Mark & Sarah in the UK

Sarah and I are Safe and Sound

Mark — 2005-07-07T20:53:38+00:00

After the events in London today I think it might be prudent to say that both Sarah and I are safe and sound. My office is on Fenchurch Street, a few minutes walk from Aldgate, however I was not affected by the tragic events of today.

Our thoughts and best wishes are with all those who have lost family members in the events of today.

Trip to Prague, Czech Republic

Mark — 2005-04-09T18:22:40+00:00

Our friend Jodie (far right on picture above) decided to torture herself by doing the Prague 1/2 Maraphon. 21kms long. I don't know how she does it! Sarah and I (along with a few other friends) went along to cheer her on.

Prague is somewhere that you have to go, especially in spring. I think we may have gone a bit to early as the leaves weren't yet growing back on the tree's, however that couldn't be helped as we were bound by the date of the marathon. I should imangine by mid-late may the place would be absolutely gorgeous.

View the Prague photo gallery.

As summer progresses to winter...

Mark — 2004-11-28T19:45:16+00:00

Winter is setting in here, but at least this year we are both prepared with warmer coats, jackets and umbrella's. It has been painfully cold some days and it is set to get worse. It is times like this where I long for some Australian sun. It has been so cold I have had to scrape ice off the winshield of the car a few times now before driving. I even managed to start driving once without realising the windscreen was iced! I can attest to the fact that windscreen wipers go absolutely no way towards clearing ice off the windshield, on top of this, adding extra water from your winsheild sprays (in order to attempt to melt the ice) makes things even worse. Luckily after a few minutes of driving with the head out the window to see where you are going the ice melts and you can drive normally again :)

On the work front, Accenture has started consolidating it's London based offices into a brand new building, Plantation Place, 30 Fenchurch Street (Map). Our office made the move a few weeks ago, and it is a great one for me. Journey time to work has been cut down to only 55 minutes, without requiring any changes so I can just get on at Westcliff and get off again at the end of the line at Fenchurch street station. I have a view of the Lloyds Building from my desk. This building is supposed to have large architectural signifigance, however to me it really just looks like an isor, but maybe that is just because of the angle I have on the building. Sarah has had a busy busy month, with a understaffed office, everyone has to take up the slack and it makes for some tiring days. Hopefully after this week is over it will start to get a little better as some staff who were away on leave are back in the office and things should settle down to a more normal pace.

I think it is most likely we will be spending this Christmas with each other for company here in Essex this year. We are both working between Christmas an New Years, so it makes more sense for us to spend it here in Essex rather than away somewhere for a few days.

On the travel front, we are going to lie low for another few months, and our next trip is most likely going to be a trip to Prague, Czech Republic, in April 2005 with some of Sarah's work friends, one of whom is running in a marathon. I am really looking forward to this trip as I have wanted to visit Prague for a long time now, and looking through Bernie's Prague pictures just makes me want to visit more!

Photo Story of Alannah

Mark — 2004-11-06T22:17:38+00:00

I had heard a lot about Microsoft's new PhotoStory 3, so I decided to check it out and put together this Photo Story of cute little Alannah Berry.

More trips

Mark — 2004-10-09T19:38:06+00:00

I know, long time no updates, but nothing much has been going on (I got sick when we went to Ibiza, and we didnt take many photographs :( ).

We have both booked some more holiday and are going to be spending almost a week down in Devon visiting my family in a few weeks time, visiting my cousin's baby (Born early this year, but we haven't made it back down there to visit).

Midlands Trip

Mark — 2004-08-20T12:17:54+00:00

We're back from our Midlands road trip. I have put some photos online. I will write an entry on here tomorrow with a bit of information on what we did. In the mean time enjoy the photos. (See mum, more than just buildings this time! ;) )

Chicago Arrival

Mark — 2004-07-18T23:29:55+00:00

What a great flight! Thank you American Airlines, I really needed a good flight. I cannot recommend AA more. Big economy seats, lots of leg room, fantastic food. The flight left late, and arrived late, but still early afternoon. The cab ride to the hotel was quick, thank god for Sunday traffic.

After checking in at the hotel I went for a walk down North Michigan Avenue to the Apple store with the intention of picking up an iPod Mini for Sarah. Boy was I in for a surprise. Beautiful store, however they were out of stock with no more in for at least 5 weeks. Despite this I picked up a bunch of iPod Mini Accessories, just because they are so much cheaper over here than if you were buying from Apple back in the UK. I picked up the iPod Mini Armband for when Sarah is working out, Griffin iTrip Mini FM Transmitter for those long car journey's and an XtremeMac iPod Car Charger for charging the iPod Mini on those long car journey's. I even sat in on a free Photoshop CS Pro workshop session, which was quite cool. Why doesn't Microsoft do cool stuff like this?

I also snapped some photo's from around about, and scouted where my training is going to be located. In fact, I can actually see One IBM plaza from my hotel room window (the room actually has 2 windows!

I have added some pictures to the gallery. I will keep them updated during the week when I can. (Free Wifi in the hotel, whatever next?).

Off to Chicago

Mark — 2004-07-17T19:13:55+00:00

Mark here. I'm jetting off to chicago for the next week for a training course related to the technology I am currently using at work. I'll be back on Saturday morning.

In other news, Sarah and I have purchased a car! We have splashed out on a J Reg (1991) BMW 316i, Automatic. Sarah picks up the car on Monday evening. It feels great to be mobile again!

Look out for photo galleries of both Chicago and the new car next weekend.

The Championships, Wimbledon 2004 + Delta Goodrem

Mark — 2004-06-26T20:37:58+00:00

Making the most of our location, Sarah and I decided a day out at Wimbledon would be a fantastic reason to take a day off work. The weather this week has been horrendous to say the least for Wimbledon. Luckily however we managed to select a day that was warm and sunny, and spent all day friday at the All England Lawn Tennis Club. After gaining entry to the ground and relieving ourselves after a long 4 hour queue to get in, we bought a program, got some refreshments and headed straight to court 13, the location for the upcoming Mark Philippoussis game. We sat through a womens singles game (England vs. Spain) in the lead up to the match we wanted to see, and it was worth it. We had seats 3 rows from the front, no more than 5 meters from the court.

View the Photos

Timetable
0500: Wake up.
0600: leave for Southfields tube station.
0645: Arrive and join first queue.
0715: Get itchy feet from waiting.
1045: Pass through the gates.
1330: Watch Mark Philippoussis Match.
1430: Realise Delta Goodrem is in crowd.
1500: Finally give in to temptation and take photos of Delta
1630: Spend some time on Henman hill watching Rusedski game.
1900: Decide we are burnt enough and head home

The Mark Philippoussis game was absolutely fantastic. As always he took a set to warm up (ie, he lost the first set), but once he locked onto his form he was absolutely fantastic and never looked like losing the match. About half way through the match we noticed that the gorgeous absolutely fantastic Delta Goodrem was in the crowd. Temptation got the better of both Sarah and I and we took some photo's of her enjoying her boyfriend's (Mark Philippoussis, yes I think she got the wrong Mark too ;) ) success. Talk about distractions. After the match finished she hung around and posed for some photos with fans. As always Sarah and I were both too shy to approach her and ask for a photo. What a great girl.

After this we walked around the club grounds for a while, peeking in on different matches and finally found ourselves on Henman hill, watching Greg Rusedski play on the big screen. (The match was being played on Show Court 1, we didnt have tickets for that court). The rest of the day was spent watching some doubles matches, before we finally decided we were burnt and tired enough to go home, at about 7pm.

For a pictoral view of the day visit the photo gallery.

New Photo Gallery stuff

Mark — 2004-06-18T23:06:29+00:00

I have installed and configured some new software for displaying photo galleries on the web that makes it so much easier to put up photo's that both Sarah and I should have more patience to upload photos from now on.

So, you can now visit the new and improved photo gallery. I still have not migrated over all the old photo galleries, and have not yet migrated over any of the photo descriptions or commentary, but I will get them done soon. Also note that I have published the photo's from our New York City visit. Note that you can also comment on the photo's so if you have something to say about a particular photo please punch it in.

New York, New York

Mark — 2004-05-01T20:49:23+00:00

Sitting in a Starbucks, drinking frappuccino and on their hotspot. Bargain prices, $0.10 a minute, so not to bad at all. We needed to hop online to check where the nearest abercrombie and fitch store is. Luckily there is one about 10 mins walk from here.

A quick rundown of what we have done so far.

1. Empire state
2. Times Square
3. Spent a while in Grand Central Station
4. Ground Zero
5. Dodgy Diner
6. Excellent italian restaurant for dinner last night
7. Subway
8. World Trade Center / Ground Zero
9. Shopping
10. Shopping - Bought an ultra-cool wine rack from Crate and Barrel on Madison Avenue, as well as some bamboo coasters and egg poachers.. Bargain prices aswell

Things to note: If you need to go shopping in the UK, don't bother, save up your cash and come over here and have a holiday and shopping. Prices are excellent when buying in the pound!

Anyway. Time to take a walk to the Abercrombie and Fitch store. Seeya l8r

Mark & Sarah

Off to NYC

Mark — 2004-04-30T00:30:08+00:00

Just a final note to let everyone know we are heading off tomorrow morning (Friday) to New York for 3 nights (Well, flight is at 1:10pm, but it'll take forever on the train/tube to get there).

Hope everyone has as good a weekend as we do. Unfortunately we will be mobile-phone-less during the visit. I don't have enough credit history here in the UK to enable roaming on my phone with orange, and I didn't have time to go and get my phone unlocked so I could use my Virgin Pay as you go SIM. Ohwell, such is life.

It's been a long time between drinks, but we're off to New York City!

Mark — 2004-04-17T16:31:10+00:00

Our apologies for the lack of updates over the last month. We have both been incredibly busy with work, and on top of that my notebooks windows installation decided to go all pear shaped and I had to re-install everything!

Both of us have been very busy with work, so there has not been much to report anyway. After hopes of holiday grandeur over the Easter period were dashed by everyone elses hopes of holiday granduer (ie. Everything was booked out), we spent a quiet weekend at home (with me working on the Saturday).

Determined to make the most of the next long weekend (May 3rd) we have both taken a few days off work around the long weekend and have booked a 3 night trip over to New York City. We are going to be staying in the upper east side of manhatten, known for its opulence, private schools and museums. Our hotel is a few blocks from the east river, central park, madison avenue and 5th avenue.

Meanwhile spring is creeping it's way into our lives as the clouds are starting to thin and sun's rays are beginning to bring warmth instead of just light. The trees in our street are yet to break out with leaves, however, rest assured as soon as they do I will post a few pictures. Along the vein of pictures, I have received my replacement camera from the travel insurance claim, and will start taking some more photographs as spring sets in. Expect a new gallery for our New York trip, as well as some random Southend and surrounding areas galleries.

Comments fixed

Mark — 2004-03-23T23:30:26+00:00

Apologies to those people who tried to leave comments over the last few days but found that they were unable to do so. We have a comment - spam filter that filters out junk/spam comments to keep the website clean of that type of stuff, and unfortunately it was configured slightly incorrectly.

I have now fixed it and it should be running great, so you can now leave comments again.

Marguerite in Japan

Mark — 2004-03-20T22:01:36+00:00

Hey, just a note to say that Sarah's friend Marguerite, who recently moved to Japan to teach english, is now blogging.

Although she doesn't have a link to it on her main page, her RSS feed is here. Subscribe to it in your favorite aggregator, or mine.