It was just another overcast Sunday at first. Nothing out of the ordinary.  We braved the cold (as all Londoners must to enjoy any semblance of a social life for three quarters of the year), exchanging the warmth of the apartment for the warmth of a nearby Vietnamese restaurant (and pho noodle soup).

On the way back we ducked in quirky clothes stores-slash-coffee houses and out of the drizzle which threatened to turn into real rain every time we dared to make another pit stop. But there was one more stop left to make before escaping into centrally heated comfort once more...a 'free shop'.

On Commercial Street.  

My first thought was that anything being offered for 'free' in a city as expensive as London had to be taken up. Or at least made time for.

My brother told me not to get too excited - there wouldn't be anything worth taking.  And he was right - a few old recorded TV movies on VHS tapes without covers, mouldy clothes in a damp cardboard box and some dog-eared books that probably wouldn't even appear in a garage sale were haphazardly displayed around the 'shop'.  More interesting was its message, and reason for being.

("Modern society is wasteful and destructive. Throughout the process of mass consumption we are exploiting humans, animals and the environment. Food is shipped halfway across the world only to be abandoned in supermarkets or household bins. It is the financial system that allows this to happen. While we base everything on monetary value without considering other costs incurred we will continue to live in a society of waste + (sic) overconsumption and inequality.")

In one corner was a sign calling for volunteers to sign up to mind the 'shop' so that it could continue to exist.

 I guess what they were really looking for were people to guard the writing on the wall.

|

The realisation that this was a slogan for a popular chain of stores that sell art supplies didn't detract from how fitting it was that this bold statement should be so casually displayed in central London.

|

I love travelling.

The week leading up to your departure is often the most exciting. Friends you haven't gotten around to catching up with for a while are suddenly clamouring for a chance to hang out before you leave, as though there's suddenly emerged a 'need' or 'real reason' to put good intentions into action.

People you haven't spoken to in ages are suddenly anxious to find out where you're going, why, and for how long? You start making plans with those on the other side of the world eager to pick up the friendships you once left behind.

Your 'to do' list has stretched to double its normal size, and for a time you shove the thought of physically leaving at the corner of your mind. No time to get excited just yet, you think, every time you're tempted to stop to smile. Finally it comes to packing - translation for: throw a 20kg pile of clothes into a suitcase and hope for the best.

Finally, you pause for breath. I stared at my open suitcase, and the sight brought back to life the reality of what I was about to do. I was going back to London. The place where this blog really began.

Last year, London was where I made so many revelations, both personal and professional, and so many promises, and plans for the future. In the year that has passed since then much has changed, promises broken, plans fallen apart. Yet it has always been, as a result, the place I have looked to for greener pastures.

After all, I haven't been "stuck somewhere between Sydney and London" for no reason at all.

I had booked my tickets earlier this year in an attempt to make the return pilgrimage, to salvage something from it all, or at the very least, to see what the place still has to offer.

Oh, the joys of impermanence. The sheer luxury it entails. Freedom always seems to come shrouded in impermanence, beneath the subtlest of disguises, at the very best of times. Travelling provides you with the perfect alibi. You are 'busy travelling' and therefore legitimately unavailable, indefinitely. Your right to disconnect from the world you know, is validated as soon as you shut your suitcase.

That wish you often make - when buried in commitments, when staring at a line of endless traffic, when running on 9-5 urban autopilot - to cast off the shackles of familiarity and identity is finally granted once you step through the automatic doors of the international terminal. You become nobody to everybody as soon as you turn your back on your loved ones and disappear beyond the sign aptly labelled 'Departure Gates'. For a moment, you are itching to turn and run back. And then you are overwhelmed with the freedom that comes with the possibility that you might never return. It crowns you with your very own halo.

And as great as I'm sure coming home will be, yet again, that restless part of me that longs to flee was awakened with a ticket and a suitcase. I've been gone about two weeks now, and am currently somewhere in greater Europe. Snapshots from my trip so far are coming up soon.

Stay tuned.

|

"Personally, I find living in London to be incredibly inspiring. It's not always easy, but I enjoy the challenge of living there, and I enjoy the passion everyone demonstrates for the arts."

- Juanita Stein from the Howling Bells tells Frankie magazine.

|

To stave off the slow death of this blog, I present you with a list that has been a'brewing for the last 7 months and is now ripe for publication: the post-exchange reflection. It's almost midnight so I'll spare you any emotional shit and get right to it. Enjoy!

Reasons why Sydney Dominates:

There are a bunch of things I really took for granted before the big flight over to London, and which I take more notice of today including:

1. Good (and by good I don't mean the restaurants meet national health and safety standards, just that they taste amazing and authentic) Asian food accessible at every corner: Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean and Malaysian to be exact.

2. Greater diversity and integration of cultures- I actually think Sydney's gotten even more diverse since I left it.

3. Friendly enforcement against 'Tall Poppy Syndrome' is well-established, usually by saying 'Fuck ooofffff' to douchebag beahaviour with a smile.

4. Being able to walk down a street, wearing whatever you want, a short skirt, whatever, and know that you won't get accosted by a junkie (in many, but not all parts)- priceless

5. Personal space is not an illusion in Sydney, it's still a reality.

6. Black stuff doesn't come out of my nose here.

7. Being able to afford to go to a swanky-esque bar occasionally and buy a drink without having to sacrifice, say, food for the next week.

Reasons why London Dominates:

There are also many things I've come to miss about London, no matter how much people whinge about it I will always defend it as a city because...

1. Anonymity still remains a valuable commodity for non-celebrities - being able to wear pyjamas down a street in Central London and knowing no one will even glance twice. There's always someone weirder than you anyway.

2. 'Fuck off' enforcement still rife, but the English equivalent is more of a 1 hour criticism session about some celebrity or sell-out musician/football player

3. SNOW. That is all.

4. Being able to walk down a street and point out all the 1000 year old monuments on either side as you walk past.

5. Being the centre of Europe, newsrooms in London have the potential to become much more interesting

6. Live music- someone that's huge in the underground/alternative music scene internationally can always be found playing somewhere on any given night of the week in London. While Londonians talk about these gigs nonchalantly as such non-events, Australian fans scramble for leaked mp3s and youtube videos for years before they'll even bother coming on tour

7. Random huge crowd events like silent disco in Liverpool Street only made possible by London's huge population




[Photo of Opera House sourced from: bernardoh.files.wordpress.com]

|

I think I'd been preparing to go home since the day I left it.


(Taken on the flight from Rome to London. Couldn't resist.)

It was a New Year's Eve flight,and I was heading for Sydney airport just as everyone else was heading to various grassy spots and hotel rooms and swanky clubs to wait for the fireworks over the Harbour Bridge, everyone to get drunk like never before, and...oh yeah, the new year to arrive at midnight.

The thing about long flights is, no matter how much you're looking forward to getting to your destination, you always feel like just giving up, turning around and crawling back into bed about halfway through. Unless you're one of those crazy people who likes to fly, or can afford to fly Business class. (Bastards :P)After about 11 hours of waiting for some kind air steward(ess) to announce it was midnight I realised the lights weren't going to come on, and that there were no party poppers, champagne glasses or funny hats to be had, and slept the remaining 13 hours of my journey.

All that sleep somehow renewed my excitement for all things London and Europe and Not Home, though. The pilot cracked the first joke (of many to come during my trip) about London's reputation for dreary weather when announcing the temperature, and said, "Welcome to London." [Side note: I've noticed that that sentence, 'Welcome to London' is never ever followed by an exclamation mark. Always a statement, much like "The sky is blue", "Grass is green", or "We're all going to die from global warming". And not once have I ever heard it said after anything remotely positive, like: "You can't get music like THIS in Sydney- Welcome to London!" It's more like an apology: "You haven't gotten a bank account with Barclays after 6 months of phone messages, in-person interviews and complaints? Well! Welcome to London."]

But I didn't leave hating the place, as my previous posts might mistakenly suggest. I feel like I lived an entire year in it's first half. I had an awesome time, and learned a million and one lessons I wouldn't have if I'd been anywhere else at that point in time. But I kept reminding myself that the time would eventually come to an end, so I would have to make the most of it whilst being ready for it to run out, too. I arrived knowing almost no one and nothing about Australia's so-called 'motherland', but made a whole new life for myself there, complete with new friends, weekend plans, hobbies and an altered dress sense and musical taste to boot.

Leaving London was as understated and unremarkable an affair as my arrival in Sydney. A brief hug and kiss, and one last quick glance-around later(in direct contravention of my personal rule to never turn back once you leave something or someone for good or with a hint of regret), and I was homeward bound. When I arrived in Sydney, I had a huge grin plastered on my face ready to see my parents for the first time in almost eight months, only to find no one there waiting. Long periods of travel have made me resourceful though. I called them using 1800 reverse (Holly Valance is useful for something, I guess), finally found them, and had my long-awaited (but now, somewhat anti-climatic) reunion embrace.

The moment of truth actually came during the last leg of my 23 hour flight. It was only then I finally accepted that my time in London had come to an end.

I'd just spent eight hours in transit at Tokyo airport. I spent it going online to see if anyone in London was awake and on Facebook, thinking about how much my upcoming semester was going to suck after such a teriffic one abroad, and generally just wanting to turn around and fly back. For all it's hang-ups it had been my home for the last eight months, and I missed it like an old friend, or a dress you weren't sure you should buy but which you will agonise over, and inevitably go back to and splurge on after about an hour.

While waiting to take off, a steward asked me about where I'd been. He nodded sympathetically when I told him I'd been gone for ages, and had been in London for most of it. I languished in the familiar old sound of the Australian accent all around me. But I talked about London for probably longer than is expected from a response in small talk. Maybe I was still in denial about the fact that I was no longer in UK airspace. "Going home?" he asked. "Yes.." I said slowly, testing out the word, realising it was the first time I'd acknowledged it out loud since leaving. The Australian high school students behind me chatted about how dramatic their two week stint in Japan had been and how emotional they were to be going home at last. I grimaced. 'Try eight months' I thought. 'Then see how you feel.'

I couldn't sleep the rest of the way back. I kept darting between nostalgic memories from London and tentative predictions about Sydney. I wasn't sure whether I was looking forward to, or dreading our descent. Only one thing was for sure- I wanted to be off this stupid plane asap.

My decision came to me on its own, painlessly. The pilot's announcement was simple, and I remember it word for word because of the way it made me feel:

"Good morning everyone, we will be arriving at Sydney Airport in about 20 minutes. The time there will be 7am. For all of you travelling here on holiday or for business, I'd like to welcome you to Sydney. And for those of you who are coming back, welcome home!"

The Japanese exchange students behind me cheered.

I smiled.

Home.

|

I am sat in a cafe on Brick Lane, leather jacket clad, typing on my powerbook, a blue 1920's ring on the fourth finger of my right hand tap-tap-tapping the silver keys. Underground rap over a sultry jazz beat thumps in the background, and the words "I exist despite you" linger on the back wall in neon red lights. The uber-cool baristas behind the counter smile, one with a pen somehow entangled in his curly hair, another with impossibly huge glasses and an impossibly bald head. To my left- my mobile, wireless username card and soy chai latte. To my right- two others on laptops, modern salads and macbooks, and piles of photocopied textbook articles.

Here I am.

Everything has changed.

|

1. My shower is tiny. It took me a while to work out how not to be swallowed by the white curtain that surrounds it, its that small.

2. I think I'm starting to develop English tendencies when I talk. No, no accent yet. Just an indignant lilt, a downward emphasis on certain words that permeates the British 'tone'. It's hard to describe. I also avoid abbreviations, preferring to speak in passive aggressive tones, e.g. "Did you not hear half of Westminster in the flat last night?" instead of "Didn't you hear half of Westminster in the flat last night?". I say "film" instead of "movie" increasingly, and use the word "surely" quite frequently.

3. I'm using my brother's old sim card, so to avoid confusion, I started putting "UK" before my new friends' names when entering them in my phone, which now means I have to scroll through the normal alphabet, and then re-scroll through over twenty UK entries to get anyone's contact out.

4. The 'x', as in 'kisses' is very commonly used as a punctuation mark in text messages among younger locals. More on that one later.

5. When the little green man at pedestrian crossing flashes, it means he's about to go red. That's a good one to know, especially if you're crossing the road by yourself for the first time in a foreign country.

6. Vivienne Westwood used to go to the University of Westminster.

|

Hello fans.



So I've been here in London for just over two weeks and I still can't find a way to properly answer the question so many of you have been asking me in that time: "How's your trip going?" There's no way I can summarise every little eccentricity, every new person I've met, every observation made in the space of a single sentence or msn conversation, so I won't try to. Here are some nice generalisations though:

Five reasons I love London:

1. The tube: When any of the lines are down, all havoc breaks loose. But when it actually works, its so convenient in getting me from market to museum to uni dorm. A subway will arrive every few minutes, which is perfect for people who constantly sleep in and are late getting anywhere- people like me.



2. Nice-shit-nice corners: When I first got to Heathrow I thought I'd somehow stepped off a time-machine and landed in an 80s' John Cusack movie, with dull carpets, almost-neon yellow signs and the general dull aura that I didn't expect to come associated with the land of Kate Moss, Amy Winehouse and Rimmel's London look. On the taxi ride from there to my brother's apartment I thought I must have mistaken the 80s film for a 60s-70s one: namely, 'To Sir with Love'. The dirty streets, dull store signage and tacky window displays did nothing to boost my confidence. But then, miraculously, turn a corner and there is Brick Lane, vibrant, filled with punk-rockers and market stalls, colourful food and vintage clothing hung up everywhere. And another- Buckingham Palace, Harrods, expensively dresssed people and so forth, Somerset House, the British Museum, the Big Ben, and the list just keeps going. There's no such thing as a bad-end of London, just a not-so-nice street which ends almost as quickly as you can say: "This looks so depressing".

3. Topshop. There's no need to say anymore....but what the heck. A few days after I got here my friend Jody told me to meet her at Oxford Circus. I had no idea what or where that was but with my trusty tube map, I was there within about 15 minutes. Utterly lost, I followed the sign that said Oxford St to one of its many exits. And lo and behold, while climbing up the stairs, I saw it, just as it was in my dreams, and in all its glory in my 'Shop till you Drop' magazine back home: Topshop. The home of Kate Moss for the masses, designer-styles at retail prices, a veritable EMPIRE for the 20-something fashion fan. A whole floor devoted to accessories, a quarter belonging to handbags. Aisles ready and waiting for returns. Dorothy really couldn't have put it better when she said : "There's no place like home".

4. London Lemmings: Two of the tube lines were down one night, and if you needed to get anywhere in the south, you really needed at least one of them to be up and running. It's a subway, so picture the steepest hill you can, and escalators up and down it. Then recall the feeling of being amid the crowd at the Big Day Out, double the numbers, and imagine running, shoulder-to-shoulder packed up and down those stairs. Not fun. The announcer told us one of the lines was now up and running. So of course we all ran up, and back down to the other platform to catch the next tube there. He then told us that they were very sorry, but were mistaken, and we'd be better off going back to the other line instead.

Up and down those stairs again. The collective sigh/groan echoed off the curved walls, and I couldn't help but laugh. It's like we were one with the frustration of it all. My brother told me once that Sydney's population is about 20% that of London's. I felt it more than ever that night, and when I saw the gathering angry crowd surrounding the affected stations, yelling at station staff and swearing on their mobile phones, I suddenly came to understand how quickly Macquarie Fields and Cronulla action can start up. Lemmings don't have it easy, but it makes every destination you reach feel like Everest in the end.

5. Inspiration amid the dark clouds: People always bitch about how gloomy and cold London is but there's so much...of everything here. Art, architecture, fashion, even the graffiti on billboards, the side of trucks, store window displays and advertisements...there's such a rich history for design here that everything is so unique, over the top and colourful. It's like all the energy's been sucked out of the air and plugged into everything else, to make up for the bad weather. There's a kind of beauty in running into a subway station in shelter from the cold, and hearing a really awesome jazz singer busking near the platforms, admiring a girl's whacky outfit on the tube and, upon reaching one market or another, seeing multicoloured scarves folded on a market stall table and re-interpreted vintage skirts made entirely of coat sleeves. Inspiring even. Hopeful.



Five reasons I still call Australia home:

1. No creepy encounters: I was in this awesome gallery the other day, and this middle-aged man looking at the same photo as me started making general banter, you know the usual "wow these photos are really something huh" type questions, which quickly turned into "so where are you staying? where are you from?" questions. I dodged as much as I could, moving around the gallery at appropriate intervals to try to get away...but there's only so far you can go in a room, so I eventually said "Look I'm gonna go, nice to talk to you bye!"
Crazy man: "Which gallery are you going to now?" (really freaked out now)
Me: "I don't know I'm gonna just walk around" (fuck does this mean he'll follow?)
Crazy man: "I'm going to Chinatown"
Me: "Oh that's nice, I'm gonna go see ya!"

I hid in an old Hollywood movie memorabilia book store around the corner for about 15 mins before returning to finish the exhibition. When I told my fellow exchange student friend this story he nodded the whole way through before telling me that every single girl he knows here has told him a similar creepy-man-story. Bigger city, bigger proportion of weirdos I guess.

2. The feel of thongs and sand on my feet: ... 'nough said.

3. Food: I've been quite lucky in that the first couple of weeks, I was staying with my brother, who kindly took me to some awesome places to eat. 'London food shitty? Narrr can't beeee' I thought to myself. But after eating every sandwich known to man to exist, I realise now how little variety there is here. Goodbye Asian food courts, goodbye 3am kebab and hello to potato jackets cold 1 pound tesco sandwiches and pasta salads. I survived on microwave soup and a small loaf of bread for a while. I bought Vogue the other day which set me back a little so I settled for a banana for dinner. I have succumbed to the neccessity of fresh food though- I cooked for myself for the first time yesterday...no really, I did. And I'm still alive to tell the tale. By July I will be the best thing since Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay! But probably still nowhere near as good as my mum...who's cooking I miss more than a lot of things!

4. The lack of a conversion rate: People keep telling me to stop converting, because after a while it's pointless trying to save money here. But it's hard not to when the pound is worth around 2.5 times as much as the Aussie dollar. On one of my first days out I thought I'd done well to find a 2 pound coffee...that was until i realised, while drinking it, that i'd just spent about 5 bucks. Ouch. Uni subsidised drinks, how I love thee.

5. My favourite people: aww yes of course, the lover of Scrubs, Spanglish and James L. Brooks-directed Simpsons episodes MUST have her cheesy ending. When I left, it became so apparent who my true friends are. The ones who tell me when they know I'm making a bad decision, and still stand by me when I go ahead and make it anyway. The ones who dropped everything to see me before I left. The ones who know exactly who I am and still love me. The ones who know what I'm thinking, what I'm scared of and what I need, before I do.

The ones who sit in cars with me till 4am while I sob my drunken eyes out. The ones I watch girly movies, eat pizza and bitch with. The ones who call without hesitation, who are there as soon as you can say the words 'I feel shit' and the ones who will gather around me in a toilet cubicle to make me throw up when I've had too much to drink. In all seriousness, you are the ones I do not have to waste a second doubting, because I know you will be right there, every bit as loyal and amazing as when I left. I love you guys. *pause for the aww*
...
...
...
Email me some time you stupid bastards. =p

Until next time, take care and don't forget about me! =)

xo

|