Photos

I wrote a really long description of my trip for here yesterday but something went wrong and it got deleted. So I was grumpy and didn't publish anything.

Anyway my trip was good. While I was in Doncaster I didn't really do anything but working and also reading my book for about 10 minutes before going to sleep. I did however make it down to London for the weekend which was really fun. The things I saw/did are as follows:

• The Tower of London
• Leicester Square to buy cheap show tickets for a show.
• Trafalgar Square to watch the pigeons.
• The National Portrait Gallery.
• Convent Garden (which has a nice market and some cool wee shops!)
• Camden Markets which was awesome!
• "High Society" a musical which was enjoyable but nothing to rave about.
• St Pauls Cathedral
• The Globe
• Shopping on New Oxford St

Here are some pictures.

This is a photo I took at Doncaster Station. The trainspotters must have thought I was crazy - I was there with a camera but not taking photos of trains. Anyway I like train stations I've decided, they reminded me of Virginia Woofle in "The Hours".

Me and a Yeoman Warden. For some reason we're both looking in different directions. Weird! This is at the Tower of London.

This is me at Trafalgar Sq. A lot of people don't believe this, they say I photoshopped myself on, but you can see the droplets of water from the fountain on my hair!

This is... me! With St Paul's Cathedral in the background. The white splodge is scaffolding on St Pauls.

Inside of the globe. Everybody say oooh.

:-)
M

Back!

Hello Everyone!

I'm back! Well actually I got back on Saturday but that's neither here nor there. I'm not back at work yet, just unpacking and the like.

I had a very busy very tiring time! Almost a brain overload but I managed to escape with my brain in tact. I was practically working the whole time except for the weekend (last weekend) in between my two weeks. In that weekend i went down to London which was great! I loved it, I fit in quite a lot.

I guess I'll write in more detail tomorrow, and probably post some pics.

Hope you have all been good. I haven't really heard from a lot of you the whole time I was away - maybe you've all been as busy as I was!

:-)
Mindy

The one Photo...

This is the one photo Kirsty is going to let me publish. It was such a great night!

Hello

Friday night was awesome. We took some pics on Kirsty's work camera so if she passes any on to me I might post them up here.

In other news I am feeling really sick. It's awful!

And very bad timing too... I'm going to the UK on Sunday!

Anyway got a lot of work to do.

Adios!

Mindy

New Zealand Shops

I've noticed something the other day. I was watching TV and an ad came on for The Family Guy or something like that and they mentioned Bed Bath & Beyond (a shop that has recently opened in Chch in one or maybe two locations). Now it never occurred to me that this was actually an American or multinational chain of shops until I saw this ad. In Christchurch up until maybe the last 5 years as far as I know all the shops have been New Zealand shops, or at least Australian. Of course the fast food chains were an exception, but we never even had Starbucks here back 5 years ago!

I think it's really sad. I know there are probably some shops that I just haven't realised weren't New Zealand owned and operated but in general I feel we got by without having American chains here. Now we have Borders in Christchurch which I suppose is a cool shop, but we didn't need it. We always had Whitcoulls that you could go for for normal books, or there are a few places in town like Scorpio books where you could get rarer ones, and order things in. Clothing wise I personally thought it was great that we didn't have American or international shops. It made it exciting and special when you went overseas and bought stuff, but at the same time the stuff you could already buy here was great anyway. We had enough choice and options etc. Now we've got things like Levi shops opening and stuff like that.

I know this isn't a big issue and I'm not depressed about it or anything, I just think it is a wee bit sad.

:-) M

Answers

1. Is it true what they say about women and detachable shower heads? (BHN)

Well Nick I've never had a shower with a detachable shower head before so I can't actually speak from personal experience here. And also I've never discussed this with any of my women friends but to take a wild guess, I'd say yes.

Fire Engine!

Here's a picture of the fire engine, back at the scene of the fire a good 12 hours after the were first called! You can see on the very left some of the huge pile of magazines that were surrounding their garage that the firemen had to pull out of the garage. How boring and young am I that a fire engine excites me. Oh well.

That is all for today. Sorry!

Midday Update

Good Afternoon!

Firstly sorry to hear about your lip Adam (apparently he bit it)... hope your day doesn't fall into too much disarray!

Secondly does someone please want to run my life for me. It's too hard. I need someone to make decisions for me. Or at least I make the decisions based on what I want, and they can work out how to jusitfy them. Sigh. I'm very tired!

Thirdly you should all see the movie Gloomy Sunday. Many Christchurchtonians will have done this already (it's been running at the Arts Centre Theatre since 2001!) but if you haven't definitely go! Although remember to book first. I've decided it's been a couple of years since the last time I saw it so I'm going to go again next week. They show it in this really cute theatre with only 11 seats. It is such a good movie, it makes me cry so much!

Fourthly if anyone has the soundtrack for that movie Amy and I are desperately trying to track it down. Because it's very expensive to buy (like $79!).

Fifthly Love from
Minds

Well

Turns out the garage across the road was jam-packed full of magazines! Thus the awesome flames. Now their driveway is full of magazines although most are burnt and somewhat damp. The fire engine had to come back twice during the day, I guess some were still smouldering or something!

And it was Amy's birthday on Saturday, and I think she had a good time and liked her presents. I thought she got lots of cool presents myself. So I guess now I can reveal that I've been making a quilt for her, that has been very time consuming. But now it's on her bed and she likes it and it was all worth it!

Don't really have much else to say today. Have a nice day everyone!

:-) M

Bad Week

This is most certainly going to be a terrible week.

I wrote possibly the longest post I had ever written here when i got to work, and then for absolultely no reason my computer reboots and I lost it! Does anyone know of any viruses going round at the moment that do that? Anyway.

What I had said was I am incredibly tired. Then I went into great detail about how I awoke last night at 3am to a crackling sound. Thinking it was a very odd time for a bonfire I looked out my window and the house across the road was going up in flames! It was a very surreal sight.

Anyway I described all in great detail but to summarise now. It luckily was only the garage and a car parked next to it that were alight (or so I believe). I also believe no one was injured. And it takes a very long time for the fire fighters to do their job. Infact I didn't get back to sleep properly at all as they leave the fire engines going the whole time, and they have noisey engines and the lights flashing, all this right outside my bedroom window.

I hope that the people who lived in that house didn't lose too much precious stuff.

Love from
Little Miss Mindy