Aidan Williams - High Acuity

Yesterday I met up with Jen, Sanj and Mark for lunch on the south bank (of the Thames river for non-Londoners). It was such a gorgeous sunny day and I was half an hour early, so I spent some time walking along the river bank, taking pictures and chatting with my mum (for the first time in a while).

We met up at Waterloo station and after walking along the river bank for a while, stopped in Gabriel’s Wharf at a place called the Riviera for lunch. Jen and I had burgers (made with Aberdeen Angus beef), Sanj had sea bass and Mark had an Aberdeen Angus rib eye steak. We sat and chatted for a good few hours before moving onto a pub further down the south bank for more of the same – it was a really great, chilled Saturday afternoon.

This morning I met up with David and he kicked my ass into shape at the gym before we met up with my girlfriend and flatmate and we went to a noodle bar in Soho.

We split up after that and my girlfriend and I went to see Over The Hedge. I’m probably starting to enjoy animated movies a little too much for a grown man, but this is an absolutely classic film! Everyone must see it! The voice actors are all brilliant, the writing is fantastic, the comedy is hilarious and the graphics are absolutely incredible – the best I’ve seen in any animated movie and you’ll know why I say that when you watch the first five minutes of the movie. Check out the site!

Aidan says: Where the f**k are my stamps, a*****e!?!?
Nathan says: F**k you b***h… I was gonna give you them, but now I’m just gonna lick the gummy goodness off the back and throw them away….

Every Thursday is ‘Massage Day’ at work and every week there is a competition between the producers and developers to see who can get the first massage.

Immature? Yes.
Funny? Pretty much.

You see, if someone from one team gets the first massage, they reserve the next massage for someone else in their team and the other team may not get a massage at all that week since she’s only around for a couple of hours.

This week, Chris and I noticed that 1. the masseuse was very late so probably wouldn’t stay as long anyway, and 2. all of the project managers were getting in there before us, so we definitely weren’t going to get a massage if the developers got in there first.

Every five minutes Nathan (developer) would jump out of his chair and start to sprint towards the masseuse as soon as someone else finished, but one of the project managers always got there before him (they sit closer).

So Chris (fellow producer) and myself worked out our strategy – he pretended to walk to the bathroom at 9 minutes into one of the project manager’s massage and took a sudden right to the massage chair just as she was finishing.

At this point, Nathan was so desperate to get a massage that he started hanging around in the company kitchen, staring at the masseuse, twitching nervously.

But Chris and I had our strategy planned and already in action. Chris took his phone and called me as soon as his massage finished – I got up out of my chair, pretended it was an important call I had to take outside the office and started to walk towards the door. Just as I got to the masseuse, I looked at Nathan, smiled, hung up and sat in the chair after shaking Chris’ hand.

It was such a beautiful maneuver unrivalled by any massage maneuver before it.

What was even more funny though, was that when I came back to my chair, sauntering into the office with a smug grin on my face, I sat down to a blank screen and started pressing first my mouse, then my keyboard, and then the power button on my monitor. Nathan had unplugged my keyboard, mouse and monitor from my computer, also unplugging my monitor from the mains, also stealing a key from my keyboard and one of the keyboard stands so the keyboard was wobbling.

After I managed to stop laughing and plugged it all back in, I turned on my monitor and got back to work, only to find out five minutes later than he had changed my desktop background to The Village People and five minutes later still, my name on MSN to ‘The Sensitive Indian One From The Village People’.

Touché Nathan – excellent work. Remind me to kick your ass on Monday and fire you.

The funniest comment on the whole debacle: “Hahaha - The massages are supposed to reduce stress, not increase office tension!”

Wow, it’s been a while eh? Sorry about that folks. I think the theme tune for the last few weeks would be Average White Band – Work To Do.

A few weekends ago I had a great Saturday out with David. It was a gorgeous sunny day, we met up with Poe and Toby at 9am in Borough Market and headed straight to Monmouth Café for some of their fantastic coffee.

We spent an hour or two walking around the market and together we spent roughly £100 on food for the barbeque we were having. To be fair, I spent around £30 and David, as he always does when he goes to Borough Market, spent £70. I bought some ostrich burgers and truffle salami, both which I’d never had before.

After a quick stop at David’s place to do some cooking, we headed from South to North London, to Andy’s place where Nathan and Chris soon joined us. We had the usual four men standing around building this tiny barbeque and all arguing about which is the best way of doing it – it was pretty hilarious. Chris, originally from South Africa, bought broughtworst with him – a huge beef sausage – I swear, that thing tastes so meaty it’s like they crammed a whole cow into one of those things. Andy’s girlfriend is a vegetarian, so when we bought all this meat over, Andy said “This is going to be my meat quota for the next few months” – but don’t worry guys, we did have a lot of vegetarian dishes in there too.

As I mentioned earlier, it was a beautiful day – we spent the entire afternoon and evening lazing around in the garden, eating copious amounts of food, drinking and chatting. For reasons I’m not allowed to talk about here right now, the day was also a celebration – congratulations Andy. J

The next Saturday (last Saturday) was another gorgeous day. I met up with David and we went to my gym and he joined! And has been kicking my ass to go to the gym all the time since. Anyway, we had a good gym session and then headed to the Humus Bar in Soho. Their website isn’t that fantastic, but these guys have an incredible set up and the food is unbelievable (and cheap). David and I bought humus with chunky beef topping and I bought humus and avocado topping for John. We met him in the ICA - Institute of Contemporary Arts (motion graphics mainly) – after that we went and sat in St James’ Park for a couple of hours, falling asleep for half of it and enjoying the sun.

The rest of my weekends (Saturday night/Sunday) are spent with my girlfriend. We’re both working extremely hard right now: she’s doing incredibly well in her job and I’m doing well in mine, so we only really get to see each other on weekends. I’m trying to figure out how we’re managing to keep it together despite not spending enough time together, but I guess I should stop questioning and be happy that’s the case.

During the week I’m so busy I don’t really have the time to think about how much I miss her, but I remember every time I see her at the weekend. I hope she knows just how much I love her, how much I think about her and how perfect I think she is.

It was father’s day last Sunday and to continue the emotional thoughts, I miss my dad… and mum. I have great conversations with my dad when we can actually sit down and chat and that hasn’t really happened since I moved down to London. I keep telling them I’ll come visit soon but the time hasn’t come yet. Dad’s coming down to London soon though. I also miss my brother Rory… He’s in South Africa right now, but we manage to share in the occasional update email. I miss my two other older brothers in South Africa, too, although I’ve never really been that close to them.

I think I miss them more out of feeling that it’s a shame we’ve never really had the time to get to know each other, but I’ll most likely never really tell them that. I know they’re two incredible people – I know about all of their achievements and their lifestyles – I know we share a chromosome or two – But I don’t think I really know them. Still though, as far as I know they’re living it up in sunny Cape Town, so all is good.

Woh, this is getting too deep… Anyway, films!

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve seen X-Men 3, The DaVinci Code and The Wild and despite some extremely dubious reviews for all three, I enjoyed them all.

X-Men may focus a lot less on the core characters that we know and love, and with so many extra characters thrown in it’s harder to get attached to them, but the story is still fantastic one and a worthy addition to the trilogy. The DaVinci Code is just a good nights entertainment, despite the fact that there are a couple of important points that are left out from the book, it’s still definitely worth seeing. The Wild is… well, it’s very similar to Madagascar at first glance, but it’s very funny, with incredible CG, a great story and is very well made.