Hmmm... As I ponder the above I realise that it's been one hell of a ride, and perhaps I'd better start at the beginning where I left you at my last post. So...that takes me back to last Saturday!
Saturday
I wake up and as predicted, the wind was howling, the rain was stottin off of the ground but off I go up to the Royal Mail sorting office to pick up three packages that had been delivered earlier on in the week.
For those of you that don't know. The Royal Mail Sorting Office.... it's one of the most protected and difficult to find places in Stoke Newington hidden behind a Jewish worshiping place. To get there, it's a journey on a bus up to Stamford Hill and you have to dodge the masses of Jewish people down the street
Who are all going to church or perhaps to one anothers house for tea?
Whatever the reason is, I finally make my way to the sorting office pick up the packages and jump on the bus homewards bound... although the hunger pangs kick in and I'm in desperate need of munchies so I hop off the bus a stop earlier to pop in the Bagel House
Yum!
And pick up a Hot Salt Beef Bagel, with a wee bit of mustard... and also a cream cheese bagel. But of course I had to dodge the old pensioner on his mobility scooter
Who had 'blinged' up his scooter with tinsel....
But he wizzed past me so fast, that I didn't get a chance to take a picture.
I ended up doing several double takes... a tinsel'd up Mobility Scooter in Stoke Newington?... I guess I've seen it all now. I return home, sort out the packages and munch down on my increadibly tastey bagels... sort out some mails, watch some telly, play some SL and have a relatively quiet day/evening. Just taking some time to recover from my close brush with death...aka... Tinsel Scooter. Beware pensioners!
Sunday
I'm up and ready and counting down the hours till Doctor Who comes on the telly... Yes I really am that excited, and can't wait for it to come on. Yes, I'm a big kid and totally love Doctor Who.
TheWaters of Mars
And I wasn't dissapointed! It was fantastic, and yes of course I'm going to say that. But bloody hell! What a finish... and what a teaser for the final episode on Christmas Day! But I have to wait until Christmas?!!... NUuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu. I don't want to wait! But there's bugger all I can do but wait.
So, with that excitment over. It's time to open up my island!
Yes, I own an island in Second Life. It's called Mayday Island...
Where lots of strange things happen....
But tonight was our offical OOC Opening party
Lots of old friends turned up and partied the night away, we had DJ's, music, dancing, games etc. Damn fine time
But eventually I tire, and head to bed. There's work in the morning.
Monday
And straight into meetings I go. Lots of them.
I was feeling kind of meeting'd out by 5pm and was wanting to go home. But I had Business Dinner to attend with Vilosh, who wanted to introduce me to my new Account Manager for his Company Information Edge.
We'd arranged to meet at the Mango Tree at 6:30pm, where I arrive on time and see that Vilosh is there with Melanie my new Account Manager.... and Tim. I hadn't seen or spoken to Tim, since I'd hung up the phone on him near a month a go. Tired of being messed around and ignored. Oh boy this was going to be akward. And it was. Were we a couple? Were we just friends? Were we friends even? Had we broken up? My mind was racing, and the last thing I wanted to do was make a scene.
I'm there for work. That's what I keep telling myself. I'm there to meet and greet my new account manager and keep up the good relations I have with the Company. They are afterall the ones that built my system and I need to keep that relationship good, because I need a lot of development on my system because of all the changes to the Treasury's COINS system for the Clear Line of Sight project.
So, I do the small talk over a few drinks and then we settle down for food.
And I have to say the food was quite nice.
Except for the chilli ice cream..... the desert, well.... was... 'interesting'. I don't think Thai restaraunts do good deserts. That was the strangest desert I'd ever attempted to eat. Ice cream with a chilli kick and cold sweet rice.
I didn't like it at all and had to leave it. It was disgusting! But of course, drinking the vast quantaties of wine helped wash the vile taste out of my mouth.
Tim and I talk over dinner.... well, when I say talk it's akward conversation at best, and there's only so much you can talk about in a public place with my software suppliers sitting opposite. But perhaps I'd had a bit too much to drink, because we leave the restaraunt and Tim comes back to mine.
Tuesday
We wake up and its sore head time.
Tim heads into his work, and I trek off to the opticans with a pounding headache and desperately trying to rehydrate, popping mints into my mouth so my breath doesn't get the optican drunk. I have the eye exam and it's discovered that I need stronger lenses... just as I thought, my eyes had been bugging me for a while now.. things were still blurry even with my glasses on! Just a sign of aging I guess.
So. Hungover, needing stronger lenses and now I have to choose frames. Never a good combination.
I finally settle on two pairs;
Chanel
and Dolce and Gabanna
Yup... I'm a fashionado!
And it's an expensive morning. Not only do I have to fork out on the frames... and also have to buy the lenses!! Are you ready for this?
£599
Yup... I've just spent near £600 pound on new glasses. Always a bad mistake to buy things when your hungover. It actually came to £722, but once I got a few discounts thrown in it brought it down to a more manageable amount. But still............... £600 on glasses.
I'm clearly in shock after spending £600 on glasses and near 2hours in the opticans so I find the nearest safe haven, that being the Slug and Lettuce just down from Oxford circus to grab some lunch;
and to recover from spending £600 on glasses.
I peck away at lunch, still clearly in shock... and quite hungover. Once that's dealt with, it's off for a wander down Regent Street, grab a paper and head to St James's Park to digest lunch and the shock of a £600 hole in my wallet before heading off to my meeting in HM Treasury to discuss a high level strategy for Management Information from the COINS replacement system.
3 hours of discussions and excercises....
And I'm still in shock over my glasses! And very, very tired. The hangover is a viscious one and after three hours of discussion all I want to do is go home and die slowly. But unfortunately I can't, because;
1. I need to catch up with Jim to discuss the COINS changes
2. I need to go back to the opticians to pick up my Chanel glasses
3. My friend Gordon, has flown down from Dundee to give a talk to the British Computing Society and wants me to meet him in his hotel around 8pm, for drinks in Londonium.
Sooooo.... not an early night for me then, and just when I desperately need one.
Off I go with the first task. I meet up with Jim and we weave our way past the crowded bars in Westminster that are stuffed full to the brim with Civil Servents till we find Sanctuary.... a pub that wasn't crowded... and it's also called the Sanctuary
We grab a pew and chew the fat, discussing various system things.
It's 7pm and I have to get to the opticans to pick up my glasses, so we say our goodbyes and I hop on a bus up Whitehall, Picadilly Circus, Regent Street till I finally arrive at the opticians to pick up the 1st pair of my glasses.
Bloody hell!
Everything is so crystal clear... I can see!! It's just amazing.... I had no idea how sharp everything was. Actually, I feel a bit sick with seeing everything so clear and sharp... it's a bit strange. These lenses will take a bit of getting used to.
So, glasses firmly on the face I head off to Gordon's hotel, the Radisson Mount Batten in Covent Garden.
Where I get a glass of wine, and wait in the bar for Gordon to turn up.. and he does, along with a couple of his other friends who were also in London... another 2 developers. Yay! It's a geek evening! And I guess I'm in charge of taking the boys out around London so off we go.
Bar Number 1 is Freuds, downstairs for a couple of beers
Bar Number 2 is Peter Parkers Rock n Roll Bar for another couple of beers and some guy stoned trying to play the Blues
- Then onto Bar number 3 - Garlic and Shots
- And finally, Gordon and I head back to his hotel... Margarita's in hand
Gordon decided to let it all hang out in the basement bar....
Till around 1am.......
Time to head off and pour myself into a cab and go to bed... SO, SO, SO need my bed. Desperately need my bed.
Wednesday
It's fair to say I 'survived' Wednesday..... I manage work (Only just!).. I pick up my other pair of D&G glasses from the opticians and head home.
Sleep for around 10hours.
Thursday
OMFG... I actually feel human.
I so needed that sleep and a quite night it would seem. I wake up feeling somewhat more of a member of the human race and head down to the Docklands. I've got a conference today at the Britannia Hotel just past Carnary Wharf about Central Government IT.
I liked a few of the speakers, they had interesting views and comments about IT projects, Shared Services and the Operational Efficency Program. Pretty aspirational aims... and I worry about the actual practicalities of delivering this, but I guess time will tell.
It got to about 3pm, and I think I'd just had enough by then. The other 3 speakers I wasn't really bothered about, their discussion topics didn't really do anything for me so I left the conference early and headed homewards, until I got to the Angel and decided to have a look at what was playing at the cinema. I fancied taking in a picture!
Oh that was such a mistake!
I saw 2012 The disaster movie to end all disaster movies.
Hmmmm.....
The acting left a lot to be desired. The parenting of the children left a lot to be desired. The whole concept about mutant neutrinos left a lot to be desired.
Good effects. Crap everything else.
I had a numb bum after over 2 hours of sickening wooden acting, and headed off home. Did a little SL, then it's off to bed.
Friday
Work was fairly uneventful.. thankfully no meetings today! Yay, I can actually get on with some work and I manage to plough through a lot of things and was pondering what to do for the evening.... ponder no more, Allison, Matthew and Andrew invited me out to the pub, and it turned out to be a bit of a pub crawl.
We started off at the Red Lion on Whitehall
Where Weng joined us for a couple.
And then we are off... well, some of us are. The boys decided to walk all the way up Whitehall, Charring Cross Road, right up to the top.
Allison and I thought better of that and hopped onto the No. 24 bus. It was a close call, Andrew was hot on our tails, but in the end we beat him and were first to arrive at the Intrepid Fox for a couple of more beers
And it's packed... loud rock/metal music pounding away... lots of body piercings, tattoo's, flesh and snogging. Reminds me of Foreigners and the Balcony Bar back home in Dundee when I was far younger :-) We sink a few beers and decide it's time to move on to another bar. So I take them the short 1 minute walk to Peter Parker's Rock n Roll bar where I was hoping there'd be Blues playing.
Uhm...
Well...
You see....
There was Blues playing on the music system and we enjoyed that, and then the bar started getting flooded with lots of Turks.
And the Blues music promtly stops..... so we prompty leave and by now, I'm kinda peckish so it's off to Garlic and Shots for some munchies and more drinks... Garlic enfused drinks.
And I have no idea what they were searching for on the phone....
But before we know it, the food is gone, the beer drank and it's near midnight... everyone shoots off to catch their last trains home and I flop onto the bus and head home
Yesterday
Urgh....
I woke up stinking of Garlic and have a rather sore head. Time for a long hot shower and I almost feel human but I can still smell Garlic... Bloody hell, how much garlic was in the food and drinks last night??!!
It's time to hop onto the bus, armed with a bottle of water and mints and it's down to Waterloo. Why am I going to Waterloo? Cause I'm going to Twickenham!
Yay me!
Vilosh wanted to take me to go see Engurlund vs the All Blacks.
The national anthems...
The famous Hakka!
And it was a good game to watch... Engurlund lost to the All Blacks! 6-19 was the final score.
So once that's finished we head back to the train station to head to Richmond, that was the plan anyway.... it's just that it's pouring torrential rain and the queues are MASSIVE... and I need to go pee.. oh god do I need to go pee.. those 2 pints are pressing hard on my bladder and it's pissing down with rain and I'm in a queue desperately trying to think of deserts and dry land.... and Vilosh is grinning cause he knows I'm desperate to pee.
Finally we get on the train (and it's rammed full), but it doesn't move... and my bladder is so needing to be emptied. There's an announcement... the brakes are jammed... Oh god... I'm soaked through to the bone and desperate to pee! Eventually the train moves, and thankfully it's only a 5 minute journey to Richmond and a quick dash across the platform to the toilets.
Oh thank fuck.... RELEASE!!
There are no words to describe the feeling of emptying a full bladder. Oh what relief!
Now, time to fill it up again. ;-)
We head to O'Neils just out of the station to catch the Scotland game.
Wow... wow oh fucking wow.
What a game! It was drama, tension, blood, fighting, brawn, muscle.... it was just amazing. The pub was full of kiwi's and they were all cheering on Scotland, because there was no way in hell they wanted Australia to win. And it came down to the last kick of the game 9-8 to Scotland, and the pub cheered! I was jumping up and down, yelling at the TV, hugging Vilosh. We won!... What a damn game. Amazing, and I have to say even better than the England game that I saw live just hours later.
This is turning out to be a damn good day :-)
And what was even more amazing, is that this is the first time I've ever been to Richmond, and the bloke next to me turns out to be Mike, who I worked with a few years ago when I was in the Treasury! What a small world!
Once the game finishes, Vilosh and I drink up and had finally dried out after getting soaked earlier.... and we decide to leave the pub, for me to get soaking wet again and find a curry house. Which happened to be packed full of Rugby fans but we manage to get a table and settle down to a truely tastey curry washed down with far too much wine and spend hours just talking... infact, talking for so long that by the time I'd checked the time it was well past midnight and I'd missed the last train back into London.
Shit!!!!!!
It's a looooong taxi ride home back to Stoke Newington, but I'm glad to finally get home, and it's sleeptime...well a little bit of SL, then sleep. But not before I check my mail and see that Sandrine had sent over a picture of me, Remi and Jay from when they came to visit London over the summer. Happy times :-)
Today
Ouch.
Not feeling so chipper today, a tad bit delicate one would say.
It's a restful day, a long lie... catch up on some TV I'd recorded, put a washing on... recover from the festivities of yesterday and watching Brian Cox's documentry on Jute & Dundee.
Time to hang the washing up and think about getting something to eat now that I can stomach it.
Till next time :-)
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