I know I haven't been the most active blogger around lately, but I've been busy contemplating my navel, so just get over it.

Another attack on London yesterday, two weeks after the previous one, people not quite sure what to make of it. Go about our day as per usual, I suppose. In my case, that would mean not doing much. We still haven't rid our flat of several cardboard boxes from The Infamous Move, but we're getting there, I hope.

This means, of course, that I watch a lot of telly. Not during the day, mind you (apart from Peak Practice, but that's just common sense, since I've already seen the series twice before (and by that I mean the years when Simon Shepherd was in it, after that it became really dull)), and yesterday the long awaited new Gervais/Merchant series, The Extras began on BBC2. I could finally see the premiere live. Nice. Also a new series with Stephen Fry in it - always a must-see, his work. Unfortunately, both Airport and War at the Door ended yesterday, two programmes we've been addicted to ever since we moved here (Airport, of course, we also watched at home). And on Wednesday the dreaded series Journey to the End of the World or whatever it was called ended at last. That's four and a half hours of my life I won't get back. I've never seen a whole (mini-)series before where I haven't found any of the characters to be sympathetic. Pathetic, definitely, especially the protagonist, but I felt sympathy for just one of the other characters, and only on a few occasions. The rest of the time he was as nasty as the rest. In other words, not everything the Beeb spews out is top quality. Tut, tut.

This week I have been getting up early every day in order to be dressed for whenever the postman would ring our door. I ordered a few things last week and they were due for delivery this week. When the delivery man finally rang our door, on Wednesday, the fucking doorbell wouldn't work. I could see him, I could open the door, but he couldn't hear anything than a high-pitched whirr and never tried pushing the door open. By the time I arrived downstairs (bear in mind we live on the tenth floor with one very slow lift), he was long gone. Yesterday I gave up on them at around six o'clock (they'd sent me an e-mail telling me they would attempt redelivery between nine and five) and went to the loo. Guess what happened the second I sat down. Thank Bob for quick flatmates, though; she lept to the challenge and managed to get hold of the guy as he was trying to phone me (I had brought my mobile with me to the loo every time since Monday, but not this time). My new DVD-writer and camera tripod were safe. Phew.

Monday afternoon we went to Leicester Square to witness the UK premiere of The Fantastic Four. My flatmate is a fan of Ioan Gruffudd's and I tagged along to get a glimpse of him also (couldn't care less about the rest, to be honest - I haven't quite made up my mind about Michael Chiklis yet and the others I don't know at all). We got there two hours before anything interesting started to happen. By the time anything did happen, I had been bored for so long I had started eyeing one of the staff members instead, and at the exact moment the show started, I am not joking, it started raining. We were still trying to dry up from the last fall of rain, but this one just wouldn't stop. I hadn't brought my brolly because I knew we would be squashed together and wouldn't want to stick my umbrella in anybody's face or be the reason for their not seeing anything. I should have rethought that, because everyone else had brought an umbrella and didn't care less about the people around them. One of them used me as a combined umbrella stand and water drain (I certainly looked and felt like one) and another lady, shorter than me, kept poking me in the back of my head. When I turned around and asked her if she would stop poking me, she just glared at me and looked away. That was when I had had enough and left the scene. Too bad Ioan was just about to turn up. I went and stood under the awning of a kebab restaurant and kept myself busy looking for that staff member again, all the time keeping an eye on the big screen to see where the celebs were. When I realised Ioan had reached our end of the crowd, I skipped back and caught a glimpse of him, as well as my rather excited flatmate, frantically trying to take a photo of him. I have included the best one below for your viewing pleasure. We had actually agreed on dining out after the show, but at this point we were both soaking wet and decided to go back home instead. I stopped by Sainsbury's to buy some echinacea tablets, just in case, and then we went home and watched Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, which was much funnier the second time around (and with someone else in the room who actually understood the funny bits and was as embarrassed as I was).



Current track: Gloria Gaynor - I am What I am

Labels: current affairs, film, name-dropping, online shopping, personal, simon shepherd, TV

(Written on Thursday the 7th)

After having been watching the BBC News for about an hour, they finally had enough information to make a "London bombs" newsbar at the bottom of the screen, and all these terrible news items kept popping up and being repeated. During the press conference gathering all the official leaders of the special incident alert mission, the last piece of information on the bar was "bin bags will not be collected today". A bit of surreal triviality there in the midst of all the horror.

So, the Olympics yesterday and then terror today. This has indeed been a busy week for London. And it's not over yet. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not. I read about the terror attacks on the Norwegian paper VG's website of all places - the very same paper that gave me yesterday's Olympic news. Same borough mentioned both times; Stratford. There was no bomb here, though. They did, however, close down the whole tube system as well as park all Central London buses, and basically people are at the time of writing fucked if they want to get back home from work, pardon my American. Just like the "9/11" attacks this day started out with our not being quite certain how big a deal it was. We still don't have the whole picture and we're not sure if this is over yet. But that is of course what the terrorists want. Messing with our minds (and some of our bodies) like that. PM Tony looked like he was going to start crying at midday when he did a brief speech from Gleneagles, and apparently this has been his worst nightmare, quite literally keeping him awake at night.

They say al-Quaeda claim to be behind this and they also claim to be fundamental Muslims. As far as I know, Islam is as interested in terrorism as all other major faiths are. It's still a bit unnerving that as all this was going on a few tube stations away from me, I was sitting in an Internet café posting in my blog and listening to a Muslim prayer that the guy who works there had found on the radio or something. Oh, this is doing wonders for my prejudice, isn't it?

I think I need to put some soothing music on.

Current track: Nothing, strangely enough.

Labels: current affairs, personal

Who would have thought we'd actually be hosting the Olympics here in our humble town of Stratford. Among other parts of the country. We went down to the station at around two o'clock in order to witness the festivities and there was plenty to see. We very nearly went on the BBC news, too, but that was merely a misjudgement on my part. I hardly think I'll be residing in this part of the city by the time the Olympics actually start, but who knows what the future will bring (apart from Nostradamus, that is, and he doesn't say much these days)? We were ecstatic, nonetheless, and celebrated by going to the cinema.

Will they change all the huge "Candidate City" signs everywhere now?

We are currently in Spooks mode, meaning we're marathon watching old episodes every evening after the regular programme ends (meaning when there's only crap left on telly). I introduced the series to my flatmate last week and she was hooked after having seen just one episode. The only drawback is that I watched the whole of series two and three during a few weeks just before I moved here, so I remember the action vividly, but it's a great programme and Peter Firth is in it, so it's definitely worth it.

Who would have thought (part two) that delivering DVD's from Play.com would take even longer time here than to Norway? I have been waiting for five days already (the usual amount of days it takes for any parcel to arrive at a Norwegian address from the UK), and today I get a slip in the post telling me that "sorry, I was out" when they tried to deliver it. I'm working from home, mate, I wasn't out all day. Try again. Try pushing the doorbell this time. So now I have to wait another two days in order to pick it up myself. Absolutely brilliant.

Current track: A muslim prayer.

Labels: online shopping, personal, peter firth, Spooks, sport, TV

Thanks to the local cinema and its terrific membership perks (£4 per ticket) and the fact that they show the newest films, not just films from weeks or months ago, we may find ourselves going to the cinema a lot from now on. Personally, I have been used to travelling by the tube for 20-25 minutes in order to see a film in Oslo (they closed our local one), so this is heaven. I don't have to pay to get there; it takes us just eight minutes to go there by foot! So, anyway, we went there to see Batman Begins last week - we felt we had to since we'd been outside the Leicester Square Odeon on the day of the premiere - and it turned out to be rather good! Now I know it's been given some crap reviews, but I think they must have had a lousy day or something. Luckily the Batmobile looked much cooler on the big screen than in real life, by the way. If you're going to see the film, please note that most of the supporting actors (dubbed by me as those in a film that are supposed to actually act and not just sell the film) are non-American (Morgan Freeman excluded, and he was as brilliant as always) even though it's an American film. It seems to have become the standard lately. Want good actors? Look outside the US! An Hollywood-hating anglophile like me revels in this tendency. Mwahahaah. (A large portion of mY film collection still consists of films produced in Hollywood, though, so I should probably shut up.) Or it could just be because Hollywood finally understands that some of the punters actually enjoy good acting as well as nice special effects, and since many of the American actors enter the business because of their good looks and have no training in drama, they won't even be considered. Those are the headliners, unfortunately, brought in to sell the film. There are some very good exceptions, though. (Why does Tom Hanks always come to mind when I think of this?) I had high hopes for Leonardo DiCaprio after his amazing breakthrough in What's Eating Gilbert Grape, but something must have happened, as he's been back to being just another pretty face ever since.

We may pay the cinema a second visit tonight, seeing as we both want to see Kung Fu Hustle (I for the second time).

Earlier this week we went to a standup comedy show and luckily it wasn't totally crap even though it was free. Three of the comedians were rubbish and I felt like leaving the place, but the other three made up for it and we may come back another time. I'm not used to the waiters constantly walking around the room taking orders during a show, though, so I was slightly put off by that. They must have approached our table five times during the first part (it's a small place), so I finally caved in and ordered my second non-alcoholic beverage. Speaking of which; we "drank in" our pub on Sunday, which meant sitting there having a jolly good time with a lot of Bacardi Breezers (name stricken due to Norwegian advertisement laws, haha). My flatmate promptly blamed me for the whole thing, as she told the landlord that I couldn't stop myself, as she was buying another round. Bitch. Anyway, We both could stop ourselves and didn't even become drunk, before skipping off to the nearest pizza place at around ten fifteen, ordering pizza in time for The History of ITV.

The day before (that would be Saturday) there was going to be 500,000 more people than usual in central London, so we were expecting the worst as we took the tube downtown. I must say that I was a bit disappointed as we didn't see more than the usual amount of tourists trodding along with their travel dictionaries and maps of London. Apparently the whole ordeal took place in Hyde Park. I was equally suprised when I came home hours later and saw the Live8 spectators gathered there on the news. Wow! We stayed away from that area, however, as we were going to see the gay pride parade instead. Oslo had Euro Pride the week before and that parade had been the biggest ever (for Oslo, that is). It usually lasts about twenty minutes, thirty if there are some really slow movers. The one in London took more than ninety minutes. But the funny thing was that the parade had an as unruly crowd as the one in Oslo and didn't look more organised than a children's parade. It just took thrice as long time to pass us. We were standing in the front row, though, so to speak, as we took our positions on the opposite side of Eros on Piccadilly Circus, wondering whether we were in the right place. The crowd on the Eros side looked as if we weren't. They later regretted not having moved to our side when the parade actually started and their area was corded off. Har, har. Well, the parade unfortunately started off with the best bit and going downhill from there, as our celebrity-seeking hearts were more than satisfied to see Stephen Fry (even taller than I had expected) and Serena/Sir Ian McKellen walking up front. Three hours, a lot of walking and a lot of throwing away of flyers later, we found ourselves in Trafalgar Square listening to Serena again, begging for world peace and an increased awareness of gay rights across the globe. We were very surprised to hear that the crowd were cheering and applauding when he said that all the three biggest TV channels had shown some interest in the parade this year. I realise more and more that my home country is among the most liberal ones, which is sad, as I don't think it's liberal enough. I mean, the news can't even show a glimpse from the parade? Jeez... Of course, we realise many things are quite backward over here - people keep asking us why on earth we would move from such a technologically advanced country, and even though I'm never going to ask myself why I wanted to move, I know that things are rather old-fashioned here. "Can you issue a cheque?" (pause) "Uhmm...we stopped using cheques years ago. Do you take VISA? Have you even heard of it?" (Naughty, naughty...) But seriously, did they only just issue credit/debit cards to normal people over here? It seems like they haven't quite learnt how to use them yet. In a normal cashpoint/ATM queue it takes them up to four minutes to figure out which buttons to press. This happens a lot. Fair enough, I've had my card for ten years now, but I was never that slow, was I? These are people my own age, too, supposed to have been brought up in a computerised environment. I wonder.

I'd better post this now and download some work. They just rang from my old job and said they'd sent me some work to do if I could find the time. Well, it could be a bit difficult between playing The Sims on PlayStation and watching that new drama series on BBC2 tonight, but I'll try... *winks*

Current track: Mel Blatt - Do Me Wrong

Labels: comedy, film, gaming, name-dropping, personal, technology, TV