Jason Hutchens: letter three

I must begin this, my latest travelogue, with sad news... I haven't launched my rocket yet. It's fully assembled and waiting patiently in my living room on its launching pad, but all launches have been cancelled at the last minute due to unfavourable weather conditions. I feel just like NASA.

My last travelogue ended just prior to Chinese New Year, so let me begin this one from there. Chinese New Year is celebrated in the first week of February, and the tradition is that you eat lots of good food and wear lots of red clothing, red being a lucky colour. We celebrated CNY in style at Rob, Hooi and Tsung's spacious apartment, with food provided by Chai, Hooi's visiting brother, and the highlight being a delicious steamboat, courtesy of Kee-Ju and Chai-Lin.

I should segue here, because I realise now that I haven't as yet introduced the cast of characters, which I really should have done in my very first travelogue. I'm sure you know who I am, and I shouldn't need to introduce D., but there are a whole bevy of people over here who shall remained unmentioned. Collectively they may be known as The Unmentionables. The Usual Gang consists of me, D., Cathy, Rob, Hooi, Tsung and Yuri, so, when I fail to mention who we went to see Madame Butterfly with, for example, you may safely assume that the Usual Gang was involved.

Anyway, let's get back to more important issues. What is a steamboat, I hear you ask? It's basically a Chinese version of fondue, where you cook your own small portions of fish, chicken, beef, liver, rice balls and vegetables in a delicious broth which sits bubbling on the table. Our hosts put on such a big spread that we could make nary a dent, and, by the end of the night, quite a lot of food was left over. Left-overs are, like Christmas, an integral part of CNY, except that instead of being left with lots of turkey and ham, you're left with lots of uncooked meat.

The following day we went to see Blast!, an American marching band spectacular. Sounds weird, I know. Blast! begins with the wonderful Bolero, played by people toting drums, cymbals and brass instruments, moving around the stage in formation. Things take a turn to the strange after that, although each scene is basically a re-interpretation of what a marching band could be. Dancers twirled guns, large blades of grass, flags, flowers and so forth; they were always twirling something. The overall highlight was the guys on drums trying to out-do each other.

Sunday was spent in style at the Dorchester, where we indulged in high tea, which is an English tradition. High tea involves dressing up in your best clothes, then sitting down in a hotel tea room, sipping the tea of your choice (my favourite is Lapsang Souchong, also known as "bacon tea" due to its smoky flavour). Food comes in three courses; sandwiches first, with the crusts cut off, filled with things such as cucumber and smoked salmon, followed by freshly baked scones with a variety of jams and Cornish clotted cream, and rounded off with a selection of fine pastries. That evening we saw Madame Butterfly at the Royal Albert Hall, a spectacular production.

During the week D. and I decided to see Toy Story 2 in Leister Square, where they have installed a new digital projection theatre (no film is used at all). We got the tickets the day before, and happened upon the premiere of The Beach. Neither of us was interested in seeing Leonardo, so we hurried away to have dinner.

On the following Sunday we took a trip to Vinopolis, a wine museum. It is situated on Southbank, close to Shakespeare's Globe, an old, thatched roof theatre. Vinopolis takes you through the history of wine, and to all of the major wine regions of the world. There are various tasting tables set up throughout the place, and we sampled a lot of interesting wines (and came home with half a dozen bottles). The highlight was a fantastic Tapas bar which sold 200 wines by the glass, including $250 bottles of Champagne. Sensational!

You might remember my friend Robert McLaughlin who is now doing postdoctorate studies at Oxford? He's better known as Ram, and he and his girlfriend met D. and me the following night to see The Inspector Calls, a fabulous play which follows the fall of an upper-class household after it's revealed by the mysterious Inspector Gool that they are all, in some way, implicated in the recent suicide of a young woman. Ram managed to get box seats, one for him and Ruth and one for D. and myself, so we felt quite posh. To balance that out, we ate cheap, sensational Vietnamese food at Cam Phat afterwards (I shall deliberately avoid the obvious joke about homosexuals here).

D. had been getting progressively more tired with her job in London, and by Wednesday she suggested that we should go somewhere for a few days to relax. We decided on Spain, and left the following morning. Barcelona is a beautiful city, and we were treated to sensational weather for our stay. We ate in authentic Tapas bars which we found in dingy alleys, we ate seafood in style at a yacht club, we sampled Cava, the famous Spanish sparkling wine, and we (or D., rather) shopped and shopped, coming back with a dozen new items of clothing. We spent one night at Montserrat, a benedictine monastery set in the mountains about one hour by train out of Barcelona. If you've ever read The Name of The Rose, you should be able to picture the monks in the long black robes who would live in such a place. We watched them chant in the evening, following a great hike over the mountain trails, and we ate paela afterwards.

On Wednesday I went to see Woman in Black, a thriller about a man who has had a terrible experience in the past, and is attempting catharsis by writing, and then presenting, his story. The play is set in an old theatre, which lends a degree of realism. The man has come to the theatre in search of somebody to help him present his story, and the young man whom he finds becomes embroiled in the tale. Some of the scenes are performed with no lighting, save a candle, and they build up a tremendous amount of suspense. D. was too scared to even attend, and strange sounds emanated from Cathy during some scenes.

The next few weeks were fairly unremarkable in that we didn't attend any plays or opera, and we didn't travel in Europe. We did, however, dine out, go to art galleries, see movies and so on. I shan't bother you with the details!

On the first Monday of this month we went to see Les Miserables, D.'s favourite musical. Les Mis has been playing in London non-stop for fifteen years or so, and I reckon that some of the performers are getting pretty jaded with it by now. It was entertaining, but I reckon Starlight Express had more catchy tunes, and Madame Butterfly was a more moving story. Still, you can't really go past "master of the house", can you?

Two high school friends of D. and Cathy, Elaine and Lucy, visited London on Friday, and the five of us decided to take the Eurostar (the train which goes under the Channel Tunnel) to Bruges, a small city in Belgium. Bruges is famous for beer, chocolate, waffles, mussels and lace. We skipped the lace and sampled the four food groups, starting with buying many kilograms of chocolate. We had a fantastic dinner of lobster and mussels which cost about a third of what it would have in London. The highlight was a pub crawl around the town, where we sampled many of the various Belgian beers, and returned to the hotel with an extensive array of interesting Belgian beer glasses which had somehow found their way into our jacket pockets and backpacks. It may seem strange to go to Belgium for one night, but, believe me, you can pack a whole lot of experience into two days. We had a ball!

I should tell you about a little hobby of mine which I've developed since I've moved to London. Whenever I see a tourist taking a photo, I try to get into the picture, if I can do so unobtrusively. I then smile and wave, the idea being that in ten years time, when they're sifting through their photo albums, showing their grandchildren what they did in Europe, they'll spot me in the background. Silence will descend as the family stares at the photo in surprise, and this will finally be broken when someone exclaims, "Hey! Isn't that Jason Hutchens?"

Well, that's all we've been doing. Next week we're off to Israel, followed by a few places within England before we go to Prague with Nazy in a months time. Let me quickly tell you about what I've been doing at work, and explain exactly why D. and I are off to Israel.

As you know from my previous travelogue, I have been working at Lionhead Studios on a computer game called Black&White. What you may not know is that the game was recently featured at the announcement of Microsoft's game console, the X-Box. For the past few months I have been sworn to secrecy about the Microsoft deal (we had the Microsoft big-wigs visit us, show us the X-Box prototype, and request that we demonstrate the game at the announcement). The part of the game I was working on involves the challenges that you will be faced with while playing the game, and we needed to get a few challenges ready for the announcement. It was a lot of fun working to a deadline under all the secrecy, and observing the reaction of the public and the press when the announcement was made.

As far as the Israel trip goes, a few weeks ago I was contacted by a lawyer from Israel on behalf of a wealthy venture capitalist. The lawyer flew to London, took me out to lunch, and tried to convince me to come to Israel to be a part of an artificial intelligence R&D campus they are establishing. I have my own plans for my future, so I declined, but I did tell the lawyer about a few of my ideas in case his boss wanted to fund their development. A week later the lawyer contacted me again, offering to fly both D. and myself to Israel for four days. I don't know what to expect, but I've got my fingers crossed. We would love to see Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Tel Aviv and the Dead Sea, so it was an opportunity not to be missed. And it will make a change from travelling throughout western Europe. I'll let you know what transpired in my next travelogue.

Anyway, my dear friends and family, I feel that it's time to wrap things up. I trust you've enjoyed the read, and that this little letter finds you well. Bro', could you print this out for the folks as per usual? Thanks. See-you all in June. Bye!