Month: May 2005

Got a call from my movers this morning on my way to work. They were supposed to call me either last friday or today, so I'm not really fussed about that. They tell me that I can have my furniture delivered tomorrow! or sometime in the upcoming weeks. The lady on the phone is of no use whatsoever because she's “not in charge of the booking”. Thank you. Why are you calling me then?

This shoots my plans of having it delivered on friday so I can have a long weekend all the way to hell and back. Also, since my boss is away for the moment, I don't even know if I can take tomorrow off!

*seethes*

Update: it's 3pm and I'm on the phone with these people. I need to find out when the hell my furniture is being delivered, and it's now unclear as to when that's actually going to happen. It seems that nobody has the answer and the one person who might know is now on lunch. I need to book my time off with my boss before the end of the day. The worst case scenario is that I take the day off and they never show up. The lady on the phone just now suggested that I schedule the day off work tomorrow, but go into work anyway, and they can call me on one hour's notice to give me time to get back home if they're coming.

Am I the only one who thinks this is the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life????

2^nd update: It's 5pm and after much hemming and hawing, I've finally managed to get them to pull the finger out and they're supposed to come by my place some time in the morning. I'll believe it when I see it, but ok. The annoying news is that all the senior people here at work are on vacation today, so I can't get anybody to sign off on the leave I want to take. The most senior person here isn't senior enough to approve it, but he says that I can have it done retroactively and it shouldn't be a problem at all – the place isn't really that fussed about paperwork as long as there's a good reason and it's not like I didn't try to get the paperwork done. My boss, his boss and the big boss are all away on personal and business trips. The senior people after that, who usually cover for the big bosses when they're away are also all on vacation at the same time, so there's nobody here bus us peons.

Ingredients

2 duck breast
salt
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 orange, juice only
85ml/3fl oz white wine

Method

1. Preheat a medium frying pan.
2. Preheat oven to 250C/500F/Gas 9.
3. Rub the duck breast with salt and soy sauce.
4. Prick the duck with a fork. Place the duck, skin side down, in the fry pan.
5. Fry the duck over a high heat until the skin is golden. Remove the duck from the frying pan.
6. Place the duck on a roasting rack, skin side up, and roast in the oven for ten minutes, or until slightly pink in the middle.
7. Prepare an orange sauce by pouring the fat from the roast duck into a small pan.
8. Add the orange juice and wine to the duck fat and boil rapidly until reduced and is the consistency of a nice glaze.
9. Place the roast duck on a plate.
10. Pour over the orange sauce and serve with vegetables of own choice.

Notes: Use good quality soy sauce – naturally fermented one, not chemically produced. It makes all the difference.

The roasted potatoes are dead simple to make.

Blanch some quartered new potatoes in salted water for 5 minutes. Drain and put them in an oven dish. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, drizzle with olive oil and cook them in the oven at 400F for 30 minutes until golden brown.

There's this ad that plays on TV here that always makes me laugh when I see it. It's just…cheerful :) Click on the picture to see the video (quicktime – it's a 6.5MB download)

So my day actually ended up getting better. My afternoon meeting lasted a whole of 15 minutes and I managed to get some really good work done, for which I'm happy. I'm actually getting to play with databases and code, so that's good. I got to pet a nice big drooly dog, which is also good, and we finally got our LCD screens for our computers, which is really good, cause that means I won't need to strain my eyes so much to get enough screen real-estate to work efficiently.

Hopefully the night will continue in that direction.

It's not even 9:15 and I can pretty much feel that this day will suck. I slept badly, nearly got run over by a bicycle on my way to catch my shuttle, which was there early. I have a headache and two meetings today.

I am not a happy bunny.

As I was walking towards the door to get into the building this morning, a duck (a cute little mallard, even) landed in front of me and casually waddled under the stairwell.

I couldn't stop giggling.

I was going through my website trying to find a file, when I noticed that I had an assload of icons that people might or might not have seen, so I decided to put them all in one massive post. They're behind the cut if you're interested.

I cut up 3 pork sausages and 2 turkey steaks and browned them in olive oil. I added a teaspoon of tumeric and a half-teaspoon of cumin. Added one finely chopped onion. Let the onion brown a bit, then add 5 big chopped mushrooms, broccoli flowers and half a yellow pepper (chopped). Let that steam for 5-10 minutes, then add a can of chopped tomatoes and a can of sweetcorn and dump that in an oven dish. Add one cup of hot water (or any stock you have at hand), one cup of basmati rice and cook at 350F for 30 minutes in the oven.

I realized that I never posted about our adventures on sunday. Katy and I walked to the city center again but brougt the camera this time. We went into a toy shop that has WAY the hell too many monopoly games. I do not understand the british fascination with monopoly. Every major town seems to have its own regional edition. Don't believe me? see for yourself. A lot of the people who were in the open air arts & crafts market were also in the town center market you see pictured. I bought a really nice vase from the pottery merchant.

The large building is Kings College, and the street in front of it is where I plan to spend some money in the near future. There are some really nifty shops thereabouts that I need to investigate further.