JAPAN CRISIS APPEAL CONCERT

My sister Megumi will be performing for the Japan Crisis Appeal Concert on Thursday 14th April 2011 at 7:30pm. The venue is St John's Smith square, London.

Megumi will be performing two Rachmaninov Preludes:
Op.32 No.12 in G#minor
Op.23 No.4 in D major

Concert

Delicious hot!

Although I'm all for eating healthily, an occasional urge to have something sweet hits me - sometimes. Recently, Krispy Kreme came to my local supermarket. For those of you who have not had the opportunity to know K.K, it is a chain of doughnuts - a very delicious doughnuts! It is so famously delicious, that apparently, there is a huge queue to get in to the shop in Tokyo - the only shop in Japan. They say there is sometimes a two hour wait just to get in! Well, fortunately, there's no waiting that long here! I recommend you take away your doughnuts home and heating them in the oven for 10 mins or so - you'll get a melt-in-your-mouth sensation!!

Beverley Minster

We had a concert in Beverley few days ago. Beverley is a lovely old town in Yorkshire - in 14th century, it was the eleventh largest town in England!
In the next morning before we had to catch a train back, we had an hour or so to spare, so we went to see the magnificent Beverley Minster which was dated as far back as 1220!

It was such an impressive looking building with many beautiful and detailed carvings. We found an interesting one - a violinist carving! On their website, they say Beverley Minster has the largest collection of medieval musical carvings. I really like walking slowly around, looking and finding interesting details, although on this occasion, we didn't have much time to take in all - it was such a HUGE place!

Chilli diet

I heard somewhere (I always tend to hear all sorts of ideas from somewhere!) that eating chilli everyday is beneficial to your well being. Notably, beacuse as your body warms up, you use up more energy, thus your metabolism increases, and also burns fat. Also, I personally think that the blood circulation becomes more active, and so it is also good for your heart (this information is strictly non-medically supported, so do take this with a pinch of salt!).

So, every lunchtime, when I am at home, I try to put one finely chopped red chilli with any vegetables - like carrots, courgettes, onion, sometimes okra and stir fry them. When I eat it, at first it's not as hot as I expected, but few seconds later, it hits you, and soon it feels like there is a heater burning inside your body! It is especially good to eat this in this cold winter's day - big savings on your heating bills???

Note: I have gone into this diet not because I need to lose weight (I of course have a perfectly good figure and hardly in need of a diet!), but just to have some food which I haven't tried before.

I received a lovely gift the other day - hot chocolate and 2 pretty mugs!

I mentioned to this person about the benefits of drinking hot chocolate to prevent colds, and she remembered, and gave me this gift before going back to Germany. Very thoughtful of her!

I immediately went home and made a wonderfully rich drink - so befitting to this wintry, freezing weather outside. I made it with half hot milk and hot water (you can warm your milk in the microwave for about 2 mins). Very delicious! This "Charbonnel et Walker" hot chocolate had chocolate flakes instead of the usual powdered versions.

Mobile book

This year, I have decided to read - ALOT! Of course I have been reading last year and the year before that too, but what is different this year is that I am going to read constantly!!! I recently found out that I can download books from the internet into my mobile phone (my techno wizard sister introduced this new technology to me!). Now I can read anywhere I like without carrying heavy books. Of course there is a limit to what books I can download - for example, the latest is not yet available etc. But, there are plenty of books which I have not read, so I'm quite excited about this!

Also, another thing which helps while reading from my mobile is that my sister also downloaded a dictionary onto my mobile, that way, I can look up any words which has not yet computed in my brain! Very useful!