found

london 1.21pm 21.4C (that cant be right!!) monday 2016 marylebone library

they did say today’s temperature will be as high as 17C but it seems to be higher than that if these figures of 21.4C is correct. it certainly feels very warm in this library. it is because they have got the heating on.

i saw today’s daily mail on the desk, and there was someone’s credit card holder underneath it. i asked the person sitting next to me if it was his. it wasnot. have a look at it below.

Digital StillCamera

Digital StillCamera

its quite a nice looking thing,leather look, and the day pass seems quite expensive £25.70. i wonder whether that person had to pay another fare for that day if he left this behind and find out he has no ticket for the return journey. on the other hand, there were no credit or business cards on the folders. so it might be this is an old item that has not been used for ages. anyway it is so old fashioned, who carries around business cards with them these days? and to put all your credit cards in one holder is asking them all to be stolen at one go. in fact no one has taken this holder, all the time it has been lying about the library. which is telling. even i myself am not going to take it. haha of course i just thought of it, a thief might have mugged someone or stole it from someone as long ago as 21st oct, 10days ago,  and had gone to the library to get online and try to buy things using the credit cards there. quite possible. it is so easy to order things online with credit cards, as they never ask for proof of ownership and u cannot sign for it either. 

added. 3.16pm 20.9C sunny. i went to chinatown to buy black soya sauce. the usual brand , pearl river, that i buy has gone up by 20p from £1.35 but i saw lee kum kee  black soya sauce being on sale for £1.25 for 500ml, so i bought it instead. as far as i am concerned they are all the same as long as it is black soya sauce and not light soya sauce. hard to tell from reading the ingredients . but i think there is less soybeans in the leekumkee. the pearl river brand says it has 24% , but the lee kum kee do not say it at all, just saying soya sauce 30%… i opened it and it has a thick consistency, rather like the black soya sauce i remember from my childhood. whereas the pearl river brand has a watery sauce. well, i shall try it and see if i can notice any difference. i might even get to like it , who knows. one wonders how they get that dark caramelised look. do they add some kind of colouring agent i wonder? growing up as kids in a chinese household we are used to seeing and using soya sauce. we never ask how it is made, but i gather it is rather a smelly process and involve mouldy stuff. people say if u ever see how it is made, u will never eat it. haha. i wont be surprised, a lot of things look horrible if u see it being made. 

added. 6.25pm 8.6C dry night wednesday 2.11.16 . i have used the leekumkee black soya sauce. it is actually very nice, has a sweet caramalised taste that brings back nostalgic memories taste of black soya sauce like in my childhood. 

i found a carpet

london 8.35am 15.8C sunny thursday 2016

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Digital StillCamera

Digital StillCamera

yesterday when i came out of my block entrance, i saw this carpet by the recyling bin. i had a good experience in the past with found carpets,that one i found ages ago and  it is on my bedroom floor for ages now and given me a lot of pleasure. so i did not hesitate to take this one, esp when it is right by my door step as it were.

later i had a good look at it and am pleasantly surprised at how intricate the design. i had thought of putting it on the floor of the spare bedroom, but it looks so good i will spread it out on my living room floor instead.

it has the name valby ruta at the back, and so i googled it and found this. it is an ikea carpet. and surprisingly cheap at £49. it is synthetic of course, hence the price, but still looks good. it is easy to upkeep unlike wool carpets which are prone to attacks by a moth caterpilla.

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Digital StillCamera

the bedroom carpet, it is softer to step on. picture is fuzzy, because   the button to activate the flash in my camera is not working and the bedroom is dark. added. i shall take another pic again though not sure when  i can do it because simon is sleeping in there after his night shift work. added. 7.23pm another attempt to get it focused.still not very sharp, but it will have to do.

princess mononoke’s warrior headpiece

london 5.55pm 5.4C sunday 14.2.2016

i was walking back from the library and saw this on the ground, it is a face hood. one that i have not seen before. it looks like this , worn by the warrior in princess mononoke. i happen to watch this and saw him and was reminded at how similar his head piece was to the thing i found.

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the one i found is made of fleece. it has not got any brand name, which is surprising, because it looked very well designed. it has this inner face mask, with two draw strings on either side of the face to tighten it over the nose. very useful, because if there is a fierce cold wind blowing, the nose and mouth always gets it, so something to cover those two vulnerable areas would be great. the other areas which can get cold are the ears. this one protects them too. this design is like a balaclava, but much more elegant.

london 8.08am 3.2C cloudy but bright. monday 2016

i had to wait till this morning to get the picture of the hoodie. 

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Digital StillCamera

Digital StillCamera

its an interesting design. don’t you think? and no brand name. just a little label ‘made in china’ 100% polyester.

only a few days ago i was telling this guy who was waiting at the bus stop; who was saying to me he was freezing, that he should get a hoodie , a scarf and gloves. and i told him u can get it free too, people tend to drop those things, and i showed him all those things i was wearing which i got free from just finding them on the street. (and here is this hoodie, just lying on the pavement).

 i ended up telling him off for not wearing these things, no wonder he felt cold.

 

found a chair

london 1.09pm sunny 17.3C saturday 2015

my friend brought back this chair which he found on the pavement near my flat. 

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Digital StillCamera

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what do u make of it? it has screws that look like ikea, i googled it but can only come up with this , that the seat is rush chair, on a site that repairs them.

recently my neighbour gave me a nightstand. its this ikea hemness.  its allready assembled, though in the past somebody has to assemble it. it looks very complicated to do,as this video shows.

london, prime burger, centrefeed roll

london 4.45pm 16.5C cloudy friday 2015

my friend from bournemouth is here staying with me visiting london.

i told him of the free burgers at prime burger in euston station and he asked me to join him today so i find myself there today. simon also decided to join us when he woke up and decided to have his lunch here instead of cooking it.

my friend had printed out 3 copies to give out. i think that might be the reason why when it was our turn , the cashier said they are doing only one pattie for the bad boy instead of two. i think too many people are printing out the email invite and using it rather than registering at the website and getting their own email.

i could have shown them the email they sent me, of course, and i could have done it to test out this theory of mine, that it is only for printed copies that they are doing the one patty bad boy. but i did not know of it until i was at the till.

anyway it was still very nice, in that the single pattie was more manageable to eat with the hands, the two patties is too big to hold and eat with a mouthful. this time i thought the meat was nicer done, not so hard or dry.

so all in all another nice lunch all the nicer for being free and for my friends to enjoy it too.

i found out that prime burger was a name change from fine burger,( according to this post, written on 3 july 2015)and they did a similar promotion in kings cross on 3rd july this year. so they are an old chain renamed and so doing a new promotion.

i googled prime burger and got a website of a company called prime burger. it is in stockholm. it must be the same one, because companies are very jealous of their name and will not allow anyone else to take it. so this is the uk branch of that stockholm company. 

(for those who dont know, the king cross railway station is not called king cross but st pancras. confusing i know but that is the british way for you).

after our meal, simon says he will be going back home to sleep, but i said i shall go roam about first. my other two friends were still eating so we left them  and i went to covent gdn and walked through it to the charing cross library.

found a big roll of industrial paper left on the road side. they are very useful to mop things up and serve as kitchen rolls. 

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isn’t it huge? i wonder what they are used for. i was wondering where to buy one and how much. and here is the price. in staples a stationery shop chain. £9.98 for 6 rolls 100m .£1.66 a roll. they are called centrefeed rolls.

as usual london is full of tourists, it is very nice to see the hustle and  bustle of it, at least i think so, as a city is exciting because of so many people there. people complain of the crowds but to me a city is exciting because of the crowds.

i stopped to look at the menu in a coffee shop in covent gdn, and saw croissants for £1.99 each, eat in, £1.15 to takeaway. when u can get croissants for 29p in lidl, or even 79p in tesco, i guess the covent gdn tourists dont mind paying that to be able to sit in a cafe enjoying being served with it. it is part of being a tourist and imbibing the local scene, isn’t it? and i can imagine it can be very exciting if u are a tourist to be staying there.

i saw a guy with short running shorts and very long legs, i think his legs are as high as my chest, so most of his height is in his legs, which are very nice by the way; and he lived near there, because i saw him opening the door to a very small house in one of those narrow alleys that weave in and out of that area. he was carrying a sainsbury shopping bag.

as a tourist it must be a lot of fun to be in the centre of it, but i am a resident so i dont fancy living in covent gdn. too touristy and everything is so much more expensive as they cater to the tourists. and too many tourists so they do get in the way.

trafalgar square was busy with a big screen to show the final of the rugby. the security man at the gate into it asked me to take off the cap of my drinking water bottle , but allow me to take in the bottle. it is strange isn’t it? first time i see this security measure … usually they confiscate the whole bottle. anyway i went in for a bit but  decided i want my bottle cap more than i want to see the rugby, so i turn tail and ask for my cap back. and exit the place and took the bus home.haha. 

added. 8.1.16, finally the centrefeed roll is used up. it took about 2months.

Builder handed nearly £18k unclaimed cash to police but wont see a penny | Mail Online

Builder handed nearly £18k unclaimed cash to police but wont see a penny | Mail Online.

couldnt the court at least give him a 10% finder’s fee? greedy of the govt to take it all, on the spurious reason that it probably is a criminal stash, just because the money is so neatly stashed. well, i wont blame anyone for not telling if they find cash.

fingerless mittens

London

I was waiting at the bus stop and saw these fingerless gloves on the ground. Someone have dropped them. this happened some time ago, and i was reminded of them when i made a comment on somone’s blog who said it was cold in their flat, and in the course of the chitchat to and fro, she said she works from home and use the computer a lot and cannot type if it is too cold. that was when i suggested she use fingerless gloves. 

I picked them up, because I tend to collect gloves that people drop on the ground. i know, funny hobby. They are very useful.  

Usually I find only one pair, but this time, they were a matched pair. And it was only afterwards when I had a good look at them did I find they have an unusual cap to cover the fingers and which can be buttoned down when not in use. The thumbs are covered which i think is a really good thing. most fingerless gloves uncover the thumb as well. 

They were very well knitted though they have been well worn, because some of the threads were coming loose.

Fingerless gloves are excellent to keep the hands warm whilst typing. And these have the caps to cover the fingers when not typing. They are called capped mittens i think. 

You don’t see these kinds of gloves much nowadays. I googled it and found amazon were selling them at £13 a pair. Made of alpaca wool , I don’t know what these I found are made of but it might well be alpaca wool. There was no information inside the gloves.