#58 - A day off, followed by ER (minus George Clooney, Noah Wylie et al)

Day off and confusion reigns for 10 minutes...
Monday was a day off.  I assumed it was a public holiday - it wasn't.  I called school to make sure I had read my schedule correctly - we never have a day off during the week!  Ok, we did...

So it was mostly a nice day. I'm skipping the not nice bits - because it hurts to type.  Afternoon tea in St James's Place followed by a walk to Covent Garden and the Royal Ballet.  Graduation present (belated) for LM.  Found out later it was her first ballet, so glad we did it right.  Fun girly day / night out.


ER (don't look if you are squeamish)
So yesterday was another day of sugar.  My sugar leaked a little out of piping bags...got some spectacular burns - put my hand in water / ice periodically, but wanted to finish class.  I think the smart thing would have been to go to the doctor right after, but I had another class so I stayed for that one too. Finished the centrepiece but still have a few kinks to work out for the final.  Pretty safe to say I will avoid piping sugar for the final so will need to consider alternate technique which minimizes potential to come into contact with sugar.

After class, before ER

Unsuccessful attepts to blow sugar during second session. May have had a little to do with the fact that my dominant hand was useless.  Blown sugar will break if you blew it thin enough and then don't pick it up gently enough.  Definitely no apple of discord in my batch of misshapen fruits.  Finished with a practice rose so class wouldn't feel like there was nothing to shoe for it.

Finished early so got a book and went looking for the nearest ER when my fingers started go feel numb.  Surely that can't be good...Google said there was one about 10 minutes' walk away.  Turned out it was some kind of meeting group organizing thing, which is good.  It was in a building where I expected lunatics to come barreling out from nowhere (I pressed a button to get in, the door buzzed to let me in, reception was closed and no one seemed to be around.  Just saw a lot of empty rooms...).  Eventually found someone who gave me directions to the hospital (you go along this road, then turn right).

24 hours after injury...

Temporarily crippled
Eventually got to hospital where I had to ask for directions for the entrance, then directions to the ER. When I finally saw the triage nurse, she asked why I had waited so long to come in. I told her I had class, then got lost. Eventually saw the doctor. One look at my hand and she went to get a more senior doctor. Left hospital a little after midnight with note so I can miss class while my hand regains some functionality. Hmmm, might be while, today is worse than yesterday. Can't be good when the chefs freak out after they see my hand.

Had a pretty walk to class this morning, then yummy dinner near St Paul's - Gordon Ramsay's Bread Street Kitchen - although I didn't know it was Gordon Ramsay's when I picked it or might have boycotted it (you know, general bad language, personal attacks on people, etc etc).

So food:  seared scallops with apple and bacon, short rib burger, green beans with shallots, mac 'n cheese (all of which LM and I shared);

then dessert:  pineapple upside down cake for her and another mac 'n cheese.  The waitress laughed when I ordered my dessert, then laughed a little more when I told her it was the best dessert in a while.

Took forever to wash hair with one hand unable to do anything.  Need more painkillers but afraid to take any.  Dinner was a while ago and you have to take these with food...

Have mock exams coming up but hand is out of commission for at least 7 - 10 days.  Need to do the practice but don't want to damage hand further with exams just over a week away.  Can't hold a pen or spoon, much less a knife so will have to figure something out.  Silver lining - can't fake this kind of injury.  Tiny lining, but there nonetheless.  Going to sleeep now, hopefully some healing will begin to make itself felt because it's starting to hurt a bit now.  Any mistakes are due to exhaustion and pain, but apologies anyway.

So until next time, please stay safe and may you not need to search for silver linings.

#47 - The nightmare before the Student Event (and brrr!!!!)

(Note:  This was written over a course of several days so the change in tenses is entirely accurate, even if possibly grammatically incorrect.

Teamwork
Part of the Superior Cuisine course is to put on a Student Event dinner - I think I may have mentioned this before...

As much as the event is about the food, it is also about our ability to work as a team.  (Personally I have a suspicion that it's also a clever piece of marketing for those students who haven't yet decided whether they will continue on to Superior Cuisine...)  It's a fast sell out -where else can you have a multi - course meal for £15, which includes canapes, a cocktail (champagne?), a glass of red and white wine each and petit fours?

There are 2 dinner events each term - one by the 2 groups containing the Grand Diplome students ("GDs") (and a few other students to round out the complement, if there are fewer than 20 Grand Diplomes, as in our case), the other dinner by the remaining groups of students in Superior Cuisine.  There is a rivalry which becomes apparent during the discussion over the breads and dessert planning session, mainly because the GDs want to take advantage of having learned more complicated things in Patisserie than the desserts taught in the Cuisine courses.  We will see on Thursday night whether we over reached or whether we calculated our abilities well.

On Wednesday morning we will start our mise en place, then we cook from 12noon on Thursday until 6pm (or so says our schedule).  Given that dinner starts at 7:30pm, we will be plating / serving our desserts around 9 / 9:30pm.  Then there's clean down, possibly a mini-debrief (I've forgotten, it's somewhere on the schedule) then people will retire to the pub for a drink or ten.

***After the event...***
Our group is lucky - we don't have class until noon tomorrow(although we started Thursday with a demonstration).  The other group has their first planning class for their entremets (the design your own dessert) which we had a the Saturday before last.  It has definitely put a damper on their anticipation for drinks at the pub as they will need to be awake quite early.  The school's rationale is that this is a small taste of what it might be like to work in a restaurant.  According to Chef FJ, the day we did lobster was a small taste as well.  Someone tole me we finished an hour late.  Time flies when you're having fun, I guess.  I thought we finished an hour earlier - so much for thinking we had been more organized than the other groups.  There has been some consideration as to whether they remove one of the dishes from that particular class.  I seem to remember that when we were in basic, the Superior group ran quite late - and the reason I remember this is because it was a day when we had to do puff pastry (Day 1 of the allumettes de fromage, I think).  Hmmm, same kitchen as well, now that I think of it.

The weekend just past

Trying out various ways
to plate dessert

So the whole point of this narrative safari is:  we spent the weekend playing with food.  Perhaps it doesn't sound serious when I say play, but that's what it felt like.  Saturday started quite late - we had all had a fairly big week and we had to try out a couple of things.  We had a few ingredients we didn't have enough of and we couldn't find it at the store, so we had to make a substitution.  It never occurred to us that we wouldn't be able to find more icing sugar (aka confectioners sugar aka powdered sugar) when there were 3 stores within walking distance.  So my friands (aka finaciers) seemed a bit odd - not what we remembered.  Then TN tried her hand at them since she is slated to make them on Thursday.  One of the guys who came a bit later brought the correct sugar, but there was still something not quite right.  My suggestion was that it might be a result of us not using the correct moulds because we don't have them.  Hopefully that is the case because we are running out of time.

We also had a try at the tea-scented macaroons.  Um, no - they didn't work.  Something wasn't quite right, so we ended up scrapping that idea and doing a variation of it (I think the tea is going to go into the filling, rather than the biscuit part).  See right for practice photos.

Sadler Wells
The baby pears were poached and prepared for the next day.  I'm not sure what else we did, besides discuss, plan, bake (a bit) - I had to go because I had plans to go see the Birmingham Royal Ballet at Sadler Wells Theatre.  The Sadler Wells had been on my list - part of the whole ballet revival in the UK and all that.

I went with one of the girls from my group, AM (from Argentina).  She had been to see Swan Lake (Royal Ballet?) before, so hadn't had much exposure to ballet.  This was one I hadn't seen before:  La Fille Mal Gardee.  It's a light, fluffy, old-fashioned ballet - the story is quite clear from the dancing.  It's a problem I find with more modern ballets - quite often they don't have a story, in which case a person who hasn't had enough exposure to see and appreciate the nuances in technique might find it boring.

The Sadler Wells is quite a different atmosphere from Covent Garden.  For one thing, it's not as opulent - to be expected, I think.  In some ways it's a smaller and more intimate space - closer in terms of width and you end up looking down at the stage so that you can see the patterns much more easily.  The company has its own orchestra who tours with them.  The conductor (leader?) was sensitive to the dancers and could cue the music accurately enough to have the orchestra end with the dancer's last flourish after a variation - something which can lend a bit to the performance and sometimes help to disguise timing that is slightly off.

It was quite sweet to have the couple on my left discussing the performance between themselves.  AM enjoyed herself as well and after the fiasco of getting to the theatre (she had a problem with the trains so we watched the first act on the screen, by the bar) it was pretty much smooth sailing for the rest of the night.  We went for a late dinner down by Tottenham Court Road on a little street whose name I always forget.  Then it was home to bed.  She was ready to go out for a little boogie, but I had to meet my group on Sunday.  We were going to try the plated dessert as well as have another run at the macaroons and GL had a couple of things he wanted to try with the bread.

I overslept and got there a bit late, but I arrived with supplies.  The others got the bread started, I wrote down a couple of recipes and I can't remember what else I did.  Is it possible I did nothing?  No...I remember being in the kitchen quite a bit.  At some point we all had to get lunch - dim sum at a place down the street...then back to cooking, although by then we were all ready just to lie down and have a nap.  I believe someone made that suggestion, only to be teased mercilessly by the rest of us for his choice of words (something about sleeping with several people).

So this was Sunday.  Again I had to leave - I was supposed to have dinner with a friend.  I'm not sure what was going on with the transportation this weekend - I arrived at her house almost an hour after I wanted to be there.  Luckily for me she had already cooked so we could just sit down, chat and eat once I had settled in.  My contribution to dinner:  roasted red, yellow and orange bell peppers, marinated in olive oil, garlic and some salt (see the last post). 

Dinner finished, LM and I had a chat about various things, then she showed me a couple of bits of a show - I think it's called Top Chef - Just Desserts - or something like that.  Then I had to go home and go to bed because I had class at 8am on Monday.

Bread, more bread and still, more bread
Monday morning almost didn't start well.  I remember waking up and thinking it odd that my alarm hadn't gone off.  Except...it had been going off for almost an hour by the time I woke up.  Somehow I managed to rush out of bed, finish packing my bag and get to school within 10 minutes or so.  Got up to the boulangerie - chef CB had started, but not by much, thank goodness.

Then it was back to business as usual.  He told us to time ourselves so that we could plan our times for the final exam.  We all forgot when we put the brioches in the ovens, but hopefully we will remember that for tomorrow.  My brioche had a few problems, but I think I know what they are.  Tuesday morning is an opportunity to try again.


Ciabatta and baguettes

Bread went on until 2pm.  We had an early break because there were things which needed to rest (like the baguette dough).  Lunch was a ciabatta roll, which was delicious.  We all ended up shaping 2 baguettes (Chef made the dough) - I gave one to Michael and Rufus, but I took the other one home and had it for my 2nd dinner with smoked salmon and cream cheese.  Yes, I said 2nd dinner - the 1st dinner was leftover risotto from last night (thanks, LM!) with some marinated roasted peppers, a little fish and some chilli.  The chilli didn't go with the risotto, so that was my bad.  I had to wake myself back up to get ready for bed - I kind of passed out for a couple of hours on the sofa right after dinner.  I really wanted to go to bed but it was something like 7pm - sad...

There was a restaurant dessert demo after breads, before I got to go home.  I wish we'd had it before our entremets class - there are so many things I could have done better but just didn't know (or rather, I'd forgotten them).  There was a fire drill right before the end of class...so I took the opportunity to take a photo of us going back to class...

Some of the
other breads
(Campagne, complet
and more brioch)

Tuesday was one of my favorite days, mainly because I looovvvveee pain au chocolat.  We had made the dough the day before and let it rest overnight.  I had mixed the flour (half soft, half strong).  Maybe we all know how to handle our dough better, maybe it's something else.  For whatever reason, everyone agreed that this was a much better tasting croissant and pain au chocolat than those that we did in Intermediate (only just over 3 months ago now...)  It's just so hard to beat the gooey, flaky goodness of a pain au chocolat fresh out of the oven.  It leaves crumbs absolutely everywhere but is completely worth the extra clean down.  Besides, it gave us something to do while we were waiting for various things (like the brioche attempt #2 to prove).

It's all fun and games until
someone loses an eye

We also finished off a couple of different types of bread, among them our hedgehog (aka Pain Surprise).

We had to cut off the top of the bread, cut out the middle in one piece, slice the piece into thin discs of bread and make them into sandwiches.  I had taken in some of my favorite sandwich fillings because I'm not a huge fan of salami (school supplied salami, ham and smoked salmon). I managed to get enough slices for 4 layers of sandwiches, then clapped the lid back on. My hedgehog supplied several people with dinner (he went to some friends the next night as dinner).


Dinner - Tuesday


I have to admit that that night I just wanted lots of salad as we had already sampled Chef CB's hedgehog in class (with a glass of wine, for those who wanted some).


Wednesday was preparation for the Superior Cuisine event - doing the preparations and such.  It was all starting to come together from the sound of things.  I had unfortunately overslept - thank goodness ML called me to see where I was.  I arrived there soon after and managed to get most of what needed to get done, done.  There was a bit of unexpected (like burning the lemon juice off altogether because I was in a hurry and turned the burner up high, then forgot about it...whoops!)



We also had a demo for class, but didn't actually end up cooking food (as opposed to dessert) so when I went home, I ended up using the rest of the puff pastry in my fridge along with the poached pears and syrup from last week.  SH, who was taking the hedgehog, loves poached pears and I needed the space in the fridge.  I used the scraps to make palmiers with some caramelized madamia nuts as well - so it worked out for everyone.  The only bad thing is that my oven is so uneven (gas flame, unevenly distributed) that it overcooked my palmiers a bit and killed the bread I was trying to bake with what was leftover from class.

The Event

Canapes

Today was the Event. I have to say that when I saw the plates, I was impressed by what everyone had achieved. I can't believe how far we have come in a few short months (and we're still just under half way through this portion of our course). I am too tired to write too much about all the food, but here are the photos. I will add what the dishes are later, but for now...


Amuse bouche

Starter - plating seared scallops

Main - Partridge 2 ways

Cheese course - brie de Meaux

Plating the dessert trio

Pear & Chestnut mousse entremet,
poached Baby Pear
and Armagnac Parfait

Petit fours: 
Lemon Butter Logs,
green Earl Grey tea Macaroons
with salted caramel
and Financiers






So this is our week so far.  Class tomorrow from 12 - 9pm, then I think I will come home and sleep a long time.  Nothing but sleep and coffee on Saturday, possibly.  Can't face being on my feet for long - didn't dare sit down after 6pm tonight for fear that if I sat, I wouldn't get back up again.  Feet are protesting the unaccustomed amount of standing, walking and running they did around the kitchens and up and down the stairs.

Any errors are entirely the result of exhaustion and being unable to see straight.  I hope you enjoyed the photos.  I definitely enjoyed the food!

So until next time, may you feel and be rested. 

6 - In which a whole lot of time has elapsed...

Time flies when you're having fun
The past 8 days have just slipped by.  I moved into my flat, set up the essentials (sheets, towels, cleaning stuff - I can hear friends snickering - and a printer for my computer) and finally figured out how the heating and hot water work.  A boiler sounds Dickensian and quaint and fun - unless you're freezing your @## off at 4pm and wondering why it is so cold in here.  Visions of being found dead of hypothermia in the middle of the living room included people shaking their heads and wondering, "Why didn't she just turn on the heat?" to which I would have been unable to answer, "Do you think I didn't try?"

BB in Honolulu previously stated that he was going to try to live a life of minimal material possessions (feel free to correct me - I am sure I misquoted you!) which sounds fine in theory.  In practice, when you are looking for a knife so that you can cut a cucumber, you want the knife!  Also, I miss my pots and pans.  Oh, don't get me wrong - this flat is furnished.  It came with two pots, one of them tiny and only one has a lid.  I can use the little one to boil water for tea or milk for Milo.  The larger one is just big enough to make porridge.  Even minimal setup, it turns out, requires a lot of buying stuff.  Stuff you don't want to have to go searching for - like, where do you buy a toilet brush?  Yes, yes, I know - this is supposed to be a blog about a rambling feast and lots of food.  But since it's a sabbatical year, you get it all - the good (found a flat almost immediately) the bad (how does this boiler work?) and the ugly (toilet brushes?  Really?).

Also, a refresher of something that all children should be taught - want vs. need.  I WANT the cute cushions I saw in the homewares store (and which are not on my shopping list).  I do not NEED the cute cushions to be able to survive...I NEED to be able to turn on the heater...

Self induced torture (aka Russian Ballet)
I have found a dance studio here.  They say they have over 198 classes a week.  I am guessing they may have around 199 - otherwise, why wouldn't you say 200 (or more) classes a week?  Anyway, there is an amazing teacher there - she is Russian and she pushes everyone...a couple of the girls left class yesterday, panting from effort.  These are girls who are auditioning for schools/professional companies.  I hear a lot of "more!  point the foot!" which is a bit of a change after the lackadasical attitude in Sydney where we were pretty much there to have fun and exercise a bit.  This is actually to try to make it pretty.    Think about it - anywhere else you would not be allowed to watch (i.e. professional company class) or you would have to pay to see some of these dancers.  Here you pay £10 and you get to participate as well.  Cheaper than going to the gym...

In which my lack of shopping knowledge was made abundantly clear
Then last night, I had dinner with NT who is also over from Sydney.  We had a bit of a miscommunication because we had one landmark (Top Shop - which is at Oxford Circus) and a different Tube stop (Goodge Street).  I didn't think anything of it because I had seen a couple of Top Shops (or thought I did) so I thought there was one at the tube stop.  Um, no - thank goodness for cell phones!  We eventually found each other and made it to dinner - dim sum at Ping Pong.  Ping Pong is this trendy looking chain - we went in because I was wearing sneakers (the better to walk quickly on a cold London night, my dear) and it looked fairly casual.

English style dim sum
So we ordered our dim sum off the card (they don't do carts).  Not having been there before, we asked the waitress if we had ordered enough or too much.  She looked at the card and said, "I think it's perfect."  Well, it may have been perfect if you have a dainty appetite.  NT and I do not have dainty appetites, so we ended up ordering a few more dishes after we finished the initial 7.  It was a fusion dim sum (think Thai crispy spring rolls with mint, lettuce and dipping sauce), a coconut rice hotpot with chicken and shiitake mushrooms and another one that was a squid ink wrapper with...fish? inside.  I was so caught up in the conversation that I forgot what was in what.  Maybe NT can help.

Just so you know - I have looked at people's food blogs (reviews, recipes, etc.) and there are a zillion of those out there, some of which are really well written.  So it may be that this one is going to be much more of a ramble than it is about the feast - although the feasting will still be there, don't you worry.

English topics/culture
Yesterday afternoon I was reminded that one of the worst crimes that you can commit here is "jumping the queue" aka cutting the line (no, I didn't.  It came up in conversation).  However, it does explain that afternoon at the bank last week and why the man was so incensed that the other had cut in front of him.

The weather - has been beautiful.  With the exception of one day when I had to buy an umbrella for a light drizzle (and which had cleared up a few hours later) it has been mostly sunny with a light (variable) breeze.  Temperatures have been in the 11-12C range during the day and around 1-2C at night, which feels a lot colder because of the wind.

Last hurrah before getting down to business
I have booked a ticket to go visit ACP&KP in Doha (Qatar - United Arab Emirates, in case you were going to Google it).  I leave tomorrow morning and have used online check-in.  Who knew?  It was great except someone snaked my seat right before I hit confirm...one second it was available, the next, gone.  But the boarding pass with my seat has been printed out and put with my travel documents, all of which have been put somewhere safe.  Usually that means I will never find it again, or it will take years, but in this case I have so little clutter that I think I am safe.  I am looking forward to being warm for a few days, then returning to London to appreciate the cool spring weather.

Classes officially start on Thursday, 31 March 2011 at 8:30am, where we finally get (among other things) our schedule.  Travel plans have been on hold until I know what our holidays are - really hoping to escape London for the hoopla surrounding the Royal wedding.  I wish the couple well, really, but since they are providing an occasion for us to have an extra long weekend, why not travel?  Manhattan is issuing its siren call in this direction...

Am off to buy vegemite for my hosts in Doha.  Personally I can't see the appeal - they have said that it is an acquired taste but almost a lifetime has not yet been sufficient.  Ah, packing - always more fun when it is for a vacation, unlike when one is moving house.  A hui hou - until next time!

#4 - What just happened?

Heathrow - in which I wondered whether my London experience was to end before I left the airport...
No matter how organised you are, there is always that moment of sheer terror when the immigration person with the stamp asks you a question which you answer and instead of stamping your passport, they start asking more questions.  This is even harder when you have been having difficulty processing the really difficult questions on board the plane from Hong Kong, such as "would you like a snack?" to which I had to think for half a minute before I could formulate an answer in a language that resembled a standard language for communication.

The guy:  "Why are you here?"
Me:  "To study."
The guy:  "Until when?"
Me:  "Until December."
The guy:  "Where's your letter?"
Me:  (Thinking *#&$@!!!!!!)  "What letter?"
The guy:  "The one that says you are going to study here."
Me:  "I didn't know I needed the letter.  It's all there on the visa."
The guy:  "Anyone can get a visa.   Otherwise how do you prove you are going to study here?"
Me:  (Did you ever try to get a freakin' visa, jump through all the hoops and get all the paperwork together?  They're more uptight than you are!)  As sweetly as utter exhaustion permits "I can print it out, if you can get me to a printer."
The guy:  "We don't have time for that."  (The he stamped my visa.  Not that I'm complaining, but really, it didn't seem like it was fun for him to give me a hard time, so why do it?)

The rest of the day continued on a much more promising note.  I actually managed to get my many bags and myself to JB's place near Regent's Park.  The taxi driver was kind enough to put my very heavy bags by the front door and the rest kind of took care of itself.

In desperate need of coffee but realizing that it was now late afternoon, I wandered down the street towards Le Pain Quotidien, hoping for good hot chocolate.  On the way, I stopped by a real estate agent's front window to see what was available in the area and voila! there was a one bedroom apartment.  I had no idea where Devonshire Street was, but I thought I'd check.  Like so many other things which have fallen into place for this particular venture, it turned out to be ridiculously easy - the flat was directly above the agent's offices (and about a 5-minute walk to the Cordon Bleu).

I know I said I could suck it up and stay in a studio for nine months, but the fates have conspired against such a plan - there wasn't much of a price difference between the studio flats and 1-bedroom places in the area, except that most of the other places were too far away or had something quite wrong with them (i.e. opening onto the end of a railway line).  As absurd as it may sound, it seems that the perfect little apartment presented itself before I had been in London for more than three hours.

Deja vu
I also quickly stuck my head in at the Cordon Bleu.  It turns out that Marylebone Lane doesn't go all the way through from Wigmore Street to Devonshire Street.  It's also crooked - charming, but confusing if you are expecting a grid pattern to the streets (flashes of wandering for an hour last April in search of Bond Street to Picadilly, only to end up right where I had started, haunted me).  Clearly Manhattan and the Sydney CBD (Central Business District, for your non-Sydneysiders) have spoiled me.  Having to learn North/South is unnatural and should not be required in order to find one's way around a city.

In which I learned that I can't fake tech-speak...
And now for the complicated part:  setting up a bank account and a mobile in the UK.  If you don't know the difference between terminology, what's included on what plan, etc. etc. the whole process can be a bit overwhelming.  Luckily the guys pointed me in the direction of a chain of stores named something like Carphone Warehouse (sorry guys, I really can't remember it) where a helpful fellow whose name I also can't remember got me set up with a mobile and mobile broadband.  Of course this required some investigation when I eventually crashed my computer.  I blame it on new software rather than user error...

Oh, by the way, the coffee at Le Pain Quotidien is drinkable.

A vacation day in London...
This morning started a little later than yesterday - I woke up at 5am instead of at 3:30.  There was a mad dash to get ready for class - there's a dance studio nearby!  I thought I was so organised, but then I couldn't find my tights, then my shoes, then my hairpins.  Boots sells hairpins (they're not quite big enough, but when you're desperate...)  As much as I wanted to stay for another class, on this occasion discretion was most definitely the better part of valour.

In which I discover that time has disappeared at an alarming rate
So it is now Sunday night and I forgot that a couple of days have passed since I last updated this blog...so, high points of the last few days, because I am tired and afraid that it will take me 2 hours to write 3 sentences.

Friday night - VT's birthday drinks at Players - some club that is underground in SoHo.  SoHo, apparently, does not stand for anything in London.  Except for the cool part of town - kind of like in Hong Kong.  I have decided that any place that is SoHo must be cool, regardless of where it is.

Went to Swan Lake at the Royal Opera House yesterday.  The Royal Ballet was amazing and I was lucky enough to attend with another person who appreciates ballet, one of ACP's work colleagues.  NB knew enough that we could exchange glances of appreciation when something particularly spectacular happened on stage.  The amount of skill and strength it must have taken to make it look that effortless defies words, so I won't try.

Then Vietnamese dinner by Leicester Square and Liam Neeson (Unknown) at the movie theatres.  Fun was had by all and we got to give reviews to the others who hadn't seen it yet.

Breakfast this morning in SoHo - some of JB's flatmates had a mission in mind but the place was packed so we ended up at a place with a French sounding name and what appeared to be Mediterranean influenced food.  Good coffee (first good cup in London!) and pretty yummy food - eggs cooked with butter and Turkish sausages.  The sausages were beef, not pork (I checked) but tasted a lot like chorizo.  I could have that with rice and not miss Portuguese sausages, eggs and rice at home too much...although it did mean that I missed the Russian ballet class which kicked my butt the other day.  Used it as opportunity to try a different ballet class - learning experience, but I won't be taking class with this particular teacher again.

Spent afternoon looking at printers because have started reviewing reading lists - the updated one is different from the one in January.  I know they said they were reviewing the material, but come on!  Have realised that I will have to compare all of my readings and that I could have saved myself the weight of schelpping 5 weeks' worth of readings with me.  Also that an extra unit has been added to the course.  Have decided that the early bird not only doesn't get the worm, it gets pissed off that it got up early at all.  I could have packed sweaters!  So much for doing things early.

Made a very large salad for dinner.  It didn't start out that way, it just ended up being really big once I got the couple leaves of lettuce, other veggies, cheese and chicken added to it.  I think I ate enough to feed 50 rabbits.  At least.  Also that the veggies from Waitrose are delicious.  Didn't make it to the markets today, so will try for later in the week.  For someone who has nothing pressing to do, am very busy...

Have determined that tomorrow I will sign the lease for the flat and hope that my bank will accept instructions to wire funds from the US to the UK when I tell them the amount in British pounds because I don't know the exchange rate.  Realise that they may tell me they can't do that and then will have to make alternate arrangements with letting agents.  Note to self:  must ensure that the lease document allows for this - because it doesn't have anything in it yet about the funds except that they must be paid in advance...

Until next time!