November '07

Bye Jared!

Jared's last day at work so we brought him a cake from Big L -- he requested something with strawberry and chocolate and we delivered -- a Strawberry Florentine.

Roisin Murphy at Koko

We met up with Adrian for dinner ... Asakusa was fully booked so we headed a few doors down to El Parador for dinner instead. They too, were fully booked, but they managed to squeeze us in as long as we left by 8:20pm. Lucky they did, because El Parador was SCRUMPTIOUS. We ordered 9 tapas (which included red snapper, chicken liver, scallops, baby squid, garlic chilli languistines, grilled lamb, mushrooms, beetroot and lentils), two helpings of bread and a whole jug of sangria between us. Bill before tips came up to around £75 between the three of us.

After that we wondered over to Koko ... and couldn't find a decent view of the stage :( (Note to self: must turn up early to bag a good spot at Koko next time)

Roisin

Finished my Manila blog at last!

Finally! Yes, it's been over a year ago ...

De/Vision and Mesh at Electric Ballroom

De/Vision

Mesh

De/Vision played all my favorite songs from their "N00B" album ... and I bought a n00b shirt as well!

Vegetarian buffet in Angel

Muffin was starvin' so we headed to Angel for curry.

When we got to Chapel Market, the place that we wented was CLOSED so we headed to another curry place across it ...

What a find! The Indian Vegetarian Bhelpoori House is the best value for money place we've eaten in London -- EVER. The food was pretty good -- they had three choices of rice (I had brown) to go with the various vegetarian curries ... my favorites were the chick pea and lentil curries. How much for this unlimited helpings of tasty vegetarian curry, you ask? £3.50!

w00t we have UK drivers licenses now!

We traded our gold NSW drivers license for a ugly pink UK drivers license, and they arrived in the mail today.

Mmm Char Kway Teow!

There was a tip-off that a good Char Quay Teow in the Food Garden Cafe in Selfridges (of all places!) which made enduring the mad bull-run down Oxford Street worth it!

Well, we had half a bull-run, because we cycled there (pretty easily too) and then stopped to pick up two Le Parfait jars to store our coffee beans in.

Camden Markets

Woke up after 1:30pm and after pissfarting about we walked to Camden Markets. It was really cold so we bought some Soya Chai to warm up. Then it started to rain ...

Grabbed a quick bite at a Vietnamese restaurant then headed to M&S to buy a chicken and wedges for dinner.

Wholefoods Market

I had been reminding Muffin about the lamb shanks at Wholefoods for a while now, so he really wanted to eat it by now.

We got two boxes of miscellaneous food from Wholefoods and then washed it down with coffee -- the coffee wasn't as good as I remembered! :(

I got REALLY nauseous on the bus on the way home and had to get out and walk home instead ... I guess eating 10 different types of food at once isn't so good for me :P

London Weather

Hmm don't think we'll be going outside ...

Wish I brought my furry Puss In Boots shoes over from Sydney ...

Off to the DVLA we go

We caught the overland to Wimbledon to send in our drivers license application. Had to show them our passport and trade in our current NSW drivers license, and fork out £49 each.

We had Maccas for lunch today -- I don't know why, but I keep buying the disgusting "special" burger all the time. Last time it was some gross Brie burger in Paris. Now it was the "Big and Tasty" with bacon. My heart almost stopped just remembering it ...

More errands

Woke up feeling crook so missed out on yum cha opportunity at Baker Street.

Muffin had a soup at Eat! and we met up with Adrian so I could use up his voucher at Waterstones (bought a book on Seattle). Got some char-siew-paus from Chinatown (because I didn't get to eat yum cha), some cakes from Kentish Town on the way home, and also managed to get our oven light from Sainsbury.

Muffin made some lumpy curry puffs for dinner.

Errands

Muffin had a few errands today ... so we cycled to Holborn to look for a hardware store (for replacement light bulbs for our stove top) ... but couldn't find anything ... Lunched at Eat! -- had a ham and brie baguette.

Had two coffees today and developed a headache later that night ...

Watched Death at a Funeral -- funny Brit movie by Frank Oz (Yoda!)

Introducing our new Gaggia!

Finally! After a whole day of false doorbell answering, our Gaggia bean to cup coffee machine arrived. There's no need for us to leave the house any more!

Our home office is complete!

After assembling the machine and briefly reading the instructions, we were sipping on our first cup of espresso. The apartment will be smelling nice from now on! (And I can probably get a job at Nero if times get tough)

Annual KFC Feast

It was around this time last year that we ate our last KFC, so we were due for our annual KFC eat.

We saw that there was a 10 piece bucket with 4 chips for £9.95. We asked them how much we could get the 10 pieces for WITHOUT the chips. £9.95, replied the Asian (i.e. Indian?) guy behind the counter. So we took the chips anyway ...

Between the 3 of us we couldn't even finish all of it. Our tolerance for crappy food must've really deteriorated!

Muffin and I now have 2008 calendars with pictures each other made from our drivers license photos. We got them for free since the guy at the shop tried to sell it to us for an extra £1.50 but we weren't interested ... We weren't allowed to smile in those photos :P

Camden Markets for food

Had a crepe with ham, garlic mushrooms and cheese while Muffin found goat curry from a different store. Had a nice cup of soy chai. And then went to Nero for coffee.

Shopping and Eating!

We needed to do some shopping, but didn't feel like fighting the crowds in Oxford Street -- so we headed to Covent Garden.

As we cycled there, we got there earlier than Vicky who used public transportation. We managed to get our coffees from Monmouth as well.

We grabbed lunch at World Food Cafe. The food wasn't entirely exciting, and not exactly VFM either.

We watched a bit of soccer from a TV in one of the shopping centers, then Adrian bought some shirts from Urban Outfitters.

Later that night, we met up with Adrian again for dinner in Tsunami before heading off for the Ash concert.