The beaver is a proud and noble animal

In one of history's more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission.

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URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20227400/site/newsweek/

I've finally pulled the finger out and put up the pictures from Cromer and Vienna.

http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/cromer_jul_2007

http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/vienna_jul_2007

Enjoy.

REDHEADS are becoming rarer and could be extinct in 100 years, according to genetic scientists.

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Ingredients
6 bacon rashers
2 large free-range egg
juice of half a lemon
3 anchovy fillets
6 tbsp olive oil, plus a little extra for frying
1 tsp dijon mustard
freshly ground black pepper
25g/1oz Parmesan cheese, coarsely grated
1 large romaine lettuce, washed and torn into pieces
2 thick slices of white bread, crusts removed, cubed

Method
1. Place the eggs in a pan of cold water and bring to the boil. Boil for 1 minute and then plunge into cold water to stop the cooking process.
2. Once the eggs are cool enough to handle, crack them into a food processor and add lemon juice, anchovies, mustard and oil. Process well and add pepper to taste.
3. Place the romaine lettuce in a bowl.
4. Fry the bacon until crisp. Drain on kitchen paper and chop roughly into bits.
5. Fry the bread cubes in a little olive oil until crispy, then drain on kitchen paper.
6. To serve, toss the bacon into the lettuce, pour the dressing over the leaves and add the croutons and Parmesan. Toss well and serve at once.

Katy and I were in London last weekend to go see Avenue Q. The show rocked. It was brilliant. It was wrong at so many levels but that didn't prevent us from laughing our asses off.

With songs like Everyone's A Little Bit Racist and The Internet Is For Porn, you have a clue what I'm talking about. The Bad Idea Bears, as pictured above, have the best lines in the show. Imagine two of the cutest little things you've ever seen yelling shit like “She's wasted! Take her home! Yaaaaaaaay!” and “Absinthe daiquiris!!!”

My favourite bit of the show is below:

We bought the soundtrack CD, but I'm really going to have to be careful if I hum it at the office :)

Katy had booked us into the Hilton in Mayfair. I'm always surprised between the discrepancy between hotel ratings and value-for-money between North America and European hotels. This was supposed to be a 4-star hotel. It had no air conditioning and the rooms were stifling. For the same price and star rating, we can get an executive suite at the Casino Hilton in Hull, with marble bathroom and king sized bed overlooking the water fountain… It's just one of those things that is consistently different, but what can you do.

Mayfair is an interesting mix of money and minge. We saw homeless men crashing in the doorway of a Porsche dealership. We walked by a chauffeur in full dress livery and then ran into a fat guy with missing teeth coming out of a Tesco express…

As a side note, London in the summertime is stupidly busy. Every other time I've been there, it's been off-season – usually in winter. You know what? It's so much better! The crowds this weekend were stifling. You couldn't walk without somebody bumping into you. Piccadilly Circus smelled like shit and piss. We didn't go to the Aquarium as we'd intented to because of the queues and we couldn't be assed because we knew we wouldn't have a good time once we were in. We decided to avoid the crowds and keep to the smaller streets. We went and had a pint at the Sherlock Holmes pub off of Trafalgar Square. We went to Fortnum & Mason and browsed stuff we would never be able to afford (or want, really). We managed to have a good time regardless of the crowds.

We also ate waay too damn much. Friday night, we went to Shogun (Adams Row, Mayfair, London, W1K 2HP). It's a really, really good Japanese restaurant hidden in the basement of a hotel but damn! It was some of the best traditional food and sushi that I've had in a while. I had seafood soup served in a teapot (cute!), followed by sushi and finished off by sauteed pork with ginger and scallions. Katy had a steamed omelette with shrimp and veg served in a gaiwan, sushi and duck teriyaki.

On Saturday night, we went to Latium (21 Berners Street, London, W1T 3LP). It's a really cosy little Italian place off of Tottenham Court Road. I strongly recommend the place. A four course menu, with antipasti, pasta, main course and dessert is about £40 per person. We bought a bottle of wine that seemed never-ending (as well as glasses of sparkling water). The meal lasted well over two hours of excellent food – and they kept bringing more of it out all the time! I had steak tartare, tagliatelle with morels and pancetta, veal with runner beans and a trio of sorbets and gelato. Katy had a mozarella salad, spinach taglioni with courgette and shrimp, lamb with asparagus and roast potatoes. In a word, num!!!!! Like I said, go try the place while it's still undiscovered :)

I have to say that we found both restaurants because of a website that a co-worker recommended. It's a good thing too, because we would never have found either restaurant on our own. Both were a bit out of the way, but they were well worth it!

As a follow-up to the previous post, dear readers. Please post comments with links to your favourite “office supplies” :)

Quick! Quick! Look at this thing and tell me what the first thing you think of!

I'm willing to bet that you didn't think the same thing I did…

A bit of background: I have a gel-filled wrist rest at work. It's black and boring and comfortable, but it sprung a leak so, once in a while, my wrist or some cables get smeared with sticky goo. Not pleasant.

After a bit of running around, I found the right secretary to ask for a new one and, lo and behold, 30 minutes later she came in with a large, shiny, rubbery, bluish thing that would not look out of place in a sex shop.

I feel weirded out and slightly aroused at the same time to have it on my desk.

I have a sick mind, I know.

Our story, gentle reader, begins last friday.

It was time to get the furball's booster shots and get him vaccinated for feline leukemia at the same time. Initially, he was only supposed to be an indoor-only cat but since we're planning on letting him out once in a while, he needs that vaccine. We took our brave, strong cat to the vet. He didn't like it. He didn't like us either for the next few days and, to show his displeasure, he peed on the couch. Nice. We're letting him off this time, because the shots left him feeling really under the weather for about 36 hours. He's still a bit dopey at times, but he's getting back to his old annoying self.

That evening, Katy and I went to the pudding club at the pub. It was a glorious meal :) Initially, we weren't sure if we'd be able to go because we left it quite late to try and book a table. In fact, the dining room was indeed full up, but they were able to accommodate us in one of the side booths. It was probably nicer that way, to be honest, because we were quite alone and it was a nice ambiance to have a chat. The “light main” course turned out to be quite a hearty coq au vin (which was divine) and I don't even want to contemplate the number of calories we had trying out all those puddings. The new chef at the pub is a pastry chef and she's brilliant. We also got quite drunk (but just drunk enough). It was a fun night.

Saturday saw us going to Cromer for a beachfront day trip. It was a nice day and it wasn't. Traffic to get there was murder and it was just way too hot to be enjoyable. Cromer seems like a nice seaside town and I wouldn't mind going there again under more enjoyable conditions. I'd learned my lesson in Geneva about wearing a hat but I still managed to get a pisser of a sunburn on the back of my neck. I'm still a bit sore, but it's gradually going away. I have pictures of Cromer and they should be up shortly.

Sunday, Katy baked. A lot. A whole lot. She spent the day at it. The lemon cake was lovely (and is already gone) and the marbled cake has only been sampled once (and will probably be portioned out and frozen before it goes stale – it's huuuuuge!). I made a nice roast chicken dinner and we spent a slow day watching Heroes and Grey's Anatomy episodes that we'd taped earlier in the week.

Yesterday was my birfday (I'm now an old fogey at 32) and I was spoiled rotten.

Katy got me:
- a gift voucher for the Cambridge gliding club good for one towed flight to 2000 feet
- tickets to go see Avenue Q in London this weekend (and she booked us into a nice hotel in Mayfair)
- a thumbring
- a book (You Suck!, by Christopher Moore)
- some chocolate

We had some homemade steak sandwiches with chips and Katy baked (yet again) some freshly-made profiterolles with artery-clogging double cream and dark chocolate. Hooah.

My parents and sister called me earlier in the day and tried to be subtle in telling me to go check my bank balance. I knew they'd said that they were going to pay part of my ticket to go to Canada in September but they went, shall be say, completely off the deep end :) I'm still in shock… THANK YOU!!!

I also got email from Michel last night and I hope to be able to resume our less-than-frequent phone chats with him this week.

Finally, on a purely silly note, I bought myself a SD card for my e-book reader (which, btw, Katy now approves of and wants one for herself :). The card itself is 32 x 24 x 2.1mm and weighs about 2 grams. This is how I got it this morning:

Also, for future reference, here is my flight information for my trip to Canadia:

Gatwick -> Ottawa:
Flight Zoom 411
Leaves Thu 13 Sep 07 14:15
Arrives Thu 13 Sep 07 16:40

Ottawa -> Gatwick:
Flight Zoom 710
Leaves Sun 23 Sep 07 22:55
Arrives Mon 24 Sep 07 10:30

I have no definitive plans yet, but I hope to see as many people as I can.