3 February 2009

hello from london [part twenty-eight and a half]

hello [again]

i just checked the weather forecast for tomorrow, you know, maybe it will be snowing again and i will not have to go to work. it looks like tuesday will have sunny intervals, ok great. but on friday, it is going to be sunny with highs of 0°C and lows of -6°C. what? how is that sunny? i am laughing as i type this. no wonder people here start dying when it hits the mid to high twenties. weirdos.

love
o

2 February 2009

snow snow snow! from london [part twenty-eight]

hello friends!

how are you all? having too much fun in the sun? london is putting on quite the snow show, white and powdery and pretty. want to see?


this is beck road, my street.


london fields, a winter wonderland!


look at that snowball!

instead of engaging in the usual knife fights, gangs of boys threw snowballs at random strangers. people built snowmen and snow penises [or peni depending on which school of thought you come from], they dropped snowballs down each other's jumpers, and made merry like people who do not have to go to school or work should. i did not have to go to work today, it was wonderful! snow snow snow!

this past week has been busy and stressful, you know, being peak production time and all. i racked up fifteen hours of overtime over four days. intense! but that is mostly over now. on friday night i had the best random night out with jonathon. we found a decent thai restaurant off brick lane. we both agreed we would not have such a hard time finding good thai or chinese or japanese food in sydney, those places sit pretty on almost every corner. why is good food so difficult to find here? we had a drink at my new favourite bar, the bistrotheque. i still cannot get over how cool that place is. come visit me, i will take you! it is brimming with well-put-together graphic/ industrial/ fashion designer types who most likely hail from hip european cities, like paris. who knows. they are certainly easy to look at. i would usually roll my eyes and heave a heavy sigh at such a crowd but this sort of works for me. oh no am i becoming one of them? someone slap me, quick! jonathon observed that we never see such people during the day down around hackney. true. outside there was a line of taxis waiting to take them home. where do they come from?

on saturday and sunday i attended nerdfest 2009. want to hear about it? i had a lovely afternoon with my friend bahbak at broadway market, dipping pastries and cakes into our hot drinks and trading stories. then we go to his house, sit in the kitchen and have a macbook-off. can you imagine it? two people sitting at the kitchen table with their macbooks open, facing each other, doing work. i worked on the e k online store, he worked on his dj set and photography project. nerd alert! on sunday i am still working on the online store but this time engaging in hour long skype sessions with stefan, explaining all the changes that need to be made to the store before we can go live. n e r d s ! i cannot believe a minute ago i actually thought i was cool. but are you ready for the pay off? the store went live on sunday night. visit it here! it has already made two sales yay!

i feel much better compared to last week, by the way. it is no fun to wallow. i am all over last.fm like a kid in a candy store. i love it! i have television covered too, with the bbc iplayer. oh so high brow! i like to sit in bed, hand-stitching felt faces, listening to music. do you know what i am excited about for you sydney people? take your time: olafur eliasson! ok so it is not on until december 2009, but still, i would come home just to go to it. olafur eliasson created an artificial sun in the tate modern in 2003, people still talk about it now.

ok ok just because you asked nicely, i have a story for you. today when i was slowly traversing the slippery icy streets home, trying desperately not to fall over because i had my macbook with me, a tall big man knocked my shoulder hard as he stomped by. there was no messing about with him. of course i thought he was a rude but what struck me more as i regained my footing was how strong he felt. he was all solid mass. my instant thought was "if i cut him open, he would be dense like a chocolate mud cake". is that weird? my second thought was "if i fall over now and smash my macbook, he would not care". i am still typing to you so everything is fine. 

love
o