Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Avenue Q

The best way to go into any musical, is without expectations. Worked for me tonight when I watched Avenue Q :)
As I read on another website, there's no better way to describe it other than "Muppets meet South Park". It's definitely different to other musicals I've seen.
I won't spoil it for you. Here are my ratings:
Hilarity: I laughed lots. Liked the first half better than the second. So 3.5 stars.
Originality: It's puppets, name one other musical that does it with puppets. 4 stars. Hrm, but it did steal ideas from Team America. Make that 3 stars.
Musical Score: Songs got a bit bland after awhile. 3 stars.
Overall: I'd give it 3.5 stars (I'm hard to please :P). Worth seeing since it's different format from the usual musicals.

Thanks for organising tix B!

Sunday, June 25, 2006

Niffies first time

... at Portobello, that is :) I think Niffies was in vege heaven! (But I can't believe she and B convinced me I was buying sugar snaps, when on closer inspection at home, I found out they were PEAS!!!)

Cupcakes from Hummingbird. Not the best, but still a novelty.


Gawd I miss coffee from Portobello. The good organic stuff *sigh*

Saturday, June 24, 2006

For the disbelievers

Pronounciation
Commonly mispronounced "mō-way", the actual pronunciation is "mo-wett". Moët is indeed French champagne, but it is spelled with a diaresis, and this is where the confusion lies. Claude Moët was born in France in 1683; however, his name is not French, it is Dutch. Even if Claude had been French, Moët & Chandon would be pronounced /moe e ʃãdõ/ or /moɛt e ʃãdõ/.

I remember making Ula call Wilco in the Netherlands one night to confirm this :) Friends do the dumbest things *grin*

@1215am

Tooting through my MBP atm is Fatboy Slim's Greatest Hits:
Two snaps, a twist and a kiss, baby. Now this on the other hand:
Errr, can't say I recommend it. So is this why people pay extra for cable tv here?? Gosh dang. If only I didn't watch House two nights ago, I'd have something to entertain myself with now.

Friday, June 23, 2006

Catching on

So it's now past my 2 month mark in Rondon. What have I learnt? What pieces of knowledge can I wisely pass on to you? Sadly, not much :)

"Are you awroight?
"
The first thing Brits ask me everytime I meet them is, "Are you alright?" And I can't help but think, "OMG, why? What's wrong? Is everything okay? Do I look sick?" To me, it's the most confusing question to ask someone when you first see them. It's the English equivalent of "Hey, how you doing mate?", only the way they say it sounds like actual concern :)

Chav (male) and Chavette (female)
From what I can tell, it's anyone who wears Burberry, bling and tracksuit sets. If you're a Chavette, it's compulsory to show massive gut poorly hidden by tight tank top. Think, Britney during her fat phase *grin* You can find more info on how to dress like a Chav, or how to spot one, from here: ChavScum
Vicky Pollard's hair btw, is a Chavette fave style known as the Croydon Facelift :)

Bunny boiler!!!
Definition from wikipedia:
"A Bunny Boiler is a pejorative term for an obsessive and dangerous female, sometimes stalking a lover who has spurned her."
This is brilliant!!! I'd never heard of the term before until Babsy worked it into conversation one day :) Where does it come from? Fatal Attraction - when Glenn Close boils Michael Douglas' daughter's pet rabbit *lol*

And that, sadly, is it. Well, for now anyway :)

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Guess who I sleep with at night?

Now tell me this ain't cool...
Headfones plugged in, Tiesto on... Noite everyone!

Monday, June 19, 2006

Skankelicious Baby!

This pic is for one Mr Grzelak, who's always requesting from me pix of euro hotties for personal enjoyment. Well... Here's an example of the quality these days in Rondon:

Sunday, June 18, 2006

Huzzah Brasil!!!

For the past few days, I've been getting a lot of strange stares/glares/questions whenever I wore this jersey. Typical reactions were:
- "Aren't you Australian?"
- "Are you Brazillian?" (I thought he was asking me if I'd _had_ a Brazillian, so was speechless)
- "Where's your loyalty?"
- "I can't talk to you. I can't believe you're not supporting Australia!"

You know what, all of the above comments just proved to me I was right about Australians - Arrogant, self-absorbed, insular. Especially when it comes to sports. I'm sorry, but it's true.

Here's why I support Brazil (not that many Australians bothered to ask me why. They were just upset I wasn't supporting Australia - see what I mean about being self-absorbed?).

Brazil is the fcking best football team in the WORLD. They're the only team who have qualified for every FIFA World Cup tournament. They've also won it five times. They've given us some of the best football performances over the years. What's not to like about the team? Why wouldn't I want to support them? They've got the greatest players in one team. Have you seen Ronaldinho in a scramble for the ball? Watching him play is just amazing. Of course I want Brazil to win! If anything, it means I get to see more of this guy ;)

It doesn't mean I have no loyalty to Australia. It doesn't mean I'm a traitor. It doesn't mean I don't support Australia in other things. But ffs, the Australian population seriously has "arse-end-of-the-world" syndrome. My theory is, because Australia is geographically soo far away from the rest of the world, and has such a small population comparatively, it needs to talk up its presence and importance to everyone. I give you, the Commonwealth Games - the only time Australia can gloat about winning a gymnastics medal. I couldn't believe Australians made such a big deal about winning medals in a competition which only had approx 92 nations competing. Have a look at the link and see who was competing. Take out the Americans, the Europeans, and the Chinese, who exactly are you left with?

Everything about sport has to be a big deal in Australia. Frankly I'm sick of it. The cricket, the AFL, the rugby league, rah rah rah. This is a country that will back a team accused of gang rape. So why on earth should I support Australia in a sport they're shite at? They're more ass than pizzazz when it comes to football. It's not to say they didn't play a good game against Brazil, I thought they did well holding out against Brazil. I just think Brazil is a kickass team and I like them because they're GOOD at what they do.

Bloody Aussies, take your head out of your arse and pay some respect to what the rest of the world has to offer.

Hrm, if the Australians do keep playing though, I'll be keeping my eye on this guy :)
Sadly, he's already married to a Brit actress... Guess I can't be his footballer wife :(

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Lavenham

First things first, my Aunt Laura took me here on the weekend:

*Lol* She doesn't understand why I had to take a picture. It was seriously the first thing I saw when we got into town. Secondly, my first taste of clotted cream!
Yes yes, I know it's another post about food. But how many of you have even heard of clotted cream before? :P Here's a house circa 18th century:
And this is my completely nutty Aunt Laura. I love her to bits!

Sunday, June 11, 2006

I now have a fave pub!

I can't believe I've been staying in Notting Hill for a month, and I've only just noticed the Windsor Castle pub literally just around the corner from me. It's got a great beer garden. It even has a football free policy during the World Cup! Thanks Kate and Saz for taking me there!
And you know what's really evil? PIMM'S!
Because it tastes nothing like alcohol, I ended up chugging a whole lot of it down ("Kate, why are you drinking so slowly?"). After a massive jug of the stuff between the three of us, we were stumbling to get back to Kate's. And somehow Kate ended up with a strawberry plant ("But Kate, you can get a punnet of strawberries for 2 quid!"). What's worse is that I got cravings for shredded duck noodle soup with pickled vegetables for dinner. In my tipsiness, it took me *forever* to find the dang shop that sold it in Chinatown. Evil stuff, this Pimm's.

Saturday, June 10, 2006

Westminster Abbey

"Place of Worship, House of Kings" - Uh huh, also known as "Place which charges 10 quid entrance fee". Museums are free here, but Churches certainly aren't. I wanted to visit St Paul's the other day, and balked at their entry fee of 9 quid. For those prices, I'll either:

a) Admire the place from the outside
b) Do it as a touristy thing when someone's visiting me
c) Pretend to be a devout Christian and sit through a service so I don't have to pay the entry fee

Having a look through my pix of Westminster Abbey, and the building now looks "diseased" to me. Very spotty. Speaking of diseases, OMG, I watched the finale for House Season 2! :D Can't wait for it to start again. W00t to torrents!

Here are some pix of Westminster Abbey:

Friday, June 09, 2006

There's something really dreamy...

... about sitting in a patch of overgrown grass and watching swirling pollen drift past. I dozed in the sun and messaged Australians about how warm it was today, and how I was napping in St James Park... what a day :)

It's even better if you can close your eyes and ignore the swarms of Poms surrounding you gabbering in their terrible accents! *grin* There is absolutely nothing sexy about the Brit accent. For sexy, I still like the French accent ;) Phwoooarrrr... Sadly, I haven't met any French people yet :(

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

My little hottie...

Now normally I don't like to show my meat off on the internet (well, not for free anyway), but look what my MacBook Pro has done to my precious yellow meat!
I couldn't help but yelp when my lap made contact with the battery pack at the bottom. My CoreDuo widget tells me the laptop is running at a respectable 25-27 degrees.
My ass it is, felt more like 60+ to me. No more surfin in a towel for me. Traitorous laptop... Looks can be soo deceiving.

Well, at least mine didn't burst into flames like this lady's. And there are instructions in the manual along the lines of, "
Do not leave the bottom of the computer in contact with your lap or any surface of your body for extended periods. Prolonged contact with your body could cause discomfort and potentially a burn." But who RTFM these days? :P

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Entertaining myself...

I thought I'd try something different tonight and headed out to a poetry reading at the Oxfam store down in Portobello. When I got there however, there was nobody else there!! The poor poet looked all dressed up, but had no audience. I think if I ever did a poetry reading, I'm going to bribe some of my friends to show up. So I hopped along to the art gallery called Apart down the road instead. I'm not sure if it was invite only to the showing, but I went in anyway :P With the free booze, I'm surprised there weren't more derros in there *grin* Apart from the cool canvases on display:

("Untitled (Girl in Aqua)" by Steve, you can own it for £1,350.00)
...what really captured my eye were the fashion designs on display by Sai So. The clothes were jaw-droppingly gorgeous, reconstructed from pieces of antique kimono silk:

The prices were high enough to make me queasy, but the quality and style of the clothes was just amazing. Girls were rushing to spend £120 on So Sai cosmetic bags! Man, I need a sugardaddy. Please email me if you wish to apply for the position. There's a beautiful trenchcoat I've got my eye on :P

Monday, June 05, 2006

Mushroom mushroom!

So what is this, and why am I posting about it? This tasty but ugly morsel is a morel mushroom! Ranking #3 on the Reenie Mushroom scale (after the truffle and the porcini), I've never seen it sold fresh before, and have only eaten it in restaurants. How much will these mushrooms set you back? Well, at the Gourmet Mushroom Co, it's only a mere 30 quid (approx AUD$75) per kilo!! Being the greedy foodie that I am, I begged my Aunt Laura to splurge and get us some for dinner *grin* This little sucker cost 30p. Not bad (and not very big either)... And well worth it for my Aunt Laura's delish rendition of Raymond Blanc's chicken with morel and sherry sauce. Yum!!!

Sunshine, happiness and lollipops

This is just to prove that the sun does shine in Rondon. It was grrrreat on the weekend! A taste of Summer to come. I sat in a park all afternoon with my lovely Aunt Laura (whom I meet with every weekend, and she feeds me to make sure I get at least one decent meal a week ;) ), and worked on my tan!

Thursday, June 01, 2006

Window shopping

Selfridges has come up with the most innovative department store windows that I've seen for a very long time. They certainly beat the creepy displays at David Jones during Xmas.











Selfridges is also coincidentally where I'm going to be spending my first paycheck (when I get a job, that is). I never thought I could fall in love with something as silly as a soft leather handbag...

Cocktails + Friends = Good Times

Awww, shucks, they're such a cute couple :)

Behold...

... my inbox filled with job applications:

I await the day I can just select all and delete these from my inbox. 58 applications in the space of about 2-3 weeks, maybe a dozen phone calls, not one interview yet.