I think by now, if you read my blog on a regular basis, you will know that I like things. I love books, jewellery, music, food and notebooks. This post is a selection of the ten things that I am currently enjoying the most. Just to inject a little lightness back into our lives after last weeks post…I am going to talk about my frivolous spending habit.
The Nisha Call occurs at 3:32 p.m., and everyone agrees that Jay did not call Nisha while he was on his own. This means that, unless the Nisha Call was a butt dial made by Jay while he was at Jenn’s house, Jay’s claim about leaving Jenn’s house at 3:40 p.m.
Tag: The Nisha Call 6 Huge Unsolved Mysteries In The Hae Min Lee Case. We’re all captivated by a good mystery. Which is one of the reasons why Serial was so popular. Why is the 'Nisha call' important? Does it support or refute Adnan's innocence? Nisha's testimony of receiving a call from Adnan while he was with Jay at Jay's work suggests that the call was NOT on the 13th, but days later, after Jay actually started that job. Otherwise the testimony is not consistent with the facts. @carmendr23 cuando te llaman tus padres en medio de una fiesta. 194w 2 likes Reply.
Just before Christmas my father decided that we needed a Sonos speaker in our lives, so went out and bought the Play5 the same night. I cannot tell you how good this speaker is as well as receiving a years free subscription to Deezer when you buy any Sonos speaker. We have spent many a night since listening to music until the small hours with no sign of distortion, no matter how loud you play it. If you’re looking for a good quality wireless speaker and you are willing to spend a little more on it, I cant recommend the Sonos Play5 highly enough. (You must listen to Phil Collins – In the air tonight, they were made for each other).
Stampers. I love stationary and I’ve been looking for a decent alphabet stamp set that also comes with an ink pad for ages and then I found one. Tiger was the place that realised my dreams and had this awesome wooden stamp set with a black and red ink pad for a whole foursterlingpounds. Bargain! I love it and I’m finding it hard not to use it to write everything.
This year I have decided to learn more stuff. I like learning and I don’t do enough of it these days. So, why not give French a go. I was fairly good, (and in the top French class at school…although I have no idea how) so I thought I would give it a try once more. Thanks to the app Duolingo, my french has come on leaps and bounds in such a short period of time. With bite size chunks you can get stuck into and stutus bars that slowly go down over time so you have to go back and refresh yourself to keep the bars full. The app gets you to translate English into French and vise versa but it also works with your mobile microphone and gets you to practise speaking your chosen language too. There are so many languages you can choose from to learn from Spanish to Swedish, Ukranian to German. If you have been looking to take up another language, I would highly recommend you do it with Duolingo.
The Body Finder series by Kimberly Derting. This set of books follows Violet Ambrose, who has a rather morbid gift…she can find dead people. When Violet is near a dead person who has been murdered and not yet laid to rest, they give off an echo. This can be in the form of noise, smell or visionary, but once Violet has caught on, she cannot rest until the body has been found and buried. With a serial killer on the loose in the first book the story moves at a fast pace and its easy to get swept up in all the mystery and teenage drama over her best friend Jay. I am just finishing the second book, and whilst not as fast paced as the first book, it is still a good/easy read. I am hoping for a little more action in the third book though.
I have a serious macaroon addiction. Yes, they should be covered in liquid gold for the price they want to charge, but you will understand if you have ever had one of these beautifully coloured, crispy fluffy clouds. Julien Plumart‘s are my absolute favourites with flavours such as rose, red berries and violet and salted caramel to name a few. The perfect decadent treat to transport you to Paris in the nineteentwenties…or maybe that’s just me.
I got a two month free trial of Amazon Prime Instant, which is probably the last thing I needed, given my infatuation with Netflix. However, with Weeds having made the move across to Amazon a while back I never got to finish the saga or fill my Hunter Parish and Guillermo Diaz fix. The most exciting thing about the new year was that it brought the Pretty Little Liars to Netflix. I had to stop watching the girls a few seasons back now, but I was soon buried deep in the mysteries of A. Currently wading my way through House we are now on season six, and I love Hugh Laurie a little more each day. Considering the show works to the same format each episode, it never manages to get boring. A family friend has been telling me I should watch Hostages for ages, so when I saw it pop up on Amazon I took the plunge and I am completely caught up in all the conspiratorial mayhem and intertwining story lines. Go watch them all, now.
I got this Q&A five year journal for Christmas and I love it. The premise is fairly obvious each day of the year has a different question and 5 opportunities to answer the same question on the same day each year for 5 years, whether consecutive or not. I think it may be really interesting when I am nearing my thirtieth birthday to see how much things have or haven’t changed from now.
Shameless selfie. No, its not my face that is my favourite but my necklace! I have long had a love affair with the very talented duo of Sugar and Vice and their much talent at making beautiful accessories. I am completely in love with this pentagram necklace and I have been living in it since it arrived. Perfect for coven chic and witchy wonderfulness. It is one of those necklaces that I am considering buying a backup of, just incase something terrible happens to it. I would really love a mirrored version of it too.
The Nisha Call
If you have not listened to the Serial podcast yet, why on earth not?! It will take over your life and soon enough you will be trying to figure out whether Adnan is innocent too or if anyone in this complex story telling the truth?! Told over 12 gripping episodes, we follow the story of Adnan Syed and the murder of his highschool girlfriend Hae Min Lee in 1999. You will hear police interviews and recent accounts of everyone surrounding the murder that winter. As well as phone conversations from Syed from the prison he was sentenced to fifteen years ago. This is a true story and all the accounts you hear are real too. I cannot tell you how good this is and how I need everyone I know to listen to it so we can discuss it in depth, all of the time! I have even gone as far as to download podcasts of other people discussing it to hear their opinions too.
And lastly, this gem of a song. You know how sometimes you can like an album and then all of a sudden you just become obsessed with one song, well that happened here. The melody and lyrics sung hauntingly by Dallas Green is just perfection. O’sister used to be my favourite until Little Hell usurped it. Have a listen and fall in love with the rawness of Dallas’ voice and beautiful lyrics.
I generally try not to do this. Last time we looked at a imported, Japanese coupe from the early nineties. This time we’re looking at an imported, Japanese coupe from the early nineties. Funny how that shook out. Importing cars isn’t really that popular of a thing to do (it’s a super complicated process). Back in Pennsylvania, when I went out hunting for Forgotten Metal, the endless farmland and suburbs could be relied upon to throw up some rusty American relic, or maybe a British sports car. Enough to keep things fresh and different week to week. But New York City? You never quite know what you’re going to get. Lately its been imported, Japanese coupes from the early nineties. And last week’s GT-R I get: people reallylike GT-Rs. It’s obvious why someone would want to import one. This, though, is a little harder to pin down. So cue the music, it’s a Forgotten Metal Mystery. This is a 1991 Toyota Soarer.
Despite sharing the same country of origin and number of doors, this Toyota and last week’s GT-R are about as different as two cars can be. Where the GT-R was a twin-turbocharged ghost pepper, this is more of a leather-appointed potato leek soup. And I mean that in most affirming way possible: potato leek soup is delicious, and this is quite a nice vehicle. It isn’t a race car, though; it’s a luxury car. Now, in America, we call our fancy Toyotas “Lexuses,” and we give them to each other around the holidays with big red bows mounted to the roof. And in the early nineties, this was one of those $50,000 Secret Santa gifts.
It was called the Lexus SC, and it was drawn specifically for the American market in Toyota’s “Calty” design studio- the same place that came up with the peerless Toyota Previa. It was based on the same basic platform as another Fast and Furious icon: the fourth generation Toyota Supra, with which it also shared an engine. The SC was relatively popular throughout its run, though sales did drop off toward the end of the decade, probably due to Americans’ insatiable lust for SUVs. If you were paying attention earlier, however, this isn’t a Lexus SC at all. Here’s the thing: Toyota decided to sell a version of this car in their home country of Japan, but since the Lexus brand hadn’t been introduced there yet, they plunked it under the Toyota brand, and named it the Soarer. It’s exactly the same car as the American Lexus SC, minus the name and a few trim changes. Really, the only significant mechanical difference is that the steering wheel is on the opposite side of the car. Which begs a question I have yet to find a satisfying answer to: why would anyone import a car that’s largely identical to one that’s already sold here?
Japanese consumers had a couple different engine choices. One was that Supra engine, the 2JZ-GE. It was a inline-six cylinder engine that developed around 230 horsepower- exactly the same as you got in an SC. Or you could have one with the 1UZ-FE: a four liter V8 developing close to 260 horsepower, which was again exactly the same as the 1UZ-FE in the Lexus. The Soarer did technically offer a turbocharged version of that inline six, the 2JZ-GTE, that never made it to our shores. And that one was offered with a five speed manual, which in America you could only get on the non-turbo version. Maybe that’s what this is? It made slightly more horsepower, around 280, so that’s something. But I don’t know if I really like that answer. You have to endure a lot of headaches when you import a car. You’ve got to get someone to drive your car to a dock, shunt it through customs, and put it on a boat. Then you have to wait for weeks, praying the boat doesn’t sink, or have a mutiny, or get attacked by pirates. And if none of that happens, you’ve got to deal with customs over here. Do you really think someone would go through all that for 20 additional horsepower?
Importing a Toyota Soarer is like watching Jurassic World. Yeah, it’s fine, it’s serviceable. But you could just buy a used SC, or watch Jurassic Park, and have a better time. Here, you’re paying more for a simulation of a slightly better thing. I don’t really understand why someone would do that. That’s why finding this car is such a mystery. By all rights, the Lexus SC is a nice car. But it’s not really a Forgotten Metal car- at least not yet. Time has not yet told us the full story of the SC. There’s a small aftermarket following, sure, probably owing to the Supra connection. But it’s small peanuts compared to the GT-R, or the Supra for that matter. That’s a car people will make little cartoon versions of to pin to signs for classic car shows, or tattoo on old men under names of women they used to love. I’m not so sure about the SC. Will we remember it in thirty years? In forty? Will Lexus bring back the SC name in fifty years for the anniversary? I doubt it. I don’t think its that culturally fundamental. But despite it being the exact same car as the SC, the Soarer is something interesting. It’s both familiar and foreign. It’s like having one of those dreams about your childhood bedroom but it’s off, somehow. That’s enough to qualify it for a Forgotten Metal post, but not enough to answer my original question: why is it here? Is it a diplomat’s car? Is there really just a big Soarer enthusiast living somewhere in the Financial District? We’ll probably never know.
Serial Episode 6 Summary
Additional Thoughts
Adnan Syed Cell Phone
- There are actually two modern successors to the Lexus SC. One is the RC, which looks like it was designed by Skyler White after she discovered her husband was really Heisenberg. Which is to say angrily, and with a knife. The other is the LC, which I actually think is quite good looking.
- The SC/Soarer actually kept pretty close to the original concept, minus the inboard foglights.