Spring Snow

I suppose it’s slightly late for an Easter post………………

…………..but guess what? It snowed during Easter! See, what did I say, it always snows in the springtime when one is conditioned to think pleasant breezes, daffodils, pastel colours, pink blossoms, cute jackets…… and lo and behold, the temperatures plummet, it’s practically Arctic out, sprouts shrink back into themselves, one has to not only wear a huge jumper but also stuff oneself into a quilt masquerading as a winter coat, and then it SNOWS.

At least it’s not rain. I detest rain.

I’m whinging a little bit but actually I didn’t mind the snow this time round. Everything’s nice when it’s a holiday and life feels like it’s worth living! :D And snow is pretty when one is indoors watching it happen in the warm.

Snow!

Snow!

And then it stopped! It didn’t snow for long even though it was snowing moderately hard, so it didn’t settle, which was a pity because that would have made for really beautiful photos to show you all.

Well even when it had stopped snowing it was still cold and apart from that blossoming tree above, the rest of the trees were, and are, still bare and stark, very wintry looking.

And guess what? We had snow indoors as well!! GM shook out one of his socks (I don’t know why…………! But the sock was clean in case you were wondering) and he was covered in white fluff. And I was so kind as to capture our indoor snowscape for you :) Haha.

Hot cross buns = Easter! I ate four packs, FOUR, over the Easter hols! M&S rich fruity buns or whatever they were called. I was absolutely addicted to them, they were chockful of raisins and I love raisins. Luckily, once Easter was over I didn’t even think about them again and haven’t craved them since. And there I was suspecting that it might be an addiction on the scale of my wasabi peas one…………… that was VERY scary. One pack in bed every night, I kid you not!

So no, no more hot cross buns in my house……. but I’ve still got a big hot cross bun-ny belly for a souvenir!

A Tale of Two Movies

I LOVE bank holidays! *___________*

Right now I’ve already had two days off work, but I’ve got two more and if you think about it, I’ve got a whole normal weekend in front of me yet! I feel so happy ^____________^

The only bad thing about bank holidays is that EVERYONE goes out at the same time so traffic is heavier than usual, and the shops are heaving. Which stresses me out because as you might recall from reading my “Pet Peeves” post, I get really irate when people walk really slowly in front of me and hold me up, and/or stop in the middle of nowhere and make me want to shove them over the banisters.

Anyway I still managed to have a nice day because after shopping (I only shop when I HAVE to these days, I detest shopping, it’s a really annoying activity) we went for sushi and a movie :) Yum, sushi. We went to a kaiten sushi place but rather than pick plates off the conveyor belt, we ordered a moriawase set each. Which was an inspired decision as our sets came fresh and looked appetising (tasted good too), whereas the plates on the belt looked as tired as the waitress. Haha.

We watched “The Orphanage” (El Orfanato), a Spanish horror movie because we’d read rave reviews on it in the papers. It’s about a woman who moves into an orphanage in which she stayed as a child with her husband and 7 year old son. She was planning to turn it into a home for disabled kids when her son starts acting up and says that he has made friends with six imaginary children who also live in the house. Soon after, her son disappears during a party and the movie is more or less about her quest to find him.

The first question my friends ask me after a movie is never “Did you enjoy the movie?” but rather “Did you sleep again?” Haha. I am notorious for sleeping during movies, no matter how exciting or loud or action-packed the movie may be. I can’t help it, I think my brain thinks when it’s dark I should sleep! So it’s no surprise that I fell asleep during this movie too. In fact, when they were showing the adverts before the movie I already felt myself nodding off, but I held off the big event till 2 minutes into the movie and then I really had a big fat snooze. I even had a dream!

However, when I sleep during movies I try to make myself wake up periodically so I can kind of still follow the storyline. This makes it easier for me to understand the ending obviously; I always get up about three quarters into the movie for the end bit. I successfully watched Pirates of the Carribean 3 using this snooze-wake snooze-wake method, and I’m sure I pretty much got the gist of the whole thing.

Okay so this whole long story about my movie-watching habits has a point. The point being when I tried to adopt my snooze-wake method for “The Orphanage”, I woke about 10 minutes in to see mother and son play a game which he’d learnt off his imaginary friends. And I was GRIPPED. I stayed awake for the rest of the movie. Isn’t that amazing?

“The Orphanage” was incredibly compelling; it was action-packed, not in the traditional car chase sense, but in terms of having something significant happen all of the time but in a very understated and quietly menacing way which had me feeling like my heart was in my throat, certain that something untoward was going to happen at any moment. In terms of scare factor, it made me literally jump practically out of my seat on numerous occasions and the fear wasn’t of the “scream out loud” variety but rather more of the “so terrified I can hardly breathe, let alone scream” variety.

I loved the lead actress. She was so believable as the distraught mother. I loved the children, they were really adorable. I loved the setting of the old, slightly creepy but still beautiful orphanage by the sea. I think the movie being entirely in Spanish really worked in a way that I can’t put my finger on, but I don’t think it would have been as good in English. The only jarring note in the entire movie for me was the actress’ fake looking boobs. They were so out of place (in this story, not on the actress’ body haha) but it’s not something any of us should hold against such an excellent film.

If this movie starred some cute Japanese actors and actresses it’d be one of my favourite movies ever. Haha. I’m shallow, I need my favourite actors for eye candy before it can go in the “movies I’ll watch over and over again” category.

So. You’d think we’d had enough of movies for one day, but nope! When we got home we watched “Enchanted”. I know I’m slow because most of you have watched it and I really wanted to watch it as well over the Christmas period but I was busy with my social life then. Well, I watched it on our new telly with surround sound tonight! Which is almost as good haha. And I was armed with my Doritos, hot cross buns (it’s Easter!), Penny Pig (limited edition lemon flavour!) and Percy Piglets too. Perfect movie watching conditions.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect besides that it was half in cartoon form and half in live action form. And that it was fantastic, that’s what everyone’s told me. The cartoon bit in the beginning was nice; the girl looked like a cross between Belle (Beauty and the Beast) and Cinderella, set in Snow White’s surroundings. Which was kind of odd, but also really nice at the same time because it was like watching a classic, dreamy, romantic fairytale, the kind Disney used to make until they decided to go funky on us and started doing stuff like Lilo and Stitch.

Then she got into her wedding regalia and suddenly morphed into a caricature of Grace from Will and Grace. And then she turned into a real person and looked like a cross between Miranda of Sex and the City (the teeth) and Grace! But that’s where the magic started; the minute she popped out of the manhole in a shower of silk, tulle and glitter hahaha. I loved her Disney voice, it was hilarious against big bad New York City and its hard-nosed citizens. When she burst into song I nearly died laughing and was kind of glad I didn’t watch it in the cinema cos I would have annoyed my neighbours no end.

I really liked the movie apart from the ending. Perhaps I was hoping for more of a happy ever after ending just like in the old days, where the prince on the white horse is “The One” and no question about it. A change of heart isn’t my idea of happy ever after! And before anybody comes and says that they made the storyline this way because this was meant to be a self-parody by Disney; I didn’t get any sense of self-parody at all, as far as I could tell, it was a homage over and above anything else. So a truly pure and happy ending would have been preferably in my book.

Patrick Dempsey was very very charming though. I think I might start watching Grey’s Anatomy. I loved his outfit for the ball, he looked very dashing in it, and also, his jacket looked like one of our cushions haha! What superb taste X]

Often when something has been hyped up and universally touted as fantastic, when one comes to finally experiencing it, it normally doesn’t quite live up to the sky-high standards set by all the anticipation caused by the positive reviews. However, today I watched two movies that have received brilliant reviews and they didn’t disappoint me one bit!

So that’s what I’ll say about “The Orphanage” and “Enchanted”, that they lived up to the hype. And I don’t think there can be a better review than that.

Soup-er Sui Gaw!

Yummm yummm!

Our friend Hic is really fond of wonton noodles and once in passing, GM told him that if anyone likes wonton or any sort of dumplings, they HAVE to try the dumplings from his grandfather’s restaurant in Paris.

Well, it just so happened that during the time of this conversation, GM’s mother was in France visiting the grandparents so we managed to get her to bring back some prawn dumplings (sui gaw)! Yay.

Which brings us to our sui gaw noodles gathering a couple of nights ago.

We had a BIG container of sui gaw, so I was planning to have six each……… I say “planning” because it turned out that I miscalculated and took out too little and everyone ended up having five each except for poor me, I only had four! :(

But it’s okay because we had some more in the freezer so GM and I had about ten each today hahaha.

Yummy…… Everyone agreed that the sui gaws were really very good. See, that’s the beauty of these dumplings, you just can’t hype them up enough. You know when sometimes something gets so much hype that when you eventually experience it for yourself it’s a bit of a disappointment? Never for these dumplings. They are immune to over-hyping!

Even my soup base was good. It was an abalone flavoured soup base courtesy of GM’s aunt.

It was a very simple meal, dumplings noodle soup accompanied by a side dish of oyster sauce kai lan! Simple, but very satisfying.

I’m thinking Tpa, Hic and Mna are going to find themselves craving gung gung’s dumplings one day soon! ;) Apparently there are people who are willing to drive four hours from the countryside to Paris every month or so, just to have their fix. So behold their power haha.

If anyone visits Paris and wants to experience gg’s dumplings first-hand, email/message me!

It Ain’t Over Till the Fat Lady…. Jumps

*All images from google images

Opera. People say you either hate it or love it. I’d never been prior to last night, so I wasn’t quite sure what category I’d fall under.

I saw an ad in the paper for reduced price tickets and got very excited seeing as how I’ve wanted to go to the opera for a long time now and it’d be the perfect opportunity. Even better, I managed to rope Tpa into coming with me. Which is why last night saw us, two opera virgins, trooping off to the Royal Albert Hall for a performance of Tosca, an opera by Puccini.

The walk from South Kensington Station to the Hall was pleasant, but it’s when we arrived that we were hit by the grandeur of it all and were seemingly swept into an alternate world of high-browed poshness.

Honestly, I didn’t see a chav nor hooligan the entire night. It was all ladies in frocks and gents with actual manners. Very impressive. Tpa and I managed to mingle, with Tpa in a rare skirt and me in a sparkly cardigan!

Tosca last night was in English rather than the traditional Italian; I thought I’d ease us slowly into the scene before going full-blown with 3 hours of singing in a foreign language. Well I was a bit misguided because the English language doesn’t seem to lend itself to opera and it sounded slightly off and was barely decipherable anyway (apart from the odd phrase, like “Horr.. horrr.. horrrrr…… HORRRRRR………..I keeeeeeeled heeeeeem!!!), so they might as well have sung in Italian. Also, I think perhaps the nuances were lost in translation so an Italian production might have been more passionate. As it was, I didn’t really witness much chemistry between the lead characters and at one point when Tosca was pacing the floor in anxiety and distress, I just found it to be rather tedious and thought “Oh get on with it already….”.

As for the singing, I couldn’t really decide if it was good or not, owing to the fact that they oddly sounded quite far away. I don’t know if this is a result of the acoustics of the place, or the actors’ singing skills, or both. I did think the painter had a bit of a tinny voice and the rest of the cast, whilst good, didn’t blow me away.

I really enjoyed the Te Deum at the end of Act 1 though, it was a majestic scene with the choir. Another part I really liked was when the choir once sang from the tiers above us and that meshed with the singing of the lead characters in the arena to beautiful effect.

So did I love it or loathe it? I think I am of that very rare breed: an in-between. I can’t say I loved it even though it was definitely a positive experience. Perhaps if I had seen a different production of a work I was more familiar with, it would have captured me more. But I’d say it didn’t put me off opera; in fact, very far from it, I want to see a different production and really spend time picking one that I would enjoy next time, rather than jumping at some ticket discount offer. Also, next time I don’t want to sit next to a Girl Who Coughs and I’m sure Tpa would prefer not to be next to a Loud Breather neither haha.

What I am a fan of though is the Royal Albert Hall. It’s a theatre in-the-round or an arena theatre, meaning the stage is surrounded by the audience. It’s the first arena theatre I’d ever been to and I think it looks absolutely amazing.

The stage yesterday was in the round part in the middle and we sat in the first row of the top tier (cheap tickets remember?) but even then we had a really good view and were facing the orchestra and action head-on. However, us being so high up might have been one of the reasons why the actors sounded so far away, although technically it shouldn’t be so because you’d think the acoustics of the theatre would be good enough.

I loved the plushness of the theatre and despite its age, it looked beautiful, regal and majestic, and probably just as fresh as when it was first built.

Those round discs hanging from the ceiling are fibreglass acoustic diffusing discs which were installed to cut down echo. I suppose they work because I didn’t really notice any echo. In fact, sometimes the sound of the orchestra was fantastic, especially when the music built to a crescendo and I felt my heart soaring with it. It sounds corny, but that’s what really happened!

I am already planning a return visit to the Royal Albert Hall. I love the place. I love classical music. I love going out!

Afterwards we mooched our way to Chinatown and met the guys for supper and had a really lovely long chat! :) It was a good night!