My Blue Heaven

Apple’s latest creation

The I-Flea! Hahaha… check out this spoof ad – its hilarious!!

Gai Paree

Paris was really nice. Très bien. Très splendide! I remember going there once before as a kid.. finding it really boring as all we did was look at old stuff in museums and old buildings. But this time I really quite liked it. The old buildings and everything. Was even contemplating the possibility of living there for a bit.. hmm… interesting thought there..

I like the whole old buildings with white window shutters, and small balconies with ornate black railings and red flowers in the flower pot look. There is this charm about it. Photos are coming.

But for the moment, highlights in brief:

• Dinner on Sat night at The. Best. French. Restaurant. I’ve ever been to. A homey little place called Le Pre Cadet, in Montmarte. The food was superb and the service even better! The owner was so attentive and helpful that it felt more like he was our host and we were guests at his dinner party. He even walked us out and shook our hands as we left! I had fillet steak and the yummiest dark chocolate mouse/fudge cake. It was smooth and creamy and chocolatey.. not frothy like mousse, but rich.. and much smoother than normal cake texture. *drools*
• The french pattisseries. Soooooo scrumptious. The french really know how to make their pastries and cakes huh. Mmmmmm. To borrow an expression from a friend.. Kazzart = Piggy. 😉
• The beautiful buildings and architecture.. just the feel of the place. It is afterall, “gay paree”.
• I quite liked Notre Dame. Even though it was absolutely packed with tourists. Dunno what it is with me and old cathedrals. I find them majestic and beautiful.
• Seeing a snippet of the Tour De France coz they were in Paris on the sunday that I was there! How cool is that! 🙂

I took a plethora of photos. Which will be uploaded when I have time to sort through them. Damn I have quite a backlog of digi photos piling up now. No time. 🙁

Anyway, work has been quite busy. At least I get to go to jazz dance class tonight. Yay! The highlight of every week for me is being able to go to dance class.. be it hiphop, jazz or salsa. 🙂 Gonna be doing Sheila Sangster’s intermediate jazz tonight. She’s a small blonde american lady. Good teacher. Its nice to do some jazz again, after so long. My jazz technique is a little rusty though.

Current listening :: “Only Hope” – Switchfoot (Hm I’m finding I currently like this original version more than the Mandy Moore version.. as pretty as Mandy Moore’s version is..)

Miscellaney

I randomly discovered this website, Australian-Food.com, whose slogan is “Delivering Australian Food to the World”. Hahaha. So I guess if I really feel nostalgic for some good ol Aussie tucker (ie Tim Tams!) one of these days, I’ll know where to look!! 😉

A friend called me from Sydney yesterday. T’was really nice to be able to chat to someone from home again. I’d just like to note that he sounded really occa! Hahah. I’ve been surrounded by pommy accents so much that I’ve grown accustomed to it.. and a real australian accent sounds so much more prominent than before.

Hm. I’ve only been here 2 & 1/2 months, but it seems like longer. A lot of the time I don’t even think about it as being in another city, another country.. I consider it home. But at times I do miss home.. my real home… sometimes I close my eyes and I can conjure up fairly vivid images of home, as if I’m there.. like of the last time I went to Wattamolla beach with friends.. what it felt like to be standing there, taking in the amazing vastness of the ocean.. and the national park forest behind the beach.. watching the sunset reflect off the calm inlet waters, and our shadows lengthening as the sky grew that darker orange colour, until the trees were silhouetted black against that vibrant dark orange/pink/blue sky.

*sigh* Ok now I feel homesick. Ack. Shouldn’t think too much about it like that.

Still.. I am happy here too, for the time being. Experiencing all these new and exciting things.. discovering new and exciting places. Like salsa dancing (which is alot bigger over here). Or Europe. Incidentally.. I’m going to Paris this weekend. Squeeee! On my very first Eurostar trip!! 😀

Ooh and I’m going to be seeing Starsailor on 2nd August at the Somerset House summer set festival. I bought tix for myself and Ai. Yay.

Well best get back to work. Morning tea break is over. 😉

Current listening :: “They Weren’t There” – Missy Higgins

Please explain?

There are some things I just don’t understand. Not sure if I ever will.

• Smoking (and why oh why does someone need to smoke in a restaurant.. please London, catch up with Australia and BAN smoking in restaurants. How can one possibly smoke WHILST they are eating?!)
• Social binge drinking (I mean why do that to yourself? What sort of pleasure can anyone get from drinking until they throw up? Why do people need alcohol anyway? Can’t they just be happy with who they are? Can’t they relate to other people without the need for external substances to help “relax” them.)
• Bitching and backstabbing. Just human nature in general really. Nuff said.

Hrmmm…

I will stop
I will stop at nothing
Say the right things
When electioneering
I trust I can rely on your vote

When I go forwards you go backwards and somewhere we will meet

Gone

Thinking about these things makes me wonder… about life… people… society.. the culture of western society in particular. London on the one side can seem like such a vibrant place… full of life and diversity. But on the darker side of the coin, it is a place filled with materialism, greed, and the insatiable and never-ending search for happiness and pleasure. Hrmm.

She told him she’d rather fix her makeup
Than try to fix what’s going on
But the problem keeps on calling
Even with the cellphone gone
She told him that she believes in living
Bigger than she’s living now
But her world keeps spinning backwards
And upside down
Don’t say so long, and throw yourself wrong
Don’t spend today away
Cuz today will soon be

She said he said live like no tomorrow
Every moment that we borrow
Brings us closer to the God who’s not short of cash
Hey Bono I’m glad you asked
Life is still worth living, life is still worth living…

Have I, too, become caught in that cage…?

Current listening :: “Gone” – Switchfoot

Chalk it up to experience

Just a quick update before I go to sleep (coz its Sunday midnight here and I have work tomm :(). I had myself a great weekend. The weather was hot hot hot – just like aussie summers! Started out with a rather fun Friday night out with work mates celebrating a 30th birthday. We went to a Salsa club called Fiesta Havana in the west end. Really nice place! I love the cocktails (esp as it was happy hour till 7:30pm with cocktails being only 2.50 quid) there and the latin/salsa/hiphop fusion of music!

I’ve discovered I quite like latin/cuban cocktails – like the Strawberry Caipirinha (fresh limes & sugar crushed together with fresh strawberries, Cachaça (sugar cane spirit) and crushed ice) or the traditional Mojita (fresh limes, fresh mint & white sugar crushed together with Santiago De Cuba Carta blanca rum topped with crushed ice and a splash of soda). So yummy! But.. I also discovered that drinking cocktails and dancing do NOT mix. The night ended in tears (literally) with me throwing up on the street outside the club. Ok before you jump to conclusions, I wasn’t drunk. I’d only had 2 drinks at around 7pm and then some nacho’s a bit after and only water from then on. But then I salsa danced a lot in that very hot club, was thrown around the dance floor (and dipped upside down many times), sweated and prob got very dehydrated… after a time of dancing I just gradually felt sicker and sicker… until eventually around 11pm it got too much – I was so nauseous I had to leave.. and threw up outside on the street. It was an EXTREMELY unpleasant experience. Puke going up your nose. Ack. 🙁 I haven’t thrown up for a loooooong time.

Anyway, I made it home without throwing up again, with the company of a very nice work mate, Emma, who walked me to my door! Then had a bit of a chat with my cousin and her husband – who happens to be a doctor (in psychiatry, but he’s still a certified GP) – and he reckons I had a heat stroke. The heat and sweating, plus the dancing and the alcohol… I think it was a combination of those things. But I’ve drunk and danced before no problems though… so… maybe its the salsa…. being dipped upside down and shaken around – prob isn’t the best thing for a stomach containing 2 cocktails and some nachos sloshing around together.

Aside from that…. I had the best time dancing. The salsa really came together for me that night… I could totally follow the guy’s lead as we danced. I used to always balk and not be able to follow what the guy wanted me to do at previous salsa clubs… but I guess the classes have paid off and I finally got it! It just flowed.. and it felt awesome. I love salsa dancing! 🙂

Sat’dee n Sun’dee

So the rest of my weekend was a very relaxed one. I spent Saturday taking it easy and recovering. Just spent the day at home, cleaning up my very messy room, washing a few loads of clothing and drinking lots of water to rehydrate my body. Then at night I met up with Ai for the very first time! I took her to dinner at my regular haunt in china town before heading out to see Aimee Mann gig at Shepherds Bush Empire. We had a comfortable spot in the seating area up on level 2. And predictably I suppose, were surrounded by oldies. But what was scary was the mullets on some of those old guys. *shudder* Otherwise the gig was good.. I quite enjoyed myself – and I quite liked the support act…. a guy/band called Robert Post from Norway! They were a three piece band, with Robert singing and playing guitar. Nice upbeat stuff – might check out their album sometime. They’re quite new I think. It was good to chat with Aileen in real life too! We’ll prob be meeting up a few times whilst she’s here for 4 weeks. And methinks there shall be some Hagen Daz icecream involved somewhere in there. 😉

Sunday saw me sleeping in till 1ish and then meeting up with a friend for a very very late brunch (2pm) at a local cafe just down the road (called Giraffe). Very cool place with really good food and drinks! And they serve breakfast till 4pm!!! Gonna go back and try some of their other main dishes. They looked really yummy. I also had a really yummy frozen fruit smoothie with mango, strawberry, banana and apple and orange juice. The perfect thing for a hot summers day. Yummo. My friend had the frozen mocha frappe.. which I will try next time! The desserts also looked scrumptious. They have this white chocolate and toblerone cheesecake with milk chocolate sauce. Mmmmmmm……. :p~ Ok enough about food!

Time for me to sleeeeep. Its now well after midnight.. darn it. Was meant to sleep earlier tonight. Nite all!

Current listening :: “She Really Wants You” – Aimme Mann

One Step Back

Bad news. I lost my flat. Or rather, the room in the flat. The guy called me during work last Fri to arrange a time to meet to do contract stuff (but I have no mobile reception at work whatsoever, so he left a msg on voicemail). I was busy and out of london on the weekend, so I didn’t get back to him till Sunday night. And then he msgs me back and I find out on Monday that he’d given the room to someone else (who came to see it over the weekend and signed the contract on the spot).

Not. Happy. Jan.

I was pretty shocked/suprised. Didn’t realise it could happen like that. And that he could do that.. thought it was set that I would take it.. though I hadn’t given deposit yet. Was a bit upset at first.. but I’m ok now. *sigh* Anyway… guess I’m back to square one. It’s not so bad… I’ve seen some positives… I can save on rent for a bit longer for one. 😉 And it also gives me the chance to look around a bit more. I really didn’t do much research or looking around before deciding on that flat.. so perhaps its a good thing I didn’t get it. I can probably find something better – like a bigger room.. newer furnishings. There are so many different places to live too. So many suburbs in london I haven’t been to yet.

Weekend

So anyways. The weather today is absolutely beautiful. Very much summery weather… hot and sunny. Am wearing my havaianas and new H&M shirt dress. 🙂 I had a pretty good weekend in Canterbury. Visited the Canterbury Cathedral.. built by King Henry VIII (wat was his role in the reformation again? I can’t remember). It was beautiful and kinda freaky at the same time. They had a service on at the time, with a choral choir singing.. they sounded so perfect I thought it was a recording. It was kinda eerie.. gothic sounding, and added to the scariness of the place. I remember walking into the cathedral main hall (which kinda reminded me of the huuuge dwarven hall in the mines of Moria in LOTR FOTR.. you know with the huge columns and ceiling) to the sound of their choral voices rising up, filling the place with that gothic feel. Took some pics. But what’s with the gargoyles and scary statues and bones/skulls? *shudder* Anyway.. photos will err…. go in the queue behind all the other photos I still have yet to upload. My bad. I’ve been too lazy/busy.

Anyway, really need to do more exercise. I ate sooo much over the weekend. In the words of Cher from Clueless… I feel like such a heffer! And haven’t been to dance class for a while too, so am really missing that. Think I’ll go to Fusion Funk tonite. Yay!

New Toy

Oh and I have a new toy too. Well.. sorta… I have an Orange SPV M2000 pda/phone… for the next 6 months. I’m kinda looking after it for someone whilst they are overseas. And I can use it. 750 free mins a month.. plus the full PDA functionality. Yay! It’s got wireless capabilities, phone/video, mp3 player, microsoft office etc etc. I’ve been keeping myself amused trying to connect to random wireless networks about London. Hehe. So far I’ve managed to tap into next doors unsecure wlan. And briefly connected to some network in the square outside my work at lunch. I could sign up to TMobile and get connected at any Starbucks hotspots. But thats like £5/hour. Ouchies.

Current listening :: “She Left On A Monday” – Bic Runga