thekua.com@rest

Before heading out to the theatre on Tuesday, I went for dinner at a new Japanese place that had recently opened near Holborn. Prices appeared comparable to Yo Sushi but the range appeared much larger and appeared a little bit more authentic than the other modernised chain. This store is part of a larger International chain (there’s other stores in Seoul, Hollywood and Paris as well), and it appeared to be run by Koreans, so expect a few twists on your typical Japanese dishes.

The atmosphere is a little bit more traditional if you manage to ignore the pop music blasting away in the background. We sat at the sushi bar and with the number of staff that buzzed around us, it was not at all difficult getting service throughout our meal. The sushi was freshly made and tasted of quality ingredients, but it helps that we sat down just after their restaurant opened at 6pm. The best thing I liked about this restaurant was their wide variety of sushi, with many of your traditional rolls and sashimi in addition to some uniquely inspired combinations that could be ordered in hand roll, or your typically cut sushi roll style. One of the different twists we had included some soft shell crab rolls that admittedly was a little overpowered by the mayonnaise. My most favourite sushi of the night was the unagi sushi (eel sushi) since the eel was extremely tender and saucy, unlike the drier varieties I have had at other sushi places.

I’ve written before about how expensive Japanese food is in London and though Sushi Hiroba serves excellent quality sushi, I would still budget for a more expensive meal. I found it worth it though considering the quality of the ingredients and the greater variety of sushi available. Better yet is that they don’t charge for water at your table either.

Details: Sushi Hiroba
Found on: 50-54 Kingsway, Holborn, London, WC2B 6EP
Contactable on: 020 7430 1888
Highlights: Super attentive service, unique variety of sushi, delicious unagi sushi and service is still only 10%
Room for improvement: It’d be nice if the wasabi wasn’t the reconstituted powdered variety.
The Kua Rating: 7.5 out of 10

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The way you choose to communicate with your team on a daily basis carries more than just the message you’re trying to say:

• Finding time to talk to someone one-on-one that suits both of you tells them that you respect them.
• Talking to someone in front of a crowd tells them that you trust them (note the difference of talking down to them).
• Talking to them over the phone, or emailing them when you cannot physically talk to them shows that you care.
• Emailing someone directly when you’re close enough to talk to them tells them that they’re not important to you.
• CC’ing someone when you’re close enough to talk them tells them that they’re really not important to you.

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Last night I had dinner at the opening of a yet another location of Wagamama’s, with the new store opening at Earl’s Court. Openings to Wagamama’s are great if you can get invites to one, since you get a main, a side dish, two drinks, and as much mineral water as you want – all for free. The restaurant gets a lot out of this by testing their staff and seeing how they cope with a restaurant at full capacity. The only thing they ask of you is to fill out a simple questionnaire about your attendant and the things that you liked and disliked about your experience.

Since this was my first opening ever, I decided to try two dishes I’d never had before at Wag’s – the Chicken Yakitori and the Ebi Raisukaree. The yakitori sticks went down a treat, smothered in delicious yakitori sauce, while the Ebi Raisukaree was admittedly disappointing. Despite the rice being drowned in a Thai like curry sauce and surrounded with lots of vegetables and prawns, it seemed like I had been given someone else’s “extra” dish since it came along luke warm. At least I got mine though, with two of the people dining with us, not getting theirs until our waiter noticed it missing and followed it up. Other than that, the food was at least standard Wagamama’s quality and the service was typical over the top friendly.

There’s not too much different about this location compared to many other branches, other than perhaps a few smaller tables for your own instead of the large benches, and a staircase equipped with a motorised chair to help anyone who might have troubles with them. At least the food and service they offer is definitely consistent with their other outlets and you generally can’t go wrong eating here.

Details: Wagamama, Earl’s Court
Found on: 180-182 Earl’s Court Road, London, SW5 9QG
Contactable on: 020 7373 9660
Highlights: Openings mean clean bright new diggs, free food and generally over the top service.
Room for improvement: My main (Ebi Raisukaree) was disappointingly warm, considering they pride themselves on prompt delivery.
The Kua Rating: 7 out of 10

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At the end of the day, the best thing I really enjoy about agile principles and practices, is that they help us be more effective. I’ve been spending some time reflecting on previous projects and though I didn’t necessarily live and breath agile principles and practices at my previous company, I think I used a few of them to overcome other less effective processes.

At my previous company, at least on the project I was on, we had a framework team developing generic services for other parts of the project to consume. At one point, my manager asked me to complete a review for a new framework service that had been in “Design” for about two months. Being one of the consumers of the service, I quickly pointed out a few scenarios where it would not work and ended up joining the project to make solution a viable one.

Here’s a list of things that I think made it so successful in the end:

• Just Enough Design – I found white boarding a very effective technique with my manager, who had much more experience to draw upon. We would use real world models talking through the algorithm until we were both happy with it. I would then go, code it and try it out – we didn’t bother documenting anything until we knew our solution was going to work.
• Iterations – We had several “hang on, that’s not going to work moments”, so each time we would return to the white board, tweak the solution and when happy with the result, I would go back and try it out. We met almost daily (depending on how long it took me to code) to handle each new scenario, slowly tweaking the algorithm into an extremely robust one. We never let ourselves fall into Analysis Paralysis, trying to think of all the possible “hang on” moments when we knew we could progress.
• Automated Tests – For each scenario we came up with, I would write equivalent JUnit tests to make sure that new enhancements didn’t break our existing models. I found that it was also nice to have feedback that was always honest with me. I worked some long hours and some weekends to get it completed in just over a month, and when you’re tired and not thinking things through properly, I could at least try things out, and know when I had broken things.
• Using It For Real – I believe the real strength of the tests was that it was based on using a real model of usage. It was the same model we used during the white board sessions, and the mapping from code back into our discussions was really easy for talking over.

The end result of these was a fully working solution developed in less than half the time of what it took to produce a flawed “Design Document”. I find it assuring that you can make the most of these without having to classify them under “XXX practice”, and have to call the entire process “Agile”.

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This Indian restaurant is tucked away on a small side street not to far from Piccadilly Circus, and serves modernised dishes from numerous regions around India. I believe the menu, or at least some of the regional specialities rotate quite frequently, and they also serve some classic dishes for those that are not as adventurous. This restaurant is owned by the Mela Group, of both Mela and Soho Spice fame, and though the food is not as cheap as many other restaurants around London, I think you get excellent quality for the price.

Tables are split into two main rooms, with each dining table being effectively one long bench and shared Wagamama style. Each night they offer two platters (a non-vegetarian and a vegetarian) that allow you to sample large amounts of different dishes. The main meals off the menu are also served with rice, naan and a daal-like dish so at least you are not forced to order additional sides to make a complete meal. Dishes are presented exceptionally well, with most of the dishes served in little crescent-shaped white plates that fit together perfectly to form an entire platter in front of you.

We had outstanding service the night we went. One of our dining members was taking a phone call when all of our meals arrived, and one of the waitresses insisted keeping the food warm until he came back. Even better was that despite being relatively busy that night, the waitress immediately noticed his return to the table, and promptly delivered his food still piping hot.

Details: Chowki
Found on: 2-3 Denman Street, London, W1D 7HA
Contactable on: 0871 3328062
Highlights: Wagamama-ish style dining tables, quality foods at reasonable prices. Great service on the night as well.
Room for improvement: The place becomes extremely noisy despite its high ceilings and fairly wide spaces so avoid if you want a little bit more personal space or a bit more of an intimate affair.
The Kua Rating: 8 out of 10

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My most memorable concert in Brisbane was most definitely Muse who played at the Riverstage. When I heard they were coming to perform in London again, I definitely had to see them and booked tickets for this Thursday just gone, way back in August. The venue for the night was Wembley Arena, a large, well lit modern looking building that looks dwarfish compared to the towering Wembley Stadium it stands next to.

I found Wembley Arena on par with the way that Earl’s Court is set up for concerts, with a wide rectangular standing area surrounded by seating on all sides. We had tickets for seats to the right of the stage, but as expected, no many people were sitting down once Muse started playing.

Thursday’s performance was impressive, though I cannot say it outshone their performance in Brisbane. Their set drew upon a lot from their new album, Black Holes and Revelations, and included many popular ones from their previous albums. Their dark, electro rock easily filled the venue and band front man, Matthew Bellamy, really stood out on stage wearing a bright red suit. I found the visuals and lights spectacular, the videos perfectly timed and the balance between their heavier and lighter, but still as spine tingling songs was well maintained.

It was a great evening, made even by the fact that getting home from Wembley ended up a lot faster than I thought it was going to be.

TheKua.com Rating: 7.5 out of 10

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This weekend went by far too quickly with a quick trip to Stockholm. All of Saturday was pretty much talking shop with a great bunch of agile-enthusiasts that I met at XP2006, who invited me to run a full day session of my Test Driving Swing presentation. I’ve run this session at XP2006 and Javazone this year and because it fits tightly into an hour I found it refreshing to run through it at a much slower pace and in more detail.

The crowd was just the right size to be interactive. I found it effective first taking their objectives and tweaking parts of the presentation to focus on the detail where they wanted. I even had time to run a retrospective that was beneficial to both the audience and myself – I got some useful feedback and the audience participated in their first retrospective, a tool some mentioned that they were going to try on their own projects.

For future demonstrations, I think I’ll avoid typing *all* of the code myself, or at least practice many times since I made a few silly mistakes (and I know that being tired [BA was supremely late arriving in Sweden] is no excuse). I think it would also be good to have a much deeper and more complex system that was completely Test Driven to the extreme as an example, though I know I will have no time to write it on my own any time soon.

I do have to thank the Agical guys for giving me another opportunity to run my session. We had some fun discussions over some wonderful meals and drinks at both Mårten Trotzig and Gondolen, both very excellent restaurants.

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Software issues at Heathrow on Friday…

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