Week 2: Settling into work, getting a feel for being a local

Hi all,

Week 2 and I'm starting to feel like an old hand.  I'm catching the #17 bus to work as it stops right outside the house and it a lot more pleasant than taking the tube.  Discovered a giant Sainsbury's supermarket and its head office just around the corner from the office (and a red bus, of course)

 Day 13

 Day 14 - a rare hour of sunshine during the day and every man and his dog went to the park for lunch (including me with my 3.50 M&S sandwich-and-crisps meal deal).  This park is about the size of my living room.

On Day 14 I noticed this sign on the outside of a pharmacy on Holloway Road.  An indication to the kind of people in this part of town?

 Day 14

 Day 15 saw us help Kate move her stuff into Megan's house.  Kate is moving into Steffi's room once we move into our house, but there's a 2-week overlap period where Kate will be staying with a friend but all her furniture will live in the living room (i.e. my room).  So this is us with 5 sofas, 3 tables, 3 desks, lots and lots of chairs and 3 flatmate's washing hanging up to dry.  Cozy!  Good thing is we managed to help Kate out by taking some extra furniture and kitchenware off her hands, which means we don't have to buy it in the new place.  Bonus!  I am now the proud owner of proper English teacups with roses on and everything.

 Day 16.  Raining.  And a big red bus.

Day 17, mounted policemen and a big red bus at Piccadilly Circus.  Got my fill of stereotypes this week.  Friday night drinks for Vic & Jay's leaving, met a nice bunch of Kiwis, had a good night out on the town and still managed to get the last tube home.  Well done me!

Week 2 has passed in a blur.  I feel very at home here; it's a stark contrast to the places I've been for the last year.  It feels really good to have a social network, a job that I enjoy, good colleagues, a familiar language and culture.  I am on the mend :)

x ML

Week 1 in London (Days 6-11) Theme: B&W

Good rainy Sunday morning!

I'm 11 days in and feel like an old hand already.  After much fuss and bother and excessive paperwork, we have passed the reference checking for the house (thanks, Dad!) and we are officially allowed to move in on 1st July.  Acton here we come!

I've also finished my first week of work.  Day 1 was an adventure; taking the tube to Farringdon meant having to change lines at King's Cross at 8:30am, this is an experience akin to fighting your way through the Boxing Day shoppers to find the toilet, which is located at the other end of the megastore.  So I quickly decided NOT to do that ever again unless life depended on it.  My office is located in the Smithfield Market building, which is one of London's oldest grocery markets.  At 3am every day, butchers from London and surrounds come here to sell wholesale meat to buyers from restaurants and cafes from all over the city.  The public can buy meat too, there is a small butcher's shop across the way.  I think I will try out some organic pork belly or fresh duck at some stage.

Smithfield Markets

On Day 7 (Tuesday 7th June) I went with Wai Mon to visit Wai Lan & baby Ryan.  He's now 4 months old and SUCH a cutie pie!  He's grown a lot since I saw him in March, had his first haircut, and now smiles at people.  Not me yet, because I'm a stranger :/ but hopefully I can fix that!  Keep an eye out, Ryan is most likely going to be a regular feature on this blog so you can watch him grow up!

 baby Ryan Wan

Days 8 & 9 were spent exploring the immediate surroundings of Smithfield Market.  To my delight, I found these 2 gems within 2 mins walk of the front door:

 Day 8

 Day 9

On Thursday Wai Thing took me on a walk from Farringdon to Chinatown (by Leicester Square) via Covent Garden.  There is so much to see in this city; it never stops, never sleeps, never stays the same and never stands still.  Here's a snap from Covent Garden area.  I love the colour theme of this city; white and red.  Very regal.

 Day 10

Saturday 11th June - weekend!  I'd scored some free festival tickets through a good friend and Steffi and I dutifully trucked off down to Clapham Common - possibly the biggest expat Kiwi & Aussie enclave (bar Shepherds Bush) in London - for the Southern Sounds music festival.  Headlining were INXS (meh) and Shihad (EXCELLENT).  After being away from NZ for so long, it was a strangely stirring and patriotic afternoon, hearing my own accent and slang all around me.  Not a British person to be seen.  Could have been a summer gig at The Mount, Grey Lynn Park or any other outdoor area in NZ.  Except for the crappy weather of course.  My favourite moment is captured here:

Day 11

Today, Day 12, will be spent moaning about the rain, eating toast with peanut butter, surfing the net, watching some TV and finally getting dressed around 2pm.  Ahhhhh Sunday!

Until next time!

x ML

365 Days of London

Hi all,

It's  been far too long since I wrote.  The last few posts were written in some of my more difficult times, an outlet for all the thoughts that were rattling around in my head when I had too much spare time to worry about life.  But that's all changing now; I've recently arrived in London to start fresh.  New job, new house, new country.  Back in an English-speaking environment.  Friends to go shopping/picnicking/drinking with.  A new job with exciting career opportunities (and work trips yay!).  A nice house in the suburbs.  And TOPSHOP!!!

I'm introducing you to my project: 365 Days of London.  I'm going to post one photo a day for the next year, to document the London chapter of my journey (note: I may lag behind and upload a few at a time).  Here are the first few days... enjoy!

 Day 1 - Arrival in London on the train with my life packed into 2 suitcases (from Platform 9 3/4, no less)

 Day 2 - A bit of lost-in-translation humour (you Dutchies will appreciate this one)

 Day 3 - Being a tourist at Trafalgar Square

 Day 4 - Amusing road sign at Greenwich

Day 5 - getting ready for my first day at work

Today is my birthday

That is all.

Inner turmoil... I has it

A thought for all you travellers out there.

My displacement anxiety has been flaring up again lately, a bit like a bad knee that you can ignore or live with  most of the time but when it starts to play up can become crippling.  I ahve been travelling for almost exactly 1 year now, I've seen and done so many things in a concentrated amount of time, and while I've enjoyed it thoroughly, I found myself flicking through a friend's travel pics and thinking "oh, I wish I was travelling again".  I just don't seem to be satisfied these days.

Those of us with the desire to broaden our horizons and see the world set off with stars in our eyes and an appetite for adventure in our bellies.  We are told that we can achieve anything we set out to do; yes, you single young female, you can travel through 3rd world countries by yourself on $10 a day not knowing where you will sleep that night. Yes, you can weasel out of sticky situations with gypsies, Zambian border officials or angry Japanese (snow-)monkeys.  Yes, you can see the Great Wall of China, teach poor Cambodian kids about photography and order sake & udon in Japanese at a local noodle bar in Tokyo. But what do you do after all that?

Normal life seems so... mundane in comparison, doesn't it?  Even when you're still 'travelling' and living in an exciting new environment, getting up, going to work, going home, and doing it all over again tomorrow seems so... lame.   What the hell is gonna happen when I go back home?  HOME home?

So my question to you is:

Is travel an experience - something to enjoy at the time of experiencing it?

Is travel a possession - a collection of experiences (and in my case, photos), memories to add to the library, one more place to add to the ever-growing list, is my list longer than yours, what places are going on the list next?

Or, is travel a drug - something that takes you on an amazing ride, showing you things you've never seen or experienced before, heightens your senses and generally blows your mind?  And, like a drug, do you need more and more to reach that same high?  Do you become desensitised, dissatisfied, harder to please?  Do you find yourself thinking, dreaming about your next one?   And do you suffer from withdrawal when you don't get it?

Yes

But there's no cold turkey for this drug.  There's no recovery.  It stays in your system.  And the real question is:  is that even a bad thing?  Is this just the price we pay for conquering the world at a young age?

Your thoughts?

 

Red lipstick and a job offer: on the way to London

Last weekend I spent 4 days in London interviewing for jobs, meeting up with old friends and restoring balance to my soul.  The last 6 months in Holland have been the toughest personal journey I've ever been on, even topping my breakup from a 4-year-long relationship with an emotionally damaged recently-turned vegetarian boyfriend when I was 22 and still quite impressionable.  I spent a Christmas fighting depression, and came round to the realisation that although I wanted it to work, Holland just wasn't for me.  A bit like said relationship actually.

So off I jetted to London, something I had been meaning to do since my arrival in Europe in September, to visit my cousins, see her newborn baby, catch up with friends.  Being the schemer I am, I had also allowed Friday and Monday in London JUST IN CASE I would be looking for jobs and JUST IN CASE I got any interviews.  All plans laid and hatched, I arrived with a 4-day schedule jam-packed full of productivity.

What struck me most of all, almost like a slap in the face: London got STYLE!  I didn't realise how fashion-starved I'd been in Holland.  My (not-so) sub-conscious defense mechanisms prevented me from reading Dutch fashion magazines, actually from engaging in any Dutch material at all, perhaps in an attempt to reject the culture that had rejected me.  Whatever the motivation, when coupled with a strict budget that prevented me from buying the cute jacket from H&M and anything else pretty, I'd been retreating further and further into myself and burying all outward self-expression.

Individualistic style is exploding from every street corner in London, from the 15-year-old raiding mum's 80's earring collection to career women rocking blazers and harem pants, Londoners are not afraid to take chances when it comes to fashion.  Especially the boys!  Even though I'm personally not a fan of the skinny-jeans-and-Ray-Bans combo that they think is so cool (it's unmanly.  don't do it.), you have to give them credit for rocking it.  Vintage is well and truly alive, something we in NZ call op-shopping and Dutch people generally turn up  their noses at.  I spent 4 days gawking my eyes out at the visual feast that London laid so deliciously before me, picked up a copy of ELLE on the way home and returned to the land of cheese with a new lease on life.

So it's with a fresh slick of red lippie, a spring in my step and a newfound sense of inspiration that I walk (cycle) the streets of Alkmaar.  Oh, and did I mention I got offered a job not even 12 hours after my interview?

London, this is gonna be the start of something beautiful xx

High five, still alive!

I'm a millionaire!! 1,000,000 Zambian kwachas (approx USD$200)

Greetings from Livingstone, Zambia! This is the final destination and it's been one hell of an adventure. I have a whole newfound respect for Dr Livingstone for doing this journey in the mid 1800's. It's tough terrain to cross (yes, even in an overland truck) and requires nerves of steel to deal with feisty wildlife, money-grubbing
"officials" and adventure sports. OK, so there may not have been adventure sports in Livingstone's day, but I am on holiday after all :)

Livingstone town is named after Dr Livingstone, the first European to  set eyes on the Victoria Falls. The locals call the falls Mosi-Oa-Tunya, "the smoke that thunders", and at 1.8km in width it is the longest single stream waterfall in the world. Zambia has about 20% of the falls, with the remaining 80% belonging to  Zimbabwe. The Zambezi river, which feeds into the falls, runs through a treacherously steep gorge and forms the boundary between the two countries. The falls are a spectacular sight and the spray that flows upwards can be seen f or miles around. This makes it a popular tourist destination and a converging point for overland trucks on northbound and southbound routes, which in turn has helped make this an adventure sport hotspot. On arrival at the Waterfront campground we were shown a DVD of all the activities we could do, including things like helicopter and microlight flights, white water rafting, river boarding, bungee (of course), lion encounters, elephant safaris, game drives, village visits, and the list goes on. The hardest part is trying to figure out how you're going to fit in all this cool stuff in 2 days, and how you're going to pay for it all...

My adventure began on the first night we arrived at this campground when I was innocently walking through the carpark and spotted a vervet  monkey sitting on the railing. We'd been warned there were cheeky  monkeys that like to steal things and cause trouble, however I wasn't prepared for the violent attack on my behind by the wingman (wingmonkey?) who snuck up behind me when I was taking a photo of  monkey #1. Luckily his teeth didn't get through my jeans because I haven't had my rabies shot and I don't expec t there's a world-class hospital here in town. This episode has caused an even stronger dislike of monkeys that I had already fostered in Japan at Arashiyama, and I even lay awake in terror last night (admittedly, after a few
beers) listening to the scufflings outside my tent and shadows dancing on the tent wall. I don't think I'll ever be the same again.


Yesterday a group of us got personally introduced to the mighty Zambezi river on white water rafts. I've done this a few times in NZ  but this was definitely the most exciting; we somehow got paired with the 2 craziest guides on the trip who were intent on giving us the FULL Zambezi experience and hitting the biggest rapids in the most extreme way possible. We hit some grade 5 rapids aptly named "The Terminator" and "Oblivion" and flipped the raft a couple of times. I  had a bit of a panic attack when I got stuck under the raft while they flipped it back upright, swallowed quite a bit of Zambezi water and  lost my bravado after that. But it was a great trip, very scenic, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat! Enjoyed a lovely sunset cruise with the Gap team that night which was our farewell dinner. Most of them are continuing to Johannesburg but this is the end of the line for me and a few others, so there were a few sad goodbyes.











This morning was the highlight of Livingstone. We did a tour of  Livingstone Island and learned about this history of explorations. The island is located just off the Zambia side of the river and sits right on the edge of the falls. Our guide took us right to the edge of the falls, we were literally looking over the edge and got absolutely drenched by the spray. We were even allowed to swim in the pools right on the edge, not even 1m away from the dropoff!! Truly an amazing feeling to stand on the edge and look over.


 
 
Tomorrow the adventure ends, back to real life, goodbye Africa :(  It's been an amazing journey and I will definitely be back one day!