More catching up.

So, once again I am faced with the prospect of trying to get several months (at least it's not years, this time) of events into a single entry without boring everyone to tears.

One of the most interesting things to happen in a long time was my trip to China:

Tienamen Square - China '09

The Great Wall - China '09

Summer Palace - China '09

Ding Ling Tomb - China '09

The trip was for work relating to the COLAB project between Leeds and Beihang Universities but there was some time for sight-seeing. There was also loads of amazing food to be had, some of it nice and spicy as well. I would have loved to have been able to have more than the 5 nights there that we did have, but you can't really complain when a trip is for free. I flew back from China on my birthday and as a result ended up with a birthday that lasted 31 hours... this would have been great, if not for Air France messing things up and having to spend well over 20 hours of it travelling back to Leeds to get back almost exactly at midnight. The longest birthday ever, in many senses.

Having got through all of that, it then seemed to become wedding season again. As is occasionally the case, I ended up at a wedding where I didn't know either of the people gettting married at all. This is a real issue I have with the way Indian weddings are done. Even still, I managed to eat the nice food and managed to get an interesting array of deserts for myself:

Sanjeev and Amy

I also got to go to Sanjay's wedding to my latest Bhabiji, Priya. The whole process was good, even if Vijay did take delight in telling me that I was dressed up like a genie:

Sanjay and Priya

The only bad thing about all of this is that apparently, I'm next. While there's been no huge amount of pressure from anyone or anywhere, all the little nudges and winks and "when are you getting married then" comments add up. It's not that I'm averse to the idea; I just hate the concept that my life should run according to someone else's (or many other people's) schedule. Still, it would be potentially stupid to not even meet someone that is being suggested to me. As someone once said to me many years ago in a drunken conversation; she could be smokin' hot. Even getting beyond all that, the chances that all the various astrological superstitions and other barriers to potential introductees are overcome, there's still the problem of this person being able to tolerate me, at the very least. I'm not exactly holding my breath.

I'm sure there's a ton of other stuff I'm forgetting. The main thing in my mind at the moment is that all of the people in Blackpool are (thankfully) on their way to a recovery following what sounds like a pretty horrendous crash on the M1. Especially the kids. Hopefully I will be able to get round there and lift people's spirits with my own special brand of entertainment.

Finally, I will say congratulations Roger Federer. It was sad to see Roddick almost crying, but I did want Federer to win. It was an epic match.

With apologies to Piku

So apparently I'm the worst uncle in the world ever.

Not only did I forget to mention Piku's birthday on here in December but I seem to have no pictures or anything to put up for it either. I'd like to take the opportunity to apoligise from the bottom of my heart and beg for forgiveness.

It all happened quite a while ago now, so my memory is a little bit hazy. I do remember that we tricked Piku into thinking that nobody else was coming and that she'd have to make do with only me (what a horrible prospect!). Anyway, I got Piku the following toy:

There's a trick to it of course, but the idea is that it should look like it's just floating in the air.

Hopefully the next time I'm in Blackpool, Piku will have mastered it.... though it is pretty tricky to get right.

Back in blog

So, not as soon after the last posting as I would have liked but it's better that the year or so break I took, right?

In true blogtacular tradition of days gone by, I'm writing this on a train coming back from an outing with someone(s) awesome(s?). I was over in Manchester visiting Sarah and Martin. Various circumstances have conspired to ensure that this is the first time we've met up since before Xmas. As a result, there was the inevitable exchange of gifts, which is often a cause for anxiety for me... I'm never sure that I've bought someone the right thing and there's always the dread of your gift being totally outshone by the gift that has been got for you, showing you up as totally not understanding the other person as well as they do you.

In the end all was well; I was hella-happy with what I got. There's a guitar tab book filled with the greatest hits of guitar hero. Finally I'll be able to look down on people who love the game and say "play a real guitar" and show them how. Surely learning the whole book of songs won't take me long. The other thing is a weird tower building game where you have to pile up hedgehogs.

Trust Sarah and Martin to find something totally nuts and awesome all at the same time. Kit and Pik will be subjected to this amazing thing at the next opportunity. I think that "Venn That Tune" went down pretty well... I know that I would have loved a copy for myself.

Other than that, I've been trying to be good and not go traveling all over the place every weekend. I have a thesis to finish correcting and it's not going to do itself. Having said that, I was in Sheffield with George for this weekend just gone and it was one of the most nutso weekends I have ever had.

Geordie certainly keeps interesting company. There's plenty of things I can't relate on here given that some pretty young people actually read it on a semi-regular basis. There were some interesting firsts that I can talk about; My first football match AND my first ever fish finger sandwich. There was also plenty of SingStar... in fact, I think I found someone who might just love the game as much as I do. Arran (one of the ladies of the house I was staying at) seemed to be screaming for literally minutes when the revelation that I had brought 12 unplayed SingStar discs with me came to the fore. I do love bringing joy to the world through the medium of fake karaoke that somehow seems to think that I am a pretty good singer. It kind of helps that the singing was done in pajama-based attire. Nothing like getting comfortable before belting out some Madonna or something of that nature.

There has been the suggestion that I go back the next time that Geordie is down that way. The prospect fills me with a certain amount of apprehension as well as enthusiasm. There was plenty of fun and games, but nothing got too out of hand. Apart from the whole Adam (random 20 year old boy that ended up under our "protection") situation.... the less said about that the better I think.

Speedily approaching Leeds station, so I will leave it there. Hope to relay all the amazing things I have been up to soon, but this weekend WILL be devoted to thesis, so there's not going to be much to say any time soon.

More Pics

More pics added to my ever-growing collection;

I've got some from Kit's birthday. We made a Toblerone and Malteaser cheesecake to celebrate. It was very tasty indeed.

Kit's Birthday

There are some more that show you how to make a Chinese-style curry sauce and my recreation of chicken katsu curry that you get from Wagamama.

Curry Sauce

Update

So according to Kit, there are people who look at this and have noticed that it's been a long time since I've added anything. I haven't really got much to say at the moment, even though it's been a year and a half. Maybe this will kick start me in to posting a bit more often from now on.

I have however got a bunch of pics added to my picasaweb from the past several months, including some from my recent trip to India:

From India Sight Seeing 2008

More from me coming soon.... I hope.

Unless my laziness kicks in again.

Okonomiyaki

Made some okonomiyaki for dinner last night - for the past week or so actually - and thought I'd share the joy of it with the world. This is an imitation of the "London mix" available from Abeno in London. Contains bacon, cheese and salmon. Toppings are okonomiyaki sauce, japanese mayonnaise and aonori (powdered seaweed) all purchased from the awesome Japan centre on Piccadilly.

Okonomiyaki

I used the recipe here as a guide:

http://www.japan-guide.com/r/e100.html

but roughly halved the amounts of everything to make it a sensible size for on person. Much easier to flip as well, I'd imagine.

I wonder how many nights I'll have to eat this in a row before I get sick of it? Planning on adding mushrooms to the fray tonight.... how exciting.

Blog Catchup... Again

Oookay, it's been a while since the last blogtacular update but I have been kind of busy.

I managed to get all of my moving stuff sorted out and I am now (happily?) settling in at Leeds - both the city and the University. It's kind of weird living by myself, but my flat is so hella-awesome that it makes up for it.

Quite a few things have happened over the past couple of months, some of them with pics (and videos) to go with them.

There was a SingStar extravaganza at Irina's place before I left Manchester for good:

SingStar Party

This was followed by the eventual move itself and all the stress involved with that:

The big move

This left me with a couple of days of unpacking etc until actually starting at work. So far, there has been plenty to learn and lots of new people to meet. There seem to be SO MANY meetings that I have to go to but there was a very useful NGS face to face meeting in Leeds, which meant I got to meet almost everyone who is involved with the running of NGS.

I haven't actually got to see much of Leeds itself - I have been good and not gone out on a "school night" and seem to have been sepnding my weekends elsewhere. Vijay came for a weekend visit, which was really an excuse to get some help from me with some course work. I introduced him to Doxygen, which apparently impressed a lot of people with its auto-generated PDF documentation for his source code. Cool-e-oh.

Nicki was over from US and A with her family, including the new addition, Blaney. I have to say, he is possibly the cutest baby I have ever seen... Well done Nicki :)

I managed to find time to go to the Leeds Barenaked Ladies concert at the start of this month. Dragged Mitch along as well and, predictably, enjoyed it very much. BNL always put on a good show. I wish I had taken more pics, but I thought that they wouldn't come out properly. Guess my phone is better than I thought.

Barenaked Ladies

The Easter weekend was good. The university was closed from Thursday afternoon 'til Wednesday morning. I had Aradhna and her two (awesome) housemates, Janine and Sophia, round for basically a weekend of Wii/Gamecube/SingStar fun. Vijay turned up for some of it as well. Amazingly, we managed to get out of the flat at some point and even managed to make it (on foot!) to the local park where we managed to have fun on our improvised "obstacle course". I didn't take any pictures of this stuff for some reason, but Janine did. We then moved on the the skate park for our races, and ended up with injuries all round... happy days. I did take some "food porn" pictures though:

Steamed, Fried Dumplings

Oh yeah... WOKMANIA in Leeds totally sucks. Never, ever, ever go there.

Last, but by no means least, I spent the last weekend in Blackpool. Kitu and Piku, as always, were brilliant. Seriously, the best kids I have ever known. Their little brother, Krish, is getting on as well. Approaching his 1st birthday and walking already. He can't quite speak yet, but manages to voice his displeasure at my presence in his house quite clearly. Once we can have a sensible conversation, he'll come round - bribery will save the day if nothing else. One of the highlights was the appearance of a quad bike for the weekend... I loved this thing. Some of the girls (i.e. Vijay and Piku) fell off, and to be fair I cam close a couple of times, but there was no permanent damage... just more bruises to add to the ones from playing around over Easter.

And that's about it. A lot to cover in such a short space. I'll try to keep up with things as they happen from now on. Should be easier now that I'm settled in.

One last thing. I stumbled across a site that asks you a bunch of stupid questions to tell you which Star Wars character you are. This is how it turned out for me:




While I'm not sure I identify with this too much, it did remind me of my realisation that R2 D2 is basically the same as Kenny in South Park. I'm convinced that he's a foul mouthed little devil, but nobody (apart from C3PO) has any idea what he's saying.... not too hard to fill in the obscenities though.

Click the link and see who you are. I know it's stupid, but it's kind of fun :)