steven.vu

Dim Sum Sundays | let’s catch up.

I’m addicted to dim sum. Little parcels of grease. Tasty. Every Sunday, Chris, Rachel and I head down to Soho. We park up at Haymarket and walk down to London Jade Garden Restuarant. If you know your Soho, it’s next to 1997 (With a portrait of Mao and his buddies hanging up) and Crispy duck.

We get a lil 10% discount and are ushered past the line to get into the restuarant. Rachel’s uncle owns the place. We feel special. Some how, every week they bump into people they know.

I particularly like the part where Chris comes up with a new masterplan to conquer the world. This week it was to get sponsorship to travel the world and make a reality TV show. Last week it was winning a poker tournament. So on and so forth.

After stuffing ourselves silly with food we head over to a local arcade and jackpot a machine. It pays for our dim sum. We’ve jackpotted it 9 times and failed 2 times. Not bad seeing as the jackpot is £50. The two pictures above were taken on seperate occassions.

It’s such a mundane thing to do, but I love it. It’s something to look forward to each week.

Our lovely office. Work has become a lil too much. We can’t cope on our own.

It’s Frith next to the plant and Chloe on the wooden desk. They’re working on tiny Asus EeePCs. <geek>I went up to the good ol’ TCR and bought them a couple of days after they were launched. Mine’s running Ubuntu 8.04.1 while Graham’s just got his stock Xandros Linux.</geek>

They’re lovely girls, although Chloe is trouble. I promise you we’ve cleaned up. It’s spotless now.

I find it really bizzarre how we have an office atmosphere now. We even have company nights out.

One Saturday we noticed two heavy cast iron radiators outside the school we’re at. The caretaker said we could have them. I got a teacher to drive them somewhere so we could flog them. Any takers?

My two favourite drinks. A double G & T and a double espresso. I ended the night with 7 G&T’s, 2 double espressos.

I have a soft spot for girls with piercings and tattoos. She was cute. http://suicidegirls.com/ . Go on, you mite like it.

China City | Concept at Battery Studios | Schlepp Records

I got an email a few weeks ago from Kevin. He’s been reading my site and quite randomly invited me to dinner with his friends. Not having much to do, I politely accepted his invitation. I was a little apprehensive about meeting someone through the interweb, so just to be sure I dragged Graham along. By heaven’s grace I wasn’t murdered.

China City was good. Nice food and a chilled out atmosphere. The tsingtao beer was a little too easy to drink. I refreshed myself to the game of chai mui and merrily drank the night away. I don’t think I learnt it right the first time.

We had a private room, I think they’re free with a minimum spend of £250 and you get a karaoke machine and table sitting ten. There was a white girl singing in Chinese. Apparently she studied Chinese for 4 years. How odd.

We left China City and headed over to Yates on Leicester sq. I had another couple of drinks before Chris called me. Chris and Rachel were heading to Schlepp record’s studios. It’s not actually their studios, but they rent a room at Battery Studios on 1 Maybury Gardens in WIllesden. It’s a rather professional affair. I was expecting a basement in someones house.

Chris rapping.

Ayi impersonating Chris.

The track is pretty damn good. It’s a dance track with Barry the Liverpudlian singing in Cantonese, Ayi backing in Mandarin and Chris rapping. The rapping track took 1 take. Ayi took another take and the editing was done in a pretty slap dash way using Logic. It turned out really good.

Here’s a little video of Christopher Leslie Evernden performing a few months ago.

Chris asked me why this website comes up when you search Christopher Leslie Evernden. I told him it was because I was cooler than him.

Corporate branding | Rush Hour 2 | Vietnamese food at Kingsland Rd.

Rush Hour 2

Chris Leslie Evernden aka Concept and Ayi were set to play at Rush Hour 2. A Chinese party organised by JnG promotions. He called me the day before.

I’m not a particularly busy person so said I’d come. After trying to convince a few people to come and watch and failing, I decided to go by myself.

The venue was in Bank, 24 Cornhill Rd and in a club called Abacus. Rather upmarket.

I got there and said I was on Concepts guestlist. She looked at me in awe. Was Chris this famous? She turned around and spoke to her boss; he said sorry, it’s still £10. Obviously he wasn’t that famous.

I mulled around by myself for 20 odd minutes and had a couple by myself. I bumped into Chris’s friend and got even more drunk.

Chris and Ayi got on stage at 1am. They were awful. Not because they were awful, but because the sound was awful. All you could hear was a beat, feedback every few seconds and a mess. If the sound was better, then I’m sure it wouldn’t have been that bad.

Branding.

We’re trying to create a brand. The brochure had a very corporate image so we decided to add in a mascot. I stumbled past istock.com and bought some vector monsters. We used our swatch to colour them and made some nice ID cards. Each employee now has a monster.

We’re also getting the monsters made into stamps; if you like a kid then you can stamp their work. I’ll post some pictures when they’re done.

Vietnamese food at Kingsland Rd.

There’s a road near old street that’s full of Vietnamese Restuarants. I went with mother and her friend. My mother’s friend is buying a restuarant down the road so thought she’d check out the competition.

We went to a place called Viet Grill. Owned by the people who set up Cay Tre. My mother and her friend could probably name the owners of most Vietnamese restuarants in London. It’s the way things are.

WoodGate + SnakeBite = WoodBite

I didn’t go to Oceania and meet D&D girl in the end. Decided to meet Jin, Graham and get slaughtered. We popped by Bar Malden and said hi to Pat Knight before heading down to Kingston. Old Orleans had a great 2 for 1 deal going on; 8 shots for 8 pounds or 2 cocktails for 4 pounds. Graham then introduced me to a new drink. It involved a lot of do it yourself mixing due to the drink being banned for rowdy behaviour.

WoodGate – Named due to the footballer WoodGate getting into a brawl after drinking it. Tastes like Blueberry skittles.

- Blue WKD mixed with Smirnoff Ice.

Snakebite – Monika informs me that it’s also known as Diesel up North. Tastes like someone drank a gallon of Ribenna and pissed it into a pint glass.

- Cider, Beer and Blackcurrent juice.

WoodBite – The drink. Half a pint of WoodGate, Half a pint of SnakeBite.

We went to Oceania afterwards but it was pretty shite. Thursday isn’t exactly the night to live it large. Bar Ivissa didn’t fair better.

P.S Don’t you love random Capitalisation. Camel Back.

Stand tall private

It’s Richard’s party. That columnist guy that forgets to write his columns. hint. Imogen and I decide to come along for the fun, we travel all the way to Ashstead for the pleasure. Somewhere along the way I get suitably hammered off an endless supply of BucksFizz and ask to be rugby tackled and bitten, repeatedly. Sadly more boys than girls took me up on the offer.

Last trains are missed and we sleep in the Marquee.

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Weekly Media – Travels through Europe:

I pen this article from a small room in Ljubljana, Sloevnia. There is a rather romantic tinge to the name, conjuring Eastern bloc linearism combined with new Western influx. In fact its just rather gorgeous here with huge rolling hills leaning far back into the distance and remarkably picturesque buildings sitting prettily on the banks of the river that flows through the centre. This is the third country so far, the seventh city. It has been eleven days of flowing from one place to the next in a stream of continuity. Night and day have lost much of their meaning now, I just eat when im hungry and sleep when i’m tired. We leave for Venice this evening, aiming to arrive the next morning. Now that sounds romantic.

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