Working Life

Work is good. It has kept me busy these past few days. I don't have any real news, maybe once I get settled in I'll have some interesting stories to tell, or at least something to complain about. Until then, here are some pictures from a few weeks ago.

This is a pretty cool sink in some restaurant/bar near Covent Garden station. The basin is make of some sort of waxy fake-wood (maybe coated, real wood but I doubt it).

This is a hand dryer in the same bathroom. It took me a while to figure out how I was supposed to use it (read: I didn't read the very obvious, clear instructions). You put your hands straight down inside of it triggering what seemed like a modified jet engine, then you lift them up slowly. It works suspiciously well. It pushes action pushes the water down your hand towards your fingertips then off. Much faster than standard dryers.

Summer Night City

Someone from Finland sent me this and I can't stop listening to it.

I am a terrible person.

Job Search: Phase 3.0F

I start full-time on Monday.

Revenge of Toad in the Hole

As promised, I present to you the sequel to yesterday's post. I let it cook longer today and it is significantly better. The parts that look burnt taste like pancakes. On the plus side, my baking tray will definitely be non-stick for life.

Here's the "nutritional" information you (probably only my mom) have all been waiting for:

Food Facts/Average Values:
Energy: 835kJ/200Calories (~54% from fat)
Protein: 9g
Carbohydrate: 14g (2.6g of of which are sugars)
Fat: 12g (3.2g of which are saturates)
Fiber: 2.0g
Sodium: 0.48g
Salt: ~1.2g

Ingredients:
Pork Sausage (43%) [Pork, Water, Rusk [Wheat Flour, Water], Pork Rind, Pork Fat, Soya Protein, Salt, Dextrose, Emulsified (Diphosphates), Flavouring (contains Yeast), Spice Extracts, Sage Extract], Water, Wheat Flour, Egg White, Skimmed Milk, Whole Egg, Rapeseed Oil, Salt. NO COLOURS OF PRESERVATIVES. NO ARTIFICIAL FLAVOURINGS

Contains:
Gluten, Milk, Wheat, Egg and Soya. May contain traces of nuts and/or seeds.

Well, that was enlightening. Here's the fun part, that's for 1/4 of a pack. Sorry Mom. Don't worry though, I had partly skimmed milk with it so that should balance it out. Right? Right...?

Night of the Living Dead

Tonight I ordered Chinese food. I was hungry and was craving General Tao/Tso chicken. They don't have that here but I wanted to try the closest thing I could get. I'll start the story off with a bit of an interactive writer-reader challenge. Can you guess what's in this mystery bag?

To be fair a lot of things came in those mystery bags. Things I didn't even order. I still have no idea what this stuff is. If someone knows, please leave a comment. It tastes sort of fishy and looks like large Styrofoam chips/crisps. This is not the thing in the mystery bag mentioned above, though. Keep guessing!

I was too hungry to take picture then so this is what was left over from my feast last night. I had eight mini-spring rolls, which didn't last for the photo. They were really good. Also, the chicken is missing but it used to be in that plastic container filled with orange sauce and some mystery vegetable. If you know what that vegetable is please let me know. Fun fact:It's a nice plastic container, I think I'll be able to reuse it. Last chance to guess before I reveal the mystery item.

Finally, the answer you've all be waiting for! (Except those that just scrolled down here right away, way to not play along and cheat the system.) This is my crowning achievement for food purchases in London. Half a liter of delicious Belgian chocolate Häagen-Dazs ice cream. I'm saving it for tonight. Unless, of course, I get hungry before then. But since it's already mid-afternoon I don't think that will be a problem.

Despite my diet I am still alive. I watched Sicko last night, so I'm feeling pretty good about our health care. Then I watched 28 Weeks Later and that balanced it out. I don't recommend wasting your time with 28 Week Later unless you would have otherwise had to spend that hour and a half of your life watching anime.

Death by Breakfast

If there's one thing that's been wrong with the UK so far it is the food hands down. Two days ago I was feeling adventurous and decided to try a new kind of peanut butter. Bad idea. It is the kind you have to mix up before you eat it, which is disgusting enough if you aren't expecting it. So I started my sandwich off by almost spilling peanut grease onto my laptop. I hoped it wasn't normal peanut butter gone-bad and set to work mixing it. It made the more horrible sound. Something between the sound of a cat working out a hairball and a dead octopus being repeatedly smashed onto a rocky beach by waves. It felt like I was eating tasteless peanut butter mixed with sweat and tears. To add to that, my loaf of bread got mangled by the slicer so I ended up with these deformed crusts. One end was super thick (2-3 slices wide) and the other was the normal size but had triangular pieces missing. In case you're wondering why I chose the retarded loaf, that company's bag is not see-through so I had no way of knowing. It wasn't my fault that time.

On my next trip to the store I found this abomination.


Who needs canned hot dogs. And what's with naming your company "Ye Olde Oak." They shouldn't be pretending to be old English, this is like selling canned America it just has to come with a baseball cap, a gun and a some processed cheese. To be honest, I almost bought it because it looked so heinous but then I realized I had no can opener and I'm really not interested in keeping it as a decoration.

At that point I stumbled across "Toad in the Hole" as I was looking through the frozen meals. It was so greasy I felt like I was eating a Gino's hair. It tastes amazing but I'm sure I'll be dead by supper time. I felt I wouldn't be able to describe it well enough so I took pictures. Get ready!

This is how it looks out of the box. Of the 6-for-4 meals it has the biggest package and comes with a foil tray. Hint: This may end horribly.


It's a little hard to tell in the other picture, but it looks like they dissolved a pig with some sort of special chemical and all that was left were eight sausages and a tray full of liquid hog. Then they froze it and sold it to the idiot from overseas that thought it looked like a traditional British meal.


Here it is cooked! Success? I don't think so. The middle of it looks sort of uncooked and there is a film of fat covering the top. Saying film is pretty generous given that it's about half a centimeter thick at some points.


I took a break from eating to write this blog. Like everything else, it tastes fairly good.

Stay tuned tomorrow for the nutritional information! I still have another one to eat so I don't want to think about that yet.

Job Search: Phase 2.0

Well, there's good news! I found out at 4PM today that my template, with a few adjustments, was the one the client chose. I made some of the changes they had asked for and sent it back. Apparently that scored me brownie points with Niel, my potential-boss, since he was able to go back to the client on the same day and get more things taken care of. I'm not completely in the clear yet, I still have to code the site, as does the other candidate. As it turns out, is a girl from Brazil here doing sort of the same thing I am. I find I'm better at coding than design so that should go well. I'll probably know later this week or early next week if I got the job. Here are the three layouts I submitted. I was supposed to be redesigning this site.

This is the first one. I has issues and it isn't very inspired but I find it looks nicer than the one they chose. It is definitely easier to work with.


This is the one they chose. I really don't like it. I don't find that their changes aren't very smart but at least I can see the point they want to get across.


This is the one I liked the most and they liked the least. To be fair it wasn't what they asked for at all. It was more of a safety net in case they didn't like the first two.