Sophilicity

Talk about throwbacks! Just over 3 months ago, I went to celebrate my friend, Marco's 17th birthday. I'm not going to lie, I totally organised majority of his birthday for him aha! Reasons why he named me "Miss Organiser Trash" or something like that...

Anyways, on the 27th of March, we decided to take Marco out on an adventure in London. It was hard trying to find the perfect place to celebrate his birthday, but fortunately I found a great place, with a great view, which was absolutely free!

Guess where?

Answer... You'll have to find out by continuing to read the rest of this post aha!

But before we went off to that great, free place, with a great view, we headed off to Misato! I might of mentioned this place in a previous post - a great Japanese restaurant located in Chinatown, Central London. Big portions, small price (well considering it's Central London anyways aha...)

The birthday boy decided to be a pain in the ass by buying noodles whilst everyone else got rice 😒 - Misato has great portions though 👌

A photo posted by Sophia Tang 🐼 (@sophilicity) on Mar 27, 2016 at 8:35am PDT

As per usual, Misato never seems to fail me, probably a reason why when I'm broke I'll probably end up in Misato if I'm not at a fast food place like KFC (which is down the road from Misato in Chinatown...)

After our food, we moved onto our final destination! Well... To be honest, before we even went to the destination we sort of arrived a bit early so we decided to chill by the river, and be touristy people. Taking pictures of the views in London as well as many selfies.

 


Now to reveal the location... As the time approached for our time slot, we entered... Sky Garden!! Sky Garden is located at 20 Fenchurch Street. To be honest, Sky Garden was one of the places I had been meaning to go to for ages! Marco and I both have an interest in photography, so I thought this would be, as you say 'killing two birds with one stone'. It was the first time I had gone to Sky Garden so I personally didn't know what to expect either.



We entered the building, going through security before entering the lift and going all the way up to the 35th floor. As we left the lift, the view just looked amazing. It's basically getting a huge view of London from the air without paying for anything. There's alternative options such as The Shard, which you have to pay to enter and view. The Shard is the tallest building in the UK.








Anyways, we realised there were quite a few staircases to walk up, one on each side. So we decided to go in a cycle motion, walking up one way, higher and higher, before going down another way, lower and lower.



As we approached the next hour, the day slowly grew to the evening, and the light started shining brightly. The colours shown in Sky Garden changed to suit the lighting outside. I was hoping to see a sunset as it was said to appear but due to the dull weather - rainy weather as per usual, thanks England... Thus we were very unfortunate despite picking a time around the time the sunset was due.



Happy birthday Marco! This post is late, but you know I already said happy birthday to you on your actual birthday aha! I hope you had a great day, and enjoyed what I did organise for you over 3 months ago! It was a fun day out despite the rain, back to being lethargic ehhh....

Anyways! Thank you guys, I hope you enjoyed the post! It was super late, but I definite recommend attending Sky Garden if you have a chance. If the weather is good, they even allow you to go out on the balcony and get an even better view of the city. Also, if you intend to go to Sky Garden, you need to book a reservation which you can do via this website below:
http://skygarden.london/plan-your-visit
Just click "book your free visit" - I suggest that you book a couple of weeks in advance because places go quite quickly as it gets nearer to the date. Another useful tool which is featured on the site, is the tool in the top left corner (desktop version) which allows you to see when the sunrise and sunset is of the current day!

Comment below if you have attended, I would love to hear about your experiences! Thanks for reading guys, I hope to catch up with my posts, I have a lot to catch up on ahhh... I'll get there eventually, but for now, don't forget to tune into the giveaways which are still live, such as my 1 year blog anniversary giveaway, which you can check out below:
Sophilicity's 1 Year Blog Anniversary + Giveaway

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.

As a continuation to my previous post, I felt I should make a separate post for the general city. It was my first time attending Nottingham, last Friday, and honestly I don't regret it. There were a few downers nearing the end of the day but that wasn't at all Nottingham's fault, more for the coach driver. The city honestly has a lot of things which I love, from Asian restaurants to great landscapes, good transport links as well as bubble tea places - woop woop!

After attending the Nottingham university open day, we decided on exploring the city life. We took the open day shuttle bus back to the train station and then made our way on the tram to the city centre. Previously, we decided on choosing between two Asian restaurants which were recommended by our friends, but also through research such as reviews. The two restaurants were Miss Korea and Pan Asia. From the two we decided upon Pan Asia as we felt the menu offered more variety although they were both similarly priced. We found it difficult the find Miss Korea as the use of the Google Maps was misleading. In the end, we had to ask the bubble tea worker at Chatime about its location.

After we had taken enough pictures of the city, we proceeded to go to Pan Asia to eat dinner. Although it was sort of early to eat dinner as it was around 4-5PM when we went to eat, it didn't mean the length of time it took us to eat wasn't going to be short. It was a great time to experiment with different cuisines as well as catch up with each other after not seeing each for a long time. Pan Asia offers a wide range of cuisines: mainly Korean and Japanese although they also offered Malaysian and other Asian starters. Whilst my cousin and my friend chose to have a taste of Korean cuisine, I opted upon choosing a Japanese cuisine (I'm quite biased when it comes to Japanese as it's my personal preference - especially as I don't really eat greens and spicy food).