Personal Review of 2005 - July to December

July was a bit of a bizarre month in London really.... First the Live 8 Concert which I didn't go, but watched more or less the whole thing on telly in Winchester - poor Ingrid, invited me and a few others down to her place for a day out, instead we were just glued to the telly most of the afternoon and evening. Then 6th July came the good news about London winning the Olympics 2012 - really didn't expect London to get it, but at least now there's no excuse for halting any of the improvement projects of transports and regeneration of East London. And within 24 hours, London went from the happiest city on earth to the saddest one, with the tube bombings. I remember I was just sitting at home, trying to work and then starting to watch the whole thing unfold. I really have no idea what the terrorists were trying to achieve - fear? nope, not working.... sympathy? definitely not..... hatred? nope.

Anyway, went to New York City in mid-July for work.... In 2004 Ingrid, Ellen, Jyotin and I agreed to meet up in 2005 either in London or New York, for a 1-year anniversary celebration of closing out and analysing a very large clinical study - it wasn't the hardest trial I've ever done in terms of analysis, but the logistics and the management posed a lot of challenges and required rather innovative ideas. Still, we managed to do it, and so Ellen managed to book a table at Jean-Georges. It also coincided with Ingrid's 20th wedding anniversary and it was so funny to see the surprise on her husband's face when I turned up at the hotel lobby, as he didn't know about the trip until the day they flew out, let alone seeing me as their New York tour guide! I also took the opportunity of the trip to meet up with my uncle's family, some of my lovely ex-colleagues at Novartis (Vladimir, Linda and Val), as well as a few friends.

In August I went to spend the first weekend down in Brighton at Dorian's, and we went to the Brighton Pride which was a good laugh. And stupid me, brought all the digital camera stuff down hoping to take some good photos, only realising when I was there that I actually forgotten all my memory cards! Must be the sun and the heat, causing my brain to melt!

My sister Elaine came over to London with her hubby and kids in the second half of August, and while the kiddies were at summer camp, we took the opportunity to visit the top restaurants in and around London.... How about 3 visits to 3-star restaurants within a span of one week? Managed to go to Gordon Ramsay on a Monday, then Fat Duck on a Wednesday and finally Waterside Inn on a Friday. The first two never fails to disappoint, but must say that the food at Waterside Inn fails to inspire our taste buds.

I took the whole of September off work - went to Shanghai with Russell for a few days. I went to Shanghai back in 2000 and did a lot of the touristy things already, so this time there was no real rush for acting like tourists. The weather was not brilliant but it didn't dampen our enjoyment, esp on the gourmet front. Who else would be mad enough to go to Nanxiang for their dumplings for breakfast for 2 mornings out of 4? After Shanghai we headed to Hong Kong, as I needed to get my new identity card. And then Russell returned to London while Graeme arrived in Hong Kong to meet up with me for our trip to Nepal and Tibet. I'll write up about the trip separately when I get round to it, but Potala Palace in Lhasa was a slight disappointment, while the bronze buddha at Tashilungpo Monastery at Shigatse, and Mount Everest (or Mount Qomolangma as it is officially known) have truly impressed me. In the whole of September I took about 3300 photos, of which a selection can be seen in the photos section of my website.

Got back to London on the 30th September and so spent a fair bit of time in October catching up with work, as well as sorting through my 3000+ photos! So that month is a bit of a blur for me now really - all I remember is looking at the computer all the time.

Went to the DIA conference in Prague in November, as I was one of the speakers, talking about data warehousing and how the technique was applied to an academic collaboration. It was a bit unfortunate that my talk was the last of the day, and I was told to cut down from 25 minutes to 15. Still, I got some good feedback afterwards which was most important. Also managed to get to see Prague a little bit - wow, what a beautiful city.

As soon as I got back to London, I met up with Ken (a very good friend from Hong Kong who used to be in the same hall of residence as me back in the uni days) and his friend Joyce. Normally I don't get to see Ken very often but this was the 3rd time I saw him in 2005 (as I was in Hong Kong twice already, I managed to see him and his wife Carol both times). And somehow I managed to persuade Ken to bring Carol over for a holiday in December.... Yippee!

Also in November, I acted as the "official" wedding photographer for Jane and Gordon (thank you for asking....) - what an honour! I was a bit clueless of what I did though, as I never knew how to ask people to pose for cameras etc. Still, it was a good learning exercise, and they seemed to be happy with the results.

December.... hmmm, the party where everyone had to bring a dish. This has become a bit of an annual event really, when everyone who comes to the party has to bring some food they cook. It saves me from having to think of dishes to make, and slaving in the kitchen all the time. After the food mountain in 2004, this year we did a much better estimate, and yet the food that got brought along were just as exciting - tartiflette from Christine, moussaka from Jane, chocolate terrine from Maria, Hungarian goulash from Rob, Coronation chicken from Dorian, Mushroom tartelettes from Paul and Fin, goat curry from Genevieve and Delroy, stir-fry noodles from Shona and Keith, fish curry from Mark, bread and butter pudding from Dave and Roy (which I didn't get to try unfortunately), vegetarian chilli from Ginny and Ron, and the gigantic pile of crepes from Anne-Cecile and Tibault, and Jeremy and Linda cheated by buying a delicious cake from Patisserie Valerie. I had the easy job and made a Luang Prabang salad (which no one seemed to have touched - don't blame them.... it was the "healthy" option), fruit curry and some sushi. What a lot of fun.... there was some leftover food, but not much.

Personal Review of 2005 - January to June

After a rather hectic and overworked 2004, I decided that in 2005 I would try to rectify the work-life imbalance.

In January Russell and I went on a 4-week trip round South-East Asia - visiting Thailand briefly before touring round Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. Apart from learning to appreciate the importance of the Mekong River to these countries, I also fulfilled a dream of mine - to visit Angkor Wat. It was more spectacular than I could ever have imagined. My Canon EOS camera got well-used on this trip, and a selection of photos can be seen in the photos section of my website.

As soon as we got back from Asia at the beginning of February, we jetted off to Basel with Christine, Ged and baby Alex for Elisabetta's 40th birthday. She certainly didn't expect me nor Russell to be there - Well done to Neil and Christine for confusing her and leading her to think that we were still in Asia. As usual the party was good and well-organised. No sooner I got back from Basle I jetted off to Newcastle for work, and so by mid-February I had clocked up nearly 15 flights already!

Anthea and Peter came to London to visit in March as it was their 10th wedding anniversary celebration. We went to a few exclusive restaurants - including the very awful "Fifteen" opened by Jamie Oliver! The meal was expensive and even I could cook better than the staff there. I have no problem with cookery training schools and using trainees (in fact I am all for it) - but don't charge £60 and serve dishes that are not worth that price. Then we went to the Fat Duck in Bray for dinner - now that was only slightly more expensive but definitely a lot better. Me being so critical about the food, when the manager Didier asked me what I thought of the tarte tatin, I said "it's OK" and he thought I was not happy with the food, so he whisked that away and offered me a chocolate delice instead (little did he know that I was just full rather than not happy with the food - in fact the chocolate delice was a worse choice for me, as the gooey chocolate really hurt my nose - an undesirable side-effect from my tonsillectomy / uvula-palatoplasty operation in 2004). We could have gone to River Cafe for another dinner but Anthea got ill (after we did a day-trip to Paris).... so missed that one.

In April Darcy and Bob came over for a visit - although Darcy came over for Christmas 2004, I managed to persuade her to come over again.... Using the Kylie Minogue's Showgirl Tour concert as the bait certainly did the trick. We really enjoyed the concert at Earl's Court. It was a complete shock to hear that after the UK leg of the tour, Kylie had to postpone all the Australian tour dates due to her breast cancer.

During Darcy's visit we also managed to squeeze in another nice restaurant visit - this time to Gordon Ramsay's. After this visit I changed my opinion of Mr Ramsay - on telly he came across as all arrogant and foul-mouthed, and so I was a bit skeptical about his restaurant, esp after the Jamie Oliver experience in March. But to my surprise, the food was excellent and the service was immaculate, and the price was not dissimilar to Fifteen.

It was the end of May when the air-con in my Renault Megane failed and I had to take it to the Renault garage in West London to get it fixed. Well, you would have thought this was a simple fix, but it took them 4 times to fix this. I was about to explode by the 3rd time and refused to cough up £750 - after a lot of negotiations I ended up paying £150 (on top of the £70 and the £110 I had to pay in the first 2 times).... it's only fair. Luckily Renault did not demand any payment when I took it in for the 4th time and they fixed it free of charge - otherwise I would have exploded!

In June, it's another visit to the Fat Duck - this time to celebrate Chris' 30th birthday. As usual the food was good.