an aside from london [part twenty-nine and 3/4]

ladies,

the boy, see attached. it is not his best picture. he sneers.

my friend, junya, thought he was a gay teenager when they first met [on that hilarious and embarrassing afternoon in the park], but damn, he is one hot gay teenager. also he is not gay.

i included a picture of myself because, well, i look lovely and i know you miss me.

love
o

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

hello friends

be warned, this half installment from london is about my new squeeze so if you want to keep your lunch down, do not proceed.

are you ready to have your knees melted?

last night while r was having drinks with a friend, he called and asked me to go to a gallery opening with him later that evening. he actually asked "does this opening excite you?", i said "no". so we ditched that plan and he asked if we should go for dinner and drinks instead. i said "yes". he calls back and asks me where we should go. he lets me get halfway through my suggestion of thai before he interrupts and tells me he made a booking at the bistrotheque for 9.30, he was hoping i would say yes. what a brute! i cannot believe he made a booking without asking me! but at the same time my knees melted. a man in control is so utterly appealing. also, i love the bistrotheque. did you know he is a very well dressed young man? it is such a pleasure to go out with him because i know my efforts will be returned. on wednesday night we went to see a band and we both rocked up at the tube station in macs. so film noir. sometimes i think he is my doppelganger. last night i wore a cream silk eley kishimoto blouse with an all-over horse print, black pencil skirt, seamed stockings and heels. he wore cigarette trousers, tux shirt and waistcoat. dreamboats ahoy. after dinner while we were umming and ahhing about dessert, i slid a piece of paper across the table. it is my coat check ticket. he does not know why i am passing it to him. "do you want me to get your coat?" he puzzles. "no. it is a note." he turns it over.

r
would you like to stay over tonight?

o

did you know no girl has ever written him a note or letter before? his knees melted, he told me so.

you are all thinking "be careful! remember what happened with the last one!" i know. i am trying really hard not to get excited. i really am.

love
olivia

wave from london [part twenty-nine]

hello friends

about time, you say? same! ready for the round up? can we do this in point form?

01 london fashion week. what do you want to know? our show was on sunday 22, you can see it here. do you think it would be biased if i said i really liked the show and it reaffirmed my love for e k? well i did really like it. i have so much respect for wakako, she is very conceptual and focused. i did not have to dress backstage this season, i got to be front-of-house and direct people to their rows. i thought i would have to contend with people who demanded to sit front row but everyone was pleasant. do you know suzy menkes? like only the fashion editor of the international herald tribune? she was at our show. i love her. she is short and round, alone and did not look affected by the fashionistas around her. i would show you pictures but my friend, b, has my camera. i am expecting at least one naked picture slotted in somewhere when i get it back.

02 the last time i saw stefan was the monday morning after the show. we had a lovely weekend together and i have spent the last three weeks getting over it. i think i am almost there.

03 i have been doing lots of fun things, like getting some culture in my life. i went to see hats: an anthology by stephen jones at the v & a. if eye candy hats are your thing, this is the exhibition for you. i caught some cabaret fever in the form of bourgeois and maurice's 'social work', two people counseling us through tough times with song, numerous costume changes, and tall hair.

03 i just finished a month of internet dating. i know. weird. ok so i was bored! and i wanted to move on from stefan as quickly as possible. it sort of worked. i have a profile on the guardian. there is someone else whom some of us know on there too but i will not name names. so far i have made one friend [we worked out we both know jonathon], went on one terribly boring date, and met an incredibly interesting and handsome boy who i hung out with all weekend [possibly a winner].

04 on thursday night i invited seven friends over for dinner [spinach and ricotta cannelloni, side salad, and flourless chocolate cake]. it was so much fun! that was the day i decided to stop being sad about stefan. most people had never met before but everyone talked and ate and laughed, all merry on wine and conversation. we discussed internet dating, bestiality, cannibalism, you know, the usual. i mention i am going for a drink with a boy from the guardian the next night and we all have a look at his profile and pictures and share a giggle. so i go on the date, he is indeed handsome in a very young east london kind of way. his name is r [born in brazil, raised in wales], he is a music journalist for the bbc and is very well-dressed. i was surprised at how much we had to talk about. we feel the same way about haruki murakami [that he is a chauvinist], love wong kar-wai, and disliked the recent mark rothko retrospective at the tate modern for the exact same reasons. for a minute i get an eerie feeling this boy is my doppelganger and i might have to destroy him. we have a drink at the bistrotheque, go for a bagel on brick lane, drink some more at casa blue, and then he walks me home at 3.30am. on saturday i invite him to join rebecca, jonathon, and i for a picnic at london fields. the sales agent from e k, junya, is in the park with his girlfriend and we wave them over. as soon as junya sits down he goes into an excited frenzy "SO HOW DID YOUR DATE GO ON FRIDAY? TELL ME! TELL ME!" and i nearly die because said date is sitting next to me. i say "i cannot talk about it right now". he says "WHY? TELL ME!". i am blushing and trying to telepathically tell junya to stop it but r saves me, introduces himself, and offers to kiss and tell.

there, are you suitably updated?

love
o

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

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

hello from london [part twenty-seven]

hello friends

so umm yes i might not write for awhile. it is not a big deal. i thought about what i could tell you today but i have nothing interesting. i am letting work take over my life right now. the e k online store is all i think about. s came back this weekend. i saw him yesterday and today. i prepped roll-your-own-vietnamese-rice-paper-rolls with marinaded tofu for dinner last night. die! he helped me make a flourless chocolate cake. mercy! you can find it here. we had drinks with his friends at a wetherspoon, kind of like a rsl but less old people. you can buy a schooner for £1.99. cheap! in the morning we had breakfast with some more friends at a turkish eatery, very delicious. and then he left. i decided to give my feelings one last chance to voice themselves and i said "i would move mountains for you", my line from the last update. i wish i heard what he said into my hair. i cried, he held me and kissed my face. why we are not together? i loathe you, distance! i feel he is my punishment for all the times i treated boys badly. damn it must have been a lot of boys. after he left, i allowed myself an afternoon at the cinema and saw milk. i wish i liked it more. sean penn is amazing, the biopic is well-executed [spliced with archival footage], but it was too long and when my attention drifted i would get teary.

so you get the picture. if i keep writing to you in this state, all my updates will be about me crying over a boy and that just gets boring after awhile. i know i will get over it but right now there is an ache in my bones and i do not want to write about it all the time.

if rebecca were here, instead of across the sea with you, i would feel better. she would have told me to stop crying already and we would be drinking fennel tea, playing pick-up sticks, and watching movies. then i would be telling you about all the things i have to look forward to, like london fashion week. our show is on february 22. excitement city! the new range looks so good. there is no way my clothing allowance will cover all the things i want. the hussein chalayan retrospective just opened at the design museum and i really want to go to that. my friend bahbak is djing at club pacific in a few weeks time and then on saturday is work it players lounge, a 90s hip hop night at the ica [sort of like the mca but smaller and less art]. there is a slim chance aki and i can go to paris fashion week with the team in march but she thinks it is more than likely we will have to stay back and run a sample sale. boo! oh well, one can dream! i am very excited about coming home in june. i wish it were tomorrow.

miss you! love you! when i write to you next there will be no mention of crying, promise!

o

hello from london [part twenty-six]

hello friends

i hope you are well. i am fine, ok, maybe a little sad. it feels like everything that was good in my life last week has turned on its head. i secretly wish i was home right now. my world here is so small, it is almost incestuous. there are only so many people i can selfishly burden my problems with. a person at work made me feel really stupid on friday but i only just worked out this afternoon her comment was not directed at me. two people i care about said hurtful things to me, one intentional, the other not. i feel like i make the same mistakes over and over. maybe i should let my brain do some of the talking instead of always going with how i feel and then having to deal with the horrible aftermath.

i spent the weekend trying to make myself happy. i bought bread from broadway market for the first time, a round wholegrain loaf. where has it been all my life? so delicious! i made a cous cous and chunky vegetable soup this week, the bread is a perfect compliment. i did a lot of reading in bed. i finished what i loved by siri hustvedt. i really wanted to like the book because two good friends recommended it but i did not find it believable at all. i did some work at home. aki was away for three days at the end of last week and she left me a list of jobs to complete. i finished them all. the work i did at home was a bit extra. i hope she notices. i found out on friday e k is applying for a sponsor license. do you know what that means? once they get it, it is very easy for them to sponsor someone for work. they just have to fill out the appropriate forms and issue a certificate. i have a review coming up at the end of the month, do you think it is possible to negotiate a pay rise and sponsorship at the same time? i went to see the wrestler today. i love seeing a film by myself, it is so luxe. i did not believe the love story between randy and pam for a second, but regardless, mickey rouke is amazing. his character does things that make him happy but are not necessarily the best idea. same! sigh. i was tempted to rent ‘little miss sunshine’ for the hundredth time tonight because it never fails to make me feel better. i should just buy it. instead i am working on a felt face badge. you know, the girl with feathers and wind in her hair. are you surprised? i am. i have not touched felt in months. maybe this is a good time as any for some felt therapy. i love hand stitching, so old-school.

a certain someone is visiting this weekend. i know the sight of him will make me happy but, of course, that is the problem because we cannot be together and seeing each other is just prolonging the inevitable. do you know what i wish? i wish people could still say things like “i love you” and “i love you too. let us make this work”. why do people not say that anymore? has love lost its ability to move mountains?

thank you for being my shoulder to cry on. i know you are all probably rolling your eyes, thinking the ride we went on together trying to get the e k job was a lot more interesting this the weepy ride i am taking you on now. i wish i had more to show and tell. next week, i promise!

love
o