Last night I saw Robert Plant live!!!!!

Yes! I actually got a chance to see the lead singer of the greatest band of all time perform in the flesh. It was a secret gig to promote his forthcoming album and American / European tour with his newly-formed incarnation of the Band Of Joy. (For those of you that don’t know, the Band Of Joy was the name of Plant’s very first band, even before Zeppelin).

So my Uncle rings me up from his work, telling me he’s just had a call from Planet Rock. Apparently he entered a competition to win tickets to a secret Robert Plant concert in London. My Uncle lives in West Sussex, but being the massive Zeppelin fan that he is I know that if he’d have won he’d have booked a day off to come up to London and see the show Read the rest of this entry »

Some of you may remember that one of my first posts on RavenGarcia.com was a film review (Tenacious D In The Pick Of Destiny), however this is something I haven’t continued with on a regular basis. The main reason for this is that I haven’t been to the cinema in ages or seen any newish films and I didn’t want to just review old films.

However, last week my mum came home with a copy of Disney & Pixar’s “Up” on DVD. Whilst I don’t really go for the Disney / Pixar type films these days, I thought I’d watch it as I was looking at the DVDs on the shelf in my room and it occurred to me that I’d seen all of them at least twice. So I thought I’d stick on Up purely for the sake of watching something new, and also because my mum had already watched it and it instantly became her favourite film, so I thought it can’t be bad (although her previous favourite film was Meet the Fockers, so I’ll leave you to make your own decisions on that). But having watched it, I thought I’d share my opinion with you all.

Up (2009)

Directors: Pete Docter, Bob Peterson

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I recently went to Camden Market to buy a housewarming present for a friend of mine who is moving to a new place in West London. I am the world’s worst at shopping for gifts. Usually I go out with a vague idea of what I want in mind, but I’ll spend hours looking at about 300 different variations then go back and buy the first thing I looked at. Just ask my friend Dean whenever I drag him out to Brick Lane on Sundays.

However, on this occasion I had no idea what to get her. It’s hard buying a housewarming present when you haven’t even seen the person’s new house, in case you buy something that doesn’t match anything else. But after much deliberation I decided to get her something for the bathroom as she mentioned on Facebook that she has been decorating her new bathroom, in fact she was having a double shower head fitted which is kind of cool.

After wandering around the market for a good couple of hours, I finally gave up and came home. The next day I was browsing the internet and I came across a site which had all sorts of things on offer. I used to be a bit skeptical about buying things online because of the safety issue, but since I’ve had a paypal account I seem to be turning into an online shopaholic.

This site was really good, and soon I found myself browsing through the bathroom products. I saw some rather nice looking floral bath towels which I was considering buying for her, but then I remembered her saying she was going for a black and white theme in her bathroom so I thought I’d try and find something that would match that.

One good feature about this site was that it allows you to search products by colour, similar to the new feature that Google have added on their image search page. So I was able to narrow down my search to only black and white objects and found something that was perfect. (I won’t say what it is yet as she hasn’t moved in yet!!) There were some interesting items available. If you ever get bored of standing up when you take a shower, you can even buy a shower stool that goes in the shower for you to sit on!

I’d recommend www.become.com for all of your online shopping needs. If you’re stuck for gift ideas, have a browse through their site and you might find the perfect present.

Vous ne pouvez jamais être trop vieux pour apprendre de nouvelles compétences. Il est toujours bon d’élargir vos connaissances car cela ouvre de nouvelles possibilités pour vous. Je pense prendre un cours de formation en ligne pour peut-être apprendre une nouvelle langue, alors que je cherchais sur Internet pour une entreprise qui offrirait des cours de formation.

C’est alors que j’ai entendu parler d’une société du nom de Votre-répétiteur.

Ils proposent des cours pa​rticulie​rs en ligne dans de nombreux sujets, tels que les sciences physiques et mathématiques, et aussi des langues aussi exotiques que l’arabe et le russe! Leur slogan est “une nouvelle approche de tutorat”, et je les recommande si vous envisagez d’apprendre quelque chose de nouveau ou d’obtenir une aide supplémentaire pour vos études.

Vous pouvez lire cet article en anglais en cliquant sur le drapeau.

After sleeping off the previous night’s session at the Shillelagh, I got up about half past 12 on Saturday and tried to ring round to see who was coming down to the gig later on that evening. Tim sent me a text to say he might pop down but never did, Dean couldn’t make it as his dad was ill, Robert couldn’t make his mind up, Wesley didn’t answer his phone, and one other person I asked decided after watching a very old, short, poor-quality video of the band on Youtube that they weren’t for them. His actual words were “I wouldn’t pay to see them” which annoyed me a bit if I’m honest. Twat.
However Will said that he would be in town about 8.30, so we could meet up then in Central London and make our way there. I decided to leave a bit earlier so I could go down to Seoul Bakery which was right around the corner from the 12-bar club. I hadn’t eaten all day and I was starving.
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On Friday night I went back to a pub I have not been to in ages. It is an Irish pub called the Auld Shillelagh in Stoke Newington. My ex-girlfriend Jenna used to live in Stokey so I used to spend a lot of time there as well. The inhabitants of Stokey consider it to be a village within a city. Church Street does have a very villagey feel about it, the rest of Stokey I’m not so sure about. So if your village was one long street with bendy buses and London taxis going through it, then fair enough.

Church Street is full of good bars and pubs, fantastic restaurants and cool little shops with friendly people. It was a great place to have on your doorstep. Me and my ex used to spend many evenings dining out there and visiting the pubs and I could write a whole article on Church Street but I’m not going to do that. Maybe sometime though.

But one particular place we used to go was the Shillelagh. Now I’ve been to Irish pubs in Austria, Portugal, even Egypt. And I’ve also been to Ireland. I spent two weeks in Cork with Jenna the year Arsenal got to the Champions League final. So I know what a traditional Irish pub is like, and the Shillelagh is the only place I’ve been to outside Ireland that comes close to replicating that. (And as you can see from the photo, it’s in a prime location nestled between two off-licenses)

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Today I felt a bit peckish so I went into Greggs in Roman Road to grab a bite to eat.

They had some sandwiches called “Oval Bites” which looked quite nice. They were basically a soft brown seeded roll with a choice of fillings; Chicken salad, Tuna & Mayonnaise and Mexican Chicken. I decided to go for the Mexican Chicken one, and an iced doughnut, which came to about £2.50.

I took a look at the sandwich. It was wrapped up in plastic, with a sticky label holding it in place which read: “Mexican-style chicken with salad and fajita mayonnaise”. I’ve never heard of “Fajita Mayonnaise”, so I took this to mean the light-pink coloured stuff which was smeared on the inside of the packaging. The “Mexican-style chicken” was a few slabs of processed meat given some sort of colouring on the edges to make it look as if it had been chargrilled, and was covered in some bright orange stuff I took to be the Mexican flavouring. A few dark, wilted leaves of indeterminate origin flopped out of the sides. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re a budding blogger, WordPress is one of the best tools for helping you manage your webpage. One of the reasons for this is that it uses downloadable “themes” which you can install on your WordPress blog, as opposed to some other sites which just give you a handful of pre-made skins with little or no scope for in-depth customisation.

When I was setting this site up, I needed a theme that was both eye-catching and a little bit out of the ordinary. There are many websites offering detailed themes, but not many of these are free. However, one of the best websites I came across was wprex. The best part about them was that they allow you to download wordpress templates absolutely free!! There are thousands to choose from too and new ones are being added all the time.

This is a paid review

All of my friends are moving out of London. In the last 6 months I’ve had friends depart these shores for Singapore, Switzerland, Toronto… the list goes on. Pretty soon I will be the only one left. So it came as no surprise to me when my friend Chris announced that he was moving to Chicago. He’s now been there about a month and by all accounts is really living the American dream.

As much as I’d love to move out of the UK, I did wonder about the technicalities of moving from one country to another. Not even taking visas into account, it must be difficult to have a place lined up ready to move into.

When I asked Chris how he’d gone about it, he told me about this website – Chicago apartments – an apartment listings site which he’d used to find a nice place in the Windy City. The website has a geographical search feature and as well as the United States they also have properties available in Canada and India as well as the UK and Ireland. The site is really easy to use and has a whole host of options you can use to tailor your search for the perfect apartment.

This is a paid review

RavenGarcia.com has officially declared war on Transport For London.

It’s a rainy Friday evening. Dean and myself have just managed to make it from the LSE student bar to Holborn tube station without getting drenched. We now need to take a short journey (4 stops) on the Northbound Piccadilly line to get to Holloway Road where we will again brave the rains and attempt to reach the Big Red bar and have a drink with Will who is in town for his birthday.

Dean has some pre-pay on his oyster card and strolls through the barriers with ease. I, however, am on a budget. As a rule, I tend to use buses rather than the tube whenever I can but tonight is one of those occasions where the tube becomes a necessity as we are looking to get to Big Red quickly so we can have a good few drinks with Will before he gets the last train back to Bexley. I go up to the counter to buy a ticket.
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