That Friday feeling

M and I both had the day off today so, after dropping Little Planet off at daycare, we headed over to Exmouth Market for breakfast at Caravan: flat whites, scrambled eggs with chives and organic salmon on toasted sourdough, black pudding and, for M, a full fry up (photo above).

We took a bus down to the Tate Modern, where we visited the exhaustive and excellent Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera exhibition. I was engrossed by this show as it appealed to the nosy parker in me. One of my fondest memories from childhood is when my father and I went out walking after dinner through our neighbourhood at dusk and both of us looking in through the windows of houses as we passed by and imagining what was going on and what was being said!

There was a very un-PC woman at the exhibition - standing in front of a photo of slum dwellers in Alabama, she exclaimed loudly to her companion, "I'm glad I don't live in those conditions!"; standing in front of a photo showing the broad behind of a woman in a red dress, she wondered aloud "Do you think she is black?" I was lost for words.

Afterwards, we bought several story books for Little Planet in the Tate shop, including the beautiful, fantastical story book Mouk - a wordless picture book about a little bear who sets off on a journey around the world and discovers different cultures and makes new friends around the globe. We have a long weekend ahead of us in the UK (Monday is a public holiday) so we will be doing alot of reading with her. I can't wait, as I love reading children's story books.

Then we walked along the Southbank to the British Film Institute, where we watched Apichatpong Weerasethakul's haunting, mysterious and political short film Phantoms Of Nabua. Teenage descendants of Nabua's Thai rebel farmers play football at night with a fire ball. Beautiful.

We walked across river into Soho where we lunched on amazingly subtle yet flavourful udon noodle dishes at Frith Street's Koya. M had his with prawn tempura in a hot broth, and I had mine cold with fried tofu and spring onions (photo below).

We popped down to the Algerian Coffee Store on Old Compton Street to stock up on coffee beans (Costa Rican and Indian) and Mrs Kibble's Olde Sweet Shoppe on Brewer Street to stock up on cola cubes and apple & custard sweets, before watching a little bit of Tacita Dean's new film Craneway Event at the Frith Street Gallery on Golden Square. We couldn't resist checking out the new iPad in the Apple store on Regent's Street - we'll definitely be buying one but may wait until the next iteration of the device coming out later this year (which will have multi-tasking capability - ie ability to have two apps open and working at once).

Then home to pick up Little Planet, play with her a bit then put her to bed. M's cooking dinner now: spaghetti with butter beans, pancetta and rocket (from our garden).

What a lovely day!

Duvet days

• On Saturday, with my mother-in-law looking after the baby for the weekend, M and I headed into town for lunch at Japanese restaurant Abeno, near the British Museum. We started with hiyayakko (chilled tofu topped with bonito flakes and grated ginger) and miso soup. I then ate om soba (fried noodles served wrapped in an omelette) with prawns, pork and squid. M ordered a spicy naniwa (pork and kimchi) okonomiyaki. He drank green tea and I drank calpico soda, which was very nice and tasted a little like lychee juice
  
  
• The place was stuffy with academics. I used to be one myself (lecturing during my PhD) and sitting in Abeno listening to the conversations around me made me remember why I had left academia a few years ago
  
  
• We chose a new flat screen HD TV, for our living room, in the Sony Centre on Tottenham Court Road
  
  
• We viewed Jia Jia Wang's colourful toytown paintings at the Alexandre Pollazzon gallery near Goodge Street
  
  
• Then cabbed it to Spruth Magers gallery off Bond Street to see Thomas Demand's latest solo exhibition Presidency featuring photographs of life-size, near-perfect paper models of the most powerful room in the world - the Oval Office (photo above)
  
  
• Earlier this Summer, we bought from Postcard Teas a brass tea caddy to commemorate Little Planet's birth. Handmade in Kyoto, the metal will age as she ages and be a lovely keepsake to be passed down through the generations. On Saturday, we returned to the store to have its accompanying brass tea scoop engraved by a member of the family who had made the caddy. Little Planet's name has its Japanese equivalent and has a beautiful meaning, so her name in Japanese was carved into the metal
  
  
• We also bought some ginger and clove loose tea
  
  
• We browsed the new Dries Van Noten collection in Liberty and also shopped at Muji, Borders, Foyles and Space NK
  
  
• I revisited the Dayanita Singh show at the Frith Street gallery. It was M's first visit to the show and he too enjoyed the haunting and luminous photos of India illuminated. He bought me an early Christmas gift of a boxed set of the photographer's travel journal work across India, Indian Diaries: Sent A Letter
  
  
• Both the Nordic Bakery and Fernandez & Wells were packed so we high-tailed it in the rain to Mrs Marengo's on Lexington Street for strong coffees, sticky toffee pudding and a fruit and nut slice
  
  
• The day ended and the night began with a friend's birthday party in St Albans
  
  
• I spent most of Sunday vegging out in bed, snuggled deeply inside my duvet, while Little Planet played with my husband and her grandmother or napped. I had spent a sleepless Friday night, tossing and turning in bed for no reason and ended up sleeping on the couch downstairs (my mother-in-law was in the guest bedroom) for fear of waking M and Little Planet up. And then the Saturday night, of course, had been a late one at the party. I only surfaced to eat croissants for breakfast and bacon butties for lunch
  
  
• I was feeling a little anti-social, I admit, longing only to read the papers, surf the net and doze all day; to not have to speak with people. We all have days like that, don't we. But in the evening we had dinner guests - one of whom is a vegetarian - and I certainly enjoyed eating M's roasted aubergine with pumpkin and feta cheese, white bean and barley salad with a beetroot and yoghurt dressing - both recipes from Silvena Rowe, followed by his puff pastry apple tart
  
  
• The weekend marked a successful week of weaning Little Planet onto solids. Successful in the sense that she ate all the food we gave her (a tablespoon at a time of baby rice for breakfast and sweet potato for lunch). But she doesn't seem bothered whether we offer it or not; she has been nonplussed by the tastes and textures so far, opening her mouth excitedly only for water, which she loves. I think I will offer her broccoli this week - not sure how she will take this...
  
  
• Little Planet has been rolling from her front to her back for a few weeks now, but on Sunday she rolled from her back to her front for the first time
  
  
• She'll be 6 months old at the end of this week. Here she is wrapped up in her new snowsuit for a buggy ride in the cold weather...

Tick tock, tick tock

This weekend, viewed the brooding American prints at the British Museum, including Edward Hopper and my new favourite dark and foreboding Martin Lewis (above) / Also the meditative Fascination with nature: Birds, flowers and insects in Chinese art exhibition, and a wander around the Korea room / Sex And The City movie sold out so consoled myself by looking at gadgets - bought a Canon photo printer, a Sony HD camcorder and desktop and fullsize tripods / Lunched on pork & kimchi and cheese & asparagus okonomiyaki at Japanese restaurant Abeno / Baked blueberry muffins / Ate steak with pepperonata and capers for dinner, cooked by M (below) / Hoovered the entire house in a sweaty frenzy, trying to kickstart labour / Tick tock, tick tock...

6.02pm

I never blog about my clients here, but last night was just too exciting to not mention it. Our company worked with Apple and O2 to develop the iPhone for the UK. Developers had been working night and day within a very tight timeline to bring it to life. Last night, at the end of the working day, when most people would usually be in the pub, 50 developers or so plus our two MDs, the client services (including me) and project management teams and the senior client began the countdown to 6.02pm. Then we watched on the console as the first person bought then activated their iPhone - at 6.03! As the minutes ticked by, the console became a hive of Matrix-like activity with sales and activations streaming down the screen. The developers will be there most of the weekend keeping an eye on things.

I finally dragged myself away from the fun to meet M for a lovely Thai dinner at the Thai Garden Cafe on Museum Street. As I walked there to meet him, I spotted three people playing with their iPhones along Oxford Street. We ate green curry with soft shell crab and red curry with beef. Then we popped into the Waitrose in the Brunswick to buy spotted dick with custard for dessert at home.

It's strange as I have no inclination to buy an iPhone right now - I'm waiting for it to go 3G - but last night I kept waking up from dreams of owning an iPhone, playing with it and showing it off to strangers and friends. I've spent over 4 months with this project and I'm delighted the launch went so well.

And even more to celebrate - it's the weekend!

Living in a digital world

Ofcom have released their latest annual report into 2007 media usage in the UK. The report reveals that older media such as TV and radio are being abandoned in favour of new technology such as the internet, DVR players and MP3 players. Daily mobile phone usage is up 58% compared to 2002 and internet use has grown 158%. In 2007, people spend less time watching TV or chatting on a fixed line phone. Women are spending more time online than men in two key age groups and so called "silver surfers" - the over-65s - are spending more time online than any other age group.

How has the digital age changed my life? My God, in countless ways:

• I'm less frustrated now when making arrangements to meet people
• I have the flexibility to work from home if I need to
• I have information at my fingertips
• I can multi-task better and get more done - I am convinced I am making better use of my synapse connections now!
• I save money by buying or comparing prices online
• I keep in better touch with my parents and also my family in India
• Convergence is the greatest concept ever - to make calls, take photos, listen to music, play games, write notes and surf the internet all on a single mobile phone is heaven itself
• I choose what to watch or listen to when I want - allowing me to live my life off line to its fullest.
• I have a whole new career!
• Digital media is perfect for my short attention span. I thrive on flitting around from one thing to another and new technology facilitates this
• I can still switch it all off whenever I need to

There are still things that annoy me about the digital age, but largely it's to do with the personalities of the people who use the technology rather than the technology itself. For example:

• I'm constantly amazed at the rudeness of people who text or email during meetings
• I have no patience for those who use txt-spk in emails or letters
• I worry about children who spend more time consuming media than creating it
• I wonder whether I would read or write or generally create more if I didn't have the internet
• When I read a regular newspaper or was limited to just five TV channels, I suspect I was exposed to a wider variety of information. My digital life is far more targetted and I know I stumble across less as a result

This interesting report is available to download from Ofcom.

Feedburning

I've always suspected Planethalder of having far more RSS feed reader visitors than website visitors. I read all my blogs via Google Reader (even via the mobile phone) and if a blog doesn't have a feed, or if it doesn't have "full text" enabled within its feed, then I'm unlikely to read. Normal website statistics packages, including Sitemeter and Google Analytics, do not count RSS feed visits in their totals. So I've started redirecting my Blogger feed to FeedBurner, which tracks a variety of feed statistics such as how many subscribers you have, how many hits your feeds are getting per day, what posts are the most popular. The service, which is now Google-owned, is completely free. If you subscribe to my site, you shouldn't have to change anything - the usual Blogger feed you subscribed via should simply auto-redirect to FeedBurner everytime you read via RSS. It'll be interesting to see what the feed statistics show.

If you are on Blogger and want to do something similar then visit the Quick Start For Blogger page on FeedBurner. Here are the processes for WordPress and Typepad blogs - I think the auto-redirects from your existing to your new FeedBurner feeds work the same way.

Bed surf

There used to be two things beginning with "S" that I enjoyed doing in bed the most: Sleep and S.. well... you know. Now that M has signed up for an internet package on his phone, I can now add Surfing to my list. What a luxurious way to catch up with the news and blogs. We've never managed to install wireless in our house, so this is a complete revelation for me.