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!