The legend of the Hot Dog Man

This reminds me of the time we where in Portugal searching desperately for the Hog Dog Man. We were staying in Lagos, Portugal; a lovely little beach town in the Algarve. Arriving into Lagos, we had been told by our Busabout guide about the amazing Hot Dog Man who would show up at night with the yummiest hot dogs ever in the streets of Lagos whereever you had been out drinking.

After a suitably messy night out on the town, we started searching for the Hot Dog Man. Now Lagos is a very small town so we figured we had a decent chance of tracking him down. It turned out to be a wild goose chase that ended up involving us being "chased" by 5 identical Portuguese quintuplets (or so we thought), almost wandering out of the town completely, being photographed next to a motorcycle by some random strangers and other bizarre encounters. In the end there was no sign of the Hot Dog Man, so we had to make do with a fast food outlet instead. Fortunately for us, they sold the best hamburgers in Europe. (well at least the parts of Europe I've been to)

After the madness of our pursuit we were so relieved that, at Lesley's initiation, we all slow clapped as the burgers were delivered to our table.

Aah the memories.

Darren Brown will kill you!

Is it just me or does the guy with the gun in the corner of the "Derailed" movie posters in the tube stations look like Derren Brown?

Look out for it those of you in Londontown.

That Derren Brown, he's a dangerous man, what with his mind tricks and such. And now he's menacing Jennifer Anniston with a gun.

Watch out, he'll kill ya!

Worst day of the year

Today is officially the worst day of the year, according to my one-time temp agency Office Angels. While it does suck being back at work, with only two weeks to go as well, it hasn't been too bad considering. (I say this now and my day will go to hell shortly)

January in London is much less enjoyable than in NZ, despite the fact I do like living here. The profusion of summer BBQs and parties, as well as all those trips to the beach, always make the start of the year so much more fun.

Here in London people stop going out after the excesses of the festive season; plus all we have to look forward to is the weather getting colder. Woo!

Happy New Year!!

It's almost time for me to take off, so I just wanted to wish everyone a very Happy New Year!!

See you in 2006. Word!

So this is Christmas....

...at least for us. No pics of me I'm afraid, you'll just have to enjoy these ones of the other girlies.






These two were having a competition as to how many party hats they could fit on their heads. I'm not sure who won though.

That's all folks

So that's Christmas over and done with for another year. Hope you all had a brilliant Christmas day and Santa got you something nice!

I had a lovely Christmas day with the girls where we exchanged presents, ate too much and drank several bottles of wine between us. I'll have to post some pics capturing the Christmas hilarity.

I spoke to my family on Christmas Eve to wish them Merry Christmas NZ time. It was really nice to chat to them, they sounded like they were having a great time. I must admit they are the one thing I miss the most about NZ. (My friends back home coming second of course! And closely followed by Wendys. Mmmm....Wendys....)

Now I am back at work (Booo! Hisss!) and struggling a bit. At least there's New Years Eve still to look forward to. And then my birthday of course. One good thing about a January birthday, you don't quite get the post-holiday blues in the same way.

And now back to pretending to work. Roll on 5pm....

ETA: Ooh have just noticed I've finally made it to a half century with my posts. Woo!

Bah Humbug

Okay, well not really. It's just with less than two weeks to go, I don't feel Christmasy at all. Not a jot. And this is despite the fact that the giant Christmas tree we've put up in our living room tries desperately to persuade me otherwise. I'm not quite sure why exactly. And I dont think I'm the only one not feeling the Christmas spirit. Other people I've spoken to seem to be lacking the joy of Christmas.

I guess I'm going to have to convince myself to be get in the spirit. And nothing says Christmas quite like the Hoff.



As I said, you can't escape him.

Happy Hoffmas!

You cannot escape The Hoff

Out clubbing on Saturday night, we were presented with evidence to prove that David Hasselhoff is very rapidly permeating all aspects of our lives. We were at a cheesy retro-styled club where the DJ played the Baywatch theme, sung by the Hoff himself. Not once, but twice.

Of course we reacted by singing along at the top of our lungs. How can you not?

Therefore in tribute to the man, I present this Hoff related link.

You know you love it!

Do You Want To?

Went to see Franz Ferdinand on Friday and they were absolutely fantastic!!

I'll leave the full review to Carly as she does it so much better. Except to say that Alex Kapranos is one sexy indie rock beyotch!

A Very Royal Morning

Today I had the best celebrity sighting to beat (almost) all celebrity sightings. Who else but Prince William came to visit my workplace this morning. There are some advantages of working in finance after all.

We waited with much anticipation to his arrival and were rewarded with the briefest glimpse as he was quickly ushered through our department. I think they were trying to shield him from the awed hush and rampant staring. Our department are obviously not the epitomy of coolness. We were warned not to take photos or request autographs, but no one managed to even get close enough to slip him their phone number. Much to the disappointment of Jessica who entrusted me to the task of slipping hers. She was highly miffed that she missed chance for her title of "Princess" to be made official.

A second attempt by me to head out to lunch, just at the time Will and his entourage were to head upstairs, was thwarted by one of my co-workers so that was it for my royal sighting.

Still I got to see the future King of England. Cant complain about that.

This movie looks very cool. Transvestites, 1970s music, not to mention Wombles! How can they go wrong! And Cillian Murphy, I must say, makes a very attractive woman.


So who's going to come see it with me in January?

"It puts the lotion in the basket or it gets the hose again!"

I just realised my new design looks exactly like this guy.

Guys and Dolls

After another satisfyingly busy weekend (I finally got a haircut, woo!), I'm back to yet another slow working week. I literally haven't done any work in about two hours. I'm sure I'm going to be for a rude shock when I have to start doing proper work when I get home.

To alleviate my boredom I thought I'd write up a review of my night of Ewanspotting at Guys and Dolls a couple of weeks ago.

We arrived at Piccadilly Theatre with much anticipation, mostly on my part, to see Mr McGregor. Even though we were in the cheap seats, the theatre wasn't too big so we had a fairly decent view of the stage. We took our seats only to be confronted by The Worse FeMullet Ever, worn by some woman who obviously was not worried about her own appearance, or the eyesight of any poor soul in her vicinity. Once we got over our initial shock we settled down to watch the show.

The show itself was really good. Guys and Dolls isn’t one of the showier musicals but more of a character piece, so it was the charisma of the actors and their performances which were more central to our enjoyment than any elaborate dance numbers. Having subsequently seen the 1955 film version, I can’t help comparing with the West End version. Some of the performers are dead ringers for the 1955 cast, the man who played Nicely, Nicely Johnson being one of them. Jane Krakowski was brilliant and she pulled off Adelaide note perfect to Vivian Blake's original performance.

Not to spoil it for you, but Sky Masterson is practically the last character to be introduced so it seemed like I was waiting ages to finally get a glimpse of Ewan. Which was obscured by his large fedora hat. Damn those early 20th century dress codes! But I did finally get to see Ewan in (almost) all his glory. (Unfortunately, they haven’t yet found a way to work in a nude scene into Guys and Dolls. But if there were you know he’d do it.)
Now Ewan is a good actor but not so much of a singer, sorry to say. Luckily Sky’s musical numbers are fairly limited and it was mostly down to Ewan to be as charming as possible as Sky. Which he pulled off wonderfully. That Jenna Russell was one lucky woman, getting to snog Mr McGregor several times.

I do wish I’d been slightly closer or at least had rented the binoculars for a better view of Ewan. Otherwise though I had an extremely enjoyable night and now I can say I was in the same (very big) room with Ewan McGregor. Heh.

Oooohhhh....

....look what I found!!!

Don't judge me. The Wombles rocked when I was a kid.

Back in black

Aah....now that looks much more "me", don't you think?

I want that one!

As it is coming up to Christmas and because I'm extremely bored, I thought I'd share my Amazon wish list with you here. Feel free to buy me anything (or everything) on the list if you so desire.

Let's do the time warp again

Possibly because it's Official Ewan Spotting Day (tm Me) time is going very slowly this afternoon. I'm managing to get all my work done in the shortest time possible leaving me with plenty of time to be bored. In fact I seem to have slipped into that 9-5 time warp where time goes at least 200% slower than when you're not at work. It is an actual phenomena shared with many of my fellow office workers which is only alleviated after 5pm.

It seems to be effecting my colleagues as well and they have resorted to amusing themselves with renditions of 70s tv theme tunes , naked Robbie Williams (click at your own peril) and coffee runs. Who said high finance was dull?

Phew! 45 minutes and counting......

I dont know if I've noticed this just because it's Monday morning, but I seem to have been lacking in patience recently. I can't tolerate people and things that normally dont bother me.

But the good news is I get to go and see my old movie boyfriend Ewan tomorrow night! Yayayayyay!!




Ahh isnt he lovely......

Bloggin' for the weekend

Hate to sound like a sterotypical 9-5er but am sooo glad it's the weekend! I had some excellent career related news this morning and went for a massive shopping spree last night so am feeling in a pretty good mood for once.

I've finally uploaded my photos of our trip so for those of you who might want to check them out, they can be found here:

Venice

Greece

Rome

Italian Explorer

Have a lovely weekend everyone!

Being there is everything

Yesterday I saw little sis off at the airport. She was flying home via our little ol' national carrier, Air NZ. And wonderful home-spun airline that they are, her flight was delayed by 5 hours. So we got to hang around firstly in the check-in queue for a good hour, then I was herded along with my sister and the other Air NZ passengers to the Marriott Heathrow where I managed to score a free glass of fine and a free meal as they thought I was also a passenger. There's nothing like the camaraderie of disgruntled, delayed airline passengers.

Luckily I managed to slip away before I was ushered into the line for the Departure lounge where I probably would have got a bollocking for not having a) my passport on me or b) a valid airline ticket.

It was a very bizarre experience though. I don't think I've been around that many kiwi accents for a very long time. It was weird....
How am I going to handle it when I get home?