Archive for the ‘Friends’ Category

We were discussing earlier in the day how the idea of the alternative scene is that everyone is alternative – yet everyone dresses the same. I’m not sure I quite surprise to this – Alternative is more like a movement, like Postmodernism. But in any case, I decided it was time to embrace such ideas, and so I shunned the regular black outfits in favour of my bright red American Football jersey.

It was also great to see Mike from Bristol put in a guest appearance, as well as Norm and Maths Chris get their disco on, and we even finished the night with a very retro trip to Pizza Milano’s. Good times.

Earlier this month, George celebrated another anniversary of his birth.

We did so in style, by heading down to Stick or Twist for Curry Club to grab some dinner before everyone else arrived. Unfortunately, their freezers had broken down so we had a very limited selection of curries to choose from as they were actually having to cook things from fresh.

George received an excellent turn out with us constantly having to expand on more and more tables as people turned up. Unfortunately, some of George’s friends are from Leeds Met so our constant jokes about prime numbers were lost on them. One of them had only just turned 18 which made us all feel old though George explained that he hangs out with them because they are easy to mould at that age. We use the term mould because the term groom has become a political no-no.

I also managed to scare the bar staff. I ordered a dessert and they explained it was cheaper if I ordered it with a hot drink. So I said OK and asked if I could have a hot chocolate, but they explained it had to be tea or coffee and suggested a coffee with two shots in because it was quite chocolatey.

I agreed because it was a money saver and I could just give the coffee to someone else. After I got back, Norm and Phil headed to the bar and were joking about the fact I couldn’t have caffeine. Apparently, this panicked the barmaid who was quite concerned that I might not have realised just how much caffeine there was in the drink she served me :D.

Thought Bubble isn’t a comic convention. It’s a sequential art convention :D. I didn’t go or anything, but Si did, and afterwards, we went to Pizza Express. I keep ending up there, despite the fact I dislike pizza.

A few weeks ago, we headed to Sam’s Chop House for a meal while Kat was in Leeds. I had been there once before and had had a great experience, so I was looking forward to it.

Unfortunately, I didn’t feel they really delivered. The steak was good, but not great. It also took a really long time for it to turn up and though I was hoping they could recover with desert, that proved similarly disappointing.

Afterwards we headed over to Brown’s to enjoy their fine range of cocktails.

I’ve been blogging a lot about great losses to the world recently. Sir Jimmy Savile, Steve Jobs and the Space Shuttle program to name a few. Sadly, I must now blog about a loss I have personally experienced too.

Two and a half years ago, I left Open Door Design and started a new job at Buzz.

On my first day, I was given a seat on the first row of the office. The man sat next to me, a fellow University of Leeds graduate was named Jason. Little did we know, this was the start of a friendship that would define us both.

Over the next 30 months we would become part of the furniture at Buzz, always there on Row One as others would come and go. We would engineer Suit Day, come to dominate the office keepy uppy competition, achieve Pub Week and share many happy memories.

However, yesterday I worked my last day at my desk. On Monday, technical will be moving to the other side of the office, and Jason won’t be moving with us. Of course, we will always be Row One no matter where we are – but it will never be the same again.

With Si heading down south like a coward, we recently headed over to Little Tokyo for a meal.

Having asked for a knife and fork last time and been provided with kid’s chopsticks, I decided this time it was best to take my own, just in case. Luckily I ordered the steak and that comes with a knife and fork, so problem solved :D.

Last Friday, I headed out to Tiger Tiger for dinner with Si and Sarann. We were using Sarann’s Gourmet Society card to get ourselves some discount, but on turning up we found out they didn’t actually have our booking down and neither Si or Sarann had realised the restaurant was so integrated into the bar at Tiger Tiger, making it very noisy. So we left in search of somewhere we could hold a conversation.

Sarann was still determined to score some Gourmet Society discount, but the disadvantage is that you have to book in order to get it. No problem we thought, we can just book now. But we didn’t have a list of participating restaurants so we had to go online to find that.

No problem, Si had his iPad with him. Unfortunately, he had the wifi only version, so we needed to find a wifi hotspot. We couldn’t find one in the nearest area, but then he realised he could tether his iPad to his iPhone to get internet. So we sat on a bench on The Headrow googling for Gourmet Society approved restaurants on an iPad routing its internet through an iPhone in order to save ourselves a few pounds – nothing complicated there :D.

Eventually, we settled on Thai Edge, which consistently delivers good food and as luck would have it, they were fairly quiet so we got a table straight away.

The meal was enjoyable though when the time came to pay, the bill came to £43 and not having any change, we gave them £45. This disappeared and never came back with our change. Normally we wouldn’t have minded this, but given service was already included it seemed too much of a liberty for them to assume we didn’t want our £2 back. As it happens, we did, given the effort Sarann had gone to to save £2 using her Gourmet Society card lol.

Despite being like death on Wednesday, having been continuously plagued by illness this week, I decided that given I had gone to the trouble of arranging a trip to freshers’ week school disco, and paying for tickets, I was at least going to go for an hour before heading gome and getting to bed well before midnight.

So I headed out with George and Jonni for a few drinks (non-alcoholic in my case) before leaving them to party the night away. Ironically I could have just stayed out as I wasn’t getting to sleep until 6-7am at the time. At least I don’t feel too robbed of a good night now though.

I left my camera with George so he could take some pictures.

On Sunday, I headed over to the airport for a second time, to pick George and Viki up as they returned from Portugal. As they regaled me with tales on the drive home, I was disappointed to hear they had not had honorary steak on Wednesday to make up for missing Norm’s birthday but then Norm probably ate enough steak for the three of them anyway.

On the plus side, George did bring back a game of shots roulette – it’s a roulette wheel and a series of shot glasses placed round the outside, each one with a number on – depending on what number the ball lands on, depends on what shot you have to drink. Genius.

Never being one to conform, Josh decided to throw a house party, but not at his house where you would expect, but rather on Call Lane.

He was joined by Rebecca who was also throwing a house party of her own at the time but decided to leave that to come into town as well.

So we hit SoBe, which is apparently short for South Beach and despite the fact that you can see it from the window of my apartment, I’ve never actually been to. Or heard of. But apparently it has just renamed, and I had heard of its old name.

It was an OK place, your standard small trendy bar in the Call Lane area type place, drinks were what you would expect in the area and service was surprisingly snappy for a busy Saturday night bar – if only that could be said for so many of the other bars in the area.