London - Dalwali Festival 2006 & Nick's 25th Birthday

After a bit of a sleep in, Brendan and I went shopping to get him a blender, and needless to say he got dragged around all the department stores on Oxford Street.
We had a bit of an afternoon nap (yes, getting old) then gathered up all of Brendan’s stuff, and saw him off at Waterloo Train Station for his return to his new flat in Southampton.

I walked to Westminster Station and caught the tubes back home.
While I was in the Bond Street Tube Station transferring tube lines, there was an alarm going off and continuous message sounded over the loud speaker for a specific engineer to go to the Utilities room.
Shortly later, just as I got to the top of last flight of stairs before my platform, a new announcement came over the PA system saying “would all passengers please leave the station immediately, due to an emergency situation” and then repeated.
Both me and the guy next to me stopped in our tracks and said ‘hmm that doesn’t sound good’.
I made a quick decision to run down to the platform and jumped on the tube that happened to already be in the station. I knew Bond Street was packed full of people and would have taken ages for me to get out. As the doors shut on the tube I thought, ‘I hope this is the right thing to do!’
I quickly got off at the next station at Marble Arch (my stop) and almost ran out the doors. Helen said that when she was on her way home a few hours later, the station was still closed and was forced to say on her tube. I never found out exactly what happened, but there doesn’t appear to be any big holes in the wall, so I’m guessing no bomb went off.

I had another sleep in on Tuesday, then realised I had not taken back my library books that were due yesterday - oops. I hung out my washing then caught the tubes to Balham and returned my books with a total late charge of 17p per day per book - sweet.
I used my 1 hour free internet at the library since our internet connection at home was playing up, then caught the tubes back to Oxford Street to do a little shopping.

I went over to Shepherd’s Bush and met everyone at Vesbar for Benny’s 26th Birthday dinner. Benny appears know everyone, including two people at Beca that I used to sit next to and the daughter of the infamous Flying Horse Takeaways in Highbury. My parents are such regular customers there she even recognised our surname - awesome.

I finally started working on my CV on Wednesday, in amongst up loading photos and doing washing and eating (of course). It was proving to be a little bit of a mission transferring my CV in to the ‘UK format’, especially since I was not 100 percent sure what it was meant to look like.
I headed down to Oxford Street for day two of looking for a birthday present for my sister, Laura, which was harder than expected. Perhaps there is just too much choice?

I headed over to Covent Gardens for the Beca Alumi function at “The Corner Store’. It was really good to catch up with everyone, especially those who I forgot where over here.
We each got a little goodie pack: including some Tiwisties, Rashans, a little Perky Nana and a flash stick! Which was perfect, because I was thinking about going and buying one this week!
I also managed to get a few contacts to send my CV to. So all I have to do now is finish it!

I got up reasonably early on Thursday (relatively speaking) and under took my slightly adjusted morning ritual of checking my e-mails and doing more work on my CV.

I went for a walk to Paddington Library, joined the group of Westminster Library’s and had a little look around before heading home to have lunch.
I packed a few books and bits in my bag, and went across the road to sit in the sunshine in Hyde Park for a while. I worked on my CV plus did some suduko and some rather amateur sketches of the stand of trees in front of me, then had a walk around the park before headed back to the flat.

I met Ben at Marble Arch Station and he took me out for a nice dinner at Pizza Express down in St Christopher’s Place. (This place is great!) We had a big chat about everything and lots of food! We ordered a whole bottle of wine, but by the time we had finished our dinner, I think we had only got through one glass each. So we had to stay there and chatted until we finished it.

I got up rather early on Friday morning and gave Leah a call. We talked for ages about everything that’s going on over here, stuff that’s going on in NZ and her pending trip to the UK next year.
I got off the phone about 11am, had breakfast then did one final check of my CV and sent it off to the guys that I meet at Beca function on Wednesday night - here’s hoping something will come of it!

My parents told me they were selling our house in Auckland, where I have lived all my life. I looked to see if it had been put in the internet, and sure enough it was and with the exact agency I had guessed my parents would go through. Mum and dad had done some work to getting it tidy, and it looked pretty good. I didn’t even recognise some of it!
Its also kind of funny to see your own bedroom on the internet for sale!

I meet Beth at Pret near Marble Arch for Lunch, then did some shopping along Oxford Street (again). I finally found what I wanted for Laura’s birthday. I went back to the flat and did a bit of searching on the internet and found a few job to apply for.

I jumped on the bus at met Grant at the Shepherd’s Bush bus station, then headed off to Matt’s place in Acton for dinner.
Matt had made us ravioli pasta and stir fried vegetables for dinner. We were eating outside in the dark as they don’t have a lounge or an outside light. I gave up trying to eat around all the vegetables to pick out the carrots and ended up eating all sorts! - including broccoli, onion, capsicum, spring onions and mushrooms! - My gosh! I thought eating ravioli was an achievement! (I hope you were sitting down mum!)

While we were having dinner, I missed a call from mum. She left a message to say they may have sold the house at Balmain Road and will move out at the beginning of December, so that’s exciting for them.

We caught the tubes to Shepherd’s Bush and watched a movie ‘The Departed’ which was quite good. Though lots of guns and dead people, so perhaps slightly gory for a bed-time movie - I only jumped a few times, and screamed once, … or, so.

I had rather a slow start to the day on Saturday. I went over to Beth’s at 1pm, but the traffic was so bad it look me an hour to get there. We headed off to Tooting with Grant and Matt for Nick’s 25th Birthday BBQ (which I think was more like a smoke-a-thon… where are the good ol’ Kiwi BBQ’s when ya need ‘em!?) but it least it was keeping us warm.

At about 9-ish, we all headed down to the road to a local bar that Nick had hired a section of for the evening. The night’s entertainment was a Boy George impersonator, who didn’t take to kindly to Grant who pretty much told him rather openly, that him he was crap. While he did play a few good songs which we had a good dance to, he often changed to lines in the lyrics to hassle us - how rude!
Grant and I crashed at Beth’s place, after having a nice cheese toastie at about 3am.

I woke up at 9 and stayed in bed until about 2pm. I eventually caught the bus home and had lunch, or perhaps Breakfast. Irene (my flatmate) came back from Morocco and we had a big catch up and saw some of her photos.

That night Grant and I headed into Trafalgar Square for the Diwali Festival of Lights. It so happened that my friend Klaus, who had just arrived in London was these as well, so managed to catch up with him which was cool. Matt met us there, and the four of us walked up to Leicester Square for a drink and a yummy ice-cream.

I was expecting the Dilwali Festival to be something a little like the Lantern Festival in Albert Park in Auckland, but was more a like show with dancing and singing on a large stage. But fun nevertheless.

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