British International Motor Show

Posted on July 29, 2006 by Grace

My overall impression of the British International Motor Show was that a LOT of effort had clearly gone into it. Apparently returning to London for the first time in 30 years I guess those putting on the show wanted to make sure they got it right. The last time I went to ExCEL was for the Movie Comic Media Expo which in no way could be compared in either professionalism or size with the Motor Show.

The Motor Show actually took up the whole of ExCEL plus the area to the front and the back so it was a massive undertaking. But not so massive it seems that I still managed to run into Doyin from work! What a small small world.

I’ve never been to any sort of motor show so I have no idea how it compares to previous shows either for excitment, freshness or newness. I’m fairly sure that most manufacturers were there but I did notice a few that weren’t: Audi, Volkswagen and Subaru or if they were there I certainly didn’t see them.

We started off by heading to the outdoor areas where the Mini Coopers, BMWs and the swish Rolls Royce were on 1display. Like the adverts you may have seen for Mini Coopers where the Minis turn into all sorts of cool things, at the Show you could see a tractor, a shed and even a piano conversion. Pretty cool. Oh, they had even turned a Mini Cooper into an interactive Space Invaders game. Seeing the BMWs and the Rolls Royce were okay but to be honest not high on the excitement list. I guess I had to remind myself that the show wasn’t just for the cool cars but for serious buyers considering the new year offerings. Not being the hugest of car fans I guess a lot of the detail in the newer models of more ordinary cars was a little lost on me. Soon, Amy and I had lost Connie, Chris and Ross to the ordinary cars and headed off to find some more interesting cars. I was looking forward to seeing some of the hotter cars – and these were in the Super Car paddocks over on the North side of the centre – yep no ordinary car for me. Let me just say that the Ferraris were very very nice. 🙂

One of the other reasons for going to the Motor Show for me, other than the hot cars, was going to see the concept cars. I was expecting a lot more – but to be fair most manufacturers had at least one concept car on display. One of the newer and interesting cars was this wierd three-wheeled motor car which is taxed as a motorbike (for congestion charging purposes) but for which you need a car licence to drive.

Overall the Motor Show was quite impressive. The displays were very well set up (and so shiny) and quite professional. I’m fairly sure you could go test drive some cars though how that happened exactly I wasn’t too clear on. There was also entertainment (in the form of a half pipe where we saw some BMX and rollerblade tricks) and a musical show from Ford (though that was merely performing their theme song). For those not into cars there were a few gaming machines spread out across the centre and there was even an Ice Bar where they were serving complimentary slices of oranges. Not a bad way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

The rest of the photos are here.

Quiz Night – Work style

Posted on July 20, 2006 by Grace

The final in our work’s series of “sporting events” was quiz night. I know – yet another questionable sport. Nevertheless it was probably, in the end, the best possible competition to have chosen. The weather has been so stinkin’ hot lately that even the thought of doing any sort of physical activity outside would have been considered madness. Einsten yet again outdid herself preparing the majority of the thousands of questions (okay – 180 or so) to test our minds – unfortunately this meant we were a man down, or woman down, for the quiz and unfortunately this meant that many of the questions were quite challenging and random even! Still, I guess there needed to be some way to separate the teams.

I still can’t say that I’ve done an official pub quiz as even though we were technically in a pub (The Old Monk – which was nice but very expensive for drinks) I don’t think normal pub quizzes are run who wants to be a millionaire style – that is, with electronic handsets and laptops and projectors. It was quite cool admittedly and made compiling the results so much easier.

It was a good night overall with our team actually coming in second and even then missing out on first by only a whisker – probably one question separated us from zero and hero. I’m not sure how that impacted our overall standings but I think our standing is still tainted anyway from the debacle of the treasure hunt – not that I’m bitter or anything …

World Cup Final – A day of activity

Posted on July 9, 2006 by Grace

So, the day of the World Cup Final dawns and its a France v Italy final. Good for the French and Italians in London but not so exciting for the Brits. Still, its not everyday there is a World Cup Final so we made plans to meet and watch the match anyway. Clearly the pubs weren’t going to be overrun with English supporters so we had no worries about rocking up an hour or so before the match and still grabbing a seat. As a result we had the whole day to find something to do.

The weather was slightly on the dodgy side but we decided a bit of Pitch n Putt wouldn’t go astray. A quick search on google and we had a venue: Queen’s Park. I was surprised to find that Queen’s Park isn’t all that far from home and after about 40-45 minutes of walking (not walking all that fast either as I was on the phone most of the time so was a little distracted) I arrived at the tube station where I met up with Sir Jules and Einstein. The park itself was only a short walk away from the tub.

Having read that the park is about 30 acres I thought finding the Pitch n Putt was going to be a bit tricky but it was actually relatively straightforward. In fact, in combination with the tennis courts it takes up about maybe a quarter of the park so its fairly hard to miss. The course itself is 9 holes with the longest hole being about 80 yards – so not too big. They make it easy to “tee-off” as well as each hole starts on top of a platform and I’m sure that this also saves replacing a lot of grass. Pitch n Putt was great entertainment and its just a shame the course wasn’t a little longer or an 18 hole one as we got through it pretty quick smart – despite not being the greatest golfers – and luckily for the other golfers on the course I didn’t hook/slice the ball too much as usually happens. Scorecards are here.

We thought we were going to be hours out on the course but, due to a combination of our clearly superior skills (ha ha) and size of the actual Pitch n Putt, we ended up finishing in just about an hour and most of that time was waiting for the group in front of us to finish. As a result Einstein thought a bit of practice on the boulles would be good.

After looking for what we thought was a lawn bowl green – what we found instead was a square of dirt. Turns out we were playing Pétanque (ironically a French game) instead. Its kind of like lawn bowls except you sort of toss (instead of roll) metal balls like small shot puts (instead of a bowl) at a small wooden ball, which to my amusement is called a piglet, (instead of a white jack) trying to get as close as possible. Strange game though I’m not sure how long it would keep me entertained on a normal day – even today it kept our attention for, oh, about fifteen minutes. There must be something redeeming about it though as about 17 million people in France apparently play it, most notibly during their summer holidays.

Next stop – something to soothe the beasts in our bellies. Being a Sunday it was the perfect day for a Sunday roast dinner. Sir Jules had found a nice pub for us to try out near Marylebone but unfortunately it was a no food day. Can’t understand why but perhaps some pubs find it easier to serve drinks only on a day like today (being the World Cup Final) or perhaps no food was being served due to there not being that many people around. Still, their loss was another pub’s gain and we found a good pub with a really nice Beef Roast and two TVs to watch the Wimbledon Men’s Singles Final on. Surprisingly after our roast we still had a couple of hours to fill before the final started at seven so it was off for a bit of ten pin bowling at the Trocadero.

Coming out of Picadilly Circus it was clear that the French and Italians were definitely out to enjoy their day of glory. You couldn’t turn anywhere without seeing someone draped in the blue, white and red or the green, white and red and of course there was much singing and chanting. But back to the game later.

The bowling at the Trocadero was okay. The lanes seemed a bit shorter than I’m used to so as Einstein commented it seemed a lot easier to hit the strikes and spares. Well, easy for her to say since she (and Sir Jules) scored well into the 100s. I did get a spare or two I think but still a pretty dismal effort in the light of everyone else’s peformance. I will say something about the bowling at the Trocadero and its that they were playing fab music. Well, for the short period we were there at any rate. A quick stop at the 2p machines, of course, and then it was back to Marylebone to find a pub to watch the final in.

I’m not going to say much about the game itself because it was boooring. Except for that one moment that everyone’s talking about when Zidane head-butted that dude that had seemingly been giving him a nipple cripple. THE funniest moment in the football ever and I’m sure a moment that will be replayed over and over. Yes Italy went on to win the game on penalties and yes, my neighbourhood was celebrating into the wee hours of the morning (much car-honking and I think it was Bolero or something played REALLY REALLY loud.) I was disappointed to see them win but then again at least we Aussies can now say we were beat by the World Cup Champs.

Wimbledon 2006

Posted on July 1, 2006 by Grace

Unbelievably it has been over a year since my last visit to Wimbledon. This time around though Pepe was lucky enough to actually win tickets in the ballot (the second time in three years) and even more luckily enough I got to go with him on this middle Saturday known as People’s day. I must admit it was a nice feeling to swoop by all of those people lining up to get on to the grounds and walk straight through the gates with our tickets. We got there some time after 11 and even though the grounds had opened up only at 10.30 pretty much all the non-reserved seatings had been taken and there were people everywhere.

Just like last year the weather was extremely pleasant if only a touch on the warm side. We had Court 1 tickets this year and although we were in the last row it actually turned out really well as we had the shade from the roof and the breeze from the area behind us so it was actually very comfortable. The matches weren’t all that exciting but I did get to see Amelie Mauresmo, this year’s No. 1 ladies seed, and this time I got to see Little Goran (Mario Ancic) in action instead of trying to see over peoples’ heads. Actually we first saw Amelie jogging past us as we walked to Wimbledon from Southfields. It was very amusing to see people turn around and point at her too late as she jogged by them. Actually I was just surprised that she decided to jog up on such a major stretch of road. We saw less tennis this year as to be honest as we were pretty comfortable in our seats but it was nice not to have to deal with the crowds.

At just before 4 o’clock many people actually left Wimbledon to go support England in their quarter-final match against Portugal. Not much to be said about that except I feel for the English going out the way they did. Much heartbreak which I can totally sympathise with. I also felt a bit sorry for the two players on the court at the time (Amelie against Aussie Nicole Pratt) as those still in their seats had their radios on and were alternately cheering and groaning as England lost the penalty shoot out. But back to the tennis – the first match we actually saw on court was Ivan Ljubičić (5) versus Dmitry Tursunov (27) and this match took ages. It probably didn’t help that part way through the match a lady up front collapsed and they had to halt play while she was treated and later taken from the court. It was nice to see that Ivan was doing all he could (providing drinks, ice etc.) to help out. Tursunov on the other hand chose to focus on reserving his energy. In the end Tursunov took the match in five long sets. Then it was Little Goran triumphing and then Amelie. Amelie is an AMAZING athlete – extremely fit she looked absolutely at home on the court and although Nicole did all she could unfortunately Amelie really was the superior player today.

In a wierd parallel to last year’s visit the tennis wasn’t completely over for the day (although Pepe and I were pretty worn out from sitting for seven hours. LOL) with some tennis still to be seen on Murray Fields or whatever they’re calling it these days with Andy Murray taking on Andy Roddick and although it would have been cool to go watch the match on the big screen I think the chances of finding a patch to sit on would have been nil.

Overall it was once again a great day. I wonder if I can make it three in a row next year ….


Ljubičić lending support	Little Goran ..	.. thanking the crowd

The ladies come on to court	Amelie	Nicole

What a game!

Posted on June 18, 2006 by Grace

I’m getting some grief from the Poms I work with who question the legitimacy of Australia’s claim to a spot in the World Cup (personally I think they’re just jealous that they don’t have Warney on their panel of pundits. Heh heh.) Yes admittedly football comes a distant fourth to the three other football codes in my country and yes we do call it soccer but given these limitations I reckon we play some pretty mean football. A number of the Australian squad play in England’s Premiership so we can’t be too awful. Today was a chance to show what we Aussies are made of and I’m glad to say we didn’t let ourselves down.

I’ve watched what feels like a ton of games in the last 9 or so days of the World Cup but today was the first chance I’ve had to watch the Aussies in action. (I missed the first because I was … ahem … working at the time.) Playing their second World Cup match in this year’s competition they had a pretty tough challenge ahead of them in Brazil. The match wasn’t actually on until 5 o’clock today but seeing as how patriotic Australians are the venue, Temple Walkabout, was guaranteed to be heaving very early on. It actually opened at 12 and that’s what time we decided to meet. It turned out to be a very good move because I’m fairly sure by 12.30 all available seating was taken and by 13.30 the Walkabout was pretty much full to the brim. Walkabouts have a pretty dodgy reputation as a bar but its a great venue for big sporting occasions like today. There a huge number of screens around the place and one giant screen at the back so I’m sure most people were okay with seeing the game.

So, we had about five hours until the match actually started and although there was an early match on, Japan v Croatia, it wasn’t the most interesting of matches and barely kept our attention. It probably didn’t help that the commentary was muted so although we could see the match its always more interesting having that commentary. So we had to entertain ourselves by reading magazines and watching adverts like the one on the right.

Finally it was Australia’s turn.

The build up to the match was pretty amazing with everyone really getting into full cheering gear. It must be noted that although the majority of the people in the bar were Aussies, there was also a small contingent of brave Brazillian supporters. It was great to see that as much as they were taunting us with all their insanely annoying whistling and braying and just general cheering, most of the people around them remained in good spirits and good natured.

Having been to two England matches I have observed some small differences in the two groups of supporters. Today’s crowd was definitely much louder than the crowd’s at either of the two England matches I’ve been to so far and it seems that the crowd today was just so into the match with face paints, tattoos and specially made shirts to show their commitment to our team. Not to mention cheering every single challenge and possession of the ball. Perhaps the difference is that our appearances so far in World Cups have been pretty rare so we have plenty to cheer. This is not to say that English supporters aren’t loud in their own right and just as passionate but in today’s crowd I just felt something a little special.

As for the game itself we did eventually go down to Brazil 2-0 but I don’t think the score really represents how the game really was. I don’t claim to know much about football but even I could see that Brazil are still not in top form and Australia really gave them a good go. Unfortunately we couldn’t capitalise on some great chances to score. Let’s just hope we can overcome the Croats later on this week to guarantee ourselves a spot in the second round.

Foo in the Park

Posted on June 17, 2006 by Grace

Was walking back home through Hyde Park and was met with the sight of revelers enjoying the Foo Fighters (although probably at the time I was walking through it was more likely to be one of their support acts: Motorhead, Queens of the Stonge Age or Angels & Airwaves.) The great thing about this concert (and let’s face it any concert held in a park) was that you don’t even actually have to be inside the fence to hear the live music. Courtesy of the giant screens you can even see the acts on stage. Fantastic.

World Cup Tuesday roundup

Posted on June 15, 2006 by Grace

There is nothing quite like being in an English pub when England are playing. Today we visited the Litten Tree for England’s 5 o’clock game against Trinidad and Tobago and it was heaving. We arrived there about an hour early but clearly, even on a working day and even though this was still only a knockout match, it wasn’t early enough to garner a comfortable position (I felt most sorry for Chicken who was absolutely surrounded by everyone’s bags so she could barely move at all.) It was actually amazing to see the absolute stream of people coming into the pub as, just when you thought there was no way for more people to fit, another stream of people would come through again. The pictures don’t capture just how ram-packed the place was. Pretty amazing and to be honest I’m just surprised that I wasn’t wearing any beer though there were definitely a couple of close calls.

As for the game itself, England did itself no favours for the first part of the match as they had plenty of opportunities but just couldn’t capitalise. It wasn’t until late in the game (something like after 80 minutes had been played) that Crouch finally scored followed by a beauty of a goal by Gerrard in extra time. I’m sure you could hear the roar from our pub from miles away. I was just relieved that England got away with a result in the end because I can just imagine how worked up the crowd would have got otherwise. The funniest moments during the game was whenever the camera found Rooney, whether he was warming up or just sitting on the bench, cries of “Rooney, Rooney” would surely follow.

Hunger won out eventually over watching the next match (Sweden v Paraguay) so off we headed to Nando’s and if this isn’t life’s full circle taking effect we ended up at The Elusive Camel yet again to watch the second half of the match. And this time we saw plenty of England shirts – the bouncer last Saturday must have been a newbie hence his eagerness to enforce the rules.

World Cup Saturday roundup

Posted on June 10, 2006 by Grace

Today England played their first game in the World Cup (against Paraguay) so, in true English tradition, a group of us went to go see it in a pub. It was kind of an interesting day (even if the football wasn’t always so) with three different pubs, three different experiences, two world cup games – all in all one very long day.

The (first) venue we tried was The Elusive Camel at Victoria, yes a sister in a chain of Camels as per the one we went to last week near Waterloo. It had apparently rated very highly as a venue for football watching and at first it seemed okay – having at least one nice big screen where we had prime watching position to see the game. Then it all went downhill from there with pricey drinks and food (for a pub) and then finding out, more importantly, that there was to be absolutely NO football jersey wearing allowed during a football game. What the?! On the day of England’s very first game in the World Cup and patrons are not allowed to wear their England jerseys? What an outrage. It was clear that we weren’t going to get much atmosphere at this pub for the game as all the English supporters, doing their patriotic duty in donning their jerseys, were simply walking out in protest. We decided to mount our own protest by going to find another pub. But unfortunately we made this decision too late for James and Jon who each went off to buy drab green t-shirts to wear instead … see pic above of the dashing due in green.

We ended up at The Litten Tree which is actually not too bad a venue. There are two large screens in separate areas and although the tables are a bit awkwardly set up we managed. As with many other pubs around Victoria The Litten Tree didn’t seem all that crowded. Either the weather was too fabulous on the outside (and it really was fab) or Victoria is too much of a commuter area to attract too many people during weekends. I think we’re actually planning on coming back to this pub on Thursday for England’s second match so it will be interesting to see how much more crowded it gets. I tried to instigate a Shot (of alochol)-Per-England-Goal for the game to make things interesting but unfortunately England failed to deliver much. Although they did get a result (a 1-0 as if you didn’t already know) it really was one of the more boring games of football I’ve seen (also considering the goal was an own-goal!) This is to be contrasted with the one we saw later between Sweden and Trinidad and Tobago at King’s Arms which I thought was infinitely more interesting even though it ended in a 0-0 draw (and no, it wasn’t purely due to the eye candy on display! The Swedes have AMAZing bone structure …) Strangely there also appeared to be a lot of Trinidad and Tobago supporters in the King’s Arms including the bar staff which added to the atmosphere. Not something I expected in an English pub that’s for sure.

One small nitpick about the King’s Arms. They obviously shopped at the same place for flag hangy thingies as the Stanhope Arms because to my annoyance once again there was no Australian flag to be seen in the bar! To be fair though, we weren’t the only ones to miss out with Angola, Ecuador, Ghana, Iran, Serbia and Montenegro, Togo and Tunisia also missing representation. And just for me here are the flags of the missing countries – nice and big so no one misses them. 🙂

The evening was rounded out with an Indian curry at a local curry house. Quality of food wasn’t the greatest but we had tons of fun entertaining the little kid at the table next to us with flags pilfered earlier (see pic to the right for Operating Take-Every-Flag.) She is going to be one huge England supporter when she gets older. Oh, and we scored some more pint glasses for the office. See the spoils of war here.

World Cup Mania

Posted on June 2, 2006 by Grace

As World Cup Mania descends in the UK, and the rest of the footballing/soccering world, it seemed like a great time to start one of our own competitions. I think it was Sir Jules’ idea first so I’ve called it Sir Jules’ World Cup Comp. I’m going to set up a page that will sort of monitor how the entrants are going (there are 18 of us) though I’ve yet to work out how to do this so the page is blank for now. There are no skills involved for this Cup as its more like a complex sweepstake (thank goodness because as readers know I have very limited knowledge of the sport though it is growing.) We each get four teams (one from each level of rankings) instead of just one team so all of us will have at least a sporting chance.

I think this is how the prizes will work out:

Team that wins the World Cup (and as there are 18 of us there will be two/three people with the same World Cup winning team so it will go by countback on how well the 2nd ranked team went and then the 3rd and then the 4th if it needs to go back that far. Prize will be split if it is still a tie.)
Best net goal position for all four teams.
Team who has the highest individual goal scorer (and again it will go back to who has the team with the second highest individual goal scorer and so forth until we have a result.)
Booby prize for worst net goal position for all four teams.

So, tonight we had the “draw” for the teams. Its all an excuse for a bit of a drink and laugh really. Its kind of ironic how the results fell out because apparently I ended up with nearly the perfect set of teams having drawn Brazil as my 1st ranked team, the Czech Rep as my 2nd, Serbia and Montenegro as my 3rd and the Ukraine as my 4th. We shall see I guess. This is the World Cup after all and anything could happen.

The night turned out to be quite a bit of fun. We were at The (Elusive) Camel and although the reviews for this place weren’t the best it ended up being okay – good position near the bar and we had seats all night. There is nothing I dislike more than having to stand up the whole night! Not the greatest thing for backs. Speaking of backs, at about 10pm these two girls walked into the bar and started walking around offering the customers something – turns out they were offering on the spot massages. Hmm … very wierd. At first everyone at our table laughed at the suggestion but apparently it caught Jonathan’s interest because he couldn’t help but look at the massage being given to a neighbouring customer. See pic to the right above. Eventually he succumbed and got one for himself! Its one of the wierdest massages I’ve ever seen with the masseuse using her face and forehead and just some generally strange things. Actually thinking back its a great time to hit people – when they’ve had a lot of drink and when they’ll agree to practically anything!

Hunt for Treasure

Posted on May 17, 2006 by Grace

It only seems like the other day that we had our most recent“sporting” event for work. Tonight was the fourth in the series of what is no doubt the most ill-named series ever, although after tonight’s experience I think I could put up an argument for legitimately suggesting a new sport for the Olympics – the Treasure Hunt. Ordinarily there is perhaps a little bit of urgency when you set out on a treasure hunt but going into tonight’s event I had no idea just how urgent it could get.

Our task was fairly simple – visit the following eight sites in London and take photos of the team at each site:

– The London Eye
– St Stephen’s Tower (Big Ben)
– The Eros
– The Duke of York
– The Royal Opera House
– The Edmond J. Safra Fountains
– Alison Lapper
– ITV Studios

Lead by Martin and Shahida, two people who were clearly on a mission, we were pretty good at getting around to all of the above in the most efficient manner possible. In fact, efficient wasn’t probably the word – manic is closer to the real thing. I’m fairly sure at some stage I was practically running to keep up with the pace those two set – hence the argument that the new Olympic sport should be the Treasure Hunt. 🙂 Not that I begrudge the pace too much as it was a good work out in the end (over 10,000 steps from the 2 hours out on the Hunt alone.)

As a side note I noticed something really funny when I was browsing through the photos today: Whilst most people in the team managed to be looking into the camera or at least in the general direction of it, there was one person in particular who either had the funniest expression on their face or found something much more interesting elsewhere. Click the photo above to check out who it is. Regular readers will definitely recognise him! Actually I’m not surprised that we weren’t all always looking into the photo as Shahida definitely did not muck around when taking the snaps. In fact she put her life on the line a number of times running across the road to make sure she got all the pics we needed.

Along the way you could also earn bonus points for completing tasks such as:
– Most intriguing picture with someone famous/senior figure of authority [Alan Rickman]
– Most unusual item acquired for free
– Most novel form of transportation used on the night [Rubbish lorry – gross!]
– Most unusual busker who lets you perform with them [The whole team juggling in Covent Garden]
– Biggest group photo with a bunch of randoms
– Most people from team picture in a telephone box [Not us clearly!]
– Most people from team picture in the middle of a working fountain [How could we not – we had the biggest team]
– Tallest view overlooking London [Photo from top of Millbank Tower]
– Taking photos of any embassy plaques, blue heritage plaques etc.

Oh, and no arrests please, loss of 99 points for that!

We managed to score for most people from team in the middle of a working fountain but I’m afraid for the rest we were either outfoxed or our cheeky attempt to win the category (for the telephone box we all put our hands inside the box but apparently this was not a legitimate method – we even had two attempts at it!) was disallowed. Items in brackets above are what I can remember as the winner for the category.


Sad attempt at “someone famous”	Our failed phone booth attempt (three others inside the black booth too)	Even this photo from the 18th floor wasn’t high enough	Shahida – the photographer

Though it was definitely entertaining to be out in Central London chasing all these sites and taking cooky photos (I’m sure the tourists thought we had lost it) all our effort in the end was for naught as even though we came second overall with our points, we received a penalty for taking the longest time to get back to the pub and dropped to 6th overall. How disappointing! Oh well, on to rounders. Hopefully we will fare better this time!

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