Something New Every Day

Not a very exciting first today. Still dieting - and making everyone else’s life a misery because of it - but for lunch on Tuesday I went to Eat for a sandwich and had a cheese and “real ale” pickle one. The 2nd part was definitely a first for me, but to be honest it just tasted of regular pickle to me.

Said it wasn’t exciting, but I like the title :-)

As promised after the Facebook comments to my last country music post, I’ve made a playlist on Spotify with some good singalong country music classics to get you through the day :-)

I’m not a big user of Spotify, so this was the first time I’d made a playlist on there. Was very easy to do, and more impressively very easy to share too. You can try it out here - obviously you need the Spotify client. I expect most people won’t like it, but all I can say is give it a try and you may be surprised.

On Sunday I decided to take a break from my TV sports marathon and have a wander around London for a bit.

I just headed out without a real plan, and ended up going on the London Overland for the first time to Hoxton via Highbury and Islington.

I hadn’t been there for a very long time and it seemed a lot more upmarket than I remembered. People must have thought I was a local in some strange was as I gave several people directions without really knowing where I was!

I then wandered south until I reached Liverpool Street, grabbed a bite to eat and then got the train back to Seven Sisters - another first - and then home to pick up the end of the cycling, then cricket, then American Football, …

After getting back from Poland at stupid-o’clock late on Friday night, for the first time in a while I didn’t go home at the weekend and stayed over in London. Saturday evening I joined flatmate Mandy’s quest to find the best veggie burger in town and we went to The Breakfast Club in Islington, somewhere I hadn’t been before.

The burger was nice - it was a bit like Sosmix which isn’t a bad thing - and the chunky chips were OK too. We went for mohitos, and then rounded the evening off by going to see the excellent Troll Hunter at the cinema.

Last day of our short trip to Wroclaw, and we were finishing up in the office before heading to the airport for a very late flight home. I was looking for something to drink, and their fridge was full of interesting things to try.

I decided on a bottle of Lemon Iced Tea from Nestea, which I hadn’t tried before - and it was surprisingly nice.

I’d had Iced Tea before back in the day when I worked on kids summer camp in the US when I was a student, but that was always from jugs of basically crap that the kids had at lunchtime. This stuff was much nicer, and I’d definitely have it again if I saw it back home.

Last time I was in Wroclaw I was taken on a long vodka-fuelled pub crawl around the city centre by my very hospitable Polish colleagues. I decided that wasn’t the best idea this time seeing as I was doing some presenting the next day, but we did go for a nice team dinner and a drink afterwards.

I was convinced from the depths of my memory I’d been in the bar we were in before as it looked very familiar, but I was surprised it was so close to the hotel we had stayed in that time. However it turned out I was right - according to Konrad the bar we had been in had closed down, and then been recreated almost exactly the same in another part of town - where we were right now! A very strange thing to do, and very surprising I’d actually remembered that correctly.

I’m in Poland for work, in the lovely city of Wroclaw in the SW of the country. I’ve been here before, but for the first time I’m staying in the Hotel Wroclaw.

It was an interesting journey here, first on the reliably horrible RyanAir then to the hotel in a rapid taxi on what seemed a roundabout route. I believe back in the olden days the hotel was the best place to stay in Wroclaw, but nowadays it’s a little worse for wear but not too bad. We have meetings for 2 days in the hotel itself, which is very handy though.

A bit behind on my posts due to travel which will become clear soon, but on Tuesday we went to Eat for lunch and I tried for the first time their dumpling soup. It started off well as the Gyoza dumplings were really tasty. However the problem was there weren’t many of them and underneath the soup was most filled up with bean sprouts and a few noodles.

Not as bad as some of the lunches I’ve had recently, but no great shakes either :-(

My journey down to London every Monday involves an early morning connection at Newcastle, which I’ve got a reasonable 8 minutes to make. However for the first time yesterday I missed it for the rather pathetic reason that the signalman at Prudhoe had overslept so the Hexham train started off late :-(

Even though the incoming train was 10 minutes late, I still almost made it as I could see the London train on the next platform, but only after I’d sprinted halfway there did it start pulling out. Very frustrating. I had to get the next train which was a lot slower and so like a lot of other people got to work an hour later than usual just because of one man’s laziness. Very poor.

I’ve been thinking about doing some integration of payment services into a website (not this one!), and on Sunday I spent a half hour or so learning about the Paypal API and the options available if I went down that route.

It actually looks quite good, and there are lots of options from the simple to a full-blown integration of your own shopping basket. Be interesting in hearing if anyone out there has used it themselves and would recommend using it - and if not what are the alternatives?