SHIT Day

So I woke up today and looked outside and it's a bright and sunny day. One of those rare days in London. So I get up and set about to go run some errands I needed to get out of the way before I go home for a couple of weeks.

First, I went to school and went to the clinic because I was feeling sick all weekend. Of course...damn bureaucratic NHS clinic people don't have any help. They always just send you away and it's like...if you feel like you're going to die, go to the hospital. Free health services are great and all, but yeah, they don't do shit for the little things. So basically, I went there for NOTHING.

Then I went down to the administration building which is across the Thames River. I've been having the worst time paying off this damn £80 for my fees. I've paid over £10,000, but because of a damn £80, the damn school has cut off my email access!!! So, I go there with the cash and they say they don't take cash. I try running the payment again via credit card, and it won't take my credit card. So...I went all the way there for NOTHING!

Then I go to Chinatown to get my mobile unlocked in case I can get a US SIM card for while I'm in the States. I get there and the guy tells me my phone isn't even locked. So...I went all the way there for NOTHING as well!

And then I go to the British Library to check out some books that aren't available at my school library. I was thinking I'd take them with me to LA so I can get some research work done. Turns out, can't borrow books from the British Library and not only that, I didn't have my passport so I couldn't even go in and read there. Went all the way there for NOTHING too!!!

So I come home having spent 4 hours and over £5 on bus and Tube to run around town and get NOTHING done. I go have a coffee at Starbucks and bitch at my friend Magda about my lousy day. I do a little cheap and cheery shopping in the Brunswick, and I'm about to feel a little better. I'm walking down the street thinking, the day might get better when the mother of all shitty things, I see this:



NO!!!!!!!!!!! Hugh's back with that evil rich bitch! I swear, it was like this:

London Lite Man: London Lite?
Me: (about to ignore him and my face drops when I see the headline) NO!
London Lite Man: Yes.
Me: NO!!!!!
London Lite Man: (sympathetic look) Yes, I know.

What a shit day...

Home

Was watching "Garden State" the other day and when I first watched it, I didn't catch this, but this is so true to me these days...

Andrew: You know that point in your life when you realize the house you grew up in...isn't really your home anymore. All of a sudden, even though you have some place where you put your shit...that idea of home is gone.

Sam: I still feel at home in my house.

Andrew: You'll see one day when you move out. Just sorta happens one day, and it's gone. You feel like you can never get it back. It's like you feel homesick for a place that doesn't even exist.

I'm glad to be going home to Fullerton tomorrow, but at the same time, in this strange way...it's not really home anymore. At least not in the sense it was back when I was a kid.

Seven Wonders of the Modern World

I read this in Time. There is a online voting site to pick the Seven Wonders of the Modern World. There are 21 semifinalists you can pick from. So far, I've only seen 3 of them (Statue of Liberty, Eiffel Tower, Great Wall of China).

Here are my picks:


Alhambra - because of my fascination with Katherine of Aragon

Christ the Redeemer - symbol of faith

Great Wall of China - because Canadian David peed on it. Great memories.

Pyramids of Giza - because duh

Statue of Liberty - out of patriotism. Go USA!

Sydney Opera House - modernity and I find it amazing that they built it with a population of just 64 people! John, you did an excellent job. (inside joke)

Taj Mahal - because I just always thought it was beautiful

Vote for your favorites.

http://www.new7wonders.com/

*PINCH*

So it's officially been 6 months since I arrived on this island. And it's been over 8 months since I left home back in July.

And in all honesty, I still have very little clue about who I am or what I want to do. If anything, the past 8 months have opened new cans of worms and I am more confused than ever. But I guess that's why I'm here.

Anyhow, today was St. Patrick's Day. And in good ol' Irish tradition, I went to meet my friends at an Irish pub to have a pint in the middle of the day and watch rubgy on the telly. Speaking of which, rugby is not a game...it's just a bunch of thick-calved men tackling one another. And they don't wear helmets! I mean...WOW. But anyhow, it was a beautiful day outside, but we were in a basement pub kicking back pints and singing Irish songs. It was quite great.

Remember back in elementary school how if you didn't wear green on St. Patrick's Day, people could pinch you? I always thought that was an Irish thing, but I was talking to the Irish folks and they tell me they've never heard of that! Apparently, it's another one of those things that Americans come up with. And I was SHOCKED because growing up, I HATED St. Patrick's Day because of the pinching. Asian people don't look good in green, and so I don't have green clothing. And every year on St. Patrick's Day, everyone would pinch me. I remember teachers giving out green shamrock stickers just hoping we'd stop pinching each other on the playground. I HATED ST. PADDY'S DAY! And this whole time, it wasn't even a part of the Irish traditions!

Well, I like St. Paddy's Day a lot better now that I can associate it with beer instead of pinching. Happy St. Paddy's Day, boys and girls. And stop pinching!

So Cultured

I read in the Daily Mail (London paper) that a hot dog vendor or some kind of stall vendor had graffiti on his stall. Some man came to him and offerred him £1,000 (~$2,000) for it. So the vendor cut out the graffiti and sold it. It took £600 to fix the wall and so he netted £400. TURNS OUT...the graffiti was a Banksy, this really famous graffiti artist, (I think I saw one in Vienna, remember?) so the piece is worth about £500,000. Poor hot dog vendor sold it for £1,000. I thought this story was interesting because it shows the value of being culturally aware.

Speaking of which, I had a very "cultured" weekend. Started with Thursday night when Magda and I went to a gallery opening at a small basement gallery in Fitzrovia. Magda's boyfriend's an artist and it was some artist friends of his. The exhibit was on text messages. And we just hung around and mingled and drank free wine.


My friend Magda.


People mingling.


Tracey Moberly in front of her samplers stiched with her personal text messages from famous friends.

The funniest part of the evening, though, was when me and Magda were standing outside the gallery having a smoke and we see this posh looking woman walk past talking into her cellphone really loudly. Then she sees this man and starts going crazy. She was KICKING HIS ASS. She's kicking him with her stilleto boots in the groin and just going cagefighter on him. The people in the restaurant in front of where they were fighting ran out and pulled her off of him. And she kept slipping out of their grip and continued to beat the shit out of the man. Then she walks off and he follows. After a second though, the man turned around and started running in the opposite direction away from her, and then she starts chasing him down the street yelling "Get the fuck back here, James!" It was a great little moment.

ANYHOW, the next day, the director of my program arranged a tour of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre for our class. I hadn't been there yet. It was the only part thing I wanted to see that I missed on my sightseeing tour back in September. So the tour was great. Because our program deals a lot with the operation of cultural organizations, that was primarily what we discussed during our tour. The interesting thing was that the Globe Theatre was rebuilt in 1997 by an American, so the business model they follow is very American. They don't rely on public grants. They are completely run on corporate sponsorships and self-generated income. I've just spent the last six months being brainwashed into the European model so it was interesting to see the American model implemented in Britain.


Shakespeare's Globe


Inside the Globe. If it looks familiar, it's because Shakespeare in Love was filmed here.


Our tour guide talking to our class.





After the tour, Magda and I went to the Tate Modern. I hadn't been there yet. Usually, contemporary art museums can be kind of bullshit, but the Tate Modern turned out to have a really great collection. They had a few Jackson Pollacks, a great cubist Picasso, an abstact Matisse, etc.


The Tate Modern


This was an installation inside the museum. You can slide down it. I didn't.


This is a recent acquisition called "Sliding Doors." It's a series of moving mirrored doors.


I got these two pictures and then security came and said "No cameras."

After the Tate, we walked along the South Bank because it was such a beautiful day. The weather has really turned over here. It's almost spring! It's still a bit chilly, but I no longer need to be wrapped up in coats and scarves and gloves anymore. It's great.


A view of the Thames and North from the South Bank.


The Millenium Bridge.

Along our walk, we stopped at the.gallery@oxo because there was an photo exhibit called "Britain of View." It was a series of photographs of the British countryside and coastline.

Note that all the pictures in this entry were taken with my new cellphone! :) I got a new cellphone this week, so if you want the number, let me know. It's the hot pink version of the LG Chocolate and I named it Cherie after the Mon Cherie chocolates.

So that was my cultured weekend in London. If anyone tries to offer me £1,000 for graffiti, I know better than to accept.

Mrs. Hugh Grant

Hugh Grant and his ugly ass girlfriend broke up! Maybe this move to London was worth it.

我的年！（猪年）恭喜发财！

恭喜发财！ 我很高兴。 这年是我的年－猪年。我喜欢猪。：）

My Chinese is a bit rusty since out of practice lately, but I meant to say above..."Happy New Year! I'm very happy. This year is my year - pig year. I like pigs." Since I'm sure someone out there will correct my Chinese. (Cathy!)

Anyhow, today is Chinese New Year, marking the first day of the Year of the Pig, which is MY YEAR! So I've had special reason to look forward to this day. Also, pigs are my favorite animal because they represent wealth and prosperity.

So Sonja, Thomas and I were supposed to go to the New Year festivities in Chinatown this year, but Sonja has been ill lately :( so me and Thomas went by ourselves. Yes, I borrowed the Governator from Sonja for the day. Leicester Square was SO CROWDED and it was mostly non-Chinese people. London goes full out for the holiday. First we saw the parade down the Strand and then we went into Leicester Square to look at the different stands selling Chinese goods and ate some Chinese food. Then we stuck around for the firework show at 2pm.


















Awww...poor Thomas is a lost child.


Remember those little Chinese noisemakers that Taiwanese kids would bring from Taiwan to school? I used to LOVE these but they were outlawed at school when I was young. So I was so excited to see these here. I bought a bunch and Thomas and I threw them all over the ground like the little kids were doing. Didn't throw them at old people though.




Me and the Governator. We asked this Chinese man to take this picture, and for some reason, he thought we meant that I wanted to take a picture with him.


Happy pigs.


London Chinatown.






Dragon dance show in a small PACKED alley in Chinatown. It was impossible to move.




Very important people.


This is Harvey, 3 years old. He was very brave during the whole fireworks show and didn't cry. We gave him noisemakers to throw and he loved it. I kept telling him, "You're so cute!" and he'd nod and say "Yeah." Haha.


Chinese fireworks are really LOUD.


And smokey. Thomas said he felt like he was in the Middle East.


Communist attack on London! Ahhhh!!!

I wish you all a great Chinese New Year. This is MY YEAR. :) 恭喜发财！(Gong-xi fa-cai!)

Wien is Fantastisch!

So we arrived in Vienna at 6am and then went to the hostel we were staying at and took a shower, breakfast, check email, etc. and waited until a decent hour so we could start seeing the city. I instantly liked Vienna better than Prague for some reason. It's just more my preference. John prefers Prague.

We took a horse-drawn carriage ride around the center of town.


Us in the carriage.


Our carriage driver who looked like Hagrid.


The horsie who started trying to bite my boob while this picture was being taken. Yeah, I know horsie, I have a nice rack.


Inside Stephansdom or Stephen's Cathedral.

Then we jumped on the tour bus around the city. At one point, we fell asleep since we were so tired from being up since 6am. Vienna is a beautiful place. There's an eclectic variety of architectural styles. Some strangely modern buildings mixed in with really old buildings.


We stopped at the Hofburg Palace area. This is the front of the Nationalbibliothek, their national library.

We toured the Imperial Palace where the Hapsburgs lived for six centuries. I wasn't very impressed by the Prague Palace, especially after having just been to Versailles last month, but this palace was pretty beautiful. Not quite Versailles, but closer than Prague. Perhaps it's because Marie Antoniette was acutally Austrian. No photos were allowed, and after the incident at Prague Castle, we didn't push the rules. There was a huge collection of silverware and plates and then the Sissi Museum, which was dedicated to the life of the wife of Emperor Franz Josef I. She was severely depressed and sad throughout her life and then was assassinated. It was actually a really interesting exhibit. The palace apartments were also really beautiful. It was sad though, because in Franz Josef's rooms, he had all these paintings and photographs of his family and in Sissi's, she didn't have any. Her husband truly loved her--after hearing she had been assassinated, he said "You will never know how much I loved this woman", but she was too deeply depressed to love him back. :(

After the palace, we sat outside in the courtyard area waiting for the bus and we saw THE CUTEST DOG in the world playing football (soccer) with a group of boys. It was so funny because he was really playing. The dog actually didn't even belong to any of the boys and had just run up and started to chase the ball. His owner dragged him away.


The boys and the dog.


The dog has the ball...


Me and the cutest dog ever.

That night, we went to dinner at Wild (pronounced "Vild" since "W" is "V" in German) for John's 22nd birthday.


John with his birthday dessert.

Afterwards, we went to the bar district called Bermuda Triangle since you drink until you disappear! After a drink, John didn't feel very good so he went back, but I stayed out. It was the first time I went to a bar by myself, but I lucked out because I ended up meeting some people. Two of them spoke Korean so I could communicate even though I don't speak Deutsch (German).


This girl and her friends were dressed in traditional Austrian outfits. They're from the countryside somewhere and are in Vienna for a meeting for some organization or something she said.






On the way home, I had a wienerschnitzel. It wasn't a club dog, but it was pretty good.

The next morning...actually closer to noon, John finally got me up and we went to have lunch at gu which was supposed to be a gluten-free Chinese restaurant. John is allergic to gluten so he can't have wheat, barley, etc. He's the only Australian who doesn't drink beer. BUT...Lonely Planet people once again messed up. Turns out it was "glutenmat"-free, which means free of MSG not gluten.

Then we went to Cafe Sperl which according to the guidebook used to be one of Hitler's regular haunts. We aren't 100% sure since we didn't want to ask the waitress. Austrians are still pretty sensative about the whole Hitler and facism thing.


Hitler was here!


John picking my nose.


Viennese iced coffee. Vietnamese iced coffee is better. I MISS LA!


Me and John with a pony in Stephansplatz. The pony had a sign on him asking for money to help him through the winter. Pony is "pony" in German.


Sigmund Freud Park

Another Lonely Planet mistake. There was a blurb in the guidebook about the Pathologisch-Anatomische Bundesmuseum and it described it as part of "quirky Vienna" and that it's a museum about death that's inside an old insane asylum. I'm thinking it's very Girl, Interrupted Angelina Jolie, so I thought it'd be interesting, but really it was more of a medical museum and just had exhibits on all the different diseases you could die from. Yeah...it was weird. I don't recommend.


The building was cool though.

Then we went to Der Neue Donauturm which is this tower thing kind of like the BT tower in London. We thought we'd have dinner in the revolving restaurant, but we forgot it's Valentine's Day so the restaurant was booked with people who were probably planning to do the cheesy marriage proposal thing. We stepped outside on to the observation deck for like 2 minutes and realized we'd freeze. Anyhow, Manuel, my new friend from the night before, was there to meet us so we left after like 5 minutes.


Freezing.


The view.

Then we went back into the city center to have dinner: me, John, Manuel and the unni from the night before. It was a bit of a language problem since we couldn't all communicate in the same language. Manuel speaks Deutsch, Korean and English. The unni speaks Deutsch and Korean. I speak Korean and English. John speaks English. So we could either speak English and the unni would be left out, or we could speak Korean and John would be left out.


Here's John using a German language book so he could speak to the unni.

We had a drink together and then John and stuck around and had a couple more. Here's an interesting find in Austria.


I think this is an original Banksy! If not an original, it's a damn good copy of one that he's done. For those who don't know, Banksy is a famous British graffiti artist. My brother's a huge fan so I got him the book for Christmas. John and I were wandering around the city and I saw this and was really excited. I looked it up online and Banksy did a similar one to this on another building in Vienna, so I think he did this too.

The next day, we got up and left Vienna. BUT, there's another famous American who came to take my place...Paris Hilton.


Paris Hilton's in town to attend the Austrian Opera Ball on the 15th. I hope you enjoy your trip, Paris. I sure did.

Thanks John for the great trip. And remember, what happens on tour stays on tour. ;)