Top 5 ways to save money on lunch
September 17, 2007 | Leave a Comment
I work in the heart of Covent Garden, London which is fantastic. There’s a lot to do at lunch time, and can easily go into one of the many shops around and deposit a lot of my monthly salary on clothes, electronic goods and other random items I deem to be ‘essential’ in my impulse buying status.
For lunch I usually go to a lovely little place nearby that does comforting home cooked food such as lasagne, cauliflower cheese and stews - nothing I can’t do myself, but it’s always that bit nicer when you don’t have to lift a finger.
If I go there every day for a week though, it’ll cost me £30/£35. That’s around £120/£140 per month just on lunch.
Most of the time I don’t think of this as anything other than a necessity…but there are times when I think to myself…I really could save myself money if I planned a little better and put a little more effort into making lunch for myself.
So here are my top 5 ways to save money on lunch.
Fruit it out
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, they say, so it’s a good idea to have something hearty in the morning. A health food place near to where I work does porridge for £1 and what better way to start of the day then with those nutritious oats?
This gives a slow release of energy which will allow you to carry on for most of the day. By eating several items of fruit throughout the day you can easily skip lunch without feeling hungry or fatigued, as well as boost your ‘5-a-day’ count of fruit and veg.
Meet with clients over lunch
My clients seem to love me, and I have a lot of them. Where possible it’s a good idea to meet with them to discuss vital parts of their portfolios and the working relationship between us. It’s good to see clients face to face where possible, as it shows you care. Meeting over lunch is also nice, as it means it’s slightly less formal than in a stuffy meeting room, but more formal than if you had gone to a bar. Sometimes the client will offer to pay for your lunch, especially if you have traveled across the city to see them; otherwise you offer to pay for them and the lunch goes onto company expenses. Who said there’s no such thing as a free lunch?
Round Robin with workmates
I’m sure everyone at work will be spending pretty much the same amount on lunch as I do. They go to the same places a lot of the time, and so it does stand to reason (I can make a little money by offering to buy their lunch, taking their cash, and them not bothering about the few pence change they have). Why not arrange with 4 co-workers that you will each cook lunch for each other one day a week? You then go home and cook an extra large portion of something yummy - and probably costing no more than £15 total - and you get to save £15 per week by the fact you do this once, and then eat whatever someone else has cooked. The only problem with this is if someone cooks something you don’t like…such as a horrible curry dish.
Stock up on sandwich stuffs
Many workplaces have a fridge that you can keep some stuff in - I know mine does. Grab yourself a loaf of bread, some tomatoes, cucumber, lettuce and cut meat from a local supermarket and you’ll probably find you can spend £10 on food which you can use over 3 lunches. Although this can be boring, especially if you eat the same thing a few days in a row, stocking up on tins of tuna, corned beef, sardines and salmon will offer a bit of variation to the daily routine.
Cook lunch and bring to work
The best way to save money over lunch, and to have it varied and tasty, is to cook for yourself and bring it in to work.
If you cook a nice risotto, stew or casserole at home - make that little bit extra and put the rest into a tight container to take into work and reheat the next day. It takes very little effort to do this, and once you get into a routine you will be able to do this most days if you have cooked for yourself the night before. Routine is the key for this one, as if I don’t do it often I find that I either leave the extra food at home and forget to take it in for lunch, or that I do take it in to work and put it in the fridge, but forget it’s there by the time lunch comes around, in which case I go out and buy lunch anyway.
If you don’t wish to have the same food for lunch as you did for dinner the night before, simply place the excess food into the freezer for another time.
Top 5 most irritating gameshows to watch
September 15, 2007 | Leave a Comment
I love game shows, and will watch most drivel that’s put on in front of me. My favourite ones are those which ask general knowledge questions such as the fantastic 15 to 1 and, to a lesser extent, University Challenge (but only as the questions are much harder).
However, there are some game shows that are just irritating to watch. Most of the time the format of the show is fine, but the combination of stupid contestants and often easy answers results in the viewer shouting obscenities at the television, wondering how such a muppet could have lasted so long in life, let alone found their way to the television studio.
At the end of the day, it’s because we all sit in front of the television watching them with one thought on our minds - “I would do much better than that twit if I was on this show”.
So here’s my countdown of the top 5 most irritating game shows to watch (introduced in the style of Bullseye’s Tony Green).
“iiin 5″ Catchphrase
The point of this show was to guess the phrase that was coming up on screen - like an animated ‘dingbats’ or ‘charades’. The show was presented by Irishman Roy Walker who had a sleezy smile and evil glint in his eye, and coined those wonderful terms ‘Say what you see’ and ‘It’s the ready money round’. The mascot for the show was Mr Chips, a yellow robotesque figure who would often look like he was wanking off a dog or killing someone with a kitchen utensil until the final square on the board disappeared to show he was in fact acting out ‘Man’s best friend’ or ‘don’t cry over spilt milk’.
answer: Holding down a job
The show is frustrating in part due to Roy Walker, but mostly due to the images being either too difficult to get, or extremely obvious but the contestants not having a clue.
“iiin 4″ Bullseye
It had to be in here, and let’s get this straight from the start - nobody watched this show for the darts, and I doubt anybody thought it would be a great idea to enter for it whilst they were sober. This show featured 3 teams of 2, one of who was a ‘darts player’ and the other being whoever they could drag to the set to answer questions.
Like Catchphrase, this show also had a mascot - Bully the Bull. He was great and would appear throughout the show moo-ing if you got something incorrect or ran out of time…though they may as well have had him sat there laughing at the idiots who can’t spell the simplest of words (go ahead and find the typos in this post, I can take it).
Host Jim Bowen was the main cause of frustration in this show, due to the fact he’s not a very funny comedian. Added to this the contestants who are dragged from under their rocks in the depths of middle England and have no character whatsoever and you get excruciating television. There’s the usual bad answers to easy questions and the worst prizes in television show history (”Look at what you could have won!” - what…that kinder egg toy?)
The top prize was often a car, caravan or speedboat - and you can guarantee there would be arguments about who would have kept the prize (no, you have it) when it was won because everybody on the show were friends who had met at the pub. Two scooters would have been more ideal.
“iiin 3″ Who wants to be a Millionaire
Yes, we know ‘it’s only easy if you know the answer’ - but some people are just stupid.
Most contestants on this show are fine, and they go through their life lines and get a bit of money and you answer questions along with them until they get knocked out on questions you don’t know the answer to anyway.
However, you will often come across one individual that must have slipped during the fastest finger first round and managed to make their way to the chair, and when you do the only thing that is more frustrating than their inability to answer simple questions is the fact they may accidentally get it right and end up with money they surely don’t deserve.
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“iiin 2″ Wheel of Fortune
Hangman with bright lights and a big wheel.
Another show that has more than it’s equal share of dumb contestants who simply can’t grasp what words are.
Originally the UK show was presented by likable Nicky Campbell and wasn’t all that bad. He was a decent enough presenter, and we can forgive the fact the show gave rise to the fame of Smilie Smilie Carol Smilie. Yet there were times when you just left wondering how the contestants can miss such obviousness, a feeling that was amplified if you ever got to see a US version of the show.
After Nicky Campbell left it went downhill very quickly. Bradley ‘It’s a puppet’ Walsh took over to offer a lot of cheese and innuendo to the show, and he was followed a year later by John ‘insert your own comments here’ Leslie, sidekicked by an equally bad Jenny Powell.
Sure, it’s annoying when you can obviously see what the word is and they guess letters like ‘z’ which won’t fit anywhere at all, or in the cases above when it is so obvious what the words are, but the thing that projects this show to the forefront of annoyance is the audience who do nothing but clap all the way through.
clap say hello clap look at the wheel clap it’s a phrase clap spin the wheel clap letter T clap 1 letter T clap spin the wheel clap - it’s crazy how much clapping goes on in there, and I’m sure the audience can’t have much skin left on their palms by the end of it all.
I never noticed this originally until someone had pointed it out to me, and now it’s the only thing I can think about if I watch it…kind of like when someone mentioned Jeremy Beadle had one had smaller than the other - never noticed that until it was told, and now that’s all I can see whenever he’s presenting something.
“iiin 1″ (or should that be “and Bully’s special prize…”?) The Crystal Maze
Slaphead Richard O’Brian presented this popular show which combines a team of witless contestants with challenges that are based around puzzles and fall into categories such as mystery, logical and physical.
The hand eye co-ordination of some of these people is unbelievable, and makes you question how they manage to get dressed in the mornings. Combine this with their inability to do tasks that a 2 year old does means you’re shouting at the television in agony (No you fucking idiot - put the triangle in the triangle shaped hole!) as the team fail to gain a crystal time after time, or use the few that they do manage to accidentally retrieve on ‘freeing’ their hapless team mates who are to slow to comprehend time and how doors work as they get locked into room after room.
I was never sure what the actual prize was at the end of the day once the contestants collected ‘gold tokens’ from inside a wind machine, because all the contestants ever seemed to take home with them was a crappy ‘crystal ball’ and a newly established lack of self esteem.
