Tag: Mike Smith

Dim Sum At New Loon Fung In Chinatown With Rohan Candappa, 2 August 2022

Are you a fan of dim sum?

…asked Rohan, while we were messaging each other to make the arrangements for a lunchtime meet up.

Is the sky blue, is the Pope a Catholic, do bears shit in the woods and is a pig’s arse pork?

…I felt like replying, but instead I sent Rohan a link to the Ogblog piece about my first ever dim sum experience, so long ago it was before I had even met Rohan…whom I met when we started Alleyn’s School in September 1973:

From Yan Chow (Or Do I Mean Yang Chow?) In Streatham To Dim Sum In Soho, Chinese New Year, Probably February 1972

In that case, let’s meet at 12:30 in the middle of Gerrard Street.

Great, I thought, this will be my first visit to Chinatown for years and I miss the place.

My childhood memory of trying dim sum for the first time must be my favourite anecdote about dim sum in Chinatown, but I do have another treasured memory on that topic.

In the mid to late 1990s, while working with the late, great Professor Mike Smith, we found ourselves nearby and decided to continue our discussions over a dim sum lunch. Studying an extensive card, I wondered whether Mike had ever tried duck tongues – a dish I had tried before (I think in Hong Kong) and rather liked. Mike said he was up for anything and thus we ordered, amongst several other things, a portion of tongues.

Mike Smith, normally calm

On tasting the anatine delicacy, Mike freaked out.

Oh my God – they’ve got bones in their tongues! Ducks have bones in their tongues! Uggh.

Even after we agreed that the bone-like core of the duck’s tongue was probably hard cartilage rather than bone, Mike was too discombobulated by the discovery to eat any more of that dish…

…which, to anyone who knew Mike well, proves that he was seriously discombobulated. Indeed, Mike told the “dim sum discovery that ducks have bones in their tongues” story to anyone who’d listen for ages after the event.

Returning to 2022, I wondered whether Rohan had chickened out (or should I say ducked out) of picking a venue, but it turned out he had a specific venue in mind all along: New Loon Fung. As we entered, I was pretty sure this was the same venue as the Mike Smith tongue incident all those years ago. Seeing duck tongues on the menu pretty much confirmed my theory – you don’t see those on the menu in many dim sum places in London.

I told Rohan the story. Of course he agreed we needed to order some, along with the several other things we both wanted to try.

Perhaps the waiters had a sense of foreboding about non-Chinese people ordering a delicacy so quintessentially Chinese as duck tongues. The restaurant was heaving by the time we placed our order, almost exclusively with people who were visibly Chinese or at least of Chinese origin.

We asked a couple of times for the tongues, once it was clear that all our other dishes had long since been delivered. Eventually our portion came:

Duck got your tongue, Rohan? He sure doesn’t look 100% sure

We “toasted” Mike, each of us with a tongue on our chopsticks, Rohan tried that one tongue, then he deferred the rest of the plate to me, leaving me in a similar position, plate of tongues-wise, as I had been in 25 or so years ago with Mike Smith.

I’m old enough and ugly enough now that I don’t do anything I don’t want to do…

…said Rohan, when I pressed the point, just to be sure he wasn’t simply deferring my chosen delicacy out of politeness.

I guess I might be on my own in the matter of liking the duck tongues dish – I recall Janie not much liking it either.

Rohan and I chatted about many things, including how most of the eateries we knew from the old days had gone from Chinatown – New Loon Fung being a rare perennial. I think it was known as Dragon Phoenix “back in the day”, but it looks and feels like the same place of old.

After parting company with Rohan, I took a stroll around Chinatown, confirming that most of my old haunts had vanished.

Strangely and most coincidentally, I got an e-mail from Michael Mainelli about 48 hours later asking me if I could recommend a place in Chinatown for him and the family to go to after a show – all the places he remembered had closed down since his last visit.

I was able to provide some helpful advice. Really I should put the time from my afternoon off onto my timesheet as R&D for the business. Only joking, only joking.

Serious business, this dim sum eating

A Personal Tribute To Professor Mike Smith, 12 November 2020

Janie and I were shocked and deeply saddened to learn that Mike Smith had died suddenly, on the morning of 12 November 2020.

I have known Mike since early 1995, when I went to visit him (and Marianna) at Keele University, at the behest of Michael Mainelli, in the very early days of our business, The Z/Yen Group. I have written up the very first 1995 visit – click here and below:

The Day I Saw Slade & The Smiths At Keele, 10 January 1995

Michael, who had already known and worked on and off with Mike Smith for 16 years by then, was aware that Mike was possibly looking for a change and might be the answer to my skills shortages, especially when advising civil society organisations on matters information systems and/or informatics.

We dipped our metaphorical toes in the working together water in the summer of 1995. Then, in 1996, Mike moved down to London, taking an employment contract with Z/Yen for “most-of-a-post”, while retaining an element of academic interest through a part-time professorship at QMW (now Queen Mary University of London).

Mike was a terrific mentor and an exceptionally brilliant systems architect. Advisory work was less his forte. But through the triumphs and difficulties we enjoyed and endured together during those years, the important thing is that we had tremendous respect for each other, forming a firm and enduring friendship.

Mike also remained an associate and close friend of Z/Yen after moving on to form Medix, which at that time was a research business for the health sector based around some of Mike’s ingenious software. Mike retained the rights to the core of his research systems and latterly Z/Yen started to use them and worked with Mike again on various projects.

It was while Mike and I were working together on a project at Moorfields in 2014 that he sprung upon me the idea that I should learn to play a musical instrument for relaxation. He recommended the baritone ukulele. Then, one day, when we were meeting a senior Moorfields medic, Mike turned up with an instrument and presented it to me at the start of the meeting.

Janie and I were about to go off to Oman for a short break; Mike insisted that I take the instrument with me, despite my concerns about travelling with a loan instrument.

A Short Break in Oman, Zighy Bay, 1 to 12 March 2014

That was me up and running…or do I mean “up and strumming”? I know Mike was thrilled that I took to the instrument with such gusto.

Indeed, the last time we saw Mike was at the start of this ill-fated year, 2020, when Janie and I went over to Mike & Marianna’s place to have dinner with them and the kids. Naturally it was also a musical session.

A Gentle Start To 2020, Including Music & Food With The Smiths & The Neighbours, Early January 2020

Janie and I were due to reciprocate the hospitality; we had a date in the diary for April, but of course lockdown put paid to that and we didn’t get to reschedule during this crazy on-off year, which is such a shame. But Janie and I are both grateful that our last memory of being with Mike is such a happy one.

A Gentle Start To 2020, Including Music & Food With The Smiths & The Neighbours, Early January 2020

4 January 2020: The Smiths

Our first outing of the decade was a visit to Mike and Marianna Smith’s house; an opportunity to eat together, make some music together and to see their kids, Eva and Bob, now that they are teenagers.

For those Ogblog readers who don’t know…

…and who are looking for somebody to blame for my music-making…

…it was Mike Smith who got me into the idea of playing the four-string guitar.

Mike makes & refurbishes stringed instruments of many varieties – the picture below depicts Mike playing a mandola, with a cello-like thing made from a half-baked mandolin by his side:

The pictures imply that Mariana did all the cooking and that Mike and I did all the playing, but that would be unfair on Mike (who prepared much of the delicious Mexican meal we enjoyed) and indeed on Eva, who is cultivating pie making skills, as illustrated above.

Bob & Eva chilling in gadget corner

We also spent plenty of time chatting too, about the kids school activities, Mike’s latest initiatives and learning some more about Mariana’s Slovak family and background.

One strange coincidence vis-a-vis the music and Mariana. Amongst other things, I was tinkling the renaissance song Belle Qui Tiens Ma Vie, which I am currently working on with Ian Pittaway, my early music teacher.

A few days after our delightful evening with The Smiths, I read Ian Pittaway’s essay on this piece and its context:

The pavan, the priest and the pseudonym: ‘Belle qui tiens ma vie’ and Arbeau’s ‘Orchésographie’ (1589)

Ian has added an annex to that essay about the Czechoslovakian folk group, Spirituál kvintet, who wrote and recorded a “Czechoslovakian protest” version of this song in the 1960s:

On discovering the coincidental link between the song and Mariana’s origins, I sent the link to Mike and Mariana. In typically subdued language, Mariana resonded:

I was slightly blown away by Spirituál Kvintet’s Pavana…

12 January 2020: Marcena & the Neighbours

As if we didn’t eat and drink enough with friends and neighbours in December, Marcena very kindly invited us in for drinks and nibbles on the second Sunday of the decade.

Coincidentally, Marcena’s centrepiece was also Mexican, a very tasty tacos dish, although there were also potatoes and chicken cutlets which bore the hallmarks of her southern Asian and southern African backgrounds.

Ged, Daisy, Marcena & Isabel
Marcena, Isabel, Joy & Piers

It was a very enjoyable evening. Janie (Daisy) tried to construct an alternative narrative for everyone else’s life…

…in fact at one point I wondered whether the full moon a couple of evenings earlier had got to her…

Any howl you might hear is likely me pretending to be a dog, in a vain attempt to scare a cat away from tormenting our visiting birds

…but in the end the truth would out and we all found out a bit more about each other, over some very tasty food and wine.

Chilled times.

Indeed, to add to the chilledness of the past two-three weeks, I also enjoyed:

  • a couple of music lessons with Ian Pittaway,
  • a jamming evening with DJ on 14 January at my place, with some yummy grub from Speck,
  • several games of real tennis at Lord’s, including club night on 16 January.
Kinda sums it up

Two Visits To South London For Dinner In Two Evenings, Including An Etiquette-Breaching Early Exit In Streatham, 16 & 17 March 2001

One For The Road sent a driver on something like this

Friday 16 March 2001 – Dinner At Mike & Marianna Smith’s Place In Kennington

I have written at length about me and Janie spending occasional evenings with Mike and Marianna, either at their place or ours. My favourite memory of those – sadly my last memory of seeing Mike, is this one:

A Gentle Start To 2020, Including Music & Food With The Smiths & The Neighbours, Early January 2020

There won’t have been music-making in 2001 – that element came later – but there will have been good food and convivial chat. I think, on that occasion, Janie drove and therefore drank little. Mike and Marianna evenings were not particularly boozy affairs, but they were very pleasant ones.

Saturday 17 March 2001 – Dinner At Doug & Paul’s Place In Streatham, Featuring The Duchess And “One For The Road”

Doug and Paul were a couple that Janie and Pauline had met on holiday together before Janie and I got together – presumably 10 years at least before this evening. Pauline had kept in touch with them and they invited the three of us to their house in Streatham for dinner. Their place was just a few blocks away from my parents place, but visiting my folks didn’t come into it.

What did come into it was the use of a chauffeuring service that Janie and I had previously used couple of times, named “One For The Road”. You booked the service to drive you home in your own car. The chauffeur would arrive at an appointed hour on a collapsible bike, which they would stow in the boot of your car while they drove you home.

There was only one problem with this service, which we encountered to our shame on this occasion; you had to pre-book the time of departure.

Janie thought 10:45pm would be ideal after a 7:00 arrival, but she hadn’t accounted for the perfect storm of Doug & Paul’s desire to show off every last feature of their new home, their painstakingly slow preparation/serving of food, together with Pauline’s classic ability to spin out every one of her many yarns when holding forth, interspersed with inter-course cigarettes a plenty.

“…and let me tell you another thing…”

Doug and Paul seemed to be luxuriating in showing us their feature-packed home and listening to Pauline’s fables.

Janie and I, although somewhat refreshed by nibbles and starters, were far from sated, foodwise. More than sated, interior design and Pauline-yarn-wise.

Janie dropped a couple of hints, before expressing significant concern, around 10:00, that our driver was arriving at 10:45 and that we hadn’t progressed yet to the main course.

Doug and Paul hurried themselves to finish preparing and then serve a main dish. The driver arrived while we were still eating that dish. We finished it hurriedly.

Thanks ever so much for dinner, but we really must go now,

said Janie.

But what about dessert?

blurted Doug…or Paul…or both.

The Duchess was a little disappointed. She no doubt had several more tales of her derring-do up her sleeve and had been looking forward to relating them over pudding, coffee and cigarettes.

We never saw Doug and Paul again.

I don’t think we ever used the One For The Road service again either.

On yer bike, son.

Windows, A Lyric For Charles And Mike, 29 June 1998

Image produced in collaboration with Dall-E

In honour of Charley “The Gent Malloy” Bartlett’s impending visit to Lord’s today (as I write on 21 April 2017) I was reminded of the following lyric.

It is one of the very last I wrote using Amipro and therefore part of the batch I am trying to rescue onto Ogblog before my old computer passes away…

…and the subject matter, ironically, is IT. I wrote this (and several others for The Children’s Society Windows Rollout team) ahead of a team end of project session at Wadderton.

The project parodied in the song was sensibly written up in a seminal piece by me and Charles for the charity press (NGO Finance) a few months later – click here if you want to know about it.

Charles likes a bit of metal – both the IT and musical variety, so the choice of tune was, I think, a good one. I wonder what Charles will think of this well-geeky lyric nearly 20 years on?

PLANNING A ROLLOUT OF WINDOWS
(Epic To the Tune of “Stairway To Heaven”)
VERSE 1

There’s a fellow whose mode-,
-em is not Dacom Gold,
And the name of that bloke is Charles Bartlett;
When he breaks wind you’ll know,
As the windows are closed,
If that noise was a burp or a fartlett.
Mmmmmmmm, mmmmmmmmm,
And he’s planning a rollout of Windows.

VERSE 2

There’s a sign on the door,
Cos he wants to be sure,
And the sign reads “IT room, no entry”;
I suspect that the room’s,
Got NS Optimum’s,
Entire stock ’til the end of the century.
Ooooooooooh, it makes me wonder.
Ooooooooooh, it makes me wonder.

VERSE 3

There’s a feeling I get,
When I call the helpdesk,
That they and Z/Yen are drinking Bacardi;
I get fine, rum advice,
‘Tho’ they ask in a trice,
Tony Duggan or Michael Bernardi.
Ooooooooooh, it makes me wonder.
Ooooooooooh, and it makes me wonder.

VERSE 4

And it’s whispered that soon,
Yes by the end of June,
TCS will have rolled out completely;
ITSOs and Marion,
Will still carry on,
FMI Windows training discretely.

VERSE 5

If there’s a gremlin in your Windows,
Don’t be alarmed now,
It’s just a browser from Bill Gates;
Yes there are two paths you can go by,
But in the long run,
He’ll make you buy Windows 98.
Ooooooooh, that’s how he’s made his fortune.

VERSE 6

Your modem’s humming but you don’t know,
Because it’s so slow,
If you’ve got e-mail or been forsook;
Perhaps the server’s full of e-trash,
Or had a head crash,
Or just can’t load Microsoft Outlook.
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh

(AIR GUITAR BREAK)

VERSE 7

Charles and Mike Smith have bought the road,
I’m talking Tottenham Court Road;
Up walks the lady we all know (“watcha Mangal”),
Whose eyes light up to say “hello,
What have you guys bought from the stores?
We have to budget very hard,
None of that corporate charge card,
This recent rollout really shows, (yeh)
That Windows costs a lot of dough.”

OUTRO – MIKE AND CHARLES’ REPLY

“We were buying some spares and cheap modems”.

Here is Led Zeppelin singing Stairway To Heaven with the lyrics shown on screen. I can do a passable Stairway on the baritone ukulele, btw, but I’m not expecting Chas to ask for a performance. Mike Smith, on the other hand, might insist upon it…

Reflections On The Day England U19s Won The Cricket World Cup In South Africa, 1 February 1998

I am writing in January 2020, on the day the U19 Cricket World Cup in South Africa is starting.

Last time the U19 Cricket World Cup was in South Africa was early 1998. That was also the last time (and so far the only time) that England won the U19 World Cup.

Here is a link to the scorecard of the final, in which England beat New Zealand.

My friends over at King Cricket will be delighted to see Rob Key’s name on that scorecard.

Rob Key is “a thing” on King Cricket:

Rob Key

Rob Key had a fine tournament, although not such a magnificent final.

It was Stephen Peters who topped the scoring/batting averages for England in that tournament and who scored the “man of the match ton” in the final.

It turns out that Peters was Essex in those days and hails from Harold Wood – Charley “The Gent” Malloy territory.

That thought made me realise that, in February 1998, I had only recently met Charles through our work at The Children’s Society and I had neither met Nigel “Father Barry” nor “Big Papa Zambesi” Jeff…yet. At that juncture, Charles was working mainly with Mike Smith. Coincidentally, Janie and I spent the evening with Mike and Marianna less than two weeks ago as I write:

A Gentle Start To 2020, Including Music & Food With The Smiths & The Neighbours, Early January 2020

It wasn’t until that summer, 1998, by which time I was also working with Nigel and Jeff, that I learnt that Chas, Nigel, Jeff…they all had a passion for cricket.

It must have been July, that topsy-turvy 1998 test series between England & South Africa was well under way. Jeff and I were going to visit a project in Mitcham – I had arranged to drive over to Clerkenwell, meet to plan the visit and then drive Jeff out to Mitcham.

When we got to the car, I tentatively asked Jeff if he would mind if I put the test match on the radio while we drove out there. Jeff’s trademark big beaming smile appeared on his face and he said,

I’d been trying to work out how to phrase that question politely to you…

…we listened all the way to the project (while also discussing cricket of course) and then again when we left the project. I arranged to drop Jeff at one of the Northern Line Tootings or Balham before I went on to see my folks.

It was a very hot late afternoon and I took the roof off Nobby – one of the very few times I did that. Big Papa Zambesi Jeff must have been grateful for the extra head room in a topless Nobby (as it were).

Janie, with Nobby, at his last resting place

I recall England taking a wicket when we were stopped at traffic lights somewhere around Tooting and we must have looked a right pair of charlies in that car leaping for joy at an announcement on the radio.

But returning to the U19 World Cup Final match on 1 February 1998, I realise that Nobby was just a twinkle in my and Janie’s eyes on that day. I think we had seen Mack the day before that final and arranged to buy Nobby. The deal was done the following Saturday…

…and I think it was the Saturday after that, in deep midwinter, that Janie and I visited the Mainellis in Nobby to see their newborn baby, Xenia, at the end of which Rupert Stubbs and the other visitors insisted on seeing us drive off with Nobby’s roof off. We drove round the corner, put the roof back on and tried to stop shivering all the way home.

I was trying to recall how I followed the tournament and that 1 February 1998 match.

To some extent, I think

No on-line all the time Cricinfo in those days. Ceefax was the only source of constantly updating cricket scores.

But I think also, in those days, Janie and I could hear sky commentary on her Videotron cable TV arrangement. She didn’t have the additional Sky sports subscription in those days – most of the cricket was terrestrial, free-to-air, but the scrambled channels, such as the sports ones, had sound all the time with the picture scrambled. I have a feeling we followed bits of that final that way.

But my main reflections are of how long ago all of that was and the journey I have shared with so many of those characters over the decades…

…and of the cricket careers that have come and gone for those (then) youngsters who fought that final. Most of the finalists went on to professional careers, many international ones. Some glorious, some less than glorious, but all interesting.

Here’s that U19 World Cup Final 1998 scorecard again.

Another Bonkers Few Days Running Around To All Parts, 26 to 31 October 1995

This was an even more bonkers road and rail trip than the June one:

A Road Trip Including A Weekend In The Potteries, Knutsford & Eventually Manchester, 16 to 18 June 1995

This time, I went up to Keele by car, meeting Mike Smith & David Foreman for dinner. I stayed at the Post House, just the one night, then on to Manchester on business on the Friday, staying again at the then reasonably rated Britannia Hotel, subsequently not so well rated. 

Janie joined me by train as she was doing a weekend foot physical therapy course at one of the Universities.

I don’t think I saw Ashley in Manchester on that occasion – I’m not sure he was yet there or if he was I wasn’t aware of it. On some of Janie’s subsequent visits I was able to spend some time with him.

I think I just read and worked a bit while Janie did her course.

On Sunday I drove us back to London.

Very early Monday I went to Waterloo to take the Eurostar to Brussels with Michael Mainelli & Kevin Parker. I think Janie might even have driven me to the station.

Two days in Brussels and I had my brick (mobile phone) swiped on the Eurostar home.

I was knackered.

The Day I Saw Slade & The Smiths At Keele, 10 January 1995

With profound apologies to lovers of 1970s & 1980s popular music who clicked this page under false pretences; I just couldn’t resist the headline. But I am talking about the day I went to Keele and met Dr Eddie Slade while seeing Professor Mike Smith for the first time. Later, I had dinner and stayed over with Mike Smith and Marianna, at Mike’s house in Church Plantation.

Professor Mike Smith, who sadly died suddenly, 12 November 2020

It happened like this. My business partner, Michael Mainelli, had worked with Mike when Michael first came to The British Isles in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Coincidentally, mostly while I was at Keele.

Michael and Mike had kept in touch. Mike Smith went on to become, in 1990, Professor of Health Informatics at Keele in the departments of Computer Science and Medicine. He concurrently held the position of Director of Information at North Staffordshire Health Authority.

Our business, The Z/Yen Group, was starting to thrive. I was looking after the civil society side of the practice and was starting to itch for bright resource, around the time that Mike was starting to look for opportunities to mix some fresh commercial activity in with his academic work.

Michael suggested that Mike and I meet. Knowing that Keele was my alma mater, Michael suspected that an excuse to stop off at Keele the next time I was heading north would be an attractive proposition for me.

So, between client appointments near Euston on the Tuesday morning and client appointments in Manchester on the Wednesday morning…

…Mike Smith said he would be delighted to see me on the Tuesday afternoon & evening, insisting that I should stay with him and Marianna at Church Plantation.

I think that first house might actually have been The Smiths’ house!

Mike also asked if there was anyone still at Keele that I would especially like to see, as he had time that afternoon to wander down memory lane with me.

I suggested Eddie Slade. I had seen most of the people who had taught me and were still active at Keele on earlier visits, but had not seen Eddie since my Education & Welfare sabbatical year, some 10 years earlier, when Eddie was Senior Tutor.

I recall that Mike didn’t rate our chances of getting in to see Eddie, commenting that he didn’t think he’d ever had an audience with the Director of Studies (as he was now titled).

But when I arrived at Keele, Mike told me that, to his surprise, Eddie had remembered me and said that he would like to have a meeting with both of us.

A recent (2020) picture of Eddie, borrowed from the Douglas MacMillan Hospice site, a wonderful cause

It was great swapping stories with Eddie from the distant past…9 to 10 years earlier. We’d not seen eye-to-eye over everything, but on the whole had got on very well and had worked together to resolve some “little difficulties”. Some of those tales might yet emerge in my write ups; some might best remain unwritten.

We also discussed how the Students’ Union had changed in those 10 years. I was delighted to learn that the Real Ale Bar was one of the union’s great commercial successes, as that had been one of our 1984/85 innovations.

I then asked what turned out to be a daft question about the television rooms. In our day, there had been three television rooms and the addition of a fourth TV channel (Channel 4) had caused some consternation. I asked Eddie how they regulate the television rooms now that there are multiple channels…

…Eddie laughed and explained to me that any student who wanted to watch television in the 1990s had their own TV. The former TV rooms had long since been repurposed.

With thanks to Mark Ellicott for this 2016 picture of the Students’ Union

After saying goodbye to Eddie, we had time for me to have a look around the Students’ Union, so I could see for myself the fate of the former TV rooms and far more besides.

This was also interesting for Mike, who confessed that he had never been in the Students’ Union building before, so it was my turn to give him a guided tour for the most part. It hadn’t changed all that much.

In 1995, there were still quite a few staff in the SU from my era. For sure Pat Borsky was there to be seen in the Print Room, for example; I think Barbara also.

Disappointingly, though, nobody said…

…”cards please”…

…as we entered the Union, although I did have my dog-eared life membership card with me, just in case.

Wally…where were you? Thanks to Mark Ellicott for this 1985 picture

Anyway, after having a good look around the union, we retreated to Church Plantation where I met Marianna for the first time, we three ate a hearty meal, enjoyed a wide-ranging conversation and the rest, as they say, is history. Mike and I worked together and became friends for 25 years, until his sudden death so sadly intervened.

I write this piece, the tale of how Mike and I first met, in late November 2020, just a couple of days before Mike’s funeral and just a couple of weeks since I wrote the personal tribute linked here and below.

A Personal Tribute To Professor Mike Smith, 12 November 2020