Lounging in London

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So i was back in London, this a summary of the things I've been getting up to. (Aside from looking for work!)

Craig arrived in London from NZ on the same day I returned so the funboy 3 were reunited over the first rounds of what was to become our London drink of choice; Strongbro ciders. I was staying back with Beth, Helen and Brad in Shepherds Bush and now planning on setting up my new life in London. My first week was pretty laid back, Randi was stopping over so we met up again and I took the opportunity to check out the London Zoo. It was not bad, some different animals from back home but the enclosures were pretty small. I also caught up with Sasha who was stopping over for a day and checked out the Tate modern art museum, it was fantastic with some very cool works. That afternoon we met Randi, got cheap tickets and went and saw the show 'Stomp', I actually really enjoyed it, it was just music and beats done with all sorts of different instruments, the opening broom sequence was particularly inventive.

Claire had a themed house party with an in house DJ playing some sweet breaks. The Strongbro's made another appearance and there were some casualties but it was a good night nonetheless.

Jim had organised a Circle line tour pub crawl, so I used the opportunity to invite a few old engineering buddies to catch up, and Beth got a few friends along too for us to have a huge group. Laurence also made it down from Cardiff for the weekend! It was weird meeting up with these people I hadn't seen in so long, but it was just like old times, like I'd only seen them just last week. The basic idea is that we stopped at each tube stop on the circle line and went to the nearest pub for a pint, then moved to the next stop. As you can imagine it got messy pretty quickly but everyone had a great time, in the end we made it 14 stops over 12 hours of drinking, though there were invariably a few breathers along the way.

We went to an ex-Pat bar (The Walkabout) to watch the ABs play England (and win) great to see lots of kiwis come out to support their team. That night was also Guy Fawkes, and boy do they know how to do it here! While back in NZ there is talk of banning it altogether over here you can still buy rockets as big as your head almost! Display grade, and worth every penny :D The best part is, they're available all year round!!

London really is a small place, mum sent me an email to say that my uncle had gotten in touch with her because my cousin who's living here had a friend who saw me on the street and recognised me from when i used to visit them in Christchurch! So that weekend I went out with my cousin, we watched the first ABs game versus France which was wicked. It was a huge group of southern kiwis, so plenty of alcohol and good times. The next day I was also lucky enough that Tarek had a spare ticket for me to go and see a very important football match, Arsenal vs Liverpool at the Gunners new home stadium. It was fantastic, sold out crowd of 60k, an electric atmosphere and a great result for the home team winning 3 - 0.

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Photos

Circle Line Tour Pubcrawl - On the tube
No hands allowed!

CLT - Bottoms up
A Pint at each pub

Zoo - Not the zoo
Nice park though