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What does this mean??
This means that there will be NO MORE updates here. All of my new updates will appear at www.thetopfloorflat.com.
Why are you doing this? I just figured this whole blogging thing out!
Because when I have www.thetopfloorflat.com, I can upload more photos, people can add comments more easily, I have more cool features, and it's a lot easier for me to update everything. I can also put advertisements on the site (if I want) and make money.
But I really like all the old posts that are here. What about those?
They've all been transfered to www.thetopfloorflat.com so you can still see all of the old posts from this LiveJournal and all of the photoes, movies, etc. The only things that were lost were the comments.
So where can I find your blog again?
You can find it at www.thetopfloorflat.com. When you get there, bookmark the page if you're worried about finding it again.
One more time?
All new blog posts at www.thetopfloorflat.com
Cheers and see you at www.thetopfloorflat.com :)
www.jellybabiesandjaffacakes.com OR
www.thetopfloorflat.com
it will look like this (and I know that is LondonMeg.com but DO NOT bookmark that page - my mom has decided she doesn't like that name so that's why it's changing, but the layout will be about the same).
Thoughts? Food or flat? Let me know, you have until I wake up tomorrow ;)
I'm so beyond excited - I have press tickets to see The Factory's last ever Underground Hamlet at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre at midnight next week (after I get back from France). In the show, all of the principles can play all of the roles and are randomly cast after the audience arrives. There is no set or props, they only use things that the audience brings. However even though there's an element of improv, they are completely strict to the script. I'm thrilled I get to go!
In any case, check out my article about the Hamlets of London:
read more | digg story
Henry, one of our coCEOs came in the other day with a bandage above his eye. Naturally we were curious as to what had happened, but I didn't think it polite to ask. Today I found out that he had received a rather deep cut when his girlfriend tossed a hard drive across the room, accidentally catching his forehead. He was, in fact, gouged by a hard drive.
Tonight we had a pub night with all of our site content contributors (well, all were invited. Some came - including a girl from Berkley who is studying and working in the UK!) which meant I got back late. Another busy day tomorrow!
My thought process this evening has gone something like this:
“I’m tired, I got back late, I should go to bed. Hmm, what’s this? I have no sheets on my bed? They’re still in the washer and we have no dryer? Wow, I guess I have more time than I thought while I wait for my bed to not be soaking wet. I guess I’ll finish my story of Wales on my blog.”
So here I am. I am quite knackered, though – between missing last Friday, last Monday and all of next week, I’m trying frantically to get everything up to speed at work. I knew I was going to be in the office late today so I offered to do the washing up (they always make the tea, and I never have to make the tea – it’s only fair when I’m around I do the dishes every so often!) and got so busy and distracted that I completely forgot I had offered and now I feel bad. This really has nothing to do with Wales. Point is, I’m distracted and tired so if this is more incoherent than usual that’s why.
On the morning of day three we all piled onto the bus for the last few stops. The schedule said that we were going to do more castles, but our guide Adam said that we had seen a lot of castles, and we’d see another before we left so he had a surprise that he thought we’d like better. As we left Abergavenny he explained that he was taking us to Pwll Mawr, or Big Pit, which was a museum dedicated to the mining history of South Wales. Like some parts of the US East Coast, South Wales saw a lot of towns grow out of the coal mining industry and thousands of men, women and children were employed in coal mines all over the country. Big Pit was once one of the largest working coal mines but has since been converted into a museum where you can don a helmet and lamp, climb into the cage and descend down the original 90metre mine shaft for an hour long tour through the mines led by a man who had worked in the mines while they were still active. It was absolutely amazing (and should you be thinking of heading to Wales yourself, it was, like many of the best museums in the UK, free) and so unique. It was hard to image that the tiny tunnels in which we found ourselves were home to 1300 men, as well as horses, dogs and children who helped out in the mines.
There were a number of other exhibits to see after the part of the tour in the mine finished but nothing really compared to being underground with one of the men who could speak firsthand about the experience. After Big Pit, we continued south towards Cardiff, although we didn’t actually go all the way to the country’s capital city (and important in my mind for its Doctor Who associations) because it would have been impossible to experience the city in an hour or less. Instead, we turned west before hitting the city and stopped at a place called Tintern Abbey which featured the ruins of Tintern Abbey, one of the Catholic structures that’s destruction was ordered by Henry VIII when he decided he wanted to start his own religion. It was clear that it had been a stunningly gorgeous building while at its height and even in ruins it was quite a sight.
We didn’t stay long although Adam suggested that we all do our kitschy Wales tourist shopping at the Tintern Abbey gift shop as it’d be the last one in which we stopped. I bought two little cookbooks of Welsh recipes including Welsh rarebit. Rarebit is compared by some to cheese on toast but is actually a cheesy bread baked with herbs and seasonings, and a variety of cheeses. It gets its name from when poor families couldn’t afford meat to feed the whole family and so when some meat was available, it was cooked into the bread, then the bread was chopped up and distributed to each member of the family. If you got the piece with meat in it, then you got the rare bit of meat – thus the name rarebit although it’s not generally cooked with meat anymore.
After leaving Tintern Abbey we headed to our final stop in Wales at a place called Chepstow which was right on the border of England, just over the river. There was a bridge with a sign in the middle indicating where the border of the two countries lay.
Chepstow also had a gorgeous castle and I found a nice trail that went around the whole thing – it was a huge castle, bigger than any I’d seen so far on the trip and probably almost a quarter mile long. There were people in costume getting ready to do a mock battle in full armour and everything but unfortunately we couldn’t stay as it was time for us to go back to London.
It was such a wonderful trip and I can’t wait to go back to Wales to do some proper camping. Now that I know a number of the towns at different parts of the country, I can catch a train and make my way along the same route we traveled, although possibly at a more leisurely pace. I met some very nice people, got a ridiculous number of photos including a decent number with me in them (the nice thing about traveling with a group is you can ask people to take your picture everywhere!) and discovered that Wales is exactly as wonderful as I thought it would be.
Whew, I’m dead on my feet so it’s off to bed, damp sheets or not. Up next… Paris!
(Basically what this means is that instead of finding all this great content at megabroad.livejournal.com, you'll find it at www.whatever-name-you-help-me-decide-on.c
Options:
www.MyLittleEpic.com
www.MeaghanInLondon.com
www.LondonMeg.com
www.ViewFromTheThames.com
www.MeaghansAdventure.com
www.something-else-i-haven't-thought-of.c
Open to your suggestions!
Alright. Picking up where I left off with day two of my trip in Wales (that’s Sunday the 24th of August for anyone playing along at home). In the morning after our night in the hostel in Caernarfon I got up a bit early to take some pictures of the castle before we headed out for the day.
Unfortunately, it seemed that everyone in the British Isles (and most of mainland Europe) had decided Wales was the place to be for the holiday weekend and so the traffic was horrendous. This was made even worse by the fact that the main road through Northern and into Mid-Wales is a fairly narrow two lane road and we were a very big bus. There were some close calls (for the other drivers at least) but we somehow managed to make our way onward.
Our morning drive was through Snowdonia National Park which is home to Mount Snowdon, the second tallest mountain in the UK. It was absolutely gorgeous and had many high, rocky peaks that looked wonderful for climbing. We didn’t do much climbing as we were in a bus but we did stop to try to get a glimpse of Mount Snowdon, although it was being shy and hiding behind a lot of clouds. I definitely plan on going back to do some camping there, it looks exactly like you’d imagine a place called Snowdonia to look except there wasn’t any snow. It should have been called Cloudonia. That’s what it looked like. Cloudonia.
As we headed south, we passed through a town called Beddgelert (pronounced Beth-gelert and it means The Grave of Gelert) and although we didn’t stop, the name goes along with such a great legend I’ll give a quick recap:
The last Welsh Prince of Wales, before it was taken over by the English, was a man called Llywelyn (sounds a bit like chwell-en with a soft ch like in challah) the Last who was Prince until killed by Edward I in 1282. Before he was killed, he did quite a bit of fighting with Edward and his English armies and so was out of his home a lot. His wife had died and the one creature he trusted the most in overseeing the care of his infant son was his dog, Gelert. One day, he was away and Gelert was keeping watch in the nursery when a wolf entered the castle. Gelert, the dog, instinctively pulled the baby out of the crib and put him underneath, then covered him with a blanket and went off to find the wolf before it could enter the room. They met in the next room and a huge fight ensued. Gelert finally killed the wolf but was quite injured so limped back to the baby’s room where he collapsed. Llywelyn returned that evening and found Gelert, covered in blood, in a seemingly empty nursery and in rage and panic pulled out his sword and cut of Gelert’s head believing that Gelert had killed the baby. At the noise, the baby, still hidden, started crying and Llwelyn realized what he had done. Horrified and ashamed that he had killed Gelert, he picked up the body of the dog and carried it in his arms until he couldn’t go any further, and there stopped and buried the body. Around that grave eventually grew the town of Beddgelert, the Grave of Gelert. Although we didn’t stop, there is in fact a place where Gelert is supposed to be buried.
I really loved getting the Welsh stories from our guide and we heard so many. But even stories weren’t helping us from getting antsy as we had spent the whole morning on the bus so we were more than ready when we got to Harlech Castle for a walk about. Like the castle in Llangollen the day before, it was also on a peak, although not nearly as high as the castle Dainas Bran so the walk up was much more manageable for the group. Also, it overlooked the ocean which was pretty fantastic. Both Harlech and the castle in Caernarfon where we stayed the night before were Edwardian castles, built basically to intimidate the Welsh people that he had overtaken. They were meant to be impressive and complex enough to be defended by only a few men so it was quite a site up on top of the hill. I spent the full hour wandering around the castle, which dated from the 1300s and probably took way too many pictures but enjoyed it immensely.
In some of the innermost castle areas, they had set up some display boards with information about the castle and its history. Everything was written in both English and Welsh. Aside from being a wonderfully lyrical language, it’s beautiful to look at too – although it’s not really phonetic so it’s hard to guess at the pronunciation from the written words.
All too soon it was time to leave the castle. We stopped again briefly in a town called Dolgellau to grab some lunch but it was another long bus stretch as we made our way to the town of Hay-on-Wye, better known as the town of books. Hay-on-Wye has a local castle as well but the castle was purchased by a nobleman who was, shall we say, completely bonkers. He turned the castle into an antiques and second hand bookshop but upon realising that the antiques weren’t moving and the books were selling like hotcakes, he ditched the antiques and bought more books. And more books. And more books. Then another shop in the town to sell the books. And another. And some more books. Suddenly, someone realised that he was completely bankrupt and he lost everything because he had been buying the books for more than he was selling them.
Fortunately, his legacy lives on and Hay-on-Wye, with a population of about 1800 (that’s smaller than Colby!) has over 30 secondhand bookshops of varying specialties. There were secondhand gardening bookshops, secondhand cookbooks shops, bookshops where nothing was over a pound. The original castle, with its random assortment of books for sale, was still there with a garden full of books for 50p. We had gotten there rather late and a number of the shops were closing for the night so we only had about half an hour to look around. I got irrationally (well, I thought it was rational) angry with the whole town when I found a rare and first editions bookseller trying to sell a “full set” of Bronte novels for £250 but the set didn’t include one of Anne Bronte’s novels so was one short. I might have to go back and give Hay-on-Wye a second chance, though. It is after all the town of books and I really think that sounds like my sort of place.
It was quite late, then, when we got to Abergavenny, our home for the second night. We were staying in a hostel called The Black Sheep which was situated above a pub and after a quick walk through the town (which wasn’t just empty… it was absolutely barren. It was like a ghost town. Although it did look as though it would be very cute during the day) to grab some dinner, we all headed back to our own pub where the bartender, who also owned and lived in the pub and hostel, put on a quiz for us with free drinks as prizes. Our team tied for first place and I won another drink for being the first to know that “woman Hitler” is an anagram of “Mother in Law” so by the time the quiz finished I was relaxed enough to enjoy and even take part in the post-quiz karaoke (although I think the rest of the group wished they had had a bit more to drink!). We annoyed the neighbours until past 11pm when we all traipsed off to bed at the end of our second day in Wales.
Just one more installment of the Welsh Saga tomorrow! Hope you’re enjoying the story so far…
I’m not sure I can possibly sum up the last three days in a single post but given that not too much is going to be happening this week, maybe I can break it up and do a post about the trip over the rest of the week. Lord knows I’d better get caught up before France or you’ll never hear about Wales. To start with, the Welsh call their country Cymru (pronounced coom-ree with enough of the ‘r’ rolled that sometimes it sounds a bit like coom-bree).
Wales was wonderful. It was everything I expected and more (and I had high expectations). There were castles and mountains and scenic drives and friendly people and cheap beer. It was beyond gorgeous. Wales is quite unique in that it has an absolutely stupendous array of landscapes even though it’s a fairly small country. It’s mountainous in some areas, costal, flat, forested, pastured, and more.
But before I get into the country let me say a bit about the trip I went on. Haggis Adventures runs trips all over the UK (most predominately Scotland, thus the name) and since this weekend was the Bank Holiday and I had Monday off, I booked this a while ago. It’s a coach bus trip and the best way to describe it (as put by my tour guide Adam) is that if Wales were a movie, the Haggis tour would be the trailer. I got a taste of Wales and have a little sense of what it’s about but really there’s a ton more to discover. We spent more time than I might have liked on the bus but I did manage to see a lot more of the country that I would have otherwise (like… the whole thing).
Tonight I’m absolutely knackered after the trip so I’ll just get started with day one… if I can stay awake for that much!
We headed out of London at about 7:30am Saturday morning (which meant I needed to leave my flat a little before 6am to make the bus) along with the rest of the holiday traffic which meant we traveled at a crawl out of the city (and pretty much for the rest of the weekend through any other city). I met up with the rest of my group which was a mixed bunch – we had a lot of Aussies and Indians, a handful of Americans (myself included), two from Korea, two from Brazil, one Kiwi, one German and some assorted Brits. I ended up chatting with Natalie (the German woman) and Abby (American) and later we connected with Mel (Kiwi) and two sisters Louisa and Gemma (Aussie). The six of us roomed together for the two nights… but I’m getting ahead of myself already.
Once out of London we headed for Stratford-Upon-Avon, the home of the one-and-only Shakespeare (who, incidentally, signed his name many different ways on the historical documents recovered from the time but never actually signed the way it’s spelled today. Funny, that). We, somewhat disappointingly, only had 40 minutes there – something that would be a trend for the rest of the trip – so I had to tell myself that I wasn’t actually there visiting, that I was just in a very nice town that happened to have a lot of Shakespeare stuff. I can’t wait to go back, though, the teaser of Stratford was enough to make me want to spend a full weekend there. I looked, but didn’t see David Tennant. Sadly. I did see Shakespeare’s house which is, to be fair, cooler as well as the pub where he was rumoured to have downed pints with his fellow actors after the plays. I enjoyed seeing the house in which Shakespeare grew up (I didn't go in this time... next time I will) although I have heard it said that during the "preservation" of Shakesperian heritage, in their eagerness to make the area look nice and build a museum for which they could charge entry, they knocked down the wrong house - so what you actually visit is the house next to the house where Shakespeare grew up. Either way, it's as close to genius as I've ever gotten.
After Stratford, we continued to head north towards Northern Wales. We learned quite a bit about Welsh history and legend from our tour guide who was incredible. The tour was worth it just for the local history he provided. Our first stop in Wales was a place called Llangollen (pronounced something like High-lock-len) where the ruins of a castle called Dainas Bran stood on a peak about 1000 metres above the town. We had the chance to walk up to the ruins which was amazing – it was a strenuous hike, very steep and ragged, but it was worth it when you got to the top and you could see miles and miles in every direction. I was glad to get the exercise too after sitting in the bus all morning. It was hard to imagine how the castle was originally built as it was hard enough to get myself up the hill without building supplies, but it was definitely a good location for the castle defenses - nothing beats that view!
After Llangollen we continued north towards the Isle of Anglesey which is a largish island off the coast of Northern Wales. We passed The Ugly House and because it’s such an interesting story, I’ll give a quick recap:
Lords of the land back in the 15th century taxed their tenants based on the size of their house and the number of houses on their plot of land. Therefore, if their children moved out to a new house on the land, they would pay twice as much in taxes. When the Welsh tenants complained, the landlord told them that if between the time he left when the sun went down and when he arrived in the morning, a fully built house with a fire burning in the hearth appeared, he wouldn’t tax them for the house. Of course he didn’t believe it was possible but the tenants gathered the materials during the day, and their friends at night, and roughly threw together a house, got the fire lit, and by morning got the house for free. The lack of precision and roughness of the materials and workmanship meant that the house was very basic and the walls jagged and protruding. Thus the name, The Ugly House. Few examples of these still exist in tact and we got to see one on the way to Anglesey.
We made a quick detour across the Menai Strait to Anglesey for the sole purpose of stopping at Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyll-l
We then traveled to Caernarfon (something like can-off-ren) where we would be staying for the night. There was some amazingly rich history of the area, not much of it pleasant for the Welsh who were basically abused by the English from the 1280s onward, but there was a truly stunning castle built by Edward I of England in the late 1200s and the castle and most of the castle wall still stands today. Our hostel was just inside the castle walls and the entire castle was on the sea. We got fish and chips and walked along the sea wall before stopping in the local pub, again right on the water, in the shadow of the castle, for local beer and to overheard some Welsh.
I called it an early night as it had already been a long day, and was out like a light by 10:30pm.
…As I hope to be tonight! I’ll pick up with day two of Wales tomorrow hopefully. It really was a fantastic trip and I can’t wait to go back.
Oh, I should mention, that the dance class uses jive steps but modern music, which is great for us as that means you can actually dance in a club somewhere, you don't just have to wait for big band music. Alright, enough stalling. Here it is - the culmination of 7 Jive Nation dance classes.
Because it's a little dark I'll throw in a few more stills that Sarah took throughout the night (not that these were posed at all :-P).
So, that'll probably be all you see from dancing for a while until my trusted photo- and film-ographers return from Sydney. Today is my day off which means I have more to do than I could possibly imagine. Off to Wales tomorrow morning!
I’ve made it to this point in the summer without actually attending any of the BBC Proms events, a fact that I felt this weekend I should rectify. Under the assumption that regardless of the event I would find myself more cultured, musically educated and generally better off, I didn’t bother to look up the composer or musical style before queuing up for my £5 gallery ticket on Sunday afternoon. Had I found out before entering the Royal Albert Hall that Messiaen was, in fact, known for his relatively modern pipe organ pieces, it is incredibly likely that I would have picked a different concert to kick off my personal Promming season. Under the misassumption that a Sunday afternoon would be prime Promming time, I jumped into the short queue at 3pm, a full hour before the concert began. I entered the hall with a group that was clearly full of pipe organ enthusiasts.
“The Royal Albert organ has 999 pipes in the organ,” I was told in a tone that is generally reserved for rare archeological discoveries and stunning feats of physical prowess. I mentally made a note never to bring any of my slightly OCD friends to the Royal Albert but trapped into the hall.
It’s a stunning venue, and it amazes every time. The grand ceiling soared above but from my position in the gallery, I was just an arm’s length away from the empty stage. I gazed longingly at the music-less stands, the harp with its dust cover, the darkened chairs, and was slightly annoyed that I was denied the experience of the full orchestra in favour of a single soloist on the pipe organ situated a few dozen metres above the stage.
The crowds of Prommers I had expected failed to appear (they had probably read the programme) and with only a few minutes to the opening of the programme, there were still only a few hundred patrons in the eight thousand person venue. The BBC announcer welcomed us all and introduced Jennifer Bate, the organist for the afternoon. Nearby, some of the other listeners closed their eyes in preparation for the opening notes. Oh lord. It would be one of those crowds.
With a (hopefully) intentional clash of major and minor notes, the concert began. Now, I have to admit, most of my experience with organ music is limited to The Phantom of the Opera’s opening notes but I’ve always found that your range of sounds runs between a whistle that’s generally more suited for a dog’s range of hearing in the smaller pipes and something approximating the gods passing gas in the larger ones. Add to that the fact that the chords often favour clashing notes and I was already prepared to scamper at the interval.
Then something amazing happened. As the talented Jennifer Bate continued to pound out thunderous combinations of notes, I began to realise that I was enjoying myself. I wasn’t admiring a symphony orchestra, there wasn’t anything resembling a melody, and I certainly won’t be adding Apparition de l’église éternelle to my iPod but there was something about the overwhelming power of all 999 pipes in that organ that really did approximate the religious fervor that Messiaen was aiming for with his compositions. I’ll admit it – I even closed my eyes.
I’m glad I attended the afternoon Proms on August 17, 2008. It wasn’t what I had expected, or what I would have planned for an afternoon of music. But I found myself overwhelmed by a new music style that I wouldn’t have otherwise discovered. And really… isn’t that what the Proms is all about?
But now that I’ve actually read the programme, I’ll be attending Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty with the London Symphony Orchestra. I’ll be the one up front with my eyes closed.
I've also been making a dedicated effort to overcome my potentially dangerous eating adventures (although given the fact that my cooking has been more experimental, it's possibly MORE likely that I'm eating something raw/undercooked/overcooked/mouldy/and so on). I've been taking pictures of some of the things I've made and please don't think this is an accurate sample of my diet - I do eat very healthily, it just happened that the prettier things were the tastier ones. These are some of my creations over the last month or so.
Yesterday, I went with Sarah and Steve (the engaged couple with whom I go dancing) to Portabello Road where Sarah had to visit a bead shop to get materials to make her bridesmaids matching earrings. We also went into an amazing spice shop that had every single spice and herb you can imagine (and some you can't). I took the obligatory picture of me next to the Portabello Road sign... now I'm just missing me in a phone box!
After Portabello Road, we went to Camden where there was a village fete-style event to raise money for an orphanage in Africa. I suppose I should feel guilty that through Spoonfed we got in for free and got free drinks so were probably offsetting the cause but it was a lot of fun and great for a free afternoon. Our next stop was going to be Poker in the Park - a free poker game in Leicester Square but by the time we got there it was finished. We weren't ready to head home and the weather was so nice, we walked to Trafalgar Square where they had huge screens up to show the Olympics and the football matches were on so it was a huge crowd. It was incredible, sitting on the steps of the National Gallery, watching football in Trafalagar Square, with Westminster and Big Ben in the distance.
It was getting late and we were all hungry so we split to head back to our homes at about 8:30pm. Today, I'm heading off to the Victoria and Albert Museum which is almost always everyone's favourite London museum. I haven't been there yet but they have an exhibit about jewelery on so it should be fun. After that I'm going to the BBC Proms and hopefully will have some more pictures from the Royal Albert Hall. Should be another exciting day!
I first went to the class last week with my friend Sarah (who works at Spoonfed and whose bachlorette party I attended a few weekends ago) and her fiance Steven. I had told Sarah back when I first started at Spoonfed that I liked jive and swing dancing (even though I'd never done it before) and she spent a month and a half telling me to come along to this class she did three times a week. Finally, last week I made the time to go along and I'm so glad I did and that I've bought the 5-week pass (L30 for 5 weeks of unlimited classes). It's good exercise after my increasingly long days in the office, fun, and social. Exactly what I needed.
I've also joined a book group and need to hunt down a copy of Slaughterhouse Five as that's the first book on the list. I've never read it before and know it's one of those books I have to read at somepoint so this should be a good excuse.
I took a bunch of pictures last week of my commute (it's really not that exciting but I had a request) so I'll be uploading those this weekend. I didn't take any pictures of the Tube... you are allowed to use camera on the underground, but generally it's groups of tourists taking pictures of each other. It might look a bit suspicious if I tried to just photograph the trains and stations. I'm not sure the officer would buy my excuse of trying to document my commute for a group of people on average 4000 miles away!
Speaking of which, I got teased today at work for having a LiveJournal account. Henry and Alex (the coCEOs of Spoonfed) met with a guy who happens to be quite high up in the LiveJournal ranks (I'll leave out his name) and when they came back, it turned out that I was the only person they knew who actually *had* a LiveJournal (guess it's a lot bigger in the US). Also, I suppose by this point I'm supposed to be hosting my blogs on my own domain (and by the way, http://www.londonmeg.com isn't taken so if anyone wants to buy me the domain name I'll switch over but for now I'm perfectly happy here). It sounded like they had a good chat this morning. It's a very exciting time to be at Spoonfed and I've basically made the decision that I'm going to stay here until next summer working with them. I just need to sign the paper work and make sure they can follow through on their offer to get a visa for me.
Well, it's my first early night all week and so I'm going to take advantage of it by catching up on my sleep. I'll try to get a video up at some point of me at my dance class if I can swing it (get it? swing? at my jive class? I think I'm clearly lacking sleep here... I have to explain my own puns. sheesh!). I love the classes and I'm so glad I started going!
I think what people read on the Tube says a lot about them. It's as much of a statement as your bag or shoes or the amount of makeup you're wearing.
So I'm not sure what to think of the heavily made-up woman on the train across from me this morning who was dressed to the nines, off to her city bank job presumably, reading "The Spanish Lover" by Joanna Trollope. Somehow I don't think I'll be adding that one to my list.
Well, first of my random musings - you know how you supposedly build your immune system in your first few years of life? Of course, you're exposed to all these things that your body recognises as foreign so you build up antibodies and blah blah blah science happens and then when you're an adult you don't get sick every time someone in the room sneezes. I've come to the conclusion that there are in fact two very important times in life that lead to the development of the adult immune system. One, when you're a newborn. The other is when you first start cooking for yourself and living on a budget. I'm pretty sure most of the things I've eaten in the last few months have been undercooked or overcooked or expired or unwashed or improperly stored or slightly moldy or just plan bad. And this isn't a comment on the quality of English food (I'll do that later). It's just inexperience in preparing my meals day after day and not having the budget to have my life catered. What this means, however, is that I am probably assaulting my immune system with lord-knows-what kinds of microscopic things that make people sick. In fact I'm amazed I've lasted this long. Of course, this must be a right of passage everyone goes through - and the real reason health declines in old age is that you've figured out how to cook properly and aren't giving your immune system a complete workout three times a day.
This week was... ridiculous. I'm not going to go into it but I managed to pull the most boneheaded stunt possible at work this week on Tuesday (to put it briefly, I was hired to do useful things with the analytics data. Last I checked, accidentally deleting it entirely is generally considered less than useful). I spent the next 24 hours in complete shock (and slight amazement I wasn't fired) and it was fairly emotionally exhausting - and, to be fair, physically exhausting as I didn't sleep much that night. The next day I tried to get back into the swing of things quite literally by going to a jive dancing class with Sarah and her fiance after a long day at work where I got to see my glaring mistake of the day before every time I opened the internet. The dance class was incredibly fun but it was another quite late night and then Thursday and Friday, not only was our intern out of the office so I was behind on a bunch of work, but I had seven interviews over the course of two days for some more interns for the team. All in all, it was a crazy week and next week, we've managed to pick up four (!!) interns to start on Tuesday so things should continue to be a bit insane.
This weekend is definitely going to be about relaxing. I've just be chilling out this morning and doing a bit of work to try to find someone to buy or help me manage DormWise (I've figured the best thing to do is sell it or let someone take over the site as it's such a shame it's sitting there and I can't work on it at all). I've got a bit of a cold which I'm fairly sure is from the lack of sleep and not undercooked food. Next week will be a push, and then the week after I'm working four days, taking Friday off to get ready for a trip and then leaving Saturday for a three day bus trip through Wales. Monday is the bank holiday so it's another day off work. It should be incredibly beautiful and fun and I'm looking forward to it!
Hopefully at some point this weekend I'll leave the flat, but if not... hey, there's nothing wrong with 48 hours of sleep.
Weekend Stuff!
Alright, starting with last Thursday night. I had press tickets to see The Waifs, an Australian folk band that I love, perform at a very cool venue right near my flat. I had two tickets so my flatmate Ann came along and she seemed to enjoy it alright (at least I wasn’t inflicting my country/folk tastes without letting her know what she was getting herself into – she had listened to their music before we went!). I got the tickets because I was going to write up the event afterwards and the article is here: The Waifs on Spoonfed.
Friday evening was incredibly low-key which was good as on Saturday, I got up early to head off to Portobello Market (which is known for its vintage offerings but also has a ton of produce as well) to get produce for the week. I got:
- 2 baskets of strawberries (which I actually had to throw out most of because they were moldy at the bottom )
- About 30 Clementine oranges
- A pound of apples
- A pound of tomatos
- A head of broccoli
- A pound of mozzarella cheese
- A loaf of homemade whole grain bread
- A pound of onions
- Half a pound of cherries
- One fig (which was also slightly rotten – or I didn’t know how to eat it properly)
For £9. It was pretty unbelievable and I definitely plan of making more use of the farmers markets around London. I probably wouldn’t buy meat (although there was some tempting fresh fish) but for stuff that comes from the ground, I think it’s quite a deal!
Then, after the market, I went home to try to find something I could wear for the fancy dress bachelor/bachelorette (or as they call it here Stag and Hen) party of my friend from work. She (and her fiancé) are Australian and so are having their party together because they don’t know many people here and this was their main celebration in the UK. It was a pub crawl that began at 2pm and carried on until the wee hours of the morning (although I headed home around 10pm!). The theme was School Uniform and I was pretty hopeless (no skirts/shorts/knee-high socks/ties or anything!) and had to make do with grey trousers and a button down – so basically I just looked like I was going to work. It was a ton of fun, though, and I met some really nice friends of theirs. I think the entire afternoon/night could probably be summed up in these picture, though:
Let’s just say that people were all very generous about buying rounds of drinks for everyone else. Regardless it was a great day.
Sunday, in the morning I met with Mimi to talk about her business plan and in the afternoon I was going to play tennis but it ended up raining so unfortunately I was out of luck. Hopefully we’ll have some good weather over the next couple of weekends.
Relevant Important Stuff!
My big(-ish) news is that Spoonfed has offered me a longer-term job and is willing to sponsor my visa (a generous offer as that’s both a hassle and an expensive process) to stay with them until at least June of next year. I’ve been a little stressed out (in a good way! I don’t have any bad choices!) about trying to figure out what to do as I have three wonderful options:
1) Stay in London with Spoonfed
Pros: it's London, I like the people at Spoonfed, it's England, David Tennant's Hamlet will be coming to London in December, everyone likes Doctor Who, it's a central hub of travel, they'll give me a pay increase, I’m getting settled and making friends here, I love my flat and flatmate, I’m working with an exciting startup in a good position, awesome accents
Cons: London is a big city (which I am not loving to death - I'm a suburb girl I think), it's beyond expensive... which means travel is difficult/impossible until I get a pay raise, a year and a half is a long time to be away from home, I work long hours and the commute sucks
2) Move to Ireland for four months in December when my UK visa expires (this is an option provided through BUNAC – the group that sponsors my current visa)
Pros: it's Ireland, I could work and write my novels, live in another country, really really awesome accents, I’ve always wanted to be in Ireland
Cons: I have to start this whole process (job, flat, social life) over again, it'll be cold and dark all winter and then when it starts to get nice I have to leave
3) Go home and possibly get a job with IMVU
Pros: it's California, it's free housing for a while, I really like everyone at IMVU, family is there.
Cons: I'm not here, I miss out on possibly awesome and rewarding startup experience, I'm not near extra cool European travel, people don’t have awesome accents, it’s silly to go there now when I’m going to go back in less than a year regardless of what I decide
I think I’ll be able to make a decision that’s good for me, and Spoonfed has been very nice in giving me a couple of weeks to make up my mind. I do miss home sometimes but I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything. Additional pros and cons for any of the three options are happily accepted in the comments section below.
