Evening all,
Have been doing quite a bit of house-hopping of late, after Notting Hill, I went stayed in a couple of hostels in the city, a part of an experiment to see what it would be like to live in them for a while and also to give my mates a bit of a break from housing me.
First hostel I went to was in Piccadilly Circus, right in the centre of London. It was a bit shit, really although I did room with a couple of interesting German guys, one studying history and French (perhaps feeling guilty?) and the other studying Islamic studies -- pretty interesting I thought. The main prob was that the social areas were miles away from any other part of the hostel, so people didn't naturally congregate together. Anyway, I only booked a few days there before moving to another hostel called "Clink".
Clink was much better. It used to be an old courthouse (and possibly jail) and it had a bar, better communal areas and the computers were set up in the actual old court. It was really cool. Met a few interesting types there too, as a result of the better placed communal area. A crazy canadian girl who sells irons on TV and a Californian guy who'd just traveled around Sri Lanka and India for a while.
On one of my days there, I finally got around to seeing the National History Museum and it was extremely impressive. The building itself is as impressive as the contents inside. When you walk through the door, there's a full scale skeleton of a diplodocus dinosaur which is about 17 metres long, so when I saw that, I did a small pee in my pants.
For me, the dinosaur section was the highlight, including a full scale teenage Tyrannosaurus Rex animatronic. It was eerily realistic (well, I guess it was, no one's ever seen a real dinosaur). It was a fascinating exhibit with loads of skeletons and cool factoids. However, I already know everything there is to know about dinosaurs, so I mostly just gawked at the skeletons.
The rest of the building is very good too, with sections on the animal and bird kingdom, water creatures, earth, space etc... Basically, it's a big science class, but much more interesting than being in a science class.
Friday October 9: Bath. Went to Bath with Craig and another guy Alex for what was a videogame forum meet. Took a while to get there as Alex arrived late, so we left late and got stuck in London traffic. Since we were in Craig's car, his music was on and it was hardcore heavy metal all the way.
The meet itself was a bit nerdy but it was a really good time. Played very few videogames actually and met a bunch of interesting people, several who work in videogames so I was able to get a few tidbits of advice about my portfolio and who to work for and not to work for.
About 40 people attended and we had a room hired out in a pub for playing games but unsurprisingly most people gravitated towards the pub and Bath's bars.
Considering how small it is, Bath has heaps going for it. Lots of cool wee shops, eating places and the town itself is beautiful, loaded with character and steeped in history.
Sunday October 11: Met up with my friend Beth, an English friend who I met in Australia and we did walked around Bath for the day. She lives nearby in Chippenham (15 mins train) and we met up after I checked out of the YMCA.
Went and checked out the Roman Baths which I heard was supposed to be amazing but I found it a bit underwhelming really. Loads of tourists and it seemed a bit 'dragged out', truth be told, with lots of exhibits about rather minor things. Maybe because I had done Classical studies (and got first in class, I might add) I sort of already knew it a lot about the Roman lifestyle etc...
However the Baths with the steaming water looked very inviting and were the highlight, it was just the supporting exhibits that weren't as good. Probably not worth the 11 pounds either. Still, it had to be done but I suppose if I want to see England's Roman heritage, I'll just go to Italy.
We walked around the rest of Bath which was as beautiful as everyone says it is. We got some lunch, ate some biscuits at a shop called "Ben's Biscuits". Probably in my top three biscuits I've ever had -- right up there with Aunty Kathleen's marshmallow cake.
Being England, it started to rain heavily which meant we had to take shelter in a nearby pub. Ended up staying there and catching up on the goss for a while before saying goodbye and I headed back to London.
Back in London - Anyway, so back in London, I stayed at Tim and Kelly's for a bit and managed to pick up a bit of freelance work. Originally, it was just fixing up an actor's CV but that lead onto doing a media pack for Molinaire Productions, a UK film company who've been involved with lots of films and won a Cannes Film festival award for "Man on Wire."
Basically, a media pack is what company's make when they're looking for funding for a film. It's like a mini-magazine that has info about the actors being cast, tax incentives for investors, data about the money that similar films have done etc... So I'm doing one of those for Craig's mate Brad, who's a producer at Molifilm. If that goes well, then there should be more work and at about 300 quid a pop, the money will come in handy.
So most days I've been going into Craig's work and working on this pack as well as doing one for Craig's film which is getting off the ground.
If anything, the contacts will come in handy should I ever wish to try and work in film/tv instead of games.
Currently - at the moment, I'm busy looking for short term accomodation to live in. Was quite keen to live in Clapham although down near the junction it gets a bit rough. Last week, my friend Anna and I were on the bus and she was telling me a story about some crackhead who broke his back riding his pushbike into a parked car. Anyway, some dude on the bus, probably a crackhead by the looks of him overheard and must've thought we were talking about him and basically abused the shit out of us for the rest of the bus ride.
A bit scary but not much point in engaging him really. If years of arguing with Dad taught me anything, it's that you can't have a rational conversation with someone who's off their face.
Anyway, he tried to follow us on the street so we went the other way for a bit before shaking him off at the train station.
So that's this installment of hostels, dinosaurs, Bath and crackheads. Tune in next time where hoping the episode will be titled: Jobs, Money, Success and Accommodation.
See ya's.
Joe
