Avengers: Age of Ultron trailer featuring Brockley (and some other stuff)

Marvel Studios and Disney today released the first public trailer of Avengers: Age of Ultron, next year's guaranteed superhero blockbuster. I won't bore you with my analysis, except, well, you just have to watch it. If it is at least half as good as Captain America: The Winter Soldier, then I will be happy bunny - and it sure looks like it may.

More importantly, within all the shots of Ultron in its various incarnation, Iron Man's Hulkbuster and Hulk destroying half of Johannesburg and Hawkeye being Hawkeye, is a short blink it or miss it 1940s flashback sequence featuring Captain America with who I believe is Stark Senior or Bucky, and Peggy Carter. This was shot back in April at Brockley's very own art deco Rivoli Ballroom.

April 2015 can't come soon enough. Hail Hydra.

London Street Food

Street food is all the rage these days, as it has always been. The quality has improved beyond anything we've had before, and often if I need my daily dose of calorie boost I would seek out a food truck.

Here are my picks for some of the best street food operating in London right now, in no particular order.

Bleecker St Burger (Spitalfields Market, South Bank Queen's Walk, Street Feast Dalston Feast)

Bleecker St Burger won the annual London Burger Bash with their special New York style burger made out black pudding sandwiched between two patties of beef. And it tastes so darn good. Top it off with a cup of their delicious sweet potato fries.

Taruna Homestay review

Taruna Homestay is a family run bed and breakfast in Pemuteran, North Bali. We stayed there for two nights during our trip to Bali last month (wow, has it only been that long?). Of all the places we've been and stayed in, Taruna was in one of the least touristy and developed area, which suited us just fine.

Each of the twelve bedroom is designed as an individual villa, with their own private entrances and terrace via the courtyard (which leads to a small but nice swimming pool). The bedrooms comes with their individual outdoor shower and toilet area, which we found unnerving at first.

Pemuteran beach

Our room has air conditioning but we did not use it often preferring to use the ceiling fan instead. The room was clean, if a bit outdated in decor and dark. As a budget homestay, there isn't such luxuries like a TV (why would you want one?), but you do get a kettle, daily mineral water and free wifi access for your Instagramming needs. You won't get much privacy as each rooms are on the ground floor unless you have the curtains shut at all times.

Bali: A GoPro holiday

Hello! It's been a while since I wrote on here. We've just returned from our holiday in Malaysia and Bali. Malaysia is the country of birth where I last visited 7-8 years ago, so it was more of a catch up visit (mainly with food).

This was my first trip to Bali and it was amazing. Long story short, we stayed at Kuta for a couple of nights, more out of obligation than necessity. A bit of advice - avoid Kuta and Denpasar as a whole, as the area is a bit of a hell hole and brings out the worst in Bali and tourists.

We moved on to North Bali and stayed at Pemuteran for a couple of nights. The B&B we stayed in is Taruna, a small family run business who were keen to help out with the planning of all our activities. While Kuta is populated by families and surfers, North Bali is far quieter. The people are friendlier and you meet all sorts of European backpackers. Pemuteran is a great base for those wishing to dive in Menjangan Island or visit the beaches of Lovina.

For this trip, my Nikon stayed at home. In its place was a GoPro Hero3+ action camera. We had a couple of reason for bringing a GoPro instead of a high quality image shooter. Firstly, we wanted to travel light and secondly, a waterproof case for a SLR costs more than a GoPro itself. And finally, I just wanted to get my hands dirty on trying out video shooting and editing.

In any case, here's five minutes of our Bali trip, edited down from tens of hours of footage using GoPro's excellent Studio 2.0 program with their Hero3 reel template. Bring on next year!

Roti King review

Nasi Lemak

Roti King is a Malaysian cafe/restaurant located close to London Euston railway station. Formerly located in Charring Cross, they moved there earlier this year.

Good and cheap Malaysian food are hard to come by in London. There are a couple - for example Malaysian Hall in Bayswater area is run by the Malaysian government, and Malaysian Deli in our very own Brockley. But Roti King does something that neither of those does - proper roti canai.

Roti canai is a type of fluffy flat bread sold in Malaysia, an is normally eaten as a side with curry or dhal (lentil) sauce. It is a versatile dish, and can be combined with other ingredients like eggs and meat, but the best is still the plain ol kind. It is light and fluffier that the kind of flatbread that are normally served in Indian restaurants in this country. When I used to live in Malaysia, I would have it for breakfast, lunch an occasionally, dinner.

Street Feast Lewisham - Model Market

Today marks the launch of the Lewisham chapter of Street Feast. Hosted at the derelict abandoned 1950s Model Market just off Lewisham High Street, the organisers has used to opportunity to inject some much needed vibe into the local scene. Foodies who lives in Lewisham has one less reason to make the trek to East London. A good thing too as I personally find East London to be a victim of its own success.

Argument about the march of gentrification aside, the feeling that I've got from speaking with some longer term residents as well as newer residents like us, is that Lewisham has been waiting for something like this to happen to their beloved by often neglected town centre.  After all, Lewisham (and by extension, South East London) has long been a laughing stock of inner London (fun fact: Lewisham is the only inner London borough that isn't connected to the London Underground).

EasyAcc Powerbank PB5000C review

Despite the ever increasing power of smartphone, with high guzzling 1080p and hopelessly useless but diserable 2.5K displays, as well as quad core (and octa-core processors on the way), more powerful cameras and operating systems that are so woefully inefficient, battery technology has yet to catch up. Manufacturers insistence that we need ultra thin smartphones at the expense of battery capacity is also a culprit.

I have been a huge fan of my Nexus 5 device, but its sheer power is only matched by its inadequate battery. The Nexus 5's pitiful 8Whr battery lags far behind even the groundbreaking Motorola RAZR MAXX, which was released two years ago with a still unsurpassed 12.5Whr battery (only bigger unwieldy phablets like the Lumia 1520 has a larger battery capacity, and only just).

The day the Avengers came to Brockley, London

Last Friday, Marvel Studios came down to film a scene at the Rivoli Ballroom in Crofton Park, Brockley in South East London. My partner and I were walking down Brockley Road when we stumbled upon a film crew filming "After Party". The Rivoli Ballroom is no stranger to film - it has featured in Doctor Who and the Muppets Most Wanted, but this one was big. We could tell by the twenty of so trucks that were lining up on Brockley Road and Marnock Road. Curiously a couple crew members had shirts with Guardians of the Galaxy printed on it.

As the filming of the Guardians of the Galaxy has already wrapped up and is currently in post production, the only logical conclusion was that (OMG, this was when my jaws dropped when realisation hit me), they were a Marvel Studios film crew filming the next Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero movie - Avengers 2: The Age of Ultron! With crews and visitors in t-shirts bearing Captain America's logo and Converse's Chuck Taylor All-Star logo (you know with the big five pointed star in the middle, you didn't need to be a genius to figure it out. The symbolism was strong. It all hinted that whatever was going on in the ballroom had something to do with Captain America.