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After having a delicious breakfast at 202 again and meeting up with Kath from Oxford, we went to visit the Tate Modern down at Southbank. It is a huge warehouse building directly opposite the Millenium bridge and located next to Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. Entry is free except ot some special exhibits, but the rest of the collections are free to view. The gallery shows some interesting collections such as the Embankment structure by Rachel Whiteread pictured below.

Other collections were a little disappointing to me, but mainly because they were far too abstract for me to understand or even try to understand. A good example is one in which red paint was “violently” thrown at a canvas so that it would achieve some message which I couldn’t quite get immediately out of a canvas simply covered in red paint. My most favourite of the collection was the Andy Warhol room that showed a number of his works (including the Elvis Presley and Jackie Kennedy ones) and described his interesting motivations behind them.

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For the “He Who Knows” Challenge, I’ve been yet to visit a Conran restaurant, so this Thursday I did the next best thing and visited The Cow, a restaurant run by Tom Conran, the son of the more famous Sir Terence Conran. I have been meaning to go this one for quite some time, as it’s only a twenty minute walk from where I live but I just hadn’t put in the effort.

The Cow is a gastropub with the bottom floor hosting an oyster bar and a tiny private dining room upstairs set with about eight white-clothed tables. Like most pubs anywhere, the bottom floor can get quite smokey and so we decided to eat upstairs in the dining room (although note that people are allowed to smoke there as well). I highly recommend that you book in advance as its popularity ensures that locals always fill the small number of tables most nights of the week.

The dining room is extremely petite. Its tables are close enough together to be able to hear side conversations but with enough room that it doesn’t feel like you’re sharing your table. The one page menu is short but has enough variety amongst the starters, mains, sides and desserts to leave you satisfied and as typical as anything associated with the Conran name, has a fair amount of seafood.

I shared a starter of smoked eel and potato and bacon salad. There was a decent amount of eel and the smoky flavour definitely came through. The salad accompanying it was quite good as well although the dressing had an excess of horseradish that really overpowered the dish at times. I followed this with the main of roast halibut, leeks, laverbread served with an orange butter sauce that was perfectly cooked. The leeks, though softened still had form and the laverbread went well with the sweet and firm flesh of the fish but I did find the orange flavour in the sauce did not come through very potently. My dessert was a prune and armagnac crème brulee that really hit the spot at the end of the meal and was not excessively rich or sweet.

For people that want a nice meal, The Cow offers a great experience in terms of both service and food quality although you can find better gastropub affair at other places. The wine list is extensive, the staff appeared to be very knowledgeable, and service was quite good. I would not exactly make it my local place but definitely a place to indulge.

Details: The Cow
Found On: 89 Westbourne Park Road, W2 5QH
Contactable On: 020 7221 0021
Highlights: Pleasant service, great quality food, extensive wine menu, wide selection of Oysters
Room for improvement: Not fantastic value for money, and could do with a bigger dining area.
The Kua Rating: 8.5 out of 10

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As you can tell, I’ve managed to go and change the styles a little bit. Let me know what you think! I’m sure you were all tired of the old styles.

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When foo people don’t know how to name things, they call it XXXXImpl. Worse yet are those that perhaps call it Standard. How about you use Default? If there is any deviation, at least people will know about it.

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For those that use Firefox and Gmail chat, be sure you have added Gmail to the “Allowed Sites” for popups before you click on the “Pop-out” option. It seems that gmail is *really* determined to pop out that window and will continue to try for an infinite number of times, effectively blocking your current firefox window.

Cool app (reminds me of the AOL chat applet), but just beware.

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Kent Beck really should have titled XP Explained as “Embrace Change for the Better” instead of simply “Embrace Change” because I have seen too many misconstrue this as:

Embrace Change…

• Because I have to (I’ve been told to);
• For the sake of it (I don’t know why I’m doing it);
• Since I heard it was good (But I don’t bother to see if it’s helping);

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I ventured out to visit the Natural History Museum at South Kensington today but the drab wet weather the long queues that formed outside made me decide that the wait was not worth it. Instead I took the opportunity to cross “Museum Lane” to the side that houses the Victoria and Albert Museum. This museum displays probably one of the largest collections of decorative arts including contemporary and historic, and just like most other museums in London entrance is free.

The museum itself houses apparently 146 different galleries and regularly hosts a number of seminars discussing various topics in contemporary art. The building itself is massive composed of several floors each with different parts displaying various works such as ceramics, glass, metalwork, furniture, photos and paintings. Though some of the selections are not always relevant or functional, many of them you would still appreciate as being impressively decorative.

After a while of walking around I caught the tube and visited the National Portrait Gallery. The gallery is yet another free institution most well known for the large collection of busts in paint, picture of photos on display. Its prime location between Trafalgar Square and Leceister Square makes it extremely popular and definitely worth the visit. Being Britian’s national gallery, you should find it no surprise that many of the busts inside are mainly English people. On the first floor that I visited there was a eerily life-sized portrait of Dame Judi Dench and even more amazing 3D display of JK Rowling (the author of Harry Potter) in a setting that truly looked life like. Of the exhibitions that I visited, I definitely enjoyed the “Look at Me” the most. This exhibition was commissioned and took a close look at the lives of teenagers from around England, some of which were predictably amateurish but others that were both powerfully relevant and presented magnificently.

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Thanks to the great organisation prowess of Laura, I got to visit Leeds Castle today with a great bunch of people including Team BaM, Jamie, David, Laura and so many others. It was officially my first visit to a castle of any kind and I found it surreal walking around on the grounds all day and enjoyed the good but albeit frosty English winter day.

Despite its name, Leeds Castle is not at all associated with the city of Leeds that lays north west of London. Instead this historic building was named after the village of Leeds in Kent with the closest major city being Maidstone. The trip is excellent with an hour and half coach trip departing from Victoria, dropping you off, and picking you up at the bottom of the castle grounds. I highly recommend you book in advance, as it is a popular destination for locals and visitors alike.

The castle itself is surprisingly small, surrounded by on all sides by a lake and only accessible on one side through its bridge. The castles grounds are massive and are home to a fantastic aviary and falconry, a decently sized hedge maze and grotto, a vineyard, a unique but bizarre dog collar museum and the rolling green parklands, some of which visitors use as a golf course.

After first meandering through the castle looking at some of the lavish decorations and richness of recreations of room settings we spent a bit of time in the aviary. The last former owners apparently established the most exotic British collection of birds that the caretakers maintain even today. Birds form all over the world fill the 40 something cages, providing a closer look at some amazing birds including the majestic toucan, colourful macaws, noisy galahs and cockatoos. There is even a demonstration that involves the number of birds kept in the falconry, displaying their flying and hunting abilities. The hedge maze was probably my most favourite part of the day, as we split into several groups and attempted to race each other to the middle of the maze where its grotto is. All in all, a fantastic day and visit to another part of England.

More pictures can be seen if you click on the picture above or here.

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