With the warm weather looming ahead of me, I decided to give up the office life and gave notice last week that today would be my last day at my current project. I was all aflutter with the prospect of sleeping in and watching Gilmore Girls re-runs all day long and cooking homemade dinners for J and I.
And then I got a call yesterday letting me know of another job starting on Tuesday after the long bank holiday weekend. For more money. Where some of my friends already work. Of course.
So now it looks like no long, lazy summer days ahead. I'll be cooped up in yet another office making the money to fund my insanely expensive hobby - why does camera equipment all cost so damn much?!
Anyway, we were meant to go to a steak lunch today for my leaving party, but of course, work got in the way. To make up for it, the associate I worked for rushed in before I left to present me with a madeira cake and a biscuit tin full of yummies. To be honest, I prefer the biscuit tin to a steak so I was pretty happy with the change in plans. She also told me that I could come back whenever and for however long I choose to, so I may return in October.
At this rate, I could very well accomplish my goal of working for every major law firm in London. Two down, about 40 more to go...
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Monday, April 25, 2011
A Time for Butterflies
The Natural History Museum is currently running a butterfly exhibit in a large tent on its East lawn. It's kept quite hot and humid in there, but it was worth venturing inside to see the butterflies flying about. I'm not quite sure if they were pumping in butterfly cocaine in there or something, but these butterflies were running mad and bold. They were fluttering about and landing on people and scaring small children. Fun!
There were loads of caterpillars hanging about...
Getting ready to change into one of these...
I was even able to coax this one onto my hand...
It was pretty awesome to see so many butterflies in one go, and I think I may revisit one more time later this summer when even more butterflies are supposed to be flying around in there. But I think I'll leave J at home next time since he kept poking at the butterflies, ostensibly to try to get them to fly onto his finger. I'm not quite sure I believe him...
There were loads of caterpillars hanging about...
Getting ready to change into one of these...
I was even able to coax this one onto my hand...
It was pretty awesome to see so many butterflies in one go, and I think I may revisit one more time later this summer when even more butterflies are supposed to be flying around in there. But I think I'll leave J at home next time since he kept poking at the butterflies, ostensibly to try to get them to fly onto his finger. I'm not quite sure I believe him...
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Visiting Jane Austen in Bath
As we drove into Bath, all I could think was "wow." The entire city is built from limestone, which means that all of the buildings glow gold in the light of the sun. It almost looks like a fairy tale kind of place, filled with beautiful architecture and picturesque green spots. If I had to sum up the city in a word - it's pretty. Really pretty.
We got dropped off in front of Bath Abbey, which is in the same plaza as the Roman Baths, our first stop of the day. The Abbey is beautiful, and the gothic details in the turrets are pretty amazing. The only negative was that it's difficult to get a comprehensive view of the church since the plaza right in front of it is quite small and full of performers and gawking tourists.
We quickly made our way into the Roman Baths, which is a lot bigger inside than it looks from the outside! It's the only natural occurring hot springs in the UK, and the Romans couldn't quite explain it so they chalked it up to more monkey business by the gods and thanked Minerva Sulis for their natural hot tub.
But they didn't forget to include themselves - there are a series of statues dedicated to the Roman emperors overlooking the main bath.
The baths underwent a revival in the 18th century, when fashionable people would leave their country estates and come to Bath to hang out and "take the waters" to cure common ailments such as gout. They even drank the stuff, convinced that the minerals and all the goodies in the water would improve their health.
Clearly, you don't want to drink this stuff. There are signs posted everywhere warning you to not touch the water, but that doesn't discourage the intrepid few who find slimy algae-filled water to be irresistible.
Right next door to the Roman Baths is the Pump Room, which is where the same fashionable people would meet their friends and drink the spa water. The Pump Room has now been transformed into a restaurant, and the spa water is still on offer for those that are curious about the taste.
We were pretty hungry by now so we wolfed down a quick lunch at Pret, and we soon found ourselves on Milsom Street! I was beyond excited because this was the shopping street that Jane Austen had written about in her novels, and I never thought I'd see it in person!
And it's still a shopping street, with loads of your typical British chains and some street vendors selling ice cream and flowers.
We hoofed it up the street, until we reached The Circle, which is a set of four large buildings that are set in a circle around the circular garden in the center.
To fully glory in my inner nerd, we went in search of the Jane Austen Centre, and we walked down Gay Street...
Until we found it!
The downstairs is a souvenir shop, where I was sorely tempted by a fancy fan or a frilly parasol, but we left empty-handed but for a picture with this nice chap who hangs about the door, greeting all Jane Austen fanatics. There is also a museum upstairs, but I couldn't do that to J, and I was satisfied with at least paying an homage to the centre.
Last on our itinerary was the Royal Crescent, which is another large building set in a semi-circle. The architects of Bath sure loved their curved buildings! Anyway, it's much too large to catch with my camera lens, and yet another park was set in front of the building and lots of people were relaxing out there with bbqs out in full force.
With everything ticked off my list, J and I began a slow wander around Bath, just enjoying the city as it is. It's quite small so you could cover the whole city in a day on foot quite easily.
We were pretty tired by the end of the day, and we decided to finish the day off with a Bath bun from a local tea shop.
The Bath bun is a pastry that's slightly sweet with currants and rock sugar loaded in the center that was created by a 18th century doctor to treat his overweight patients. The bun was considered relatively healthy back in the day, but the doctor's plan backfired when his overweight patients went nuts for the bun and didn't lose any weight at all! "Duh" seems to be appropriate here.
Overall, Bath was such a pretty city, and I have plans to return in September during the Jane Austen festival. Until then, Jane.
We got dropped off in front of Bath Abbey, which is in the same plaza as the Roman Baths, our first stop of the day. The Abbey is beautiful, and the gothic details in the turrets are pretty amazing. The only negative was that it's difficult to get a comprehensive view of the church since the plaza right in front of it is quite small and full of performers and gawking tourists.
Clearly, you don't want to drink this stuff. There are signs posted everywhere warning you to not touch the water, but that doesn't discourage the intrepid few who find slimy algae-filled water to be irresistible.
Right next door to the Roman Baths is the Pump Room, which is where the same fashionable people would meet their friends and drink the spa water. The Pump Room has now been transformed into a restaurant, and the spa water is still on offer for those that are curious about the taste.
We were pretty hungry by now so we wolfed down a quick lunch at Pret, and we soon found ourselves on Milsom Street! I was beyond excited because this was the shopping street that Jane Austen had written about in her novels, and I never thought I'd see it in person!
And it's still a shopping street, with loads of your typical British chains and some street vendors selling ice cream and flowers.
We hoofed it up the street, until we reached The Circle, which is a set of four large buildings that are set in a circle around the circular garden in the center.
Last on our itinerary was the Royal Crescent, which is another large building set in a semi-circle. The architects of Bath sure loved their curved buildings! Anyway, it's much too large to catch with my camera lens, and yet another park was set in front of the building and lots of people were relaxing out there with bbqs out in full force.
With everything ticked off my list, J and I began a slow wander around Bath, just enjoying the city as it is. It's quite small so you could cover the whole city in a day on foot quite easily.
We were pretty tired by the end of the day, and we decided to finish the day off with a Bath bun from a local tea shop.
The Bath bun is a pastry that's slightly sweet with currants and rock sugar loaded in the center that was created by a 18th century doctor to treat his overweight patients. The bun was considered relatively healthy back in the day, but the doctor's plan backfired when his overweight patients went nuts for the bun and didn't lose any weight at all! "Duh" seems to be appropriate here.
Overall, Bath was such a pretty city, and I have plans to return in September during the Jane Austen festival. Until then, Jane.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
A Saturday at Stonehenge
It's bank holiday weekend, which means we have a four day weekend, which means we actually have time to go somewhere instead of our typical weekend of catching up on housework, laundry and sleep before heading back to the office on Monday morning.
I've been wanting to go to Bath ever since I became an ardent fan of Jane Austen, and we were about to buy train tickets there when I realized that it would be less expensive to go on a coach tour to Bath with the added plus of a stop by Stonehenge along the way.
Stonehenge is in Wiltshire, about an hour and forty five minute drive away from London, and there's no way of reaching the site via public transport so the coach tour was the perfect way to visit one of the world's wonders. There's not much to do once you arrive except listen to the audio guide and wander around the rocks. Visitors are no longer allowed to frolic amongst the rocks and are kept a respectable distance away. My first impression of the place? I thought it'd be bigger. Don't get me wrong, the rocks were plenty big. I just thought they'd be... bigger.
In case you didn't know much about Stonehenge (like myself), it was built by prehistoric people around 2000 B.C., and they still haven't figured out why a bunch of folks decided to drag around 45 ton boulders hundreds of miles to stack them up in big piles. Calendar? Burial place? What's also amusing is that the Druids have kind of adopted the site as their own, but the truth is that they have absolutely nothing to do with Stonehenge. However, they're still permitted to have their summer solstice celebrations on the site.
Another thing I didn't know about Stonehenge is that it's surrounded by sheep. Angry sheep. One of them actually stood in front of J and I with its legs splayed wide apart and started baa-ing his head off at us. It was hilarious, and I may have been more amused by the sheep than the boulders behind me.
Then we all piled back on the bus for the hour long ride to Bath - Jane Austen, here I come!
I've been wanting to go to Bath ever since I became an ardent fan of Jane Austen, and we were about to buy train tickets there when I realized that it would be less expensive to go on a coach tour to Bath with the added plus of a stop by Stonehenge along the way.
Stonehenge is in Wiltshire, about an hour and forty five minute drive away from London, and there's no way of reaching the site via public transport so the coach tour was the perfect way to visit one of the world's wonders. There's not much to do once you arrive except listen to the audio guide and wander around the rocks. Visitors are no longer allowed to frolic amongst the rocks and are kept a respectable distance away. My first impression of the place? I thought it'd be bigger. Don't get me wrong, the rocks were plenty big. I just thought they'd be... bigger.
In case you didn't know much about Stonehenge (like myself), it was built by prehistoric people around 2000 B.C., and they still haven't figured out why a bunch of folks decided to drag around 45 ton boulders hundreds of miles to stack them up in big piles. Calendar? Burial place? What's also amusing is that the Druids have kind of adopted the site as their own, but the truth is that they have absolutely nothing to do with Stonehenge. However, they're still permitted to have their summer solstice celebrations on the site.
Another thing I didn't know about Stonehenge is that it's surrounded by sheep. Angry sheep. One of them actually stood in front of J and I with its legs splayed wide apart and started baa-ing his head off at us. It was hilarious, and I may have been more amused by the sheep than the boulders behind me.
Then we all piled back on the bus for the hour long ride to Bath - Jane Austen, here I come!
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Clay Pigeon Shooting at Holland & Holland
What do you get when you put eight lawyers and a bunch of shotguns in a field? Just another typical Saturday morning... not!
One of the perks of J's job is that he gets taken out to fun events, and today's was clay pigeon shooting at Holland & Holland in Northwood, Middlesex. Lucky for me, my parents had bought me a very fancy British hunting jacket for Christmas, and I finally got a chance to break it out!
We all met up early this morning by Baker station, and I got the feeling that some of the people weren't told that we were going shooting since they were dressed like they were going to deliver a lecture in a university hall as opposed to shooting a shotgun on wet hunting grounds. Anyway, we were soon whisked away in two silver people-carriers (vans) to the shooting grounds in Middlesex, which was maybe a 45 minute drive away from London.
Once we arrived, we were greeted by a very nice lady who offered us tea and coffee and bacon butties (bacon sandwiches) while we waited for our instructors to assemble our shooting gear.
I took a quick wander around while everyone munched on their sandwiches, and I came across a very pretty cannon. Well, at least as pretty as heavy munitions could be. =) In any case, the story behind the cannon is that it was cast in Spain, and Napoleon somehow wrangled it from the Spaniards, and then the Brits snatched it way from Old Bony. Now it sits in the middle of the field, and it's shot twice a year, and they have to warn the neighbors since it can be heard 8 miles away!
I quickly rejoined everyone after frolicking amongst the cannon, and we were split into two groups of four. Our instructor John doled out nifty caps and safety glasses to everyone with strict instructions to keep them on during the shoot to protect ourselves from any flying bits and pieces.
I was the only one in our group who hadn't shot a shotgun before, and although I had shot some handguns before, the shotgun looked like a whole different ballgame. First of all, it's a lot bigger. Second, it's got a pretty strong kick-back to it. Third, it's much more difficult to handle than a handgun.
I also have to confess that I wasn't quite strong enough to load or break down the gun, and John took care of all this for me. I anticipated having some trouble shooting flying targets, but I didn't think that I would have problems just flicking the safety off - I've been strongly advised to do some thumb-strengthening exercises. Also, a word of caution: when you break the shotgun to reload it, the empty cartridges have a tendency to come flying out of the still smoking barrels.
Anyway, in clay pigeon shooting, they throw out clay disks (black in our case) that simulate the movement of a variety of birds that the Brits used to hunt such as the grouse or the pheasant so the clay pigeons move in a particular fashion in each stall. Thanks to John's excellent coaching, I hit my first target on my first go on a 20 gauge shotgun! John handed me the empty cartridge to keep for luck.
Then we all got pretty comfortable yelling "Pull!" and blasting away at those clay pigeons...
The kick back was a bit much for me, so I put on a special shoulder pad, but I eventually ended up taking it off since it made aiming the gun a bit more difficult.
Midway through, we headed back for a short tea break, and I got a chance to find out a bit more about Holland & Holland and its history. Apparently, they are the gunmakers for royalty, and their guns are not cheap. A pair of them could run you over 100,000 pounds!
Their drawing room was quite beautiful with lots of leather and fancy guns hanging about, and there were heads of big game hanging about the room including some caribou, rhinocerous and some buffalo type thing.
After we were refreshed, we went out again for a bit of competitive shooting, and John announced the top three when we came back...
and it turned out that J took third place! I couldn't be prouder. =) John also treated J and I with a quick peek at the secret stash of big game guns that can take down an elephant and are kept locked away - they were beautiful and huge!
Of course I couldn't leave without one last pose by the cannon with my shotgun...
It was one of the funnest things I had ever done, and I made J promise to bring me back soon. My shoulder aches a bit, and I smell like gunpowder, but I was grinning like a fool by the end of the day. I wasn't as good as I would like to be, but it was a blast, pun intended!
One of the perks of J's job is that he gets taken out to fun events, and today's was clay pigeon shooting at Holland & Holland in Northwood, Middlesex. Lucky for me, my parents had bought me a very fancy British hunting jacket for Christmas, and I finally got a chance to break it out!
Once we arrived, we were greeted by a very nice lady who offered us tea and coffee and bacon butties (bacon sandwiches) while we waited for our instructors to assemble our shooting gear.
I took a quick wander around while everyone munched on their sandwiches, and I came across a very pretty cannon. Well, at least as pretty as heavy munitions could be. =) In any case, the story behind the cannon is that it was cast in Spain, and Napoleon somehow wrangled it from the Spaniards, and then the Brits snatched it way from Old Bony. Now it sits in the middle of the field, and it's shot twice a year, and they have to warn the neighbors since it can be heard 8 miles away!
I was the only one in our group who hadn't shot a shotgun before, and although I had shot some handguns before, the shotgun looked like a whole different ballgame. First of all, it's a lot bigger. Second, it's got a pretty strong kick-back to it. Third, it's much more difficult to handle than a handgun.
I also have to confess that I wasn't quite strong enough to load or break down the gun, and John took care of all this for me. I anticipated having some trouble shooting flying targets, but I didn't think that I would have problems just flicking the safety off - I've been strongly advised to do some thumb-strengthening exercises. Also, a word of caution: when you break the shotgun to reload it, the empty cartridges have a tendency to come flying out of the still smoking barrels.
Anyway, in clay pigeon shooting, they throw out clay disks (black in our case) that simulate the movement of a variety of birds that the Brits used to hunt such as the grouse or the pheasant so the clay pigeons move in a particular fashion in each stall. Thanks to John's excellent coaching, I hit my first target on my first go on a 20 gauge shotgun! John handed me the empty cartridge to keep for luck.
Then we all got pretty comfortable yelling "Pull!" and blasting away at those clay pigeons...
The kick back was a bit much for me, so I put on a special shoulder pad, but I eventually ended up taking it off since it made aiming the gun a bit more difficult.
Midway through, we headed back for a short tea break, and I got a chance to find out a bit more about Holland & Holland and its history. Apparently, they are the gunmakers for royalty, and their guns are not cheap. A pair of them could run you over 100,000 pounds!
Their drawing room was quite beautiful with lots of leather and fancy guns hanging about, and there were heads of big game hanging about the room including some caribou, rhinocerous and some buffalo type thing.
Of course I couldn't leave without one last pose by the cannon with my shotgun...
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