Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

Elina had recently jumped ship on her accommodation again and this time moved to St Mark’s, which is located just behind the Eldon. In celebration, she invited me over for dinner. I was very much looking forward to trying herring casserole, but this was mainly due to the fact that at the time I was mixing herrings up with storks for some reason (herring, herring gull, stork maybe?) though when I found out it was just pork instead, I was equally contented.

The flat was charming, which I’m sure you’re all aware is a nice way of saying that it’s a shit hole. The tiny kitchen table suited the two of us very nicely but would have been a push to get four people round, as is traditional with any student kitchen, the gas stove spark didn’t work and to top it off the showers don’t seem to produce any hot water. Ah, student days.

After dinner we settled down in Elina’s room and watched Star Wreck, which is a Finnish film parodying Star Trek. It waas well worth a watch and the questionable production values only added to it’s charm. Much like the actual Star Trek it gives it’s audience something to aspire to (just in this case it was being Emperor, rather than that whole Utopian future nonsense 😉 ).

Fonze having missed most of his birthday meal, we headed down to The Elbow Room to shoot some pool.

What looked like a slightly disappointingly stocked bar when we first approached, turned out to actually offer a great selection and we were soon enjoying some Ketel One vodka. I’m not a fan of the American style pool tables as their ridiculous size pockets mean that it’s very demasculating every time you don’t pot anything and the white goes in on almost every shot.

However we struggled on none the less and having taken the first game I suggested Fonze and Elina have a game, after all we had the table for another forty minutes so that was plenty of time for them to play and still get plenty of other games in.

Turns out I was quite wrong about that ;). A fun night none the less though.

This evening has been rubbish. I got home, exhausted and haven’t really done anything. I’ve done a bit more work on some grant applications, answered some emails, done some more planning. But by 8:30 I was already giving up on being productive and went for a power nap.

I’m now fueling up on chocolate and Red Bull so I can get something done, but I wonder if there is just a better way.

For example, I always really enjoyed working nights at McDonald’s. There was actually something really satisfying about working twelve hours until 4am, then (after a quick picnic in the Tesco car park) heading home and just going to bed, knowing that you didn’t have to be up again at some irritatingly, and quite frankly painful, hour in the morning.

Of course, that isn’t really achievable in the real world because of the whole 9-5 office thing, even with the flexitime we have at work it still doesn’t grant me that kind of flexibility. But how about a whole different approach. What if we should shifted our day pattern to accommodate this?

So, let’s say that I sleep seven hours a night. I’m at work from approximately eight until six including travel time, so that takes up ten hours of my day. That gives me seven hours per day of free time. Instead of getting up at eight and going to work, I could get up at one in the morning, spend the morning doing productive stuff while I’m still in the mood for it, go to work at eight, which doesn’t matter how tired I am because it’s work so it’s inherently self-motivating (because it’s not voluntary so you don’t have to choose to do it, you just do it), come home at six and go to bed.

Of course there would be lots of problems with this strategy, notably that because society is geared to holding evening events, half the time I would need to be up when my new schedule says I should be asleep. It also means being awake in the middle of the night when it will be dark but then during winter it’s dark in an evening anyway.

The former I think it really an insurmountable problem in the long term, though I do think it would be fun to try for a fortnight. If nothing else, it would probably make an interesting YouTube documentary.

We recently headed down to Distrikt for Sunday lunch.

It is located just across the road from my apartment which is convenient though it is a bit of dive inside. It’s nicely done out, but it is underground and that comes with inherent implications as well as it being like a sauna.

The bar itself had an excellent range of drinks including several flavours of Belvedere and 42 Below which are some of my favourite vodkas. The food itself was very nice. They do their beef really rare, which I don’t mind, but put some people off a little.

The bar staff were a little surly at first but I think they had just been having a hard time as their kitchen wasn’t working for the first thirty minutes. Things lightened up however, after she heard my ring tone however and discussed whether you would peg me as a Rhianna fan or not 😀 .

Having a post-Wendy fry up for a second month in a row, definitely makes it a long standing tradition. Even Fonze stuck around for greasy goodness.

Continuing our theme at Buzz of mixing and matching between high-quality restaurants and all you can eat buffets, we followed the previous work social at Red Hot World Buffet with a trip to Piazza by Antony.

They had a reasonably well-stocked bar with a range of good vodkas and knowledgeable staff too. The barmaid suggested I followed my Kettle One up with a Belvedere Intense. Given I drink Belvedere at home, I thought it was worth a shot, and turned out to be an excellent recommendation.

Unfortunately, the rest of the night was rather disappointing. I began to feel really ill after having my starter (I don’t think there was anything wrong with the food as other people had the mussels and everyone else was fine) and ended up barely touching my main and heading home straight after the meal to get some sleep.

Last Sunday, myself, James and Elina headed down to Hope City Church.

Officially I think they come under the label of a “charismatic” church, which means they are hip, young and evangelical. They were founded twenty years ago by a mysterious figure that everyone refers to as Pastor Dave and has now spread to six different cities – one of which is in Africa.

Their new “Megacentre” is located in a former warehouse, which seems to be the trendy place to put a church these days and as we went in, we made or way to the brand new auditorium complete with an iMac controlled technical set-up, full band on stage and video link-up facilities so they can broadcast the news from across the Hope City Church family.

After the service, Joel very kindly sorted us out with tea and coffee (actually, I somewhat threw them when I asked if they had any cold drink) and we hung out in the “Impressions Cafe” on some very comfortable sofas. The biscuits were good but not quite up to the standard of York Rock Church which even had branded cups!

We came away with a welcome pack of goodies which included Hope City Church magazine, which was incredibly glossy and well printed, and featured a story on 20 years of Hope City Church. It was interesting to see that they had tried to start a number of satellite churches over the past two decades, some of which had worked out, others apparently hadn’t. It was interesting to see that they have become a success story – expanding into Frankfurt this November – by sheer force of will and not giving up. It may not be our cause, but it could certainly be good inspiration.

Having not really done much with my Saturday other than try and get some work done, I decided to ask George out on a romantic man-date (which also would have involved Norm, but he hadn’t been paid yet).

We ended up at the recently opened Brooklyn Bar at the bottom of Call Lane, as they had a restaurant upstairs which looked good. The bar was well stocked as well – anywhere which stocks 42 Below and Belvedere gets a big thumbs up in my book.

The steak was very nice, but not amazing. It was reasonably well cooked and good quality meat, but can’t stand up to the amazing flavours of Blackhouse or River Plate. Never the less, I wouldn’t have any hesitation in eating there again.

Last Saturday we hit up Wendy House for a good old fashioned night out. The theme was in disguise to which some people really put the effort in – notably Viv who managed to survive a night in that outfit without slowly cooking herself, which is no mean feat.

I hadn’t blogged about it until now as I was waiting on someone to post some photos. The ones below were posted by Kat, and I have to say how impressed I am that someone managed to get into so many photos taken with her own camera lol.

Sunday finally marked the arrival of George’s long awaited fry up. Given there were five of us in the apartment, we ended up having a bit of a family style breakfast round the table. These are the days kids, these are the days.