London Stills - jesse d's travel journal

26/02/03 - 11:56 pm
Getting on a plane tomorrow that is all set to take me halfway around the world to a place called 'London, England' and I presume to stay there as long as my heart will allow... I really hope I don't miss Perth, my ma, my friends and the Indian Ocean too much. I feel like I'm going to climb Mount Everest! My friend Tomasz told me that relatively... as far as I myself am concerned, I indeed am climbing my own Everest. Of course it will be fun and exciting too and hopefully hard to leave by the end, not much use going anywhere if the place isn't hard to leave I reckon.

At least I'll have my mate Keegan over to keep me company, as long as Keegan is alone in Melbourne I will be alone with him in London.

This picture was taken at my travel companion Emily's going away party, that's she and I there. Good night this one, I had previously attended a 'bandfest' of sorts at Claremont Footy Club featuring Alex's band Bus #56 it was the first time I saw them and I wouldn't usually have done so... except I'm going away and I felt I should do so, they put on an amusing feast of sight and sound they did.

Tonight I went to the Captain Stirling, we all walked there. Me and my friends Ryan, Borg, Alex and Tomasz, I had a couple of midis and saw a few people and said goodbye, I'll see you later!

I'm rather excited about the places we have picked to stay in, the first being a modern looking YHA in the prestigious London Docklands, the area in which our Chili Peppers concert on March 9th will be held. The second is an old cottagy YHA in Hampstead Heath near the Camden Markets.

I am not excited about a 24 hour plane flight... I hate long trips, Byron Bay to Sydney was enough and that was only 12 hours, then a few days later Sydney to Melbourne took about the same, now they're asking me to do 24 hours all in one go! I wish they would break it up into thirds... I could contemplate that.

The second picture was taken tonight in my bedroom, thumbs up! It's funny... ok?

The road goes ever on and on,

Now far ahead the road has gone,

And I must follow, if I can,

Pursuing it with eager feet,

Until it joins some larger way,

Where many paths and errands meet,

And whither then? I cannot say - Bilbo Baggins

27/02/03 - 10.20 pm
At Changi airport in Singapore. Oh, such sad goodbyes at Perth. Feeling fine now though and excited about arriving in London tomorrow.

Flight was good, watched Eminem's 8 Mile like twice at Emily's behest, I hate that guy... was ok movie though :P

Anyway take a look at these photos they are self explanatory and I'll type more later! Gotta *fly* now though :) (and perhaps get some duty free shopping done, biggest airport in the world!)

28/02/03 - 6.10 AM
STILL on the plane, saw some armed guards in Singapore. 4 of these military men just walking in a pack around the departure gate to Heathrow carrying some pretty damn heavy looking artilery. Enough to give me a few nerves before take off.

But apart from that the flight has been good! Singapore airlines is the greatest, I think I might watch 'Being John Malkovich' on their video on demand system or play some SNES after this :P I have 7 hours flying left to do. We are currently flying just North of Dubai approaching the Persian gulf... I'm not sure if we fly over Iraq but my navigation screen in front of me seems to tell me we're headed over that way, I think the pilot said something about Baghdad in his initial address.

ANYWAY be in the Docklands soon and man I'm so hungry, I could eat British meat :P.

02/03/03 - 9.23 PM
East side love is livin on the west end.

Start work tomorrow in the middle of Piccadilly Circus... everything is happening full speed it's kinda scary. I'm just hangin on to the back of the travel bus experiencing the extraordinarily extreme emotions it's dragging me through. One minute I'm excited to be here, the next I'm scared and anxious... but it's cool!

My first impression of London was a depressing one, got on the tube at heathrow and went past some grim, grim houses, each the same as the other just frowning at me... Then the Rotherhithe YHA... must be situated in one of the worst areas in London... dirty canal and ugly houses. Ghetto.

We visited Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, Millenium Wheel etc on our first day and that was relieving, nice place.

Generally a rude shock of a first day though. The next day we went to Camden Markets... a sweet, heavenly place on the other side of town. Could buy anything cool you can possibly think of.. from rock band bootleg videos to a choice of endless vintage clothing stores full of funky delights :) a good day, and the Hampstead Heath YHA was nice too.

Today we moved into our pub conditions and met our co-workers.. most of them are cool. We have a TV and stezza in all of our rooms and it's smack bang in the middle of the West End. Judi Dench, Michael Richards and Ian Mckellen are all perfoming in different plays just a short (4 minute max) walk from where i sleep. AMAZING.

Leicester Square is just the next place along, the movie theatre capital of London, that's where they frequently have the big movie premieres, J-Lo was there Friday apparently.

04/03/03 - 8.04 AM
Yesterday I woke up, got all you can eat pizza at the place down the road. Went to the HMV where they almost have more movies than music and I bought 'Bullets Over Broadway' cos it's one of my favoured movies and we have a VHS player in my stinky bedroom.

The bedroom is a squat, I don't think anyones cleaned... anything in there for about a year or what. The first night there were two other guys in there. Paul, who is a bit older and took Emily and I out to eat 'Tapas' at a Spanish restaurant in Angel the other night (Tapas is a Spanish style of eating that enables you to try 4 different things on the menu because they serve everything in small bowls) and Justin, who's a cool guy that took me out to a dingy corner pub during his lunch break... He drank 2 and a half pints of Grolsch in his lunch break. It's bit of a worry, or not!

Paul left to housesit for his friend for a couple of months or something yesterday, and he told me that I should revolutionise the room, cleaning the walls etc. Emily's room is fantastic. She shares with a Brisbane girl called Sarah.

Last night we went to see a play at a theatre down the road called 'This Is Our Youth' with Freddie Prinze Jr. and Chris Klein which was hilarious... not the play but the notion of seeing it. The play itself was pretty good, it was set in a New York Apartment circa 1982 and spanned over about an 18 hour period in which Freddie Prinze (a stoner kid) gets kicked out of his father's house but not before stealing an incredibly large sum of money. He runs to his friend Warren's (Chris Klein) house to figure out what he's going to do now.

Warren, being the typical alpha male and more dominating figure in the relationship calls him an idiot for stealing from his dad but then comes up with a complicated way to use the money to buy and sell drugs to make profit, which Freddie agrees to but doesn't understand.

The play then took a bunch of twists and turns in which Freddie takes the girl he likes to a fancy hotel room for the night, spills the cocaine he is meant to be profiting from and Warren's drug dealer dies. Although I enjoyed the humour in the play, I didn't really know what it was trying to tell me, but I knew it had some kind of theme. Either the play raised too many questions, or I was just too tired to think straight.

I thought that we'd be in a large theatre with bad seats seeing as we bought the ticket 4 hours before showtime for 15 pounds. But not so! we were in a theatre with the same basic design as His Majesty's in Perth but only half as big (Emily reckons it was as big, but it was barely half). We had seats in the centre on the floor about 7 metres from the stage and no one was sitting in front of me! Stoked.

Maybe tonight I will see 'Arsenic and Old Lace' with Michael Richards at The Strand but there is plenty of time and so many plays to see. And bands for that matter.

Still a bit freaked out about terrorism slash biological warfare... It's not my fault! The newspaper freaked me out, there was this article 'Mass Terror Practise Planned For London's Centre' and it was about how the military plan to stage a mass disaster somewhere central to prepare themselves for something as potentially catastrophic as September 11... Such as a tube explosion or and outbreak of smallpox... not quite sure how they would 'stage' that :P It could have been a tabloidy newspaper though, there are a lot of them, and I see more people reading them than I do the serious papers! A real worry when people prefer that kind of fantasy to reality.

Today Emily is working but I'm meeting up with my mate Alex Lav from Perth under the TDK sign in Piccadilly Circus at midday. I'm very much looking forward to it.

I'm very hungry right now and nobody is awake to let me out because they all wake up at like 10.30... bastards.

Yesterday I also bought the video 'A Bronx Tale' because it's the best movie ever, now all I have to do is buy 'Amelie' and i will have the golden three and can stop wasting money on videos, they are only 6 pounds though.

NEXT



		27/02/03 - 10.20 pm At Changi airport in Singapore. Oh, such sad goodbyes at Perth. Feeling fine now though and excited about arriving in London tomorrow. Flight was good, watched Eminem's 8 Mile like twice at Emily's behest, I hate that guy... was ok movie though :P Anyway take a look at these photos they are self explanatory and I'll type more later! Gotta fly now though :) (and perhaps get some duty free shopping done, biggest airport in the world!)
		28/02/03 - 6.10 AM STILL on the plane, saw some armed guards in Singapore. 4 of these military men just walking in a pack around the departure gate to Heathrow carrying some pretty damn heavy looking artilery. Enough to give me a few nerves before take off. But apart from that the flight has been good! Singapore airlines is the greatest, I think I might watch 'Being John Malkovich' on their video on demand system or play some SNES after this :P I have 7 hours flying left to do. We are currently flying just North of Dubai approaching the Persian gulf... I'm not sure if we fly over Iraq but my navigation screen in front of me seems to tell me we're headed over that way, I think the pilot said something about Baghdad in his initial address. ANYWAY be in the Docklands soon and man I'm so hungry, I could eat British meat :P.


					04/03/03 - 8.04 AM Yesterday I woke up, got all you can eat pizza at the place down the road. Went to the HMV where they almost have more movies than music and I bought 'Bullets Over Broadway' cos it's one of my favoured movies and we have a VHS player in my stinky bedroom. The bedroom is a squat, I don't think anyones cleaned... anything in there for about a year or what. The first night there were two other guys in there. Paul, who is a bit older and took Emily and I out to eat 'Tapas' at a Spanish restaurant in Angel the other night (Tapas is a Spanish style of eating that enables you to try 4 different things on the menu because they serve everything in small bowls) and Justin, who's a cool guy that took me out to a dingy corner pub during his lunch break... He drank 2 and a half pints of Grolsch in his lunch break. It's bit of a worry, or not! Paul left to housesit for his friend for a couple of months or something yesterday, and he told me that I should revolutionise the room, cleaning the walls etc. Emily's room is fantastic. She shares with a Brisbane girl called Sarah. Last night we went to see a play at a theatre down the road called 'This Is Our Youth' with Freddie Prinze Jr. and Chris Klein which was hilarious... not the play but the notion of seeing it. The play itself was pretty good, it was set in a New York Apartment circa 1982 and spanned over about an 18 hour period in which Freddie Prinze (a stoner kid) gets kicked out of his father's house but not before stealing an incredibly large sum of money. He runs to his friend Warren's (Chris Klein) house to figure out what he's going to do now. Warren, being the typical alpha male and more dominating figure in the relationship calls him an idiot for stealing from his dad but then comes up with a complicated way to use the money to buy and sell drugs to make profit, which Freddie agrees to but doesn't understand. The play then took a bunch of twists and turns in which Freddie takes the girl he likes to a fancy hotel room for the night, spills the cocaine he is meant to be profiting from and Warren's drug dealer dies. Although I enjoyed the humour in the play, I didn't really know what it was trying to tell me, but I knew it had some kind of theme. Either the play raised too many questions, or I was just too tired to think straight. I thought that we'd be in a large theatre with bad seats seeing as we bought the ticket 4 hours before showtime for 15 pounds. But not so! we were in a theatre with the same basic design as His Majesty's in Perth but only half as big (Emily reckons it was as big, but it was barely half). We had seats in the centre on the floor about 7 metres from the stage and no one was sitting in front of me! Stoked. Maybe tonight I will see 'Arsenic and Old Lace' with Michael Richards at The Strand but there is plenty of time and so many plays to see. And bands for that matter. Still a bit freaked out about terrorism slash biological warfare... It's not my fault! The newspaper freaked me out, there was this article 'Mass Terror Practise Planned For London's Centre' and it was about how the military plan to stage a mass disaster somewhere central to prepare themselves for something as potentially catastrophic as September 11... Such as a tube explosion or and outbreak of smallpox... not quite sure how they would 'stage' that :P It could have been a tabloidy newspaper though, there are a lot of them, and I see more people reading them than I do the serious papers! A real worry when people prefer that kind of fantasy to reality. Today Emily is working but I'm meeting up with my mate Alex Lav from Perth under the TDK sign in Piccadilly Circus at midday. I'm very much looking forward to it. I'm very hungry right now and nobody is awake to let me out because they all wake up at like 10.30... bastards. Yesterday I also bought the video 'A Bronx Tale' because it's the best movie ever, now all I have to do is buy 'Amelie' and i will have the golden three and can stop wasting money on videos, they are only 6 pounds though.

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