To begin, one of my latest facebook status update was (which I do just to make you all jealous!):
"Nicole had a fab day of getting her eyebrows groomed at Harvey Nichols; buying lunch and goat's cheese from Harrods; shopping on Oxford St, and then joining thousands of people to see the switch-on of the Oxford St Christmas lights be carried out by Jim Carrey and also saw Peter Andre perform. Also saw my first celeb today; no idea who, but they were surrounded by security and paparazzi. Who knew so much could happen in one day?"
Which pretty much sums up my first few days I have been in London. I've also dressed up as a sexy Devil, walked along the streets of London with a witch and two pumpkins, been hit-on by a pretentious 31 year old who proceeded to tell me at the tender age of 24, I know nothing about life and just wait until I'm 31, then I'll understand everything (yeah right).
I've also had the pleasure of utilising a free pass to a Virgin Active gym. I did my first BodyAttack class in about four months and I don't recall BodyAttack being this hard. Maybe it's been my lack of strenuous movement in the last two months (unless you count running from one heated building or train station to the next – I’m really not made for this cold weather) or perhaps it was the instructor’s northern English accent as the reason why I had trouble following, but geez, it hurt! And not just, "Ooo, this is a bit uncomfortable", it was lungs exploding, stitch in side, I think I may be having a minor heart attack, hurt. But with everyone else doing the moves around me in full swing, I couldn't show any weakness. It was me against the English and like any true Aussie, I wasn't going to let them win. Highlight was that the instructor did the "Crank Dat, Soldier Boy" plyo track, which I love. Disgusting song, great track.
With my free pass and after being shown around the gym by the charming and quite attractive Virgin boy (oh, you knew that was coming) I decided to take full advantage of the experience. One thing to note is the buildings in London and that, even though it is a gym, it has to work with the building's original structure and thus the result is a gym that also doubles as a maze! So after asking for directions in the ladies changeroom, I found the sauna and set myself up for a good 30 minutes of heated relaxation. Thankfully I had the whole thing to myself as the metal part on my bikini top was beginning to burn me each time it touched my skin and so I decided to just discard it. Wouldn't have been a problem anyway, seems not having your kit on at Virgin Active is the way to go with many women stripping down and running around naked all over the changeroom. They also have signs around the gym saying, "No paparazzi", ha! Lovely gym though, when I get some money together back home (which we all know will be never), I plan on joining a Virgin Active gym. Good facilities, free towels, not Fitness First - what's not to like?
I’m also loving Pineapple Dance Studios at Covent Garden. It has dance classes for all styles and levels. Vanessa took me to her Commercial Dance class last Saturday and it was, to quote the Brits, wicked! The warm-up is super strenuous and luckily I do have the flexibility to keep up. To best describe the class jsut think of the movie Centre Stage, where Jodie is frustrated with her lack of success and fulfilment in her American Ballet Company classes and so ends up at some local dance studio taking a funky jazz class. Now slow that down a notch, make the class only women (no cute men) and the participants don't magically know the routine, the teacher teaches us it as we go. She shows us the steps about three or four times and then we put it all together. In this class we danced to "Halfway" by The Black Eyed Peas (hence this post's song) and it's been in my head ever since. I still remember the moves, rocking them out a bit in my tiny room.
Most people in the class were of the same dance level, not pro, lacking in technical training, but definitely co-ordinated and possess some skill. Except for this one woman (who is a friend of the teacher and I guess there to guide us when we all have to do it by ourselves as she stands up the front) and she is amazing! Her body is just pure muscles; her arse does not move, as it seems to have moulded into one hard piece of muscle and her body does things mine could never do... and she wears scary, deep red lipstick. But even so, wow!
We also decided to hang around for the Michael Jackson dance class led by the charismatic, yet slightly frustrated Anthony King - google his name, he's like, way famous in the dance world. In the spirit of Halloween and the movie 'This Is It', we learnt a piece from the Thriller video, which is quite hard, unsurprisingly. MJ's moves are so bloody intricate that everyone got picked on for doing a wrong move every single minute. Made the class a bit slow and you just felt like saying, "Look, we're not pros, clearly we're here because the King is dead, now can we just get on with and it and learn the claw bit?" Though Anthony did tell Vanessa that she has good hip-popping hips. Go Vanessa!
After this mammoth day of using every possible muscle in my body and pretending to be the King of Pop, my body was aching. I was ready for a date with a hot bath and some Epsom salts, yet instead we settled for two large pizzas and a trip to a Halloween party in my borrowed devil outfit (no, I don’t travel with devil outfits in my suitcase). I hate sexy fancy dress costumes, I think they're so typical and gross, but it's all that was on offer, and I would have stuck out more as a normal civilian than as a slutty little devil. I do regret not going as a murder victim as we stopped by friends of my roommates where they had ha fake blood a-plenty. But what the real highlight of the night was my roommates who made their own costumes out of foam and spray paint and went as a pumpkin and a squash. And the guy who dressed up as a motorcycle accident, bad taste but his behaviour was more interesting than anything. Such a photo whore, so I got a picture with him!
Oh and the Halloween party was where I met that charming 31 year chap who felt that at 24 years of age I don’t know anything about life. Annoying to be told this, but I put it down to this guy just being a massive wanker. He also then talked about how living in London is the easy way out for Australians when living overseas and that's why he's going to go live in Paris and you know, be all out-there and stuff. Oh, and that every other Australian does the easy travel options like seeing the usual tourist sites while he likes to go "on the unbeaten track" and see the unusual parts. Ugh. I hate travellers like this who think they are above everyone else. No one cares. Millions of people travel, you're not unique. It's how you approach your trip and with an attitude like that, I'd say it's best you either stay home or go somewhere like Siberia so no one has to listen to you. I think he is lamenting his youth and taking it out on those who are the age he wishes he still was.
What else happened... gosh, well I met up with a girl I made friends with in Hamburg and we had a good day of having brekkie, getting our photo taken at Platform 9 and 3/4 (Fink you're being funny? It was my idea of course), and then drinking a beer for tea in Victoria watching the first rush of peak-hour set in. Then I had to dash off as Vanessa, her friend Selina and I had tickets to see 'This Is It' at Leicester Square. Selina had tickets to the concert so I guess this is a small consolidation for what she missed out on, and it looked like it would have been an amazing concert.
Then I spent some money at Primark, this awesome department store that sells all these clothes really cheap. Bought a high-waisted navy skirt with gold buttons and suspenders (sounds gross, it's not), a satin grey shirt, a retro-style black and white dress and a pearl necklace to match and finally I bought myself some flannelette pjs as I'm sick of sleeping in my tracksuit pants. Then after having Suzanne glam us all up, Vanessa, Selina and I headed out to Kensington to the Piano Room for some drinks and piano music, sung by a hot British man who took song requests. Score!
Sunday was met with particular laziness. A lazy breakfast of eggs benedict with smoked salmon (at a restaurant, I did not cook this myself), a movie with my other housemate Dana and then just having a quiet one in with Thai food. Monday saw the farewell of Vanessa as she embarked on her long flight to Sydney while I inhabit her room for the next three weeks.
Then I went off to my dance class and learned I cannot do pirouettes very well. I may need to practice in the lounge room before I head back for tomorrow, and hopefully not break anything in the process. I kept missing the count and it would just stuff me up for the rest of the sequence, very frustrating. Thankfully Physie has a total of zero turns so after London I will never have to do another pirouette again. Oh, and during the stretches we have to do the splits and I am happy to report I can still do them. I think I’m going to do a Basic Ballet class as well. Never tried ballet, can’t hurt, might even improve my physie skills. Watch out you little 18 year old Intermediate Seniors, Nicole’s coming home!
I haven’t spoken about our other housemate. Well he has dark hair, very elusive, but when he does make an appearance he causes quite a stir! No, it’s not Gerard Butler… it’s a mouse! A dirty, rotten mouse! A mouse that decided to visit me the other night while I was emailing Ange B. I screamed, ran across the room and leapt onto the couch and perched myself on the arm for a good 10 minutes with my eyes firmly locked on where I thought the mouse had gone. I didn't see it again but that doesn't matter, there was a friggin mouse in the room and everyone was asleep! Not even my high-pitched screams woke anyone up so they could help me; I had to weather this storm alone! So, I moved the couch, looked under the TV, behind the washing – everywhere I could think a mouse might hide. I then moved all the food out of the lounge room and back into the kitchen so it wouldn't have a reason to stay and when I finally decided it was time for me to sleep (aka my eyes were closing as it was 3am), I kept the lights on and also kept waking up every hour just to check that it wasn't crawling on me. Didn’t have a great night sleep that night I must say, and when I did sleep I had some really weird dreams, none to do with mice funnily enough.
And finally, yesterday I went to Harvey Nichols to get my eyebrows groomed. They were looking atrocious and resorting back to their natural caterpillar appearance. The method used at the Blink eyebrow bar is eyebrow threading, which is amazing; painful, but amazing. Then I bought my Chanel foundation, which I've decided to stock up on here, as it is only $55 while in Oz it is $85!!! Also stocked up on some MAC products and my Stila order came in the post the other day. Make up here is ridiculously cheap. Then I headed to Harrods for a bit of a squiz at all the yummy food and bought myself a prawn baguette, some goat's cheese and then ate it in Starbucks. I also ooed and ahhed at the chocolates they had and wished I could eat at the seafood grill restaurants there if I had a spare £30.
After wandering aimlessly up and down Oxford Street I then came across this huge amount of people standing around Oxford Circus at about 5pm. So I thought, “Hrmm… wonder what’s going on here?” and joined the crowd, which then turned into a mass crowd. Seems it was the lighting of the Oxford St Christmas Lights and who was doing the switching on? None other than Jim Carrey himself - which explains all the A Christmas Carol decorations. So I parked myself next to a mum and her two teenage daughters and thousands of other Londoners, risking swine flu infection but too excited to care.
I was lucky enough to get to listen to some nobody radio host and Jason Donovan (who still has his Aussie accent), watch the cast of Sister Act perform three songs (definitely not seeing that show, they don't even sing songs from the original movie, what an outrage, give the public what it wants!), The Saturdays perform (who?), some r&b/pop star and - wait for it - Peter Andre! The Brits love him here! And no he didn't sing "Gimme A Little Sign" or my personal fave, "Mysterious Girl"; he sang some new song from his latest album. I didn't even know he still sang; all I know he is famous for is being with that disgusting excuse for a human being Jordin who is a role model to all Chavs in England but should really be in jail.
FINALLY, after much standing around in the cold, Jim Carrey was introduced on stage and the 16 year old girl next me went nuts! Personally, I was pining for Mr Darcy himself, Colin Firth, but after a much drawn-out celebration of switching a bunch of lights on, Jim Carrey was good enough for me. So he pulled his little lever and the street lit up! It was like magic!
Then along with thousands of people around me, we all pushed our way out and dispersed along the streets. I fled to a Starbucks to read my book and wait for the crowd to die down a bit as I didn’t fancy being squished in a train carriage again (see Bastille Day posting from July). When I did finally emerge I strutted down Oxford Street admiring the lights and taking the odd snap. Such a lovely night. When I finally made it home I found Suzanne had made some yummy soup. Mmmmmm!
And can I ask, where the hell did my tan go? Here is me only 2 months ago:
And here is me now:
WTF happened? What's this moontan I've developed? Surely I don't look this pale back in Oz? And it's not just the flash; I'm like this in every picture. And I can't tan in Oz when I come home because we don't have a bloody Ozone layer. Grr to paleness.
Moving on… I got my hair done today (I wrote the above yesterday but went to sleep). I now have a fringe and my hair is a dark chocolate brown colour. I walked into the apartment and Suzanne is like, “You look so London now!” Yay! I'm not entirely sold on the look though and as soon as I walked out of the salon my fringe blew to the side so I bee-lined it for the nearest supermarket, bought some hairspray and dowsed it to keep it in place. I can see myself getting over it very soon. Enjoying the long hair now because I think I might chop my hair off again, just above my shoulders. Long hair gets in the way.
I needed to get a pic asap as I will never be able to get it this hair salon glossy. Bit difficult trying to get the pic done so I went into TopShop, grabbed some clothes and took some pics in the privacy of their changerooms. And walked out buying a top.
And I found some red boots! Yay! Not at TopShop though, some other store, no idea what but I should probably find out as they had to order in my size and I need to pick them up when they come in.
But that’s it, no more shopping. I can’t afford to buy anything more. I’ve looked at my credit card and my cash and I miscounted something and I may be a little effed credit card-wise when I come home. So I’m thinking, two casual jobs for the first half of the year and just work hard to pay off all my debt. Once I have that under control I can save a bit more money and then move out. FINALLY!
So tomorrow is going to be a frugal day of walking through parks, visiting museums and art galleries - all free!
I didn't even get to talk about Hamburg yet... okay well.... next time.
PS – The UK has the best trashy TV, and luckily my roomie, Suzanne, loves it just as much as I do. We’re currently watching “Ugly Models” and the other night we watched a prestigious doco entitled, “Why Men Watch Porn.” Lovely.
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