tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31451362876422587132024-03-13T08:46:32.222-07:00Palimpsest: A Commonplace Book in the Internet AgeSir Ducksworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13480027352899189930noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3145136287642258713.post-87990253046640287982015-08-20T00:31:00.001-07:002015-08-20T00:31:41.971-07:00Europe Holiday Chapter 1: London PrideA week ago I saw one of the staff from my old art school who asked me how my trip had been. I sort of stood there dumbfounded, seeing as the breadth of my traveling these days is triangulated between the Central Coast, the city, and Windsor. I had no idea what he meant until I realised he was talking about the big one that happened eight months ago, when my family went to visit my sister in England for the first time. She'd been living there for seven months by that stage, doing industry placement for her hospitality degree, and we wanted to spend Christmas with her. With that conversation in mind, let me take you back to the Summer of 2014.<br />
<br />
The scene: I've just finished my undergraduate degree. I've had a ball at the end of degree art show where I exhibited some prints, dolled up, and drank cheap wine. Two days later, I'm on the way to the airport. We're running late and my parents are tense. Kate Bush's Babooshka is playing on the taxi radio and I really want to sing along but I know no one else would find it funny. When we finally arrive at the Sydney terminal, my Nana has been waiting for us for at least half an hour because she's practical and always arrives early to things. We're always late, so between us, she's waited extra long. But we're the ones flying out so she's just been people-watching.<br />
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We order drinks from a bartender who can't recognise a brandy bottle, and then it's time to hit the air. Just as a flight attendant is scanning the tickets of the people in front of us, we hear about a cricketer who was killed when a ball hit him in the head.<br />
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We left around 5.30 Australian time on November 27th, arrived England time
5.00 November 28.<br />
During travel-limbo time I sampled about five or six movies. Bridesmaids and Tammy made me realise how amazing Melissa McCarthy is, and I didn't want a flight attendant to offer me tea while I was watching The Fault in Our Stars because I was mustering all my strength not to cry.<br />
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Evie was waiting for us at Heathrow terminal, and I ran through the
gates so that I could be the first one to hug her. She was wearing a pink coat
she'd told us about on Skype, when she and her friends were going to go winter
coat shopping on their payday. It was weird Skyping her when it was so hot in
Australia and she was wearing Winter clothes, and also weird finally being in
the same timezone. Evie gave us each a "London Welcome Kit" in little
plastic backpacks with red double decker busses on them (the buses even had
her route number- 10- on them!) and an assortment of tasty things, an Oyster
card for travel, and cute trinkets. When we first saw the tube trains at the station, I remember thinking how cute they looked with their rounded edges, like giant tic tacs. (They were cuter then, when we weren't struggling through commuter crowds.)<br />
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When we reached Kensington, we had to maneuver all our baggage on to the steep escalator steps. I wasn't quick enough to place my wheelie bag properly on the step below me, so it ended up with two wheels dangling off the side and messing with my centre of gravity. Mum was below me and asked whether I was ok just as I lost my balance and fell on to her. She fell on to the stranger behind her etc etc but somewhere along the line some upright people were nice enough to catch us and help us all upright. What an introduction to Kensington. We freshened up at Evie's apartment, which we were finally seeing in the flesh. It hardly fit the four of us and our bags, but we took turns showering in the building's communal bathroom, while the rest of us drank tea. Showering was wonderful after so many hours on the plane, and I saw the most hilarious passive aggressive note above the shared toilet.<br />
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<i>Some people are being very disrespectful... leaving <u>their soil</u></i>
[underlined for emphasis] <i>in the seat.... It is not very nice for other
people</i> [and then added in larger font, seemingly as an afterthought] <i><u>THINK
OF HYGIENE AND EBOLA!!! </u></i><br />
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When I unpacked my beige down jacket it was smeared with something black,
like I'd brushed a mascara wand over it. I opened it up and found that my bottle of India ink had exploded in the non-pressurised hold of the airoplane and leaked through my pencilcase. Later when we got to our apartment, I washed all my stationary with the disposable brush I'd been given on the plane, and turned the shower-stall half-grey with the flecks of ink in the process.<br />
<br />Our first meal in England was the ubiquitous pannini at a Costa's coffee
shop, where Evie encouraged us to buy gingerbread lattes because they had gold
dusting on top. She said that English coffee is piss-weak),
and that the only way to combat how awful it is to disguise it with syrups and
whipped cream. Australian coffeeshops (even Starbucks) don't really go in for
themed beverages, so it was cool to get a festive drink here in
England. And festive it was, with a swirl of whipped cream snow, gold flakes, and a tiny snowman biscuit planted in the cream.<br />
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One of the things I noticed as we walked down High Street was that toddlers
in strollers reminded me of extreme snowboarders. Maybe the brisk air had them
all awake and alert, but every kid I saw seemed to be leaning forward out of
their stroller in excitement, angling their torsos like they were surfing. This observation goes no where, but when I was jetlagged and caffeinated, it was hilarious<br />
<br />
Evie took us through Kensington Palace Gardens and on that day, I made a vow
to myself. Throughout my trip, I would pat EVERY DOG I SAW (and there were
loads of dogs at that park.)<br />
Mostly, my proximity to dogs wasn't so close. I'd see them in the distance and stare at them with deep intention. Sometimes one would walk by me and I'd put out my hand to pat it, and it would walk by unphased, incidentally brushing it's coat underneath my hand. I also saw my first squirrels. At first I thought they were cute and had expressive tails, then I saw how quickly they darted around and was paralysed with the real fear that one would run up my leg before I could notice. But apparently they turned out not to have a taste for human flesh, so I was ok.<br />
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Evie was keen to show us a
statue she often walked past of Abraham Lincoln.
<br />
"Abraham Lincoln? That's weird. Why would there be a statue of Abraham
Lincoln in London?" We looked at the ornate gold quasi-religious
decorations around the statue. We were right by the Royal Albert Hall, and it was a
statue of Prince Albert. She'd been walking past that statue for seven months
and thought it was Abraham Lincoln. We never let her forget it, but funnily enough there's a statue elsewhere in the city which is really Abraham Lincoln. For the rest of the afternoon we sat up top on a bus that toured round the
city, and I learnt my fact for the day: The term "daylight robbery"
dates back to a time when people were taxed for the amount of windows they had,
so people boarded up their windows and in turn were deprived of natural light.<br />
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<i>sisters! reunited in weirdness!</i></div>
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SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 30<br />
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The four of us visited Portabello road, and was completely overwhelmed by the sheer size of it.w<br />
I realised
I was walking around trying to find a souvenir that was "authentic",
and captured some special meaningful essence of the market, amongst all the "samey" stalls. Then I had the epiphany that my experience of the market carried the baggage of all the Portabello Road mythology. I had a romanticised idea of the market, so that when I dismissed all the vendors selling cheap mass produced goods I was dismissing the reality of the experience. I know it seems tacky to have an revelation that is based around consumer goods, but I think it's transferable. It's really easy to get
caught up in an idealised version of something, and when the reality
turns out to be different from that idea, there's a temptation to keep looking
for that "ideal". The reality might even turn out to be better, it
just requires that we actually look at what's in front of us. Mindfulness
preachiness over, back to our regularly scheduled travel updates.<br />
<br />
That night Evie took us to Winter Wonderland, a Christmas market and
amusement park in Hyde Park. Oh God. It was like the Christmas apocalypse.
Police directed the crowd into a bottleneck holding area, where we’d be let
through in stages. It was like a Christmas moshpit, but not fun at all. It was shopping centre crowds on Boxing Day. I held on to Evie as we were let through,
and we made our way out of the stream of people to stand off to one side,
waiting for mum and dad to come through. Had they gone through? Were they still
in the queue? Had they been trampled underfoot by enthusiastic
Christmas-fanatics? When we found them, our only objective was getting out. We could see the quaint wooden roofs of the stalls, but the crowds were so thick that that's all we could see. Finally we arrived out the other side of the park where the neon stopped and it was finally dark. We saw some swans on the pond and walked home.<br />
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SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 31<br />
The next day was November 31, a Sunday, when we cruised along the Thames using the complimentary ticket that came with our tourist bus trip. My facts for the day included that London
has 32 boroughs, and Tower Bridge is classified as a boat. I also learned that Blackfriars bridge is decorated on one side with sea birds and the other with freshwater birds, because it was supposed to mark the point at which freshwater turned to seawater. I saw all the usual suspects from the water- the London Eye, the Shard, the monument to the fire of London. We floated past traitor's gate at the Tower of London, and saw Tower bridge parting to let a boat through.<br />
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<i>fam bam, on a boat</i></div>
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<i>the good ship S.S Tower Bridge</i></div>
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<i>sometimes you just don't want the V.I.P treatment </i></div>
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Afterwards we headed towards Spitalfields to check out the markets where I saw circuitboard earrings, hardwood watched with pressed flowers in the face. I almost bought a tophat, and I saw a visual pun t shirt with an eyeball, an anatomical heart, and the London skyline. "Geddit?" the vendor asked me, "It's I Love London!"<br />
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<i>New from Doc Martens- it's "The Littlest Skinhead!" range</i></div>
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In Brick Lane we had the most amazing curries from Aladdin's Indian restaurant. We'd been gawking at the endless stretch of eateries along the narrow road when a runner from their restaurant ran across the street and convinced us to eat there. As well as offering us free drinks, he showed us the framed photo in the front window that proclaimed that Prince Charles had eaten there. And if it's good enough for royalty, it's good enough to go down my throat. Brick Lane seemed to be its own extension of the markets. There were vintage stores aplenty, as well as outdoor stalls which sold only one item, like heavy suede coats. On a bridge there was a drink truck which sold slushees and blared out music like it was its own street party<br />
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<br /> MONDAY, DECEMBER 1<br />
<br />
On the days Evie had off, she'd shower at her apartment and walk over to us to have breakfast, but on this day she had to work, so my parents and I had no particular time we had to wake up. Partially thanks to jetlag, and partially to the heavy
block-out curtains in our apartment we didn’t leave the house until at least midday. Considering it gets dark
at 4.30 during an English Winter, it meant we'd lost half of the day we were using to visit the Victoria and Albert Mueseum. That day we ran into the odd custom of mandatory donations. Most museums throughout London and Paris are nominally free, but foyers will have large perspex boxes that ask for a specific donation amount, or you might be prompted to "please donate a pound to use the cloak room." (Those I didn't mind. Later when we were in Paris and I had to pay to use a public bathroom, <i>that </i>irked me.)<br />
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I only saw the first floor of one wing, but I wanted to see everything at the museum. I thought I glimpsed Dita Von Teese's electric purple Vivienne Westwood wedding dress on a balcony. I saw giant religious "comics", which were painting which depicted stories in a single frame. We walked past Tipoo's Tiger, which only gets its crank turned every once in a blue moon to make sure his roaring mechanism still works. I saw the Ardabil carpet, so many beautiful textiles, and an art deco fire grate named Scandal. It had been commissioned by a couple who wanted to memorialise her ex-lover. Other sources said the man was lover to both the woman and her husband I spent so much time sketching it that I missed out on the rest of the museum.<br />
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><i>We had to eat our packed lunch outside in the courtyard. My mum is looking so happy because she's out of the cold</i></div>
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<i>Ooof! That brocade <3</i></div>
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<i>"Scandal" (1930) by Charles Sargeant Jagger </i></div>
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In the evening we met up with Evie for Winter Wonderland attempt #2. It was still obnoxiously crowded, but we had the right idea going on a week-day. We took dad around from stall to stall, trying to pick out a birthday gift for him. Eventually he agreed to a polar fleece hood to keep him warm throughout the trip, but it took a while. His indecisiveness is genetic!<br />
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<i>Evie and I took a hawt wooden troll date to the festival.</i></div>
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<i> </i> </div>
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<i>Winter Wonderland</i></div>
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 2<br />
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We celebrated Dad's birthday by going to everybody's favourite place of torture, the Tower of London. We arrived just in
time to get a tour with a Yeoman Warder who had great puns when they didn't turn out to be sexist and dated. My favourite story was the escape of William Maxwell, Lord Nithsdale, who had been
imprisoned during the Jacobite risings. Lady Nithsdale would visit his tower
with her ladies maids in tow, until one night she brought an extra set of gowns
and smuggled her husband out of the tower disguised as a ladies maid! They lived happily ever after, and I found out through a google search that Maxwell had actually been pardoned the day he escaped, perhaps the guards recognised him but played along?<br />
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I saw the crown jewels, a silver salt pillar the size of a jug, and so many jewels, but what really captivated me were the ravens. They're such clever birds! One drank the collected water from a bubbler, and another tourist turned the water on so she could get a cute photo op. It just ended up lunging at her sleeve, which is raven for <i>fuckoff</i>! Classic ravens.<br />
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<i>I call it "Raven with Landmark"</i></div>
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<i>"Did you just take a selfie with that Raven?"</i></div>
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<i>"...yes. Yes I did."</i></div>
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<i>Precious baby let me love you and be my Familiar!</i></div>
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With a lot of time to kill before our dinner reservation, we warmed up inside a Starbucks with more festive beverages, and had to endure Paul McCartney's <i>Wonderful Christmas Time</i>. I'm not sure if the song ever stopped, but I think I'm now programmed to destroy things if I hear the chime of "Simply, having, a wonderful Christmas time!" Blasted earworm! It started a trend of me alerting my family any time I had song lyrics in my head, which was often, and never appreciated.<br />
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We went to Jamie's Italian for dinner, where dad got a memento napkin with Jamie's Italian emblazoned on it. I remember some kind of stroganoff, a damn good cherry pie, and a drink mixed especially for me when I said I wanted the bitterest cocktail known to man. It was pretty fresh.<br />
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WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 4<br />
In the early hours of the morning we were lightly dozing off our jetlag when we heard a few sharp knocks at the door of our apartment. They didn't stop when we ignored them, so mum got up in the dark and talked through the locked door at. The man on the other side was asking to talk to someone, and mum told him that whoever he was looking for wasn't at our address, He kept talking, presumably to confuse us into opening the door so that he could harvest our tasty tasty organs. Mum tried to rouse dad into helping her but he was so tired that he just mumbled for her to tell him to go away, like the man was a naughty puppy. This went on for long enough that dad woke up properly and put on his burliest Alpha Male voice to say <i>There is no Dana, only Zoul</i>. Whatever he said, the guy eventually pissed off.<br />
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<br />Our second rising that morning was at 11, and we didn’t leave the house for
a very long time, because Dad (read: me) was attempting to download Europe maps
he’d paid for on his GPS. Of course every phone has GPS these days, but on the
principle of getting the use out of an object whose sole purpose was to get
people from A to B, we (I) spent at least an hour (on that day alone) trying to
get the maps to download. They didn’t. With what was left of the day, we
decided to visit the Jeffrye Museum in Shoreditch, a collection of English
interiors from 1600 to the present day. I spent a lot of time ogling teapots
and mantelpiece clocks and wishing that I lived in an Arts and Crafts decorated
living room. I also made mental notes, now that I knew how create an authentic
Georgian interior in The Sims.<br />
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<i>Chairs through the ages at the Jeffrye Museum</i></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i> One of many gorgeous interiors at the Jeffrye Museum</i> </div>
<br />
The next day, Thursday December 4, was another Evie-working day, so my
parents and I went to the British Museum. I think I recall Facebook messaging my friend Michael back in
Australia asking “How do you view the National Gallery?” Again I was met with
my dilemma of whether I see less, and see it thoroughly, or see more, and
register less of it. Another experience I found with galleries in Europe was
that when I didn’t have time to look at an artefact, I’d just shoot a picture
on my phone with the intention of looking at it more thoroughly later, and I
found that creepy. The idea of hardly registering some gorgeous cultural artefact.
Snap the picture, and look at it later as an afterthought. I guess it stems
from my desire to experience as much as I can while I’m there.<br />
<br />
My favorite
moments were when I recognised paintings I’d learned about as a wee young
thing. I was stoked to stand in front of Hans Holbein the Elder’s The
Ambassadors, with the distorted, stretched skull in the foreground. It’s a
beautiful optical illusion, where you need to stand to the right of the
painting when, at a certain angle, the skull is perfectly proportioned. So many
times I’d held my Children’s Book of Art at an angle to try and see the skull
properly, but to see it in the flesh was amazing. Other highlights were the
Romanticist rooms with JMW Turner, some Monets, and Odilon Redon<br />
<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>The Ambassadors, by Hans Holbeim the Elder, 1533</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>The Ambassadors, from a different perspective</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i></i><div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Parentals and the Oslo Christmas Tree</i></div>
<br />
It was dark when we stepped outside the building (which being London in
Winter, meant it was probably 4 PM), and a crowd had gathered in Trafalgar
Square for the lighting of the Oslo Christmas Tree. It’s a gift which Sweden
gives England every year as thanks for their protection during WWII. There were carolers and musicians and the area radiating from the tree was thick with people, it was so busy!<br />
<br />
The majority of Friday (December 5) was a huge kerfuffle because Dad’s bank card had
frozen. He called a British helpline for his Australian card, using his British
SIM card. When he finally got to talk to someone, he’d been on hold for so long
that it used up all his phone credit, and he had to call back on my mum’s
mobile to ask the hotline to call him back. While that was getting resolved,
mum was trying to get in contact with the hotel we’d booked for our stopover in Arles, as they hadn’t confirmed our booking. Somewhere along the way, she found
out that that hotel couldn’t take us, as they had some problem with their
wiring, or a floor flooded or something else they’d neglected to inform us. Eventually our hotel said they could get a neighboring hotel to put us up, and in the meantime, Dad's credit card issue was resolved<br />
<br />
What with us being in holiday mode, we hadn’t woken up early, or anticipated
that we’d spend several hours in our room trying to resolve mishaps, so by the
time we ventured our into the world, it was mid-afternoon. We’d decided to
visit the Natural History Museum, which greeted us with a stegosaurus skeleton
at the entrance, and behind it an escalator which led up through the middle of
a giant cutaway globe to the next floor. Despite the lure of the journey to the
centre of the earth, I spent a goodly amount of time in the front foyer looking
at all the specimens there. Some glowed, some were fossilised, but what really
captivated me was the moon. Behind one of the glass display cases was a chunk
of moon rock as big as my hand. It’s no secret that I am obsessed with the
moon. I think it all started with this 8 bit style flash game I found one day
called “<a href="http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/461959" target="_blank">I Wish I Were the Moon</a>”. The Romanticist in me loves the experience of pining for something so large an out of reach and humbling. It's about the closest I've gotten to a religious experience. <br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Walking with dinosaurs</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pPrMNneLbq8/VdVyTLUtA4I/AAAAAAAAAIo/FMssS8CcQDw/s1600/DSC_0545.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pPrMNneLbq8/VdVyTLUtA4I/AAAAAAAAAIo/FMssS8CcQDw/s640/DSC_0545.JPG" width="360" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i> Journey to the Centre of the Earth!</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i> A fossil from some kind of stingray, but I didn't photograph the info tag!</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
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<span class="_Tgc"><i><b>Pele's hair</b> /ˈpeɪleɪz ˈhɛər/ is stone mineral
threads or fibers formed when small particles of molten material are
thrown into the air and spun out by the wind into long <b>hair</b>-like
strands. The diameter of the strands is less than 0.5 millimetres (0.020
in), and they can be as long as 2 metres (6.6 ft)</i>.</span><div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Thanks Wiki!</i></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>My moon! (It looks like a piece of coconut)</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://www.cornel1801.com/disney/Princess-Frog-2009/characters/Ray.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.cornel1801.com/disney/Princess-Frog-2009/characters/Ray.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Essentially I am the firefly from The Frog Princess, pining over a star</div>
<br /><br />
We pressed on through the “natural disasters” exhibit, which was a lot like
the one at Questacon in Canberra, with simulated earthquakes and the like. If I’d known how much of the museum there was
to explore, I mightn’t have lingered so long in the one place, but I had fun
looking at Pele’s hair and videos of lava flows. Mum was exhausted after that so while
she headed back to the apartment, dad and I sated our gem-lust in the mineral
exhibition. There were trays and trays of gems! Uncut, polished, faceted,
cabochon. It was so pretty!<br />
<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Remember when Aladdin and Abu explore the Cave of Wonders, and Abu starts drooling over the gems? That was what this felt like. (I did not become a jewel thief though.)</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>A cute pic of me at the Natural History Museum</i></div>
<br />
When we were done there, we explored the older, part of the museum, which
was a series of large sandstone rooms with high ceilings and the skeletons of large animals
overhead. There were many glass cases of exotic birds (the Victorian mentality
was apparently something like “That looks cool, lets put a bullet through it
and stick it on a shelf!”) I was disappointed that the creepy crawly room had
no real creepy crawlies, just nu-tech “create a spider” machines that didn’t
work, and a lot of giant plastic bugs. But if there is anywhere in London I'd recommend visiting, it's the Natural History Museum<br />
<br />
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</div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MLh3iO78aNo/VdV3mF3qvxI/AAAAAAAAAJI/OpW38SlfMR4/s1600/DSC_0618.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MLh3iO78aNo/VdV3mF3qvxI/AAAAAAAAAJI/OpW38SlfMR4/s640/DSC_0618.JPG" width="360" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>An ammonite, and my hand (for scale)</i></div>
<br />
<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>I'M IN A GLASS CASE OF EMOTION! (and hummingbirds)</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>This cute told me she was a Silvery Cheeked Hornbill.</i></div>
<br />
<div style="tab-stops: 354.55pt;">
Saturday, December 6 was our last day in London,
when we were due to leave for Nimes, our stopover on the way to Arles in the South
of France. Cue the wheeling of trolley bags down the endless corridor of Kings
Cross St Pancras. A cool thing I found throughout major train stations in
Europe was that they had pianos for the public to play, and someone at St Pancras station was playing “Let it Go” on endless rotation because it drew
crowds and cheers. </div>
<div style="tab-stops: 354.55pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="tab-stops: 354.55pt;">
There was a lot of waiting around until our train
was boarding, once we had our boarding passes, we started the process of
strapping on our 20 kg backpacks, and wheeling our trolleys towards the turnstiles,
finally moving.</div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>He's smiling because he doesn't know what's about to happen</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="tab-stops: 354.55pt;">
The arrows went red. Our tickets didn’t work. We
were directed to the Euro star office where we were informed that we’d
accidentally booked for the next day, when there might not be any trains
because of a strike that was going on in Brussels. At that time, we were all
panicking, wondering whether we’d have to stay in London another night with no
booked accommodation. I think my dad actually suggested that my sister put us
up in her bedsit apartment which had just enough room to swing a cat, and my
mum, the only French-speaker, was talking to someone at the desk and asking if
there was anything they could do for us. We waited, we discussed amongst each other
the cost it would be to buy new tickets. We were transferred to one of the
English-speaking staff, a dishy looking dude with salt-and-pepper hair and a
signet ring. He looked at his computer and frowned a lot, and I thought we were
done for. We couldn’t get the money back for the tickets we’d bought, but he
could get us cheaper tickets for the current train which would be leaving soon.
We’d have to wait in the holding ‘til the last minute and was no guarantee, but
if people didn’t claim their seats, we’d have to be ready to run onto the
platform and on to the train. </div>
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Mmm family holiday stress. </div>
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<br /></div>
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<i>Did we make our train? Did we sleep in the train station? Tune in for the next installment of my ridiculously long-winded anecdotes! </i></div>
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<![endif]-->Sir Ducksworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13480027352899189930noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3145136287642258713.post-45157247568687995872015-01-08T00:19:00.002-08:002015-01-08T00:22:43.601-08:00Europe Holiday- Teaser<br />
In an experimental creative writing class I took a few years ago, it was argued that anything could be a narrative; a shopping list might be a character profile, footnotes in a text could swallow the body of the text. So in the same vein, while I cull blurry holiday photos from my hard-drive and try and make sense of the ones that are left, here is an abridged version of my Europe holiday, told through the wifi hotspots I accessed.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>CHAPTER 1-FLIGHT </b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
#WiFi@Changi</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>CHAPTER 2-LONDON </b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
5pwt</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
orange</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
02 Wifi</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Jamie's Italian </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
BTWifi-Starbucks</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
NHM-Free-wifi</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
NH-Hotel-Group</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
_ST Pancras WiFi</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>CHAPTER 3-NIMES</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
HOT_TERM_SALON</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>CHAPTER 4- ARLES </b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
theatreantique</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
IDK-WIFI-ICE-TO-ICE</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
ATRIUM </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>CHAPTER 5- PARIS </b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
SFR WiFi Gares</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Muse du Louvre</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
SSGP5</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
SSGP4</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
LE MALARTE </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
*SNCF gare-gratuit</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
wifi salon grand voyageur</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
THALYSNET </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>CHAPTER 6- AMSTERDAM </b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
McDonalds Free WiFi</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
VanGoughMueseum </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Canal- free wifi</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Meininger FreeHotSpot </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
RIJKSWiFi</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
PEUPLEFAST </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
sylviaINET </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>CHAPTER 7- ON THE SEA</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Internet@Sea</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>CHAPTER 8- LONDON</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
5PWT_TOP FLOORS</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
HIEX London City</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Virgin Media WiFi</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
WLAN Zone- The Cloud</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
MA-Ministries</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Crowne Plaza Heathrow WiFi</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
_Heathrow WiFi </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Sir Ducksworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13480027352899189930noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3145136287642258713.post-52651540228523053062014-12-23T14:37:00.000-08:002014-12-23T14:37:47.507-08:00Blog ChristeningI used to blog in a big way a few years ago, now I guess I'm back in the saddle again. What's prompting it currently is that I want to record my Europe holiday, and the gorgeous watercolour paper travel journal I bought before I left isn't seeing much use. I bought a pack of blank postcards with the intention of posting hand-drawn postcards, but it took me forever to finish drawing the first one, let alone write it. Do you think I've posted so much as one postcard? No way. If I'm conscious, I'm either nesting in a doona pretending that I'm not, or gallivanting about the country so that I'm too tired to do anything constructive when I get home.<br />
<br />
Much as I absolutely adore things written in longhand, I know I'm more likely to blog than journal, and I'll have the opportunity to edit and condense. (Anyone who knows me knows that all my anecdotes lead nowhere in particular yet I find them amusing.) Once the holiday is all written up, expect this space to be filled with all matter of miscellany including but not limited to posts on: art/ craft projects, books, pop culture reflections, reviews (?), makeup, music, whatever happens to capture my attention. Watch this space for part one of my travel blogging- London (part 1)Sir Ducksworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13480027352899189930noreply@blogger.com0