Notice anything funny about the house above? Well, it is close enough to where I live to be classed as a ‘neighbour’. The cops had been there in the past couple of days, breaking through the door and upstairs windows. There’s even been a photographer taking pictures of the cops posing outside - and a huge skip which was covered up. Strange, as I did not think that cops were involved in house cleanup excercises. Been searching local news sites for a couple of days, and found this today:

A CANNABIS factory was discovered after police raided a house in Leeds.

Plants and equipment used to cultivate the drug were seized after police hammered down the door of the property on Dolphin Lane. No one was inside the house but officers were confronted by a Rotweiller dog on guard inside.

The house, which has a CCTV camera fitted above the front door, was still cordoned-off yesterday as officers continued to search the premises. Engineers were also called to cut off the electricity supply to the house. No arrests have yet been made in connection with the discovery on Wednesday evening.

A neighbour said she did not know who owned the house. She added: “During the past couple of years I have seen Chinese people coming and going from the house but they don’t speak to anyone. “It’s a quiet area around here and people tend to mind their own business.”

A West Yorkshire Police spokesman confirmed that a raid on the property took place at 10pm on Wednesday.

Yes, yours truly just rushed out with her trusty cameraphone and snapped this picture about 5 minutes ago. Hurried back as I realised that I might quickly become a suspect in this very chinese minority area

Where can you get

Clear waters with lovely pebbles

Beautiful stained windows telling the story of Christ in 36 panels

Family of ducks

…..and beautiful ruins from the 11th century?

Stay tuned - can’t access flickr from work now (pixs are suddenly not displaying BLAH), so this has gotta wait…if you can guess the name of the place I’ll give you £10

I welcome Krispy Kreme to the North of England. Full fledged with the hot sign and conveyor belt and all! It’s now on bacon’s way to work (when he does go into work) and so I put in an order today. It is also, incidentaly, on the way to Manchester airport, so anyone wanting to place an order of KK can do so - but would need to pick me up from KLIA late next Sunday as I would be leaving KL on Monday. takers???

but bacon finished half a dozen before I even saw it….thus is the addiction to kk..:)

I had always been very adventerous in exploring new foods - and growing up in KL with its plethora of foreign cuisines definately helped. It is very rare to find a type of cuisine unrepresented in KL, I daresay most cuisines are represented in some shape or form in twin tower land. There is, however, a missing piece in the great KL food puzzle - West Indies food.

No, not Western India. More like Jamaican, Bahamian and the likes. The soul food of Bob Marley. I had tentatively heard of the existence of such food, but had not come across it before. So I was pleasantly suprised when I discovered it nearly two years ago at the V Festival, then again at the Notting Hill Carnival and then Glastonbury

Today, we both woke up in the morning and suddenly decided that we were craving for Carribean cuisine. Yes, we read minds and we are extremely greedy. We have no idea of any Carribean restaurants in Leeds, but a rough idea of the ghetto where there might be West Indian restaurants. So we went a-searching.

We drove around for about 15 minutes in Roundhay/Chapeltown ghetto where alot of immigrants had made their home; Indian, Polish, West Indians, Jewish ect. After nearly giving up, we spotted Maureen’s

A sight for sore eyes.

A small checklist on carribean cuisine:

Ackee & Saltfish: Salt cod is sautéed with ackee (Ackee is a fruit from a tree that bears bright orange/red fruit), onions, peppers, tomatoes, herbs, and may be garnished with crisp bacon and fresh tomatoes
Curried Goat : Curry made with goat, carrots, potatoes. Slightly like the mamak kurma
Rice & Peas: A misnomer, this means rice cooked with red kidney beans - a staple like white rice is to chinese food. Coconut milk is used as well, making it slightly like nasi lemak without the pandan smell.
Jerk meat : Chicken, pork or beef rubbed with a spicy spice mix made of peppers and allspice and grilled.
Plantins : Huge mostly tasteless bananas, grilled, deepfried or stewed
Festival: a slightly sweet, deep fried dumpling stick, eaten with jerk.
Patty: Made from a slightly crusty, pastry dough formed into a semi-circle envelope/turnover and filled with hot and spicy ground meat filling. Like curry puff and eaten everywhere
Cow Foot: Erm…soup made out of cow’s feet. Recipie here
Blue Drawers/ Tie Leaf: Boiled green banana pudding
Gumbo: Like the Creoles make it, but not as spicy and thicker.

It’s all seriously weird and wonderful isn’t it?? Even the guy inside Maureen’s looked like he was stoned out of his head …and of course I had the pleasure of being the only yellow person there and bacon the only white one. How exciting. However, as we had not have Carribean cuisine since Glastonbury in June, so instead of picking some adventerous unknown item, we went with what we love and missed -

Bacon had Jerk chicken with rice and peas. Comes with macaroni and cheese as well which is slightly weirdly American. And a side salad. £5.50 for a large

My curried goat with rice and peas as well. Can you believe this is the small version at £4.50. Large version comes with boiled cabbage

erm….fried chicken. Heheh. I really wanted some fried chicken, and this was 1/4 of a huge chicken. So much nicer than KFC.£1.80

When we went to pay, bacon calculated that the total came up to £12.45. The stoned looking cashier said, “Around £12 man”. So we paid £12. Hilarious. And not to stick to the stereotype, but all they listened to inside the small cafe was reggae and more reggae. Not many pictures due to me forgetting cameras of any kind, so this was taken with bacon’s phone. Being the only yellow and white in the scene did not help as the endless trail of customers stared at us whilst waiting for their food.

Well, we definately don’t belong there. But love it we did, and return we shall. The next time we return we will go for all the weird and wonderful sounding food - no more jerk chicken or curried goat even though it was so beautiful….symphony…sighh…And next time, when I am off my antibiotics, we shall have lashings of carribean rum punch as well.

Maureens West Indian Restaurant
105 Roundhay Rd ,
Leeds, LS8 5AJ

I must say that this is probably the first time I was actually caught in falling snow for at least 6 years - since Shaver Lake @ California anyway. Even though it was freezing, uncomfortable and the snow tends to melt away like, well, snow and leave wet patches on your coat, it was still really fun. As much fun as walking into work is.

Contrary to popular belief, it does not snow often here which adds to the magical child-like amusement. You’d be lucky if you get three days worth of snow in a year. Which is probably a good thing, I would not be amused if I was constantly wading through snow and sluice. It is amazingly slippery when the snow melts, and I nearly fell twice in my 5 minute walk.

Pixs to be uploaded later, although I must say there is not much to see as it only started snowing this morning therefore it has not settled for that snow topped leaves look.

Walking to the bus stop - in case the snow stops and there’s no more!!

Snowstorm @ leeds - looks more like flecks of dust dont it?

Snowflake on my glove - no, it does not come in pretty lacey patterns

Just getting into work after trampling my way through the pelting snow

And I nearly forgot. The word settlement in my passport scares me to no end - does indefinate leave to remain means I am indefinately stuck here in rainy england?

In a way, receiving my ‘official’ status puts me in a more comfortable position in this nanny state. It enables me to claim benefits, or go on social security…not like I ever would. But if I had kids, I would be able to claim child relief, and if I ever become unemployed I would be able to claim benefits as well. This sticker would also enable me to pay a very low price for classes that I would want to take in university - at last, resident prices rather than the ubiquitious ‘International Student’ fees that most of us were made to fork up during our university days.

Do I feel any different? No, not really. But I do feel safer…at least I have a chance to claim on the exhorbitant tax that I pay -somewhat like insurance?

So yea…one more step closer to being ‘English’

Sydney Airport, Dec 2006

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG!!!!!!!!!

Every half-yearly, I check Krispy Kreme’s website to see if they are opening stores near me. NEAR me, as in maybe an hour away. Well, in June 2008, it will be better than near. Krispy Kreme is comming to Leeds.

Original glazed…come to mommy!!!!

Following up on the last post…welcome to the Buffet Box, at the corner of the Merrion Centre.

the smallest kitchen in the world…I swear its smaller than the one I had in my old apartment!Yes, we were on one enf of the restaurant/cafe and the kitchen was on the other end. That was how small it was.

For those not in the know..this is the Leeds version of the Malaysian nasi lemak. Hmm.Seriously, beggars cant be choosers. The sambal is a tad sweet,but other than that it was actually pretty authentic. A side of chicken and potato curry that came with it suprisingly does not taste indian (like all curries here) but with the distinctive taste of coconut milk, just like home. The rice don’t taste coconutty..which was pretty strange. But overall it was not bad for £4.50, and beggars can’t be choosers. Will definately go back for lunch as my workplace is only 2 minutes walk away.

Penang Assam Laksa. A little lack of ‘heh-koh’ (shrimp paste) but not bad. May have come out from a Hup Leong packaged powder mix. I think it’s made with flaked canned tuna!! Clever idea - I hate making assam laksa because of the lack of fish here,but now I might just try it out with flaked canned tuna.

Overall, not bad for £10 for two. Not the best best in the world, but totally edible. Would definately return especially towards freezing winter - Bah Kut Teh for lunch…yummmz.

its been raining all day today…walking to work required me juggling an umbrella and a huge sling bag, getting my birkenstocked feet soaked and my jeans dipped into the puddles that inevitably form everytime it rains.

Its grey, and possibly the coldest day we’ve had since March. The skies are grey and unwelcoming, and I am seriously getting withdrawal symptoms from cutting down on coffee. I only brought with me a thin hoodie and will probably be frozen when I leave the office later.

But.

Every morning as I walk into work I pass this dodgy 10*10 ft ‘cafe’. It serves bacon sandwiches in the am and fluoroscent sweet and sour chicken for lunch. Seedy looking white customers sit there for endless cups of coffee, being served by the equally seedy looking chinese owners/servers.

Today they had something pasted on the wall that caused me to do a double, triple take

Malaysia food, served from 1pm

NASI LEMAK, Assam Laksa & something-else-i-didnt-catch

omg omg omg omg omg..so happy happy joy joy…its like all my dreams come true. It still feels like a dream, so I am going to drop by again later and take a picture of that sign,just so that I know I was not dreaming. Guess where am I having lunch tomorrow? Heh.

Its been a week and a half since I started my new non-chandelier job. Obviously there is not much I will disclose but here are my thoughts……

1) You don’t realize how much you appreciate the security of a large corporation until you’ve left it. Discounts on products, annual reviews…ahhh..bliss.
2) I was probably the only person who thoroughly enjoyed doing my annual anti money laundering training. Lots have changed since 2005
3) I have to pay £0.10 for a cup of hot water
4) I have no fridge NOR microwave. I had never worked in a place without either before
5) I walk past McDonalds every morning. So far I had succumbed 3 times.Oh noes!
6) My bus stops outside Starbucks every morning. So far I had succumbed once - a treat on my first day before I was stung by a bee
7) Back to drinks, I calculated that if I were to pay £0.20 for a cup of coffee (£0.50 for posh coffees) , I would spend about £10 each month. Again, first time I have to pay for my own drinks.
Therefore I am now the proud owner of a thermos. Reminds me of college days
9) My job consists of reading news feeds for an hour a day
10) I should be lucky if I get to travel once a year with work
11) I had never worked in a place where EVERYONE that you meet actually enjoys working there and are not looking at jobsites during their break
12) Everything is so computerized,I don’t have anyone to speak to re HR issues
13) Trivia. The bro in law did his apprenticeship in this building with an architectural firm when they were building it many moons ago.
14) I am back surrounded by men. Its now choc bars and crisps instead of the usual black tea and handful of nuts!!
15) This is my first actual 9-5 job.Woowee!
16) Everyday I walk past a pound shop, where everything is £1. Today I bought a tube of toothpaste at 8.35am.
17) I have been a slave for nearly 5 years now.
18) I don’t actually know where my office is located in the grand plan of the building. There are no windows I can look out of.Another first.
19) I have access to flickr!!! Phew!!!I have no access to meebo,facebook,blogs,emails..well,most stuff.
20) I have been there more than a week, I only know how to get to the restaurant/cafeteria, my desk and toilets. And two exits out of the available 3.

ta-da! Its been keeping me busy and very tired indeed..but found out I am actually able to blog from work, so blogging schedule will probably be moved to lunchtime instead of 24/7 on call :).However, will probably do scheduled posts,like this one. But hopefully transmission is now back to normal

In other news, wifi is now working and we are now broadcasting live from bed!