Author Archives: Grace

Another Christmas catch-up and the Leicester Square Christmas Fair

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I met up with Rehana and Alli tonight for a bit of a catch up tonight at FuLuShou at the Empire Casino. Between Rehana now being a mother of two and Alli expecting we had a lot of baby talk tonight! But I still quite enjoyed hearing their various stories … not that it means I’m feeling clucky or anything of course. Ha ha.

FuLuShou was also hosting a few Christmas parties tonight and I managed to convince the waitress to give us one of the Christmas crackers to have at the end of our dinner. The crackers were a lot more sophisticated than the ones we’ve previously had at our Christmas lunches. The cracker was even wrapped in paper intertwined with felt. Very decadent.

Alli left at about ten but Rehana and I hung around a bit more having a bit of a catch up. We then headed for a walk around the Leicester Square Christmas Fair. Its not particularly huge but it certainly was attracting a fair (ha ha) number of customers. In particular the stalls where you win giant prizes were very popular. I was trying to convince Rehana to enter the basketball one but she couldn’t be convinced …

Bluebird Restaurant

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For our last meal as the current team Jenny and I decided we needed to find a nice venue for our Christmas lunch. Toptable and the credit crunch were more than happy to oblige in delivering to us the Bluebird Restaurant in Chelsea.

Bluebird Restaurant is quite a hike from any nearby tube stations so bus is the best option for getting to this restaurant (that is, unless you can afford a chauffer like many of the locals …)

We took advantage of the lunch deal on toptable (some set course meal) and it turned out to be very good value for money for the quality of the food that we got and even the portion sizes. I have a big appetite (as everyone knows!) and even I was full after the first two courses which consisted of a beautiful velvety and rich mushroom soup and perfectly cooked steak with side of fries. We were also served some delicious buns baked fresh on the premises to accompany the meal.

The restaurant itself is very attractive. The room is gorgeous with high ceilings (so feels particularly light and airy) and funky furniture. Sadly we weren’t lucky enough to see any celebs during our dining experience but apparently it is a frequent celeb hangout and I don’t blame them for coming to this lovely restaurant. Service was pretty good although strangely they were quite slow with pouring our wine. Wine was hidden away behind our booth in an ice bucket so we never knew how much was left.

Carvosso’s at 210 Chiswick

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I love how Christmas time means going out for a meal especially, when someone is leaving the team. Today Jenny and I had our last lunch together forever at work. Very sad to be losing her! We decided to head up to Chiswick to see what we could find. After checking out a couple of places, most of which were busy with Christmas parties, we stumbled upon Carvasso’s. For some reason we’ve never spotted this place when we’ve been looking for a lunch venue in Chiswick. Such a shame because it’s a great find (although the prices are a touch high for a regular weekly lunch.)

The bar has a nice warm atmosphere inside with lots of tan coloured wood throughout. Without feeling too crowded the venue was able to give an impression of coziness and privacy as it seemed to have lots of nooks and crannies everywhere. Apparently it has a courtyard out the back too which should be explored in the warmer weather.

The food was very good quality and filling and there was plenty on the a la carte menu that caught my attention. Service was attentive and responsive though they seemed happy to leave Jenny and I to gossip until we were ready to go.

During our meal I was also quite busy checking out what everyone else was having. I can’t wait to go back and try their pork belly which looked spectacular!

The Day The Earth Stood Still

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We were up in Milton Keynes overnight for work and after exploring the theatre district (by exploring I mean having dinner at TGIF as all the restaurant we found seemed to be chains!, playing a few arcade games in the Xtreme centre, and checking out the indoor ski slope) Jules and I weren’t left which much to do for the night so we decided to catch a flick. The Day The Earth Stood Still, starring Keanu Reeves, was it for the night.

I didn’t actually know what the movie was about but I think it is mostly an environmental message movie – a kind of warning for us that we are destroying the earth. It was a part action part science fiction type movie. This is the kind of movie that suits Keanu to a tee – he is required to deliver a basically emotionless, stoic character which requires no change in facial features and an enviable constant calm. So … he played this role perfectly!

Impact-wise the movie had lots of special effects etc., I especially liked the touch of including a giant robot with Cyclops style laser eyes which Jules and I found absolutely hilarious although I don’t think we were supposed to find that funny, and the special effects did prove effective but in the end I kind of thought “its not the worst movie I’ve even seen” and that “it was just okay.” Thoughts which were strangely echoed by those walking behind us when we walked out the cinema it seemed! This luke-warm reaction is probably not the kind of reaction movie-makers would like to hear about their movie.

Drug Search?!!

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On my way to the Westfield Shopping Centre tonight to carry out some peaceful Christmas shopping (peaceful in comparison to the manic Oxford Street) I noticed that there was quite the police presence at the station. I didn’t really think much of it except that I wanted to stop and play with the cute police dog (who reminded me of a ginger version of a neighbour’s dog called Mugsy – all floppy ears and bounding around with energy) but I wanted to get my shopping done with quickly. On the return journey there was another, even more cuter, police dog – a nice little black lab. My mistake was to make eye contact with the little cutey and make my usual cutesy dog come hither sounds and would you believe he/she sniffed me out and signalled me for a drugs search!

I noticed that the people whose job it was to herd me over to the searcher were a bit intense and, knowing I was not even the remotest bit guilty, I could help but feel like a bit of a crim! The woman who searched me was pretty cool though and made lots of funny jokes about it. Apparently, before me, she’d had the highest success rate of searches (over 50% of people she’d searched had drugs on them!) with everyone else having only 6-7% success rate. Its the first time that I’ve ever seen such a search at my station though the police woman said that they quite often targeted it because they knew that people went to … and she didn’t finish because someone else interrupted her! Darn!

Race of Champions 2008

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We so enjoyed the Race of Champions last year that James arranged for us to go again with a few more people along for the ride. It was a freezing cold day though and with both Pauline and Sandra still recovering from cold it was only the very strong-willed of us (D, and three of James’ friends and I) who stayed until the end. Ha ha.

Because of the rubbish weather leading up the event the track was very slippery and oily so the big event we were looking for: Chris Hoy on his bike versus Lewis Hamilton in his car (I don’t even know how that could possibly be competitive) was put off. We were very disappointed but I guess with two cars crashing, including professional drivers, within the first few races I could see why Chris Hoy was hesitant to get out there and race. In actual fact the oily wet track made the race much more exciting the last year with chances of a crash being very high!

The format wasn’t different from last year with the Race of Nations, followed by some tricks by the dude who spins cars and then tricks by the bmxers, followed by the Race of Champions. In between Lewis Hamilton also came around and did a few laps around the track in both of his cars including his F1 car. Those F1 cars sure are noisy!

I had a great time but I sure was glad to get back into the relative warmth of the tube. Despite the fact I enjoy the colder weather in England today was even a bit too cold for me and my toes! It took a while to defrost them that’s for sure.

North London Tavern

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We stopped in to the North London Tavern for a quick Sunday lunch before heading off to Wembley Stadium to see the Race of Champions so I didn’t have much time to absorb the true atmosphere.

It seemed like a beautiful pub though with high ceilings, warm dark wood everywhere and comfortable seats. Pauline complained that she could feel the vibration from the nearby train but I didn’t really notice it that much.

As we got there on opening for Sunday the staff was still getting their instructions from the manager. However they didn’t mind us placing our food orders though they didn’t seem to know how to put them through the registers! Staff were very friendly and they even kept us in the loop with the progress on our Sunday dinners (because they knew we had limited time to eat!)

Food was pretty good and obviously cooked fresh. Shame we didn’t have more time to relax.

Christmas party 2008

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Getting up this morning for our area team’s official Christmas party for the year was a little bit difficult. I could barely walk because my feet were still so sore from dancing last night after the London conference. The only consolation was that we didn’t have to meet until 10.30 where other teams were meeting for 8.30!

We started the day in a pub in Holborn with a very tough quiz! It was all done in good spirits though with the highest score being about a 50% correct answer rate we were certainly scratching our heads on many of the questions.

We then headed over to Boulevard Bar Brasserie for lunch. This was an exercise of controlled chaos with three big groups (our group along must have been greater than 30) having their Christmas party there. The pros with this restaurant were that they were very flexible. Whilst most other places at this time of year require confirmed numbers and meals pre-selected before sitting Boulevard Bar Brasserie were happy to flex our numbers and didn’t require us to pre-select meals. Though this worked well on the one hand (as it turned out numbers for us kept fluctuating as people went off sick etc.) it also worked to our disadvantage with delays in our meal coming out. Between our starters and mains there must have been at least an hour if not more to wait. In this time a good deal of wine was consumed as you can imagine as we waited for our food so probably the restaurant was happy. Service was pretty good considering how many of us were there. Food was fairly ordinary and my turkey seemed a tad dry and overcooked. Not gigantic portions so even after our desserts a number of us were still fairly peckish.

Overall not too bad for lunch for Christmas but at the price we paid I’ve experienced better. Because the restaurant was quite relaxed I must say that it’s the longest we’ve ever spent in a restaurant for a Christmas do. Normally they are keen to get you in and out but we must have easily spent four hours in there!!

Finally, we moved on to the Bier Bunker in Covent Garden for drinks. It was clear that other companies had the same idea as to even get into the place you needed to be checked off the list. They seem to relax that a bit later on but seemed fairly strict for a bar at 4pm but I guess it was a very busy time of year.

I left the beer buying to the boys. Bier Bunker is a microbrewery so has a wide variety of beers on tap. Space-wise it seems quite large with a third of the room dedicated to long (for sit-down) tables and the other parts to empty space surrounded by more couches. Strangely empty for most of the early evening it suddenly seemed to get very busy very suddenly with heaps of people on the dance floor. We eventually also headed out to the dance floor and by the end of the night I was lucky to be able to physically get home – me feet were sooooo sore I was tempted to crawl the last few hundred metres home!!

London Conference Makarena

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Every year at work we have a London conference which is really the only time that everyone, admin/audit/support, trainees/principle auditors/managers etc. in the London region is together. It ends up being quite a good day because even though the messages during the day tend to be quite dry the champagne open bar session at the end of the day makes it all much better (ha ha.) This year, being held this side of Christmas, it almost operated as a kind of quasi-Christmas get together too with many people partying on at the Camel afterwards including having a bit of a boogey.

We even had a makarena line going: