New Year's Eve

It's New Year's Eve, Mr KE and I have got absolutely nothing planned and it's great. We have had a lovely Christmas break, just the two of us taking it easy. I haven't even been sale shopping; haven't even been into town....which is very unlike me (contrast with last year) but oh well, I have other things on my mind! This year I have spending my money on buggies and baby clothes :)

So what have we been up to?

• We had roast chicken for our Christmas dinner; with pigs in blankets (cocktail sausages wrapped in streaky bacon), roast potatoes, baby carrots, peas, bread sauce and gravy. No christmas pudding because Mr KE doesn't eat it and I'm not such a big fan. Instead, lots of chocolates and sweet gooey things all day.
• On Boxing Day Mr KE went to watch our local football team with his friends while I snoozed on the sofa.
• We have been sleeping in, going on long walks in our local parks and eating lots of indulgent food.
• Mr KE has been DIY-ing while I watch TV ....yes, it's a hard life....

It's now 7pm, we have no plans for dinner (takeaway? forage in the fridge? just eat more chocolate?) and the lack of pressure is really relaxing. You know what I mean - it's New Year's Eve...must have a good time.....even if you get totally stressed out doing it!

Happy New Year everyone!

Christmas Breakfast

(Couldn't decide which photo to post - so I've posted both...)

When I was young, we always had ham sandwiches for breakfast on Christmas morning. We would normally get up late, after the excitement of Christmas Eve, Midnight Mass, opening presents, and wander downstairs in search of food.

By the time we got up, the kitchen would be in full swing preparing for lunch, guests etc. There would be a big ham in the kitchen, ready for us to cut thick slices of salty meat and make sandwiches.

Mr KE's mother does the same, so to me - christmas breakfast is not complete without proper ham! With just me and Mr KE around, I got some slices from our local deli and very nice they are too.

We ate in the kitchen because I couldn't be bothered to clear the dining table - lazy me.....




...of course, Christmas means a never ending supply of chocolate. We started straight after breakfast with these yummies. Special thanks to our chocolate supplier, you know who you are!

Christmas Eve

Mr KE popped into M&S on his way home and fancied these chinese snacks, so we had them as starters on Christmas Eve. They were all duck-based and came with a little pot of hoisin sauce.






For our main course, we had individual beef wellingtons, potatoes dauphinoise and green beans. The beef wellingtons were from Waitrose but I made the potatoes from scratch; they are basically potatoes cooked in layers with double cream and milk. Very decadent indeed!

As for the Beef Wellingtons, they were OK but I can't help thinking that it is a bit of a waste of beef fillet. If you haven't had it before, beef wellington is beef fillet, pate and mushrooms wrapped in puff pastry. Very 1970s dinner party. These days it's more fashionable to have cook things simply eg if I had a good bit of beef, I would just pan fry it with a bit of salt and pepper.

Anyway, we were too stuffed after our meal for any pudding, so we just crashed out on the sofa for a rest before heading off to midnight mass. I had to have a nap before our walk up the hill...I need to conserve my energy these days!

Christmas - Past, Present and Future

This will be the first Christmas ever that Mr KE and I are spending together on our own - and this is probably the only Christmas that it will be just the two of us. Well, for some years to come anyway.

We normally spend the holidays with his parents in the countryside but this year we are avoiding the journey and staying at home. To be honest, I'm quite looking forward to spending some you-and-me time with Mr KE in our London nest before the pipsqueak arrives. As I have been reminded by lots of friends who have young children - spend as much time with your husband as possible, go to the pub, eat out and enjoy sleeping in. I know that they are not trying to be negative about having children, but the reality is that life will be completely different...but that's okay.

From a practical point of view, this means that I am cooking our Christmas dinner!! My mother-in-law always has christmas completely organised so usually we just turn up at their house, eat lots of delicious food and spend the whole holiday sitting on the sofa watching TV and eating chocolates. I am totally useless daughter-in-law, hahahaha.

Although we aren't really thinking about Christmas (we haven't even got a tree), I still have to make some kind of effort on the food front. I've even written out "menus" :) .... good little wife or what??

My Last Day at Work

Today was my last at work. I have a few days leave to use up so my maternity leave doesn't officially start till the New Year. It feels really surreal, because I've always had a mental picture that I would start seriously preparing for the pipsqueak once I had finished work. So now, that's it.

It was a very quiet day at work, with a lot of people on leave or at meetings etc. The overall feeling in the office is one of pessimism; everyone thinks that 2009 will be a very difficult year. In a way, this is a very good time to be on maternity leave as I will be away during the hard times.

I can't complain about my conditions; I can have up to one year's leave and go back to my current job, or my Employer has to provide me with an equivalent position. (This is Employment Law in the UK) I get 12 weeks maternity leave at 90% pay and statutory maternity pay (SMP) for 6 months after that, which is about £500 a month. The company will also continue to pay for my health insurance, mobile phone, pension and car allowance (hooray!) while I am on leave. In this situation though, the most valuable thing is that your job is essentially safeguarded for one year.

The UK minimum is 6 weeks at 90%, but it really depends on your Employer. A friend of mine had 6 months full pay, then her SMP kicked in. She was on maternity leave for a year, went back to work for a few weeks, then resigned. And you know what, her company actually owed her money because you still accrue annual leave when you are on maternity leave, so they had to pay her for the annual leave that she didn't take. Unfortunately, not all companies are that generous!

The Hospital Tour

On Monday afternoon Mr KE and I went on a tour of the hospital's maternity wing. We waited there with a few other couples...and waited ...and waited. The tour was supposed to start at 4pm, then at 4:40 a doctor popped her head round the door and told us that all the midwives (who normally give the tour) were busy. So she would give us a short tour instead, in a little while.

Fair enough, in a busy hospital, us "tourists" are not the priority. So it was 5 o'clock before we actually had a look a round the delivery suites.

The delivery rooms themselves were OK, you get a private room with en-suite bathrooms, armchairs, birthing balls and CD players. Some of the rooms had facilities for water births. We were advised to bring pillows (!) because there is chronic shortage in the NHS...people steal them apparently. Even so, they are still hospital rooms with lots of medical equipment in the room eg resuscitation equipment, monitoring equipment. So not really an environment where you would to spend a lot of time.

You are only allowed 2 people in the suite with you, for security reasons, infection control and also out of respect for the other people giving birth. It made me smile thinking of the Brunei hospitals which are over-run with visitors.

We also found out about admission procedures. When you come in, you get assessed by a midwife and there is a triage system (like A&E) where the more serious cases get prioritised. So there is no point going in too early as you will just have to wait in the corridor. As the doctor said, there is nothing more annoying than seeing someone else walk straight in when you have been waiting with contractions for 2 hours. But they will just take the person who is more advanced in labour, regardless of how long you have been waiting.

After watching lots of movies where someone starts contractions, and it's quick quick get to a hospital; it's quite reassuring to find out that it's more like start contractions, go the hospital, the midwife will probably send you home and say come back when you are really in labour. Like in 8 hours time.

So the lesson of the day was: stay at home as long as possible. That's what I'm going to do (hopefully).

Chocolate Making

While my workplace seems to be all doom-and-gloom, Mr K-E and his colleagues have been defying the recession with lots of office outings. Two weeks ago they went ice-skating at Somerset House and on Thursday night, his team went on a chocolate-making evening.

I was really jealous, so I asked him to take lots of photos for me.

The set-up was a long table covered in greaseproof paper.

To start off with, the instructor explained the difference between "real chocolate" and "confectionary bars". It is all to do with amount of actual cacao in them. So Cadbury's Dairy Milk is a confectionery bar, not strictly speaking "chocolate".



I remember a few years ago there was uproar when the EU were going to impose a standard i.e. only a product with in excess of 50% cacao could be called chocolate. This would mean that most of the "chocolate" in the UK would not be allowed to be sold as chocolate....well, that idea was quickly shot down and manufacturers still call their low cocoa/high vegetable fat bars chocolate bars.

Anyway, back to the chocolate making.

Everyone has their own "stations". You start off with the fillings, a bar of soft dark chocolate (like a ganache) and a bar of semi-brittle nutty paste.

The funny looking fork is for dunking in chocolate. (More about that later)


You get mini cookie-cutters in different shapes. You can see the round one in this photo along with big bowls of dark, milk and white melted chocolate. On the table there are also saucers of dry toppings (cocoa powder, coconut etc) and caramel-covered almonds.

They used a special kind of chocolate which stays melted at room temperature.


In short, you cut a shape out of the "block" and then use your fork to completely cover it in chocolate. Shake off the excess and leave it on the table to dry. If you want to decorate it, you need to do it before it is completely set.

People were quite sceptical before but everyone really enjoyed it.

Look at the state of the table!



You also get two glasses of champagne to help with creativity :)


These were Mr KE's efforts. Some people were eating the chocolate all the way through, but Mr KE was concentrating so hard on making them look nice that he didn't eat any during the session.








He wrapped them up nicely and brought them home for me to eat.








They are lovely, really fresh - the nicest chocolates I've ever had. And I'm not just saying that because my husband made them!

New Car

We picked up our new (second-hand) car on Thursday night, woo hoo!! It almost didn't happen, because despite two e-mails and a phone call to our bank warning them that there would be a large transaction on our current account, there was still a problem during the money transfer.

Aarrrggghhh!! Luckily the cashier at the car dealer persisted and finally (after one hour of calling the bank and holding and being transferred from one person to another) the transaction was processed. Most dealers do not take personal cheques or credit cards, so unless you want to carry thousands of pounds with you in cash; the only way to transfer the money is by direct debit. Oh well, I suppose it means that the money in my current account is secure.

This weekend we drove down to Southampton to see my favourite nephew :) who is really cute. Mr KE loves the new car....after driving our little "lawnmower" for 5 years, oh, the thrill of having power steering and 5th gear!!

A different kind of shopping

This morning we got up early and drove to the DHL depot to pick up our Mothercare stuff, then unpacked it all at home before going to our NCT class. All before 9:30 in the morning, on a Saturday : a time when when I am normally still in bed. Well, they say parenthood brings new experiences.....

Woohoo, I feel so much better that we have all the stuff we need now. The only things we need to get now are the car seat and the car. Oh yeah, pretty big item :)





We checked the delivery in the living room. We already have a cot and a crib, but we decided to get a Moses basket too so the pipsqueak can sleep downstairs while I watch trash TV.

Mr KE bought Arlo from Mamas and Papas.











Mr KE's favourite outfit for the pipsqueak is this bearsuit which is a pramsuit for wearing when we go out.

It's really cute and soft. It has ears, mittens and even bear footprints!

He also spent ages playing with the Bugaboo, changing it from mode to mode. Rear facing to stroller mode and back again. I'm sure the novelty will wear off soon.

Architecture in Liverpool

A few months ago, Mr KE went on an "official mission" to Liverpool with his colleagues. It is the European Capital of Culture this year (hard to believe, I know) so there were lots of cultural events and architectural exhibitions talking place.


Here are some interesting photos from his weekend away.

The last photo shows a famous Catholic Cathedral. I don't like it myself - a bit too spiky.

Big Sigh.

Mr KE worked from home today because our Mothercare delivery was supposed to arrive today. We also ordered stuff from Argos (a chest of drawers and a new drying rack) ....organised huh? Unfortunately, the best laid plans can still go wrong.

The Argos stuff arrived OK, but Mr KE had to call Mothercare. Despite all their assurances and "guaranteed next day delivery", everything is arriving tomorrow. Aarrggghh. There's no way I can take a day off and Mr KE has to be at work too. How annoying. Now we have to drive to the depot because they won't deliver at weekends.

Breathing as a form of Pain Relief?

Mr KE and I signed up for NCT ante-natal classes and yesterday we went for our first session. We had to go to Brixton because our local NCT classes are only on weekdays, which kind of defeated one of the main reasons to join the NCT i.e. to meet other mothers in your local area.

Anyway, it was very useful; there were 7 couples there and one woman who was there on her own. I felt really sorry for her because everything was set up for couples eg giving massages during early labour, breathing exercises etc.

I had heard from friends that the NCT are good, but they have very strong agendas eg they are very into breast feeding, natural births and non-intervention during labour. Almost religious, I would say :) The instructor wouldn't even really talk about "formula" feeding but just pushed the "breast is best" mantra. She also said that women should have "realistic expectations" of childbirth .....uh, ok but I don't think it is necessary or noble to suffer through extreme pain in the year 2008. I guess we will go through that in more detail next week when we discuss pain relief.

There was a couple there who were interested in hypnobirthing. Eeek. Mr KE wanted to laugh, but managed to stifle it. And yes, it is very middle class - the couples were doctors and accountants...even in Brixton.

On Tuesday evening, we will have our "NHS " ie free ante-natal class. It will be interesting to see the difference.

Five things that have been keeping me busy.

Five things that I have been up to lately:

• Fending off agents (aka recruiters/headhunters/bloodsuckers) calling me about positions in the Middle East. As the economy in the UK seems to be heading into a long recession, a lot of companies are expanding their operations in the Middle East and there is a big push to recruit suitably skilled staff. It so happens that I work in one of these "niche" sectors and if I were in different phase of my life, I would be very, very tempted....but it's not the right time for me.

• Discovering a whole new world of shopping for things that I never knew existed! Who knew that there were so many different types of buggies, baby car seats, cot mattresses etc? One item that we chose fairly quickly was the buggy. There were three main requirements: I wanted the lightest one on the market, Mr K-E wanted one that he wouldn't mind pushing around and we both wanted one that could face either way. So the Bugaboo Bee it is!! (With all the accessories, of course....)

• Making long lists for all the stuff we will need in January. Our plan was to buy everything from Mothercare in one big hit and get it delivered all on the same day, thus missing the Christmas rush. Sounds pretty stress-free right? The only problem with on-line shopping is that someone has to be in the house when the stuff gets delivered. Suddenly our straightforward plan doesn't seem so straightforward afterall.

• Getting used to the idea that I won't be wearing high heels for a while :(

• Being excited / scared /happy /anxious all at the same time. So much to do; we still have to buy our new car, clear more junk out from the flat, buy Christmas presents and send Christmas cards etc. Mr KE and I are always busy at work in the run-up to Christmas (I'm actually moving office on 5th December) plus we have our NCT & NHS "parentcraft" classes to attend. And try to meet up with friends and family before Christmas. Happy times!

Octoberfest

I've been very distracted lately, what with all the stuff going on at work, visitors from home and Mr KE and I trying to get ready for big changes. So I haven't been keeping up with the blogging but will try to get back to doing it regularly.

While everyone at my work was been fretting about redundancies, Mr KE and his work gang have been ignoring the credit crunch. Last month they celebrated Octoberfest at a German bar in Old Street.

I haven't messed with the photo, his friends always look like this after a few litres of beer!

The food doesn't really appeal to me...sausages and sauerkraut...urghh. I guess it's just stomach lining for the beer.

Stand By Your Phone

It's been another busy week (and weekend) for me and Mr KE. It was an eventful week at work for me, starting with another Monday morning announcement about the company's "resilience plan" for the expected downturn.

We were told that we were all at risk (including Directors) and that we had all been assessed and ranked according to performance. We were given a breakdown of numbers for people who were at risk - i.e. 3 Directors, 4 Grade XXX, 3 Grade YYY etc. There an explanation of the standard legal procedure i.e. that anyone at risk would be called in and HR would try to find them a position in another part of the company or another part of the world. If this was unsuccessful, then it would mean redundancy.

Everyone was asked to be available from 1pm onwards on Friday afternoon. So stand by your phone....for bad news.

I work in a satellite office, so we were away from the "hub" and tried to find some humour in the situation. We were even joking about calling people at 1 o'clock to scare each other. Anyway, while we were laughing about it - when suddenly my phone started ringing.....it was 1 o'clock....and I could see from the number that it was the Business Unit Director (i.e. the person who would be making the dreaded calls)........OMG!!!

Everyone in the office stopped laughing... and for a minute, I thought the worst!! But to cut a long story short - he was calling me to ask about a contract I was working on. Everyone around me was listening intently, so I had to shout out - it's OK folks, he's only calling about XXX! Not being big-headed, but I never really thought I would be at risk anyway.... but still....it took a while for my heartbeat to return to normal.

Ack! How insensitive, huh?? Anyway, the process was delayed and the calls only began at 2:30 because the HR representative was late coming back from another office. I thought that was pretty cruel, as everyone was basically waiting to hear if their jobs were safe.

Someone from our satellite office was made redundant - from the same Grade as me. In fact, there were 3 names from my Grade, and they were all in about the same age late forties / mid 50s (I think). It's not nice when anyone is told "you are weakest link, goodbye" but from an Asian perspective, I'm glad that the assessement was based on performance rather than age/experience, if you see what I mean.

I think in Asia, the idea that seniority is based on age is so ingrained that a person in their fifties would never be made redundant over someone in their early thirties. As someone said to me once, there's no point having twenty five years experience when it actually means one year's experience X 25.

So, *phew* and back to work.

Hooray!

Clever Mr KE has fixed the car! He had to go to Halfords on the bus with the old car battery in a rucksack and bought a new one. Then he fitted the new battery and voila!

So there's no big rush to get our new car now. At least that's one less thing to worry about :)

Cuts

I'm sitting at the kitchen window watching Mr KE downstairs fiddling with the innards of our little car. He's so cute when he gets out all his spanners, pliers etc. He doesn't really know what he's doing, but with the help of the internet, anything is possible, right?

I'm still very busy at work although there is a overall feeling of pessimism as the country seems to be heading towards a long recession. On Monday, all the staff were all called to a meeting (actually it was more of an announcement) and told that the outlook was bad for the next 18 months. Yeah, no shit Sherlock.

The dreaded R word (redundancies) was not mentioned but it was highlighted that 80% of our costs are staff costs. The London and other SE offices are doing OK but the Northern offices are in dire straits. Unfortunately, the company can't just shut down the Glasgow office (for example) because of long leases on company premises and also because it wants to maintain a presence throughout the UK.

So the pain has to be spread throughout all the offices. Realistically, this means that every office will have redundancies, even London. I have heard off-the-record that a list has already been drawn up although staff will be told that everyone is at risk. The word is that the cuts will be at all levels - from top to bottom. The redundancies will also be made at the same time; so not 2 or 3 one month and then 2 or 3 next month etc which generally leads to widespread breakdown of morale. Short and swift is the aim. Let's wait and see.

Arse!

We have a little car that's about 15 years old. Even though it's tiny, has a lawn-mower sized engine and is worth around £2.50 ; it has been a faithful friend over the last 6 years. Since Mr K-E and I only use the car once every few weeks, we just couldn't justify running a more expensive car.

However, as things are changing around here, we have been planning to buy a new car by the end of the year. In fact, we have just about decided on the car and model etc, and all that's left to do is go to a car lot and pick one out.

Then, this afternoon, we had loaded up our little car with all our recycling, when ....arrrghhhh... it wouldn't start!! We don't have AA Homestart, so tomorrow morning Mr KE is going to walk over to the garage and ask them to have look at it. What bad timing! Hopefully it's just a flat battery because there would be no point spending ££££s on a car that's worth £200...

It's so annoying because now we might have to decide..is it cheaper to repair the car or just rent one for a few weeks until we get our new one?? Fingers crossed, it will just be a small thing, like a loose wire or something equally easy.

On a better note, while I'm typing this, Mr KE is cooking dinner. On the menu - rump steak, oven chips, salad and a homemade tomato salsa. Can't wait.

Neighbourhood Chinese

It's been a long and tiring week. On Friday evenings Mr KE usually has a few drinks with his friends before we meet up and have dinner in town. Then we have a wander around Leicester or Trafalgar Square before heading home to our nice comfy sofa.

Tonight I came straight home, so we decided to eat at our "local" Chinese restaurant. Friends and family know that I live opposite a Chinese restaurant - but we never actually go there. Once in a while we get a takeaway, but in general we eat Chinese food in Chinatown. In the 8 years that we have lived in this flat, we have only been in there 4 times (including tonight). I think the last time we ate in was more than 4 years ago.

The food is OK, but it's just a little too close for comfort. I've never been the friendly neighbour type of person, and I just find it embarassing when the staff recognise me. I don't do neighbourly chat, unfortunately.

Also, it doesn't feel like eating out when you can see your own front door.... and your own kitchen.

Sunday Night Dinner

It's been a while since I've blogged about cooking, although rest assured I have been trying to to cook more and not just live on processed food.


Tonight I tried a new recipe -roughly based on Jamie Oliver's Meatballs and Pasta. I love Spagetti and meatballs, so I had high hopes for this one.

The recipe actually calls for half beef/half pork mince, but I only had beef mince so that had to do.







Mr KE prefers fusilli to spagetti so I used fusilli instead. The recipe says to bake the meatballs and sauce together without the pasta - yeah, well, who follows recipes anyway.













Pour the tomato sauce on top.












The recipe asks for mozzarella and parmesan, but I didn't have any mozzarella so I used a cheddar/parmesan mix instead.













This is what it looked like when it came out of the oven. It tasted OK, but I thought the meatballs were a bit dry. (It wasn't as nice as the meatballs I had as a kid.)

Maybe because the mince beef was a very lean mix and there wasn't enough fat in it to keep it moist. The next time I'll try it with half pork and see how it goes.

Duck Tour

Mr K-E went on a team outing last week. They went on a Duck Tour, which is a ride on a World War 2 amphibious troop carrier converted into a bus. The bus takes you round Westminster and then onto the Thames.

Mr KE said it was quite fun, especially for kids. You can join the tour near the London Eye.

He is also of the exclusive :) "over and under club" which means he has been over and under a bridge in the same vehicle.

Apples in Norfolk

While we were in Norfolk, we went to an "Apple Fair" in the village. A neighbour of Mr KE's parents has a walled garden with more than 85 varieties of apple trees. He and his family organised the apple fair to raise money to repair their local church bell tower. Village fundraising!

Mr KE's parents were busy helping, while Mr KE and I tagged along.


The walled garden. You can see that all the walls and cottages are made of traditional Norfolk flint.


The organiser really knows his apples. All different varieties were available for people to compare. As for me, I only know 3 types of apples i.e. red, green and brownish :)



A medieval tent was set up and people could try fresh pressed apple juice. All the apples were from the trees in the garden; organic of course!

In the garden, there is an apple tree which was planted in 1887 in celebration of Queen Victoria's Jubilee. This 121 year old tree is still producing lots of fruit, although it looks like it's about to fall over any minute and has to be propped.


It wasn't just the apple trees that were on show. The garden had lots of beautiful features, like this statue above and the old well below. There was also topiary (hedges cut into animal shapes, chairs etc), formal planting and (of course) tea and cakes for sale.

A Norfolk Garden

Mr KE and I spent the weekend at his parents' place in North Norfolk. His parents live in a Norfolk Flint cottage about 10 minutes away from the coast.

The weather was nice (for September) so I spent some time in their garden and took some photos while the sun was out. I really like their garden because it's really interesting and looks good all year round.


This part of their garden always reminds me of the sea. It looks beautiful, even in September - so you can imagine waht it looks like in high summer. At the end you can see their blue summer house. The summer house is a cosy space with doors that open completely at the front; the whole house is built on a turntable so you can rotate it to catch the sun.

You can also see one of their beloved Siamese cats in the photo.

Another view of the garden. It's divided into sections, almost like rooms.

This a view of the house from the bottom of the garden. It is actually a terrace of 5 small cottages converted into one big house. As one of their relatives said, "You've bought a whole street of houses!".


Their back door. You can see the "flint", which is the traditional building material in the Norfolk area.

Credit Crunch Lunch

Today I had lunch with a colleague at the Carluccios just round the corner from my office. It was nice lunch, but I was partially distracted by other things...i.e. thinking that the last time I had been in there a few months ago, it had also been with a group of colleagues. Unfortunately most of those colleagues have now left due to the slowdown at work.

Since the last time I blogged about hard times at work, things have gotten worse. We now have very, very few contract staff in London and the situation in our regional offices is still very bad. Last week two people from the Glasgow office started an 8 week stint in London, a last-ditch attempt to avoid redundancy.

Last week, Lehman Brothers . This week??

On the brightside, this time last year I was working crazy hours and it was very stressful. I guess you get to the stage where you think it's normal to work till 8 every night; and over weekends too. But really it's not.... So the good thing is that these days, at 5:30 I'm thinking about going home and not about how much more I can do before the vision blurs.

Thames Festival: Sunday

We had such a good time on Saturday we went back to the Thames Festival on Sunday for more. We watched more free-running under the London Eye.

It wasn't as packed as Saturday but it was still very busy.

There was a Night Carnival which started at 6:30. We were right at the front so Mr KE took lots of photos.

Apart from the floats, children in costumes, puppets etc, there were also lots of scantily clad ladies dancing along the route. For some reason Mr KE took lots of photos of these ladies ...hmmmm.

One of the best floats: dragon and rider.

It was a bit cold standing on the roadside while the floats went past; but it was worth it. We went home tired but happy.