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.

Adventures of Bertie the couch – London

Max got drunk a few months ago. He was in a bad way. We decided to leave him in the office after he refused to go home. The next day we arrived to the sweet smell of ammonia. He’d pissed himself.

A few months later, Max finally felt enough guilt to buy us a new couch. Guilt is a rather rare and disturbing development in Max’s psyche.

After buying the couch from Max’s manager, we towed it through Kingston. The heat was immense and we sat down for a quick fag break. From here on in, we took a break every 5 minutes.

We passed our old school, Tiffin Boys, and decided to pop in and take a couple of snaps. Unfortunately the CCTV caught us and a couple of bemused teachers confronted us. Thankfully they were nice enough to let us take a few pictures before moving us on. That’s Mr King on the left, my old Geography teacher.

After seeing Mr King, I decided a pint would be best. The problem is the closest pub, was full of our old teachers. On a summers afternoon, all the teachers fuck off down the pub. It’s an unwritten rule that students are not to fraternise with the teachers. They’re embarressed of us. Like people don’t know they’re bloody teachers. For the Tiffinian’s amongst you, we saw:

• O’Connell
• Williams
• Liddy
• Skirton
• Lipchenska [sic]
• Girling

I started chatting to them. I offered them all a job . They kindly refused. At this point the cider soaked in and we decided to take Bertie to London.

It’s surprisingly easy to get a couch onto a train. At first, you feel slightly eccentric, but after 10 minutes it’s just like the commute. I read through that shite paper, The London Paper; While it’s better than the London Lite, it’s still just an aggregation of the AP. I’m secretly hoping that i’ll be in it tomorrow, under the “You were on the train sitting on that couch looking dapper, coffee sometime? x” section.

The couch had never seen the London Eye before, so we decided to stop by. British Airways refused our couch on the Eye. Maybe next time.

After the Eye, we dragged the sofa over the bridge towards Embankment. I got a busker to serenade Max and I. Max got a little carried away and tried to kiss me.

After that little incident, I decided I needed another drink. We entered the first pub along that steep road towards Charing Cross. The pint tasted like it’d been sweetened with sugar. Do avoid. We met some chef’s from the Royal Society of Arts, he did his best to explain what or where it was, but I really wasn’t listening. I do remember where they were from; Scotland, Liverpool and Sweden respectively. They seemed each to bear the stereotypes of their respective places.

My phone camera isn’t best suited to night pictures. We asked quite a few people to take a picture with their cameras, but no one’s emailed them to me. Darn.

I can’t remember how many people have sat on this couch. I’m assuming it’s a lot.

To the future

Bertie is resting in our office. I don’t know if he can bear another trip. We’ll try and find another sofa from somewhere. I was thinking down the Mall, Leicster Sq and Hyde Park next. During the summer we could do the festivals. Maybe calling Ikea would be a good idea.

Click on page 2 for the full gallery.

New Years Eve 2006 – 2007

I’ve got the shits like there’s no tomorrow. Last night I shat some clear liquid that looked like it came off the set of Aliens and threw chunks more violently than ever before. My uncle said he had the cure.

We get to a dank squaler of a restaurant and a bowl is placed in front of me. In it are 2 beating hearts and some gall bladders. The dead disembowleld snake is being butchered in the corner. A shot glass is placed in front of me and a milk bottle full of a reddish substance comes from under the table. This is the fabled drink. A freshly gutted snakes heart, gall bladder and snakes blood mixed with snake wine. Shot properly and you can still feel the heart beat down your throat.

My 14 year old cousin drinks with me. She’s braver than me. Once that’s out the way, I feel much better. We head off and dance the night away.

p.s will add some sexy pictures.

Siem Riep – Angker What?

I’m up in Siem Riep at the moment. Made a mate called Gregg and we’ve been bunking for a couple of days. I’m off to Phnom Penn tomorrow I think. Depends really. Met some cool Swedish girls yesterday on “bar street” in a place called Anker what? Really cool atmosphere but seeing as it’s the best Siem Riep has to offer, it’s pretty piss poor.

I tried my luck with the Swedish girls while Gregg went for some rather tatty blondes. We then went to a Cambodian club called Route One with them and partied the night away. One of the Swedes is Iranian while the other is Vietnamese which is a little cool. They’re both studying in London when they get back which should be cool.

I don’t know which i fancy more. i thought it’d come to me in a dream but then I dreamt of both and some French girls that were on the bus which just confused me.

Our Tuk Tuk driver is really cool. His name is John. I’ll get some pics up here hopefully.