Almost end of 2012

Patrick Sport, Travel, UK Life

Looking back at this year, I’ve been pretty slack at blogging however it’s been rather busy. Since the last blog, I saw the Michael Jackson Cirque du Soleil courtesy of tickets purchased for me by my sister. It was a great show in the O2 centre, although there was definitely a lot more music dance, than the circus acts. As I say, it was definitely a more Soleil show than the Cirque and could have used a bit more balance. I think I also fit in a short weekend break to Dusseldorf where I met some friends and practiced a bit more of my German.

I also visited Turin again for the Salone de Gusto, the slow food festival that I went to four years ago. I went with the same Italian friends (and my American friend Ajit) that I went before and we had a fantastic weekend despite the heavy, wet weather. Lots of cheese, wine and meats were consumed along with plenty of espresso and just chilling out.

A quick trip to Berlin for a conference (although technically it was in Potsdam) and a fantastic Christmas meal at St John’s restaurant where we tucked into a very festive Christmas pig. One Christmas/farewell part at the newly opened ping-pong bar/restaurant called Bounce that also happens to be the place where the British invented the sport. We also had a company Christmas party that left me with a bit of a sore head on a Saturday.

50 years of Bond style

Patrick UK Life

In anticipation of the latest Bond movie, Skyfall, the Barbican has hosted an exhibition on the Bond series, focusing on the detail that goes behind the scenes in all of the Bond movies. I was able to take photos on the outside but unfortunately a whole army of employees prevent you from taking photos inside the exhibit where you see all of the details that go into the costumes, set design and props that get used in all of the films.

A lot of it is obviously very detailed in an attempt to be as true-to-life as possible. Short clips from the huge assortment of movies play at certain times, adding to the atmosphere and wonder of the Bond persona. Being an extremely popular event, each of the sessions were timed to stagger the entrance of people. I went for a late lunch session in the hope that I could turn up and buy a ticket (which I did) and it didn’t turn out to be so crowded.

The exhibition was split into three different areas – the first being the most comprehensive and where I spent the most detail. The second area was focusing on the villans of Bond which was pretty interesting to see the variety and the third, well underground representing the intricacies of shooting films in snowy regions and dubbed the “ice palace”.

Bond wouldn’t be Bond without his drink, and the Barbican was well into the whole theme by setting up a Martini bar. It offered the classic Bond drink as well as a number of other drinks. A really fun exhibit that I was glad to see.

Aeropressing

Patrick Food, Shopping, UK Life

Yes. I admit it. I’ve been weaning myself off the flat-whites. I have had no problems drinking espressos in the past, and I’m now heading towards just drinking long blacks. The good news is that my taste for coffee on its own is developing, the bad part is that I keep finding places that make just passable coffee with milk hiding burning, over extraction, or just being plain bad.

Fortunately I’ve now acquired an aeropress as well as hand-grinder on the recommendation of the folks from Prufrock coffee and I’m very happy with the results.

The aeropress is a pretty simple device. Lock a filter into place at the bottom, place over a cup, fill with some ground coffee and then pour over some hot (not boiling!) water before placing a plunger with a rubber seal before pushing down. The pressure creates an “espresso”-like but more watery coffee that is very easy to drink. And this is well before trying to play around with water temperature, the size of the grounds or the amount of water. I’ve tried both the coffees from Caravan and Square Mile coffee and both make coffee that is tasty and very easy to drink.

Now I have to ensure I don’t drink too much!

October

Patrick UK Life

I’m not doing very well at trying to keep this blog up to date this year. I guess that means that life has been pretty good then 😉

I’ll get around to writing about a few different things I’ve been up to.

September Already

Patrick Berlin, General, Travel, UK Life

I have no idea where the last couple of months have gone, but it’s been a very busy one. Life has been good with a project quite close to home, I thought I would have more time to blog, but I guess other things are getting in the way. Keeping fit has been a big part to this year, after travelling a lot last year and difficult keeping a proper routine, it’s been good to have a bit more of a regular schedule. I also managed to self-publish my own book at the start of August although the rest of August was busy preparing for the big Agile conference in Dallas.

In terms of personal stuff, I managed to make it to an Olympics event (yay!) – 10m quarter final women’s diving where we got to enjoy the Olympic stadium after work and the amazingly fun atmosphere. Although I didn’t win any tickets in the ballot, a good friend offered me one for the event that I took with no hesitation with the price point, timing and event matching up pretty well.

For the August bank holiday weekend, I spent the time in Berlin which was very fun to get back. I was less a tourist this time and spent a bit more time catching up with friends, revisiting old haunts and trying to practice my terrible (but much better) German on the poor Germans who would respond in kind. September is already here and I’m about to embark on a trip to China for a couple of weeks where the family will be visiting from Australia.

Sorry for not keeping up to date, but there’s a short summary of things going on. I’m sure I’ve missed plenty but life seems to get busier and busier!

Pot Luck Lunch

Patrick Food, UK Life

One of the greatest things about working in London is the sheer amount of diversity. You have so many people from so many corners of the world and we often get to work with people from all sorts of places. On my current project, for example, we have about twenty people on our immediate team, of which we have fifteen different nationalities. Pretty cool!

One of our team members decided to organise a pot luck lunch where, basically, everyone brings a dish in for lunch with the theme being something that represents the country that they’re from. As you can imagine, it was quite a diverse spread.

We had vietnamese spring rolls (fresh and fried) from Vietname, we had some Russian dumplings, Latvian pancakes, Indian curry, Indian basmati rice, English Fish and Chips, German potatoes with green sauce, and plenty of other things I can’t remember. And then we got on to the desserts including Pavlova (New Zealand), Tiramisu (Italy), Eton Mess (England) and Lamingtons (Aus)

We kicked the lunch off with everyone presenting their dishes, talking about their origins and, perhaps, how it might be typically eaten.

I prepared a duo of two things including Aussie mini meat pies with tomato sauce, and then followed up with lamingtons (which I’ve never made before). I have to say that I’d probably not be making them anytime soon as well because they took quite a lot of effort to make.

Euro2012 Cup

Patrick Sport, UK Life

Through June, Europe was buzzing with the Euro2012 football match. Although I’ll admit I’m not the biggest football fan, we had a betting pool at work in for fun, where we all put in £5. Given that it was a fairly large team the winning prize was a reasonable amount, but everyone would win some small prizes as a result.

For some odd reason, I ended up leading the pack most of the way, even though I didn’t really know much about the teams at the time. It also turned out that my betting on Germany winning the finals lost me plenty of points that would have guaranteed a clear victory after the quarter finals. As it turned out, I ended up tying (points wise) with another person, but still won out given that I picked more winners consistently throughout. Fun times!

Edible Cinema

Patrick Entertainment, Movies, UK Life

One of the greatest things about living in London are all the interesting events that people put on. One of the latest concepts, put together by the Soho House Group combined food and entertainment in the form called Edible Cinema. The concept sounded amazing – watch a movie and then at times throughout the movie, consume a morsel paired to go perfectly with the movie at hand. And what better movie choice other than the dark movie, Pan’s Labyrinth.

I was impressed by the thoughtfulness and playfulness of the pairings such as the impressive “oak smoked popcorn“, a wonderful starter to consume as the opening scene drives through a woodland forest and the car pauses for a short break. Other morsels came in for of clever liquids all made with some form of Bombay Sapphire Gin (sponsoring the event).

Here are the eight morsels (above) waiting to be strategically consumed and the menu (below) of what they are.

I love the concept of this sort of cinematic experience although I think it takes a lot of time, effort and talent to get the right pairings to go with the right moments. For instance, the pipette of a highly intense cocktail mix super strong worked well with the syringe scene but the lump of orange flavoured, pure sugar cube at the end was a bit too sickly to finish off with. I look forward to the next ventures and can only think that the original Ghostbusters might make the next great experience.