to those who opened their doors & hearts to us

Many thanks to those who made this trip even better:
1) Yeen & Joice, London - sorry, i dont have your pict :(
for letting me crash at your place while waiting for my flight out the following morning within such short notice :P

2) Anna & Hubert, Cardiff
for graciously accepting 8 of us into your home, despite some of us being complete strangers to you. The use of your spacious kitchen for our cooking session - hope u enjoyed the meal :), the warm beds & shower (apologies to matt to taking over his room), and the interesting breakfast conversations.

U2 trippers with Anna & Hubert in Cardiff, Wales

3) Amanda & Dinesh, London

for allowing us to use ur apartment as refuge...the living room floor space, foosball table, the fridge & kitchen, the bathroom, tv, etc. for the friendly & funny company and the nostalgic music from the good ol' gramophone. Amanda & Dinesh (photo obtained from River)

This is just me thanking a few people, but I'm sure there's also others that my fellow trippers have met along the way - thank you from the bottom of our hearts!

it all began with bowie

ground control to major tom

take your protein pills and put your helmet on

commencing countdown engines on

check ignition and may gods love be with you .....

an important point to note.
it was indeed a great opening to a great concert, the lads brilliantly used this classic tune to make their entrance.

very exciting!!!

...what they played in cardiff

Thanks to Sara and her cool digital camera, she recorded all the songs at the concert :D. Here's what they played:

Breathe
No Line On The Horizon
Get On Your Boots
Magnificent
Beautiful Day
Mysterious Ways
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For*
Stay*
Unknown Caller
Unforgettable Fire
City of Blinding Lights
Vertigo
I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight (Remix)
Sunday Bloody Sunday
Pride (In The Name of Love)
MLK
Walk On
Where The Streets Have No Name
One
Bad

Encore:
Ultraviolet
With Or Without You*
Moment of Surrender

*3 of the songs that i really wanted them to sing. Definitely a night that I'll remember & cherish for a long time. Thanks U2 and my fellow trippers!

Banksy in Bristol!

This has nothing to do with U2, but I just have to say a few words about my favourite anti-establishment graffiti artist. Banksy! He's AMAZING, but he's so mysterious nobody actually knows who he is, or what he looks like. He's pretty famous in the UK and Europe, but no one else I know has actually heard of him, so I feel the need to rectify the situation.

After Cardiff, some of us went off and did our own thing, some went to Oxford, some went to Cambridge. I went to visit my friend Louise in Bristol. That was when I discovered there was a Banksy exhibition at the museum there! Imagine how excited I was! Unfortunately, one look at the lines of people queueing to get in, and I changed my mind about going. Louise talked to one woman who had been waiting in line since 9 in the morning...and it was already 11am!


What I like about Banksy is that his work is very satirical, involving themes from politics, society, current affairs. If anyone has noticed the image of a dove in a bulletproof jacket that I sometimes use online, that was done by Banksy. It was part of a series he did in Palestine, along the Israeli Separation Wall, as a commentary on the political situation there.

Banksy actually comes from Bristol. You can see some of his most famous work just by walking around the city. Which is way better than waiting 4-6 hours to see an exhibition in a museum! It made my day to discover his 'man hanging out of a window' piece while crossing a bridge, hehe! And I caught a glimpse of another one on the way to the bus station the next morning!

Oh yeah...he does have a website. It doesn't tell you much, but you do get to see lots of other amazing pieces he's done. Please, please do check out his stuff - it's really cool! :-)

.. why the concert was awesome part deux

Here's a series of videos from the concert..

Since posting the video above took me almost 3 freaking hours, I have uploaded more clips onto YouTube, with links below:

U2 - 2
U2 - 3
U2 - 4
U2 - 5
U2 - 6
U2 - 7
U2 - 8
U2 - 9

More coming soon! Gotta renew my driving license now :)

thai indulgence in london

I'm not kidding when i said indulgence...it was probably the best and most extravagant meal (and drinks) we had in london throughout the trip - many thanks to Bill, River's brother. This blog is a bit delayed, but how can i not mention this delightful place (plus i promised river :P )

We were there as early as 6pm so that we can spend a bit of time with Bill and wife, and before they get busy with the dinner crowd. Located on High Road in North Finchley, this quaint bar cum restaurant is unassumingly simple in decor but holds many secret treasures when it comes to good food and drinks. I loved the bar area stacked with many varieties of alcohol and pictures of the restaurant staff & patrons taken over the years, as well as the napkins in the shape of the lotus flower (a very significant element in thai culture).interior of restaurant

The Foo siblings, Bill, Yean (River's sister) & River started our food adventure with a mixture of cocktails - pina colada, sex on the beach, margarita, mojito, strawberry daiquiri,mai tai & river's vodka special. I think the mai tai was the 'strongest' with hints of spices like cinnamon, star anise, etc. Although I've always like sex on the beach...the strawberry daiquiri was the best, as in light and easy to drink after a heavy meal. Surin turned red not long after the cocktails...no, he wasnt drunk, but had some gas built-up...he didnt look too good throughout but he couldn't resist the delicious meal.Cocktails ala Foo

cocktails for everyone

As for the dinner meal, i'll let the scrumptious food pictures 'speak' for themselves. We had 11 dishes in total: grilled chicken, chargrilled prawns with chilli sauce, garlic squid, panang beef (curry), yam nea (beef salad), tom kha hed (mushroom soup), steamed veggies, fresh scallops with thai sauce, weeping tiger(sirloin steak on a sizzling hot plate), spicy beef noodles and 3 varieties of rice (white,coconut & fried). Everything was soooo delicious!!! :P My favs: garlic squid, prawns, scallops, weeping tiger & grilled chicken (yes, my mouth is watering thinking about it..hihihi)who can resist all these??

And to top it all...Bill went the extra mile and prepared 6 shooters for us....he claimed "this will help you wash down the food"...not to mention get us happily drunk...hic!hic!hic!...:D

Anyway we (gladly) wiped out almost all of the food and alcohol. We were satiated, happy & giggly as we made our way back to South Quay...THANKS SO MUCH BILL,TOON & THE FOO FAMILY!!!the gang with Bill & wife, Toon in the middle

happy troupers heading back

Address:
Thai & Co bar restaurant
826 High Road, North Finchley
London N12 9RA
For more info, pls visit their website: http://www.thaiandco.co.uk/

(ps - Joanna/Polly - it's worth the visit when u're in London :D )

5 t-shirts and a cap...

.. why the concert was awesome

Ok ok.

This is a bit too late, and after you have read the previous post by Sheemster you'd probably be wondering how good WAS the concert. Lemme tell you.. it was a-mazing, fan-tastic, awe-some, overwhelming, ex-cellent, co-ol, grrr-eat... well you get the idea.

We began the day (August 22nd) with some sight-seeing around Cardiff. Many are already wearing their U2 t-shirts, Surin and Johan included.


We had our strategy in place - find our entrance, eat, drink, camp outside the gates (to grab the t-shirts on sale) After some food, River & I had this brilliant idea of showing off how far we came for U2 (People were boasting in the papers that they came all the way from somewhere in ulu UK to watch U2 in Wales). So we decided to make a banner. We had 3 hours before the concert starts (well, before the gates opened), so basically camped outside, ignored people and did our art.
It turned out sooo nice, thanks to Dylan, Johan, River, Reuben and I. Jen, Surin & Sheemster should not get credit for this :D
We ran for the merchandise counter as soon as the gates opened. Everyone went crazy. 22 pounds for a t-shirt.. Worth it what?! Someone even bought himself 5 t-shirts and a cap and slept with it. Thanks to Reuben's nosiness, we got to be at the coolest area for the concert. Well, cool enough for us. We sneaked in around 5.30pm to the standing area and made our way through the crowd to be as close to the stage as allowed (Welsh people are quite scary when they are drunk). Since U2 was only due at 8.30pm, we had nothing to do but take a gazillion photos of ourselves and the surroundings, shared miserable pieces of bread with butter (we were scared to go out in case we were not allowed to come back into the area), and Jen & Surin even played tepuk-tepuk.

But when U2 came on, our hunger just amazingly disappeared.

I will try to upload the shorter clips from the concert, taken from my point and shoot camera; now gotta ciao!

Postscript

To those still reading this blog:

We're back home in Malaysia, still recovering from some serious jetlag. Everything is moving in slow motion at the moment.

Yeah we kinda let the blog lapse, and didn't manage to post updates about the concert itself, or the rest of our activities after that. Not because we didn't want to, but internet access was a bit scarce, and we had amassed too many lovely photos and videos to upload and sort through during the ensuing hectic and activity-packed days post-concert. And after Reuben buggered off to his friend's place taking his laptop with him, blogging became nigh impossible (yes Reuben, it's all your fault).

Still sorting - and decompressing - as I write. Hopefully in the next few days and weeks we'll find the opportunity to put up more content here. In the meantime, this article which I salvaged from the Bristol Evening Post, plus this review, gives a pretty good idea of what it was like to be there. :-)