Out and about

Been doing that shopping without buying anything again today ...

There's a new revamp of the centre of Bristol that opened last week - the Cabot Circus development. What they've done is take an area of the centre of Bristol that was getting rather run down and neglected and turned it into a shopping centre. Complete with cinema and a couple of the decent name department stores slotting in alongside lots of clothes shops, munchie shops and curiosity shops.

Not a bad little collection. They've anticipated the weather too, with glass overhead providing cover from the elements. The engineer eye couldn't miss seeing that they've been smart with the design, by not totally enclosing the area with the glass ceiling, there's gaps to let the air in with drains overlapping the gaps to keep the rain out.

Car parking there works well, the entrance sucks the cars off the M32 before they clog up the rest of the city. Before Cabot Circus, all the cars would tornado round the city streets in the hunt for a space in one of the myriad car parks spread around the centre. Getting out is more of a problem though but that's due to Bristol drivers not knowing that they shouldn't sit on yellow boxes blocking people's exits.

Did I buy anything today ? Nah. It's too close to birthday and Xmas season to risk upsetting someone by buying what they've already acquired. Patience Mode to On.

I'd already had breakfast at work, with the lovely Angela joining us too which was a pleasant surprise, so not too much lunch needed. Which was probably a good thing seeing as the various "Insert-Coffee-Shop-Name-Here" places in Cabot were packed. So I nipped off to the other large shopping centre in Bristol where I ended up watching someone again ...

I like a bit of hot chocolate and the place I went hunting for it has had a bit of a Chinese invasion. Chinese girl on the till wearing a t-shirt with a bunny on it. Chinese lad with spiky hair doing the coffees and the hot chocolates. Chinese girl "in the back" (figuratively speaking) doing the washing up. What I noticed was the energy these three brought to the job, especially the one with the bunny.

If you can imagine 3 people doing the work of five, that's how bouncy these three were. If there's one characteristic the Chinese people seem to share, it's to throw themselves into whichever task is before them wholeheartedly. It shows by how they seem to ration the minutes in the day, getting as much value as they can out of each and every second. It's an admirable characteristic, although it does show me up for the lazy person that I am.

They didn't appear rushed though, Spiky Lad had a big smile when he came over with my Toastie and Bunny Girl was very patient with me when I was having trouble making out her accent. I think she was hyper to my hypo. The sad thing though is that the new shopping area looks to be drawing trade away from the older area as people look to the New Thing. BB's didn't have any queue, whereas I walked out of the "Insert-Coffee-Shop-Name" places in Cabot due to huge queues (at 2.30 ish). Hopefully that will balance out over time.

Time to get back to book/game plus iTunes - I have a challenge this weekend, to try and get the "Recently Played" to over a 1000 different tracks. It's now sitting at 892 different songs played over the last 14 days, for a total of 2 days 14 hours. There's 1700 tracks for iTunes to choose from on this laptop, so I think I have a decent chance to hit that 1000.

PS Now playing Antmusic by Adam and the Ants.