Updatin'

Today i have to present the work i've done to my class......

Im soo fucking nervous.

Everyone here at the Slade are a bit too cool for me.

They don't really take kindly to exchange students.

Met a man the other day!

He's lovely.

Domo origato Mr. Roboto, Mata ahoo hima de.....

If your wondering what the titles for, well its my new fav song. D/L it. its by STYX 'Mr. Roboto'.

Soooo fantastic.



Ok....





Anyway.



Finally got internet in my room. You will see a lot more blogs now.....



I went on an interesting hourney without my A to Z (this is like a mini melways). What this means is that if i go wondering on my bike i'll most likely end up lost in this giant city and not be able to find my way home. Although i was pretty good. I made it all the way to where i wanted to go...........accidentally! got two pairs of Plimsole shoes (red and white) on a street called bricklane..... not too disimilar to Brunswick street.... only smaller. This is a street in Bethnel Green which is tres melbourne in spirit. Genna we will spend some time down there! I went to this cool shop and bought a book from it. The shop is called lik.neon and its store was n the cover of the book. I picture of this great cat sitting on the counter. They have 4 cats that mind the shop and they are all very friendly and inquisitive and like jumping all over the counters and what not. The main one sits on its throne and minds the front desk..... ere is a link of the book i got. http://www.s-label.com/blogimg/2007/london_indielondon.jpg



Anyway today was hotter than most melbourne weather. Well it seemed so. Maybe ive forgotten melbourne weather already!



I have photos of my trip............ but they wont load!

treacle cake...

To everyone that reads this.....

You.

I will be getting internet in my room tomorrow hopefully. I just registered at slade today and have to do the big UCL one tomorrow which will take a while.

The heads of the school at slade all ahte this one guy who is the head of painting. It was weird because they were arguing in our orientation. Im hopeing that phyllida the head of sculpture isnt that bad. Turns out that im the only one doing exchange in sculpture....... because everyone else that applied was shit! :) or that i was the only one that applied to sculpture but there are a big amount 0f peeps doing painting. I think i've fallen in love with a girl called Hemmi. She is from finland and has the most amazing accent. She has spent a lot of time in Iceland too painting striped on the road. She is studying painting and paints life size horses. Oh she is great. So there is thousands of international students at this school!!! Its great. Jeremy Bentham is a philosopher who had something to do with the school but whenever the heads of philosophy have meetings they wheel in Jeremy Benthams taxidermy body to join in! amazing! Gen you would love this. Im getting a lot of music off peeps aswell so ill have to burn some cd's for everyone. Catered for everyones likes/needs.

There is a girl called Lena who is from Finland as well but she lived in belgium. She has offered me and gen her place to stay when we go which should be fantastic. I also talked to some people from slade today and we are planning on going to octoberfest! Hooray for European beer.....
Yea but the majority of slade exchange people are people that did painting as like a minor degree thing and so a lot of them dont really care too much for art. It shows because you try and talk about someone say....... Damien Hirst and they will be like uhhh who? but Henni is GREAT! great greag great Henni. Infact Henni stole my original accommodation. I got an email about 2 weeks before i came over to london asking if i needed accommodation. These two grisl from sculpture told me i could live there its totally fine and then backed out when Henni emailed them like a week later..... They would prefer a girl staying with them which is fine buuuuuut......... fuck that.

I think ill be doing some Paris trips as well soon although i am running out of money..... fast. I think i will have to take my money for when i go through europe and put it another account somewhere! quite scary how expensive everything is. However i am working at a temporary restaurant or function thing tomorrow night and its 50's house wives and husbands themed! sounds like fun and ill meet lots of cool people there as well.

Had a nice little argument with a couple of americans in my halls. They were republicans and want Sarah Palin to win......... :S I dont want to get into the nitty gritty of it all but the only reason they want her in is because they dont want to pay taxes and have their money go to the government and to other people who "don't deserve/need it". Greedy fuckers. A lot of americans on exchange here. The majority are from america and most of them were underage at home so most of them dont drink.... and dont want to. Its kinda weird.... but hey, peer pressure always works.

anyway we are still friends. Im not burning bridges anywhere. However i heard London Bridge is falling down. Best not head down there......

I think i am in love with one of my teachers as well. Susan Collins...... my replacement Sierra or Schwartz.

Having lots of fun guys however i still wish Sal and Brent would head over. You guys would especially enjoy it. You two should move here! Find an avenue make it happen. Please..... pretty Please.

Oh yea went to a pub today with friends and got the most terrible service in the world. Sal you would have loved it! Shit food as well

Also im thinking of staying for another year. A.k.a differring my 3rd year back home. Just to live and work round europe. Its so beautiful 'ere. They seem to play really good music in most venues. I was just at a seedy pub but they played radiohead and smashing pumpkins, coldplay, pink floyd etc etc. I think msot people here like good music. Except for the gangstas.

Another teen got killed. About the 18th or something this year. I walked past his house accidentally the other day in an outer suburb and there were flowers everywhere. Quite sad but it just goes to show that the younger the gangsta the more homies they smoke....

Damien Hirst just made 111.5 million pounds in auction of his work, "all proceeds go to the artist...... and only the artist". Apparently he was hanging out in soho when his auction was on... I live sort of just above there and im desperately hoping to run into him. Sugar daddeh...

There is a perv looking at very young half naked women on the computer behind me......

Gen.................. our first white christmas ever this year!!!! i was thinking that on our return we have a while australia christmas policy party! you organise it. ill party it.

Only met two toehr aussies here which is great. Dont have to talk bullshit about collingwood for an hour and pretend to know whats going on in the world of footy.

I am going to see Peter Saville give a talk tomorrow. Compliments of Sarah Greig..... thanks Sarah.

Hey Gen if you speak to Naomi Schwartz at all tell her that i saw her exhibition and it was awe inspiring.... no joke it was AMAZING. and tell her i went to the tate and saw a Tuttle work among a lot of others.

Tate modern = fucking brill. Tate Britain = fucking brill.

The Britain had a martin creed work on..... sooo great to see. He went to slade as well. Anyway im having great ideas for work as well. As soon as i start working ill pop some photos up of what im doing on here as well.

Missing y'all.

- Treacle Cake

Photos 'n' shit

So this is Changi airport (Singapore). This is about the time i realised i didn't know where my wallet was... i spent a good 10 minutes in my bag looking for it...... i was all teary eyed and about to give up until then i found it........ in my pocket. Everything was so overwhelming..... was aboot 6:00 am and it was humid and hot as hell...... For those of you that don't know me...... intimately ;) you won't know that if i don't shave in the morning i get really irritable, red eyed, sick, can't take anyones shit and i could kill anyone. Ummm they had showers there..... luckily.....














Here is where i spent my 5 dollars and had my cold shower..... For a country right on the equator i was not impressed with the lack of warmth in the water. But the shower area kicked arse sooo i didnt mind. Time to stretch my legs and stretch other.... stretch in general.














and heres me!














You have to turn your head/lap-t for some of these because the blog editor is corked.....














Piano, fountain and flowers....... how beautiful...... i've never seen anything more beautiful in my life...... it screamed Asian kitsch. Eischoltz heaven.














I thought they were interesting at the time.













and this too..... although i'm not always bored by my crotch.














Genna...... you'll be catching this train when you get into Heathrow.
Everyone else can ignore.




































































This is paddington.... Genna you will be pulling into this when yo get off the plane.... Its a beautiful old station that is gigantic. Lots of steel tres industrial...... You get used to this kind of thing however when you live in london because everything is old..... Oh and that sequence of photos is what made me thing of the 28 weeks later scene.... exactly like it ey? innit?















This is the view outside my 'temporary student accommodation' window. There are these beautful cranes that dance during the day. It kind of nice around my area because right outside my building they are destroying a building and every day they have this massive hose spraying down a and this rubble that is getting pounded by giant heavy machinery. Shall endeavor to get some photos of that. Im also living right next to regents park..... Quite beautiful. I haven't explored it completely yet but you find many of these parks around london. Like the botanicals but lots of them spread out all over london.














Bread on desk with ugly curtain.






















































This is one of many of the parks. St James' Park. And you can see the London Eye and some other old brit building. Very, very pretty London is.



























And this is a cute little common near where Sarah lives. The rain had just halted and the sun had started to sneak in. A beautiful moment in ye olde Clapham common and this is the end of my Crapham Common blog.

G'night

Greg's long awaited/belated premier cru blogogne (only a few of you will get this)

So turns out im really lazy....... but who of you didn't know this. Well it's not entirely the laze that has kept you a-waitin' but more the fact that i don't have internet yet in my barely furnished cupboard (some of you back home will call this a flat). There is however a mirror with a cute sink underneath facing my bed.

Keepin' you up to speed......

So i was staying with my cousin-in-law Sarah and her flatmate Tara, who is amazing btw, in a suburb called Balham (just south of the river). It just boarders into zone 3. Zone 3 being the furthest anyone would want to be when staying in London. This is of course not to suggest that Balham is a trash burb (quite the opposite really). Tres Beau. I moved out 3 days ago to a place in Euston which is in zone 1 (city centre.....ish). Just on the outskirts but it is quite a good place to stay. I am within walking distance of uni, picadilly circus, Soho (gay centre), southbank (the river thames) and many many other things that i .... just haven't been around to visiting yet. When i get my bike everything will be much easier however the tube is just as good, it just hurts the pocket a lot more. Its about 5 pounds a day which is a little over 10 dollars. ouchies......
Anyway, these two ladies that i am staying with are absolutely fantastic. Tara is a professional singer/singing teacher/psychotherapist. She has her work cut out for her but is soooo lovely to be around. Can't a brother D? She loves neighbours and home and away..... she loves trash tv and is always very insightful about peoples behaviors. i have a feeling that Vanessa a.k.a Tandra would like 'er a lot. Sarah (cousin in law) is a senior web designer for a company called 26 which i visited recently. It has a cute garden outside the building which is picturesque where you can eat your lunch. You see a lot of places like this in London. Lots of common's (a.k.a common grounds owned by the local councils). London is pretty big, i haven't even been able to grasp its size yet. Sarah just took me down southbank yesterday and we went to the tate to see cy twombly's retro. Tate is enormous as well. Jumbo size. Its right along the Thames which is about 4 times the width of the yarra.... jumbo size as well.

London is made out of bricks and cobblestones too btw. Everything is old and bricky. Its very rare to see a house that is not made out of bricks. For an accurate account of what London looks like go to your local video store and hire out 28 weeks later..... watch the scene where the children are coming to the quarantined section of London and that is pretty much what it looks like.

There are plenty of hard arses in London too..... best to ignore. The most hard of the arses are teenagers...... some/many of them won't move out of your way and have trump attitudes. Its weird how different melbourne is in this respect.

There are definitely more positives to be found than negatives in this town.

I'm finding myself very very anxious for Genna to arrive as well. It is hard to explain but i feel i need someone here to share everything.

Enough 'gay-shit' :)

Ummmm so i am going to go get a job tomorrow.... it just feels weird not having any commitments and i figure it will be a lot easier to meet peeps through work. I will buy a bike tomorrow so that i don't have to find work close by. I am feeling like all my money is just going to go very fast and ive barely bought anything...... You have to be a very cautious spender in London.

And in England every year you have to buy a TV License..... Which means you just give the government like 300 bucks to be able to watch tv...... if you happen to watch black and white tv you only have to pay 100 bucks........??????????????????? even small tv's or you use your computer to watch tv programs then you still have to pay the money. All the students have been warned about watching tv's in there rooms..... they come a round frequently apparently and if they find you with a tv watching device they can fine you up to 1000 pounds????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? Greedy government.

And another thing....... London is CCTV city. There are millions of cameras watching you wherever you go. It was the first thing i noticed when i got here. Lots of police everywhere and CCTV.

Will update more..... There is a lot more to say however it's getting late.......

Oh and call or message me on +447838834252 i want to hear from you all! :):):)

p.s sal couldnt open your picture message, dunno if its cause i'm in london or what.