My great Monday's encounters were set in motion by the arrival of my long expected copy of the new Harry Potter book on Saturday morning. Unfortunately I didn't get long enough time over the weekend to finish the book and that's why I stayed up until 2am on the night from Sunday to Monday, when I was set to travel to my present work place in Leicester!

 

I woke up at 6am on Monday morning - you can imagine what I probably looked like after having slept only 4hrs - then grabbed my carry-on, a suite-bag and another bigger bag strapped over my shoulder with a squash racket sticking out of it in the front ... so once I looked like a Christmas tree, I set out to leave my flat and stroll over to the tube station ...

 

My first blunder came while I was getting off at St. Pancras where my carry on got stuck in the gate, which started the alarm and crazy blinking. Two members of the London Underground Staff appeared to resolve the issue and after each of them having had their intial go at the problem, they decided to open the box, turn of the gate, rescue my carry on and gave me a nasty look saying something like 'We hate you ...' (at best). This all happened during the peak of the peak hours of course!

 

Some 10 mins later I was on the way to get on the train. Having not prepared for a mass chase after free seats, I fell back into the tail of the crowd and while trying to keep at least an eye on my friends working their way far in front of me I've run over one lady's feet with my carry on. I tried to say sorry, but apparently too late - she was pissed off!!!

 

The things went a little better on the train - just one person tripped over my squash racket, but fell in the seat, so it was more funny than upsetting. However, once we set our foot on the platform in Leicester and I laid my carry on aside to shift my bag, the damn thing fell forward just when a lady was passing by - she tripped over it and almost smacked herself on the platform. Lucky me she didn't though ... This really got me distracted to the point that I again forgot to prepare my ticket at the exit gates of the station, blocked the whole crowd behind me while searching for it as well as holding up my friends ... then when I tried to chase them, my carry on AGAIN ran over feet of another person - this time it was a guy and he even appologised to me, which I more than appreciated giving the course of events so far ...

 

The rest of the day went ok - again one person slightly tripped over my squash racket early in the morning, which I easily fixed by pulling my back underneath my workdesk. On the way home though, since intensified again, when I was trying to leave the building through these very small revolving door as my squash racket got stuck in it and the door stopped and started shrieking again ... Fortunately no one was there by then, so I used the other door to get out. While I was waiting for my taxi though, the alarm didn't turn off and as people were slowly materializing from the building using just one of the two doors, they were all looking at this and thinking 'what bum must have done this' ....

 

.... I kept quiet!!!!

Monday morning I grabbed my carry on and travelled to my new assignment in Leicester. I met my new manager shortly before I got on the train, who happens to be from Venezuela, so we had lots to discuss during the one hour ride towards our destination - well, anything but work really ;o))) ... I still talk a lot about my trip to Central America and when people seem to be at least remotedly interested, I just cannot get myself to stop ... yeah, lucky if you hadn't had to listen to me yet ... just check the lengths of my blogs dedicated to this trip and you'll get the idea, lol ...

 

Anyway, interesting thing is that while I'll be on this project, I'll be staying in Marriott hotel  ... we have De Luxe rooms, breakfast included and yeah, I feel I'm totally taken care off ;o)) .... there's a budget I have for meals every day, and Marriott cooks have been doing a good job so far ... There's also a gym in the hotel, which I visited both Monday and Tuesday.

 

Another good thing about staying here in Leicester is that the project is full of Spanish colleagues, which gives me quite an extensive exposure to the language. Kind of what I really wished I would get one day ...

 

 

 

 

This weekend flew by so quickly! Now it's after midnight from Sunday to Monday and I'm still sitting here updating my blog ... though I'd better gone to sleep to be ready for my tomorrow's trip to Leicester where I'm due to start working on a new project.

 

Anyway, let's take a step back and revert back to Friday. First of all I'd managed to run my longest run in the open air - 7.5kms - with my iPod & Nike Plus appliance on measuring all the details. I was in fact aiming at 10K, but got simply lost in the small driveways of Island of the Dog (the Docklands peninsula) and made it back to my flat quicker than intended. Anyway, 7.5km worked fine for me. We'll see what can be done later on ...

 

In the evening I went to see the new Harry Potter movie, which turned out to be fairly good. Only the kids in the movie appear to be slightly older than what they should be - that's 15 years each, correct? - anyway, I've discussed this with my flatmate Tim and he believes that in reality the actors are just 1 year older than their movie characters. If so, then today's kids apparently look older than what I'd have thought ... if NOT though, then I was wondering what the last Harry Potter movie will be like, with let's say a 25 year old actor portraying a 17 year old lad ... well, we'll see in a few years ... By the way the last book is due to be released on Fri upcoming week and I've pre-ordered it at Amazon and cannot wait for it to show at my doorstep ....

 

On my way back from the cinema, I've encountered a homeless dude. He approached me, as they often do for some reason (not sure why me ...) and asked for money (the usual). I've found myself subconciously developing the bounce-off strategy of explaining that there's no cash I carry with me, only a debit card ... and so far it's been working as a good enough deterrent. They generally buy it and leave me alone. It's obvious I wouldn't hand them my card, right? So I recommend this trick to everyone, however posh it sounds when the message is conveyed.

 

Saturday has been a busy day too. First I met a Czech friend shortly after lunch time and went for a walk towards Millennium Dome. If you've seen my latest blogs, you must be getting an idea someone is wedded to the place ;o)) .. yeah, I do like it actually ... I got back home later Sat evening and arrange meeting with my flatmate Tim and our Greek buddies - Dinos & Nick (both Hamalis' ;o)). And so we did meet up at Piccadilly Circus shortly after 10 and headed for the bars. The first one we ended up in was Jewell and was really full of very cute ladies, so we gave their group a nickname - The Hotschool - there were simply so many of them that it looked like a beauty contest rehearsal ... Then we changed places and went to Strawberry Moon nearby Piccaddilly Circus. This bar was 'less' full of beautiful women, but music was funny - i.e. 80's and 90's. We got a bit shocked when they put on a beaty contest and pulled out really fat ladies out of the crowed. One of them, who was most overweight, put on quite a dance show, so the guys and I willingly voted for her as our favourite candidate for main price ;o)) ... Besides that not too much else happened until the end of the night and then it all came and I befriended one Canadian girl who happened to be a great dancer and was really nice to chat to ... And that completed our Saturday's mission ;o))) ...

 

Sunday was already well planned. My friend Clarence took care of it and called onto various people from our department at Accenture to form a music band. Honestly I firstly thought this would never materialize, but Clarence is a man of action and so he eventually did call these shots ;o)) ... and it was a great idea, let alone the BBQ Clarence also pulled together for us ... it was a great day, I had fabulous time at Clarence's house accompanied by his family and my friends from Accenture.

 

Sunday evening ended with a French movie called Moliere. And that's what I'd like to recommend to everyone. I have lately seen a few French movies and all of them happened to be great. This one on top was really funny in a very distinct way of mainland European humour. Just go and see it for yourself though!

 

 

Ok, so when I say Cake night, I necessarily don't mean an occassion where my buddies and I sit around and stuff our bellies straight out by cheese cakes or such. This Cake is an American band from Los Angeles, who found their way down to the IndigO2 arena recently open in the Millennium Dome at North Greenwich.

 

The tickets were in timely manner booked by Robert and since one of Clarence's bro couldn't make his way up there, I happily bought in. Not that I would be anyhow familiar with the band or their music. My very limitted knowledge was strictly constrained to their cover of I'll Survive sang by one Gloria Gaynor that by co-incidence according to some 'very reliable' internet sources happened to be a #1 disco hit in 1979 - that's actualy the year of my birth! Which also means that "the song is pretty old", is that what you're thinking about????

 

So, back to this Cake thing. We were supposed to meet up at 6pm. Yes, it didn't happen. I did meet with a buddy also called Daniel, so we formed this Daniel team waiting for others. Meanwhile Robert slipped through and accommodated himself in a Martini bar probably thinking the same as us - Daniel's - were thinking - Where the hell is everyone?

 

Modern technologies worked they wonders, we exchange texts and there I was sipping on a Martini (wasn't bad at all in fact!!!). Then we helped ourselves to another Guiness and conversed all the way to half seven, which sent a shock wave through my body as the concert was supposed to start at 7pm, right? Well, you could tell I haven't been to a gig for a lloooonnnngggg time ...

 

Clarence & his bro Franz showed up around that time too and we had to wait another half hour for the opening group - or better said the individual who started the gig - to begin. The guy sang well, his style of music fitted my liking, but still I successfully managed to forget his name. Nevermind.

 

Cake finally showed up around 9pm - it was about time I'd thought. I'd done my homework and listened to some of their stuff earlier that day, but still, it didn't help way too much I'd say. Robert seemed to be the only person around who knew some of the songs. Well, to be fair, I seemed to remember one (good man)!!! No one else knew their stuff anyway, so it was all cool. I've noticed the singer styled himself into the Fidel Castro fashion - that certainly caught my attention - but nothing about Cuba was mentioned during the gig, although I somehow felt sure it would come up ;o)) ...

 

I liked the concert. It was cool, people around were fun, no one was intimitely familiar with the songs, but who cares, right? I'm not currently thinking I'll madly run into the first Virgin store on a shopping spree for all Cake records they offer, but in the same time I'm more than happy to recommend the gig to anyone, who likes easy-listening music.

A few months ago I've made an abrupt decision that I could no longer accept my 'sit down' way of living and that matters would have to change. And so I started regularly working out and running itself has become an integral part of my exercise.

 

As I had already owned an iPod Nano for some time, the Nike Plus promotions definitely caught my attention. First I really wanted to see my improvement somewhere (either on paper or - being slightly geeky - even better on my laptop ;o)) and second I really wanted to know what distance I'm running when doing my outdoor track ... I kept measuring time, but had no basis to relate it to ...

 

Now, I don't want this to sound like a joint commercial of Apple and Nike, but yeah - I have for once became a happy consumer of commercial treats. Last Saturday I bought my Nike+ equipment, which consists of Nike+ shoes, an armband for my iPod and the electronic set to connect the mp3 player to the shoe.

 

The SW, which comes with it is really cool. A new section pops up on your iPod, then your iTunes fully integrates and downloads this data and eventually sends you off onto a Nike+ website, where you can finally provide all your customer info to Nike for free (which they would otherwise have to spend loads of money to extract) in exchange for quite a cool online app, which lets you monitor progress, compete with other people (I currently have no one to compete against, which sucks as I lllooovvvee competing with people and beat them especially ;o))) - just kidding, alright? - and there's also this Google app, which lets you draw your tracks and returns distance in return ... cool stuff, believe me ...

 

And the Nike+ shoes are sooo cool too ... maybe it's just me never believing in these commercial tricks and not bothering buying proper running shoes, but the ones I got are super light. I'm almost afraid that one day I'll go running barefoot and won't even know ;o)) ... Really, as I feel I can qualify as an expert now (I've done 10KM for reference ;o)), I strongly suggest that everyone invests money in proper running shoes before attempts running anywhere! I'd had my problems with my knees before and now I don't ... plus I'm faster 'cause the shoes are simply more convenient ... (damn, Nike should pay me for this ...) ...

 

And the sensor? How does it work actually? Well, I've found a few smart geek websites and they say that Apple is using these 'piezoelectric sensors', which of course I'd never heard about before, but they're allegedly known for low consumption and Apple uses them to measure the frequency of runners' steps and the time the foot spends on the ground to evaluate his / her pace ... Just FYI - on a 5km track the actual distance varied by less than 200m. I know it could be better (i.e. if GPS was used for instance), but unfortunately I chane my running style way too much during the session to make it more accurate even if I re-calibrated the device; which can also be done by the way!

 

Yeah, I'm now a happy customer of Nike. So far what I bought has been so comfy that I'll check Nike town next time I go by if there's anything else to buy, hehe ... ;o)) ...

My flatmate Tim and I decided to dedicate part of our Sunday afternoon to something healthier than sitting around and conducted a long-ish walk to the newly renovated Millenium Dome from all the way from our flat. It was a nice day after all, so spending it all within the limits of the walls of our flat seemed to be a bit of waste anyway ...

 

The findings we acquired on the way were a bit surprising. Unless I got it all wrong, the place should be a show  case for the 2012 Olympic Games, and I'm not sure if the city of London is seriously planning on overwhelming the worldwide audience by the amount of junk lying along the Thames river as it is at present. The path to the dome ranges from superb residential and quite posh areas to the industrial rusted low ones.

 

The dome itself has been renovated out of maybe two-thirds, so there's still quite a bit of work to be done. However, from what I'd seen 1.5 years ago, enough has been done already. Simply the place has potential. There's a huge multiplex cinema inside, two concert arenas - out of which the main one can allegedly hold up to 20,000 people!!! I was also quite impressed by the women-to-men ratio today, as there seem to be very good looking young ladies all over the place. The occurance was so apparent that I had to approach local staff enquiring whether there was anything happening tonight - yeah, and the answer explained the situation fairly easily - it was Justin Timberlake concert ;o))) ... these gigs apparently still attract quite a crowd of young ladies these days ;o))) ...

 

The Millenium Dome also offers Starbucks, so Tim and I helped ourselves to some coffee and then left for home, which happens to be just one stop away from this place. So one day in the future, if someone decides to build a few bars in the building, which I'd personally find more than suitable, I won't have to commute too far to attend such nights out !!!

 

I have never done any proper rowing before and yesterday was my first time ever to give it a go under very interesting circumstances ...

 

First of all the race has been organized by the Accenture diversity team, which I'm by no means a member of. Second I've been brought into the team representing Africa & Carribean - and simply I neither look African nor Carribean really, so my attendence did look slightly suspicious ;o)) ... My friend Clarence was the one who signed me up for it in the first place because our common friend Karen, who's an active member of the Diversity team, needed some people to fill up the boat. Then I was meant to meet another friend, so I ducked out, and then my friend got cancelled and another friend of ours claimed to know quite a few cool people doing dragon boats, so we reverted back to the 'rowing plan' ... in the end neither Karen nor our friend showed up, but Clarence and I still had loads of fun ...

 

I found the people great - our Afro-Carribean team had quite some team spirit! We took second (out of three) losing to the team of Asia / Pacific, which was unlike our team full of tiny ladies, but somehow capitalized on series of previous practices and better technique.

 

The evening ended up with a great dinner and a few presentations of various charities, which are active in the respective regions we represented. I found the whole thing very interesting and was happy to do something good for the better of the world ;o))) ...

This is going to be just a very short posting. Believe it or not, I have completed 10km run first time in my life. I have never run such a long track without stopping or significant slow downs ever before!!! My average speed was 11.1 km/h and the incline I set to myself brought me to 100m above the point I started at ...

 

The time at completion showed 53mins ...

 

For those of you who run regularly this is going to be probably an event not worth of any kind of mention, let alone such a show off I've presented above  ... but for me this is an importain break through in my amateurish sporting career, lol ...

 

Take care!

So the Boyz and I found ourselves having no plans for Saturday evening and so clubbing sounded like a good alternative to do-nothing ... multiple calls between myself, Dinos and Clarence set us up for a Brazilian bar called Guanabara located in Holborn, nearby Leicester Sq. I also managed to convince another buddy of mine - Patrick - to join us. Few more people were expected to show up, but somehow didn't, and with Patrick leaving shortly after we entered the bar, it pretty much went down to 4 attendants ... but yeah ... it was great fun!

 

The bar itself looks a bit like " ... a dump ..." should I use Clarence's way of putting it, but the women are very friendly, Mojitos cost 6GBP and music is really great - something what I thought was Brazilian rhythm songs with many drums being especially dominant and sexy dancers on the stage shaking their boddies ...

 

The battery in my camera unfortunately went off, so I didn't get a chance to take many pics, and what's worse is that we ended up with no pictures of our lady-friends who we met in the bar and with whom we danced quite a bit ... but at least you'll get a good picture of what Clarence, Dinos, Nick and myself looked like in action ;o)) ...

 

The bar closed at 2.30am, which was very sad due to the abundance of energy we all still had. There was not much else to do, so we left for the streets looking for a hamburger, but all fast-foods were surprisingly also closed at around 3am when we finally reached them. On the way to Leicester Sq we hired a ricksha, actually two of those as each can only carry up to 2 people. I took a ride with Clarence and our ricksha turned out to be a beast ... we beat Nick & Dinos by quite some distance on a fairly short track, which also cost us 5 quid ;o)) ...

 

The hamburgers were nowhere to be found, so I had no choice but give it another cultural experience of eating British late night stree hot-dog. Somehow it tasted better than first time I had one. At the very end of the night we also met 3 Swiss au-pairs, who wanted us to continue along to another club, but by then Clarence was ready to wrap it up and the rest of us were a bit tired too, so we loaded those three ladies into a cab with Dinos and Nick and sent all 5 of'em home while Clarence and I went off to catch our N50 - Docklands bus, which took us back home.

 

It was a great night, I had loads of fun and I'm sure another party like that is coming soon!