And on to the next one...

Last night was fun. The skating was pretty, although not on my behalf, more wobbly there but it's beautiful skating around at Somerset House as the light fades. My only complaint would be that there are a few too many people on the rink but you can't win them all!

Then glammed up we went off to Orso. No photos yet I'm afraid, a colleague was taking them and didn't bring in her camera today. But when I have pictures that are shareable I promise I shall share. Our meal was lovely, Orso is a very good restaurant with great service, good food and lovely wines to choose from. Expensive, but then I wasn't paying this time :) Plus it's quite a cosy restaurant so one I would recommend for an intimate dinner with a loved one.

I left at the right time, drunk but not awfully so, happily drunk shall we put it. Got home on the bus to a very drunk J. This morning neither of us were so pretty!

And tonight we are celebrating Christmas with our friends. It shall be another night of revelry which I'm not sure my body can cope with but we'll see.

Hopefully your Friday has been more productive than mine. Although one final tip, Itsu Detox Zinger is just the best thing when you have a hangover, ginger lime and apple all in a lovely drink. Yummy!

Have lovely wintery weekends. M x

It's party time!

Tonight is our work Xmas do. We're going skating at Somerset House and then off for dinner. I've never done the outside skating in London thing so hopefully it'll be good fun, sure it will. And then for dinner the theme was glam so I have purchased myself a new dress from French Connection. More on that later, hopefully accompanied by pictures!

Let's see how I feel tomorrow...

Kazakhstan Part II

I think I may have promised more on Kazkahstan so here goes. We stayed in the Radisson in Astana, a five star hotel (lucky us) which was huge and lovely. My room was on the 12th floor and the first thing I thought when I walked into it was how huge the bed was. I tried showing in the photo below it's size, truly you could have fitted three people in there, should you want to. You might also notice my travel companion keeping the bed warm. As hotel rooms go it was good, well equipped, underfloor heating in the bathroom, giant shower, good TV, coffee and tea facilities and even an iron and ironing board. So I was fairly impressed. Plus going back to the bed, it was soooo comfortable.

So then I thought I'd share another view from my room, the space in Kazakhstan was one thing which really struck me. It's just on another scale. As the 9th largest country in the world with a population of around 15m the population density is vastly different to the UK. And you can see this in the cities, with huge roads and big buildings. Beyond the city is the steppe. A flat landscape which goes as far as the eye can see, without coming across anything else. Also because the city is relatively much smaller the sky is darker and bigger. You can really see the stars, feel free and look up in wonder.

On a lighter note the hotel had their Christmas decorations up when we arrived. I couldn't help but pose with the life sized bears they had in reception. My mama would hate these bears, papa probably would like them. And me I stroked them whenever I walked past, hello bear!

I have some more city pictures to share. Another post soon hopefully!

Kazakhstan Part 1

We arrived back late last night after a very long day travelling, I was already pretty tired from the trip but that really slayed me. So I was much relieved to crawl into a warm bed with J last night and drop my head on the pillow to switch off.

Kazakhstan was fun though. We worked hard and it felt like a really valuable trip workwise, plus the people we met were overall absolutely lovely and I was so well looked after.

So to start with below is a picture of the view from my bedroom window in our hotel in Astana. Hopefully it gives you some idea of what the city is like, there's a lot of construction going on, so in almost every view there are cranes. But considering the city is only 11 years old it's doing pretty well!
More to follow soon but a few things to catch up in the office first, hope everyone is well and I shall try and catch up on all the lovely posts I've missed and the news.

Hope you have great weekend's! xx

Off again...

I should be on a flight to Astana, Kazakhstan right now. Off with work to go to a couple of events we're participating in. It should be good, absolutely freezing at this time of year but interesting. I'm back late on Thursday 26th. I will try and blog, comment etc while away but time and internet connections might be few and far between. Hopefully lots of photos for you upon my return! Again apologies in advance and promises of being better again shortly.

Arrivederci! xx

Autumnal London

London has turned decidedly autumnal recently, I'm seeing my breath in the morning and have started to wear my gloves in the morning. It's also that time of year when you get some fabulous light in the mornings and early evenings, the low light which gently washes over everything bringing it to life, especially when you get a moody dark sky threatening rain.

So here's to a quiet hungover Saturday. I released some stress last night by getting really very pissed on a team dinner. But it felt good at the time and it was a really very enjoyable evening.

Only another 9 weeks to go of work, work, work and then it's Christmas followed by Argentina. So I shall think of that to get me through the next few weeks. We've got lots of planning to do and will soon be receiving our packing and information pack. More on that soon I'm sure.

Enjoy your weekends. M x

On drinking with colleagues

Last night was our summer party at work. Well yesterday afternoon. And it was great, we had a lovely late lunch somewhere on Portobello road, coupled with plenty of drinking and then watched Public Enemies. Which by the way isn't great. I just found that I couldn't get emotionally invested in any of the characters... But I digress, we then finished off with cocktails in a bar somewhere down the road.

I feel like crap today.

Anyhow, what I was really thinking about was that I'm very lucky to get on with all the people I work with. We have a small office, somewhere around 15 people and everyone is really nice, so it's fun to go out drinking with them. Although of course you do have to change your behaviour slightly just to make sure you don't say or do anything too ridiculous.

And it got me to thinking this morning about the sense of drinking with the people you work with. In many ways it's the perfect opportunity to get to know them without the constraints an office brings. But in other ways it can make it harder to manage people when you know them too well and let personal feelings get in the way of management.

What do you think about it? Is it something you do regularly or something you try and avoid?

And my apologies for the rather disjointed post, my brain is not in fully functioning order.