Catch up

Ok so lets try this again shall we ... to all my fans ... however little there may be I appologise for not updating sooner ... I tried on Tuesday but due to slowness of the internet (due to the rest of the houses insatiable need for porn ... I'm not going to explain you cant make me) I decided to give up before I permaently damaged my poor notebook.

Anyway so last weekend a good friend of mine from school, JF decided to come visit me before the army sends him off on some mission ... dont know the details ... anyway ... he arrived on friday and we decided to drag Liesl along, since we had not been out together since matric and decided to go to Nando's. Oodles and oodles of fun some hot some not ... me I'm a sissy when it comes to hot stuff so I had lemon and herb :o) Was cool and the food was good.

Afterwards we decided to go see a movie ... ice age 2 ... me being the animation queen and all and JF also being quite keen to go we went off to cine world to go see. Got there and got the answer that ice age was a kiddies movie and only showing during the day ... bummer and what about the big kids ... decided we would go the next day. Walked around and found a nice pub called the Cat and Canary and had a drink and did some catch up ... realized just how much trouble we got up to in school ... and I always thought I was the good girl.



Saturday was one of the most beautiful sunny days I've seen since we got here. *sigh* and it hasn't been since ... anyway we slept late as is usual on a Saturday then JF decided I had to be initiated in the joy of a pub lunch ... so we set off, the DLR was not working so we decided to walk ... being that it was a nice day and all. Did not find a pub that served lunch in our area so at Canary Wharf we decided to educate him in Starbucks coffee and just had sandwiches there. Sat in the sun for a while then went to go see Ice age 2. I love it ... it is a must see ... especially if you liked scrat ... the one with the acorn ... he is in the second one a lot more and it is really funny. So we had a real good laugh. Went home had home made pizza and some wine and did some some catching up and talking about the Malawi tour JF and I went on while we were still in school ... 3 weeks of fun and games ... as we remember it. So JF left early on Sunday and we just spent a quiet day at home recovering from our weekend :o)

So this weekend ... more fun and games ...

L8r
Panthera

PS Geluk met Oom Pikkie se verjaardag verlede Vrydag

Dive..dive...dive

Yes people that's right this weekend was the London International Dive show ... and it was brilliant. First thanks to Zod for surprising me with the tickets to the dive show ... made my day. So this is how it went ... got up a lot earlier than usual this morning (/this being that I am on "holiday" so I dont get up at 7 anymore) to head down to Excel for the dive show. Got there in time to enter a the line to get in ... and realized we were five minutes early ... bonus ... so we filled in a competition form while we waited ... needless to say it was the first of many ... hehehe ... playing the odds ... the more you enter for a Red Sea holiday even if with different people the better your chances right? Especially if there is two of us ... right?

Anyway I digress so we enter this huge exhibition hall and this is what we found ... dive stuff and more dive stuff. There was everything ... literally every diver's dream ... somewhere you dont go with your creditcard at all. There was equipment and equipment and more equipment.










We found digital cameras and housings and more cameras and housings ... Dads would have had a field day :o) ... and of course the day would not be complete without the 350D (/Zods passion) and finding out it too has a housing for underwater photography.






















We also visited this guy who was painting t-shirts kewl huh? There were of course info on dive holidays ... the type of thing that makes you want to use up your nest egg all at once ... needless to say we got lots and lots of free stuff ... it looked like we went on a shopping spree in Oxford street :o)










We left Excel just after two just seven minutes before it rained (we had to wait that long for DLR thats how I know exactly how long) ... note in the photo ... no clouds in sight ... and they say Cape Town weather is unpredictable.

Overall a very good start to a new month, a happy month.

L8r
Panthera

The dark side

Yes it has officially happened ... I have joined the dark side ... I bought my first suit today (/me can see the people used to looking at me in my work clothes ... jeans and t-shirt ... going what the ^&E#@) yes it seems to get any job at this stage I need a suit ... so yes we went shopping today. #sigh#.
Later
P

Ship Ahoy

Ok ... so we were invited for coffee (see photo for biggest mug they have ... the Grande [and I can just see the glint in my sisters eyes] ... the coin is a 20 pence [the size of a 50c]) but I digress. So we took the DLR to Cutty Sark station (for Maritime Greenwich. And as jou near the Starbucks you get you first glimpse of the Cutty Sark. Now the Cutty Sark is a ship ... more to the point the last remaining extreme clipper as well as the last tea clipper. She is now at a dry dock in Greenwich. According to the Greenwich Guide she was launched at Dumbarton on the River Clyde, Scotland, in 1869. The name comes from Robert Burns' poem, Tam O'Shanter; Tam meets a group of witches, most of whom are ugly, but for Nannie, who is young and beautiful.

The name Cutty Sark derives from where the beautiful witch called 'Nannie', chases Tam while riding his grey mare home one night. She wore only a Cutty Sark, which was a short shirt made from Paisley linen. In the poem she reaches out and grabs the horse's tail, which is why her image on the ship's figurehead shows her left arm out-stretched.

She had sleek lines and an enormous area of sail that made her the fastest ship in the race via the Cape of Good Hope for the tea trade with China. Unluckily for her owners, the Suez Canal was opened in the same year as her launch, which is not navigable by sailing ships. Her last cargo of tea was carried in 1877.

From 1885 - 1895, she was used in the wool trade with Australia, bringing the new season's clip from Sydney to London, setting new speed records year after year. By 1895, she was again losing money for her owner and was sold to the Portuguese as the Ferreira, although interestingly enough her crews called her Pequina Camisola ('little shirt'). She was worked by her new owners between Oporto, Rio, and Lisbon for over thirty years until 1920, when she was sold again, this time becoming the Maria do Amparo. In 1922 she underwent a refit in the Surrey Docks, London, and was driven to shelter from a storm in Falmouth harbour on her way home. A Captain Wilfred Dowman saw her there, and bought her from the Portuguese owners, returning her to British ownership again.

On Capt. Dowman's death in 1938, his widow presented her to the Thames Nautical Training College at Greenhithe on the Thames, where she was used as a training vessel. After the Second World war she again became surplus and eventually she was towed to Greenwich and placed in a specially constructed dry dock in 1954. After a lot of restoration work she was opened to the public in 1957. Since then more than thirteen million people have visited her.

She is a pretty boat ... I mean ship and it's such a nice area ... the coffee was not bad either :o)

L8r
P

Another day...

So Another day in the life of the unemployed...so Zod got a job and started last week. I was very happy I got my fisrt interview on Thursday...of course completely fudged it...but I'm not going to go into that now. The interview was about five minutes walk from Tower Hill station so me liking being prepared sat the previous day and work out the shortest way to get there with the tubes...and put the map on my phone.

The interview being at three and me having been told not to be late...I left at one just to give Murphy a chance to interfere...So I take the tube from Canary Wharf to Canada Water then the East London line to Whitechapel...armed with my tube map, A-Z of London, phone and copies of my CV...all went well untill Whitechapel there I had to take the District line to Tower Hill station...only problem is that the District line runs with the Circle line so here is me on one of the platforms trying to figure out from the map if the train goes this way then will I get to Tower hill...figured out I was on the wrong platform...change platforms and get on the train...check the map...yip right way to Tower Hill...sit down and the train starts moving look at the opposite map and its turned around...now you have to wonder which way am I actually going...have a private panic untill we reach the next station and figure out that I am on the right train.

So I reached Tower Hill ... shot ... freezing cold as you can immagine from the photo's. But the immediate area around there is beautiful. The first thing you see is the above sundial with the entire history timeline around the base. The you look up and you see the castle and the Tower of London...you turn right and you see Trinity square, containing the memorials of the Maritime memorials .

On the one side of Trinity square if the former headquarters of the London Ports Authority...and as you pass the square and look back you can see Tower Bridge. As you turn back you can see All Hallows Barking...so overall a very pretty but stressfull day

St. Patrick's Day Parade

So I open my eyes on Sunday, having had a rather late night on Saturday (Tarryn's birthday party - say no more) to the sound of my phone beeping. Sarah wants to know if we would like to go to the St. Patrick's Day Parade. So we decide to give the GP a skip and go for a day out. So we met up with Sarah and the parade at Hyde Park corner station. Got a little spot at the fence and watched the parade go by.




























With something to keep us warm we followed the parade to Trafalgar square - we saw lots of interestingly dressed people... including sweet toddlers with their parents... everybody was celebrating St. Patrick's day.
At Trafalgar square there were crowds of people... the water of the fountains green and the proceedings were opened with the release of green, white and orange balloons.
...the next stop was Covent Gardens where Sarah and I decided we had green and white but we needed something orange so we decided... to find Nemo... he's orange and white? We hung around there for a while then met up with Rudi (Sarah's husband) and Bryan (he is actually Irish) at a bar called O'neill's for some drinks. We ended off the evening with some pasta. From left to right is me, Sarah, Rudi and Bryan. Overall an exhausting but absolutely worthwhile day.

L8r
Panthera

It's a small world...

Yes...it is a small world after all ... had a real shock last night ... went to Asda to go buy food for the week with Zod. There I met a girl that I met at university... we lived at the same residence. It was one of those where you see the person out of the corner of you eye and then do a double take. It was really weird we lived in the same res for at least 2 years and I think we ran into each other on campus three times. I did not really expect to come to the other side of the world and run into people I knew from res in our local supermarket.

It's true South African's are everywhere.

l8r
Panthera

Snow day

Well today we had our first real snow ... not enough to cover the ground but enough to make it feel like a snow day. In March ... is supposed to be spring ... isn't it? Well it's not like I haven't seen snow before but today was the first time I was actually outside when it snowed ... it was cool ... literally ... so the novelty wore off fast so we settled for watching out of one of the bedroom windows. Here are some of the photo's. Yes...the white stripes are snow falling. Oh yes and Zod cut his hair.

L8r
Panthera