Lego 21325 || Medieval Village || One of the best Lego sets of ALL time!

 I recently purchased the Lego 21325: Medieval Blacksmith set. I honestly did not realize just how much fun this set would be!

When the set was released in February, I put a video out that I was NOT going to buy this set ... immediately. When I finally did purchase it in March, it was because they had included the Amelia Earhart promo.

The real joy of new adult-aimed sets like this compared to my childhood sets is all the interior details. Sure, they're not that visible once it's finished, but they add so much to the build experience. 

I spaced out the build over several days so I could enjoy it more. If you followed me on Instagram you would have seen the build develop over time in my stories.

This set instantly reminded me of the classic Lego Kingdoms sets and the Castle sets. A blast from the past and when I was constructing this beautiful building, I wanted more. More medieval buildings to construct a town. Please, LEGO!

Adding the light brick, and the way it is positioned under some translucent bricks, is truly genius and must be experienced first hand. It really does look like the forge is hot and ready to melt iron!

Every bag had different colours and pieces, interesting building techniques and something interesting to explore. It felt like a real trip down memory lane and was filled with nostalgia, yet when compared to the previous Blacksmith sets, it was actually far more sophisticated. What was even better was that each bag was actually LESS building than the bag before, leading to a race to the finish!

Here's the finished product. I put it on a baseplate with some additional tiles so it becomes easy to lift and maneuver. I also added one extra blacksmith (perhaps an apprentice?) minifig that I had in my inventory.

The two Black Falcons minifigures are a throwback to an earlier Lego Medieval/Castle era, one which I hope they bring back!

The only negative thing I could say about the Blacksmith set is the tree. It took some time to build, had lots of little pieces, and LOT of repeat steps, but in the end, the final look is only somewhat worth it.

Much like the Ideas Old Fishing Store, this set is packed full of detail and interesting building techniques. Each building floor is removable, as well as the roof for playability. This makes a great display piece as well. 

Lots of extra shield, knight headgear and ingots, as well as other stuff in the forge.

Details! Details! Details! The light-up forge, the upstairs fireplace, the writing desk with quill and ink pot, the bed with colorful quilt, and the kitchen range complete with stewpot are just delightful! 

I loved the roof detailing with the Nexo knight shields. They were so much fun to place! The roof gives the appearance of an old building, with some moss, and some missing shingles. 

And again, in true modular style, you can take off even the roof to display the interiors. I was surprised Lego went all out - we even have a bearskin rug!

Overall this is an extremely fun to build set, and fun to play set, and fun to display set. Worth every dollar, and highly recommended!

The Top 5 Tintin Books Of All Time

Tintin is the fictional character in the comic book series "The Adventures of Tintin", created by Belgian cartoonist Herge. This week Tintin turns 90 (he was first published in 1929). Despite some accusations of racism and colonial mindset (same accusations hurled at Enid Blyton for some of her work), I have tremendously enjoyed reading these books while growing up. Tintin was my favourite comic book series and as you can see from the picture above, I have all the books. Yes, many are battered and bruised from all the moves I made throughout my life, but these books form an invaluable treasure trove of memories for me.

In honor of Tintin turning 90, here's my pick of the top 5 books from the series.

1. The Calculus Affair

The story follows the attempts of Tintin, his dog Snowy, and Captain Haddock to rescue their friend Professor Calculus, who has developed a machine capable of destroying objects with sound waves, from kidnapping attempts by the competing European countries of Borduria and Syldavia. The story reflected the Cold War tensions that Europe was experiencing during the 1950s.

This book is most often accepted by critics to be Herge's best work. His biographer Peeters would describe it as his "masterwork", and it's not hard to see why. The art work is amazing, very realistic, the mood is like an espionage thriller, with many mysterious incidents, red herrings, comic moments and it all coming together in a fitting climax. I don't remember exactly, but I think this might have been the very first Tintin book I read as well.

2. The Blue Lotus

This was the very first Tintin book that I had purchased as a kid with the pocket money I had saved. This book is a sequel to Cigars of the Pharaoh, although it can be read on its own as well. The amazing thing about this book is how it does NOT perpetuate negative stereotypes of Chinese and Oriental people common at the time to the elites of Europe, but has high degrees of realism, and promotes an idea of brotherhood of humanity and friendship across cultures. This is because Herge got in touch with some Chinese people, and one of them became his closest friend and a great influence on him.

Tintin starts this book in India, where he’s approached by a Chinese visitor who is poisoned as he delivers a message to Tintin. Our hero begins looking for the killer and starts on a journey across Asia, fighting a secretive opium cartel with a long, powerful reach. This adventure has a more realistic, international feel since Tintin is dealing with real-world tensions between the Japanese and the Chinese. Herge actually put some real life incidents prior to the Second World War in the book. It remains one of my favourite books of all time.

3. The Black Island

This is a straight up adventure, mystery and thriller story, with great art work and a tight story line. It starts straight from the first panel, where Tintin sees a pilot crash a plane, offers to help, and is shot. He is then framed and is on the run, and must solve all these incidents and clear his name. This is more of an adventure story, with not much of the detective element - as in Tintin is on the trail of those bad guys while avoiding the bumbling cops hot on his trail - and all the loose ends are neatly tied up at the end. One of the key facts was the nature of the criminals isn't known - as in what exactly are they upto - until the very end.

4. King Ottokar's Sceptre

This one is a very strange book. At first glance, it's about how Tintin becomes involved in a plot to destabilize a fictitious country of Syldavia when the ruling monarch's sceptre goes missing. Tintin has to find this historical relic, with a deadline looming, or else the ruler has to abdicate.

Dig deeper though, and you realize the story is portraying the grim realities of the looming World War 2. The story was published during 1938 and 1939, just as Nazi Germany began to gobble countries (Austria, Czechoslovakia) before invading Poland. Italy's invasion of Albania is thought to have inspired Herge to create Syldavia.

The mosques that appear in Herge's Syldavia are based on those found throughout the Balkans, while the appearance of the Syldavian village, featuring red-tiled roofs and minarets, may have been specifically inspired by the Bosnian town of Mostar.

This is why I love this book. It starts as something small, slowly gets bigger, and before you know it , the story has a huge canvas and there's the threat of war and destruction. The book also introduces the recurring character Bianca Castafiore, and obviously introduced the fictional countries of Syldavia and Borduria, both of which reappear in later stories.

5. The Red Sea Sharks

There's a lot of Tintin stories involving Arabs and the Middle East. Yes, some of it is a bit of a caricature, and some of it the "white saviour" colonial mindset typical of its time. Herge seems to have accurately predicted the trouble the Middle East would be under due to its "Black Gold", and here he portrays a heinous international slavery ring run by some evil Arabs, who are kidnapping pilgrims en route to Makkah.

This is an intensely thrilling tale, but is also more complicated and introspective than most Tintin stories. The slavery aspect makes this a darker story than most, but there are plenty of flashes of humor and more than enough action to keep the tale from being depressing.

And of course: we will see the "end" of Rastapopulous!

Honourable mentions: Tintin in Tibet, The Shooting Star

Condo Gardening As A Beginner

I was never a gardener. It always seemed too much work. I used to watch my mother garden, and see how she toiled away in the heat and how meticulous she was with her plants and think - wow, that's a lot of dedication for some greenery. So I never picked up gardening as a hobby. When we moved to our own place in a condo, I thought we would never have plants or even do any bit of gardening.

BCCB (which stands for Bangladeshi Canadian - Canadian Bangladeshi) is an organization that I am part of. It has over 20,000 members across its various chapters throughout Canada, and one of the chapters is a local gardening club, and I was on their mailing list.

They were holding an Aloe Vera workshop, and it sounded interesting, so I signed up for it. You attend an hour long workshop where they give you a free (yes, free!) pot, soil and a baby Aloe Vera plant. I attended the workshop, and at the end of the day, I now had a plant without any place to put it on my condo.

So I was intrigued. Let's see if I can keep this plant alive, I thought. I mean, water once a week and leave it alone. Shouldn't be too hard, should it?

So I found a place on top of my souvenirs shelf that received a good amount of sunlight throughout the day, and left the plant there. I would water it once a week as instructed. After some time, I saw one of the leaves wither, but the rest seemed to be fine, and even seemed to be growing. This isn't so bad, I thought. It was actually nice to come home and check on the plant.

Then I saw another workshop by the same BCCB group. They were having a lau workshop. Lau, also known as bottle gourd, or kaddu. Now which Bengali doesn't like bottle gourd? And once again, seeds would be given out free, along with soil and pots.

Can I do this, I thought? I mean, for this I would need a proper garden, eventually. That's what my parents' place was for. So this time both my wife and I signed up for the workshop.

The workshop was certainly interesting. We even learned about plant sex! If we ever meet up in person, ask me about that story. But it was definitely enjoyable. I never realized I could sit and listen to an hour of someone talking about lau and be fascinated by it. So when we came home, we found a sunny spot beside one of our windows, put some boxes there and then out pots, and waited.

For some time, there was nothing. I looked every day, and waited. Suddenly, one evening my wife excitedly called me to the window. The baby plant had emerged!

The growth was soon very rapid. It was amazing to see just how fast this plant could grow from nothing. The way the seedlings turned into a plant reminded me of this verse of Allah.



"So observe the effects of the mercy of Allah - how He gives life to the earth after its lifelessness. Indeed, that [same one] will give life to the dead, and He is over all things competent." Quran, 30:50

The instructions were to keep the soil moist, but not wet or over drenched. We took care of that, and also made sure there was enough sunlight.

It was soon time to be planting them in the soil, but we had to take care of sudden dips in the temperature. Even in May, we had a frost warning early in the month. The temperature during the day was good, but at nights it dipped rapidly. The instructions we got was to wait for Victoria Day or even the last weekend of May to plant these.

Yesterday I saw creeping vines come out of the plant. This was the sign that it is almost ready to planted into a garden, along with a supporting trellis. So that is my next project. Waiting for next weekend so I can plant them into my parents' garden, and then build a trellis for them.


I also bought a small mini rose plant (called a kordana rose). So that is the extent of my mini condo garden right now, all on top of a box by the window sill.

The plan now is to build a proper shelf by that window, and then start growing sprint onions and perhaps even some micro-greens.

Wish me luck this growing season!