crazybobbles » food

Secret muser meets? (mmm meat)

crazybobbles — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 00:22:28 +0000

It’s pretty fun meeting musers, but at the same time it’s worrying how surprisingly similar they get, the same locations and faces everytime. The locations need to change a bit, we can’t eat nando’s everytime, play in funland everytime, sing in karaoke bars everytime, shop in cyber candy everytime etc. I think they can be as simple as having a meal and not get so lavish with these events that seem someone deja vu all the time.

Man it was weird when i wrote epic long posts about each day? Now I just don’t feel it anymore. Here’s two more photos… if folks are cool with the people shots I’ll post them up too.

Will still need to catch up on old posts, I’m gonna keep them nice and snappy

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Photomonth preview & Korean BBQs

crazybobbles — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 00:59:33 +0000

Photomonth preview event!

After reading a flickr blog entry about a photomonth preview event happening close by to work, it was a preview night to show case some photos as part of the photomonth… month. I decided to make an evening of it all. My friend m was coming over to meet me that day so I thought she’d appreciate the photos and free drinks before we go out for a meal somewhere. The gallery was pretty close to Rough Trade East, and from the 3 or 4 trips to the place I no longer required google maps to aid me from finding the place. I met with my friend near where I worked and walked with her to the gallery (stopped by for some book browsing and toilet breakage).

The gallery was pretty neat, a lot of photos were based around the area (so a couple of gherkin shots) and they obviously all had a certain theme to it all. I believe most of these were shot as part of a photo walk or project. I haven’t been on a photo walk before but it does sound fun, shame you need to pay like £45 just to walk around with people and take photos of a place that was free (the only benefit is getting help from professionals). Anyway, enough about photowalks, here’s some photos of the event.

After slightly abusing the free wine and admiring the shots, we vacated the area for some food, I initially wanted to go for a curry at brick lane but I had no idea which place to goto (need some reviews first before going to a shonky one). We decided to head to central London and find a yo sushi since m hasn’t dined in a yo sushi for quite a bit. The plan sort of fizzled as I couldn’t think of a place to have yo sushi in and suddenly I decided to take her to the Korean BBQ place that my other friends took me to. m found the idea amazing since she’s never went a Korean BBQ restaurant, she’s tried making a Korean BBQ at home once but failed epically so it was a good idea to see how it was done properly.

Waiting patiently for food

Once at the restaurant we sat down and ordered pretty quickly, the BBQ set mix was about £30 and that was the main thing we wanted to have, it was just meat but that was fine. The meats included beef, pork, duck and chicken. We kept joking about how the waitress kept looking at me because she fancied me teehee (not really , however she did teach us more about Korean BBQs and the steps required to consume one, it was muy interesanté). The food came and the BBQ grill was heating up (for those who know little of Korean BBQs, the meat is initially set on the table RAW and gets grilled up in the crazy heating grill area that’s located in the middle of the table in a built in sort of way). It was all marinaded so once the meat was cooked it was ready to consume.

m instantly was in love with it, we were both pretty hungry and watching the food getting cooked in front of us made us even hungry! But it was definitely worth the wait, boy I need to visit here more. We spent a while identifying all the meats that was grilling, some were easy to spot but some needed some prodding and guesswork (we eventually asked hehe).

Beef, pork, chicken and duck!

Chicken and beef mainly! Nom nom

I felt slightly hungry still and ordered a seafood udon, it was nice and thick and was definitely the cherry on top of the meal, though I wish we actually ordered it with the BBQ so we could eat the udon with the various pieces of BBQ’ed meat. I could go on and on about food but I won’t bore you too much, it was a yummy place and I’d recommend anyone to try a Korean BBQ if they haven’t already (and try it again if you have!). Hopefully my food photography will convince one or two of you to go!

Seafood udon!

After our meal we went to funland (since it was closeby) to play some mini bowling (the £2 one with smaller balls and the pins attached to string). We both took a lane each and I did pretty well with my mini bowling skills by scoring a strike and a few spares. Think I ended up with 100 something whilst m scored 80 odd.

After that we ventured into the bumper cars, I took a crazy ass timelapse video of it all whilst doing some serious crashing onto fellow bumpercarians. Good times.

After that we wondered around aimlessly in London, heading to Trafalgar square and others place with no aim whatsoever, I suddenly felt like I was in a book (namely catcher in the rye). It was nice wondering around aimlessly, I suppose you just need to have good company to make it nice (which I did). The evening was getting late so I took m back to her station and said goodbye to her, it has been a while since I’ve met her so it was nice seeing her again . Nice and short entry since I have a bitchass amount of things to catch up on, it’s become one of those moments where the things I’m doing is greater than the things I’m writing! Damn life haha (just kidding). Next entry will be about the adventures of uka so stay tuned!

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Heroes in a half shell

crazybobbles — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 20:21:25 +0000

Mmm they really were!

After a haul of gig photos I’d thought i’d process something different for a change, food photography, they’re pretty easy to develop, you just sort the white balance and you’re done. A few weeks back I went to a lovely chinese restaurant that I’ve mentioned quite a few times before, Red Chilli. I was visiting my brother and I made sure that I got some crispy peking duck action while I was there, so I booked a lovely holiday and made arrangements with him, it’s almost exactly a year since I’ve seen him so it was definitely overdue of a visit. So yeah, we ate the almighty red chilli. He recommended other places for the future so I’ll definitely check them out but I wanted to go for something I was familiar with.

Once again my brother was tempted in ordering the set menu’s and I cursed him for not realising that they’re not saving money by buying set menus and that you never go crispy aromatic duck. We slowly trawled through the menu and picked a fine selection of dishes, there were 5 of us and our choices were pretty random, we went for some obvious dishes (scallops were a must, soup was a must, and the infamous assort seafood and chicken hot pot was another must). If you think I’ve missed out duck, you’re right, THE DAMN HEAD CHEF went on holiday! I initially ordered Peking Duck (because that’s awesome) and the waitress said “Crispy aromatic duck?”, I thought she misheard me so I told her I wanted duck in the peking variety and then she goes and explains the unfortunate news, damn head chef.

I would name the dishes properly but I would need the menu and upon looking at the site it looks like the guys haven’t paid their hosting fees properly so their site is suspended teehee. So yeah, playing by memory and just saying what meat was on the table (pretty much all the meat they had minus duck *sniff*). Anyway, I won’t describe too much of the food otherwise i’d make me want to go there again

Here’s the rest of the photos. We got oranges at the end! Last time we didn’t so I made sure we did! The bill was nice and friendly and we paid up and left with smiles on our faces (except for the lack of duck). They even sorted out the typo on those damn prepacked napkins, but they were still a bastard to open!

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That damn duck weekend!

crazybobbles — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 11:33:43 +0000

Finally, was able to actually get this damn duck evening sorted. No idea why this event was labelled “damn duck” but inn kept hammering that line on long enough to cause the duck to be damning, plus it’s been a god damn long time to get this event sorted (3 odd months) I previously was able to book a table of 8 for 7pm for the epic duck weekend to celebrate my various achievements including graduation, job and first paycheck. Basically a lot of events crammed in one. It was hard these days to get time off, have it synchronised with everyone and pull off a big meetupmathom but somehow we managed, Inn took her time to actually decide on a date since she had to book it and her company had weird rules on it. I was flexible since it was easter period and I had planned on booking a long holiday to spend time with Alice before she heads off abroad.

Anyway, before and after the event me and Alice had our time off together, Alice wasn’t too happy about leaving her job but had to so she could go travel. Hopefully that all pans out right. We were able to prepare loads of stuff since Alice was leaving very soon. On the duck day me, Alice and Inn met up a wee bit for some random browsing and whatnot. Alice wanted to do a makeover with Mac but that backfired when booking was required, same with Body Shop, shame because it would have been fun watching! Inn also got some food before the duck event. We then chilled out at a starbucks where we met up with Gem and Paul.

After getting a wee bit impatient we decided to just go red chilli and chill out there. We managed to get ourselves a big table that had a lazy susan in the middle. Was a good thing since there was quite a lot of people eating and spinning food around was a good idea. (it’s ALWAYS a good idea). After some bantering kev and her sister finally arrive. We began the ever so painful process of choosing food and eventually we picked a few starters and that duck (whole variety)

The duck was epic, granted Inn wasn’t as chuffed but man it was epic haha. We had a lovely soup too and the others had spring rolls and, some cake and a hot and sour soup (all for kev, though he shared). The main course was a lot nicer than I thought it would be, I ordered the hot pot, kev ordered the sizzling beef, paul ordered some chicken and spring onion dish, alice ordered some chicken dish too and inn had to be alternative by ordering some braised pork trotter (which was some slowly cooked pork so the meat is soft (but salty).

The chicken dishes were highly accepted as well as the sizzling beef. Food was slowly but surely consumed and we even cracked a bottle of champagne (well I did, hardly anyone could drink because they were all driving or didn’t want to drink too much! Rats). I got it from work and had to find a way of using it, not going to just sit on my own and guzzle it haha.

So yeah, we got some nice orange wedges to finish off (everyone ruined their oranges by not eating it the right way (bit like eating sweetcorn too)) and boom, the bill. It was a lot less than we expected which was good and I paid almost half of it since it was meant to be a treat as well as me helping to pay Alice’s portion.

So the moral of the story is, eating is cool. Me and alice took alice’s family to go eat at Red Chilli again so we were able to enjoy a double heaping of duck! They were chuffed about the food too since we ordered some epic dishes (including soft shell crab mm).

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The story about a peking duck

crazybobbles — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 09:34:53 +0000

One of the funniest things happened when spending time with Alice last weekend. We went to dine at a lovely Chinese Restaurant called Red Chilli, I’ve been there twice and was very impressed both times (this will be the place where I’ll be celebrating something with a whole roast duck).

Anyway once at the place we were told to wait for an hour for a table, this was a bummer since we went to Leeds just for this, loads of people didn’t bother getting a table because of this, I was persistent and eventually we got a table within 15 minutes, turns out the predicted hour is simply what you should expect to wait for and not an accurate measurement of when you’ll get your table, ho hum.

We ordered a lovely Peking duck at Red Chilli, we were both very hungry and was determined to get some duck action. Anyway, there were two n00bish tables next to us, I already got an idea that they had no idea on what to get and will most likely eat set menu stuff, most of which had “Crispy Aromatic Duck”. Take note that it’s simply NOT peking duck, Peking ducks are roasted nicely and sliced up right in front of you by some fat chef (which makes you wonder why he’s always fat hehe) whilst the crispy variety only involves deep frying some duck and having the waiter/waitress “shred” it for you, it’s a lot more dry and has a dull deep fried brown look contrary to the nice golden glossy orange look.

Anyway, we were sat in some corner and the two n00b tables were placed in a way that our fat chef couldn’t come cut the duck right next to us. In comes the hilarious bit… Since the chef couldn’t cut the duck next to us he had to do it between both the tables, when the duck arrived both tables were staring at our duck being sliced up, one even took photos. They thought it was their duck since it’s being cut up next to them despite the waitress handing us the pancakes. Both tables just finished their starters so you can’t blame their gullible selves that they thought this was their duck. After some slicing the moment came, they served US the duck. Their faces were disappointed but by the looks of it they looked like they were expecting to get the same, this was when the waiter came and placed a lovely dull brown duck on their table. The reactions were priceless! Not to mention we got to see for both tables. Lesson of the day, Peking = win, Crispy = fail, thinking you’re getting a peking duck but getting a crispy = double fail

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Super Jet Lag Meetup

crazybobbles — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 00:08:44 +0000

As soon as returning to London from New York, I agreed to goto a meetup since I had the energy to (it was that or just loads of sleeping). This was a quick lunch followed by some Nando’s, it was a free for all meetup so all sorts of musers ranging from oldies to n00bs were about. I arrived pretty late since I was trying to get stu to come, he missed his coach. I eventually buy tickets for him and he managed to catch the coach to see us later on the day.

I met up with everyone at Victoria, they decided to go sushi it so yeah. I said hello to everyone and tried shaking everyone’s hand. I showed off my new york hat and gave people some “Kisses” chocolate. The meal was pretty nice and then we went to get Stu’s ticket at National Express, I ended up doing it on the phone but nonetheless we got stu out of the door haha. We then went to Covent Garden and checked out some boring street performer as well as cyber candy. I got people to take the stairs since it was quite a gruelling walk!

Afterwards we went to funland, that was.. fun, we had some bumper car action and I did some DDR’ing. Afterwards we went back to Victoria to meet up with stu and have some nando’s action. I took some photos here and there and tried to abuse the 50mm lens.

After meeting up with Stu we went to find the nando’s, I used my google maps app on my phone to locate it but the problem was finding out where we were in the first place, eventually we got there and found out it was packed and it might take 20-30 minutes for a table to be ready, we went to the pub next door to chill out and scream at passers by, eventually we get our seats at Nando’s and had a lovely meal, I ordered two jugs of sangria to treat everyone. We played a few games of “I never” and abused my nando’s loyalty card to get some extra chicken. The meetup was quite fun and ended at Wetherspoons. Max kept playing with his new compact Canon camera bless. I got back home and had an epic sleep! ready for work!

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Graduation Weekend!

crazybobbles — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 22:43:27 +0000

The most epic event in your life you’d think? The day you graduate, sadly it didn’t feel like it for me. I was to engrossed with working that uni stuff felt like “meh”. I suppose you need the studies to get the job and all but yeah, just weird that graduation would be blasé due to the fact that you feel like work makes more sense. Anyway, a graduation is a graduation and I decided to invite Alice as my guest and all. It was held at the Barbican Hall on a Friday so I booked myself a lovely holiday (as well as Alice) for the day. It also meant I got a weekend with Alice too in London.

The graduation itself was pretty boring, it was fun wearing the fancy graduation robe, but my part went quite quickly… a bit too quickly one might say, I was literally the SECOND person to receive my certificate. First class students get to go on stage first . But yeah the rest of the event was spent listening to a bunch of imbeciles hoot their fellow students when they received their awards, I mean, it’s a formal event, we’re at the Barbican, dressed up in robes and hooting? wtf? Ah well. The highlight of the graduation event (me picking up my award aside) was the fact that Mark Shuttleworth (founder of ubuntu) was there to make a speech! That was pretty epic. I spoke to a few students but kept it simple.

We went to hardwok cafe afterwards, Alice had never tried it and it was lunchtime so it made sense hehe. We managed to get the last of the yummy hardwok food, I had a Thai Red Curry (per usual) and Alice had a chicken in black bean sauce. We ate outside the place and had Krispy Kremes for dessert. Alice finally understood why I kept raving about hardwok cafe (if only the rest got it). Later on that evening we met up with Jason and Rachel for ANOTHER Royal China. We went to a Caffe Nero beforehand since it was a wee bit early and there we talked about how “judge judy” was the ONLY famous judge. Rachel said that there was another famous judge called “judge brown”. It was hard trying to make her crack that it was a lie since she kept building up a more and more elaborate lie about who judge brown was and what he did that made him so famous, it got to a point where Rachel said she was in contact with him and that he was her father. After a the battle of judge brown we headed to Royal China for our grub. This time we ordered a half duck to feast on as well as some dim sum dishes and awesome seafood noodles / ho fun. The meal was epic as ever (especially when we got ourselves some scallops action too) and though it was about £20 odd per head, it was a yummy meal! Afterwards we settled in the Natural Cafe and had a lovely chat like before.

The next day we had a meal at Wagamamma and spent the rest of the day at Central London, I took Alice to loads of places including Cyber Candy at Covent Garden and the Apple Store (beautiful landmark). It was disturbing how we managed to get a lot of things done, we also went to china town and got ourselves… ANOTHER duck haha, this time I went into a restaurant and ordered one cut up for din dins, it came to £14 which was amazing! We went to picadilly circus to so Alice could take the ubiquitous shot of the lights (not as epic as times square though).

Sunday we had a lovely meal with my dad and then spent the rest of the day watching Harry Potter (we managed to watch Sliding doors at one of the days too, it was a must!). We also watched Kill Bill and had a lovely meal at home. The next day Alice went back up north and I went to work again, it was a lovely day but it was always a bummer going to work and ONLY just departing with Alice. Ah well

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Christmas with Alice 2007

crazybobbles — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 21:54:04 +0000

For Christmas, I had booked a holiday to go up north and spend it with Alice and her family. It was a pretty epic week and a bit, my birthday was spent enjoying a lovely roast yorkshire ham lunch (I hear it’s amazing) and lots of presents from Alice and her parents (for both xmas and birthday), including a Harry Potter BluRay, His Dark Materials boxset and a Howls Moving Castle art book. It was quite a fest of presents and I was able to celebrate the Xmas Day household style. It’s really nice seeing all the quirks at the house, it was full of family traditions and food. The turkey was awesome and it definitely lasted for quite some days hehe.

I also got an awesome KATAMARI BIRTHDAY cake!

It was nice watching everyone give and receive presents on Xmas day, I managed to get Alice a lovely ipod since she was thinking of getting one in the first place, granted she did pay for the warranty and chipped in £30 for it, so I suppose it wasn’t a full present :$. I was also able to check out Ikea for the first time up north, they do awesome £1 breakfast though I got myself a double breakfast since it was so cheap, the furniture was pretty awesome and I can see why people love it so much. I got Alice to get some finger puppets since they looked flippin’ awesome.

We were also able to do a quick Gourmet Burger Kitchen visit with kev and have some bingo action in Leeds, I picked a lovely BUFFALO burger which was new on the menu. It was pricey as fuck but was pretty amazing, nice and juicey. Besides it’s BUFFALO, who can resist (yup, I see you salivating you veggies haha kidding). Kev and Alice were pretty impressed by GBK too, Alice had a Oreo milkshake too which was new on the menu. Bingo night wasn’t too much of a success since we missed the early thingy and wasn’t able to win much. It’s getting slightly frustrating because it’s almost that we’re playing to win and not for the fun anymore, though it’s been a while since we’ve won and I’m dying to say “GWAR” to everyone. Maybe Inn stole all the win from everyone

The last day up north was spent at Nando’s before my train arrived, it was a lovely meal, we hadn’t had Nando’s for some time so it was pretty cool. The train journeys were spent surfing on my new E61i phone, was able to use fring as well as surf on sites via Opera Mini.

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Stuart’s birthday and Alice weekend

crazybobbles — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 21:36:19 +0000

For Stuart’s birthday we all opted to get him a DS Lite, the original plan was to get him vouchers for it but I thought it was cooler to just get him the actual console. Alice was able to attend and spend some time in London with me. We managed to all meet up at Brent Cross and head to Kazzie’s for the night. I believe we had some nice grubby takeaway from some random Chinese Takeaway place.

I’m not sure how we spent our evening and morning but I believe we did have an amazing breakfast! We bought everything we needed to make the perfect full english breakfast and got delayed for the actual event that Max and Aino organised. I believe we did quite a fair bit of smash brothering too which made us disturbingly late, no worries though since we’re the host I guess *shrugs*. Passing Brent Cross I was able to smuggle myself a black DS Lite for Stu whilst Karis and Inn were able to distract Stu for a bit.

We arrived at Regent Street pretty late and finally found everyone, we then headed to a very packed Oxford Street finding the restaurant. We were going to have tapas at a place called La Tasca. Quite a fair amount of people were about which was fun and we had a lovely seat booked and all.

The meal was alright, paella was just wet rice and bits of stuff however we did order a fair amount of stuff and in the end, the bill was a joke. It came to £200+ and people were simply gobsmacked by it, it was rather awkward for people, especially when some were refusing to pay any more. Me and Alice decided to save the day by pitching in the rest so everyone was able to pay the bill and avoid embarrassment. But boy Max and Aino aren’t planning any meetups in the future. Tapas is a 2 person event, not suitable for orgies.

The rest of the weekend was spent with Alice, we met up with Jason and Rachel and had some yum yum dim sum at Royal China, I chose this place because Jason and Rachel previously took me to “Ping Pong” to have dim sum when I told them that Royal China is a nicer place and do a wider range of dim sum. So yeah, it was a pretty epic meal at a far less scary price (especially when Jason and Rachel could afford it all hehe). I was very pissed off that we didn’t get free oranges! They usually do it so

We went into the Natural Cafe to sit around and chat for the rest of the day, Jason got me an orange to eat hehe. Was always nice seeing Jason and Rachel, Alice got on well with them too so it was all good We then called it a night and that was that day.

The day after I had to go work and Alice had to return back up north, we said our farewells at Monument and that was the weekend. Lesson of the day, don’t get tapas. Stick with a golden crispy fucking duck haha.

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Sushi, 3D Dumbledore and We are Physics!

crazybobbles — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 22:04:02 +0000

Today was quite a disturbingly hectic day, so many things arranged and plan in the last minute. Kazzie spoke to me on msn and asked me if I wanted to go out and have Yo Sushi! with her and Stu. I originally was going to decline the offer since I was pretty tired from Regina Spektor gig and all, thought since Michelle was also inviting me to see We Are Physics at the buffalo bar as well I decided I might as well make the day of it and have a proper day out again.

Yo Sushi and a very late stu

Upon arriving fashionable late I met up with Kazzie and got a seat at Yo Sushi! We were still waiting for Stu to arrive so we just sat around and drank some green tea, I ordered some cold dishes so that they were immediately ready when Stu was about and Kazzie ordered a chicken yakisoba to eat. The wait was pretty long as I believe Stu was almost an hour late. We eventually got nice and cosy and ate our food, Kazzie promised Stu that if he came today she would eat a Salmon Nigiri so we ordered just that (I persuaded her to do it so I could have her nigiri if she couldn’t finish the other one off hehe). The dish arrived and kazzie actually kept her promise and ate the thing. Though it’s nothing for us (me, alice, inn, kev and loads others), it was quite remarkable that Kazzie did eat raw salmon when she didn’t like fish in general!

I ordered a salmon skin hand roll, a tamago nigiri and a beef ramen which kept the bill nice and small (should of got a rainbow combo to be honest). I mentioned the gig I was going and Kazzie and Stu were pretty much up for it, we were then contemplating what to do between the gig and after Yo Sushi! After paying the bill and leaving victoria we headed off to the Apple store in Regent Street to have a look at the new ipods as well as perv at the iMacs. Stu did some research and found out that imax were showing Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix in a hour and a bit so we decided to spend the rest of the afternoon watching Harry Potter! The difference was that it was at the imax (one of the biggest screens in the UK) and the last battle scene was in 3D! I think the idea of watching it all in 3D was too much to miss so we went to waterloo to pay imax a visit.

mmm Dumbledore in 3d

We were given large specs at imax and were able to buy decent tickets to the show and all. We were also able to catch a few 3d trailers to really enjoy the 3d experience, it was amazing! Things were popping out right in front of you and stuff, it just made us desperate to see what 3d harry potter had to offer!

The film was amazing, if you exclude hermione’s moving eyebrows, kazzie’s constant giggling about them, the large number of discrepancies from the film and the book and the fact that our seats were slightly to the left. The 3d bit however was flawless, it was amazing watching it all in 3d. The best bit was when Dumbledore was fighting Voldermort. Stu laughed at Dumbledore’s whipping wand technique and I was just gormless when the the glass at the ministry of magic shattered. It was all pretty jaw dropping when it was in 3d.

We are Physics! Did they goto the imax too?

After the film we decided to head off to the buffalo bar at Highbury Islington station. Stu decided that he was tired after watching Dumbledore in 3d so we left us at Euston. Kazzie brought her dslr camera so we were ready to take some lovely photos of the band at it. We met up with Michelle (who was with Caff) and headed to the venue to go check out the band. They were pretty amazing, really reminded me of Polysics as they were really jumpy and fun to watch. Photo taking was slightly tedious since the lighting was inconsistent and all. However with the help of flash I was able to take a few decent shots. The guitarist was wearing 3d specs which led me to believe that they might have went to see Harry Potter too haha.

After the gig there was also another band playing but due to time we had to leave at 11pm, was a shame since I wouldn’t mind watching them myself (they’re headling and all). But yeah, the venue was pretty far away from where I lived so it was best to call it a night instead of risking taking a painful night bus back home!