Author: Jag

I finally got around to upgrading my blog software. These pages are now powered by the very latest version of WordPress; version 2.1. Upgrading was a breeze, took less than half an hour, the most of which was time taken to carefully do a backup up all the pages and the database. The upgrade itself took less than a minute (using my hosting provider’s Fantastico scripting service), and then I spent a few minutes tweaking my customised theme template to handle the blogroll links correctly.

So a random cameraphone picture from the last few days to provide something a little less technically boring and blog-page self-centred. Actually, this is for Sanj:

Whilst I was at it, I’ve done a little spring-clean of the my right-most hand sidebar, where I had links to RSS/XML for “syndication”, I now have the conventional feed icons for the links to some of my feeds. Also, I collected together a few WordPress plugins that I’ve been meaning to get for a while, in particular you will notice that every posting now has handy little icons at the bottom right for those who have accounts at de.icio.us, digg or Yahoo! MyWeb, making it possible to bookmark and share postings with others. I haven’t quite worked out why anyone would want to do that, but you never know.

And finally, the ongoing war on comment-spam. After a fairly quiet-ish 2 years using Akismet alone, these pages have, in the last week or so, been coming under a sustained and aggressive comment-spam attack. So I installed the Bad Behaviour plugin and tightened up on my moderation rules. It couldn’t have come too soon, as Bad Behaviour and Akismet together caught over 4000 spam comments in the last 24 hours alone! (BB got about 1000 of those.) You can now see the number of spam comments caught here in the last two years if you scroll right down to the very bottom of the page, where there is an up-to-date comment-spam counter. I really hate all forms of spam.

It’s an Italian restaurant in North London. 131 Stroud Green Road, N4 3PX to be precise. According to some Internet restaurant review sites it’s “at war” with another Italian pizzeria called La Porchetta Pizzeria which happens to be only a few doors away on the very same Stroud Green Road.

Upon entering this pizzeria (which is not far off the shadow of the new Arsenal football stadium) I was given a hearty shake of the hand by the Italian owner, and not long later was treated to some fine Italian-style pizzas cooked up in what I can only describe as an “authentic” pizza-oven slap-bang in the middle of the restaurant. And very tasty they were. Exceptional value (i.e cheap) , and exceptionally tasty. Thoroughly recommended. And for those with a naturally Indian disposition towards chillie hot spice, they serve their pizzas with a bottle of chillie oil for drizzling on your pizza. Beware though; you’ll never eat pizza from Pizza Hut or Dominos ever again …

Lee Garden is my local Chinese takeaway. It’s near the tube station on my High Street. And if I’m travelling home late in the evening, knowing that there’s nothing to prepare myself a dinner at home, I might pop in for a takeaway as I walk back. I love this takeaway. I love Singapore fried noodles. I love waiting there, listening to the hissing and clanking sounds coming from the back as my noodles get tossed around in the wok. (At least that’s what I assume is happening.) I love the way in which what turns out to be a mountain of tasty, spicy noodles can be compressed so skillfully into such a small plastic container. I love the fact that the (microweavable and dishwashable) container can be reused over and over again. As anyone living or raised in Indian family household will know, containers like this are essential for passing on leftovers of food to friends and family when there’s just too much left over at the end of an extended family get-together.

But something changed at my local Chinese takeaway recently. It was closed for a week or so – for refurbishment. The picture below shows what it used to look like inside for many years. Just like any other Chinese takeway in London does. Click on the right-hand side button below the picture to see how it looks now, in its new style. You can also click on the left-hand side button to revert back to the old style if you prefer it.

I’m a bit saddened by this change. There was something reassuringly Chinese-takeaway-ish about the previous style. But I’m also optimistic about the new design. It’s very wine-bar-ishly, Apple iPod-ishly, 21st century. So if you’re feeling musically inclined, you could also select an accompanying tune to go with the picture. The “old” tune is a beautifully sad song, about a broken “Ghungroo” by the legendary Indian ghazal-master Pankaj Udhas, and the “new” one is a 21st century, progressive, wine-bar compatible, clubbing tune called At Night (remix of course) by Shakedown. Take your choice.

(Click in the green buton to load the music. Turn up the volume. Shouldn’t take too long. After it loads click the play button and if you wish to stop, just hit stop.)

But the Singapore fried noodle tastes just as good as it always has!

The London Underground is full of delightful little surprises. This is just one.

The London Underground system is so old, and grows so organically over time, that quite often things aren’t as efficient as they could be. For example, the walkway between the Jubilee Line and Piccadilly Line platforms at Green Park station is a long underground tunnel that takes a good few minutes even walking at a brisk pace.

And walking at a brisk pace is what I normally do whenever I have to do this tunnel. So brisk that I never really notice a very clever but quirky little detail about this walkway. We all know that the colour coding used on the tube is excellent, consistent and familiar. For example, that the colour of the Piccadilly Line is dark blue and and the Jubilee Line is grey (or silver), but did you know that as you walk from the Picc platform to the Jub platform through this tunnel at Green Park, the tiny little mosaic tiles on the white walls of this tunnel start off with speckles of dark blue only and then gradually become a mixture of dark blue and grey as you progress through the tunnel, eventually becoming grey only at the Jub Line end?

It’s when you discover delightful little things like this that you really appreciate the not-so-obvious designs and patterns that exist in the underground system.

(Many thanks to Marcus for pointing this out to me ages ago!)

Happy New Year. On the first day of it we decided to get out and go visit a museum we’d never been to before: The Victoria & Albert museum. After spending far too long there I decided that I need to go there again. And again. And again. It’s marvellous.

Why oh why did it take me such a long time before visiting the V&A?

The calendar year comes to an end. And with it, the last bus disappears into the night.

And so for another year my beloved bus takes me home. For another year, with my cameraphone in my pocket, the stairs to the top deck take me upwards. And mobile. Upwards with my mobile; Upwardly mobile.

I’m sure I’ve said before that the best views in the world are to be had from the upper deck of a London bus, and I really do believe that. But there are too many views in 2006 that are best forgotten, with frighteningly few that are best remembered. Most of these were had in the minds eye, with my eyes physically closed. Why is that I wonder? But more frightening is the fact that we are over halfway through this first decade of the new “millennium” when it seems like only just last year when we were celebrating the start of a new one. A new millennium that is.

Hey ho. Here’s hoping for all the best for everyone in 2007.

Neither politically, nor religiously correct. But two fingers to all that; she’s a 21st Century, 3rd generation Indian, European, British, Londoner and she’s proud to be them all!

That’s what you are. A very big thank you to all that voted for these pages in the 2006 Weblog Awards. We didn’t come first, but fifth overall in the Best UK blog category, which I would say is a pretty good acheivement. And just fine by me. Hopefully fine by you too.

I have to admit I was rather puzzled by the nomination of this journal to the Best UK Blog category. I scratched my head at first. Wondering what to do. But then I figured out it could be a bit of fun. And a lot of fun it was too. All nine other blogs in the finalist lineup are fine ones indeed, and I’m sure that at least a couple of orders of magnitude of equally good sites can be discovered by clicking through the blogrolls of those. Runner-up JohnnyB has an excellent reflection on the contest that sums it up quite nicely.

A big up to the person (or persons) who nominated this site; you know who you are. And a big up to those of you who know me personally, whom I emailed in a targeted attempt to “get out the vote”, as well as those that voted simply because they like what they saw here. We did well considering we didn’t get any endorsements from other high-traffic websites. Not that I know of anyway. In fact if I stretch it a bit; we came second overall in terms of non-team blogs in the finalist lineup, and of those we were the highest voted “Londoner” blog. (Yes, I know I’m stretching it a bit 🙂 ) But congratulations to all the finalists, and I hope we all had some fun and discovered something new along the way. I certainly have. For example, I learned that Google ranks my recipe/method for Prawn Jambalaya as more relevant than Delia Smith’s. Now that leaves me extremely satisfied. I think I’ll tell my Mum about that.

I’ve been down a few streets in London which curve in a highly geometric fashion. Regent Street is an obvious one. As is the spectacular Park Crescent in Regents Park. But this weekend I discovered another one a bit further out in the hoods:

Someone left a comment on the previous post that this blog has been nominated as a finalist in some blog award competition in the “best UK blog” category. Now, considering that there are many far better “UK blogs” out there that could have been nominated leads to me conclude that some mistake has been made. Anyway, if you feel like voting for this blog (and for some reason you can vote once a day) then click here.

Otherwise here are just a few, much better UK blogs that I really recommend you take a look at. OK – some of them are really London-biased, but they’re ace:

Diamond Geezer, Going Underground, BowBlog, Pewari’s Prattle, Londonist, In the Fray The Fly and in fact any of the many links under “Others from London/UK” in my right hand side-bar.

On weekend shopping trips when I was a kid, I used to love to while away time reading magazines for free in WHSmith whilst my Mum and Dad did the town-centre shopping chores. I could have stood there for hours, reading magazines that I couldn’t afford to buy, just like a lot of other people: standing there facing the magazine shelves with magazine in hands. Completely and utterly absorbed. To me, it was state-of-the-art, real-world, knowledge fix. The best you could get at the time.

Of course, now we have the Internet. And Google. So not as many people can be observed standing reading magazines at WHSmith these days – well, not as many as I seem to recall when I was a kid. Which brings me onto the “mobile Internet”. In my view, just one of potentially many tests of the mobile Internet becoming an essential utility will be when many people start to get their arbritrary knowledge-fix using their mobile phones, as opposed to standing at the magazine shelf in WHSmith, or browsing from Google-searches on their PCs during workday lunchbreaks. Sure, I see a lot of people fiddling with their mobiles in shopping malls, seemingly killing time. But I doubt that many of them are immersing themselves in online magazines, browsing websites or clicking through Google results on their mobiles. Not yet anyway. There are many reasons why, but unfortunately the margin of this page is too small for me able to write all the reasons down …

Oriental City. A small-scale specialist shopping mall which is home to several popular shops, restuarants and a fantastic value food court which is like an escape to the far East within the heart of North West London looks like it’s going to be greeted by the bulldozers next year as London’s insatiable appetite for a new B&Q and hundreds of new 1 and 2 bedroom apartments gets fulfilled.

I have to admit that the plans submitted by the developer will help regenerate the area to a state that will, on balance, be a lot better than it is now, on several dimensions. And actually, the proposal includes an intention to re-open a slightly smaller version of Oriental City within it, but like all change it will be sad to see some things affected so badly, like some jobs, livelihoods, and last but not least, the fact that Oriental City seems to serve a very important social need for some members of the a community of people that is actually spread quite far and wide. e.g. it’s quite common for people to travel quite far to spend a day at Oriental City, catching up with extended family, friends, relatives etc. It will be sad to see that sort of thing disrupted. The optimistic side of me says that these things never disappear, they simply reconvene and re-form in different ways and in different places. Still …

A detailed report on the Mayor of London’s response to the plan clearly indicates that the Greater London Authority will be supportive of the proposal, but from a very recent comment left by someone in my article about China City Dim Sum from a while back, it would appear that a group of traders/proprieters at Oriental City are worried about some of the unwritten assurances that the developer has about relocating Oriental City traders during the period of the proposed redevelopment. I reproduce that comment here to get a feel for the sentiment. (Click on the “more” below.)
Continue reading “Closure” →

Trendy lounge. Funky bar. Hip restaurant. (So it says on the website.)

It used to be a McDonalds. It’s no surprise that it closed down. This is a predominantly Gujurati Indian neighbourhood. And in recent years we have seen an influx of Sri Lankan, South Indian, Iraqi, Somali, Eastern European and (most recently) Polish peoples. McDonalds is definitely out of custom around here. But now it’s Tonky Gorilla. It’s been “coming soon” for a couple of months now. And it looks as if it’s ready to open any day now. I was intrigued when I first saw the refurb hoardings a couple of months back. Was even more intrigued when the apparent owner responded on Flickr.

It’s all happening round here. Trendy, funky, hip. But most importantly: Tonky (!!??)

I have to admit that I never really appreciated the proper meaning of this word. So I go look it up; the Oxford English Dictionary states:

Adjective: travelling from place to place.
Noun: an itinerant person.
Origin: from Latin itinerari ‘travel’, from iter ‘journey, road’.

In today’s technologically mobile world, aren’t we all that? Virtually, also, perhaps?

Thanks to the ever-inspiring Diamond Geezer, lunch today was traditionally London; pie and mash at the about-to-close down family-run-since-1890 Goddards Pie House in Greenwich. A warming and veritable end to a chilly November morning of spectacular views obtained in getting there by switching from the Jubilee Line to the Docklands Light Railway at Canary Wharf. It’s been a while since I was in Docklands last, and the ascent up the escalators at Canary Wharf tube is simply breathtaking:

Then hotfoot it over to Wood Green Cineworld to see the movie Don, a very recent Indian cinema release, interestingly set in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. My review in a few words: Good fun action film, especially if you are a fan of SRK. But why oh why couldn’t we have been spared the squirm-in-your-seatingly embarassing song and dance sequence featuring Kareena Kapoor near the beginning? Also, “Bollywood” desperately needs a new coreographer, as the dance sequences throughout the film made you think that you’ve seen it all before, and the pace of the dancing was simply way out of tune with the tempo of the songs too. And please: can we have less of the open-mouth syndrome from the leading lady during dance sequences please? That’s so Rani Mukherjee and we’re getting a little tired of it! Still, great escapism due to implausible storyline, but couldn’t help thinking about the sinister stuff that Suketu Mehta wrote about in Maximum City which I read just recently. Overall, good film; shame about the dancing.