Les Miserables

Patrick Theatre, UK Life

Le MiserablesOn Wednesday my sister and I went to view probably the longest running (20 years!) musicals at West End, Les Miserables. We had fantastic centre tickets four rows from the front, giving us a perfectly clear view of the stage.

The theatre that hosts Les Miserables, The Queen’s Theatre, is aptly named because it is stunningly majestic. The two levels of circle seats as well as the stall seats are filled with chairs slightly offset from each other, giving people a better chance of viewing when they are unfortunately sitting behind tall people. I can say that the seats were extremely comfortable, though apparently not wide enough for some (the couple next to me seemed to overflow into my personal space, leaving me leaning to one side for most of the night). The intricately detailed ceiling is lit with a strange circular light, something that you really need to be there in person to fully appreciate.

Le MiserablesI had no idea what the story behind Les Miserables was about, but in short, it too was amazing. I can see the many reasons why it has been such a long running musical and won numerous awards. Between the story, cast, costumes, stage, lighting and orchestra, there was no one thing that I could really find much fault in. I think the stage transitions were probably the most impressive and powerful parts of this musical, with heavy use of the circular revolving floor allowing them to fade scenes in and out. One moment the audience is placed just outside some gates in one scene, and then suddenly, the audience is placed behind them, looking out. The sets that accompanied all the stage transitions were also just as stunning, really taking you to all the different places they depicted including a courtroom, a bar, the city at nighttime, the sewers, and a garden just to name a few. The cast were also just as impressive and obviously well rehearsed in all parts, and included a very professional young girl and boy playing children who would be no more than eight years old.

Les Miserables is one musical that may not suit all audiences as its story can be quite depressing, but I think people should still go to see it, at least just to appreciate how well a theatre production can be presented.

The Kua Rating: 9 out of 10

Much Better Indian at Mela

Patrick Restaurants, UK Life

Taking Rohan’s advice I ended up having a meal at Mela, an Indian restaurant just around the corner from the office. This place can be found walking up past the Oasis sports centre, and a little bit down along Shaftsbury Avenue towards Soho/Chinatown. On initial appearances, Mela comes across more like a Chinese restaurant, more so than an Indian one, with long sticks of meats hanging in the window. Like most other London restaurants, the tables are pretty close together, but have enough room to feel like you’re not sitting right next to other tables. The décor is bright and colourful and everyone in the restaurant was fortunate that night to be entertained by some musicians playing traditional Indian instruments live such as the Sitar. The service was excellent most of the time and the offerings of food are quite broad and different compared to most other Indian restaurants. More to the point, the quality of the food was excellent with strong flavours and lots of heat that was well soaked up by pilau rice and some fresh naan bread.

The servings seemed a little on the small side compared to many other places I had been to, with us having to order two naans and rice serves instead of just our normal single serves, but the quality of food made up for it. We were a little surprised that the total cost was as much as it was when the bill came up, so it is best surmised as something a little bit pricier for better quality than most other ones out there. It was a good dining experience and at least I know where a decent Indian restaurant is now.

Details: Mela
Found on: 152-156 Shaftesbury Avenue, London, WC2H 8HL
Contactable on: 020 7836 8635
Highlights: Excellent atmosphere and a wide selection of quality Indian foods. Service was attentive without being in your face for most of the night.
Room for improvement: Rice and naan serves seemed a little small for the price they were charging.
The Kua Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Another Great Thing About London

Patrick UK Life

In trying to organise our Christmas vacation, I’m visiting the Russian consulate to organise my Visa. I’m heading there tomorrow as it works out conveniently for myself and our client (it’s only open between 9am-noon) but I need a passport photo. Panic set in this afternoon as I had to print my digital photos and I got home rather late. Luckily enough, my local Boots was open (in fact, right up to 10pm and it took me less than a minute to print. Love it!

Evolving An Agile Architecture

Patrick Agile, Work Related

Last week I heard that the project I just rolled off was a huge success, both for our UK office (in terms of significant wins and growth), as well as the development team (for the freedom of both process and technology choices). When I started work on the project, I was working with Joe Walnes, and one of the project’s foundation principles was about making technology and process decisions that helped to reduce the build time (and therefore delivery time). I have been on, and heard about, many other projects that end up with several staged builds, leading to the average developer build of around an hour. When I left, we had a sub-minute build (including end to end testing) and a deployable application with a dependency on only Java 5 and Ant (but okay, it’s not a huge system yet).

I’m posting this entry so that somewhere I hope that someone learns something which they apply in optimising their own build (or even sharing their strategies) to make their projects even more agile. What follows is a list of some of the more significant decisions we made, and more importantly, why we made them. Read more “Evolving An Agile Architecture”