Month: February 2008

Unfinished business

Last week, I lamented not getting around to cooking ‘Greek salad, stuffed peppers, Mapo tofu or sausages in chilli tomato sauce’.

This week, I managed to make:

  • Greek salad
  • Mapo tofu with turkey mince, capsicum and mushroom, topped up with passata (sieved tomatoes)
  • Stir-fried broccoli and green capsicum with oyster sauce
  • Sausages and omlette of mushrooms, red capsicum and parsley

I’ve also insured myself against the risk of not having any food to eat. In the freezer, I have spinach curried rice, sausages, and pork dumplings. It’s a nice change from not having a freezer (and microwave) last year.

Extreme eye-contact

There are rules. In the Underground, it is not proper to make eye contact with people you don’t know. I use my ‘staring into space’ skills, honed after a few years of using Melbourne public transport.

Imagine my perturbation when one Monday night, while going down the stairs to my Tube platform, the man walking beside me turned around and made eye contact.

Eye contact is sometimes accidental. Despite our best efforts, accidents do happen. When they do, the correct response is to dart your eyes away. On this night, though, my fellow commuter held my gaze. I think he even smiled! I was forced to blink and gaze past him, then look the other way (a la ‘I was looking in your direction but not focusing on you specifically and now I’m going to naturally and without any concern swing my head to look elsewhere’).

When we reached the platform, I think he tried to re-engage eye contact. I shuffled quickly down the platform and lost him in the crowd.

Bulk buy

A few weeks ago, I discovered that since the Great Fire of London in 1666, Covent Garden (my favourite part of London) had been the most important wholesale food market in the UK. By the 1960s, Covent Garden was choked by gridlock due to lorries trying to get in and out of the market. So in 1974, the market was picked up and moved to south-west London.

From Wikipedia:

New Covent Garden Market is a wholesale fruit, vegetable and flower market, known as ‘London’s Larder’, located in Nine Elms between Vauxhall and Battersea, South West London. Covering a site of 56 acres (227,000 m²), it contains approximately 250 fruit, vegetable and flower companies.

The Market is run by a government agency, the Covent Garden Market Authority, set up in 1961 and charged with modernising and overseeing the administration of the vegetable market which was considered strategically important as a wholesale food and flower market, providing ingredients for London’s restaurants, schools, prisons, hospitals and other mass caterers.

I was very excited to read this because the New Covent Garden Market is within walking distance of my house. I sent an email to ask whether or not I could do my grocery shopping there.

I got a reply the next morning. The answer was essentially: ‘Only if you want to buy fruit and veg by the pallet-load’!

Overdosed on Soothers

‘Can I see some ID?’ the Sainsbury’s employee at the check out said to me.

‘Huh?’ I stopped my packing temporarily.

‘Do you have ID?’ The man waved a pack of blackcurrant Soothers at me. I wanted them for my sore throat.

‘Erm.’ I opened my wallet and flicked through my cards.

‘No, sorry. I have a university student card…?’

The man shook his head. A university card wasn’t ID.

The man behind me in the queue noticed what was going on. ‘What? You want ID for cough lollies? You must joking!’ he barked.

‘Do you have a driver’s licence?’ the check out person asked, looking uncomfortable.

‘I don’t drive,’ I said helplessly.

My fellow shopper laughed. ‘Is the till asking you to check for age?’

‘Yes,’ the check out man said.

‘Man, you are doing your job a bit too well, don’t you think? Can you see it in the news? Student overdosed on Soothers!’

Turning to me, the check out man asked, ‘How old are you?’

‘Um, twenty-five.’

The check out man nodded and swiped the lozenges through.

Well, I am glad that the debate had been whether or not people needed to be over 16 to buy Soothers. There had been no question that I could have passed for a high school kid. It seems that I have retained my youthful good looks.

Being a good underling

In my recent performance appraisal, my manager said that he valued the fact that he trust me to complete tasks without me demanding much of his time.

Whenever I have to make a decision on how to approach a job, I weigh up two options:

  1. Ask for direction from my manager
  2. Have a go

I lean heavily towards Option 2. If I have the faintest idea of what could be done, I will have a stab at putting something together in the hope of minimising fuss. I’ll also try to polish it up before taking to my manager(s) for a sense check. Often, good presentation can help people see the potential in the work. I’ve had some of my craziest ideas sail through review without comment because, when put into a professional format, it looks like the obvious approach to take.

Of course, sometimes I get things wrong and have to redo work. In the long run, though, I have found that the benefits of being brave and having a go are worth the risk of stuffing up occasionally.

Saving your boss time and fuss could be worth more than you think.

Past my bedtime on a Sunday night

Bad habits I’ve picked up

  • Salting food before tasting it
  • Chewing gum

I’m looking forward to dinner tomorrow. To celebrate coming out on top after some busy weeks, our team is having Mexican food at Covent Garden.

What I got done this weekend

  • Went to the gym twice
  • Booked accommodation for my upcoming trip to Germany
  • Cooked ‘quick meatball casserole’ from my favourite recipe book. Tonight’s dish plus ‘oven baked risotto’ takes me up to 14% of the 101 recipes.
  • Roasted herbed chicken and potatos (with paprika)
  • Did a mega grocery shop
  • Researched and bought an MP3 player
  • Cleared my inbox

Things I didn’t get done

  • Tidy my room
  • Make Greek salad, stuffed peppers, Mapo tofu or sausages in chilli tomato sauce (but I bought the ingredients)
  • Laundry and ironing
  • Getting my hair cut
  • Finish reading Guns, Germs and Steel
  • Process all the photos from my Chinese New Year weekend.

China in London

We had planned to have a good time on the Chinese New Year weekend in London. Damjan and I met up with Jon and Pey at Covent Garden on Saturday morning. Covent Garden is my favourite part of London. Only a few days ago, while watching the historical crime series City of Vice, I found out that Covent Garden was a seedy hotspot of brothels in the 1750s.

These days, it’s a centre for shopping, performing arts (the Royal Opera House borders the piazza) and street theatre. As Damjan likes to say, ‘It’s the only place where I’ve ever heard opera busking!’

Wikipedia says, ‘Today Covent Garden is the only part of London licensed for street entertainment with performers having to undertake auditions for the Market’s management and representatives of the performers’ union and signing up to timetabled slots.’

I do my hiphop dance lessons at Covent Garden. Damjan and I also have a favourite restaurant here called Food For Thought.

We took Pey and Jon around Covent Garden, then through Chinatown, which was gearing up for Sunday’s major Chinese New Year celebration. We then went to Trafalgar Square, which was also being tarted up for CNY. After popping into the National Gallery to see van Gough’s Sunflowers (I can’t see why this painting is so famous), we went to St James’s Park. The flag was flying over Buckingham Palace so the Queen was home.

Our London day tour ended with ice cream at Hyde Park and a home-cooked meal at my home.

The next day, Damjan and I took on 中国在伦敦 (China in London) celebrations in earnest, despite being warned about how crowded it would be. We started with lunch in Chinatown with Debra and John (Debra is a workmate of mine). For dessert, we bought opportunistically-overpriced Chinese pastries being sold on the main Chinatown drag.

Because shimmying through the CNY crowd was so tiring, we ducked into a French café, where I had my favourite French treat, mille fueille. It was the third one I have ever eaten (well, I’ve only ever eaten half of each so it was my 1.5th).

Rested, we battled through to Trafalgar Square, where we watched a rather strange Chinese/Western crossover band perform. After taking another break (in St James’s Park), we visited Hamley’s, the most famous toy store in London. It is six storeys of toys.

After dinner at Tuk Tuk in Soho (the present day red light district), Damjan and I ran to the station so that he could catch his train home.

Setting the tone for the weekend, we listened to this fellow play the Chinese pipes (if you’re reading, mum, what is this?) while waiting for Pey and Jon to arrive.

These street performers are very good at sucking in crowds. It’s always a ‘full house’.

Covent Garden is where the first Punch and Judy puppet show was performed, as recorded by the famous blogger diaryist, Samuel Pepys.

One of the gates to Chinatown. For a really big city, London has a disappointingly small Chinatown.

Here they are setting up Trafalgar Square for the party.

We wondered whether or not the lanterns get reused every year. I doubt it. Cathay Pacific probably had to pay a lot to sponsor the lanterns.

I feel a kinship with any woman in a high vis vest.

And here are the fruits of their labour — a packed out Trafalgar Square.

That’s Nelson’s Column. I believe it to be out of proportion to anything you might use as a reference in its surrounds. So it has to be said: Is someone compensating for something?

Going up

For two weeks, I had been trying to go to the bank. I needed to change my account and apply for a mini cash ISA (which is a high yield savings account with tax-free interest). I popped into the bank mid-afternoon on Monday and found myself in a queue.

‘Hi!’ a customer service person said. ‘What can we help you with today?’

‘I usually see Scott,’ I said, naming the customer manager who had opened my Gold account. ‘Is he available?’

‘Yes, he is. But there will be a fifteen to twenty minute wait.’

Certain that she was understating the waiting time, I said, ‘I’ll come back another time. When’s the least busiest time at the bank?’

‘Before 11 in the morning,’ was the reply. She added, ‘If you want to see Scott, you need to come in this week. He’s changing jobs. Friday’s his last day.’

I intended to go to get to the bank the following day but insane deadlines chained me to my desk all of Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

On Friday morning, as I dozed in the Tube carriage, I thought ‘Right. Today’s my last chance. I don’t want to go through the hassle of breaking in another bank person.’

I got off at my stop and headed to the lift. I was the first one in so I moved right down to the end. I was quickly surrounded by other commuters. Despite the crowd, travelling in a Tube station lift is the only guaranteed 45 seconds of silence you will get in the middle of London.

I was all ready to be silent when I looked to my right and jumped up with a start.

‘Scott!’ It was my account manager.

‘Hello!’ he said, obviously recognising me but not remembering my name.

‘Uh. I’m coming to see you this morning,’ I said.

‘Oh! Good. Well, it’s my last day, you know.’

‘Yes, I do, they told me. Congratulations on the new job.’

‘I’m very happy, yes, it’s a promotion. I’ll be closer to home, so I won’t need to take the Tube anymore, it’ll be just a 30 minute bus trip to work after today.’

‘That’s good…’ I murmured.

‘…And it’s more of a client management role, more responsbilities. I wasn’t keen on managing a team, I don’t want to deal with HR problems so this is perfect. It’s almost an extra £5000 a year, too.’

‘Wow, that’s worked out well, then…’

‘Yeah, I’ve been at my current branch for a quite a while now so it’s probably a good time to move on, it makes sense…’

We reached the ground floor. Our fellow silent lift travellers had probably been listening to the entire story of Scott’s career progress.

‘Great,’ I said. ‘I’ll probably see you later this morning!’

‘Bye!’

Going up (version 1)