Nicholson News

• WHEN SNAKES ATTACK! • MARTHA’S TOP CHINESE FOOD TIPS SAMUEL IN INDIA • ARSENAL QUIZ • LES DEUX ALPS REVIEW

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Nicholson News Summer 2012

It’s very exciting to start something new - who knows where it will lead to? We decided that instead of just sending pictures and emails to our friends and relations, we’d make a proper magazine. With Martha in China and Samuel in India, it’s a great way to stay in touch, see what everyone’s doing and hear their stories.

In this special launch edition, we feature Samuel’s adventures in India, where he has swum in crocodile-infested rivers, ridden through the mad streets of cities on the back of a powerful mo-torbike and found a massive snake on the ceiling of his room! He gives us some tips on how to keep cool in the heat - have a look at Remy & Raffy’s interview with Samuel on page four, along with some pictures from his travels.

There’s more travel action on page three, where Raffy writes about our trip to Les Deux Alps in France. It’s one of the best resorts in the country and we had a fantastic time.

We catch up with Martha in northern China on page eight, meet-ing all kinds of interesting new people while she eats delicious Chinese food while travelling around researching for her degree at Edinburgh University.

Raffy has collected some pictures and stories about snakes at-tacking people and other animals - have a look at his feature on page five, followed by Remy’s fascinating roundup of famous In-dians on page six.

Finally, try our Arsenal quiz on page seven, with a special ‘spot

Skiing in Les Deux Alps, by Raffy

PublisherDavid Nicholson39 Romilly RoadLondon N4 2QY

Email: [email protected]: +44 (0) 20 7359 1200

www.davidnicholson.com/nicholsonnews

Editorial Remy Nicholson Holt, Editor

Raffy Nicholson Holt, Deputy EditorEmail: [email protected]

Tel: +44 (0) 020 7359 1200Mobile: +44 (0) 7802 834477

Advertising managerClare Nicholson Tel: +44 7801234271

Email: [email protected]

RegistrationNicholson News is a subscription-free quar-terly publication. To receive a copy in your inbox every quarter, please send an email

with the subject “subscribe” to

[email protected]

ContentsTravel page: Les Deux Alps skiing holiday . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3Cover story: Samuel ‘s travels in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Crazy animals page: When Snakes Attack! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5Great Indians, by Remy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6Quiz page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7Recipes from our China correspondent Martha Nicholson. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Editorial page 2

Welcome to the launch edition of Nicholson News!

the baby’ section at the bottom of the page.

We have lots of plans for the rest of the summer, including a week at the BEST Swim Centre in Majorca, being coached by former Olympic swimmers (including our cousin James) in a 50 metre outdoor pool next to the beach. We’ll be training for four hours every day. Read all about it in the next edition of Nicholson News.

Enjoy the magazine and have a great summer!

David, Clare, Martha, Samuel, Remy & Raffy

When we were getting dressed to get ready, I said to my Dad ‘what sort of

transport are we getting there?’ and he said ‘first we’re getting a taxi to Victoria, then the Gatwick Express to the airport, then on a plane to Grenoble, then a coach to our hotel in Les Deux Alps.’

When we got there, me and my brother found out that there was a TV in our

room. Then we went to get our skis, boots and poles and we got the button lift up to a steep hill and we tried to ski down but my first try wasn’t that good. But the sec-ond one was much better. And my third one I got it just right.

The best thing about the trip was when my ski teacher took us on a ski lift up

to a really high, steep hill. And we skied down. We could see all the hotels in the village from the top of the hill.

When I’m skiing, I don’t need to look where I’m going, I just look at the

view. We could see really high mountains and the hill we started on.

The best thing was that when we some-times had lunch in the mountains and

they had really good lasagne. We would sit outside on the balcony looking at all the views of where to go.

When we were at the restaurants there was a pile of snow you could climb

on to get onto the roof, to sit on.

The really fun part was, when I was ski-ing I went really fast and I loved over-

taking the other people. To go extra fast I would kneel down and put my sticks in the air – I went on turbo power.

One day we took a train up to the top of the resort. It went up a very steep hill.

It was very cold and windy when we got to the top, on the glacier. It is nearly 3,600 meters (11,800 feet) high

At night there were bright lights in the village and we went for a swim in a

pool. There was so much steam that you couldn’t see anyone. We rolled in the snow and then swam in the outdoor part of the pool.

One evening we went to a fondue res-taurant for dinner.

At the end of the holiday I got my award from the ski school. I got my first star.

I t was a really good holiday and if you have enough money you should go there.

Skiing in Les Deux Alps, by Raffy Travel

Nicholson News - Summer 2012

Fondue for four Raffy on the rooftops

Cover story 4

Remy & Raffy interview our India correspondent Samuel, to get the inside story on his trip!

R&R What is the temperature and how do you keep cool?

Samuel It is around 35 degrees in the day and I like to soak a towel in water and put it on my head to keep cool. Or take a cold shower.

Samuel holding the Taj Mahal in his fingers

R&R Where have you been and what have you been doing?

Samuel I am in Delhi right now the coolest city in India! I have been all over south India; going to amazing parties in Goa, eating fish curry in Kerala, seeing gigantic temples in Karnataka, riding on the back of a 250cc Honda Pulsar in Maharastra and soon I will be in the Himalayas.

R&R Have you learned snake charming?

Samuel I‘ve not learned snake charming, but I woke up one morning in Goa and there was a big snake looking at me from the ceiling! Instead of charming it I ran away.

R&R Is it fun living in India or is it quite hard work?

Samuel It is very fun living in India but also hard work, especially if you get sick which seems to happen a lot.

R&R How do you get around? Do you take bicycle rickshaws?

Samuel There are no bicycle rickshaws only au-torickshaws and I take them all the time, but I like to walk

around to see everything.

R&R What is your hotel like?

Samuel Some of the hotels have been very disgus-ting with horrible squat toilets and stinky sheets and bed bugs but right now I am staying in a friend’s house who is quite rich so it is very nice. Also I bought a hammock so if I need to I can sleep anywhere!

R&R Have you met any famous people?

Samuel I have met a TV star from Norway, a skate-boarder from Sweden, a man who works for Nintendo, a DJ from Amsterdam... but no famous people really.

R&R Have you been swimming?

Samuel I go swimming as much as I can as it is another great way to keep cool. I have swum in lakes and rivers that have crocodiles in them in Hampi, and while I was by the sea I swam everyday more than once.

R&R What hairstyle do you have now?

Samuel I shaved off all my hair but it has grown a bit so it’s just quite short all over

Quite short all over

R&R What sort of buildings are there?

Samuel In Hampi there were 800-year old temples, Kerala had British and Portuguese colonial buildings and Goa had a lot of beach shacks with bamboo walls.

R&R Thanks Samuel, enjoy the rest of your trip!

One morning I woke up and there was a snake on the ceiling!


Cobras can eject venom from their fangs, spitting it as much as two metres away.

SPLAT!

The coast garter snake lives in North America and likes to eat slugs, lizards and toads.

Yuk!

Crazy animals page 5

When snakes attack!


Whenever you’re close to a snake, you need to watch out.

Ouch!

The Western diamond-backed rattle-snake kills more people in the north of Mexico than any other snake and is the second-most lethal snake in the US.

It eats squirrels, prairie dogs, wood rats and rabbits.

Yum yum!

Mother Theresa

Mother Theresa was born on 26 August 1910 and died on 5 September 1997, a few days after Princess Diana. Mother Theresa was a Roman Catholic nun from Albania who became an In-dian citizen. She founded the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta in India in 1950. For over 45 years she ministered to the poor, sick and dy-ing. Mother Theresa’s organisation at the time of her death had 610 missions in 123 countries.

Ravi Shankar

Shankar was born on 7 April 1920 in Varanasi to a Brahmin family of Bengalis as the young-est of seven brothers. In 1956, he began to tour Europe and America playing Indian clas-sical music. He met and worked with violinist Yehudi Menuhin and George Harrison of The Beatles. Shankar wrote music for the Indian in-strument the sitar and toured the world with an orchestra in the 1970s and 1980s. Then from 1986 to 1992 he was an elected politician in In-dia. In 1999 Shankar was awarded India’s high-est civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna and has received three Grammy Awards. He continues to perform , often with his daughter Anoushka.

Shah JahanShah Jahan was founder of the magnificent monument Taj Mahal made to bury his wife Mumtaz Mahal. Shah Jahan’s name means King of the world in Persian. Mumtaz Mahal died giv-ing birth to her fourteenth child! Shah Jahan was son of the emperor Jahangir Shah Jehan im-pressed his father so much that he gave him the name Shah Jehan Bahadur. The Taj Mahal took 20 years to build, using 22,000 labourers and was constructed from white marble.

Mahatma GhandiMohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on 2 October 1869 and was assassinated in 1948. Gan-dhi first used non-violent disobedience when he was a lawyer in South Africa. After his return to India in 1915 he set about organising peasants, farmers and urban labourers to protest against excessive land tax and discrimination by British rulers. He was an important figure in the strug-gle for Indian independence and was known as ‘Mahatma’, which means ‘great soul’.

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Sachin TendulkarSachin Tendulkar was born on 24 April 1973 and is still playing for the Indian cricket team. He is known as the “little master” because he’s so small and is a master at playing cricket. Ten-dulkar is the only cricketer to accomplish 100 centuries in international cricket. He also be-came the first batsman to score 12,000, 13,000, 14,000 and 15,000 runs in that form of the game. Tendulkar passed 30,000 runs in interna-tional cricket on 20 November 2009.

On 24 February 2010, Tendulkar became the first man to score a double century in an ODI against South Africa. On 8 November 2011, Tendulkar became the first batsman to score

15,000 runs in Test cricket. He has been hon-oured with many different awards like the Padma Vibushan award, India’s second highest civilian award.

Great Indians, by Remy


Arsenal quiz - do you know your Gunners?

1 Who has scored the most goals for Arsenal and how many?

2 Who has won the most games in the head to heads between Arsenal and Spurs?

3 Which Arsenal defender has the best scoring record in the Barclays Premier League since 2009?

4 Who won the PFA player of the year award 2012?

5 Where did Arsenal Football Club start in 1886?

Spot the baby - do you know your Nicholsons?

1 2 3 4

Which one is Martha, Samuel, Remy or Raffy - see page 8 for answers.

7Competition page


Asian food special 8

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In China, the food is a big eclectic mix of local flavours and recipes. People cook Sichuanese food, which is hot and spi-cy, Hong Kong food which is sweet and sour and then in the North East where I am in Dalian, people like to eat their food in pancakes. You can go to ‘spring pancake‘ restaurants whe-re you can‘t buy rice, potatoes or bread, just pancakes.

In those restaurants it‘s best to go with lots of friends so that you can have lots of things to go in your pancakes. These pancakes are savoury, not sweet, and they‘re quite small. You can put meat, vegetables, tofu and different sauces in the middle and then wrap it up.

They‘re a bit like the pancakes you have on pancake day in the UK, except there‘s no lemon and sugar or chocolate!

With every meal in China, people usually drink green tea. It‘s served in big pots and placed on your table so you can help yourself for the whole meal. Sometimes you will just be given hot water, but never cold water because people say it‘s bad for your health to drink cold water.

My Chinese friend was quite shocked when I told him I would like some cold water. He thought I must be crazy!

To make spring pancakes, here are some instructions:

1) Make the pancakes the way your Daddy does it, with flour, eggs, milk, a pinch of salt and some butter.

3) Put the pancakes in a pile in the middle of the table for everyone to share

4) Put three or four plates of your favourite meat and vege-tables on the tables for everyone to share - see my picture.

5) Use chopsticks to put the meat and vegetables in your pancakes and then wrap them up, yum!

I‘ve travelled all around the south of China to find out how people migrate from the countryside to the cities. In one place I stayed with a family and they brought home a cat to eat, which they killed, skinned and put on the fire to cook. I decided to go to bed without having any dinner that night.

I love to meet new people in China and the best way to get to know them is to have a meal with them. It‘s really fun.

A big dinner party in Dalian with some other students

A ‘flaming wok‘ restaurant in Shanghai

Pancake recipe from our China correspondent, Martha Nicholson

Quiz answers: Do you know your Gunners? 1. Thierry Henry, 229 goals. 2. Arsenal (60 won, 44 drawn, 53 lost). 3. Thomas Vermaelen (14 since 2009). 4. Robin Van Persie. 5. Woolwich in South-East London.

Spot the baby: 1. Samuel. 2. Remy. 3. Raffy. 4. Martha

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