My blog - March 2005
Ricecastle
March 27th 2005, 12:27am
Today I thought we'd run out of food, so I was going to go and buy some more when I remembered there was some salmon in the freezer, so I chopped some red onion and fried it with garlic in butter, and then floured up the salmon and fried it with lemon juice and herbs in the same pan, while boiling some rice and some peas. And then, since I've been watching Masterchef too much these last few weeks, I decided to serve it in a poncy Masterchef style. Unfortunately I couldn't find a small wide container to make the rice cake in, so I had to use the breadmaker's measuring cup - hence the ricecastle in the picture! If it had been a small ricecake I could have put the fillet on top of it, but it would have looked very silly on top of that! I also sprinkled some dill on the plate just for effect. Considering that I thought we were out of food, I was impressed with how it looked, and even more impressed with the taste - the fish had a nice tangy crispy coating, which was just right.
In other news: There is no other news, as I've been working almost non-stop all week, and haven't been to bed before three at all, except on Friday night. On Thursday night I didn't go to bed at all. So yesterday it was really nice to get to bed at ten and then sleep for twelve hours. Absolute bliss!
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Leicester Tigers
March 19th 2005, 1:22am
This evening I watched the Leicester Tigers playing the Barbarians with my dad. It's the first time I've been to a live game of rugby for years - probably at least eight or nine years now. The first half of the game was rather quiet, but in the second half everyong woke up and the Tigers were scoring tries all over the place - with Tuilagi getting three of them. (I think it was just the one Tuilagi who got three tries - although there were three Tuilagis on the pitch, all brothers). In the end we won 42-19.
When I used to go down I sometimes took my camera along and tried to get photographs, but back then I couldn't afford lots of film or decent lenses, so I didn't often get good pictures. Now I still can't afford lots of film, but I have a digital camera and a long zoom lens, so I was able to shoot of a hundred and twenty photos, and a few of them were quite good. I've put the best nine on my photos page.
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Comment posted by Michael at 1:22am on March 19th 2005
Hey James, they look excellent! What length telephoto did you use? I am very jealous for two reasons - one that you got to watch Tigers and two, you took better pictures than I ever have!
Comment posted by James Ots at 1:22am on March 19th 2005
I used my 28-300mm zoom lens, which is about 44-480 on the Canon EOS 300D. And I set the ISO to 3200 and then underexposed everything by one stop so the shutter speed would be faster.
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No More NTL
March 17th 2005, 3:44pm
Hooray - I am finally free of NTL! Well, I hope I am anyway. At the beginning of the year I tried to cancel NTL, and they said they would after thirty days. So when they took more money out of my account I thought it would be the last payment, and cancelled the direct debit. So they sent me a letter saying that I would have to pay a surcharge for paying by cheque in the future. I phoned them and they said they had no record of me asking them to cancel the account, but would arrange for it to be cancelled. And then a month later I got another bill. So today I phoned up again. The first guy took my account number, name and address, and couldn't find any record of me cancelling my account, and put me through to disconnections. Disconnections disconnected me, so I phoned back and talked to someone else, who took my account number, name and address and put me through to the house move department, who took my account number, name and address, told me they had no record of me cancelling, and put me through to cancellations. Cancellations took my account number, name and address, told me they had no record of me cancelling, and then said if I'd hold the line they'd cancel my account and clear the bill. A couple of minutes later they said they'd done it. So let's hope they really did this time.
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Comment posted by Paul Morriss at 3:44pm on March 17th 2005
Everyone I know who uses NTL has a customer services nightmare story, including me. If it wasn't such a competetive service then I wouldn't use them.
Everything works fine as long as you don't try and change anything.
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More Silverware
March 7th 2005, 9:56am
Coventry Blaze have done the double! Last night they easily beat London Racers 5-1 to become league champions. But it was their last home match of the season, so I don't get to watch ice hockey again until autumn, which is no good! I'll still be going to the rink twice a week to learn to skate though.
On Friday night a load of us went to The Masala Club to celebrate Jay's birthday. I had been told it was the best curry in the Midlands, but I still prefer the Shah Bagh and the Royal Bengal in Earlsdon. My camera managed to take a really terrible picture of me, which is why the right hand side of the photos is blurred out! And it didn't do a very good job with Suzie either, so I thought I'd blur her too. (Sorry Suzie, but I'm sure you'd prefer it that way than the way my evil camera phone wanted the picture!)
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Comment posted by sabrina fidelis at 9:56am on March 7th 2005
what about your young life?
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