Popcorn and M&Ms

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Toodles, Canary Wharf!

From Thursday lunch and happy hour at the Wharf...until next time!!

Wonders of the Internet

Just as I was bemoaning what a tragedy it was that I did not get a photo of my new "friend" from Chinawhite...he found me on Facebook.

Honestly, how many intriguing European guys who find me on the Internet am I going to encounter in 2007?

Nevertheless, I felt obliged to share these photos, so you could see how cute he is!

So, for my last night in London, I was treated to the remarkable coincidence that my dear friend Hillary was in town, also for work. This was quite a fun “we’ve grown up” moment, as we’ve definitely come a long way from our dorm rooms and mini-fridges in 1994 to international business travel in 2007! We are also both September birthday girls, so we had some celebrating to do.

After MUCH deliberation with the office gals, we got a reservation at a place called Sketch. My friend at work assured me we were quite lucky to get in, as there was some sort of art week something or other going on, and this is supposedly a place for the glitterati… I met Hilary at her hotel, and we headed to the restaurant. Mind you, there is a “fine dining” section upstairs, plus several other bars and such inside, so the place has all sorts of stuff going on. (Feel free to check out the Web site if you’re really curious – http://www.sketch.com.uk/) I think the thing we were both most taken by upon entering was some live-motion statue of a dog eating out of a trash can. Seriously.

Anyway, here’s what the dining room looks like without any people in it…

It’s also a gallery by day, and at night they have some kind of funky black and white new-age video show going on with techno music and kooky images (as Hilary said, “that candle looks like it was made on a Commodore 64”), juxtaposed with text like (I literally wrote this down):

MY GOAL IN LIFE IS TO GIVE THE WORLD WHAT I WAS LUCKY ENOUGH TO RECEIVE
THE EXTASY OF DEVINE UNION
THROUGH MY MUSIC
AND MY DANCE
DANCE DANCE DANCE DANCE

I think “sensory overload” is probably the best way to describe the scene, as there was so much going on, it was almost hard to concentrate! When I insisted that Hilary switch seats with me so she could look out and have the “good” seat, she said, “I can’t believe you’ve even been able to talk to me, there’s so much going on behind you!”

The other décor highlight was the bathrooms, which are individual egg-shaped stalls/pods (kind of like an airplane bathroom, honestly) with French maids in attendance.

Anyway, the food…we started with cocktails: a champagne one with various fruity things and some kind of pink lemonade. Hilary had a delicious starter of a gazpacho with fresh melon and a berry sorbet; it also had some ham toasts on the side. I had pan-seared gnocchi with gorgonzola, strawberry and tomato, which was a really different combination of flavors, and just fantastic. However, her duck entrée was definitely tastier than my scallops. And after that, I just felt like I needed another course, so I got a cheese plate, which was an enormous (considering all the other portions had been typically avant garde-miniscule) platter of stilton, fresh mozzarella, toasted nuts and grapes. For dessert, Hil had something that was chocolate with a gelatin center, and I got this selection where they bring you four pastries and a sorbet, and you pick two of the four pastries, along with the sorbet. One of my pastries was a really dense, rich chocolate tart with a crisp crust, and the other one was an impossible to describe mix of lemon and some kind of airy cookie with delicious cream. Oh, and the sorbet was something like passionfruit mango, so it was really 3 desserts in one.

From there, we headed to a bar called Jewel around the corner (HD's favorite spot), where we got a random person to take a photo just for documentation!

And with that, the long journey home began…

Hampton Court photos

Now you can see why I was so high on my trip to Hampton Court with Kelly a few weeks ago!

One of the cool things about Hampton Court is that it's two kinds of architecture in one. So, as Kelly is showing us, the front is Tudor...

And the back is baroque.

So, the Tudor part has fun things like gargoyles...

And the baroque part overlooks fabulous gardens...designed for William and Mary, just in case you're wondering why you feel like you're in Williamsburg.

We even took flower photos...Grandmama would have been so proud!

Friday, October 12, 2007

Meet the team

Hallie (events), Liz (media relations) and me

Marta (media relations), who just graduated from Chapel Hill

Amanda (internal communications)

Liz and Marta at lunch

Amanda and Zerin (admin)

Everyone at lunch

Needless to say, communications/media relations/events is a very female-dominated team! We do have one male (coincidentally, also the big boss) but he was out today.

Last week

Since it was my last week in London, I resolved to get out and about as much as possible.

Monday night, Kelly and I walked to a pub called The Gun, which is quite close to my apartment building on the Thames. Unfortunately, upon arrival, we found out it was closed. And, even more unfortunately, there is absolutely nothing nearby. So, we treked over to the Radisson Hotel by my building, which you may recall was the scene of the steak sandwich incident.

We had a light dinner of wine with cheese and crackers and just enjoyed chatting.

Tuesday night after work, I spent some time sitting in the courtyard of my building to watch the sun set, and I just enjoyed being sort of introspective about the past six weeks and writing in my journal about how different experiences change us. (If you are curious, I was contrasting two thoughts: One, that "wherever you go, there you are," which is an expression I've always liked. And two, a sculpture exhibit I saw at the Tate Britain, which represented the idea that we become different people in different spaces, and sometimes that difference is physical.) Then, I went to my new neighborhood Italian restaurant (the site of the free open house last week) and had a FANTASTIC meal of veal parmagiana and vanilla panacotta with raspberry sauce. The veal had fresh buffalo mozzarella and came with roasted peppers, roasted potatoes and vegetables, and it was just so tasty.

Wednesday night brought a field trip with David to Brick Lane for Indian food. This is a very big thing to do in London, and I was really glad to check it out, although David's food was much better than mine. (I ordered chicken tikka masala, which is a very classic, popular Indian dish here, but it was too sweet -- too much coconut milk or something.) Many of the restaurants have people outside to make you "special offers" to eat there, and we got a complementary bottle of wine that seemed quite suspicious...like it had been watered down, which was possible, since it had not been opened in front of us.

David has gotten some new glasses, which I should have taken a photo of, as we could call him PD (Preppie David) when he's wearing his glasses.

Thursday night, I went for drinks with a Brazilian guy named Adriano (I have assembled quite a collection of Portuguese-speaking colleagues, and if I were staying here longer, I could create a little club!). He made a bet that I will end up back here within six months with a permanent job...if he's right, I have to buy him dinner. I said that was a bet I'd be happy to lose!

Now, I am mostly packed, and it's my last day at work. We went to a very British place for lunch, where I had duck confit and potatoes dauphinoise (scalloped potatoes). Perhaps I should have gone with bangers and mash, which is also very British, but they do have that at RiRa in Charlotte. Then, I got a little photo happy...

Presenting HD

Well, you've just got to love a man who takes photos, don't you?

Hunky David (the fact that he requested a blog nickname pretty much sums up his fun personality) handed off these photos from last Friday night.