new year, new cheer, new chair

Well, Its 2009... and I've been having a bit of a stroke of bad luck over the past few months it seems.

nothing too terrible to complain about, just a series of spectacularilty unfortunate events which have delayed the arrival of my student loans, and also some passport problems which prevented me from travelling at Christmas.

I'm hoping my luck turned from bad to good today though... as when I arrived to campus today I realised that I didn't have my wallet with me - even though I had used it on the train to buy my ticket. I had a panic, and had to take the train back to Manchester. Luckily though, someone had found it and turned it into the lost property office. It must have fallen out of my pocket as I left the train... I remembered someone bumping into me, and so all the way back to Manchester I was praying that it had been an accidental bump causing me to drop my wallet rather than a purposeful pickpocket bump, and that I had been 'dipped'. (someone snatched my wallet out of my pocket).

So I'm hoping that loosing my wallet marks the last stroke of bad luck, and someone turning my waller signifies the start of better luck and karma being in my favour.

Although I had to pay an 'administrative fee' of £3.00 to get my wallet back... so I'm not sure what that signifies.


In another bit of news, the weather has been very cold here lately. I know that my Canadian readers will not sympathize with me, but its been unusually cold here and I've been huddling away indoor wearing long johns and a housecoat.

Ok ok... so its been at worst, about -5 degree celcius... but you have to take into consideration these factors

1- its cold and wet
2- houses are not insulated well here
3- 'central heating' in England means radiators in most (but not necessarily all) rooms. It does not involve any function which circulates or regulates heat... or maintains specific temperatures.
4- double glazed windows (two panes of glass) are a luxury.

Most people have a system where by the house gets warm in the evening, cold throughout the night, a boost of warmth in the morning, and then cold all day when no one is home... this backfires for me as I work from home a lot of the day. There is none of this business of just setting your house at 21 degrees and letting your furnace and circulation system maintain a constant.

in fact i'm not sure i know anyone who even has a furnace.

that being said, I must admit the English certainly know how to panic over weather...

here is a BBC news story that may give you a chuckle

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7812861.stm

its changed now - but the headline that read ealier was this;

** Warnings issued amid Arctic chill **
The Met Office issues severe weather warnings as temperatures in the UK plummet as low as -10C (14F) overnight.

YIKES!

my plan is to huddle indoors and keep warm, and hope the 'artic chill' passes soon.

- C

p.s. I just remembered the title of this post. Remember a long while back in Brighton, I covered an old chair I found in the street? Well in honour of the new year and finding a cheap piece of upholstery fabric I have recovered it to reflect a bit more of a grown up style. check it out.

Before and After

always something here to remind me

After spending a number of years in the U.K. it has seemed that with each day I feel like less and less like an alien living in another culture... although every now and then something wholly British pops up to remind me that I am indeed still a Canuck at heart.

The more I get used to living here, the smaller and more insignificant these reminders become... but they are still there, and although they occur in the subtlest ways, they are all the more surprising to me when they pop up.

One example of such is the time I stood in Bermondsey tube station asking directions to Bermondsey street. Repeatedly saying the words 'Bermondsey' street in a wide array pronunciations and tones, while standing under a sign which read 'Bermondsey' while no Londoner around me seemed to have any idea what the word I was trying to pronounce was.

But the example I'm going to write about should have been far more straightforward than pronouncing a street name. This story also speaks to the ways that once you learn something simple and take a fact for granted your mind doesn't naturally assume it could be different or change.

It also speaks to the way in which that every now and then you go a very long time without understanding something simple, and when the light bulb finally turns on, you find yourself slightly shocked at what has happened.

The story begins with Bagels.

I love a good bagel toasted with cream cheese or butter, or stuffed with tuna or some kind of sandwich filling, or covered with cheese and a couple dashes of Worcester sauce and melted under the grill... any of the above suits me just fine for lunch or a snack.

The best bit about buying bagels and cream cheese is making sure that the supplies last with one another. That you spread the cream cheese enough, so that by the time you get to your sixth bagel there is enough cream cheese left to give it worthy coating. Anything else, means that you end up in a vicious circle of buying bagels to use up your cream cheese, or cream cheese to use up your bagels in an endless cycle.

While at university, I mastered the art of cream cheese and bagel balance... so that it all works out in the end. I'll admit I'm slightly obsessive with my cream cheese rationing.

Ok, getting back to business.

Since moving to the U.K. I have only ever had housemates, that is until I moved into my current flat in Manchester... and thus, whenever I've bought bagels I have understood that when living with friends and flatmates one or two might go astray before you get to the bag. I tend to maintain a fairly liberal food sharing ethic, and feel that people are welcome to my bagels and other supplies as long as they don't indulge to the point where I'm not left with enough to eat myself.

So throughout the past three years or so, I've never given much thought to when I go into my bag of bagels and notice one is missing... although, I have often thought it was strange that just about every single time I've ever bought a bag of bagels, without fail, one of my flatmates seems to have eaten at least one without saying anything. Not caring too much about it, I've always just rolled my eyes and let it go.

though each and every time it happened, i did think to myself how strange and odd it was that it always seemed to happened. And then, was always forced to give it a second thought when it came to figuring out what to do with that last sixth of cream cheese left in the plastic packaging.

now, before I go - I must say that I don't buy bagels every week. generally, there is a bit of ebb and flow to my bagel buying, so although this oddity has been occurring over three years, it does not necessarily reflect 156 weeks of bagel buying... probably more like 30 or 40 bags in total.

anyway. a few weeks ago, now living by myself, I bought a bag of tesco caramelised onion and poppy seed bagels, and noticed when I went to get a second one that the 6-count seemed short.

later that day, as I was eating a bagel, and a bagel advert came on the television I noticed something very strange.

have a look at this photo and see if you can see it too.


that's right. bagels come in bags of a 5 here. not 6. its not just brand. I checked at the store. its a hard fast rule for all bagels. indeed, its all very simple.

and despite this, every time I've ever bought a bagel I've at some point noticed the count was off... and it never occurred to me that it might be because the bags have fewer in them.

I've always thought I was dealing with a case of sneaky-bagel-hungry-flatmates.

somehow taking for granted the way I've always bought bagels in north america, clouded me from thinking about any other logical explanation.

its time like this that I wonder if I am actually suited to getting a Ph.D... though despite my long-term bagel confusion/delusion, my realisation has brought some good in that it has afforded me an extra one-thirtieth of a pack of cream cheese on each of the five bagels I eat along with it.

check my math. its the one thing I'm sure about right now.

- C

new beginnings

Now that I'm moved in and settled - to the point where I finally have internet access at home, I thought I would update this in yet another attempt to bring this blog up to life.

Hopefully, now that I have returned to student life I'll have more time and more things to write about... though right now I'm mostly tied to my computer writing, rewriting, and then rewriting again my work proposals and plans for my research project.

So far I'm starting to feel settled - it helps that I have my own flat and that it doesn't seem to be as rainy in Manchester as everyone has told me it would be. I've made a weather chart on my wall and I'm marking down 'rainy days' 'ok days' and 'lovely days'.... ok days being days which there might be a bit of rain or just a grey sky. So far rainy days and ok days are neck in neck, and lovely days are coming up short... but still, the rain is far from the majority when you add lovely and ok.

I've posted some photos of my flat on my flick account, so go have a look at them there if you like.

Last friday I took the train into Huddersfield for school and ended up going on a bit of a hike up to a part of the town called 'Castle Hill' from which you can get a good view of the town. It was a bit of a hike up to the top of the hill, but it was well worth it for the fresh air and the nice views.

All in all I'm settling well into life in Manchester, though I am getting dragged back to the big smoke now and then for various bits of work so it doesn't really feel like I've totally left London.

Though when I am a short walk from a view like this, I do appreciate the fresh air and open space.

Check in soon,

- C

new flat!

here are a few photos of the new flat. check out how grown up it all looks!

click here!

proper update on all things new and flatty to come soon

- C

time flies... so do pancakes.

As per usual, time flies in London.


Weeks seem to go by faster and faster... while January dragged a bit, February - in its usual form whizzed right past me.


As such, my update on my activities for 'pancake tuesday' is long long overdue (but wasn't Feburary 5th just a week ago? you might ask... well no, it was a MONTH ago.)

Last year on Shrove (pancake) Tuesday, I had a lovely breakky down at Bills cafe in Brighton, but this year, having to live the life of a working stiff, I did not have the luxury of rolling out of bed midday like the lazy student I once was and then strolling into town for an afternoon serving of pancake goodness.

Instead I rose early, took the bus to work and arrived with little to no expectation of partaking in pancake eating. I dont even know where to go to eat pancakes in London, and sadly had no one around to make pancakes with.

But lo and behold, some bbc news flashes came my way and I caught wind of some fun which was a brewing outside of the house of parliament just across the Thames.

Although I thought pancake tuesday was traditionally about the consumption of pancake, I was informed it is also about the running with frying pans whilst flipping pancakes in a relay-race style competition. Who knew?

for further information please see ... here

So anyway, when I caught wind of these pancake races, I realized that it was too late in the day for me to run off to some of the races occuring at my favourite markets around London (and I wouldn't have the time to do so either)... but then I found out that adjacent to Westwinister, there is a charity pancake race in which members of Parliament, the House of Lords, and the media race against each other... All only a short walk from work. So I couldn't help but skive off for a short while and go take a look.

Here are some photos of the racing Mps, Lords, Barnonesses, and journalists

After the big race, I watched the awards ceremony with some work friends and then joined a queue for what I thought was a 'buy a pancake' stand... but turned out to be a 'have a free pancake stand'... we were the only ones in the line who were not a part of the actual race, so it is still a little unclear as to whether or not we were meant to get free pancakes - but we still did just the same.

And so that is the story of how I ended up having pancakes on shrove tuesday.

In other news, I'm moving house (again) seems it happens every six months or so... and moving down to south of the river near Battersea park. I have sent a few emails around with my new address details, but have tried not to flood absolutely everyone's inbox with mass emails - so if you would like an update on my contact info, please send an email my way to let me know.

I will have proper access to internet at my new place, so it should not be too long until I post some photos of my new set up.

- C

long month...

January has been a very long and dreary month over this side of the Altantic, but I've made it through and now I'm ready to embrace whatever February is going to bring.


Work has been hectic but very fulfilling and I have been really lucky in lining things up to keep my freelancing afloat. I have been doing all sorts of fun things at work, including bringing my Caribbean history project to a close and getting to do some fun artsy things with the kids I work with as our outcome of the project.


Here is a photo of a war memorial they have made for their school; its dedicated to the efforts of Caribbean people during the second world war and the way its been made represents the way in which the kids found pieces of the historical puzzle that were missing, and each child's canvas shows what they will remember/what they have learned, and overall represents the way in which invidual's efforts come together to help the greater cause during the war. It supposed to be a map of the caribbean and britain - but i need to varnish and touch up the outlines to make it clearer. Can you believe I get paid to do this stuff?

You should just be able to make out Trinidad in the bottom right corner.

I also graduated in January (very exciting?) except that I didn't go because t have my friends come and watch me would have cost 25 pounds a ticket (no one gets free tickets) and I would have had to spend money on a gown rental even if I had gone on my own. I decided the money would better be sent on a celebratory dinner with friends or something like that. But here is a shot of me holding my degree whicH I just got in the post a couple of days ago.

If you click on the picture above it will take you to some photos i've taken around dreary London in January.

It's still a little early to be looking forward to spring, but the daffodils and crocuses are starting to pop up, and the tide of rain which seemed to be falling whenever i was leaving my house in the morning or leaving work in the evening seems to have slowed... and so hopefully there will be some less dreary photos to come!

- C

holidays are here...

Well Christmas is upon us, and I've finally got a bit of breathing space to update my blog!



The museum work has come to a halt for the holidays, so I've only got one job to manage (hooray!)... and as I have been slowing getting into the Christmas spirit, this week I fell in full swing...



I've just posted some photos in my new photo account on Flickr... check out the link BY CLICKING HERE



the photos are of a day trip to Kew Gardens which I took with Liz (both of us taking advantage of the fact that our Museum security passes get us into almost everything for free)... meaning, that now that I have a proper museum badge, I am getting around to going to all the exhibitions and showings which are not free! So with a savings of 13 pounds each, we did a walk through the gardens.



I've also posted some photos of London at its peak of Christmas decor... they have hung giant paper chains all across the Carnaby Street shopping area which are fantastic! Check out the photos to see.



And then the other night I had Liz, Michael and Vicky around to my flat for a big ole Christmas feast, serving up roasted lamb shanks and a plethora of goodies to go with them. So check out the photos for the yummy goodness... here is a preview of my half eaten plate.



its obviously quite telling that I tucked in and started eating before I even got a chance to take a photo of the meal....



its was a fantastic evening.



I've just got a couple of more shifts at work before the actual Christmas day arrives, at which point I am going to get together with friends and just do a bit of relaxing (and more food eating).

I will post more about my holidays as they progress... just thought I'd put up some photos quickly.


merry Christmas!


- C