Wimbledon

This weekend sees me going to one of the greatest event of the British sporting calendar: Wimbledon.

Met Jean at Waterloo station around 6:30 a.m. and catch the next overland train to Wimbledon. Share a cab at the station and ride straight to the “Que-bledon”    

 

 As you can see thanks to Borat its ok to wear Bikini for a man, I am sure in a 100 years it will just like the Scots to with their kilts. We waited for almost 3 hours before we got to the gate where we can buy tickets. So we bought along some entertainment for our morning.

  

 No I didn’t managed to solve the Rubik’s cube. I think it tookme like an hour before I Managed to learn how to solve like one side! What was that old saying about old dogs new tricks again? One thing about Wimbledon is that they have their queueing system pretty much down pad. Theres even a 37 pages A5 guide on rules of how to Queue as well. Once you in the Queue they issue you with a “Queue card” which says what day and queue sequence you queued for. Without this card they will not sell you a ticket. 

 

This is as far as I got to the centre court. You see theres only two way to buy tickets for the centre court. Either you enrolled in a lottery run back in 2007 or you camp overnight to be the first to buy the ticket on the day. The only problem with the lottery is that its usually like a year ahead of the actual championship and you don’t even get to choose which day the ticket is for! Queueing for the day has its drawback too: The last three day of the championship the centre court tickets are all sold in advance!

Its not a bad thing to queue. With weather like Saturday it just like you spending a fine Saturday morning laying in the park hanging out with some of your best friend.  

Caught a bit of the action of the matches on the outside courts. Saturday was the day scheduled for Boy’s and Girl’s Single matches.

   

 TBH I almost fell asleep court side on most matches! The 5 hour sleep and the drinks I have the night before certainly didn’t help! It just hard to fire yourself up watching a match when you are equally indifferent about both sides!

 

And here are the souvenirs!! Just to let you guys know the tennis balls really stink!!

Sunday caught up with Eugene and his mates to watch Spain win over Germany in the Euro. It was an alright match and I have to say the Spaniard really deserves the win!!

Well I will be helping Tarkan to run the BBQ at his house next weekend, should be fun!!

"Untitled"

Been really busy with work the last couple of days. With the system going live its all hands on deck….

First – Beware of the Italians

At least  the ones you meet on streets who peddle clothes to you. During the week some Italian guy drove by and stop me on the street. Hes claiming to be going back to Milan from a fashion show now he got 3 “Armani” leather jacket and a “Boss” suit that he dun wanted to carry. He needed money to pay for his hired car so will sell me the suit for 350 pounds and give me the jacket for free.

I know that its not genuine suit and leather jacket so I bargained him down. He offered me 170 pound for the lot as thats how much his hired car cost. Afterwards he scammed me out of another 40 pounds for petrol.

Later on I found out that its actually a pretty common scam to have an Italian offering you real “Armani” at supposedly discount price. So let just say that I paid around 100 pounds for clothing I dun needed and 100 pounds for a lesson in life! :-/

Still, with him driving around central London on the scam, and only got 200 out of me and still have to pay for congestion charge and the fuel, I can take a little consolation I am not the only one that got scammed.

Damn those south Londoners

Actually not quite that bad. On friday night I caught up with Jono for his girlfriend’s B’day. See Jono is a friend that I met from mountain biking in Sydney. He came over to London a few months ago with his girlfriend for a working holiday. Hes lives in Clapham which is south of the Thames and I hardly catchup with him since he arrived. Its good to see an old face from home and it was good night to be out on a friday night. Its sad that in 10 weeks time Jono will leave London for Australia: yet another familiar face gone!

Still, it was an enjoyable drinks. Julian also came out and met us in at the bar. At one stage it looks like hes going to get a bit of luck in the club, but I left the place early so I got no idea what happened. After that I stop by the hostel to meet Alan.

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Gone in and worked for most part of saturday. Saturday is Summer Solstice also means the longest day on the European calendar, and what did I do? Worked! Go figure. Anyway went to Putney to catch-up with Micheal. Hes also from Sydney, I met Micheal while doing Salsa dancing. Since last December hes in London worked as a music teacher in a school around Putney. This is meant to be his 30th birthday do and what a surprise, same age as me this year!!

Anyway its good to see that hes enjoying his time here in London. Hes lucky to landed in a good workplace and most of his workmates are there for his 30th.  They are a great bunch of guys and its good result for Micheal to achieve in the space of 6 months! I wished I can say the same about me!

I have to leave early because they refuse me into the club because I was wearing casual shoes. (They were Merrells For fuck sake!!) Still it was a good evening. Could have gone for a bike ride with Jono on sunday but by the time I woke up its 11:00 a.m. I liked my sleep in………

Anyway I am glad that the Italians gone out of the Euro. IMO they play some of the most cynical style of football, I have to say the world (if not Euro 2008) is now a better place!

“Untitled”

Been really busy with work the last couple of days. With the system going live its all hands on deck….

First – Beware of the Italians

At least  the ones you meet on streets who peddle clothes to you. During the week some Italian guy drove by and stop me on the street. Hes claiming to be going back to Milan from a fashion show now he got 3 “Armani” leather jacket and a “Boss” suit that he dun wanted to carry. He needed money to pay for his hired car so will sell me the suit for 350 pounds and give me the jacket for free.

I know that its not genuine suit and leather jacket so I bargained him down. He offered me 170 pound for the lot as thats how much his hired car cost. Afterwards he scammed me out of another 40 pounds for petrol.

Later on I found out that its actually a pretty common scam to have an Italian offering you real “Armani” at supposedly discount price. So let just say that I paid around 100 pounds for clothing I dun needed and 100 pounds for a lesson in life! :-/

Still, with him driving around central London on the scam, and only got 200 out of me and still have to pay for congestion charge and the fuel, I can take a little consolation I am not the only one that got scammed.

Damn those south Londoners

Actually not quite that bad. On friday night I caught up with Jono for his girlfriend’s B’day. See Jono is a friend that I met from mountain biking in Sydney. He came over to London a few months ago with his girlfriend for a working holiday. Hes lives in Clapham which is south of the Thames and I hardly catchup with him since he arrived. Its good to see an old face from home and it was good night to be out on a friday night. Its sad that in 10 weeks time Jono will leave London for Australia: yet another familiar face gone!

Still, it was an enjoyable drinks. Julian also came out and met us in at the bar. At one stage it looks like hes going to get a bit of luck in the club, but I left the place early so I got no idea what happened. After that I stop by the hostel to meet Alan.

*                                           *                                        *                                                   *

Gone in and worked for most part of saturday. Saturday is Summer Solstice also means the longest day on the European calendar, and what did I do? Worked! Go figure. Anyway went to Putney to catch-up with Micheal. Hes also from Sydney, I met Micheal while doing Salsa dancing. Since last December hes in London worked as a music teacher in a school around Putney. This is meant to be his 30th birthday do and what a surprise, same age as me this year!!

Anyway its good to see that hes enjoying his time here in London. Hes lucky to landed in a good workplace and most of his workmates are there for his 30th.  They are a great bunch of guys and its good result for Micheal to achieve in the space of 6 months! I wished I can say the same about me!

I have to leave early because they refuse me into the club because I was wearing casual shoes. (They were Merrells For fuck sake!!) Still it was a good evening. Could have gone for a bike ride with Jono on sunday but by the time I woke up its 11:00 a.m. I liked my sleep in………

Anyway I am glad that the Italians gone out of the Euro. IMO they play some of the most cynical style of football, I have to say the world (if not Euro 2008) is now a better place!

"Nomad looking for a new home"

To those still reading these pages, I have to apologise: The updates might be more boring and mundane now days. To be honest there just not enough drinking session or going to a club to dance or pick up. The last few weeks mainly consists of the routine of work and gym. Hardly something that sets the world on fire.

People are now in a different circles in their lives. Once you run in your own circle in London its hard to include others. I dunno why this is the case but rather than spending energy fighting this, its time to move on and build something a new.

Contrary to the previous impression past weekend I was quite social. I met up with Tarkan and his friends to have a Turkish dinner on Saturday and on Sunday I went to Jean’s flatmate’s boyfriend b’day BBQ. Also met up with Julian and his friend to see a movie on Saturday afternoon. I have to say that I was hardly being anti-social but I do long for a good party as well.

I guess I shouldn’t rush things: it takes time to build new friendship and you cannot expected it to be on the same level as the old ones initially. Who knows, maybe in a few months time these core-friends will be more stable than the old characters that you used to know.

On the point of new friends, Jeans been really cool to hangout with and when I felt like getting upto something its always is with her. Unfortunately she will be back in California in a month and a half, it will sad to miss her company. Oh well, thats how the cookie crumble I guess.

The past is the past. Its time to look forward………..again……………..

 

 

  

“Nomad looking for a new home”

To those still reading these pages, I have to apologise: The updates might be more boring and mundane now days. To be honest there just not enough drinking session or going to a club to dance or pick up. The last few weeks mainly consists of the routine of work and gym. Hardly something that sets the world on fire.

People are now in a different circles in their lives. Once you run in your own circle in London its hard to include others. I dunno why this is the case but rather than spending energy fighting this, its time to move on and build something a new.

Contrary to the previous impression past weekend I was quite social. I met up with Tarkan and his friends to have a Turkish dinner on Saturday and on Sunday I went to Jean’s flatmate’s boyfriend b’day BBQ. Also met up with Julian and his friend to see a movie on Saturday afternoon. I have to say that I was hardly being anti-social but I do long for a good party as well.

I guess I shouldn’t rush things: it takes time to build new friendship and you cannot expected it to be on the same level as the old ones initially. Who knows, maybe in a few months time these core-friends will be more stable than the old characters that you used to know.

On the point of new friends, Jeans been really cool to hangout with and when I felt like getting upto something its always is with her. Unfortunately she will be back in California in a month and a half, it will sad to miss her company. Oh well, thats how the cookie crumble I guess.

The past is the past. Its time to look forward………..again……………..

 

 

  

End of the season perhaps?

Theres a poem called “reason, season and lifetime” by Brian A.”Drew” Chalker. ( I am sure I read somewhere else that the author is not Brian but some other motivational speaker’s back in the 90s) It is a very positive motivational shard of wisdom that get passed around in chain emails, I won’t print it here so you can look it up on Google.

While most find comfort in this poem telling them how friendship works, I am pretty depress every time I think about this poem and thinking about my current situation with people . Its sad to see the friends of mine came into my life for the “season”, we have alot of fun together and those were good times. Like all “season” it has to end, now that we all gone our separate ways and lead a different lives we dun see each other as much as we used to. Over the last few weeks I literally have no phone calls and the only time I spent with people were either with Alan, Kylee or Jean. (Poor Jean, she just got here in London for a few weeks and been hassled by me on almost every weekend) The rest of the people just seems to drop out of sight.

Case in point I messaged Simon during the week to arrange for a catchup and Simon mentioned that Karen was organising a Birthday bash this weekend. We didn’t ended up doing anything as we both can’t contact Karen, maybe shes out of the country so shes not answering emails and SMS. *shrug* I am hardly in the loops nowadays.

Looks like I been having a delusion of grandeur: the bond with people I met over the last 10 months are just not as close nor as strong as I would like. A few months on the reality finally hit on how lonely life can get when you decided to move away from your friends and family to a different country. The loneliness and emptyness are deafening, I missed the times when I am surrounded by good mates. Sure we aren’t doing anything interesting and are shit bored most of the times, but even than we all feed off each other’s imagination and come up with some of the funniest jokes to entertain us.  I missed those times.

Looking at the FB photo’s of Jacqui’s B’day and my current social predicament, I really wonder who will be at my 30th B’day…..

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Not going out and partying do have a plus side: Your bank balance builds up. Boredom however increase the chance of you of converting the bank balance into retail therapy.

I did that this week, after 10 months living in this city I finally got myself a new bike! 900 quids poorer now I am a proud owner of a Trek 6700 mountain bike with around 200 pounds worth of accessories. The plus side to that 900 pounds I spend is that I probably dun needed to spend anymore for a few years to come (unless of course the bike became stolen.) 

So yesterday and today I rode around the vity on my new bike. Went riding around central London and realised how small the central London is. In 20-30 mins you can go from Kings Cross to Oval down south. I went for a 2 hour ride today sees me ride from Angel up North, across the Tower bridge  to Oval, over to Pimlico than up North to Knightsbridge and Hyde Park,back home while bus/pedestrian shalom.

I find out that as much as London is congested with traffic/pedestrians and the streets are not designed with bikes in mind, riding bikes in London is actually awesome! During my ride I weave through the traffic and no one honk their horns or yelled abuse at me! (One guy did tried to spit at me but hes missed, I left stuck in the traffic) They will all wait behind me before getting past once theres enough room, and on streets like Oxford street I am like the fastest moving object on the whole road! It sounds dangerous but its also a thrill weaving and dodging traffic! Now that summer is back with sunny days like today, you will definitely see me on my bike alot more!     

Changing of the guard.

Not much happened this weekend. Think the most exicting stuff I can write about is washing my sheet and cleaning my room. Do you know what 3 months old unwashed sheet looks like?

 Yup thought you dun wanted to know about it! :-/

Anyway I did do something interesting on Sunday: I helped Jimmy to move his stuff over to Mark’s new Hostel at Hyde Park on Sunday. See the new manager in the museum hostel wasn’t as well received as Mark so a few of the old weeklies are moving over to the new place. The problem with the new place is that its actually not renovated yet! Only about a floor or two are in a semi done condition and only a few rooms are ready for people to moved in yet.

I think the existing weeklies in the museum hostel are in a bit of a prickle: faced with a unsympathic manager that liked to introduced his new regime and a new crew to replace an old one, their other choice is to moved out to a 150 bed hostel that have around 2-3 furnished room and no working kitchen.

Still, blessed is Mark. He helped me out when I first came to London by giving me a nice room with a weekly bed, now hes offering to help out some of the old crew a safe heaven if they wished to leave the museum. he place might needed alot of work to be done but when it finally finished it will be fantastic! Its a 150 bed hostel spread over 6 floors and basement with 2 MASSIVE common room, a pool table, big kitchen with 4 stoves with 5 hobs (Theres only 1 stove in museum) and a nice and quiet area. Their will be at least 18 weeklies beds each with their own en-suite bathroom. The staff room is on the top floor and will also have a view to the Royal Albert Hall.

TBH I am not sure how many people will be moving there in this stage, but it will be different to museum and the crew will be a different crew as well. Still, was tempted to moved out just ot be back in the hostel again.

On second thought, I like my uninterrupted sleep!!

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Well from Facebook Ican see that Jacqui just have her 30th b’day! This signal the start of the downward spiral for us all! From the photos on Facebook it looks like everyone is having loads of fun. Wished I can be there with you all! Wonder how my 30th is going to be in London here…..