April 25, 2002
Birthday Meal
Well, to celebrate my 30th birthday Rich and I went to La Fourchette, a French restaurant on Western Road. To be honest this wasn't originally my first choice of restaurant, but my first choices were not open on a Monday - bah!
Anyway, we went and for the first hour or so there were only 4 of us there - the other couple were celebrating their 2nd wedding anniversary. There is a lot of choice on the menu, and there was also a whole blackboard full of sea food - yum. We made our orders and sat drinking our way through a nice bottle of red wine, when there was suddenly a lot of screaming and crying going on. It seems that one of the front room staff had cut herself with a chefs knife and severed a vein or artery or something - sufficient to cause a lot of bleeding anyway. One of the other diners had just finished her refresher course with St John's Ambulance and so went and attended to the girl in the kitchen before sending her off to the hospital to be sorted out properly. The panic over, we went back to drinking and were shortly served our starters. These were good, and my scallops with bacon were truly wonderful. Our main courses were both good, although I think Rich's roasted Red Mullet was a tastier choice than my pan fried Sea Bass. As it was my birthday, we also had desserts - my choice was cheese and a really good selection there was too, whilst Rich had the sorbet.
So, despite it not being my first choice to start with, I'm pretty sure I'll visit again as I was really, really impressed with the selection of dishes available - especially the fish choices.
Posted by Jane at 10:19 AM
April 22, 2002
What is the plural of Elvis?
So, on Easter Sunday, a group of tall Elvises took to the streets of Brighton. Yesterday I put the photos up and this has led to a discussion of what the plural of Elvis is. Suggestions so far are Elvii, Elvises, Elveses and Elvis impersonators. Now I think the last one is a bit of a cheat and an avoidance of the real problem... Any suggestions?
Posted by Jane at 11:07 AM
- elvis
the plural for elvis is elvii
Posted by elvis on 2003-02-28 00:51:58
April 20, 2002
Paul told us on Saturday that they'd received a letter from Center Parcs telling them that our weekend break was cancelled. Not a great surprise really, but good to have it confirmed.
Posted by Jane at 8:37 AM
April 19, 2002
We went out for some beers last night, and didn't get around to eating anything until 10.30. By this time our favourite fish and chip shop had closed. So, we decided to try Uncle Sams burger place. I should have read the description on the board better, but I didn't and so was a bit surprised when I got home to discover that my Veggie Samwich was a bread cake, 2 slices of cheese and some salad - and that was all, nothing burger shaped. I won't be ordering that again :-(.
Posted by Jane at 11:53 AM
April 17, 2002
It's strange, we hadn't been to the cinema in ages, and have been twice this week. We went to see Ice Age on Sunday with Susie, and then to see Bend It Like Beckham last night.
Ice Age is pretty amusing, an animated tale about a group of animals who are trying to return a baby to its "herd" (yes, a little bit Jungle Book). There are some really amusing bits, and it isn't just for children.
Bend It Like Beckham is a great film, about two 18 year old girls who are both football mad. One is an asian girl who wants to play football like Beckham despite her families protests and their expectations for her. The other is a white girl whose Mother just wants her to be a "normal girl", and not spend all her time practising football.
Posted by Jane at 8:54 AM
April 16, 2002
Spam Scam
I got sent some e-mail spam today, not altogether unusual, but this was a scam spam. The basic details are that it is sent from a DR. SAM BASHIRU (Director, ECO Bank Plc) basically telling me that a JAMES AKMEH died over a year ago in a ghastly air crash and had in his bank account at the time US$21.6M. The email wanted me to pose as a next-of-kin to James Akmeh and in doing so I would give my account details and 30% of the money would be mine, 5% would pay joint expenses and 65% would go to the originators of the transaction. All they needed from me would be my bank account details, and personal telephone/fax details. Tempting. Not!
I did a bit of research, and of course found it noted on several websites - some of the details were changed but the format were the same (Scam o Rama, Tanko Zuba). I also decided to do a search on a few of the other details, like Eco Bank. There is no Eco Bank (and google helpfully points to several scam sites when I search for it) but there does appear to be an EcoBank (although I can't seem to get a response from their website at the moment). The email is sent by a sam_bash2000@yahoo.com - sounds like a good, solid email address then! I just wonder how many poor unsuspecting people actually do give their details out.
Posted by Jane at 10:13 AM
I have a bit of a reputation in our office as being the Google Queen. Whenever anyone wants to know the answer to some unusual question, I crank up google and mostly find the answer. Because of this, I was asked to find the submission urls for various search engines so we could publicise our new website. I found the submission forms on the big sites, and a few Free submission sites who submit your site to lots of search engines for you for free (we're not interested in paying for submission at the moment, although we may go down that route later). One such site is Submit Corner who seem to have a lot of search engines listed. I've given them a try and we'll see how we get on.
Posted by Jane at 2:19 PM
April 14, 2002
Further to an earlier blog about the fire at Center Parcs, a BBC news report is saying that the Suffolk Fire Service have released a report which says that contractors working on a roof caused the fire to start, and that it spread too quickly for Center Parcs own Firefighters to deal with it.
Still haven't heard anything about our weekend in June yet, but seeing as how the BBC report says "Rebuilding work at the centre is likely to take several months to complete" I'm not hopeful about it.
Posted by Jane at 12:26 PM
April 11, 2002
Yesterday I got the strangest text message I've ever received. Susie was off playing tourist in London before she goes back to NZ and sent me a message saying "A squirrel just ran up my leg and a pelican just ate a pigeon!"
Posted by Jane at 7:24 PM
Restaurant round-up
Lately with been to the Tin Drum, Kemptown (lovely starters, but dissapointing otherwise), The Bayleaf (perfect Indian) and Moshi Moshi (it's a conveyor Sushi chain, but a good one).
Posted by Richard at 9:31 PM
April 10, 2002
What a pleasant evening. The weather was fine, with a bit of a breeze and so we decided to go and attend our first Brighton Kite Flyers Fly-in at Stanmer Park. Our first mission was to untangle the lines for the Janus which we did with a little help from Simon, one of the BKF members. Then we got the kite up for it's first flight this year, and fun it was too. Most of the other kites flying were big single line affairs, and Simon mentioned that we might grow into these kites as they are far more sociable than these complicated multi-line jobs.
When the light failed, we decided to head off in search of a pub serving food, and ended up doing quite a few miles to get to the Shepherd and Dog in Fulking. I'd been here with the guys from work a month or so ago and so knew that it was pretty good. It seems to have had some poor reviews in the past, but we have no complaints. It's not cheap as pub food goes, but the portions were generous, and the food was tasty.
As we were driving home in the dark along the country lanes Rich realised that it was a clear night and there were lots of stars to be seen, so we did a quick detour via Devil's Dyke and had a look at them - it was too cold to study them in too much detail.
Posted by Jane at 9:14 PM
April 09, 2002
I got an email today through BNM (a Brighton based new media mailing list) telling me how to fight telemarketers. I thought it was quite clever and amusing, so here's the link.
Posted by Jane at 2:02 PM
Technology. Progress. I'm told that if I press the red button on my digital TV handset and then select "option 5" I can watch and rewatch the funeral of the Queen Mother. Hmm.
Posted by Richard at 10:18 PM
April 06, 2002
The NSPCC are running a Donate-4-Free service on their website. All you have to do is Click on the big green button that says "Click Here" and 4p will be donated to the NSPCC on your behalf. There is a Terms and Conditions notice which says that it will only work if you're within the EU.
Posted by Jane at 10:45 AM
April 04, 2002
Two on-line shopping experiences
We buy quite a lot of stuff online these days. You still have to be careful. Here are two recent experiences...
One. For some years we've been buying travel insurance on-line from Worldcover direct. It's not the cheapest, but it's easy enough: fill in a form, get a quote, hand over your credit card details, print out a confirmation that you're insured and also a few weeks later stuff arrives in the post. For our trip to Malta, we renewed our annual insurance as usual. A few months after the trip, Jane noticed that we'd not received anything through the post. Odd. Our credit card had been charged, so I emailed Worldcover and discovered that they had no record of our policy. Sure they were polite and helpful on the phone, but it did take a fist full of emails, and three or four calls over two or three weeks to get to the bottom of it. In the end I had to send them a photocopy of our credit card statement (they'd found records of all our previous policies, so they knew we're loyal customers, but still wanted proof). It later turned out that "some files hadn't been transferred from their web site" (or something like that). So... what would have happened if we needed some help while we were in Malta? Don't know, but it probably would have been long and messy. Will I ever use this company again? Maybe if they half their prices.
And in contrast...
Two. A while ago we ordered a stack of DVDs from Splash DVD. One of the items, Moulin Rouge!, wasn't out yet, so they shipped it a couple of months later and only then charged us. Checking the credit card statement, we spotted that they'd charged us twice. So, oh no, another email battle... I emailed Splash DVD asking them to sort this out. Less than 24 hours later I got this reply: "I have checked our records and you are correct. Apologies for the error. I have refunded your card £14.49 today and this should appear back on your statement within 2 working days.". Now, that kind of mistake I can accept, and I've got no hesitation in shopping with them again.
Posted by Richard at 10:57 AM
And in other news, the Center Parcs complex that we are meant to be going to for a long weekend in June has been on fire today. It sounds quite serious. From the BBC report
Graham Smith, assistant chief fire officer for Suffolk, said: "It's a particularly difficult fire to tackle due to the early collapse of some of the structure which has created dangerous conditions for the firefighters."
Not sure I like the "early collapse of some of the structure" bit at all...
Posted by Jane at 8:14 PM
Well, according to the official web site Hull City have got a new manager. Brian Little left quite some time ago, and now Jan Molby has joined us (after resigning from Kidderminster Harriers a few days ago). He had been rumoured to be joining us for at least the last two weeks. Still, at least it has been resolved.
Labels: hull city
Posted by Jane at 8:08 PM
