Adventures with Kake

On Monday I despaired at the falling-down-ness of my house.

On Tuesday I did a big pile of work and very little else.

On Wednesday a plumber came to fix my house! Again! We don't appear to be leaking any more, though we still have no downstairs lighting circuit.

On Thursday I went to Hawksmoor for bob's birthday. It was pretty damn good. I shared a porterhouse with ewan — his first ever steak. I wish my first ever steak had been that good (though I seem to remember it was in the Star back when the food was as good as the beer, so it can't have been bad).

On Friday I played Guitar Hero and watched girly TV with Richard.

On Saturday I did a little bit of Discworld hacking then had a takeaway from Banzi which consisted almost entirely of breakfast foods (congee and banh mi, though the banh mi was actually a pre-emptive strike on tomorrow's breakfast). Oh Banzi, your food is tasty, why do you not have online ordering? I would abandon Royal Margin (except for pho) if you did.

On Sunday I had banh mi for breakfast! Then I did a big pile of work.

The week before last...

On Monday and Tuesday I meant to go on an adventure in East London, but was foiled by temporary loss of mojo. Worked instead.

On Wednesday I wandered round the City and took some photos, then headed over to meet parents (in town for the week) and have dinner at Vanilla Black.

I think I mostly just worked the rest of the week; can't really remember doing anything exciting, though my memory does suck.

Last week...

On Monday I went for an East London adventure with ewan. We had lunch at Saravanaa Bhavan then wandered around Upton Park in a big circle, taking photos on the way. (We tried to go to the Newham Bookshop, but it's closed on Mondays. Why don't they mention this on their website?)

Then we got the District Line to Upminster Bridge, from whence we wandered through endless depressing suburbia (only about half a mile in reality, but so much further psychologically) to reach the Optimist Tavern, an Ember Inn resembling nothing so much as a hotel bar. And then it started raining.

Upminster improved from then on in, though. Ewan headed off to take some pub photos, while I did a little research tour of the restaurants on Corbets Tey Road and St Mary's Lane to find somewhere for dinner later. We reconvened in the Mason's Arms, which we were pleased to discover was a proper pub, and much less chainy than the others we've experienced in the area so far.

My restaurant research tour had revealed little of interest. La Grolla is probably the best in the area, but I'd already been there quite recently; and the Othello Taverna offered nothing for vegetarians. We eventually decided to go to Yin Court, once sashajwolf joined us, on the strength of its having an actual vegetarian set menu — and it was actually pretty decent, particularly the beancurd dishes.

I think I may have had enough of Upminster for now, but Ewan and I are both interested in exploring its neighbour, Cranham, at some point. It has at least two pubs, if nothing else!

On Tuesday through Sunday, although I was having a very slow work week, I felt too manky to go out and explore. I mostly did admin stuff — updated the London bookshops map and the vegetarian restaurants/cafes in London map, among other things. (Do let me know if you have any suggestions for things missing from either map).

I also spent some time playing on the Discworld MUD. Programming is a lot of fun, but sometimes it's good to reconnect to the game as a player, and talk to the other players as an equal. It's also a good way to find bugs :)

On Monday I went to Wimbledon — not to watch tennis, but to take photos for RGL. I discovered what I think may be London's steepest lime-and-soda price gradient while I was there; £2.70/pint at the Brewery Tap and 50p/pint at the Rose and Crown 115 metres down the road. Then I went to choir.

On Tuesday and Wednesday I mostly did work.

On Thursday I went to L'Autre Pied for lunch with ewan. Unsurprisingly, given it has a Michelin star, the food was pretty good. (I took some photos of the food and would appreciate comments on whether I've over-processed them...)

After that, I did the Tube Walks I missed out on the weekend previously. I was also going to go along Oxford Street and take the photos I've been putting off for months (mainly because they're inside buildings), but it was so hot I couldn't face it. I retreated to the Coach and Horses, which has aircon and reasonably-priced lime-and-soda.

The reason I didn't just go straight home was that later on I was going to the first meeting of the Reading Matters/Savidge Reads book group, on the top floor of Waterstone's on Piccadilly. We're going to be meeting on the first Thursday of every month, and take it in turns to pick which book to read. Kim of Reading Matters wrote up tonight's meeting here.

On Friday I tried to work, but it was kinda hot again, so I pathetically knocked off early and drank gin.

On Saturday I braved the lack of Jubilee Line, and headed east to Leytonstone to have a bit of a sing of the third paragraph of Cornelius Cardew's Great Learning, an avant-garde piece for voices and instruments based on Ezra Pound's translations of Confucius' work of the same name. There were only six of us, but it was actually quite fun.

We're performing it this Saturday, 11 July, at various venues around Leytonstone including the old Woolworths and the Green Man roundabout. Come along if you like — there's lots of other Leytonstone Festival stuff going on during the day, and I will doubtless find myself in a pub at some point.

On Sunday I fixed stuff on the Discworld MUD.

On Monday I visited Upminster, the very end of the District Line! I had lunch at La Grolla, a decent enough Italian restaurant. I also popped into Swan Books, the Essex Yeoman, and the Crumpled Horn; and then I took a photo of the windmill. I'm still not certain what Upminster's hidden gem is; possibly it's Swan Books, which had a book about Romford pubs that I nearly bought for ewan.

The excitement did not end there! I headed back towards East Ham on the District Line, with the intention of trying another of the Indian cafes on the High Street, but realised en route that I could stop off at Barking and go to Chennai, a South Indian cafe/restaurant in the same chain as Lewisham's Madras. I enjoyed the food at Madras when we went there, so was expecting good things from Chennai. The food was just fine here, too, as it turned out, though the staff did seem quite bemused by the presence of an actual customer.

Then I went to choir. It was awesome, as choir always is. We're singing Bach's St Matthew Passion in March next year, apparently. It takes three hours to sing, but this is a nice, sensible, relaxed choir, so we'll be stopping for dinner in the middle. I approve.

On Tuesday I went to the Isle of Dogs! I visited the Pepper Saint Ontiod, in the company of ewan, and then headed around the dock for dinner at Byblos Harbour. On the way back to the Tube station, we popped into the North Pole to satisfy Ewan's curiosity. Or perhaps his completism. Or perhaps just to have some beer!

On Wednesday I took some photos in Hammersmith (and briefly popped into the Ruby Grande to shelter from the rain) before heading over to Richard's place to spend many hours playing Rock Band.

On Thursday I took advantage of being in West London, and went to London.pm sushi at Makoto, then headed down to Brentford to take a couple more photos and drink beer at the Magpie and Crown and O'Brien's. Finally I headed up to Northfields to meet aca and many others for tasty South Indian/Sri Lankan food at Papaya.

On Friday, Saturday, and Sunday I did loads of bugfixing and stuff on the Discworld MUD. This might be considered slightly overdoing it — but on the Friday I moved from the Ramtops domain to the Guilds domain (where I will be working on witch stuff), and it was all very very exciting, and very hard to stop doing stuff. (superpitching — this is the geeky thing I mentioned.)

On Monday I went to Fulham to take some RGL photos. I also had a very nice vegan lunch at 222 Restaurant. Then I got the Tube all the way over to East Ham, where I had dinner at Chennai Dosa before heading on to choir in Leytonstone.

On Tuesday I went out for dinner with lozette, bellaphon, and MsMarmiteLover to Ganapati in Peckham. It was even better than the last time I went there.

On Wednesday I went down the Northern Line to take some more RGL photos. I went down to Tooting and had lunch at Sree Krishna, then worked my way back northwards, popping into the Jackdaw & Rook and the Nightingale on the way. Then I got a bus from Elephant and Castle over to Surrey Quays, and met claudacity, bob, flick, and drplokta at Whelan's for a drink before dinner at Royal Palace. Royal Palace is the place I went to a few weeks ago that has a Chinese-only menu; luckily, claudacity can read Chinese, so we managed to order a vast and delicious spread of dishes, all of which we polished off happily.

On Thursday I went to Camden for london.pm dim sum at Yum Cha. I then dragged Richard around on a mini pub crawl before getting the Tube down to London Bridge to meet bob and the other usual suspects for Mongolian food at the Horseshoe Inn.

On Friday and Saturday I did loads of work to make up for all the fun I had earlier in the week.

On Sunday I joined in the Discworld MUD Bugfix Sunday.

On Monday I went to choir again, and it was again awesome. I sang alto 2 this time. I sang alto 1 last week, but although I can cope fine with the high notes, I like singing the low ones and I missed doing that. I mentioned to a couple of people that I'd be interested in giving tenor a go at some point, and this was greeted with great enthusiasm since like many choirs this one has a fairly low proportion of tenors. I have sung tenor before, but I don't want to go straight into that after such a long break.

During the break, I chatted with techiebabe and another of the singers about stuff I can explore in the area before coming to rehearsal; the plan is to use this to improve RGL's coverage of Leytonstone and the surrounding areas (Leyton, Stratford, Wanstead, Woodford, etc).

On Tuesday I finished importing my old A-Z walk entries from LiveJournal to here. (New ones will just appear here.) I also made braised cauliflower for dinner (along with pork chops and home-made oven chips); there's something about the combination of cauliflower and red bell pepper that works really well.

On Wednesday I spent far too long deciding where in Earl's Court to go for lunch, and eventually settled on Mohsen. Then I wandered around and took some photos and eventually met bob for dinner at the Botanist on Sloane Square. We tried to pop in to the Crown again on the way home, but it was closed.

On Thursday I went to London.pm dim sum at Leong's Legend, and then took the Tube up to Holloway and did a mini pub crawl down Holloway Road (including the very promising Landseer) before meeting lozette, bellaphon, and MsMarmiteLover for dinner at Dastarkhan, London's other Kazakh restaurant.

On Friday I had a quiet night in, during which I did some knitting, watched some No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, and made prawn bisque with some prawn heads that bob stashed in the freezer a while ago.

On Saturday bob and I went to a beer festival at the Crosse Keys, then walked home along the river and stopped off for dinner at Lovage, a new(ish) modern(ish) Indian(ish) restaurant near Shad Thames.

On Sunday I did some Bugfix Sunday bugfixing on the Discworld MUD and then popped downstairs for a few civilised cocktails with ali_in_london and montag.

On Monday I made cauliflower-leek soup.

On Tuesday bob got back from Eastercon with a pile of new books, so we did a massive declutter of old CDs, videos, and out-of-date computer books. Then we celebrated with a takeaway from Cafe Nawaz, which was pretty decent for what it was, and well-priced too.

On Wednesday I fixed some bugs on the Discworld MUD (and also did a wee bit of new development, which I can't tell you about until it goes in-game).

On Thursday I made some roasted carrot pate and read my freshly-arrived copy of 42 Magazine. I was planning to make baba ganoush as well, but my aubergine exploded in the oven.

On Friday I made teh interwebs crave fried egg sandwiches.

On Saturday I attempted to watch The Wire with uon but got bored halfway through the first episode due to being unable to understand what was going on. He appears to be hooked, though.

On Sunday I fixed some more Discworld MUD bugs and wrote some new NPCs for Ohulan Cutash. If you're a Discworld fan, or indeed a MMORPG fan, you really should check this out. It's been around since 1992, and has been properly maintained as well as expanded over the years since then. It also has a very good proportion of active female developers, which I believe a lot of people are touting as one of Dreamwidth's plus points.