Leaving London...

So there's twenty five minutes until we have to leave for Southgate station to go to Heathrow to fly to Bangkok. You think we'd be pretty organised huh? Erm, not as the case may be. Well, I'm organised, have tried to post home my parcel full of Christmas presents only to be told that it's going to cost me £65 to send 2.07 kilograms to Australia. I spluttered and cried foul and then quietly returned all of the presents. I'm sorry guys. i just can't afford to spend $130 Aussie dollars on postage. So what are Andre and I ddoing at this cosmic moment? I'm waiting for my oven chips to finish cooking so I don't have to pay for food at Heathrow. Andre is running around like a chook with its head cut off. She is so far from organised I dread to think of it. I have yet to do a few little things like drop a bag off at Oxfam and go to the bank to withdraw cash. She has a few little things to do... like finish packing. I choose not to think about it at this cosmic moment!!! So i'm a bit sad to be leaving London, I'm always sad to leave where ever I am though. I'm comforted by the fact that it has rained all day it's pitch black to 4.10pm and the top temperature today was 4 degrees celcius. Yup, there is definitely an upside on returning to the southern hemisphere!

Anyway, this is the start of four and a half months in south east asia for us; taking in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Indonesia and Hong Kong. Following that there's a month in New Zealand and then back home to Melbourne, hopefully safe and sound! Then of course there's the wedding, but that's another blogs worth!

Things I am going to miss most about London:
Friends
Andre's Family
The antiodean scene
Temple Walkabout
Pubs
Islington
Jim Thompson's
Mayonasise
Chocolate
Clubbing on a Monday
Marks and Spencers Food Hall

That's not all, but it's a best of I guess :)

Thanks for reading, commenting, calling and texting guys. I really appreciate it. I know it's easy to tune someone out when they're gone for as long as I've been and it shows what awesome friends you are that you keep writing and informing, humouring and keeping me in the loop.

Love you guys,

Simone xxx

P.S. When I get to Bangkok are you finally all going to stop boasting about your nice weather? :P

Snow Day...

It snowed today. Not once. Not twice. But thrice!! How cool is that?!? This is what I've eaited for for two years! Real snow of the fall out of the sky persuassion! All this on the day that the Adamou's were having their outdoor BBQ. I know it's wrong... but i find it so funny. Adam (Andre's dad) was out there barbequing in the snow with his coat and hat on! Poor thing, I just wanted to show him some photos to show him how the whole BBQ thing is supposed to work! :)

Anyway, the whole thing is worth blogging for two reasons.

1) Snow makes me VERY, VERY happy.

2) On Friday I fly out to Bangkok to start the next four and a half month part of my journey around South East Asia. It's going to be a long time before I see snow again.

So... questions? Comments? Thanks for the Selamat Hari Natal Kelso and Zac for the Non-Denominational-Whatever-Whosit-Greeting. Lovely to know you're thinking of me and Rod and Stace and Chris and Lisa and Alex and so on and so forth who made contact in their own way. Love your work guys :)

Merry Christmas...

Merry Christmas guys! Hope Santa was good to you and that you enjoyed your day. Things here are peachy keen, though a litttle too cold for my Christmas tastes. Give me the sun, the beach and laying flat on the floor... Talk to you soon,

Love,
Simone

Finding Love in London...

So it's happened... I found him, the one who makes me happy. Keeps me company at nights, makes me laugh and if I ever lost him I would cry like never before. He's stylish, fun, interesting, clever and slightly on the petite side. He has a serious sex factor and I am absolutely addicted to him. Where did I meet him? On the internet... and then I picked him up in Curry's on the A10. Yes, I am totally in love with my Rio Carbon 6gig Pearl Mp3 player. We're very happy together. (Come on, as IF there's a boy that good at any of the London clubs I go to!)

My god, I have become a total Mp3 player junkie. It is never out of my head and I finally feel like a complete human being again, I had forgotten how music dependant I am! I have done very little since thursday (when i wagged work to go and buy it) except fiddle with it, arrange it's playlists and download music for it. It's like suddenly aquiring a child! i did consider going for the ipod nano, but I've not heard a single positive thing about it. Besides my darling Rio has a 20 hour battery life which is far better for me travelling.

Speaking of travelling, those in the know are already aware but i was supposed to go to russia last week (in fact, supposed to be there now) but due to a totally forseen economic crisis i decided that sometimes you just have to make sacrifices for the long term good. Read, go to russia, blow all your money and then have to cut south east asia a month short. which would suck. As it is I am probably going to end up doing a mad woman's tour of New Zealand doing the whole lot in like a week because I'll have no money left. Alternately I suppose I could get a job in NZ, but we're only there for a month before I have to get home for the wedding, so we'll just have to see. Andre of course has scads of money and I hate her for it. But I'm going to make her live like a tight arse like me... and eat the most disguisting things I can physically pry into her mouth!

We leave in two weeks for Bangkok. We're flying out on the 30th of December to land at 4pm on New Years Eve. Andre and I are meeting her sister Chryso and her boyfriend Shivan who are living and working (as high powered lawyers!) in Hong Kong. Andre's going to visit them over there in January and I'm going to hang out and see a bit more of Northern Thailand. There's some villages and caving up there that i'm really interested in seeing, and let's face it. It's not like I've never been abroad on my own before! I guess I'm getting excited now. I'll be sad to leave London again, but then... it's a step forward. It's been a very different but the same sort of experience this time. If I were to come back again I would do it as a for keeps move and I would probably look for a flat closer into the city. Which is a total pipe dream since.. well.. I have no money and am very unlikely to ever have THAT sort of money! So until then I'll just keep dreaming about a house in Victoria (and make sure I've processed all my paper work for here. Just in case!)

So, it's nearly Christmas. The tree is up in Trafalger Square (I saw it last night in my stumble home from Temple!) And the lights are on in Oxford and Regent Street. Lovely. I am still campaining for a stint of outdoor ice skating but everyone seems to have gone all delicate and shy on me. Bastards... oh well, thus is life. Worst comes to worst (and really it's very good) Andre and I will just get rugged up and go on our own. THIs year I'll be having a greek Christmas at Andre's auntie's house. She is this fabulous roudy woman who is oozing life and vivaciousnes. There is absolutely zero doubt that i'm welcome in her home for christmas. In fact if i didn't turn up I think she'd gather a posse to find me! She's really lovely, but then all of Andre's family is... with the exception of one dubious Uncle! Who offered to french kiss Amrina and I over Sunday lunch. Ewww.... !!

Anyway kids, I'd better go and do something productive (shower, dress, walk to the post box and then go to Max's for drinks... never mind that despite have brushed my teeth three times I can still taste the snakebites from last night!), so I'll catch you on the flipside,

Love,
Simone x

Ok, so at this juncture maybe I'd had a FEW snakebites...

Andre's smashed. Thank goodness I've so clearly got it together!

Rosie's rocking out! Imagine that now in every colour of the rainbow.. much like throwing a packet of fluffy skittles really... or not...as it were...

Ahh, how sweet, Andre, me and Emma have a bonding photo in the toilets. Where the toilet woman remembered me from times past. Seriously. She greeted me by name. It's been more than half a year since I was last year. That makes a strong statement. I'm scared to think what that statement is!

The whole gang, minus Andre and I who seem to have gone missing... plus a few randoms. Nothing lures the folks like a collection of naff dresses...

See, I had to drink snakebites... They matched my beautiful dress.

Two perfect looking bridesmaids. We could never get up to mischief... specially not in those dainty little Dior shoes. (No joke I got them for �6 from the op shop!) Oh and that's the Thames in the backgound, it was bloody freezing!

Oh Andre..not one, but TWO snakebites? You little Aussie battler!

An Ode to the Walkabout...

Every weekend I swear I'm not going to the Walkabout and guess where I've ended up the last two weekends in a row? Yup, Shaftsbury Ave last weekend and Temple last night. God I love Temple. It's like the Lamby's, only not packed with 17 year olds, not so dark, you can breathe and the band aren't quite so chronic as Passionfruit Pulp. (I that even their name?) SO... long and the short of it, I've really missed going to a bar having a chat and a good old jump around and well... snakebites are gold. It's really nice to just be able to talk to strangers and shoot the breeze and hang out with mates. Though there's much more of that at Temple than at Shaftsbury Ave, which has gone a bit too generic west end club for my liking. If i wanted to go to a west end club I'd got to a proper one like Cirque.

So last night was Rosie's 30th birthday party. And she chose the theme "Bridesmaids and Pageboys". We were invited with strict instructions to hit all the op shops and find the biggest, brightest, ugliest dress we possibly could. Now, those who know me well will realise that I will do just about anything to get into a foofy dress. My 21st being a prime example of that! So I took Rosie's instructions as gospel, hit up the Cancer Reaserch shop and came up with dress gold. Let's put it this way, more than one person (lads and lassies alike) came up to me last night, tugged on my puffy sleves and said "oh my god, you like like Bridesmaid Barbie"... and really what's not to love about a fairy floss pink dress with tulle petticoats. (I'll upload a photo as I can be bothered!) Anyway, let me just tell you that there is nothing funnier than nine girls in bridesmaids dresses moshing to nivarna. Absolutely hilarious. I wish I'd made a movie of it but I was having too much fun to remember!

And in other news... Matt (Batty) and I celebrated Hump Day in fine style this week. We headed out to Islington to Mem and Laz and had some sensational food (Mem and Laz is my absolute favourite resturant in the whole world. It used to be Tonic but that seems to have been abandoned now!) Mem and LAz is fun, vibey and feels really friendly and if you fancy something that's not on the menu... ahh.. no worries. They'll make it for you anyway. They also have a really good beer range. Sounds pretty peachy to me! Anyway, we followed up by visiting the Beirodrome. Matt has gotten into a couple of different sorts of beers so the Beirodrome with over 60 types of beer seemed like a good place to hit up. And oh my god... how good. He introduced to a belgian strawberry beer called Fruli. It's like a strawberry smoothie and is so thick and lovely. This is not one for serious beer afficinados but the girls will love it and boys, it's worth a crack. If you don't like it, hand it over to your chicks, it'll be nice for them to finish off your beers for once!

anyway, that's quite enough prattle out of me for awhile. I will try to be a little more regular with my blogging and I'll get my act together and talk about travel sometime soon. We have to start thinking about it, it's only a month away now.

Talk to you soon,
love
simone x