The Top Floor Flat

I’m not entirely sure how I became de-facto Michael Jackson correspondent for Spoonfed but once again I found myself at a flashmob for the dead King of Pop. This time, a group had gathered at Trafalgar Square to try to break the world record for the most people to do the Thriller dance at one time. Although they were no where near breaking the record, it was a pretty spectacular showing and I’m proud to say that I got some incredible photos and video footage of the event. Take a look:

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This weekend brings with it another Monday Bank Holiday and the annual event, the Notting Hill Carnival. This Caribbean influenced festival sees all of Notting Hill transformed into a heaving, music-filled, dance party with Rio-like costumes, floats loaded with sound systems to rival most nightclubs and half of London in attendance. Last year I missed this essential London carnival, instead doing a bus trip through Wales for possibly the most polar opposite experience possible. This year, I won’t make the same mistake and will be making my way to the Carnival on for either Sunday or Monday’s festivities.

Some things in particular I am looking forward to:

- Enjoying a major London event that is a 15 minute walk from my flat (seriously, this is a big deal – very few things happen in West London).
- Authentic Caribbean food. ‘Nuff said.
- Amazing music. From electro to pop to reggae, the sound systems are apparently as varied as the costumes.
- Notting Hill Carnival After-Parties. As big as the days themselves, these parties range from an extended public party to secret events in local pubs and houses.

In any case, expect a full recap post-Carnival fun with pictures of course! We’ve been gearing up for the Festival at Spoonfed and one of my co-workers has put together the essential Notting Hill Carnival Beginner’s Guide which, while useful, won’t be quite as helpful as just tagging along with him (and his multiple years of Carnival navigation experience). If you’re on Twitter, you can follow everyone’s comments from the event on the hashtag #nhc09.

Happy Bank Holiday Weekend!

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Have things been slightly slow at The Top Floor Flat blog? It does seem a bit fluffy around here lately. I haven’t been on any trips lately and a spat of uncharacteristically sunny weekends has meant that my exploration of London has been limited to pretty much exploration of a particular bit of grass in Holland Park from the vantage point of my brand new picnic blanket.

But things are about to get exciting again as I take off for Greece in a few weeks time. Ten days of sun, sea and Greek island hopping will mark my first major trip in quite some time, and my longest to date. A flight into Athens gives me just a few hours to explore the city before an early morning ferry delivers me to Mykonos for two days, then Paros, followed by Santorini then finally two days on Ios before it’s back to Athens and London.

Although I am traveling with a tour group, the trip is actually quite free form with the ‘tour’ organising the transport between islands, providing information on the country, islands and best things to do and some excursions for the group but most of the time available for my own plans. I’m looking for all the Greek advice I can get related to my four island stop off points and would love to hear some recommendations for what to do an see in each place.

Of course, Greek island time will most likely lend itself more to sun bathing, wine sipping, olive oil dipping and the like so I won’t be too ambitious. I am incredibly excited for my trip and well in need of a vacation. This one looks to be absolutely ideal.

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Londoners on the whole aren’t generally a very chatty bunch when it comes to public interaction. Avoiding eye contact on the Tube, hiding behind brollys on the streets, blocking the next seat on the bus with bags are just a few of the litany of avoidance tactics one might discover in this fine city. So when someone joins in an overheard conversation one can be sure that it’s related to something very good or very bad.

Unfortunately, Saturday night seemed to be a list of the highly amusing but very bad. I left the flat shortly before 22.00 to meet my friend for a drink pre-Lord of the Rings all-night marathon. As I stood alone on the train platform, a rather nervous-looking young man approached me. With some trepidation I stuck my nose further into my book (as I mentioned I was unused to being spoken to while on public transport) but to no avail.

“Excuse me, I need to ask you a question.”

I eyed the stranger non-committally. He continued.

“Imagine you’ve just signed the agreement for a new flat. You’re moving into a place where a group of other people already live.”

Nod from me.

“Then, one evening, you show up unannounced to move some things in. You find them all sitting around a table that is covered in while lines of powder and discover you’ve moved into a drug den.”

I burst out laughing and the man looks a little hurt but also seriously confused. The train arrives.

I make a slightly useless comment about having no idea what I would do in that situation and hastily board the train wondering if I had just imagined that exchange.

Twenty minutes later, I’ve nearly recovered from the unexpected interaction and have found my friend Basheera at Feng Sushi on the gorgeous, neon-back lit London Southbank. A significantly disappointing tuna maki roll later I, hyperbolelessly point out that it was in fact the worst sushi I had ever tasted. A moment later:

“Excuse me,” says the man sitting next to us. His female partner is staring dejectedly at the plate before them. “Did I just hear you say this was the worst sushi you’ve ever tasted?”

Nod from me. Two random conversations in one day – this must be some sort of London record.

“Our sushi is unedible. It tastes completely off. I thought it was just us.” He leans towards me conspiratorially. “Will you have the nerve to refuse to pay?”

“Probably not,” I admit although at the same time I am wondering what sort of damages I might get from the restaurant if I get food poisoning.

“No,” he sighs. “Me neither.” This seems a rather shame given that it looks like he’s already spent about ten times more than I have on the inedible sushi.

A tense exchange with the hostess (who does not take kindly to our constructive criticisms) and the rather wise decision on the part of Bash and myself to bail on the Lord of the Rings marathon (yes, you heard it right, I didn’t end up going after all of that) later, the two of us say goodbye on the busy walkway outside the restaurant.

“Do you like cider?” she asks. Of course.

“Well the event I was at earlier today was sponsored by a cider manufacture and I have a bunch of bottles in my bag. Would you like one?” Of course.

A rather surreptitious transfer of bottles takes place and only after the exchange do we realise how dodgy we must have looked.

“It’s ok, no one was watching,” insisted Bash. We look around at the people seated at the outdoor tables across from us who are staring intently at us.

“Oh well,” I sigh. “At least we’ll give them something to talk to each other about.”

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I have, in the last week, received two pointed emails regarding my lack of posts here on The Top Floor Flat so I feel I should take a moment to explain myself. After all, 10 days without a post is a bit of a record and when my flatmate’s mother (Hi Rosemary!) begins to wonder what’s happened then I know it’s time to get my blogging act together.

Over the last 10 days, I have been dealing with a number of technical issues which, while annoying, have been brought on by some incredibly exciting steps for me personally. First, I’ve sold the company I founded in college, DormWise. This has been a goal of mine for a while and now that the deal is all but finished, I’m absolutely thrilled with how it’s worked out. The site transfer isn’t 100% done but once it is, I’ll be doing a little profile on the (very friendly) guys who are taking over DormWise (lucky them!). Additionally, I’ve been working on another very exciting project (also web 2.0 related) that hopefully will be released in early September. I realise that’s quite vague but this one is going to be a lot of fun and I don’t want to ruin the surprise.

The upshot of both of these things has been that I needed a new server for my remaining sites (The Top Floor Flat, Techettes and my new project) while shedding the DormWise site and server. Not exactly the most complex process but painful enough that the server transfer took a few days longer than anticipated and both this blog and Techettes suffered a bit of down time. It’s thanks entirely to my fantastic hosting service BlueHost that we’re all up and running again normally and I can, for example, come back to post about such important life updates as Lord of the Rings all-nighters.

So, thanks for the emails, I’m glad you missed me! Stay tuned for some exciting announcements and more general chatter from The Top Floor Flat.

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A friend of mine said yesterday, “Meaghan, you’re a smart girl but sometimes you do some very strange* things.”

This was in response to my announcement of weekend plans which include possibly the “strangest” choice of activity to date. Yes, today, as of 11:59pm, I will be sitting in the London BFI IMAX theatre, settling in with a couple of friends to watch approximately 10 hours of video footage, namely the three Lord of the Rings films back to back.

I went through a fairly intense stage of Tolkien fandom around the time the trilogy was released the first time in theatres and I have many fond memories of large groups of high school girls camping out at the Shoreline Centruy theatre in Mountain View California for midnight showings of the fantasy flicks. In a rather spontaneous burst of nostalgia, when I saw the BFI offering about two months ago, I thought ‘why not?’, got some friends on board and booked tickets.

Now, a number of weeks later, I’m beginning to question my rash decision to dive into the most epic of movie all-nighters imaginable. But regardless of whether I end up sleeping through the stories or coming out the other side a gibbiling mess speaking half in Elvish and half asleep, I’m quite looking forward to tomorrow morning, stepping out of the Southbank theatre to an all but empty Thames Walk and still being here in London on my own adventure. And possibly grabbing some elevensies.

*Chances are high that this was a quick edit from the preferred adjective “stupid.”

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Although I’ve never lived in New York, I often imagine there are a number of similarities between London and NYC. In particular, in a city of this size and diversity, it’s generally assumed that you can get anything – anything at all – as long as you know where to look.

I have been looking for decent Tex-Mex style food in London and I must not be looking in the right places. Wahaca, a London-based traditional Mexican style restaurant, definitely has the spices and flavours covered and is the closest I’ve tasted but in an effort to find something a bit more in line with just north-of-the-border food, I rounded up my friend Kate and new acquaintance Adam to try the overly themed Navajo Joe’s restaurant in Covent Garden.

Ostensibly a Native American themed Mexican restaurant (right, we’re already off to a good start), they suggest on their website “don’t let our name fool you. Although our history is traditionally rooted in south-western cuisine, we’ve evolved over time into offering some of the most forward thinking, refreshingly accessible food in Covent Garden.”

Unsure what that meant but in the mood for polenta, buffalo wings, quesadillas, and a hell of a lot of chipotle we took our seats in front of perhaps the most schizophrenic menu since The Cheesecake Factory opened. There were our BBQ chicken wings and nachos under the starters menu – accompanied by asparagus tempura with truffle hollandaise, seared steak teriyaki and crispy duck with hoi sin sauce. Those were some worldly Native Americans putting together this menu.

Their main plates looked equally ridiculous under the bull’s skull on the wall and southwestern themed décor. Blackened duck with bak choi, ginger salmon, char-grilled peri peri chicken… even the southwestern favourites section featured an asparagus and oyster mushroom enchilada with sugar snap peas and goat’s cheese.

While we were debating what percent of the American south west would know what an oyster mushroom was, our drinks arrived and a couple of potent margaritas later we were feeling a bit more kindly towards the menu (or at least very hungry and quite ready for something off said menu to arrive). We started with mini platters of four cheese nachos, stuffed tempura jalepenos, coxina chicken with lime dressing and plates of the BBQ chicken wings and mozzarella and sundried tomato quesadillas with pesto dressing. It was a good spread and although that sounds like quite a bit of food, portion-wise it was a good starter mix for the three of us. Surprisingly, it was the quesidillas that proved table favourite with the jalapenos coming second. The wings, sticky and sweet, still felt more like something they’d run in from Chinatown, a couple of blocks away, than the searing hot buffalo wings we were craving.

For the mains, we had all ordered the fajitas and a rather uninspiring stone plate of mostly onions and a bit of meat arrive about 30 minutes after our starters had been cleared. These guys were not scoring points for presentation with a couple of tin cups of toppings (cheese, guacamole, sour cream and salsa) accompanying our bare serving plates and onion-laden meals. The food was good, and chipotle heavy as desired but we were soon left with, between us, about three to four marinated onions on a plate – this is after making an effort to eat a lot of them with our meal. This is definitely not a meal for a date and frankly a pretty lousy way to make the plate look more full. We were offered a dessert menu but, in search of a real American flavour, we opted for the Ben and Jerry’s down the road.

Navajo Joe’s restaurant was a pretty depressing display of the most minimal effort in menu and maximum in cheesy decorating for an attempt at a Mexican restaurant in one of the most tourist-laden parts of London. I’m sure it does quite well. I had a fantastic night out with my friends, got a pretty tasty dinner in the process but if I ever decide that I want another Tex-Mex meal here in London, I’m just going to have to keep looking.

Navajo Joe’s
www.navajojoe.co.uk

34 King Street
London, WC2
020 72404008

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Yesterday I attended Tomorrow’s Web Conference in London, a fantastic teens in tech event. You can read my full writeup on Techettes.

I like to think back fondly on my days as a budding entrepreneur; reselling on Ebay at 11, coding my first website shortly after… but at the end of the day, I was still just pawning off duplicate Beanie Babies and making Jelly Roll pen fan pages (thank goodness that element of my digital footprint has been firmly erased). No, my youthful tech exploits are placed decidedly in perspective with the astounding talent, creativity and technical prowess of the teens at Tomorrow’s Web 2009, the UK’s first ever by-teens, featuring-teens, for-teens tech conference.

Read on…

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The most popular conversation topic in London, I’ve discovered, is without a doubt the weather. While the stereotype in the US is that the weather is a topic reserved for idle chatter between people who either don’t know each other or are prone to offend each other, this is serious business here in London. There’s the good weather conversations and the bad weather conversations which are usually fairly straightforward. But then there are there are the advanced topics of weather discourse where one might pull out stats and superlatives. “It’s rained for the last 37 days which has accounted for a total of 6.9 inches of rainfall,” one might say. “This weather is so muggy it feels like you’re walking through jello,” another might reply. Suffice it to say, weather talk is always worth a listen.

But while I may be won over by the conversation topic, I am certainly not feeling any warm fuzzies towards the actual subject of the conversation. July passed in a haze of dreary rainclouds while August was ushered in by a muggy mist. A few sunny days quickly gave way to torrential downpours which I became closely acquainted with during my mile-long walk through said rain this evening on my way home.

The joke is that a British summer looks something like India’s monsoon season and I would be hard pressed to argue. But while I may not have gone native in my ability to quietly gripe about the weather and carry on as if I were still in sunny California, at least I have gone native in my ability to speak about the weather like it was the most important thing on earth.

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A little over a week ago I took a walk over to my local and possibly favourite London park, Holland Park for a little fresh air. I’ve posted about Holland Park before but had still, disappointingly, not made it to the Holland Park Opera, a covered open air theatre in the centre of the park. Yet not long after I had camped myself in the middle of a rose garden I heard the unmistakable sounds of an orchestra and a woman in a viking helmet – it was the Holland Park Opera open house and the doors had been thrown open to allow the likes of me, and the neighbourhood children, into the opera to see demonstrations of performances, old costumes, behind the scenes on the site and (this was more exciting for the children than for me) the in-costume star of Angelina Ballerina.

I had missed most of the singing but was quite impressed by the costumes on display as well as the theatre itself. As I write this, I’m reminded that I only have another day or two to see the last of this season’s performances so it seems a bit unlikely I’ll get the full Holland Park Opera experience but in comparison to what was to come on the open house day that may be ok.

After a tour of the opera house and grounds, I heard the distinct sound of an orchestra warming up. I took a seat right at the front of the theatre while the orchestra prepared, unsure of what to expect. It seemed they were a bit apprehensive themselves and the reason became clear when a line of two dozen children appeared out of the wings, led by a grinning conductor. It seemed that I had also missed out on a conducting lesson and now, the mini maestros were ready for their thirty seconds of fame while they picked one of three songs (Overture for William Tell, the Can Can or Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro) in which to conduct the rest of the orchestra.

A minor amount of chaos ensued. The highly trained orchestra, much to the delight of the children conducting and the spectators, followed along precisely with the amateur conductors – meaning that rarely did the piece actually stay on tempo or sound much like the familiar composition it was supposed to be. Everyone was having a fantastic time although none seemingly so much as the main conductor himself who looked positively thrilled.

It was a fantastic afternoon and although I didn’t get a chance to lead the orchestra myself, I’m so happy to have been a small part of the Holland Park Opera open house and see first hand the amazing arts facilities I have just beyond my front door.

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