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For Stuart’s birthday we all opted to get him a DS Lite, the original plan was to get him vouchers for it but I thought it was cooler to just get him the actual console. Alice was able to attend and spend some time in London with me. We managed to all meet up at Brent Cross and head to Kazzie’s for the night. I believe we had some nice grubby takeaway from some random Chinese Takeaway place.
I’m not sure how we spent our evening and morning but I believe we did have an amazing breakfast! We bought everything we needed to make the perfect full english breakfast and got delayed for the actual event that Max and Aino organised. I believe we did quite a fair bit of smash brothering too which made us disturbingly late, no worries though since we’re the host I guess *shrugs*. Passing Brent Cross I was able to smuggle myself a black DS Lite for Stu whilst Karis and Inn were able to distract Stu for a bit.
We arrived at Regent Street pretty late and finally found everyone, we then headed to a very packed Oxford Street finding the restaurant. We were going to have tapas at a place called La Tasca. Quite a fair amount of people were about which was fun and we had a lovely seat booked and all.
The meal was alright, paella was just wet rice and bits of stuff however we did order a fair amount of stuff and in the end, the bill was a joke. It came to £200+ and people were simply gobsmacked by it, it was rather awkward for people, especially when some were refusing to pay any more. Me and Alice decided to save the day by pitching in the rest so everyone was able to pay the bill and avoid embarrassment. But boy Max and Aino aren’t planning any meetups in the future. Tapas is a 2 person event, not suitable for orgies.
The rest of the weekend was spent with Alice, we met up with Jason and Rachel and had some yum yum dim sum at Royal China, I chose this place because Jason and Rachel previously took me to “Ping Pong” to have dim sum when I told them that Royal China is a nicer place and do a wider range of dim sum. So yeah, it was a pretty epic meal at a far less scary price (especially when Jason and Rachel could afford it all hehe). I was very pissed off that we didn’t get free oranges! They usually do it so 
We went into the Natural Cafe to sit around and chat for the rest of the day, Jason got me an orange to eat hehe. Was always nice seeing Jason and Rachel, Alice got on well with them too so it was all good 
We then called it a night and that was that day.
The day after I had to go work and Alice had to return back up north, we said our farewells at Monument and that was the weekend. Lesson of the day, don’t get tapas. Stick with a golden crispy fucking duck haha.
Today was a weird day, I had my second interview at a company I eventually get into and boy was that a crazy day. I was told to turn up at 9.30am and have my interview which turns out to be rescheduled to 11am. The interview was a double whammy! I had two sessions, one with the Vice President of Client Services and the second was with a client relationship manager and a fellow technical consultant (or solutions engineer back in those days haha). Afterwards I was scheduled another interview with the director of technical consulting later that day. It was a phone interview from new york so I gave them my mobile number and expected their call later on.
After a hard and gruelling interview day I felt pretty happy with the results and went to see Inn, Stuart and Karis at Brent Cross since they were heading off to Stockholm the day after. I went to a KFC prior to meeting them outside hendon central station. Karis and Inn were picking me up whilst Stu was slightly late and all. We had some food (at Burger King and Yo sushi) and eventually met up with Stu and basically did a bit of shopping, checked out the new ipod touch and went to Luton airport to exchange some money.
Now the last line was a bit hectic since I’ve never been to an airport before, the worse bit was that I wasn’t travelling the day after so I was just going for company and all and BOY was it a horrible journey! I suppose it was horrible since we went there and found out that they dont exchange Swedish monday there since there’s not departures to Sweden in the airport! Grr! I kept telling them about how I’ll eventually start looking for cufflinks if I get my job so I had a quick gander at the cufflinks store haha. Once all of that was done we eventually went back to Kazzie’s place and headed off to pick up kev. It was a quick swop of people but meh! I wanted to go home, I was far too tired from all the interviews, I had my phone interview inside Karis’ car when we were driving to Brent Cross which was funny (especially when moments before the interview I told them two that at any minute I was going to get a phone interview haha). So yeah, a tiring day with interviews (and random trips to airports) but hopefully I get a job offer and all (which I do haha, damn me writing this AFTER getting the job)
I decided that since I’ll be starting job hunting now, now that Alice has found herself a lovely job at Halifax (in Halifax). I believe my “holidays” need to come to an end and that I should start getting into the real world of finding a job and paying taxings like every graduate who wishes not to do their masters or doctorate. After a lengthy 30 minute thinking, I decided to plan a long visit to Alice’s place to ensure that we had enough time together and all.
The visit was slightly crippled though, mainly due to the fact that Alice’s job requires her to be at the office about 7-4 odd. Which meant that I would be spending most of that time on my own (that’s a lie, her family will be in the house most of the time). This is where productivity will see a massive boom as I ensure that the time spent when Alice is away isn’t gone to waste. I made sure that I finished blogging everything as well as start finding jobs around the end of the second week. We also had a day where we were going to spend with kev, inn, gem and paul for sushi and bingo (sushi being just with kev and inn). So yeah, quite a lovely one visit hits all plan. How could one refuse to go? (especially when Alice is living up there haha)
Sushi, 3D Dumbledore and We are Physics!
08.09.07Today was quite a disturbingly hectic day, so many things arranged and plan in the last minute. Kazzie spoke to me on msn and asked me if I wanted to go out and have Yo Sushi! with her and Stu. I originally was going to decline the offer since I was pretty tired from Regina Spektor gig and all, thought since Michelle was also inviting me to see We Are Physics at the buffalo bar as well I decided I might as well make the day of it and have a proper day out again.
Ever since Alice arrived back from France we were going to arrange some time to meet up and all, though since I was occupied every other Friday, it meant that I had to work my times to visit Alice around the schedule and all. We were able to have a quick Monday to Thursday visit which was fun. I met Will (Alice’s eldest brother) during my visit and got to go to Temujin once again. I was also able to have a quick meal with kev at Lucky Dragon (we had loads of yum yum dim sum and kev got some soup and beef fried rice (crazy portions though)) and at the end I was able to accompany Alice to get her A Level results (which were awesome, she got all A’s). That little visit was short but nonetheless significant. One thing that neither of us knew was going to happen was that me and Kev were going to buy tickets to Leeds Festival for the Friday date to see Smashing Pumpkins and Nine Inch Nails (and in my case, see Alice and tell her Happy Birthday).
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