Mahinda’s Little World

Okay, so here’s a quick(ish) summary of what I got up to while under "blog blackout"…

• (Snow) White Christmas
  Had Emily and her friend Martin over for Christmas dinner. It was almost like a family Christmas, and absolutely lovely.
• Welsh New Year
  Went to Haverfordwest to see in 2007 with "Chem Eng" mates — Will, Cath, Dave, Roger, Mandy and Noëlle. A fun few days with old friends, most of whom I only see about once a year.
• Japanese day at Howell’s
  Another "film night", where we managed just the one film — Funky Forest: The First Contact, quite possibly the single strangest film I’ve ever seen. As the comments on IMDB will tell you, it’s a strange one. As the movie website’s in Japanese, here’s a slightly more accessible page…and another. The day included an hour-long no-English-spoken Japanese lesson, fun and games, Japanese/Korean takeaway and much general merriment.
• Many many desserts
  Pudding night at Julie’s place, in deepest darkest Stockport — I contributed my first real attempt at crème brulée, complete with Madagascan vanilla (from Sarah) and Sri Lankan cinnamon (picked up the last time I was there). Much dessert with the MADwalkers bunch, complete with board games and Banzai! Between that and Tenby Towers Christmas, I managed something like 12 desserts in one weekend!
• Tenby Towers Christmas
  We ended up having this on Jan 13th, thanks to highly mismatched schedules. It was fun, of course, but nothing like the Tenby Towers Christmas Dinners of old — those really were something special, whereas the last two have been more like normal dinners, albeit tasty ones. Much as I enjoy living with Paul, Andy, Gillian and Tara, I really miss the days of Al, Dave and Stubie.
• Winter Ales Fest
  Tasty tasty beers! As I’ve been so busy with work, I couldn’t really immerse myself into it like I did last year, and didn’t quite enjoy it as much as a result. Still, it was nice seeing the old faces, especially Verity, Rob, Andrew and the Manc U30 crowd. Friday night’s session was pretty amazing, as it seemed at one point that all my friends in the whole world were there!
• More Howell-related events
  Howell’s leaving on a jet plane any time now, to head off to Japan to teach English for a year. As such, he’s had many many leaving events to say goodbye to Blighty, and Manchester in particular. The ones I’ve been able to attend (at least in part) have included a pub crawl around Fallowfield, a 16-pub crawl in the city centre (I could only make the last 5 or 6, plus an attempt at playing hide-and-seek at 2am in Castlefield!) and a Rusholme curry. Goodbye, Howell!
• Hockey
  I’ve been playing hockey, as per usual. We’re currently in a bit of a losing run — defeat after defeat, including a 5-0, 7-0 and 5-0. As a defender, it hurts — the thing is, I’m actually playing quite well.
• Claire’s 30th
  Last weekend saw Claire’s *cough*tieth birthday celebrations, down in Newbury. We went hovercraft racing, and much ale was consumed. I also managed to get a new TV and squeeze in a brief visit to the folks. I’ll try and give this one a proper post of its own at some point.

When not doing all that lot, I spent most evenings (and a few Sundays) tapping away on my work laptop. Not ideal, but sometimes I suppose you just have to do it. And no, I don’t get paid overtime.