Tagged: London

Mondays

I love walking down the street in the morning.. You never quite know what you will find!

Monday mornings

I think we’ll all agree that Monday morning commutes are hard.. Perhaps more so for some than others!

Carnival

A lovely weekend, topped off by the Carnival – Europe’s largest and second only to Brazil (I am faithfully informed by the interwebs).

The riots have meant that the carnival, much like London in recent weeks, was slightly more subdued than in the past. But good cheer, colourful costumes and fiery jerk chicken made for an excellent bank holiday Monday.

Revolutionizing Renewable Energy and Fashion

I went to the Earth Awards last week, and got to see some innovative ‘green’ solutions.. And, got to blog about it at the paper..

David Wendell wants to revolutionize renewable energy by taking a page out of nature’s book, and improving it. His new technology captures carbon and transforms it into sugar — something that plants do naturally — more efficiently using artificial photosynthetic foam. The foam developed by Mr. Wendell and his colleague Carlo Montemagno, both professors at the University of Cincinnati, was one of six finalists at the Earth Awards 2010 held yesterday in London, eventually winning the $50,000 prize.

Read the full post here

Grocery Shopping

Every year, usually around January, I realize that there is a wide gap between who I am and who I want to be. Nowhere is this more evident than in my grocery shopping. Like most people I’m rather fond of junk food. One of the semi-cheap thrills of moving to London was discovering a whole new junk food alphabet – from Aero bars to Buttons all the way down to Wispa and Yorkie bars. For a posh night in I break out the Kettle Chips with cracked black pepper.. which is essentially junk food at its Sunday best.

Yet if you see me at a Sainsbury’s on the weekend, it’s like I’m shopping for a different person. The kind of person who eats crunchy carrots and radishes, breakfasts on organic oatmeal and drinks chamomile tea. Every Sunday afternoon is pretty much an exercise in optimism – with purchases of what feels like eight kilos of fresh fruit, muesli bars, authentic pesto from an authentic Italian man at the market, non-fat non-saturated no calorie yoghurt (i.e. white coloured water) and juice enough for your average kindergarten class.

Come Wednesday evening though and I can usually be found in front of the television munching nachos at 1 am while a disapproving pile of oranges watches over me.

Every day at 3.30pm

The sun shines through the corner office and hits me in the eye.

Sun worshipper that I am, I enjoy seeing its gold orange glow reflected off the modern steel and glass structure opposite the window, and I imagine briefly, that I am sunning myself on some tropical island..

And I wish I could exchange the tweed umbrella in my bag for a tiny coloured paper one in my drink.