When Imagination Meets Reality

So it's not like I've been doing nothing for the best part of five months (five months of no blogging...oh the shame) I have been doing so much stuff, some of which is still on-going, finger majorly crossed, but the high point was the visitor I had over Chinese New Year! The best-friend-from-home-not-seen-in-two-plus-years.

We are just too cool!

Whilst the major downside of living abroad is that you can't take your friends and family with you, these are the very same people who give you the greatest joy when they visit you and you can proudly show them around the place you call home. The Best Friend and I have had our ups and downs, but even now she is back in the old U of K, it feels as if she's just the same old bus ride away (and I do still miss a good old Glasgow - Edinburgh bus journey). Some things really do never change! 

Her introduction to Asia was a crazy one. It just so happened that SHINee had their concert tour in Hong Kong the same day she arrived. I posed the option of going to a concert to her, without telling her who we'd be going to see, and with her (half) consent, I got us tickets: 

It was brilliant. We didn't know what was going on half the time, she was jet-lagged and we had a double language barrier (Korean and Cantonese and yet we still managed to answer half the questions - we got skillz...), but blimey are these boys good live and my K-Pop love was nicely indulged! This is an excellent representation of how we felt: 

Credit to the genius who made this!

What followed was two weeks of awesomeness, including a mosy to the Big Buddah, playing Guidebook or Ritz in Ozone (highest bar in Asia, dontcha know!) and enjoying the sun of Chinese New Year (which descended into a bitterly cold February but that's by-the-by). One of the most amazing things we did was go to Tai O. I'd been meaning to go for Yonks and just not done it however I'm so glad I waited to go with Le Pal. No one else could suitably understand just how inspirational of a place it was. For us, it was perhaps one of the closest realities we'll get to out imaginings of our brain child. We have spent hours on end picking apart what certain places look like, and wandering around Tai O, land and water, suddenly one of those places was physically in front of me.

 Picture SPAAAAAAAAAM! I'm now off to go and battle with a plot and try and find a way of fitting everything I want/need into the epic. Somehow I will find a way of getting it all in there... somehow!

When it comes to music, language is no barrier!

I have always had my ipod's recently played playlist capped at 250 songs. This is out of age old habit (I haven't altered it in the six years I've had an ipod) and because it generally allows for a decent turn over of songs. At the end of every month I used to save the playlist so I could go back and listen again, sadly that ipod died a heroic death and the playlists were lost *sobs quietly into consoling cup of tea*. That is something I should probably start doing again... I digress.

What surprised me when I scrolled through the playlist this morning was how the majority of the songs are not in English. There is currently an extraordinarily large amount of K-Pop, a bit of J-Pop thrown in, a fair whack of French music some German tracks and even a lone Spanish one floating around, covering a vast range of genres. There's reggae, some indie rock, pop of various guises, a little R&B and much in between! 

I speak none of these languages fluently, but when it comes to music I have found that this has little-to-no impact whatsoever. The music and the voice alone are enough to convey the message of some songs, and sometimes understanding the lyrics is surplus to requirements (although when the odd word or phrase in English is thrown in, it adds a whole new aspect to working out the meaning of a song - especially when you pick up on incorrect grammar!). 

All that said, one of the few track on the playlist that IS in English is 'I Miss Her' from Jessie J's new album, Alive. While it's not going to win an accolade as the greatest song ever, the lyrics connect on such a deep personal level that I can't help but love it. It's a song that put one of my worst fear's to music, but that in itself makes the prospect OK. Music has always been part of who I am, I associate places and people with music. There are songs I associate with Lower School, some with Upper School, some with 6th From, and more than a few that remind me University! I wouldn't have it any other way. Music has this way of transporting you back to the best (and occasionally the worst) memories. It can fire up your imagination, comfort you when you're sad and celebrate with you when you're happy. You can love, laugh and cry to music. It can fix you when you're at your lowest, even if you don't speak the same language. 

In the end, music is universal. 

Nothing beats a good ol' sing-song!

Friday 5:30pm - the time that one of my most challenging classes arrives. Imagine my surprise when this rowdy class of four boys were utterly enchanted and captivated by McFly's Love Is Easy and constantly requested to hear it again - they even remembered to say please! It just goes to show that nothing beats a good song! Oh all right I know I'm biased and that I have a deep love for McFly that has been firmly rooted since they appeared 10 years ago (10 years ago - cripes) but the point still stands, music is powerful!

After this revelation, I pootled off home to have an evening of chilled out cooking (and a fair bit of weeping as a mountain of onion was involved) and I stuck on an album from a band I wasn't familiar with but had been suggested to me by Amazon and Spotify. The album in question is Kodaline's In A Perfect World. This time it was my turn to be blown away.

I can't not love this cover - It reminds me of both my homes!

To anyone reading this in the UK, I realise I must be well behind the times! In my defence, it takes a fair wee while for music from the homeland to permeate over here, and I don't listen to the radio anymore (bar the odd Radio 4 program... yes... yes I did just admit to that!) To anyone not in the know, what I have discovered is that Kodaline are apparently a "Dublin-based Irish alternative rock quartet". Well that sounds grand to me!  Although it was Amazon that gave me the recommendation, I had iTunes pennies to use up, so hoisted myself over there for purchase and I am rather glad I did! My favourite track on the entire album (I ended up with the Deluxe version) is Latch. Love of the goosbump variety there, and it's not often I get that!

I find the whole alternative rock/ folk hybrid genre a difficult one. I want to love so much of the music, but some of it does nothing for me. I heard the Lumineers album and immediately thought of my sister and she loves it, but it doesn't light my fires in the same way. Kodaline have lit those fires and they're roaring away! What a delight!

As there was a request for more recipes on here, I will share with you what I was cooking as I made this magical musical discovery! There is no name for it really. Mum calls it a barbecue sauce, it could be called a sweet and sour sauce, but whatever it is it's very very yummy!

Random Saucy Goodness

Ingredients: 

3 decent-large sized onions
Olive oil
a small glass bottle of tomato ketchup (preferable Heinz)
White or cider vinegar
granulated sugar

Method:

1. Slice the onions. Now there IS a correct way to do this for this recipe. See the hast picture below and cut as indicated by the dotted red lines (I hope this makes sense!)

2. Splash some oil into a large saucepan or a wok and add the onions, breaking them up as you go. Drizzle a little extra oil over the top. 

3. Turn on the heat and cook the onions down till they are soft, stringy and opaque. Be careful not to burn them.

4. Add the tomato sauce, stir in, then fill the bottle with water, shake and add to the pan so you have all the tomato goodness and exactly the right amount of water! 

5. Let the mush simmer for a wee while, then add splashes of vinegar and spoons of sugar till is reaches a taste to your liking -  there are not instructions for how much to add. 

6. This can be eaten straight away or be kept for a good while in the fridge or frozen and it is always at its very best the day after it's made. 

Music To My Ears

Just to increase the crazy jumble of things I waffle about on here, let's add music into the mix! And today's track has, I gather, gone to number 1 in the UK charts - I haven't had much of a look elsewhere!

Purchased on a whim, we are talking here about Daft Punk's return in the form of Get Lucky feat. Pharrell Willams - put simply it is fab! The French duo haven't really broken any boundaries with this track and at times it has major shades of Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger sweeping through it, but in my view this is no bad thing. Pharrell Williams' voice melds beautiful with the track too - he was a good choice - and overall the track let me with a warm, fuzzy feeling. It's good, very good, to have them back.

I was a late-comer to the Daft Punk scene. I remember when One More Time came out, but I was too deeply entrenched in my emo-indie phase to pay too much attention.Though this old love it very much still present and correct there was no way that the wafts of song from my brothers CD player and increased listening to Radio 1 wouldn't eventually wear me down and I knew it was absolute love when my brother played me the live mix of Around the World/Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger. Then there was the Tron soundtrack. I saw the film on a whim, and whilst overall not greatly impressed by it, it had been worth it for the soundtrack alone. I love a good soundtrack at the best of times, but this one was something else!

It really is so good to have them back and I am waiting for the album with bated breath!!

Toodles,

Nelly x