Thursday, October 30, 2008

Quarantine





I can now add Quarantine to my list of UK experiences. Don't ask me about the details, all I can tell you is:

  1. It's not as bad as it sounds

  2. I'm not really sick

  3. I'm in good hands (mostly)

  4. I volunteered for this

  5. I'm getting paid for the whole thing


If you're ever in a similar situation, the following survival tips might come in handy:




  1. Latex gloves make great balloons







2. Butterflies can sting







3. Whenever offered a cannula, politely say: “No bloody way!”







4. It's possible to lower Blood Pressure and Pulse with a bit of strategic Meditation







5. Good company and a sense of humour does wonders for the immune system











6. Eating lots of fruit keeps the body healthy, drawing them keeps the mind occupied






7. Online Flash games can keep you sane. When cabin fever sets in and you run out of things to do, you can always find a little time-waster online. These are a few of my favourites. Click on a picture to try the game. Unfortunately, it will not open in a new window, so once you've played one, hit the back button to try the rest.
















Friday, October 24, 2008

A Moving Experience

Warning: Readers sensitive to sentimental, melodramatic nonsense may want to avoid this entry and wait for one with pretty pictures and videos.


Tonight our house feels a bit colder than usual and I don't think it's just winter setting in. I have cleared out the room myself, but suddenly it's emptiness strikes me as unexpected. The almost lonely atmosphere is enhanced by the fact that I know downstairs others are getting ready to leave as well.






I've never been a fan of long-term commitment. I have moved house five times in the last three years, it doesn't take me long to get tired of a job, adding a new employer to my ever expanding CV every now and then and my relationships rarely last more than a couple of months. It's easy to put my wanderlust down to just being a free spirit, but in truth I've never been able to figure out what exactly it is I'm chasing (or what's chasing me). All I know is that I've always felt there must be more out there, a life purpose to be discovered, a soul mate waiting to be found, a calling to accept rather than a job to apply for, potential to be realised, a destiny to be fulfilled. You might say I have unrealistic expectations, that I'm idealistic, a dreamer and even a little naïve. You may be right, but it's being all these things that keeps me going, keeps me young, makes me try harder, looking forward to tomorrow, keeps me alive and at the same time keeps me from ever being completely satisfied, always running, whether it's towards or away from something.


Growing up and living in a community where people lead relatively stable (one might even say boring) lives, my outlook on life has always made me feel like a bit of an outsider. It was relatively easy to leave behind that life and place that was all I knew since I can remember, because I knew that if I ever wanted to return, it will still be there, more or less unchanged. Ironically, it is considerably more difficult to leave behind my first London home, probably because I felt more at home in this messy, chaotic, temporary stop-over than in my so-called hometown. My housemates, who were strangers to me less than four months ago, may be following different paths from my own, some more sure of where they are going, some less, but at least they are all following some kind of path, going somewhere. Whether it be Amsterdam for a weekend, the Caribbean for a lifetime or the supermarket down the street, which is still halfway round the world from the hometown they started off in, they are going somewhere. And because they are going somewhere themselves, they can not be left behind by me, unlike the people back home. It also means they can not be returned to, because like me, they will not be here.


And yet, knowing all this, I am moving anyway, without any guarantee that were I might end up next will be better than here. Why? You might say it's just the rush of the unknown calling again, but it's more than that. It's because I know there is still more out there, more strangers who will become friends, more late night and early morning conversations around kitchen tables or on dirty sofas, more beers to be shared, more unplanned adventures to be had. And every time I move on I like to believe that I am getting a little closer to that illusive “something” that I am chasing, a life I may find worth settling for, a place worth staying in. But until I find that, leaving an empty house every now and then always outweighs the prospect of hanging around in one place indefinitely, wondering: “What if?”.


If following my path means meeting more temporary travelling companions than permanent neighbours, then so be it, because having to say farewell to people worth meeting still beats never meeting them in the first place.



Friday, October 17, 2008

Loch Ness or London?

There's been talk of strange sightings along the Thames at night. One rumour tells of a creature so far only labelled “Classification Pending”:

"Witness a new life form living in the Thames... Only appearing at dusk, they develop into an apparition – like creatures of folklore before them."

I had to investigate, so armed with my camera-phone and notebook I took to the streets of London at sunset. By the time I got to London Bridge, as guided by my "Here-be-Monsters"-Map, the almost-full moon was rising slowly over the skyline towards Tower Bridge in the East.



My search began on the south bank, moving north over the bridge, keeping a close eye on the water below. I arrived on the other side of the river without spotting anything exceptional, but wasn't discouraged and decided to get closer to the water level by going down the dark, deserted stairway leading to the Thamespath.



After a while the icy night wind turned my nose into a red, runny block of ice and the thought of abandoning the monster-hunt crossed my mind, but then I saw something gliding through the water without a sound, not far from the shore. It was only visible for a moment, but I instinctively knew that this is what I came to see and quickly went back up to street level on the bridge for a better view.



I joined a small group of people already hanging over the side of the bridge, watching the water attentively. The air was filled with a sense of wonder as they whispered to each other and then someone broke the silence: “Look at that!”, followed by cries of “There it is!” and “Cool...”. From the depths a creature emitting a faint white glow emerged, first only showing glimpses of itself, later swimming just below the surface for longer periods of time before vanishing again.
I activated the night mode setting on my camera and chose a high exposure to make sure I got evidence of what I just witnessing. I filmed the dark river for what felt like ages, hoping for another appearance, the cold numbing my fingers, making it hard to keep a firm grip on my camera. Sure enough, the waves were illuminated once more, this time by two of the mysterious animals. Later they were even joined by a smaller, playful little one and for a moment I was wondering if this was London or Loch Ness:





For related sightings seen around London, like the perpetually sinking sailboat or the ghostly green outline of the old Blackfriars Rail Bridge appearing on it's former posts after dark:




Visit http://www.drift.org.uk/ .

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

On a Lighter Note

Wow, that Nunhead story was deep, don't know where that came from... If you're looking for something a bit lighter, I fixed up this video that I've already posted earlier:





For the full story, check out the original post: The World is a Mirror . Back then I was still posting from my mobile phone. It feels like I've really come a long way since then, though it's less than 3 months ago...


If you like the cemetery stuff, these where taken a while back in Brompton Cemetery:






If you look closely you can actually see a copy of the A-Z London Map in my hand. Now I just use Google Maps on my phone (when I still need a map). I kinda miss the rush of being fresh of the plane, not knowing anything. I think it's time to get out of London for a while...

Monday, October 13, 2008

Nunhead Cemetery





People sometimes ask me why I would want to visit a cemetery, to which I usually reply: “It's like a park, just better”. This is especially true of Nunhead Cemetery in London. Apparently it used to be a lawned cemetery with a few trees here and there, but somewhere during the 70's it became full and without any new “tenants”, it had no income, so they stopped maintaining it. Over time the lawns have turned into overgrown woodlands with hundreds of hidden tombstones lining the narrow pathways breaking away from the main road.























Which brings me to my next topic: Roads. I originally planned to start this post like this:


“Daniel's Road was a very short road, leading straight to the cemetery. Not a very cheerful sentence to start a story with, but only if you're reading it in an overly symbolic kind of way.”



I would then continue to tell a strange, overly symbolic, self-referring, metaphorical, paradoxical tale full of life lessons, starting with the night before:

“The conversation in the lounge at Daniel's house-share house turned serious. The topic was The Future and being not quite sure what the next step should be. It was clear that everybody in the room, including Daniel, was feeling some kind of pressure, whether it was from parents who expected a life with more direction, girlfriends wanting more stability or simply the nagging desire for adventure, caged in by time or financial constraints. They all felt the need for some kind of change, but nobody was completely sure of which direction to take. With his mind full of questions, Daniel went to bed, deciding that the following day should be spend reflecting on the past three months in London. Trying to make sense of it all, deciding where to take it from here. And what better place for contemplative reflection than a cemetery”

Then I would go on to describe how I discovered Daniel's Road opposite the cemetery and how it became a metaphor for my life's journey after I had a deja vu like sensation of the surroundings reminding me of places I've never been to and memories of events I've never experienced.












It would end with me realising how much I'm missing because I'm tangled up in my own though processes:

“He wandered the whole of the cemetery, and later the rest of the neighbourhood, wrapped up in his own thoughts, finding hidden meaning in things around him, trying to make sense of things, running the whole day over in his head, describing it before it even happened, attaching his own interpretation to everything. And then, at the top of the hill he came to a realisation. All this time he spent living in his own mind, he was actually wandering around oblivious to the reality of the things around him. The beauty of the shadow play on the autumn leaves on the ground escaped him, he was deaf to the calls of the magpies and crows mixing with the sounds of a wind chime somewhere in a tree and the delicately crafted stone angels and gargoyles staring at him all went unnoticed."




















"He knew what to do, he quickly found a bench to empty his thoughts into his notebook, so he could continue unbothered by them and spend what was left of the day just experiencing everything around him."



"He spent a few minutes there, writing furiously and when he got up he was blissfully aware of the fact that he had no idea what was going to happen next, simply because he wasn't planning it.





He also realised how lucky he was to be a character in this strange, overly symbolic, self-referring, metaphorical, paradoxical story, because in real life one rarely gets a second chance to go back to what we missed the first time round.”


You might have noticed that I even considered writing it in the third person to convey the almost out-of-body dettached set of mind I was in.

I eventually realised however, that it would take a very experienced writer to make that kind of story work and even then most people wouldn't find it as cool as I first thought it would be. Also, it would have been just plain weird. But in a way my uncompleted little mind-trip story still says a lot about the effect Nunhead Cemetery had on me. You see, these old cemeteries have a very unique atmosphere to them. A peaceful, almost mystical kind of ambience where I sometimes lose myself in reflective thought and contemplation. And that's exactly what happened to me in Nunhead. A very powerful experience, but very difficult to convey. Something you have to experience for yourself to understand.

I was going to end the story by saying:

“Daniel's Road might be a short road with a hilltop cemetery to the south, but you can also choose to look north, down the hill, for a great view of the City. You might even be able to see St. Paul's Cathedral and the Eye of London, not visible in this photo, but to experience that you have to be there in person.”







If you where actually looking for some facts on Nunhead Cemetery and read through all my ramblings without finding any, you might want to visit Wikipedia or the Southwark Council website.












Monday, October 6, 2008

London Bits and Pieces

The past couple of days have been rather uneventful. Well, uneventful might not quite be the appropriate word. I did add another year to my age this week, which I suppose does count as an “event”, but a more personal one, not the kind of thing most people would find interesting reading about. After all, everybody has a birthday once a year. I think what I'm trying to say is that I haven't experienced anything blog-worthy recently or at least I can't think of anything I can spin into a story interesting enough to post. Well, that's not entirely true either, Saturday night's birthday celebrations turned kind of wild in the end and would make amusing reading material, but it's probably better not to publicly publish the details of the night on the Internet...


So, today's post is a mix of random stuff, bits and pieces I found lying around in my “archives”. And what better way to start small talk than talking about the weather, the Brits do it all the time. We have to face the fact that summer really is over now, I took this picture of sunrise over the rooftops just after 07h00 one morning, a lot later than the mid-summer sunrise at around 04h00 in June when we arrived.








The temperature is also dropping fast and we've had one or two really grey and misty mornings.






The other day I realised that I've never been to Canary Wharf, even though it's just across the river from where I live. So I decided to take the ferry from the Hilton Docklands Hotel in stead of the boring old tube to the other side of the river for an afternoon outing.







This was taken from the pier while waiting for the ferry:




And this is the tunnel from the hotel to the pier:




I have been told that my previous post on the London Underground makes it seem a lot nicer than it actually is, so here's a shot of a busy day on Canary Wharf Underground Station:




Last weekend we went to the Olympia Centre in Kensington for the South African day of the Toast Festival. I don't think the event was really big enough to justify being called a festival, but it was nonetheless nice to have a few South African beers and boerewors rolls and get nostalgic with good music from back home. The centre itself is also very cool, with a very high ceiling and lots of windows, creating a kind of outdoor feel indoors, perfect for the unpredictable British weather. This is Freshly Ground on stage:







And finally, this is how I keep my room cheerful. It's one of two printed cotton throws I bought at a Camden Town Market stall. I'm using this one to block out the sun through my loft window so I can sleep during the day.