hot-diggity

Hot dogs in a jar. Who would have thought. 

this is london

This is where I live now. LONDON TOWN. The city of Plaistow- robbery hotspot! Notable residents include Tony Cottee (of West Ham United fame) and Sol Campbell who also played football or something. The area is actually really nice and mostly residential. West Ham Park is just at the end of our road and on Sunday I went for a run through it, there were familys playing in the leaves, people playing cricket, heaps of squirrels and even an icecream van! There is a part which is a botanical garden and it boasts being one of the few parks in the UK that have their own nursery!

This is our street

and our door

This is my room:

this is london

job hunt

EMPLOY ME!

silver screen

These are just some of the films that shape the way that I feel about Paris. They all use the city as another character in the film, its is as much about her as it is about them. Paris, j'taime.

Paris take two

Back in Paris. What a wonderful city. 

Musee D'Orsay

Pilgrimage to Pere Lachaise:

Oscar Wilde

Apollinare is in there somewhere

Max Ernst

Balzac

writing never dies

Brussels

We didn't eat any waffles

It was a bit of a disappointment

The night we got to brussels it was raining, but thats ok because we found our way fairly easily to our hotel. thats right HOTEL. no hostel for us. only because we left it too late and they were all booked out. Our hotel even had its own bathroom with a heated towel rack thing. wow. AND breakfast. with eggs and everything. 

when we got outside it was still raining. and my umbrella had turned inside out and promptly been thrown out in amsterdam. I was destined to have bad hair for the whole day. damn. LC and I decided to head to one of the flea markets only to find that flea markets are not so fun in the rain. SO then we decided to A. get some soup and B. find a cinema and see a film. After wandering around for several hours we finally found some yummy lentil soup (it was good but a bit salty) and a cinema that was showing a plethora of crap. We decided that Woody Allen's latest installment was worth a shot and as it turned out it wasn't too bad. 

there was a shop full of things made of dead things. amazing.

I kind of look like a man. how unfortunate

Within he first 5 minutes I had decided that if the film continued at the same level i would have to walk out. This is a pretty big deal, I have only ever walked out of one film before and tat was due to it being overly crass, utterly unintelligent mindless drivel. Luckily it was just a particularly uncomfortable scene and was over along with the protagonists marriage. The film was, admittedly, a little bit left of centre. It was challenging to the hollywood schema and often grating to watch (although never more so than those first two scenes). The thing is, while at first glance it seemed to be pretty shit, in reality it showed Woody Allen once again examining the boundaries of cinema. Now, I haven't seen that many of his films but i can say for sure that Annie Hall is very different from some of his more recent 'hollywood' style films (especially those featuring young Scarlet). Annie Hall is a very different sort of film to Match Point or Scoop. In Whatever works Allen uses techniques which are considered faux pas' including talking to the camera. At first this makes you cringe, then you realise its just trying to get you to think about this like a film. Allen also uses the character boris (played by Larry David) and a grossly egotistical parody of himself. In some places you realise that basically, Woody Allen has just done the cinematic version of jizzing on your face. He is just sooooo in to himself. But maybe this is just another way of making you more aware of film- making you aware of the director/auteur. There are definitely some very charing moments though, the parody sometimes goes a bit far (in a hilarious i can't believe he just did that kind of way). The characters are endearing once Allen develops them past the point of parody. and his wit is undeniable. 

If you want to read more go here. If you want to go see it, do. It is not a film for everyone but, grin and bear it because it is really a nice story. 

Amsterdam

After Berlin LC and I made our way over to Amsterdam to visit my cousin Rosanne. She was born in the Netherlands and has lived there all her life except a year exchange that she did in Sydney last year. It was so good to catch up with her last year (she is my only female cousin who is my age) and so weird that we have quite a lot in common. She reckons she is more like Sliuzas than her mums side and you can definitely see the resemblance in our faces! Anyway, she kindly let us crash on her couch for the weekend and was so lovely. Uncle Richard and Aunty Anita come up to amsterdam (from the other side of the country) to have dinner with us. We had such a nice family dinner. 

In Amsterdam there is this amazing thing called FEBO. Basically it is deep fried food from the wall. No social interaction required. And they even have souffle!

The canals. It was absolutely freezing but so beautiful. 

Family dinner! so nice to be part of a greater family unit after it just being the two of us for so long. Can't wait to see them again for easter. 

Rosanne invited some of her friends over and we drank wine and chatted all night. they were so nice and spoke in english the whole time even though its not their native tongue. We learnt about the weird christmas traditions (the biscuit things were so good) where santa comes from spain and has a black helper. that is so not PC. In these photos are Tom and Hannah (and Rosanne) who are all taller than I am. I was literally a midget. This has basically never happened to me before. 

The view from Rosannes living room. You can see the dunes just to the right of the far right but not in this photo. Everything here is below sea level. Amazing, huh! oh and there were heaps of people sailing on the lake during the day. I want to go sailing. 

Amazing Cinema!

Goodnight Amsterdam.