Last night I wrote a post but my internet died in the butthole. Now I can’t be arsed rewriting it. All the gold lost while drunk 
After a grueling three and a half hour interview yesterday, I was pooped out and was busting to go to the loo. So as I was about to leave the building, I decided to use the facilities in the building and approached one of the building attendants on the floor
Me: Hi, do you happen to know where the bathroom is?
Attendant: Why do you want to go to the bathroom for?
Me: urrr… I need to pee?
Like wtf?! who the hell would question people why they needed to go to the toilet??? When I followed the directions I was given, it led me to the janitor’s loo. Doesn’t matter me too much since I just point and shoot 
One of the many things I like about living in London is how close all the shops are and more importantly they open late!! Especially when it comes to food I can go out at 8pm to buy my ingredients and if I forget something, it’s a matter of walking for a minute and hey presto I’m there. I think you can do that now with the IGA stores back home as they close at 9pm but if you look at the stores themselves, they’re run down, the goods are more expensive than coles and (more importantly) less variety.
Anyway, while waiting for a phone interview, I got a bit hungry and bored so I decided to make/copy a Stuzzico pizza. Though I didn’t get the fetta cheese, it still tasted damn good with the olives, rocket leaves and mayo… mmm….
I’ve finally left the Astor Victoria and have now moved into a mate’s flat. He’s currently stuck in Perth but I met up with his flatmate and he was ok with me moving in. COOL!!! Astor Victoria was kinda starting to get on my nerves so it was great timing. I had booked an additional two days and potentially another week to preempt my mate coming back the following week. As a result of doing this, I had to move out of my current room (which I liked) and to another room that was on the other side of the building.
What a contrast I had experienced though as previously I was situated on the first floor but now I was moved to the third floor. In case you do not know Astor Victoria has 5 floors but in fact between each floor there are half floors. For me I was essentially walking up 6 floors as opposed to the 2 floors previously. Walking up and down these stairs was not cool especially on the day that I changed rooms as I had to carry my 20kg backpack!
Walking up the stairs was not the real issue though but instead it was my new roommates! Not that there was anything wrong with their personalities but there was one fella who had severe snoring problems!!! Another roommate had to shout a number of times to STOP SNORING!! but that only worked for a minute or so before it started again. All night long… oh the pain and the lack of sleep. It was surprising for me as I did not encounter loud snorers in the other dorm room. I thought I was going to be relieved as the snorer had left the following day BUT to be replaced by ANOTHER!!!
Another contrast between the different sides of the buildings was that the bathrooms stink! Like it hadn’t been cleaned for a bijillion years and the showers were running boiling hot water. Nearly burnt my nuts off while taking a shower >_<
I now understand why people don’t like staying in hostels. Oh well, you win some and you lose some. At least now I can relax a bit as I have security and comfort. I no longer need to lock all my gear in lockers and I can leave my electronic gear plugged to the wall without me watching it.
Now I just need to get back to preparing for this job interview and stop procrastinating!!!
Tags: Astor Victoria, horror, hostel, london
I was walking around Russel Square when I noticed a new style to parallel parking.
These smart cars are just bloody tiny! I was just amazed that it was able to reverse park in such a tight spot!
Well, it’s been over a week since I had arrived in London. It was all a mad rush for me from finishing work (documentation and handover), packing all my life and necessities into a backpack to landing in London and getting myself settled from scratch. Upon arrival it seemed all too overwhelming and hard to do anything. This is a brand new city for me so even going out to buy bare necessities or an oyster card was hard as I didn’t know where the local shops were and how to get around. Eventually I got it all sorted out but the stress of all these many little trivial things got to me. Luckily I took a step back and wrote a list of todos and strike them off the list as I got them one at a time.
Where I am staying now is the Astor Victoria. A nice hostel with friendly people. I actually chose this place because it had free wifi and the lockers are pretty decent.
Below is my bunk bed which is pretty comfy in contrast of how it looks like in this picture.
Below are my roommates (minus the guy) but they had left a couple of days ago. The one taking the picture is an aussie who has been showing me the ropes during my stay here. The girls who had replaced the Canadian girls are Americans but not so friendly… far too shy for my liking
What I like about being in the hostel is that it is so easy to strike up a conversation with some of the travelers here. All you really need to do is say hi, how are you doing? where do you come from? how long are you staying here? where are you going? how is it all so far?. I never knew how it is so easy to strike a conversation here. A lot of a contrast when you compare it to Perth, or maybe I just have nothing to talk about with random people in Perth?
Anyway on a day like this, it’s cold, wet and depressing so I’m feeling a little home sick. What I learnt while being in London was that I actually relied a lot on my family and friends more than that I think I did. It’s fine to strike up a conversation with the odd random person or so but at times I just needed someone to talk to and just bitch about all the things that is happening now. I’ve definitely met quite a few people while here, went out and boozed it up in this expensive city and had fun but it surely does not beat talking to your family and friends. I’ll see how it goes I guess. At the moment I’m treading water and am now seeking to get my life in a bit of a routine that I am happy with.
At times I feel like going on a massive backpacking trip and follow the paths with some of these travelers have done so far. Maybe I should give it all up now and say fuk it to working in London and backpack my way from here to back home. Maybe take 6 months to do it and visit all the cities in between?? I reckon it would be so cool but I’ll give it a couple of months to see first unless some other backpacker is doing it then the chances of doing is high…
In the past few days there has been news of the Telectroscope. I was there on the opening day!!!
I was there for a job interview opposite Tower of London (in between London Bridge and Tower Bridge). Absolutely lovely location and heaps of tourists (me included). The Telectroscope is pretty cool as you get to see the people on the other end at real time who are situated in New York. When I was there, there was a NYPD cop car with the officer in front of the scope waving at us. Sigh, if only there was a hot chick on the otherside, I reckon there would have been better dialog . Unfortunately you only get to see the people on the otherside so all you can do is wave or if you know sign language.
Tags: london, Telectroscope
Was at the local Tesco buying some groceries when I saw this:
Tesco is like Coles or Woolies which is pretty much a large grocery outlet. See, you Krispy Kreme crack friends! It’s not so appealing once you see Krispy Kreme sold at your local Coles or Woolies is it??? Well too me it wasn’t so appealing… Kinda makes it as crap as Dunkin’ Donuts.
Finally arrived in London early yesterday morning and am now slowly getting into the groove of things. The flight to London is definitely an experience I want to quickly forget! It was a 22 hour flight with two stopovers (one hour each). I hardly had any sleep as Royal Brunei flights are so goddamn uncomfortable!! What made the matter worse was that there was a baby on the plane and she just couldn’t stop crying. Is it a crime to throw a baby out of a plane?
Arriving in Heathrow airport definitely proved to me that it is the busiest airport in the world. Upon arrival to the airport, there were probably around 4-5 planes that had landed at the same time so you can imagine how long the line would be at immigration. I’ve never seen so many people packed together like cattle at a slaughterhouse.
What these poms do well (so far that I’ve seen) is have a decent transport system. I’m able to take my 20kg backpack with a trolly all the way to just outside the Heathrow terminal “tube”. I was worried of carrying my backpack over long distances but luckily I was saved.
Immediately leaving the tube I was simply shocked with the British “summer”. How the crud is 14 degrees a summer?! I was told that last week London had a heat wave of 25 degrees. What the crud!?!? I was expecting the temperature in the high twenties for a British summer. I think I’m screwed. The only thing that is keeping me warm is from the heat of my macbook pro. Ha! there was a reason why this thing was made to be super hot!
Haven’t had much of an opportunity to take pictures yet but hopefully soon!
Finally, I’m nearly packed. I’ve got about 90% of what I think I need to bring there and the remaining 10% will be packed either late tomorrow or early morning the following day. At this stage the bag weighs about 18kg followed by another 6-7kg on my hand carry backpack. Tried walking around with the bags on today and all I could think was OMFG!!! and that was walking around in it for about 10 minutes. Not sure how I am going to last for a couple of hours… What I am going to dread though is going through customs. If those bastards decide to take all my gear out, then they are going to put it all back together. The gear at the moment was just stuffed and it’s about to burst open.
Tags: backpackers, bag, london, packing
