Boulder to London

This week started with a nice surprise when one of my old co-workers from GE emailed me to say that she was going to be in London with a few other folks we used to work with.  We decided to meet up on Wednesday evening for a few beers at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese and then dinner at Gaucho Grill.  It was a fabulous night catching up with folks that I hadn’t seen since I left GE in 2007 and it was fun to hear about everything that has (or hasn’t) changed since then!  I shared with them, that it wasn’t until just recently, maybe the last month or so, that I really felt that the decision to leave GE was absolutely the right one!  We reminisced about good times, and the Gaucho didn’t disappoint with the great steaks it served up.  We finished the night off with a couple of Jamison’s and parted ways.  Hopefully we’ll have the opportunity to catch up again soon.

On Thursday night, our team had a fun night out in Soho.  We used to be a fairly small team of 30 or so and are now a little over twice that size.  Consequently, many of the things we used to do are becoming a bit impractical with such a large group so we tried something different this week and arranged to have everyone  (+ partners/spouses/guests) attend the Jersey Boys musical.  I’m generally not a huge musical fan, but the night turned out to be a very good time.  The show was well done and they performed a bunch of the Four Seasons’ hits, which actually surprised me as there were a number of songs that I didn’t even realise were the Four Seasons.  If you want a fun and entertaining night out, Jersey Boys is one to consider.

To complete the hat trick, Friday night we met our friends Alistair and Helen at great wine bar called Terroirs.  It’s over near Covent Garden and has a massive wine list and great French food.  We started with a whole crab, followed up with steak tartare, anchovies, roasted hare and a couple of other things that were all quite tasty.  We had three bottles of wine from their vast collection which ranged from some very light reds to a more full bodied fruity red with our cheese plates.  The staff were great and the atmosphere had a nice gentle buzz that was not too loud, but definitely fun and social.  If you’re going to go, make a booking as you won’t be able to get a table otherwise.  Also, it’s a little tough to find and after circling the area for 10 minutes, our taxi driver dropped us off in a down pour to find it ourselves.

As if I hadn’t had enough fun over the past week, Korey and Ben invited me out to watch England play Australia in rugby yesterday afternoon.  It’s been a long time since I’ve spent a Saturday afternoon in a sports bar, so I jumped on the opportunity to head back to Covent Garden to a place called the Maple Leaf (apparently the only Canadian bar in London).  After a strong start by England, Australia recovered and put up a number of points to go ahead and eventually win the match.  I left the bar and headed home to meet Melisse for a curry which seemed to be the perfect dinner after an afternoon in the pub.

Finally, I also just started reading a new book called ‘The Black Swan’.  It’s all about how seemingly improbable things happen at an alarming rate leading to events and outcomes that were never expected yet lead to significant changes in our lives and how we view the world.  Think the 1987 stock market crash, 9-11 and recent tsunamis / earthquakes.   As living, thinking, reasoning individuals we have great difficulty accepting that something we’ve never experienced could happen (think Black Swans) until we’re proven wrong.  We are generally trapped in backward looking logic that is based on normal distributions and bell curves, even though the world we live in is full of outliers and unexpected events.  I’m only on chapter 4, but it’s a very easy read and I highly recommend it.