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So… on Tuesday just gone, I went to the V&A Museum. The Victoria and Albert Museum (to give it its proper title), is a really beautiful, grand museum and gallery located in the rather posh, leafy and lovely part of London called Kensington (in South Kensington to be exact).
The V&A is my favourite museum/gallery I’ve ever been to. The ones that I can remember are the British Museum, the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum, the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, the Tate and the Tate Modern; I’ve been to more but these are the ones in London that I’ve been to recentishly and are all about the same sort of thing. The reason why I love the V&A so much is that it has so many different things to see. It has exhibits from medieval European stonework to French Art Nouveau posters; from Raphael to modern photography, from Renaissance sculptures to Japanese samurai swords – it really does have so many things to offer. Sure, most of the stuff isn’t necessarily cool like dinosaur fossils or mummies, but everything is exquisite and beautiful in its own way; you’ve gotta give credit to a museum that shows fashion from P Diddy as well as Greek statues.
My favourite sections of the museum are the 15th-19th century British collection and the Chinese and Japanese collection. I used to study Fine Art and Graphics so came to the V&A to look at the collections when I was studying the Arts and Crafts Movement, Art Nouveau, 20th century design, Japanese art and Chinese art; it’s really awesome – you can see so much! Below are a few pictures of random things I liked, although I didn’t take many pictures because my friend isn’t really interested in that kind of stuff and prefers fashion and photography.
These two things are from the Chinese collection – I think they’re so vibrant and beautiful. It reminds me of Islamic art but is more delicate I think, and also of Art Nouveau (which was influenced by Asian art), but is less pretentious. I don’t know from what year they’re from but they’re probably old…
These are both from the Medieval Europe collection; I don’t know from what country or from what year but they’re both amazing I think. The big… tower thing is huge! It’s about… 10 of me, so about 50 feet or something. It’s inspiring to think before they invented cranes and diggers and everything became industrialised, they were making things as grand as this.
This is some chandelier thing that you first see when you enter the museum. Again, it’s massive, and seems to like, float in midair, above your head – it’s really awesome! It’s made out of green and blue glass, blown into spirals and twirls, it’s really beautiful.
Going back to my last post and my rather ugly chopsticks stolen from some random Chinese restaurant in years gone past… I bought some new chopsticks! They’re really cute and pretty don’t you think? Granted, they’re Japanese and not Chinese, but still, so pretty! I’m giving the blue/purple pair to my sister today as a birthday present; she can’t use them, but hopefully this will be incentive for her to learn. When we visit my dad, I know she gets embarrassed because she’s the only one that can’t use them ^_^’
That’s about it really… I really recommend if you ever come to London, or if you already live there, to visit the V&A. It’s normally pretty quiet and you hardly ever get smaller children there (although some teenagers go as trips with their schools), and it’s quiet, never busy, you’re allowed to take pictures (not of everything though), it’s free and cool inside on a hot day and you can sit outside next to a pool/water fountain thing and lay about in the sun.
If I’m honest, I can’t really cook… at all. I can cook an okay macaroni cheese and spaghetti bolognese which is about it. I once made enchiladas but that was only once so I can’t really say I can cook them. Apart from random pasta dishes, I really can’t cook. Cooking has never really appealed to me but baking has; I wish I could bake the yummiest cakes and will definitely learn to make the perfect muffins.
Anyway, my inability to cook is a bit embarrassing seeing as my dad can cook yummy Chinese food and my mum makes the yummiest Christmas dinner so I don’t really know why I can’t cook well, probably laziness on my part. Although, that said, my brother seems to think spaghetti bolognese with sausages instead of mince is nice. It isn’t!
Anyway, what I am okay at making is lunch! I can make a couple of smallish dishes that don’t take long and are yummy enough. I love to set a time when I’ll put my lunch on and plan in my head and get up and go to the kitchen and clean the pots and pans I’ll be having. Then getting everything ready and eventually cooking it. One of my favourite lunches is a semi-faux Chinese lunch that I randomly made up with Chinese ingredients. It’s basically noodles, pak choi and some oyster sauce! It’s yummier than it sounds!
All you do is get some Chinese style noodles, cook them like normal, boil some pak choi seperately, add them to the noodles at the end, put into a bowl, add noodle flavouring and add a bit oyster sauce for flavour! You can add some meat if you want too as well but I seldom do, you could also add egg (to the boiling noodles), which would also be nice.
Pak choi is a type of Chinese cabbage that I’ve always had at Chinese restaurants and at home on a seperate plate, boiled, with lots of oyster sauce on it and you randomly help yourself to them; they’re so nice! Cooked like that they’re very soft. Pak choi (which is a Cantonese pronunciation) has a slightly sweet flavour which I really love! You can really start to smell it when you boil them, but it’s not over bearing or really strong like most conventional Western vegetables. Here are pictures of my lunch I cooked about 5 days ago:
This pak choi I actually bought from a mainstream, British supermarket chain-store called Sainsbury’s which I never thought I’d find there! I normally buy mine from China Town and was so amazed to see it in Sainsbury’s that I bought it (China Town is quite a bit further from me than Sainsbury’s). It’s a bit different though… it’s definitely longer than any pak choi I’ve had before and the stuff from China Town is much cheaper (five or so smaller ones costing less than two bigger ones from Sainbury’s) and think I prefer the smaller ones.
These are the noodles I use! They’re pretty cheap and basic, doesn’t have to be organic or anything expensive, I think they cost my 23p a packet. They’re chicken flavour by the way!
This is the oyster sauce. It has a slightly sweet, slightly salty, slightly fishy taste but it’s yummy nonetheless, although you should only use it a little bit or mix it in a lot.
And that is the finished product! It looks a bit small, that’s probably because there’s not a lot of soup but I don’t tend to use a lot of water when cooking the noodles. I also didn’t mean to add the oyster sauce in a perfect circle! Also, we don’t really have matching chopsticks anymore (they got lost along the years ago or something; we have four left, none match), but I like to use them when I can to practice for when I go to Chinese restaurants and don’t embarrass myself, although I am pretty shabby at them and embarrassingly food has fallen out of my chopsticks just as it’s getting to my mouth – much to the amusement of everyone else… But there you have it, lunch with chopsticks, cooked in about 15 minutes and very yummy to eat!
For my first blog entry I wanted to post something that was hopefull, a little bit cool! I only got my Nintendo DS at Christmas time (2006) and have only got five games so far: Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training, Children of Mana, Final Fantasy III, Tetris DS and Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales. I play my DS a lot, more than my PSP (although I don’t really have any games that I want to play on my PSP though) and at the moment I’m addicted to Tetris!
I must admit that I was never that much of a Tetris fan; yes I had an original Gameboy and yes I did play Tetris on it but I was never that fanatical about it (I think I was too young and teddies seemed more fun!), but after seeing Hikkichan’s super Tetris skills I so badly wanted to have it so I could be like her! Shameless fanatacism I’m sure but wanting to be good at Tetris isn’t a bad goal is it? Hikkichan is amazing at Tetris! She managed to get the top score of 99,999,999 for it on the DS and that is sooo amazing!
When I first started to play it, I was lucky if I got past 50 lines! Yesterday I completed 200 lines on level 20 and then later on decided to go for broke and put on Endless mode. I played until the wee hours of the morning before my right arm went numb… then my left one and then I closed it! I carried on this morning but got a bit bored. My top score is 4,726,000 so far – that’s 95,273,999 points away from the top score – I dunno how she managed to get that score! She must have had to have taken breaks and stuff – her whole body would be numb otherwise!
In the picture of my DS above, you can also see my cute little phone charm that I attached to my DS. It’s of Hello Kitty dressed up like a bunny as part of a Chinese zodiac range and I’m a rabbit so tuhdah! Hello Kitty, Chinese zodiac bunny style! I love phone charms (or straps as I normally call them), lots and lots! I import them from Strapya which is a Japan based online store selling phone straps. They have sooo many different ones and they’re relatively cheap so I’ve bought lots! I can’t remember how many I have, but I have a few, my favourite being a chibi Jack Skellington (from Nightmare Before Christmas) dressed in a Santa Claus outfit that I put on my phone last Christmas. My brother recently went to Disneyland Paris and brought me a Mickey Mouse phone strap that is now on my Nintendo Wi-fi USB Connector! They’re just too cute not to collect!
I’ll leave you now with Utada Hikaru winning against lots of geeks at Tetris! Go Hikkichan!
