Goodbye Modern Jago!



Nathan and Si test their Strength - Si won!

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Hello!

We are just back from a fab few days in London. We went because Nathan had been invited to the Critter Awards on Thursday night at Modern Jago - Microsoft's design space in Shoreditch (the hipster part of London where men wear red trousers) Then on Friday night we were invited to a Thank-You Event for the Microsoft Elite  - who are the developers who got apps into the Windows 8 store when it first launched. Nathan is one of those - by virtue of having Interference in there! This was also at the same place - which is an old school which has been made very designer!



Nathan checking out the many volumes of
the Human Genome

We are so lucky to have friends in London - and the wonderful Si and Heidi let us stay with them for two nights so we could go to both events. In fact Si came along to the first one - the least we could do was to get him drunk on a school night to show our gratitude :-)  (Sorry Heidi!)

Having booked a couple of days off we went down on the train on Thursday morning. So, we had to find something to do during the day - which is not hard in our buzzing Capital.


In fact just outside Euston station we saw The Wellcome Collection - so we thought "We've never been in there - let's see what its all about!"  It seemed to have a combination of science and art so would probably suit us both :-)

Huge Jelly Baby

The first nice surprise was that is was free. We had a look at Medicine Man - which told the story of Henry Wellcome, born in 1852, and his insatiable desire for collecting anything related to medicine and health. Thanks to him I have now seen Napoleon's toothbrush and George III's hair. It was a little like a calmed-down version of the mad Pitt-Rivers Museum in Oxford. He had a thing for shrunken heads too :-)

 Then we looked at Medicine Now - which was all about how medicine had developed since Wellcome died in 1936.

 The many, many volumes of the human genome were impressive - so was the exhibit explaining how they can look at an individual's DNA and say how much Asian, African or European etc. ancestry they had. We all have some of everything I think! We even saw some wool and droppings from Dolly the original cloned sheep. Nice!



Lion from SouZou exhibition

Interspersed with the scientific displays was art that had been influenced in some way by health and medicine - including a huge jelly baby.

The biggest sculpture there though was a massive representation of Obesity. The feet were so lifelike - although the rest was hideously exaggerated.  It was a bit scary - and placed next to the exhibit showing the many weight-loss pills and programmes over the ages, along with a bookcase that reached to the roof full of diet books. There have been so many diets!!




Nathan hits a coconut?

There was also an art exhibition in another room called Souzou - Outsider Art from Japan. Forty six artists who are residents or day patients in social welfare institutions across Japan. Some amazing stuff - especially the guy who draws massive cityscapes of places he's never been - just read about on the internet. They are extremely detailed. Fascinating.






They proved rather difficult to move

After that it was time to head over to Si and Heidi's to get changed for the Critter Awards. Sadly Heidi had to work - but Si got suited and booted - it was a black tie event and we headed off to Shoreditch Sadly Modern Jago is closing on 21st June - as it was only meant as a pop-up space for 6 months so get developers up and running with new stuff for Windows 8. They did extend it by 3 months as it was so popular! There was a Fairground Theme with coconut shies, hoopla and test your strength machine.





Inside we were offered drinks - various beers supplied by the staff from Brewdog in Shoreditch and for the ladies - Summer Cup, which was quite like Pimm's - but rather strong! Very easy to drink though ;-)




Si with the lead singer :-)

On entering we were given a blue pouch full of magic voting beads - and we had to pop them into the boxes along the wall - all colour-coded for various awards.

There were Surface tablets there in case you didn't know who the nominees were or what they had done. Have a look at the Critter Awards if you are interested. They were taking lots of photos so some might appear on the site soon.




Fun at The Critters

After we had done that we had a wander around. There was also an awesome band on called Rayguns Look Real Enough - described as a "comedy rock band" who were just great. They did medleys of so many songs and after the award ceremony came back on with the lead singer wearing a tiger onesie - with no front. He got everyone signing and laughing though! They made for a great atmosphere.






Another drink old chap? Don't mind if I do!

There was also a Jukebox where you could choose anything you fancied - although we discovered that people got a bit shirty if you deleted the rubbish selections and put in your own :-)







Wall of Fame - can you spot Interference?

It was a very fun night - you have to admit Microsoft know how to put on a party. We were a little worse for wear on the way home - but we made it - and Si even managed to get up for school the next morning. I did resolve not to drink any alcohol at the next one though :-)






A Little Tipsy?






Before that we had another day in the glorious sunshine. As our hosts were both working - N and I decided to amble over to leafy Chiswick.  (using underground and overground transport - makes us sound like the Wombles!)



Hogarth's House

We met up with Jodi - a former work colleague of ours when we were at Leek. He is based in Chiswick now and took us to a very nice pub in Chiswick, called the Packhorse. it was lovely and traditional inside - until you got to the conservatory where through the curtains was - a Thai Restaurant! Quite a surprise - and very busy! We managed to get some lunch - which was wonderful N and Jodi went for Pad Thai and I had some chicken with fried rice. Then Jodi showed us a little of Chiswick High Road - pointing out the good ice cream shops - before he had to go back to work. He had mentioned the river and how nice it is down there - so we decided to have a little walk along the Thames.






Hogarth's Garden

We saw a sign - so followed the road down there, past some very quaint boutique shops and lovely houses. We hadn't realised that Chiswick was so pretty :-) We walked along the river watching the boats and the ducks and swans. We also saw a lot of planes coming in, turning then casting their shadows over the river as they came in to land at nearby Heathrow. it was really interesting. We also fantasised about which apartments overlooking the river we'd like to live in if we won the lottery!




Add caption

We walked a little further and came across William Hogarth's House - which used to be in an orchard - but is now besides a very noisy and busy main road. It's a wonder he got any paintings done with all that noise ;-)

Leafy Chiswick

We spotted his ancient Mulberry tree though - with a very gnarled and twisted trunk.
We did stop at Baskin Robbins for ice cream before we headed back to Shoreditch for our very last visit ever to Modern Jago.


Hotdog anyone?

Nathan's Certificate - and photos of the night.

This was by invitation only - for the Microsoft Elite - to thank them for their work in getting Windows 8 App Store up and running. This time we were handed actual Pimm's as we came in. N was given a certificate and we both had Microsoft goody bags. There was food at this party too - a man making popcorn outside (sweet and salty) and carts indoors making hotdogs and crepes. Nathan sampled the hotdog, and I went for a huge strawberry and chocolate crepes - they were delicious! Then a very enthusiastic Microsoft lady came up to us and asked if we'd had our Flickbook made yet. Remember making them at school where you drew a little stickman on each page - in a slightly different position so that when you flicked through it he looked like he was moving? Here they did it by taking a 6 second video of you and then putting it frame-by-frame into a book. We did ours together - and they suggested we do "spinning high 5s" So we had a go, feeling rather silly in front of the camera and they gave us a book each to keep! The result looks pretty cool :-)



Busy Event - with fluffy clouds :-)





Toasting Microsoft Elite!

There were also Instamatic cameras lying around and you could take pictures of yourselves and then have a souvenir to take home. We did one of each other eating popcorn and then someone took one of us together in front of the Wall of Fame.



You can see Nathan pointing to Interference :-)





There was also an Oxygen Bar  where you could sit and get energised. I'd never tried one before - it was a little strange You put some tubes up your nose (like they do in hospital) and they connect you up to a pipe with oxygen being bubbled through some liquids. These had various flavours in them - and you had to try and work out what they were. One was labelled "Chilling" another "Reinvigorating" and you could twiddle the knobs to get the mixture you liked. There was chocolate, mint, Jasmine and Eucalyptus. They certainly cleared the head!

Nathan getting Energised!

It was sad when we had to go home - we'll not see Modern Jago again. Thank-you Microsoft for giving us this amazing space - and so many opportunities for networking and parties!!

Nobody does it better :-)