Summer in a Day

Everyone I know, myself included, has been moaning about the terrible weather we've been having. The weather's been bipolar, sunny one minute and then storming like mad the next. Just when I had finally despaired of having a summer at all, a day like today comes along to reassure that summer still exists, even if for just one day.

It was sunny and 30C (~88F) today - a freaking miracle. J and I packed a large beach towel, some water and reading materials - all things you would normally pack to take to the beach. Except we're in London, so we headed over to Regent's Park instead to enjoy some of the lovely weather. Everyone else in London had the same idea, and the park was absolutely packed. People were lolling about in the most unlikely of places, and many of them were dead asleep, including one woman whose shirt was slowly sliding off to the amusement of the people walking by.

There were loads of people all dressed as if they were at the beach - women in swimwear and the men in just shorts. And all of our pale pasty bodies were slowly roasting under the hot sun. I saw a lot of sunburns, and now I'm the proud owner of a red pair of shoulders. I guess my skin got pretty shocked at the prospect of sun, but it was totally worth it!

Council Tax, Damn

I swear, England is trying to nickel and dime me to death. First, the TV licence, and now the council tax. Council tax is a property tax that is levied on your property, and the amount of tax is determined by which borough you live in and the value of your property. Strangely enough, it's not the landlord that's usually responsible for paying the tax, but the tenant renting the property.

Lucky for me, I live in Westminster, which has some of the highest taxes around, and I got a notice from the taxman that they're coming to my flat to see how much tax they think I ought to pay. So I've been sitting at my flat this morning, playing hooky from work, and the taxman (lady, it turns out) has just arrived to see what the flat's worth.

At the moment, she's roaming around our flat with a special tool that takes all the measurements of the different rooms, and she's already asked me twice as to how many bedrooms the property has. Because our flat is new built, it's not currently in any tax band, and hence, the reason for the assessment. If you refuse to the in-person assessment, they estimate your tax band based on surrounding properties that are about the same size.

I had a difficult time determining whether I ought to just go with the estimate, but ultimately, I decided to have the assessment done since I know the tax band of our neighbor (who has the same floorplan as me) is in the second to highest band. What have I got to lose?

Anyway, she's just informed that our flat is rather large - this doesn't sound too good. I'm supposed to sit tight while she informs Westminster council about our tax assessment and then we get our first council tax bill. Definitely not a London moment to cherish and remember. Sigh.

Ballerinas at the O2

Being J's wife is really starting to pay off - we got tickets to watch Romeo & Juliet being performed by the Royal Ballet Company at the O2 arena this past Saturday!

I've heard a lot about the O2 arena, but this was our first time visiting. The arena is right by the prime meridian, so there are lines on the ground indicating mini time zones, which J thought was pretty cool. The entrance to the arena is quite nice with a standing waterfall feature made of marble and greenery, and there are also sidewalk fountains that look like fun on a hot day. It was windy and raining, so I gave the fountains a wide berth, and we quickly made our way into the arena.

The O2 Arena from afar

Lucky us, we had suite tickets so we got to bypass all of queues for the regular folks, and we faced some stiff security to get to our box. Once we got to our suite, a very nice bartender came by to take our drink orders and we settled into our very comfortable seats to enjoy the show. The arena is huge - it's more suitable for a major sporting event, and I couldn't imagine that many people wanted to watch a ballet based on one of Shakespeare's classics, but it did manage to fill up quite a bit!

One of J's colleagues showed up with his wife, so it ended up being a double date. It was nice for J since he ended up not being the only one to nod off several times during the first half of the show. Watching the two of them was like watching a pair of bobble-head dolls as they struggled to stay awake during all the dancing and pirouetting. I didn't know who to watch - the ballerinas or J and his colleague jerking awake every few minutes.

The second half of the show definitely picked up the pace, and J managed to stay awake to enjoy the rest of the ballet. I actually enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. The production and the costumes were really well done, but I wasn't such a big fan of the musical score. I think we also enjoyed it more because we knew the story and could follow along (we did struggle to remember some bits of it but we managed). All in all, a great Saturday afternoon!

Ile De La Cite and the Latin Quarter

There's a flower market on Ile de la Cite that was closed the last time I was in Paris so I was pretty excited to see it this time around. The market was a lot smaller than I thought it was going to be, but it was also quite charming. The rain had finally stopped, and the sun was peeking out from behind the clouds, which made it perfect for looking at some pretty flowers.

 

They sell not only flowers and plants but all sorts of garden-related knick-knacks. I was sorely tempted by a mirror, but the prospect of lugging it around for the rest of the day turned me off.

Since the market wasn't that large, I didn't linger too long and I crossed one of Paris' many bridges to the Latin Quarter on the Left Bank. The first sight I came across was the St. Michel fountain, which looks quite impressive from afar. Up close, um, not so much.

I quickly moved on further down Boulevard St. Michel, which is the main thoroughfare through the Latin Quarter, but I took one of the side streets away until I came across the Sorbonne, Paris' very famous university. It also was a lot smaller than I anticipated - I'm starting to sense a theme here.

Anyway, I continued my wander until I came across the Pantheon, the resting place of several famous people including Voltaire, Rousseau and Victor Hugo. The weather was pretty insane at this point, storming like mad one minute and then sunny the next.

Not a far distance away was the Jardin du Luxembourg, where the Palais du Luxembourg is also located. It's a very nice park, but I still think London's got Paris beat hands down when it comes to parks. I strolled around for a bit and sat down on one of the many chairs to relax my feet for a bit before moving on.

After the park, I thought it might be nice to roam around the rest of the Latin Quarter with no particular destination in mind. To my pleasant surprise, I came across a little reminder of home!

My plans for an aimless wander around the Latin Quarter came to an abrupt end when the threatening sky finally split open and it started pouring rain and the gusty winds flipped my umbrella inside out. I had already been out for seven hours or so, and I decided to beat it back to the hotel with a few pit stops on Rue de Rivoli, and I bought a ham crepe and pain du chocolat to eat back in the hotel room for dinner.

Pere Lachaise Cemetery

Okay, I know that it could be considered a bit odd, but I really like cemeteries. Not all cemeteries, just the ones that have been around for a very long while and are a bit overgrown and rambling. London has quite a few and it turns out, so does Paris.

After I had a very nice breakfast with J and saw him off to his meetings, I hopped onto the Metro to visit one of Paris' more famous cemeteries, the Pere Lachaise. It started raining right when I arrived, and the dreary weather seemed very appropriate. The cemetery was quite empty, and only a few tourists had ventured out in the cold and wet weather to look at some gravestones, which allowed me to roam around in peace and quiet.

And roam I did! the cemetery is absolutely huge and filled with long cobbled avenues and paths, and there are even street signs to direct your way.

Lots of famous people are buried here, such as Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde and Frederic Chopin, and you could navigate to each gravesite using a map from the information center. I wasn't much into the grave-surfing, and I decided to just wander about and enjoy the peace and quiet in the heart of the city. The rain made the cobblestones a bit slippery, so I was careful to not slip as I strolled about for a good two hours or so.

Some of the sculpture was really interesting...

 

 

 

Some of it was quite sad...

The cemetery was pretty amazing, and I would've spent more time there, but I was getting quite anxious to see the flower market on Ile de la Cite since it had been closed the last time I was in Paris so I bid adieu to those at rest and hopped back on the metro.

Paris, One More Time

One of the perks of J's job is that sometimes it sends him to fun places. This past weekend, he had to attend a "retreat" of sorts in Paris, and the firm was kind enough to put him up at the Hotel Regina in central Paris for two nights. Although I'd been to Paris before, I thought it'd be fun to tag along and see some of the sights I didn't get a chance to the last time I was here.

We hopped onto the Eurostar Thursday afternoon, and we were in Paris by early evening. We were pretty hungry, so we headed over to this cafe called Le Fumoir behind the Louvre that a friend had recommended to me. The dining room was adorable - it was basically a smallish library with dining tables scattered about. I already knew about the sky high food prices in Paris, but my eyes still bugged out a little when I saw that dinner was a set menu of 3 courses for 35 EUR. Yikes. But the food was amazing and worth every euro - I would definitely go back.

After our great meal, we wandered back to the hotel to find a host of problems waiting for us. The Hotel Regina is a four star hotel that had been recently renovated, and the rooms don't come cheap. Too bad it doesn't show. The thing about European hotels is that they're never going to be as nice as American hotels, so you have to reset your expectations. In any case, our room had a musty smell, the bathroom had a funky smell, the volume on our TV didn't work, the safe wouldn't shut, and the mattresses were overly firm. Oh, and a double bed is literally a double bed - two mattresses pushed together.

We called down to reception to see if anything could be done, and they sent over a guy to fiddle with the TV some to no avail. We pretty much shrugged our shoulders and decided to hit the sack. To be frank, I think we would've been surprised if they had done something about it - service here is not the same as it is in the US. We went to sleep on our overly firm mattresses, and I laid there wondering what I should do the following day when I was going to be on my own since J would be occupied with work things pretty much all day long...

But It Was Supposed to be Temporary...

I started working last December, and I figured since I'm only working short-term contracts, I'd have long breaks in between the assignments. No such luck, I've been working steadily since then without a break so my hobbies such as photography have had to take a backseat.

I have no complaints about the current job I'm working, but I've been inundated with job offers in the last month, two just today! I guess when it rains, it pours.

The first job is more money and a longer assignment. The other job is also good money, but for a very short period, but it's in Macau! The firm will fly me there and pay for all of my expenses, and I'll get a day off for sightseeing once a week. So tempting!

Still thinking on what I ought to do...

Fun At Work

I'm sure I must have mentioned it before, but the stuff I do at my current job is BORING. Boring as in people regularly fall asleep at their desk sitting up with their hands positioned over the keyboard. The guy who sits next to me is currently suffering from terrible hayfever, and one of his extremely loud sneezes succeeded in waking up the girl who sits across from me who was enjoying a good snooze. She jerked herself awake and said, "Oh, you woke me up," and then we all had a good laugh.

So just so we're clear, my job is boring. Which means we're responsible for making our own fun...

We just got new water coolers in our office, and we must be a thirsty lot since it seems as though the bottle constantly needs changing. It's usually one of the burlier guys in the room who does the heavy lifting, but I gave one of the bottles an experimental lift yesterday and thought to myself, hey, this isn't so heavy. One of my friends caught me out, and when I boasted that the bottle wasn't that heavy, she had me agreeing to change the next bottle before I knew it. Serves me right for bragging.

It was later this afternoon when the bottle finally ran out and the big, burly guy sitting behind me got up to mount a fresh bottle on the cooler. My friend stopped him and told him about my grand plan to change the bottle myself. I should mention that he's more than twice my weight and has a good foot and a half on me in terms of height.

Anyway, he stood aside as I kicked off my heels before hefting the bottle up off the floor. Nice and steady, I had the bottle on the water cooler in two snaps. I was pretty pleased with myself, but I wasn't aware that the whole room had stopped their work to watch. Maybe they thought they would see me drop the bottle and watch a glorious torrent of water gush from the bottle, I don't know.  What I do know is that when I turned around, everyone in the room was grinning and then broke into applause while I rushed back to my seat blushing like mad. Never again.