Everyone down for Christmas

This year we decided to host Christmas in Southampton. Mum and Dad arrived on the Saturday, Tom on Sunday and Simon and Amy on Christmas Eve. We went out for a lovely all you can eat Chinese meal on Christmas Eve in order to pre-strtech our stomachs for the Sirloinon the bone and Maple syrup ham that Priscilla served up in Christmas day. As usual we had a great selection of presents...all inspired if not all in good taste. The real hit for this year was the Wii (which Priscilla bought me for my birthday). Everyone enjoyed the sports games with even Mum and Dad getting in on the action.

Oh Christmas tree oh Christmas tree

It seemed about time to hack down a small pine tree and plonk it in the lounge for a couple of weeks. I hope the decorations are tasteless enough for everyone.

Priscilla catches up with an old friend

With nothing planned this week we thought we would nip down to London and see if the Sultan was in town.   As luck would have it he was staying at the Intercontinental and so he invited us to come and say hi.  Unfortunately he also seemed to have invited half the population of Brunei including Joni and Audrey.  Normally we would have passed on such an event, but we thought what the heck... especially as he was giving out 150 pounds to any citizen that braved the weather.  Not something I would do again, but it was fun to see a room crammed with people wearing the most outrageous colour combinations.


Us looking all smart


The Sultan


Two girls looking tired after a long day.

Christmas shopping in London

SNAP

"Simon and Amy's" trip to town

Urrgghhh Oxford street looking very very busy

About noon in Kowloon

I spent the last week on business in Hong Kong.  On Wednesday night my colleague Manfred took me out to Mortens steak house on Kowloon.  We took the ferry from Hong Kong Island and I managed to snap this picture of the 8pm light show from the Kowloon ferry terminal.  

Off to See Prilla's old school friend

On Saturday we went up to London to see the famed but slightly disappointing BlueWater shopping centre, followed by a visit to see Jenny who used to go to St Georges school in Brunei with Priscilla.



We had a lovely home cooked lamb curry for dinner washed down with some chilled beers.  We also found out that Jenny used to be a Taekwondo coach and she had loads of spare training pads for us.  Unfortunatley Jenny is planning to work abroad soon and so this might be the last time they catch up for many years.

October in Cornwall

Last wee we headed down to Cornwall for some boogie boarding and general relaxation.  We hired a 6 sleeper cottage in Harlyn bay (near Padstow) and were really lucky to have Sarah and Tom join us at the beginning of the week and Alan and Kas at the end.  

Priscilla and I went down on our bikes while Sarah brought the boards ands wetsuits in her car.  Alan and Kas were kind enough to bring the boards and suits back at the end of the week.

Here is a picture of Priscilla, getting ready to leave.



On the way down we stopped off at Charmouth, just east of Lyme Regis and then "The Jamaica Inn" famous as the location of the novel with same name.

We were very lucky with the timing as we had lovely weather for all but one day and the beaches were deserted.  Here are a couple of pictures of us having fun.

Breakfast at Lee-on-Solent

Saturday started out with a trip on the bikes to the Penguin Cafe in Lee-on-Solent.  This was the first real trip anywhere for Priscilla on her new bike and so we were all very excited for her.  We had a lovely ride up followed by a hearty breakfast.  After stoking up, we packed the car ready for a black belt Taekwondo seminar in Weston-Super-Mare (Yes, two towns with hyphens in just one day).



We had a great day training with other black belts from the associated and we finished the day off with a nice Chinese meal near the sea front.  For those of you that have not visiting, don't worry, you are not missing anything, Weston-Super-Mare is somewhat less super than the name implies.

Return to St Michaels

This last weekend Joni and Audrey came down from London to help with doing up 36 St Michaels Road, ready for sale.  It was all hands to the pumps and it was amazing how many jobs we got done in just a single day, especially as I was laid low with a nasty stomach bug.  Well done everyone.

Priscilla Takes to the Sky

This Saturday we were up early for Priscilla's first flying lesson.   She had 30mins of instruction on the ground before we took to the air and headed east from HMS Daedalus towards Portsmouth.  The weather conditions were perfect and Priscilla eased us over the Spinaker tower and back without the slighest bump.

A late Christmas Dinner

We had promised ourselves a Christmas dinner last Decemeber, but as usual time got away from us and so we took the recent opportunity for a lovely meal at the "Water Margin".  Sizzling dishes all round!

bacon sandwiches

Priscilla swaps her harley for something a little more fun

Priscilla's first time on the Honda

Priscilla on her Bike

Dinner by the sea

First Entry

Woohoo, our first entry.  Nothing to report today expect we are both very busy at work.   Priscilla had fun with her car yesterday and had to get a new exhaust fitting by the nice men at Kwikfit

Study Move

A retro post

We moved the study today from the little room at the back to the not quite so little room at the back.  It is nice to have a bit more elbow room.

I managed to cobble together a new pc for Prilla using old parts lieing arround the house.  It is a suprisingly well specced pc with a 3800 Athlon, 2GB or RAM and an ATI 9800 graphics
card...not bad for spare parts. We have put a desk in for Priscilla as well so we have 2 pcs in the room now.  

We also needed a new monitor for my pc so I now have a nice new swizzy 22inch wide screen monster...it looks
fantastic.