Happy 2nd Birthday to “Emm in London”

Can you believe it? It is two years since I started this little blog! It has been quite an exciting year but not as exciting as the first year when I visited Turkey, South Africa and America and took a road trip around England. 

Even though I finished  my trip to New York and Washington just before my 1st blog birthday, I did post all about it in this year.  Over 500 photos and 25 blog posts chronicle my first trip to the United States and the beginning of my love affair with New York!

In the middle of July, I was Blogger Blog of Note for the day.  It was very exciting and I met tons and tons of people overnight.  More exciting than that, of course, is the amount of people who stayed to read and who I have become friends with over the past year.  It has been amazing and it certainly makes blogging worth it!

At the end of July, we went to see Mika at The Roundhouse.  I was not previously a fan of Mika or his music but his concert changed all of that.  It was brilliant and I would certainly consider seeing him again.  If it was free again.

In August I went on my first photography course and wrote all about it in London: The City, the Monument and the Bridge.  Now, almost a year after that first course and after promising to learn all of my camera features before getting a new camera, I am just about ready to move on and to upgrade.  Of course, I know nothing about cameras and will post about my shortlist soon.  Visit The Photo School for more photography courses around London.

In mid-August, Mister Emm rushed back to South Africa for some emergency dental treatment.  Yes, that’s right.  It cost less to go home, have a holiday and get the treatment than it would have cost to do it in London (and we got more than one quote!).  In September we moved house again which was pretty horrible and then my Mum moved over here from South Africa.  Let’s just agree that September rushed by in the blink of an eye and we were all happy to emerge unscathed on the other end!

In October, my friend Patrick visited from South Africa and we spent four days roaming around South East England.  It is my earnest intention to finish posting about that before I go on holiday again with Mister Emm, The In-Laws and Patrick again in October.  (Just thought I should mention that I promised similar things about finishing posting about my trip to new York in a timely fashion and it took me exactly 6 months!!!)

At the end of October, I chopped off all my hair for charity in the Halloween Haircut Horror.  I chopped ten inches off my pony tail and sent it to a charity that makes wigs for cancer patients.

In November, I was sent up to my favourite city on the planet for work.  I held a mini-competition for readers to guess where I was and many correctly guessed Liverpool.  I visited the new Quiggins Centre and the exquisite bombed out Church of St Luke.

At the end of November, I went to see My Favourite Band on Earth Ever© Cranes in concert for the third time.  It had been a pretty long day as I had dragged poor, long-suffering Mister Emm around shopping in London all day and I had forced him to watch New Moon with me too!

December began in hilarious fashion with me commenting that it was too sunny to be winter only to be proven dramatically and unmistakeably wrong two weeks later when I was very lucky to get home after heavy snow just about brought London to a stand still.

Instead of succumbing to the winter blues, we decided to turn it all around and we went off to the cosy old Hawkwell House for a charming winter retreat for Christmas.  It was everything we had wanted it to be – warm, cosy and full of Christmas cheer.

I took a rare lunch hour and decided to get Lost in Southwark.  Southwark is an area rich in history and it was also the home of Charles Dickens.  I wrote lots more posts about Southwark through this year too.

At the end of January, I went on my second photography course and learnt about camera settings and the manual mode.  I set about to capture the essence of London in my photo essay for the day.

I took the first of many walks around my new home town of Dartford.  Dartford is a really old town and there are tons of old buildings to photograph.  Which reminds me, I really should get out more and take photos.  There are Norman churches and disused graveyards featuring monuments to fallen Protestants!

There were lots of photos of winter sun and heavy snow which were both fine with me.  The only thing I don’t really like in winter is the never ending grey!

At the beginning of February, we took a trip Up North and visited the area where I lived until I was nine years old.  I also introduced you to my grandfather and told you a bit about my family history.

In February, we began the slow process of emerging from our winter hibernation and we went to the theatre to see the Garrick Theatre production of The Little Dog Laughed.  We also went to the ShockWaves NME Awards Tour 2010 which was a lot of fun.

We got our first sighting of Spring in March and I gave the first of my updates on the Shard and London Bridge Quarter development.

It was our wedding anniversary at the end of March and we took a lovely trip to the Isle of Wight.  We took a ride on the grand old Isle of Wight Steam Railway and had the most glorious four days there.  One of these days, I am sure I will finish posting about that too!

In April I began my series A Window Into South Africa where I interviewed normal South Africans in the run up to the World Cup.

I attended the launch of the Pizza Express summer menu and met lots of other great London bloggers.  It was a fab evening and we got to make our own pizzas.

We spent a rather rainy but brilliant day in Southbank in the middle of May and met up with our good friend Gavin who is living in Seattle.

May was all about the MyCommunity competition which culminated in the awesome sunset flight on the London Eye.  It was a really awesome experience and once again, I got the chance to meet other London bloggers.

In June I ran the Race for Life for the third time to raise money for Cancer Research UK.  You can still take advantage of the chance to sponsor me there and receive a month’s free advertising on my sidebar.  I also posted some gorgeous photos of St Paul’s Cathedral and the surrounding areas.

We went to see Green Day at Wembley Stadium which was amazing.  It definitely made me determined to have a new and better camera by the time I see Muse at Wembley in September!

Finally, we spent a balmy Sunday in the West End where I got together with my colleagues to watch England vs Germany and to see the play Ghost Stories.  It was a fabulous afternoon and a good reminder why I don’t go into the West End very often!

Wow.  I don’t know about you but I’m exhausted now!!!  I think this post took four hours to type up!!  The coming year is going to be a bit more exciting, I believe, with trips to Serbia, Scotland and South Africa this year and hopefully even more travelling goodness in the first six months of next year.  Mister Emm has promised to do more spontaneous travelling once he gets his British passport next year so hopefully that will mean weekend trips to Prague, Paris and Brussels for Emm in London.  Happy birthday dear blog!

Weekend trip

Our friends have now all returned to their homes around the globe and we're back to the normal and some final work before leaving for vacation. That doesn't stop us from spending the weekends on the sea. Or to be frankly honest, we're pretty good at finding excuses, and have already cut down work to around 50%.

Some pics from our last trip, somewhere in between Tossa de mar and Sant Feliu:

Links

Read a note about our circumnavigation on Linn's beautiful website called Sunshine Stories. (Swedish)

Weekend Snapshots ~ 6: A Balmy Sunday in the West End

I usually try to do these ‘Weekend Snapshots’ posts on the actual weekend but I wanted to write up my review of the play that we saw last Sunday first.  Some of you might have noticed that posting the review didn’t go too well and I had to delete and repost it more than once on Sunday and Tuesday.  Sorry, I was just having a momentary case of the blogging blues!!

The West End is what most of you will know as the Centre of London and it has all the shops, theatres and major tourist attractions.  It includes Oxford Street, Leicester Square and Covent Garden.  I tend to hang out more in the City or Bankside near London Bridge and Waterloo but the area I really want to spend more time in is the Marylebone and Mayfair areas.  Because 36 hours a week is evidently not enough, my colleagues and I decided to meet up in Leicester Square last Sunday to watch the football and attend a play.

The Odeon - Leicester Square

One of my favourite places on Leicester Square is the huge Odeon cinema.  You see, that is where it all began as that is where I watched Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire which was so good that I rushed out and bought the Harry Potter books and that is what started me reading again after about 15 years of nothing but academic texts.  I digress…

Ruby Blue Bar - Leicester Square

I met my colleagues at the Ruby Blue Bar in Leicester Square.  We had made a booking during the week and were intrigued that they had not asked us for the standard £25 holding deposit so it was no surprise to arrive and find out that not only was there no booking but the restaurant was closed too.  Thankfully they were serving bar snacks in the main bar which were so good that we forgave them for their booking mistake. 

We all watched the England game and we were one sorry bunch of co-workers when we left the pub after England were slaughtered by Germany.  Well, to be honest, they were sorry – I was gleeful!  I’m not an England sports fan but I’m sure you won’t hold that against me!!

Leicester Square Station - Charing Cross Road

After the game, we walked on down to St Martins Lane to the Duke of York's Theatre to watch the play Ghost Stories.  If you click on the photo above, you can see why I liked that scene so much.  I loved the old-fashioned London Underground roundel with the old looking Charing Cross Road sign too.

London Coliseum

Opposite the Duke of York’s Theatre is the London Coliseum which is the home of English National Opera.  I just love that globe at the top!

After the play, we made our way down to Trafalgar Square.  I’m not sure how evident it is from the photos above but it was hot on Sunday.  Nevertheless, my long suffering husband and one of my colleagues indulged me while I took photos of Yinka Shonibare’s “Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle”.

Nelson's Column - Trafalgar Square

Yinka Shonibare’s “Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle”

It was really very hot indeed and there were a lot of really drunk football fans all over the place. 

 
Fans in the Fountain at Trafalgar Square

That included, of course, in the fountains at Trafalgar Square.  The police were Not Amused™ but they also seemed a bit scary so I decided against taking their photo!

The Second Kathu Village Culture Festival

Last weekend from the 25th - 27th June our local village had it's second cultural street festival (first one was last August - see here). Using the word "village" in Phuket may sound odd, but there are many small communities in Phuket and remember that Phuket was not always so built up - go back only 20 years and things were much quieter. The villages like Kathu retain a very local way of life with modern attributes like internet, new cars and 4 lane roads (often the 4 lane roads are totally unnecessary). Kathu is one of the 3 districts of Phuket (along with Muang and Thalang) and is then subdivided into subdistricts called Tambon and further into villages (Tesaban and Muban) - it's all rather confusing actually - this website helps with all the terminology.

So the event in Kathu celebrates the culture and history of this part of Phuket, which became the main town in Phuket in the early 19th century thanks to the tin mining boom. Kathu (aka Ket-Ho) was the center of the mining industry and due to the influx of many Chinese at the time, a lot of the people are of Thai-Chinese descent. Same goes for Phuket Town which became the main town after Kathu. There is a lot of history here, and this little festival shows how proud the locals are of their heritage. It's not a tourist show but at least this year I was not the only foreigner there! Must have counted at least 4 others! Well, up to you. I love these local events.



On Friday 25th I took my camera along to watch the opening of the event and a street procession through the village. Traffic was diverted up a dirt back road behind the Chinese temple so the whole village was for pedestrians only. The procession was due to start at 5:30pm so I had time to snap a few photos before they started walking. The feeling I had was that everyone was very happy and enjoying either taking part or watching. OK, maybe a few of the teenagers dressed up in costumes were a bit embarrassed but it was a real fun event for the village. Maybe next year a few more foreigners might turn up and have a look, I promise to promote the dates if I hear about it!



Costumes ranged from elaborate Chinese opera with lots of make up to simpler old style clothes for the ladies of the village and youngsters dressed as miners.





At the head of the procession (after a picture of the King) were important local dignitaries like the mayor and local government representatives and a swathe of older village ladies. Those watching were giving out a lot of wais and Sawadees!





By the way, there are more photos of this festival on Flickr: Kathu Village Festival 2010 and I will probably get around to adding more to that page. I always feel a picture is worth more than words. Colours, faces, smiles, hell you can almost hear the music and smell the food being cooked at the street stalls. The village was full of stalls selling food, clothes, art and more. There were several small stages in the village with music being played and a large stage outside the health center where they had some performances in the evenings that I did not see - will try to see some next year.



Went along on Saturday too, this time with the family. No street procession - this was only on Friday, but there were plenty of people around. Food stalls were selling chicken, rice dishes, noodles, salads... I had a plate of wing-bean salad (Yam Tua Pu), found some chicken and fries for the kids (ah yes, not absolutely 100% everything has to be "traditional"!), then we took a long walk through the village and back.



Down a side street we found a great little demonstration of old tin mining techniques. A raised wooden sluice box was carrying water to a pool where ladies were working with pans. Must have taken a while to build. I reckon this guy might be old enough to have worked as a tin miner in the past...



He was on the sluice box which was meant to trap heavy particles of tin ore while washing water and other lighter material along. Looked like he knew what he was doing. There was a fair crowd of locals watching. They did not have this last year so I think people were keen to see it and learn something about the history of their home town. To find out more you can visit the Phuket Tin Mining Museum.



Meanwhile the ladies were panning for tin in the water, looking for smaller residue not caught by the sluice... of course this was a show, a demonstration, but they did seem to be taking it quite seriously!



I took the opportunity to snap a few portraits of local people as well as the festival. Everyone was happy. This is our local area.. we live about a mile from the street where the procession took place. Sometimes I wonder if the local people are happy to keep these events quiet, don't want too many tourists! The publicity is minimal.. it was mentioned on one Phuket news website, I did mention it a couple of times on Facebook and Twitter... and I did see one sign up at the entrance to Kathu village for a few weeks prior to the event, but it's small wonder I only saw a few other foreigners there. You have to keep your ears to the ground to find out about these things.



I can tell you the next local fair coming up is the Phuket Flower Fair which will be held from July 9 to July 18 at Saphan Hin and will feature pineapple exhibitions - Phuket's pineapples are said to be better than pineapples from other provinces. Some photos here from last year's flower fair.

More photos from the Kathu village festival here on Flickr (slideshow). Kathu, by the way was also where the Phuket Vegetarian festival started - some photos here of the Chinese Shrine and the village at festival time, and here of the main processions.