London

Well there's about 6 days now till I go away (!!!!!), and I'm excited but also quite at a loss for things to fill that time as lots of my friends are still at uni due to exams and stuff.

Sooooo on Monday night I decided to take a trip to London. I searched on a 'whats on' website and found a few art galleries with photography exhibitions that looked worth a visit, booked a train ticket and went down there on Tuesday morning. I thought the train would be loads but it was only £17 return (with my young persons railcard that has the expiry date rubbed off)

On the train down I texted my best friend from high school who i've not spoken to in a good few months and it turned out that she was down in london for the week, visiting a friend of ours who is at university there! That was a pretty weird coincidence. So we arranged to meet for lunch after I'd been to one of the small galleries.

The first gallery I went to was one reccomended to me by one of my future lecturers at Sunderland when I was there for interview. Its just called "The Photographer's Gallery" and it's in Leicester Square. There were two exhibitions on, one of a guy who'd photographed an abandoned prison called the Maze. It did say that he'd tried to exentuate the repetition and boredom of the place... and this really came across in the photos. As a result, however, they were just pretty uninspiring.

The other exhibition was Portraits of South Africa, photos of people in South Africa, dealing with issues of how they've changed since the end of apartheid. These were much more compelling. Each photo had a little snippet of information, or a quote from the subject as the photographer had spent time getting to know his models. It was a really interesting collection.

Sooo, then I met up with Jemma and Phil, my friends, and we hung out in a cafe, then an ice cream bar, and then wandered around shops a bit. Just cool to hang out with people you've not seen in ages. Especially since we spent a bit of time in a travel books shop cause Phil was buying a map of Russia, so I had a perfect excuse to wax lyrical about my trip to europe (I'm getting in early on the repetitive "well on my gap year..." talks :D )

Well then we parted ways and I headed on the Tube to Brixton (a place I'd not really heard of but I discovered causes people to make faces at you when you say you're going there.)

I got there and sort of found out why, I suppose. I shuffled through a dodgy market, looking for Electric Lane, where this gallery was. I found it finally and had to press a buzzer to be allowed in. This was a collection of five female photographers works. One documented the death of her mother and her fight with alzheimers. Each photograph had scrawled sentences at the bottom, which I think were quotes from her mother. I enjoyed the works but wished that there were more. The gallery was just two very small rooms. I'm not entirely sure I didn't miss out some of it, but none of the people there seemed very helpful and I'd already messed up cause I pressed the buzzer on the door twice and didn't realise the door had been buzzed open; so I didn't feel I could ask.

After I left there I considered exploring Brixton a little more... but found myself gravitating towards the tube station and headed for Kensington. Pottered around the high street there... nothing very exciting.

Oh, one thing I've not mentioned, I picked the worst day to go to London cause the tube was striking from 6.30pm. This meant that after that time I'd have to stay within walking distance of Euston where I got my train back to Rugby. So I ended up looking at a map in Euston station at around 6pm. I saw Camden Town on the map and it didn't look far, so I thought I'd walk up there and get something to eat. Unfortunately I mentally had it mixed up with Covent Garden, which I love, so was disappointed when I remembered that I hate Camden. I wandered up and down a bit but, frankly, the place intimidates me.

I finally plucked up the courage to go into a chinese restaurant and embarrassed myself cause I had to say "table for one" about three times before the guy understood me :/

I will admit that I was a bit nervous about wandering into a random chinese in Camden but I had a really good meal and then wandered back towards Euston. Still had about 2 hours to kill so I walked in the other direction to Tottenham Court Road where I knew there was an internet cafe. Parked myself there for about an hour and a half : )

When I stepped out of the cafe it was dark and immediately opposite was a building lit all in purple, so I grabbed my camera, thinking of the "buildings at night" contest on worth. (I've decided not to enter that one so it's ok that I mention it :D)

This led to a really enjoyable walk back along Tottenham Court Road, taking photos and not being bothered if people were wondering "Why the hell is she taking a photo of that?"

Got back to Euston just as my train started boarding.

Sorry that this is the most ridiculously long blog entry. I think I describe stuff in too much detail.

Oh and

Here's the photos I took

www.jaymeekae.com/london

I don't think many people will like them but I was feeling self indulgent so screw you guys. :p

Just in case...

Here's a funny thing that happened today. I was at the library looking for this book about backpacking around Europe, called "Europe on a shoe string". It didn't look like they had it so I went to speak to the helpful library lady to see if anywhere in the area could send it across.

After a bit of searching, she informs me that the only copy in the area, of a book about travelling in Europe, is in (wait for it) Onley Prison Library.










... just incase any inmates are planning cheap backpacking holidays and all.

tum te tum... 11 days!

Well i've not blogged in a while because i've not really done anything interesting. I moved out of my house in Newcastle and spent a lot of time cleaning and whining about all the cleaning in chat.

Howwwwwever, in 11 days I'll be off to Europe with my inter rail pass to travel down the east of france from lille, via Lyon and Annecy, probably Aix-en-Bains then along the south of france via Monte Carlo or Nice and Cannes, quick stop via Marseille, then onto Montpellier, then via Perpignan into Spain, down the east of Spain stopping certainly in Barcelona, but I haven't quite planned that far yet... :D

Soooo I may actually have something interesting to blog about.

I'm sure I'll be stopping off at net cafes and begging them to let me plug in a USB cable (does anyone know how to say "Is it possible to plug in a USB device here?" in french or spanish? - I will probably be posting a worth forums thread asking for this phrase and others like it to be translated :) ).

I'll be keeping a travel diary too and taking lotttttts of photos (my storage device can hold over 5000) so I can be one of those annoying "Well on my gap year..." people who just doesn't shut up for months to come.

Women > Men Lol

Now this is something that's been annoying me for about four months.

In the girls bathrooms at work, on the inside of the door in one of the stalls, there's this poster with a list of "Reasons Women are Better than Men"

The list includes gems like "We can paint our nails", "We can judge a person just by looking at their shoes". Well, Thank God I'm a woman, eh! Nail painting! Shoe judging! What more could I possibly want?

See what I'm getting at here?

"We'll never regret piercing our ears"
Come on, is this really all they could think of?

I don't normally get annoyed about this kind of jokey stuff, it's just ironic that something that's supposed to be giving women a big up, is infact pigeon holing us as all wanting no more pleasure in our lives than nail painting and, in a round-about way, suggesting that there's nothing more to being a woman than this superficial crap.

I need to print out a big rolleyes and pin it over the top on my last day.

Rargh

Today my boss managed to tell me he thought i was smart, and make it seem like an insult.

I can't even explain how he did it, but it was like he was accusing me. He made one of his endless comments about how I'm leaving and going back to uni (which is wasting my time in his opinion. He told me that I shouldn't bother because I'll hate my job anyway. "Look at us" he said "We all hate our jobs". Yes, but you sell WIRES for a living.)

Anyway, he said something about photography and not going off into war zones, and I said "well i might." He seemed shocked and he muttered something; then came out with "I think secretly you've got a voice in your tongue [sic], and a brain in your head but while you're here you just keep quiet and accept things."

Now I know that sounds like a compliment, but I already said I couldn't explain it. At the time it was like an accusation of weakness or something. I wanted to blog it straight away so that maybe I'd remember it better and explain it more clearly. But I can't really blog at work and now I've forgotten the essence of the moment.

What the CRAP?

How the hell...?

I was just sitting at my desk, being amused by some newb at worth and resting one hand on my knee when i felt this little bump. I'm wearing these cropped trousers with the ends rolled up a little bit and i realised something musta fallen into the fold.

A short investigation later, and I found half a shell of a pistachio nut.

I've not had pistachio nuts for a good 5 months at least. And these trousers are new, I've had them about 2 months.

what what what what what.

Template

Okay well I've changed the template. I kind of like it but i'm not sure about all this pink so it might be changing slightly soon.

Does anyone know how to include titles with posts?

Comments

Well I've removed the haloscan comments and switched over to blogger.com comments cause i thought that was what was causing me some problems.
Turns out I still have the problems and it's mozilla's fault. And blogger.com comments are pretty annoying.
Sigh.

Oh well. I went to the trouble of preserving old comments and have added them to old posts.

Don't say I never gave you anything.

Ill and at a loss

Well I'm ill. It's only a cold but it's enough to make me feel like i don't really want to go outside and do anything. But I don't want to lie in bed either. And i don't want to sit here all day. Eh. I don't know what i want to do.

Being ill sucks.

Birthdays

People in chat were talking about birthdays that coincide with events like Christmas and I got to thinking about it. Most people will agree that it'd probably be a bit lame. They cite reasons like how you'll only get one present to cover both Christmas and your birthday from stingy relatives, and how you don't get one day that's *just* for you.

I've always agreed wholeheartedly that sharing a birthday with something like Christmas or New Year isn't something I'd like but I think I have a slightly different reason. I'd never thought it through all that much before but I realised that I consider it a disadvantage because you'd have less days to break up the rest of the year.

My birthday is in April, it makes a nice break, something to look forward to, between New Year and Summer Holidays. If you don't have a birthday to use up somewhere else in the year, then you miss out on a whole day of non-normalacy.

Perhaps I'm not explaining this very well. I realised I think of it the same way I think about work. There's certain things that can break up the work day. Escaping the office to cover reception, texting friends, browsing worth. Now if two of them coincide, like if I get a text when I'm down on reception, I almost feel like I've wasted a bit of non-work time.

It was just pretty striking to me that I was drawing some comparison with needing to break up the *year* in the same way that I need to break up the monotony of a day at work. Worrying. I don't want my life to be a heap of boring, broken up with dots of interesting things to keep me going. Luckily, I don't think it will be.

There you go, there's some of the angst that shiva doubted I was capable of :)