Sophilicity

First of all, I'd like to apologise, I'm not very good when it comes to committing to a project because I get carried away with a lot of other projects too. So much so, it's been over 4 years since I started my blog, and the last actual blog post I made was in February 2018. In June 2018, I started a project on my blog showcasing my experiences as I wanted to try a different approach so I started talking about stereotypes as my first subject. However, I haven't had much time to offer more experiences since. If you haven't already, you can find out more about my experiences in the experience tab at the top of my blog page!

However, it's been a busy period these past couples of years, but blogging is something that I definitely want to get back into. I don't want to make any promises since I'm not very good at making commitments with this blog, but let me provide you with an insight of content which I hope to share with you from now. 

To summarise my experiences since 2018:

• July-September 2018 - Worked with Katy&Sean for an internship experience in Events, PR & Marketing. Assisted with the Korean fashion brand, Sewing Boundaries and worked to host K-Pop concerts in collaboration with Beyond Ent. e.g. BIGONE & UP10TION.
• September 2018 - Began 2nd year of university, working as the social secretary of the UoN Korean Society till May 2019.
• January 2019 - Left my job at UnitedKpop and flew to Budapest, Hungary for a short trip with my best friend, Ying.
• March 2019 - Left my job at PHunk'D and was elected as the new general secretary of the UoN CFM Society. Also flew to Lisbon, Portugal during reading week, with two friends, Aneeqa & Kira.
• June 2019 - Finished my 2nd year of university and flew to Ningbo, China for UNNC Summer School programme. 

I've returned for the second part of my London exploration day with friends! As a Londoner, I feel that you should go to Winter Wonderland at least once in your lifetime - no it's not amazing and may possibly be overrated but the visuals are on pointe. Personally, I've been a couple of times but for various different reasons. For my most recent visit to Winter Wonderland, my aim was to get some awesome night photography. If you read my previous post, you would understand my love for night photography especially with lights. 

I'm a constant Instagrammer, I'm literally on Instagram everyday - which is probably really bad opps. But anyways, because of being on Instagram a lot, I always happen to see this one particular scene consecutively on my Instagram feed which happened to be taken at Winter Wonderland. So of course I thought I would take my own version of this picture too. Here it is:

Just entering Winter Wonderland we knew it was busy, with bag checks and long queues, it really shows how popular the event is. But if I'm honest, the food and drinks and even the rides available are rather expensive. From my previous experiences, I did go on quite a few rides, some of which were amazing, some made me really dizzy and some were rather anti-climatic and nothing special. 

I think the one thing I wanted to try and have wanted to for a long time, was churros. Unfortunately, I didn't actually get some this year because my friend, Charlotte and I were literally searching for slushies despite the cold weather. Hopefully I'll get a chance to try some at some point... Meanwhile, my friend, Cindy was also looking for her own particular drink that she always had when she attended Winter Wonderland; a winter cider from what I remember... She wasn't able to find it, but we did find some hot berry cider - which burnt my tongue opps... but it was really good, especially in the winter cold. 

We did come into a bit of a mishap during our Winter Wonderland experience, might explain Marco's done expression to be honest. But if you happen to be a photographer, I would recommend coming here to take photos especially later in the day when it's darker. The lights on the Christmas tree are shining, the lights from the different rides are illuminated and all the different places are lit to suit their own style. 

Although, I did have one problem with trying to get images of moving rides, I really should of changed the shutter speed to make it look better but I didn't really think about that at the time. Photographers would probably understand my struggles aha... I think by changing the shutter speed you can get quite an awesome effect for moving objects e.g. train passing through a station, or waterfall etc. If you have a DSLR camera, I would recommend you trying out that option. 

Personally I feel like Winter Wonderland is an experience you should try out once if you happen to be in Central London at the time, I've been at least 3 times so far. Unfortunately, Winter Wonderland only appears from around November to January, but specific dates would usually be specified on the Winter Wonderland website: http://www.hydeparkwinterwonderland.com/

Each of the rides I happened to pass all had interesting names, I think one of the most relatable items I saw at Winter Wonderland was that one place was named Las Vegas, and then down the path was a place called Chinatown. These were either places to eat or rides (as you can probably tell... my memory is terrible but it just made me laugh because down the road from Chinatown in Central London there also happens to be an arcade called Las Vegas so it was an interesting coincidence.

I've always wanted the opportunity to explore London but I never really got the chance to. With my friendship group in London, we always stick to the same area, and after a while it does get a bit boring and tedious. Especially if we are doing the same thing over and over again. My usual hangout spot has to be Chinatown, since my majority of my friendship group are Asian. We always end up back to the same place, which is Las Vegas Soho Arcade. I love the place, since it's great for gaming but being there constantly makes you realise there isn't much to do other than game...

So since my friend, Ernest happened to be returning from Loughborough university, he brought along a couple of friends and his brother, Marco and we decided to explore before we met up with everyone else for dinner. For this blog post edition, I'm going to be focusing on the first part of the day.

We ventured off to Saatchi Gallery located by Sloane Square tube station (found on the Circle (yellow) and Distict (green) line). I've been meaning to visit this place, as an Instagrammer myself, I've seen many of my friends and people I follow on my feed attend this gallery. I've been to a couple of galleries before such as the National Gallery (located by Trafalgar Square, Charing Cross).

The first thing I saw when I got into the gallery was this...


I wasn't really sure what was going on if I'm honest, I think Marco mentioned the leaves being laminated to form art - I'm not gonna lie, I'm not a very arty person so I think I made more jokey comments than serious ones...


For some pieces, I thought they were actually rather interesting, like this complex design reminded me of circuits... But then again circuits remind me of science... And I can't exactly say I'm too fond of science... Excuse me science people RIP.

But I think for some rooms that we visited, I was really confused because from suddenly going from a light to dark room, and then seeing the art pieces become illuminated, it was really cool but the art was a bit creepy. An example would be this...



Like just the comment above written on the table already creeped me out... Like if I'm honest, I ain't about this life... As you can see just from reading this you'll realise my true personality for these particular things. Although I'm not gonna lie, anyone who had white on their clothes e.g. white strips on trainers etc. Those strips were illuminated as soon as they stepped into the room, it was a cool discovery but only worked inside the room.

Another experience in a dark room, included this one piece. So, Marco and I sat in a room by ourselves staring at the wall - trust me, we were really confused at first. As we were about to get up and leave, we noticed images forming on the dark wall, in the form of an animated sketch, we returned back to our seats and watched the animations progress. Rather different to the other art pieces we saw throughout the gallery. Inspirational I say aha.


Moving onto the funnier creations, we all saw this and thought, forget magic carpet, carpet on wheels - wouldn't that be an interesting way to travel aha. I was thinking back to a parody I watched of Twilight, called Vampire Sucks. Yeah I'm not gonna lie, it was pretty lame, like instead of flying they rode segways (opps spoiler if you haven't seen it but there's many other things about the movie which are lame and funny too aha). This could probably be used for a parody of Aladdin...

For this design, I actually really like the style, I was a Graphic student in secondary school so these kind of prints really interested me, and the way they were positioned were rather unique. Plus, each design was repeated so it was symmetrical in the design but the positioning was asymmetrical which is rather contradictory and ironic.



If I'm honest, as I continue writing about these pieces, I realise there's quite a lot of things which come to mind in each of these pieces, which I guess is the point. Art makes you think about things, whether it reminds you about something, emotions, a memory, it just goes to show... Although these aren't all pictures, I understand more about the idiom "A picture is worth a thousand words".

The same applies for this art piece, although my friends and I couldn't help but laugh that although it was rather cool with the lights and the different colours for each design, it was just funny to realise they were all rice cookers. Being the typical Asians and our household ware, we joked about how much rice we could make with these rice cookers aha.