March

Hey all! It's becoming a bit busier these days (in school and with social outings), which means that I actually have stuff to write; when I have a chance to write. Here's a brief summary of the main things that I did since my last post.


On the Feb 20th it was one of my friend's birthday, so we ended up going out on Monday (Feb 22nd) to celebrate. How we've been doing it is that the Birthday boy always gets to pick the restaurant, and so this time we went to a Japanese restaurant in the Bull Ring called Mount Fuji. I ended up ordering the Teriyaki Chicken & Tempura Bento with Chef's Selection Sushi, and to drink I just asked the server what she thought would go best with my meal. They brought me my drink which looked like a small shot glass (50ml) filled with choya plum wine, but found that it was amazing as it just tasted like fruit juice (but apparently it was at least 10% alcohol content), so good thing they didn't bring a bottle. They then brought the Chef's selection of sushi, which were all really good, but all that I remember is that there were three different ones and only one looked like a typically fish sushi roll (with the seaweed wrapping) while one of the others was something like a prawn with rice and then the other might have been a scallop or squid (i don't think i would have known the difference). The only part of the sushi I wasn't crazy about the ginger that i ate (since apparently culturally your suppose to have after each type of sushi), but i think my friends just wanted to see me eat the raw ginger. I then got my bento and for those who don't know (which was me prior to getting it) Bento basically means individually packaged or severed dishes in a box. Thus my meal consisted of this fancy box (unfortunately you don't get to keep - looks like they cost about £25-30 just for the box) where inside each part of my dinner was in it's own separate container.

There was so much too it that i frequently got so confused since it was all so delicious, but the tempura was my least favourite part, while the Teriyaki chicken was the best Teriyaki chicken i have ever had (needless to say, i'll likely go back in the near future to have more Teriyaki chicken)! It was a great experience (although my hand did start to cramp by the end of the meal, since I forgot to stretch my hand prior to eating with chopsticks), but ultimately everyone really enjoyed the food and atmosphere, even though the restaurant is very small, it was well designed to maximize the seating.


Mar 1st it was another one of my friend's Birthday's so we decided to go to a different restaurant and ended up going to a French one right beside campus called La Bastille. Its a really neat restaurant with a bar in the front and fancy dinning at the back. We ended up ordering some frogs legs and I had Confit de canard with duck liver, sultana salsa and sweet red cabbage.

All the food I had was amazing and it seemed like a high end restaurant but with out the price. Near the end of the evening we started to hear some Jazz music, which we found out later that they have live Jazz music by a group called "Playing Django" every Monday night. We started to go every Monday night to hang out and listen to the music, and although its suppose to start at 7 we found that it's really about 9. We also recently found out that La Bastille carries lots of different Belgian beers, so we have now devised a plan to sample each of the beers on their list, but hopefully they don't change the beer menu or add any more to the list.


There was a day long optometry student festival, on Mar 6th, called Optfest in Cardiff. Several of the schools in the UK were represented, even Glasgow (which took over 12hrs on a bus). The day was filled with several sporting activities such as tug of war, football, rugby, dodgeball and netball. Overall in the events Bradford ended up winning, but Aston did quite well as we were 1st in netball (although its a girls only sport and our team consisted of one female), 3rd in dodgeball, 3rd in football and undefeated in rugby! Not bad all things considered and it was tones of fun! 

At the end of the day we all had a big dinner and went to the student union where we tried a bit of Ceilidh dancing (which is sort of a Celtic line dance). It was a great day and the optic society at Cardiff did an awesome job organizing the whole event and hopefully there will be a 2nd annual Optfest next year!

On Mar 13th my aunt and uncle were in town so we ended up going out for dinner that night. They hadn't been to Birmingham before we met down town, so they could see the city a bit and we ended up going to an Indian restaurant called Festival Balti. It was my first time going to an Indian restaurant and it wasn't too bad and the food definitely wasn't too spicy at all! It was really nice to see some friendly faces and it turned out to be a great evening.


Mar 14th I went back down town with one of my friends and we watched the world's 3rd largest St. Patty's Day Parade! I know it wasn't St. Patty's Day, but it sounds like they do the Parade the closest weekend to the actual day. The parade was held in an area of town that I had only recently discovered was called Digbeth (with is the Irish quarter). They festivities down there for about a week leading up St. Patrick's Day, but we didn't end up going to any of the pubs or any of the events this year, but next year we'll probably try to go to more of the events.

On the actual St. Patrick's Day (Mar 17th) I just went with some friends to an on campus bar called Einstien's since it wasn't nearly as busy as any of the off campus bars would be. Unfortunately they didn't have any green beer, but they did have a bunch of Irish beers at decent prices, so I had a cider followed by a traditional pint of Guinness. We had a good night, especially since we all had to be up for a 9am class the next day.

I had two assignments/essays that I had been working on all month and on the 19th I finally handed them all in. Typically you would think that after all the work that we would go out drinking that night, but instead we had a drink or two at the pub for lunch. That night went to the REP theatre and saw Arthur and George.

Unfortunately I was bit tiered from doing the essays, so missed a few minutes of the first half of the show, but found the second half of the show was captivating as I managed to pick it all up and all the pieces of the mystery seemed so slowly come together. I thought it was kind of odd that during the intermission they actually sell ice cream right in the theatre so you can actually eat it in your seats. I noticed it last time, but too late to do anything about it, but so this time we made sure to get some, so I grabbed some Cadbury's chocolate ice cream, which definitely hit the spot.


On Mar 24th after class at 1pm there was a school run eXperience trip to London. I ended up going with one of my friends and we took the bus and got to Covent Garden in London around 4. This was my first time ever in London so we wandered around and I saw a few of the main sights (Big Ben, Trafalgar square and the London eye).

We also saw some non typical sights, such as the covent garden market.

We then got hungry so we went to a pub called the Coal Hole for dinner.

I had a pint from Stonehenge Ales called Signs of Spring which was actually a green beer (a week late, but still works) and also finally some fish and chips that lived up to my expectations of UK fish and chips!

We then headed to the Lyceum Theatre where we watched the Lion King.

It was a great trip and I'm glad we went even though it was just an afternoon trip.


Classes then ended on the 26th for a three week Easter break!


That's all for now, but I'm not caught up yet! I still have some of my Easter break adventures to go (which I should hopefully have up shortly).


- Jeff -



*word of the week: "ATMs" in Canada are called "cash points" in the UK.