Posted 1 month, 1 week ago at 9:33 pm. 0 comments
An old family friend called me on the weekend in search of some help with her website, www.yourtuscanchef.com. A few years ago they started their a small family-run catering business in Florence specialising in Tuscan cooking lessons and market tours in Florence. And now, what started out as a hobby has developed a little, and now there trying to make the business a little big bigger then it currently is.
I built the orginal site while still in high school, and three or four years on it decided to break right at the time they had arranged a few adverts in various magazines and newspapers.
Deciding to throw out everything I once did on the site, I installed Wordpress on the domain with a stock-standard template over the weekend, and began to play around with Google apps. And now I want to use this experience to play around with a few things I don’t get the chance to explore while at work, mainly a little design ala photoshop work, SEO and whatever else takes my fancy along the way.
Posted 1 month, 1 week ago at 8:01 pm. 1 comment
We brought a car today! A little Peugeot 307 that will let us explore England and beyond a little bit more. I’m excited at the prospect of the freedom again. Just to be able to jump in the car and drive. The cost of petrol is slightly scary, but all sensibility has kinda flown out the window when I think about being able to pick visitors up from the airport, take day trips out of London, spend a weekend in the country and one day go a little further afield into Europe. It’s all rather exciting!
Posted 2 months, 3 weeks ago at 12:19 am. 0 comments
It’s now past midnight, and considering I have work tomorrow, I should be in bed. But I couldn’t help but play with wordpress 2.5 and this theme I found - Futurosity Eos.
So far I like, a lot. I love the idea of the photo feature, which hopefully it will inspire me to take my camera out a little more - Something to include in tomorrows list of things I want to achieve in the next week, month and year (Quite a bit).
Posted 2 months, 3 weeks ago at 11:33 pm. 1 comment
There’s no one reason why I haven’t blogged lately. Whilst I may have the best intentions to keep this site up to date and keep a record of my life in London, other things seem to take over and the great ideas I sometimes get, well there long since forgotten.
No excuses tonight though - to keep it short and simple, here is a bullet styled update of my life over the last few months.
One
I returned to Melbourne in January for a few weeks. I rediscovered how lovely my friends and family are. And how adorable my little neice is. I miss them all.
Two
I returned to London and the boy. Life is good. I think I feel more at home at his house them my own little flat. A very good thing, I think.
Three
We’re off on holiday in less then 4 weeks. Seven glorious days by the red sea in Eqypt. A celebration of sorts - his birthday, and our almost-anniversary.
Four
Thinking Moving in with the boy in a few months. The lease in my little flat is now running month-by-month, and with two of my three flat mates leaving in the next few months, the time seemed right. And I’ll get to see the boy every day. A lovely thought.
Posted 5 months, 2 weeks ago at 9:07 pm. 2 comments
The last time I saw my niece she was around six weeks old and ever so tiny. So small that I was certain even if I returned to London, when I returned back home once again, she’d still be so tiny and still look like a lovely new-born that I wouldn’t miss a single moment of her life.
I was kidding myself. I know that. She’s now fifteen months old, walking and saying the odd word. She calls my mother mar-mar as she can’t get the word Grandma out. She’s got a mountain of hair and a stubborn streak (much like her Mum!). She knows twenty words (Twenty whole words!). She’s clearly a most intelligent one year old.
I know all this through tales friends and family have told me. And while it is my choice to live on the other side of the world, it is still hard not being there to watch such an important part of her life, and my sisters life play out in front of my own eyes.
Tomorrow, after work, I’m heading to Heathrow, and thirty hours after that I’ll be in New Zealand where I’ll be greeted by the most wonderful and adorable one year old on this earth.
Yes, I’m slightly biased, but I don’t care.
Predictably, I want to be the prized favorite Aunt on my return. So in my quest for this prized position in my niece’s life, tonight I went hunting for a toy a one year old would adore. And somehow I think I’m going to get more use out of it then her own. I’ve spent the vast majority of tonight not packing, but spinning the wheel on the cutest elephant this side of London that sings all manor of songs.
I clearly have the mind of a two year old.
Posted 6 months ago at 11:28 pm. 2 comments
In 2006 I moved to London and met a boy. And over the last couple of months, he’s become the boy.
Our story is a strange one. We met whilst speed dating, which typically you would think implies that you might date someone in the first instance and follow it up later with something a little more serious if things work out - not become close friends in a relatively short amount of time, and eighteen months later ease effortlessly into a relationship that just is.
I think too much. I also talk to much, complain, moan, and generally wonder aloud perhaps a little bit too much too.
And in doing this over the last 18 months I have often said never-ever when people have hinted that the boy and I should become more then just friends. And in the way admittedly I use to be skeptical of of some of the things he said or do. Because, while he might not want the world to know, he felt a little more for me then I returned to him at the time.
But that changed at some point over the last six or seven months. There is no one exact defining moment. I didn’t wake up one day and suddendly come to my senses. Instead over time I stopped saying never-ever and one night took the risk and throw my feelings out there, much like he had done for me 18 months previously (I did say our story was a strange one).
And now, seeing in 2008, I just wonder what on earth too me to long.
Happy New Year.
Posted 9 months, 1 week ago at 10:33 pm. 3 comments
I think it is only because I live in another city, and haven’t live in Melbourne for so long, that I am suddendly remembering all things Australian, all things Melbourne.
Yesterday, whilst on the tube heading home, I opened the London Paper to find a feature article on travel to Australia, and in the middle of the two page spread, a glorious photo of Melbourne stared back at me.
Melbourne is a stunning place. Beautiful. London is too, but since living here I’ve started taking for granted everything it has to offer, just as I did with Melbourne when I was still at home.
Maybe this is what happens with you pass the two-year mark. Who knows.
I love London, but I’ve realised that I love Melbourne just as much, and maybe, just maybe, I might return for longer then a two-week fleeting visit.
This isn’t to stay it’s going to happen yet. London is, well London, and I quite like being a Londoner. That, and I have my eyes set on a passport, which involves being here for the long haul (another six years!), and you never know what’s around the corner.
So who knows what is it. I have a trip booked to return to Melbourne in January next year. In the short week that I’m there I want to explore the bars on Hardware lane, explore Federation Square, admire the sky line from the river. Drive over the West Gate Bridge.
Since booking my ticket, I’m spending far to much time thinking about Melbourne’s own South Bank back in Melbourne. When I head down to my local pub, I laugh of my memories at home which involved coffee and cake more so over a pint of beer.
It sounds like I’m moaning. And maybe I am. Whilst I love London, I’m missing Melbourne, and I miss my friends.
And I guess this is what they call homesickness.
Posted 10 months, 1 week ago at 12:37 pm. 1 comment
So, I said I’d do a dance.
It resembled a slightly excited Anna, with a a huge grin across her face as she attempted running - in 49 degree heat - from the compound office back to the restaurant where she had been half way through her lunch and reading My Sisters Keeper for the third or fourth time.
Riyadh, it’s bloody hot.
Needless to say, I qualified for the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme without any issues, and tomorrow morning I will be first in line outside the British Embassy in the DQ requesting that wonderful stamp in my not so wonderful passport (Passport photos are not fun!), before confirming my flight home to the UK for Tuesday night, allowing a whole 24 hours for any disasters can (but hopefully won’t occur).
DHL took just under two days to get the Home Office decision letter to me. A letter, less then a page long which allows me to stay in the UK for the next to years.
I would have thought it would be longer.
Posted 10 months, 2 weeks ago at 10:18 am. 0 comments
Right now there is an envelope in Shefield that will tell me if I have successfully applied for HSMP, or that not. The second option I don’t really want to think about, but fingers crossed I’ll be able to rip open that envelope this weekend and do a dance resembling something that shows my excitment for being able to stay in the UK for a few more years.
I put my application in for HSMP less then a month ago. I followed it by faxing in an Urgent Treatment Request form which I submitted alongside a letter from my employer. I faxed that in on Tuesday, mid-morning, and by Friday morning at 9am (2 hours ago) when I called to request a status update, a decision had been made.
The Home Office though, can’t (or won’t) tell me the result over the phone, so I’ve had to arrange a courier to collect the documents and send over to Riyadh where I am currently visiting my ex-pat parents. The aim is, if all goes to plan is to do that dance, then spend a day in the British embassy getting a lovely stamp in my passport.
That said, if I can’t do that dance, I’ll take a deep breath and realise that going home is meant to be. This experience has made me think alot about Melbourne, and you know, it’s not the worst place on earth to live. Slightly cheaper then London, I’m sure I could enjoy it just as more as I have the last two years in the UK.
So, the waiting game begins…
Posted 10 months, 3 weeks ago at 10:41 pm. 1 comment
This post has been sitting i the unpublished basket for a while now. I’ve been sitting on it, wondering if the words I wrote could be read as being selfish. Or read in a way where I’d offend someone, somehow. I’m close to it, but not as close as others. And I hope I’ll never be able to comprehend the pain and anguish that they must be feeling…
I read the news from Australia most days, and this morning I saw that Australian story aired an episode on Belinda Emmet. Tonight I jumped online and watched the thirty minute snap shot of her life, and an hour or so later, I was a little teary to say the least.
The thing about Belinda Emmet’s story is that she could so easily be someone you know. By hearing her story, it so easily reminds you of other people who have suffered at the hands of what she called the “Big C”.
Cancer.
Watching her story, and hearing about what she went through and what she missed out on only puts into worlds what other people you know are going through, or what they had to. The words you were too scared of asking to hear, too afraid to face the reality they were already living.
And to say this, I’m one of the lucky ones. It’s not my sisters. It’s not my parents. It’s not my best friend.
Cancer touches everyone. If it’s not you, or someone in your immediate family, it’s someone almost as close.
Australian story brought back all the thoughts I had somehow managed to push to the back of my mind. About the anguish my friends and family have and are experiencing. Because they’ll never get to see her again, and because she’ll never get to experience all the things mothers are meant to experience in life, and quite frankly, it seems unfair.