There’s a whole heirachy of supermarkets here in the UK, from the posh/expensive to the more standard super super markets, to the mini marts and corner stores.  The major ones (that I know of) in their apparent order of goodness are something like:

• Waitrose
• Marks and Spencer
• Sainsbury’s
• Tesco
• ASDA (Walmart)
• Morrisons
• Somerfield
• and a whole bunch of smaller chains and corner stores that either aren’t in my area
  

As you can probably imagine, the higher up the list a store is, the better it’s produce and fresh food is supposed to be, with the down side that it usually costs a percentage more than the equivalent items in the store below it.  In all honesty (from past purchases), this seems to be the case.  In fact I’ve often noticed if we pick up dinner from our local Waitrose (for lack of a cheaper alternative), what might be £10 at Tesco, is almost always £25, and picking up lunch from Marks and Spencers (roll/baguette, yoghurt/fruit and a juice)  usually totals about £7, when the equivalent lunch from the Sainsbury’s around the corner is usually half of that.

In the same way, I’ve often noticed doing a weeks shopping, when actually in the store is often cheaper (or we get a lot more for the same price) when shopping at ASDA instead of Tesco.  I’ve wondered a few times if there’s actuallya noticeable difference between the larger super markets (Sainsbury’s, Tesco & ASDA) prices, or the price is made up by impulse purchases around the store.  There’s no question the two super markets on the top of the list are significantly more expensive then the larger stores, and I’ve often felt the pain of a overpriced dinner, or mid week shop, but we seem to spend approximately the same amount each time we do a big shop regardless of store.

As we move into the new place we’ll no longer have access to a car to do a weekly or fortnightly shop so we’ll be relying heavily on internet shopping and home delivery, so I took the time last night do the same shop from ASDA, Tesco and Sainsbury’s using their online shopping portal.  I was surprised by the results.

I did the initial shop through ASDA, and completed a £75 shop which comprised of about a fortnights food, as well as a few items such as laundry detergents, razor blades, bleach that were runnig low at the time.  This is about on par with our previous grocery habits, as when we lived in a group of four it was almost always consistently £70-£100/wk.  Going from previous experience, this figure should probably stay about the same as we run out of different higher-priced items at various stages throughout the month.  I did exactly the same shop at both Tesco and then Sainsbury’s, and the totals came out at £75 and £70 respectively with savings made from one store on discounted/multi buy items and on other items at the different stores.  On a week to week basis, depending on what was on the shopping list, these figures would be subject to change as different stores had different and/or better specials.

I’ll do the same test the next time I do a shop, but I have to say Sainsbury’s is the clear winner in the online shopping stakes, due to cheaper delivery, and a much better online shopping experience than the other two.  ASDA’s online interface was nothing short of attrocious and must have been designed by monkeys.  Not only was it difficult to find products (even when using the search function), the actual design and layout of the pages seemed cheap and pre 2000 looking, which unfortunately was not reflected in the sale price.  The reward/loyalty program offered by Tesco’s Clubcard scheme seems to be the best one with 2-for-1 one offers and £5-10 discount vouchers given out on regular basis (depending on amount of shopping done).

Happy belated New Year!  I’m a few days behind due to sheer laziness and the continued delicious nod of the remainder of the holiday period.  It’s been a great end to the year with pubs, parties, lunches and a great couple of days in the northern English town of York.  But with the fun finally coming to an end, I’ve spent the evening trying to get back into the swing  of things, cleaning the house, doing shopping, writing a budget, going through some photos and getting some New Years resolutions sorted out, all at the expense of my ever latening (if thats a word) sleeping pattern.  That’s something I’ll have to brave before work and fight tiredness for the first few days.

Yorkminster, York UK

We’ve just got a new rental apartment in the lovely London area of Clapham, which for the uneducated is spread over a rather large area which contains an area like Queens, and one which is a little bit more like the Bronx, thankfully we’re somewhere in the middle on the North side which is a short walk from just about everywhere, including the Thames, London, Clapham Junction, Clapham High St, etc etc with lots of links to transport as well.  The best thing is the large savings which we’re looking to make by firstly moving closer into the city (reducing transport costs), not living in Richmond/Twickenham (reducing bills and local council tax rates).

Clapham Area

I was looking through the list of New Years resolutions that I made this time last year and while some of them were a farce, I’ve managed to stick to about 50% of the valid ones, so I wouldn’t mind seeing this year improve a little on that.  I would say the major goals of this year are:

• Money Money Money - With the move to our new apartment we’re looking at a monthly saving of approx £200-300 with less taxes and transport costs.  If i’m a little more responsible to money and cut the £100+ dinners we should have the potential to save a big chunk before the end of the year
• Buy a house - I’m happy renting for now, but with house prices due to bottom out late next year, the obvious plan seems to be to use the saved money from above in a deposit to purchase a house.
• Pursue out-of-work work - I did alright with this last year, but with regular work coming in this has huge potential.  Just a matter of finding work consistently.
• Walk home from work, especially as it starts heating up.  With a walk of approximately 3 miles it shouldn’t be too hard.
• Drink more? Drink less?  We’ll see

Anyone else have New Years Resolutions?

It’s been a long while since my prevous post about possibly the most underrated movie of this decade, but a lots happened since then.  Firstly and semi-importantly, HD911 has passed a new milestone (yet again) by getting over the 21,000 page hit count since September of last year when the site was put up.  This number seems to be increasing at a quicker and quicker rate, though I can’t say exponentially as that would be riduculous.  But it does mean that the site has received just over 2,000 hits a month on average since it’s birth, which seems to me like an awful lot, considering the quality of my content.

After all, it’s no Isaac Newton thesis, or Oscar Wilde novel.

On Sunday night we got home from our week long jaunt through Russia, from St Petersburg (4 days), to Novgorod (1 night) and finally to Moscow (3 days).  All I can say is what an amazing country, the food, drink, sites, everything.  The whole week I was there, I don’t think I had one bad meal, which says a lot for a foreign country, especially one which serves pretty much anything in a pancake (pork roast, caviar, salmon, etc) or an omlette (pork steak omlette, mmm).

But it wasn’t without it’s dramas, like me leaving my card in a cash machine on the first day of the holiday.  I can still recall the moment it happened too:

• Walk up to machine, insert card
• Perform transaction, receive cash
• Hear funny beep, assume it means end of transaction
• Put cash in wallet, walk away with ATM still beeping.

TopDecks Tours - Vodka Caviar 2008

Yet another case of the stupidity of me.  But, the holiday went on.  The other biggie was the tour group we with for the week, a Topdeck Tour, called Vodka Caviar 2008.  The tour itself was fine, with ample time to go off and do your own thing, whilst still seeing an awful lot of the tourist attractions and each city.  But the group itself pretty much consisted completely of 30 post high school age Aussie people, or at least some older people who acted like they were this age.  Honestly, the whole trip was like a soap opera, with sex, bitching, crying, and the horribly annoying Australian habit of groups of friends at the complete exclusion of others, something which I haven’t noticed since leaving the home land.  And thats a good thing.

The Amazing Moscow Underground

The reason we chose to go on a tour instead of battling it on our own was purely due to the fear and perceived danger in Evil Russia.   Looking back, this was a silly point of view and apart from few things its no worse, than anywhere else we’ve been so far like Paris, or Prague, and I’d consider our weekend in Brussels last year a lot more intimidating than anything we saw in Russia.  A few things that you need to do when you’re over there though:

• Always carry a passport with your travel Visa, as police can request this at any time, and you’ll (apparently) be locked up without it.
• Whilst being questioned by Police, never hand over passports of wallets, as these apparently have a habit of going missing (according to guide books, police corruption is an apparent worry)
• Before arriving, make sure you’re travel insurance is up to date and active, given the visa/passport situation it’d be a hell of a country/authority to deal with without outside help.
• Keep yours wits about you, and common sense, common sense, common sense.

We weren’t actually questioned at all on our time in the country, but the police/army/guards/etc were quite intimidating, as they were pretty much everywhere on the streets in the city, though this was a slight comfort as well.  I’ve never been anywhere yet in my travels where there were so many uniformed officials everywhere.

The Church of Spilled Blood, St Petersburg

I found the key with Russia was definitely to keep an open mind, and take pretty much anything anyone else has said about the country with a grain of salt.  Friends/people I’d talked to before the trip had warned me that St Petersburg was dodgy (whilst Moscow was nice), and vice versa, and the whole country was terribly expensive and everything is a complete rip off.  In fact, our tour guide seemed to do whatever he could to diss the country with warnings of muggings, cons, bad water, bad food, dodgy cops, expensive travel.  Though I guess thats his job, to make sure nobody gets hurt or loses anything on his tour.

Anyway, I’d definitely recommend Russia, it was a fun packed week.

So amidst all the stress about money, and pressure to get stuff ready for the trip to Russia, I’d almost completely forgotten about our four day trip back down to Cornwall again.  Although I’ve now seen it several times before, its sure to be a fun relaxing weekend with some sunshine, good company and of course good liquor.

Going down there as a foursome should be interested, just like old times again.  It has its advantages too, I wasn’t there to pick up the hire car, which means I don’t have to drive.  This is a good and a bad thing, bad because I desperately want to drive an automobile again (even if it is a four door Focus), but good because I’ll compensate by drinking, and catching up on some further reading of a new book or Arrested Development episodes.  I swear, this show gets better every time I watch it.

I’ve taken it upon myself to come up with a challenge for this extended weekend, but this challenge won’t involve the best sub £1,000 replacement vehicle for a UK Police Astra Diesel (ala the latest episode of Top Gear). I’m going to attempt to try every Cornish beer I can find, and write a small set of notes on each, The Great Cornish Beer Review.  This will involve going over my favourites from previous trips down to the foot, such as:

• Tribute Ale - A deliciously smooth brown ale, continuously drinkable all night, available in both Oxford, and the Twickenham Tup (20m from our front door), plus probably many other locations around London.  (Warning: ghastly when warm).
• Sharps Doom Bar - If I remember correctly, this bitter had a deceivingly strong taste to it, not that it’s in anyway a low alcohol beer.

The hardest thing about this of course is, despite my vast vocabulary (riiight), I have a pallete about as sensitive as the calloused palms of a full time grave digger.  Indeed, I think the words are in there, but picking the taste of raspberries from a 20 year old bottle of Shiraz doesn’t come to me naturally, at least not without reading the label.  I know what i like, but why I like Guinness, Tribute, Victoria Bitter and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale even though they’re vastly different types of beer, I don’t really understand.

We’ll see how that goes, anyway.

Россия, здесь мы приезжаем! (Russia, Here we come!)

In just less than 12 weeks, I’ll be drinking Vodka (and eating Caviar apparently), in a Russian tour group, over the course of 7 days from St. Petersburg, through Novgorod and finally to Moscow.  I’m sure it’ll be great, and I’ve been checking the weather for Moscow recently, and they’ve been enjoying 21º Celsius temperatures, which may even be warm enough for shorts.  But we’ll see.  One thing I’ve learnt about the world (in my vast travels), is that the brisk 15-18º (almost sweater weather) in Australia is perfectly fine for shorts and a T-shirt in the UK.  Going by this logic, I’m going to stock up on thongs (no, not flip-flops), as I might just enjoy it.

When in Russia, I guess!

The tour we’re going on is the Vodka Caviar 2008 tour run by Top Deck Tours, which seems to be jam packed with included food, outings and theatre/circus tickets, though it’d definitely want to be for the cost.  But, all in all, it looks to be great fun, and I’m looking forward to seeing parts of the former Soviet machine.

We’ll be travelling around in a “modern air-conditioned bus”, and the group usually consists of about 20 people (of which 16 I’m expecting to be Brits).  I’m hoping for a fun piss-up, but I hope its not like all these Contiki Tours I’ve heard about friends doing over the years, I think I’m getting too old (hell, I am 25 now). Soft, I know!

The last thing we had to do in preparation for the trip was get the Visa organised, which as always was an annoying process (the two visa applications and postage cost (just over £40) almost £150, but amazingly enough, the website told me we’d have the passports back on the 20th of June, what do you know, they turned up on Friday night.  Perfect timing.  A little too perfect perhaps.

Shannon looks around suspiciously…..Шпионы, они всегда наблюдают

Similar, except mines got a hologram (how very 2008)

I’m not the kind of person who gets homesick, and I don’t really miss much about Perth, but sometimes I catch a smell, miss a taste, or see a photo which really brings it all back:

Perth, Australia by night

And, even in the year since I’ve been gone, Perth seems to have changed a fair bit now.  We now have a fifth, metro train line, which even has a section underground.  Definitely something to check out when in a little under a year when I get home for a holiday.  I’m sure it’ll be an enlightening experience.

Just like the 11pm train from Kings Cross

The Things I’d do if I was back in Perth :-

• See Family/Friends (of course)
• Drink up a storm at the Queens Hotel in Mt Lawley
• Eat Twisties
• Stock up on Aussie red wine, and Coopers Beer
• Get the best pizza in the world from Il Padrinos (The Pizza King) in Northbridge
• Take a weekend down south in Margaret River
• Ride the train

And that’s about it!

Home Sweet Home!

It’s been a whlie since I posted an article on the N95, and thats not to say it’s falled out of favor, or I’m bored of it.  To tell you the truth, this truly amazing piece of portable technology, continues to enlighten me, and still I’m finding new things out every day.  A couple of months ago, in my previous post, I mentioned Nokia Sports Tracker, which at the time, was a buggy, horrible example of beta software.

That’s all changed though, Sports Tracker is now a powerful, bug-free (at least from what I’ve seen), exercise accompanyment which is a damn load of fun to use at the same time.  Broken down, it:

• use GPS to map speed/distance travelled on a map;
• allows you to set routes for commonly travelled paths, and records times for previous workouts so you can beat previous routes;
• includes a Step counter to approximate work done and energy consumed;
• updates progress, and live workout status online, updating the users profile (ala Facebook).

Nokia Sports Tracker Online

I’ve now completed the 3.5 mile walk from the office to Waterloo Station 10 times, and got my time down to 24 minutes, though I’m sure this could be a lot better if I wasn’t walking through peak hour traffic to get there.  And best of all, the GPS/live part still works jammed in my pocket.

Well, as of a few days ago, Curious Perversions in the UK - CPITUK (or at least where it was formally based, http://kwiksand.wordpress.com) is now a year old, and after 12,000 unique (10,500 since September and HD911’s birth) , I’m roaring and ready to increase that by a factor of 10x in the coming 12 months.  Though, as before this depends on a whole bunch of things, the main one being that I actually write something interesting and worth reading.  But I’m committed to acheiving this, so stay tuned for more Shan-anigans as we go along.

The 10,000th Brick

Interestingly enough though:

• This site is almost a year old now;
• We arrived in the UK a year ago (shock horror); and
• I’m getting married on the anniversary being here a year

The Past Twelve Months

But it’s also probably a good idea to look back and reflect on what CPITUK has become, whether or not that progression matches my original intentions when I started it or not.  I guess the driving force behind writing in the first place was to give friends back home some insight as to what is going on in the saga that is Shannon.  As well as this, I wanted a humorous (I’m giving myself too much credit) critique regarding every day life in London and the UK.

I think for the most part, I’ve kept to this general rule, and the mortar between the bricks has been filled talking cod shit (possibly too much filler for this many bricks in the wall, me thinks).  We’ve definitely seen what London has to offer though, and that really makes me think its the second best city in the world (behind Tehran of course).  On the topic of Life and Living in the UK, I’ve covered:

• Work/Contracting
• Tax
• Money and pain/sweetness that is the Aussie Dollar to Pound
• Visa and Immigration
• Alcohol
• The public transport system (more importantly tube closures.

.. to name a few.  But there’s so much untouched ground, so many worthy stories that haven’t found their way to the printing press, and some never will.  But you never know, I’ve been working on a piece of late about the stripper (darling she was), who just wouldn’t leave, despite aggression, threats and a body slam from a rather small human.  Got to hand it to her, she must have had whatever the energiser bunny is on.

The Next Twelve Months

Stay Tuned for:

• more (hopefully) interesting stuff
• much more cod shit
• photo diary style entries of holiday’s abroad, or perhaps weekends at home
• new sections for the site
• the emergence of ShanCo, whenevet it happens

Now lets just see whether I can get that bricks to mortar ratio right.

“If you build it, they will come” - And look where Kevin Costner is now, that’s somethign to aspire to.

I’d originally started writing this post at Green Park station last night (Thursday 3rd April), but the rest was written today

It’s 9:15pm and I’m currently standing at the entrance to Green Park Station, which as I stand is about a 100m walk from the front door of my office.  Tonight, like any normal night, I left at 6:00pm, as such I’m no closer to home than I was the better part of four hours ago.  But there’s no usual story of drunken antics or other similar fun, I’ve been stuck on a packed Jubilee Line Tube train with no air, fans and only emergency lighting the whole time.

I have to say, a fully clothed Roman Bath packed with pissy London commuters is not my idea of a fun way to spend a few hours, but there wasn’t much I could do but laugh.  And like human evolution, accelerated at a thousand times the normal speed my nose has evolved in the way I can now say, without doubt, that I can identify the sweaty smell of almost any human being, young or old, male or female, white collar or blue collar, black or white and of course the most pungent of aroma…. me.

People got really funny, really quickly in that situation and started to panic, like repeatedly pulling the Emergency alarm was going to do anyone any good, as the driver had to explain several times:

“Ladies and Gentlemen, I realise everyone is upset, and quite frankly I am too, but there’s not a lot of things I can do at present so I’ll just ask you to stay calm.  Please note, pulling the emergency handle on the train repeatedly will not help the situation, and no, there are no toilets on this train, and no, I’m not allowed to let you off the train to walk down the tracks”.

I think the worst thing was, because of the power cut, the driver couldn’t communicate with anyone at the stations or other tube staff.  It wasn’t all bad though, finally, just before 9:00pm the London Underground cavalry and Police arrived and we walked off back down the tunnel to Green park.  That was the coolest part about it all.

The best photo I could get of the tunnel, wish I’d got more

Things I learnt:

• It’s never not an option to go to the toilet before leaving the office
• If the power goes out completely, there is no communication at all with the upper world (apparently due to using an inferior/cheap communication system)
• Old style wireless/CB (I’m assuming) still works with other drivers along the tunnel
• London tube tunnels are nothing like the New York tunnels you see in Law and Order or dodgy 80’s cop movies.  At least on the Jubillee line, noone could live down there, and so my thoughts of a subterranean London civilisation have been all but dashed.
• Once again, its never not an option to go to the toilet before leaving the office

Update: BBC News Article - Hundreds trapped on Underground

With great regret, I announce the Monopoly Pub Crawl, was not an astounding success.

As many would know, its not often I fail at anything, and certainly not when the job at hand involves alcohol. But alas, 26 pubs in a row, is just a little bit too much. After 12+ hours, 17 pubs and what must have been close to 6 or 7 miles of walking, we gave up, and the Monopoly Pub Crawl for January 2008 came to an unfortunate end. Yes that’s right, navigating for 30mins+ for a quick sit down (15 minutes) and a half pint continuously throughout the day is just not worth it.

We will try again though, in May or June, and it shall be finished. Note to self, wear looser, more comfortable jeans (my good ones were wet), and rely more on public transport as opposed to walking some of the longer stretches. All in all it was a fantastic day though, and the people, beer and fun made the whole thing worth it.

Euston-rs!!!