A Typical British Bank Holiday Weekend
The Easter Bank Holiday Weekend, I feel is rather underrated, particularly after the feror surrounding Christmas. Under normal circumstances, I would have made big plans for the four day break. However, two things worked against me this year. Firstly I had to work on Good Friday. Working in an international environment, where you are supporting customers across large geographic areas means that support does not close down, like it would if I worked for a solely UK firm. Having said this, I was given the option to work from home, which I duely took. Secondly, my family from Australia were over for a few days and there was a great deal to cram in before the second leg of their European tour (which took them onto the continent earlier this morning).
Let me roll back the clock to Good Friday. I was woken by my cousins at 6.30am, this would not have been an issue if I had been working in the office. I am normally just grabbing my manbag before heading out the door at the time in the morning. The good old “working from home” phrase, gave me the comfort of an whole extra hour in bed. This disappeared like a dream out of my window. Instead, I was harrassed (being the most polite adjective I could use) by my cousins, Alisha (12) and Jay (9) for a good solid hour before I got the chance to get up and get ready. Thankfully the day went a great deal quicker, the moment I logged onto my work laptop and explained I needed quiet to get on with my reports. The day went rather quickly, I had so many things to complete and e-mails to send that it was midday within a blink of an eye. After lunch (when I finally grabbed a shower and changed) I remembered I had a few additional reports to run, to assist my colleague, who would return to the office today. Around 4.30pm, I signed off.
Television has had to take a major back seat in my life this week. My relatives arrived on Wednesday afternoon and I spent most of the evening catching up with them. Although, of course there was time to watch the crunch first leg of the Champions League quarter-final. I think it is a bit too late for me to even go into reviewing the amazing come back, perhaps the best I have seen by Arsenal. Anusha was texting me, during the match, on the edge of her sofa. I text her back, “We need to score a goal, to get back in the game!”. She replied, a second after Walcott scored, “Perfect timing!”. Minutes before the penalty, my Mum was convinced we would draw the match. Lady Luck was shying on us for a change, but will we have enough for the return leg in Spain tomorrow night? We shall see. Back to the main topic at hand, television. I had downloaded all my shows as usual but not had the time to watch any until Friday evening. I watched the season finale of Greek. For the record, Clark Duke once again pulls off a faboulous performance playing the “third wheel” with Rusty and Dana during Spring Break. I will miss the show, I do not know how but the script writers keep it fresh and funny and strong, even after an amazing sixy four episodes. Chuck I did not get to see under early Sunday afternoon and to date I have yet to watch FlashForward and Fringe. Doctor Who, I had hoped to watch on Sky+ but unfortunately the digibox was switched off at 6.20pm, so I had to catch it on iPlayer. I tried to do this around 7pm yesterday evening, but the family arrived, a few minutes into the start of the show, and the noise was just too much, so I stopped the recording and hoped to watch it fresh again later over the weekend. This evening, around 6.30pm, when I got back from Westfield, I watched the season premiere with Katalina. My sister, Samantha’s, friend Kirsty’s, six year old daughter.
Chuck jumped the shark a season ago, the whole premise of the show has been turned on it’s head. Having said that, it is still worth watching for the eye candy and hilarious supporting cast (most of whom work at the Buy More). While the enjoyment factor may have gone down a notch or two, it is still good fun to watch but the formula (as far fetched as it was/is) has I feel, run it’s course and it now time to put the series to bed. I mean what else could possible be done, that hasn’t already in three years. There are only so many twists and turns you can pull on the spy genre, without going stall to quickly.
With my weekend, relatively free, we planned to go to Windsor Castle with the family on Friday (my sister Natalie being both driver and guide) but looking on the Royal website, I discovered our 1 year passes were not valid over the Easter weekend. The plan was changed and everyone headed to Reading instead. I had some peace and quiet for the day and tried to be productive. I got a few things sorted out, got the car vacuumed and screen wash topped up. At 6pm I had to go collect my Dad from Bray, so that practically killed my television slot in half. I did not get back home until two hours later when I was expecting to be about half an hour tops.
Went to the brand spanking new Vue at Westfield, London this lunchtime to catch Clash Of The Titans. This has to be my favourite Vue cinema to date and we got to our seats, just as the world famous Pearl & Dean titles played, talk about perfect timing! I would give the movie, a six out of ten. The effects were good, but nothing amazing for 3D (have our eyes got used to the technology already) but the ending was rather abrupt. The first half hour was perhaps rather slow in pace and the second half had to make up for it. If you go and see, you can try and spot all the British actors in the supporting cast. (Do not worry, they are rather obvious!). Sam Worthington, once again, puts on a tour-de-force performance as the title character, but Neeson and Fiennes are used very little, with the later reminding me of his portrayal of a Jedi Knight in The Phantom Menace. However, perhaps my review is rather unfair, as I have not seen the original 1981 version. I recall from my middle school days, assembleys when the story of Medusa (among other Greek myths and legends) would be told). I was at that impressible age when these stories freaked me out but I was not interested to find out more, there were more important things to do like play computer games. I think I was hoodwinked by the trailers, if you strip away the gimmick of 3D (and it is purely a gimmick here, no new ground broken, like in Avatar!) the movie is very poor. It lacks substance, even for a remake. I may even go as far as to say it is perhaps the worst blockbuster of the year so far. Thankfully there are much better films to look forward to, particularly in late July.