Madrid, Spain - Tapas, Sangria & a Korean Guy

Every now and then, I thought about the people I met on my travels.




Some of them I might never meet again in my life, but left a permanent footprint in my heart.

There's one such guy, korean guy to be exact, on my trip to Madrid years ago.




Leaving Barceona behind, with all its wonders and splendors, and after absorbing all the historical sights and knowledge, I was ready for some culture pumping.




Oh yes, that means food - tapas, sangrias, jamon, etc; and lots of them (paella was too exp to be eaten alone, biggest problem with travelling solo).










It was a day of gastronomy exploring at the market.

Not just any market. A food market. Yes, in Madrid.




People stand around bar counters where they enjoyed a good meal of tapas and home-brewed sangrias over productive chats with their friends, family, strangers or lovers.




The whole experience was something I've never experienced before. Refreshing, fascinating and really hungry to look at.




You'd see mountains of varied tapas in neat displays inside the glass counters, like how you would find pastries in bakeries; you make your pick, pay, and squeeze a spot at the counter to enjoy the rest of your meal.














my 2 euro glass of Sangria. ^^


This was where I met a stranger, another Asian, in a group of travelling Europeans and local Spanish; our eyes met, we smiled. An instant connection was made. We were the only two Asians in the market and it was pleasing to know, and feel, that you're somewhat not alone.

Both strangers. Both incapable of understanding Spanish. Both a little bit intimidated by the scene. Both alone.

So we shared a corner at the counter. And we ate.

And we became friends in under 15 minutes.




I forgot his name. It has been couple of years. But he was a funny guy. Not flirtatious, not fluent in English, just funny.




He did things like running in front of my camera totally randomly while I attempted a night shot at a plaza.


I laughed, because he had this weird "interrupt jump" mid-air. The photo turned out better.


He would wear furry ladies hat and asked if he looked good. But would then shook his head with a face of disgust commenting the hat was hideous and didn't suit him.


at a Christmas night market in Madrid.


He liked photography, so did I.

So we roamed the city throughout the evening taking photos at everything.

We took our friendship to a bar, where I sampled more sangrias.


quiet bar in a quiet lane



beer for man & sangria for girl


Spain has a heavy Arabic influence in most of their architectures.; mainly due to the fact that it was been under the Islamic Empire (a.k.a. Islamic Umayyad dynasty) which lasted some 800 years.

As you can see in the design of this very Arabian-styled bar.







We finally ended our Madrid trip together days later with two tickets to Flemenco dance performance.










Flamenco turned out to be much more serious than I had anticipated. It was intense, loud and precise. But it wasn't fun. I had a more enjoyable flemenco dance performed by some locals in another city than this.

The next day we parted our ways as I ventured further South of Spain.

We met once more in London closing to Christmas; he on his great European trip of a lifetime, I was exploring my uncharted zone in Europe; both decided to spend the new year in the Great Britain.

One email was exchanged after that last encounter.

And that was the last we ever heard from each other.

We went back to our countries, we resumed our mundane lives, him getting a new job, perhaps still with his long-term girlfriend. And that was that.


To the random funny korean guy I met in Madrid,

Thanks for leaving such an endearing footprint in my life. My memory of Spain will always consist of you.

Guess the venue!

London Community Gospel Choir
Photo credit: Roger Thomas

This is the London Community Gospel Choir. But what I (and photographer Roger Thomas) found surprising was the venue. Definitely not where you'd expect....but where?

Roger writes: "The joint was jumping. It was as if they's lit a small fire under every seat in the house."  Anyone? There's another picture if you "Read more."

London Community Gospel Choir with choirs 2020 and Urban Voices

Photo Credit: Roger Thomas

THE ANSWER IS CADOGAN HALL


Where there are a three VERY interesting lunchtime gigs coming up this month:

Tuesday August 9th. Vocalist Kai Hoffman. Who also writes for us.

Thursday August 11th has two top players, both of whom are completely there at the top level on at least two instruments. Ivo Neame and Jim Hart. Neame is a pianist and saxophonist. Hart plays vibraphone and drums. Fascinating

Thursday August 25th . Peter King Quartet. The legendary saxophonist has to be heard. Often.

RIP Gene McDaniels (1935-2011)

American singer-songwriter producer Gene McDaniels died yesterday. His songs from the sixties will stay in the memory: “A Hundred Pounds of Clay,” “Tower of Strength,” “Point of No Return,” and, perhaps above all, “Compared to What,” truly immortalized by Les McCann and Eddie Harris . (above) Here's a tribute from a friend. RIP.

unplug + recharge

Time for me to unplug. For. A. Whole. Week. (Always a challenge...) Back in a week, or so, hopefully refreshed, recharged and full of new, simple recipe ideas. Hope your week is full of delicious food, fresh air, and summer fun too.

p.s. There was no Friday lunchbox this week. The kids cut out of camp early!

Julian Siegel wins award

Paul Pace presenting Julian Sigel with the jazz award

at the 2011 London Awards for Art and Performance

Photo credit: Simon Hipkins 

The London Awards for Art and Performance 2011, organized by London Festival Fringe , sponsored by the Waldorf Hilton, were held in the Waldorf's magnificent balroom in Aldwych on Thursday July 28th.

The four finalists for the jazz award were :

Beats n Pieces
Submotion Orchestra
Matt Roberts Big Band
Julian Siegel

and the winner was..... JULIAN SIEGEL, whose album Urban Theme Park is bound to be on best of lists for 2011.

There's a description of the awards process (and the jazz longlist) here

Here's a slideshow from the awards ceremony.

Nominations for the 2012 awards open in August.

London Festival Fringe website

Breakfast with Disney Characters

This is the last the most exciting post of my Hong Kong Disneyland trip and stay, at least for me.









I’ve always had wanted to stay at a Disney Hotel whenever I visited a Disneyland.



Because at Hong Kong Disneyland Hotel you get to dine with all the famous Disney characters!



Like Mickey Mouse, Goofy and Donald Duck.





It was the event I was looking most forward to during my stay there.



As I was staying in Disney Hollywood Hotel, I had to take a shuttle in the morning to Hong Kong Disneyland Hotel for the breakfast at the Enchanted Garden.





So dreamy~!





The buffet breakfast had a good selection of Western and Chinese cuisines, and also…



Mickey pancakes!















Despite the great selection of food, especially the amazing crispy bacons they have (yum!), I could barely concentrate on eating.



Throughout breakfast I was just peeking and peering around the restaurant for the Disney characters. Even when told that they would come to my table eventually, I still couldn’t control the insane anxiety I had inside.



“It’s Goofy. OMG!” I pointed.









As chef Goofy wobbled and staggered over from table to table, I fiddled with the food in my plate as I stretched my neck so high to ogle at the other tables of guests taking turns to take photos with Goofy.

















I love Goofy. He’s one of my favourite characters because he’s so goofy. Lol.Muacks!





About the shoes I was wearing. It’s a pair of crocs I bought a year ago and ever since it’s been like a comfort shoes for me whenever I don’t feel like wearing something too serious.



However, if you’ve paid attention, I’ve been wearing this pair of shoes in every other posts of my current HK Disneyland trip.



There’s a story to it.



I actually forgot to PACK other shoes when I was packing for the trip, because I was moving house then and all the shoes I have were at the new place, yea so smart to move all the shoes to the new place when I have a trip coming up.



So I had no choice to be stuck with this pair of fugly shoes throughout the trip.



OMG the shame.



To think I have a wardrobe full of shoes. :S



Anyway, Mickey showed up!

Even though Minnie was my favourite character of all time, but still, it’s Mickey!



The star of the show!



A kid cried at the next table because he thought he missed the opportunity to take photo with Mickey. Awe… (Mickey went over there the second time to take photo with him again, double Awe~)















Love lovelovelove Mickey. A million hearts!





I even took a second round of photos with him after breakfast.





And he swung my hands around to make this position.









So cute!









Finally, Pluto showed up. So I thought…. Meh… why not.









Pluto turned out to be really funny. Making odd poses and just being cheery.



Bye chef Pluto!





We then took a walk around the garden of Disneyland Hotel, where there’s a mickey maze right outside.









We also visited the Sorcerer’s Lounge, right before we head into the park to start another new crazy day. I love this place, very posh.















That’s a wrap of all my HK Disneyland posts.



Do make your reservation to have breakfast with all the Disney Characters when you have the chance to visit HK Disneyland. It’ll be an experience you never forget.





Read about other posts on HK Disneyland here: post 1, post 2, and post 3.

Black Tuesday - A Comic

For more craft beer comics, visit The Full Pint

Preview: Jazzverse Jukebox with Soweto Kinch

Sarah Ellen Hughes previews the Jazzverse Jukebox with Jumoke Fashola and Soweto Kinch on Sunday August 7th at Ronnie Scott's

The Jazzverse Jukebox – a monthly event in Ronnie Scott’s upstairs bar – is a creation of singer and broadcaster Jumoké Fashola and her jazz trio, which is “designed to stimulate the senses, soothe the soul and energise the eardrums.”On Sunday 7th August, as part of the Brit Jazz Fest season, the event will migrate downstairs and join forces with the formidable talents of saxophonist/MC Soweto Kinch.

Soweto Kinch has been adorned with awards ever since he won the Montreux Jazz Saxophone competition in 2002. From then he has picked up three BBC jazz awards, two MOBOs and a Mercury Music Prize nomination for his album in 2003. Not bad for someone who is only just in his thirties, and originally studied Modern History at Oxford, hoping to become a journalist!

The rest of the show is packed full of some of the UK’s best singers and ‘spoken word artists,’ including Charlie Dark and Sh’maya, ranging in styles from pop to hip-hop and grime.

Then there’s the host - acclaimed singer, and award-winning radio and television broadcaster, Fashola has performed in every genre of singing perceivable, including solos in Handel’s Messiah and The Wizard of Oz. Her rich and mellow voice has a clear influence of gospel and a hint of the blues.

jumokefashola.com / ronniescotts.co.uk

National Jazz Archive receives 3-year grant of £346,300



Syd Lipton

Image provided by the National Jazz Archive



Patience rewarded: congratulations to the team at the National Jazz Archive, based at Loughton Library in Essex, who have just announced that they have received a three year grant of £346,300 from the Heritage Lottery Fund .

The archive will be investing in a full cataloguing of the archive for the first time, conservation where necessary, the launch of a new “Story of British Jazz” website, with sound files, not only of music but also of interviews and memories. There will also be more public events and an education programme.

Boy, these processes in the museums sector take a long time. I reckon it was 2007 when the archive received a "Phase One Development Grant" and project manager Angela Davies was first taken on board to prepare the application which has just led to this grant.

It represents a major team effort from the archive's founder Digby Fairweather, who calls this development "the most exciting moment in the Archive's history since we received our first book donation back in 1988!"(Dig never leaves home without an exclamation mark), Chair of Trustees Chris Hodgkins, Vice Chair Graham Langley and patrons such as Dame Cleo Laine, Sir Michael Parkinson and Gary Crosby.

And above all from one of the most helpful people in jazz, David Nathan, who has continued to staff the archive consistently, professionally, smilingly throughout. And by people who have given their sevices for events: e.g. the Dankworth family, John Altman, Alan Barnes, and Simon Spillett who did an event as recently as last week.

The next stage will be a series of recruitment processes, which will start in January 2012, for a Project Manager, an Archivist, a specialist in digitisation, and a Learning and Participation Manager. The archive will stay in Loughton, but looks like it will probably need extra space .

The archive will also be making a fundraising effort, to support this major increase in its activity from other sources. The NJA's website has a button to make direct donations.

nationaljazzarchive.org.uk  Registered charity number: 327894

The Independent newspaper, music and freedom

Drumroll. And yeah, can you try to make it last till about next Monday August 1st.

Because, believe it or not, next Monday the Independent will do something highly unusual.  It will, I am told, publish a live jazz review (Andy Gill/ Keith Jarrett) . What's the big deal? I stand to be corrcted, but I believe this to be the first review of a live jazz event in the Independent since August 2010.

So this is the way a newspaper fiercely proud to be "free from party political bias, free from proprietorial influence"  chooses to deal with jazz, or as Duke Ellington called it, the "unhampered, unhindered expression of complete freedom."

By way of comparison, and again according to my quick perusal of the paper's online archive, the Independent has given that talisman of freedom Britney Spears a staggering twenty-three items of coverage so far this year alone. Oops, let's do live jazz again.

Review: Keith Jarrett Standards Trio

Keith Jarrett / Gary Peacock / Jack DeJohnette

(Royal Festival Hall, 27th July 2011) 

Those untameable, disconsolate beasts, social media commentators, have been giving Keith Jarrett a hard time. Or do I mean "We...."?

Rather than paying attention to the music, there is one who posts as @angryjarrett on Twitter (strapline "Are you taping this? ARE YOU FREAKIN' TAPING THIS?"). Another goes by the moniker of @fakejarrett . And those with an appetite for controversy, or a perverse need to see the artist humbled, can be sated by tracking down a Youtube clip (160,000 views) of Jarrett losing his patience with people with cameras at UmbriaJazz in 2007.

If I have to be true to the stereotype of the blogger and complain at all about last night, then all I that can find would be that Jack DeJohnette was occasionally overbalancing. This was an approach which worked well in Ornette Coleman's "When will the Blues leave?" with rims and casings producing unusual and anarchic textures, but less so at other times.

But, in the final analysis, are the seekers-out of controversy and small gripes really representative, well, of anybody? On the evidence of last night's packed Royal Festival Hall concert by the Keith Jarrett Standards Trio with Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette, it is clear that the population of devotees, accumulated over decades, is larger, by far, than that of the malcontents.

 Listen to the recent duo album Jasmine, with Charlie Haden, and the impression is of a musician getting progressively calmer, mellower. Jarrett got a reputation for petulance in a brief period about 3-4 years ago when other aspects of his life were in turmoil. Yes,  Jack DeJohnette did plead with the audience, at Jarrett's request, to put their phone-cameras away. There were warnings in the hall about taping and photographing which did come across as draconian, heavy-handed. But in the end, these are distractions, a sideshow. It is the music which has to speak for itself. And it did, consistently.

One didn't have to look very far to see the way in which the audience takes Jarrett to its heart. I noticed a man in a seat near me reaching out to find his wife's hand in the particularly melting introduction to Jerome Kern's "Yesterdays." I also read the spontaneous reaction of pianist Andrew McCormack on Facebook last night: "The intro to 'In Your Own Sweet Way' was worth the admission price alone!"

But most telling was the audience's reaction to the end of the official second set. There was whooping, cheering. A significant proportion of the spectators was up on its feet. And they were duly rewarded. The first encore, "God bless the child" was by my watch not far short of fifteen minutes long, and was followed by three others.

Reputation is a lagging indicator. Jarrett is back on form.

Produced by Serious for the South Bank Centre