Just to make sure we weren't missing out on anything, we decided to follow the droves of Londoners that head to Brighton for the weekend for a bit of sunshine. The alterior motive was that one of Aaron's friends from school in Thailand, Helen, is living down there and they figured it would be a good time to catch up. Brighton is about one and half hours and £10 by train from our place, so we had no excuses.

From the memories of Brighton at home I was thinking of a lovely sandy beach, but this one is very stony and not quite as inviting. However, it had a kinda similar atmosphere where everyone seemed very laid back and outside a cafe enjoying their lentil burgers and organic smoothies.

We headed along the beach to Hove (a town that Brighton is basically joined to) in search of Helen's place, and from there we headed out to have lunch then to pound the streets and soak up the atmosphere. The afternoon involved a bit of walking, a bit of chilling out on the grass listening to a band, then back to the beach (where by this time the wind had come up and we just about got blown away.)

Aaron and Helen spent the afternoon talking about people I didn't know, but it filled in some background on people I am to meet in the next few months (so you guys we are coming to visit - be warned...)

We've just got back now, and Aaron is in the process of packing for a week away in Leeds for work (staying in the Hilton, no less) where he'll be running an assessment centre to decide whether all the people that have been fired by his work are to be re-hired or not.

An extra note - HAPPY BIRTHDAY MUM!
It's my mum's (Karelan) birthday tomorrow (well today in NZ time), so I just wanted to say 'Happy Birthday' and I hope you have a wonderful day! I'll leave the embarrassment there, and not mention how old she is. BTW, mum you're pressie is on the way, I'm just not sure how long it will take to get there.

Saturday night, we cruised on into town on a late train from our day in Oxford. Our accommodation was hooked up at a local bed & breakfast / pub, the ‘Crown and Castle’. It was only £30 for the two of us including breakfast. Which is very good, it was looking like costing us that to stay in a dorm room of bunks at the local backpackers in Oxford with out breakfast, bedding, warmth or sleep. Breakfast was a nice array of fatty foods, fried eggs, sausages, hash browns, bacon, toast, and a few other bits and bobs,.. I loved it :+)

Warwick Castle was having a ‘Medieval Festival’ at the time we went which meant there were a few extra events on at the castle. It costs £8 each with our £5 off each coupon we had found (some would say hunted for). Upon entering you greeted with a fantastic view of the outer wall with towers on the corners. (Trust me, you get no concept of scale in this picture). This is the front of the castle, the back is on a small cliff which falls down to a river (Picture). From the top tower (called Guy’s Tower), you can see how high you are, and how easier it would have been to spit on door to door salesmen as they came up to the gatehouse and barbican. Shortly I will add a panoramic of the inside courtyard (if I have time and can figure out the software).

As part of the festival they had a jousting tournament. It was very entertaining to watch, although choreographed. They showed various skills of jousting, like collecting hoops on the end of the pole, hitting those swinging dumbies with a sack of grain on the other arm. They also had an archer is tradition dress, with old school bow. He missed his target about 9/10 times. His excuse was that in those days it didn't matter, they charged with so many people you would hit someone anyway.

Check out the Warwick photo Gallery here.

Setting out early in the morning, we caught the train to Oxford. It is nice to catch an express train, the difference can be 2 hours or more. With the plan of looking around and staying the night, we started looking for some local accommodation so we could set off and not worry about it later. It turned out a good thing we started looking because there was none. None in Oxford and none in the surrounding towns or villages. The number of tourists in Oxford was amazing, they were everywhere. On the verge of giving up, we decided to ring Warwick information to see if there was any there, there was, we booked it, we were set.

Oxford is a pretty small town, and is as you would imagine completely built around the University (the first one in England). The story goes, some time back in the day, England had a falling out with France (as we all do) and weren’t allowed to send pupils to University there, so a local one was established. We got on an open top double decker all day ‘jump on, jump off’ tourist bus. It was good, it went to all the University colleges, Museums and anything of interest with a live guide giving very good commentary. There isn’t much to say really, we saw lots of colleges, all stone and all pretty old. I think I am starting to get adjusted to very old stone work/buildings and am just not finding it as impressive which it is.

After our touring of Oxford, we finished the perfect day of weather by strolling up and down a very thin Thames lined with house boats.

Check out the other Oxford photos here.

Over the last week or two, I have had a bit of a blocked ear, with every now and again some pain when there is a sudden pressure change like when in a train and the train goes trough a tunnel. Yesterday and last night it climaxed in all out agony. I was bearing through it, till it got to midnight, I realised there was no hope; I was not going to get any sleep, it was effecting my balance and I was clenching my fists in pain. Something obviously not quite right. So, in not so pleasant terms I told myself to go get help. So after a quick ring around, I realise there is no 24 hour / after hours surgery in the UK and my only option was A&E at the local hospital.

Carmen in her generosity and kindness accompanied me to the hospital. Of course we have no transport, so had to walk. It is about 20-minute walk to the nearest hospital. We sign in, I get seen by a nurse who basically assesses if you are going to die while waiting for a doctor. Then you wait. Wait a bit longer. And wait. 150 minutes later, I get called into the doctor, who looks in my ear. Says "woo that’s nasty infection". Walks away gets antibiotics, and painkillers. Problem solved. It annoys me a bit, when was the last time you had an ear infection, umm when I was like 5? Must be this English winter, I mean summer.

Waiting time to time with doctor ratio: ~75:1. We walked home at about 4am. It did make getting up at 7am for work this morning difficult.

To be honest I would have been pretty upset about the whole experience, if it wasn't for the fact it was free. Free consultation, and free drugs. They have numerous nurses, who see you very quickly, but obviously are not allowed to do anything. And two doctors. There was about a constant 7-10 people in the A&E, almost all minor stuff, and the odd ambulance trucks on up and everyone gets pushed down the waiting list while the new emergency gets seen to. A dedicated doctor (like a normal GP) for walk-in A&E cases would solve all waiting problems, well it would have for last night but apparently it was a slow night.

Last Thursday, the sun stayed out long enough for us to have a work BBQ in the park just down the road. I do say the sun stayed out long enough because it was raining half an hour before the BBQ started.

Basically the BBQ involved standing around drinking wine out of plastic Starbucks cups (that hold twice as much as a wine glass, and Sabrina insisted on them being full), eating burnt patties, and once the patties had gone down and the wine had kicked in, the sumo wrestling and horizontal bungee started.

My big boss, Wes, decided that my boss, Katy, and I should give sumo wrestling a go. We get on pretty well, and so figured - why not? (as you do after a few glasses of wine). Everyone else spent the entire time laughing at us, but not as much as we were laughing at ourselves. It's funny how hard it is to get up off the floor in these huge suits. In the end we called it quits and still have no idea who won (cos we were giggling too much to figure it out).

Things have settled well, even better that we now have broadband wireless in the flat. I am again complete. I have decided to stick out my temping job at the Environment Agency until the end of the contract which is in October, I now have enough to do and it is keeping me busy. I have settled into a PA role, editing, writing reports, organising meeting etc, its not glamorous but it is paying well enough and it is not at all hard/stressful or challenging which gives me time to find other things to do (while not get bored). Although I found the engineering degree both interesting and challenging, I cannot find an application or job in the field which really interests me. So, I am thinking about applying to finance/banking/trading positions as the end of the contract draws nearer. Partly because the pay seems to be good, but also because I am actually interested in the field. I had an interview for an engineering technical sales position this week and found myself screaming on the inside run away, it is good to be narrowing the field. Sales is not even an option now.

So we have done a quick catch up session this evening, the last two posts were backdated to give some close reference to when we went on the trips. I will now tie up some lose ends of things we have done over the last week.

Science Museum
London has a Science Museum, which in short rocks. It is very cool, we spent about 5 hours there and I think we covered about 40% of the museum (keep in mind we are engineers). It is really well laid out and lots of interactive exhibits which keeps you interested. We are going back in a week or two to finish it off. We will give a full post then..

Canary Wharf and Bollywood Dancers
We went for a walk around Canary Wharf, which is the new mini Manhattan of London. It doesn’t fit in with the old, stone history of London at all. It is very nice (and expensive, you get the impression a water might cost £3). Anyhoo… we stumbled across a Bollywood dance exhibit, they were the performers from a recently ended stage production of Bombay Dream. The show was pretty well done and good to watch.

Water Puppets
Finally, last night we went to Greenwich to watch Vietnamese water puppetry. What’s that you ask, as did we, hence why we went. It was a full on production, with lighting, music and choreography. It was done at night, hence the photos didn’t come out to flash (pun intended). First, look at the photos more closely (i.e. click on them and this one). You can see the back drop, in front of that is a pool about 1m deep and 5m from front to the back drop. They control these puppets from behind the drop, though the water, now this in its self does not sound very impressive, but it is once you watch it. The puppets are able to cross over each other, move various limbs, breath fire (dragons), climb on each other… The two pictures there are of three boats with small team of people which actually row. They were having races in that skit. The one pictured (right) is of a group of woman dancing, they were all doing twirls, and line dancing.. it was very impressive, but hard to convey. The commentary was in Vietnamese, which wasn’t annoying but we didn’t get the obvious jokes when half the crowd started to laugh.

I am doing this from memory, as I wasn’t on the ball enough to write this when we toured the tower last weekend? Could have been the weekend before…

We headed off to the Tower of London, as all good tourists do. It is a building of immense history. I think this one building has more history than all of New Zealand. It stretches back to 1078 AD. The building as it stands today, is effectively completely original, obviously each monarch and ruler throughout history has added their own tower, extra wall, moat, extra bedroom for the family…

Our trip started with an hour guided tour by one of the local Beefeaters (pictured left). They are members of the royal guard, but double as tour guides at the Tower of London, he was a fantastic speaker and gave us such in a good history of the site (not that I can remember all that much now). From the be-headings, traitors, builders, royals, and much more

The crows are very menacing, back in the day, one of the kings was told that if the crows left the Tower of London, that this families reign would fall. He made it law that there will be at least 6 crows on site at all times. It is still law. So they clip some pet crows’ wings to keep them about. There are signs all of the place telling people not to get to close as they will take a finger if given the chance.

What I didn’t realise before going was that there was a large museum inside the site. This is very interesting and obviously focuses on the Towers history. There are also the previous kings and queens family Jewels. ‘The family jewels’ as you know them are the gear of the current monarchs, but some of the previous crowns, jewels, sceptres etc are housed and displayed at the Tower. No photos allowed =(

On the whole, it a very worth while place to see. The amount of history is very overwhelming, especially when you are reading the words craved into the stone walls over 500 years ago by rival royal family members being kept in the prison towers to rot. We were even treated to a demonstration of old school fighting.

Don’t know if you guys have heard the latest news over there or not? The Mayor of London is highly keen on having a Formula 1 Grand Prix grace the streets of downtown London once Silverstone’s contract expires in 2006. In an effort to show dedication to this idea, promote the British Grand Prix and show that London is capable of handling hoards of people (also in hoping to get the Olympics in 2012), Regent Street was closed for all of Tuesday, to set up for the 6pm blitz around the streets by a few F1 cars.

There were 9 F1 cars and half a million people (there were only 250,000 expected) there, and they ran individually just for public display, however a few of them managed to get in donuts and smoke up the wheels more than once. There were a few of the big names as well as some drivers from the past with Juan Pablo Montoya, Martin Brundle, Lucio someone (Ferrari test driver) and David Coulthard to name a few.

Aaron and Gary were a bit jealous that I managed to make my way right to the barrier when they were only about 6 deep in the field. To make matters worse, I made friends with some of the people on the way through and came away with free beers and earplugs. Following the race, Aaron, Gary and I braved the crowds and headed for Piccadilly circus for a pizza before heading home.

Soho for Dinner with the Grandparents(Carmens)
It was great to see my Nan and Granddad while they were passing through on some more of their travels (I swear I’ll never catch up)! They’ve just come through China, Mongolia, Siberia, Russia, Paris etc etc on the Trans-Siberian train. Justine (my auntie) and I organised to head out for dinner in Soho (Chinatown) which is in the centre of London. We chose a Chinese restaurant from the hundreds and spent the evening chatting about everyone’s travels and our ‘settling-in’. Nan and Granddad are off tripping round the Southwest of England for a couple of weeks before heading home, and hopefully we’ll get another chance to catch up with them before they leave the country. Walking back to the tube station, we passed Trafalgar Square – which really looks much more magical at night time than during the day.

Where do you work?
For no particular reason except we were bored, we went and had a look at each others work places and decided you guys should know as well. We are in theory pointing to our offices. Of particular joy, the other day the tube workers had a strike, they are sick of only getting paid approx £30k, working 35 hours a week. They want more, more money, 4 days a week working.. so we had to catch the bus (picture) (with the other millions of Londoners trying to get to work)

Flat life
Flat life is going well. You start to learn the really annoying habits of your flatmates (anger is building, oh yes, anger is building). Our flatmates are Kate and Richard. We had our first flat dinner last week. We are planning on having them once a month and take turn on what course we are cooking. We got the dessert, so I cooked a picture). What I didn't realise is that a Pavlova doesn't rise. I should have figured it out, as there isn't anything to rise. But I spread it out nice and thin and made a big flat meringue.

Soon we will take you on a photo-tour of our flat. But Carmens side of the bedroom is still a bombsite. We got a computer desk last week for £30, which I skilfully managed to assemble. From pieces to table in two minutes flat.

Well we were a bit on the slow side on this one, but when we heard the word ‘free’ infront of the word ‘concert’, it was decided that we definitely should go! Unfortunately you had to apply to get tickets about a month in advance, so I thought we’d missed out. However, I applied for a couple of competitions online, and was very excited to get a phone call 2 days before the concert.

They packed ~80,000 people into ‘The Mall’ infront of Buckingham Palace and what sort of concert would it be in London if it didn’t rain. We were a bit delayed in getting in as they wouldn’t let Aaron’s “professional camera” in so we had to go find a train station locker to leave it in, but thanks to being just a little bit pushier than most we managed to make our way to about 20 people back from the stage.

The concert was pretty good all in all with a number of boy bands we hadn’t heard of as well as a few we had. The list included: McFly, Jamelia, Baby Spice, Rachel Stevens (originally from S-club 7), Kelly and Ozzie Osbourne, James Brown (!!!), and the rocker from way back, Rod Stewart.

We were updated throughout the afternoon with the Olympic Torch’s progress through the London streets, and some of the artists pre-recording songs which were later passed off as live on TV (while we stood and watched the presenter preen himself in the camera). It was kinda cool to actually see the Olympic Torch arrive on stage and for the cauldron to be lit, and London made a really big thing of it as they are vying for the 2012 Summer Olympics.

Aaron: Did someone say gerbil

Making the most of the tube strike on Tuesday 29th June, Katy (my boss) and I headed off to Wimbledon for the evening. The tube strike started at 6.30pm, so we left work at about 4pm to meet Katy’s friend, Emma, at the station at 5pm. Walking from the station to the grounds, we were definitely going against the flow and were a bit worried we’d missed all the action, but the mob were just on their way to the station before the tube strike kicked in.

For someone that isn’t that into tennis, this was quite an experience for me, and I was wide-eyed as we walked past the hundreds of people camping on the footpath for tickets to the Tim Henman game which was on Thursday. That was real dedication! (especially since there were only about 40-50 tickets available for this match.

Ground admission after 5pm is only £8 (which gives access to courts 2-19), and they resell tickets for Court 1 and Centre Court of people that have left for the day for only £3 with the proceeds going to charity – so that meant we ended up sitting in seats that other people had paid £48-53 for the evening. In order to save ourselves from the wildly expensive, but very famous, Wimbledon strawberries and cream, we’d visited the supermarket at lunchtime and had a picnic feast packed.

Wimbledon has a fantastic atmosphere and a really nice setting with people chilling out on the grass watching matches on screens and wandering between the 20 different courts. Most of the games while we were there were mixed doubles, so the only big name we ended up seeing was Lindsay Davenport, but some of the games were fantastic with really close battles!

The games finished about 9.30pm (when it started getting too dark) and I headed to the nearest overground train station (1/2 an hour away) in order to get home.