After work drinks

On Friday after work I headed into the City for a couple of drinks (maybe a couple more). Met up with some of bf's friends. We were in a newly opened pub and there was nobody there. Maybe two other tables were taken, but otherwise it was empty. I kinda liked it because I had just changed trains at London Bridge and been run over by a big guy and really didn't feel like getting squashed by more people in a busy pub. So I didn't mind. And they played really good music. A bit random, I remember Ace of Base, Rage against the Machine, Black Eyed Peas, some country, dance and R&B. 

Best part of the evening: We all got hungry and headed over to a Japanese restaurant around the corner. They had amazing food and it was decently priced.

 Unagi and Avocado maki anyone?

Spicy wing sticks and chilli beef with green peppers, onions and black beans.

The bf wanted to share the food (never happens), I took advantage of that and stole more than half his chilli beef. We also had edamame beans but I forgot to take a pictures of those.

Placement Mania

I am back full swing with uni life. Can't believe that already three weeks have passed. After another two weeks I will go on placements full-time. Can't wait for that! I didn't get the placement that I originally wanted with a packager in their production department. They just wouldn't make up their mind whether they wanted someone for five weeks, which is the required length of my placement. So I applied to a couple of other places. Finally ended up with a five week stint at a medium sized publisher in their sales team and two weeks at a big publisher in their outsourcing arm.

The latter one I am really excited about. We had the guy who runs it come in last term and tell us about what they do. They basically do all aspects of publishing, but for other companies. Usually smaller publisher will outsource to them and they then either do something in-house or outsource themselves. What I love about it is how global it is. The job could go out to companies anywhere in the world. For some clients they have set production schedules, where a magazine would be send to the Philippines via email, they would do the copy editing, then it would go on to India for illustration work, would be send on to Europe for putting it together in it's final form, then send to the publishers in the States, they would approve it, and then send it on to their printers. Amazing!

The placement in sales is not as exciting. I'm not sure yet whether I'm in International sales or UK sales. Hoping for international, but I shall see. I don't mind it, I might even start working in Sales when I get done in the summer. I just would have preferred to get some production experience as I still think I would prefer to work there. Plus, I have experience in a buying role which already sets me up for a job in sales and I wanna avoid being pushed into this one direction without the chance to try something else. Come summer I will be happy to accept ANY job, but until then I wanna keep my options open!

In other news, I love my new study group! They are so different then my last one. People actually do work without being pushed and volunteer for tasks. It's amazing! We are so far ahead in our projects, I'm really starting to relax and enjoy my studies again. Stress-free uni, who would have thought that is possible?

Speaking of which, gotta go and study some more now. Reading this really interesting book about ...drumroll please... publishing!

Paperchase!

Yesterday I made the big mistake of walking into paperchase after class. I love the stuff they have. Spend about 20 minutes debating over whether I should by a notepad or not (decided not, since I still have three at home, but oh it was sooo cute). And then I found a new section in the back of the store. They are basically selling sheets of wrapping paper. But some of it is really ... different. I took some photos:

I love those kinds of material. So I got really excited until I realised that I couldn't buy any as I have zero use for them. My group was thinking of doing a girly book project this term and we could have gone all overboard with these to illustrate the book and make it fun, but then we decided to do a book for boys instead. Hmm, I'm thinking boys will not get too excited about pink glitter on their books. *sigh* Maybe I can find a different project were I can incorporate these materials...

This is frustrating

So the last term went out with a bang. Exams, food, drinking and one day of leisure. And now this. Been back in classes since last Monday and no time to breathe. All the projects for the semester got dumped on us, I had my placement on Friday and the weekend was spend like this:

That's right. Sitting at my bf's office (because it's nice and quiet and has free coffee) studying! I read through someone else's dissertation and through about half a text book and did some maths exercises.

Today, thankfully, I only have one class. But after class my group is meeting to discuss ideas on two projects. We are supposed to acquire/commission books. But of course we have to come up with the ideas. Uh, not really good at that. Did I mention I don't wanna be an editor and don't really care about that part? Well, at least there are four other people in my group who ALL wanna be editors. So I figure it would be good practise for them ;-)

Here's to the next weeks calming down a bit...

After exam treats

I survived the exams. Ok, there were only two, but on consecutive days. I hate that, usually bad at studying for two things at the same time. I prefer to keep it separate.

But it's over now! The last one was on Friday and I got out of it just after four. Went directly to the nearest pub with most of my classmates and had some nice drinks. Unfortunately most of the others then wanted to go home and dress up for a night on the town. But I knew if I were to go home I would never make it out of the house again. Luckily others were thinking alike and five of us headed up to Angel for some dinner.

We ended up at Gallipolli, a Turkish restaurant and ordered their set meals. It was amazing! I had waaaay too much to eat. They kept bringing out more and more little plates. I kept putting most of it on my actual plate as the table was way too small to host all those plates.

Look at all the stuff on my plate. And that's not even all we got! After that we went to a Circus-themed bar. No idea why, but it was really pretty. Had another couple of drinks and then headed home in a really good mood. Could get used to treating myself this way.

This is the inside of the restaurant. Apologies for the poor picture quality and low lights. It was really atmospheric. The walls were painted a dark red, candles on the table, lots of Islamic art on the walls. Really cool place. You could have sheesha outside (was too cold for that).

Saturday was spent at home recuperating. Read a bit, watched some TV and hung out. Nice day.

On Sunday bf wanted to go out for brunch and shopping. Not saying no to that. I had two poached eggs with whipped yogurt and spicy butter. It was amazing! The eggs were swimming in the yogurt, which was almost like whipped cream, but sour and salty, and the butter was melted and all orange/red and really spicy. Had some bread to dip in. Nom. I forgot to take pictures though, as I was starving and only remembered after I finished. Sorry.

After brunch we went shopping for a bit on Regents Street and Oxford Street. I actually enjoyed it as there weren't that many people around. We ended up in a little café afterwards. They had home-made cake and ice-cream. So we decided to share some.

This is an amazing carrot cake with pistachio ice-cream on the side.

This is just a regular cappuccino. But it went really well with the dessert. Headed home afterwards and enjoyed some movies. Now I'm supposed to write learning reflections for uni. But they are not due till tomorrow at midnight... So I'll probably end up doing them tomorrow. Too lazy now...

50 book challenge

I'm going to challenge myself to read 50 books this year. Thanks to studying I might actually make it without that much effort. If you are interested I made a page for this.

So far I have read this year:

Underground Haruki Murakami

Publishing Law Hugh Jones & Christopher Benson

I thought Underground was a little bit depressing. But then what can you expect from a book consisting of interviews with some victims of the Tokyo underground attacks.

Well, Publishing Law on the other hand was an awesome read and I would recommend it to anyone who just doesn't know what to do with their free time ;-)

It's a new year

New Year's Eve was pretty unspectacular. Bf had to work (I fortunately didn't have to go to my placement) but came home quite early, around 3. So I headed out to grab some food. I also wanted to get out because I was getting cabin fever. Had been sitting at home for the last three days waiting for a delivery that never arrived. Still hasn't.

Bf wanted mashed potatoes and sausages for dinner. Not very festive, but then again we weren't in a festive mood. When I came back from store bf was on PSN busy downloading games. So we had a pretty relaxed evening playing Tetris and Risque against each other, watching a bit of TV and drinking champagne and Guinness mixed with Champagne. It's called something Velvet. Can't remember now. Nothing exciting, but it was nice to spend some time together. We went to bed at 4am. So I guess we actually did have lots of fun because neither of us wanted to go to sleep.

The next day we slept in, had a nice breakfast and were lazy the whole day. Initially bf wanted to go up early and shopping, but that didn't happen. We went on Sunday instead. Was fun, I browsed through some clothing stores, HMV and drug stores. Only bought some socks and panties though. Have to watch the budget and I really don't NEED any new clothes. Plus there is no space in the wardrobe. Need to throw out some older clothes. But I hate doing that. Not good at getting rid of things. Though I have been going through my sock/underwear/tights shelve and threw out quite a few things.

Now it's time to study. Urgh, hate studying. The bad thing is I got my grades from the essays and I did really well. And since that is 50% of the grade I'm not too bothered with the exams. I don't care if I do well or not as long as I pass and I feel I know enough to pass... so meh, not bothered about studying. But don't tell the bf. He'll get really worried otherwise.

Will do more cleaning today. Hate doing it all on one day. So today I think I will clean up the desk (which should take forever) and either kitchen or bathroom (anything to avoid studying). Hoping that when I start bf will feel obliged to join in and clean the other room (yes, isn't it great to have a studio flat, not that much cleaning to do).

I'm still not happy with the looks of the blog. So yes, expect another change. Sorry, I tried to do the seasonal thing, but now I just wanna switch it up a bit... I will leave you with some photos of our shopping trip to Angel.

Note the subtitle: Only one year left til the world ends according to John Cusack.

Pics look a bit bleak. It was a really sunny day when we set out but when I took the pictures it was getting overcast.