2017 - A Year in Review
2017 Country of Living: England in LONDON!
Mel has been enjoying her time as a dog groomer at Dogtown while I continue working for Smartlogic though my company has recently closed it's rather under-utilised office in the city to allow us to work from home – Should be interesting though, to be honest, I have been pretty working from home for some time now. We have been once again very busy with events and managed to arrange trips to amazing Venice, then Vienna (Wien) for the Austrian Grand Prix (Formula 1), and finally Thailand/Cambodia/Vietnam (primarily Cambodia) on an small group tour. I also travelled to Manila early in the year and Warsaw later. I have also finally taken a rather pricey but exceptional 5-week cooking course at Leiths School of Food and Wine, “The Complete Cook (Part 1)”, and look forward to part 2 early in 2018.
Travel
A bit of travelling…
- February - A wonderful off-season trip to Venice.
- March - A work trip to train a new supplier in Manila.
- April - We had a short break in Wales near Knighton where we stayed in a Shepherd's hut (“The Whistle”).
- July - A short weekend trip to Austria to see the Austrian Grand Prix, staying in Vienna (Wien). This was Mel's first experience of Formula 1 and from all evidence she really enjoyed it. Beautiful setting in the Austrian Alps for the race where we had a great view of most of the track from the side of a mountain.
- Late August/Early September - We had a wonderful trip to Asia with Intrepid Travel where we had about five days in Bangkok (Thailand), followed by nine days in Cambodia and a last day in Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam). See my Angkor Trails Journal 2017.
- October - Mother stopped by for a flying visit (a day) on the way to Zimbabwe then again on her way back in November.
- November - Escaping a bit from our hectic lives we had a weekend getaway in Southend-On-Sea which, though cool weather, really helped recharge us for what was a very hectic end of the year.
- December - I went to Warsaw (Poland) for a quick work trip.
Visitors
We had a lot of visitors this year with my mother arriving for a two week visit in mid-May then a week later (overlapping by a week) my younger sister, Karin, arrived for a two week visit then a short break of about a week when Mel's mother Josie visited for a week. My mother returned in October and November on her way to/from Zimbabwe for her annual volunteer work at a hospital there.
Reviews of the Year
Events
January
- 25th - Cirque du Soleil - Amaluna (Concert) London
- 28th - The Legends of Darts Masters 2017 (General Event) London
February
- 3rd - School of Rock: The Musical (Musical) London
- 4th - Sadler's Wells Sampled (2017) (General Event) London
- 11th - Whoopi Goldberg: Stand Up Live (General Event) London
March
- 3rd - Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (Play) London
- 5th - Sherlock Jr + The Cameraman (General Event) London
- 7th - André Rieu 2017 (London) (Concert) London
- 22nd - Yamato - Chousensha - The Challengers (Concert) London
April
- 2nd - The Oxford & Cambridge Goat Race (General Event) London
- 8th - The Moscow State Circus: Gostinitsa (General Event) London
- 21st - City of Glass (Play) London
- 24th - Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead (Play) London
May
- 10th - David Baddiel – My Family: Not the Sitcom (Play) London
- 25th - RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2017 (General Event) London
June
- 1st - Farewell to the West End: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Talk) London
- 18th - Evening Standard Food Month: Night Market (General Event) London
- 20th - Penn & Teller: UK Tour 2017 (General Event) London
- 24th - West End Live 2017 (General Event) London
- 30th - British Summer Time 2017: Phil Collins (Concert) London
Films
- 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)
- 2 Guns (2013)
- Alien: Covenant (2017)
- Anthropoid (2016)
- Arrival (2016)
- Beauty and the Beast (2017)
- Big Hero 6 (2014)
- Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
- Colossal (2016)
- Django Unchained (2012)
- Ghost in the Shell (2017)
- Into the Woods (2014)
- Justice League (2017)
- La La Land (2016)
- Life (2017)
- Logan (2017)
Restaurants
- Abe Restaurant (Filipino) Manila Bonifacio Global City
- Baozi Inn (Chinese) London Soho
- Billy Hundreds: Fish n Tapas (American/British) Southend-on-Sea
- Bird (American/British) London Islington
- Caffé Ristorante ROMA (Italian) Venice Cannaregio
- Carvosso's at 210 (Mediterranean) London Chiswick NOW CLOSED
- Chick 'N' Sours (American/British) London Covent Garden
- Din Tai Fung (Chinese) Manila Bonifacio Global City
- Duck and Waffle Local (American/British) London Piccadilly Circus NOW CLOSED
- Duke of Sussex (Pub) London Chiswick
- Hampshire Hog (American/British) London Hammersmith NOW CLOSED
- Harry's Bar (American/British) Venice San Marco
- Hedone (American/British) London Chiswick NOW CLOSED
- Island Poke (American/British) London Spitalfields
- Kalamari (Greek) London Chiswick
- Kimukatsu (Japanese) Manila Bonifacio Global City
- L'Antica Pizzeria da Michele (Italian) London Stoke Newington
- L'Autre Pied (French) London Marylebone NOW CLOSED
- Mod Pizza (Pizza) London Soho NOW CLOSED
- Morgans Restaurant (American/British) Isle of Wight Shanklin
Books
- / (Slant) by Greg Bear (1997)
- And Now for Something Completely Digital: The Complete Illustrated Guide to Monty Python CDs and DVDs by Alan Parker, and Mick O'Shea (2006)
- Dear Leader by Jang Jin-Sung (2014)
- Fifty Degrees Below by Kim Stanley Robinson (2005)
- Gordon Ramsay's Playing with Fire by Gordon Ramsay (2008)
- Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age by Paul Graham (2004)
- Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (2011)
- Sixty Days & Counting by Kim Stanley Robinson (2007)
- Stars in my Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delany (1984)
- The Aftermath by Ben Bova (2007)
- The Apocalypse Codex by Charles Stross (2011)
- The Bazaar of Bad Dreams by Stephen King (2015)
- The Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (2004)
- The Full Cupboard of Life by Alexander McCall Smith (2003)
- The Fuller Memorandum by Charles Stross (2010)
- The Great Diamond Heist by Gordon Bowers (2016)
- The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross (2006)
- The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
- The Precipice by Ben Bova (2001)
- The Pythons Autobiography By The Pythons by Monty Python (2003)
Next Year
Not a lot planned though I am planning a skiing trip with my mother at the end of January, my younger sister is talking about a visit late spring, in July Mel and I are going to Maastricht (Netherlands) to see Andre Rieu, and Mel's family are talking about a “ladies” visit sometime as well.
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Visit here for my review of 2016.