Parties and Visas

A bunch of parties have crowded into the last two weeks of January for us. We had two parties last weekend, and this weekend, two more. In both cases, one was thrown by Grace's friends, and one was thrown by my work. Last Friday night, we went down to Tooting Broadway (yes, it's really called tooting) in South London for a birthday party for one of Grace's friends. Although Tooting Broadway is only about 10 miles from our house as the crow flies, it still took me an hour to get there. And that was on the tube. If we had taken a bus there... just forget about it. Anyway, the party was with some of Grace's friends from her course at UCL, and it was good to see them all again, as its been awhile.

The next day, we had another party, this one for a work colleague of mine, who had gotten engaged. This time we had to trek out to the Isle of Dogs in East London, a 40 minute journey to move 7 miles.

South, North, Central and East London all have a very different feeling, at least the parts we visited this weekend. I haven't been to far west London. Anyway, central London is very recognizable - it's where all the monuments and famous buildings are. It feels very 'nice,' because, in general, it is. It has tons of grand old buildings, expertly kept up. In contrast, where we live in North London has a bit homier feel to it. Things are still very old, but the scale is smaller, with few buildings more than three stories tall. South London - Tooting, in particular - doesn't feel very old, and the buildings are also smaller than in central London. Tooting, I think, feels more like regular towns and cities in Britain.

East London is totally different. It's brand new, and has a completely different aesthetic from the rest of the city. The architecture and building design are all modern, and the layout of the city strongly hints at its planned nature. Walking around, I felt like I was in a modern part of Hong Kong, or maybe Tokyo (though I've never been there). It's also extremely quiet, and there are few people out at night. It's the banking district, where all the wealthy city boys live and work, but it doesn't seem to have grown it's own personality. Maybe it's too new. Maybe it's too expensive for poor students or artists who would otherwise patronise and open interesting shops and pubs.

We had a good time at my work colleague's party also. The next day we pretty much stayed in, as the weather was rainy. We used the time indoors to put the finishing touches on our visa applications. Grace's student visa runs out at the end of the month, and we've been working on getting new visas since last November. It's been a long journey, with lots of hours spent reading the fine print of visa rules, and filling out tons of applications, but we finally mailed in our completed applications today, celebrating this evening by renting a movie and opening a bottle of wine (it's the end of the month, we're cheap). For awhile, it looked like we wouldn't be able to get it done in time, and we would have to come home to make our applications from the USA. Things came together in the last two weeks though, and everything is out of our hands now. Now we wait for the UK visa office to decide our fate. With luck, we'll be allowed to stick around, and we can begin to think about spending some of my holiday. We have a list of places to go, but until we get our passports back, we can't leave the country. So, for the time being, we will remain on this Northern island during the gray and dark month of February.

Photo of the Week

From Photo of the Week

Canary Wharf (East London), as viewed from the Isle of Dogs.

Photo of the Week, plus an Update

From Photo of the Week

Carved monkeys crawling the walls of the Natural History Museum.

Update: It's been a busy week, but we managed to make it over to the Natural History Museum to see my favorite annual show, the Shell Wildlife Photographer of the Year. The line was really long this year and we had to wait for a half hour just to get tickets. I was particularly interested to go this year, because I thought it might provide some inspiration for the new camera. Anyway, I didn't like it quite as much as I did last year, but it was still great.

While we were in town, we also stopped into the Royal Albert Hall for the first time and bought two tickets to go see a showing of "The Fellowship of the Ring" movie with a live orchestra. Grace really likes the soundtrack, so she's really looking forward to it. I think it'll be really interesting too - live music, but accompanying a movie. Our seats are pretty bad (you get what you pay for), but I managed to snag an aisle seat, so hopefully it'll at least be comfortable.

Otherwise it's been a pretty quiet week. I've had a bunch of freelance work to do, which means I haven't been doing the dishes and the kitchen is in a real state now. It will take hours to clean the place up.

Other than that, Grace and I both watched the inauguration today, live at work. At my office about twenty people gathered to watch, and the Mayor of London flew the American flag today at City Hall. Everybody is really pleased about Obama, but at my office at least, they're braced for major disappointment.

Photo of the Week, Star Destroyer Edition

From Photo of the Week

St. Paul's cathedral, with the corner of the modernist tourist information centre jutting into the frame.

Update: No excitement this weekend. Grace was down with a nasty cold and I had to do freelance.

Don't You Worry About Us

The heat is back on. At last.

Looking on the Bright Side

The heat is still out!

Two days ago we bought a space heater, and that has let us live pretty normal. We can wear normal layers of clothing, for instance. But we have to stay in one room pretty much all night to stay warm. The living room is probably close to room temperature. The rest of the flat, you can see your breath. We move the heater into the bedroom when we go to sleep, and by the morning, its actually a bit toasty.

But hey, we're looking on the bright side!

-You don't have to be so prompt in putting away food, because the whole kitchen is basically a walk-in refrigerator.
-We're no longer swatting at big black flies all the time. I think they used to come in to our flat to stay warm. Not anymore!
-Actually, that's about all I can think of for now. Other than the fact that it could be worse. England is still pretty temperate compared to, say, Iowa, though its been well below freezing all week. But apparently in the late 1970s there was a massive coal strike and there were massive power cuts across the country. Lots of elderly people died from the winter cold. It was known as Britain's Winter of Discontent and ushered in the era of Thatcher.

Photo of the Week

From Photo of the Week

The Millenium Bridge.

I should add, this is the first photo of the week taken with the new camera.

The Heat Is Broken

Welcome back to Britain. The boiler for our flat broke yesterday. Apparently it had been acting up while we were away. Now we have hot water and electricity, but no heating. As you can see, we have adapted as best we can. I'm wearing a hooded jacket over a sweater over a waffle shirt over a long sleeve T-shirt. And a hat. Grace is wearing her new flannel pajamas over a turtleneck sweater over a thermal long sleeve shirt and pants. And a hat. Our feet are resting on a funny polka dotted hot water bottle. That, friends, is a rubber bladder filled with very hot water (from the electric kettle, typically used to heat water for tea). It stays hot for hours and hours. We've also been closing all the doors to 'lock in' the heat generated by our bodies. And we added another down comforter to the bed, so now we've got sheets, a flannel blanket, two down comforters and a quilt.

It seems like a lot to us, but my Grandma Marge, from Canada, would probably not be impressed.

Meanwhile it's -2 degrees Celsius outside. That's not bad, but when you have no heat and live in a drafty flat...

How long will it last? We're not sure. The landlords live below us and are suffering the same fate, so I expect they'll be in just as much of a hurry to get it fixed as we are. But a friend of mine from work said he was without heat for 6 weeks last winter...

In other news, we're back in the UK after spending nearly two weeks in the US. Probably visiting with most of the people who read this blog. We had a great time, and we were sad to go. But, I was also a bit glad to be back in the UK before long. When we got in, I popped round the corner for milk and bread at the corner shop, and felt positively European, or at least a 'big city' dweller. Also, getting back on the buses was not as depressing as I thought it would be, after having a car for two weeks (maybe because its warmer on the buses than in our flat though...)

The day we got back, I shelled out for a new camera, so hopefully the quality of our picture of the week - already pretty exceptional, I would say - will improve even further. We also had fun doing a little more shopping with leftover Christmas money.

Now we're a bit jetlagged (we slept more than 12 hours on Saturday night), but hopefully the work routine will force us to adapt back. I plan to start the running at lunch routine again tomorrow, and Grace is planning to go to the gym. Settling back in then.