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Laura and I went to Hyper Japan in Earls court 2012. It was a nice culture exchanged centre for Japan to the world. You can eat food there, buy some japanese authentic books, games or cutleries etc. Laura and I … Continue reading
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It was a really hot day about 32 degree. John and I decided to visit the famous Highgate Cemetery. Normally if we were in China, this was really spooky and superstitiously wrong, however, it seems ok and respectful to visit … Continue reading
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Chaozhou is famously known as one of the great cultural centres in the Lingnan region of China. Chaozhou culture is known worldwide as a unique part of world heritage. It’s one hour drive from Shantou (my home town). John always … Continue reading
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After graduated, I haven’t seen Nicole for almost a year and a half. Since moved back to London and had a holiday in China, (which I am still adjust all the holiday pictures and will post it soon) our new … Continue reading
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I always want to see ballet performance in London, so it did have an amazing Swan Lake of English National Ballet at London Coliseum. I asked my girl friend Nicole to join me and we were right on time to … Continue reading
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It was John’s birthday today, however John and I don’t really fussy about our birthday at all, and it’s just another day to let ourselves to have excuses to eat out somewhere. John saw a Persian restaurant next to us … Continue reading
It’s good to be back in London, and call this marvellous city once again our home. I enjoyed our Leeds life, and also made a lot of incredible friends. Norther people dislike London for reasons, just like Souther people tease Northerner about their accents. I take it as different culture and I really appreciate the various culture backgrounds among this country.
After all the hard working moving and driving from North, we finally settle down and had time to relax in our new home and new area.
North London is always the first choice for John if we want to live in London, so at the end, we are living in North West London next to Primrose Hill. While we enjoy the area in Spring and Summer, we will fully make use of the area to offer. John and I said that so far, we don’t need to central London at all, because all the restaurants and shops in Camden have already kept us occupied.
Karolina is my working colleague, and we bond to each other so quick after few months working. She loves Chinese food more than I do sometimes. Both of us are seafood’s lovers, and normal I always invite her to my place, so I can cook good seafood for her. In the past few days, we had the most amazing Karaoke, German sausage nights together, and she decided to cook Polish food for me today as well.
She told me that they don’t do lunch, and normally they eat breakfast at 11am, then have a late afternoon big dinner, then have a small sandwich at night. This is Polish food culture. It was quite weird, but weird because we get used of three time meal system.
Karolina cooked a slow-cook beef with wild mushroom with some polish rice, and drink was butter-milk (sour yogurt) together. It was beautiful and they normal eat with a big portion as well. It was lovely to try some real Polish food without travelling there. That’s why I love living in different places, because you always meet some wonderful people from all over the world.
I am a lucky girl who always meet gorgeous people. It was the best few days in Leeds with all my friends together.
Back home, when it’s Chinese New Year, our family tradition always have seafood hot-pot because Shantou is near coastal city. Seafood for us is everyday basic food. Basically you just have a chicken stock as the soup base or just water, and put any seafood and meat into soup, then at the end, you put more vegetable and noodle in, and simple as that.
Mum used to cook that when she was a little bit lazy and didn’t want to fuss to cook a proper meal. I always like that and it takes about 2 minutes to have a noodle soup on the tablet with fresh seafood and ingredient.
Ingredient: 1 fresh chicken stock /cube, seafood or left over food, 1-2 lettuce, some coriander and noodle or dumplings. Season is salt and white pepper.
Boil the chicken stock, (add some water depends how do you like) put the seafood in for 2 minutes, then noodle in for 1 minutes, add lettuce at last with coriander, season it with salt and white pepper. Job done, really to warm you up with fresh seafood and noodle soup. The soup will be tasty, fresh and noodle will fill you up as well Simple dish for cold winter!
After a big meal, traditionally we always drink some GongFu tea to digest our food and fattiness. Health and you can talk to friends all night long while you are sharing the tea culture.
After John went to Manchester for his conference meeting, he said I would love to go shopping and experience Manchester. We decided to drive to Manchester at this weekend and see whether I like it or not.
It was very easy road to drive from Leeds to Manchester. After 40 minutes, we parked in central of Manchester and started to explore the area. It got Selfridges and a lot of big departments, high street, and a lot more choices than Leeds. I always think Leeds city centre is too small. I did enjoy to go shopping in London, but could be quite tired, because it is huge. I could easily spend one day only walking in Oxford Street. However, Manchester is the perfect size for going shopping. You don’t need to take tubes to go to different area, but it got so many designers shops and brands everywhere.
Manchester is famous for a huge number of Chinese population, and it means there is a lot of Chinese restaurants in town, so we went to Tai Wu restaurant, which we had been to the same one in Guangzhou and it is a big Chain dimsum restaurant in China. It was great dimsum – very cheap. Price was from £1.7-£3 per dish. However, like in China, Tai Wu didn’t have much of vegetarian choices because John likes vegetarian dimsum. I think we ordered 8-10 dishes and came out only £16 for the bill.
Interestingly there was Jazz Festival promoting in Manchester city centre, and pity that we didn’t stay long to attend the event. I can feel more music cultural happening in Manchester than Leeds.
Manchester always has the reputation that it is a rough and scary city and I felt it when I was there, not because I followed the stereotype, but it was true. Even though living in London for 2 years, I didn’t feel London is particular a rough or dangerous city. It has some rough area for sure, but I never felt uncomfortable living there. I think I might feel quite dangerous living in Manchester, but it was my personal opinion and it is properly not fully true if you are living there rather than as a visitor.
I do like Manchester, and bigger than Leeds and love about the shopping and many choices of food. I will definitely go shopping there again and return often. It makes me miss London a lot.