Things we've been doing while we're waiting.....

for our apartment!

Well - the biggest thing that we can possibly say is that we've managed to reach a new plane of enlightenment thanks to some help from our new mate.....



Walked past his house, popped in and he gave us the path to enlightenment - consequently we're now sorted. ;-)

Actually we just walked past his place on Baron's Court Road while we were flat hunting. He was almost directly next door to:



Which Damo thought was almost equally impressive - anyone who can design aeroplanes has got to be a bit of a champ....

This week we had a bit of drama with our flat mate - she had her handbag stolen on Tuesday night, and we both get a phone call from her telling us, and also informing us that the handbag had her house keys, and also the address to our flat..... Great thinks us....

Nikki was all the way at the other side of the city, and Damo was still at work, so we were pretty much resigned to the fact that our flat would be ransacked when we got back to it.... Thankfully it wasn't - we had a bit of money floating around at that time (which we've sorted out now), but we had our 2 months rent for the new flat in cash in the flat, so we were packing it.....

Speaking of flats - hopefully we've finally sorted a place out to live - we're waiting to hear back about our reference checks, but we're a little worried at the moment because we are basically starting from scratch as far as credit history goes, so it makes things extremely difficult.

The flat itself is not too bad a place - we're based at a place called Hammersmith Grove, Hammersmith (go to http://maps.google.co.uk and type in 'Hammersmith Grove, W6' and select aerial view, and we're about halfway along the street - up from the Hammersmith undrground stations.)


(This pic of Damo was taken at the Design Museum in London....)

It will, however, leave us absolutely mollified financially. But on the plus side, we absolutely positively can't wait to get into our own place. Damo is pretty happy too because it's probably going to put him about 10 mins closer to work too, so that's a good thing.

Nikki's facing a bit of a dilemma at work at the moment because they're wanting her to go full time, and she is about to tell 'em to go jump (well not in so many words..... but you get the point), so it's going to be interesting how they take that... even though it shouldn't be because she's only temping, but they treat her like she's a full-time employee.

We went out on Friday night with Steve (Damo's mate from his old work - he just got back from 2 weeks around Italy and France) down to Fulham and grabbed a bite to eat and went out to a place called the Havana Club - we had a pretty good night, though not without the usual bull-shite of trying to get the last tube home. So far it's always turned out to be a bit of a nightmare trying to get one of the last tubes home. But we had a fairly decent night anyway.

Last night we decided at the last minute to go and see a stage show we'd heard about called 'The Vegemite Tales' starring Blair Mcdonald (ex-neighbours, ex-big-bother runner-up), and as it turned out, it was it's final night, and it's been running for about 5 years. We hadn't pre-booked and we figured that if we couldn't get tickets off a tout (the name they use for scalpers over here), we'd be pretty much stuffed - Nikki had called earlier and they said that sometimes there might be bring-backs, but we weren't really holding our breath being it's final night - anyway, we went up to the box office at about 7.40 for an 8.00pm start, and asked if they had any tickets and they told us that they had a couple that we could have - we were stoked.



Went and watched the show and it was absolutely hilarious - about a share-house in london of a bunch of aussies - it was piss-funny.


The set...

Anyway - we had a blast - it made Damo a bit nostalgic and miss home a bit, but it was great!

Today (Sunday) Nikki took Damo to a F1 design exhibition at Shad Thames (near Tower Bridge) for Damos birthday to have a look around - he his was in element and loved every minute of it - it was sensational, and it finishes up in a couple of weeks time too, so twas good to get in when we did.

On the walk on the way there, we went past some old stomping ground - this was all the area (over the road from...) where we were dossing when we first got here...


(This picture is particularly for Leigh - Nikki thought she'd be interested to see how much concrete there was here, with one small amount of water running through the middle of it - naturally Nikki dropped her phone in the water.....)



*Damo speaking*The F1 exhibition was sensational - there were definitely times when I was getting goosebumps - hearing Senna talking about the way that he used to concentrate prior to going out qualifying, listening to a Honda V10 getting tuned etc.

It was sensational to read a bit about the history of ground effect and actually hearing some of the people that came up with these ideas talking. Seeing Colin Chapman, reading a bit more about Sir Jack Brabham - there was so much cool stuff to see - it was a bit overwhelming. *end Damo speaking*


Mario Andretti's JPS car...


Nigel Mansell's Championship winning Williams...


Damo next to the Ferrari F2004.... One of (Perhaps the) most dominant F1 cars of all time....

There are a lot more photos but we won't bore you with the details. (Well any more than we have already...)

*Nikki speaking*Bore with the details? You guys didn't have to go to the thing! ;-) *end Nikki speaking*

Anyway, things over here are going swimmingly at the moment, and it would appear at this point in time that we've brought the good weather over with us - they are having one of the mildest October's recorded - there's been all sorts of weather records set since we've been here - Damo reckons it's because we're so hot.... ;-)

Then again it could be global warming from all of the crap that comes out of his mouth.....

Nikki is really loving getting to see her neice and nephew on Skype video - Damo wishes he could say the same.... ;-) *Damo speaking* I know, I know - yeah I'm easy to reach on it.... *end Damo speaking*

Stay safe all, and we miss everyone heaps!

Moving House

OK - sorry we've been bad with our updates lately, but we've had to start looking for new accomodation.

Damo has started his new job too, and it's out at Stockley Park, which is out at Middlesex. On a bad day, it can take 2 hours to get to work, and the same back home.... but on a good day he can do it in 55 mins.... it's crazy. 55 mins isn't too bad for a commute time, but 2 hrs is bad.

We've finally found a place, though our house exploits have definitely not been without drama. We've been screwed over by a couple of landlords twice already, and we're not even into one of the places yet.....

But we got confirmation today that, all things going well, we'll be moving into our own place at Hammersmith on the 21st October - we are sooooooooo looking forward to getting our own place. It's all been a bit of a drama thus far, but we're reasonably happy with the place we've ended up with. We're at a place called Hammersmith Grove. It's about a 5 minute walk to Hammersmith Tube station, which is a fairly good spot for us.

We're toying with the idea of getting a car, so we're probably going to get a rental car for a week to see if it's going to be worthwhile.

Anyway, we haven't got many photos this time around, because our life for the last couple of weeks has consisted of little more than going to work, coming home from work to go flat hunting, coming home and cooking dinner, cleaning up, going to bed - rinse and repeat..... We've been teeing up appointments for every night, and also both days on weekends. If nothing else, it's been good to get out and about to check out the neighbourhoods!

It certainly hasn't been that good viewing the apartments though - we've seen some pretty dodgy places, and our budget is even reasonably fair - for £250 a week, we went to one place that looked like it should have been on a horror movie set - the bathroom was like something we'd never seen before! It was hilarious - a dude answered the door half-naked, closed the door again, asked us to wait, we're pretty sure that he went and extinguished his bong, and then came back and asked us in - the lounge room had a bed on the floor. I'm reasonably certain that we hadn't seen such a dodgy toilet and shower in our lives....

There've been all sort of different places that we've seen. Some good, some not so - but it's finally over now, thank god!!!!!!! It has been an interesting experience though - one day, we had a 6:30pm viewing at Hammersmith, and Nikki had to get from Liverpool St (the other side of London), and it was raining, cold, windy - she had no credit in her phone to ring Damo and tell him that she was running late - which wouldn't have been any good anyway because he was stuck on a tube for an hour and half on the way back from Heathrow... we still ended up making out appointment somehow!!!

The next day, was almost more or less the same, only this day it was capped off by being stood up by the Real Estate agent - they pulled a no-show. We were pretty happy, that's for sure.

It's certainly been a fairly traumatic experience, that's for sure - Damo said that he didn't have anywhere near this much stress on either of the houses that he bought, so it's odd that it's so full on just for a bloody rental place!

Anyway, unless we get screwed again, we'll be in our own place in 2 weeks time! We're having the flat warming in 3 weeks time if any of you want to come over for it.... ;-) We've even got a spare bed!

We saw Ree and Bruce and the kiddly-winks this morning on Skype - it was great to see them!!! Ryan was hilarious - when he could see Nikki on the screen he was trying to hug the screen... It was so nice to see them all. We also found out this morning that Nik's dad, Adrian, has gone and bought himself a fancy-schmancy new car with a sports kit on it - Damo asked him when they were going to go cruising for chicks - he told him that he wouldn't want to show him up now!!! :-)

It was strange today - we were walking along past Earl's Court tube station, and we heard a buzzing noise coming from a bin straight outside the tube - needless to say, we were a little concerned, so Damo mentioned something to a London Underground worker who was standing right near there, and his response was "We don't deal with that sort of thing - that's not our area - we just look after the tube" and then he left it alone. We headed off at a fairly brisk pace thinking it might be best to get out of there sooner rather than later.....

We've had a fairly domesticated day today, catching up on washing, cleaning the unit, and we've pretty much finished packing ready to get out of here when we can. We haven't given notice yet, but we've got to give 2 weeks notice, so we'll probably have a bit of overlap but it won't be too bad.

And now that we've got the unit sorted out, our next trip shouldn't be too far off either! (Thank god.......)

Anyway, we hope you're all well - we miss you all heaps and we've heard whispers that some of you might be coming over here, so we are looking soooooooooo forward to that excessively.