An Aurobindo Christmas Party

Since I have been woefully remiss in updating my blog (mostly due to the fact that I am still living in the 20th century and have to wait to fill up a roll of film and then get it developed), I am shockingly doing two posts today! Hold on to your hats, ladies and gentlemen!

So the next big adventure after Northern Ireland was Christmas. My second in the UK. The first big shindig was the Aurobindo Pharma Christmas Party, organised by yours truly, on 14 December.

First up was a friendly game of bowling (Vivek snapping pictures left and right, Mike focusing intently on the game, and Innes and Ashish in the background unable to stop talking about work for 5 minutes). I was fairly surprised that I did reasonably well. After all, the last time I went bowling was nearly 20 years ago (YIKES!).

Sadly my team lost, but in my opinion it was all about the fun. And fun it was!

Bowling was followed by dinner at a rather posh Zen Oriental Restaurant at Hilton Heathrow. I have to admit to being completely addicted to roast duck. Roast duck made an abundant appearance along with various dishes of sweet and sour chicken, lamb with broccoli, shrimp with chillies. It was all followed up with seriously yummy dessert. I have to say, we do know how to have fun when we put our minds to it.

The following week, after much complaining by the troops at our lack of Christmas spirit, I got a tree from Argos and Vishnu and I got it set up and looking gorgeous.

Complaints turned to awe and wonder at my extreme cleverness and good taste.

I would say the Christmas spirit was helped along in large part by copious amounts of chocolates, chocolate biscuits (cookies), and and Italian Christmas cake called pannetonne (which is a yeast cake, very light and sweet, and flavoured with orange and almonds and all kinds of dried fruits).

We had another impromptu party on the 21st since I had ordered a big lunch and lots of sweets for the MHRA inspectors who ended up leaving at noon. What we're we to do save throw a party and enjoy the yummy food. It would have gone to waste, otherwise. And we couldn't have that!

So, full of Christmas spirit (and way too much food) we rolled ourselves home early Friday to enjoy the Christmas season.

Next up a Christmas Feast with my friend Neashon! After I get the pictures developed, that is!

Giving Thanks In Northern Ireland II

Let's just say by this time we were dying for a wee. I mean dancing in the seat, crossing the legs, and praying for a miracle. The miracle came in the form of a cute little café in Strangford done up in a bizarre combination of nautical theme and Victorian teapots. Weird.

After a mad dash for the loo, we perused our menus and decided on sandwiches. After all, we needed to leave plenty of room. We'd caught sight of the pastry case. And oh, dear, was it the stuff dreams are made of!

I ordered a simple grilled sandwich and Lyn ordered cold. I think maybe they had to kill the chickens or make the bread or something because two simple sandwiches took nearly 30 minutes. The pastry case was in danger of being devoured whole when they finally brought out the sandwiches. They were fine. Nothing special, but dessert was to DIE FOR!

If I remember correctly, Lyn ordered something of a cheesecake nature whilst I ordered something drenched in chocolate. Silence reigned (save for the occasional moan of delight) until every last crumb was devoured.

Back to the car for a tour of Strangford. Our grand tour consisted of driving two blocks and having to turn around because there was a large body of water in front of us. Sort of hard to drive on that. The most interesting thing about Strangford (beside the café and it's gorgeous desserts) was a cute little line of ice cream coloured cottages just off the bay.

We decided any more time touring Strangford might be a bit of overkill, so we headed off to castle number two: Killyleagh Castle. Now I swear I looked this castle up on the internet and it said that while the castle is actually still inhabited, it is open to the public. Unfortunately, it wasn't. There was a big sign telling us that we should feel free to snap as many pictures as we liked through the gate, provided we not step one foot on their property lest they loose the dogs, call out the guards, and hang us from the highest yardarm. We stayed outside the gate.

The castle was truly beautiful. Like something out of a fairy tale, or my trip to France. It was quite a disappointment we couldn't go inside. But there you are.

We took a quick walk around the village to see what we could see (not much), then headed home. After all, we had big plans for the evening!

The big plans included going out with Lyn's friend Connor to the local establishment for dinner and a few drinks. It also involved immense hilarity over the ridiculous antics of the rather drunk crowd of Irishmen (and women) who were old enough to know better but smashed enough to believe they were Snoop Dogg and seriously cool. In other words, they thought they were really cool. They weren't. They looked like headless chickens flopping about the dance floor. Good times, people, good times.

Saturday was my last full day in Northern Ireland, so Lyn took me around to see places from her childhood. Oh, and we did a bit of shopping! lol We didn't bother with castles this time, just enjoyed the time out and about.

It got a bit cold and rainy that night, so we stayed in with the telly and Indian takeaway. I do love a curry.

Sunday it was back home to England. I'm definitely visiting Northern Ireland again. It's a beautiful place. This time, though, I'm going in summer. And I'm making sure the doggone castles are open!

Giving Thanks in Northern Ireland

Armed with the foreknowledge of how much I missed everyone for Thanksgiving last year, I decided to visit my friend, Lyn, in Northern Ireland for Thanksgiving in 2007. Lyn agreed it was a stellar plan and the plotting and planning began. Lyn was particularly excited about celebrating Thanksgiving which is not something they celebrate in the UK.

I flew out of Heathrow at 3pm on Wednesday and landed in Belfast less than an hour later. It was on the darkish side, so I only got the merest glimpse of the city, which is about a third the size of Portland.

After an excellent meal at the local eatery and a relaxing evening chatting and watching telly, we slept in a bit on Thanksgiving morning. After a quick breakfast we hit Sainsbury's for all the necessary accoutrements for a traditional Thanksgiving feast with an Irish twist.

Since there were only two of us, we opted for a turkey joint rather than an entire turkey as that might have been construed as overkill. To accompany the turkey were roast potatoes, parsnips and carrots, gravy, a gorgeous stuffing made by Lyn, Irish treacle bread (also made by Lyn), and of course the one item required by any feast as which a Meliza presides... olives! For dessert there was pumpkin pie... naturally! It was made by yours truly as the entire UK thinks pumpkins are pig food and can't fathom why one would eat pumpkin in pie form. However, I have now converted Lyn to the glories of pumpkin pie.

On Friday we began our sightseeing adventures.

Northern Ireland, being mostly surrounded by a lot of water, had many gorgeous sea views. Beautiful. They've also got a seriously cool parliamentary building in Belfast. We took a quick car tour through the parking lot so I could snap a picture.

After driving through some seriously gorgeous countryside, we arrived at our first destination: Castle Ward (that's Lyn in the Castle Ward grounds on the left). I'm afraid Castle Ward looked nothing like a castle. Not a rampart or turret in sight. In fact, it looked like a big manor house. A big CLOSED manor house. For despite checking online to make sure it was open, it wasn't. However, the grounds were very pretty, so we consoled ourselves with a bit of a stroll around.

After our stroll, we decided a trip to the nearest town for a bathroom break and tea was in order. So, we clambered into the car and set off for Strangford...

Becky and Jim Go To London: Day Three

Becky and Jim's third and final day in London dawned bright and sunny and surprisingly fairly warm. Unfortunately, I awoke a zombie.

Yes, indeed. Apparently I am vilely allergic to something that blooms in Hyde Park during July. It was, quite frankly, the worst allergy attack I've ever head. I was determined to enjoy the day anyway, and so I gulped an allergy tablet and headed into London.

Our first stop was a nearby shop to buy a month's supply of Kleenex (which I went through in a day) after which we had a nice meal at a little shop, um, somewhere. You see, things are a little fuzzy.

I very much remember visiting the Churchill Museum which was quite interesting. It traced Churchill's life from birth to death, highlighting his political career and World War II. I know Jim thoroughly enjoyed it. It was intersting but honestly I could barely focus my eyes and I was so miserable it's a bit of a blurr.

So I made the excutive decision to go home to bed. I was quite sad to leave them, though they travelled with me part way on the tube so they could go and see St. Paul's. I admit, I bawled like a baby once they were out of sight. Hopefully the other riders of the tube thought it was my allergies. Then again, in London, pretty much anything goes, so probably no one noticed.