1,200 km – 80 quid

Last weekend was amaysing. This was the first time I have went away from London which wasnot studies related. My colleague Heytham, he is very nice chap, took his Spanish friends and we went to the Lake District.

Lake District is a huge National Park with a lot of mountains and lakes. It is almost 600 km to the north from London. We have spent there almost three days from Friday evening to Sunday evening.

To get there we have rented a car … I was the driver … hard time …. It was first my first time driving in UK on the left side of the road. I have to admit that it was a bit odd … at the beginning I was a bit scared and went a bit slowly and wondering on how to take the turns but after some time it became very easy.

The guys I went with were very funny and friendly. They are all friends from the time they were studying in the university in Spain. Nowadays, two of them are doing Ph.D in Cambridge and the third one is doing MBA in Columbia University in New-York and currently in London for this summer practice.

For the first day it took us almost seven hours to drive there, we came almost at 1am, which was very late. The problem was mainly because of the traffic jams ... somehow they appeared and disappeared spontaneously. For example, as soon as we approached a traffic jam, I was expecting some accident but apparently there was nothing, after a couple of miles going very slow or stopping the hash has disappeared and everybody was driving as usual .. mystery ….

80 pounds is the price we have paid for the petrol to cover the 1200km of the trip.

To be continued …

kids

I have almost forgot to update you all of a two more children which were born to my friends ...

Bialikim has a new member of stuff, her name is Rut :)
Lukazkiy family has a son ... and Dimich still hasnot updated me with the name !

My congratulations with the best wishes to them !

It is very interesting because this is the first son to any of my friends, is it a fashion nowadays to have girls ?

Felix - Daughter
Evgenish - Daughter
Hama - Daughter
Veronichka - Daughter x2
Liza – you do have a son but you live in states, which is miles away :)

fascinating ... :)

The Great Exhibition

Couple of weeks ago I have been to the Great Exhibition.

Great Exhibition is an exhibition organized by the Royal College Of Art (RCA). This is one of the most famous institutes for the art studies. They cover a very wide area of art studies including classical paining, photography, materials and industrial design and many others.
This place is special because all the students there are studying toward Master’s or Doctoral degrees, there are no undergraduate students at all(studying toward Bachelors degree)

The Great Exhibition is organized to present all the student's graduate works from around the college for the current year.

We most loved these two works:
The lamps in a shape of balloons .. very quite …


And the chairs which were made from free newspapers, they were simply rounded together.



I think it was the best art exhibition which I have attended lately. For my opinion, it is so brilliant because on the one hand it was very modern and very original on the other hand. Looking forward to the next year …. for new ideas … :)

They have pushed their luck with this poster :

Metallica

Metallica ! I think there is no person on the earth who have not heard about Beatles … the same will be true about Metallica. They were so famous ten years ago, nowadays they have faded. I like their ballad songs, but not really the fun of the hard ones. This summer they were performing in London’s biggest and newest stadium, Wembley, I think it can host almost as many as 80,000 people ….

When I was told that an extra ticket is available for their concert I took it without hesitation. The ticket was for a seating place, 40pounds, which is quite expensive.



We came to the concert with a friend of mine. Arriving there we have spotted that the standing area is better but unfortunately it was impossible to get into it. The people who had the special tickets for this privileged area were getting special silver hand bands…. which were checked….
With a bit of thinking we faked the bands by cutting a piece of newspaper and rolling it on the hand. We have covered it with the coats and as soon as we were asked to introduce it we just flashed it a bit, without really showing it … it was really stressful to pass all the security but it was worth it. We found ourselves almost in front of the stage ! It was still far away, we couldnot really see anything ….





I would say that the concert was brilliant, it was a bit mad with a lot of strange people but it was worth the effort. It is not my type of music, but they were great … a bit old ….. but definitely great !

It was really a surprise for me to find the stadium transportation so easy and well organized. As soon as the concert was finished we simply walked all the way to the tube and got inside the train without stopping …. which was amazing.

07/07/07

Am I complaining to much ? I hope not.
It was the messy month … I think the hardest through the last year. It was not really hard because of the difficult work, it was messy because the number of the events … Today was my first day without rushing around … unbelievable… I have even started reading during the evening ! What a change :)

The rain .. you might not believe it but it is raining constantly for the last month .. disaster .... I want the promised summer !!!

Another thing has happened this month, a day which could have been written 07/07/07 ... it was really funny to see it written on my mobile ....

skipping rope

I have bought a skipping rope couple of days ago ... and I must admit that it is not that easy to jump for five minutes ... this is my new approach to the morning waking up ...