Adventures with Kake

The week before last...

On Monday and Tuesday I meant to go on an adventure in East London, but was foiled by temporary loss of mojo. Worked instead.

On Wednesday I wandered round the City and took some photos, then headed over to meet parents (in town for the week) and have dinner at Vanilla Black.

I think I mostly just worked the rest of the week; can't really remember doing anything exciting, though my memory does suck.

Last week...

On Monday I went for an East London adventure with ewan. We had lunch at Saravanaa Bhavan then wandered around Upton Park in a big circle, taking photos on the way. (We tried to go to the Newham Bookshop, but it's closed on Mondays. Why don't they mention this on their website?)

Then we got the District Line to Upminster Bridge, from whence we wandered through endless depressing suburbia (only about half a mile in reality, but so much further psychologically) to reach the Optimist Tavern, an Ember Inn resembling nothing so much as a hotel bar. And then it started raining.

Upminster improved from then on in, though. Ewan headed off to take some pub photos, while I did a little research tour of the restaurants on Corbets Tey Road and St Mary's Lane to find somewhere for dinner later. We reconvened in the Mason's Arms, which we were pleased to discover was a proper pub, and much less chainy than the others we've experienced in the area so far.

My restaurant research tour had revealed little of interest. La Grolla is probably the best in the area, but I'd already been there quite recently; and the Othello Taverna offered nothing for vegetarians. We eventually decided to go to Yin Court, once sashajwolf joined us, on the strength of its having an actual vegetarian set menu — and it was actually pretty decent, particularly the beancurd dishes.

I think I may have had enough of Upminster for now, but Ewan and I are both interested in exploring its neighbour, Cranham, at some point. It has at least two pubs, if nothing else!

On Tuesday through Sunday, although I was having a very slow work week, I felt too manky to go out and explore. I mostly did admin stuff — updated the London bookshops map and the vegetarian restaurants/cafes in London map, among other things. (Do let me know if you have any suggestions for things missing from either map).

I also spent some time playing on the Discworld MUD. Programming is a lot of fun, but sometimes it's good to reconnect to the game as a player, and talk to the other players as an equal. It's also a good way to find bugs :)