Photos uploaded at last

So, there is a few weeks of photos that I have finally uploaded...
- Dover
- Jewel Tower
- Chinese New Year
- The big anti war protest (and extras)
- Ravenscourt Park

Work has been pretty full on lately. I started shifts last week - it's been about 4 years since I did shiftwork, and it is even worse than I remembered! It probably wouldn't be too bad if I actually got the extended weekends thing, but I was doing extra shifts to cover people away on training. 48hr week last week, 72 hour week this week... The good news is they want me back on Mon-Fri next week - apparently no-one wants to take up the work I am doing, can't understand why!

There are whispers of a new role for me soon, but it is all cloak-and-dagger stuff at the moment, and I am not about to bank on any of this coming to fruition. It would be very cool if it does - kind of a make or break position, as it were... More on that if/when it happens.

I'm changing Umbrella companies for this contract (an umbrella company is used when contracting to manage the invoicing etc - and I am not allowed to set up my own company). For reference, if anyone is thinking of coming to the UK to do some contracting, do not ever go with Giant Group. They are a bunch of ... hmmm, guess I should save that until AFTER I get my last pay from them! On the plus side, I wont have to deal with them again after next week. Who would have thought dealing with Inland Revenue would be preferential to dealing with, well, anyone?

Anyway, off to bed.

Grant.

White cliffs of Dover, OR, giant chalk horsey!

Look! A castle!

But first, a weather report. Week before last it was t-shirt weather, just about. Bright sunny skies, and I was getting terribly sweaty while cycling. Then apparently something odd happened with the arctic or whatnot, and all weekend before last was bloody freezing. Sleet on Sunday, and last Monday we had snow. At the end of March. This in a city in which people assured me it would not snow at all ever. So I am pretty chuffed, even if the last batch was just a few light flurries.

So, weekend before last our adventure was to Dover, White Cliffs Of. On the way, we saw this controversial horsey. Unfortunately not one of the mysterious old ones.

Dover proper was a little shocking. It isn't flat, for starters. We had to walk up the hill to the castle (in fact, the hill we walked up was the side of one of the white cliffs), and my calves were in agony for three days afterwards. I am a Londoner now, and I don't hold with all this crazy hill business. I don't care if it's been a strategically significant site since at least the first century (there are the ruins of a Roman lighthouse). It should be flattened for the sake of the tourists.

Dover is of course the closest point of England to France and therefore the most likely invasion point, although I believe the last actual attempted enemy landing was in the thirteenth century. Still, better safe than sorry, and it is therefore the home of Dover Castle, a giant fortified structure whose ramparts contain an eclectic combination of Roman, Saxon, Norman, Tudor and WWII-era structures, as well as a warren of tunnels built during the Napoleonic wars and WWII. The evacuation of Dunkirk aka Dunquerque was coordinated from the super secret tunnel warrens, as was the naval stage of D-Day. If war is your bag there is quite a lot of interest around. Alas, the place is sadly lacking in the stolen treasures that other castles so amply offer.

On the other side of town is another giant hill. It's also full of tunnels, as one does. Otherwise, Dover is an excellent mixup of faded glory and postwar fugly, a lot of it having been bombed out of existence before it had a chance to fade.

Sunday before last we strolled around Kensington and unfortunately broke the seal on our formerly frugal selves. I picked up some boring black shoes for a lawyer functiony thing, Grant purchased his long-desired hoodie, and we spent an embarrassing amount on media (Kaiser Chiefs aka RUBY RUBY RUBY RUBY! Chili Peppers because we are oooooooooold school, and "Peep Show" DVDs which if you can stand embarrassment-based English humour is worth a look). We got sleeted on halfway through proceedings which was a good excuse for a break for tea and scones.

Grant actually had last Monday off and got to spend part of it queuing in a job centre for a National Insurance number (sort of like a TFN) in Camden Town, but he was happy as it snowed more there than here. I took the opportunity to add about another 1000 words to my thesis and freak out some more about it - 18,600 words now (word limit for those playing at home is 15,000). Good times!

Grant did a bunch of 12 hour shifts last week while I pretended to be studying French copyright law. Last Tuesday I had the aforementioned lawyerly thing which was a reception at a firm with whom I used to do some associate work. It was actually a wonderfully fun and incredibly long evening with about 6 hours of excessive corporate hospitality and some really aggressive wine waiters with an excellent grasp of stealth glass filling techniques. Anyway, I have a fistful of business cards to do the networking thing and it was nice to remember that I am actually OK at that particular game. And better still to hang with some of my peeps, aka lawyerly types. There are not really many lawyerly types at uni, and oh I had missed the snark and the brainiacs and the crazy client stories and those who sympathise with me when I say EUROPEAN IP LAW IS STUPID (ie. those who also harken back to the glory days of English sovereign IP law without nasty European bits in). I am considering doing a short stint over here at the end of my degree given the horrifyingly big numbers that get bandied about salary-wise for IP lawyers, but I guess I'll see what comes up.

However, excessive corporate hospitality did mean that the next day I was a touch under the weather and not really up to proper study other than uni class. For some reason this made me feel compelled to clean the oven. It doesn't smoke as much now, but buggered if I can work out why it was smoking before - it has weird black plastic flaky stuff in it that smells like burning plastic but who knows from whence it came - but enough of these glamorous tales from the front lines of housewifery.

I topped this off with a Uni book launch function on Thursday, which was yet more scads of free alcohol (no wine waiters though but you can't quibble self-service when it's free) and hanging around with a select group of tipsy academics and fellow students. Again, lots of fun. However, people seem to think I am crazy for wanting to go back to Australia and be a scary evil corporate lawyer when I could do ??? instead. I am not entirely sure what ??? is and no-one has yet clarified. Certainly there seems to be a relatively poor understanding of the differing academic markets in Australia and the United Kingdom. Here you could probably specialise in IP right off the bat. In Australia, even if I did manage some kind of academic appointment it would be low-end and general, probably in Woop Woop, and most Australian unis either don't teach IP or don't teach much of it, so it's highly unlikely I'd have the chance in the short term to actually exploit my specialty. PLUS it would be roughly a 50%+ paycut. But hey, other than that and the publish or perish mentality that would have me working longer hours than in corporate law for less cash, an academic career back home is a great idea!

I am getting rather cross with uni at the moment, because the reading is going in one ear and out the other. Fortunately I have tons of casenotes to review when it comes time for exam preparation, so I won't have to go back to the raw materials, but still. ANNOYING, because I am at last actually putting in the hard yards and am basically just making myself more confused. I'm hoping it will all settle in soon enough, esp since I am as of now on yet another 4 week holiday, then a 7 week term, then a 2 month study break, so - well, I have time on my hands and God knows I need to avoid spending it on the thesis at any cost. Humorously enough, I have been designated the go-to gal on my subjects by those fellow students with questions. I don't know that I would be relying on me, frankly.

Grant has been doing 12 hour shifts of the day and night variety for a couple of weeks to cover some training, and this has unfortunately overlapped with the start of daylight savings, so this morning we both got up at 5.45am to walk to the station and it was still dark. ICK. And then I was a zombie for the rest of the day while pretending to study the interaction of IP and human rights laws, but I think Grant managed a little better.

First grade of year (doesn't count to final assessment): A-. MINUS! MINUS! FIE! DON'T THEY REALISE I HAVE A REPUTATION TO KEEP UP, HERE?
Steps this week: 8700. But the week is young!
How deep Grant is in to the guts of his new computer: elbow - it's a little computer (Shuttle).
Tip for travel vegemite-in-a-tube users: apply vegemite to knife, not toast. It's like vegemite toothpaste!

Watch me pull a dramatically prolix thesis out of this hat!

We had a lovely weekend, first walking out to Ealing for friend's birthday Saturday via Grand Union Canal (probably about 10km - 25,000 steps). Quite a nice walk, although the canalway is about as patchy as the Bay to Bay cycleway in Sydney in parts, presumably due to a Battle of the Boroughs. It may have been my last long walk in the brown quilty jacket though, as it was bloody hot. We walked down through Acton (where Grant works) to Ealing and it was readily apparent why Acton housing is comparatively cheap. AWFUL. But Ealing is pretty swank.

On Sunday we went into town to meet another friend for breakfast near Waterloo. We had a nice walk along South Bank (ie of Thames, not in Brisvegas) afterwards. It was an unusually pretty sunny day, and the usual street performers were out. We stopped to watch a very funny magician, whose act including counting his three magic cups in many different languages, including Australian (Magician: "Aussie Aussie Aussie!" [pause]; Grant, Loz, and about three other people: "OI! OI! OI!"). The act was made even better by a magician using Grant and I as misdirection during one of his tricks - always nice to have a crowd clap while you kiss, isn't it? I must say, Grant said he could spot some of the sleight of hand, but the guy was way too fast for me. We also went for a bit of a wander around the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey and the Jewel Tower, which is a 600 year old relic of the old palace that the Houses of Parliament ultimately replaced. One of the Edwards kept his treasures there, but in a truly pragmatic exercise of Victorianism, its last official use was as a store for the standard units of weights and measures - because it is thick stone, the tower resists vibration and changes in temperature, so keeping the units stable. It's an educational if somewhat dry place - lots of Parliamentary history stuff (+ cabal, precursor to the cabinet, is an acronym of the names of the nobles involved in the first cabal of Charles II - Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley and Lauderdale) which rather highlighted my ignorance of English history. Side benefit is I finally learned what the crazy imperial weights system is based on (weights of wheat grains - crazy English).

Grant has been having fun at work. The official position of whether or not he goes on shift changes every other day. He doesn't care either way - I'm not working, after all, so it won't be anything like the fun 3 years where we passed each other at the door 2-3 days a week - but it would be nice to know either way so we can plan some damned holidays.

I have been working on my thesis today (being a dangerous combination of ambitious and lazy, I am trying to make myself devote my Mondays to the cause as I am off Uni Mondays and Tuesdays). It's going OK; my supervisor seems happy with it so far. BUT, the advanced draft part is already 17000 words and the whole thing is only supposed to be 15000. PLUS I have at least another 5000 to go by my calculations. It's turning into LLB Honours all over again - for that one I was supposed to turn in 12000 words and it was 25000! The secret is to hide the total from responsible authorities until the very last minute.

However, since I am now terrified of adding words, thesis editing has become an interesting exercise in me pretending the thesis is some sort of incredibly boring jigsaw. It has now been restructured about 5 times, to the point where my supervisor instructed me to Quit Fiddling With It. Of course, I'm hoping he won't notice that I've squeezed in new sections 2(a) and (b). Right?

Otherwise Uni is going pretty well. I am doing a bit better with getting the reading done, and feeling a little less panicky about the whole thing, which is a plus. However, the fact remains that I haven't sat a formal exam in 5 years and I'm about to do three of them. SIT DOWN, CLOSED BOOK exams no less, all covering not only UK law but US, French and German/EU law as well. OK I'm going to stop talking as I am scaring myself.

I have just put in applications for (a) a 2 week residential study program in Washington DC run in conjunction with my Uni and a few others, and (b) a very casual research assistant job. I'm really not sure of my chances for either, actually. Frankly, for the former I walk a dangerous line between being underqualified for not knowing enough about US law and overqualified for knowing too much based on what I used to do at work, and on the latter my only research work has been on my own behalf, which doesn't really count as relevant experience to do it professionally, especially since I'm out of my home jurisdiction and deprived of the useful paralegals who used to do my research for me. However, I did get to go over my CV etc to fill in the applications, and the whole exercise did remind me that on paper I look quite good, and used to be a Super Lawyer Type Person, even if I feel rather like a lazy waste of potential earning power at the moment.

In final news, spring is finally really here, and I am loving it. I am much less tired and more productive than I was when we were getting 7-8 hours of daylight. The sun is up after 6pm now. I get woken up before 7am with the sun coming into the bedroom, and it's less of a chore to get up to walk to the station with Grant. There are flowers everywhere, and I no longer need a beanie on morning walks, and can cycle in just a t-shirt and my light jacket. VERY EXCITING!

Ro's visiting this weekend. Hurray!

Steps: 80+K last week; Grant busted 100K. Go team Donnelly/Eade!
Cycle: 40km per usual. Boring, I know. I should get extra points though as it was really windy last week.
Thesis words: don't even want to think about it, but about 800 words. Sob!

Go West

The thing about London geography is that unless you travel the joint on foot or by bike, the combined forces of circuitous bus routes, endless little back streets and the hopelessly bendy and mostly underground tube network will stop you from getting any sense of where things are vis a vis other things. So, since we get to Hammersmith by tube (4 stops from our place), I had always considered it to be unequivocally west of our position. By contrast, we walk generally eastwards to get to Kensington. But here's the thing, as made amply clear by our weekend circuit of Da Grove, She Bu, Ravenscourt Park, Hammersmith and Kensington: HAMMERSMITH AND KENSINGTON ARE NEXT TO EACH OTHER. In fact, the main street of the one turns into one of the main streets of the other. Trippy, but at least now the endless Kensington road signs pointing to Hammersmith make sense as something other than directions for those taking a long view.

Anyway, the point of the exercise was to see if we could find a way under the A40 overpass to get Grant to White City, a closer train station to his work (answer: no, but again, we got to see the ponies which are kept in the industrial wasteland under the motorway, of all places) and to see if we could cope with living in She Bu, where the housing prices are roughly a hundred quid a week lower than our current locale, as we are looking to move up to at least a separate bedroom place, or a larger joint if friends come over to flatshare. Answer: not entirely sure. She Bu has a thriving Arabic community and therefore awesome cafes, restaurants, grocers and textile shops, as well as a decentish street market. It isn't infested with the nasty Tescos that have taken over basically every largish corner shop in our neck of the woods. But it's further out of the city, the roads are busier, the transport is marginally less convenient, it's a giant Australian stereotype, and it's slightly lacking in an Indefinable Something. Current plan is to keep seeing what we can find around here, and if not, bite the She Bu bullet - or maybe do something REALLY CRAZY, like go north or south (NB: NOT east).

For the record: Ravenscourt Park is very pretty.

On Sunday we indulged in what is fast becoming a favourite lazy day activity at least of mine: a brief trip to the Vic and Albert Museum, lunch at a cheap and nice Chinese diner, and a leisurely stroll through Kensington Palace Gardens and home. Lovely, esp. since on Sunday we got to witness the sight of two whippets chasing each other at full speed. They do not just look like itty greyhounds, apparently; they can back it up.

So anyway, all in all it was a low-key but nicely western experience of a weekend.

From the Accidental Housewife files for the benefit of my own personal recollection of Really Damned Good Tacos:
Tasty Kidney Beans
Fry onion until brown, add 1 teaspoon cumin, toast.
Add 2 ladles of cooked kidney beans (cook with one onion and dash cumin), juice half lime, half teaspoon marigold stock powder, quite a lot of fresh coriander.

Cooked salsa
Fry one capsicum, 2 spring onions; add 4 slices jalapeno, half teaspoon oregano, 1/3 tin tomatoes, cook down.

How is everyone out there, anyway?

And the theme of the weekend is...Wellington

For our Obligatory London Weekend Adventures last weekend, we accidentally selected a Wellington theme.

(1) Apsley House

We are proud members of National Heritage and therefore feel compelled to visit strange landmarks of historical significance, because it is free. Very few of these are actually in London, thus complicating the process; fortunately, Apsley House, at the corner of Hyde Park and opposite the Victory Arch commemorating the Battle of Waterloo, is one. Therefore, we did the usual hike in via Kensington Palace Gardens and Hyde Park to go have a look.

On the way we ran into a giant peace demonstration, which lapped Hyde Park once or twice and freaked out the horses doing their daily constitutional on Rotten Row (aka Mud Central, since it has been raining all week). Police estimated 10,000 protesters (uh - NOPE) and organisers 60,000, so who knows - I would have thought closer to 100,000, myself. Interesting timing actually, as Blair announced the Iraq pull-out this week - I wonder if he was pre-empting the demonstration? Anyway, there were lots of people marching for various and sundry worthy causes, and we joined in for a bit, making it Grant's first demo - but not, it must be said, mine!

Then to Apsley House, which has been the home of seven Dukes of Wellington since the very first, a certain younger son by the name of Arthur Wellesley who was not expected to amount to much by his family, proved everyone wrong by rocketing up the ranks of the army and eventually defeating Napoleon in the land war in Europe. The house itself is gorgeous and chock full of fairly fabulous artworks, most of which Wellington No. 1 actually purchased (unusually, for an English nobleman, most of whom appear to have been of the "but I found it just lying there!" or "possession is ten-tenths of the law" schools of thought) but some of which were recovered from various Napoleonic lieutenants who had looted much of Europe, including the Vatican City. Wellington returned most of it, and memorably offered to give a particularly nice collection of works taken from Spain back to the reinstated King of Spain, who two years later replied that it was awfully nice of Wellington to offer but in the circumstances he had earned it and could keep it. A contemporary art critic commented that two of the paintings in said collection were so valuable that it was worth fighting the Spanish campaign just for them. Nice one!

Wellington also had a bit of a fascination with representations of Napoleon. He never met the guy, but the house is full of Napoleon busts, portraits, and best of all, through the staircase, a giant twice-life-size naked Napoleon sculpture. AWESOME.

Otherwise, lots of paintings of various heads of Europe and of Wellington's beloved horse Copenhagen, who got shipped around all over the place, did constant duty in the Battle of Waterloo itself, didn't get flighty about pesky things like battles raging around him but would kick you as soon as look at you, which may explain why Wellington made it through unscathed. Copenhagen lived until nearly 30 and had a state funeral, which is more than you can say for most horses I suppose. Portrait artists get extra points if they remember that the horse was not in fact white.

As an interesting matter of etiquette, it appears that if you free Europe, people give you quite a lot of stuff, especially china and silver. Given my silverware collection is meagre, am considering a drive to free Europe; will let you know how it goes.

Also: Duke number 1 had special riding boots made to keep his legs warm and dry. Can you guess what they became known as?

(2) Epping Forest

On Sunday we ventured EAST OF THE CITY (gasp!) to Epping Forest for a bit of a walk in a proper forest. It's actually technically in Essex, a large chunk of which has been eaten by London, so you can get there on the tube. Very convenient.

Things we did not quite take into account:

• forests in winter are collections of sticks of various heights (although quite neatly, there is very little undergrowth around so you can basically walk whichever way you like) rather than forests in the ordinary Australian understanding of the term, ie. something with leaves (actually, the holly still had leaves and I have plenty of scratches on my hands to prove it); and
  
• it rained all last week. We did not quite clue in to the likely results of this until the two people walking in front of us to the forest were wearing waterproof boots and gaiters. In short: MUDFEST.
  

The theme then for Sunday was Do Not Attempt Without Wellingtons, but unfortunately we had nothing but joggers and therefore got very wet even before it started raining again. I jumped a creek but Grant refused to do so citing inflexibility of jeans; there followed a very exciting half hour of us wading through ankle deep mud on opposite sides on an increasingly swollen body of water until I jumped back across - albeit with Grant's help this time. People were actually mountain-biking in the forest despite the conditions, and thereby giving all cyclists a bad name, because the paths were too muddy and the tyres were wrecking them. Naughty.

Anyway, I'm quite looking forward to going back once they've had another drought or I've acquired some decent waterproof boots, whichever comes first!

Otherwise the weekend was quite lazy, although we did manage to catch up with an old work colleague of mine who lives in the area for Saturday dinner which was nice.

Steps last week: 77K or so
This week: shut up
Bike: the obligatory 40km of uni commute
Thesis: stalled at 6700 words (10000 if you count footnotes, which unfortunately they do) waiting for my supervisor's comments. Two weeks without thesis Monday! My poor precious routine! BUT I have read 3 competition law cases so far this week, which is why you can hear my brain making steam-whistling noises. And now for three more. Sigh.

Kung Hei Fat Choi, OR, We're All Going to Die

Happy year of the pig, everyone!

After our wonderful Saturday adventure to Brighton, we decided to head into Chinatown for the Chinese New Year celebrations.

This was a very bad idea, which several billion other people had also had (see above). The minute we got off the train at Embankment, we hit the biggest crowd I have ever ever seen, and I used to commute through Town Hall station :) London has a fairly small Chinese community and I guess it was pretty cool to see the numbers of non-Chinese out in support of the occasion. I was feeling less cheerful about it at the time, when the sheer volume of human beings effectively deprived me of food, freedom of movement, and at one point, the ability to breathe.

The red lanterns were lovely as always, as were the various cultural displays, including Shao Lin brick smashing and whatnot, and four dragons, which is excellent as I am a sucker for a dragon dance (note: the dragon dancers had a human wall of crowd-shifters around them, which meant they could actually move, unlike us). What was not lovely was that despite rigorous street closures and an attempt to assert a one way human traffic direction along Chinatown, the police had basically created a Mob of Doom in Chinatown itself. It took us about 45 mins to get from one side of the three-block strip to the other, including a five minute argument about whether we should wait in line for 30 minutes for a restaurant table (Grant - affirmative, me - negative). Most of this time was spent being rammed from behind into a solid mass of bodies in front, which typically would be actually trying to do the same thing but in the opposite direction. But now and then a dragon's head would pop up over the crowd, so that was cool, at least.

We had intended to go and visit one of the National Heritage sites afterwards, but were so buggered from crowdwrassling that we just got some food from a street vendor (who was selling Thai/Japanese/Chinese food, by way of really helping the pig-ignorant European tendency to be unable to tell the difference between the cuisines, cultures and indeed faces of those nationalities) and fled home to the relatively deserted streets of Sunday Holland Park/Ladbroke Grove for a pastry and a cuppa tea.

Thesis this week: zip, am trying to catch up on copyright (and failing, I might add, although I did get 20-something case notes written yesterday).
Bicycle km: zip
Steps: might as well be zip. Last week 98K.

Brighton - on Sea, not Sands...

I think I must have been slightly stir crazy this week - with being sick last week and not really getting out much on the weekend. Fortunately, Loz noticed the subtle signs, and suggested we head down to Brighton for the day. We hadn't gotten out of London for a while so it was certainly about time. This would also cross off another one from "Best Day Trips from London" - a wonderful gift from Lee (score so far: 8/25, come on team!)

We did manage to get out of the house before 9am by some miracle, but a minor stuff up at Victoria station (we're not admitting it was our fault, and blaming the rail network is easy) meant we didn't get down there until close to 11am. Still, plenty of time to enjoy the restorative powers of a seaside town.



The big attraction of Brighton is the Royal Pavilion, and it was our first stop of the day. Well, second after the really cool bike shop. They actually stocked Kona, and lots of it! Anyway, where were we? Oh yes, the Pavilion. It was quite spectacular, and as commented by a member of parliament back in the day, largely resembled a turnip. More precisely, one large turnip upside down on a box, with many smaller turnips, also upside down on boxes. It apparently started out as a modest farmhouse, but was renovated by George IV after he got himself out of debt. I don't know how a Regent/King gets into debt or out of it, but I suspect it has something to do with the ladies and gambling, and then doing favours for Parliament. Next to the Pavilion was the Dome, but we didn't go inside to check out the museum/art gallery.

Next we walked through the Brighton streets towards the sea shore, evaluating potential dinner venues, and appreciating some of the remarkable buildings. One very cool thing was that the public buses have names. We made it down to the impressive beach with the Brighton Pier. Do the pictures provoke the memory of feeling of sand between your toes? Or, for example, pebbles beneath your shoes?

Down from the current pier is the old pier. Much like the Royal Pavilion, it appears to have an iron structure. And much like the Royal Pavilion, it is rusted and decaying. Good thing they've been doing restoration work on the the Pavilion since a year or two after it was built (so only for a couple of hundred years now).

We went and wandered out along the pier where there are many sideshow-style attractions like shooting galleries, a dolphin race(!), a very unfortunate witch, and some carnival rides. Lauren was boring and not interested in riding them - she didn't want to go on G.Laxia, the Haunted House, Turbo Coaster, Crazy Mouse, Booster, Waltzer, Wild River, or Scream. She didn't even want to go on this one.

By the time we finished the circuit of the pier, the sun was on the way down, and it was getting dark. This brought out a huge number of birds - flocking about around and under the pier. The photos don't really capture it, but is was quite amazing. I was able to get a number of good photos - probably too many, but I still find the sun disappearing into the ocean to be quite fascinating. The whole area reminded me of Santa Monica - it's obvious where the Americans got their influence - but I think the colonists use of timber instead of iron/steel was a good idea.

Brighton pier at night was very pretty, as was the Royal Pavilion - in particular the big turnip, pity about the scaffolding though.

We finished off with dinner at English's of Brighton - awesome, definitely taking Dad there so we can get the seafood platter!

It was a great day out, easy to do from London, and we will be doing more of this sort of thing in future!

All of the photos can be seen here.

It Done Snowed II

OK, so further to our previous tantalising post: BEHOLD THE SNOW. This would be from last Thursday. Shut up, I never said we'd update frequently! Take a careful look at the picture of Grant. He lost that beanie (lovingly knitted BY HIS WIFE) half an hour later.

It was especially wonderful snow actually - still coming down at 10am, all clothes soaked, sizeable snowperson-facilitating snow (my snowperson was lame because my hands got cold).
Much better than the previous January snow which, while nice, had stopped by the time we got up. When I went to copyright class in the afternoon, my lecturer, who is an Australian expat decades removed from the motherland, said to me in excitement: "Isn't it wonderful?"

After I dropped Grant off at the station at about 7.30am I went for a hike through Holland Park, which is the foresty snowy pictures, esp the maze, the terribly cold fishies in the Kyoto Garden and My Lord Holland You Are Sitting Very Still.

Freakishly, the tube was only running about 20 mins late when I caught it in to class in the morning despite the snow. Considering that it routinely does way worse in bright sunny weather, I was pleasantly surprised! It still would have been faster to ride in, but I get scared of unusual weather conditions, viz. when I rode home after hail in Sydney and tried to access my inner European for racial memories on what to do when hitting an ice drift at speed. I did ride in the next day, and got absolutely drenched in a sleety downpour (fellow student, English: "You don't have to ride in EVERY day, you know"), and then afterwards had to spend half an hour cleaning the grit out of the bike that had been scattered in the snow the day before. Apparently gritty abrasive salt+dirt+water = bad for bikes. Or so I am told. I have my suspicions that it is a beat-up though to make me clean my poor old bike.

Grant actually had to come home early on the snow day with a cold and was off sick the next day too (damn contracting damn no sick leave). However, he's much better now, with the exception of in the wee small hours when he tends to start hacking up a lung just to piss me off. We have new cough syrup - honey and lemon flavour. On inspection, ingredients = honey and lemon. Not entirely sure why this product exists.

Anyway, Grant's bug did mean we didn't get up to too much hiking at the weekend, which coupled with the fact I rode into school 2 days last week meant that my walking total was CRAP - a measly 58000 steps. Did however do 40km on the bike. Not very flash, but given it is the dead of winter I am pretty chuffed. I have to wear a jumper while I ride and everything. AND windproof gloves, cf Wednesday when I didn't wear them and couldn't feel my fingers for quite some time thereafter.

We did meet a friend of Grant's from when he was working in Syd, who is over for the week, for drinks and dinner on Saturday night around SoHo (no champagne, but if there had been I doubt it would have tasted like cherry cola). Met some nice friends of hers, too, which is always a good thing in this big wide city. Otherwise the only other weekend adventure was a moderate stroll to Kensington Palace Gardens for tea and scones. I used the word "grand." Now all I need to do is start saying "all right" instead of "Hello, how are you?" and I'll be set.

Thesis has been doing quite well yesterday and today, in part because I cheated by doing thesis work instead of trade marks/copyright today as well as yesterday. Aren't I clever in using my self-distracting powers for good instead of evil? Yesterday I cleaned the flat from top to bottom by way of distraction. Excellent stuff. Anyway, today's slog got me 1800 words added and about 800-1000 subtracted, so I am still ahead of the game. My argument now goes from intro to parts a through c of part 2 before running aground, compare earlier where it sort of went intro, part 2(c), make of that what you will. OF COURSE, disclaimer here is that my supervisor has read none of it yet so could decide it is all total rubbish. I think I keep deterring him from reading what he has already by sending him a new draft every week. I personally would regard that as a tip not to read anything until I had a version someone was prepared to call final! It isn't due until July but I have 6700 done pretty well and another 6000 done in early draft form. Cue freakout re: 15,000 word target overshoot (familiar from 2000 where I produced a 25000 word thesis that was supposed to be 12000), which is why I am glad to have cut some words out. Have to do some more work on the USA part of it though.

I must say Jamie hit the nail on the head when she told me the problem with grad school was the utter lack of external stimulus to activity. I have *no* assessment tasks due until July, and final exams are August. Until then I could do jack and there would be no consequences. Don't tell my brain this or I won't get anything done. It's just between you and me, OK? All of this is way worse coming from a life where the task that got done first was (a) the most overdue (b) the one with the screaming client or partner attached to it, and there sure as hell were stimuli to prompt action (positive - $$$, negative - aforementioned screaming). Feel rather like a marionette with strings cut at times. Still, it is nice to relaxxxxxxxxx just the same, also to use brain as sharp instrument instead of blunt one for a change.

UK things people never warned me about: the limescale. OH MY GOD, THE LIMESCALE, THE KETTLE KILLING, DRAIN-CLOGGING, TAPE-CAKING LIMESCALE (apparently it's very healthy for you though). Also, still a bit annoyed by lack of tags on teabags.

OK, off to veg shop and then copyright study. YAY.

Bike k last week: 40km
This: 0
Thesis: 1800 words, but lost 800-1000, so what do we call that?

Again?

So this is the forecast for tomorrow:


We'll see what happens... The max of 2 deg could be a little rough though.

Edit: this just in, news report states the forecast is for the heaviest snow fall in 10 years!

"Surreal, but nice."

Thus speaks the hero to the heroine in Grant's favourite girly flick, "Notting Hill," which was on the telly on the weekend. Hereabouts the movie is considered horrifically twee and it can also be regarded as a rather racially suspect whitening of a quite multicultural area. All that notwithstanding, it's nice brainmush and on top of that we now get to squeal "OH MY GOD, THAT'S...[insert name of local landmark/shop here]" every five seconds, which was indeed surreal, but nice. You know you've arrived when the geographical names in English film and telly start to make sense.

It was hotting up last week - even to the point of not having to wear a beanie! - but apparently this was a bluff, as it is now freezing again. Heavy frost this morning, for the first time really. No more snow, sadly.

I have given up on my lofty ambitions to do this degree properly and read each case report in full, and am now reading the headnotes only, which is like the Cribb's Notes. I feel like an intellectual traitor but on the plus side, I got through three weeks of trade mark reading in one day yesterday. You can't argue with that kind of brute force productivity, people. At this rate I might even catch up on copyright sometime before the exams.

Cycling kms last week: 40km
This week: none yet, trying to be brave enough to ride to uni today despite cold (riding is the only way to guarantee getting there in under an hour - it is supposed to be a 20 minute tube trip, but that only works under lab conditions)
Thesis this week: about 1000ish, again
Steps this week: truly pathetic 17,000.

And how have you all been?

Hippy Waitangi Day eviryone!

Hi all

Our usual weekend stroll was to the Vic and Albert Museum, or rather to the Chinese diner near there.

We did manage to see the Islamic ceramic/textile/metalwork exhibit prior to lunch which was AWESOME. And educational: Chinese artisans redesigned their blue and white china for the Middle Eastern market and flooded it with cheap ceramics in the new patterns in the 15th century. Result: market went crazy for the new blue and white china, and Middle Eastern artisans started copying the Chinese designs, including their maker's marks, which is actually the first example of someone pirating Chinese designs and trade marks I have heard of. Go Ottoman Empire! There were some beautiful rugs which were only lit for 20 minutes in the hour to avoid fading. And also some lovely embroidered robes, which are believed to have been worn by three of the 19 princes executed as children when their half-brother succeeded their father to the throne to avoid succession infighting, an exercise that was apparently never repeated.

Prior to V&A and lunch, we came across this scene. That would be the expat New Zealand Waitangi Day party, aka the Circle Line Pub Crawl 2007. Look, the New Zealand speed skating team! Here's hoping they don't steal our Australian tactics of hanging back and hoping everyone else falls over at the next Winter Olympics. They were all drinking Fosters though. Tch. Anyway, it is nice that trans-Tasman rivalry back home becomes antipodean brotherhood the minute you get to the other side of the world - we celebrated Australia Day in a much more low-key way with a New Zealander.

In other news, yesterday I rode the 10km to Uni only to find that my lecture had been cancelled, which in fact my lecturer had mentioned in passing some months ago. Didn't feel too stupid as there were 5 other people there, but still - further evidence that I am something of a brain in a bottle at times. That pretty much torpedoed my otherwise reasonably productive week as at that point I was too ticked off to do anything for the rest of the day.

Well, it's 5pm and still twilight so here's hoping we may be past the worst of the winter!

Thesis total: same (hey, I write thesis on Mondays, leave me be!)
Steps total: 70K and rising
Most excellent hummus recipe: one can chickpeas, 1/3 cup chickpea liquid, 1.5 Tbs tahini, juice of half a juicy lemon, 2 cloves garlic. WHIZZ.

There are some photos here from the various walks of the last 2 weeks - descriptions on the photos.

These boots are made for walking. As are these sneakers, these sandals and these attractive crocs.

Oh-kay. So we have spent another week tromping the wilds of North-Western and Western London, and it has been good. Targets this week included:

• Hampstead Heath, a terribly awesome scrubby-type park a la Richmond Park and Bushy Park only without the deer. Hampstead Heath is about 6 miles walk from our place (help, I am infected with imperial measurements!) and it took us about 2 hours to get there, as we went via our favourite Indian food stall in the Church St markets off Edgware Road, which sells truly awesome chicken tikka wraps made with roti. Yummmmmmm. Then we walked beside the Regent's Canal, home of some really unreasonably swank stately homes, to Primrose Hill, ditto, through Belsize, ditto to a lesser extent and then Hampstead (still quite swank) to the heath proper. It has swimming ponds. And a man was swimming in one of them. Even though it was roughly 2 degrees. Really, the icebergs are cool and all, but this guy was swimming in water that had just about made its own ice. Highlights included meeting a guy with two tallish red-coloured staffies and having him identify them as Long-legged Staffordshires, most useful because I totally want one, and the beautiful Kenwood House. We were rather ticked off because we are English Heritage members and should get into such places free, but it was actually free for everyone. Logically enough, Kenwood House and its fine grounds were at one point slated for redevelopment. It's nice to know that the CRAZY PERSON developmental mindset is not specific to our homeland. They had an exhibition of paintings including Dutch masters, and specifically including this very nice one. Grant and I are currently arguing about the terminology for Rembrandt's use of light (next best argument after the best means of demonstrating the doppler effect) so drop a line if you know. There and back is a 32000 step trip if you have stubby legs like me.
  
• A 23,000 step trip with Jen from Twickers to Teddington to Kingston and back via Bushy Park and a cop-out bus trip back from Teddington because my footsies were tired. Most of it was along the Thames, rather terrifically pretty river that it is. Teddington has a gigantic lock which was the scene of the fish-slapping dance of Monty Python Fame. I HAVE TOUCHED GREATNESS. Highlights of the trip were the pretty, pretty Thames, and the absolutely lovely lunch Jen made us - thanks as always Jen!
  

This week has been a busyish one too. Grant has been working until almost 6pm some evenings (everyone in Sydney: HAHAHHAHA - 6 months ago, neither of us could be relied upon to get home before 8pm). He was supposed to be moving from the temporary team leader position to shiftwork over the next few weeks, but it looks like that has been pushed back again. I wasn't desperately keen on the return of our old buddy evil nightshift Grant, plus I like having the house to myself during the day, so no broken hearts at the delay on this end!

I had another thesis-y Monday which seems to have involved adding about 3000 words to the text, although I am not entirely sure where they landed as I was messing with the whole thing. I am now at about 10000 words and am nowhere near having made my point - and this with a 15000 word limit. My supervisor is under strict instructions to edit all waffle. We will see. I am thinking of tweaking the structure a bit AGAIN but he has slapped me across the knuckles for even thinking about it, so I will have to try to manage that in secret.

Tuesday I got to play doublespeak in a meeting the degree coordinator and marketing for my uni organised with some students so that they can better prostitute, I mean PROMOTE, themselves to the market. It was actually quite useful. One thing I have found really strange is the different cultural expectations of an LLM. In countries like Australia, the UK and Japan, a Masters degree is something you get when you already have work experience - an investment in swifter promotion or at least a higher charge-out rate, and therefore $$$$$$$, which is what we all want deep down in our lawyerly black hearts. But there are lots of European students who are doing the LLM straight from their undergraduate programs because they want to get into specialist fields. It may well work in Europe, but a specialist LLM wouldn't get you into a job in IP in Australia.

Speaking of which there is a joke in English IP/academic circles that the only IP lawyers are in fact Australians. When I introduced myself to the meeting as an Australian IP lawyer, the arbitration senior lecturer interrupted "Is there any other kind?" Oz seems to produce and export more IP practitioners than you would expect - perhaps that whole "clever country" thing is paying off? Or perhaps the combination of an increasingly US-style litigious culture with a UK legal system makes Oz IP lawyers a more saleable commodity? Dunno.

Yesterday I rode to uni in very pretty winter sun, had my usual vicious argument with trade mark lecturer number 2, who is constitutionally incapable of agreeing with anything I say even though he may later make a statement of his views which may be uncannily similar to those I have just stated. I actually *agree* with the principle we were fighting about, but not about the procedural way in which the UK Patents Office deals with the issue - allowing an Examiner to "guess" that a trade mark is not intended to be used in a country which allows intention to use filing? ARGH. Never mind, I am making myself cranky again just thinking about it. Also had an interesting tutorial afterwards in which I remembered and disgorged everything I ever knew about the US doctrine of functionality. However I have no idea why I know it as we haven't covered it yet in class (so as you can imagine, the tutorial question on that direct subject was therefore pretty fun for everyone to answer). I think it was something at work? Anyway, a sure fire way to impress fellow students is to say "aesthetic functionality" sagely. Try it at home.

Today I had my so very tiring 4 hours of classes. I do like Thursdays though as it's the day when the IP peeps have lunch together. I *may* have been asked about the Crocodile Hunter. Later shocked a Nigerian student (independence from UK: 1960) by informing him that Australia technically only became independent in 1987 (GO AUSTRALIA ACT 1987!).

Tonight we are off to bar trivia with Bin at Ealing. Since we know NOTHING of local personalities it is always fun. Trade marks and public figures are the lingua franca in this world and without knowledge of either, trivia and comedy including "Never Mind the Buzzcocks" (second most awesome UK telly programme after "Top Gear" which is now back on the air) are quite bizarre experiences.

And then I have a whole 2 hours of uni left for the week. Gosh, it's a hard life.

Thesis words this week: roughly 3000, 1800 good ones
Steps last week: 120000 or so
Steps this week: Meh.

If you see my mother, tell her to call me!

Let it Snow!

In the few milliseconds between the alarm going off and me hitting the snooze button, we heard the news report say something along the lines of "south-east England ... snow". Hang on a second! We're in the south-east of England!

And lo, this is what we saw out the window of the Pixieflat:


It had been snowing, and how!

We then got all excited, I got ready for work and we ventured outside into the virgin white snow. The t-shirt slogan "I'm a virgin, I'm just not very good at it" comes to mind about now.

Anyway, it was still exciting, and the first time Lauren had seen snow, like, in the city.


Reportedly, it was more snow than London has had in the last 3 years.

By the time I saw daylight again at lunch, all but a few specks of snow had gone. We are hoping for more tonight, so we can build a snowman like this.

I took a few more photos on the way to work, you can see them here.

Grant.

I'd write something, but my fingers are blue

OK, so I would be the first to admit that we had really a dream run of weather in this country. The weather than had Europeans hysterically screaming "GLOBAL WARMING!" had us musing "Isn't this pleasant?"

But it's now two degrees. And apparently falling. The pixieflat doesn't feel like a furnace when we come home anymore; it's cosy. We have had to TURN ON A HEATER (a little one, but still). More damning still, WE HAVE HAD TO CLOSE THE WINDOW. I AM WEARING THERMALS INSIDE THE FLAT.

The dining table, which is also the desk, is against the window and as I write, cold air drifts slowly down over my hands. I *could* close the curtains to warm up, but then I'd lose the few hours of daylight we get before night hits at 4pm.

Still, someone down the road has potted palms on the balcony and they're not dead, so it can't be that bad. AND we got a nice package of Aussie goodies in preparation for Australia/Invasion Day (thanks Jan and Paul!) so I am keeping warm with litres of Bushells tea. Made with teabags with tags! Hallelujah!

See, I actually *am* working over here!

It's something of an adjustment going from a rather speed-oriented job juggling billions of deadlines with everyone wanting everything done RIGHT NOW (in fact, a boss once gave me two things to do - being already busy, I asked her which one she wanted done first and she wanted them BOTH DONE AT THE SAME TIME) and every minute involving an influx of files, mail, faxes, calls and emails to my new life as a sane person. I mean as a student/housewife who spends two fulls days a week at home studying/cleaning things and 3 days per week at uni for 3.5 seconds total. Basically, I've gone from being the very model of a modern Sydney career gal and queen of efficiency (tip: cut out the dead wood, including anything in your life you may find pleasant, also consider eating your cereal WHILE walking the dog around the block in the morning) to being a giant lump with whole days rushing past and no self-discipline. This has not exactly lead to rapid progress on my thesis.

However, I've been trying to get a little more organised about my scads of time. Instead of sleeping in I now go for a walk to the station with Grant in the morning which sort of wakes me up. It's important however that I not wear comfy tracksuit pants for this as otherwise the whole day will be a write-off, don't ask me why. I try to get out to do the veg shopping while it's actually still daylight, even. In fact, the last two weeks have been 100,000 steps + which I think is not too bad. Oh yeah, and I now have free timekeeping software which I use to attempt to hammer myself into productivity, even if Grant thinks it is desperately pathetic (hey, timekeeping is a valuable SKILL in my profession; I have to stay in practice).

HOWEVER, my new-found self-discipline actually wasn't really translating very well to uni work. Yes, I've been to the library weekly for a couple of weeks. But then you actually have to read the stuff. Unfortunately photocopying doesn't itself provide for osmotic assimilation of the text. And what I was managing to write on the thesis was terribly discouraging as I changed the planned structure after I got a chunk done which meant I was going to have to rewrite it. So of course I just left it alone for a few weeks :)

But there is hope. I have discovered the 40/20 rule much beloved of PhD students (40 mins work, 20 mins break). It works really well if like me you are obsessive, bully yourself into sitting down to do 40 mins, and get up 3 hours later. Therefore not really a 40/20 rule so much as a 180-with-toilet-breaks rule but anyway, it seems to work. I've done 1800 words today that I think are actually useable. Total so far 6700, but about 2000 of those need to have quite a bit added to them to work with the new structure.

Now I'm scared to stop writing as it may be my only productive day of the academic year, but I've sort of run out of content so probably should give it a break and read some more grist for the mill. 15,000 words by July was never really in doubt, but it was in doubt that it would be any good!

Thesis today: 1800
Steps: 5700 dammit time for a walk.

O Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

OK, so now and then I have to be allowed a title that shows off a "classical" Novocastrian-style education, right?

We in the British Isles have been enjoying some 90mph+ winds lately. It's really quite extraordinary - diagonal walking is a new skill for me. Lots of trees down in Holland Park, but no damage in our immediate vicinity. It isn't cold but it's damn hard to maintain a natty hairstyle or to get from A to B via public transport without spending protracted periods stuck inside tube tunnels. I would say "typical England" but anyone who has depended on the Northern or North Shore train lines in Sydney knows just how reliable they are once heavy winds start dropping widowmaker gumtrees across the lines.

It's been warmer but apparently we are staring down the barrel of 3 and below next week, so time to break out the thermals perhaps.

Our Saturday morning looked like this:
This is a huge benefit of living with Grant by the way - delicious cooked breakfast at the weekend! The coffeepot was a present from Susan and Robert, and very well used it has been. See how nicely it goes with the dodgy red cookware? Also note wee cute Union Jack coffee cup!

The massive breakfast was required for our weekly walking adventure, this time SOUTH OF THE RIVER to Battersea Power Station (decommissioned) via Holland Park, Kensington, Earl's Court, Chelsea, and Wandsworth (including the runner-up to coolest graffiti ever after Newcastle's famous THIS IS NOT ART, namely this, and Battersea Park, which is very very pretty and has tasty soup. It took an hour and a half or so to get there, and way way longer to get to the power station, because they have cunningly surrounded it with building sites and dead ends. By the time we got a decent view on an obscure backstreet near the Vauxhall Bridge, we had gone way further east than originally intended. So, instead of heading back the way we came, we went home via Victoria (ooh, Little Ben! cute!), Hyde Park, Kensington Palace Gardens and Notting Hill. By that point we had walked a billion trillion miles, the breakfast and the soup had both worn off, and for once Grant was the one having the sugar crash instead of me. Picture a cranky pants Loz hungry hissyfit with twice the brute strength and much longer eyelashes!

My feet are killing me, but it was a lovely walk - sunshine, fancy architecture, and plenty of time beside the mighty Thames. However, I doubt we can force any visitors to undertake the journey on foot.

Many more pictures of the power station (for Robert) and a rather cool round building (for Mum) here.

Thesis words written for the week: 600. That is my head hanging in shame. 2000 last week. Happily, most of the 2600 has to be butchered/deleted/revised to fit in with my new structure. HURRAY!

The Festive Photos

Ok, a bit of catching up to do. I haven't taken a lot of photos recently, but we might as well run through a few of them...

We went to the Tate Modern with Robert, Harry, and Gus - primarily for the 5 storey slide. Unfortunately, there were no tickets left for the top slide, and the 4th floor slide didn't have any free slots for several hours (Robert et. al. went back later in the week and got on the slide). The Tate was quite interesting - some exceptional pieces in there, including one video piece that I really liked. The best bit was the minimalist section - not necessarily the works themselves, more watching other people walk in there looking around dumbfounded "oh, so, like, that's the artwork?"

From there Loz and Gus headed home, while Harry, Robert and I stopped off at The Old Swan for a couple of beers. Next stop was the Prince Of Wales hotel at Holland Park. We timed it pretty well on both occasions as it was pissing down outside (Loz and Gus got the worst of it!)

Skip forward to New Years Eve. Loz and I headed out to Claire and Belinda's place at Ealing (a couple of stops past my work) to join Vron and Sarah for some quiet celebrations. We enjoyed some great company, home made pizzas, wine, beers, and flaming pudding! Vron and Loz ran out of steam, and Loz and I were home by about 4am. Fortunately they had free trains running all night, so getting home wasn't a drama.

Vron joined us in the Pixieflat on New Years day, and we took her on the first of many epic walks she would be forced to do while here :) This one was to Holland Park.

Last weekend Loz and I went out and about (via Holland Park once again), did a bit more of exploration of our surrounding suburbs - past the Victoria and Albert museum (shell blasts from WWII) and a few other interesting things (this was in Knightsbridge... think Footballers Wives). We dropped in to Harrods - along with a ton of other people. We bought a carbon steel, pre-seasoned wok (*only* 15 pounds!), and I found a coffee cup.

That *mostly* brings us up to date... and we promise to keep this thing a bit more up to date!

A few additional photos in the usual place.

We done had a holiday season

Hi all

A long silence. Sorry about that. We are all still here, but busy for a change.

Last week was my first back at uni, or to put it another way the end of my "holiday." I was sad about this for a couple of hours before I realised:

(a) I had actually done more uni work over the break than the rest of the first term, and had done it while having tons of visitors;

(b) I used to work a ten hour day minimum and now have eight hours per week of uni. THIS IS A HOLIDAY, in other words.

It was actually great to be back and see all the generally fun and nice people with whom I study. Sure, some of them are basically five and a half, but they're very precocious. And there are a few thirty-somethings who sit around and angst glumly about careers, which makes me feel right at home.

Also last week I had a very welcome taste of corporate hospitality with one of the UK lawyers with whom I occasionally collaborated at work. She was very nice indeed but I had forgotten that one of the main traits of generous corporate hospitality is that it refuses to accept no for an answer. Hence I was plyed with enough New Zealand white (not too bad actually - well done to our trans-Tasman cousins!) that I was rather the worse for wear the next day. When of course I had to go to uni.

Other than that we have had a really busy holiday season with family visiting and visits to and of local friends and most importantly a 2 week stay from Vron, whom we have missed terribly. It was great to have her around to just generally hang out, but between us we also did the obligatory tourist hike of 90% of the Greater London area, as well as surgical strikes on its largest museums. There's a great metalwork exhibit at the V&A should anyone be interested.

Of course, three people in the pixieflat was also rather an adventure. When your main bedroom is also the loungeroom, your guest bedroom is - drumroll - your KITCHEN (hygiene dictated that the bathroom not be used for this purpose). Vron has now become one of a select group of humans, namely those who have banged their head on a fridge in their sleep. Vron flew out on Saturday, and we are trying to be brave about it but maybe our chins are a little bit wobbly.

In other news, yesterday involved a mammoth hike through the wilds of Kensingtons north and south as we conducted a tour of department stores of the West End, or at least Marks and Spencer and Harrods. Harrods is very very very DJs-ish although bigger, and I am trying to work out which was the chicken and which was the egg in that particular scenario without checking the Internet, because that would be cheating. Harrods is grossly overpriced on most fronts but does have a room decorated with sphinxes which few other stores could boast. Furthermore, they sold us a union jack demitasse coffee cup for Grant (matches his new red coffeepot, thanks Susan & Robert!) and a CARBON STEEL WOK AT LONG LAST. The fact that the latter cost the same number in pounds on sale as the last one I bought at Flemington markets in Sydney cost in dollars is kind of par for the course, but since they are the only establishment in the entire country so far that has been willing to pony up a carbon steel wok and since I am sick of scooping veg all over the place from the frypan while attempting to stir fry, I am praising Harrods.

But I'm never going back there because it was really busy and scary and really really hard to get out of, and they were cheating by using the perfume and cosmetics rooms to scare me away from the exits.

Not a great deal of proper travel lately due to aforementioned visitors. We are in the early stages of working out another euro trip, but in the meantime are planning more extensive use of the "25 Day Trips from London" book!

Can you tell I am avoiding a copyright assignment as we speak?

Loz

*sigh* family

Sometimes you don't realise how much you miss something until you have it back. I've experienced it a little when I don't speak to Mum and Dad for a little while, but it has kind of hit home with the visit by Susan, Robert, Harry and Gus.

They did (eventually) get here. We had arrange with Jen to go out for dinner on the Thursday night for Gus' birthday (not a great photo, but *you* try and get Gus to smile) but as they were delayed due to the fog, we made it Friday (in the end they arrived at ~10:30pm, and then had a *perfect* cab ride back to Jen's place). We all had a good time on Friday night, and the Chinese restaurant was great!

(As I had been psyched up to Do Something on the Thursday, Loz and I met up at Notting Hill Gate and went to The Old Swan for dinner. While I was waiting for Loz, I took some night photos.)

On Saturday the crew came in to check out Portobello Rd (via the architectural wonder that is Trellick Tower) , and then we took them to Kensington Palace Gardens and the Orangery. Our waiter wasn't there, but we had a lovely afternoon tea nonetheless. As it is London. the sun was well and truly down by the time we left, but we walked home via the Prince Albert Memorial and Royal Albert Hall. (Mental note, must see Cirque du Soleil there, if only for bragging rights).

Loz and I headed out to Twickenham on Christmas Eve (London really does shut down on Christmas day - NO public transport whatsoever!). Christmas morning alas brought us no snow. We did go for a walk along the Thames to Richmond for a pint though. Robert cooked up a storm as usual, and the Christmas turkey was excellent!

Boxing day was quiet, and as I had to prepare psychologically for work, we headed home early-ish so I could mope. Three of the most boring work days in history ensued, and that pretty much brings us up to date.

There is talk of doing some trials of at least part of the Monopoly Pub Crawl tomorrow, but I suspect we will just faff about in the city - which is pretty much the same thing!

More to follow post-New Years (with Vron!).

Grant.

Relevant photos.

Brass Monkey Weather

WINTER HAS ARRIVED!

I am going by the following signs:

1. There is fog everywhere (see below)- all domestic flights out of Heathrow apparently cancelled today. Merry Christmas everyone.
   
2. The sun doesn't rise until about 8am (which of course means I sleep in until 8.30am) and sets at 3.30pm, not that you can SEE the sun!
3. I can no longer leave the house without my wearable doona with the hood up AND a beanie underneath AND gloves, and even then my legs are freezing. I *could* implement a long johns policy but then I would boil the second I went indoors anywhere.
4. I just had to turn the water tank's flow to the heater units on and then even turned an actual heater on, which we have never ever done really.
   
5. Most tellingly of all, Grant has purchased an overcoat. I think this is in a holy text somewhere as a sign of the impending apocalypse.

Because Uni is on holidays, saving me a whole 12 hours or so a week including commute time, I'm not cycling much at the moment and more walking. It rather brings home the difference between cycling in Winter (lots of energy expended, nice toasty core temperature even when wearing very little protective clothing) vs walking in Winter (SWEET JESUS I CAN'T FEEL MY LEGS).

On the plus side, Uni has brought so much paper into my life that if it gets much colder we can have a nice cosy bonfire.

Today I am going to the library for the third time ever, which is again possibly a sign of the apocalypse - you have been warned!