M.I.L.K

If anyone's bored, can spare 12mins and have their speakers on, do check out this clip by clicking on the [PLAY] symbol from this website:

http://www.milkphotos.com/milkav2.htm

It's an inspiration and will certainly bring a smile to anyone's face. I love it!

It's the weekend!

- My friends and I have just booked our next trip... PARIS!!!!!! We've booked it almost 2mnths in advance because it's cheaper. Woohoo! Since we're all currently working we can only find the time to travel during the weekends but that should be sufficient. Fly out early Sat morning and arrive back in London on Sunday night. Can't wait!

- My workplace has asked me to stay longer. My contract will now be extended (not sure for how long yet but I'm hoping til January, the end of my stay in London) and I'm hoping to get a little bit of a pay rise *fingers crossed*. I've been working an extra hour each day which works out to be 45hrs/wk, in order to make up the week that I'll be in Spain!! It's a little tiring but I'm enjoying the work I'm doing. Architecture's not so bad after all!

- My time in London has become a routine now so there is not much "excitement". I simply can't wait to travel! The weekend is all about relaxing and I just looooove Sundays!! I do nothing! We usually go out on Saturday night and Sunday becomes our lazy day where we wind down by sleeping a lot and become couch potatoes in front of the telly all day. I love it!

- Thanks to Beriah, we went to see another 3pound theatre show the other night. I liked it! We went to see The RatPack on Wednesday night at The Savoy Hotel and it was really enjoyable!! Its a re-enactment of Frank Sinatra, Dean and Sammy who used to play shows together in the past. I'm starting to enjoy what London has to offer. Can't wait for more theatre shows!!

- It's Saturday 2:45pm now and my friends wants to go shopping . I need to buy foundation and moisturising cream. Time to go!

***UPDATE***

It's now 12:26am and I'm finally home after a looooooong day of shopping with Annie and Bora. We've assured ourselves that we're not shopping again until Winter hits us! It's the last day of the half yearly sale in London and so all shops were opened to 8pm and not surprisingly we all stayed til the shops were closed! We're all allowed to shop anyways, we're on holiday!! On the way home on the tube, we got chatting with a Melbourne guy named Kyne who has been here for a year and we all ended up having a loooooooong dinner together... all four of us at a Thai restaurant near our place. He turned out to be pretty nice and have agreed to come over to our place some time to cook a killer risotto (yummo!) and Bora will be the assistant in order to learn how to cook proper risotto for us all!!!

Photos of us girls today making the most of the last day sale....

Us girls with our shopping bags... me showing off my Harrods bag where I bought my MAC foundation

And a few other photos of my time in London so far..


Same setting, different occasion: Getting ready to go out on Bora's bday... A night in playing Charades..



On the tube, ready for a girls night out... In Trafalgar Square (no, the guy hugging me is not my new bf. That's Irene's brother Darrio who is known to be quite affectionate to everyone simply because he's Italian! He's harmless hehe)..


Our place on top of the Kebab n Red Cross shop, the very top with the window open.. Inside Kew Gardens.. ..and me somewhere in London!

I wish for everyone I know in the world are all well and happy!
=)

I finally had PHO!

I had been craving for the Vietnamese dish Pho for quite some time now after my sister mentioned that she had it in Cabramatta back home and how delicious it was (thanks Phuong!) and so I got the girls to go with me to eat it over the weekend. It took us 1 1/2hours by train to get to the Vietnamese district Hackney to have the Pho! Unbelievable! And to think that it only takes me 5-10mins to travel to have Pho back home, I surely took it for granted. Well! The pho just doesn't compare to the ones I've had back home but it's "good enough" =)

Bora, me, Annie & Beriah @ Tre Viet having our first bowl of Pho in London!

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Today London reached 34 degrees celcius and it is The hottest day that London has ever experienced. The bad thing is, it'll be hotter for the next few days! My place is not made for hot weathers especially when it's small and there are 4 people living in it. Forecast shows that tomorrow will hit around 38degrees (ouch!) and so it will be a boiler and I will definitely sweat like I had sweat in Burma when I'm out playing softball after work!! This is definitely not what I expected of London. I've always heard it's a cold and dreary place but right now it is not the case... I guess everyone here is trying to make the most out of the sun-rays and sun baking as much as they can. I find it way too hot and I can't even sleep well at night!

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Guess where I'm flying to next?? Bora, Annie and I are going to Spain!! We're going for 6days and we'll be hitting La Tomatina Day (throwing of tomatoes) on 30th August in Bunol, staying there for 2 days before heading to Barcelona to check out the unique gothic buildings by Gaudi and then spending our last 2 days in Madrid! Woohoo!!!!

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Oanhsta, hope you and Craig have a blast in Vietnam!!! All the best! xxx

Exactly 5months since I left...

So I've been away from home for exactly 5months now and my time in London seems to be flying by very quickly!

Here, by category is how I perceive London so far...

[Transport]

Everyone here mainly uses a travel pass called an Oyster card in which you would've registered for it before using and you can forever hold onto it as you simply top it up whenever necessary. Getting a weekly travel pass to get around London via trains and buses is an absolute must! I pay £22.20 to get into zones 1 & 2 and and that covers the central London area and its peripheries which is where I live. I can really go by with a £14.00 pass and travel only in zone2 which is where I work and live and top up £1.00 each time I travel to central London.. so I might do that next week. It only takes me 15-20mins to actually get from my place to anywhere in central London so everything is nice and close and it is the only way to get around London unless you want to lose an arm and a leg for a cab-ride! I didn't mention this but going back to my very first day in London when I arrived at Heathrow airport and had to catch a cab to my friend's place in East Acton due to a misunderstanding (really, it wasn't my fault), I was absolutely shocked with how much I had to fork out for the cab-ride! I only had $200AUD on me and I changed $100 thinking that it would be more than enough to cover a cab-ride but I was so so wrong! $100AUD converted to £39 and my cab-ride was £45!!!!! I was in total shock and since I had been stuck at Terminal 4 airport for quite some time late that evening, I was determined to get out of there and so I changed the remaining $100AUD I had, got in the black cab and 1/2hr later I got to my friend's place. Sadly enough, my friend wasn't even there! Well, it's all in the past now and it's best to leave it there. SOOOOOO don't ever catch a black-cab but if you really really must then go through a mini-cab company who would charge you less!

Going back to trains and buses.. so it's very convenient to get from place to place. The train station is known as the TUBE and the system here works much differently than back home (it's way better over here). Whether you love or hate the system, you got to live with it if you're to stay in London. I especially hate catching public transport in the middle of the night when you're on your way home from after clubbing. The trains stops working at 1am so you literally have to find the appropriate buses on the streets to get you back home. Sometimes it entails you catching more than 1 bus! Ugh, oh how I miss being in the comfort of a car back home!!!

[Shopping]

Primark is the best store for any girl to shop at who is on a budget at any level. It's in comparison to Target back home only better because everything is more cheap, more fashionable and surprisingly sooooo many people go here! It's the best place to get manchester goods also. Example, if you don't convert the cost back to AUD but consider it as the same dollar value, you can get a nice V-neck cotton jumper for £5, a bra for £4, a pair of flats for £10, a towel for £3.50, a pillow for £5, a pair of grey work pants for £10, a business skirt for £5, and plain t-shirts for £2.50. I actually bought a whole set of business clothes in here and it was all under £25! Don't forget- DO NOT CONVERT! That is the rule over here, never ever convert back to AUD currency or else you're in for a shock. To make it all better, once you find work over here everything becomes reasonably affordable. Yay!

"Vintage" shopping is also great! Although some clothes maybe second hand, they are unique especially the accessories such as bags and belts. You can get really good bargains in stores like Oxfam, Traid and The Red Cross. I recently got another pair of lovely high heel boots (which I wore to clubbing) for only £2!!!! And it looks great on me too!!! =)

My all time favourite store: ZARA!!!! I love this place!!

[Entertainment]

I went to a theatre show the other evening for only £3! I went to see Whistle down the Wind, a small show and it was pretty interesting. Our friend tends to buy cheap tickets at work through a charity organisation and we get to benefit from it! Maybe one day she'll have cheap tickets to Les Miserables because I really want to see the show as I've heard nothing but great things about this show. There are quite a few theatres in London and it's great entertainment to get into!

I've been clubbing a few times and the scenes are great! Obviously you're not bound to meet anyone from back home and it's great that way as it allows you to not care what others think so you can do whatever you want! Nothing naughty of course ;) There are always a good mixture of people in the crowd also.

Hyde Park is a really nice place to be at on a lovely day. The place is so massive and lots of people go here to play sports and sun-bake. I've been here a few times to play softball and had a picnic the other day with my flatmates. There is also a man-made lake in the middle of the park where everyone tends to sit around. Just beautiful!

[Food]

Simply eat in! When you've got housemates it's ideal to eat in because everyone can take turn cooking and cleaning up and you save money to spend on better things like travelling!!! A home cooked meal costs anywhere between £4-10 for a very decent meal and it can be slightly higher if you want to have a feast and to split that amongst 3 ppl, it's not even £4 per person for a dinner meal! We average about £7 per meal for the 3 of us so far and once all 4 of us housemates are finally under the same roof we can either save a little more or have a bigger feast! =p

Eating out can be a little costly, depending on where you go. An average meal (without a drink) is about £6 per person and to eat out for lunch and dinner frequently can be costly. Basically, cooking at home and sharing it around is ideal in London!

I've been craving for Pho badly in the last few days and my friends and I have planned to go have it soon in Hackney, a district of mainly vietnamese people -can't wait!

[Working]

I'm enjoying it! Well, so far that is. I work in Earl's Court, only 2 stations away from where I live and it only takes me 15-20 mins to get there!! I work 9am-6pm, 40hrs a week and the pay rate is just OK. I can't complain since it's my first proper Architectural job in an office! And it's in London too! Woo hoo! =) I'm on a 6-8wks rolling contract and I've been here for a good 3 weeks now. I have a huge feeling that they will ask me to stay longer and if they do, *fingers crossed* I can ask for a pay rise. I'm working on a large residential project of 600 houses and I've got the role of taking care of one the blocks. At the moment I'm basically bringing all the drawings up to date like all the other blocks and I'm even allowed to do a little bit of decision making in the project! Cool ay?! It's a pretty interesting project I must say and let's hope I can work on it for all the time I'm here in London!

[Renting]

We all found a place where us 4 can live comfortably and can still save money to travel around Europe. We pay a total of £280/wk for rent and council tax between the 4 of us and it works out very very reasonable when we divide the cost between us all. We pay extra for hot water and electricity but the cost all depends on how much electricity we end up using. We have a thing we regard as an Electricity Key and we simply go out to a store to top up (usually £5/person) and we hold onto the key until the electricity we've been using runs out. When it's low (it never runs out as there is always emergency credit provided for us to use), we take this key to the electric box and insert it to re-top our electricity availabilty. We go out to the store some time later again to re-top the key for the next round. £20 electricity covers us for a good 2-3wks. Not bad!

Sharing a flat/house with others could be a little difficult if everyone is quite different to one another and aren't willing to compromise.. however I'm quite fortunate in this aspect. I've met these girls from the old house (thanks to David) and we all know how to give and take a little and be considerate for eachother's sake. We're all happy girls and we all go out together, cook and clean in turn aswell. It's great to have such company in London because it could get a little lonely otherwise. London can get a little expensive if you go out all the time so there are times when it's best to stay indoors and having good company allows everyone to simply enjoy eachother's company through watching a good dvd movie after having a nice dinner together, then having some drinks and maybe play some games like Charades and Monopoly! ..which is what we've done!

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Some ridiculous things to mention about London..
- a land-line to land-line call is not charged as 1 local call but it's charged by the minute!!
- you are required to get a TV license if you intend to watch TV in your own home!! And it doesn't come cheap... £126.50 per year!!!!
- if you travel by car into the city during the peak hours, you have to pay a congestion charge of £8 simply to enter the zone each day! That's just ridicuolous!
- you have to swipe your oyster card (travel pass) upon entering and exiting the platform whether the gates are widely open or not or else you will automatically be charged an extra £5 on your card!!!

1wk into my first job in London

Wow, I started last Monday and prior to entering the office I was extremely nervous! Why?! Obvious reason: I've never worked in a proper Architectural firm before. And to make it more nerve-racking, it's a med-large scale firm! Ahhh! BUT BUT BUT.. after an hour or two into the project (I'm working on the project: FENGATE in Peterborough where we're designing several new blocks of residential flats that will take over an existing brownfield site) ,I found myself at ease and comfortable in this role. It feels like the uni-days all over again with the constant CADDING throughout my time here but fortunately the difference here to Uni is that I'm not cadding 24/7 and having allnighters to get my project done. I'm so relieved this is not the case and that my skin's not constantly breaking out and I'm losing weight due to sleepless nights, not eating right and simply just under stress. Here, I work 9am-6pm with an hour lunch-break, and if our work's not finished by "home-time" we don't have to stay back to complete it- we can simply work on it the following day. Yay!

My company plays Softball with other professional companies every Wednesday after work at Hyde Park and I joined in last week and it was great! I love softball way back since the highschool days so I'll be joining in every week from now on. It's quite laid back and no one takes the game so seriously. All the guys are leniant towards the girls so we don't get out as much hehe. A lady at work took some pictures of us whilst we were on the field so I can attach it to my blog.

The weather's been quite hot over here- 30degrees and above! My housemates and I went to Hyde Park over the weekend to have a picnic whilst gawking at the guys playing sports and checking out the girls in bikini which is very common over here and unusual for us to see because it's a park and there are no beaches around!

Everything has been working out very well for me over here. So far, that is. Who knows what tomorrow will bring. *fingers crossed* though that everything will stay almost just the way it is.

I've been missing home very much and recently we got a phone line installed at our place so I can make frequent and cheap calls home. However, did you know that London charges calls INCLUDING land-line to land-line by the minute? That's just ridiculous! It'll be cheaper for people in Australia to call me than me calling them. We'll be getting broadband soon which will make life a little easier and cheaper for the 4 of us here.

Home phone number: +442032660143; Mobile number +447900531477

I cooked Lasagna the other night!!! My uncle in Holland should be so proud of me because I learnt to cook the dish from him! It was quite easy actually. David came over to eat including Katie and Thomas who I know back in Australia and it was the first time I met them here in London. She was so surprised to see me here! hehe

Time to leave work now. It's 7:15pm!!