The peeps sure know how to throw a Sports Day event. I was impressed at the turn out, impressed with the equipment (thanks mainly to Andre!) and even more impressed that the turn out was fairly evenly split between the women and men … and no, the women were not on the sideline all night as this photo might suggest. Heh heh.

First event was the Egg and Spoon race. Impressively eggs were only dropped once or twice over the 20 metre run. However, I was laughing so hard I missed the finish!

Next up was the three-legged race. Tip: pair up with someone with the same length of leg! My partner was tiny and it felt like I was practically dragging her along. Still, somehow we didn’t come last 😉

Then it was the welly throw. If you have never thrown a welly you’ll never realise just how tough it is. Underarm throws win the day!

The wiffle ball was up next since everyone had warmed up with their welly. MUCH easier to throw!

Cheerleeders:

Then quite possibly the best event of the night, the obstacle course. Mega cool – it started with a maze you had to complete with your feet, then a crawl through a tunnel, a jump over a little hurdle and then a final sprint with a balloon between your legs. Hilarious.

I thought we should have finished with that but we still had a couple of more events. The long jump:

The sprint:

And a penalty shoot out.

Great defending by Andrew on this one.

Open-City, formerly Open House, events grow every year and are concerned with creating better places, better cities. I know them mostly for their work on Open House. This year I thought I’d check out their new event, Green Sky Thinking, a nearly week long programme highlighting new thoughts and solutions in incorporating sustainability in architecture. In addition to gaining access to buildings in the way Open House allows, the events also include talks by a number of architecture and design firms. I wanted to go to all of them! But unfortunately I could only narrow it down to one event as most of the sessions were during the working day.

The Angel Building, Islington, was completed in 2010 and cost £72 million to retrofit.

It used to be an ugly environmentally unfriendly 1980s commercial block that BT moved out of with 7 years left on the lease. After Derwent London were done with it 100,000 square feet had been added to the building (an increase of 73% net floor space) by building outward not upward, two roof top terraces, reduced energy consumption thanks to a number of innovative measure such as 6m glazed bays providing natural light, wrapping the existing concrete frame with a highly energy-efficient glazed skin (which also reduced the amount of demolition required), rainwater recovery (used to flush toilets saving 455,000 toilet flushes a year), installation of waterless urinals (saving 87,000 liters of water per year), and passenger lifts which recycle energy as they descend. Yes the lifts are a bit slow but they do use 50% less energy to power. Then there are all the technical things like biomass boilers etc. etc.

Add in some art. Add in communal meeting spaces, breakout areas, cafes and benches (so you can mingle with other tenants in the building rather than just being secluded to your own business.) Add in some trees. And you get quite a beautiful building inside and out that would just be a joy to come to work to.

Current tenants include Cancer Research UK (the first time they have all been in one building allowing them to save 20% on costs), Expedia and Sage.

The environmental/sustainability theme even trickled down to our afternoon tea which included muffins, carrot cake and “Green” tea (as in environment not just green tea …)

The architects were really inspirational. They really sounded like they were into the whole sustainability concept including having the belief that if they can’t walk to a site/building then they won’t buy it and they don’t consider themselves developers but refurbishers. The Angel Building was shortlisted for this year’s RIBA 2011 Stirling Prize. (Update: The prize this year was won by the Evelyn Grace Academy, London by Zaha Hadid Architects)

Day 02 of my OpenHouse 2012 itinerary featured three distinctive buildings, all located in a nearby neighbourhood of Kensington High Street.

First up was the interesting flat called The LuxPod. The LuxPod was near and dear to my heart simply because I couldn’t conceive that there might actually be a shoebox smaller than mine that someone could actually live in!

At 13 square metres (!) the LuxPod is a super clever and inspired studio. You’d never believe it but in that tiny space there is a fully functioning:
– living area,
– kitchen,
– bathroom (complete with underfloor heating and a heated mirror wall.)

You also of course have a place to sleep in the form of a double-bed and all the high-end gadgets you could ask for including a smashing speaker system with ipod/iphone dock, a flatscreen TV, electric curtains and a super-cool lighting system.

Yes, admittedly you need to be rather tidy and you need to be moving your furniture around a bit but the way the whole flat has been designed actually makes it all fairly easy to manage. Not surprisingly you need to reserve your spot to go and see this house on OpenHouse weekend (since it could probably fit at the most four or five people in the space.) However, if you want to check it out outside of OpenHouse weekend I’m sure proud owner Judith Abraham would be more than happy to show you around. She was incredibly friendly during our visit and definitely deserves to be proud of what she has achieved with the flat.

From new to old my second building for the day saw me strolling back up to and down Kensington High Street to the Former Commonwealth Institute and future Design Museum. The building has stood empty for nearly a decade but with money to invest the Design Museum plans to relocate here in 2014. The Commonwealth Institute used to house an exhibition celebrating the 54 nations of the Commonwealth. The building itself, with its radial design extending from a circulate platform located exactly at mid-point of the height and diameter of the building, is the symbolic centre of the world of the Commonwealth. The copper roof itself was specifically designed to allow harmonization with the greens of Holland Park and the tent-line exterior to blend with the soft treelines of the park.

A more creative photographer than me would have had an amazing time with all the interesting angles and shot possibilities in this empty space. Beautiful even if a work in progress.

Finally a quick stop at the Leighton House (Museum.) The centerpiece of the house was the entrance hall with a beautiful display of gorgeous Islamic tiles and this really set the tone for the rest of the house. Full of dark rich colours – I like how each of the chairs seated a pine cone. The garden or backyard really was lovely too. Shame no photos allowed inside … hence my short visit. Ha ha.

In the spirit of the painted Elephant I was very excited to find that City Hall was surrounded by a troop of painted gorillas! We were very lucky to be getting the 20 visiting gorillas – apparently part of a bigger troop of 60 gorillas the result of a collaboration between Wild in Art and the Bristol Zoo entitled Wow! Gorillas and they were certainly deserving of their Wow! Gorillas tag.

I got a bit excited when I first heard about the Quintessentially Epicure event. It promised the showcasing of the very best chefs in the world dropping names such as Marcus Wareing, Giorgio Locatelli, Australia’s own Brett Graham (from one of my favourite restaurants in London The Ledbury), Helen Darroze, Heinz Beck and Phil Howard … I immediately jumped on an offer (£55, normally £100!) for a standard ticket which I thought at least got me tastings from the above named chef’s restaurants. I would have liked to have splurged for the Chefs Demonstrations and Degustations but there was no way I would be able to afford the £500 price tag. Ouch.

The Quintessentially Epicure event was held at the Hurlingham Club – a private member’s club located near Putney Bridge. It was a lovely building and a pretty location for such an event. They even had peacocks running (okay strutting) around the car park. I think they were actually trying to check themselves out in the reflection of the cars …

Leading up to tonight, there had been scant information about the event so Su Yin and I didn’t really know what to expect. It turns out that rather disappointingly we didn’t get to eat from any of the named chefs! However, our entry ticket did at least give us six free “tasting” plates and a free glass of champagne:

Our Tasting Card		Tamarind
Quince		My Dining Room
Maze		Bennett
Babbo		Tattinger

Additionally, we were able to sample some other delights from such places as La Maison du Chocolat, Iberica, and most excitingly Pierre Herme who were incredibly generous with their samples – though to be fair about three of the delicious macarons was as much as we could handle!

The biggest “celeb” chef we saw was Silvena Rowe who was manning her Quince stand. Rather amusingly she had this bed/lounge thing nearby where she was often found relaxing at various stages of the night.

If I’d paid the full £100 for this event I would have felt quite ripped off, and even at £55 I felt slightly in the red … though some could argue it is comparable to the Taste London events where you pay nearly £20 entry and then on top of this pay additional for each tasting plate. Will I come back next year? I’m not convinced yet …

After some years here in the UK I’m finally officially a citizen. Its so amazing that they emphasise that you must be able to pass an English-speaking test in order to become a citizen yet one of the people in the ceremony today couldn’t understand a word of what was being said. All that she really had to do at the requisite time was state her name … and even with her 7 year old’s instruction (her daughter could actually speak perfect English) in their own language she still didn’t get it. Oh dear.

The ceremony was a bit nerve-wracking with the thought that I might trip as I was walking to get my certificate but thankfully I managed to avoid such a catastrophe. Thanks to Sandra and Julian for accompanying me to my ceremony!

Lynley works at BP so as one of the sponsors, her company is lucky enough to get first dibs to the London Prepares Series – which is basically a series of warm-up events testing out some events for the London Olympics. She was lucky to get some to today’s event: the FIVB Beach Volleyball International at Horseguard Parade. Best of all it was the Women’s finals events! Heh heh.

And what a gorgeous day we had for the event!

The London Olympic event is going to feature a 15,000 seat stadium – hard to imagine when today’s event featured a mere 1,500 seats! I really liked this event as we were able to get pretty close to the action, in fact, it turns out that half of winning team (Brazil’s Liliane Maestrini) must have had her parents in the stadium as upon their victory she came charging up in the stands next to us! She was really gracious too with all the cameras right in her face!

I used to play a lot of volleyball (indoor not beach) so could appreciate the sport for what it was but I’ve never seen beach volleyball played at an international level. Boy those girls were good. Yes, I did say on the interview with Clare Balding for BBC Two’s Olympic Countdown that it’s about the sexiness etc. of the sport but its also about the athleticism. They are so fast and quick and flexible.

It’s a shame Great Britain couldn’t bring home from their gold medal match – though they really played with heart.

And don’t forget there are the cheer girls …

Plus a musical performance by these two … can’t recall who they were though!

Celebrity sightings included the Rolling Stone’s Ronnie Woods and Sir Steve Redgrave (who presented the flowers to the teams in the medal ceremony.)

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.