Category Archives: Going Out

Yogi’s Wedding

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A good friend at work Jon, or Yogi as he is apparently known!, got married today and held his reception at the beautiful The Royal Society of Arts on The Strand. Its actually a nice venue for somewhere that is in central London. It is also where the controversial picture of Queen Elizabeth II (with her head floating above a distorted body against a yellow background) is hung.

This wedding has been quite a few months in the making. I’ve been quite impressed at how involved Jon has been. Grooms have a traditional reputation of being as hands off as possible so to know how involved Jon has been in all the planning and decision-making I thought actually sounded quite romantic!

I’ve not been to an English wedding yet – my experiences at weddings are that you have a wedding to which everyone is invited to and then you go ahead and have a meal (whether it be sit down, or buffet style but still at tables etc.) But everyone kept telling me in England you have a wedding that not everyone goes to, then have a weddng meal and finally you have a reception which is normally canape style for everyone else. Strange.

Jon and Sara held their reception in the the sub-terranean vaults which, true to the website description, provided a well romantic candle-lit setting. We had loads of space to spread out and roam around and of course there was a fairly good sized dance floor to groove on.

But I’m getting ahead of myself!

Jenny and I arrived in time to drag the others away from the pub to the reception venue and to get there for the speeches. Jon gave a very moving speech as did Sara. I find it quite unusual for a bride to give a speech. The most touching aspect was that Jon was actually quite teary during her speech. So sweet! The best man gave a very funny speech too which I thought was also quite original in incorporating a Bulls Eye game.

After this it was time to move on to the food! The food was buffet style (not limitless) in that you walked up to a buffet style service area and you were served portions of the food. It was very delicious – the roast pork was perfectly cooked and the crackling on it – exactly right. The only difficulty with dinner was that there was limited seating (though I think that was part of the package to make it slightly cheaper.) Thoroughly enjoyed dinner. However what I think was most appreciated by all was a pretty much open bar. Wine and beer was free for most of the night. I fully expected it to run out quite early as everyone was hammering the bar but surprisingly it lasted most of the night.

Finally the dancing! Jon and Sara had the innovative idea of asking everyone for three songs to form part of a list from which they would select a final shortlist to play at the wedding. A good idea to get everyone up and dancing when their song choice came on. But Jon needn’t have worried – the dancefloor was surprisingly busy for most of the night (mainly by us! ha ha!)

A very good night was had by all (I think once again helped by the generous bar!) Festivities drew to a close at midnight with, surprisingly, most people hanging around until then. D, James B and I then attempted to go to the Casino in Leicester Square. Apart from the fact that my feet were killing me at this point (to the extent that for most of the night I didn’t even have my shoes on and when on I could walk about 5 steps in a minute) D was in no shape to be at the Casino and we were turned away! Quite an end to the night.

Even more photos here.

Gary and Caroline Leaving Do

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Yet another work do! This time for Gary and Caroline who are leaving the team and London but not the employer. Its kind of strange that they’re both leaving at the same time but made for a convenient joined leaving drinks. The venue: the Jugged Hare near Pimlico.

Actually its a very nice pub. The decor inside didn’t feel dated at all. I mean it was obviously a little old but it had worn down quite well. In fact I think the pub even used to be a bank. We also had an area upstairs all to ourselves so we were all able to have a seat. The atmosphere was nice and the service at the bar was efficient and friendly. The food offerings were interesting and of course the focus being on the “jugged hare” (a pie.) In fact I was impressed that they offerred a “pie-tasting” option which gave you a selection of pies to share for two.

Not one of the biggest nights we’ve had but an enjoyable night nevertheless.

Jon Engagement and Akhlaq Leaving Dos

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If there is one good thing that our team at work is good for its organising “dos”. Tonight’s celebrations were for Jon’s Engagement and Akhlaq’s Leaving.

For some of us the celebrations started off fairly early with some drinks at Woodin’s Shades just near Liverpool Street. A few of us managed to get there very early (as we’d been at training and training days hardly last until the traditional end of the day at 5.) And actually it was quite a strange feeling walking about and going to a pub at that time – it almost has that cutting class at school feel to it! After a few hours there we moved on to the main event at Gulshan Tandoori Restaurant. Unlike the last time we did curry near Liverpool street Gulshan was thankfully not too far a hike from the pub.

There were 18 of us going to the dinner at Gulshan and although we kind of had a room to ourselves the restaurant’s layout didn’t really lend itself easily to physically accommodating such a large group. We ended up split at two tables with 12 at one and six at the other. I thought the least they could do was split the tables 50:50.

Service at the restaurant was quite good as we all know its not easy managing a group of our size. In general our food and drinks managed to be delivered to the correct people – which is always a relief. The other plus was that there was no attempt to rush us out of the restaurant at any stage which makes a nice change. My only complaint in relation to the service was how slow they were to deliver our food once we’d ordered. We even started the speeches because we had no idea when the food would come and, as sod’s law would have it, the food came in the middle of Caroline’s speech for Jon.

Food-wise it was a relief to see that many of the curries are quite familiar yet it also had some variety for the more adventurous. Staff were pretty good at answering queries about the types of curries. Quality of food-wise the curries were pretty good – quite tasty and decent-sized portions. Hard to judge whether the curry was value for money because there was quite a lot of alcohol flowing at the table and even after paying for some of the bill with part of the drinks whip it was about £15 (for shared naans, a rice and one curry each) which seems still quite high.

Dinner was followed by a visit to yet another pub where some of the more hardy of us stayed until we got chucked out. I think a good night was has by all.

Walthamstow Doggies

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2008 is the year of gambling and the game of choice tonight was a night out at the dogs! I’ve been to a couple of horse race events but never managed to see the dogs so I was pretty excited about tonight’s event.

The Walthamstow Greyhound Racing Stadium is one of only two remaining greyhound tracks in London (there used to be 33) with the other one being in Wimbledon. The Stadium is located a fair way out in the east (beyond tube lines even) and with the Victoria line down after 10pm in the evenings I was quite pleased that at least 12 of us turned up for tonight’s event. There are various deals you can get at the track including tonight’s super special Track Pack which for £5 we got admission to the track (normally £5), a racecard, two free drinks and 2 x £1 tote bets.

So, how to pick a winner at the dogs? Well, the advice given to me was don’t pick a dog will less than four legs (it seems obvious but still … 🙂 ), don’t pick dogs in the middle of the track and pick dogs on form.

James, D, Caroline and Amelia Shona, Catherine, Wee James and Jon Jenny, Amelia, Me and Wee James

Well, given that advice you would think it would be easy to pick a winner. Not so! Picking a winner proved tough though it seemed that the dogs on the inside track (most particularly barrier No. 2) were taking the wins – but we didn’t know this until the end of the night. Wish I’d known that at the beginning! In the end I only ended up with one win, which was one win more than others it seemed (like Wee James who I don’t think won one race all night) but less than others (such as Donkey and Laurence who both seemed to have some measure of success.)

But the night wasn’t just about winning – it was seeing the dogs run like crazy animals around the track. When the race was on they turned the lights down in the area we were sitting in – guess this is to let us know that some sort of action was going on on the track. Unbelievably it wasn’t until about the second or third last race that we even realised where the finish was! 🙂

Seeing the greyhounds tonight actually gave me an appreciate for these fine animals. First of all they are much bigger than I thought and second of all they are much quicker than I thought. Quite amazingly quick. Before the start of each race they actually parade the dogs in front of you to give you a chance to sample the wares. Probably something we should have done from the beginning rather than for the last race … not that we would have known what to look for!

Overall I think most people had a fun night out tonight even if we weren’t all successful. Makes a nice change from just going to the pub for a pint at the very least.

Amy’s Girlie Day

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I’m the last person you would call girlie but sometimes you just need a day of well, just being a girl! Amy, someone I’ve known since I was about four years old, organised for a group of nearly 20 of us girls to attend what she refers to as her “top secret absolutely fabulous party” – this was basically a whole day for celebrating being a woman and filling our day with favourite things to spoil ourselves. So what did this involve? Well, she firstly organised a professional manicurist to come and paint our nails, then she arranged the most amazing high tea for lunch from the french cafe downstairs (which includes the yummiest and freshest panini sandwiches, cakes and pastries) and then she managed to come up with some interactive “games” for the afternoon (which were basically getting to know each other games and also talking about travel plans and allowing us to hook up with people with similar interests.) What impressed me most with her organisation was the level of detail that went into the organisation from the naming of the various rooms (“nail salon”, “bag room”, “shoe and coat room” and even a “waiting area” outside where she herded us whilst she changed the layout of the room), to the name tags, to the glasses with our names on it, to the tea cups with our names on it and finally to even organising for two of the girls to talk about their wide and varied travel experiences. I know it may sound a little cheesy but all these things, in combination with everyone’s good humour, really worked well.

By the time all of these festivities, so to speak, were completed it was actually dinner-time and even for that Amy had arranged a
special three-course tapas style meal at her local burger joint (Natural Burger Co & Grill) which she claims has London’s best burgers and a tiramisu to die for but our first stop before dinner was Abbey Road Studios where we all made our marks – can’t believe its taken me four years to do this little task!

Finally, after dinner the few of us who were still energetic enough headed back to Amy’s where we settled in to watch Juno on a special edition DVD (direct from the BAFTA!) It was a long day but a fun day!

Mecca Bingo!

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Bingo is not unique to the UK but for some reason its on my UK To Do List so finally I got Jenny to take me to a one of the bingo halls in London. Surprisingly it was actually difficult to find a centrally located one and Camden (or Shepherd’s Bush) seemed to be basically it. Well, for big well-known bingo halls anyway.

I was trying to get Jenny to explain the concept of bingo to me beforehand but I think I was getting more confused than anything and actually a bit anxious about embarrassing myself by calling out BINGO when I didn’t have the right numbers. I think I was even working myself into a nervous frenzy about making a call in the first place (though turns out I needn’t have worried too much anyway – no luck tonight!)

Jenny kept wondering why I was so excited about coming to bingo. She kept on going on about how the hall would be filled with grinners and no young ‘uns. To both our surprise there were actually quite a few young people about tonight. Of course you had the core group of older and professional people who were entertaining to me simply because they were so matter of fact about their calls and also at the general dissent in the crowd when our bingo caller made a mistake with the numbers (I think she did it about five times and I was thinking there would be a riot at one stage!)

The bingo hall was much larger than I imagined it to be and it was high tech too (well, you could go electronic with the bingo cards – though we stuck with the old fashioned paper and dabber.) Seats are quite cosy however but was comfy enough for the three of us to spread out. Other than the bingo cards that you buy at the start of the session between games you also had mini-games you could play based on the squares on your table. At a pound a pop these are the real money makers for the bingo hall. It doesn’t take much to convince yourself that its only a pound per game and you can easily lose track of how many you’ve played.

Overall Jenny, Pecan and I had a good time despite not winning. It was a fairly early night too finishing at just after 9 though we could have stayed around for the later session. Hard to remember that bingo is actually a form of gambling! 🙂

Kick and Kurry

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I think that without James the number of trainee events at work would take a huge dive. If you look behind ever trainee event I’m sure you’ll find that its James who is the instigator, whether he ends up organising it or not! So tonight he took on the task and arranged a Kick and Kurry night – a bit of table football at Bar Kick in Shoreditch followed by a bit of Curry near Brick Lane at a place called Tayyab.

A good time was had by all at Bar Kick and spirits were high, if slightly competitive on the table football. Fair to say I think the best player of the night was Emily who’s stunning spins of the rods inevitably followed with a goal scored. What I want to know is why every time she hit the ball it went in goal, whereas if I was even lucky enough to get near the ball it always went the wrong way!

We had a slight hiccup in the journey to Tayyab in that it ended up being MILES away from Bar Kick so we were almost 45 minutes late for our booking. Luckily we were offerred a table within 10 minutes – one of the pluses to the “service” in this restaurant. No doubt about it the food here is pretty good and great value for money however you will feel like you’re on a production line as you are seemingly rushed to place your order, eat your food and then presented with the bill. The service isn’t super friendly but it is I guess quite courteous and extremely efficient hence us finishing our meal within 45 minutes – not a bad feat for a group of 11 of us! Be warned the restaurant is noisy and crowded – and that was at 10pm!

Portobello Road Market

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I’ve just returned from the Portobello Road Markets and I’m happy to have survived the experience! I think I can count the number of times I’ve been to the markets on half a hand – which is a fairly sad comment considering I live about 5 minutes walk from its south end!

But as it was a brilliant day (how awesome is the weather lately!) I could hardly say no to accompanying Mirela and Enrique for a stroll down the markets.

I know why I can’t stand going to the market – its the tourists! Yes how ironic. Today we managed to walk all the way down to the end of the market covering the antiques (only around on Saturdays and seemingly the biggest drawcard), the fruit and vege stalls, the crafts, the second hand stalls etc. It was hard work but thankfully as we were there a little later in the day the return journey was a little bit easier with less crowd to wade through.

The fruit and vege stalls were actually really good with the produce looking very nice and at good prices. I know I should do more of my fresh food shopping there but just the thought of wading through the tourists stops me every time!

At The Casino At The Empire Leicester Square

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Its only recently (that is, in the last year or so) that I’ve really taken notice of the casinos in London. Unlike casinos in Australia, where any punter can place a bet at any stage without anything more than producing ID, in London it seems you have to join up as members first. Its a pretty straightforward process though I think some casinos require you to pay a fee and maybe have a waiting period. The Casino At The Empire at Leicester Square allows you to join for free and play immediately. I guess its something to do with trying to capture the tourist dollar.

Well tonight, for something a little different, D organised for a group of us to pay a visit. So, along with D, James, Catherine and Lawrence I went to check it out.

Dinner

Before gaming we all had dinner at one of the three restaurants inside the casino – FuLuShou which is a restaurant serving Asian fusion food. It has a pretty diverse food menu covering Chinese, Thai, Japanese, Malaysian, Vietnamese and Korean noodle and rice dishes and even offered a small range of dim sum dishes. Our food was very tasty and fairly decent sized portions (though not overly-generous.) Next time I want to go back for the desserts that sounded intriguing – Pandan ice cream with coconut glaze on honey sesame tuiles, Chilli Chocolate Spring Rolls with peanut and toffee sauce, Banana and sticky rice pudding with mango ice cream and biscotti and Lychee pannacotta. For £4 these seemed a bargain though I’m not sure what size portion you would get.

The restaurant is not very big with only about 10-15 tables I could see inside the restaurant with a few scattered outside. What it lacks in size it makes up for in the details – nice decor, good atmosphere and the booths are quite comfy, cool and intimate. The waitresses wore very nice (and sexy) cheong sums and were at all times friendly and efficient.

This restaurant was as definite surprise. I was expecting tacky over priced average food and instead I got fairly classy, value for money, decent tasting food. If there was one drawback it was that food came out in a Wagamam style manner – all at different times without about 10 minutes between the delivery of the first dish and the last.

The Casino

As I mentioned above to get into the casino you have to sign up to be a member but this is a straightforward process that involves you handing over your ID, getting your photo taken and then receiving your membership card. I was actually impressed by the casino though it was smaller than I’d imagined it to be. For those new to gaming they have practice tables but I’m not sure if its free because by the time I saw the tables they had shut down (11pm close.)

After dinner we headed out straight to the floor to check out the action. The main casino is on the ground floor where there are electronic gaming machines (slots, roulette, etc.) and then the tables for black jack, poker etc. There is also apparently a private poker room for World Series Poker tournaments and Learn to Play sessions.

The casino wasn’t as big as the two I’ve been to in Queensland Australia but it was enough to keep us entertained until about 3.30 in the morning though D (who had to catch a train home), James, Catherine and I had ceased gambling at about midnight. Lawrence kept going back at various times to dip his toe into the pool. The good thing about the casino is that when you’re not gambling there are plenty of spots to have a seat, have a drink or just take in the action and relax.

The tables are all handled by glamourous and ridiculously good looking dealers/mangers. My main game these days is blackjack where you get your own space to enjoy the casino. Games like roulette are just to manic for me with people being way too aggressive with their bets and with their physical space around the tables. Blackjack, though often surrounded by crowds, seems much more civilised. I think I was at my table for about three hours (and I must have sat through about three dealer changes) and D was performing well as a host by constantly bringing me drinks. I had a really good time as I had some good banter with the guys next to me – ironically I was sitting next to a dude from Adelaide and his friend on my other side was from South Africa.

Oh, at 10pm, 12am and 2am four las-vegas-style dancers come out and do a bit of a dance on the stairs. It was a little cheesy and almost embarassing but I guess the loud music does its job of waking everyone up (if they needed it) and re-energising the room.

Overall I had a fantastic time at the Casino in very good company and in fact it made a nice change from the norm of going to a pub and just drinking. At the casino you get to have a drink, have somewhere nice to sit and then of course there is also the distraction of the gambling.

Pre-Chinese New Year celebrations at Princess Gardens

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With the Chinese New Year fast approaching there are plenty of celebrations going on to welcome in the new year. My childhood friend Amy’s yum-cha feast at Princess Gardens today marked the first of them. It turned out when we got to Princess Gardens that quite a few other groups had the same idea – to celebrate CNY early!

13 of us turned out for this feast – a mixture of Amy’s work friends, randoms, uni friends and childhood friends (that would be my bro and I.) For some 13 may not be a lucky number and in fact often in the really supersticious of chinese buildings floor 13 (and 14) will be missing! Knock on wood I’ve never had a problem with the number 13 so here’s hoping it bodes well for the new year.

This is only the second time I’ve been to Princess Gardens. Located just near Bond Street in a road perpendicular to Selfridges I’d say Princess Gardens is a hidden gem of London. Yes the dishes tend to be slightly pricier than what you’d find at the yum-cha places in chinatown but bearing in mind your surrounds and the extremely good quality of the food its not such a bad price to pay (and today the price tag didn’t even hurt that much coming out at only £14 each!) Surprisingly (surprising becuase I thought I’d sampled most yum-cha offerings before) I even tried out a few new dishes including Shredded Mooli Cakes (why haven’t I eaten these before – they are delish!), Cuttlefish Cheung Fung and a couple of desserts – honeyed deep friend lychee and some wierd donut dumpling thing with banana and red bean.

A good feast was had by all. We were having such a good time that a few of us even continued on with drinks first at Bonds (where strangely they were only showing the rugby and not the football) and then at some pub in Paddington. So what I thought would just be lunch turned out to be a 10 hour affair!