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Southbound Again
Topic Started: May 19 2008, 07:37 PM (373 Views)
Creaturefeature
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Hello everyone

Sorry for being so scarce lately. It's been crazy with finishing off work and moving - yep, moving!

New job and new city. Yes, I've come back down South, leaving Sheffield for the bright lights of London. It's been a fun couple of years in the steel city, although the project was a hard and frustrating slog for most of it. I'm looking forward to starting in a new lab with a new project that's more what I want to be doing. So I have a couple years here now. I'm sharing a flat with my sister, which should be fun (and probably occasionally annoying, but mostly good!) and the cat certainly seems to be pleased to have two human slaves to serve her now.

Anyone ever in London be sure to mention it and maybe we can meet up for a drink :cheers
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quicksilver
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If You ever go to brighton, let me know and we can go for :cheers :grin
i've been twice in london and its enough. this city is just too big for me
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Vetch
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Mahen Anthropologist
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Hey, long time no read! :flower: Hope your moving was uncomplicated!
now I'd tell my stupid moving joke about that moving suite by Paul Wohindemit*, if it would only work in English... Heh, I did tell it anyway, didn't I? :grin

One of those days I'll come to England, and find out if your infamously lukewarm beer really is beerable.
(I've been to London twice, but the first time I didn't drink at all, and the 2nd time I only had that silly cider).
And I must say my impression was similar to what Quicksilver writes. Verrrry big city. Too many cars for my taste. But that's changed?


______________
*Wohindemit ~> Wheretowiththestuff

P.S. No, I am not PUI.
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Felicitous Sk8er
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:ot2
Quote:
 
P.S. No, I am not PUI.


Too bad! You are always so much fun when you are!


Creature-ji --

Thanks for the update. It sounds like a good move -- especially for your cat!
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Surtac
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So you're in London and you haven't been to the cricket? Where are your priorities, Jo?

Sorry - just kidding. Would love to catch up with yourself and Mule and Shoka and Reading Fox and Zen and all of the other British based associates. One of these days - one swears.

Sounds like a good move, btw. :cheers

:invert


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the mule
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Paidhi-Aiji
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Jo, welcome back from oop north! Hope you are settling in to the new job.

'Tac and Vetch, just name the day, I'm sure we can arrange a meeting of the association. Can't promise tickets to Lords (£60+ each these days) but there is plenty of good lukewarm beer to be found.
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Vetch
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Lords? Who needs that -- we have our own MCC over here... :flower: --- :bawl
Ohhh, I want to come!! sniff... A match on TV would be heavenly, compared to what we get in Germany. Cold frothy beer be damned!
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Creaturefeature
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Heh,

Well I did consider going to the cricket but as you can imagine nothing got organised around the general chaos of the last few months. I'm definitely going to go *sometime* though.

London is very big, noisy and dirty (though much improved since the introduction of the congestion charge) but of course it has its compensations, and I've found that when you actually live here and have your own place to go back to for peace and quiet it's not so bad. I'm sharing a flat with my sister in Highbury/Islington area. Plus I found a lovely local pub tucked away in a side street near me that does decent beer :)

My lovely brother took me on a massive guided walking tour (7-8 miles) of central London yesterday; he'd printed out a whole list of recommended pubs (with real ale) to spot on the way - this is a man who has his priorities right! It was great actually; we started off outside St Pancras, popped into the British Library (sooooo lovely), and wandered down past Gray's Inn, Bloomsbury and Coram's Fields, pointing out the hidden-away pub of The Mitre, and then across the Holborn viaduct, past St Paul's and the Bank of England, and found a nice pub to have lunch and beer in. Then we went across London Bridge, round the area where I'll be working, taking in The George, a pub in one of the last surviving coaching inns, and Borough Market. From there we pootled our way down to the Southbank and wandered along the river in glorious sunshine. I also saw my first famous person - Dustin Hoffman was filming outside the Southbank Centre, heheh.

We came back across Blackfriars bridge, past Charing Cross and Embankment, and made our way through Covent Garden, then onwards, through Chinatown and Soho, and finally finished up in The Argyll, a classic Victorian pub, just off Oxford St, before staggering down to get the tube home.

It was great because I got to really see how all the different areas linked up (particularly since some areas that look far apart on tube map, which is diagrammatic and not scale, are actually very close), and had all the sights and good places to eat and drink and whatnot pointed out to me, when it would have taken me *months* to find all that by myself.

I'm still going to have to everywhere with the AZ for a while though :)
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Vetch
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Wow, that sounds so nice!
A tiny bit like what I am experiencing with Munich, which is so much better than I thought. For lack of cash I am not using the (rather expensive) underground but my bike. And I too found out that the city is very accessible like that. I get everywhere I want, much faster than I thought.

You saw Dustin? I saw the Dalai Lama! I think. S/o sped by in a limo, accompanied by a bunch of police and stuff. Wow.

But nothing beats the English pubs, I think, in cozyness (voc?) and style. (Perhaps the Austrian are as good.) Cheers to your brother. He does seems decent. :flower:

And they're having a Kurosawa directorspective at the Barbican in May. And you have the Gherkin! London rulz! :flower:
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the mule
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Ahh the Argyll, I remember it well from the days when I worked in Wells Street (just behind the Plaza) I hope you dropped in at the Nags Head while you were in Covent Garden. A very fine pint of McMullens in the old days!
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