My London Experiences So Far

So. It has been so very very long since I have done a blog entry for a number of reasons. First and foremost is probably because I’m too lazy and irritable to attempt to do it on my phone or tablet, and up until now they were the only means available (I wasn't going to pay money to go to an internet café! Don’t be daft!). The idea of writing up a few hundred words online only to have my phone screw up and delete everything (I can’t save it online with my phone) was not one I was readily jumping at. There has also been the fact that I've been pretty busy adjusting to life, working, meeting people, blah blah blah. However with my mother and sister coming over here and bringing me my oh so beautiful laptop and with me settling in nicely, it makes my countless ideas (3) for blog entries a reality.

There are a lot of things which I can and want to write about, but each one will need it’s own entry, and so I will start my re-blogging experience with this first post which is basically a summary of everything that has happened to me in the past few months.

The last time I wrote a blog entry was April the 9th, which means there is almost four months of drama, delight and deliciousness which has yet to be documented. I have spent the majority of the last four months working and living in London. I work at a frozen yoghurt store called SNOG in the centre of SOHO (which is the gay area of London). I will write a different blog entry which goes into much more detail about this, probably something entitled: WORKING IN SOHO – or something equally creative. It’s been a good experience working there, and I’ve met a lot of interesting characters on the way. This is a photo of the shop:

London in general is a pretty nice place to live, except for the ridiculous costs associated with it. The price for rent and for transport is mind-boggling, and it is what eats up about 90% of my pay every fortnight. Admittedly I could be getting rent A LOT cheaper because I am living in an expensive area of London and I did not get the best deal, but at the time I was sick of living in hostels and searching for houses while trying to work five shifts a week. I live in an area called Bayswater, it is slightly west of the city centre and south west of Paddington. The area itself has everything that you’d need; McDonalds, bars, Burger King, Subway, cinema. As well as a bunch of other things you might occasionally visit such as supermarkets and laundrettes. I’ve been living here for exactly two months now, and I am leaving here in exactly a week. I pay a whopping 175 a week for a single room in a house with a tiny kitchen, a bathroom, and three other people – as I said, super expensive for not a whole lot of anything. I live with a 32 year old Italian guy and his 26 year old Italian girlfriend as well as a 25 year old French girl. They are all reasonably nice but we barely see each other because I usually work night shifts (5-12) and they work during the day. I should probably include pictures of the house, but I can’t be bothered taking any of the kitchen or bathroom so I’ll just let you know that the kitchen is about HALF of my bedrooms size:

My Bedroom's Window and Desk

My Bed - SILKY SMOOTH

The other single biggest expense is the transport. I need to catch the tube to get to work every day – I catch the Central Line from Queensway for four stops and get off at Oxford Circus (takes about 10 minutes), then I change to the Bakerloo Line for one stop and get off at Piccadilly Circus and walk to work from there (takes about 5 minutes). It’s amazing being only fifteen minutes from work, because many people I work with take at least an hour to make the trip, and screw doing that twice a day every day. Here's a map of the underground so you can see:

My house is literally next to Bayswater Station and just 5min walk from Queensway

Despite the little distance that I need to travel and the fact that my house is in Zone 1 (Centre of City) it still costs me the same amount as it would if I was living in Zone 2 and it took me 50 minutes to get to work. The CHEAPEST way to travel is to buy a monthly travel card for Zone 1+2 (they don’t sell it for just Zone 1) which is £130. This averages out to roughly £26 a week for travel, which is almost $45 AUD. A weekly travel pass is £30 a week ($52) and if you do the ‘pay as you go’ option I found I was spending almost £40 a week ($68). Here is a photo of my travel card holder, because it's awesome:

AAAAAAADVENTURE TIME!!!

To put it into perspective – on the shitty £6.19 minimum wage I am on, I need to work for almost five hours just to pay for my travel. Now if I calculate my weeks rent into hours worked it equates to about 30. So in summary, I need to work 35 hours a week (almost full-time hours) just to pay my bills and get to work. Add in the other five hours work for full-time hours and that leaves me with a little over £30 a week for food and EVERYTHING else – hardly much to enjoy life with. Needless to say I’ve dipped into my Australian savings several times over and splashed out to go watch theatre, movies (I go to the cinema a lot, but more about my THEATRE AND CINEMA EXPERIENCES later!) and to enjoy a night on the town (Or not? More about my ‘HORROR NIGHT’ in another post!).

Overall London is a great place to live – if you have the money. If I didn’t have my savings I would have found it very hard indeed, and it amazes me that people come here and work so hard for so little. My manager works close to 50 hours a week at SNOG and he has a bartending job which he works about three times a week, meaning he works almost 70 hours a week. Plus it takes him almost an hour to get in and out of the city back home… ergh. Definitely not my kind of lifestyle. But I’m glad I’m here to witness it and to learn that it really isn’t my thing. I may  not know what I want to do as a career when I get older, but I’m learning bit by bit the lifestyle that I want it to allow me.  

So what is next? Well that I am not 100% sure of. I am going to the Reading Festival in about two weeks’ time and after that will be travelling through Germany and France catching up with mates. I then have about ten weeks before the rest of my family arrive from Australia. I may come back to London, I may continue travelling, who knows? The only certainty is that nothing is certain at all. 

An Introduction To My Contiki Experience

After 24 days of pure awesomeness, my Contiki tour has finally drawn to a close. Because of the sheer intensity of it all, I barely got time on the tour to sleep let alone write blog entries. Rather than just creating one huge blog entry that lasts pages and takes me weeks to write, I am going to create several blog entries over the next few days/weeks to do with the Contiki.

This blog entry is going to be a sort of 'introduction' to explain to you exactly what it is I did, in the simplest of it's forms.

We began the trip in London... hold up. Instead of me telling you the places I went I am just going to copy and paste the map that they have on the Contiki website:

There we are! So those are the places I went to, the numbers indicate the number of nights we slept there. There were 38 of us on the trip and we travelled by coach. Because of some legal stuff, the driver could only drive for about 3 hours before we had to stop for 45 mins, so it meant that the trip was stretched out and some of the days were rather long!

All in all it was an amazing adventure, one I'd definitely consider doing again sometime in the future. For those of you out there thinking about doing a Contiki, let me share with you a few things I learnt from this one:

First and foremost,

24 days is a LONG TIME!!! I could just have easily had a lot of fun in fifteen days or even ten. By the third or fourth day you were already forming really strong bonds with people, and by day ten everyone knew everyone else really well.

Secondly,

It's not all about drugs, sex, booze and rock and roll. It's just mostly about booze. We drank almost every night, however there were still plenty of people who didn't drink or come out who had just as much fun as the rest of us. There was no pressure to drink, and I personally took several days off because of alcohol related dying.

Thirdly,

It doesn't matter if you go with a friend, a partner, or by yourself – everybody is there to have a good time and by the end of it everyone is just one big happy family, regardless of how they started out. There were several people on our trip who had partners not on the Contiki, and they had no worries staying loyal and just enjoying themselves as much as everybody else.

Fourthly,

You cannot see everything – it is a huge rush in some places (Paris, Rome, Berlin) to see all the major icons and attractions, and if you do manage to see everything, chances are you aren't able to do all the extra little things such as climbing all the towers to the cathedrals or going on guided tours. Even if you manage to start strong and see most of everything, by the end of the trip the alcohol and fatigue will hit you, and you'll find yourself not feeling as young as you did on day one.

Fifthly and lastly,

Have a place to stay when you finish so that you can go into hibernation for the next few weeks to recover.

Among those five valuable lessons is the other lesson I learnt of packing. There were things I took and never used and then there were things I left behind which I wished I hadn't:

Here are a list of things I wish I had brought with me but I didn't:

   1. A neck cushion for the long coach rides – I woke up too many

       times with a sore neck!

2. Noise cancelling headphones for the long coach rides – My iPod only plays from one ear, so it meant I had to half put up with people talking or the coach music rather than what I wanted to listen to!
3. Sunglasses – most of the places we went to were overcast because of winter, however there were times on the coach when the sun made it very difficult to sleep, even though we had curtains!
4. More movies/videos on my phone and tablet – although most of the coach rides were spent hungover and sleeping, for those times when this wasn't the case it was nice to relax and watch some movies. Our tour manager put movies on usually once a day, but when you have three legs in your journey, that means two of them are entertainment free!
5. A good camera – I only had my phone, and by the end of the trip it felt as though I was taking the same photo over and over again. It would have been nice to be able to change settings and actually zoom in from far away without it looking blurry!

Here are a list of things I wish I hadn't brought with me but I did:

1. A towel – we stayed at hotels where there were fresh towels everyday, so all mine did was take up space!
2. Soap – same reason!
3. A big ass laundry bag with a bunch of tablets and gels which I never looked at let alone used. - Chemists are reasonably priced throughout Europe and chances are someone on the coach will have the drugs you want if you are in desperate need.
4. Shorts – I only brought them because I was told that some of the hotels might have heated pools... they did not.

I can only come up with four unnecessary things I brought with me because I packed like a boss.

For those of you interested, we were able to do washing twice on the trip. Once in Prague and once in Nice I think it was. I got away with only doing it in Nice, and then literally ran out of clothes on the last day. Not one piece of clothing was clean.... delightful.

So there we go, these are a few general things about my Contiki. I will have more entries over the next few days which will give you a more in-depth perspective into what it is I actually did on the trip, as well as including some sexy pictures of myself standing in front of buildings.

Until then,

Au revoir, ciao, arrivederci, nashledanou, tot ziens, lebewohl and adios!

Clubbing, Theme Parks, And A Touch Of Photobomb

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Well well well. What do we have here? Another blog entry before the fabled Contiki tour? How interesting. But whatever is there to talk about? What do, who, and why!? Read on and the secrets shall be surrendered.

It was a Wednesday night last Wednesday that I departed into the hours of the night with a drink in one hand and three people in the other. My cousin, her house mate and one of their friends ventured off into the night to their uni's best (and only) night club!

These are me peeps. Can you pick my cousin? Hint: It's not the black guy

We arrived bright and early at about 9:15 to try and get in by 10:00 because it is cheaper and we are all stinges with money. HOWEVER, our reluctantness to spend money was shared with what seemed like every uni student in England and we ended up waiting in the line for over an hour, which meant to get inside cost me a solid £5 – but hey that's alright. At least I was in.

The night then got fuzzy. Drinks. Shots. Dancing. Photos. - rinse and repeat.

I'm not going to bore you with details but I will say that it was a fun night, my favourite part was getting photos with a whole bunch of strangers (whether they wanted me to or not!) and photo bombing:

 

Random Stranger Groping

Photobomb... Begin!

Yesterday (Saturday 9^th) my cousins and uncle and I went to Thorpe Park which is a theme park near where they live. We got free tickets there because my Aunt is working at Legoland which have a deal with Thorpe Park. Anyways, it was awesome. There were quite a few fast rides and we spent the whole day going on roller coasters. Luckily the lines were really short because of the shit weather (cold and drippy) so we didn't have to wait for longer than 30mins on any given ride. It was an awesome day however I woke up this morning with a sore throat, let's hope I don't catch a cold before my contiki.

EDIT: This is a pic of my cousins, Uncle and I going on the "Saw" ride:

 

Here is a few videos of the fastest ride there, it has HUGE acceleration. I wanted to get more videos of rides, but strangely enough in my excitement I didn't think of it:

I am staying in London Wednesday and Thursday night, and head off on my Contiki Friday. It's all very exciting. I will definitely have more (exciting!) stories to tell at the end of my Contiki.

GET KEEEEEEEEEEEEEENNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!

The 10 Biggest Differences I've Noticed About England So Far

1. The Sky/Weather

This is an obvious one, the weather is definitely a shit load colder here (roughly 40°C colder in fact) however the biggest difference is the sky – in that England doesn't really have one. In Alice there's usually bright blue skies and a searing hot sun with the occasional cloud floating by here and there. Here there is nothing but white clouds... freakin' everywhere:

2. The Keyboard

There are a few differences between the Australian and English keyboard, but the biggest one is that the @ symbol and the “ marks have switched positions:

3. The Currency/Variety Of Prices

Again, this one is obvious – they use Pounds and Pence here rather than Dollars and Cents, however the thing I found interesting is that they still have 1p and 2p coins. What this means is that the cost of items vary down to the pence, rather than in Australia where every price ends in either a 0, a 5, or a 9:

4. The Street Signs

This may just be where I am staying at the moment (as may almost everything else on this list) but from what little I have seen so far I have found the street signs here rather entertaining. My favourite is the “Elderly People” sign which my Aunt compared to the “Kangaroo” signs we have in Australia:

 This is the "Elderly People" sign from afar

 "20 is plenty!"

 "Watch out for the humps!"

5. The Traffic Lights

On first glance the traffic lights seem exactly the same, however there is one big (and kinda cool) difference between them. Here instead of the lights turning from red straight to green, the orange light will come on first to signal that the lights are about to turn green, giving the drivers time to get into gear and put the pedal to the metal:

6. Their “Orange” Fanta is F**CKING YELLOW!!!

See Below:

W.T.F?

7. Sweets/Chocolates/Lollies/Chips/Crisps

Whatever you want to call them, England has them in a larger variety and with better taste. They also have the same products such as Mars Bars but sell them in larger quantities and for cheaper (a bag of 4x Mars Bars was only £1 – that's about 30c per Mars Bar!) My favourite of the large variety thus far are 'pickled onion' Monster Munch and 'prawn cocktail' crisps:

Confusing isn't it?

8. The Cost Of Things

Everything here is cheaper than it is in Alice Springs and Australia. Whether it is Maccas where you can pick up a large quarter pounder meal for about £5 ($7.32), the cinema where you can get in on cheap Tuesdays for only £3.25 ($4.76), t-shirts for £2.50 ($3.66) or jackets that cost $250 in Alice for only £120 (175.65) in shops around here, most if not all things I have come across so far have been considerably cheaper than back home.

9. The Accents

Yet again we have another obvious one, but of course it has been one of the most noticeable things for me. I do so ever love the British accent in all it's forms. Along with the accent comes a variety of different sayings and expressions which are somewhat unheard of or uncommon back in good ol' Alice Springs. They use expressions such as “watcha?” and “y'aight?”for a greeting similar to “hello”/”how are you?”. Along with this they don't understand some of the things that I say. They find it odd to ask “How's it going?” and they can barely comprehend the saying “nek minnit!”. One of my personal favourites is the fact that they say “half eight” rather than “half past eight” or “eight thirty”.

10. The Taxis

I found it interesting to note that the taxis here aren't all the same as they are in Alice. Rather than having a fixed look, the taxis here are simply the drivers cars, meaning they come in all shapes and sizes. The only way they can be identified as being a taxi is the sticker/plate they put near their number plate.

Unfortunately I don't have a picture of any of them, but if I am lucky enough to find one later on I will update and edit this post to include it.

My First Day In England

On the 22^nd of February 2013 I departed from Alice Springs Airport at roughly 11:50am. I then proceeded to travel for the next 35 hours or so until I finally arrived in London airport at about 11:35am Saturday the 23^rd (going off the POMS time zone – nine and a half hours behind ours).

My route was as follows:

Alice to Melbourne – 3 hours

Waiting at Melbourne airport – 3 hours

Melbourne to Singapore – 7 ½ hours

Waiting at Singapore airport – 1 ½ hours

Singapore to Dubai – 7 ½ hours

Waiting at Dubai airport – 3 hours

Dubai to London – 8 hours

Please note: travel times are by flying (on a plane) ONLY

All of the flights were reasonably calm and drama free. I was fortunate enough to have a spare seat next to me on the Melbourne to Singapore flight so I was able to relax and stretch out a bit more than usual. The rest of the time I was crammed like a sardine next to people who ate boiled eggs and needed the bathroom every 10minutes or large people who fell asleep taking up the whole arm rest. The in-flight entertainment was pretty impressive (Emirates) and I spent most of my time either watching movies, eating, or attempting (poorly) to get some sleep. 

It was pretty boring waiting around the airports for my next flight, because I didn't want to buy anything and looking around shops pointlessly doesn't really appeal to me. I did take a few photos of things though that I found interesting;

Firstly, this random statue at Melbourne airport:

Secondly, the different drinks available at Singapore airport:

And lastly, the fact that Dubai airport somehow thinks that it's possible to survive by packing nothing but a set of expensive duty-free headphones:

When I finally landed in London it was pretty exciting. I looked out the window and saw that it was snowing ever so lightly (huzzah!).

Here is a video to prove I am not a dirty liar (if you can't see the snow, squint and tilt your head to the side):

 

After admiring what little snow there was and realising my fingers were going to go numb the moment I stepped off the plane, I proceeded to the bag collection area. I waited roughly 30 minutes to collect my baggage, only to have the carousel stop on me and find out that they have in fact left my backpack in Melbourne. According to the man behind the desk, it should be delivered to my auntie and uncles house sometime today. 

After finally getting out of the airport and back to my aunty and uncles house it was about 1pm. I went for a walk with my cousins and aunty to the nearby corner store and bought some crazy lollies and “crisps”:

After enjoying some “Midget Gems” we had tea, and I went to bed shortly after. I managed to stay awake until roughly 6pm English time. My year at uni and several years before that of being lazy has taught my body how to go into hibernation for long periods of time, so despite waking up several times throughout the night, I was able to sleep in until 9am. I don't think that jet lag will be much of an issue for me because I already stayed up really late and slept in till midday when I was back in Alice.

Not sure what the plan is for today, but I'm looking forward to it!

Only Five Days To Go!

This video was made at least a month ago, and I have been lazy and then had troubles uploading it. But I figured I might as well upload it now because what good is it doing taking space up on my tablet?

I leave this Friday (22nd as the video states!) and things are getting more and more real very quickly. I have successfully made it through my last weekend in Alice Springs, despite the best efforts of my friends to kill me through alcohol poisoning.

I am blessed enough to have amazing friends who thought it would be a good idea to throw a surprise going away party for me and trick me into a slight depression before hand by telling me they were all busy for my last weekend. However the surprise came off brilliantly and I welled up a few tears and peed myself a little with excitement when I saw all of my good friends out supporting me in town.

I received gifts, laughs, awkward stares (from my awesome hat) and a whole lot of free drinks. It's a nice feeling to know how many people want me out of this town and were so happy to see me finally leaving! xD

My beautiful mother filmed the surprise and I am yet to see the video, however I hope to see it and upload it to the blog before I leave so everyone can relive the wonderful moment in time when my face went from looking like a sour cat's bottom to something slightly resembling the Joker off Batman.

I may or may not do another blog entry before I leave, but if I don't, I'm sure everyone will hear from me within the first few weeks of being in England!

Until then,
Bon Voyage!

This Is What Religion Means To Me:

“Why are you scared to dream of God when it’s salvation that you want? You see star’s that are clear have been dead for years, but the idea just lives on.”

These are song lyrics by Bright Eyes, the greatest artist of all time. In my eyes he sums up religion perfectly. It isn’t about a person or a greater being (“God”), it’s about so much more. Religion isn’t about what you believe; it is about what that belief gives you. Religion is a state of mind that is enveloped with promises of hope, faith and “salvation”. When I say religion in this context I mean broadly speaking rather than just Christianity. All religions began from something, some event or series of events that caused people to believe in a higher being. These events (much like the stars) are long gone however the ideas which eventuated from them still “live on” through religion.

“’When I do wrong, I am with God’ she thought. ‘When I feel lost, I am not at all.’”

“God”, the greater being that many believe in is simply a catalyst for these beliefs of hope and salvation. It’s easy enough to say that things will get better if you are in a bit of a rut. It’s easy to tell yourself that things will be better and of course it’s easy to hope that things will get better. However it isn’t always easy to BELIEVE that things will get better, because often you can never see how it is possible - and as they say “seeing is believing”.

In order for change to occur someone or something needs to make it happen. Believing in a higher being is believing that something far greater than yourself has the ability and will to make this change happen. It gives people the chance to put their faith in something more concrete then just ‘hope’. Mere optimism is usually not enough for people to put their faith in, so “God” is ready and waiting to soak up everybody’s hopes and dreams and supposedly spew them back down on us in a form of some kind of ‘sign’. Hope goes up, faith comes down, and confidence in a better tomorrow is the result.

Personally I don’t believe in God. There is no ‘higher being’ that created everything and everyone. For those who would argue against that and say “Then how are we here? How did we come to be if not for God?” then my argument would not be the Big Bang Theory. The thing is nobody knows how or why we are here, and that is ok. I think it’s foolish to believe that we will ever know. We will never know everything (try as we might!), and there will always be things that amaze and confuse us – and you know what? That’s what makes life so God damn exciting.