laziness

❆ since jerry's been away, a disgusting and morbid laziness has totally possessed me and i feel utterly powerless to it.... i've eaten mcdonalds before going to bed and chocolate for breakfast on at least 6 occasions, my yoga class has been totally abandoned, and on my days off work, instead of exploring london and catching up with friends i haven't seen in ages, i can't seem to tear myself from my pijamas or my bed. not sure if its the way missing jerry has manifested itself, but i feel like the most slothful pig.

i did manage the staff party on monday of course ;o)... cocktails and bowling in our own private room at all-stars bowling alley was fabulous! the cocktails turned to shots and the bowling turned to piggy-backing and shoulder-riding to 'heaven' nightclub where i danced barefoot all night and swore to never wear heels again.

the hangover stretched into two full days so that yesterday at work i was a complete space-cadet. luckily it was quiet in the restaurant and the manager, the head bartender and i kept ourselves entertained with hypothetical questions. they started off quite tame and innocent; if you had to delete either red, blue, green or yellow from the whole world forever, which would it be..? and then the questions slowly degenerated until they were dirty, sexually obscene and downright scandalous. grant was asked who he'd choose to have intercourse with between his mother and a gorilla and he answered that it was the same thing. later on he was opening an £80 bottle of champagne for a a table of guests and the cork popped so hard it pushed him backwards and he fell over in slow motion, landing on the floor with the bottle slipping out of his hands and spin-spraying all around him. with all his guests watching the whole spectacle, he was mortified, but it provided amusement for the rest of us the entire night.

today i promised myself to get out of bed and do something with the day, before work tonight.... go to the solarium even.. anything! ...it's not looking good so far...

daniel-san

✥ i hadn't seen my good old friend dan in ages, mainly due to clashing work schedules, but also because dan actually has a life in london and i dont!
after him slinking out of several of my attempts to corner him into hanging out, i even busted him at MY corner pub with someone else!! ...i then managed to make him promise me thursday....

looking forward to his visit, i spent the day cleaning the house and buying food for a middle-eastern banquet that i planned to prepare for dinner. he called me at one o'clock trying to postpone. his initial excuse was a severe thunderstorm warning... when i broke him down with a guilt trip, he finally admitted the real reason: he had to wash his hair... a big mission for waist length dreadlocks apparently. 'one day ill cut the damn things off', he grumbled. 'yay, lets do that tonight instead!" i suggested.. he settled for washing them at my house..

ive been trying to get him to ditch the dreads for years. in japan i even gave him head-lice in the hope he'd be forced to shave them off! ...no, that's not true... i did give him head-lice but not intentionally.....

over my fabulous dinner we reminisced about the video shop that was directly beneath my apartment in japan. i loved that video shop, even though all the movie titles were in japanese and the staff didn't speak a word of english. i became such a hermit movie junkie in that cold winter- i actually remember watching seven movies in a row one sunday!
one night dan and i rented 'run lola run' and later realised it didn't have english subtitles... dan trecked back downstairs to try to return it and in his broken japanese he mixed up the word for 'english' (eigo) with the word for 'movie' (eiga) so that he was holding up the video and saying to the guy 'this is not movie'!! ... 'yes it is..', responded the video guy, thinking he was a complete retard.

while dan washed his hair, i dashed around the corner, hoping to find a DVD shop to hire 'fantastic mr fox', (directed by our favourite director, wes anderson) which we were really hanging to watch. although i didn't find any DVD shops, i discovered a gorgeous little pub/restauarant with a terrace overlooking the canal which i'm gonna take jerry to as soon as he's back.... in 9 days (yes, i'm counting)...:o)

fan också!

✻ today i was super excited about going to my first swedish class. id booked in a ten week course at a language school near my house and was so looking forward to finally getting cracking at it!
i arrived to class enthusiastic and optimistic, pen and notebook ready, space having been cleared in my scattered brain to store some new swenglish that i could hopefully use to impress jerry later on....

i like to judge people quickly. sometimes i try not to, but cant help it. today i summed up the teacher in ten minutes and knew he wasn't good enough to be my teacher.
being a qualified and experienced language teacher myself, i admit i may be over-critical and demanding, but from my many years teaching (and studying) in classrooms, i know how things should be done...

firstly a class has to be fun, which means high energy, movement, games, races, activities that make the students laugh. and secondly, any good beginners class should have the students talking 80 per cent of the time and the teacher only 20..

the swedish teacher talked 100 per cent of the class. the first hour was spent listening to the alphabet, then the next hour watching the teacher flip through books and fiddle around with the bullshit hi-tech media and waste our time. we were all falling asleep. one guy got up and left..... in the entire two hour class i produced three sentences... 'my name is anna', 'i'm from australia' and 'my boyfriend is swedish'...
im not paying £200 for that. i can learn all that AND 'your mothers a whore' for free AND with a pirate skånska accent to boot.

so i called the language school and told them i want to be transferred to the next course in october, only if it's a different teacher....and it better be a good one.

i miss you!

✷ jerry's gone back to sweden to work at 'visby' for the famous summer party week where everyone crowds the island to party half naked at the exclusive outdoor clubs with big name DJ's pumping house music, while the people squirt expensive champagne over each other and generally flash their money around... it's not really my thing (not only because i don't have any money to flash :o)....

he's been gone one day and i miss him desperately already! i miss his gorgeous hamster face on the pillow next to me in the morning, his wet forehead kisses which i always have to wipe off, and the thousand ridiculous pet names that he sings out to me each day...

i dont know if its true that 'distance makes the heart grow fonder'... i think it just reminds you of the fondness you already feel for someone, but maybe take for granted...

china town

✻ china town is such a cool place to hang out, in every city of the world.

on our day off yesterday jerry and i went out for dinner at a korean restaurant in china town with a window menu advertising delicious looking hot-pots and fried dumplings.
the waiter was fresh off the boat and i think it was his first job in a restaurant because the poor thing was terrified. although i ordered a 'vegetarian babimbop' directly from the menu, which the waiter double checked, of course it arrived (after jerry had already been served and finished his meal), with minced meat in it....

after our meals we went for a wander through china town, and feeling piggish, we decided to sample some pork buns (jerry) and red bean buns (me) from a popular little street stall. biting into the thick soft dough reminded me off my childhood - on the way home from every trip to melbourne, dad would detour past china town just to stock up on the bean buns...
mum would also drag me along on 'business trips' to china town to buy her 'secret black ink' that was apparently the best for her calligraphy and only available in one particular little junk shop in china town. i felt very special being the only one who knew where she sourced it from and sworn to secrecy regarding it.

after i'd moved to melbourne for uni, mum and dad went through their feng shui phase, and i was sent with an extensive list and a hundred dollars to china town where i was instructed to buy various things including a jade frog with a coin in its mouth, a hexagonal chinese mirror, a brass bell and a picture of two geese, which they desperately needed to fix the flow of energy through their house.

next time i visited home their tv was in a new corner, the toilet was lit with a red light (which was so dark you could barely find your way to the toilet seat) and there was an empty ceramic vase on the floor which i was later reprimanded for putting a used toilet roll in, since its purpose was for draining negative energy from the whole house.
(im not pissing on mum and dad, i actually do believe in feng shui...)

jerry and i stood in china town eating sesame icecream and people-watching for ages; the little old chinese migrants picking up their chinese newspapers and playing mahjong under the chinese gazebo. china town really is a wonderful cultural experience.

virgin galactic

london is a city of surprises. every day i'm amazed and shocked and inspired. last night a fox ran past us in our street....in the middle of the city! ...today i saw two fat albino twins at the cinema, a group of beautiful moslem women in christian dior burkahs, accompanied by a huge black bodyguard and then a swimwear shop display window with live models, who i only noticed were real people when the girl smiled at me!! .......what a fabulous city!

we had a work meeting at the gardens where everybody brainstormed ideas for the staff party (my vote is for the amusements park followed by karaoke) and then we tried to come up with ideas for a new shared cocktail that encompasses the whole concept of the gardens. at the moment we just serve a huge cocktail in an enormous cocktail glass to share between 6. i think something involving ice, fire or smoke is always fun and novel... so i'm working on an idea to present...

we talked about sales and incentives, cocktail competitions and the most exciting thing was an idea for a new cocktail costing £1000,000 with the garnish being a trip for two into space on the virgin galactic, along with a bartender to serve you on board!!! what an incentive to sell that drink!!! i have to win it!!

quitting day

❉ yesterday before work, i dropped in to see jerry at his work in the bar at the French restaurant. the place was super plush! the japanese receptionist was expecting me and escorted me to the elevator which I caught up to the third level. jerry was all alone in an empty bar, wearing a hilarious mandarin style uniform that I'd never seen before. he'd had the chef make me a spring platter of gourmet delicacies and i sat at the bar and enjoyed them over coffee.

next thing his french boss came up to the bar and asked to see him in private. two minutes later jerry returned to the bar with a face of stone and pupils so dilated that there was no blue left... i knew shit was about to hit the fan..... apparently he was told he's not allowed guests, and that if all the waiters had their girlfriend visit it would be a big mess! ten minutes later the boss returned and jerry asked to see him in private. he accused the boss of treating him like a mcdonalds worker, and reminded him that everybody else has their wives and girlfriends visit all the time, including yesterday when his own wife was there with her friends, all drinking free champagne. he reminded the boss that he'd already given his notice and was just covering shifts to be nice. he then paid for my coffee from his tips and said he wouldn't be coming back to work.

at the pub we were screening the world cup final and all the local spaniards had filled the place, which worked out well for tips in the end with spain's glorious last minute victory.

i had gone to work with the intention of resigning as well, after trying to all weekend unsuccessfully. my boss knew i wanted to quit and was avoiding me. he'd ignored my calls and text messages, brushed me off every time i came to his office asking to talk to him, and then snuck off home during the evening without a word... so i was forced to resign via email...

the nightclub

✷ last night was my first real shift at my new job at the nightclub... and it was awesome! the place is so nice and has such a good reputation that i'm proud to work there and the staff are like one big happy family. i couldnt even believe how friendly everyone was to me!

of course i felt like a retard in the bar, not knowing where anything was, how to use the register, what goes into the house cocktails etc.. but i had so much fun anyway! i was jumping around all night from the excitement of finally having a job i like. my colleague hassan, who i worked with in the bar even commented on the amazing amount of energy i had!

richard branson's daughter was drinking at my bar, and i was serving her without even knowing who she was until she actually told me! ..at 4am we closed up. i'd done a full day shift at the pub as well as the nightclub shift, so i could barely keep my eyes open but somehow it was a good feeling; i felt like a real machine, working 18 hours straight and pushing myself to the limit.

jerry had his trial as well and they liked him so much that they gave him the job on the spot and he worked the whole night! we came home on a buzz, both so happy that we're working together, with such lovely people, in such a cool place! and since we won't have to work as much to make the same money, we can do fun stuff like go to the beach next week in our time off! .... it feels like now the real london experience starts... :o)

bikram

❉ traveling through london on the night bus late one night after work, i glimpsed a dress in a window at selfridges, and though it flashed past me within the space of a second, i was sure that it was my dream wedding dress.
after several days of obsessing over it, i dragged jerry across town yesterday to check it out... to my dismay, it wasn't white or even ivory, (the night window illumination must have deceived me) or even for sale!! the shop assistant informed me that it was a julien macdonald haute couture piece, and only a sample for the window display! :o( ...a sign in another window advertised a vera wang bridal preview collection on this weekend!!....:o) chances of dragging jerry to that..? zero.

ive been inspired lately to get back onto bikram yoga, (the type you do in a 40 degree heated room). i used to do it in melbourne many years ago with two of my girlfriends and we loved it! you stretch every muscle in your body, while pouring with sweat (which is like a detox) and you come out feeling so invigorated! after a few months of doing it, i became so flexible i could do the splits and so agile i felt like a wild animal. it's also really good for concentration, and emotional balance and pretty much everything else...

so i checked out the internet and discovered there's a bikram studio quite close to where we live... and that they do teacher training courses.... according to the website, there's a lot of money in it, and great travelling opportunities, since bikram teachers are sought after everywhere in the world. i would love to be good enough to teach yoga!! ...so that's my new aim.
i went to the studio and joined a class. and it was marvelous!

firemen

✠ there was a hyper vibe at 'the pub' on friday night that infected all of us. for some reason we just couldn't stop laughing all day, even amidst the stress and anarchy of the pub's disorganisation...
i think it started in the afternoon when someone pressed the fire alarm and within one minute, two firetrucks roared around the corner, pulled up outside and 15 ripped, young firemen piled in, to be greeted by 10 hyper female waitresses with nothing to do at that particular time, except stand around and perve. one of the firemen was particularly hot, even the gay deli guy was eyeing him off...
ombretta, in proper italian style called out 'if i ring my alarm at home will you all come this quickly?' the guys enjoyed the attention so much that they hung around even after it was established that the alarm was accidental.

at midnight, after we closed up, we decided to all go to the park nearby and get pissed. we stocked up on alcohol from the bottle shop and sat talking shit and laughing until the rain came, when we relocated to the front of the fire station. a local bum came to join the action and in my drunkenness i decided to give him some therapy which turned into a long lecture. in the end i had him promising that tomorrow he would wake up a new man, quit the grog and call his family. before he left us, he told me he was sure i was some sort of psychic angel!

last night i had my trial as bartender in the nightclub at 'the garden'. it went super well, even though i had to consult the book every time someone ordered a house cocktail... the whole place is amazing! a really nice place to work! after my trial i was told i had the job, starting next weekend! ...yay!!!! i recommended jerry and worlds and the manager said he'd call them for interviews, so we may all end up working together, which would be super fun!

in our little spare time, jerry and i have been designing our own wedding website, save-the-date fridge magnets, gathering addresses and making arrangements with the resort for our special day. after a long while with other things on our minds, the wedding was put on the back burner, but now we're super excited about it again!