Surreal Life.

Weird things about London:

Spending an hour and a half every day under the ground.

Living with people I don't know.

Not seeing 5 people I know every time I walk down the street.

Thinking I see people I know when I walk down the street, then realising I don't know them/am not in Wellington.

Not knowing anyone really.

Cobblestones.

English people.

Supermarkets closing at like 5pm on a Sunday.

People complaining about crappy public transport when they have no idea what crappy public transport is.

Actual homeless people who seem hopeless and depressed/ing and aren't just stars of humorous anecdotes.

Opposite time zones.

Buying a return ticket to Stockholm for £34.

Being real far away when bad stuff happens.

Today I woke up and checked my facebook like I do every morning and the first thing on my news feed was Lucy's status about Christchurch. Pretty much haven't been able to think of anything else since.

About a week ago I woke up to a text from my mum saying that my uncle was in hospital in a coma after falling off the hill behind his house. This feels like that.

But different.

The first 3 pages of the free evening paper I read every day on my way home from work were devoted to Christchurch. I had been reading everything I could all day on stuff and the BBC website but for some reason this made it real. I thought about how all the people around me were reading the articles in the same way I have read articles about bad things happening in far away places. Maybe with mild interest or morbid curiosity. Maybe not even reading them because too many horrible things happen and sometimes you just have to ignore them. But I read and I wanted to cry. Then I came home and watched every news channel. Then I cried.

And I don't really have any right to cry. I know hardly anyone in Christchurch.

When I left New Zealand I thought about the possibility that I wouldn't see my grandparents again. They're old. I didn't think about the possibility of not seeing my friends again. 

Please stay away from any moving tectonic plates.

National Pride.

Oh hey, I just remembered I have a blog! Ok actually Jenny has reminded me many times over the last month but I chose to ignore her. Recently she threatened to never talk to me again if I did not blog. I would like to make it clear that the timing of this blog post has absolutely nothing to do with that threat.

There is a phone in my house that rings all the time but no one ever answers it. I don't even know where it is. I probably wouldn't answer it if I did know where it was because clearly it wouldn't be for me and I'm not really that keen on random phone conversations with strangers. It must be for someone though. Why are they not answering it?
For awhile I thought it might actually be the phone by the door that people ring when they want to get let into the building/come up to your flat. But again I never have visitors so I did not try to answer it. Plus for like the whole time I've lived here, until like 2 weeks ago, the security door was broken and not actually locked. The other day I ordered some Pizza and it turns out that phone makes a completely different noise. One day maybe I will following the sound of the ringing and find this mystery phone. Probably not though.

Cool story aye?

So on Saturday I kind of participated in the Waitangi Day Circle Line Pub Crawl. Which is basically thousands of kiwis wandering around the streets of London in costume, getting drunk, pissing in inappropriate places and ending up outside parliament for this spectacular display of National Pride. Kind of like the Wellington 7s but with more opportunity for bringing shame on our entire nation. If you want to see some pictures of the carnage you can look here. I checked, and luckily I'm not in any of them. Unluckily I saw some people dressed up as Peanut Butter Nutters and now I can't get this song out of my head:

I probably haven't heard that for 15 years and I still know all the words. Pretty solid advertising. Pretty sure we always had Kraft peanut butter though.

Anyway, I mostly didn't do anything to embarrass my country, mainly because I was not very prepared/had no alcohol/costume and there were so many people that you couldn't actually get into any of the pubs so I was sober for most of it. We ended up skipping the last few stops, including the Haka, and went straight to the last pub. The Temple Walkabout. An Australian Bar.
There I met a lovely lady called Shona, or something equally Australian, and her boyfriend Ziggy. We bonded. Shona bought me a Snakebite. I annoyed some English people who were just trying to watch the Rugby and then somehow ended up on the after party which was on a boat.

Tomorrow night I'm going to something called and Evensong at Westminster Abbey, again for Waitangi day. I just googled it and it appears to some kind of prayer service which I guess was pretty obvious considering where it is. Which is great. I love Jesus and all those guys. Plus I get to go into Westminster Abbey for free and who doesn't like free?
Not sure if I should go as a Shortland Street nurse or a Buzzy Bee though.

P.S. Sorry Ben, I didn't take any pictures of my bruises... they were really great though. Trust me.