New Years Eve 2009

Hello and welcome to our New Years celebrations in London! While I worked both New Years Eve and New Years Day, my flatmates wanted to head into London to party it up, so I went with them. Being the lovely gals that they are, they did my hair and makeup:

Before we hopped the tube to hit the party scene:

The location was the Walkabout in Temple, which is an Aussie bar in the heart of London. The nice bit was that it was a ticket-only event, so it wasn't *that* crowded, although it was still busy. They also let us out at quarter to midnight to watch the fireworks before letting us back in. I'm afraid I didn't take any pictures of the fireworks, only a video, which is about 15 minutes long and would take me about 4 days to upload to YouTube, so instead, I'll share a clip from QI that I quite enjoy. You can pretend it's fireworks if you like.

Okay, back to New Years:

Here's the whole gang (minus me). From the left it's Amanda, Tamryn's friend Kirsty, Tamryn and Kevin. All dressed up, aren't we fancy!

... And the drink of choice for the evening, the Walkabout-famous Snakebite. It's one part cider, one part beer with a shot of blackcurrant grenadine. And it's quite lovely. I especially enjoy the S in the top. Classy.

I left them all at about 1:15 or so in the morning to head back home, seeing as I had to get up at 7 a.m. the next day for work, but it was a very fun evening all around. Sniff. My last New Years in London. How sad.

The (Late) Christmas Post!

Welcome, dear reader, to my very very late Christmas post! I don't have many photos to share, but I thought you'd enjoy the following glimpse into my holiday season!

These lovely people make up 3 of my 4 flatmates. From the left is Tamryn, Kevin and Amanda. I was helping out Amanda and Kevin by taking their photo for a holiday card they were sending to family when Tamryn jumped in the photo for an impromptu snapshot!

On Christmas day we went down to Tamryn's friend's house for a Christmas lunch and some festive mulled-wine drinking.

There was also some festive hat-wearing.

After the lunchtime festivities we retreated back home to video chat friends and families, and begin cooking.

Amanda is vegan and so she cooked a little tiny (albeit expensive) tofurkey, as well as a lovely roast for the rest of us meat eaters. She also made all the stuffing by hand (I know, AMAZING!), and slaved over the stove for hours for the rest of us.

Tamryn is doing her part in stirring the gravy.

This is the only snapshot of our lovely meal that I managed to take before devouring all of it. On the plate you can see the following:

• Apple dumplings
• Bun
• Brocolli Bake
• Roast Beef
• Hand-made stuffing with cranberries
• Potatoes, onions and carrots
• Mashed potatoes
• Gravy
• YUM!

To say the least, OM NOM NOM NOM. It was so very tasty and we all ate so much the rest of the evening was pretty much spent sitting around drifting in and out of sleep.

And finally, to round off the festive day I present to you the build-your-own robot I gifted Kevin with in our flatmate secret santas. You can turn the little switch on underneath and he runs about chomping in a very honorable attempt to be Godzilla. Rawr.

It was a very lovely, low-key Christmas and damn, that food was good!

HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

Happy Christmas Everyone from me and my new Stig keychain, gifted to me from my Top Gear advent calender. It's been a lovely day, and I'm currently sitting in the living room waiting for our lovely roast, broccoli casserole, roasted vegetables, tofurky and home-made stuffing to cook. I will post more pictures later, but it's been wonderfully festive!

A Mash-Up of Things for You

Hello one and hello all. Welcome back. Now that I'm only getting out of the house maybe 1 day a week, I haven't many interesting things to tell/show you. Other than, of course, my new TOP GEAR advent calender, about which I know you are all anxiously waiting for the beginning of December for me to unveil the first "Some Say..." fact about the Stig.

In the meantime, please enjoy this gathering of videos and images for your enjoyment:

Eddie Izzard has a new DVD out on Monday, and I'm hella excited about it! You can never go wrong with Eddie Izzard, and his website has released this short clip in anticipation of the DVD.

Click on this link here to watch the clip, and I hope that it works for you.

It's Christmas-time, people! And in celebration of that, I have tried my first-ever mince-meat pie, which, yes, I know, doesn't contain any meat. Above, again, if it works for you, is this years version of the famous M&S Christmas Ad. And, if it helps, this year features one of my favourite Brits. :)

One of my other favourite comedians, Michael McIntyre, also released a DVD last week. It's a real laugh, although not as much as his first DVD.
Unfortunately I have no links for this DVD, although I'm sure eventually bits will show up on YouTube. Still damn funny.



Speaking of Stephen Fry, he has finally acheived one million followers on Twitter. If you don't know what twitter is, go here and find out.
In celebration of having one million followers, Stephen Fry released the above video on his website. It's very strange and rather amusing and very strange again. This video comes from the future, apparently, and this future version of Stephen Fry gives the following (highly amusing) predictions about the future:

• Cold fusion is achieved and the energy problems of the world are over.
• Food problems are solved and poverty is over.
• Substance Energy Congruency Beams allow the transportation and replication of all molecular matter.
• The iPhone is still not flash enabled.
• The President of the United States is Zac Efron.
• The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is Robert Pattinson. Praise be to Robert Pattinson.
• Norwich City achieved the double five times in a row.
• The words moon and spoon no longer rhyme.
• All inner thighs are called Godfrey.
• All left nipples are called Miriam and all right nipples are called Shane.
• A new molecular structure of carbon allows for exciting developments in cake and biscuit manufacture.
• Basketball is outlawed.
• Trousers demand independence.
• Humans no longer need to go to the lavatory. They go now just for pleasure.
• Peace is given a chance.
• The official marker pen of the future is the Sharpie.
• That is all you need to know.
• Oh, give Windows 8 a miss.

In particular, I am looking forward to the words "moon" and "spoon" no longer rhyming and will definitely give Windows 8 a miss. Either way, have a look and have a giggle.
And last, but not least, I've discovered another wicked British program called the IT Crowd. It's awesome. And funny. And all things British, which means sometimes it's dead awkward to watch.
I'd like to embed a video here for you to watch, but embedding is disabled, so click on this link and watch this clip in particular.

I hope you enjoyed this small glimpse into my British life. Most evenings are really spent in front of my computer and watching clips, or chatting with my flatmates, or, as it was the case tonight, grilling the best portobello mushrooms to put in pasta. Yum Yum!

Good night. I'm eating mince pies in your honour. They are tasty, but not the best pies I've ever eaten.

Xmas

Happy Christmas Everyone!

Pictures and stories and good wishes to follow when I am more alert. :)

Christmas Season

The Christmas Season is upon us, and actually, I can't believe how fast it is happening. The fall seemed to crawl by, however, now that I'm working time is flying.

And yes, that is my little Christmas tree. The little knit hats came off of bottles of juice you can buy in the supermarket, and the rest came from my favorite 'doller' store, Poundland! There are now more knit hats on it, as well as some paper streamers that the roommates added.

We had our office Christmas party on Wednesday night. It was a lot of fun, and we all had a good laugh. I got some chocolate and some bath bubbly stuff from my Secret Santra.... and I still don't know who it is haha.

However, since the office Christmas party I've been midly ill. I'm not sure if its something I ate or whatever, but I am going to pick up some medication today and hopefully come Monday/Tuesday (my days off), I'll feel better.

As a side thought, I've had 3 people in the last 2 days tell me that they like my accent, which I think is cool. Its funny since I don't think that I have an accent, but its also nice to have people that enjoy listening to you, even if its not for the content of what I'm saying.

On another side, it is pouring rain outside. Just POURING. More than I've ever seen here in London. And its blowing sideways. I'm hoping in the next 20 minutes before I have to head off to work its subside, although I doubt it.

I still don't know if I will be working at HMV in the new year. Some of the guys I chatted with said that basically what happens is that the company (depending on sales/staff), gets approval to hire a number of staff and they go from there. It's nice to hear that of all the temp staff, the regular staff have bets that I'd be the one asked to stay if we get clearance. I like being liked. Heh. However, I don't know yet whether they will ask any of us - given the whole 'economy' thing, I'm not sure if they'd get approval to hire any of us, and whether or not it'll be full or part-time. We'll cross that bridge when we get there, I guess.

I'm going to make tacos tonight, and I'm looking forward to it. :)

For now, I'm going to go get dressed and battle the rain to get to work.

Christmas Window Displays

Here's a quick little update for everyone - as I was walking down Oxford Street doing some shopping I saw some of the famous window displays. As they were moving and animated I figure I'd take a video for you! So, enjoy!