A weekend of Speights, Banana fritters and Jerk Chicken

Well lord you'll never guess where we went last night. I am almost ashamed to admit it. Hmm should I tell you. We went to the infamous group of pubs fondly called the 'Walky' or the Walkabout. On their website they claim to be the 'coolest Australian bars this side of the planet and prides itself on providing customers with an authentic Australian experience.' The Walkabout offers good food, live sports and music with an Australian twist, including all the latest Rock hits plus the best anthems from the last three decades. It was like stepping back in time. About 5 years in fact. To a time when my weekends consisted of drinking at various places, like for instance The Bowler, KC's, The Outback etc. And when Ryan's consisted of going to The Shed. You get the picture. The pubs have sticky floors, filthy toilets, and play timeless tunes from Guns and Roses etc. This was like that. We walked in and I nearly fell over each time I took a step I was stuck to the floor so bad. Away from the range of new beers to try and back in familiar territory, Ryan caved in and soon had a speights in his hand. We sat down with our drinks, looked around, before looking at each other in horror. It was a meat market and everyone was up for some friendly trans-Tasman relations. We proceeded to drown several drinks to forget where we were and spent the rest of the night on the sweaty sleazy dance floor . We rolled home at 2pm and stayed in bed til midday. I think I regressed to my student days! It all came about because we headed out last night to catch up with an old school friend of Ryan's, Claire and her partner Michael at the Boathouse (one of our fav more classy pubs). It was cool to meet Claire properly as I've met her a couple of times with Ryan before, and they're both great fun people. This last week has also seen us move flats. We moved last weekend, after borrowing our old flatmates smart car. Not so smart, no pun intended! as the lack of a back seat and pretend boot meant it took 3 trips to move our gear. We've settled into our new place which is only a few minutes from the first. Its cosy (read smaller) but that also means its cheaper than what we were paying (£680 per month including utilities) which is pretty alright really. Don't convert it to NZ dollars! Our new flatmates are great. There's another kiwi couple, Dave and Lucy. Dave's from Blenhaim and studied physio at Otago, the same years I was at uni. Lucy is a teacher and comes from Chch. We've got an Australian guy Finn who is a sparky and so laid back he's almost horizontal. His sister Emily is staying with us at the moment too. And for our token European we've an Italian gal named Paula (pronounced Powla) who works in a lingerie store and at a pub. Apart from Paula whose 27 and me a year younger, everyone else is 25. Dave and Lucy only got back this weekend from a 3 week camping trip round Spain but they seem pretty neat so far. We're having flat drinks and nibbles next weekend. Guess that'll be our welcome do! Ryan is finished his 3 weeks up in Chalk Farm working on house. On Tuesday after the long weekend he's moving to a new site for 2 months, working in White City. It's the closest site to where we're living that he's had so far. We think he'll be working at the massive new Westfield mall being built there, as his brief for the job is that he'll be doing 2nd fix stuff and shop joinery. While I'm talking about jobs, I've got an interview on Tuesday at Kathmandu for an assistant manager position. I had an initial interview Thursday just gone for either a sales assistant position or for the assistant managers position. The guy asked what I wanted to try for and said he thought I'd be good as assistant manager, and that if I got it, they'd start me off in their Covent Garden store which is their smallest. So I'm going for the assistant manager position. Twas easier to get an interview for this than a planning interview. Saw it advertised on TNT, put in my CV one day and had the interview the next. So will see how the second interview goes. Other than our big night on Friday, this weekend saw us heading off to the Notting Hill Carnival, a massive multi-cultural festival. Its the largest street party in Europe, with more than 1.5 million people going over 2 days! There are dozens of masquerade bands with elaborate and colorful costumes who parade around a 3.5-mile route, and heaps of sound systems, playing reggae, jazz, soul, hip-hop, house and garage. There are hundreds of street stalls selling exotic foods, including curried goat, jerk chicken and banana fritters!

We took along a bag of Strongbow, which is dirt cheap cider, cos there's no bans on drinking on the streets at the festival! We saw heaps of great costumes and music. It was so packed that it was just one big crowd and crush moving in one direction along the pavements. We've got a link on the blog to our carnival festival pics so you can check out the fab costumes. It was pretty cool! It's only a month til Oktoberfest which we're looking forward to and at the end of September we've got Cat and Aaron coming to stay for a week, which we're really looking forward to as well! Think that's about for now really.