This sums up Orange UK nicely

We’ve had no shortage of problems with our Internet service provider Orange here in London. I’ve complained about it in the past here and here. There have been many times where they’ve given us grief and I didn’t bother to write anything because they’re not worth the effort. In short, they are just crap and don’t seem to care. It also doesn’t help that for the past 6 months, our Internet has been dropping out for a few minutes every hour or so. We know that it’s about to happen when our router “clicks”.

I had a chuckle today when I went to their website because I needed to call them and this is what I got when I clicked on “contact us” link.

It sums up their customer service nicely.

 

Taste of Christmas

When Ian told me about a “Gordon Ramsay’s Taste of Christmas” event happening at ExCel, my first thought was that it sounded like a direct competitor to the BBC Good Food Show and it was.

We went yesterday with Jodie and Steve and were pleasantly surprised at the entrance as we walked through a “Christmassy” hall with falling artificial snow, putting us right into the festive mood.  We had booked tickets to see Gordon Ramsay’s first cooking show of the day.  The demonstration hall was like an amphitheatre; it was quite packed out and we got seats in the second row   The show started with an entertaining bloke who looked a lot like Peter Hellier (but it wasn’t obviously), followed by Mark Sargeant (Head Chef at Claridge’s) and finally Gordon Ramsay showed up energetically in the midst of the crowd.  Gordon threw eight inflatable giant “Christmas puddings” at the audience and eight lucky people got to go on stage to sample a parsnip-celery-apple creamy soup, panfried duck breast with caramelised endive and brussel sprouts sprinkled with crushed chestnuts; and a pear and frangipane tart.  I really liked the sound of the soup and wanted to try the recipe out.  The show ended with some trivia cooking questions.

After the show, we walked around a bit and it became apparently that it really was a Gordon Ramsay show.  Half of the restaurants available on the day were his restaurants.  There was even a Ramsay-branded pub in the back and of course there were book signings for Gordon Ramsay cookbooks.  Eventually the smell of the food available made us all hungry and we managed to get a table to start our sampling…

Clockwise from top left: Pork belly with spiced apple sauce puree; duck with pear chutney and toasted sourdough; red wine braised beef with oyster mushrooms and creamed mash; red snapper with couscous.

Clockwise from top left: Salmon ceviche with chilli, lime and coriander; cuttlefish wrapped in pancetta; hot chocolate fondant; sticky toffee pudding with caramel sauce.

In the afternoon, we went to Angela Harnett’s cooking demonstration where she made one of her family favourites, pumpkin ravioli.  Afterwards, we wandered around the various stalls until we found a nice spot to rest our tired legs.  Ian and Jodie went and bought some drinks for us to sip on while we waited for the next cooking demonstration with Jason Atherton where he cooked panfried quail.

All in all, watching Gordon Ramsay’s cooking show was great but I still prefer the variety of stalls from the Farmers’ market at the BBC Good Food Show.

 

BBC Good Food Show 2008

The BBC Good Food Show this year definitely lived up to its name.  There were hundreds of stalls, plenty of tastings and demonstrations.  We had booked our tickets weeks in advance and eagerly anticipated watching Heston Blumenthal in his Food Icon demonstration/show.  This year there was a great selection of stalls from the Farmers’ Market.

Here’s some of the tasting dishes we tried on the day.

Clockwise from top left: Salt & pepper squid from Smiths of Smithfield, pan fried scallops from Theo Randall, chocolate fondant with green tea sauce from Sumosan, duck from Kai Mayfair.

Clockwise from top left: Tuna with truffle oil from Sumosan, phad thai from Blue Elephant, salmon broth from L'ortolan, ragú tortellini from Refettorio.

After our satisfying lunch, we went over towards the demonstration hall for our much anticipated Food Icon session.  When the presentation started, my jaw dropped.  I couldn’t believe we paid to watch a rerun of his BBC Christmas TV programme on a projector screen.  Luckily it did improve when Heston began to give an insight to the journey he had with his restaurant The Fat Duck.  He talked about how to make the ‘perfect dish’ and how it is relative to each person’s taste, that is largely affected by the flavours of our childhood.  He also reckons that the easiest way to open the door to our memories is to bring out that nostalgia through his tasting menu.  To demonstrate what he means, we were asked to open up the envelope which we were given at the beginning of the session (and I thought it was going to be a draw for something! lol ) and put a Eucharist-like wafer into our mouths… it brought me back to my childhood memory of playing with my little cousin and we were pretending to eat baby powder…and yes, baby powder tastes awful.

Another highlight of the session was finding that sound actually has an effect on our taste.  Heston brought out some stats and figures from a study he did with a professor at Oxford University a few years ago.  He found that eating an oyster while listening to pounding waves and squealing seagulls tasted stronger and saltier than when eating an oyster while listening to barnyard noises.  This inspired his “Sound of the Sea” dish at his Fat Duck restaurant, which is made of seafood and edible seaweed served on a sand-like tapioca mixture with side-dish of iPod in a shell playing the sounds of breaking waves.  While this all sounds very convincing, I am yet to be converted

Clockwise from top left: Envelope containing a strip infused with frankincense and a thin wafer infused with baby smell, telling the beginnings of Fat Duck, making scrambled eggs ice cream, watching his BBC Christmas show.

Even though the show was smaller than last year, we were happy we got to see the culinary alchemist himself  so it was definitely worth the trek to West London

 

A day out at Wimbledon

To get tickets to watch the Championships at Wimbledon, one typically has 2 options: enter the public ballot or queue at the gates on the day (early in the morning – they even allowed those camping out the night before to pitch tents). It’s a little known fact that you can also buy tickets online from Tickemaster the night before. The only issue with the tickets you get this way is that there are VERY few made available and they are waaaaaaaaaaaaaay up the back. We didn’t mind of course as we’d never been to Wimbledon and have always wanted to go.

So each night during the Championships, we would both log into Ticketmaster and sit there hitting the refresh button in our Web Browsers. The reason for this was because the tickets became available at 8:30pm. If you attempt to buy tickets before, you’re met with the “tickets aren’t available yet” message. Once it opens however, you need to be VERY quick and VERY lucky. They’re pretty much gone within a minute and if you don’t get it on the first attempt, you should just give up.

We were lucky enough to score ourselves Centre Court tickets for the middle Saturday (28th June) to watch the following 3rd round matches:

• Caroline Wozniacki vs. Jelena Jankovic
• Tommy Haas vs. Andy Murray
• Nicolas Kiefer vs. Rafael Nadal

That’s right, we got to watch the eventual champion, Rafa Nadal! Needless to say, we were excited.

We took the train there and walked from Wimbledon station, which was full of people heading to the tennis. We could have hopped onto a bus to get to the courts, but decided to take a walk due to the queues. It wasn’t too bad actually and took around 20 minutes. Perhaps it was closer to 30 minutes, but Wimbledon is a really nice area so we didn’t notice (even though most of the walk was uphill). Our excitement probably made the walk much more pleasant as well.

The place was buzzing with activity and we took our time walking around the various outside courts to catch some of the action (including some of the junior matches). After all, we had about 45 minutes before the matches were due to start on Centre Court.

We definitely got our money’s worth, with Nadal’s match finishing around 9pm. It was a fun day, the weather was great (and warm) and we got to experience an iconic, historical event that is on the “to-do” list of many people. Here’s a few pictures from the day (click on each for a larger version).

At the top of the hill where people sit to watch the big screen (affectionately known as “Henman Hill”).

They Royal Box, which on the day included luminaries such as Martina Navratilova, Billie Jean King, Tim Henman, Todd Woodbridge, Sachin Tendulkar, a bunch of politicians, actors, and a few British Olympians.

Jelena Jankovic in action.

Andy Murray and Tommy Haas.

Rafa Nadal in action.

Rafa performing his famous “undoing of the wedgie” move.

And if anyone’s interested, Jankovic, Murray and Nadal were the winners of their respective matches.

 

Go East

We’ve been especially quiet through April. Why? Because we’ve had no frigging Internet! The reason being we moved in April to a newish place in Canary Wharf and made the mistake of staying with Orange as our service provider. More on that in a little bit…

Those reading our blog regularly since we first moved to the UK may remember my post about our search for a place to rent last year followed by Mimi’s post when we finally found a place in Earls Court. If you read those entries again, you’ll remember I wanted to live in or around Canary Wharf while Mimi wanted West London. As always, women usually win these “discussions” and get their way. So after an excruciatingly long search, we ended up in an old but redecorated flat in Earls Court. I say “redecorated” because calling it “refurbished” would be over stating what has been done to it. Sure, it had a newish kitchen and a remodelled bathroom, but other than that it just had a fresh coat of paint. We knew this so I’m by no means saying we were duped.

Our initial lease was 6 months paid up front. I think we mentioned that without a credit rating (which is the problem for anyone who moves to the UK and doesn’t yet have a job), you cannot pass any reference checks. So you either need a local guarantor or you pay your 6 months rent up front. We had no choice but to go with the 2nd option. That also meant that we had to renew our lease in October 2007. At that point, we both had jobs so we passed reference checks and could then pay rent on a monthly basis. The standard one year lease usually has a 6 month break clause, which means you can move out after 6 months if you give 2 months notice…which we did in February to break the lease in April.

It’s not that we didn’t enjoy living in West London. We loved the location. Even I admit to that…and I miss that convenience even now. The problem was the fact that anything you want to rent at a reasonable price in West London will be old. That’s just a fact. And very rarely does it get refurbished properly because that essentially means gutting the whole building…hence my “redecorated” comment. So even before moving in, I expected there to be problems around the things you cannot see like the plumbing, heating, insulation etc. I also made sure Mimi understood these things and she didn’t seem to mind because she got her West London address! Sure enough we encountered quite a few things along the way, hence the decision to break the lease at 6 months and move to a MUCH MUCH MUCH newer place.

Here are the main ones (I’ve omitted all the little annoying things because they pale in comparison and also had more to do with our neighbours and not the actual apartment):

• Bitterly cold except in summer – Old buildings usually mean the insulation is almost non-existent. So that building itself without heating will be almost the same temperature as the air outside. There are also gaps in all the window fittings and frames so heat escapes and cold air comes in. Add to that the fact that the so called heaters are the old ones fitted into the wall which basically use hot water as the heating mechanism. Essentially, it heats up by running the hot water through a metal frame pretending it’s a heater. Doesn’t really work that well. I could put my hand on it directly and leave it there as long as I felt like doing so. To be fair, it did heat up the apartment slightly, but only because without it turned on, we needed to wear the same clothes we would wear to go out. Put simply it was just F*$&ing cold!
• Bed bugs – When we first moved in, we noticed some reddish brown stains on the bed frame but didn’t think anything of it. We just cleaned it up and left it at that. When the temperature started to get warmer, we started to get red itchy spots all over our legs and arms. We told the landlord who then called the pest controller in. They said it was a beetle of some sort and that the larvae irritates skin and leave itchy spots. So they treated the apartment for the beetles (3 times over the space of 3 weeks) and we thought the problem was solved. Incidentally, at the end of the treatment, we left to go on our trip to China and also back home to Oz. When I got back (I arrived back in the UK a few weeks before Mimi), I woke up the next morning with the same red spots all over my legs and arms! Worse than that, I noticed red blood spots all over the mattress. I think it was when I squished the bugs through the night as I moved around. I lifted up the bed and to my horror saw the actual bugs on the frame and the mattress! I took pictures but I don’t want to post them on here in case anyone reading is squeamish. The landlord got the pest controllers back who upon inspection of the bed confirmed the bed bugs and also pointed out the reddish stains on the bed frame (which we noticed upon moving in) were sure signs on the bed bugs. In other words, they were already there before we moved in…although our landlord assured us that she had NEVER had bed bug issues before. Anyway, the bed frame now had to be treated and we had to sleep in the living room on the air mattress for a whole month! My back is still “thanking” me for that month on the air mattress. Thankfully after the treatment, they bugs were gone…at least for now. I don’t know if they’ll be back but it doesn’t matter because we don’t live there anymore!
• Dust dust dust everywhere – When the place was redecorated, we think they basically ripped up the carpet and just polished the original wooden floor boards and then treated them. Problem with that was the fact the original floor boards had half centimetre gaps between each long plank. So there was no way we could see what lay underneath the boards nor could we clean them properly. They were just permanently dirty and that meant we could never clean up all the dust as a lot of it was under the boards.
• Plumbing – Apparently, the basement flat in the building had a water leakage problem that had been going on for 6 months. They had essentially moved out of their bedroom because the wall was “growing mushrooms”. Their words, not mine. They eventually complained enough to building management that plumbers had to come in. It came down to the point where they isolated a pipe that was the cause of the leak and it happened to run through the middle of our flat! So they had to cut a hole in the wall to get at the pipe and the just seal back the hole with a board…which still had not been fixed up properly on the day we moved out. Luckily the plumber that did the work was smart enough to know he could get at the pipe through the wall or else they had to rip our kitchen sink out!
• Tricky boiler – Our hot water boiler took us some time to figure out how to use. It was temperamental and sometimes refused to produce any hot water…or so we thought. This was until we figured out that the “magic switch” was the kitchen tap. Turning on the hot water via the kitchen tap somehow forced the boiler to generate hot water. It was still annoying however because one of us yelling out to the other in “mid shower” to “turn on the kitchen tap” was quite a common occurrence.
• Leak in the ceiling – 2 weeks before we moved out, the ceiling started leaking. We’re guessing it was a pipe running through the building, but we’re not sure. The landlord was still trying to get it sorted when we moved out.
• Boiler broke – 1 week before we moved out, the boiler stopped working. That meant we had NO HOT WATER. Luckily we still had our gym membership (which we had cancelled but ran through until the end of April) so we had to go to the gym EVERYDAY simply to take a shower. Lots of fun! Incidentally, that was the most we had ever used our gym in the space of a month. Pretty bad on our part.

The boiler breaking and ceiling leaking in the last 2 weeks of our tenancy were a sure sign we made the right decision to move out. Even Mimi finally agreed that she was happy to be moving to a much newer place. I’m going to get in trouble for this next statement, but I’ve learned that the only way to get her to agree to something is to let her try things out her way first…unfortunately that meant living in that Earls Court flat for a whole year! That’s not to say I didn’t come around to the whole “West London” thing. Like I’ve already said, you CANNOT beat the convenience and location…if you can put up with everything else. The only way we both would have been 100% happy in West London was to pay 40% more rent for a properly refurbished place…and that certainly wasn’t going to work within our budget!

Now on to the new place. Remember how we saw over 60 places before we found our place in Earls Court? The best thing about that was we were VERY well researched and educated about what presented good value. Fortunately we had also seen some places in Canary Wharf last year. This time around, we only saw 1 place and took it. In other words, we went from one extreme to the other. Mimi didn’t even physically see our new place. I had a business meeting in Canary Wharf and simply arranged a viewing for myself to fit in with my meeting. I took some pictures so Mimi could have a look and decide if she wanted to have a look herself. In the end she decided that she liked what she saw in the photos and we agreed to make an offer without her even taking a look because we thought £300 per week was good value (it wasn’t listed at this price so it’s not like we offered the advertised price). We basically agreed that if they would take the offer we’d be happy to go for it. They did. Oh, did I mention the new place has a gym and pool for residents? Add to that the fact that our rent is now lower than what we paid in Earls Court and we’re in an even better position. Sure the council taxes here are 50% more (council taxes in the Tower Hamlets are generally more than in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea), but we don’t have to pay for water and gas (included in the maintenance costs paid by the landlord), so the bills balance out (we did our sums to verify this).

To add to all the positives, I’m changing jobs and my new role happens to be based in Canary Wharf! That wasn’t planned. It just worked out that way.

In summary, we’re happy with the new place for the following reasons:

• Monthly costs go down.
• MUCH newer.
• MUCH warmer.
• MUCH cleaner.
• Gym + Pool

On the negative side:

• Not as convenient.
• We’re still working out the heater timer – we need to have a gap of an hour between showers otherwise the 2nd person will run out of hot water halfway through.

Overall, we’re still ahead in this new place I think…I’m not going to speak for Mimi but I think she agrees

As for the whole issue with our Internet…

I complained last year (here and here) about how difficult it was to get our Internet in Earls Court set up mainly because of Orange’s incompetence. This time around was no different. Customer service is still non-existent and they refused to take any responsibility for the fact it took 3 whole weeks to get the service enabled in our new place. I gave them advance notice before we even moved in and all they could do was blame BT (because they own all the lines) and keep saying “I understand your frustration sir”. Well if you understand my frustration, then do something about it!!!!!! They were also still charging us for the 3 weeks of non-existent service. When I asked them why, they blamed BT again. If I could do this again, I would have cancelled the service with Orange upon moving and just changed service providers. At least they wouldn’t have charged me for the non-service and I would have been rid of Orange! The only disadvantage of doing so would have been that we would be stuck with another 12 month contract, which is not that big a deal because we’re planning to stay here for the next 12 months anyway.

The whole Internet service thing doesn’t seem to be limited to Orange however. I’ve spoken to other people and looked in forums and it seems to be the case across the UK. For a first world, technologically advanced country, the UK does an APPALLING job when it comes to telecommunication matters. I would take Telstra or Optus any day!

That’s enough complaining from me for today. I’m going to go relax on our balcony and look out at the river…oh forgot to mention, we have a balcony with a partial view of the Thames.

 

Our first live football game

In case people start to think all we do is eat, here’s something else to prove that we do other things…

I’ve been looking forward to today for awhile. While I’m sure Mimi was at least a little bit excited, it paled in comparison to me for 2 reasons:

1. I actually like watching a football game (in this case I’m talking about the Soccer kind, not Rugby League, Rugby Union, Aussie Rules or American Football – but I like watching them all).
2. I’m a bit of a Chelsea FC fan. Mimi’s more of a Liverpool fan because she likes Steven Gerrard (she doesn’t really like watching a game or even highlights, but if Liverpool’s involved, her ears prick up).

Today we went to Stamford Bridge (which is actually walking distance from where we live) to watch Chelsea play Tottenham. My buddy who shall remain unnamed (unless he wants to dob himself in by writing a comment) works for a company that has season passes to Chelsea games and managed to get 4 of them for this game.

We had pretty good seats and it was a good game…mostly because Chelsea won 2-0 and Juliano Belletti’s goal was just spectacular. Full coverage of the game here if you are interested. It would have been even better if Chelsea weren’t missing half their first team. John Terry (injured), Frank Lampard (injured), Andriy Shevchenko (injured), Didier Drogba (National team duties), Michael Essien (National team duties), John Obi Mikel (National team duties) and Salomon Kalou (National team duties) were not in the side today.

I won’t go analysing the game because there’s plenty of that around the place by people more knowledgeable than I. But it was a fun experience and I dare say we’ll be going again. In fact, we would have seen a few games by now if they weren’t so darned difficult to get. Chelsea are one of the biggest clubs in the world and tickets to watch their games are hard to come by. Here are a few photos we took:

 

Eating season continues

Friday was my Birthday, so as we’ve been doing throughout the past few weeks, we ate some more. Mimi took me to L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon in Soho. Robuchon is arguably the chef of chefs, so we went to dinner expecting only the best. Of course, we knew the concept behind his L’Atelier restaurants was a little more informal and very “Tapas-like” and accordingly we expected things to be a little less formal.

Naturally, we arrived late. Mimi’s not capable of being on time for anything, but that’s another issue for discussion at a later date We were told that because we were 45 minutes late, we would have to eat fast as they needed the table back at 8:15pm (this was at 6:45pm). We just said OK and figured it was sort of our fault anyway and didn’t feel like fussing about it. We were seated at our table, which was not so much a table, but more like a bar (exactly like at a sushi train restaurant). We didn’t mind that too much, except that even though there was plenty of space, they made us sit right next to another couple. I mean, if we’re paying that much for food, they should at least make the effort to keep everyone as comfortable as possible.

Putting the seating issue aside, we settled down and browsed through the menu, which is exactly the same at all the L’Atelier restaurants all over the world. The waiters didn’t even have to move around. All they did was hang around behind the bar area and serve us over it. The area behind the bar also had a big hot-plate which they used to cook simple things that just required searing. I think they had a larger kitchen for things that required more complex preparation that we didn’t have a direct view of. Our waiter suggested we either order the set menu or pick 2 tasting dishes and a main. We went for the tasting dishes and a main.

Here’s what I had:

And here’s what Mimi had:

Overall, the food was as you would expect. Exquisite (yeah sounds posh, but “good” or “nice” doesn’t do the food justice). The highlights were the Crispy langoustine fritter with basil pistou and both desserts.

At about 8:05pm, our waiter asked if we would like coffee, but it turned out to be a nice way of telling us to go to the bar upstairs and to vacate our “table”. We didn’t really mind as we weren’t in the mood to have our night ruined by getting too particular about things almost all restaurants do to a certain extent. As it turned out, they have a very nice, intimate, romantic bar which you could spend hours in if you like. We ended up staying there for just over an hour (or maybe it was 2) and then left after a few drinks each.

As you would expect, we had a great evening out. The food was as you would expect. The company even better. And our food tour of Michelin star chef restaurants continues…next time.

But like Mimi said, we should probably head on over to the gym first.

 

Ushering in 2008 London style

Our festivities continued through the holiday season and New Year’s Eve (NYE) was no exception. Although we were out of London during Christmas, we decided to experience one NYE in London. After all, it may be embarrassing if someone asks you what it’s like and you have no idea even after having lived in a place for a few years (not that we’ve been in London for even a year yet).

Instead of roughing it out in the cold and crowding with everyone along the river, we decided to splurge for a 5 course NYE dinner at Skylon Restaurant at the Royal Festival Hall right next to the London Eye. Of course, it’s not something we’re likely to ever do again given the price tag, but we thought doing it once would be fine.

The restaurant itself was very nice and also fully booked. There was also a live band that seemed to only have a repertoire or pre-1980 songs, but they were quite good, if a bit loud. We were singing along to the likes of ABBA, Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis all night. The Royal Festival Hall itself was having a dance party of sorts, so the area was filled with people. But it was still quite comfortable because only people with special “Royal Festival Hall” passes were allowed in the general area for security reasons. The food was nice, but nothing to write home about. We were pretty full afterwards though, so I guess we can’t complain they didn’t feed us.

What we didn’t realise was that while the restaurant was right by the London Eye and on the Thames river, we couldn’t really see much of the fireworks from the restaurant due to logistics. So at about 11:30pm, the staff came around and suggested we get our coats and head on outside to get a good view of the show. Here’s a photo of the crowd waiting for the countdown…

And thanks to the BBC and YouTube, here is a video of the fireworks.

Quite spectacular in hindsight. If we hadn’t seen the BBC’s coverage, we wouldn’t have realised that it was actually a good show. From where we were standing, we just saw a lot of flashing stuff through all the smoke. I guess that’s what you get if you are too close to where the fireworks are being launched from. Still, I don’t think it is as good as Sydney’s…but I’ll always be biased about anything that I compare to home. Sydney also has the advantage of having the prettiest harbour in the world as a canvas.

We left the restaurant at 1:30am and decided to walk to Embankment tube station as it was a direct line back to our area. Unfortunately, we didn’t realise they closed it because of the anticipated unmanageable congestion from people trying to get home. So we thought we’d walk to Westminster tube station, which is the next stop. That too was closed for the same reason. We were told that the closest open tube station was actually Victoria…roughly a 20 minute walk away.

As with all NYE celebrations in most countries, there is an aftermath and lots of cleaning to be done by the council. On our walk between Embankment and Westminster tube stations, we took a picture.

To Westminster council’s credit, they cleaned it up pretty quickly and efficiently.

When we got to Victoria station, the crowd was HUGE. There was a mass horde of people waiting at the entrance to the station because they couldn’t get in. So we decided against attempting to take public transport and thought that since we were so full anyway, we would walk it off all the way back home in the cold. Actually, it was about 5 degrees, so not too bad.

……….2 hours later we were still only at South Kensington tube and gave up trying to walk back. We knew for a fact that South Kensington was at least a half hour walk back home and that was at normal pace. We had slowed down to “granny pace” by then due to fatigue. So we decided to head for the station and thankfully the crowd wasn’t that bad.

We eventually got back at around 4am. Luckily for us, we didn’t have any plans for the 1st until dinner…and it was a really late one at that. All things taken into account, it was a fun NYE and a real experience.