Art, Current Events

Sotheby’s Freddie Mercury exhibit

Leave a comment

On now for a month you can go to Sotheby’s on New Bond Street and see a vast collection of items once owned by Freddie Mercury before they go on sale. I’d say if you can, go see it now, because after the six auctions all his treasures will be scattered and most likely scattered to the four corners of the world.

I feel it will be a shame, as I felt a lot of these items should have stayed in his house and that created into a museum. Nevertheless, this is a part of life and its story in this famous character.

I knew he had a love for Japanese art, but I didn’t realise how vast his collection was. From a very nice collection of prints, to ceramics and sets of kitchen ware. There is a degree of opulence about the character and a slight insight into the eccentric nature of the person we see from his things. There is also a degree of love for the items on display, from the clothing to the records and his famous piano. A new Yamaha piano will set you back £5,000 but if you want Freddie’s make sure you have more than £2 million + capitol. And if I am honest, there are some even nicer things to get your hands on than the piano.

Exploration

London Mithraeum

Leave a comment

This is a little hidden gem in the Bank area of central London. When they built the new Bloomberg building they moved the Roman Mithraeum temple out and then put the ruins back to where they originally found them. You can now go online and book a free visit if you have a spare half an hour to visit it in your day.

Entering you are treated with an ever changing art space, then next to it is a wall of finds which you can browse before descending down the stairs to the temple. There is a brief bit of information in a waiting area and when let through you are treated to a very mystical setting, low lights, barely visible and it is a treat to watch and listen to the story.

After that’s finished you can have a walk around when it lit up better, take some photo’s, ask those questions before leaving. Well worth a visit in my opinion.

https://www.londonmithraeum.com

Personal

Operating hours are a myth!

Leave a comment

I went to see a film and got back home before 10pm so… there are five takeaways right next to were I live it’s 15 minutes to 10pm and they all say they close at 10pm all but the Chinese take away were closing up and cleaning! I feel the Chinese takeaway is rubbish which looks filthy and unkept.

Ugh!

Now back home I found a pot noodle I didn’t know I had, poured myself a glass of red wine at home! So much for those take away operating hours!

Amazon

Piles of Amazon packages

Leave a comment
Amazon HQ reception

Since I moved into my new home in August 2021 I had been getting amazon packages for a company and wasn’t sure why they were coming to my address. But my initial research of the company name showed it was the previous people that lived here before me that was operating a business from this address.

At first, I had thought the couple have moved to Wales, they did initially, but they returned to the same area I live in, they effectively moved around the corner to a bigger house. So, I found them and had a chat about these amazon packages. It turns out they have been operating an Amazon store on the platform and the packages I get are part of the returns system. Somewhere in amazon’s great big computer network there seems to be an error with addressing and these returns that I get.

It’s now 2023 and this morning two more packages came through my letter box. I really was fed-up with phoning Amazon, their system is so poor. Spoken to Philippines, Jamaica, this time I got on the train and went to their head office in London.

After near to 40 minutes of waiting in reception I finally spoke to a guy from security! I gave him a report about my situation. They didn’t even have a customer service representative to deal with me. I noticed a few things in the head office there, like other big companies they operate security through another company, Securitas AB. They appear to operate full time staff and contractors (cheaper staff).

I was also asked and was told that they get seven to eight people a week coming in through the door reporting similar instances of these problems. That’s equivalent of 416 people a year just in London coming in through the door. If like me they have received over 60 unneeded packages a year, that’s 24,960 packages sent wrongly a year. 

Amazon are firing staff, but it seems to be to save money it might be wiser to sort out these problems with the displacement. 25,000 packages could equate to a loss to Amazon of £125,000 just in England. If you want to have a guess at a worldwide figure of loss to Amazon, the numbers tell me that Amazon are losing £2.5 to £3 million plus through these system errors.

The company is worth billions, even still, that’s a big loss and the small end.

Personal

Ancient Apocalypse review

Leave a comment

Recently added to Netflix this show takes around the globe to analyse events in history and connect them together. However, this is deep history and that has problems. It’s very hard to analyse these events and carbon dating isn’t quite as accurate as a lot of TV makes out.

Graham Hancock points out his Wikipedia page straight away at the beginning, it really seems to be a dig at the website. It’s not Wikipedia, it’s the more grounded historical societies and historians which are calling him a fruit.

Hancock is running around half-cocked! He takes us to nice interesting places to explore and shows up some interesting historical sites. But that appears to be where it ends. It’s then all guess work with flashy computer animation. There is nothing scientific about this program, I might as well have watched Ancient Aliens and have the same problems. Half-cocked mumbo-jumbo!

Hancock seems to push his apocalypse theorem at over 10,000 years ago and talks about an ancient civilisation, but nothing is confirmed. In truth, it’s very hard to piece together the ancient world at this level, as part of what he said is right, there were lots of earth-shattering moments which destroyed the world, but there are multiple times this has happened. Volcanoes, earthquakes at different periods in different areas of the planet have this effect also. But he hasn’t addressed these other problems that can cause these disasters. Hancock seems to stick to one large event and doesn’t appear to look at the picture the same as others. This view is fracturing and I can understand why there is so much scepticism.

I give him credit for trying to establish a theory, but this is just his theory. It’s so much easier to focus on a singular issue. But overall, this is too grandiose and that throws a lot of people off, including me.

TV

House of Dragons: Fed-up after episode five

Leave a comment

I am not sure if I enjoyed the show, the story feels disjointed and episode five felt like the nail in the coffin for me. The original Game of Thrones was amazing, the writing was excellent with an excellent cast.

The writing for House of Dragons, well there are a few good moments, but the whole script feels disjointed. You are thrown around from one location to another at times. Some of the acting seems good, then other actors, actresses, some seem flat and unemotional. Action thrown in and what you have left is miss-mash TV.

I wasn’t really enjoying the show, and I felt lost with episode five. I understand getting married, but other elements… Ugh! I don’t know how others feel. But I’ve had enough of it.

TV

Cobra Kai season five review

1 Comment

Having just finished watching the season I can honestly say that I enjoyed it. It was quirky, funny, silly, and a lot of kick-ass. Johnny this season has mellowed out and some of the others seem to be lost souls at times. There are some characters searching for who they are and what they are fighting for.

Terry Silver has taken many under his wing, and trying to gangster style the valley into a brand which is just over the top. It then felt like he was mixing in a Yakuza element into his business. It’s unclear at times about where he wants to take the business but then it is revealed he wants to enter an elite Karate competition. 

At times the show suffers a little from generic overtures, however it all comes together well and friendships open back up and that sense of family gets stronger. 

Bringing in all the old original actors from the films really does make the series unique and that is one of the best pluses. Yep I enjoyed it.

4.5 out of 5.

Current Events

The World of Stonehenge review

Leave a comment

Currently on in the British Museum, up until 17 July 2022 is The World of Stonehenge exhibit.

Upon entering you are greeted with a graphic showing a number of henge’s, and how many there are in the UK, which is a hell of a lot. Next you will see a large necklace plate crafted out of gold, being as it’s gold, it looks like it was made yesterday. 

There is a wealth of information to soak-up, and a lot of axe heads. All different types of axe heads, different stones, then onto metals. That aspect alone is an exhibit on its own. 

The craft of the age, makes you wonder, how did they manage to do that! There are items on display which leaves you with questions, as no expert is sure what they were for. Exquisite detailed objects, geometric shapes, probably inspired by elements of what the people of the day saw in the landscape and produced onto their wares.

As I got to the bottom of the room I had already been there for an hour and a half so I skipped some cases and the exhibit seemed to rush through time again on the evolution of war and weaponry. 

I wouldn’t mind visiting this exhibit again for a second look another time.

5 out of 5.

Personal

Time to switch anti-virus software.

Leave a comment

I had used the free version of Sophos Home for my anti-virus protection on my Mac Book for a long time now. However, I was having problems with the software for the last few months. The Sophos icon on the top bar which is normally white was red, so I tried a few different things to try to fix it. Then I went to uninstall to reinstall, aww bugger. It won’t reinstall properly.

It started to say, create an account, but I already had an account. Onto customer services, they wouldn’t help. They were slow to respond, I felt impatient and was starting to get cranky! Instead of checking the server for my account or sorting out the server-side issue which appeared to be the case. It just felt like customer discrimination between those that pay and those that don’t. Some guy called Rashmi kept saying he couldn’t help me. This was going downhill fast.So, I removed Sophos altogether and installed Avast. Let’s see how we get on with this one.