Food for thought

On the plane today, the lady in the seat next to me ordered a tea with splenda sugar and non-dairy creamer.  A sugar with no sugar and a cream with no cream.

Wait. What. Who decided this was OK? Does it count as food?

thinking about 2010

Still in Boston...Rhys has promised a guest post about our time here. While Christmas day has just finished, the Boxing day madness has probably gripped shops everywhere. Happily I am avoiding the mahem and staying home at my Grandma's house thinking about things. After all,  there happens to be a minor blizzard happening outside right now. So no better time to curl up  with a hot chocolate!

**
Thinking about 2010 it seems like the longest year in the world. So many things have been jammed into 365 days, but I feel like most of the time I wasn't busy at all. Yet somehow all these things have happened. I'm going to take that as a good sign all around. Let's see...
1. Visited 6 countries....New Zealand (it counts), England, Germany, the Phillippines, Norway, and the USA. Not a bad record since 5 of those countries happened in the past 3 months.
2. Left my family. Most people do this when they head off to university, but I'm glad I stuck around. Leaving home is more difficult than I remembered. and moving is more difficult than I remembered (I guess if I did remember I would have been too scared to go)
3. Moved to a new city and set myself up in a nice flat, after a few mis-fires with the first flats I lived in. Note for the future: If the house has a hole in the roof and a bonkers landlady, it's probably not a nice place to live.
4. Learned to pack light. Moving around the world with only 23 kilos of luggage means I got to give a lot away. And of course pack exactly all the wrong things I didn't need. Who moves to London with no umbrella or raincoat?!
5. Graduated from University. Twice.
6. Decided to not do post-grad. Decided to do post-grad. Decided to not do post-grad again. Flip-flopped about and decided actually London was much more exciting and difficult.
7. Got a job at Verkerks in Christchurch and learned about salami.
8. Started to work at Trimble NZ again, and learned how to do data entry while watching TED videos.
9. Got my first real job in London and learned about TV....and became a professional blogger!

So that's 9 big things...not sure what will happen in 2011. But hopefully I will hit another 6 countries! topping the mental list for the moment:
*Italy: Rome, Pompei, Florence
*Greece: bicycling around the islands
*Paris: mooning about the city
So this of course leads us to new years resolutions. My first one is easy, "go to more museums more often. See all of the British museum". My second one hard "make some friends". always a tough one. Looks like I will have to do some activities.

Best book of the year:
Young Picasso, by Norman Mailer

Much love to everyone at home
xoxoxox

4 days to go

4 days until Christmas...fingers crossed our flight to Boston isn't cancelled this week. We had 5 inches of snow on Saturday, and London is still reeling in shock. I thought it was pretty normal for the underground to be out of order the day it snowed (every single one of the 12 lines were down the entire day). However, what I didnt expect was the insanity at Heathrow Airport. Things are manic, with flights still running at 1/3 capacity. And it is now Tuesday night...aparently things should be back to normal on Thursday which is the day we fly. It is a bit of mystery how flights are still behind. My favorite new fact is that Helsinki Airport hasn't been closed since 2003. In 2003 they had to close for 30 minutes, and then everything was up and going again. So why does it take Heathrow 4 days to recover from one 5 inch snow fall?? 

At least we got to build a snowman.

Winter Wonderland in London

There is nothing like waking up to snow falling! Our whole neighbourhood is transformed into a winter wonderland. It's amazing how with a bit of snow, everyone comes out of their houses smiling, throwing snowballs, rolling snowmen, making snow angels, slipping about, and of course sledding. We even managed to build our own snowman in the front yard after the "arduous" task of shovelling the front walk.

7 Days to go. . .

until a moomintroll christmas!

The Year in Review, as defined by Google Search Terms

Oslo

This past week I was lucky enough to score a business trip to Oslo along with one of my coworkers (who regularly does business trips around Europe- respect). M. picked me up at at 5:30am on Tuesday morning and drove to Stansted London Airport.

It's worthy to note at this point if you ever come to London that Standsted and Gatwick Airports - although they are "London Airports" both require over an hour of travel to get to actual London. It's much better to come into Heathrow where it's only a 15 minute high speed train ride to central London!


We were flying Ryanair- only £8 round trip to get from London to Oslo. very very cheap, I guess no one wants to go to Norway in the dead of winter. -16 C during the day, and only 4 hours of sunlight, or something ridiculous. Here in balmy London we get nearly 7 whole hours of sunlight (or of non-darkness since usually it's overcast)!

Christmas Countdown: 14 days until Christmas

This blog has become some sort of strange Christmas countdown. Anyway: to celebrate 14 days to go, here is a little christmas video!

Simon's Cat: Santa Claws


did I mention that reading The Guardian is my new obsession? they have excellent (hilarious) opinion columns and long articles. The BBC still wins when it comes to getting the news in short, and the New York Times for US news, but The Guardian wins. And apparently NYTimes.com is going behind a pay wall in early 2011, so don't get too attached....

Home sweet home

Last week I finally moved away from my temporary flat and into a new house in Dollis Hill.

The flat seems to be working out extremely well - I finally feel like I am home, not just living in the awkward-in-between.

The flat is in a neighborhood in North West London, about 20 minutes from central London by Tube. The house is pretty far north, and close to Wembley Park (Where some Olympic events will be held in 2012!). It is a small cute flat that is packed like sardines- 6 people and one bathroom requires some intense morning planning.

The problem with London...

Is that you can only buy clothes in one of three colours; Black, navy and camel. I actually went shoe-shopping yesterday and encountered an entire store devoted to black shoes and nothing else.

On the bright side (no pun intended) Christmas is just around the corner! The countdown is officially on, Christmas parties are approaching, packages are mailed, the tree is decorated and the cookie-baking season is upon us!

PS Send me your Christmas cookie recipes!

Visiting Cologne and German Christmas Markets

Cologne cathedral was huge huge huge- awe-inspiring. It took 600 years to complete the building- from 1200 to 1800, only to have it nearly bombed out during WWII. Koln has the unfortunate luck of being situated on the banks of the rhine river which of course was the site of a lot of fighting during WWII. Just about the entire town of Koln was razed to the ground during the fighting- but somehow the cathedral survived (Although parts are still being repaired and rebuilt)

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.   

His house is in the village though;   

He will not see me stopping here   

To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

My little horse must think it queer   

To stop without a farmhouse near   

Between the woods and frozen lake   

The darkest evening of the year.   

He gives his harness bells a shake   

To ask if there is some mistake.   

The only other sound’s the sweep   

Of easy wind and downy flake.   

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.   

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep.

-Robert Frost

Visiting Cologne by Train

This past weekend Rhys and I took the Eurostar to Cologne (Koln) Germany- on the high speed trains it is only 4 hours, including the transfer in Bruxelles to make it from downtown London (from Kings Cross Station, but not from platform 9 3/4) to downtown Koln.*

*there are a alternate spellings for everything. it seems that English speakers like to re-name every German town, as well as the name of Deutschland itself (english speakers call it "germany", spanish speakers call it "alemania", german speakers call it "deutschland"....I don't know what other languages call it, but I'm sure it's all different.


The train ride was very pretty- especially when we crossed into France and got our first glimpse of snow-covered countryside: