I often find That Mitchell and Webb Look (on the BBC) a bit painful but I have found some of their sketches very funny.
Ever wondered what a homeopathic A&E (Accident and Emergency) ward might look like?
Would you like to see Mr Darcy doing some freestyle disco dancing?
Paul and I are leaving London and moving back to Brisbane in August. We are really looking forward to it, especially as we haven’t been back since we left three years ago. So, I have soooo much to organise and pack etc. Also, Paul’s Mum and sister arrive this Friday and we’ll be spending the weekend with them which will be really nice. I also have to blog about our trip to Amsterdam last week. That was completely short notice - the Friday before, Paul’s work asked him if he wanted to go to the Amsterdam office next week. As I’m not working at the moment, I got to go too. It was booked on the Friday and we left early Sunday morning. We had a really good time (even though Paul had to work). I will be posting photos soon.
Yesterday (Sunday) Paul and I wandered around Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens with Kara and Cheryl. We checked out the current exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery (films and photos by Luke Fowler) which was interesting. Below are Paul and Kara outside the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens.
The photos below are from the Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens.
On Sunday of the previous weekend we went to Victoria Park where we spent hours sitting around in the sun, eating and drinking and talking to friends. We also wandered around the park a bit - it’s a really large and lovely park. We have been having glorious weather with lots of sun.
Last weekend was a long weekend, so on Monday we went to the Tate Modern with Kara and went to the Roni Horn exhibition (it didn’t do a whole lot for me), and we looked at some other art including an installation they have that you can climb on/over. It was really popular. There was a performance at 5 where they got 1000 people together and they all screamed at once but we just missed it (we were in a cafe)! I did get interviewed about it by CNN reporters and apparently it was on SBS news in Australia through the week and three people I know saw it! Outside the gallery was a whole lot of stuff going on that was The House of Fairy Tales (see photos below). There were heaps of kids’ activities with lots of story telling and performances.
On Tuesday night last week I went to a London Feminist Freethinkers meeting (a secular/atheist feminist group). It was an interesting discussion group but it got off-topic a lot. Not sure if I’ll go to the next one. I might.
On Thursday night Paul and I went to see Coraline in 3D (based on a Neil Gaiman novel and by Henry Sellick of The Nightmare Before Christmas fame). It was really good (for a kids film). The only time I’d seen 3D film before now was at Warner Brothers Movie World (on the Gold Coast!) in 1992. It was a short film with excerpts from lots of films and in 3D. I read somewhere that the new Harry Potter film is coming out in Imax and 3D. I might have to go see that! I saw the latest trailer and got very excited about it.
Pretty cool advertisement for the Queensland Art Gallery and the Met Exhibition coming this year. I’m really looking forward to checking out QAG’s Gallery of Modern Art when I’m next home - it opened after I left. I hear it’s really great.
In three days Paul and I will have been in the UK for three years! Sometimes I can’t believe I have been away from Australia that long. About six months ago I got really homesick and was desperate to either move back or go back for a visit. I’m not feeling like that now but I definitely do want to go back this year. There are a lot of people that I miss and I’m really looking forward to seeing Brisbane (and the rest of Australia) with fresh eyes. I think it will be interesting. Brisbane was such a big, scary but exciting place to me when I moved there at the age of 17 (after growing up on a farm outside a small town). I guess this time it will be different 1) because I’m coming from somewhere much bigger than Brisbane, and 2) I spent 11 years in Brisbane so I know it pretty well. I’m really looking forward to seeing how it’s changed and if it is anything like I remember it (I think I’ve had a tendency to romanticise a lot about Australia while being away). There are things I’m really looking forward to (like visiting my sister in Canberra - I think it will be very cool to be shown around Canberra by a local - and someone who knows my interests). Paul and I are really keen to do more travelling in Australia. He has seen quite a bit but I haven’t really.
I have just had a really fun weekend. On Saturday evening I went to a talk on feminism and atheism. The woman giving the talk is the convenor of the group London Feminist Freethinkers (a secular, feminist group) that I’m very keen to get involved with. Cheryl and Kara came to the talk too and afterwards they came over to our house and we made pizza and watched Spaced. They live on the East side of London and Paul and I are often going over there to see them and do stuff so we were excited to be bringing them over to the West side where we live.
On Sunday, Paul, Kara and I walked around Richmond Park (which is huge - almost 1000 hectares). It was a very windy and overcast day with rain on and off but we enjoyed the big walk out in nature! We saw lots of deer (but no fawns) and we walked through the grasslands and woods. We really enjoyed the unobstructed line of sight to St Paul’s Cathedral from Henry VIII’s Mound, the highest point in the park (see image below I got from Flickr). There is a legal requirement that the view to St Paul’s Cathedral (16km away) be kept free so no buildings can be built in the way. The mound has a telescope mounted so you can more easily see the Cathedral (you can only see the top of it and it’s quite small). It was pretty cool. There are other protected views in London to St Paul’s Cathedral.
We met up with Daniel S for dinner (he’s in town for a conference) and today he and I are going to the London Transport Museum.
On the way home last night we saw a lady at Russel Square tube with a huge, gorgeous blue parrot with a very long tail (I’m not 100% sure it was a parrot). It stood on her arm while she was buying a ticket and when we got down to the platform it was sitting on her shoulder.
I recently watched a lecture (on Youtube) by Bart Ehrman on biblical scholarship and discrepancies in the bible (Misquoting Jesus: Scribes Who altered Scripture and Readers Who May Never Know) which was really interesting. I’d like to read some of his books (Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It into the New Testament, Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew). And I watched a National Geographic show about the Gospel of Judas. I think all that early Christian history is really fascinating. The problem I find (as a lay person) is that it’s often hard to know who to trust (i.e. who has the credentials and are they using good historical sources, etc).
I’ve got a few (rather silly) websites I visit when I need a laugh at something silly:
see more Lolcats and funny pictures
see more Lolcats and funny pictures
see more Lolcats and funny pictures
see more Lolcats and funny pictures
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able, and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God.
- Epicurus
The NASA spaceshuttle Atlantis is taking off this evening so I’m spending today watching NASA TV. It’s awesome.
Last week Madeleine was in town for a few days on her way to Baltic Pride in Latvia. I met up with her on Friday at the Barbican Centre (and got a bit lost trying to find her - that place is massive!). We caught a bus down past St Paul’s and up Fleet Street and the Strand and had lunch with an old school friend of hers in Covent Garden. Then we wandered up to the Portrait Gallery and looked at stuff there. I had been to the portrait gallery a couple of times before but had somehow missed the top floor - and looking at all the portraits of historical figures I was reminded how little history I know. Luckily Madeleine (who has English parents) was able to fill me in on some stuff. When we were done we looked in book shops on Charing Cross Road. We also went to a lovely little cupcake shop and had very cute (and yummy) cupcakes. I had a really lovely day.
On Saturday it was Kara’s birthday so I had brunch with her and lots of her friends at the Pavilion Cafe in Victoria Park over her side of town. Sonja brought along a plate of lovely cupcakes she’d made. After yummy brunch, Kara, Nicole and I wandered through the park and up to the Broadway Market (which I had never been to before - I also hadn’t been to Victoria Park before). It was really lovely. We wandered back to Nicole’s house - where Paul came and met us (he’d had another Microsoft exam that morning - he got 93%) and then Kara and I went down Brick Lane and then back to her place for a little rest before heading out to Cargo that night for birthday drinks. I’ve been to Cargo three times, all in the last two weekends!
Paul and I thought about going to Richmond Park on Sunday but ended up staying home and tidying the house (probably for the best). We might go there next weekend (and try to get a posse together for it). Also, Daniel S is in town next weekend so it will be nice to catch up with him.
Google streetview has recently published their UK version so there has been lots of moaning and groaning here about ‘invasions of privacy’ - I find it bizarre that people can happily accept being watched every day by the mountains of CCTV cameras in the UK yet they don’t want photographs of streets on the internet ‘that anyone could see’. When someone says ‘a burglar could look at my house on streetview’ remind these people that a burglar can also walk down their street and look at their house.
I had a look online and found that my home town is on streetview! I couldn’t believe it! In fact, heaps of rural Queensland and Australia is on streetview. And you can even see the highway that you drive along to get to my parents’ farm and you can see the dirt road that goes off the highway and right up to the gate into the farm!
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