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The most epic event in your life you’d think? The day you graduate, sadly it didn’t feel like it for me. I was to engrossed with working that uni stuff felt like “meh”. I suppose you need the studies to get the job and all but yeah, just weird that graduation would be blasé due to the fact that you feel like work makes more sense. Anyway, a graduation is a graduation and I decided to invite Alice as my guest and all. It was held at the Barbican Hall on a Friday so I booked myself a lovely holiday (as well as Alice) for the day. It also meant I got a weekend with Alice too in London.
The graduation itself was pretty boring, it was fun wearing the fancy graduation robe, but my part went quite quickly… a bit too quickly one might say, I was literally the SECOND person to receive my certificate. First class students get to go on stage first ;). But yeah the rest of the event was spent listening to a bunch of imbeciles hoot their fellow students when they received their awards, I mean, it’s a formal event, we’re at the Barbican, dressed up in robes and hooting? wtf? Ah well. The highlight of the graduation event (me picking up my award aside) was the fact that Mark Shuttleworth (founder of ubuntu) was there to make a speech! That was pretty epic. I spoke to a few students but kept it simple.
We went to hardwok cafe afterwards, Alice had never tried it and it was lunchtime so it made sense hehe. We managed to get the last of the yummy hardwok food, I had a Thai Red Curry (per usual) and Alice had a chicken in black bean sauce. We ate outside the place and had Krispy Kremes for dessert. Alice finally understood why I kept raving about hardwok cafe (if only the rest got it). Later on that evening we met up with Jason and Rachel for ANOTHER Royal China. We went to a Caffe Nero beforehand since it was a wee bit early and there we talked about how “judge judy” was the ONLY famous judge. Rachel said that there was another famous judge called “judge brown”. It was hard trying to make her crack that it was a lie since she kept building up a more and more elaborate lie about who judge brown was and what he did that made him so famous, it got to a point where Rachel said she was in contact with him and that he was her father. After a the battle of judge brown we headed to Royal China for our grub. This time we ordered a half duck to feast on as well as some dim sum dishes and awesome seafood noodles / ho fun. The meal was epic as ever (especially when we got ourselves some scallops action too) and though it was about £20 odd per head, it was a yummy meal! Afterwards we settled in the Natural Cafe and had a lovely chat like before.
The next day we had a meal at Wagamamma and spent the rest of the day at Central London, I took Alice to loads of places including Cyber Candy at Covent Garden and the Apple Store (beautiful landmark). It was disturbing how we managed to get a lot of things done, we also went to china town and got ourselves… ANOTHER duck haha, this time I went into a restaurant and ordered one cut up for din dins, it came to £14 which was amazing! We went to picadilly circus to so Alice could take the ubiquitous shot of the lights (not as epic as times square though).
Sunday we had a lovely meal with my dad and then spent the rest of the day watching Harry Potter (we managed to watch Sliding doors at one of the days too, it was a must!). We also watched Kill Bill and had a lovely meal at home. The next day Alice went back up north and I went to work again, it was a lovely day but it was always a bummer going to work and ONLY just departing with Alice. Ah well 
For Stuart’s birthday we all opted to get him a DS Lite, the original plan was to get him vouchers for it but I thought it was cooler to just get him the actual console. Alice was able to attend and spend some time in London with me. We managed to all meet up at Brent Cross and head to Kazzie’s for the night. I believe we had some nice grubby takeaway from some random Chinese Takeaway place.
I’m not sure how we spent our evening and morning but I believe we did have an amazing breakfast! We bought everything we needed to make the perfect full english breakfast and got delayed for the actual event that Max and Aino organised. I believe we did quite a fair bit of smash brothering too which made us disturbingly late, no worries though since we’re the host I guess *shrugs*. Passing Brent Cross I was able to smuggle myself a black DS Lite for Stu whilst Karis and Inn were able to distract Stu for a bit.
We arrived at Regent Street pretty late and finally found everyone, we then headed to a very packed Oxford Street finding the restaurant. We were going to have tapas at a place called La Tasca. Quite a fair amount of people were about which was fun and we had a lovely seat booked and all.
The meal was alright, paella was just wet rice and bits of stuff however we did order a fair amount of stuff and in the end, the bill was a joke. It came to £200+ and people were simply gobsmacked by it, it was rather awkward for people, especially when some were refusing to pay any more. Me and Alice decided to save the day by pitching in the rest so everyone was able to pay the bill and avoid embarrassment. But boy Max and Aino aren’t planning any meetups in the future. Tapas is a 2 person event, not suitable for orgies.
The rest of the weekend was spent with Alice, we met up with Jason and Rachel and had some yum yum dim sum at Royal China, I chose this place because Jason and Rachel previously took me to “Ping Pong” to have dim sum when I told them that Royal China is a nicer place and do a wider range of dim sum. So yeah, it was a pretty epic meal at a far less scary price (especially when Jason and Rachel could afford it all hehe). I was very pissed off that we didn’t get free oranges! They usually do it so
We went into the Natural Cafe to sit around and chat for the rest of the day, Jason got me an orange to eat hehe. Was always nice seeing Jason and Rachel, Alice got on well with them too so it was all good 
We then called it a night and that was that day.
The day after I had to go work and Alice had to return back up north, we said our farewells at Monument and that was the weekend. Lesson of the day, don’t get tapas. Stick with a golden crispy fucking duck haha.
Stephie had planned ages ago to see Silverchair at Brixton academy, she had bought me a ticket to see them (which was very nice of her) and inn and kev were joining in on the action to go see them. So yeah, we pretty much get a meetup going on, and since Stephie doesnt come down London that often we were going to make a lovely weekend out of it.
Today I was able to visit my friends Jason and Rachel for a nice long day of Wii and catching up at Rachel’s house. The day went on till 11pm (wasn’t expecting it to be such a long visit) and it was amazing and typical Jason and Rachel catching up at her place type thing haha.
Yeah, I texted Jason asking him whether he was about yesterday but he wasnt, so to make up we arranged a quick day out on Saturday. Twas a nice and manly date haha. Met up at Wimbledon and literally went to Waterloo via super trains (not tube). Had a talk about DSLR cameras, seems like Jason is interested in getting into photography as he understands that compact cameras are quite limited at awkward conditions, mainly indoors etc. I told him about the whole divide of Nikon and Canon and how he had to make the right choice first time round.
We decided to go watch Magicians (rather than 28 Weeks Later, I’ve sort of gone off that due to lack of original talent hehe). But yeah, we decided to piss about in Funland before the film, we booked our tickets and all (I was still Student oh yeah) Jason bought the tickets (and I bought the food later on). We felt like adults haha. We then went to the arcades and played Point Blank, was an awesome game, Jason only discovered it today, he enjoyed it quite a bit 
and yeah at 50p a game you cant really go wrong.
After that we went to watch Magicians, shockingly we were the only ones there! Well later on another couple turned up, was slightly homo erotic one might say haha. But yeah, the movie was really good. Not as gross as Peep Show but still nonetheless good. Not really a Shaun of the Dead / Hot Fuzz though, I dont think Magicians was that impressive as a movie when you compare it to the likes of Shaun of the Dead etc. Was fun seeing loads of Peep Show casts in the movie.
Afterwards we went to Yo Sushi for some Sushi, Jason was missing Japanese food from Japan so I thought it was the best place to go. We had chicken yakisoba straight away and then ate all sorts of japanese stuff, including Prawn Tempura! mmm, that was godly haha. We also had some fried chicken stuff, it was all nice and yummy. We had a very minimal amount of Sushi, just one prawn/tuna/salmon Nigri. We talked a lot about Japanese culture and it was pretty interesting. No singing sushi chef though Thats the only reason you spend £2 on 2 nigris instead of £1 at Wasabi’s. Ah well, the tempura was awesome enough to cover that.
Afterwards we went to loads of random shops in the rain haha, Jason told me to have a look a Abercrombie and Fitch, he explained how Rachel told him to go there and it was filled with women in Bikini’s and thumping techno music. OH HOW WAS HE WRONG! First thing we got was a topless man and thumping music. The paintings are homoerotic and everything else followed the same theme, immediately we left haha.
We also went to the Apple centre, I played some Logic Express, wasn’t too impressed by it to be honest, Xpand and Pro tools did the same job and all. But yeah, afterwards we went back to Wimbledon where we had a nice Frappe Latte and some hardcore DS battling (Elite Beat Agents). Jason met up with Rachel and yeah, she was too tired so they left and I went back home. Quite a nice day, I enjoyed the sushi in particular No photos sorry.