I’m yet to blog about the year gone by, so I thought it’d be useful to reflect upon the year like many other people have. It’s been a very busy year and I’m surprised to see it go already. I’ve met many new people and had many great experiences and it will be interesting to see how the next year turns out.
Read on for even more detail… Read more “2006 – The Year in Review”
It’s quite normal for some of my post to go to the office since someone is always there to sign for things, but imagine my surprise this week when I walked in to find a small little package for me. I hadn’t ordered anything myself recently and I was so puzzled as to what was in it that I had to open it when I got home. Imagine my surprise when I found a nice Ciak journal. I’m almost at the end of my Moleskin one so it works out really well for me. This one is also great portable size too so whoever got it for me it’s most ideal.
Thanks to whoever sent it and I hope you will let me know soon. I really appreciate the gesture and I’m extremely keen to find out who it is. Please contact me (send an email to me on emailpat [at] thekua.com).
Earlier this week I finally managed to eat at Ran, a Korean restaurant I always walk past on the way to work but I had never had a chance to eat their yet. I’ve been intrigued in this place for a while namely because I haven’t had much Korean food in London yet and this restaurant has a large LCD facing the street cycling through all the delicious looking platters of food they serve. I made a booking for six of us and although two of the six were half an hour late I thankfully never felt hurried or rushed to order by the staff, even though tables seemed limited in number.
I like Korean food the most for the delicious charred food you get from the gas grill that sits in the middle of the table. All of the Korean restaurants I ate at back home had a very homey feel, with most of the grilled done by yourself. At Ran though, they go to the supreme effort of cooking all of it for you (with the gas grill still in the middle of the table) and then distributing it out amongst the diners. It is extremely demanding on the waiters and waitresses and they certainly deserve the 12.5% service for all the preparation they did for us.
We tried a great selection of many dishes including Korean pancakes, assorted tempura, assorted kim chi, gyoza, a variety of grilled meats and the Dolsot Bibimbap. It was a supreme feast and I think we were all surprised that even though collectively we’d all had some shoju, warm sake and some Korean beers, and service included it only ended up at £25 a head for such a fine meal.
Details: Ran
Found on: 58-59 Great Marlborough Street, London, W1F 7JY
Contactable on: 020 7434 1650
Highlights: Fantastic atmosphere, great service and great quality Korean food at decent prices. Booking over the Internet was extremely easy and a great all round experience.
Room for improvement: The chair and table arrangements make it hard for the waiters and waitresses to cook and serve food. They don’t open for lunch on weekends.
The Kua Rating: 8.5 out of 10
Even though it’s Christmas, I find it strange that they’ve turned Leicester Square into, what looks like, a sideshow alley, instead of something perhaps a little bit more relevant to the season such as a Christmas market.
(Ed: I admittedly took this picture last week with my new camera and I think it turned out rather well.)
I had my room packed up, my bills redirected, my flight booked, had someone almost moving into my flat and was already trying to get through the round of (short term) farewells, but contrary to my recent post, it looks like I’m staying in London for a bit longer. Earlier today I got the ominous phone call telling me that my current opportunity to be a trainer in India will not be available as planned for the start of next year.
To say I’m disappointed is quite understated but at least I will no longer be as anxious as I have been this last week building up to Christmas and I know an opportunity will open up sometime in the future. Better yet I’m glad that it’s been easy enough to cancel the cancellation request on my ISP (they rock!) and I still get to go on my skiing trip already booked and paid for next year. I apologise to all the people who I sincerely told that I was leaving London, and I thank all of you who contacted me to wish me the best.
The picture above are the characters for the Toaist principle, Wu-Wei, and I find relevant in dealing with the recent news
I really enjoyed the entry that Rachel wrote giving “Refactoring” a normal name that ordinary people could understand. I like her synonymous term, “Tidying Up”, because it’s a great metaphor for understanding how important it is to any project in the long term.
There are obvious immediate side effects to tidying anything up. Things are easier to find, easier to move about and much easier to change. People who inherit or work in this “tidied up space” can do everything at amazing speeds. It also means that things can get messy quick. Fast forward three weeks and with all the changes, suddenly the “tided up space” no longer looks very tidy. Clutter begins to build up in piles, you see people duplicating effort, and then you need to start moving things around to even begin finding anything important. The clutter is slowing you down.
It’s important to keep on top of “tidying up” because it maintains your ability to stay fast. It also means that people coming along after you can work almost as fast as you (it still takes them time to adjust to finding where things are and where they should go). More importantly, those people following you need to understand how important it is to keep “tidying up”.
Thanks to lildude for the ‘Messy Desk’ picture and chaosbit for the ‘Tidy Desk’ one (both from flickr).
The biggest news I have this week is that I’m going to be living in India for about 6 months starting from January. I’ll be taking on a new role with other instructors running training and induction classes for people that join Thoughtworks. I’m really looking forward to the experience and I have a lot of support from my work colleagues and sponsor. I hope the people I will be working with will be able to capitalise on all my experiences I’ve had working on the many projects I’ve been on, and I think I will be able to refine a lot of the techniques and approaches I use when coaching teams and pair programming with people. I will also get a huge kick of working with people that are genuinely interested in learning and sharing and like most projects I’ve been on they’ll no doubt be plenty of fun along the way.
It’s a big change for me once again after moving to the UK, but I do plan on returning to the UK after six months and going through the paces again to find another place to live in London. It’s an exciting time and though there’s plenty of stuff to fit into the week before Christmas, it’s going to be completely worth it.
Oxford Street normally has some interesting displays, especially the Selfridges building but at Christmas time, sometimes you think they go just a little over the top. They’re still impressive though.
