Dont go anywhere! I'm almost back

Hello Hello! Long time no see! After more than 2 weeks of hiding I am back to blogging… Hopefully you still remember me..

So what have I been doing in London for the last two weeks? Well most of my spare time has been occupied by looking at and looking for flats. I can honestly say that this is my new hobby. I have seen dozens of flats over the last two weeks… Some were small flats. Some were dirty flats. And there were the small and dirty flats. Nice flats with weird flatmates. Weird flats with nice flatmates. So here I am at an internet cafe.. still homeless but with a light at the end of the tunnel.. but enough about my living situation… 

This post is about friends.. You see when you are in a new country and constantly meeting new and exciting people… you also get to realise how much you love you friends. Let me explain. I'm sure most of you have experienced this. The single biggest most important thing i will miss about Sydney is my friendship group. Over the last hundred years that we have known each other for we have developed not only personal jokes but also phrases and words which have somehow found their way into our vocabulary. The former mostly comes from movies involving Will Ferrell or Ben Stiller or both.. The latter were in most cases made up by friends, probably in a state of extreme intoxication. I will not go through them all as you might think I am a little strange but just to illustrate the point… one of the more commonly used made up terms is "awkweirdity" (an extremely awkward, uncomfortable and may be a little weird situation which lasts longer that you would've liked it to). So now you know. Over the last two weeks I have experienced the urge to use these jokes and words in a number of social situations (mostly at a pub) only to realise that no one will understand what the hell I am carrying on about.   

I should be back up and running in about a week or so.. no photos until then I'm afraid... Here is a little one from Haslemere where I went last weekend for the Gold Cup Polo finals I must say the English countryside is just as I always imagined it! Beautiful!

Hello London!

Hello! It's me and I am back! Landed in London this morning and since my body clock is utterly confused anyway, I decided not to lose any time and go out exploring... These are a couple of shots I took with my little p&s camera...

When travelling one faces a number potential worst case scenarios. The most common ones are:

- sitting next to a smelly person on the plane

- sitting next to a screaming child

- being sat next to a larger person because you are little and between the two of you will manage

I normally experience at least one of these when I travel and this trip was not an exception.  800 passengers, 14 hours and 55 minutes travel time and one screaming child. The problem is that you cant ask him to stop and you kind of feel guilty thinking mean thoughts.. but this child pushed me to a limit. The little boy was sitting behind me and apart from the constant screaming, he also continually kicked my chair and managed to pull my hair a number of times... Now that's just bad manners! 

Anyway, I'm here now and absolutely loving it... So many things to do in the next couple of weeks! So bare with me if I am MIA for a little while longer..

Hope you have all been well! 

tulips...

 tulips are my favourite flowers.. they are simple, understated, elegant... no big hoo-ha... what you see is what you get. p.s.Sorry about being so unsocial lately! The move is taking up so much of my time!.. I still do read and appreciate all of your comments! Will be back to normal soon enough hopefully xx

a little bit yummy...

the cabbage...

Last weekend I went to Melbourne to visit my good friend M and celebrate her birthday. M is an interior designer and has lots of cool-little-quirky things in her house. Unfortunately, I only had my old point-and-shoot (which you cant even buy anymore) with me and the photos from it are complete rubbish but I thought I'd share this one anyway...

M had a number of flower arrangements in her house and one of the flowers looked like a ... cabbage! It looked much nicer than it sounds but I thought I'd check it with M anyway in case I was going mental.. Turns out - cabbage.

Cabbage or not, I think it looks different and really cool so here it is....

a very long post about favourite things...

so I have a bit of good news to share with you all... HUGE NEWS actually! I will shortly be making a move to London and I cannot tell you how excited I am about this! Unfortunately it does mean that I will have less (much less) time to blog :( 

 I do however promise to do at least one post a week.. more likely than not it will be on sundays.. which will also in a way validate the name of this blog (state of sunday.. get it? get it?).. Actually that was the idea originally (not taking into account the fact that I do really like the name Sunday) - to write a sunday blog but turns out - i have too much time on my hands!

Anywho.. I digress...

With every move there comes packing... and with every packing there comes cleaning... As I was sorting through my stuff.. trying to pack the last 10 years of my life into 5 little boxes I found my old stationery box.

I bought it when I was still at school and once I used up all the stationery that came in the box, I started using it to store birthday cards, letters and other sentimental rubbish. You could also say I kept it for things that I love unconditionally and things that make me happy. As you already know I'm big on things that make me happy - I've done a post on 'happy' books and 'happy' greeting cards previously...

So I thought to myself, what the hell! Lets take it up a notch and do a post on ALL the things I hold near and dear to my heart (shoes, bags and alcohol will be covered in a different post - just kidding :))

So here it is.....

• obviously my favourite books which you have met before
• obviously my favourite birthday cards which you have also met previously
• my teddy bears: Andy and unnamed
• one of the many Sex and the City DVDs I own
• Russian Matreshka doll (did I mention I was Russian? No? Oh well.. now you know :)
• A framed front cover of The New Yorker magazine (here is another piece of trivia - I am NY obsessed)
• An old polaroid picture of me and my good friend F
• A lense cap - this supposed to represent my camera but clearly I couldnt have my camera in the picture because it was busy taking the picture...
• A letter from my cousin from ages ago
• An old photo of my mum and I (this is not that time nor the place to be modest - I was a damn cute chubby baby!... overinflated ego anyone?!)
• My mum's engagement ring - my sister had it and then i got it when i turned 18.. it's kind of like a good luck thing - hard to explain

and there you have it.. until next time xx

p.s. needless to say arranging things and then taking photos of them and then taking them onto the balcony because the light is better and arranging them again did make the packing process a little longer than I expected...

Sunday lunch at Watson's Bay, Sydney

smile...

I really like cards. Postcards, greeting cards, thank you cards. I have kept pretty much all the birthday and christmas cards I got in the last 10 years. I also sometimes buy cards for no reason or occasion just because I like them. These are some of my all time favourite cards. The one in the front I bought myself and it is my favourite. It hangs inside my bathroom cabinet and every morning as I reach for my toothbrush, I look at it and it makes me smile...

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend!

the unlikely....

My friend A (who also happens to be my housemate) brought this huge sweet potato from her boyfriend's mum's garden... It was so huge and ugly that I couldnt help myself but to take a photo! I love photographing interesting textures in B&W... I dont think of it as ugly - think of it as texture and form...

make me happy books...

No matter whether you read a lot of books or pick one up every now and again as a form of sedative.. there must be a couple of books on your shelf that make you happy... I am talking about when you for no particular reason pick that book up and flick through the pages or read a random part and it instantly makes you happy.. For the last ten years I have been a bit of a gypsy, moving from one apartment to the next I cannot really afford (space wise) to have a library.. So I normally give them away to friends or sell them on e-bay. But these babies are not going anywhere. They make me happy... Le Petit Prince is in French and I can hardly understand it but I keep re-reading it hoping that every time I will pick up something new. Oscar Wilde I love for the beautiful use of English - I experience an unexplainable joy from reading (or re-reading) his plays. The Sartorialist - you cant really read this one but although I know every photo in the book I still look at his photos almost every day. I love portraits and to me The Sartorialist is not about fashion but about portraits, hundreds and hundreds of portraits. What are your happy books?

Insomnia...

Couldn't sleep the other night.. after couple of hours of tossing and turning I was blankly staring at the window and I noticed a number on the glass. I've never noticed it before....I'm guessing it's the measurement of the window which must have been scribbled on the glass by the builders and then wiped off but the imprint stayed...

Rainy days in Sydney....

So as most of you are aware from my constant complaining, it has been raining a lot in Sydney over the last two weeks... Here are some of the random 'rainy' shots...

Aussie birthday...

Last weekend a friend of mine hosted a birthday dinner party. I thought it would be interesting to share some of the photos with you because I bet you this dinner party was very different to any other dinner party you've ever been to... The dinner party was held at a beautiful property about 2 hours drive from Sydney. The tables were set up.... in the stable! And we are not talking an empty stable.. the horses were still there! To make it even funner the dress code was blacktie. Here are some photos from the night...

bye-bye Adelaide...

I am back from my trip to Adelaide and as much as I would love to tell you all about it, I'm afraid you will find it awfully boring because in the last three days I saw a lot of different meeting rooms, powerpoint projectors, my hotel room and not enough daylight. However, I thought that some pictures would be better than no pictures. You will have to excuse the poor quality as these were taken with my old Ixus80 point and shoot (half of its buttons dont work because i spilt punch on it about a year ago and never got it fixed).. Oh and by the way.... it STILL raining in Sydney!

(The office building where I spent most (read: all) of my time)

(Super-Coffee-Man painting on the wall of the coffee shop -  needed that as I had to get up at 5am) 

(Sunset over Adelaide - view from my hotel room)

(Is it just me or does this cloud look like a plane?)