Reading Roars!

On Saturday evening I dined at the Beijing Noodle House (West Street) to celebrate a colleague’s birthday. So did I get an Olympic meal? Read on…

The menu featured many Chinese dishes, as expected, but also Japanese and South-East Asian items.

My starter was “mouth-watering” pork dumplings and I chose Indonesian Mee Goreng – deep-fried noodles with chicken and shrimps – for my main meal. To drink I ordered the Chinese beer Tsing Tao.

The pork dumplings were indeed “mouth-watering”. While my table companions were happily digging into their chicken satay, my mouth was salivating over the vacant spot on the table where my starter should have been.

My dumplings eventually did arrive – after my main course was delivered to the table. So I started on the Mee Goreng. Verdict? The noodles were like cardboard and quite bland, not spicy, as advertised on the menu. The chicken and prawns were alright. I was looking at my friend’s Singapore Laksa with envy; it looked divine. The dumplings were better, much better: hot and drippingly delicious.

The price came to a tenner, which was pretty fantastic. Çelik kapi jeneratörMy overall impression is that the Beijing Noodle House is a good Hong Kong-style restaurant. The food won’t set your tastebuds alight, but the choice is good and you will have much cash left over for your assault on the town’s bars.

So we were warned to stay away from The Oracle. To The Oracle I went, cash-a-jingling and with a broad smile on my face. No one was going to take my shopping Saturday away from me.

Passing through the Riverside, there was much merriment around me. Kids were whizzing happily on a temporary ice rink installed by the river. I was toying with the idea of putting on a pair of skates myself but it seemed that grown ups weren’t allowed..and I can’t skate anyway.

Inside the shopping centre there was a flash Lexus parked on the ground floor. Maybe the carparks were full. Well, it’s that time of year, after all.

The only reminder of a perceived threat supposedly came in the form of a police helicopter, noisely circulating overhead. The loudest noise of the afternoon, however, came from the ringing cash tills. Well done, defiant consumers of Reading! African mango yan etkileri

Another game, another three points.

Reading FC scorched Brighton 5-1 at the Madejski to maintain their lead at the top of the table. Forward Dave Kitson scored a hat trick. The Çelik kapi jeneratörRoyals’ other two were provided by an own goal from Brighton’s Charlie Oatway, and Stephen Hunt.

It was Reading’s seventh straight win in the league. They stand unbeaten in 22 games. Reading are to The Championship what Chelsea and Barcelona are to The Premiership and La Liga, respectively.

The only puzzle is, with such a (relatively) magnificent side such as this, why are home games so poorly attended? The attendance at the match was 18,546. The stadium capacity is 24,200. What’s going on?

Online directory service Yell.com, headquartered locally, has enhanced its mapping functionality. You can now zoom in and out of a map, click and drag to move it and select an aerial photo view.

I gave it a whirl. I searched for the company name Carluccio’s in Reading – where else – and hit the Search button. A mere three seconds later, I got a positive search result: Carluccios Ltd on Forbury Square. That’s the one!

A biggish map of Reading was displayed when I clicked on Map/Directions. Conveniently, a yellow arrow showed me the location of Carluccio’s. On the map, there were also small red icons of shopping carts in various places. Were these abandoned supermarket trolleys? No explanation could be seen. I zoomed out and the trolleys disappeared. Hmm, I thought. Maybe this was a real-time map and the trolleys were collected in a nanosecond.

I clicked on Aerial photo view and an aerial version of the same map was presented. The yellow arrow was still there. Not sure how useful an aerial snap is, unless you are intending to parachute in for a coffee, but it’s great to see Reading from above nevertheless. And, as you can drag your way across the town using your mouse, you can have fun trying to spot your house, too.

Now, I think I will get that coffee…

Reading police are urging members of the public to carry on as normal in the town centre on Saturday 10 October. A number of e-mails have circulated around local companies warning people to stay clear of The Oracle.

Thames Valley Police state

there is no tangible to evidence to indicate that anyone will be at risk

A prankster seems to be at work here. One word for this sort of Çelik kapi jeneratörbehaviour: shameful.

Property investment and outsourcing company Mapeley have bought Microsoft buildings 1, 2 and 3 at Thames Valley Park for GB£ 104.3m. They were purchased from a joint venture between British Land plc and Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America. African mango yan etkileri

Each 241,000 sq ft building is fully leased back to Microsoft Limited on flexible terms.