WARNING: Teriyaki, Tandoori and Hoi-Sin sauces don't mix

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Nic and I both received good news on the same day. Well, we had both been offered jobs, I suppose it’s good news, although we were both enjoying the life of leisure and didn't really want it to stop.

Nic got a job with a company called Haymarket media and is working in their conferences department. That is based in Hammersmith so she is lucky in that she only has a short commute to and from work. What isn’t so lucky is that she gets loads of work piled on her. Not literally, she’d probably quit if that happened. I think it is easing up a bit now but she is looking forward to finishing in May/June when we head off to Canada.

I am back at Direct Line insurance although the role has changed and we now take care of the Churchill, Privilege and Direct Line websites. As of writing this we have moved offices and are now based in Bromley. It’s a longer and more expensive commute for me but on the plus side it's a nicer area than Croydon.

After a few weeks in London, Nic and I met up with a group of my mates from back in NZ. Steve, Matt and his girlfriend Abbey were just in London on holiday, while Pete, Frankie, Amber, Emma and Nicky are now all living in London. We wandered the streets around Covent Garden trying to find somewhere where we would all agree on eating at, and finally stumbled upon a Mongolian restaurant. I had never been to a Mongolian restaurant before but Pete ensured us they would cater to everyone’s tastes.

If you haven’t been to a Mongolian restaurant before I will explain the concept: Firstly you decide on whether you are going to have all you can eat or just go up to the buffet once. We were having lunch so decided on the one plate thing (you also got soup with this). So we all had soup first and then went up to the buffet. All the meat and veggies are raw. You decide on what you want, pile it on your plate and then in a separate bowl you decide on what marinade or spices you want. You then take it up to the chef who cooks it on a huge circular hot plate/bbq.

Most people went for one, maybe two choices of meat, a few veggies and then one of the recommended sauces. I was different.

I have a problem when it comes to buffet restaurants, I can’t leave until I am so full that I feel sick, otherwise I feel like I haven't got my money's worth. Therefore when at the buffet I got lamb, pork, chicken, beef, and fish. I then somehow found room on my plate for every type of vegetable too. This may have been ok if I went for a normal sauce combination. I didn’t. I decided that I liked tandoori, and teriyaki, and hoi sin. I thought it may have been some sort of Indian-Japanese-Chinese taste sensation. Wrong. It looked like road kill, and tasted even worse than it looked. At least I'd had a large bowl of soup.

Later in the afternoon we found an Irish pub and yarned about days of yore. Mostly about uni days and the antics we used to get up to. Was probably both boring and an eyeopener for Nic, if that's possible. I think we are all a bit more mature than our uni days as at the end of the night no-one was in a gutter, in hospital or in jail.

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