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a-spoonful-of-home · 4 years

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My Top 17 Foods To Eat In Chengdu

Szechuan cold spicy noodles 四川涼面

These are hands down my favourite food to get in Chengdu. Sitting down in the heat outside with some cold spicy noodles (and a beer - of course) is the best way to spend a hot summers day here. It’s a great mixture of garlic, spring onions, ginger, and lots of chilli oil. I think I prefer cold noodles over hot noodles because it takes the heat down a level. Just writing about these noodles is making me want to go for a walk down to the noodle joint near our complex! An absolute staple of Szechuan cuisine - 10/10!

Steamed buns 包子

Steamed buns, or baozi, kept me alive when we first arrived in Chengdu and were running round trying to get all our documents sorted. They’re so convenient and you can really get them everywhere. I love the snacking culture here in China because it means you’re never very far away from some tasty street food. Steamed buns, sweet or savoury, never break the bank and you can pick one up normally for around 20p/30p. Steamed pork buns are my favourite bun but it’s always fun to try new ones - like the custard buns that you can poke with a chopstick and squeeze all the custard out… granted it can look a little disturbing but it’s still fun!

Dumplings in chilli sauce 红油抄手

Another classic here. I wasn’t a huge fan of these the first time I tried them but now I can’t get enough of them. I think I’ve really worked up my heat tolerance since moving here and now there’s nothing better to me than a big bowl of pork dumplings covered in spicy chilli sauce! It’s the intensely aromatic sauce they’re coated with, made with vinegar, garlic, and roasted chilli oil, that makes these dumplings so irresistible. You can also get dumplings in soup but I prefer the dry dumplings with chilli sauce.

There are lots of different types of dumplings in Sichuan and China as a whole, but Zhong dumplings are named for the family who first made these in Chengdu around 100 years ago - and now they’re recognised officially as one of Szechuan’s most famous street foods! They’re a simple dumpling with sweet soy sauce and chilli oil and they’re great for beginners. James and myself were actually lucky enough to get to go on a dumpling making course when we first arrived - it was really fun!

Roast pork 烤猪肉

This isn’t a Szechuan specialty but it’s still very much available here in Chengdu. My favourite way of eating pork here so far has been where the pork is served on a sizzling plate with a sweet sauce and peanuts. Normally the server will pour the hot sauce over the pork in front of you and it’s great to watch it sizzle. I love it when meals feel more interactive like that. It’s super sticky and sweet and is everything that roast pork should really be!

Hotpot 火锅

I think it would be a sin to come to Szechuan and not try hotpot at least once. Unfortunately, I’m not the biggest fan of hotpot with red oil but I do quite like the version of hotpot at a restaurant near us that uses what I think is some kind of chicken stock/soup to boil the ingredients. This restaurant is Hong Kong themed so it’s not typical Szechuan food. When the food is cooked you dip it in a sauce that you can put together yourself - this is chillis, garlic, soy sauce, and spring onions. There are a few different types of hotpot but some of the most popular here are chuan chuan 串串 (where you get your food on long sticks and place it in the pot) and huo guo 火锅 (where you place the food directly into the pot and scoop it out when it’s ready).

It’s a really fun way to eat though because at most restaurants you start by going around a fridge section of the restaurant with a basket and get to choose what you’d like to boil, then take it back to your table and cook it in the pot with your friends. Chinese style eating is quite different to the UK because typically you share food more instead of ordering just for yourself and I really prefer it like that - it just means you get to try more things and don’t have to worry about ordering something you won’t like! It’s a much more sociable way of dining and it’s just so much more fun.

Eating with friends

It’s always so much more fun to share your cooking with your friends - especially when you all come from different parts of the world. I really love the other teachers in my class and so I decided to cook them some ‘traditional British food’ because Tina, one of the teachers, really loves trying new food. It was also a bit of a thank you for how welcoming they’d been and how much easier the job is working in our team. Of course, being the welcoming people they always are, they came to the dinner with Szechuan food for us to try too! They made us kung pow chicken, fried chicken wings, and mapo dofu (silken tofu in a spicy sauce) and we shared with them a cottage pie, potato and broccoli soup, Hellmann’s egg mayonnaise sandwiches, biscuits with brie, and a steamed syrup pudding - the best of both worlds!

Dan dan mian 担担面

Dan dan mian (noodles) are so called because historically the walking street vendors who sold the dish would have a type of carrying pole (dan dan) that they carried over their shoulder with two baskets containing the noodles and sauce at either end. The name of these noodles is literally translated to noodles carried on a pole. They’re another Szechuan staple food and one of my favourite things to pick up when I’m walking around Chengdu. They're served hot with minced pork in a spicy sauce. They’re also served with preserved vegetables like zha cai 榨菜 (lower enlarged mustard stems) and ya cai 芽菜 (upper mustard stems). Living in Chengdu has meant that I’m a lot more into preserved vegetables than I was in the UK!

Xiaolongbao 小笼包

Now this is definitely not a Szechuan food but you can still get it in some places in Chengdu. It’s associated with Wuxi and Shanghai so I’m really excited to try some more when we move cities! It is a steamed dumpling with broth inside that's typically made from chicken or pork. You eat them using a soup spoon and a pair of chopsticks and bite into the dumpling on the spoon then suck out the soup. There’s a restaurant called ‘Modern China’ that we’ve been to a fair few times. It’s got a huge menu but recently I’ve been ordering just xiaolongbao and calling that my dinner. It’s been wonderful!

Roast Duck 北京烤鸭

Some of the best roast duck that we’ve had in China (so far!) was when we went to Hongyadong 洪崖洞 in Chongqing - which was once the site of the earliest and most developed pier in ancient China. It has since become a popular destination for visitors to experience Bayu culture and houses a large-scale stilt house complex built along the bank of the Jialing River. It was full of food vendors and we ended up going for a dinner roast duck which was skilfully carved in front of us. Again - I just love food where you get to see the chef or servers work with it! The restaurant we visited is called Quanjude and it’s a restaurant famous in China for its roast duck and longstanding culinary heritage since it was established in Beijing in 1864. There’s no way that we’re going to be able to live in Shanghai without at least one trip on the bullet train to Beijing now!

There’s also a restaurant called Bao Bao Ding just near our apartment and they sell really great roast pork and duck with rice. It’s not hard to find and I’ve never found it to be anything other than delicious! James also swears by the spicy duck neck snacks that you can get here but I think they’re still too spicy for me!

BBQ 烧烤

One of the first restaurants that James and I went to near our new apartment was a BBQ joint just across the street and I fell in love with this area! I’m a big kid and I just love getting involved in cooking the food myself so I really enjoy going for BBQ here. You’re supposed to dip the cooked meat in chopped peanuts and spices when you’ve cooked it on the grill and it’s so good. Unfortunately, I went to a different BBQ joint in the city and ended up getting food poisoning (I don’t think that I cooked the chicken enough) and so I’ve got off BBQ for the moment but I’m sure I’ll be able to get back on it!

Sweet water noodles 甜水面

I love these noodles so much - they’re always the star of the show. Most famously, you can get them from the Wenshu temple area where there are plenty of vendors selling this street-side snack. They’re quite different to the other noodles in this list because they’re made using a much thicker, square-cut noodle and are served in a sweet-and-spicy sauce. They're served cold and are very chewy with a rough surface to help them grab every bit of the sugary sauce that they're served in. I really love both the chunky look of these noodles and their mouthfeel and I think they’re always going to be something that distinctively reminds me of our wonderful times in Chengdu.

Pastries 蛋糕

Although I do miss a good Greggs sausage roll - Chinese pastries really are off the hook. We live by a bakery called Holiland which opened in the mid 90’s and became the biggest chain bakery in China. I think that’s fantastic news because we won’t have to go without our Holiland fix in Shanghai! Chinese pastries and breads are typically a lot sweeter and lighter than those in the UK and always seem to be much more creative in their presentation - maybe it’s just because they’re new to me but I really find them to be so beautiful. Some of my favourite pastries here are the hotdog pastries (literally just a hotdog in sweet bread) and the half baked cheese (which is sort of like a cheesecake with no base). It’s a very dangerous shop!

Bubble tea 珍珠奶茶

I really love just how readily available bubble tea is everywhere you go here. Every famous western fast food company that’s come over to China has their own bubble tea (McDonalds is the best one) and there are so many other chains (like HeyTeaGo and Fresh One More Time) which sell some really amazing teas. It’s really going to be one of the things I miss the most when we do eventually move back to the UK. One of the best teas you can get is a watermelon tea with a cheese foam topping. There’s a lot of cheese flavoured things here (like cheese flavoured yoghurt) which I’m really into. It’s not so much a hard cheddar cheese and is more like a cream cheese/mascarpone flavouring (if that). I’m really obsessed.

Vegetarian food at temples

I really like visiting temples. I think they’re such beautiful places that offer a calm that you don’t seem to find in many other places in the city. They also often have vegetarian restaurants nearby and the food is super tasty and affordable. When we went to visit the Leshan Buddha with my parents, we went to a restaurant near the temple there and had a lovely meal overlooking the square. I’m just really into these vegetarian restaurants and love what they’re about.

Cake at the kindergarten

We always bake a cake with the little ones whenever its one of their birthdays at the kindergarten. There’s a great mini kitchen downstairs and they’re so precious in the tiny chefs hats and aprons. The cake itself isn’t the most delicious cake I’ve ever had because we don’t put any sugar in it, so it’s more like a bread with fruit on top, but it’s so much fun to share it with so many excited four year olds. It’s great for them to get to bake the cake and then eat it together. I love birthdays at the kindergarten.

Street food 路边小吃

The best part of living in China is the abundance of street food. There have been so many new things I’ve had the opportunity to try from vendors in the road. It also keeps our cost of living down because they’re never that expensive and can be quite filling! I love just picking up some noodles when I’m out and about, or grabbing some Guo Kui 锅魁 (deep fried meat pie) which tastes a little bit like a sausage roll with lots of Szechuan spices.

Liang Gao (Glutinous Rice Curd) 凉糕

Liang gao is a sweet summer dessert which roughly means 'cold cake' (although it's more like cold tofu thing). It's served with sweet molasses and has a texture like jelly pudding but is just mildly sweet without the sauce. I first had it at the noodle shop near our first apartment and it was a great accompaniment to our noodle feast that we had!

Variety of crisps

China has some really out there crisp flavours. I’m not sure if they’re just novelty or if people really like them but I guess they wouldn’t sell if people weren’t buying them! The most interesting flavours I’ve seen have been lychee sparkling drink flavour and yoghurt drink flavour. Some of the flavours like spicy crab and hotpot flavour are really good but I think I’ll be avoiding the yoghurt for a while longer!

Sugar people 糖人

Sugar people is a form of traditional Chinese folk art using hot liquid sugar to create beautiful shapes and animals. This isn’t really something that is particularly delicious to eat - just because it’s made purely of hardened sugar but it really is beautiful. The reason I love it so much is because I think it’s such an amazing art form and it’s handmade and blown in front of you. I really enjoyed this pig candy because I got to blow it up myself (which a lot of help from the vendor). It’s kind of like glass blowing but you get to eat the finished product (highly recommend not doing this with actual glass).

#china #szechuan #sichuan #chengdu #food

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mejol · 6 years

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MORE LILY

yaaaaas

Okay let’s start with something from the beginning, where does Lily come from? He actually came to me listening to Breath of Life on repeat for a while, coming up with this tragic love story between two young elves (Lily&Florence). So yeah, the idea was that they would be afraid of losing the other, Lily being at war always and Florence suffering from a bad sickness... in the end though it would be Florence dying from the illness.

Funny how things change huh?

But as I added more characters, they kinda got a life of their own? Lily getting sick of having to hide their relationship, relationships blossoming up elsewhere, their world expanding, and the thought of “what comes next?” just kept going so I just went with it, creating lore and a whole world around them! And I love this, cause Lily is probably the first character this happen to, there was nothing forced, it just kept growing with him naturally as I worked on him.

A lot has changed for sure, but I think I’ve held him to his core the same, this bright and strong elf that just doesn’t fit in anywhere, he just started portraying it differently, gaining awarness, he knows people will look down on him, so why not cut them down by their heels or knees, forcing them down to his level?

He uses his wit and intelligence to his advantage and combines it with his strenght, making him really dangerous, and it makes him into the same threat that was a danger to the wood elves so many years ago, yeah remember that corrupted elf mage I’ve mentioned sometimes, there’s a reason to it.

The fact that he became the same evil he put down so many years ago is amazing to me, and he doesn't realise it, and I love it. Cause to the ones on the other side of the field facing his armies, they don’t know why he attacks, only that he is able to destroy all that they hold dear, and that’s really scary!

So that’s kinda why I love him so much, he grew so naturally and had a very satisfying story to me, and it felt good letting him die, sounds awful I know, but he had suffered and sacrifice so much for somthing that could not be done at the time, and he had nothing more to give.

He didn’t die a hero, he didn’t die as a tyrant even, he was just forgotten, and I’m good with that, his story is a sad one but it was the start of change, making the earth fertile for future seeds. History won't mention him, hell other people get all the credit for thing he had already discovered with magic, but that’s the way it is. Cause in the end, it’s the winners that write the history of how things played out, and he lost, and that’s why I love him, he gave me a story I fell in love with, a story I wish I could write but for now I’ll leave it as it is...

If anyone actually read all this then wow, here have some music that fit with him and that has helped me get inspired. And yeah, yeah judge all you want...

Breath of life - Florence + The Machine

The rains of Castamere - Tina Guo cover

Human - Rag'n'Bone Man

Broken people - Logic & Rag'n'Bone Man

Så som i himlen (just like in heaven) - Danny Saucedo

Dö för dig (die for you) - Danny Saucedo

#I can't seem to put the two last music links in but whatever #i don't have any taste in music so yeah judge all you want #oc talk #long post #this blog has just become me shitposting #great #also if the links don't work #can't see now really #but they don't seem to work #if you're that curious just copy and paste i guess?#anyway i was gonna point out #that the last song is aimed at his friendship and romance with sigun #so there's that usless info

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slaycinder · 7 years

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Tagged by: @uglifish you lil scamp

Rules: tag 9 people you want to get to know better

Relationship Status:

*puts my hands up cause I’m a Single Lady*

Chapstick or Lipstick:

Lip balm because I don’t NEED lipstick! ...that and I usually just lick/smear/eat/drink it off because I forget it’s there

Favorite Colors:

Purple, green, blue

Last Song I Listened To:

Black Dahlia by Hollywood Undead

Last Movie I Saw:

Thor: Ragnarok (and I LOVED IT)

Top 3 TV Shows:

Oh, don’t make me choose.

If I could only have access to three shows for the rest of my life, I might choose

Spongbob Squarepants cause it makes me happy

BBC Sherlock cause I love Sherlock Holmes and it’s my favorite incarnation of his story

Parks & Rec cause it’s funny and cute and takes place in my home state

Top 3 Bands/Artists:

Fall Out Boy, hands down, for their unique sound and awesome lyrics. I’ve seen them in concert...five times now?

P!nk, cause she’s one of the first artists I remember ever listening to in earnest (I saw the video for Just Like a Pill on MTV and have loved her ever since). I’ve only seen her in concert once, but it was an amazing show!

Lindsey Stirling and/or Tina Guo, because they both make kickass music with electric violin and cello, which are two of my favorite instruments to listen to.

Books I’m Currently Reading:

I have the attention span of a cracked walnut, so I have unfinished books all over the place, but the ones I’m most likely to finish are

Clash of Kings (GoT) - I had to buy a second copy of it because half the stupid pages just FELL THE HELL OUT OTL

Saga by Brian K. Vaughn and Fiona Staples

Monstress by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda

Now... whom shall I tag?

@loxli @pantsu-princess @pallomine @fleur-bailius @jakehercy @dancingaxolotl @techno-sorcerer

There ya go I can’t count to 9 :D

#remember when you tagged me 50 years ago and I kept forgetting to post this #good times #lol

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13thfloornz · 7 years

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Hans Zimmer is not what I expected. I thought he’d be a controlled man, perhaps dour, even distant producer/ businessman/ and money-making-possibly-soulless-gouged-by-years-at-the-top-in-Hollywood machine! He’s anything BUT that. .

“I’ve basically lived in the studio for the last 30 years” he warmly intones after his third piece, the title music of the movie Gladiator. “This whole thing is just about playing music to you. I just wanted to hang out with people I’ve been playing with all my life…some of the greatest musicians in the world and some of the greatest friends a man could ever have”.

I’m already beguiled by the simmering Zimmer charm. It’s disarming to hear a powerful, successful, musical heavyweight, and one of the most prolific composers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, so humble and real. If Kanye West is at one end of the ego spectrum of what success looks like, Hans is at the opposite- and far more endearing – end of that spectrum.

“ So let’s pretend” he continues in a nod to the substantial Auckland audience in a three-quarters full Spark ( yes, new name ) Arena, “ let’s pretend this is a dinner party and we are just having a bit of a chat”. It’s partly true. His chat is wonderful. But you have to like your dinner parties with music so loud that you can digest a vortex of spinning whirling thundering pulsating and, at times, overwhelming volume! Hans’ dinner party music makes heavy metal look like disco. At times I wondered if Hans is secretly a frustrated heavy metaller who somehow effortlessly fell in to his role as Hollywood’s heavyweight for musical scores.

His chat to us about Hollywood is light and ego-free. He mentions names with ease and grace- and zero sense of any big-noting. They are all- including the best of Hollywood’s directors such as his “friend Chris” ( the uniquely talented Christopher Nolan) just people. Like him. Like his band . Like us. Just people with whom he enjoys making links. Before Angels and Demons, as he causally tells us, “ I was in Paris at the Louvre with Ron Howard looking to shoot the Da Vinci Code. I love the way the Louvre’s classicism and the modern, in the glass pyramid created by I. M. Pei, complement each other”. He says it as I might mention to someone that I wandered down to the local dairy. Who gets to wander the Louvre after hours? Dinner party chat. Casual. Informative. Warm and endearing.

And honest too. “ Now the classicist is going to play the violin while the rest of us make a lot of noise in the background. Wish us luck. We might get through this.”

And it is. At some points at least. A LOT of noise.

The audience loves the movie stories. I wish he had given us more before each piece. An interesting angle on the workings of Hollywood through the frame of the composer whose music is so seminal to a movie’s success. “ I got a phone call at 9 am from Ridley Scott ( Gladiator director) . I am never awake at 9 am. But I took Ridley’s call. “What’s the movie about?” I asked. “ Men in skirts” he said. But the more he told me, the more I could SEE his vision”. He continues the story with a charming nod to his wife, one of whose comments helped him and Ridley realise the movie was just too much about “ you boys”. They then added The Female influence. So here’s a man admitting to picking up the nuance from his wife’s words. And listening to her. Can Zimmer get any better?!

A special nod, from the Gladiator theme, to the stunning operatic and longing-laden vocals of Australia’s Lisa Gerrard, who floated on stage in a halo of golden attire. Back in 2000, she won a Golden Globe for her title-song rendition. And Auckland was lucky to have her perform it again live.

The highlight for me in the first half, musically , was the theme music for Sherlock Holmes, which has the same charm as the quizzical lead in that film, Robert Downey Junior. With its banjo and accordion backdrop, the music evokes the humour and light touches of that much-loved film.

The Lion King opener also had the audience roaring approval, with the serengeti- call of Lebo M from Soweto. As he sings, he moves in a stealth- cat-like low dance of the African plains, the genesis of all hip- hop moves. Wonderful to watch. There is a delightful brotherhood between him and Hans after the song: “ From Soweto to Auckland” announces Hans as he wraps his arm around his soloist’s shoulders. “ When I first met this man he was a political refugee in LA working in a car wash- and not doing a very good job! ….. The Lion King changed a lot of things…It’s currently playing in theatres round the world, but tonight YOU get the real thing.” And then he acknowledged Refi, the other vocalist , who is Lebo M’s daughter.

Hans likes to acknowledge those who work with and for him. He mentions all of the musicians in his band throughout the show – from Nile Marr- son of the Smiths’ Johnny Marr and a prodigiously strong guitarist in his own right with a powerful inner energy on stage- to Gary Kettel ( “Way- hey” is their code) on percussion whom he credits with helping him in his early nervous days in film scoring, to his drummer – “ My Brother” – Satnam Singh Ramgotra, to Tina Guo on cello whose 8 hours a day of practice from 3 years old has clearly paid dividends for her, and Guthrie Govan whose electric guitar solo in the second piece of the second half – Rain Man – was mesmerisingly beautiful. Perhaps his most heartfelt thanks go to his Musical Director and keyboard and accordion player Nick Glennie- Smith who hovers ever near Hans and with whom it’s clear he shares a deep and abiding lifelong friendship.

At the centre of this band and at the heart of the swirling waves of notes and tones and beats and rhythm and – above all, for much of the concert- volume, is Hans Zimmer himself . He is at the core of every whirlwind he creates, with head bobbing, smile playing at the corner of his lips, neck leaning to and fro, and feeling, and present to, each note as if it were the first time he was meeting the music. As if every note matters to him, each time he plays. There is a quote from him in the programme notes “ If I play you a piece of music, that’s when you can truly look inside me”. Indeed. This is man of Big Passion and Total Commitment.

This largely works for him. Sometimes not. Some of the pieces felt so overdressed that I wanted to strip them back to the musical truth which bled through Hans in to the score. I felt that with Pirates of the Caribbean. Like a women with every piece of jewellery on- and then some extra frills and bows. Overkill. Just too much. A chaotic wall of sound and flickering lights. A total sensory overload. Pounding inside the chest cavity of possibly every audience member. This might work once or twice over two hours but after a whole night of it, the senses get dulled, drunk on overload, with the neurology of the brain numbed in to staggering stillness by the sheer wall of vibration and layer upon layer of sound in each of the frequency levels.

Given the power of his elemental themes, and the beauty of his piano riffs, I wonder why Hans has felt the need to overdress his music in live concerts? Why so ear-shatteringly loud? Why even any need for flashing lights, another way to exhaust the neurology? Why not let the beauty of his musical writing sing the loudest in these live shows? And his personable nature ? And his engrossing stories?

The nadir of this overblown tendency came with the music from The Dark Knight. Why have subtlety when you can double-down on sound? Huge sound. Huge visuals. Flashes and lightning strikes. Everything thrown at the audience. That brooding, menacing bass .Threatening. Throbbing drums. Thumping. No reprieve. Getting louder still. I felt my mind receding in to an aching stillness away from the cacophony of sound. I focus in on Hans, who strikes me now as a mad genius in a huge laboratory of sound waves pushed to their outermost limit.

After the fury and foreboding of this piece, Hans told a deeply moving story of hearing of the death of the movie’s star, while they were in post-production: “ Let’s go a little darker now” he signals. “ When we did Batman Begins, we didn’t know we would do three movies and 12 years of our lives” And then he talks of Heath in that final instalment “ Daring, fearless acting…Just before we finished, we got the shocking phone call that Heath , our beautiful Heath, had died” .

And then, the show’s highlight for me- or one of them, along with Inception. The backdrop shows building outlines against a star-covered sky as the organ music of the opener signals the other-worldly beauty of Interstellar. This music has a particular and very sacred memory for me, forever linked in my mind with a deeply happy moment. As I watch Hans at the piano, I say a quiet gratitude to him for creating such exquisite musical beauty, even as I am recovering from his earlier volume assaults .

I love the piano solo, the build up, the slow guitar , the rumbling drums . As with his pattern , this too builds up to the Giant Wall of Sound. I wish those blue flashing lights would stop their distraction as I tumble in to the soundscape. Like Interstellar’s storyline, I am floating beyond, in an alternative space. I pull out towards the end and study Hans conducting the whole enormous enterprise from the front of the stage. The first time he has done this. Nothing glib or rehearsed. He is totally absorbed in his music. And at the end, he thanks them all: “ The most astonishing musicians and the best friends I have” .

A huge standing ovation. The crowd stamping for more. And I don’t think it was only I who was asking myself “What did I just witness here?” . It was not so much a concert as a Happening – a full immersion in the driving musical passion and joy- and at times overload – of one man.

The encore could not have ended the night more perfectly. Inception. Zimmer striking those opening notes with a tenderness and beauty and musical sensibility that was exquisite.

He is a transporting musician to watch in action. His love for music infuses his audience. When the last notes of Inception float away, he raises both hands in symbolic High Five to the audience, and most respond in kind.

The audience came and saw. They were conquered – some by the beauty of the music, some by Zimmer’s charm some by the enormity of the musical talent on stage. None of the main musicians of his band even used musical scores, so immersed were they, like Zimmer, in what they created for us with all their passion and commitment. I passed a few Aucklanders on my way out who looked dazed by the sensory overload. The volume button needs to be turned down, no doubt in my mind. But no one in that Auckland audience could refute that Hans Zimmer and his band had given us all of themselves, musically.

Zimmer’s warmth and humour were somehow captured in the taped Monty Python song that played as we left : “ Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life” . A nod, I suspect , to the Zimmer philosophy .

Liz Gunn

Click on any image to view a photo gallery by David Watson:

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Setlist

Driving Miss Daisy. Sherlock Holmes. Madagascar.

Crimson Tide. Angels and Demons.

Gladiator.

The Da Vinci Code.

The Lion King.

The Pirates of the Caribbean.

Interval

True Romance.

Rain Man. Thelma and Louise.

Man of Steel.

10.The Thin Red Line.

The Amazing Spider-Man.

The Dark Knight.

Interstellar.

Encore

16. Inception.

Hans Zimmer – Spark Arena April 29 2017. Hans Zimmer is not what I expected. I thought he’d be a controlled man, perhaps dour, even distant producer/ businessman/ and money-making-possibly-soulless-gouged-by-years-at-the-top-in-Hollywood machine!

#13th floor #Auckland #concert review #David Watson #Hans Zimmer #Liz Gunn #NZ #Photos #Spark #Vector Arena

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putschki1969 · 8 years

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Music Shuffe ♪

Thanks to @troublemaker-hell for tagging me ^_^

Instructions: you can tell a lot about a person by the music they listen to. Put your music device on shuffle and list the first 10 songs that come up. Then tag 10 people. No skipping.

Note: I don’t have a lot of songs on my ipod. It’s mostly Kalafina/FJ and some random other stuff so don’t expect a lot of variety here XD

1. Where the Lights Are (Japanese ver.) - FictionJunction WAKANA (Awwwwww, still one of my favourite songs by Wakana. So beautiful!)

2. こいびとの昔語りの夕暮れの/Koibito no Mukashigatari no Yūgure no (fotw live ver.) - Kalafina (In my top five of all time favourite Kalasongs and it’s just super special to me because I saw it live during the “fotw” Special Finals. Also, one of Kalafina’s most epic performances, I think I could watch it every day - multiple times)

3. 나 가거든/If I leave (live ver.) - Jeong Eun-Ji (I don’t really listen to Korean music but I just LOVE this song! Everyone should listen to it!)

4. Nelle tue mani (Now We Are Free) - Andrea Bocelli (I think I love EVERY version of this song, it’s no different with this one. Another favourite of mine is Tina Guo’s cello cover, be sure to check it out ^_^)

5. Maahi Ve - A.R. Rahman (Highway OST) (Highway is one of my favourite Hindi movies and this song plays in the background of a very special and moving scene)

6. 夏の林檎/Natsu no Ringo (5th Anniversary live ver.)- Kalafina (Even though it’s quite nostalgic, it makes me feel good every time I listen to it. Utter bliss - no other way to describe it; The vid is not the 5th anni but it’s lovely too)

7. I have a dream (Budokan live ver.) - Kalafina (For some reason, I wasn’t a big fan of this song in the past but then their Budokan live version came along and I instantly fell in love, I don’t really know why but this version is so much better and more precious than previous ones <3 I think it might be the slightly altered strings arrangement.)

8. Seventh Heaven (fotw live ver.) - Kalafina (It took me quite a while to appreciate this song but once I had truly felt its utter beauty, there was no going back. I cannot get enough of it! And their fotw live version is by FAR my favourite. No surprise there XD...I was there, nothing beats that experience; fast forward to 1:41:50 on the video to watch Seventh Heaven)

9. in dulci jubilo - Kalafina (My second favourite song of Kalafina’s winter/Christmas themed album Winter Acoustic “Kalafina with Strings”. My favourite is “We Wish You A Merry Christmas”)

10. Confrontation with Count Dooku/Finale - John Williams (Star Wars AotC OST) (Arguably the worst out of all Star Wars films but boy, the score is gorgeous!! BEST version of the Imperial March ever, so freaking epic!! Fast forward to 2:45 to listen to the juicy parts. I also really love the transition to the Anakin/Padme love theme - another one of my faves)

Huh, surprisingly, there is some variety here after all XD

Tagging @erza-shidae, @sharkafina, @youturnitintolight, @concretebadger, @yesthisisemma, @kalaboh, @auctumnitas, @japanese-yuri-fanfic-queen, @lovelykieren, @sangaella (AND literally everyone who reads this and wants to give it a shot as well ^_^ Please go ahead!!! I am sure I forgot some of you or maybe I am not quite sure whether or not you want to be bothered with memes >_<)

#meme #tag thingy #music meme #kalafina #I have such a weird taste in music #random

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