Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

Enjoying the long weekend, we headed over to Stick or Twist to enjoy Sunday Club – a traditional roast dinner in true Wetherspoon’s style (ie, with a beer). After leaving we went in search of an ice cream, only to find that none of the ice cream vans were to be found. What kind of lazy ice cream people can’t be bothered to work on Easter Sunday?

On Wednesday, after a long absence due to my attendance at Perspective Citywide, I headed over to York for the monthly meet up of York Brights.

Despite organisers’ Ewan and Gill being on holiday, the conversation was lively and engaging and ended up continuing long into the night – well, until gone 11pm, which is quite late when you get to my age and still have to drive back to Leeds that evening 😉 .

What would a post Wendy Sunday be without Fry Up Club? This month featured an extra special amount of pork, which is always a winning combination and a continuation of our tradition of screening Monty Python in the background, this month featuring The Holy Grail.

Most importantly, we finally got Viki to do some cleaning. Maybe there is hope for her after all.

Following on from our cocktail based adventures we hit Wendy House which turned into a bit of an old school reunion with Sarann joining us and Norm making it down in the end as well!

Again, thanks to Kat, who I have just stolen the photos from.

Having finally got my hands on a cocktail shaker (after so many times of being denied by Marko’s lack of stock) I decided to throw a bit of a cocktail party before Wendy House. After all, the last cocktail party we threw, ended very, very well 🙂 .

Thanks to Kat for the photos.

On Friday, myself, Si and Sarann headed into town to grab some dinner.

We ended up at Cafe Rouge in The Light, which was looking fairly empty for a Friday night – ideal for some good conversation. Service was a little disappointing given how few people were in there but the quite atmosphere was enjoyable.

The food was mediocre, I went with the Steak Rouge which was OK, but given there are so many great places to have steak in Leeds, it wasn’t any more enjoyable than say the £6 steak I had enjoyed at Wetherspoon’s the previous Tuesday.

Afterward, we headed over to Browns for a few rounds of cocktails. Apparently they will mix anything to your order but we didn’t put them to the challenge and rather opted just to work out way through their signature menu.

After a few rounds of cocktails and the wine I had had at dinner, I found myself leaving the bar somewhat intoxicated whereas Si, the supposed teetotaler until a year ago, didn’t seem to be feeling it. Maybe Si is a secret alcoholic after all?

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 😀 .