Marketability

Marketability n. Pertaining to the skill with which a person can manouver through the crowds congregating around weekend street stalls.

So today we went to the Notting hill markets in the north west. Very cool, lots of overpriced "antiques" and other useless junk.

beautiful area though - we're going to have a wishfull look on the net tonight to see the house prices :-).

anyway, unintentionally on the way there, we came accross this quaint building:


apon closer inspection, revealed this:


Very cool. although I didn't feel like it was 1984 in this suburb. very open, very green, lots of trees and friendly unhurried people that stopped walking directly in your path and then start off again just as you start to walk arround them......

it was a lovely day really - very very hot in the sun, absolutely no cloud in the sky here's the main street:


I have an anouncement: I have found the sole cafe in london that makes good coffee.
A Very trendy place called apostrophe, with funky seats, nicely designed space inside, bright and cheery at the front and intimate and dim towards the back of the store. Exactly the way a coffee shop should be. the coffee was near perfect. 9/10 really, the only reason I don't give it a 10 was because they served my Latte in a cappacino cup. The clincher that prooves that it's a good place is that it's right next door to a starbucks and yet still is mostly full. Not that it's all that hard to make better coffee than starbucks, but it just goes to show that local stores can still triumph over american mass produced coffee flavoured swill. Two Thumbs Up!


I've also come to a couple of conclusions after a week of being here:

1. Native English speakers are in a minority (americans don't count)
2. people born in England don't work in shops.

Even at the markets today I was extremely hard pressed to hear a british accent. italian, eastern european, japanese even, but not one English. We're living with a polish couple and an indian lady in a house owned by a turkish guy. all resturants are owned by the italians or french and all waitresses are from the chech republic, sovakia or Belgium.

on another note, I went into Burger king today for brunch.... I wanted to order an aussie burger but realised that they didn't have one. :( closest thing was really an "Angus" which came out drowning in BBQ sauce and I literally had to go up to the counter and ask the check out lady where the bacon was.... the burgers may be better at Hungry Jacks, but they certainly aren't at burger king.

At the end of the day unfortunately I had to walk fast to get home in time to go to the toilet. guess it was God's way of beating it into me not to eat Burger king.

prior to that however, we once again hit Oxford street in search of a shirt for debbie, found one that she liked finally (after 2.5hrs of standing arround yesterday) yay!

oh - I forgot to mention. Yesterday we went and had lunch at canary warf. it's very very nice. I ordered a "pint of coke" which was really weird. Canary warf reminded us of brisbane, it's more open, the people seem freindlier there's water and parks and tall, new buildings. I wanted to go check it out because the jobs that I apply for are usually in the square mile of London city or in canary warf. I infinately prefer canary warf and even if it means I have to change trains and take 40 mins to get into work, it would be worth it for the sake of my mental health. the whole place is newer and cleaner nicer with a cool shopping mall and nice cafe's dotted all over the place.

here's where we had lunch (click)

No photos there unfortunately, I got sick of carrying arround a backpack all the time. nevermind, when I'm working there, earning 600 pounds a day, I'll take some photos and post them ;-)