StewBlog

I downloaded the 10-day free trial of this recently... I've only been playing it a few days but I'm really quite enjoying it, which is unusual for me as I really don't get on with many computer games. This genre appears to be a bit of an exception though - I quite like roaming around on quests and this game is huge, so plenty of scope... The full game was only £9.99 from Game online and then you have to pay a small monthly subscription... It should arrive in the post on Saturday morning, I reckon.

A departmental night out has been organised for this evening at the Old Brewery Tavern in Canterbury, which could be quite interesting... I know my mate Jon is going along but no idea about anyone else. I'll have to try and not have too many beers!

After rather a lazy morning, I popped round to my nan's flat to put up some blinds for her in the kitchen and the bathroom. As usual, I forgot all about the tea that was made for me until it was cold... There is *nothing* worse than cold tea!

I dropped in on Leon on the way back to the house to help him with his non-flushing toilet. The ball cock needed adjusting to allow more water into the cistern before closing off the cold feed... We overadjusted it though, spewing excess water down the overflow and out of a spout onto the pavement two stories below - nice! After our bit of plumbing we decided it would be rude not investigate a beer garden on such a fine day so we met up at the White Hart for a spot of dinner and a beer or two. The burgers in there are fantastic! Still don't think I could manage the 12oz though... Eeek! We moved on a bit later to Casey's.

Well, a new bar called Fresh opened up recently in the Northgate area of Canterbury and we thought we'd better give it a go... It was very white and clean in there and I felt a little bit like I was on the set of Buck Rogers! Anyway, I went through to the garden to meet up with Jonny, Nuala and Andy and we had a beer or two in there. We discussed stag parties, hen parties, shag parties amongst other things... Jen joined us a bit later on with her chap and we moved inside, where-upon Jonny threw beer upon the table and himself... We trotted on to the City Arms where we met Mark and his girlfriend, Emma, and I found out Mark went to the same secondary school as me but in the year below - I still don't recognise him at all though which is a bit weird! Anyway, we went on to the Cherry Tree, which is temporarily banned from playing music due to some licencing issue(!), and then to the Cuban...

I went round to Matt's house to watch the footie last night. He has a projector so the curtains were closed, the lights were turned off and a lovely 2 metre wide image was projected onto the wall!

I arrived just in time for kick off and grabbed a beer. I was pleasantly surprised to really enjoy the beginning of the first half which was jeweled with good performances from Joe Cole, Frank Lampard and Micah Richards.

The first German goal was unfortunate, but I do feel for Paul Robinson a little; nine times out of ten that crossed ball would have swung away, but I think the German slightly mis-kicked it sending it goalwards... He can't have gone for that, can he? Anyway, there was nothing wrong with the second - An unstoppable strike!

We had plenty of chances following our first goal, but nothing seemed to quite come off for us so we march on to Israel next, a bit unsure of our keeper and not entirely convinced where our next goal is coming from...

I went round to Gus's place at about 8 and we played poker for about 2 hours before heading into town to Casey's. For some reason they closed early so we went next door to The City Arms and ended up in The Works...

Nuala and I left work at 3 and got on the bus from work into deepest Thanet for the last night of Folk Week - a fairly famous event ocurring annually in Broadstairs. We stumbled on the Albion Hotel to start with who had a great band playing in the garden, supported by two rather elderly but nontheless enthusiatic groupies who seemed to have their own dance routines for the songs...! We stopped off there for a beer while we waited for Marc and Mirage to join us and when they arrived we moved on to catch a band called The Hot Rats at the bandstand. We watched them for a bit and then had a look around the craft fair, where we also met up randomnly with Mark and went for dinner in Ballard's Lounge - I imagine this was *the* place to be during the golden age of the beach holidaying in the UK, but any aspirations to grandeur are rather forgotten these days, as the place looks more than a little dated. We moved onto The Charles Dickens, which was hosting a kind-of folk version of the White Stripes! Then around 10, Nuala and I got a taxi back to Canterbury and met up with people in Casey's. later on, we moved on to The Cuban...

MJ got his first year A Level (AS Level) results today: AAAAB

He was pleased but slightly annoyed that he only missed out on the last A by three points! My parents, MJ and Matty decided that a celebration was in order so we went to the White Hart for dinner and drinks. I don't go in there that often in the evening but it was really nice in there tonight!

I walked round to Kudos to meet the guys from work and we sat in the bar area for a while with drinks while I introduced myself properly to our visitors. We had a good look through the menu and decided to order mixed starters to share and a range of mains including Emporer Beef, Fried Scallops and Prawns along with singapore noodles (my favorite) and rice. After our order was taken, we were shown to our table.

The decor in Kudos is like no other restaurant I've ever been to. The walls and beams are painted entirely in light mauve and the floor is made up of large iridescent tiles. There are trinkets and crystals hanging in the windows and the odd fountain spraying water over pebbles here and there - It may sound a bit chintzy but it works really well, especially when you meet the rather eccentric proprietor! Even the toilets are unusual - There is just one unisex bathroom with 5 cubicles. Two on the near side have male signs on them, the two on the far side have female signs on them and the one in the middle is, as the sign indicates, for people who aren't too sure

We spent quite a bit of time talking about Armenia, it's geography and customs, especially as Anna is getting married in two weeks! One fact I do remember: Armenia was the first country in the world to adopt Christianity as its state religion.

I really enjoyed the Emporer Beef and will definitely be ordering that again!

I watched a great TV programme last night about superstition, presented by one of my heros, eminent evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins. He was speaking to various spiritually involved folks such as tarot readers, psychics, mediums, water-dowsers, astrologers et cetera about their work. I have to admit, I'm very sceptical of all of these professions (I'm generally sceptical anyway, so this isn't really extraordinary for me). I just see it all as a bit of fun really. For instance, I really like watching Derren Brown and even though I can't figure how he does some of the things he does, I still know there is a valid explanantion for it all - I don't believe he can contact the 'spirit world.'
I know others take all of this very seriously though and I guess this is the point that Richard Dawkins was trying to make last night... It seems that everyone, including myself at times, is increasingly willing to believe in make-believe whilst ignoring experimentally derived fact. For instance, Dr. Gillian McKeith, presenter of You Are What You Eat, makes a very entertaining program but her dietary advise is utter bunkum! She's not even a real doctor and was taken to court recently and forced to drop her Dr. title.
Proper science appears to be thoroughly out of fashion at the moment - University departments are closing down as we speak, which is a terrible shame. Afterall, it is the advancements in physics, chemistry and mathematics that have catapaulted us into the 21st century; what have star signs ever done for us?

Today, we have some people visiting from Armenia to be trained in some work that they are going to be doing for us over the next 6 - 12 months. Quite looking forward to meeting them as I've never even spoken to anyone from Armenia before. We're all off out for dinner in Kudos tonight as well, so that should be nice; haven't been in there for a while...

I didn't get up until 12:30ish today after the previous evening's party and felt pretty good after the lie-in. Had loads of clearing up to do from the barbeque so i got on with that. I also had to fix the front window as some loser through a glass bottle through it while I was in New York - Fortunately my neighbours called the Police and they had put a board over it. Gav and Kyle came round briefly to collect a few things left over from the party, afterwhich, I finished glazing the window and sat and watched the footie in the afternoon! Quite a nice day all in all...

I met Gav and Leon for a quick beer in the White Hart before returning home to prepare for a family barbeque - I had relatives visiting with my parents and Matty in the afternoon... I got cleared up and the guys all arrived and we all went straight out into the garden with drinks and stuff and i got the barbeque lit. Didn't cook anything too exciting this time, just burgers and chicken legs... Seemed to go pretty well though!

They guys all left around 7ish so I hopped in the shower and went out to meet Leon in The Cherry Tree. We stayed there until around 10 and finally made it over to Jonny's house for their party with some beers and Singstar mics and games... I didn't think I was hungry but when I got to the kitchen and saw pizza slices, peanuts, cocktail sausages etc I was straight into them! Unusually, not too many people were up for singing so just a small group of us ended up singing rather a few songs, including a version of I Believe in a Thing Called Love by Leon and I which Scott 'kindly' YouTubed! You might need some ear-plugs for this one... Andy and Jonny finally got around to completing a version of Livin' La Vida Loca also...!

Things quietened down by 5:30, so I packed up and wandered home in the daylight for a good sleep... ZZZzzz...

Keith and I left work at about 5:30pm and walked into Sandwich to the Red Cow for a beer - I now know that they have really nice Fuller's London Pride in there; I think I must be getting old as well as I'm starting to notice which pubs sell nice beer whereas I never really cared too much before... We moved on to the Fleur de Lis where Charlotte, Richard, Gregoire and his wife met us and we all went on to the restaurant. Chiddi got lost (even though Sandwich is a very small town, more like a large village with only one indian restaurant...) and eventually found us about an hour and a half later in the India Village. The food was good and it was pretty busy in there - it's always full of folks from work though! Richard kindly gave me a lift back to Canterbury and I went straight to bed...

Out in Sandwich tonight for a curry as a few of the guys are leaving over the next few weeks, so it's a kind-of farewell thing. Keith and I are going to leave around 6ish and have a few beers in the Fleur de Lis before the others join us at 7:30 before moving on to the India Village at 8pm. Really looking forward to a nice curry now... MMMmmm...

Well, I got out of bed pretty late and arranged to get a taxi to Electric Gardens with Nuala, Susan, Claire, Adrienne and Matt. We found a nice spot in front of the main stage and met up with Andy and Vicky who had camped there on Saturday night. Later on, Mirage and Marc joined us too. We saw The Young Knives, The Rakes and The Happy Mondays, among others. It was excellent to spend a day in the sunshine, drinking beers and listening to bands... The beers went down a bit too well though and we all decided it would be a good idea to hit the Cuban bar after everything finished for cocktails... After being denied entry to the Works later on Nuala, Susan, Claire and Adrienne came back to mine for yet another Singstar session, which inevitably went on until the wee hours...!

I had a Saturday and Sunday ticket for the Electric Gardens music festival at Mt. Ephraim Gardens in Kent but I couldn't face it on Saturday having only arrived home at 10:30am from my flight. instead I went be bed and stayed there for many hours...

So, once again we meet in Mumbles for a cheeky pint before heading down to the West Village to a vegetarian restaurant called Gobo for Gav's birthday meal. Gav and I had both been here before on more than one occasion on previous visits to New York and knew it was good. We ordered the malaysian curry, yam and yukka fries, the best vietnamese spring rolls, shitake mushrooms and quite a bit more... It was really nice! Merle, Gav, Tony and I moved on to The Blind Tiger on Bleecker Street, then on to Sloane's bar where we met a couple of guys who recommended the Red Lion to us, a British-themed pub (eeek!) We went there anyway and it was pretty good as they had a Rolling Stones Tribute band in and wasn't too British at all! We had sambuca's in there before Pete showed up and Gav and Tony sloped off to another bar. Us three went on to Off the Wagon where we consumed Jager bombs... Then we ended up in another bar playing pool wher I beat the bar man and another punter before we called it a day and shuffled home, rather the worse for wear again...

Today, we had a very nice breakfast in Sarabeth's on Central Park South - The coffee was ths smoothest I've tasted and the eggs benedict was vast. After breakfast we visited the famous B&H camera shop on Ninth Avenue up on 30th Street. Tony bought a new zoom lens and keen to try it, we took the subway down to Battery Park for a free ride on the Staten Island Ferry which runs right past the Statue of Liberty. After that we went back up to Bleecker Street and into 1849 for 20 cent wings, nachos and beers...

In the evening, we decided to investigate the Meat-packing district over by the Hudson River just north of the West Village. We hopped out of the taxis in Jackson Square, a cobbled area filled with swanky bars, where I reckon parts of Sex and the City must've been filmed. We headed straight for Pastis, which looked busy but not quite our scene. A bit better was a bar with a garden just round the corner where we stayed for a few before following a tip-off from Pete about a beer and tequila bar. We found somewhere that seemed to match the description, but the interior, formica tables and tinsel hanging from every inch of ceiling, didn't quite match Pete's recollection of the place he had been to before. After a quick one in there, we moved on and found the place we were looking for, Hogs and Heifers! A no-nonsense, red-neck(?) bar, with many bras hanging from the ceiling in which the barmaid uses a megaphone to hurl abuse at customers - It reminded me a little of that movie where the barmaids dance on the bar, pour drinks down people's necks and whip off their bras... Can't think of the name right now though...