From my humble beginnings of a (mostly) travel and clubbing blog, I have been severely lacking in this category for at least a year. Definately since I started my job last September. However, all good things comes to those that wait – and I AM back with a vengence!

Folks holiday in sunny Mauritius or cosmopolitian New York. I holidayed in sunny Birmingham. From all places..bacon had to work from Birmmingham on Friday and Sat, so I took a day off and headed down south with him. It’s the one place that you never think of heading towards unless you have friends or family there…or heading towards Cadbury’s world which is on the outskirts. So I decided to give Birmmingham a chance, it was fab!

We checked into the Holiday Inn as they were doing deals for the weekends – £70 p/night p/room inclusive of breakfast for two. Nice. Tiny bed, but nice room. It overlooked a very busy road, which was slightly annoying at 4am on a Saturday morning.

I left the room as soon as I took the pictures as I was afraid of just slumping into the bed and falling asleep. I headed uphill from the Holiday Inn with my stomach still digesting my prawn noodle (more on this later!) – to the world-famous sight that is this:

Yes, discs plastered curvy spaceship

I think it’s lovely!

This was Birmmingham’s pride and joy, the Bullring centre. It actually contains Selfridges, one of the more posh department store in the UK. The building is so cool!

The bull which the centre is named after

And that’s the jellybean version in Selfridges!

For the low price of £20,000 you can get your own!!

Gloria Jean’s at Bullring. This is the first Gloria Jean’s I’ve seen in the UK.

In case you’ve not noticed, one of the very very rare days that we get sunshine in the UK! Bright blue skies, lovely afternoon breeze – possibly the last nice day we will see for a very, very long while. Sigh.

Bullring is such a weird place…a real conondurm between the new

and the old existing side by side

And the retro – presenting the outdoor market!!

Loads and loads of yummy fruits and vegs, with lashings of cheap fabrics. Fabrics starts from £0.50 per-meter!! Of course it’s slightly ugly (understatement) but cheap nevertheless.

One of my steals. I literally went nuts there with £1 p/m fabric. I eventually got about 3 metres of this.

I walked on, and realised right next to the open air one was this:

The ‘world famous’ rag market . Thus the numerous fabric stalls around!

Weird and wonderful, this reminded me of the market at Sydney.

I spent a good couple of hours here just buying sewing-related materials…cheap cheap cheap is what I say!

Buns everywhere

Even a sexy shop – selling popcorns and cheap candy. Hmm. This was where an old lady hiked up her skirt and flashed me…hahahaha! I did not snap a picture of her for fear that she might scream that I am molesting her. OMG. It’s just so mad!

I headed back to the hotel after my explorations for a quick rest and to open the doors for bacon who got home just in time for dinner

For dinner we headed towards the Mailbox…

I like the stilettoes in front of the building!

The objective of this visit was to go toShogun Teppanyaki for the £10 sushi buffet

Being stuck up north, I am very sushi deprived…well, japanese food deprived generally. And malaysian food.And korean….the list just goes on.

Well, for £10 pperson, expectations were low. But even then, I have not seen uglier sushi in my life before. Ever. The restaurant were manned by philipinos dressed in kimonos. Which is fine, but they served pseudo-fillipino food! Their stirfry veggies and teriyaki chicken tasted like what I had when I was in Manila! And on top of that, they served deep fried samosas and springrolls with tempura prawns! The handrolls were so badly done that everything just kept falling apart. The yakisoba was too salty for me – again, reminisence of what I had in Manila. For a laugh it’s great, but don’t expect even supermarket quality of sushi. What really cracked me up were the tobiko (flying fish roe). It was available in a multitude of colors..the original orange plus pink, green and red.

Come back tomorrow

We all know we can’t live without the internet and information-on-demand services. But have you thought about what sites you cannot remember doing without? This has been on my mind for some time…and here is my list:

gmail.com (or googlemail!)
This is my all-time no.1 favourite. I have had email addresses with various providers for more than 10 years now (eeeek!)….but gmail changed my life. From the unlimited storage space to the clever search function, I cannot imagine life without gmail. My life is there, from scanned copies of passports, visas and university certs to email addresses of all the lovely people that’s touched my life. I regularly do a search for CV, Address and Passport – as long as you titled you emails properly, you’ll always find what you’re looking for!

flickr.com PRO
It is fast, it is easy, its the photo album documenting my life. The best money I’ve ever splurged out online was for flickrPRO. I have thousands of pictures there, charting my life for the past 5 years. I have instant access to pictures from any computer that has internet access, and I’m loving it. I cannot imagine living without flickr, and earth would be a very sad (and less colorful) place indeed without my flickr.

Paypal
Financial services made easy! It’s only in the past two years that I accepted the power of Paypal – previously I only thought that it was the domain of the ebay crazy. I’m even using it as a savings and expenses account – accepting payments and using it to fund my various harebrained ideas. I’ve earned enough to buy me a camera for this year, but am going to just hold on to it until christmas. In the meantime…the money continues rolling in…

sourrain.comWithout sourrain.com, there would be no need for flickr.com or paypal. Nuff said

wikipedia
The world’s information portal. My first port of call for the random ideas and things that pop into my head on a daily basis – from what is a wifebeater to sewing machines. Brilliant.

I tag all those who are as geeky as me….like magges, moo, dree and lisa … and of course any other geeks out there!

I am seriously turning into an old-school housewife!

Meet my ‘BROTHER’. Judging from the avocado green body, I am guessing that the machine is older than me….the ‘in’ color during the 70’s flower-power age. Not too sure when did the previous owner bought it. There is no receipt, model number nor instructions. Beggars can’t be choosers. The best part about this machine is that it’s FREE. Yes FREE! Ain’t life great. The only thing I had to promise is to actually use it. Someone literally passed away and left me a sewing machine.

You know…it’s only today that I realised that all the sewing machines that I’ve ever seen were proper antiques. I was impressed with my mil’s machine, which was already 30 years old! The one we have at home belonged to bacon’s grandma and had a receipt dating to the 1930’s. The one my mom had was even older as it only had a handle to turn the wheel and not the foot stepper – and that belonged to my grandma. And now I have this green machine, which comparatively, is top-of-the-range. Bloody heavy as well, its about 20kg!

The dials. Top is basically adjusting the stitch length, middle is to adjust the location of the needle, and the bottom is to adjust the length of the zigzag stitch. Don’t know what it is..I’m sure there’s a more complicated name for it as well!

When I picked this up from the mil’s place, she proceeded to give me a quick lesson on sewing straight lines and the importance in pinning cloth together before sewing ect..So yeah, she had me sewing straight lines for an hour. I’m not very good at straight lines..heh. My eyes glazed over when she was telling me about this stitch and that stitch… and then told me go home and continue practising my straight lines…and she’ll teach me how to sew a zip when I get better. However, she did say that I am much better than her during her first go at a sewing machine. Kembang

However, sewing boxes or straight lines are so unsatisfying. I want to produce something, not go in one line and waste fabric. So when I came home, I proceeded to make this from scratch:

Two hours later. A light lime green floral makeup purse. OMG…I am sorry, but for someone who had never used a sewing machine before (my mom did my sewing class assignment at school), I am so talented.

Yes, zips and all! I’m going to give this to the mil..hehe…

Things actually FIT in it!!

Shit. Honestly..SHIT. I can bloody sew. The only thing I could do before this was mend buttons. And even then..it usually looks like someone stuck a whole bunch of thread to the buttons to keep it in place. This excercise has definately made me appreciate the intricacies of how a piece of garment is made..and let me tell you, even with only making this small purse…it’s bloody hard work!

Now, next steps…a matching bag. Stay tuned.

As most of you know by now, I am now godmom to two gorgeous little boys…Jovan & Joel. I’ve not sent anything for the birth and Jovan, whilst Joel’s 2nd birthday is coming up in the next two months. To be honest, I am not a very motherly person, but the one thing I love buying are baby clothes – probably most people as well. Its just too ee ee cute!!

I can’t really find any australian sites with really nice baby clothes, but by chance stumbled upon this online store selling baby clothes. It’s just too damn cute!!I especially like the baby girl dresses – unfortunately my good friend had not popped a girl out yet…heheh *hint hint* Mag.

Another site that I really like is the Jelly baby site – look at the sit and ride mouse!! OMG its so cute I wanna sit on it! Maybe its just my fate being surrounded by preggers people…bacon’s friends are popping out babies like no tomorrow. At work, I am taking over the place of someone who will be off on maternity. She in turn, took over from someone who left on maternity in April. It’s like a seat of fertility or something..sheehs..

Digressing again. Anyway, if anyone know of a good australian site to buy baby clothes, let me know ya! And magges, let me know if there’s anything in particular you like/need – remember, its a gift from me to the boys, not from me to you k!!