My Blue Heaven

Just to fill in the blank space

Um.. yeh.. been a while since my last blog entry. Life has been a whirlwind of activities. Many of which can be found on various web 2.0 community web sites. Biggest news of the moment is that I got a new job offer from one of London’s top digital agencies. I’m pretty excited about this as I’ve been wanting to work for them since I contracted with them for a few weeks in 2005. They have some really big name clients and the work they produce is always of the highest quality and cutting edge in technology and design.

Ok enough about work. I’m going on holidays soon! Yay! In July, myself, my boyfriend and my brother will be heading off on a big self-drive holiday round Italy. Starting off with flying out to Cologne, Germany then driving down to Venice, then to Florence, then into the Chianti region staying at the World Heritage listed San Gimignano, down into south Tuscany to the hot springs and fine restaurants of Saturnia, then up the Mediterranean coast to the summer holiday town of San Vincenzo, then further north to the Liguria and Cinque Terre region staying a few days at Riva Trigoso, and finally back up to stay in Frankfurt, Germany and visit some old friends. I can’t wait! Italy is my absolute favourite european destination (and not just because of the awesome food). And I really need a holiday!!!

I’ve also been really getting into my piano playing. We had our final performance for the year for my jazz improvisation class last week. I thought this was my best performance and solo out of three we had. I recorded it again and made another video which you can watch below.

I’m also going to be (most likely) starting part time studies at Goldsmith college next academic year. I’m going to be doing the Certificate in Music Studies, which is a modular, part time course equivalent of the first year of a degree in Music. I figured, I would do the modules anyway as I continue to do courses here, so why not get a cert out of it whilst I’m at it? Gonna have to ship my keyboard over here though first.. bit hard learning without a piano or keyboard at home to practice on.

What I don’t like about London

This is an addendum to my “Two Years In London” anniversary vlog, in which I talk about the pro’s and con’s of living in London that I’ve observed thus far over the past two years. This post will be about what I dislike about London – there are so many things I can talk about on this topic. I forgot to mention a few things in my vlog so I’ve decided to blog about these extra things. (I still find it much easier to blog about my thoughts than talk about them.) So here are some extra thoughts on things I dislike about living in London (I’ll also write up an expanded post on what I LIKE about London too later):

• Bad coffee – even compared with Sydney, the coffee in London sucks. Its become the home of coffee house chains like Starbucks, Costa Coffee and Caffe Nero (whose claim is “The best espresso this side of Milan” – which says a lot about the quality of coffee here in London seeing as their coffee is only just bearable). London is sadly missing the individual little cafes that serve great coffee, which are pretty much everywhere in Italy, and are quite prevalent in Sydney too. There isn’t really much of a “cafe culture” in London – which is something I quite miss about Sydney. I loved going to cafes to meet up with friends over a nice coffee or hot choccy. There ARE some cafes in London, but finding decent coffee that doesn’t taste burnt is like finding a needle in a haystack – a haystack that is full of commercialised coffee chains ala Starbucks. Ugh.
• Culture – It’s strange this one. Seeing as both Sydney and London are in english speaking westernised countries, and in fact Australia was born from UK settlers.. one would have thought the culture would be fairly similar. But I’ve struggled over the past two years with a noticeable difference between the culture that I grew up with in Sydney, and the culture here in London and have felt quite a bit alienated sometimes. Londoners seem to be more into the pub/bar lifestyle.. going out drinking appears the highlight of the average Londoners lifestyle. They are less into the outdoors, being active and just less focused on personal wellness and healthy lifestyles. The wellness thing is something I’ve noticed is a priority in continental european lifestyles. They seem to be quite big on this. There’s a similar concept in Australia – but with more focus on the outdoors, being in tune with nature, being active, sporty and healthy. For example juice and fruit smoothie bars have been HUGE in Australia for a number of years, and is only JUST starting to pick up now in London. Smoking has been banned for years in Australia, and is only coming into force this July here. There’s a huge difference that is plainly obvious in the percentage of people who smoke in London compared to Sydney. Also the culture in London has created quite a lonely lifestyle. An article I read in the paper highlighted a survey conducted in the UK about the number of close friends of people in different areas. Unsuprisingly, London came bottom with people having an average of only 5 close friends, compared with Yorkshire, who came top with 15. It is kinda sad, that in London the most densely populated by far, surrounded by the most ppl, people are the most lonely. And I have definitely felt that whilst here. It has been very difficult for me to form close friendships in this sort of culture.
• Quality of life – Closely related to the previous point, I find the quality of life in london is much worse than the quality of life in Sydney and other european cities like Frankfurt, cities in Italy etc. There is a distinct lack of peace in London. Life here is so busy and stressful, compounded by the strong partying, drinking and long working hours culture here. And there is a very strong focus on career, money, fashion and consumerism. I’ve found it hard to find peace as I find myself very often stressed, worried and highly strung. Which I’m well aware is not good for my health long term. And I think Londoners are aware of it too but nobody seems to be able to do anything about it, with the long hours work culture getting increasingly worse.
• Ignorant yobs – I’m often utterly astounded by the amount of people here that have NEVER been outside this country. With so many EU countries on the doorstep, literally a couple hours away (in some parts of england you can actually tune into french radio stations!!!!) it is SO easy to travel to completely different countries and cultures. I think people here don’t realise how lucky they are. Coming from a fairly isolated country that Australia is, London is like a dream-come-true in terms of travelling opportunities. Yet so many here are so ignorant of this and as a result are so close-minded. Or if people do “travel”, for many it is to go to places like Ibiza where they can do exactly the same thing that they do in London – drink and party. They party all night and sleep all day, not knowing nor caring about exploring and experiencing this new country and culture that they are in.

Oye Como Va

I’ve started a new Latin Piano course at Goldsmith College. It’s great fun!! I had my first lesson last night. There are about 10 people in the class and we take turns on the piano. But whilst one person is on the piano, the rest of us form the band taking on various percussion instruments – clave, bongos, bell, casara, congos. There is a bass player too in the class. It’s awesome! I’ve always wanted to learn this latin style of playing – this class has opened up a whole new world of latin music and rhythm. It’s quite different from jazz. 🙂

One of the songs we did was “Oye Como Va” by Tito Puente – a king in the world of latin jazz. He plays the timbale and he is truly amazing! I found a fair few clips on YouTube, but this one just blew me away. It’s of him and band jamming on the streets of the Bronx, playing for his people.

My VisualDNA Profile

Florence Trip

Snippets of Florence – a two part video series I created about my 5 day holiday in Florence earlier this year in January (for my birthday). Enjoy. 🙂

Part 1

Part 2

[Edit: Wed 18 April]
If you wanna see complete versions of the opera singing.. go here and here.