dim sum with co.

i never really appreciated how much i would miss chinese food after moving to london. but i miss it. very very much.

i cannot even begin to express just how sick i am of white people food. i am tired of eating baked beans, sandwiches, salads, pasta. i need rice. i need congee. i need my mum's soup. every morning at breakfast it is baked beans on toast with hash browns on my plate, when really i would give anything to have mee goreng instead.

a couple friends and i decided that we were becoming too reliant on prêt a manger and needed to get a fresh dose of MSG, so we headed to chinatown in search of dim sum.

the food was alright – it was really fucking expensive, but considering how desperate i was for a taste of home, i wasn't too upset.

we headed to oxford street after food. we're students and we shouldn't be spending this much money, but the weather is becoming tit-freezing cold, and we needed winter jackets, so we had no choice.

it was a good sunday. i froze my face off, but i just see that as the ultimate experience of british lifestyle.

over and out,

서 seoul 울

it is friday evening and i am sitting in my living room sipping chocolate milk. i haven't updated this blog in two months, and i suddenly felt the urge to post something, yet my life these past few weeks haven't been very eventful (save for my birthday, but i have yet to develop the rolls of film from that day). so here i am, revisiting my trip to seoul from april of 2k15 in a series of photographs, despite the fact that i still have a shit ton of work to do for school.

buk 북 chon 촌

i loved bukchon; the little shops lining the alleys were just plain adorable, and the traditional buildings were seriously the bomb.com. the colour scheme was beautiful, too.

i came across a hotel in one of these little old-style buildings. it was a sort of inn / motel. those places where bathrooms are shared and rooms consisted of multiple beds for multiple people. it looked so cool; the next time i visit seoul, i'm definitely staying in one of these buildings for the ~full experience~

isn't this store the cutest thing ever??

hong 홍 dae 대

ah, the hip part of seoul (yes, i did say hip. yes, i am 18, not 48). we lived near hongdae during our trip, and this is by far my most favourite region in the city. the vibrancy of the night scene is unlike anything i've ever seen. walk down the street beside hongik station and it's like experiencing ten concerts in ten minutes: there's a rapping duo, but right beside them, an acoustic guitar player. and slightly behind them, five breakdancing guys + a guy shaking what his mama gave him to some girls generation songs. i love the darn place. it's magnificent. and the people in this area wear some really pretty clothes, so that's quite nice.

so pretty but also so expensive (i did cry internally when i found out the price of that skirt)

the architecture at ewha womans university (which is near the hongdae area) is simply unreal. imagine going to school every day in a campus that looked like it came out of a fairytale. i don't think i would dread school days as much as i do now.

this was dinner at 팔색삼겹살 (palsaek samgyupsal – it means 8 flavours of pork). as the name suggests, there truly were 8 flavours of pork. 8 heavenly flavours. heavenly. my favourite was the wine-flavoured, purely because of the fact that it was the weirdest thing i've ever tasted.

in 인 sa 사 dong 동

this 'neighbourhood' follows hongdae very closely on my list of favourite places in seoul. i'm basically a sucker for tiny restaurants and little alleyways, and insadong has a lot of these.

i was taking a picture of the stall beside her when i noticed her photographing me with her phone.

**

wow, this turned into a huge post that took up 3 hours of my evening. i've finished the chocolate milk now (because i know you're really curious about that).

over and out,

the cars of okinawa

so i'd been wanting to do a post on the cars i saw in okinawa ever since the day i arrived there, but here i am writing this post weeks after i've come back because i am a master procrastinator.

i don't know if the cars are all like this in japan, or if it's just more prominent in okinawa, but seeing as how i went to tokyo when i was 7 and don't really remember much of it (so i can't compare), i'll just assume it's more of an okinawan thing to have adorable cars until someone tells me otherwise.

bear in mind, many of these were taken really hastily because my reflexes are not faster than a moving car, so forgive the weird composition and angles of some of these photos.

till next time,

alexius.

okinawa / ii

our second day in okinawa was spent in naha, the capital city. one of the really special things about naha is that unlike many other capital cities in many other countries, this capital city is probably one of the least busy and least populated i have ever been to. i took so many photos of streets + alleys and i didn't have to duck left and right and wait impatiently for people to pass by so i could take just one decent picture without seven heads being in the photo as well. i'm not the biggest fan of huge crowds and human beings in general, so the virtual lack of people in naha makes me one very happy tourist.

after shopping along this really, really long street, we went to junkudo, this bookstore nearby, and it was heavenly. there was an entire shelf dedicated to batman comics, but they were all in japanese, and i was rather disappointed that they didn't have any in english.

BUT i bought stuff nevertheless; two notebooks (the paper feels like the wings of an angel. japanese stationery was - i'm not joking - the main thing i looked forward to prior to this trip), the colour purple by alice walker, inferno by dante, gone girl by gillian flynn, and i am a cat (吾輩は猫である) by soseki natsume.

till next time,

alexius.