We went to watch The Counterfeit Stones last week with D & C. Eventhough J had watched them before, I dragged him along to this one as I really wanted to see just how great these guys were.

Considered to be one of the best tribute bands out there, The Counterfeit Stones have been known to have gone to great lengths to recreate the personalities of the original Rolling Stones as well as their hits.

My personal opinion: I was blown away! They were amazing! I couldn’t sit still! The music was great…especially with classic hits like “You can’t always get what you Want”, “Honky Tonk Women”, “Ruby Tuesday” etc.

The close resemblance between the lead singer to the original Mick Jagger was uncanny. I was pleasantly surprised on how he pulled off the eccentric posture and moves of the original lead man so effortlessly.

People started leaving their seats and moving over to the aisles to dance. It was a brilliant performance and one I was sad to see end.

The Counterfeit Stones are currently touring I believe. So if they are ever in your area, I strongly recommend them. For a mere £16.50, it’s hardly a hefty price to pay for a night of good live music.

Finally signed up to Twitter today. Still getting my head around what it actually is….They call it a “micro-blog”…where you update your “followers” on what you’re actually doing at the moment.

Now if I’m right, these followers aren’t exactly your friends…they simply well…follow you! Call it a “micro-blog” if you see it that way…I see it as a Facebook-status-update-platform-without-the rubbish-Facebook-games, tags and everything that came along with Facebook.

The minute I placed my first ‘tweet’…I started looking at how to actually reduce the size of the fonts because it appeared to me to be rather too large. On looking on other Twitter pages, I noticed that their ‘tweets’ were of normal standard sizes. So here I was, clicking on every option available to figure out how to reduce my font size for a good half an hour. Little did I know that by placing another ‘tweet’, the one before (which I was frantically trying to reduce the size of) automatically got reduced to the standard size. Therefore, for those of your Twitter virgins out there…don’t panic…your latest ‘tweet’ is meant to be that big.

Alliance and Leicester is offering a £100 cashback when you switch to their Premier current accounts.

The catch is: you must transfer your existing current account and it’s direct debits/standing orders to the new A&L account and pay in a minimum of £500 every month. Since I had a HSBC current account which I was thinking of getting rid of anyway, this sounded like a perfect opportunity for me to do so and gain £100 towards my D90.

It didn’t take as long as I thought; mainly due to their automated ’switching service’ which made it much easier to switch my direct debits. (Me being me…I’m still going to confirm with my existing bank to ensure that it has indeed been transferred over).

All in all, application took me a couple of hours and I’m £100 richer (see note below).

Saving for my D90 – The Challenge Update:

£150 £250 saved.

Note: It apparently takes 4 months for the £100 to show up in your account so for those who desperately need to have the cash in hand immediately, that’s not going to happen.

However, for ease of the budget calcualtions and not over-complicating things too much, I’m assuming that I will receive the £100 before the 29th of Sept. Therefore, have taken the £100 (which I’ve yet to receive) into consideration in my calculations. I’ve never banked with A&L before…so we shall see how it pans out…

Both J and I were quite excited to catch Angels and Demons when it was released so we went to watch it after work last week.

Now, both of us read the Da Vinci code and loved the book. However, we both found the movie a little dissapointing. We enjoyed reading Angels and Demons and were hoping that the big screen adaptation wouldn’t be such a letdown as Da Vinci. Therefore, we decided to give it a shot and see what it turned out to be.

And I have to say, I’m so glad I did. I’m not sure what the reviews are saying but this was one movie I wanted to see and judge for myself without having someone else’s opinions in my head before I even stepped into the cinema.

My own personal verdict? Brilliant. Well executed and once again, great acting from one of my favourite actors; Tom Hanks. I thoroughly enjoyed it. There were a few scenes that were in the book but not depicted in the movie. However, unlike the Da Vinci Code, it wasn’t instantaneously picked up upon until after the movie when we were in the car talking about it. Ron Howard executed the plot really well and I was glued to the screen from the beginning. I would never have envisioned Ewan Mcgregor playing the role of the Camerlengo but he surprised me. I would definitely recommend it. It’s even better if you’ve read the book but if you haven’t…it’s another good Saturday evening pick for the cinema.

Since the purchase of my D40, coupled with the more adventurous photography I’ve been doing in my classes and my photowalks, I’m beginning to feel the limitations of what my D40 has to offer me.

Don’t get me wrong…it’s a brilliant camera and one which I hope to keep for a long long time. My personal opinion? Give it a few years and it will be a classic and worth a lot more than what you can get it for now. It’s successor, the D40x (which is worth roughly £150 more) has already seen it’s production ceased while the originial D40 is still being manufactured.

The problem I have with it however, is that it only autofocuses with the latest AF-S lenses and some older AF-I lenses. If I were to use any traditional AF lenses, I would need to manually focus my shots (not ideal if I’ve got a kid that can’t sit still for more than 5 seconds). Therefore, by having a D40, I would need to invest a lot more on newer and latest lenses. However, if I were to get a better body; for example a D90, I would easily be able to autofocus on older lenses (which are just as good as the newer models and cheaper too).

There’s only one problem…the D90 costs £750.Don’t know about you…but 750 buckaroos is a hell lot of money for me.

I therefore have 2 options:

1) Max out my credit card and get it next week. (And be in debt with a hefty 15.9% interest rate).

2) Give myself a sensible period of time to raise some money and pay for it in cash. (While at the same time, doing my bit to boost the economy and not adding another £750 to our national debt)

After much deliberation, I have decided to go with Option 2.

My target date…29th Sept 2009 which also happens to be the day I turn 25. Which gives me exactly 4 months! I have £150 stashed away so I’m already 20% there! Easy peezy!

You can follow my progress via the image in the right sidebar.

Due to my photography classes once a week, J’s responsible for dinner that evening.

I’m not sure if it’s the same situation with every guy but whenever J’s cooking, he get so intense! The last time I had that same look in my eyes was when I was solving differential equations at A Levels!

No one’s allowed into the kitchen and no one’s allowed to do or say anything which might distract him from his masterpiece.

It cracks me up everytime. So you can imagine how difficult it was to get this shot of him concentrating so hard to place the potatoes perfectly into the oven dish for his signature sausage casserole dish.

Which was delicious by the way…

Coming from a lifetime of living in flats to actually having a garden now, the thought of planting a seed and watching it grow…is completely alien to me. These past few months, I’ve begun to discover terms like compost…grow bags…stakes…seedlings…plant food (and the list goes on)…terms I would never have been exposed to if I was still living in a HDB flat in Singapore.

Anyway, the truth is…I found it extremely boring. You plant these little seeds and you wait for 2 weeks while nothing happens…yet you wake up every morning and look into this little pot to see if somehow…somehow something’s changed from the night before and you hope…no!…you pray that you see some kind of life spurting out from underneath all that soil.

J has been persuading me to get some gradening done. However, I see no point in growing flowers etc…they look pretty yes…but am I going to go through all that for something that looks pretty and dies again in a few months? So we came to a compromise…I’ll grow herbs.

I wouldn’t mind going through all that waiting and praying and watering…if I can get some fresh herbs for my dishes at the end of the whole ordeal. So I did. I planted coriander, chives, basil and rosemary. Out in the garden, we have tomatoes and courgettes which will hopefully be arriving in June. Look how gorgeous my coriander’s looking!

I might have green fingers after all….

Well, It is officially spring time and with that comes the floral dress season. I was shopping online for some light summery casual floral dresses for casual daywear and I was spoilt for choice. Eventhough it’s not shown here, New Look and Coast do have a very nice collection as well. However, you have to be prepared to pay a bit more for Coast dresses.

I especially like the Lipsy collection; with a wide range of day to night florals. Great choice if you’re looking for that perfect floral dress for a spring/summer wedding.

I bought the ASOS floral halterneck dress (far right in pic) for a colleague’s BBQ in a couple of weeks. Top it up with gold strappy sandals and it’s a comfortable chic outfit. Not bad for £30.

I’ve always been intriqued with studio photography; the flash meters, the diffusers, the reflectors and of course… the brilliant photographer behind the lens. I had the wonderful opportunity of photographing Samantha Ramm last night and I have to say I was pretty dissapointed with myself.

I’m not quite sure what it was… what I was seeing through my lens was not coming out in my pictures! After a few frames, I was getting quite agitated. I knew it wasn’t Sam…she was brilliant! How can I not even take one decent frame of a beautiful 16-year-old actress?!?  It took a while to get my head around flashes, reflecting light back, aperture, depth of field, do I want a silver reflector or a white one, do I want a plain backdrop or something else…while at the same time keeping Sam comfortable and happy.

Eventually, out of the 50+ frames I took, I managed to get a few I was happy enough to upload into the gallery.

Everyone said I was too critical…too much of a perfectionist…Maybe they’re right…

I’m almost certain not everyone has a butt like J Lo. Personally, I would like a slightly fuller rear – not big…just a nice decent round shape. Maxi dresses look flat on my rear which is why I usually stay away from them. But that was before I discovered Booty Pop!

These really do make your booties POP and not in an obvious way. Very discreet and looks really natural. I love it!

For all you know, this might be J Lo’s little trade secret…