crazybobbles » food

Photomonth preview & Korean BBQs

crazybobbles — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 00:59:33 +0000

Photomonth preview event!

After reading a flickr blog entry about a photomonth preview event happening close by to work, it was a preview night to show case some photos as part of the photomonth… month. I decided to make an evening of it all. My friend m was coming over to meet me that day so I thought she’d appreciate the photos and free drinks before we go out for a meal somewhere. The gallery was pretty close to Rough Trade East, and from the 3 or 4 trips to the place I no longer required google maps to aid me from finding the place. I met with my friend near where I worked and walked with her to the gallery (stopped by for some book browsing and toilet breakage).

The gallery was pretty neat, a lot of photos were based around the area (so a couple of gherkin shots) and they obviously all had a certain theme to it all. I believe most of these were shot as part of a photo walk or project. I haven’t been on a photo walk before but it does sound fun, shame you need to pay like £45 just to walk around with people and take photos of a place that was free (the only benefit is getting help from professionals). Anyway, enough about photowalks, here’s some photos of the event.

After slightly abusing the free wine and admiring the shots, we vacated the area for some food, I initially wanted to go for a curry at brick lane but I had no idea which place to goto (need some reviews first before going to a shonky one). We decided to head to central London and find a yo sushi since m hasn’t dined in a yo sushi for quite a bit. The plan sort of fizzled as I couldn’t think of a place to have yo sushi in and suddenly I decided to take her to the Korean BBQ place that my other friends took me to. m found the idea amazing since she’s never went a Korean BBQ restaurant, she’s tried making a Korean BBQ at home once but failed epically so it was a good idea to see how it was done properly.

Waiting patiently for food

Once at the restaurant we sat down and ordered pretty quickly, the BBQ set mix was about £30 and that was the main thing we wanted to have, it was just meat but that was fine. The meats included beef, pork, duck and chicken. We kept joking about how the waitress kept looking at me because she fancied me teehee (not really :P, however she did teach us more about Korean BBQs and the steps required to consume one, it was muy interesanté). The food came and the BBQ grill was heating up (for those who know little of Korean BBQs, the meat is initially set on the table RAW and gets grilled up in the crazy heating grill area that’s located in the middle of the table in a built in sort of way). It was all marinaded so once the meat was cooked it was ready to consume.

m instantly was in love with it, we were both pretty hungry and watching the food getting cooked in front of us made us even hungry! But it was definitely worth the wait, boy I need to visit here more. We spent a while identifying all the meats that was grilling, some were easy to spot but some needed some prodding and guesswork (we eventually asked hehe).

Beef, pork, chicken and duck!

Chicken and beef mainly! Nom nom

I felt slightly hungry still and ordered a seafood udon, it was nice and thick and was definitely the cherry on top of the meal, though I wish we actually ordered it with the BBQ so we could eat the udon with the various pieces of BBQ’ed meat. I could go on and on about food but I won’t bore you too much, it was a yummy place and I’d recommend anyone to try a Korean BBQ if they haven’t already (and try it again if you have!). Hopefully my food photography will convince one or two of you to go!

Seafood udon!

After our meal we went to funland (since it was closeby) to play some mini bowling (the £2 one with smaller balls and the pins attached to string). We both took a lane each and I did pretty well with my mini bowling skills by scoring a strike and a few spares. Think I ended up with 100 something whilst m scored 80 odd.

After that we ventured into the bumper cars, I took a crazy ass timelapse video of it all whilst doing some serious crashing onto fellow bumpercarians. Good times.

After that we wondered around aimlessly in London, heading to Trafalgar square and others place with no aim whatsoever, I suddenly felt like I was in a book (namely catcher in the rye). It was nice wondering around aimlessly, I suppose you just need to have good company to make it nice (which I did). The evening was getting late so I took m back to her station and said goodbye to her, it has been a while since I’ve met her so it was nice seeing her again :). Nice and short entry since I have a bitchass amount of things to catch up on, it’s become one of those moments where the things I’m doing is greater than the things I’m writing! Damn life haha (just kidding). Next entry will be about the adventures of uka so stay tuned!

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Heroes in a half shell

crazybobbles — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 20:21:25 +0000

Mmm they really were!

After a haul of gig photos I’d thought i’d process something different for a change, food photography, they’re pretty easy to develop, you just sort the white balance and you’re done. A few weeks back I went to a lovely chinese restaurant that I’ve mentioned quite a few times before, Red Chilli. I was visiting my brother and I made sure that I got some crispy peking duck action while I was there, so I booked a lovely holiday and made arrangements with him, it’s almost exactly a year since I’ve seen him so it was definitely overdue of a visit. So yeah, we ate the almighty red chilli. He recommended other places for the future so I’ll definitely check them out but I wanted to go for something I was familiar with.

Once again my brother was tempted in ordering the set menu’s and I cursed him for not realising that they’re not saving money by buying set menus and that you never go crispy aromatic duck. We slowly trawled through the menu and picked a fine selection of dishes, there were 5 of us and our choices were pretty random, we went for some obvious dishes (scallops were a must, soup was a must, and the infamous assort seafood and chicken hot pot was another must). If you think I’ve missed out duck, you’re right, THE DAMN HEAD CHEF went on holiday! I initially ordered Peking Duck (because that’s awesome) and the waitress said “Crispy aromatic duck?”, I thought she misheard me so I told her I wanted duck in the peking variety and then she goes and explains the unfortunate news, damn head chef.

I would name the dishes properly but I would need the menu and upon looking at the site it looks like the guys haven’t paid their hosting fees properly so their site is suspended teehee. So yeah, playing by memory and just saying what meat was on the table (pretty much all the meat they had minus duck *sniff*). Anyway, I won’t describe too much of the food otherwise i’d make me want to go there again

Here’s the rest of the photos. We got oranges at the end! Last time we didn’t so I made sure we did! The bill was nice and friendly and we paid up and left with smiles on our faces (except for the lack of duck). They even sorted out the typo on those damn prepacked napkins, but they were still a bastard to open!

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That damn duck weekend!

crazybobbles — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 11:33:43 +0000

Finally, was able to actually get this damn duck evening sorted. No idea why this event was labelled “damn duck” but inn kept hammering that line on long enough to cause the duck to be damning, plus it’s been a god damn long time to get this event sorted (3 odd months) I previously was able to book a table of 8 for 7pm for the epic duck weekend to celebrate my various achievements including graduation, job and first paycheck. Basically a lot of events crammed in one. It was hard these days to get time off, have it synchronised with everyone and pull off a big meetupmathom but somehow we managed, Inn took her time to actually decide on a date since she had to book it and her company had weird rules on it. I was flexible since it was easter period and I had planned on booking a long holiday to spend time with Alice before she heads off abroad.

Anyway, before and after the event me and Alice had our time off together, Alice wasn’t too happy about leaving her job but had to so she could go travel. Hopefully that all pans out right. We were able to prepare loads of stuff since Alice was leaving very soon. On the duck day me, Alice and Inn met up a wee bit for some random browsing and whatnot. Alice wanted to do a makeover with Mac but that backfired when booking was required, same with Body Shop, shame because it would have been fun watching! Inn also got some food before the duck event. We then chilled out at a starbucks where we met up with Gem and Paul.

After getting a wee bit impatient we decided to just go red chilli and chill out there. We managed to get ourselves a big table that had a lazy susan in the middle. Was a good thing since there was quite a lot of people eating and spinning food around was a good idea. (it’s ALWAYS a good idea). After some bantering kev and her sister finally arrive. We began the ever so painful process of choosing food and eventually we picked a few starters and that duck (whole variety)

The duck was epic, granted Inn wasn’t as chuffed but man it was epic haha. We had a lovely soup too and the others had spring rolls and, some cake and a hot and sour soup (all for kev, though he shared). The main course was a lot nicer than I thought it would be, I ordered the hot pot, kev ordered the sizzling beef, paul ordered some chicken and spring onion dish, alice ordered some chicken dish too and inn had to be alternative by ordering some braised pork trotter (which was some slowly cooked pork so the meat is soft (but salty).

The chicken dishes were highly accepted as well as the sizzling beef. Food was slowly but surely consumed and we even cracked a bottle of champagne (well I did, hardly anyone could drink because they were all driving or didn’t want to drink too much! Rats). I got it from work and had to find a way of using it, not going to just sit on my own and guzzle it haha.

So yeah, we got some nice orange wedges to finish off (everyone ruined their oranges by not eating it the right way (bit like eating sweetcorn too)) and boom, the bill. It was a lot less than we expected which was good and I paid almost half of it since it was meant to be a treat as well as me helping to pay Alice’s portion.

So the moral of the story is, eating is cool. Me and alice took alice’s family to go eat at Red Chilli again so we were able to enjoy a double heaping of duck! They were chuffed about the food too since we ordered some epic dishes (including soft shell crab mm).

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The story about a peking duck

crazybobbles — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 09:34:53 +0000

One of the funniest things happened when spending time with Alice last weekend. We went to dine at a lovely Chinese Restaurant called Red Chilli, I’ve been there twice and was very impressed both times (this will be the place where I’ll be celebrating something with a whole roast duck).

Anyway once at the place we were told to wait for an hour for a table, this was a bummer since we went to Leeds just for this, loads of people didn’t bother getting a table because of this, I was persistent and eventually we got a table within 15 minutes, turns out the predicted hour is simply what you should expect to wait for and not an accurate measurement of when you’ll get your table, ho hum.

We ordered a lovely Peking duck at Red Chilli, we were both very hungry and was determined to get some duck action. Anyway, there were two n00bish tables next to us, I already got an idea that they had no idea on what to get and will most likely eat set menu stuff, most of which had “Crispy Aromatic Duck”. Take note that it’s simply NOT peking duck, Peking ducks are roasted nicely and sliced up right in front of you by some fat chef (which makes you wonder why he’s always fat hehe) whilst the crispy variety only involves deep frying some duck and having the waiter/waitress “shred” it for you, it’s a lot more dry and has a dull deep fried brown look contrary to the nice golden glossy orange look.

Anyway, we were sat in some corner and the two n00b tables were placed in a way that our fat chef couldn’t come cut the duck right next to us. In comes the hilarious bit… Since the chef couldn’t cut the duck next to us he had to do it between both the tables, when the duck arrived both tables were staring at our duck being sliced up, one even took photos. They thought it was their duck since it’s being cut up next to them despite the waitress handing us the pancakes. Both tables just finished their starters so you can’t blame their gullible selves that they thought this was their duck. After some slicing the moment came, they served US the duck. Their faces were disappointed but by the looks of it they looked like they were expecting to get the same, this was when the waiter came and placed a lovely dull brown duck on their table. The reactions were priceless! Not to mention we got to see for both tables. Lesson of the day, Peking = win, Crispy = fail, thinking you’re getting a peking duck but getting a crispy = double fail

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Super Jet Lag Meetup

crazybobbles — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 00:08:44 +0000

As soon as returning to London from New York, I agreed to goto a meetup since I had the energy to (it was that or just loads of sleeping). This was a quick lunch followed by some Nando’s, it was a free for all meetup so all sorts of musers ranging from oldies to n00bs were about. I arrived pretty late since I was trying to get stu to come, he missed his coach. I eventually buy tickets for him and he managed to catch the coach to see us later on the day.

I met up with everyone at Victoria, they decided to go sushi it so yeah. I said hello to everyone and tried shaking everyone’s hand. I showed off my new york hat and gave people some “Kisses” chocolate. The meal was pretty nice and then we went to get Stu’s ticket at National Express, I ended up doing it on the phone but nonetheless we got stu out of the door haha. We then went to Covent Garden and checked out some boring street performer as well as cyber candy. I got people to take the stairs since it was quite a gruelling walk!

Afterwards we went to funland, that was.. fun, we had some bumper car action and I did some DDR’ing. Afterwards we went back to Victoria to meet up with stu and have some nando’s action. I took some photos here and there and tried to abuse the 50mm lens.

After meeting up with Stu we went to find the nando’s, I used my google maps app on my phone to locate it but the problem was finding out where we were in the first place, eventually we got there and found out it was packed and it might take 20-30 minutes for a table to be ready, we went to the pub next door to chill out and scream at passers by, eventually we get our seats at Nando’s and had a lovely meal, I ordered two jugs of sangria to treat everyone. We played a few games of “I never” and abused my nando’s loyalty card to get some extra chicken. The meetup was quite fun and ended at Wetherspoons. Max kept playing with his new compact Canon camera bless. I got back home and had an epic sleep! ready for work!

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Graduation Weekend!

crazybobbles — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 22:43:27 +0000

The most epic event in your life you’d think? The day you graduate, sadly it didn’t feel like it for me. I was to engrossed with working that uni stuff felt like “meh”. I suppose you need the studies to get the job and all but yeah, just weird that graduation would be blasé due to the fact that you feel like work makes more sense. Anyway, a graduation is a graduation and I decided to invite Alice as my guest and all. It was held at the Barbican Hall on a Friday so I booked myself a lovely holiday (as well as Alice) for the day. It also meant I got a weekend with Alice too in London.

The graduation itself was pretty boring, it was fun wearing the fancy graduation robe, but my part went quite quickly… a bit too quickly one might say, I was literally the SECOND person to receive my certificate. First class students get to go on stage first ;). But yeah the rest of the event was spent listening to a bunch of imbeciles hoot their fellow students when they received their awards, I mean, it’s a formal event, we’re at the Barbican, dressed up in robes and hooting? wtf? Ah well. The highlight of the graduation event (me picking up my award aside) was the fact that Mark Shuttleworth (founder of ubuntu) was there to make a speech! That was pretty epic. I spoke to a few students but kept it simple.

We went to hardwok cafe afterwards, Alice had never tried it and it was lunchtime so it made sense hehe. We managed to get the last of the yummy hardwok food, I had a Thai Red Curry (per usual) and Alice had a chicken in black bean sauce. We ate outside the place and had Krispy Kremes for dessert. Alice finally understood why I kept raving about hardwok cafe (if only the rest got it). Later on that evening we met up with Jason and Rachel for ANOTHER Royal China. We went to a Caffe Nero beforehand since it was a wee bit early and there we talked about how “judge judy” was the ONLY famous judge. Rachel said that there was another famous judge called “judge brown”. It was hard trying to make her crack that it was a lie since she kept building up a more and more elaborate lie about who judge brown was and what he did that made him so famous, it got to a point where Rachel said she was in contact with him and that he was her father. After a the battle of judge brown we headed to Royal China for our grub. This time we ordered a half duck to feast on as well as some dim sum dishes and awesome seafood noodles / ho fun. The meal was epic as ever (especially when we got ourselves some scallops action too) and though it was about £20 odd per head, it was a yummy meal! Afterwards we settled in the Natural Cafe and had a lovely chat like before.

The next day we had a meal at Wagamamma and spent the rest of the day at Central London, I took Alice to loads of places including Cyber Candy at Covent Garden and the Apple Store (beautiful landmark). It was disturbing how we managed to get a lot of things done, we also went to china town and got ourselves… ANOTHER duck haha, this time I went into a restaurant and ordered one cut up for din dins, it came to £14 which was amazing! We went to picadilly circus to so Alice could take the ubiquitous shot of the lights (not as epic as times square though).

Sunday we had a lovely meal with my dad and then spent the rest of the day watching Harry Potter (we managed to watch Sliding doors at one of the days too, it was a must!). We also watched Kill Bill and had a lovely meal at home. The next day Alice went back up north and I went to work again, it was a lovely day but it was always a bummer going to work and ONLY just departing with Alice. Ah well

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Christmas with Alice 2007

crazybobbles — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 21:54:04 +0000

For Christmas, I had booked a holiday to go up north and spend it with Alice and her family. It was a pretty epic week and a bit, my birthday was spent enjoying a lovely roast yorkshire ham lunch (I hear it’s amazing) and lots of presents from Alice and her parents (for both xmas and birthday), including a Harry Potter BluRay, His Dark Materials boxset and a Howls Moving Castle art book. It was quite a fest of presents and I was able to celebrate the Xmas Day household style. It’s really nice seeing all the quirks at the house, it was full of family traditions and food. The turkey was awesome and it definitely lasted for quite some days hehe.

I also got an awesome KATAMARI BIRTHDAY cake!

It was nice watching everyone give and receive presents on Xmas day, I managed to get Alice a lovely ipod since she was thinking of getting one in the first place, granted she did pay for the warranty and chipped in £30 for it, so I suppose it wasn’t a full present :$. I was also able to check out Ikea for the first time up north, they do awesome £1 breakfast though I got myself a double breakfast since it was so cheap, the furniture was pretty awesome and I can see why people love it so much. I got Alice to get some finger puppets since they looked flippin’ awesome.

We were also able to do a quick Gourmet Burger Kitchen visit with kev and have some bingo action in Leeds, I picked a lovely BUFFALO burger which was new on the menu. It was pricey as fuck but was pretty amazing, nice and juicey. Besides it’s BUFFALO, who can resist (yup, I see you salivating you veggies haha kidding). Kev and Alice were pretty impressed by GBK too, Alice had a Oreo milkshake too which was new on the menu. Bingo night wasn’t too much of a success since we missed the early thingy and wasn’t able to win much. It’s getting slightly frustrating because it’s almost that we’re playing to win and not for the fun anymore, though it’s been a while since we’ve won and I’m dying to say “GWAR” to everyone. Maybe Inn stole all the win from everyone

The last day up north was spent at Nando’s before my train arrived, it was a lovely meal, we hadn’t had Nando’s for some time so it was pretty cool. The train journeys were spent surfing on my new E61i phone, was able to use fring as well as surf on sites via Opera Mini.

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Stuart’s birthday and Alice weekend

crazybobbles — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 21:36:19 +0000

For Stuart’s birthday we all opted to get him a DS Lite, the original plan was to get him vouchers for it but I thought it was cooler to just get him the actual console. Alice was able to attend and spend some time in London with me. We managed to all meet up at Brent Cross and head to Kazzie’s for the night. I believe we had some nice grubby takeaway from some random Chinese Takeaway place.

I’m not sure how we spent our evening and morning but I believe we did have an amazing breakfast! We bought everything we needed to make the perfect full english breakfast and got delayed for the actual event that Max and Aino organised. I believe we did quite a fair bit of smash brothering too which made us disturbingly late, no worries though since we’re the host I guess *shrugs*. Passing Brent Cross I was able to smuggle myself a black DS Lite for Stu whilst Karis and Inn were able to distract Stu for a bit.

We arrived at Regent Street pretty late and finally found everyone, we then headed to a very packed Oxford Street finding the restaurant. We were going to have tapas at a place called La Tasca. Quite a fair amount of people were about which was fun and we had a lovely seat booked and all.

The meal was alright, paella was just wet rice and bits of stuff however we did order a fair amount of stuff and in the end, the bill was a joke. It came to £200+ and people were simply gobsmacked by it, it was rather awkward for people, especially when some were refusing to pay any more. Me and Alice decided to save the day by pitching in the rest so everyone was able to pay the bill and avoid embarrassment. But boy Max and Aino aren’t planning any meetups in the future. Tapas is a 2 person event, not suitable for orgies.

The rest of the weekend was spent with Alice, we met up with Jason and Rachel and had some yum yum dim sum at Royal China, I chose this place because Jason and Rachel previously took me to “Ping Pong” to have dim sum when I told them that Royal China is a nicer place and do a wider range of dim sum. So yeah, it was a pretty epic meal at a far less scary price (especially when Jason and Rachel could afford it all hehe). I was very pissed off that we didn’t get free oranges! They usually do it so

We went into the Natural Cafe to sit around and chat for the rest of the day, Jason got me an orange to eat hehe. Was always nice seeing Jason and Rachel, Alice got on well with them too so it was all good We then called it a night and that was that day.

The day after I had to go work and Alice had to return back up north, we said our farewells at Monument and that was the weekend. Lesson of the day, don’t get tapas. Stick with a golden crispy fucking duck haha.

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Sushi, 3D Dumbledore and We are Physics!

crazybobbles — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 22:04:02 +0000

Today was quite a disturbingly hectic day, so many things arranged and plan in the last minute. Kazzie spoke to me on msn and asked me if I wanted to go out and have Yo Sushi! with her and Stu. I originally was going to decline the offer since I was pretty tired from Regina Spektor gig and all, thought since Michelle was also inviting me to see We Are Physics at the buffalo bar as well I decided I might as well make the day of it and have a proper day out again.

Yo Sushi and a very late stu

Upon arriving fashionable late I met up with Kazzie and got a seat at Yo Sushi! We were still waiting for Stu to arrive so we just sat around and drank some green tea, I ordered some cold dishes so that they were immediately ready when Stu was about and Kazzie ordered a chicken yakisoba to eat. The wait was pretty long as I believe Stu was almost an hour late. We eventually got nice and cosy and ate our food, Kazzie promised Stu that if he came today she would eat a Salmon Nigiri so we ordered just that (I persuaded her to do it so I could have her nigiri if she couldn’t finish the other one off hehe). The dish arrived and kazzie actually kept her promise and ate the thing. Though it’s nothing for us (me, alice, inn, kev and loads others), it was quite remarkable that Kazzie did eat raw salmon when she didn’t like fish in general!

I ordered a salmon skin hand roll, a tamago nigiri and a beef ramen which kept the bill nice and small (should of got a rainbow combo to be honest). I mentioned the gig I was going and Kazzie and Stu were pretty much up for it, we were then contemplating what to do between the gig and after Yo Sushi! After paying the bill and leaving victoria we headed off to the Apple store in Regent Street to have a look at the new ipods as well as perv at the iMacs. Stu did some research and found out that imax were showing Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix in a hour and a bit so we decided to spend the rest of the afternoon watching Harry Potter! The difference was that it was at the imax (one of the biggest screens in the UK) and the last battle scene was in 3D! I think the idea of watching it all in 3D was too much to miss so we went to waterloo to pay imax a visit.

mmm Dumbledore in 3d

We were given large specs at imax and were able to buy decent tickets to the show and all. We were also able to catch a few 3d trailers to really enjoy the 3d experience, it was amazing! Things were popping out right in front of you and stuff, it just made us desperate to see what 3d harry potter had to offer!

The film was amazing, if you exclude hermione’s moving eyebrows, kazzie’s constant giggling about them, the large number of discrepancies from the film and the book and the fact that our seats were slightly to the left. The 3d bit however was flawless, it was amazing watching it all in 3d. The best bit was when Dumbledore was fighting Voldermort. Stu laughed at Dumbledore’s whipping wand technique and I was just gormless when the the glass at the ministry of magic shattered. It was all pretty jaw dropping when it was in 3d.

We are Physics! Did they goto the imax too?

After the film we decided to head off to the buffalo bar at Highbury Islington station. Stu decided that he was tired after watching Dumbledore in 3d so we left us at Euston. Kazzie brought her dslr camera so we were ready to take some lovely photos of the band at it. We met up with Michelle (who was with Caff) and headed to the venue to go check out the band. They were pretty amazing, really reminded me of Polysics as they were really jumpy and fun to watch. Photo taking was slightly tedious since the lighting was inconsistent and all. However with the help of flash I was able to take a few decent shots. The guitarist was wearing 3d specs which led me to believe that they might have went to see Harry Potter too haha.

After the gig there was also another band playing but due to time we had to leave at 11pm, was a shame since I wouldn’t mind watching them myself (they’re headling and all). But yeah, the venue was pretty far away from where I lived so it was best to call it a night instead of risking taking a painful night bus back home!

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Leeds Festival 2007

crazybobbles — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 21:40:37 +0000

Ever since Alice arrived back from France we were going to arrange some time to meet up and all, though since I was occupied every other Friday, it meant that I had to work my times to visit Alice around the schedule and all. We were able to have a quick Monday to Thursday visit which was fun. I met Will (Alice’s eldest brother) during my visit and got to go to Temujin once again. I was also able to have a quick meal with kev at Lucky Dragon (we had loads of yum yum dim sum and kev got some soup and beef fried rice (crazy portions though)) and at the end I was able to accompany Alice to get her A Level results (which were awesome, she got all A’s). That little visit was short but nonetheless significant. One thing that neither of us knew was going to happen was that me and Kev were going to buy tickets to Leeds Festival for the Friday date to see Smashing Pumpkins and Nine Inch Nails (and in my case, see Alice and tell her Happy Birthday).

Visiting Burley Park

As well as spending time with Alice, I had also booked time to go visit my brother since I was only going to Leeds Festival for the day whilst Alice was going for the entire weekend with her friends. So once Alice was all packed up and ready to head to Leeds festival with her friends, I had to bid her farewell for the day and head off to my brothers place to stay. I was to set off from Huddersfield to Burley Park to meet up with my brother (who was currently doing a bit of shopping).

Once meeting up with him I went to his den to check out the state of it (they’ve recently moved houses and now live in a cosy house with a spare guest room which I was going to be staying in). His house was definitely a lot nicer than the previous one. I’ve noticed that he’s got a few new toys to play with, including a Silverburst Les Paul guitar, his POD XT Live and his bloody Mac Book Pro. There wasn’t much to do at his place though, I luckily brought my Wii over to play around with (otherwise it would have been boring) and he got to have a go at it and test out on whether he’d want to buy one afterwards. I also had a go on his Mac Book Pro, it was pretty awesome, however the problem was that all he did on it was browse the internet. Any £300 laptop PC could do that! I thought it was quite a waste to just buy it for the purpose of browsing the internet. I was expecting him to use photoshop or making music via Garageband or Logic, but noo. Just browsing.

Food wasn’t too exciting, lots of oven baked food haha, I wasn’t use to it to be fair, I talked about restaurants he liked going to and he mentioned a place called Red Chilli which was a proper fancy Chinese Restaurant. At some point he was going to show why Red Chilli was an awesome place and all. I told him about Lucky Dragon but he didn’t seem to like the idea about it and thought it was too much of a Takeaway kind of restaurant. Later on my brother had guests and all so I slowly but surely went back to my room to play with my laptop. I did socialise a bit with them but I’m getting the feeling that they’d prefer their own company and all. Anyway, I had Leeds festival to look forward to and all.

Arriving at Leeds Festival

Arriving there was nice, managed to pop by at kev’s place for a bit before heading off to Leeds, originally I was going to have a quick trip to Wokmania and stock up on food but turns out Wokmania wasn’t opened yet so I changed the plan and bought some meal deal lunch at Boots. I knew the importance of food during festivals so I made sure I was nice and full during the day so a decent lunch was required, wasn’t too bothered about dinner since we were all (kev, inn and me) planning on getting a curry after the festival. Inn was going to drive us to the site so once I met up with kev it was a matter of waiting for inn to arrive. After a quick banter at kev’s place we headed off to the festival. Inn was familiar with the route so it wasn’t a painful journey and all.

The trek back to the car

Once there we parked ourselves at the Brown parking overflow place, Inn managed to take down some landmarks to remember where we were and all. The trek to the site was a pretty long one, there was a lot of moaning involved of a trek that seemed like forever, we eventually got there and got our wristbands. I phoned alice and told her to come and meet us. We got into the venue ok (smuggled my DSLR camera as well as a daddio telezoom lens!) and met up with Alice. As I was trying to take photos of the ferris wheel I discover that I had forgot to put my battery in my camera! ARGH! Luckily inn had her DSLR in her car so me and Alice (alice was being ultra nice) had a lovely trek back to the car to retrieve her battery and all. Kev also wanted his Ribena back too and I also wanted to leave my top in the car too. It wasn’t too painful of a trek since I was with Alice and all, finding the car was a pain though. Had to rely on Inn texting us about landmarks and stuff. Eventually we found it and were able to head back to meet up with inn and kev who didn’t really see much since we were gone.

He who must not be named

I wasn’t bothered about who we saw before Nine Inch Nails and Smashing Pumpkins so I pretty much saw whatever everyone in the group saw (think that was the same case with Alice and Inn) so kev pretty much led us around places to see random bands. We saw the Cancer Bats purely because their name had the word “Cancer” in it. We also saw a bit of the Maccabees which was fun, another band which vividly stands out in my experience that day was the band “The Dwarves”. We had no idea what they were like but we had a look anyway. Lets say theres a lot of nakedness. A lot of nakedness. The guitarist, “He who must not be named” was all kinds of naked. Well thats a lie, he did wear a mask haha. It was quite a sight haha, especially when he got up on the amps and started to pleasure himself in front of the crowd (thank god his…thing.. was shy). There was also the bassist who was dressed up as a priest who spent most of the gig with a bass amp fault. It was funny watching them try and fix it and then half way through the singer went “I don’t need bass!” haha. So yeah, pretty random.

Revenge of the Refried Beans

After that we decided to go to the main stage to check out Fall Out Boy and the other bands after them (Kev wanted to see Fall Out Boy). We weren’t really paying attention to Fall Out Boy and spent the time eating our lunch and all. I was surprised that I managed to smuggle my bottle of Innocent Smoothie into the venue and all, it went down well with my all day breakfast sandwich. After fall out boy kev wanted to go and buy a taco (grande) since he was feeling hungry. I advised him that tacos weren’t exactly the best food you’d eat in a festival, he was asking for some proper bowl movements and all, and this is what he got.

After Fall Out Boy came Lostprophets, we began to make our way to the front of the main stage since the rest of the bands we wanted to see were on the Main Stage. We manage to catch a quick glimpse of Kate Nash playing in some random tent as well as the all important trip to the toilet for kev after his taco grande. Lostprophets were fun, they mentioned about how little UK bands were playing tonight as well as getting a proper mosh pit going. I managed to take one decent photo of the lead singer which was good.

Nine inch nails and Smashing Pumpkins

I’ll keep this short (photos will occupy the rest of the post), after Lostprophets we began making our way to the front, the crowd were pretty tame so around the time Nine Inch Nails started we were pretty near the front, and when Smashing Pumpkins started, we were practically in front for it.

Nine Inch Nails were amazing tonight, they did play quite a lot of Year Zero songs as well as do an all synth stage to play a few synth exclusive songs (Me, I’m Not for example) I was really happy that they played Sin tonight as well, they ended with Head Like a Hole and Hurt. The Smashing Pumpkins were just as amazing, though only Billy and Jimmy were left in the band, they still did a pretty good job with their old stuff. Tonight Tonight was probably the best song from their set. I wasn’t too keen on how they went a bit too riff wanky at every song, just picture all their songs extended with big 5 minute instrumentals. Heavy Metal Machine was disturbingly long :/. Anyway, here’s some photos of the gig, I was really happy of the outcome since I was really far away from the stage.

Alice’s birthday and the trip back home

After the festival we exited the festival and went to Alice’s campsite for a bit, we were hoping to celebrate her birthday for a bit as well as have some cookies haha. The time spent there also meant that we wouldn’t have too much of a problem exiting the place since it was pretty packed with people leaving the place and all. After a nice chat and all, me kev and inn left the festival site and headed straight back to kev’s place, we were initially going to find a curry house to eat in but we were too late, everything was closed and all so our only hope was to order a takeaway at kev’s place. Once at kev’s place we decided to download the new episode of The IT crowd and watch it whilst we ate. I ordered a chicken madras, inn ordered a korma whilst kev ordered a lamb balti. Twas a yummy meal, though it was pretty hot stuff the madras (glad I didn’t get vindaloo). After consuming our dinner and watching the IT crowd we pretty much called it a night and went to sleep.

Back to Burley Park and Lucky Dragon action

Kev had already informed us that he had relatives visiting so we had to pretty much leave the place at around 11 odd. We cleared up the living room and stayed at kev’s room for a bit surfing around the muse board and all, once things got boring we decided to head off. I needed to head back to my brother’s place first to unload my stuff and have a nice shower before going back to Leeds for a meal with inn (she wanted Yo Sushi!). After a quick trip to Burley Park and a quick shower we headed to Leeds uni to park the car and head for Yo Sushi! However, along the way I managed to persuade inn that Yo Sushi! wasn’t really a good idea and that Lucky Dragon was the place to be. I finally managed to persuade inn to go and so we headed to Lucky Dragon and had a lovely dim sum meal. I knew what I was going to order since I already had that dim sum lunch with kev and alice. Inn on the other hand was a bit indecisive. The best bit was when we were issued Chinese menu’s and inn couldn’t read it at all. I helped order the with little help of the menu and managed to get a pretty decent dim sum set. The bill came out pretty nice, we only paid about £6 each and was pretty full from it all so it was pretty amazing. Afterwards we went to hunt for a present for Alice, I managed to get her a nice pair of earrings that were the invisibility stars in Mario. The next task was getting a nice box, card and stuff to stuff the box in, we managed to get some cotton balls in Boots for 39p so score! Once all that was done I said my goodbyes to inn as she headed back to kev’s place because she forgot her sleeping bag. The rest of the day was spent at my brother’s place, it was pretty boring, only got interesting the next day.

Red Chilli

The next day my brother proposed that we all went to Red Chilli to have a lovely meal. I immediately agreed since I was getting pretty bored in the house. We booked a table and headed off around 8pm odd. Once there I immediately saw why my brother liked Red Chilli, the place was pretty classy! Not only that, the food was more unique and old fashioned compared to your bog standard chinese restaurants. My brother was initially going to order the “True Love” dinner set which was £26 per head. I however persuaded everyone to get some duck instead since duck is always nice as well as the fact that most set menu’s aren’t exactly cheaper than when you order a la carte. We ordered some seafood soup, scallops (I didn’t get any though :() , half a duck and 3 dishes for main course (chicken with some spicy dip, some seafood dish and softshell crab). I was amazed at how cheap the soft shell crab was! The duck was amazing and everything else was lush! I was really impressed with the place and preferred it over Lucky Dragon (for meals anyway, they dont do Dim Sum here). The bill came to about £75 odd which wasn’t bad for a party of 5. Will definitely pay Red Chilli a visit when I’m out about in Leeds (and when I have money haha).

Reunited with Alice

After a lovely meal at Red Chilli the night before I went back to Huddersfield where I met up with Alice, apparently the people around her campsite went a bit crazy so Alice and her friends decided to get a lift from one of their parent’s and sleep in the comfort of a house rather then raving festival go’ers armed with lighters and other flammable objects. I met up with a very tired Alice at Huddersfield where we got a lift back to her place from her mum, Alice was absolutely tired from the festival but nonetheless glad to see me again :). Afterwards the remaining days were spent with Alice at her place watching films and recelebrating her birthday with the rest of her family. It was a pretty hectic and fun week. I left on the 30th and had another Yo Sushi! Meal.