Busy bee

Busy working, busy chilaxing (more so than working even), busy exercising, busy watching the London Marathon, buzy eating peking duck pancakes in the sun. Busy bee. And now I should be busy cleaning the house for the guests who come on Wednesday. But am busy reading. And Facebooking. So the cleaning can wait.

Hakkasan

Before I had even moved to London, one of my best mates had insisted I'd visit this place. I knew I would, but not for just any occasion. My brother's visit last week was special. So I booked Hakkasan. It's supposed to be a great place for celeb spotting, but we were focussed on the food way too much. And the wine menu. And on calculating how many taxi receipts one would need to be able to expense a £ 1450 glass of whiskey. Hakkasan has a michelin star, and man, does the wine list rub that in. It fell from the 17th to the 36th place on the best resto's of the world list that was announced yesterday but is still considered one of the UK's best restaurants.

Soooooooooo....my expectations were high. And wow, my expectations were exceeded. Great staff, great wine, and the food...just amazing. So refined. I just loved everything from the plates to the interior to the desert. Definitely a place to go for a special occasion. Just be aware: if you want the £ 140 peking duck with beluga, you will need to order 24 hours in advance.

Home

Home is London. Without a doubt. Amsterdam is still home too in a way. And then there is the village I grew up in, but left over 16 years ago. It's still my parents' home. This weekend I went to both. My mum's 60th at my parents' house and two sneaky white beers in de Jordaan in Amsterdam. I saw all uncles and aunts, caught up with old neighbours, and even my granddad and nan had made it up north. A lovely get together. Bro and I had caught up the two days previously as he visited me in rainy and gloomy London (that is now warm and sunny and heading towards the hottest April in the century), and drove up north together with his girlfriend. But lovely as it is, it's not home. Home is where my heart skips a beat when I fall in love with the beauty of the place for the umpteenth time. Home is where my books are, where my couch with the afghan I bought in NZ are. Home is where I have my phone and internet connection that allow me to stay close to friends. Home is London.

How very English

Never had I tried to cook a roast. Not even a roast chicken. It just seemed too English and to easy to get wrong. Today I had friends over for dinner (an early easter caused by public transport closures tomorrow), and it seemed a good occasion to cook a roast. Had I remembered Lynne didn't eat meat, I would have opted for chicken, but I had forgotten this. With a little recipe help from an English friend in the Dam, I cooked a pork leg joint, with cider, apple and sage. And damn it was yum. Crackling, juicy meat, and beautiful apple-cider gravy. Roast potatoes didn't seem very spring-ey so I opted for tarragon potato salad instead. And Gu's chocolate pots. They're a supermarket brand of chocolate deserts and they are absolutely heavenly. Chogasmic. It may even have been the highlight of the meal, despite all the effort I put into the main. They're just so damn good.... Mark brought a nice bottle of red and some Peroni beers, bub Hayden crawled around the living room and was being fun and sweet, and I? I just felt happy as a pig in mud. Friends, booze and food. My favourite combination of things!

The week of the unexpected reunions

Friday morning I had an email from Cath, who I met in Cinque Terre last October, being a friend of a friend. She was in London with two of our mutual friends - could I meet them for cocktails that night? Of course I could. Three raspberry champagne cocktails and a curry later I took a tube home - having really enjoyed the impromptu reunion.

On Monday Victor, a guy I met in WA in 2003, mentioned in his Facebook status update he was in London. He'd forgotten I was here too, but I reminded him and a few emails later we agreed to meet on Tuesday. We had a sneaky beer in the sun and dinner at Gaucho's (great meat, the weirdest ever waitress). His girlfriend of 2003 is now his wife, and bub number two is on its way. They moved from Sweden to Switzerland, I moved here. Other than that, not much had changed. How lovely to catch up.

And today I exchanged some emails with a schoolfriend. She works for PwC as well, but was on secondment to SanFran when I joined. Nice to swap stories and agree to meet up some time I'm back in the country.

Unexpected reunions rock.

Thou shall travel

The red curry I made tastes almost like in Thailand. Em's status updates from Freo remind me of the trip I made there in 2003. I was on the phone for an hour with my Italian friend in Vienna. The tv in the background shows a detective series set in Botswana. I saw the pics of a friend's south america trip, listening to tango music. The book I am reading takes me to the Frisian country side in the last century. I am thinking of all the beautiful food I will eat in Lisbon, about the fado I will listen to, about the coffee shops of Seattle and meeting little Ramona. Today I am travelling big time. I haven't left the docklands but travelled miles and miles in my mind. Nothing, absolutely nothing, beats travelling. My feet are itchy as hell.

G20 and stuff

Just like yesterday, no soap dodgers were to be seen in Bank Street this morning. Canary Wharf is full of bankers in jeans. The demonstrators are either at the ExCeL or are lazy buggers who are still in bed. I bet it's the latter. Yesterday things got nasty in the city, but not as nasty as was expected according to City AM. Which makes me wonder what was expected. They had missiles for god's sake. And a guy died, which I guess could be seen as a occupational hazard.

The rest of the focus is on the Obama's. They visited the queen yesterday and presented her with an iPod with footage of her 2007 visit to the US. Who very 2009 - a pretty cool gift. Queen 2.0 next?! According to the highly reliable London Paper, Gobama brought 200 security staff, 300 other staff, amongst whom were 4 speech writers (and here I was thinking all he needed was that clever 27yo and the presence of Starbucks). Several heli's and cars are also said to have been flown in. Was hoping to catch a glance of the Marine One out of my 24th floor office window in Canary Wharf but no such luck this morning.