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Over the weekend, I managed to see the movie, Up in the Air. I remember this getting some really positive comments at the BFI Film Festival last year, and thought some of it would be quite appropriate, doing a lot of travelling as a consultant. It stars George Clooney, and Vera Farmiga, who looked stunningly different from her role in the thriller movie, Orphan and a very talented Anna Kendrick.

The movie focuses in the travelling lifestyle of Ryan Bingham (Clooney) who works for a firm that is brought in specifically to fire people. It reminds me of a scene out of Officespace or some movie like that. However his preferred lifestyle of not being attached to anything comes under threat when firm newbie, Natalie Keener (Kendrick) comes up with the idea of replacing this face-to-face lifestyle with video conferencing software.

There’s many great parts to the movie, including where Bingham teaches Keener some of the finer arts to travelling light. I can definitely relate to this, thinking of the many hours I spent last summer travelling to and from Copenhagen. Perhaps more typically represented is the life of the US-based travelling consultant where it’s all about racking up miles, status points and credit points. Overall the movie started off really well but then it started to drag its feet, pursuing too many different story lines to properly address in a single movie. This left the conclusion rushed and it felt like arriving at a banquet only to be told the kitchen was closed when dessert arrived. I’m puzzled as to why it’s had big screen success, as I think it’s place is definitely in a bit more of a niche crowd.

TheKua.com Rating: 6.5 out of 10

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It’s that time of year to look back and see what’s been going on for 2009. It seems like it’s been a quieter year than most before and despite not wanting to do a lot of travel, it still seems like I ended up doing a fair amount.

Travel
The year started off in the US where I spent the day getting back from Boston before celebrating the New Year in New York. Since I was travelling to Marlow for work during the week, I didn’t end up going anywhere until March where I met the rest of the family in Japan.

Rather than hitting Tokyo, we met them in Osaka where we headed out to places like Kobe, Nara, Himeji and then spent the rest of the time visiting the temples and shrines of nearby Kyoto. April saw me head up north to visit my old flatmate, now living in York. The start of May then saw me head to Chicago for the first time, for a wedding and catching up with lots of people I knew living there.

I also took advantage of the great weather to head to Brighton for the first time. The end of may, I headed out to Sardinia for a conference where we ended up pretty much isolated from anyone else for the entire week. Great times yet I still remember the water being particularly cold.

It was around this time that I also started doing the weekly commute to Copenhagen for several months. I think I ended up staying over on the weekend twice – once to see what life in Denmark was really like, and then another to head over to Malmo (Sweden) on a very convenient and modern train.

August then saw me returning to Chicago for another conference before finishing off the year with a trip to Edinburgh in November and then Finland for a pre-Christmas holiday. I’d also mention travelling to Cambridge daily since returning from Copenhagen but other than eating out and resting, I don’t really get to see much of Cambridge.

Music
I don’t think I got to see as many bands this year seeing Aussie bands Eskimo Joe and The Living End in April, followed by amazing musician and talented whistler, Andrew Bird in May. I then saw John Butler outshine the Union Chapel in July. October then saw a flurry of activity including The Cribs, Franz Ferdinand and then Scottish musician, Calvin Harris play a sweat inducing performance at The Forum. The year finished off with a performance by Japanese musician, Ryuichi Sakomoto.

Food
I think this was definitely the year of the Michelin-starred restaurants for me. I was very thankful managing to find the only booking open in a three month window for the world’s 3rd best restaurant, Noma. What an unbelievable experience the tasting menu here was.

Amazingly local food accompanied by great service. I still remember the evening sun setting at just before midnight casting an amazing warmth into the converted warehouse when we sat down to eat.

We had just as an amazing meal at Restaurant Paustian v. Bo Bech before leaving Copenhagen. When visiting Chicago for the second time, I made sure to head out to Moto to enjoy the delights of clever cooking techniques and dining dazzlery. I can still picture the sparkling bombs that explode in the mouth for dessert. I also took my sister out to Rhodes 24 for her birthday (admittedly quite late in the year) and also ended up having a lunch at (overrated) Gordon Ramsey’s Maze restaurant. There was plenty of other amazing food places eaten ate but I woulnd’t be able to list them all.

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For most of our trip to Lapland, we stayed in the town Saariselka deep in the Arctic Circle. We figured that being so far north, we’d have a chance to see the Northern Lights and despite the great conditions for it (clear skies and really low temperatures) we only caught a brief glimpse of them.

As you can see, there was plenty of snow around and that meant there was plenty of opportunities to do lots of snow based activities. We managed to get around to doing some snow-mobiling, some cross country skiing, riding with some reindeers and sledging with the husky dogs. Saariselka also has a 1.2km long downhill toboggan trail that is definitely worth going down at one stage.

Although my most favourite activity was the cross country skiing, controlling the husky dog sledges was an inexperience to behold. We had a pack of six dogs on our sledge and it was amazing to see how they are simply built to run. Each sledge has a brake that digs into the snow and with our dogs, even with my full weight on it, their jumping efforts sometimes managed to move the sledge just a little bit. Fortunately it’s enough to get them to all stop running at the same time because they manage to run fairly fast.

The dogs are pretty silent when they’re running at full speed and its amazing to see how quickly they want to run as soon as they stop. They start howling, and even leaping in their harnesses, or digging into the snow waiting to get ready. Some of them do sit down, a little bit more relaxed but I’m guessing they’re some of the older dogs used to dragging people behind them. I think we managed to do about two and half hours of a course which was pretty good value for money.

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Being somewhere extremely cold such as Lapland, you think you’d be crazy for wanting to stay in the cold. However figuring it was a once in a lifetime sort of experience, we thought we’d try staying in one of those ice hotels. I’m sure that most people have heard of Sweden’s famous Snow Hotel and being even further north, Finland has its fair share of places like this. So we decided to stay a night at the Snow Village found in Lainio.

The main part of the Snow Village is made out of snow compacted together to form an entire building which changes design every single year. Despite the extreme temperatures outside (-20 degrees Celcius), the insides of the Snow Village maintain a comparably warm 0 degrees Celcius, just perfect for the ice beds that you sleep in. This year’s theme was focused on different elements and colours, with four different corridors representing different themes. Here’s some of the examples:

This corridor was based on a Fire-theme, hence the bright red colours:

This one was based on Water, thus the blue:

And then Forest clearly green:

And finally an Air-theme completely white:

Despite all the layers of clothing, when it’s -20 degrees Celcius outside, the insides feel strangely warm as a result. Fortunately the different corridors are built as one big structure so the temperature inside stays relatively constant. It’s a different story on the outside where you are exposed to all the elements such as snow and wind. It still looks pretty spectacular from the outside.

Just like any ice hotel should have, there’s an ice bar where you can sit on blocks of ice and even a dance floor completely made out of ice. During the early parts of the evening it doubles as an ice restaurant where you can eat your food whilst enjoying the ice atmosphere. Don’t worry if you don’t want to eat in the cold because they also have a proper building with plenty of heating to keep you warm if you find it far too cold.

Part of the experience of the ice hotel is really staying over in one of the many rooms dotted along the different corridors. They offer two types rooms, the deluxe suites which are all custom made and unique with different characteristics and varying structures, and the more ordinary ice rooms. Since you actually get to see all the suites we stayed in one of the normal rooms with ice beds that look like this:

There’s a mattress to protect you from the icy bed, although you are also given a sleeping bag and thermal fleece to take into the room when you are ready to rest your weary head. The suites are pretty spectacular and the following knight and castle-themed room was definitely my favourite.

I can definitely recommend the experience, even if you do it for just one night.

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The last couple of weeks have been amazingly busy. I seriously don’t know where all the has been going. I know at least where this last weekend went as I took the train from Kings Cross up to Edinburgh. Figuring that I come into this station from work anyway, I figured it’d be easiest getting on a train that takes about four and half four rather than catching planes, waiting for airport security and then catching a bus on the other side. I’m really glad I did as well. The train was comfy although going first class doesn’t include a meal like the Virgin trains do. These ones to Edinburgh are taken care of by the National Rail East Coast line. I reserved a table so that I’d have access to power sockets although I didn’t need to worry since I think all of those seats came with it.

Our trip to Edinburgh (seemingly like many trips) centred around hanging out with friends enjoying good food and wine. Eight of us went up, having a lunchtime booking for Michelin-starred Restaurant Martin Wishart.

We had an amazing meal (more of that over here) and plenty of wine to go along with it. Like many great meals I’ve had recently, this one seemed a bit like a marathon taking just under four hours to complete. We were lucky then that this place was a couple of streets away from the vaults of the Scotch Malt Whiskey Society.

We spent the rest of the afternoon until early in the evening sitting around in the dark oaked halls of the vaults, sipping a wide variety of drams and simply enjoying each other’s company. It definitely got busy towards the end of the evening, where we stepped out to grab a quick meal before heading home to our wonderful apartments. The next morning we had breakfast at Urban Angel, one of the best places for a Sunday brunch before walking around town and having to return to London early afternoon.

One other place worth visiting if you’re in Edinburgh and dying for a good coffee is Artisan Roast. It’s got a fantastic little vibe and particularly great coffee.

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I can’t believe it’s been a whole year since London Open House was on. Every year, different buildings around London open up their doors to welcome the public with most of them being free. Some are worth applying in advance for, ushering limited numbers of people around, whilst others you can only turn up on the day, and practice your British queuing skills with all the other people.

This year, the whole weekend was planned out but I’ll share some of the highlights with you and I visited far too many sites worth mentioning. Saturday’s highlight was the OXO tower, one that you could only turn up on the day to book a tour given each hour. With only 18 people allowed each hour, it was definitely worth waiting the hour before the first tour began.

The Coin Street Community Builders, responsible for the entire site were kind enough to at least collect the names and contact details for the huge volume of people they ended up turning away. The start of the tour begins on the ground level where you collect your hard hat and they give you instructions about how things to watch out for and the plan for the hour. We’re instructed to take the lift to top, where the Harvey Nichols Restaurant sits before we duck into a small door to take the, normally, restricted access door to an even smaller set of stairs where it’s obvious the hard hats are needed.

We stopped at the various different floors on the way up, stopping at each O-X-O before emerging at the top where you get an amazing view of the surrounding area. We were so high that we towered over the rest of the diners enjoying their river front views (pictured below).

Day 2 started with another queuing experience at the Horse Guards near Buckingham Palace. We waited much longer than we did at pretty much any other venue but it was definitely worth the wait with a great story lead by one of the members of the First Guard walking us through the different rooms.

I also really enjoyed your time visiting City Hall, namely because for the time invested queueing to get through security granted you access to some great views, a wonderful building to walk through without feeling overly crammed or rushed. Below is the cool staircases you got to walk down at the end of the tour.

Other places we visited included Royal Albert Hall, BFI Imax, the Channel Four building, and the Treasury Building.

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According to some study, Danish people are one of the happiest in the whole world. Perhaps it has something to do with their power points…

Even the 110V ones get in on the act:

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Something I pulled out of the photo collection from my time in Copenhagen… Nogger versus Punktum.

We certainly had a good chuckle at the names.

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