Author Archives: Grace

MatterBox

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Matterbox first appeared on the scene about February 2008 promising a “new way for companies to talk to [the public] by giving [away] real, physical items.” It worked on the basis of people signing up to participate. However, it was only about a year later that the first Matterbox actually got sent out and both Sandra and I still missed out on this box. The second Matterbox came out another year later or was it two and finally we got something out of the premise. It wasn’t a bad box to be honest containing such items as a mini Original Source shower gel, a new Cadbury chocolate, some mini books and a Lovefilm DVD cleaning cloth, but there were also some rubbish items such as recipes for cocktails, and an O2 sim pack (couldn’t understand this as you could get it from O2 direct.)

Today I received the next box and it was seriously a big waste of time and money. The Biggest Waste. Ever.

As Official Treat Provider of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games Cadbury have been running a series of events called Spots v Stripes to encourage the nation to be involved in all sorts of weird games. In aid of this Cadbury were the “sponsor” of the next box. The product of this box was this:

A Spots v Stripes pocketgame. Very disappointed not to even get a bar of chocolate with it. Seriously. The Biggest Waste. Ever.

And unbelievably someone even tried to ebay the item …

Jenny BBQ

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Jenny has had a pretty amazing year this year with a new job, a new engagement (!) and a new house (!!) And with her birthday just having gone by a couple of weeks ago today she was having a celebration barbeque at her new home … which was a very lengthy journey on the tube (all the way to the end of the central line) and then a taxi at the other end! Not that I minded – she, after all, has to make quite an effort to come in central to do stuff with me.

She’d been blessed with some pretty damn fine weather and, if she’d had a pool, it would have been perfect conditions to don our cossies! We had to settle for walking barefoot in the grass and lounging around in her fairly sizable backyard. She’d gone to sooo much effort with the food. I love that about Jenny – she just gets so excited about her food. And they had sooooo much meat. Sean was on the barbie all afternoon and into the early evening grilling stuff for everyone. Not sure how many people turned up as it was a mixture of Jenny’s and Sean’s friends but it had to have at least been 45 people if I had to guess at a minimum?

A fun day.

Jill leaving do

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I didn’t take proper photos at Jill’s leaving do tonight but I took enough to show that the Thames was very low today. Apparently it happens quite often when the tide goes out but I don’t think I’ve ever seen the water levels so low!

Jill’s leaving do was at this cute little pub/bar on the Thames. The weather was quite lovely so we took it out on to the terrace. She kindly bought everyone’s first drinks and also arranged for food platters and had even got her family to join us. It was good to meet them! Jill is such a sweet person – it was her leaving do but she’d gone and gotten me a card and a voucher for ticketmaster! So thoughtful! I’m definitely going to miss her.

Another BBQ at Caro and Nate’s

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Who said England doesn’t do summer! Okay, admittedly the weather has been sketchy this entire week but today it was rather brilliant … and perfect to enjoy Caro and Nathan’s barbeque feed outdoors. The food was especially delicious today, mostly to do with Caro’s skills in the kitchen, but in part it must have surely been something to do with eating it outdoors.

Gaspar certainly enjoyed his time outdoors running around picking herbs and then giving them to me! And Cesar also certainly didn’t mind having his feed outdoors. Yum!

We finished with some very decadent and rich cupcakes

Zoo Lates

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The concept behind Zoo Lates at the London Zoo is that the adults get to be free of the little kids to enjoy the Zoo in relative peace and quiet. Plus, with the temperatures being a bit cooler, in theory at least, the animals will be less lethargic and we would have more opportunity to see them. Throw in cocktails, market stall food and a silent disco and you can really party.

Tonight I met up with Su, Shahid and a bunch of Shahid’s friends and I was very amused to find that everyone was acting like a little kid! Nothing was holding anyone’s attention for very long and we were flitting around from one zoo enclosure to another as soon as something caught someone’s attention. Very ironic.

It was definitely a lot cooler in the evening and I was also looking forward to seeing the bed-time rituals of all the animals. I’d heard that one year people got to see a hippo having its teeth brushed! Unfortunately for us the animals were pretty quiet and in what seemed like a bed-time mood already. Well, the big headline animals such as the lions and tigers at any rate.

I had a sighting of a pygmy hippo, but not getting its teeth brushed 🙁

Have you ever sen a white echidna? These creatures were very odd looking!

At the zoo they also have a farm area that allows interaction with the animals including feeding. The llamas and alpacha were happy to see us. I was pleased to see they had anti-germ soap everywhere to wash your hands afterwards.

The most exciting animal sighting was the komodo dragon which was in the process of eating a whole live chicken. Greedy little thing tried to swallow the chicken whole and even after about 20 minutes it hadn’t made much progress on it. We left it to eat in peace.

We had a brief sighting of one gorilla but he wasn’t doing anything too thrilling and soon wandered off out of our sight.

Having had enough of animals the “kids” and I headed over to where the party was happening – the food stalls and the Silent Disco. I have to hand it to the London Zoo, they’d arrange a pretty good range of foods for our enjoyment ranging from American grill, to spit roasts, to falafels, to curries, to South African brai etc. It was very good. The only complaint some of the lines were very slow.

The Silent Disco was a must to work off our food and boy it was fun. The enclosure for the Silent Disco was pretty small so it soon got quickly crowded. The music was good and we had two channels to choose from. The DJ, however, had to keep telling us to keep the singing down as the Zoo animals were sleeping. Hmmm … at about 10 minutes before it was going to wrap up the heavens opened. We’d been lucky the rain had held off until then to be honest. Some people braved the rains but we took off and sought shelter at one of Gordon Ramsay’s gastropubs just down the road.

Overall I did enjoy Zoo Lates as a concept, it was good to be visiting the animals at a different time of day, and I enjoyed the food and Silent Disco.

Awana

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I’d gotten Su Yin a groupon voucher meal for two at Awana for her birthday as I’ve always been pretty happy with the food there and being Malaysian I thought she would enjoy it. She nicely took me as her plus one. We started with some (non) alcoholic cocktails before getting into the food proper.

The key dishes I like to enjoy at Awana is their satay, preferably chicken. Alas on the set menu was the beef satay! Okay it was pretty delicious being tender, juicy and with a hint of smokiness, but it was no chicken satay. Su Yin ordered what she thought would be a fresh prawn spring roll but it ended up being deep fried.

For mains it was more beef for me with the massaman curry and Su Yin opted for the lighter fish dish, which would have been my first choice except I’d had that before. For me the beef wasn’t quite as tender or juicy as I’d want it to be – I thought it would be fall apart tender and whilst it wasn’t tough, it was just a touch on the dry side.

Desserts were Pisang roti canai a sweetened crispy flat bread filled with banana in heavy milk served with chocolate and lemon grass ice cream and a guava cheesecake and banana ice cream. Both were quite good but I couldn’t really fit much of them in. I know. How odd. Maybe my drink had been much too creamy at the start.

A Doggy Birthday Present

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Sometimes it’s the simple things that amuse me … such as seeing the drug dogs in action. Today the dog bust was happening at South Kensington tube station. This is not a station that I would ordinarily associate with rampant drug use/carrying … but then again Notting Hill station doesn’t normally strike me as a station susceptible to such matters but they often have them there too and the dog once even picked me up!

Today I saw two dogs in their shifts whilst waiting for Su to arrive, the first was a white lab who was pretty uninterested in matters, though that could have been something to do with me catching it at the end of its shift, and then they brought this black lab in. He was sooo energetic, following everyone he could and jumping around from person to person … but oddly the three people he picked up all had the same style: Backpack, giant headphones (like DJ style) and male. So funny! It certainly made my birthday.