The Top Floor Flat

We’ve been enjoying an unseasonable bout of good weather complete with gloriously sunny weekends, a distinct lack of rain and the inkling that it will be properly warm in a few short weeks.  Last Saturday I took advantage of the weather to take a stroll through the nearby Holland Park as part of my ongoing efforts to explore the neighbourhood.  I couldn’t have picked a better place for my outting and spent a happy few hours exploring Holland Park.

I had been in the park once before, at the end of the summer.  I had originally been tempted into the park to inquire about their evening opera performances which take place at a beautiful open air opera house in the centre of the park but had unfortunately missed the last scheduled date.  Despite the lack of performance, I spent some time wandering the paths and was immediately impressed.  Upon my return this weekend, I wondered why it took me so long to get back.

Holland Park was absolutely packed with visitors enjoying the sun but the diversity of the park’s offerings meant that people were comfortably spread out through the grounds.  There are a number of different areas.  The entrance I used led into a long, shaded walk along a series of sports fields but at the end of the path, the real charm of the park becomes apparent.  One direction leads to the opera house, the Orangery - a small art gallery showcasing local work, the Ice House - the park cafe, and the most incredible flower gardens and promenade.  Although the roses won’t be in bloom for a while, the majority of the beds were absolutely alive with colours and full of daffodils, tulips and greenery.  The promenade which leads between the Ice House and the Orangery has one wall covered with a mural depicting men, women and children enjoying the park in Victorian style clothing.

However should one turn the other direction from the top of the entrance path, mini trails lead to short shaded walks that loop around the park.  Throughout my walk, I kept coming across hidden patches of grass where couples were picnicking, secluded benches, and amazingly beautiful flower beds.  The trails looped back towards the centre of the park with the tended flower gardens, Ice House and Orangery but not before passing by two playgrounds for toddlers and children and possibly the best secret of Holland Park, the Kyoto Gardens, complete with Zen sensibility in planning, Koi fish and, on the day I happened to visit, a set of enthusiastic anime fans in impressively complete costumes doing a photoshoot.

I’ve already made tentitive plans for a Holland Park picnic later this week in the hopes I can enjoy the spring flowers again in the nice weather.  Regardless, now that I have the opportunity, I’ll certainly return for the summer opera series and to enjoy the wonderful little park hidden away in my side of London.

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As promised (you didn’t think I’d carry through, did you!) here is actual footage of me dancing. Last night was the last night in town for Sarah and Steve before they head off to Sydney (lots of ’s’s for that family) to get married next month. I’m really going to miss them both but it’s going to be so weird not to have Sarah at the office, and then at the dance classes! I’m so glad everyone in the office is so nice, but it’s been especially great to get to know Sarah. In addition to being incredibly sweet and fun, she also manages to find more free things to do around London than I would have thought possible! She was kind enough to lend me her fiance for the dance; keep in mind that I am an absolute beginner (last night was one full week of dance classes!). Also, I overlayed the track because the music came out really fuzzy and there was a lot of chatter - so I just added in the sound again myself :).

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!

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[This has been reposted from the <a herf="http://blog.spoonfedflavour.com">Spoonfed Flavour Blog</a> where I originally wrote up my Sunday afternoon]

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.

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It’s been a little while since I did a photo post and I actually took these pictures a while ago on a day when it was fairly clear, I had my camera, and I managed to get the front seat on the top level of the bus (the chances of all of these things happening again are quite slim). When I first started working with Spoonfed my mom asked me to take a picture of the commute and the office. I haven’t managed the office yet (honestly, there’s not much to see - lots of computers) but I now have pictures of the first leg of the trip coming home. You can see a full slide show in order here: Commute from Spoonfed to Bank Tube Stop but I’ve put a couple of my favourite pictures below:

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!

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Another long stretch without a proper post. And I don’t even have a good excuse this weekend as I was fairly lazy.

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.

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If you just can’t get enough bloggin’, you can check out the Spoonfed blog which contains an annoyingly large number of posts by me (like, most of them - although hopefully that will change soon). The Spoonfed official blog is here:
http://blog.spoonfedflavour.com.

Remember that time I wrote an article for Spoonfed and was going to post the link here? That might happen soon! We might actually have the new content (including my review of the line dancing class) on the site in a matter of days (*knock on wood*). I’ll post the link when that happens.

Tonight I’m going to see The Waifs, a band that I absolutely love (they’re an Aussie folk/rock/country band), with my flatmate Ann. Should be a good time and made even better by the fact that tickets are free (thanks Spoonfed!). Catch you after the show!

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One of the problems of living in a city with such a developed underground transportation system is that one tends to become quite knowledgeable about certain areas of the city, with absolutely no clue as to what’s going on in between. For example, I feel quite at home in the west end of the city, just north of the river, and just east of the city proper. Other than that, I can sort of muddle my way from tube stop to tube stop.

This was hit home as I met up this evening with my friend Kathryn for dinner near Covent Gardens; arguably one of the places I should be able to figure out the most easily as it’s particularly touristy. She took me on a walk through the absolutely gorgeous part of town where all of the barristers have their home-away-from-home (little studios near the courts so even if they live in the country they can be in the city for important cases). I had no idea that area was there.

Kathryn and I had a great dinner at this little Greek place and then walked through Leicester Square where there were all these big setups getting ready for the European premiere of Dark Night tonight (for which I sadly did not have tickets. Or see Christian Bale. How disappointing). All in all, though, it was a great night!

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Yesterday I met up with Vori for tea which was so so nice but I had gone on a long run with Mimi in the morning and I think I got horribly dehydrated as by the time I met up with Vori I had the most awful headache imaginable. I hope I wasn’t too terrible to be around - she’s so nice and she invited me to join her bookgroup which she will be starting with some other friends. Perfect for me - I love to read and I love to talk about reading.

After I excused myself and my somewhat out-of-it behaviour (do to the headache) and made it home to feel ill for the rest of the afternoon, I made some dinner, drank about 10 gallons of water, and started to feel a bit better. By early evening, I was fine again which was great as Ann, my flatmate who had been in Wales all weekend, got back and we decided to visit this local pub about which we had heard really great things. It was so nice! We had Pimms (no strawberries, though) and just chatted.

Then we went home and had the cake I had made earlier that day (it came out much better than I expected!) with some tea and it was very very nice. All in all, what with Doctor Who, seeing Vori, cake and lots and lots of tea, it was a wonderful weekend!

Pictures of cake:

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Well, you’ve all risen wonderful to my selfish demand for more comments. Excellent. I also appear to have gotten Milly to start watching Doctor Who which I think is like… massive karma points in the grand scheme of things.

So, yesterday was fairly uneventful until about 6pm. See, the plan was to meet Kathryn and Jenny (my friend from high school and her friend from college) at around 7pm, possibly grab a snack or small dinner, then go to a swing dancing class that my colleague from work recommended. After I finished work, I went into the bathroom to change from work clothes into a dress and dancing shoes (read: impractical heels - which were suggested on the website for the class) which I had brought with me in my backpack.

Then things started to go a little nuts. I called Jenny (who was going to be spending the night at my flat before catching an early flight back to Russia today where she’s studying abroad for the summer) who was still at least an hour away from our meeting point - where we were planning on meeting in about 20 minutes. I got on the bus and because the weather was absolutely atrocious, everything on the roads was impossibly slow. So, fifteen minutes and three blocks later, I called Kathryn, who was already at the arranged meeting point, to say *I* was another half hour away.

I finally got to our meeting point, although Jenny was still a half hour behind us. We’d basically missed the beginning of the dance class at this point, but decided to try this nice Italian restaurant that Kathryn’s friend had told her about and began to walk there with the plan to have Jenny catch up with us at the restaurant. As we passed an ATM, I realised I didn’t have any cash so went to take out my wallet, only to realise it was gone. I, rather understandably I think, panicked (in a completely controlled and not panicky way, but I still panicked) and started searching through my backpack - which responded by busting a zipper which I couldn’t seem to fix. Keep in mind that it’s raining cats and dogs and we’re on an uncovered street as I’m frantically searching through my bag.

It occurs to me exactly where my wallet was - on the sink counter of the ladies room at the office. I was now about 45 minutes away from the office and could in theory go back but because it was such a long trip and we had now arrived at the restaurant which told us the kitchens were closing in half an hour I really didn’t want to go back if I didn’t have to (i.e. if it would still be there in the morning or if it was already long gone). I called Alex, my boss, who has been incredibly helpful in the past to ask his opinion on that point. His response? He called the maintainece staff and a guy he know who worked in another office in the building, got the guy to go into the women’s bathroom and *find* my wallet so I could pick it up today, and then offer to come meet me where I was in the city to give me money to get home if I needed it (thankfully I didn’t - I had my travel card which gets me anywhere in the city). Honestly, I’m pretty sure I have the world’s nicest boss. Talk about building company loyalty.

In the end, Kathryn spotted me money and we had a great dinner and had a lot of fun with Kathryn and Jenny. I managed to get all of my stuff home in a relatively dry manner despite the broken backpack, and today I’ll get my wallet back. It was a suitably embarrassing escapade (especially the bits where I was pulling my clothes out of my stuffed backpack on a crowded street in the middle of the rain looking for my wallet) but lesson learned. Crisis averted thanks to really, really nice people.

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So… I forgot to take pictures last night.  To be fair, besides the fact that it was in an amazing setting (the British Museum has this atrium that used to be an open-air courtyard around the British Library, and now is an exhibit hall enclosed by a giant domed glass ceiling) and the fact they were giving away free Krispy Kreme donuts (how can you get more American than that? Free fried food.) the 4th of July event was a bit underwhelming.  Part of the problem was that it was so crowded! The whole area was jam-packed and surprisingly with very few Americans.  That was alright, though, because earlier that day I discovered through Facebook that a friend of mine, Kathryn Taussig, with whom I attended middle and high school at Castilleja was also in London that day.  I managed to get ahold of her and she met me at the British Museum event.  From there, we went with one of her friends (in fact her roommate from school - she’s been at college at St. Andrews in Scotland the last three years) to this incredible Ethiopian restaurant.

I’d never had Ethiopian food before (or if I had, I hadn’t had it like this.)  It was served the traditional style - all of the dishes we had ordered were poured on top of this giant piece of doughy bread, which we then used to scoop up the spicy beef and lamb dishes on top.  There were no utensils other than the bread itself so things got a little messy.  We also got a bottle of the traditional honey wine which was quite tasty.  As Kathryn has been living in the UK for the last three years, she knows a lot of people around Europe and was already suggesting friends I might visit when I take time to travel.  She’s going to be in London all summer and doesn’t really know anyone in the city either so hopefully I’ll be seeing a lot more of her!  She also got excited about DormWise which is always nice and encouraging for me :).

Today I had a long, late breakfast with Mimi (who is so nice to keep taking me out for meals) and then I went home to do (a ton) of laundry and bake cookies for the thing I’m going to tonight.

I found a group of people online (very dodgy, I know, but I wasn’t stupid about this or anything) who have weekly pub meet-ups and they all sounded very friendly and smart.  On Thursday, the group was meeting relatively near my work so I figured I’d poke my head in, if they seemed alright stay for a drink and head out or just keep walking if it didn’t seem like my type of group.  I ended up staying for over two hours chatting and met some really nice people.  I got invited to join some of them this evening for the finale of the Doctor Who series 4 (ahh! it ended on such a cliffhanger last week!) and readily took them up on the offer because it’s not nearly as fun watching the show alone.  They’re way on the other side of the city, near Canary Wharf (that’s the Investment banker/MBA area of the city) .

Unfortunately my baking experiment didn’t turn out quite as pretty as I hoped (I made sugar cookies with jam filling) but they taste fine which I guess is most important.  In any case, expect a journal update of somewhat overwhelming geekiness next, after I see the Doctor Who finale!

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