(Some of) London's Best Chippers

If there is ever such a thing as a genuine English dish, it has to be Fish & Chips. But there are better ones and less tasty ones. Time to take (fish) stock.

This survey by no means claims to be comprehensive, but rather based on first hand experience - which in many ways could be considered pure coincidence (since sometimes you just happen to get to places which turn out to be very good). But nevertheless, one knows what one likes, and in terms of Fish & Chips served, this would include the following:

• Rock & Sole Plaice: Conveniently located on Endell Street in Covent Garden, one should not be deterred by the slightly run down interior. The fact that it is always crowded speaks for itself.
• Tom's Kitchen: Admittedly, I never went there, but the Fish & Chips he served at last year's Taste of London in Regent's Park were so good in fact, I believe that it must be worth a visit.
  
• The Narrow: Gordon Ramsay's gastropub in Limehouse does nothing to jeopardise GR's brand reputation. It is simply very well made indeed.
  
• Masters Super Fish: Just around the corner from The Old Vic, this place is many cabbies' favourite. And since they have the knowledge, who would doubt their judgement.
  
• Fish! Essentially the take out window of an upmarket fish restaurant in Borough Market, this is a lunchtime favourite for the Friday excursion to the market. The portions are so substantial, the afternoon is usually spent dozing off and digesting the giant haddock.
  

The first Fish & Chip I ever had was in Brighton about 15 years ago, and it was so genuine, it was even served out of a newspaper.

Surprisingly, neither of the above serve the fish in a paper, despite the fact that there are so many disposable newspapers to wrap fish in.

Then again, it's impolite to read whilst eating anyway.

iPhone: Curse of the Early Adopter?

With Apple advertising the new iPhone 3G as "Twice as fast. Half the price", this can only mean bad news for all those who jumped on the bandwagon a little early, right? Not quite, it turns out.

Adopting technology early is a strategy that does not necessarily bear merits. Remember Beta videos and Sony minidiscs? Exactly. As a matter of fact the increasingly short lifecycles of technological equipment lead to two possible strategies when purchasing new goods.

1. You either postpone buying anything because you know that in a short while you can get a superior piece of machinery for less money or
   
2. You just grind your teeth and get on with it. Although in all likelihood, the goods you purchase will be outdated in next-to-no-time.

Following the second strategy at least has you have access to some recent technology whilst with the first one we would still all be computing (or what used to be computing) on a Commodore 64.

As a short background, I have not been a Mac user all my life, but have been converted about four years ago. It was not a decision of religious proportions but one of convenience, although in the meantime, it has gotten to the point where I could not see myself returning to PC mundanity. Ever.

So, when the iPhone hit the UK about 6 months ago, and thankfully my contract with Vodafone had just run out, I jumped on the opportunity to smarten up my phone equipment, albeit for a hefty price. Back then, it cost £269 to purchase, even though you had to commit to a 18 month contract. The upfront cost was dampered by the fact that my wife bought it for me (which led to the Vodafone representative arguing with me - when trying to lure me back - that this is pretty much like paying myself. This is when I stopped dealing with our friends from Newbury).

And while the phone is not perfect, the battery life is a bit meagre for instance, it is in fact a superior piece of engineering which from my point of view is head and shoulder above any other phone I had in the past. Having said that, I went - being patriotic - through a number of Siemens phones which tended to break easily and didn't like the few Sony phones I had afterwards. So I was ready to try a new brand anyway....

In general, as a reasonably passionate Mac user it didn't take much convincing to get me hooked on the iPhone and I have been happily using it since.

Now yesterday, Apple presented the new iPhone 3G which promises all the things that were criticised about version 1.0, 3G access, GPS etc etc. And all of that for half the price of the original one, which makes us early customers look a little silly.

I thought this would again be a case of just having to live with the fact that your car loses half its value driving it around the first corner, until I got a text from O2 tempting me into a free upgrade to the new model.

Last time I checked, O2 was not registered as a charity, so there must be economic reasoning behind this. First of all, they only upgrade those on a contract for £45 a month or more (which I am not) but the ones on the cheaper contracts can buy a new model for £99. So apparently, they must make enough out of the monthly fees to happily subsidise the handset. To tempt even more, they are introducing Pay-as-you-go so that the second (old) iPhone could still be used.

All in all, while I don't think there is concern to be had about O2's future earnings, this is a reasonably happy surprise to the early adopters.

Maybe, in an environment were technology becomes more and more disposable and exchangeable, somebody has actually realised that there is value in binding your customers to you by offering them something they appreciate, rather than leaving them feel ripped off.

This seems to have been Apple's strategy when they refunded the even earlier adopters (before they slashed the price in the US last year after a few months) and O2 has taken this on board.

Aside from tangible products, nowadays it is all about the brand and what consumers are associating with it. Not being penalised for showing brand loyalty is a nice add-on for the customer.

The Baby-Moon (AKA The Last Hurrah)

Hailed as the hottest trend in vacationing, the babymoon (for those not in the know) is one (or more) last getaways before a baby arrives. Which means you will remember it as the last holiday where you had proper lie-ins!

Nature has its funny ways of making things work: For instance, alcohol (in reasonable quantities) apparently does not cause any serious harm to babies in the first few weeks. Which is a great coincidence because it takes most couples a few weeks to find out that they are expecting, a time which is usually not spent refraining from the odd drink.

And with 40 weeks (give or take), homo sapiens have a fairly long gestational period which gives parents-to-be ample time to rethink their undeterred hedonism in the future. More importantly, once morning sickness is out, and swollen ankles are not yet in the way, there lies an opportunity to embark on a last getaway before it's "All change". Some marketing genius has labelled this getaway the Baby-Moon.

There is an entire industry (and an abundance of websites) around the Baby-Moon, getaways to romantic locations, such as the Caribbean (The One and Only Resort in Nassau, Bahamas -- as seen in Casino Royale, although Bond was not babymooning) and the Far East (like the Peninsula in Bangkok). You better start checking with the airline how long you are allowed to fly.

The fact that British Airways recently had an ad campaign around the fact that their staff is trained in delivery (babies not parcels) could be taken as an incentive to travel while it's still only two of you.

Finding myself in a similar situation, I was happy to find out that a fair few destinations on www.baby-moon.eu have already been ticked off the list of places to go (such as the cute Hotel Lungarno in Florence) and that my own Baby-Moon destination, the Four Seasons in Hampshire, picked for early next year, when air travel is off limit, offers pre-natal treatment as well.

But then again, since we we are just 16 weeks, there was time to slot a trip to Thailand in, which should provide opportunity for some pampering as well. Maybe they even have a "What's kicking" package, although at 16 weeks, "Not very much" would be the appropriate answer.

Alas, since a Baby-Moon by definition is the last trip before family expansion kicks in, this would make this trip a mere Baby-Half-Moon.

Originally published on HereIsTheCity Life on 18/11/2007, available here.

One man's trash

is another man's treasure. Which is what sprang to my mind when offloading my trash and bumping into poor old Genghis Khan who had been disposed of by his previous owner.

But of course, the local authorities have for some time now refused to take him on board of their garbage trucks, which could be for numerous reasons:

• He is recyclable but not wrapped in a Local-Borough-Authorised Pink Bag and will therefore not qualify as recycling or
• Despite his lean figure, he would be considered bulk refuse and therefore would need to get an appointment to be picked up individually.

One could argue that the second treatment is much more appropriate for a figure of his historic stature.

Even though it would land him exactly where the first option would lead him as well, onto the landfill of history.

Misleading Movie Poster Quotes

On any given Friday, a fair number of movies opens across the UK. Some are brilliant, some average, many poor. How is it possible that every movie poster has critics quotes hailing the respective oeuvre as a masterpiece?

Of course no movie studio would admit that a piece of film-making they commissioned is outright rubbish, nevertheless it is astonishing how the distributors are usually able to put quotes on the poster about how great this particular piece is.

A lot has been made about the poster for Guy Ritchie's self-indulgent turkey 'Revolver' and the out-of-context quote "Brilliant - Guy Ritchie back to his best" quote allegedly from the Sun movie critic (which it wasn't).

Thankfully, movie history has cast a very dark shadow over the above product, but there are more examples of misleading movie quotes along the same lines which makes you think how a selected number of movie critics can get it so wrong (or whether the quotes might have been "taken out of context"). The following are examples of movies not worth watching, despite the plaudits:

• "An outrageously hilarious comedy" (The Heartbreak Kid)
• "A great time at the movies for everyone!" (Evan Almighty)
• "It…just may kill you with laughs." (Death at a Funeral)
• "The best movie adaptation of a video game so far." (DOA: Dead or Alive)
  

In general, it seems that one can almost tell by who is quoted whether the quote is reliable or not. For instance Maxim's former Peter Hammond seemed to have a reputation of producing favourable quotes for even the worst tosh.

Five star reviews by something like the Sun (despite being exculpated for Revolver) usually mean that you are up for a mind-numbing spectacle which does not have much of a storyline but is likely to sell out to large crowds.

Probably not unlike the very paper you would have read this review in.

Think Before You Chip and Pin

In a world where you tip by waving your Oyster Card and feed the parking meter by phone, some first hand experience on how safe "Chip-and-Pin" is, and on how to deal with the aftermath of being ripped off and seeing your money disappear to Romania.

Last year during the run-up to Christmas, I stopped at the cashpoint at Cannon Street Station to get some money since the excessive consumption of egg-nog lattes had left me short of cash. Coincidentally checking my bank account online a few hours later, I saw the record of the withdrawal, but surprisingly noticed another withdrawal of a strange amount ending in 74p. Whilst I was still trying to figure out how I would possibly have taken out such an odd sum, I could not rule out that it had been a transaction done a few days ago that had just come through.

In an effort to be diligent and vigilant I contacted my bank (or rather their overseas call centre) in order to find out details about the withdrawal. While they had no more information at hand, I was promised that they would find out more within 24 hours and would contact me once that was the case. In the meantime I cautiously blocked the card.

Within the next day, the call centre called me back but - about half a dozen security questions later - only to tell me that more information had not come through yet. In the meantime, I had realised that not only my card but all my accounts were actually blocked. Which was particularly unfortunate since my -- 2007/credit-crunch/(but nonetheless) -- bonus had just come in which I couldn't access.

A few days, many phone calls later -- with the excuse of technical problems -- I was told that the transaction was a cash withdrawal made in a town that I didn't know. However, Google helped me locate it in the province of Romania. That explained the odd sum, but not how somebody stole my money somewhere in Central Europe.

Naively I believed (in particular given that the Romania and the Cannon Street withdrawals were about one hour apart) that this was quite obviously fraud. To my surprise the (overseas, call centre) clerk revealed to me that my bank would not be able to refund the money since clearly it had been me who had given the details to somebody else.

Well, let's rest here for a second: That's my bank - who I believe am a fairly good client of - calling me a fraud.

I was furious, and after threatening to close my accounts (which since blocking them about a week earlier had actually cost me more in interest than the sum withdrawn to begin with) he reiterated his statement referring to company policy.

Swearing to myself that this was the last time I would ever deal with a help line located further east than Canterbury, I decided to face the enemy and walk into the next branch, ready to cut my ties with this institution.

I would have, if it hadn't been for the fact that the employee in the branch (1) was friendly and apologetic beyond belief and (2) confirmed immediately that they would have fraud departments dealing with this and (3) stated that fraud like this happened pretty much all the time.

Apparently, depending on where you shop, sometimes dodgy employees sell on debit card details (he even knew the price - 20 GBP), get your PIN off security camera tapes, and then -- usually in Eastern Europe -- somebody gets to your money with a fake card, because the ATMs down there cannot read the Chip yet but only the magnetic stripe which is easier to forge.

While this episode had left me furious at times, it also left me with some valuable (and probably very obvious) lessons learnt:

• Always, always cover your hand typing in the PIN. There are so many security cameras on you all the time, there's likely to be one on you when you Chip-And-Pin.
• Being the victim of theft, no matter how "clean" and remote it might occur in these digital days, leaves you with the feeling of your privacy being invaded. And even if common sense prevails at the end and you get your stolen money refunded, this is not a good feeling to be left with.

Originally published on HereIsTheCity on 20Jan2008. The original article is available here.

3 Pen Cei, Aberaeron, Wales

Following the Easter weekend spent on the Welsh coastline, we started a mission to spread the word about the beautiful B & B we stayed in the harbour town of Aberaeron...

We went to 3 Pen Cei for a long Easter weekend away from London to enjoy the Welsh coast. Whilst it was early in the year, the weather was predictably unpredictable. However, the coziness of 3 Pen Cei made up for the fact that it was cold and stormy outside.

Upon arrival we were greeted by Lesley who owns the B&B and showed us our superb room. The guest house has been completely renovated in 2007 and a great effort has been made to maintain a maritime decor throughout and make the environment stylish and comfortable. And these efforts have paid off. Best of all, the website conveys exactly the right image of what guests get themselves into so there we no unpleasant surprises but rather a sense of relief that everything was as fabulous as it came across on-line.

The small B&B has 5 rooms, all named after local rivers. We stayed in the spacious Aeron room, which was equipped with amenities from Plasma TV and Wi-Fi to a huge bath-tub and high quality linens. The giant bed was extremely comfortable and the furniture matched the features of the listed building very stylishly.

The B&B is family-run and the keepers look after their guests, by providing a great (Welsh) breakfast (we tasted all the options over the few days of our stay and they were all great) and all the information the guests need to make the most of the their stay. All that in a friendly and genuine way.

The guest house is located on the harbour front of picturesque Aberearon, next to the Harbour Master Hotel, which has a great restaurant and bar (so good it's usually fully booked).

The little town and the adjacent coastline provide charming surroundings for a weekend away, and 3 Pen Cei provides the perfect base to make the stay ideal.

Originally published on TripAdvisor, it can be found here.