Moroccan take-away in London

OK, the following may make you sick. So don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Today, on my home from work, I decided to buy Moroccan food from a Moroccan/North African take-away.
I was too lazy to cook and I desperately needed some nice, sweet Moroccan dish.
A friend, who is Iranian, gave me the address and phone-number of a Moroccan cafe/restaurant.
So I went and ordered some food. The menu looked normal, tajine, couscous, roasted chicken with almonds, briouat etc. etc.
There was only 1 dish that I never heard of before and that was traditional Moroccan rice with mushrooms….

And because I’m always adventurous, and like to go where no moron has gone before, I decided to order the rice dish and some chicken-briouat and kefta-briouat.
It was all wrapped up beautifully and I thought it smelled nice. And then I came home and sat down to eat it……

Here is how it looked like:

The briouat were disgusting. I didn’t taste the chicken, I did see it but I couldn’t taste it. The spices definitely didn’t taste Moroccan.
The kefta-briouat (the square ones) were even more disgusting. It was all dry and flavourless.
But still, you could consider the briouats as Moroccan.

But the “rice”-dish! First of all, it wasn’t rice! It was risotto! And the mushrooms were like those cheap mushrooms from the supermarket. The only spices used were salt and pepper! Seriously….
A close-up of the “rice”-dish

Do I need to say more? Does it even look Moroccan?
And this is supposed to be prepared by Moroccans.
I did eat it though, I mean I paid for it.

The funny thing is, there is another Moroccan take-away in Camden-market. Owned and managed by Malaysians and their Moroccan food was delicious!
Malaysians are the new Moroccans.

The world capital of the 21st century

According to New York Magazine, London is supposed to be the capital of the world.

The city is young, there are a lot of immigrants/expats, financial services are booming and the culture scene is impressive.

According to the magazine it comes down to this “In short, New York is cardiganed Woody Allen and London is party-dressed Lily Allen.”





The skyline of London (some buildings still have to be realized)



Well that’s very, very nice. I mean living in a world capital, only 10million others can say that!

But its not all glamour, party and Lilly Allen. It’s tough, tough I tell you!

I have to move out in 2 months (2nd of June) and so I have to find a new apartment. And that proofs to be really difficult.

I did some viewing today and it was really disappointing. One apartment looked downright infested with I dont know what. The other one wasn’t even in London I think.

I don’t have a lot of wishes, I’m very easy. But I don’t want to travel 1 hour or more. It’s time-consuming, really expensive and smelly (the tube here is disgusting!)



But it just looks like that I have to settle with a shabby apartment somewhere in a shabby suburb, travelling in a shabby transport-system.

“Party-dressed Lily Allen” my *ss!



The already legendary NY vs London issue of NY Mag:

http://nymag.com/guides/TOC/london/

London Thursday

Wow, 4 posts in a day. Must be a record for me!

Anyhow, todays London photo is a photo of a door. Yes a door. It is a door of one of my uni buildings.
And I actually do live in this particular building.
Isn’t it a beautiful door?

This is how it should work!

This story is just remarkable.

Muslim children attending a strictly jewish school. Saying jewish prayers, eating kosher food, learning Hebrew, studying Judaism.
And the muslim parents taking all kind of measures to let their children attend that school.

How wonderful.

Its London Thursday

I’m back. Still no job (working on that), papers almost done and a ₤2000 deficit in my society’s budget which we need to solve in 4 weeks time.
But I still love London.

Today a picture of the view from my (only) window. I live in the center of London, walking distance from the Houses of Parliament and Buckingham Palace ( its exactly 4.25min to Parliament and 3.45min to Buckingham Palace, according to my homemade London-planner)
So you would expect that my view would be fabulous. Old jewels or new modern glass buildings.
Well guess again!
(warning: lousy 640*480px shots)

I dont even know what the building is for! It looks like some kind of factory, but at the moment its only being used by fat pidgeons.
Around the corner (its too cold to hang out of the window and make a picture of that) you have an office building and that most be the ugliest office building I’ve ever seen in my life.
I get depressed just looking at it.
Well only 4 more months (maybe even less) and then I’m out of here.

Why I love London

This picture kind of summarizes why I started loving London.

The alleys! I just love the London alleys and courtyards. Everytime I walk through one I consider myself lucky to live in this marvellous city!

The first couple of weeks I really hated it here. They drive on the wrong side of the road (cliche), the supermarkets are expensive and crap, it was too busy, you’re forced to litter because there are no dustbins, everyone speaks a different kind of English and my uni was crap, public transport is hell (seriously I think that they use the underground as a sauna here)
The day I arrived in London, with 50kg luggage, was also the day that I first set foot in England. I didn’t know what London was like. I kind of underestimated the size of the city. Its huge! I thought that my halls were on walking distance, guess again. After 10min I almost fainted and decided to take the bus (the bus-driver helped me with loading my luggage on the bus)
Its also very expensive. I arrived with €100 pocket money. Believing that would be enough for 1 student-month, just like in Holland. Now I know that €100 is just enough for 1 week!

I was considered crazy by most of my friends, who didn’t understand my sudden urge to move (i decided it overnight).
But now I just love this city! Yesterday I smoked a shisha/narguila with a fellow student from Madagascar(!) in a Libyan café after we shopped in Little Lebanon.
That would be impossible in Amsterdam.
London is a real cosmopolitan city. Nearly every nation is represented here (I’m taking classes with a girl who is half Fijian and half Malaysian)
History is everywhere you look. You can easily get lost in the thousands alleys they have.
And Starbucks is on every corner. I just love Starbucks! Who said that globalization and “Mcdonaldization” were bad? Paris, eat your heart out! Ha!
I never, ever want to leave! (well my heart is still in/with Beirut, and I do hope that Beirut will be my final stop but still)

So I decided that Thursday is going to be London Thursday from now on. A weekly picture of lovely London.

( picture via Londonist)

Video: Islamic extremism inside the UK

Yesterday Channel 4 aired an interesting documentary about Islamic extremism/wahhabism in the UK.
It was very interesting and quite shocking. It was nothing new actually. We all know that wahhabism is everywhere.
But it is still interesting to see how it works and how they camouflage radical mosques as tolerant and open.
See the 6 videos after the jump

Revenge of the arty-farty leftists

Don’t you ever mess with anti-war protesters. Usually they’re smarter then you.
Not always but usually.

Take Brian Haw for instance. The UK’s most famous anti-war protester. He has been “protesting” in front of the Parliament for 6 years now.

Recently his massive 40m display was reduced to a mere 3m display with anti-war placards.
Every time I walk by, I keep on thinking that he is defeated by the government. (the placards are tiny and silly. Hilarious actually)

Not anymore now. Tate Britain came to the rescue and an exact replica of the 40m. display is now exhibited as art in the museum. And it is all legal.
According to some freakish law, people are not allowed to have unauthorised demonstrations or raise placards within 1km distance of the Parliament.
The exact spot where the replica is situated, is also the border of that 1km zone.

I told you they were smart!