I have done lots of things in the UK, but one activity I haven't managed yet is certainly baking. And if it wasn't for my friend Flavia's love for sweets, I don't think this would ever happen, but yet, here we are. I'm sitting in my flat and there are two rolls of allegedly Czech strudle sitting on the kitchen counter ;o)) ...

 

Yesterday (Saturday) Flavia and I conducted the necessary shopping exercise and bought 'most' of the ingredients necessary to perform the art of strudle-making. Today in the morning the time came for us to capitalized on our thorough prep and turn the ingredients into something worth-while. To make sure we don't mislead the procedure from the very beginning I got my mom on the phone as a first step to clarify on a few potential loop-holes in the recipes provided by her, and then Flavia got busy with the dough making. Few minutes later I could see a sticky material in a bowl and the procedure started taking some promising shape ...

 

The apple peeling and cutting went well too. When you have two determined individuals on the team, no barrier is high enough and we were done with this most tedious bit of the strudle production in no time ...

 

But then the steps that required probably most experience came in and things started going down-hill. I first tried to roll the dough on a cutting board with no flour underneath it, neither had I any flour on my hands nor the roller. So naturally the dough got stuck everywhere you could imagine and that's when we realize the flour was still needed ;o)) ...

 

Flavia meanwhile prepared a state of the art filling with apples, cinnamon, sugar, raisins and crushed wallnuts :oP ...

 

As we proceeded through strudle rolls number two and three, we were apparently getting better, but still ... the result ....

 

We now have something that reminds one of bread filled up with apples, cinnamon, nuts, ... It's not a disaster, but it's not exactly what I promised to be Czech strudle ... anyway, we can always try again, right? All it needs is the will and some manpower!!! :oD ....

One of my best friends - Michal - happened over to London on his way to great holiday in the US. He came on Saturday and left early Monday morning this week. We had quite a good time. First of all I got a few presents, which were 15 cans of Czech beer and one bottle of Vodka. For someone who almost doesn't drink this is definitely quite a load, but I'll look into consuming it one way or another. I'm sure some of my friends will appreciate if I ask them to help me ...

 

First of all we got ourselves some lunch at Nando's, which was excellent as always, but then I'm a Nando's addict, so no surprises there .... I, of course, ate as if I wasn't fed for a week ... ups ... My flatmate Tim joined us, but then dropped out as he had some other business to attend to. Meanwhile Michal and I headed for the center to meet up with Flavia. We came a bit late, but she topped us both and came even later, so all was good.

 

The following events must have been Flavia's dream-come-true. First we spent some valueable time around the new Macbook Air, then we checked out a Nokia store and finally headed to a photo-camera store. Then Michal and I probably realized that there is more culture to London than only stores with electronics and fortunately we had a great guide with us - Flavia the architect ;o)) ...

 

From then onwards the rest of the walk was fully orchestrated by the lady and I have to admit that it was for the better ;o)) ... we went to see Covent Garden walked around Leicester square and finally ended up in Yo-sushi (it could have been easily Burger King if it wasn't for Flavia of course ;o)) ... The sushi was great and after that it was time to head back to my place where my flatmate Tim was alread awaiting us with his Nintendo Wii started up and it was time for some serious gaming ... I won the boxing matches, but totally failed the golf game (how typical - no patience, but lots of strength) ...

 

On Sunday, I was knackered. Saturday was a long day and I didn't get to sleep much. The plan was to visit Windsor castle later in the afternoon; however, to kick off the day somehow Michal and I set out for a jaccuzzi. When we got into the Jaccuzzi room, the pool was covered with a lid for some reason. I did offer my opinion saying that the reason for the lid is that the place is simpl shut, but Michal argued that the lid is there to keep the dust away, so we took it off, laid it on the side and hoped in. After we've comprehended the greatness of the situation, a guy showed up in the door and asked me for my flat number. Allegedly I was threatening my health sitting in the jaccuzzi 'cause the water wasn't purified. Hence the lid there of course ...

 

Anyway, an apology seemed to have relaxed the guy, we covered the jaccuzzi with lid again and he left us alone. Our next target was the steam room, but before I finished my quick after-jaccuzzi shower, Michal managed to cause further damage by letting most of the steam out saying that the place was too foggy ... so when I got there, the place looked like anything else but steam-room ... so we wasted some 5 mins in it, found it useless and left to my flat. Shortly after we sat in my car and I drove towards Windsor ...

 

I have been to Windsor before, so the goal was for Michal to enjoy himself, take some pics, etc .... I guess that the event turned into a success. Early in the evening we left the castle and took a mad-drive towards Flavia's place. I'm writing mad-drive for a reason. On that Sunday evening many London's drivers seemed to be running on a very short fuse and lots of hunking in the streets was present. I was shown some interesting finger signs myself ... ;o)) ...

 

The main programme of the night was a U2-3D concert in the London Waterloo's Imax. The show was of course amazing, we all had fun and then we headed back to my place ...

 

On Monday morning Michal left for his trip to Los Angeles, so I'm hoping he's going to remember his visit to London as a good time-investment ;o))

As I wrote in my previous blog, I found myself a new friend in London - Flavia, to whom I've promised some travelling over the UK. I had been doing it on my own for some time in Autumn last year, so having a company with me will only make my weekend daily travels way more interesting. On top of that Flavia is an architect, so I have high expectations in terms of interesting observations of styles, etc.

 

Our first destination was meant to be the castle of Dover, but given the weather we made another decision and set out for Southend-on-Sea, which is way closer than Dover and therefore doesn't pose such a risk in case the weather is unbearable ;o)) ... then we could just come back any other day ....

 

We were somehow lucky and at least in the beginning the weather seemed to be fine. Still windy, but acceptable. Of course it must have picked up at the exact moment we arrived at the famous 1-mile-long pier for a walk ;o)) ... so, yes, we both froze, but took a few decent pics at least. I was only hoping that Flavia enjoys this trip as it was our first, so that I don't lose my potential travel companion after the very first attempt ... seemingly, she did have fun and she says she wants to go somewhere again, so let's hope ;o)) ...

 

We also had an English lunch there - Fish & Chips. We both liked it, only Flavia found it a bit heavy for her stomach. Well, it's not exactly the type of food Italians are used to ... but I'll give her a few months and then she will certainly consider Fish & Chips to be one of the lighter options out there, haha ...

 

On the way back we succeeded in a search for Ikea. I was pretty tired by then, but not my companion who rose to the challenge and spent there apparently her two best hours of the day ... I patiently waited and then too Flavia home ... the day was over and it was fun ...

I've made a friend online with whom I have been in touch for months and now she arrived to London. Her name is Flavia and she's Italian. When we finally got a chance to meet up, I had asked Flavia prior to the meeting to bring over her Digital SLR camera and took her for a walk to Greenwich. We were lucky the weather was fairly decent and hence we took a few pictures on the way.

 

Flavia has a Canon 400D, which is a competitive product to my Olympus E-500 ;o)). When we compared pictures, it seemed to be that both cameras did fairly good jobs ... I'll upload some of these pictures on my blog for you to see ...

 

I have been to Greenwich many times before of course. It's just around the corner from my flat, but the walk with Flavia was interesting nevertheless - we took quite nice pictures of the Canary Wharf sky-line on the way back ...

 

The next day I found a great sunset just behind the windows of my liging room. This offered another photographing opportunity I couldn't miss - again, these photos will be uploaded here on Spaces ...

I haven't written on this blog for a loooonnnngggg time and the only positive side of this as a consequence is that it let me realize that I indeed have a couple of readers out there who reminded me of the neglect of my blog surprisingly ;o))) .... so now I'm trying to fish around my memore to pick up the most interesting events in the past 1.5 months to cover here ...

 

The very last blog I wrote in mid January was about the purchase of my new electrict guitar. Since then my guitar has been following me to Leicester (where my project was based) every week and I dedicated almost every evening to practicing new scales or songs. I have also purchased a license of a Guitar Pro software to help me out and make my song more reminiscent of the originals ;o)) ...

 

Soon after that I came across this ingenious solo from a Taiwanese guy who calls himself Jerry C and this solo is an adaptation of Pachelbell's Canon D. Jerry C's version is called Canon D Rock. You can find many of other versions on Youtube, most of them being played by very good young guitar players, some of them aged 16 even ;o)) ...

 

So I tried to learn the solo myself and that brought me to the style which I had been practicing ever since and still cannot make is sound right ;o)) ... it's called sweep picking and the trick is that it is sort of a combination of what I had played before, i.e. when I strummed the strings, my right hand went very dynamic while the left hadn playing chords stayed fairly static. Then when I was playing solos, my left hand moved fast while my right hand played across one or max two strings. So sweep picking breaks these barriers and it expects the player to strum the strings in the right hand and play solo-like moves with the left. Plus the tones come and go very fast, so accuracy is a total must ... I'm learning a lot by playing these exercises over and over, but it does require plenty of practice and it's not a skill one can acquire over night ;o)) ...