Living in London is a full-time job

Another song from Wicked called 'For Good'. My second favourite after 'Defying Gravity'. Seeing it again on Wednesday with slightly better seats. Can't wait! So I'm going to dedicate this beautiful song to my even more beautiful friends and to anyone who has touched my life in a positive way.

So, I have only been out three times in London and last night was definitely most interesting…

Me and housemates Dana and Suzanne

 

The girl on the left, Dana, is nice enough, though a touch abrasive (or a lot). Most of the time I like her, but I think she needs to watch how she speaks to people. Especially me.

So anyway, this week's weather, for the most part, has been absolutely dismal and I have found myself curling up into a little ball each morning, refusing to leave the comfy, warm confines of my bed. This has then seen me not leaving the apartment until about 1pm, after my roommate Suzanne, has stuffed me full with all the yummy food she cooks.

"Would you like some Tom Yum soup/pumpkin soup/stew/pear tart that I just whipped up?"

The only thing I can really cook is either pasta (pasta, boiling water and sauce - too easy) or things like mussels in vegetable broth, crispy skinned duck in blood plum sauce or salt and pepper squid. Because when I cook it has to be a masterpiece, not something that is practical. So for dinner tonight I had nutella on toast and a hot milo as I just didn’t have a spare duck on hand.

Hey, it's six weeks till Christmas. It's going to be strange not having Christmas with my family in sunny Australia, teasing and gossiping with my cousins or eating a hot meal on Christmas Eve that my Oma has cooked (because even though they no longer live in a cold climate, they still insist on cooking heavy, hot meals for Christmas. Old habits die hard I guess). Not sure what meal we're having this year as we're going to be a bit pressed for time as we’re spending Christmas Day on a sleigh ride up a mountain in Salzburg and then catching a train to Vienna the same day. I think maybe Kristi (and whoever else wants to come) and I will have a Christmas Eve dinner as her family is Finnish and mine is German so we both celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve. It better snow. I didn’t come all this way to not have a white Christmas. You hear that Earth? Do as I say. 

It is going to freezing though. I was walking through Covent Garden with Suzanne and we went into Accessorize and they were selling earmuffs, by which I proclaimed I would never resort to wearing something as silly as earmuffs. After Suzanne informed me it will be so cold I will be begging to owe a pair I decided to give them a chance, and as predicted, I looked so stupid. It’s not happening. I would rather have my ears succumb to frostbite and sport the Van Gogh look than wear fuzzy earmuffs.

In other news on my random experiences in London, I walked passed Orlando Bloom the other day! No joke. I had just finished my dance class and went looking for the awesome cupcake place that Vanessa had taken me to on my first weekend in London (alas it was closed). So instead I decided to seize the moment of a gorgeous night and go for a stroll through the streets of London and eventually found myself in the Strand. While I was walking along a secluded street I noticed someone walking towards me who looked familiar. Why would someone be looking familiar to me in London, I don't know anyone here. The person came closer and closer and then I realised... OMG... it's Legolas! We locked eyes for a split second, and let’s not get mistaken here; I don't think it is because he thought I was good looking, it was probably because I was staring at him in a very confused way. Unfortunately, because I had just come from a dance class, my face was still all red and my hair was a sweaty mess. I didn't try to polish myself up too much because I didn't think I'd be bumping into crushes from yesteryear! This is why London is so much more interesting than Sydney. The only person I have walked passed who is even a little bit famous in Sydney was Wayne Cooper and who wants to get excited about that? He’s a woman-basher and not worthy of any kind of recognition in my opinion.

I'm so crushed. This is not how I envisioned myself meeting my teenage crush. In case you don't already know, myself and another girl who I went to high school with, Holly, were obsessed with Legolas. In fact, I think that's a bit of an understatement. I'm pretty sure we went and saw the Fellowship of the Ring about five times - that's 15 hours of sitting and watching the same movie over and over, yikes! But it was worth it. I even created an email account in honour of Legolas and may or may not have written the odd fan-fiction based on Orlando Bloom. Very sad, I know. However, now Orlando has lost his appeal as he hasn't made a movie in a while (how fickle am I?) and he's a bit old. But still, if he had turned around and proclaimed his love for me, I wouldn’t have said no.

So, yesterday I went to the Tate Modern with a friend's friend's brother. I'm pretty sure it was a date, ugh. I met him at a Halloween party and kind of just went with him as he had a free pass to the Pop Life exhibition. Yes, using people is wrong, but when you’re on a budget, well... there's a place in hell for people like me, I'm sure. As punishment though, it was very awkward and it was just I talking the whole time because this person just doesn't speak. By the end I made up an excuse that I was really tired and should probably head home.

As for the Tate Modern, yeah not a fan of pop art. I just don't get it. It looks cool, but I think I’m missing the deep meaning behind it all. Some I ‘got’, while others I just thought were a bit trite. But whatevs, I'm sure there are people out there who appreciate it for what it is.

There were also rooms that contained very sexually explicit picture art. What I found most interesting was watching people walk into the room and observing their reactions as the images, which are about 4mx3m in size, are quite confronting. Some people tried to act cool, like they see this sort of thing everyday; others would laugh; others couldn’t tear their eyes away; some people pretended not to look, while others headed straight back out again. As for me, well I almost tripped over the rope that was surrounding a piece of artwork. It would have been highly embarrassing, though extremely hilarious if I had gone crashing into the artwork, which was a sculpture of two people having sex, connected parts and all. That would have been one for the ‘How Embarrassment’ pages in Girlfriend.

Then another piece of art was just a television showing a video of two people having sex. You could see people wanting to keep watching but felt it was too socially unacceptable to keep doing so. I left everyone else to it, as I just didn’t want to see anymore. There was more material on show, which was also very explicit and a little hard to take.

Overall I was disappointed with the exhibition. Lucky I didn’t have to pay. The National Portrait Gallery has an exhibition on British pop music from the 60s entitled ‘Beatles to Bowie’ so I think I'll head there sometime during the week. That’s a bit more up my alley. After the Tate Modern I did get a few pics in front of Shakespeare's Globe, finally.

And lastly, let's face it, I'm never going to write a post on Greece or Helsinki so just head to my bestie's blog and read the account there: Greece and Helsinki. :-)

Late-erz!