Thursday, December 15, 2011
Hey guys!
A few of you recently let me know, its been a while since my last email - 6 weeks in fact! It feels like things have been pretty busy, and I've been on two of the longest holidays since I got to London - New York for 10 days and literally just got off the plane from Marakech for the last 5 days.
So over the last 45 days, i've actually been on holidays for about 1/3 .. not a bad effort hey? Christmas is coming up, so there are more holidays soon.. life is hard :P
On the work side, things have been pretty busy as well, i've actually been on back to back projects for the last 6 weeks, which is a little unusual I guess. I was hoping that with all my holidays, I'd be able to dodge projects, but unfortunately this was not the case.. yep - I am completely on cruise control mode, and treating the next 1.5 years as a total holiday where work is an inconvenience that must be tolerated to fund my travel... Luckily, I have 6 weeks of annual leave + public holidays here, which gives me about 40 odd days off per year, and because you can't build up annual leave over here like you can in Australia, I intend to use them all.
So I might as well start off be writing a bit about New York - big thanks to Lee for letting me crash at his house for the whole time, and Alex for cooking Thanksgiving dinner (this was a feat in itself but when I put it into context it will be even more impressive..)!
The trip went off to a bad start as my flight was cancelled the night before - which meant I had to rebook it and seeing as I was originally going to arrive in NY abot 9, I took an earlier flight which meant I would arrive about 7. This meant that I was not going to go into work at all, which was awkward as of course I didn't take that day off as annual leave.. but I did it anyway, and actually managed to meet up with Marto for brunch during his 24 hrs in London which I was quite happy to have done.
I finally managed to get use out of my gold frequent flier status, but the British airways lounge was massively disappointing, pretty much the same as the qantas domestic lounge - crap food, and everyone is in there anyway.... business class check in was good - but there was no line cos it was quite an empty flight...
Flying Friday
I watched a few movies on the plane, he highlight being Friends wth Benefits - some of you already know I like my girly movies but with two good looking main characters which spend a significant part of the movie in their underpants the story is predictable but still suprisingly decent. I lande at JFK at about 5 - and get into a cab to NYC to meet Alex! To prevent this from being any longer than it needs to, i'll go to bullet point mode.
- I don't really like eating on planes and i think its a combination of 3 things
1. The food is questionable quality and here is too much of it
2. I don't move after I eat and it just sits in my stomach
3. There is probably too many meals for the length of flight its because I always feel the need to everything cos its in front of me, and that i dont get to move, but I always feel a bit sick and uncomfortable after a long flight...
- First meal: Lime Paneer Burrito - a pretty tasty fusion style 'fast food' that can be found in NY
- Lee lives in West Village, which a really cool area with lots of bars and restaurants nearby
- Wonzy's birthday so his wife cooks an great Korean meal, there were about 7 guys there from ruse/ baulko/ grammar and we spend about 3 hrs on his house discussing the the usefulness of an MBA and the Eurozone crisis - i'm sure Christina and Wonzy's wife were riveted.. i can't decide whether the conversation was smart or just a complete waste of time...
- We go to bar at about midnight and stay there about 12 and stay until about 2:30am, where we discuss Peter Choi's 'decision' to propose to his girlfriend of 2 months...
- And end up at Artichoke pizza at about 3am (8am London time) which serves a MASSIVE pizza - at this point this i like my 7th meal the last 24 hrs and am stuffed - a feeling that would become extremely familliar over the next 10 days..
Seedy Saturday
- I get to bed about 3:30am and get woken up at about 6:30am - when one of lee's housemates gets up to go to the gym - this girl is NUTS. shes goes to the gym like 6times a week before work and on weekends at random times and so i would never get a good nights sleep...
- Lee and I get up about 10am to get a coffee and a walk around the area
- Coffee in New York is actually pretty good - not the drip coffee stuff but proper coffee - but quite expensive 3USD+
- It was on this morning that I get my 'New York' experience: Lee and I are walking near East village, and get approached by an Asian couple, the girl never speaks but both appear well dressed and the guy speaks fluent american english.. and the conversation goes like this:
Random Guy: Hey do you guys live around here?
Lee: Yeah, I live in West Village
Random Guy: I have a strange question to ask you...
Miles: OK - what is it?
RG: This girl wants to shoot an ADULT FILM and he wants to go somewhere to STRIP in front of some people.. do you guys know a place?
MT and LEE: WHAT?
RG: Yeah - so do you guys know of a place?
Lee: Umm.. how about you go to a park, do it behind some trees or something (it is about 7C in NY)
RG: err.. I don't think thats going to work..
Lee: Well you aren't coming to MY HOUSE! Is this for some kind of school project or research or something?
RG: No....
MT: Sorry dude, doesnt look like we can help..
RG: Oh OK.. thanks anyway
We figure there are probably only a few realistically reasons this could have happened. 1. True story - girl was 'testing the waters' to see if she was cut out for a career in the business. 2. we were going to be robbed. 3. this was some kind of hidden camera show...
- Lunch was at Per Se my first 3 Michelin star restaurant and arguably the best restaurant in New York - (see photos on facebook) $295pp
- Meal was technically excellent, the restaurant was fantastic, very nicely spaced out, quiet but not overly so, fantastic view of central park and the city
- Service was fantastic, even though one waiter dropped a bedroll almost in my lap
- Wine list was on an IPad which was kinda cool
- Dishes were beautiful - really well presented
- Highlight of the meal was dessert which went on and on - Palate Cleanser, Caramel Cheesecake (actual dessert course), Cinnamon balls, blood orange sorbet coated with dark chocolate, macaroons, chocolate truffles, and fudge
- Overall it was a fantastic meal but there was no single dish that blew me away that I will remember for ever - people have talked about the beef but whilst it as excellent it wont stay with me forever...
- I think what I can say is that Sydney has international quality food - a 3 hat restaurant in Sydney is comparable to the best in the world but may only be lacking in certain technical aspects and presentation.
- I had a five guys double cheeseburger (one of the best I had in NY) for dinner and we went out that night to go clubbing - first at a rooftop bar, then tried to get into a Korean club, but it was packed so we went to a k town to eat korean, then went back to the club where only lee and I got in and then BACK to KTOWN to eat again - i fell asleep on the table .. this is typical of the number of meals I would have in a single day in New York
Sports Sunday
- Sunday was a sleep in
- Sports bar for hot wings, fries and football
- we went somewhere I had always wanted to go : WHITE CASTLE. Let me just say this. NEVER AGAIN. the burgers are actually TERRIBLE. The beef doesn't taste like beef and the buns get soggy quite quickly and the texture goes pasty. gross.
- The highlight of Sunday was gong to see Eli Manning and the giants play the eagles. The game itself had its good moments, even though michael vick wasn't playing due to a rib injury
- best part of an NFL game is the 'tailgating' which is basically when people get to the stadium really early in the day and have a massive bbq and drink up in the carpark even if they don't go into the game. They make a whole day of it. They play some funny game with tiny bean bags and they literally like wood fires on the ground. Guys rock up with trucks and bbqs on the back of them and its pretty cool. People just hang out all day and have a good time.
- Giants lose when Eli throws an intercept on the final drive...
- Monday morning brings another 6:00am wake up and then a Salmon and cream cheese bagel
- The highline is a old rail line that's been converted into a park - pretty cool to have a bit of a sanctuary in the middle of the city
- Natural History museum is MASSIVE
- Shake shack has great burgers but for about $15 bucks a meal, its not cheap
- Levain Bakery has really rich cookies - chocolate and hazelnut, triple chocolate and choc chip
- Momofuku crack pie is good too
- Ippudo NY with Lee, Alex and Miranda (Best ramen in NY, 1.5 hr wait on a MONDAY NIGHT) freaking outrageous.
- $18 ramen (24 with extras) and a total bill of about $50 a head
- Unfiltered sake looks like.... 's_men'
- Good Tonkotsu ramen tho, much better than anything in London for a similar price....
Training Day Tuesday
- Cafe havana with Dush, GREAT CORN! EVERYONE HAS THE CORN. GET THE CORN. its corn with cheese, lime, spices and basically the best corn i've ever had, but then agin i've only ever had normal corn...
- Columbia University
- 125th street - 'African American Broadway' says Dush. Not quite. Its pretty ghetto. Interesting thing about New York, 30 blocks away you have the upper east side with multi million dollar apartments but at 125th its a completely different socio-demographic and ethnic group. The shops are totally different, the way that people talk are different. People dropping n bombs on the street just like in the movies. It really is nothing like the rest of manhattan. I guess you kind of get that in London with the housing estates but this appeared more in NY cos i guess there is a much larger population in an area. In that way I guess the integration in London has worked to an extent - except for the riots...
- walked down 5th ave and broadway, its a long way to walk down to 30th st...
- got caught in TORRENTIAL rain - was late to meet dush and katy at Rub BBQ in Chelsea
- over ate again - burnt ends (win), pulled pork (good), brisket (bit dry), ribs (hurricanes is better), onion strings (addictive), chips (above average)
Wet Wednesday
- More Torrential rain
- World Trade Memorial
- Brooklyn for Grimaldis - better than Lombardis. The way they do their pizzas is that you get a magherita pizza and you add stuff to it.. Grimaldis usually has an hour line but i got lucky and got a seat straight away
- Tried to walk to Williamburg but got pretty lost and ended up in an area full of what i orignally thought were amish people, but were actually hisidic jews. These guys don't even speak english and they literally have like a 1km square area where its like being in israel or something but there are literally no one except hisidic jews there.. they must have wondered why the hell there was a random asian toursit walking around
- eventually get to williamsberg and have a coffee and wait for alex...
- pick up the the 14lb (6.5 kg) turkey for thanksgiving on Thursday
- Go back to Lee's place to drop off the turkey and they go to Blue hill farm for dinner with Alex
- BLue hill farm - the whole idea is great quality produce from the farm and cooked simply. at $80pp i think this was a good value meal which you can have once in a while in nice causal surroudings. There were kids here for dinner, and Alex made a good comment - i'm not taking kids to anywhere good/expensive until they are of an age to appreciate - at least 10-12! otherwise its a waste of money - they can just eat McDonalds :P
- Went home and out to the meatpacking district where we stayed till about 4am - then off to a some random cafe for.... breakfast? till about 5am... then we went home.. Alex to Brooklyn, lee and I across the road
Thanksgiving Thursday
- Alex turns up about 10am - at which point lee and I are still trying to sleep
- Despite the fact that Alex has had probably less than 5 hrs sleep, being the trooper she is turns up for a full day of cooking..
- Watched foot ball on tv all day.. while alex cooked. Any time you can find a woman who is willing to cook all day when you sit on your a$$ and watch sport on TV, you know you have found a real keeper!
- Turkey, Stuffing, mac and cheese, green been casserole, smooth mash potato - my first thanksgiving meal EVER and one that will be hard to top
- Football in some kind of concrete soccer court somewhere
- Alex's friend who works at Per Se turns up semi drunk and has interesting insights on the high end fine dining industry
- We play Cranium - I win.
Black Friday
- Apparently, this is not actually a public holiday so Lee and Miranda go to work
- I head out to SOHO to do some shopping and pick up some bits and pieces, nothing major
- Meet up wth Delinda and Danny for lunch at Lombardis - 45 min queue, Good pizza
- More shopping afterwards and go to a BBQ place up in Harlem with Yao and Kristiina , Lee and Dush
- THey have this 'squealer' challenge which is basically a pulled pork sub with super hot chilli. You can't drink water while you eat it and you cant drink water for like 10 mins after...
- I had a quater of a sub while drinking like 1L of water. It was brutal. The table next to us had a guy that did it, he was a machine. This sh!t was seriously HOT. I had stomach problems for the most of the next day and that was just eating 1/4 of it.
- Seinfeld restaurant and home
Sad Saturday
- Last day in Manhattan as I will meet up with relatives in Flushing later in the day
- Wander around manhattan a bit more as Lee studies, I actually dont eat much that day until...
- I take the train out to Flushing
- FLUSHING IS CHINA
- IT is like 80% Chinese out there, shops are all in Chinese and its like the hisidic jews, all over again but they are chinese and the speak English
- Meet my two young cousins for the first time and go to my cousins place in queens
- compared to my flat in London or Lees apartment in west village it is HUGE
- 3 stories with a korean family living on the ground and kitty and tat living on the 2nd and 3rd floors as well as having the basement as an entertainment area
- They said it was small, but maybe they were being modest but it was seriously spacious
- Korean BBQ for dinner IT WAS GREAT. Man I missed good KBBQ. I don't think they have good ones in London - if any of you guys know different let me know, New Malden was dissappointing.
- Slept in a bed and had my own room for the first time in a week whic was FANTASTIC.
Sunday
- Airport, business check in and the TERRIBLE lounge where not everything is free. American Airlines SUCKS
- Watched crazy stupid love and was inspired by Ryan Gosling's super hot body (no homo)
- Am inspired to get that cut for just one time in my life
Total weight gain in NY - 2.5kgs
This is already ridiculously long. Congratultions if you go this far.Its taken me about 3 hrs to write this, whilst watching nigella, eragon and aeon flux on TV...
Marrakech next time..
Hope you are all well and write back!
A few of you recently let me know, its been a while since my last email - 6 weeks in fact! It feels like things have been pretty busy, and I've been on two of the longest holidays since I got to London - New York for 10 days and literally just got off the plane from Marakech for the last 5 days.
So over the last 45 days, i've actually been on holidays for about 1/3 .. not a bad effort hey? Christmas is coming up, so there are more holidays soon.. life is hard :P
On the work side, things have been pretty busy as well, i've actually been on back to back projects for the last 6 weeks, which is a little unusual I guess. I was hoping that with all my holidays, I'd be able to dodge projects, but unfortunately this was not the case.. yep - I am completely on cruise control mode, and treating the next 1.5 years as a total holiday where work is an inconvenience that must be tolerated to fund my travel... Luckily, I have 6 weeks of annual leave + public holidays here, which gives me about 40 odd days off per year, and because you can't build up annual leave over here like you can in Australia, I intend to use them all.
So I might as well start off be writing a bit about New York - big thanks to Lee for letting me crash at his house for the whole time, and Alex for cooking Thanksgiving dinner (this was a feat in itself but when I put it into context it will be even more impressive..)!
The trip went off to a bad start as my flight was cancelled the night before - which meant I had to rebook it and seeing as I was originally going to arrive in NY abot 9, I took an earlier flight which meant I would arrive about 7. This meant that I was not going to go into work at all, which was awkward as of course I didn't take that day off as annual leave.. but I did it anyway, and actually managed to meet up with Marto for brunch during his 24 hrs in London which I was quite happy to have done.
I finally managed to get use out of my gold frequent flier status, but the British airways lounge was massively disappointing, pretty much the same as the qantas domestic lounge - crap food, and everyone is in there anyway.... business class check in was good - but there was no line cos it was quite an empty flight...
Flying Friday
I watched a few movies on the plane, he highlight being Friends wth Benefits - some of you already know I like my girly movies but with two good looking main characters which spend a significant part of the movie in their underpants the story is predictable but still suprisingly decent. I lande at JFK at about 5 - and get into a cab to NYC to meet Alex! To prevent this from being any longer than it needs to, i'll go to bullet point mode.
- I don't really like eating on planes and i think its a combination of 3 things
1. The food is questionable quality and here is too much of it
2. I don't move after I eat and it just sits in my stomach
3. There is probably too many meals for the length of flight its because I always feel the need to everything cos its in front of me, and that i dont get to move, but I always feel a bit sick and uncomfortable after a long flight...
- First meal: Lime Paneer Burrito - a pretty tasty fusion style 'fast food' that can be found in NY
- Lee lives in West Village, which a really cool area with lots of bars and restaurants nearby
- Wonzy's birthday so his wife cooks an great Korean meal, there were about 7 guys there from ruse/ baulko/ grammar and we spend about 3 hrs on his house discussing the the usefulness of an MBA and the Eurozone crisis - i'm sure Christina and Wonzy's wife were riveted.. i can't decide whether the conversation was smart or just a complete waste of time...
- We go to bar at about midnight and stay there about 12 and stay until about 2:30am, where we discuss Peter Choi's 'decision' to propose to his girlfriend of 2 months...
- And end up at Artichoke pizza at about 3am (8am London time) which serves a MASSIVE pizza - at this point this i like my 7th meal the last 24 hrs and am stuffed - a feeling that would become extremely familliar over the next 10 days..
Seedy Saturday
- I get to bed about 3:30am and get woken up at about 6:30am - when one of lee's housemates gets up to go to the gym - this girl is NUTS. shes goes to the gym like 6times a week before work and on weekends at random times and so i would never get a good nights sleep...
- Lee and I get up about 10am to get a coffee and a walk around the area
- Coffee in New York is actually pretty good - not the drip coffee stuff but proper coffee - but quite expensive 3USD+
- It was on this morning that I get my 'New York' experience: Lee and I are walking near East village, and get approached by an Asian couple, the girl never speaks but both appear well dressed and the guy speaks fluent american english.. and the conversation goes like this:
Random Guy: Hey do you guys live around here?
Lee: Yeah, I live in West Village
Random Guy: I have a strange question to ask you...
Miles: OK - what is it?
RG: This girl wants to shoot an ADULT FILM and he wants to go somewhere to STRIP in front of some people.. do you guys know a place?
MT and LEE: WHAT?
RG: Yeah - so do you guys know of a place?
Lee: Umm.. how about you go to a park, do it behind some trees or something (it is about 7C in NY)
RG: err.. I don't think thats going to work..
Lee: Well you aren't coming to MY HOUSE! Is this for some kind of school project or research or something?
RG: No....
MT: Sorry dude, doesnt look like we can help..
RG: Oh OK.. thanks anyway
We figure there are probably only a few realistically reasons this could have happened. 1. True story - girl was 'testing the waters' to see if she was cut out for a career in the business. 2. we were going to be robbed. 3. this was some kind of hidden camera show...
- Lunch was at Per Se my first 3 Michelin star restaurant and arguably the best restaurant in New York - (see photos on facebook) $295pp
- Meal was technically excellent, the restaurant was fantastic, very nicely spaced out, quiet but not overly so, fantastic view of central park and the city
- Service was fantastic, even though one waiter dropped a bedroll almost in my lap
- Wine list was on an IPad which was kinda cool
- Dishes were beautiful - really well presented
- Highlight of the meal was dessert which went on and on - Palate Cleanser, Caramel Cheesecake (actual dessert course), Cinnamon balls, blood orange sorbet coated with dark chocolate, macaroons, chocolate truffles, and fudge
- Overall it was a fantastic meal but there was no single dish that blew me away that I will remember for ever - people have talked about the beef but whilst it as excellent it wont stay with me forever...
- I think what I can say is that Sydney has international quality food - a 3 hat restaurant in Sydney is comparable to the best in the world but may only be lacking in certain technical aspects and presentation.
- I had a five guys double cheeseburger (one of the best I had in NY) for dinner and we went out that night to go clubbing - first at a rooftop bar, then tried to get into a Korean club, but it was packed so we went to a k town to eat korean, then went back to the club where only lee and I got in and then BACK to KTOWN to eat again - i fell asleep on the table .. this is typical of the number of meals I would have in a single day in New York
Sports Sunday
- Sunday was a sleep in
- Sports bar for hot wings, fries and football
- we went somewhere I had always wanted to go : WHITE CASTLE. Let me just say this. NEVER AGAIN. the burgers are actually TERRIBLE. The beef doesn't taste like beef and the buns get soggy quite quickly and the texture goes pasty. gross.
- The highlight of Sunday was gong to see Eli Manning and the giants play the eagles. The game itself had its good moments, even though michael vick wasn't playing due to a rib injury
- best part of an NFL game is the 'tailgating' which is basically when people get to the stadium really early in the day and have a massive bbq and drink up in the carpark even if they don't go into the game. They make a whole day of it. They play some funny game with tiny bean bags and they literally like wood fires on the ground. Guys rock up with trucks and bbqs on the back of them and its pretty cool. People just hang out all day and have a good time.
- Giants lose when Eli throws an intercept on the final drive...
- Monday morning brings another 6:00am wake up and then a Salmon and cream cheese bagel
- The highline is a old rail line that's been converted into a park - pretty cool to have a bit of a sanctuary in the middle of the city
- Natural History museum is MASSIVE
- Shake shack has great burgers but for about $15 bucks a meal, its not cheap
- Levain Bakery has really rich cookies - chocolate and hazelnut, triple chocolate and choc chip
- Momofuku crack pie is good too
- Ippudo NY with Lee, Alex and Miranda (Best ramen in NY, 1.5 hr wait on a MONDAY NIGHT) freaking outrageous.
- $18 ramen (24 with extras) and a total bill of about $50 a head
- Unfiltered sake looks like.... 's_men'
- Good Tonkotsu ramen tho, much better than anything in London for a similar price....
Training Day Tuesday
- Cafe havana with Dush, GREAT CORN! EVERYONE HAS THE CORN. GET THE CORN. its corn with cheese, lime, spices and basically the best corn i've ever had, but then agin i've only ever had normal corn...
- Columbia University
- 125th street - 'African American Broadway' says Dush. Not quite. Its pretty ghetto. Interesting thing about New York, 30 blocks away you have the upper east side with multi million dollar apartments but at 125th its a completely different socio-demographic and ethnic group. The shops are totally different, the way that people talk are different. People dropping n bombs on the street just like in the movies. It really is nothing like the rest of manhattan. I guess you kind of get that in London with the housing estates but this appeared more in NY cos i guess there is a much larger population in an area. In that way I guess the integration in London has worked to an extent - except for the riots...
- walked down 5th ave and broadway, its a long way to walk down to 30th st...
- got caught in TORRENTIAL rain - was late to meet dush and katy at Rub BBQ in Chelsea
- over ate again - burnt ends (win), pulled pork (good), brisket (bit dry), ribs (hurricanes is better), onion strings (addictive), chips (above average)
Wet Wednesday
- More Torrential rain
- World Trade Memorial
- Brooklyn for Grimaldis - better than Lombardis. The way they do their pizzas is that you get a magherita pizza and you add stuff to it.. Grimaldis usually has an hour line but i got lucky and got a seat straight away
- Tried to walk to Williamburg but got pretty lost and ended up in an area full of what i orignally thought were amish people, but were actually hisidic jews. These guys don't even speak english and they literally have like a 1km square area where its like being in israel or something but there are literally no one except hisidic jews there.. they must have wondered why the hell there was a random asian toursit walking around
- eventually get to williamsberg and have a coffee and wait for alex...
- pick up the the 14lb (6.5 kg) turkey for thanksgiving on Thursday
- Go back to Lee's place to drop off the turkey and they go to Blue hill farm for dinner with Alex
- BLue hill farm - the whole idea is great quality produce from the farm and cooked simply. at $80pp i think this was a good value meal which you can have once in a while in nice causal surroudings. There were kids here for dinner, and Alex made a good comment - i'm not taking kids to anywhere good/expensive until they are of an age to appreciate - at least 10-12! otherwise its a waste of money - they can just eat McDonalds :P
- Went home and out to the meatpacking district where we stayed till about 4am - then off to a some random cafe for.... breakfast? till about 5am... then we went home.. Alex to Brooklyn, lee and I across the road
Thanksgiving Thursday
- Alex turns up about 10am - at which point lee and I are still trying to sleep
- Despite the fact that Alex has had probably less than 5 hrs sleep, being the trooper she is turns up for a full day of cooking..
- Watched foot ball on tv all day.. while alex cooked. Any time you can find a woman who is willing to cook all day when you sit on your a$$ and watch sport on TV, you know you have found a real keeper!
- Turkey, Stuffing, mac and cheese, green been casserole, smooth mash potato - my first thanksgiving meal EVER and one that will be hard to top
- Football in some kind of concrete soccer court somewhere
- Alex's friend who works at Per Se turns up semi drunk and has interesting insights on the high end fine dining industry
- We play Cranium - I win.
Black Friday
- Apparently, this is not actually a public holiday so Lee and Miranda go to work
- I head out to SOHO to do some shopping and pick up some bits and pieces, nothing major
- Meet up wth Delinda and Danny for lunch at Lombardis - 45 min queue, Good pizza
- More shopping afterwards and go to a BBQ place up in Harlem with Yao and Kristiina , Lee and Dush
- THey have this 'squealer' challenge which is basically a pulled pork sub with super hot chilli. You can't drink water while you eat it and you cant drink water for like 10 mins after...
- I had a quater of a sub while drinking like 1L of water. It was brutal. The table next to us had a guy that did it, he was a machine. This sh!t was seriously HOT. I had stomach problems for the most of the next day and that was just eating 1/4 of it.
- Seinfeld restaurant and home
Sad Saturday
- Last day in Manhattan as I will meet up with relatives in Flushing later in the day
- Wander around manhattan a bit more as Lee studies, I actually dont eat much that day until...
- I take the train out to Flushing
- FLUSHING IS CHINA
- IT is like 80% Chinese out there, shops are all in Chinese and its like the hisidic jews, all over again but they are chinese and the speak English
- Meet my two young cousins for the first time and go to my cousins place in queens
- compared to my flat in London or Lees apartment in west village it is HUGE
- 3 stories with a korean family living on the ground and kitty and tat living on the 2nd and 3rd floors as well as having the basement as an entertainment area
- They said it was small, but maybe they were being modest but it was seriously spacious
- Korean BBQ for dinner IT WAS GREAT. Man I missed good KBBQ. I don't think they have good ones in London - if any of you guys know different let me know, New Malden was dissappointing.
- Slept in a bed and had my own room for the first time in a week whic was FANTASTIC.
Sunday
- Airport, business check in and the TERRIBLE lounge where not everything is free. American Airlines SUCKS
- Watched crazy stupid love and was inspired by Ryan Gosling's super hot body (no homo)
- Am inspired to get that cut for just one time in my life
Total weight gain in NY - 2.5kgs
This is already ridiculously long. Congratultions if you go this far.Its taken me about 3 hrs to write this, whilst watching nigella, eragon and aeon flux on TV...
Marrakech next time..
Hope you are all well and write back!
Wednesday, November 02, 2011
Miles in London Part 11 - What Winter?
Hey Guys,
It has been about a month since my last update, I hope you are all well! Its now been about 7 months in London and I think its fair to say that things have settled pretty much into a routine now, especially when we aren't travelling. Over the last 4 weeks we have only travelled once, to Madrid - which is not as bad as some people would make out. People always say that Madrid is a bit of a letdown after Barcelona but I actually don't mind Madrid at all. I think it comes down to the fact that Barcelona is very much a party town, so if you want to have a bucks weekend or go somewhere just to party, Barcelona is probably your best bet. However, you also get the downsides of a touristy, party town - the crowds, the tourists, a lot of rip-off touristy food on las ramblas, multi language menus, more pick pockets etc. The other big advantage of Barcelona is that it has the beach, which Madrid doesn't have. The Gaudi stuff is pretty interesting but I was unimpressed by the park, and the other gaudi houses are super expensive.
Madrid on the other hand is more of a local's city. There is very little English around, and although there is still a lot of tourists, it doesn't feel overwhelming like it does in Barcelona. I actually found the food in Madrid to actually be better on average than my experience in Barcelona, in particular the Pinxos (small pieces of bread with various toppings - ranging from olives and pickles to seafood to black pudding and quails eggs) was really good. I also enjoyed the royal palace, which was actually an amazing example of the decadence that the royal family lived in. Amazing furniture, painted ceilings in every room, beautiful golden chandeliers. I have been to other palaces before but for some reason I don't remember them being as over the top as this one was. The throne room in particular as quite impressive, with carved lions on the sides of the thrones, and the dining room which had a long table which seats 100 also a highlight. The other cool thing was the armoury, where they had about 50 sets of armour. As some of you may know, i read a lot of fantasy, and it was pretty interesting to see what 'knights' would be wearing. The armour has a LOT of pieces and i imagine that it would have been pretty damn heavy and uncomfortable. Not sure that it would be the best thing to fight in. The length of a lance was also suprising, they were like 5m long.. which was a lot longer than i expected. Also, the suits of armour were really small which meant the spanish kings must have been quite short... (i just re-read that and realised how nerdy that sounded... but oh well ;P)
Anyway, so I ate a LOT in Madrid, every few hours in fact. The kind of went like this - Churros and hot chocolate in the morning, Jamon Boccadillo (Spanish Sandwich) for morning tea, markets for pinxos for lunch, pinxos for afternoon tea, and then restaurant for tapas/dishes for dinner. Yeah. So pretty intense food intake. Which brings me to my next point.. weight gain. Over the last 7 months, I've gained about 5 kgs. The slim fit shirts I bought when I first arrived - which fit perfectly are now too tight around the stomach, and on the weekend Nancy said I was too fat for my trenchcoat... I think the reason for this is twofold. Firstly, when I travel, I eat. A lot. I make the excuse that I need to try all the food in a certain place because if I don't have it then and there, i'll probably never have it again, so i just figure, screw it i'll just eat it. Secondly, the weekends used to by my exercise days, in Sydney, i'd play basketball twice on the weekend but here i'm travelling so it compounds the issue. so for the record, I am officially going on a diet - until New York. The plan is lose 2-3kg before i get to new york so I can gain it back in the week I'm there so at least i'll have a net gain of 0... amazing aspirations i know ...
The other things I wanted to cover quickly, the weather has been surprisingly (and unexpected i'm told) not freezing. This week, the weather is about 15 in the day, not unlike a sydney winter. Usually,the weather is in single digits in the day already so it has been unseasonably warm. This has meant a few things. I've been able to find some people to play basketball with, and play outdoors (this will have to move indoors soon im sure), and all the money i've spent on winter clothes so far has been a bit wasted.. which segways nicely into my final point for this update... shopping.
I've spent a LOT of money of clothes since I got here. I think since I've got here I've spent way too much on clothing. For those who know about my budgeting spreadsheets i can see that since being in London, I've spent WAY more on clothes than the last 2 years. Which links back to my weight loss point - I have to lose weight so that these clothes still fit. I think my sense of fashion has changed as well. Overall I think people in London arebetter dressed thanin Sydney and i guess subconciously you want to dress better to fit in. Also I think you have access to much better clothing here than in Sydney, i mean people went nuts at Zara, which is just a very average brand here as you guys know.
Work wise - things are bearable, i'm still basically in cruise control mode, just treating work as something I have to do to fund my travel and life in London. I admit that I'm not hating it as much as I was a few months ago though so thats something.
Other interesting things I did this month - go karting last weekend, first korean meal since i got to London and finally going to Bicester village (outlet shopping).
Next update will be post New York! I have literally 30 places to eat at while I'm there, i'm really looking forward to that, and seeing Lee, Alex, Dush and my family of course :)
Will and Anny drop in this month as well...
So what have you guys been up to?
My life does revolve around food doesnt it. 3/4 of this email is about food... haha but i guess thats just me..
Write back!
Miles
It has been about a month since my last update, I hope you are all well! Its now been about 7 months in London and I think its fair to say that things have settled pretty much into a routine now, especially when we aren't travelling. Over the last 4 weeks we have only travelled once, to Madrid - which is not as bad as some people would make out. People always say that Madrid is a bit of a letdown after Barcelona but I actually don't mind Madrid at all. I think it comes down to the fact that Barcelona is very much a party town, so if you want to have a bucks weekend or go somewhere just to party, Barcelona is probably your best bet. However, you also get the downsides of a touristy, party town - the crowds, the tourists, a lot of rip-off touristy food on las ramblas, multi language menus, more pick pockets etc. The other big advantage of Barcelona is that it has the beach, which Madrid doesn't have. The Gaudi stuff is pretty interesting but I was unimpressed by the park, and the other gaudi houses are super expensive.
Madrid on the other hand is more of a local's city. There is very little English around, and although there is still a lot of tourists, it doesn't feel overwhelming like it does in Barcelona. I actually found the food in Madrid to actually be better on average than my experience in Barcelona, in particular the Pinxos (small pieces of bread with various toppings - ranging from olives and pickles to seafood to black pudding and quails eggs) was really good. I also enjoyed the royal palace, which was actually an amazing example of the decadence that the royal family lived in. Amazing furniture, painted ceilings in every room, beautiful golden chandeliers. I have been to other palaces before but for some reason I don't remember them being as over the top as this one was. The throne room in particular as quite impressive, with carved lions on the sides of the thrones, and the dining room which had a long table which seats 100 also a highlight. The other cool thing was the armoury, where they had about 50 sets of armour. As some of you may know, i read a lot of fantasy, and it was pretty interesting to see what 'knights' would be wearing. The armour has a LOT of pieces and i imagine that it would have been pretty damn heavy and uncomfortable. Not sure that it would be the best thing to fight in. The length of a lance was also suprising, they were like 5m long.. which was a lot longer than i expected. Also, the suits of armour were really small which meant the spanish kings must have been quite short... (i just re-read that and realised how nerdy that sounded... but oh well ;P)
Anyway, so I ate a LOT in Madrid, every few hours in fact. The kind of went like this - Churros and hot chocolate in the morning, Jamon Boccadillo (Spanish Sandwich) for morning tea, markets for pinxos for lunch, pinxos for afternoon tea, and then restaurant for tapas/dishes for dinner. Yeah. So pretty intense food intake. Which brings me to my next point.. weight gain. Over the last 7 months, I've gained about 5 kgs. The slim fit shirts I bought when I first arrived - which fit perfectly are now too tight around the stomach, and on the weekend Nancy said I was too fat for my trenchcoat... I think the reason for this is twofold. Firstly, when I travel, I eat. A lot. I make the excuse that I need to try all the food in a certain place because if I don't have it then and there, i'll probably never have it again, so i just figure, screw it i'll just eat it. Secondly, the weekends used to by my exercise days, in Sydney, i'd play basketball twice on the weekend but here i'm travelling so it compounds the issue. so for the record, I am officially going on a diet - until New York. The plan is lose 2-3kg before i get to new york so I can gain it back in the week I'm there so at least i'll have a net gain of 0... amazing aspirations i know ...
The other things I wanted to cover quickly, the weather has been surprisingly (and unexpected i'm told) not freezing. This week, the weather is about 15 in the day, not unlike a sydney winter. Usually,the weather is in single digits in the day already so it has been unseasonably warm. This has meant a few things. I've been able to find some people to play basketball with, and play outdoors (this will have to move indoors soon im sure), and all the money i've spent on winter clothes so far has been a bit wasted.. which segways nicely into my final point for this update... shopping.
I've spent a LOT of money of clothes since I got here. I think since I've got here I've spent way too much on clothing. For those who know about my budgeting spreadsheets i can see that since being in London, I've spent WAY more on clothes than the last 2 years. Which links back to my weight loss point - I have to lose weight so that these clothes still fit. I think my sense of fashion has changed as well. Overall I think people in London arebetter dressed thanin Sydney and i guess subconciously you want to dress better to fit in. Also I think you have access to much better clothing here than in Sydney, i mean people went nuts at Zara, which is just a very average brand here as you guys know.
Work wise - things are bearable, i'm still basically in cruise control mode, just treating work as something I have to do to fund my travel and life in London. I admit that I'm not hating it as much as I was a few months ago though so thats something.
Other interesting things I did this month - go karting last weekend, first korean meal since i got to London and finally going to Bicester village (outlet shopping).
Next update will be post New York! I have literally 30 places to eat at while I'm there, i'm really looking forward to that, and seeing Lee, Alex, Dush and my family of course :)
Will and Anny drop in this month as well...
So what have you guys been up to?
My life does revolve around food doesnt it. 3/4 of this email is about food... haha but i guess thats just me..
Write back!
Miles
Miles in London Part 10 - 6 month anniversary
Hi All,
Happy 6 month Anniversary! Amazingly, its been just over 6 months since I left Sydney, and in all honestly, for me at least it doesn't seem like 6 months ago. It all still feels really new here, i don't feel like this is my city at all. I don't feel like I am 'comfortable' with London at all. I really don't feel like i know the best places to eat, I dont feel like I know the best places to hang out and I certainly don't have a routine here like I have in Sydney. This is not a good or a bad thing, its just the way it is at the moment.
In general, I would consider 6 months a LONG time, but maybe its cos I'm getting old but the last 6 months have really gone by in a flash. I still vividly remember landing in London on that first cold morning, catching my 80 pound cab to canary wharf and wandering out into the city for the first time. All of sudden, I've been working 6 months, which means 25% of my secondment is already over! I know that I have travelled a lot over the last 6 months, and that i guess what I think about it and count everything off , it seems like a lot, but it all feels like its happened in a compressed time frame, and my life in Sydney doesn't feel that far away at all!
This means its been at least 6 months since i've seen most you, and I'm sure that means you all miss me heaps! :P I know most of you have written back at some point and I really do appreciate you guys writing back, it makes the time writing these long emails worth while. I hope you guy aren't bored of these emails yet, and if you want me to stop bothering you, just let me know and i'm more than happy to take you off..
So how do I feel, 6 months in? The short anwser is that I'm really enjoying London as a place to live. I thought that one of the biggest things about moving to London would be adjusting to living on my own, and that I would feel all grown up and stuff I had to look after myself. You know what, moving out is massively overated. I don't feel any more mature than I did back in Sydney. I mean, sure mum doesn't cook me breakfast every moring anymore, so I just have a glass of juice and get a croissant on the way to work... So she doesnt wash my clothes for me anymore... so i just throw it into the washing machine myself... (which reminds me.. i have to move the clothes to the dryer..... and im back..). I thought this whole moving out of home thing would make me feel more grown up but really it justs more annoying..and more expensive. Rent is annoying to pay.. it was so much better to live at home!
I know that guys who live at home are looked down on as some kind of incompetent moron, but honestly, its not that hard to move out, and it doesn't mean that any more of man/adult just cos i can do some chores.. its really not that hard.. I cook some, I clean some, and the stuff u don't do well the first time, you learn to do better by looking it up on google and you tube. I've been thinking about this and the biggest factor in my situation is that i'm fortunate enough in my financial situation that i'm not in the position where i can't afford essentials or can pay abit to make my life a bit easier if I need to. E.g. if i'm too lazy to responsible and buy supermarket food and cook food at home, I can afford to eat out. I was able to pay a bit more for my apartment so that I could have the convenience to live near the station and I've been lucky to be able to travel on the weekend too.
I'm not saving much at the moment but thats mostly due to the travel i'm doing, so you could argue thats definitely more of question about lifestyle..
The last few weeks have definitely been more quiet, we've cut back a lot on travel. Danny came to visit so I spent a few days in Amsterdam to chill out, and there actually hasn't been any weekend trips in the last few weeks. We also aren't travelling till mid October! So thats like 6 weekends in London in a row, a new record! The main reason is that Nancy is saving up to go to HK in Jan and I'm saving up to go to NYC and go nuts during the thanksgiving sales - Lee/Alex, its time to book me into Per Se and Momofuku!
Other highlights in the last few weeks have been Deb visiting from Cape Town, (can't believe its been a YEAR since Africa) and going to Yauatcha, going to my first 2 Michelin star restaurant @The Square with Danny, having my first Pho Tai tonight in 6 months - actually pretty good, about an average sydney standard - not as good as cabra or bankstown but definitely hit the spot for my pho craving, finally having my first good steak @Hawksmoore and the AMAZING weather we've been having here in London over the last week.
Everyone told me that it would get cold in September, but its just come October and we just had 28C in London, apparently UNHEARD OF. Its been fantastic, and we've spend the last 2 days doing what all Londoners do when its sunny, we went to park and had a picnic! Everyone is pretty sure this is the last sun we'll see for 6 months so everyone is enjoying it while they can. Every casual conversation you have in the street is commenting about how amazing the weather is. You guys don't understand how excited Londoners get when its sunny this late in the year, people can't believe their luck. You know, I haven't had a winter since July last year - it been 14 months of warm weather for me, Japan, Africam Australia and Europe, all during the summer.. this next 6 months of darkness/cold is going to really be a shock to the system, considering i've never lived in a cold weather city during winter in my life EVER.
Anyway, I think i'll let you guys go now. I'm really enjoying London at the moment, and I hope you guys have also had a great 6 months. Write back if you guys get a chance, and tell me whats you've noticed has changed over the last 6 months?
Hope to talk to you guys soon!
Miles
Happy 6 month Anniversary! Amazingly, its been just over 6 months since I left Sydney, and in all honestly, for me at least it doesn't seem like 6 months ago. It all still feels really new here, i don't feel like this is my city at all. I don't feel like I am 'comfortable' with London at all. I really don't feel like i know the best places to eat, I dont feel like I know the best places to hang out and I certainly don't have a routine here like I have in Sydney. This is not a good or a bad thing, its just the way it is at the moment.
In general, I would consider 6 months a LONG time, but maybe its cos I'm getting old but the last 6 months have really gone by in a flash. I still vividly remember landing in London on that first cold morning, catching my 80 pound cab to canary wharf and wandering out into the city for the first time. All of sudden, I've been working 6 months, which means 25% of my secondment is already over! I know that I have travelled a lot over the last 6 months, and that i guess what I think about it and count everything off , it seems like a lot, but it all feels like its happened in a compressed time frame, and my life in Sydney doesn't feel that far away at all!
This means its been at least 6 months since i've seen most you, and I'm sure that means you all miss me heaps! :P I know most of you have written back at some point and I really do appreciate you guys writing back, it makes the time writing these long emails worth while. I hope you guy aren't bored of these emails yet, and if you want me to stop bothering you, just let me know and i'm more than happy to take you off..
So how do I feel, 6 months in? The short anwser is that I'm really enjoying London as a place to live. I thought that one of the biggest things about moving to London would be adjusting to living on my own, and that I would feel all grown up and stuff I had to look after myself. You know what, moving out is massively overated. I don't feel any more mature than I did back in Sydney. I mean, sure mum doesn't cook me breakfast every moring anymore, so I just have a glass of juice and get a croissant on the way to work... So she doesnt wash my clothes for me anymore... so i just throw it into the washing machine myself... (which reminds me.. i have to move the clothes to the dryer..... and im back..). I thought this whole moving out of home thing would make me feel more grown up but really it justs more annoying..and more expensive. Rent is annoying to pay.. it was so much better to live at home!
I know that guys who live at home are looked down on as some kind of incompetent moron, but honestly, its not that hard to move out, and it doesn't mean that any more of man/adult just cos i can do some chores.. its really not that hard.. I cook some, I clean some, and the stuff u don't do well the first time, you learn to do better by looking it up on google and you tube. I've been thinking about this and the biggest factor in my situation is that i'm fortunate enough in my financial situation that i'm not in the position where i can't afford essentials or can pay abit to make my life a bit easier if I need to. E.g. if i'm too lazy to responsible and buy supermarket food and cook food at home, I can afford to eat out. I was able to pay a bit more for my apartment so that I could have the convenience to live near the station and I've been lucky to be able to travel on the weekend too.
I'm not saving much at the moment but thats mostly due to the travel i'm doing, so you could argue thats definitely more of question about lifestyle..
The last few weeks have definitely been more quiet, we've cut back a lot on travel. Danny came to visit so I spent a few days in Amsterdam to chill out, and there actually hasn't been any weekend trips in the last few weeks. We also aren't travelling till mid October! So thats like 6 weekends in London in a row, a new record! The main reason is that Nancy is saving up to go to HK in Jan and I'm saving up to go to NYC and go nuts during the thanksgiving sales - Lee/Alex, its time to book me into Per Se and Momofuku!
Other highlights in the last few weeks have been Deb visiting from Cape Town, (can't believe its been a YEAR since Africa) and going to Yauatcha, going to my first 2 Michelin star restaurant @The Square with Danny, having my first Pho Tai tonight in 6 months - actually pretty good, about an average sydney standard - not as good as cabra or bankstown but definitely hit the spot for my pho craving, finally having my first good steak @Hawksmoore and the AMAZING weather we've been having here in London over the last week.
Everyone told me that it would get cold in September, but its just come October and we just had 28C in London, apparently UNHEARD OF. Its been fantastic, and we've spend the last 2 days doing what all Londoners do when its sunny, we went to park and had a picnic! Everyone is pretty sure this is the last sun we'll see for 6 months so everyone is enjoying it while they can. Every casual conversation you have in the street is commenting about how amazing the weather is. You guys don't understand how excited Londoners get when its sunny this late in the year, people can't believe their luck. You know, I haven't had a winter since July last year - it been 14 months of warm weather for me, Japan, Africam Australia and Europe, all during the summer.. this next 6 months of darkness/cold is going to really be a shock to the system, considering i've never lived in a cold weather city during winter in my life EVER.
Anyway, I think i'll let you guys go now. I'm really enjoying London at the moment, and I hope you guys have also had a great 6 months. Write back if you guys get a chance, and tell me whats you've noticed has changed over the last 6 months?
Hope to talk to you guys soon!
Miles
Miles in London - Part 8
Hey guys!
I had written about a page of this email which I somehow to lose out of gmail, even out of the drafts folder. I must have hit the perfect combination of shortcut keys which meant not only did it exit from this window but I also managed to discard the draft as well. Unbelievable.
Its REALLY annoying to have to literally rewrite which I had spent the previous 15 mins writing, so luckily for all of you who have complained that these emails are too long, this will become shortened..
Its been been a pretty crazy 2 weeks since I last emailed. Work has been really busy finishing up a project and I have been to Scotland for almost a week and then Barcelona for the best part of 4 days, so pretty action packed on this end. I hope you are all well where you are, I know that you guys have weddings to plan, new boyfriends to entertain, new cars to drive, your own holidays etc, so write back with all the exciting things that you guys are up to! Sometimes I send these emails out and not many of you reply sometimes, so it would be good to get an update on what you guys are all up to.
I'll break this email up into parts so hopefully it will be easy to read.
Work
Work has been really busy - i actually got put on a project I enjoyed and the partner on the project went on holidays for the first 3 weeks of a 5 week project, which meant I was left to my own devices. It was good to get back to doing something i actually found interesting and actually work at the level I'm used to back in Australia and not a level below, which was what had previously been happening. Unfortunately, my holidays were right in the last 2 weeks of the project which was not ideal. It was OK for me, but I think the team had to work harder in my absence which I feel slightly bad about, but in my defence I was taking calls from Scotland to make sure that they were on the right track and to answer any questions they had. So after several late nights in between Scotland and Barcelona, I think we managed to keep the client and the partner happy. So for the first time since I've been here, work isn't a source of major complaints. Besides the fact that I have to work at all, I'm still looking to be a househusband at some point in the near future....
Scotland
Our trip to Scotland was in two parts, firstly a 3 day tour of the Scottish highlands starting from Edinburgh (Edinburgh and Glasgow are in the lowlands) with haggis adventures - whose slogan is 'wild and sexy'. I know this is pure marketing but I was a bit surprised that they didn't try to play up to this at all during the tour. I mean even contiki does the whole traffic light thing (everyone gets 3 colors at the start of the tour green = available, yellow = maybe, red = not interested) but there was nothing to show that the big slogan on the side of the bright yellow bus was true.... The highlands are quite beautiful - think new zealand but less lush and more desolate. The Scottish moors are beautiful in a barren, eerie way and ever since watching 'highlander' i've wanted to go to scotland and see what it was really like, and yes it is just like in the movies!
It does rain a lot in scotland though and for the first few days we did get severely rained on. The highlights of the tour include general scenery, visiting a nice scottish castle on a lake, the isle of skye (great scenery) a interesting and informative talk about traditional scottish life (how to wear a kilt, weapons used etc) where 2 people on the tour were dressed in traditional scottish garb - this is not quite the same as the kilts you see today. The main thing that i don't understand about this as why the traditional scottish kilt does not appear to be very warming. For a place as cold as scotland - lots of snow in winter, teens in the summer - how could people go around wearing just some kilt? The loch ness was not particuarly a highlight, it is massively touristy, and gimicky with lots of models of fake nessies and where we took our boat tour, there were heaps of little midges which are really annoying and bite your face etc...
Overall, a good tour which i would recommend to get a taste of the scottish highlands.
We returned from the tour on Friday where we met up with Nancy V, Jean, Helen and Matty at our hostel. The hostel was managed by quite an eccentric guy (JonJo) who seemed to take a lof pleasure in showing us how the lights in the room were able to dim, and the admittedly nice recreation room with projector.. When we checked out on Monday morning at 10am (the prescribed checkout time) the manager was still completley drunk from the night before and answered the door with his sunglasses on and reeking of alcohol.. did I mention that he slept in the office as well? Im a little recess you access through a ladder...
The main reason we were in edinburgh was actually for the fringe festival and we saw some great shows while we were there. There are a lot of great 'free' shows there too, mostly late night stand up. It usually features 3-4 comedians doing 10-15 minute sets and you are asked to give donation at the end but you don't have to. Generally, these are all in pubs/clubs with rooms set aside for these shows and in general these are quite good. We saw a few duds, in particular one guy with the 'Richard Mercer' voice but he just wasn't very funny... he had one sketch where he was playing a washed up james bond and put a gun to head to kill himself... not funny.. The best thing we saw while we were there was by far 'baby loves candy' which is a group that does improv musicals - the crowd yells out names of random musicals, past musicals include 'Jersey Whore'. and our one was 'The Last of the Norweigans'. This was absolutely hilarious and quite clever! We also saw Margaret Cho - shes the bisexual american woman. Nancy didn't like her at all, shes quite crude, talks about her vagina, oral sex, and toilet humour, in other words right up my alley. I found her quite funny, but the most interesting thing was how polished she was compared to any other act we saw. She was just smooth and you could tell she knew exactly what she was doing. With almost all other stand up acts we saw, there would be moments of hesitation, or they would get put off by some heckler etc, but margaret cho to her credit, put on a very professional show.
Edinburgh as a city is quite nice, there is a lot of nice old architecture there, the royal mile is great to walk downand there are so many old pubs everywhere. My one regret is not being able to see the Royal Military Tattoo which is supposed to be amazing. I guess i'll have to go back for that.
I found food in general to be quite good and we had some nice meals there, in particular a nice fish and chips place called seadogs.
London
We got back to London at about 11pm on Monday night and I was up at 5am to go to birmingham for work, where we pulled a couple of 2am's and I got back to London on Thursday night at about 11pm. We got up at 3am for our bus to take us to the airport for our trip to Barcelona on Friday.....
To be continued - I can see eyes glazing over already so I'll tell you about Barcelona in the next email - pictures are already on facebook!
Coming up -
Berlin with Alby and Linda
Amsterdam with Danny
NYC for Thanksgiving!
Hope you all write back soon!
Take care
Miles
I had written about a page of this email which I somehow to lose out of gmail, even out of the drafts folder. I must have hit the perfect combination of shortcut keys which meant not only did it exit from this window but I also managed to discard the draft as well. Unbelievable.
Its REALLY annoying to have to literally rewrite which I had spent the previous 15 mins writing, so luckily for all of you who have complained that these emails are too long, this will become shortened..
Its been been a pretty crazy 2 weeks since I last emailed. Work has been really busy finishing up a project and I have been to Scotland for almost a week and then Barcelona for the best part of 4 days, so pretty action packed on this end. I hope you are all well where you are, I know that you guys have weddings to plan, new boyfriends to entertain, new cars to drive, your own holidays etc, so write back with all the exciting things that you guys are up to! Sometimes I send these emails out and not many of you reply sometimes, so it would be good to get an update on what you guys are all up to.
I'll break this email up into parts so hopefully it will be easy to read.
Work
Work has been really busy - i actually got put on a project I enjoyed and the partner on the project went on holidays for the first 3 weeks of a 5 week project, which meant I was left to my own devices. It was good to get back to doing something i actually found interesting and actually work at the level I'm used to back in Australia and not a level below, which was what had previously been happening. Unfortunately, my holidays were right in the last 2 weeks of the project which was not ideal. It was OK for me, but I think the team had to work harder in my absence which I feel slightly bad about, but in my defence I was taking calls from Scotland to make sure that they were on the right track and to answer any questions they had. So after several late nights in between Scotland and Barcelona, I think we managed to keep the client and the partner happy. So for the first time since I've been here, work isn't a source of major complaints. Besides the fact that I have to work at all, I'm still looking to be a househusband at some point in the near future....
Scotland
Our trip to Scotland was in two parts, firstly a 3 day tour of the Scottish highlands starting from Edinburgh (Edinburgh and Glasgow are in the lowlands) with haggis adventures - whose slogan is 'wild and sexy'. I know this is pure marketing but I was a bit surprised that they didn't try to play up to this at all during the tour. I mean even contiki does the whole traffic light thing (everyone gets 3 colors at the start of the tour green = available, yellow = maybe, red = not interested) but there was nothing to show that the big slogan on the side of the bright yellow bus was true.... The highlands are quite beautiful - think new zealand but less lush and more desolate. The Scottish moors are beautiful in a barren, eerie way and ever since watching 'highlander' i've wanted to go to scotland and see what it was really like, and yes it is just like in the movies!
It does rain a lot in scotland though and for the first few days we did get severely rained on. The highlights of the tour include general scenery, visiting a nice scottish castle on a lake, the isle of skye (great scenery) a interesting and informative talk about traditional scottish life (how to wear a kilt, weapons used etc) where 2 people on the tour were dressed in traditional scottish garb - this is not quite the same as the kilts you see today. The main thing that i don't understand about this as why the traditional scottish kilt does not appear to be very warming. For a place as cold as scotland - lots of snow in winter, teens in the summer - how could people go around wearing just some kilt? The loch ness was not particuarly a highlight, it is massively touristy, and gimicky with lots of models of fake nessies and where we took our boat tour, there were heaps of little midges which are really annoying and bite your face etc...
Overall, a good tour which i would recommend to get a taste of the scottish highlands.
We returned from the tour on Friday where we met up with Nancy V, Jean, Helen and Matty at our hostel. The hostel was managed by quite an eccentric guy (JonJo) who seemed to take a lof pleasure in showing us how the lights in the room were able to dim, and the admittedly nice recreation room with projector.. When we checked out on Monday morning at 10am (the prescribed checkout time) the manager was still completley drunk from the night before and answered the door with his sunglasses on and reeking of alcohol.. did I mention that he slept in the office as well? Im a little recess you access through a ladder...
The main reason we were in edinburgh was actually for the fringe festival and we saw some great shows while we were there. There are a lot of great 'free' shows there too, mostly late night stand up. It usually features 3-4 comedians doing 10-15 minute sets and you are asked to give donation at the end but you don't have to. Generally, these are all in pubs/clubs with rooms set aside for these shows and in general these are quite good. We saw a few duds, in particular one guy with the 'Richard Mercer' voice but he just wasn't very funny... he had one sketch where he was playing a washed up james bond and put a gun to head to kill himself... not funny.. The best thing we saw while we were there was by far 'baby loves candy' which is a group that does improv musicals - the crowd yells out names of random musicals, past musicals include 'Jersey Whore'. and our one was 'The Last of the Norweigans'. This was absolutely hilarious and quite clever! We also saw Margaret Cho - shes the bisexual american woman. Nancy didn't like her at all, shes quite crude, talks about her vagina, oral sex, and toilet humour, in other words right up my alley. I found her quite funny, but the most interesting thing was how polished she was compared to any other act we saw. She was just smooth and you could tell she knew exactly what she was doing. With almost all other stand up acts we saw, there would be moments of hesitation, or they would get put off by some heckler etc, but margaret cho to her credit, put on a very professional show.
Edinburgh as a city is quite nice, there is a lot of nice old architecture there, the royal mile is great to walk downand there are so many old pubs everywhere. My one regret is not being able to see the Royal Military Tattoo which is supposed to be amazing. I guess i'll have to go back for that.
I found food in general to be quite good and we had some nice meals there, in particular a nice fish and chips place called seadogs.
London
We got back to London at about 11pm on Monday night and I was up at 5am to go to birmingham for work, where we pulled a couple of 2am's and I got back to London on Thursday night at about 11pm. We got up at 3am for our bus to take us to the airport for our trip to Barcelona on Friday.....
To be continued - I can see eyes glazing over already so I'll tell you about Barcelona in the next email - pictures are already on facebook!
Coming up -
Berlin with Alby and Linda
Amsterdam with Danny
NYC for Thanksgiving!
Hope you all write back soon!
Take care
Miles
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Miles in London - Part 9
Hi All,
It hasnt been that long since I last wrote but I didn't get around to talking about Barcelona due to the length of my last email.. Let me address that now!
Let me start by saying this : Barcelona is a great city. Its realy chilled out, and Spain is probably one of my favourite cities in Europe. The weather is great, and I love the whole eat late, stay up late vibe, especially on holidays. Archiecture is really interesting in Barcelona with Gaudi's relgious/nature influences all throughout the city. The ONLY slight blemish to the city this time was that I wasn't blown away by the food there (it wasn't bad, just wasn't amazing!) and the month of August is not the ideal time to go due to the fact that a LOT of local shops/restaurants close for most of August as everyone goes on holidays!
Highlights of Barcelona:
- Relaxed atmosphere
- Great architecture: Sagrada Familia, Casa Batllo (pronounced baiyo), las rambla
- Waking up late, eating late
- Jamon Iberico at the markets - so much better value than eating at a restaurant!
- Getting my tan on!
- Relatively cheap compared to London /Paris
The best food we had there was from markets, and the best things at the markets is of course Jamon Ibero! There are a lot of different varieties in terms of cut (shoulder vs leg), acorn vs non acorn, breed pf pig, time of aging (1-5 years) and the flavours do very drastically between them, I personally tried as many different types as possible, all in the name of science of course. Other meals in Barcelona were good, but not amazing - the other highlight being a squid ink paella at a relatively fancy restaurant.
I think food quality was limited by the afore mentioned closure of lots of local restaurants due to August. I'll give barcelona the benefit of the doubt just this once..
It just so happened that Viv, Miranda and Josh were also in Barcelona on the same weekend! Thanks for letting us tag along with you guys!
Just to go onto a tangent...After 5 months of 'low cost carrier' travelling I think I have now established several rules:
1. Saturday morning flights are generally not worth it. Getting up at 3:30am to get to the airport ruins your day, and you end up wiping out in the afternoon anyway so its not like you get to spend a full day anyway. Saving accomodation for a night sounds like a good idea, but the opporunity cost of losing half of saturday due to tiredness and extra expense to get there in the morning must be considered.
2. Location of the airport is important. Depending on when you live, the airport is really important. For example to get to Stansted Airport from Clapham early in the mornig or returning late at night is a NIGHTMARE. We got up at 3:30am for a 7am flight and only just made it and it cost us about 20 pounds to get there. While you may pay an extra 20 pounds to fly from a close airport, this is easily cancelled out by the size of the taxi bill at 12 midnight when you land..
3. Book in advance - plan 3 months ahead!
We also went to Berlin last weekend, organised by Linda... Friday night flight of course - the woman is a pro and learnt the before 3 rules a long ago... She booked us a MASSIVE 2 bedroom apartment in the Mitte district (east berlin).. We arrived on Friday night and immediately smashed a currywurst once we had dropped off our bags. Currywurst is fantastic, its just a sausage fried in oil and covered in tomato sauce which has curry powder in it. We had it at a place right under friedrichstrafe station and I have to say the chips here were amazing - really crunchy and went great with the curry sauce! We also had a few drinks a bar called Van Gogh, it was a really eccentric little place which specialised in cocktails and had a man playing a piano and singing in the corner. Really chilled out place and was absolutely packed from where we got there at about midnight to 2am when we left..... to have KEBABS! Great call by Linda to redirect our taxi driver to take us to a kebab shop instead of home!
This was probably the first kebab i've had since i left australia and this was pretty good! Not too fat, and had enough vegetables to make me feel healthy. The meat was cut really small so that was interesting too. Kebabs and currywurst are EVERYWHERE in Berlin, much more so than in Sydney. Unfortunately, food went downhill from that point, the rest of the meals we had were unmemorable, with a few average roast pork dishes and various sausages/wurst dishes were not impressive. I do remember having a few better meals last time I was in Berlin, but I think the south of Germany (e.g. bavaria) is more well known for food..
The highlight of the trip was definitely the Fat Tire Bike tour - which was 5 hr bike tour throughout berlin. Riding a bike is definitely a good way to see a city - i just dont think you cover enough ground on foot. We apparently covered 14kms on the tour, and although when you think about it, over 5 hrs its about 3 km/h we did have a 1 hr lunch break and stopped constantly to talk, take photos etc. Also we werent tired like we would have been after walking 14 kms..The tour covered most of the highlights, reichstag, berlin wall, checkpoint charlie, bradenburg gate, museum island etc. and the guide, a Kiwi named Francis was quite knowledgable.
Anyway, that more of less brings you up to date with my travels. London has been getting slightly colder but hasn't really turned the corner yet in terms of temperature, I dont have a coat, but its fine so far. It is getting dark earlier now, its dark by about 7:30 pm now,compared to almost 10pm in the hights of summer.. 6 months of darkness here we come!
Danny is coming to visit for a couple of months, arriving tomorow night! It gives me an excuse to go to my first 2 star restaurant in London - The Square in Mayfair. I hope its good!
Hope you are all well. Write back when you guys get a chance!
Take care!
Miles
It hasnt been that long since I last wrote but I didn't get around to talking about Barcelona due to the length of my last email.. Let me address that now!
Let me start by saying this : Barcelona is a great city. Its realy chilled out, and Spain is probably one of my favourite cities in Europe. The weather is great, and I love the whole eat late, stay up late vibe, especially on holidays. Archiecture is really interesting in Barcelona with Gaudi's relgious/nature influences all throughout the city. The ONLY slight blemish to the city this time was that I wasn't blown away by the food there (it wasn't bad, just wasn't amazing!) and the month of August is not the ideal time to go due to the fact that a LOT of local shops/restaurants close for most of August as everyone goes on holidays!
Highlights of Barcelona:
- Relaxed atmosphere
- Great architecture: Sagrada Familia, Casa Batllo (pronounced baiyo), las rambla
- Waking up late, eating late
- Jamon Iberico at the markets - so much better value than eating at a restaurant!
- Getting my tan on!
- Relatively cheap compared to London /Paris
The best food we had there was from markets, and the best things at the markets is of course Jamon Ibero! There are a lot of different varieties in terms of cut (shoulder vs leg), acorn vs non acorn, breed pf pig, time of aging (1-5 years) and the flavours do very drastically between them, I personally tried as many different types as possible, all in the name of science of course. Other meals in Barcelona were good, but not amazing - the other highlight being a squid ink paella at a relatively fancy restaurant.
I think food quality was limited by the afore mentioned closure of lots of local restaurants due to August. I'll give barcelona the benefit of the doubt just this once..
It just so happened that Viv, Miranda and Josh were also in Barcelona on the same weekend! Thanks for letting us tag along with you guys!
Just to go onto a tangent...After 5 months of 'low cost carrier' travelling I think I have now established several rules:
1. Saturday morning flights are generally not worth it. Getting up at 3:30am to get to the airport ruins your day, and you end up wiping out in the afternoon anyway so its not like you get to spend a full day anyway. Saving accomodation for a night sounds like a good idea, but the opporunity cost of losing half of saturday due to tiredness and extra expense to get there in the morning must be considered.
2. Location of the airport is important. Depending on when you live, the airport is really important. For example to get to Stansted Airport from Clapham early in the mornig or returning late at night is a NIGHTMARE. We got up at 3:30am for a 7am flight and only just made it and it cost us about 20 pounds to get there. While you may pay an extra 20 pounds to fly from a close airport, this is easily cancelled out by the size of the taxi bill at 12 midnight when you land..
3. Book in advance - plan 3 months ahead!
We also went to Berlin last weekend, organised by Linda... Friday night flight of course - the woman is a pro and learnt the before 3 rules a long ago... She booked us a MASSIVE 2 bedroom apartment in the Mitte district (east berlin).. We arrived on Friday night and immediately smashed a currywurst once we had dropped off our bags. Currywurst is fantastic, its just a sausage fried in oil and covered in tomato sauce which has curry powder in it. We had it at a place right under friedrichstrafe station and I have to say the chips here were amazing - really crunchy and went great with the curry sauce! We also had a few drinks a bar called Van Gogh, it was a really eccentric little place which specialised in cocktails and had a man playing a piano and singing in the corner. Really chilled out place and was absolutely packed from where we got there at about midnight to 2am when we left..... to have KEBABS! Great call by Linda to redirect our taxi driver to take us to a kebab shop instead of home!
This was probably the first kebab i've had since i left australia and this was pretty good! Not too fat, and had enough vegetables to make me feel healthy. The meat was cut really small so that was interesting too. Kebabs and currywurst are EVERYWHERE in Berlin, much more so than in Sydney. Unfortunately, food went downhill from that point, the rest of the meals we had were unmemorable, with a few average roast pork dishes and various sausages/wurst dishes were not impressive. I do remember having a few better meals last time I was in Berlin, but I think the south of Germany (e.g. bavaria) is more well known for food..
The highlight of the trip was definitely the Fat Tire Bike tour - which was 5 hr bike tour throughout berlin. Riding a bike is definitely a good way to see a city - i just dont think you cover enough ground on foot. We apparently covered 14kms on the tour, and although when you think about it, over 5 hrs its about 3 km/h we did have a 1 hr lunch break and stopped constantly to talk, take photos etc. Also we werent tired like we would have been after walking 14 kms..The tour covered most of the highlights, reichstag, berlin wall, checkpoint charlie, bradenburg gate, museum island etc. and the guide, a Kiwi named Francis was quite knowledgable.
Anyway, that more of less brings you up to date with my travels. London has been getting slightly colder but hasn't really turned the corner yet in terms of temperature, I dont have a coat, but its fine so far. It is getting dark earlier now, its dark by about 7:30 pm now,compared to almost 10pm in the hights of summer.. 6 months of darkness here we come!
Danny is coming to visit for a couple of months, arriving tomorow night! It gives me an excuse to go to my first 2 star restaurant in London - The Square in Mayfair. I hope its good!
Hope you are all well. Write back when you guys get a chance!
Take care!
Miles
Thursday, September 08, 2011
Africa Day 3
You know what, its been more than a year since my trip to Africa and I'm still on day 3. I could give up the blog here but that would be quitting! And I don't quit! Well not often - not unless im really getting flogged, in which case i just throw a tantrum and demand rematch... but thats not really quitting!
Anyway - Day 3...
You've probably forgotten the context of this now, but I'm still in Uganda, in the QE2 national park. We went on another game drive - and on this day we saw
- a whole famly of elephants crossing the road (i still remember this, it was my first closs sighting of a large group of elephants!)
- a hippo out of the water and about 5 m from the mutatu. This was the first and last time that I would see a hippo this close out of the water!
- Antelope, Warthogs (pumbas)
- A lion from a distance
We also went to an african village which is probably the first time i came close to a proper third world village. The kids were dirty, they didnt have running water, and i'm not even sure if they had electricity.
I don't think they had seen a lot of asians nor had they seen a lot of asians with hairy legs because they seem to be fascinated with the hair on my legs.. and they kept stroking it... weird i know...
We also went on a cruise of the the lake and on the cruise we saw
- Elephant in the water
- Maribu Storks - The ugliest birds in the world. Carrion eaters of course.
- Hippos in the water
- Crocodiles
A really cute kid!
who insisted we take multiple photos of him...
That afternoon - we went on a chimpanzee walk, where we went in search of chimps! Unfortunately we only managed to see glimpses of them as they were up in the trees. We had a cool guide though, who held my hand as i walked over a fallen over tree to cross a river. There is a 90% chance that I would have fallen in without her help..
Dinner was roast Goat! It was AMAZING. One of the best meals of the trip. To get a roast in the middle of africa was pretty special actually, I didn't expect to have that kind of food, i thought we were going to be eating really simple food throughout the trip but every once in a while we'd do something amazing like a roast side of goat and roast vegetables...
I believe this was the night wher Katie, Bahn and I had our first late night chat... :)
Good times...
Anyway - Day 3...
You've probably forgotten the context of this now, but I'm still in Uganda, in the QE2 national park. We went on another game drive - and on this day we saw
- a whole famly of elephants crossing the road (i still remember this, it was my first closs sighting of a large group of elephants!)
- a hippo out of the water and about 5 m from the mutatu. This was the first and last time that I would see a hippo this close out of the water!
- Antelope, Warthogs (pumbas)
- A lion from a distance
We also went to an african village which is probably the first time i came close to a proper third world village. The kids were dirty, they didnt have running water, and i'm not even sure if they had electricity.
I don't think they had seen a lot of asians nor had they seen a lot of asians with hairy legs because they seem to be fascinated with the hair on my legs.. and they kept stroking it... weird i know...
We also went on a cruise of the the lake and on the cruise we saw
- Elephant in the water
- Maribu Storks - The ugliest birds in the world. Carrion eaters of course.
- Hippos in the water
- Crocodiles
A really cute kid!
who insisted we take multiple photos of him...That afternoon - we went on a chimpanzee walk, where we went in search of chimps! Unfortunately we only managed to see glimpses of them as they were up in the trees. We had a cool guide though, who held my hand as i walked over a fallen over tree to cross a river. There is a 90% chance that I would have fallen in without her help..
Dinner was roast Goat! It was AMAZING. One of the best meals of the trip. To get a roast in the middle of africa was pretty special actually, I didn't expect to have that kind of food, i thought we were going to be eating really simple food throughout the trip but every once in a while we'd do something amazing like a roast side of goat and roast vegetables...
I believe this was the night wher Katie, Bahn and I had our first late night chat... :)
Good times...
Thursday, September 01, 2011
Miles in London - Part 8
Hey guys!
I had written about a page of this email which I somehow to lose out of gmail, even out of the drafts folder. I must have hit the perfect combination of shortcut keys which meant not only did it exit from this window but I also managed to discard the draft as well. Unbelievable.
Its REALLY annoying to have to literally rewrite which I had spent the previous 15 mins writing, so luckily for all of you who have complained that these emails are too long, this will become shortened..
Its been been a pretty crazy 2 weeks since I last emailed. Work has been really busy finishing up a project and I have been to Scotland for almost a week and then Barcelona for the best part of 4 days, so pretty action packed on this end. I hope you are all well where you are, I know that you guys have weddings to plan, new boyfriends to entertain, new cars to drive, your own holidays etc, so write back with all the exciting things that you guys are up to! Sometimes I send these emails out and not many of you reply sometimes, so it would be good to get an update on what you guys are all up to.
I'll break this email up into parts so hopefully it will be easy to read.
Work
Work has been really busy - i actually got put on a project I enjoyed and the partner on the project went on holidays for the first 3 weeks of a 5 week project, which meant I was left to my own devices. It was good to get back to doing something i actually found interesting and actually work at the level I'm used to back in Australia and not a level below, which was what had previously been happening. Unfortunately, my holidays were right in the last 2 weeks of the project which was not ideal. It was OK for me, but I think the team had to work harder in my absence which I feel slightly bad about, but in my defence I was taking calls from Scotland to make sure that they were on the right track and to answer any questions they had. So after several late nights in between Scotland and Barcelona, I think we managed to keep the client and the partner happy. So for the first time since I've been here, work isn't a source of major complaints. Besides the fact that I have to work at all, I'm still looking to be a househusband at some point in the near future....
Scotland
Our trip to Scotland was in two parts, firstly a 3 day tour of the Scottish highlands starting from Edinburgh (Edinburgh and Glasgow are in the lowlands) with haggis adventures - whose slogan is 'wild and sexy'. I know this is pure marketing but I was a bit surprised that they didn't try to play up to this at all during the tour. I mean even contiki does the whole traffic light thing (everyone gets 3 colors at the start of the tour green = available, yellow = maybe, red = not interested) but there was nothing to show that the big slogan on the side of the bright yellow bus was true.... The highlands are quite beautiful - think new zealand but less lush and more desolate. The Scottish moors are beautiful in a barren, eerie way and ever since watching 'highlander' i've wanted to go to scotland and see what it was really like, and yes it is just like in the movies!
It does rain a lot in scotland though and for the first few days we did get severely rained on. The highlights of the tour include general scenery, visiting a nice scottish castle on a lake, the isle of skye (great scenery) a interesting and informative talk about traditional scottish life (how to wear a kilt, weapons used etc) where 2 people on the tour were dressed in traditional scottish garb - this is not quite the same as the kilts you see today. The main thing that i don't understand about this as why the traditional scottish kilt does not appear to be very warming. For a place as cold as scotland - lots of snow in winter, teens in the summer - how could people go around wearing just some kilt? The loch ness was not particuarly a highlight, it is massively touristy, and gimicky with lots of models of fake nessies and where we took our boat tour, there were heaps of little midges which are really annoying and bite your face etc...
Overall, a good tour which i would recommend to get a taste of the scottish highlands.
We returned from the tour on Friday where we met up with Nancy V, Jean, Helen and Matty at our hostel. The hostel was managed by quite an eccentric guy (JonJo) who seemed to take a lof pleasure in showing us how the lights in the room were able to dim, and the admittedly nice recreation room with projector.. When we checked out on Monday morning at 10am (the prescribed checkout time) the manager was still completley drunk from the night before and answered the door with his sunglasses on and reeking of alcohol.. did I mention that he slept in the office as well? Im a little recess you access through a ladder...
The main reason we were in edinburgh was actually for the fringe festival and we saw some great shows while we were there. There are a lot of great 'free' shows there too, mostly late night stand up. It usually features 3-4 comedians doing 10-15 minute sets and you are asked to give donation at the end but you don't have to. Generally, these are all in pubs/clubs with rooms set aside for these shows and in general these are quite good. We saw a few duds, in particular one guy with the 'Richard Mercer' voice but he just wasn't very funny... he had one sketch where he was playing a washed up james bond and put a gun to head to kill himself... not funny.. The best thing we saw while we were there was by far 'baby loves candy' which is a group that does improv musicals - the crowd yells out names of random musicals, past musicals include 'Jersey Whore'. and our one was 'The Last of the Norweigans'. This was absolutely hilarious and quite clever! We also saw Margaret Cho - shes the bisexual american woman. Nancy didn't like her at all, shes quite crude, talks about her vagina, oral sex, and toilet humour, in other words right up my alley. I found her quite funny, but the most interesting thing was how polished she was compared to any other act we saw. She was just smooth and you could tell she knew exactly what she was doing. With almost all other stand up acts we saw, there would be moments of hesitation, or they would get put off by some heckler etc, but margaret cho to her credit, put on a very professional show.
Edinburgh as a city is quite nice, there is a lot of nice old architecture there, the royal mile is great to walk downand there are so many old pubs everywhere. My one regret is not being able to see the Royal Military Tattoo which is supposed to be amazing. I guess i'll have to go back for that.
I found food in general to be quite good and we had some nice meals there, in particular a nice fish and chips place called seadogs.
London
We got back to London at about 11pm on Monday night and I was up at 5am to go to birmingham for work, where we pulled a couple of 2am's and I got back to London on Thursday night at about 11pm. We got up at 3am for our bus to take us to the airport for our trip to Barcelona on Friday.....
To be continued - I can see eyes glazing over already so I'll tell you about Barcelona in the next email - pictures are already on facebook!
Coming up -
Berlin with Alby and Linda
Amsterdam with Danny
NYC for Thanksgiving!
Hope you all write back soon!
Take care
Miles
I had written about a page of this email which I somehow to lose out of gmail, even out of the drafts folder. I must have hit the perfect combination of shortcut keys which meant not only did it exit from this window but I also managed to discard the draft as well. Unbelievable.
Its REALLY annoying to have to literally rewrite which I had spent the previous 15 mins writing, so luckily for all of you who have complained that these emails are too long, this will become shortened..
Its been been a pretty crazy 2 weeks since I last emailed. Work has been really busy finishing up a project and I have been to Scotland for almost a week and then Barcelona for the best part of 4 days, so pretty action packed on this end. I hope you are all well where you are, I know that you guys have weddings to plan, new boyfriends to entertain, new cars to drive, your own holidays etc, so write back with all the exciting things that you guys are up to! Sometimes I send these emails out and not many of you reply sometimes, so it would be good to get an update on what you guys are all up to.
I'll break this email up into parts so hopefully it will be easy to read.
Work
Work has been really busy - i actually got put on a project I enjoyed and the partner on the project went on holidays for the first 3 weeks of a 5 week project, which meant I was left to my own devices. It was good to get back to doing something i actually found interesting and actually work at the level I'm used to back in Australia and not a level below, which was what had previously been happening. Unfortunately, my holidays were right in the last 2 weeks of the project which was not ideal. It was OK for me, but I think the team had to work harder in my absence which I feel slightly bad about, but in my defence I was taking calls from Scotland to make sure that they were on the right track and to answer any questions they had. So after several late nights in between Scotland and Barcelona, I think we managed to keep the client and the partner happy. So for the first time since I've been here, work isn't a source of major complaints. Besides the fact that I have to work at all, I'm still looking to be a househusband at some point in the near future....
Scotland
Our trip to Scotland was in two parts, firstly a 3 day tour of the Scottish highlands starting from Edinburgh (Edinburgh and Glasgow are in the lowlands) with haggis adventures - whose slogan is 'wild and sexy'. I know this is pure marketing but I was a bit surprised that they didn't try to play up to this at all during the tour. I mean even contiki does the whole traffic light thing (everyone gets 3 colors at the start of the tour green = available, yellow = maybe, red = not interested) but there was nothing to show that the big slogan on the side of the bright yellow bus was true.... The highlands are quite beautiful - think new zealand but less lush and more desolate. The Scottish moors are beautiful in a barren, eerie way and ever since watching 'highlander' i've wanted to go to scotland and see what it was really like, and yes it is just like in the movies!
It does rain a lot in scotland though and for the first few days we did get severely rained on. The highlights of the tour include general scenery, visiting a nice scottish castle on a lake, the isle of skye (great scenery) a interesting and informative talk about traditional scottish life (how to wear a kilt, weapons used etc) where 2 people on the tour were dressed in traditional scottish garb - this is not quite the same as the kilts you see today. The main thing that i don't understand about this as why the traditional scottish kilt does not appear to be very warming. For a place as cold as scotland - lots of snow in winter, teens in the summer - how could people go around wearing just some kilt? The loch ness was not particuarly a highlight, it is massively touristy, and gimicky with lots of models of fake nessies and where we took our boat tour, there were heaps of little midges which are really annoying and bite your face etc...
Overall, a good tour which i would recommend to get a taste of the scottish highlands.
We returned from the tour on Friday where we met up with Nancy V, Jean, Helen and Matty at our hostel. The hostel was managed by quite an eccentric guy (JonJo) who seemed to take a lof pleasure in showing us how the lights in the room were able to dim, and the admittedly nice recreation room with projector.. When we checked out on Monday morning at 10am (the prescribed checkout time) the manager was still completley drunk from the night before and answered the door with his sunglasses on and reeking of alcohol.. did I mention that he slept in the office as well? Im a little recess you access through a ladder...
The main reason we were in edinburgh was actually for the fringe festival and we saw some great shows while we were there. There are a lot of great 'free' shows there too, mostly late night stand up. It usually features 3-4 comedians doing 10-15 minute sets and you are asked to give donation at the end but you don't have to. Generally, these are all in pubs/clubs with rooms set aside for these shows and in general these are quite good. We saw a few duds, in particular one guy with the 'Richard Mercer' voice but he just wasn't very funny... he had one sketch where he was playing a washed up james bond and put a gun to head to kill himself... not funny.. The best thing we saw while we were there was by far 'baby loves candy' which is a group that does improv musicals - the crowd yells out names of random musicals, past musicals include 'Jersey Whore'. and our one was 'The Last of the Norweigans'. This was absolutely hilarious and quite clever! We also saw Margaret Cho - shes the bisexual american woman. Nancy didn't like her at all, shes quite crude, talks about her vagina, oral sex, and toilet humour, in other words right up my alley. I found her quite funny, but the most interesting thing was how polished she was compared to any other act we saw. She was just smooth and you could tell she knew exactly what she was doing. With almost all other stand up acts we saw, there would be moments of hesitation, or they would get put off by some heckler etc, but margaret cho to her credit, put on a very professional show.
Edinburgh as a city is quite nice, there is a lot of nice old architecture there, the royal mile is great to walk downand there are so many old pubs everywhere. My one regret is not being able to see the Royal Military Tattoo which is supposed to be amazing. I guess i'll have to go back for that.
I found food in general to be quite good and we had some nice meals there, in particular a nice fish and chips place called seadogs.
London
We got back to London at about 11pm on Monday night and I was up at 5am to go to birmingham for work, where we pulled a couple of 2am's and I got back to London on Thursday night at about 11pm. We got up at 3am for our bus to take us to the airport for our trip to Barcelona on Friday.....
To be continued - I can see eyes glazing over already so I'll tell you about Barcelona in the next email - pictures are already on facebook!
Coming up -
Berlin with Alby and Linda
Amsterdam with Danny
NYC for Thanksgiving!
Hope you all write back soon!
Take care
Miles
Monday, August 15, 2011
Miles in London Part 7 - Riots!
Hey Guys,
Thanks to everyone who checked up on Nancy and I to see if I was OK during the riots.
It was all a bit surreal - I never really got close to any of it - Brixton is the next suburb from us, and was one of the first places post Tottenham to start rioting. It wasn't until Sunday night that Clapham Junction got hit quite bad, with Debenhams, a department store getting badly smashed and two buildings getting burnt (the first was a costume store, which got hit first so people could steal masks.. kinda smart actually).
As you can imagine there is a LOT of debate going on right now over here as to the cause of it and why it got so out of hand. I have watched a few things and read a few articles and for the record, here is my understanding of events:
Mark Duggan - a man from Tottenham was shot by police - and it is now clear that he never fired his gun at all. This was the cause of the initial riots in tottenham, where i'm sure the pictures have been broadcast around the world - I believe this was saturday night.
What is also clear is that the police were very slow to respond on Saturday and as mobs generally do, they started burning cars, buildings and looting. Now Mark Duggan is from a council estate (public housing). One thing to remember here is that there is a massive amount of community housing here in London, and they can be found in almost any suburb of greater london. Of course not everyone in these places are bad people but it seems that the vast majority of rioters were from these places. I guess you can imagine the aboringal boy that was killed running from police in Redfern last year and what happened there - but this was on a much larger scale.
Every other riot after Tottenham was pure copycat. I think that people saw how easy it was for those people in Tottenham to get away with looting and rioting and realised there was some quick money to be made. Also, it also seems that the 'gangs' that work in these various areas all actually called an truce and decided to work together to target certain stores and areas - all done via blackberry messenger - another controversial topic right now. None of the rioters that have been interviewed have even pretended that it was anything to do with Mark Duggan - it appear to be purely opportunistic greed. So basically, it just spread and while it was mostly London on Sat and Sunday night, on Monday night it had spread to Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool etc, all places where people had never heard of Mark Duggan, but had seen on TV groups of people burning and looting, and no one getting arrested.
Btw - its good to point out that originally, the looters were mostly aged 15-17 - 'street gangs', but as the days moved on, it became much more organised with people in their late 20s getting involved and driving up in cars, loading up the boot etc, and it was much more planned.
So that's where it stands at the moment. Everyone here is trying to understand how this got out of hand, and why so many people feel that they needed to riot. All the usual suspects have been thrown out there:
- Social Divide
- 5% of people own 80% of wealth
- Education Cuts
- Police Cuts
- Lack of opportunity for the people in these housing estates
I'm sure you've all read the articles for yourselves.
Personally, I think it was a combination of all of these things but mostly just the nature of society these days. Everyone wants the get rich quick, no one wants to work hard anymore. I look at the generation before us - and I was taught by my parents that working hard will give you success. Nowadays i guess kids believe that there are shortcuts, and they don't care if its legal or not. Its probably a massive oversimplification but I think that a work ethic has really disappeared from our generation.
Feel free to email me back to discuss :)
Anyway - in other news, we went to Krakow a few weekends ago (it seems like AGES! and i've only spent the last 2 weekends in London), Krakow is a nice place,as with most European cities, it has an old town and boasts hundreds of years of history and culture. On the whole, Polish girls are pretty hot - on average, potentially the best looking girls i've seen in any country so far - but I haven't been yet (France, Belgium, Helsinki, Estonia and Portugal for those keeping count). There were no particular jaw dropping moments but just on average, the waitresses, people walking along the street, were well dressed and good looking.
Highlights of Krakow
- Auschwitz/Birkenau - you can't really call this a highlight but its something that I think is worth seeing. 1.1m million people were killed at these death camps - you don't even call then concentration camps because people literally got off trains from all around Europe at Birkenau and were promptly marched into the gas chambers and killed. In almost all cases they never knew what was coming, they all thought they were simply being relocated. Most people had brought luggage and they dearest belongings. The museum is intense, when you see the tens of thousands of shoes, toothbrushes, suit cases and even human hair (yes you read that right, the Nazis harvested hair from dead bodies to be used in factories to make carpet etc) you start to appreciate the scale of this tragedy. When you talk about 1m people - the number is so large that it almost becomes meaningless, but when you see the personal belongings (and these are only the things that were left behind, because when the soviets came, they had already marched all prisoners that could walk out) it really hits home.
The most harrowing experience was actually walking into one of the gas chambers at Auschwitz. God only know how many people died in there. The nature of German efficiency meant that the furnaces to burn the bodies were simply located next door, 5 meters away and they made other Jewish prisoners collect the bodies and put them in the ovens.
Its hard to imagine cruelty and massacre on such a scale.
- The salt mines are a much more light hearted attraction that consist of an old salt mine - 130m deep into the ground. The amazing thing here is that they have been mining for salt for such depths since the 1300s and was one of the most profitable mines in the world for hundreds of years. Nowadays, they have amazing carvings out of salt and one chamber in particular that is now a church, where they have the last supper carved in salt on the walls, a salt pulpit, salt crystal chandeliers, salt crucifixes - simply stunning. The lines for this are pretty horrendous - it took us about an hour to get in - but i made the most of that time,i lined up about 30 mins to get a hot dog, potentially one of the most inefficient processes I have ever seen in my life - how could you back up a hot dog line for 30 mins ? Just put some more damn hot dogs on the barbecue....
- We also got some culture into us, attending a concert at Wawel castle where we both go in as students. I suspect that it was a fairly legit concert as people came in suits and nice dresses, Nancy and I were definitely the most under dressed people there, it was nice, in a small courtyard in the castle and consisted of a pianist, a clarinet player and a violinist.
Food - No Miles email would be complete without some mention of food!
Food in Krakow is great, they are a meat and potatoes kind of people and I'm a meat and potatoes kind of guy.
The most common thing to eat there appears to be Perogi - basically a meat dumpling, either steamed or fried. Over the 3 days I must have eaten about 30 of them. Other highlights included Zurek, a sauerkraut soup, Beetroot soup and Duck with Apple. Servings were generally generous food was CHEAP - luckily the poles havent got the euro yet, and a 3 course meal at a decent restaurant was about 10 pounds for 2 people, or the price of a pizza in London.
We also went to St John on Friday - the master of nose to tail cooking. 1 Michelin star. I had been warned about this actually, with a large number of asian friends who had been before telling me that they were not impressed so my expectations weren't high. Also, service was supposedly dreadful according to several food bloggers so all in all , things weren't looking great. With the help of some friends, I managed to find 15 other people to share this meal with me as we had ordered the SUCKLING PIG FEAST - where you get an entire suckiling pig, and a selection of starters and desserts.
For starters we had snail and oakleaf (great salad!) and bone marrow and parsley (if you love marrow, you'd love this). The main was the pig and presentation wise, it certainly didnt disappoint - see facebook for photos. The main criticism from almost everyone I had spoken to was that the skin was not crackling. I guess due to the way that they cook it, the skin does not crisp up in that fantastic way you get with roast pork. I had been expecting this so my disappointment was tempered. The pig for me was a mixed bag.
I loved the meat - it was amazingly tender, you didn't need a knife at all, everything literally had fallen apart. I didn't like how something in it gave me asthma - I have no idea what it was but it was getting a bit ugly for a while because I didn't have my puffer but luckily logan came to the rescue. I liked the stuffing, it was quite tasty and complemented the texture of the meat. I didn't like the stuffing because there was too much and it was too fatty. Actually that is the main problem with the pig. It was amazingly fatty. I don't actually think I ate that much pig, but in the end, it sat in my stomach like a lead ball for hours. I daresay that I still felt that pig the next day at about 11am.
Desserts were Peach & Raspberry Pie, Vanilla Ice Cream and Eccles Cake and Lancashire cheese. Ice cream was by far the winner - the rest were too heavy. Dud picks on my part. I think with another meal they would have been fine, but after rich, heavy, fatty pig, it was all too much.
Overall, It was worth the experience, Service was actually quite good, and I liked the starkness of the decor all white. I actually enjoyed my first plate of pig a lot - it was the 2nd and 3rd that I really regret. At 50 pounds a head (including service and wine) I dont' feel like I got ripped off, i walked away full and I've paid more for worse. Would I do it again? Probably not for a few months...
Anyway - I think that catches you guys up on life in London. Hope you guys are all having fun.
Next Stop - Scotland and the Fringe festival!
Write back to let me know how you all are!
Miles
Thanks to everyone who checked up on Nancy and I to see if I was OK during the riots.
It was all a bit surreal - I never really got close to any of it - Brixton is the next suburb from us, and was one of the first places post Tottenham to start rioting. It wasn't until Sunday night that Clapham Junction got hit quite bad, with Debenhams, a department store getting badly smashed and two buildings getting burnt (the first was a costume store, which got hit first so people could steal masks.. kinda smart actually).
As you can imagine there is a LOT of debate going on right now over here as to the cause of it and why it got so out of hand. I have watched a few things and read a few articles and for the record, here is my understanding of events:
Mark Duggan - a man from Tottenham was shot by police - and it is now clear that he never fired his gun at all. This was the cause of the initial riots in tottenham, where i'm sure the pictures have been broadcast around the world - I believe this was saturday night.
What is also clear is that the police were very slow to respond on Saturday and as mobs generally do, they started burning cars, buildings and looting. Now Mark Duggan is from a council estate (public housing). One thing to remember here is that there is a massive amount of community housing here in London, and they can be found in almost any suburb of greater london. Of course not everyone in these places are bad people but it seems that the vast majority of rioters were from these places. I guess you can imagine the aboringal boy that was killed running from police in Redfern last year and what happened there - but this was on a much larger scale.
Every other riot after Tottenham was pure copycat. I think that people saw how easy it was for those people in Tottenham to get away with looting and rioting and realised there was some quick money to be made. Also, it also seems that the 'gangs' that work in these various areas all actually called an truce and decided to work together to target certain stores and areas - all done via blackberry messenger - another controversial topic right now. None of the rioters that have been interviewed have even pretended that it was anything to do with Mark Duggan - it appear to be purely opportunistic greed. So basically, it just spread and while it was mostly London on Sat and Sunday night, on Monday night it had spread to Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool etc, all places where people had never heard of Mark Duggan, but had seen on TV groups of people burning and looting, and no one getting arrested.
Btw - its good to point out that originally, the looters were mostly aged 15-17 - 'street gangs', but as the days moved on, it became much more organised with people in their late 20s getting involved and driving up in cars, loading up the boot etc, and it was much more planned.
So that's where it stands at the moment. Everyone here is trying to understand how this got out of hand, and why so many people feel that they needed to riot. All the usual suspects have been thrown out there:
- Social Divide
- 5% of people own 80% of wealth
- Education Cuts
- Police Cuts
- Lack of opportunity for the people in these housing estates
I'm sure you've all read the articles for yourselves.
Personally, I think it was a combination of all of these things but mostly just the nature of society these days. Everyone wants the get rich quick, no one wants to work hard anymore. I look at the generation before us - and I was taught by my parents that working hard will give you success. Nowadays i guess kids believe that there are shortcuts, and they don't care if its legal or not. Its probably a massive oversimplification but I think that a work ethic has really disappeared from our generation.
Feel free to email me back to discuss :)
Anyway - in other news, we went to Krakow a few weekends ago (it seems like AGES! and i've only spent the last 2 weekends in London), Krakow is a nice place,as with most European cities, it has an old town and boasts hundreds of years of history and culture. On the whole, Polish girls are pretty hot - on average, potentially the best looking girls i've seen in any country so far - but I haven't been yet (France, Belgium, Helsinki, Estonia and Portugal for those keeping count). There were no particular jaw dropping moments but just on average, the waitresses, people walking along the street, were well dressed and good looking.
Highlights of Krakow
- Auschwitz/Birkenau - you can't really call this a highlight but its something that I think is worth seeing. 1.1m million people were killed at these death camps - you don't even call then concentration camps because people literally got off trains from all around Europe at Birkenau and were promptly marched into the gas chambers and killed. In almost all cases they never knew what was coming, they all thought they were simply being relocated. Most people had brought luggage and they dearest belongings. The museum is intense, when you see the tens of thousands of shoes, toothbrushes, suit cases and even human hair (yes you read that right, the Nazis harvested hair from dead bodies to be used in factories to make carpet etc) you start to appreciate the scale of this tragedy. When you talk about 1m people - the number is so large that it almost becomes meaningless, but when you see the personal belongings (and these are only the things that were left behind, because when the soviets came, they had already marched all prisoners that could walk out) it really hits home.
The most harrowing experience was actually walking into one of the gas chambers at Auschwitz. God only know how many people died in there. The nature of German efficiency meant that the furnaces to burn the bodies were simply located next door, 5 meters away and they made other Jewish prisoners collect the bodies and put them in the ovens.
Its hard to imagine cruelty and massacre on such a scale.
- The salt mines are a much more light hearted attraction that consist of an old salt mine - 130m deep into the ground. The amazing thing here is that they have been mining for salt for such depths since the 1300s and was one of the most profitable mines in the world for hundreds of years. Nowadays, they have amazing carvings out of salt and one chamber in particular that is now a church, where they have the last supper carved in salt on the walls, a salt pulpit, salt crystal chandeliers, salt crucifixes - simply stunning. The lines for this are pretty horrendous - it took us about an hour to get in - but i made the most of that time,i lined up about 30 mins to get a hot dog, potentially one of the most inefficient processes I have ever seen in my life - how could you back up a hot dog line for 30 mins ? Just put some more damn hot dogs on the barbecue....
- We also got some culture into us, attending a concert at Wawel castle where we both go in as students. I suspect that it was a fairly legit concert as people came in suits and nice dresses, Nancy and I were definitely the most under dressed people there, it was nice, in a small courtyard in the castle and consisted of a pianist, a clarinet player and a violinist.
Food - No Miles email would be complete without some mention of food!
Food in Krakow is great, they are a meat and potatoes kind of people and I'm a meat and potatoes kind of guy.
The most common thing to eat there appears to be Perogi - basically a meat dumpling, either steamed or fried. Over the 3 days I must have eaten about 30 of them. Other highlights included Zurek, a sauerkraut soup, Beetroot soup and Duck with Apple. Servings were generally generous food was CHEAP - luckily the poles havent got the euro yet, and a 3 course meal at a decent restaurant was about 10 pounds for 2 people, or the price of a pizza in London.
We also went to St John on Friday - the master of nose to tail cooking. 1 Michelin star. I had been warned about this actually, with a large number of asian friends who had been before telling me that they were not impressed so my expectations weren't high. Also, service was supposedly dreadful according to several food bloggers so all in all , things weren't looking great. With the help of some friends, I managed to find 15 other people to share this meal with me as we had ordered the SUCKLING PIG FEAST - where you get an entire suckiling pig, and a selection of starters and desserts.
For starters we had snail and oakleaf (great salad!) and bone marrow and parsley (if you love marrow, you'd love this). The main was the pig and presentation wise, it certainly didnt disappoint - see facebook for photos. The main criticism from almost everyone I had spoken to was that the skin was not crackling. I guess due to the way that they cook it, the skin does not crisp up in that fantastic way you get with roast pork. I had been expecting this so my disappointment was tempered. The pig for me was a mixed bag.
I loved the meat - it was amazingly tender, you didn't need a knife at all, everything literally had fallen apart. I didn't like how something in it gave me asthma - I have no idea what it was but it was getting a bit ugly for a while because I didn't have my puffer but luckily logan came to the rescue. I liked the stuffing, it was quite tasty and complemented the texture of the meat. I didn't like the stuffing because there was too much and it was too fatty. Actually that is the main problem with the pig. It was amazingly fatty. I don't actually think I ate that much pig, but in the end, it sat in my stomach like a lead ball for hours. I daresay that I still felt that pig the next day at about 11am.
Desserts were Peach & Raspberry Pie, Vanilla Ice Cream and Eccles Cake and Lancashire cheese. Ice cream was by far the winner - the rest were too heavy. Dud picks on my part. I think with another meal they would have been fine, but after rich, heavy, fatty pig, it was all too much.
Overall, It was worth the experience, Service was actually quite good, and I liked the starkness of the decor all white. I actually enjoyed my first plate of pig a lot - it was the 2nd and 3rd that I really regret. At 50 pounds a head (including service and wine) I dont' feel like I got ripped off, i walked away full and I've paid more for worse. Would I do it again? Probably not for a few months...
Anyway - I think that catches you guys up on life in London. Hope you guys are all having fun.
Next Stop - Scotland and the Fringe festival!
Write back to let me know how you all are!
Miles
Friday, August 05, 2011
Africa Day 2 - QE2 National Park
Finally - Day 2!
Day 1 went on for a while - in blog terms it was almost 6 months! But we got through and hopefully the rest of the diary won't be as dragged out. We woke up early on day 2, had breakfast - at this point I actually was getting up early enough to have breakfast (usually nutella on toast and milo) packed up our tent and got onto our big yellow truck 'Ben'.
We drove all day to a national park called the QE2 national park and stayed at camp site called Hippo Hills. This would be the first of many days where we wuold literally spend up to 12 hrs on the bus, stopping only to have lunch.
The highlight of the morning was having chicken on a stick - I suspect that these were semi cooked and simply reheated a little bit when people wanted to buy them. There were a lot of sellers of said wings along the dusty ugandan road.
I think only Katie, Bahn and I had chicken on a stick - not everyone was as keen to tempt food poisoning like the 3 of us. Katie was definitely one of my best friends on the trip. She always had a big smile, and the her Bahn and I really hit it off.
That's Rich in the background.
Let me take some time now to describe the lunch process:
The truck pulls over a nice spot which is open and a little way from the road so that we don't get too much road dust.
Each person would then move to various task and as creatures of habit, we always seemed to fall into a similar roles. Some of the boys would pull out the table, and the girls would set up two basins with truck water (Josh would fill out wherever he felt the water was clean, the truck held up to 100L i guess), one for vege washing and one for hand washing. We would then get various vegetables from the truck, depending on what we had bought recently, the vegetables we would have consisted of: Tomatoes, Cucumber, Red Onions, Carrots and tinned betroot. There were probably others but these were our staples. We would slice most of them, and grate the carrots.
At the same time, other members of the group would get out various condiments: butter, mayo, Mrs HS Balls Chutney (AMAZING - such a shame I haven't seen it since - they even have a chip flavoured for this!), and the meat would consist of various hams and usually canned tuna. If we had recently been to the shops we would also have cheese as well.
I think that a few weeks into the trip we had the lunch prep process down to 3 mins FLAT From the bus stopping to us eating..
All the food was kept cold in eski's or in the trucks freezer which help most of the food.
We would also have loaves of bread and crackers and it was pretty much buffet style.
My typical lunch would be tomatoes, carrots, tuna, mayo, MRs HS Balls Chutney and cheese. I actually these lunches were one of the main reasons I lost weight in Africa - these were relatively healthy compared to my normal lunches, and actually quite satisfying and filling.
Others (Deb and Sangee) would typically finish with some fruit also.
There was usually a made rush for the tuna, so you had to be quick for that :D
We wouldn't wash lunch dishes but put them in a bucket to be washed when we got to the campsite.We would then pack everything back into the eskis and wipe the table down, put the table away and get back on the truck. The total time would be approx 30 mins from start to finish.
I think that for the next 60 days I would have this type of lunch for at least 30 of days but i actually didnt get tired of it. If you had offered me this food now, i'm sure I would protest after 2-3 days but strangely I didn't mind. I guess I knew that I didn't have any other options so you just accept it, eat and move on. Strange how quickly you adapt.
Along the way, we also bought some freshly caught river fish which we would have for dinner one of the nights. At some point we had also bought some Goat.
On the way to the park after lunch we saw some Elephants! My FIRST African animal experience!
That night we feasted on river fish, roast chicken and roast pumpkin and potatoes. All we had was 2 small barbecue racks over coals, and we managed to cook that sort of meal. The food was fantastic, and cooked so simply, just a bit of seasoning, eating while watching a beautiful african sunset. We were really in the middle of nowhere now, even though this was an established campsite, it was empty except for us and the sense of being alone with nature was really overpowering.
I enjoyed my first night out of civilisation immensely and fell asleep content. Tomorrow would bring my first 'game drive' and also a river cruise so I was really looking forward to that.
PS. The camp site was named hippo hills because hippos were known to wander up to the campsite at night. Did you know that Hippos are the biggest killer in Africa? They basically charge people and trample them to death.. So we were warned to be careful when we got out of our tents at night.. TIA...
Day 1 went on for a while - in blog terms it was almost 6 months! But we got through and hopefully the rest of the diary won't be as dragged out. We woke up early on day 2, had breakfast - at this point I actually was getting up early enough to have breakfast (usually nutella on toast and milo) packed up our tent and got onto our big yellow truck 'Ben'.
We drove all day to a national park called the QE2 national park and stayed at camp site called Hippo Hills. This would be the first of many days where we wuold literally spend up to 12 hrs on the bus, stopping only to have lunch.
The highlight of the morning was having chicken on a stick - I suspect that these were semi cooked and simply reheated a little bit when people wanted to buy them. There were a lot of sellers of said wings along the dusty ugandan road.
I think only Katie, Bahn and I had chicken on a stick - not everyone was as keen to tempt food poisoning like the 3 of us. Katie was definitely one of my best friends on the trip. She always had a big smile, and the her Bahn and I really hit it off.That's Rich in the background.
Let me take some time now to describe the lunch process:
The truck pulls over a nice spot which is open and a little way from the road so that we don't get too much road dust.
Each person would then move to various task and as creatures of habit, we always seemed to fall into a similar roles. Some of the boys would pull out the table, and the girls would set up two basins with truck water (Josh would fill out wherever he felt the water was clean, the truck held up to 100L i guess), one for vege washing and one for hand washing. We would then get various vegetables from the truck, depending on what we had bought recently, the vegetables we would have consisted of: Tomatoes, Cucumber, Red Onions, Carrots and tinned betroot. There were probably others but these were our staples. We would slice most of them, and grate the carrots.
At the same time, other members of the group would get out various condiments: butter, mayo, Mrs HS Balls Chutney (AMAZING - such a shame I haven't seen it since - they even have a chip flavoured for this!), and the meat would consist of various hams and usually canned tuna. If we had recently been to the shops we would also have cheese as well.
I think that a few weeks into the trip we had the lunch prep process down to 3 mins FLAT From the bus stopping to us eating..
All the food was kept cold in eski's or in the trucks freezer which help most of the food.
We would also have loaves of bread and crackers and it was pretty much buffet style.
My typical lunch would be tomatoes, carrots, tuna, mayo, MRs HS Balls Chutney and cheese. I actually these lunches were one of the main reasons I lost weight in Africa - these were relatively healthy compared to my normal lunches, and actually quite satisfying and filling.
Others (Deb and Sangee) would typically finish with some fruit also.
There was usually a made rush for the tuna, so you had to be quick for that :D
We wouldn't wash lunch dishes but put them in a bucket to be washed when we got to the campsite.We would then pack everything back into the eskis and wipe the table down, put the table away and get back on the truck. The total time would be approx 30 mins from start to finish.
I think that for the next 60 days I would have this type of lunch for at least 30 of days but i actually didnt get tired of it. If you had offered me this food now, i'm sure I would protest after 2-3 days but strangely I didn't mind. I guess I knew that I didn't have any other options so you just accept it, eat and move on. Strange how quickly you adapt.
Along the way, we also bought some freshly caught river fish which we would have for dinner one of the nights. At some point we had also bought some Goat.
On the way to the park after lunch we saw some Elephants! My FIRST African animal experience!
That night we feasted on river fish, roast chicken and roast pumpkin and potatoes. All we had was 2 small barbecue racks over coals, and we managed to cook that sort of meal. The food was fantastic, and cooked so simply, just a bit of seasoning, eating while watching a beautiful african sunset. We were really in the middle of nowhere now, even though this was an established campsite, it was empty except for us and the sense of being alone with nature was really overpowering.
I enjoyed my first night out of civilisation immensely and fell asleep content. Tomorrow would bring my first 'game drive' and also a river cruise so I was really looking forward to that.
PS. The camp site was named hippo hills because hippos were known to wander up to the campsite at night. Did you know that Hippos are the biggest killer in Africa? They basically charge people and trample them to death.. So we were warned to be careful when we got out of our tents at night.. TIA...
Lisbon
Hey Guys,
Hope things are going well wherever you are in the world! Hopefully a short and sweet update on whats been happening here over the last 2 weeks... I keep falling behind with these updates and I know that if I don't get around to them, they will become like my Africa Journals (I'm still on day 1/70)...
'Normal' London weather has resumed for the last few weeks - Rainy and Cold and we're talking about Mid July - right in the middle of 'summer'. I am really appreciating the good weather we had in May/June now and can see why Londonders get excited when they get a sunny day on the weekend - it actually allows them to go outside and do stuff! Otherwise I guess you are restricted to the indoors and indoor activities... I hear that the hardest part about living in London from an Australian's point of view is the winters - cold, and dark when you leave the house in the morning for work and dark when you leave the office at night, apparently it takes a massive toll on you psychologically. I'm doing fine right now, (in the middle of summer) but it will be interesting to see how I go come wintertime.. i don't generally mind the cold too much, but i'm not a massive fan of rain...
The last update didn't include our adventures in Lisbon - which I think has so far become my favourite European city not named London. We only spent a weekend there, but really liked it and would definitely go back if we get the chance.. So whats so good about Lisbon? Better than Paris? Better than Bruge? How could this be?
On physical attributes, its hard to explain. Paris, in the right spots (looking over the seine, looking down to the Eiffel tower) is prettier, but in general it is also dirtier and reeks of urine. The food in Paris can be amazing, but you certainly pay for quality. In contrast, Lisbon does not have as many 'OMG this is beautiful' moments, although the view looking down to Plaza de marques de pompal is nice, but instead you get a lot of 'oh, this is a nice spot' moments. It is understated, and it can suprise you. Lisbon is built on seven (I think) hills, which means that you come across some really nice view points and they lisboans have built parks in the perfect places. Lisbon isn't too crowded, and whilst some places can be a bit dirty, it has the same cobblestone, narrow streets that give a lot of European cities its medieval charm.
Food in Lisbon is also generally of a high standard, and the cheapest western European city I've been to so far (probably because the whole country is broke but whatever). The iconic Portuguese food is of course the pateis de nata (portuguese tarts) and the best ones can be found at the Pasteis de Belém - apparently they use a secret recipe from the monastery of geronimos (also worth going to just to see the amazing cloister and main chapel) next door. I had 6 tarts from 6 different place over the weekend all in the name of science of course and these were BY FAR the best. This is definitely affected by the fact that they were warm, (they sell so many, there is always some coming out of the oven) but even then, the flavour was amazing ,the egg was not too runny or too firm and the pastry was amazing crispy, giving the contrast of textures. The other thing I loved is the fact that they have these pastelerias everywhere which all sell various sweet breads, pateis de nata, and espresso coffee, just like cafes everywhere else in the world you say, but the main thing is that a most of the time you STAND. So you feel a bit peckish, don't want to sit down for 30 mins and order stuff off a menu, so you just stand at the coutner, get a pastry and an espresso and eat it then and there and then get the hell out. I love it. I don't want to have to buy food if i'm hungry and then walk and eat - its not enjoyable. Nor do i want to sit down just to have a coffee all the time unless its to catch up with a friend, so this whole experience was revelation.
Other Lisbon food highlights included 100 Maneiras - fine dining for 40 euros (7 courses). This is situated in Barrio Alto which is one of the narrow cobblestone street areas I was talking about except evey second building is a mini bar which can hold approx 30 ppl. So you have dinner and wander into the bar area which doesnt really start pumping till about midnight to 1am. Caparinhas and alcohold in general is relatively cheap and the vibe is pretty good.
We also sought out a 'portuguese chicken' shop called Bonjardims which was fantastc - despite what we think in Australia, portugal is not really famous for roast chicken nor did any ohter places claim to serve this, but this place was the exception - a whole chicken (serves 2) for 12 euros. Good crispy skin, just the right amount of seasoning - always straight from the grill (we went twice).
I found that the city was relatively quiet - apparently all the locals go to the beach during the summer so that might have been the reason, but I found the space quite nice. They have an intersting tourist tram (no. 28) which takes you on a loop around the city that is worth a ride, its goes up and down hills and takes you right to the castle sao geoge which is worth visiting for the great views of the city. I wouldn't say I was suprised by how much I enjoyed it as a few friends had already mentioned that it was a great place, but it certainly lived up to its expectations. Next time I'll have to make sure I get to the beach.
Its already midnight.. writing has once again taken a lot longer than I expect it to and I have to get up at 5:45 tomorrow morning :(
I'll have to leave Krakow (The hottest girls in Europe so far) for another day..
Good night all, and write back so I know you guys are still reading!
Miles
Hope things are going well wherever you are in the world! Hopefully a short and sweet update on whats been happening here over the last 2 weeks... I keep falling behind with these updates and I know that if I don't get around to them, they will become like my Africa Journals (I'm still on day 1/70)...
'Normal' London weather has resumed for the last few weeks - Rainy and Cold and we're talking about Mid July - right in the middle of 'summer'. I am really appreciating the good weather we had in May/June now and can see why Londonders get excited when they get a sunny day on the weekend - it actually allows them to go outside and do stuff! Otherwise I guess you are restricted to the indoors and indoor activities... I hear that the hardest part about living in London from an Australian's point of view is the winters - cold, and dark when you leave the house in the morning for work and dark when you leave the office at night, apparently it takes a massive toll on you psychologically. I'm doing fine right now, (in the middle of summer) but it will be interesting to see how I go come wintertime.. i don't generally mind the cold too much, but i'm not a massive fan of rain...
The last update didn't include our adventures in Lisbon - which I think has so far become my favourite European city not named London. We only spent a weekend there, but really liked it and would definitely go back if we get the chance.. So whats so good about Lisbon? Better than Paris? Better than Bruge? How could this be?
On physical attributes, its hard to explain. Paris, in the right spots (looking over the seine, looking down to the Eiffel tower) is prettier, but in general it is also dirtier and reeks of urine. The food in Paris can be amazing, but you certainly pay for quality. In contrast, Lisbon does not have as many 'OMG this is beautiful' moments, although the view looking down to Plaza de marques de pompal is nice, but instead you get a lot of 'oh, this is a nice spot' moments. It is understated, and it can suprise you. Lisbon is built on seven (I think) hills, which means that you come across some really nice view points and they lisboans have built parks in the perfect places. Lisbon isn't too crowded, and whilst some places can be a bit dirty, it has the same cobblestone, narrow streets that give a lot of European cities its medieval charm.
Food in Lisbon is also generally of a high standard, and the cheapest western European city I've been to so far (probably because the whole country is broke but whatever). The iconic Portuguese food is of course the pateis de nata (portuguese tarts) and the best ones can be found at the Pasteis de Belém - apparently they use a secret recipe from the monastery of geronimos (also worth going to just to see the amazing cloister and main chapel) next door. I had 6 tarts from 6 different place over the weekend all in the name of science of course and these were BY FAR the best. This is definitely affected by the fact that they were warm, (they sell so many, there is always some coming out of the oven) but even then, the flavour was amazing ,the egg was not too runny or too firm and the pastry was amazing crispy, giving the contrast of textures. The other thing I loved is the fact that they have these pastelerias everywhere which all sell various sweet breads, pateis de nata, and espresso coffee, just like cafes everywhere else in the world you say, but the main thing is that a most of the time you STAND. So you feel a bit peckish, don't want to sit down for 30 mins and order stuff off a menu, so you just stand at the coutner, get a pastry and an espresso and eat it then and there and then get the hell out. I love it. I don't want to have to buy food if i'm hungry and then walk and eat - its not enjoyable. Nor do i want to sit down just to have a coffee all the time unless its to catch up with a friend, so this whole experience was revelation.
Other Lisbon food highlights included 100 Maneiras - fine dining for 40 euros (7 courses). This is situated in Barrio Alto which is one of the narrow cobblestone street areas I was talking about except evey second building is a mini bar which can hold approx 30 ppl. So you have dinner and wander into the bar area which doesnt really start pumping till about midnight to 1am. Caparinhas and alcohold in general is relatively cheap and the vibe is pretty good.
We also sought out a 'portuguese chicken' shop called Bonjardims which was fantastc - despite what we think in Australia, portugal is not really famous for roast chicken nor did any ohter places claim to serve this, but this place was the exception - a whole chicken (serves 2) for 12 euros. Good crispy skin, just the right amount of seasoning - always straight from the grill (we went twice).
I found that the city was relatively quiet - apparently all the locals go to the beach during the summer so that might have been the reason, but I found the space quite nice. They have an intersting tourist tram (no. 28) which takes you on a loop around the city that is worth a ride, its goes up and down hills and takes you right to the castle sao geoge which is worth visiting for the great views of the city. I wouldn't say I was suprised by how much I enjoyed it as a few friends had already mentioned that it was a great place, but it certainly lived up to its expectations. Next time I'll have to make sure I get to the beach.
Its already midnight.. writing has once again taken a lot longer than I expect it to and I have to get up at 5:45 tomorrow morning :(
I'll have to leave Krakow (The hottest girls in Europe so far) for another day..
Good night all, and write back so I know you guys are still reading!
Miles
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Miles in London - Part 5
In general, London has still been great, the weather is holding up for the most part, there have been patches of rain but enough blue skies that I would still call it summer. The temperature here never really gets about 25, so between 20-25 is a nice 'warm' day. Its weird to talk like that right, cos in Sydney if its not above 25, its definitely not summer. I guess you do adapt quite quickly...
I know I've said this before, but London when the weather is nice must be one of the best cities in the world. The parks here are quite nice, we have Hyde park, regents park, even clapham common is nice enough on a summers day. People really make the most of warm weather and the parks are full of people lying about 'sun tanning' or just having a picnic and a chat. It will be interesting to see how this all changes dramatically come the winter time. We've been to quite a few more places since my last update and had a few visitors as well, but i'll get to those in time.
I think the first thing that happened since my last update was I went to Royal Ascot - the Melbourne cup of London. Its quite the day out, with Ascot being about 1hr out of London by train and people really dressing up for the occasion. I've never been to the races in Sydney or Melbourne so it was a new experience for me. This is how it works here: There are 3 types of tickets you can buy:
Silver ring (30 pounds) : gets you into the grass area, pleasant enough in the dry, but when it rains, like it was on the day we went, it can get MESSY. Shoes were ruined, and gumboots were not an uncommon sight and I'm sure those girls wearing the gum boots were very glad they did. After a while, the smell of the churned up mud, the damp, and the portaloos starts to become unpleasant. The people here are dressed quite well, guys are in suits, girls are in dresses, but its a slightly more casual affair, with picnic mats where the ground was remotely dry, plastic chairs and tables under temporary pavilions and temporary stalls. Pimms is the drink of choice.What ticket did i get? The silver of course! Mostly BYO food here, with some food stalls also. Thanks to T for providing us with an amazing picnic spread!
Grandstand: (50 pounds): gets you into the actual facilities, through a proper ticket gate, into the grounds where there are gardens, a outdoor screen, and into the lower levels of the actual building - which is in line with the finish line. This is traditionally where you would imagine people to be when they go to the races, with the concrete steps where you stand and cheer for your horse, then throw you losing stub on the ground in disgust. Food here not that much better actually, there were pizza stalls, fish and chips but at least they provided tables and chairs (sometimes plastic also) but at least you were in a building. Thanks to NV, who snuck Ben and I into this area for the second part of the day, out of the mud and away from the commoners! Top hat and tails are sometimes seen here.
Funny incident: when we tried to get into the grandstand area using other peoples tickets that NV had smuggled out for us, they wouldn't work through the machines because she hadn't scanned them out when she took the extra 2 tickets so it said 'double entry'. At this point the ticket guy said accusingly 'Have you actually scanned these out?' To which i then said to him in my most outraged tone whilst waving the tickets that weren't ours: 'Mate we just came out of here before, we didn't scan out because you just let us out without scanning, LOOK AT THESE PEOPLE!' as i pointed at several people leaving by the gate. The ticket guy apologetically let us in through the gate :) My friends, it is all about the delivery.. you have to make him believe!
Royal Enclosure: This is in the upper levels of the buildings - unfortunately i couldnt find a way to talk myself into this one, you needed a badge and almost all the guys were in top hats and tails - hard to fake. I can only imagine the pure decadence that exists at this level...
So gamblingwise - let me just state that i hate horse racing, its pure lottery and I don't believe anyone knows what they are doing. So I win my first race, doubling up and lose the next 5, being down aboud 60 pounds for the day. Thats my first and last attempt at the races. In fact, I had one of those cliched races where the horse i randomly chose led, all the way from start tothe last 1/2 lap where everyone else overtook him and he came last....
Unfortunately Nancy as unwell and wasn't able to come to Ascot, so maybe i'll have to go next year anyway..
Stoney and Nara came to visit! Due to the South American volcano, they didnt make it to south america but did manage to come to London. I even scored a nice meal out of them! Thanks guys!
Viv Arrives in London - where she turnsup at our doorstep in a jacket and s scarf and asks 'this is summer?' and then goes straight to the much warmer greek islands! Shes back now and hopefully settling in nicely in her new pad!
Helsinki and Tallinn - Alby's birthday on the 25th, and Linda organises a trip to Helsinki and Tallinn to celebrate his and kind of my birthday! Quick observation about Helsinki:
- It doesnt get dark dark in Helsinki till about 11pm, and hten gets light again at about 3am
- We went during some kind of public holiday so it was very quiet lost of restaurants were closed
- I over ate during our first breakfast which basically affected my ability to eat for the rest of the trip... I know that just because its 'included' doesnt mean I have to over eat. I just can't help it.
- Soumellina was quite nice - its a fort that the russians/finnish/swedish occupied at various points - the walls seemed kind of low to me to be a 'fortress' and i believe the only time it came under attack, the commander surrendered anyway...
- Our guide at Soumellina was cute - and apparently her name was not Guida - i just say the first 4 letters of her 'Guide' tag and assumed....
- Doable in a day, maybe two if more things were open. Not as expensive as I thought it would be..
- Church in the rock was pretty cool - and there was a guy playing piano there - shame we couldnt stay longer to relax, but we had to go catch our...
Ferry
- First time on a proper cruise liner
- Couldnt feel any movement, the ship was massive
- Cheap booze and tobacco..
- Stayed over night in quite cramped sleeping arrangements and in the morning we got off at :
Tallinn
- Capital of Estonia where supposedly, the most beautiful women in the world are from
- Women were OK - not amazing
- Old town is nice, they play up the whole medieval thing a lot there, cobblestone streets
- There is some evidence of stag weekends here, with a few gentlemens clubs around the town
- Free walking tour by an enthusiastic uni student guide - recommended
- Food highlight - our meal at Olde Hansa, where we had Bear (Good), Elk (Very good), wild boar, sausages, duck and various other things. Novelty factors include roleplay by the staff - including the owners son, owners daughter, serving wenches and a menu written in 'ye olde english'
- Soviet bloc country until the 80s - visited a hotel the KGB had set up on a top floor that 'didnt exist' and had bugged all the rooms. Interesting insight into communist and soviet life, and how they wanted to be portrayed to the rest of the world.
- 1 day for the old town is OK, but 2 days allows you to do a few more things and take it easy...
Back in London for my birthday - thanks for all the birthday wishes on facebook - i know that if facebook hadn't told me,most of you (except Mindy) would have forgotten! Had a quiet night in - Nancy cooked despite not feeling great and spent the night watching come dine with me and just chilling out.
Went to L'entrcote (BIG fan of this place!) for Ming's birthday on the 29th and had my first karoke session in London - they use a touch screen to choose songs, but other than that its quite similar to Sydney, Had a good old sing, particularly for a school night! Went to Bar Boulud (of Daniel Boulud of 3 Star Daniel of NYC fame) to have one of his famous burgers - supposedly one of the best in London for my kind of birthday dinner on saturday, unforunately quite average. The 'porkie' burger that I had was 12 pounds (18 AUD) and had an overpowering horseradish taste, which drowned out everything else. The pattie was quite thick, and I ordered minemedium rare which didn't quite work in this context. The pattie WAS cooked correctly, but I don't know if having a rare burger really adds to the burger experience. I found the burger relatively flavourless, not like a steak tartare for example which is heavily seasoned and the only difference was the texture, which was interseting with the raw mince inside. I think I rated this burger a 4/10, not because it was bad tasting, but because it was so expensive for what it was, and the taste was average , and barely that when you factor in the horseradish...
I know I've said this before, but London when the weather is nice must be one of the best cities in the world. The parks here are quite nice, we have Hyde park, regents park, even clapham common is nice enough on a summers day. People really make the most of warm weather and the parks are full of people lying about 'sun tanning' or just having a picnic and a chat. It will be interesting to see how this all changes dramatically come the winter time. We've been to quite a few more places since my last update and had a few visitors as well, but i'll get to those in time.
I think the first thing that happened since my last update was I went to Royal Ascot - the Melbourne cup of London. Its quite the day out, with Ascot being about 1hr out of London by train and people really dressing up for the occasion. I've never been to the races in Sydney or Melbourne so it was a new experience for me. This is how it works here: There are 3 types of tickets you can buy:
Silver ring (30 pounds) : gets you into the grass area, pleasant enough in the dry, but when it rains, like it was on the day we went, it can get MESSY. Shoes were ruined, and gumboots were not an uncommon sight and I'm sure those girls wearing the gum boots were very glad they did. After a while, the smell of the churned up mud, the damp, and the portaloos starts to become unpleasant. The people here are dressed quite well, guys are in suits, girls are in dresses, but its a slightly more casual affair, with picnic mats where the ground was remotely dry, plastic chairs and tables under temporary pavilions and temporary stalls. Pimms is the drink of choice.What ticket did i get? The silver of course! Mostly BYO food here, with some food stalls also. Thanks to T for providing us with an amazing picnic spread!
Grandstand: (50 pounds): gets you into the actual facilities, through a proper ticket gate, into the grounds where there are gardens, a outdoor screen, and into the lower levels of the actual building - which is in line with the finish line. This is traditionally where you would imagine people to be when they go to the races, with the concrete steps where you stand and cheer for your horse, then throw you losing stub on the ground in disgust. Food here not that much better actually, there were pizza stalls, fish and chips but at least they provided tables and chairs (sometimes plastic also) but at least you were in a building. Thanks to NV, who snuck Ben and I into this area for the second part of the day, out of the mud and away from the commoners! Top hat and tails are sometimes seen here.
Funny incident: when we tried to get into the grandstand area using other peoples tickets that NV had smuggled out for us, they wouldn't work through the machines because she hadn't scanned them out when she took the extra 2 tickets so it said 'double entry'. At this point the ticket guy said accusingly 'Have you actually scanned these out?' To which i then said to him in my most outraged tone whilst waving the tickets that weren't ours: 'Mate we just came out of here before, we didn't scan out because you just let us out without scanning, LOOK AT THESE PEOPLE!' as i pointed at several people leaving by the gate. The ticket guy apologetically let us in through the gate :) My friends, it is all about the delivery.. you have to make him believe!
Royal Enclosure: This is in the upper levels of the buildings - unfortunately i couldnt find a way to talk myself into this one, you needed a badge and almost all the guys were in top hats and tails - hard to fake. I can only imagine the pure decadence that exists at this level...
So gamblingwise - let me just state that i hate horse racing, its pure lottery and I don't believe anyone knows what they are doing. So I win my first race, doubling up and lose the next 5, being down aboud 60 pounds for the day. Thats my first and last attempt at the races. In fact, I had one of those cliched races where the horse i randomly chose led, all the way from start tothe last 1/2 lap where everyone else overtook him and he came last....
Unfortunately Nancy as unwell and wasn't able to come to Ascot, so maybe i'll have to go next year anyway..
Stoney and Nara came to visit! Due to the South American volcano, they didnt make it to south america but did manage to come to London. I even scored a nice meal out of them! Thanks guys!
Viv Arrives in London - where she turnsup at our doorstep in a jacket and s scarf and asks 'this is summer?' and then goes straight to the much warmer greek islands! Shes back now and hopefully settling in nicely in her new pad!
Helsinki and Tallinn - Alby's birthday on the 25th, and Linda organises a trip to Helsinki and Tallinn to celebrate his and kind of my birthday! Quick observation about Helsinki:
- It doesnt get dark dark in Helsinki till about 11pm, and hten gets light again at about 3am
- We went during some kind of public holiday so it was very quiet lost of restaurants were closed
- I over ate during our first breakfast which basically affected my ability to eat for the rest of the trip... I know that just because its 'included' doesnt mean I have to over eat. I just can't help it.
- Soumellina was quite nice - its a fort that the russians/finnish/swedish occupied at various points - the walls seemed kind of low to me to be a 'fortress' and i believe the only time it came under attack, the commander surrendered anyway...
- Our guide at Soumellina was cute - and apparently her name was not Guida - i just say the first 4 letters of her 'Guide' tag and assumed....
- Doable in a day, maybe two if more things were open. Not as expensive as I thought it would be..
- Church in the rock was pretty cool - and there was a guy playing piano there - shame we couldnt stay longer to relax, but we had to go catch our...
Ferry
- First time on a proper cruise liner
- Couldnt feel any movement, the ship was massive
- Cheap booze and tobacco..
- Stayed over night in quite cramped sleeping arrangements and in the morning we got off at :
Tallinn
- Capital of Estonia where supposedly, the most beautiful women in the world are from
- Women were OK - not amazing
- Old town is nice, they play up the whole medieval thing a lot there, cobblestone streets
- There is some evidence of stag weekends here, with a few gentlemens clubs around the town
- Free walking tour by an enthusiastic uni student guide - recommended
- Food highlight - our meal at Olde Hansa, where we had Bear (Good), Elk (Very good), wild boar, sausages, duck and various other things. Novelty factors include roleplay by the staff - including the owners son, owners daughter, serving wenches and a menu written in 'ye olde english'
- Soviet bloc country until the 80s - visited a hotel the KGB had set up on a top floor that 'didnt exist' and had bugged all the rooms. Interesting insight into communist and soviet life, and how they wanted to be portrayed to the rest of the world.
- 1 day for the old town is OK, but 2 days allows you to do a few more things and take it easy...
Back in London for my birthday - thanks for all the birthday wishes on facebook - i know that if facebook hadn't told me,most of you (except Mindy) would have forgotten! Had a quiet night in - Nancy cooked despite not feeling great and spent the night watching come dine with me and just chilling out.
Went to L'entrcote (BIG fan of this place!) for Ming's birthday on the 29th and had my first karoke session in London - they use a touch screen to choose songs, but other than that its quite similar to Sydney, Had a good old sing, particularly for a school night! Went to Bar Boulud (of Daniel Boulud of 3 Star Daniel of NYC fame) to have one of his famous burgers - supposedly one of the best in London for my kind of birthday dinner on saturday, unforunately quite average. The 'porkie' burger that I had was 12 pounds (18 AUD) and had an overpowering horseradish taste, which drowned out everything else. The pattie was quite thick, and I ordered minemedium rare which didn't quite work in this context. The pattie WAS cooked correctly, but I don't know if having a rare burger really adds to the burger experience. I found the burger relatively flavourless, not like a steak tartare for example which is heavily seasoned and the only difference was the texture, which was interseting with the raw mince inside. I think I rated this burger a 4/10, not because it was bad tasting, but because it was so expensive for what it was, and the taste was average , and barely that when you factor in the horseradish...
Thursday, July 07, 2011
Africa Day 1 Part 3
Wow - part 3 just for day 1, I didn't think I'd have this much to write about, but I guess it was a very eventful day.
Finally, I want to make some final notes about Kampala, this is exactly what I wrote down in my diary on the night of day 1:
- Uganda is very dirty, rubbish everywhere, shacks
- Uncivilised!? Goats and Chickens in the street.
I want to draw your attention to these points as I don't feel that I have made clear what my impression was. The 'city' was a dump. Rubbis WAS everywhere, and even 1-2k from the city centre, it would be common to see a goat eating grass on the side of the dirt road, or chickens just walking around in the street. It really was a third world country, in hindsight, for a 'capital' it was one of the worst I came across..
I finally arrived back at the Red Chilli Hideaway - where my 70 day tour of Africa would start.
By the time I got there the bus had already arrived and the hostel was quite busy. The way the tour works is that there are several main areas that you can hop on and off e.g Nairobi, Kampala, Victoria falls, Dar Es Salaam and Capetown being the ones on our tour. The bus basically does continuous laps and people start and stop wherever they wish. At this point in Kampala, everyone on the tour had joined in Nairobi, except for Jaime who joined at Victoria falls and had come north.
I met Tanya our tour leader, an Aussie from northern Queensland who had been on the job for about a year. She had been a customer on a tucan tour herself and loved it so much that she decided to stay in Africa and be a tour leader.
Tanya was friendly and approachable, and the first few minutes were spent on logistics, handing over kitty money, filling our forms etc. Let me quickly talk about the people on the tour and my first impressions/thoughts - i'm sure you'll see how these perceptions evolve (or not!) throughout the next 70 days...
The people joining in Kampala:
David and Mary - an older couple from Australia, David was ex Telstra and retired, with adult children back in Australia - they told me about the need for a Rwandan visa
Katie Stirling - first impressions: tall, ranga, easy with a laugh, friendly. I didn't actually talk to katie much on the first night, I seem to remember her doing a lot of drinking with other people in the hostel...
James - Canadian, customs officer, middle aged. Seems quite conservative and a bit quiet. Stayed in a room (as opposed to a tent) on the first night
Bahn - at this point still MIA (Ruban is my mate from highschool who would be on the tour with me)
Me - What more do I have to say!?
The people who joined in Nairobi (about 5 days before):
Deb - Italian, but living in England. Slim, pretty, friendly. Honestly, on the first night I thought there might be something going on between here and....
Rich - from Liverpool, really nice, funny guy. I may have thought there was something going on between him and Deb.
Sangee - Aussie Indian from Canberra. Doctor. Hair in braids, pretty, ready with a laugh, popular with the african boys :)
Kelly and Judy - Couple from New Zealand. (Kelly is an asian guy, Judy is white - i'm not racial i just want to paint the right picture..) A bit older as well, probably in their 50s, have adult children
Chris and Ange - Couple from UK/Australia respectively. Really friendly, clearly very nice people. Really seemed to suit each other, even from the start.
From Vic Falls - Jaime, from Adelaide, also from customs. As the longest serving member of the bus, she seemed to be in charge, running the cooking, and packing up as she knew where everything went. A little bit more serious than the others but still friendly and helpful.
Our Driver was Joash, a Kenyan who had been driving tour groups for many years - first impressions was that he was very quiet, and kept mostly to himself, not really talking to many people on the tour. Joash almost always sleeps in the truck...
A lot of the future posts will be about these people so I won't go into them any more at this point.
The first task after admin, was to pitch our tent. This was the first time in my entire life that I had to put up a tent and suprisingly, it wasn't that hard. It works best if two people do it together and I think James helped me put mine up.
The tents basically look like this:
This is a photo I took the next day.
After setting up tents I helped a little to make dinner - it seemed very confusing at the time, I had no idea where anything was, cooking facilities were outdoor campsite style and our equipment was basic - just various sized pots and two pans, one large and one regular size...
Dinner tonight was Spaghetti Bolognaise with Garlic bread which was well underway by the time I wandered down to meet the guys who were already on the tour. Spag Bol was made in the expected way, sauce separate to the pasta, and garlic bread was bread rolls with butter and garlic seasoning, placed on a hand held grilling rack and held over a gas flame and regularly turned..
The meal was good, as you would expect spag bol and garlic bread to be. The pasta, that Deb was in charge of was 'al dente' of course, and there was plenty to go around. Afterdinner, everything is packed away - something that seemed amazingly complex, with Jaime the only person who seemed to go which boxes things went into and howthey were to be placed into the truck. There were about 7 large boxes that the kitchen equipment and ingredients were packed into, and they all had to be placed into the truck in a certain way - it was hard to remember... and there was a lot of 'where does this go' being asked of Jaime and Tanya
At some point after dinner, Bahn arrives and we make small talk with the rest the group, asking where everyone was from, what they'd seen so far (Rhinos - which us Kampala joiners wouldnt see for a while...). We catch up as I hadn't seen him in about a months as I was in Japan. Not realising that a tent actually does not do ANYTHING to block sound, you might as well all be sleepingin a large room in sleeping bags.
Mid conversation, we get a 'Can you guys keep it down!' from Kelly I think... and we learn our first lesson about tent and group sleeping etiquette....
We shut up and I lay in my tent, marveling at the fact that I actually was in Africa. I was in a tent, sleeping on bed roll n UGANDA, thousands of kilometers from home, from Nancy and about to start off on a great adventure. I think it was the first time all day that I had time to reflect , and it was at that point that it all really hit me. I had 70 days to experience a continent that was a whole differnt world. I had made it through the city and I was hoping to have a life changing experience. I was really looking forward to the weeks to come.. i was hoping the our slogan was true - that this would be the adventure of a lifetime..
Finally, I want to make some final notes about Kampala, this is exactly what I wrote down in my diary on the night of day 1:
- Uganda is very dirty, rubbish everywhere, shacks
- Uncivilised!? Goats and Chickens in the street.
I want to draw your attention to these points as I don't feel that I have made clear what my impression was. The 'city' was a dump. Rubbis WAS everywhere, and even 1-2k from the city centre, it would be common to see a goat eating grass on the side of the dirt road, or chickens just walking around in the street. It really was a third world country, in hindsight, for a 'capital' it was one of the worst I came across..
I finally arrived back at the Red Chilli Hideaway - where my 70 day tour of Africa would start.
By the time I got there the bus had already arrived and the hostel was quite busy. The way the tour works is that there are several main areas that you can hop on and off e.g Nairobi, Kampala, Victoria falls, Dar Es Salaam and Capetown being the ones on our tour. The bus basically does continuous laps and people start and stop wherever they wish. At this point in Kampala, everyone on the tour had joined in Nairobi, except for Jaime who joined at Victoria falls and had come north.
I met Tanya our tour leader, an Aussie from northern Queensland who had been on the job for about a year. She had been a customer on a tucan tour herself and loved it so much that she decided to stay in Africa and be a tour leader.
Tanya was friendly and approachable, and the first few minutes were spent on logistics, handing over kitty money, filling our forms etc. Let me quickly talk about the people on the tour and my first impressions/thoughts - i'm sure you'll see how these perceptions evolve (or not!) throughout the next 70 days...
The people joining in Kampala:
David and Mary - an older couple from Australia, David was ex Telstra and retired, with adult children back in Australia - they told me about the need for a Rwandan visa
Katie Stirling - first impressions: tall, ranga, easy with a laugh, friendly. I didn't actually talk to katie much on the first night, I seem to remember her doing a lot of drinking with other people in the hostel...
James - Canadian, customs officer, middle aged. Seems quite conservative and a bit quiet. Stayed in a room (as opposed to a tent) on the first night
Bahn - at this point still MIA (Ruban is my mate from highschool who would be on the tour with me)
Me - What more do I have to say!?
The people who joined in Nairobi (about 5 days before):
Deb - Italian, but living in England. Slim, pretty, friendly. Honestly, on the first night I thought there might be something going on between here and....
Rich - from Liverpool, really nice, funny guy. I may have thought there was something going on between him and Deb.
Sangee - Aussie Indian from Canberra. Doctor. Hair in braids, pretty, ready with a laugh, popular with the african boys :)
Kelly and Judy - Couple from New Zealand. (Kelly is an asian guy, Judy is white - i'm not racial i just want to paint the right picture..) A bit older as well, probably in their 50s, have adult children
Chris and Ange - Couple from UK/Australia respectively. Really friendly, clearly very nice people. Really seemed to suit each other, even from the start.
From Vic Falls - Jaime, from Adelaide, also from customs. As the longest serving member of the bus, she seemed to be in charge, running the cooking, and packing up as she knew where everything went. A little bit more serious than the others but still friendly and helpful.
Our Driver was Joash, a Kenyan who had been driving tour groups for many years - first impressions was that he was very quiet, and kept mostly to himself, not really talking to many people on the tour. Joash almost always sleeps in the truck...
A lot of the future posts will be about these people so I won't go into them any more at this point.
The first task after admin, was to pitch our tent. This was the first time in my entire life that I had to put up a tent and suprisingly, it wasn't that hard. It works best if two people do it together and I think James helped me put mine up.
The tents basically look like this:
This is a photo I took the next day.
After setting up tents I helped a little to make dinner - it seemed very confusing at the time, I had no idea where anything was, cooking facilities were outdoor campsite style and our equipment was basic - just various sized pots and two pans, one large and one regular size...
Dinner tonight was Spaghetti Bolognaise with Garlic bread which was well underway by the time I wandered down to meet the guys who were already on the tour. Spag Bol was made in the expected way, sauce separate to the pasta, and garlic bread was bread rolls with butter and garlic seasoning, placed on a hand held grilling rack and held over a gas flame and regularly turned..
The meal was good, as you would expect spag bol and garlic bread to be. The pasta, that Deb was in charge of was 'al dente' of course, and there was plenty to go around. Afterdinner, everything is packed away - something that seemed amazingly complex, with Jaime the only person who seemed to go which boxes things went into and howthey were to be placed into the truck. There were about 7 large boxes that the kitchen equipment and ingredients were packed into, and they all had to be placed into the truck in a certain way - it was hard to remember... and there was a lot of 'where does this go' being asked of Jaime and Tanya
At some point after dinner, Bahn arrives and we make small talk with the rest the group, asking where everyone was from, what they'd seen so far (Rhinos - which us Kampala joiners wouldnt see for a while...). We catch up as I hadn't seen him in about a months as I was in Japan. Not realising that a tent actually does not do ANYTHING to block sound, you might as well all be sleepingin a large room in sleeping bags.
Mid conversation, we get a 'Can you guys keep it down!' from Kelly I think... and we learn our first lesson about tent and group sleeping etiquette....
We shut up and I lay in my tent, marveling at the fact that I actually was in Africa. I was in a tent, sleeping on bed roll n UGANDA, thousands of kilometers from home, from Nancy and about to start off on a great adventure. I think it was the first time all day that I had time to reflect , and it was at that point that it all really hit me. I had 70 days to experience a continent that was a whole differnt world. I had made it through the city and I was hoping to have a life changing experience. I was really looking forward to the weeks to come.. i was hoping the our slogan was true - that this would be the adventure of a lifetime..
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