The Good, the Bad and... well that's it.

Stuff I like about London:




1. Not getting sunburnt.


2. Being able to go and see good theatre on a Tuesday night.


3. In any direction you look there's a pub within 100 yards. (yes, I'm all Imperial now)


4. You can buy booze at the supermarket.


5. There's a museum for EVERYTHING.


6. You don't really need a car.


7. There's at least three hours of Top Gear on TV every single day.


8. Lots of pretty old buildings. As in, they're pretty, and they're old. 


9. Hearing pretty much every language in the world spoken on the Tube.


10. Central heating.




Stuff I don't like about London:




1. Not being able to feel my toes.


2. Being unintentionally groped on the Tube during peak hour.


3. Uneven, ankle-hating pavements.


4. The mountain of paperwork needed to get anything even vaguely official done. 


5. Chicken bones on the footpath on a Sunday morning. 


6. Tourists.


7. Slow walkers. 


8. Street canvassers. No, you can't have my money!


9. People shouting at their kids. All the freaking time.


10. The black shit that comes out when you blow your nose.

Internet Dating, or, What the Hell Am I Doing?

Look, I don't know what possessed me... I've joined internet dating sites before and it ended badly, so why did I think it was a good idea?


I guess I thought maybe since I'm in London and new to the city it'd be a good way to meet people. Sure, if you want those people to be overweight IT consultants who can barely spell. I mean, I'm young, I'm attractive, educated, funny - surely there are some nice guys out there who aren't a little bit socially retarded, mind-bogglingly unattractive or lacking one or both testicles. 


So, in the interests of putting it out into the universe, and maybe assisting those who are thinking of signing up, here are a few tips for the gentlemen out there in cyber-dating-land.


1. LEARN TO SPELL. Seriously. Punctuation and grammar don't hurt either.


2. Smile in your pic. You may think you look sexy, but you probably look like you've injected Botox with a horse syringe. Especially if ALL your pics are like that. 


3. If you message someone and they don't reply, it's probably because they're not interested. Messaging again won't help. Nor will continual pokes. Get the hint. 


4. Don't lie about your age. When your profile says 28 but your pic looks 45, there's something wrong. 


5. Posting pics of your car/boat/guitar isn't going to win you points, it's going to make you look like a douche.


6. I don't want to read an essay in the 'about me' section. That being said, putting 'I don't know what to write in these things, so yeah - message me' isn't terribly informative. It also makes you sound incredibly boring. 


7. Please don't message me offering sex. There are other places I can go for that. 


Now then. Hopefully someone out there will get the memo and send me some vaguely enticing messages. 


I may be waiting a while...

London, Centre of the Universe

I'M FINALLY HERE!


Not without incident, mind you.


I was packed and ready and at the airport when an over-zealous Airline staff member freaked me the hell out by telling me that I'd have problems entering the UK with only a one-way ticket. FUCKING HELL! I'd been so thorough in my research and pre-planning, I didn't think anything of this nature could occur, and nobody that I spoke to, including the Home Office, said anything indicating problems. 


So, I predictably spent a lot of the next 20 hours or so worrying about being denied entry and sent back to Oz forthwith. The flight wasn't bad - I did manage to get some sleep, and I bonded in an unspoken long-haul flight kinda way with the two gentlemen sitting next to me, finished my first Kindle book (ooh, I have a kindle!) and watched The Social Network (which was great).


I needn't have worried, because despite filling in my entry card wrong (oops!), the nice man at passport control gave me a stamp and sent me on my way. 


HUZZAH!


Then came the challenge of navigating the Tube to meet my friend Daniel, who I am now staying with. My stupid phone didn't have International Roaming on (stupid Optus, they are ruining my life), so I had to buy a vending machine SIM card, wait for it to activate, and in the meantime use the airport public internet to try to contact Daniel via facebook. 


So, lugging my luggage (oh wow, that's why they call it luggage) onto the Heathrow Express and armed with my awesome London Underground iPhone app, headed towards Kings Cross. I'd expected to have to change trains along the line, but definitely wasn't prepared to drag my (overweight) luggage up and down stairs. Omg, London - get some more lifts already.


Luckily I was saved not once, but twice, by handsome young Knights In Shining Armour. Yes, my friends, these nice young men saw a Damsel in Distress (me) and gallantly came to my aid. AND they were HOT. Sadly, they then disappeared into the night, but the experience (twice!) gave me hope that there are nice men out there, and apparently in higher proportions than in other places I've been. 


That was last night. Today I spent the day gawping like a tourist at the sights of London and wandering around aimlessly. The greyness of the day didn't bother me in the slightest, as I could happily wander for as long as I liked without fear of getting sunburned. Frostbite, on the other hand, was a distinct possibility. It is fucking cold in London right now. Going from 39 degrees to four is not the best of experiences, and I'm sure my body is going 'Um, excuse me, but WTF?'. 


Oh well. I can handle a bit of cold, dammit! 

Shoes: Best Friend and Worst Enemy

I have a confession. I am a shoe addict. 


It's not much of a confession, I'll admit. I don't exactly go robbing convenience stores or selling myself on the street corner to fuel my need for stiletto heels and ankle straps. 


....yet.


I've lost a great many pairs of shoes in the last few weeks. Not lost as in misplaced - I've had to give them up, like so many starving African children, to homes that can care for them better. In some cases, they were beyond help, and I've had to put them (humanely) out of their misery. 


This has all come about because of the travelling I've done, or am about to do. Stupid luggage restrictions. How am I supposed to fit fifteen pairs of shoes along with all the rest of my worldly goods into 20kg? We must all make sacrifices, but this is ridiculous. 


I got a fabulous pair of leather boots in China, but packing them would mean paying almost as much as I got them for in excess luggage charges. Half the fun of having a shoe addiction is finding an amazing bargain, and the airlines are ruining my fun. Thankfully I'm told that there's more fun to be had in London, where fabulous shoes abound, and that my babies can always be replaced with new ones. 


I guess the upshot of all this is that I'm more or less packed, and ready to head off into a land of wonderful shoes and opportunity. 


And dammit, I will be ready for this opportunity clad in appropriately fabulous footwear!

Give a Little, Get a Lot

For the past two weeks I've been volunteering at the Perth International Arts Festival. I'm only home in Perth for three and a half weeks, so you may well ask why the hell I'm spending my time working and not getting paid, when there's a million other things I could (and probably should) be doing.


Well first, as you may have gathered, I'm easily bored. I also have a tendency, when faced with a lot of free time and not a lot of structure, to be lazy as hell. Last summer I spent three months at home, unemployed and waiting for my contract to start, mostly spending my time playing Xbox and eating peanut butter with a spoon. 


This is not how I wanted to spend my time on this occasion. Especially since it took a good few months to shed the kilos caused by stagnant peanut butter consumption. 


So I got in contact with an old friend who works at the Festival and offered my services. So to speak. 


I expected a few freebies and a nice reference for my resume in return, but I'm getting so much more. I hadn't realised, but I'd been suffering from Cultural Starvation. Not that there isn't any culture in China - far from it, but after ten months I'd pretty much had my fill, and I was sick of the false and cheesy environment in which I was working. I needed some real art, and to feel inspired again as an Artist.


Working at the Festival, amongst so many passionate people, people who are really excited about seeing some obscure act from Argentina, or an Iranian film, or in my case a beautiful piece of theatre by a company from Switzerland, has reinvigorated my creativity in ways I didn't expect. I'm learning so much, even as I sit there laminating posters or labelling stationary. 


These guys love the Arts so much, you can't help but be inspired. 


Not only do I get to see these amazing shows and acts from around the world, I get to sit amongst passionate and enthusiastic audiences who remind me of why I started performing in the first place. Just the fact that there are these people out there, who understand and appreciate good art or theatre or music, gives me hope that I can give something to someone out there in the big scary world. 


Talking to one of my temporary colleagues the other day, we were discussing why supporting the Arts (yep, with a capital letter) is important, and we hit on the fact that unlike other not-for-profit organisations, the Arts benefits everybody in one way or another. It might highlight an important issue, change somebody's thinking, bring a new or different culture into someone's life, give someone a moment of pure delight - but above all, help spread these ideas around.


Yep, I'm all for spreading things around. Share the love, I say! 


So as I climb down off my soapbox, I just want to say how grateful I am to be an Artist, and how grateful I am to have the opportunity to work with such wonderful and dedicated people.


Viva la Arte! Viva la Festival!


If you want to feel as awesome as I do, and you're in Perth, go see some of the shows. You won't regret it. 

www.perthfestival.com.au

I. Hate. Paperwork.

Bureaucracy is my enemy. I swear, I've filled out so many forms and sent so many emails in the past few weeks it's no wonder I woke up with a killer migraine at 5.30am this morning. My brother, who was still up (omg deadbeat) looked at me strangely as I headed to the freezer for an icepack to soothe my throbbing head. 


I thought I'd escaped pointless forms and ridiculous requirements when I left China, but no - even my Chinese bank account has been blocked (yes, I entered the wrong PIN - whatever) and I have to print, sign scan and email ANOTHER stupid form to get another PIN. 


That's before I had to deal with the British Home Office. After my emails about my British Passport application went unanswered, I called up, and after being disconnected and told to call the number that I'd originally dialled twice, I finally chanced upon a human being who really wasn't much help anyway. 


So, back to the plan of getting my passport when I actually arrive in the UK. Unfortunately, for this I needed even MORE forms and documents - birth certificates and such - and there were yet more forms to fill out to obtain these. 


AAAARGH!


Thankfully, my own Birth Certificate was pretty painless to get - just gad to go down to the local registry with a completed form and my passport and they printed it out for me on the spot. YAY!


Glad to find that some things can be easy... 

No Effort, No Worries

Anything that lets me do something without making any effort, I'm completely down with. Ever since going to China, I've been trying to learn different languages. I've always been so impressed with people who speak more than one language. I guess being a native English speaker and growing up in Australia, it's not as necessary to learn another language.


Oh, I took a year of Japanese in High School (konnichi-wa!) but lost interest because I had to learn to write  in Japanese as well. Too much effort. Same when I borrowed some Russian language CDs from the library - as if I'm gonna learn how to read and write Cyrillic. Then I find myself in China, a country that boasts several dialects and a lexicon of several thousand individual characters, as well as a tonal system. So, depending on how you say it, the word 'ma' can either mean Mother or horse. I didn't really want to be calling anyone's mum a horse, so my Chinese (both Cantonese and Mandarin - we used both) was limited at best. I did try my Cantonese at the local Chinese takeaway today but I'm pretty sure they didn't notice. 


But I really want to learn another language, and since I'm going to Germany in August for a singing course (excitement!), and German being closest to English, I thought I'd give that a go. I even have some German friends to practice on, so it all works out quite well, really.


Now, I'm one to lose interest in things quite quickly. In fact I have the attention span of a goldfish with ADD. I'm actually really surprised I've kept up this blog for so long. 


I needed something to help me learn German without me getting bored and losing interest. 


I found it. 


Well, my friend Miriam found it, and got me onto it. It's called Earworms, and it uses funky music playing under the language lesson to help implant it in your brain. Like those annoying jingles you can't get out of your head. You're actually supposed to relax and not really make an effort. It'll just gradually implant itself in your brain. 


That's the idea, anyway. I've listened to it all the way through twice now, and so far I'm no Diane Kruger, but I have a feeling this one will work. I can listen on the train to work, at work, in the car - anywhere, and OMG MULTITASKING!


I'm addicted to multitasking. I NEED to be doing more than one thing at the same time. Yesterday I was simultaneously listening to my German, laminating, checking my facebook and doing a research project. 


Don't tell my boss. 


Or maybe do tell her - I am a freaking multitasking GENIUS. 


But leave out the facebook...