Monday, February 23

Real Virtual Reality?

Yesterday was my wedding anniversary. Twelve years together already. It is crazy how fast time flies, but that is something for another topic.

To celebrate this memorable day we first spent the whole morning taking our old bed frame apart, and assembling our lovely new walnut wooden frame that got delivered the day before. When my sister called to congratulate us I had to explain of course what the new bed looked like. And I couldn't explain it much better than that is square-ish. Which result in me loosing several points on my tech babble skills. And I am supposed to be the tech-savvy one of the family! But we did manage to get everything screwed together and in place without having any random pieces left over. So that felt pretty good. We spend another hour or two cleaning up all the packaging, and taking the pieces of the old frame and all packaging downstairs to the car, and from there to the recycle centre. By three o'clock were back home, and the celebrations could begin! Woohoo! We dropped on the sofa and watched a rerun of something. I think. Oh yes, it was a cheesy Dick van Dyke medical murder case thing.

But that was fortunately not the end of the day. We had booked a table at Sahara Restaurant, a Moroccan specialty place in Notting Hill. I had never been to the place, but it looked very promising. We were supposed to be there by 8pm, so we had recovered plenty enough from our morning chores, and since we had skipped lunch we were pretty hungry too.

The restaurant turned out to be a tiny place in one of the back streets of Notting Hill. But it was perfect! As soon as we crossed the doorstep I felt I was in a different world. Wonderfully decorated in shades of yellow and red, plenty of pillows all over the place, and some great painting from everyday life in Northern Africa. And of course the music. It all made for a fantastic feeling. But strangely enough I didn't feel like I was in Marrakesh (especially not since I have never been there), or Sousse or Tunis. In stead I had the feeling I was walking the streets of Khemi. I know the Age of Conan city was created after the North African cities, but I still felt like I had stepped into a virtual MMO world. It was a really weird, but pleasant experience.

But that was only the beginning of my joys. The food was phenomenal! Everything was prepared in real traditional Moroccan style, and it was heavenly! The bread with spicy chili sauce, the appetizers, and then the main course. Succulent lamb with almonds and dates, and some couscous. I am still savouring the flavours. And all this was accompanied by an excellent Moroccan white wine. I was quite surprised that an Islamic country makes such delicious wine.

And while I was dreaming away over the food, the music, I noticed the other guests and the two people running the place. There were perhaps 20 people in total, and I am quite sure none of them were English. There was a lot of French being spoken, but also interesting English accents that clearly came from far away. Maybe I had really stepped into Khemi and was playing a diner game with people from all over the world. I don't really want to know if I am pushing it too far now.

Although I suggested we should just sleep right there, eventually we left. After all our brand new bed was waiting. And so ended a wonderful day. Today I am still happy. Happy to be married to a wonderful person, and happy to live in multi-culteral London, and happy to have visit virtual places like Khemi.

5 comments:

  1. Woohoo! Congratulations!
    I envy you. I sometimes wish I had a partner to demolish a bed with...
    Even if it takes 12 years. I really think the blog needs a slightly out of focus photo, with slightly askew horizon. made through a mobile phone to properly display what you mean by "squarish thing".

    It osunds like you had a lovely time and can carry that with you for quite a few days. Makes me feel better for totally wimping out on you today and not show up on the Rogue Isles at all.

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  2. Hmm, yes, we do need more pictures. We've got some great posts but no pictures to cheer it up. Too bad I poured water over my phone a year ago, and ever since the camera is not working.

    The whole reasoning behind my post was my weird experience of feeling like I was in a virtual place, and how real and virtual world are getting closer and closer. And not about gloating I have somebody to demolish a bed with. But it made for a nice story in the end so I left it all in.

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  3. Oh I didn't take your post as a gloat.
    I just saw an opportunity to make a pun and couldn't resist as usual :-)

    I recognize your sensation of the virtual world in RL. But on the other hand I sometimes despair of VW's actually getting any better except in terms of graphics, which are already at the level where the uncanny valley manifests itself.

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  4. P.s. Comment notification should now work for the two of us.

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  5. Boy was I relieved to see that zombies are at the bottom of the uncanny valley, dunno about you but they have this way of upsetting my day...

    I think 'square thing' is an ample description for a bed.

    Congratulations on 12 years! When you decide to come for sushi you must bring your partner too, maybe instead of our bog standard take aways we should hit our restaurant Blossom , I can't imagine it will take you away to any virtual worlds but we could always do some LARP, that would entertain the waiting staff (who see me as a big bad boss, it's about time they realised I wasn't really that evil and saw the true geek).

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