Life around here

Wow, I have been pretty remiss at keeping up the blog this year I must say - the last post before this was in June! I think because it's so easy to send photos via WhatsApp etc. now, that it's taken the place of the blog a little, but seeing as I do enjoy looking back and keeping track of all the things that we get up to via the blog, I'll do my best to keep updating it even if it does continue at such an infrequent and erratic pace...

So, life around here... The big news, which everyone knows in real life but I haven't mentioned here so far, is the imminent arrival of the baby! I'm currently only three days away from my due date (9th Oct) and feeling as big as a house. Thank goodness for stretchy clothes from H&M! I finished work a couple of weeks ago which has been great (sitting for long periods of time was getting pretty uncomfortable) and have been filling the freezer with risottos and pasta (obviously I'm having an Italian phase) and waiting for essential deliveries like the car seat, mattress for the pram, nappy bag etc. It's interesting, I've hardly bought anything "in real life" for the baby actually - I would say at least 75% of what we've bought has been online (either from stores or from things like eBay) - I'm definitely part of the digital generation!

Last day at work - 16 September 2016 (end of week 36)

So, while it's hard to get out and about too much lately, we did have a great gender-neutral baby celebration with our friends at one of our local pubs where we had a surprisingly difficult quiz (highest score was 5/10, sorry guys!) and lots of fun predictions on the baby's sex, name, arrival date etc. Lots of predictions for a girl (69%) and mostly past the due date so we shall see how accurate they are!

But, let's go back in time and work forward from where I last updated... At the beginning of July we spent a weekend on the Pembrokeshire coast with John, Jules and Benjamin which was really relaxing - unfortunately John, Adrian and I all got sick which wasn't great, but it was still a nicer location to lie about in the sunshine than in London!

Going for a walk

Gorgeous coastline

View from where we were staying

Mum and Dad came back from their jaunt around Europe for graduation (I'll make that the subject of a separate post) and one of the things we did was to climb Monument - something I've been wanting to do for absolutely ages. We also had some really nice days walking about the city and people watching, going to market etc., as well as having a quick look around East Dulwich and then visiting Dad's Uncle Albert which was really nice (especially the giant chocolate cake he'd got for us!).

View looking east from Monument

Monument staircase

Adrian fulfilled a long-held ambition which was to have a T-Bone steak at Hawksmoor. Even though I've been eating meat during the pregnancy, there was no way I was going to be able to help him get through it all, so Pam came along and we had a really fun evening.

Getting ready to eat! 

The remnants of the bone marrow and the T-Bone!

One particularly fine weekend day we decided to pop up to our local park, Southwark Park, and have a jaunt on the row boats. Most other people were on the pedalos, but a row around the lake followed by an ice-cream in the sun made for a pretty relaxing afternoon. I also loved the looks from people as they saw a heavily pregnant woman rowing her husband around!

Keeping on an even keel 

We went for a swim at the Olympic-distance swimming pool in Stratford - it's a really fantastic facility: loads of lanes, not too many people and great water temperature. If we lived in the area I'd be down every day!

At the Olympic pool at Stratford

I also went to a very interesting insect day down at our local reserve - Stave Hill Ecological Park. It was all about identifying different types of insects, such as the key differences between bees and flies (antenna length is a key one there) and bush crickets and grasshoppers (leg angles are important in that case). I went with a colleague from work and a current member of LSE Bees - and the funniest thing was that literally a day or so later we had a bush cricket in our bedroom and I could identify not only what it was, but that it was a female because of its ovipositor. Very cool!

My colleague Alex checking out a specimen

One of our local pubs, the Wibby Wobbly, has been closed for a little while now. It was unique in that it was on a boat in the docks, but now it's been taken over by pirates! Love the juxtaposition of the squatters with the bright lights of money-making Canary Wharf in the background...

Pirates at the Wibbly Wobbly

Adrian and I fulfilled another one of those, "I've wanted to do that for ages" London things - a candle-lit visit to the Sir John Soane's Museum. It's a museum dedicated to the artefacts collected by Sir John Soane, a 19th century architect, and is absolutely chocka-block with stuff inside. The first Tuesday of every month they light the entire museum by candlelight and it's extremely popular - check out the queue! It's just around the corner from LSE and so I'd seen these queues for four years and it was great to finally be seeing what all the fuss was about. Not so comfortable to be sitting on the pavement for over an hour in my condition as part of the queue, but an experience to be had nonetheless.

Queue for the museum - can you spot Adrian?

Exterior of the museum - no photos allowed inside unfortunately

We made the most of a very sunny Sunday afternoon to cycle down to one of the pubs on the river in Rotherhithe for a drink - turns out it was my last cycle ride before the baby comes! It was really lovely just soaking up the sun and chilling out.

At the Salt Quay in Rotherhithe

Chilling in the sun (with a non-alcoholic beer...)

And then there's just been lots of other miscellaneous things going on - like brunch with Adrian's sister Emilia at Lima Flora (really interesting Peruvian food), eating mille feuille in St James' Park, strolling around Greenwich, and heading out and about using my "baby on board" badge to catch up with friends at various events around town.

Delicious!

A selection of the dishes at Lima Floral

Walking around a rainy Greenwich

Hanging out in Shoreditch

On the tube

Basil and blackberry cupcake at the Lower Marsh market yesterday

So there you have it - a complete update of things round these here parts. Now we're just hanging out, waiting for baby to arrive! Fingers crossed it won't be too much longer...

Garden explosion

Summer is here! (Even though it's been raining heavily on and off for what feels like weeks now)

The difference in just a few weeks always astounds me - it's been such a colour explosion! The strawberries are coming faster than we can eat them and the roses are so heavily in bloom it feels like they're threatening to collapse the entire bush. The beans are still a fair way off, but they're winding up their bamboo stalks more and more each day.

And how about the photo of the cactus in bloom! We haven't seen that flower before and it must have been all this rain that's finally inspired it to open up - and such a bright, vibrant colour too. 

Now all we need is the sun to appear so we can enjoy it...

A very green garden (8 June)

A fortnight later (22 June) - the rose bush is nearly collapsing under the weight of all those flowers!

What a stunning pink cactus flower!

Finest sands in England

Today was forecast to be a scorcher in London, with temperatures up to 26 degrees C (yes, I know that's not a scorcher everywhere, but for early May in London it definitely counts). Given how pasty we both are, and how long it had been since we'd been to the beach, we made the trip down to Margate, a seaside resort about 1.5 hours away from London on the high speed rail.

It's the kind of place that had a heyday, fell into decline, and is now on the way back up. Think amusement and bingo halls crossed with craft beer and gelato. It's also got the Turner Gallery of Contemporary Art which was interesting but given the glorious weather we only really gave it a cursory glance.

We spent the most of our time on the beach, soaking up the sun and reading. I got to about waist deep in the water but it was so cold that was as far as I could manage - bit better than Adrian who didn't go in at all!

It was decidedly more chilled out than Brighton and the gelato was definitely just as good (we got salted caramel, peanut butter and jelly, pear and chocolate, and rhubarb and custard....mmmmm....).

If this weather continues we'll definitely be back!

PhD lockdown

Posting has been light lately, and will continue to be so as I enter into the final phase of the PhD. It's due on the 30th of September and there's still an awful lot of work to be done. I'm starting to spend quite a few late nights and weekends at uni, but I'm confident it will all be finished on time! (It has to be...)

Adrian's also in the final month of training for Challenge Roth (3.9km swim, 180km bike ride, 42km run) which looks like it's going to be a lot of fun (for the spectators, maybe not so much for the competitors). He's working hard - although once that finishes and he becomes man about the house to look after me while I finish, it might not be any less work!

There are lots of things to update on the blog, but here are a few photos from what's been going on lately:

Watching NZ vs England at Lords

"Making it Work" at the Sciences Po climate change negotiation simulation in Paris

My team's tomato plants for our 2015 Green Impact summer challenge - we've got to keep these guys healthy and grow as many tomatoes as we can!

Dumpling making to stock up the freezer

Our delicious strawberry plants - we get fresh strawberries on our breakfast every morning. Can't get any more local than that!

So wish me luck as the PhD lockdown continues. I'm planning to emerge victorious on the 1st of October!

Bestival

A couple of weekends ago we finally went to something that we've been looking forward to for months (having got the tickets absolutely ages ago) - Bestival! Bestival is a music festival on the Isle of Wight, and is basically the last festival of the season (and generally always happens on the first weekend of September).

It's got such a nice, relaxed vibe to it and generally gets lots of bands and other musicians who we like, so having first been five years ago in 2009, we headed back this year with big expectations. And fortunately it didn't disappoint! The weather was absolutely amazing - warm and sunny, although not too sunny that you couldn't sit outside for hours (which was our main festival activity of choice), and it clouded over most nights which meant it didn't get too cold. It's also got a fancy dress theme, and this year it was 'Desert Island Disco' which saw all sorts of brilliant takes on sequins and Hawaiian shirts. Although the complete ubiquitousness of bum bags was somewhat astonishing - clearly I'm way too old to know that they're in fashion now!

We went with a group of friends and because it's a reasonably small festival (unlike say Glastonbury which takes forever to get anywhere and you're never going to meet up with your friends no matter how hard you try), we managed to just run into each other most days or meet up for lunch etc. between bands which was great.

Favourite acts for me included Beck (despite him falling doing his brilliant dance moves and hurting his knee), La Roux, Sam Smith, Disclosure, Laura Mvula, Candi Staton, The Kooks (surprise guests!), and DJ Yoda, as well as the brilliant Mr Motivator - an '80s exercise instructor who got the crowd up and moving on Sunday lunchtime.

We also did all sorts of silly things like have a go on a toboggan ride, try out unicycling, learnt all sorts of cool stuff in the science tent (did you know that sounds make a difference to how you perceive the texture of the food you're eating? For example, if you crumple some crackly paper, it will make potato chips seem more crunchy in your mouth - something I did not know!), and just generally hung out and had a good time. The rest of the photos are here if you want to have a look.

Here's to more festivals in the future!

Making friends with our local parks

We live close to a couple of quite large parks in South London, and either cycle through or past them daily. As a result of that, and being curious about the notices put up at the gates etc., we've stumbled upon some great (free!) nights out lately.

The first was in Burgess Park, where they had a pedal-powered screening of Pan's Labyrinth. With some friends, we turned up bright and early and helped power the music pre-film, as well as pedalling throughout the evening. It was a good way to keep warm, especially when it rained halfway through! The film was every bit as gruesome as I remembered - definitely not one for kids - but the idea of a pedal-powered film was brilliant. We had to keep it above 14 (not sure whether that's RPM or what) otherwise the whole thing would shut down! Love this great photo from Electric Pedals of the night:

And then last night, we went on a 'Bat Walk' in Southwark Park. The local council's ecology officer gave us a short introduction to the bats we might encounter, handed out a few bat detectors, and then off we went! We had to wait until it was pretty dark, but soon enough, woosh!, there they were, swooping and diving over our heads. We walked around the park's lake (as there's more insects there, and therefore, more bats coming in to eat the insects) and listened out for the noise from the detector.

We saw lots of these guys: the common pipstrelle (pipistrellus pipistrellus). Click on where it says 'listen to a common pipistrelle' in the link to hear the noise that we could hear through the bat detector (set at about 45 or 46 decibels).

Photo source

They're the most common bat in the UK (lots more stats here) and due to the great backlit clouds, we could see them reasonably well (although taking photos would have been impossible due to the low light and how fast they were moving). I had no idea that there would be bats in our local park or that we would see so many of them, so it was a really interesting evening.

During a walk around Southwark Park in the pouring rain on the previous Monday we also found out that we can play lawn bowls for only £2 a go, as well as go boating on the lake. So, inspired by our recent successes, we'll definitely be keeping an eye out for other events in the neighbourhood - who said you had to go far afield to have fun??

Finally summer!

Obviously I've been extremely remiss in keeping up the blog as of late - I'm going to completely blame it on the wedding (more on that soon though once we get all the photos!) - but I've made a resolution to try and be better about doing smaller, more frequent updates.

So, seeing as the topic on everyone's minds here at the moment is the fact that we've finally started to have some lovely weather, I thought I'd share a few photos from the last couple of days.  First up is our new garden, where the roses are in full bloom and all the wild strawberries are bearing fruit (which taste absolutely amazing).

Then on Sunday I went for a walk in Kent with some friends from LSE - fields of flowers (including some early lavender and poppies), gorgeous riverside houses, and the biggest cheese ploughman's lunch you've ever seen...

And finally, from less than an hour ago, lunch with Adrian (who's on call this week, and thus free and easy during the day) in Middle Temple gardens (only open to the public during summer).  The fuchsias were in particularly full flower - they look almost cartoonish in their shape I thought.

So, fingers crossed we'll have a lot more sunny days like these!

A favourite place

Corsica is one of those places, where, if I could, I would visit year on year on year.  It just has everything that I love - beautiful beaches and crystal clear water, hot weather, great food, and is French!  My French is getting rustier by the day, so I always love an opportunity to try it out on unsuspecting locals...

We were incredibly lucky to go to Corsica and stay with good friends who were over in Europe from Australia.  The villa they hired was absolutely gorgeous and in a beautiful location called Porticcio, not far from Ajaccio.  We flew down to Marseilles, then picked up a rental car at the airport and got the ferry across to Ajaccio.  It was pretty nerve-wracking to drive on the wrong side of the road for the first time, but after driving for a week on the hair bend corners of Corsica, with seriously crazy Corsican drivers, I know I'll be fine anywhere!

It was the most relaxing week - we just slept, ate, swam, and then slept, ate and swam some more!  It was so much fun playing with our friends' daughters (two and four years' old) and we also went on two day trips, one to Corte, right up in the mountains in the middle of the island, and the other to Bonifacio, right down the bottom of the island. 

Both were beautiful but Bonifacio was particularly breathtaking - one day when I'm rich and famous I think I could easily have a villa there!  We could pop across to Sardinia for lunch even...  I particularly liked the cemetery right on the tip of the island, as it had lots of little houses almost for each family and was so peaceful and tranquil to walk around. 

The blue, blue waters of Bonifacio

It was also ridiculously hot, over 30 each day and lovely and dry.  My New Zealand tan was topped up nicely!  The memory of that will have to tide me over for quite some time though so I'm glad it was so good...

To see the rest of the photos click here.

 

Making our way back up the Nile

It’s about time that I finished the blogs telling you all about Egypt.  Especially since it was about seven months ago!  I can’t believe how time is flying...

Okay, so I’d last left it at our farewell to the felucca.  While it was very sad to have to leave, there were many more highlights in store so it was onwards and upwards to Kom Ombo temple, the site of the world’s first calendar.  It was pretty cool how it was quite recognisably a calendar, albeit based around seasons and planting etc. rather than just days like we have now.  Having checked out the mummified crocodiles (!) in the small museum also on site it was then time to head towards the Temple of Horus in Edfu.  Horus, the hawk god, is one of my favourite Egyptian gods because he’s so easily recognisable with his peaked nose (well, hawk I guess) and elaborate headgear.  

Excited to be at the Temple of Horus in Edfu

 

Adrian doesn’t have particularly fond memories of this temple as he was propositioned by a rather crusty old man who was hanging around checking out the hot young men.  While the rest of us thought it was quite funny, I think Adrian might have a few mental scars yet to heal...  The interior of the temple was quite amazing, with room upon room of hieroglyphics.  When the Christians found the temple, they scratched out the figures (especially their faces) because (I’m guessing) they were ‘false idols’.  But quite a lot of the figures were buried under layers of sand that had drifted into the temple so it’s quite cool to be able to see some that are still intact.

After an overnight in Luxor where we wandered around town and checked out the beautifully lit Luxor Temple, the next day it was time to see the Valley of the Kings!  Having heard so much about the valley we had very high hopes and it didn’t disappoint.  You’re not able to take photos so there’s no visual evidence, but the colours of the paintings inside the tombs were just spectacular.  It was also really cool to be able to see how the painting process was carried out, with two draft layers in red and black outline before the final, full colour, painting was applied.  Basically the more inexperienced workers would do the drafts, with the higher up (and actually paid) workers doing the final versions.

After the Valley of the Kings it was onwards to Hatshepsut (rhymes with ketchup) Temple.  The colours here were also stunning and quite amazing given the temple’s exposed situation set into a cliff face.  Dedicated to Queen Hatshepsut it’s formed of three tiers of columns, making it really striking.  Later that day we visited Karnak Temple which had a hall of columns (134 in all) which you could wander amongst and see all the different types of hieroglyphics.  It was really neat to see the different styles, with some deeply cut into the stone while others were raised and more 3D.

Being mummies at Hatshepsut Temple (Adrian's a man hence crossed arms, I'm a lady hence straight arms)

Peek-a-boo at Karnak Temple!

After another night in a sleeper train it was back up to Cairo where we visited the Egyptian Museum.  Again, no photos inside, although I was desperately tempted as the treasures from Tutankhamen’s tomb were just amazing.  And it’s not even the stuff they think was the most elaborate!  It’s pretty cool that at least one tomb’s treasures survived though so we have an inkling about what it was all like.  Seeing the detail on the sculptures, including the beautiful jewellery was just stunning.  They're actually building a brand new museum called the Grand Egyptian Museum, much closer to the pyramids, so it would be cool to go back in 10 years to see what that's all like when it's finished.

We then had an afternoon free so we went exploring out into urban Cairo to do some shopping at a fair trade store I’d heard about, and then managed to get hopelessly lost in the markets before miraculously finding another member of our group who pointed us in the right direction.  Basically, instead of going to the touristy side of Khan-al-Khalili, we went to the locals area which is a total maze and quite bewildering!  Luckily we made it back though and didn’t miss the bus...

Next stop, Dahab!

Melting Malaysia

Just a quick update to say hello from swelteringly hot Kuala Lumpur (you know it is legitimately hot when even locals tell you they're finding it tough to deal with)!

It was 35ºC yesterday and today with only the occasional breath of wind to help cool things down.  Fortunately the hostel is air conditioned which makes it a good respite when it all gets a bit much. 

I had this delicious beef ball soup (which comes with noodles with a soy, mince and vege combo on top) for dinner last night and have also had the best freshly squeezed watermelon juice, which I ordered not knowing what it was, just pointing to something that looked good on another table - the hunch paid off! 

I'm either off to Melaka tomorrow or up north to do some walking/rafting - we'll see how the budget's looking before I decide... Travelling alone makes you very efficient with your time - I've already seen Chinatown, Little India, Petronas Towers, the base of KL Tower, the National Museum, the Islamic Arts Museum, the Central Market, lots of temples and mosques, as well as the Batu Caves! And I'm only on day 2! 

So stay tuned for more adventures...