Wall/Street Canvas Vandals

Creation of Adam - Graffiti Style

Ah, the East End. If one lacks a sense of direction, beware of your surroundings. A map would be helpful to have on hand. Or perhaps a trail of colorful pebbles. The twists and turns of the alleys along with dead ends can be frightening to a newcomer.

Half of one wall painting

Whether you are lost or not, make sure to pay attention to your surroundings. The neat thing about the East End in London is the large amount of graffiti that covers any empty wall an artist (and other) can vandalize. In between the vintage clothing boutiques to the Bangladeshi and Pakistani restaurants, there lurk the ever-growing and forever-changing creatures, waiting for you to notice, wanting you to notice, around every corner you turn and in any direction you walk. From walls to shop shutters, all kinds of art await your judgment, some sadly fading into obscurity while others stand poised and demanding all your attention.

Print-on painting - Japanese Olive from Pop-eye

Some walls are far more intricate than others, with many artists competing for a spot or working off another person's existing addition to the public canvas. Some like the wallpaper methods. Others prefer the traditional paint. Vinyl stickers to graffiti stenciling also exist too.

Its a George Double-ya love bomb.

My favorite one is the below simply due the colors and the roundness of it. A grey-ish tone with only blue serving as a vibrant color. Must more eye-catching this way. This one probably had the clearest artist signature than some of the others. I would guess that its a light-house. No idea.

Do you notice me? - Blue Wooden Pallet

I shall call you, Pinky!

The only street artist I've ever heard of before heading to London was actually Space Invader. I was pretty excited to see that he had tagged the East End with his infamous tile art. There were 2 other artworks, if that's what they were, displayed nearby too. A pink alien dino eating a cookie and a destroyed car with a green snitch like ball crushing it.

Om nom nom, a classic, and a rusted snitch

In the alley/backend where these 3 were on display was a food market going on. I didn't really try anything, but a lot of the food stands were foreign foods like Chinese, Indian, etc. Pretty smart since the graffiti tours would end up going through there with hungry patrons ready to dispense gold for some form of sustenance. Not a bad place to eat either with 2 weird works of art to think about.

One man's wreck car is another man's work of art.

Lots of shopping was done in this area. A great place for vintage clothing or thrift shopping. I bought myself a Halloween colored dress. I still wear it from time to time. Probably the only orange article of clothing I own today.

Voila! The final work of art spotted outside one of the larger, vintage thrift shops we visited before leaving the East End. If you can't tell, its about 3 stories tall. Pretty impressive work.

Caw!

A Twist on the Past

It's been a while since I last thought about this blog. I had intended to write about my daily adventures, but I must have been preoccupied with living in the now (or then, I suppose). As the past 2 posts were quite lengthy with no photos, I thought it would be appropriate to start now.

Fountain in park near our flat

The great thing about the UC London study program I did was where our student housing was situation or even the classrooms themselves. Yes, classrooms. The program was based more in an institute type setting rather than the universities other programs had.

London had many parks scattered about to create the garden city effect. There were quite a few around my area, like the park the fountain above was in. It was just around the block. Convenient and lovely to stroll through.

Please excuse the mess. My 3 person shared room.

Our student flats weren't too bad. Located right in the center of London, we could walk to most things in about a half-hour or so. Our flats were worth about 1 million pounds. The only bad thing about living in London are the mice and water pipes. We had a little friend visit us twice and my shower room kept flooding due to bad piping.

The best thing about our neighborhood?

THE BRITISH MUSEUM

A museum within a museum!!!

I truly adore this museum. The exterior and interior architecture and design are so awe-inspiring and calming. The above is what you seen upon entering into the main area. The ceiling design is my favorite. Just triangles creating a spherical pattern. I probably stood there dazed and in wonder. Most of the permanent exhibits are of European history here, with rotating global exhibits year round.

Do you feel nauseated?

Bonus! I wish I had a DSLR or anything fancier than my 10 year old camera. I tried to take a spooky shot of the British Museum during one of my nightly strolls through the city. The blur is quite strong in this. Hopefully, the small size mitigates the nausea a bit more.

Models aka Ladies of the Night

August 24, 2011

Lucky for us UC Accent students, we didn't start class until this Monday actually. Instead, Thursday served as an orientation day for us to learn about the program and various parts of London from a walking tour. For some odd reason, they thought it would be smart to have us students wake up EARLY to attend an orientation only a few hours after arriving into London, still jet-lagged and all that good stuff. We were served black coffee or tea with cookies as a breakfast... bitter, bitter tea I am not used to at all... ASIAN tea!!!!!!!!

An informative session but due to the lack of sleep regularity and warm environment, many of us started to drift off. On the bright side, we got free stuff from the security team in charge of our city/borough of Camden Town in London... I still don't know where/how we are situated in London.... Anyways, got a rape alarm (not a whistle): a must have as mace is not legal in the UK, a portable bag hook dealie for tables, a clip to hook you bag to you to keep from being stolen so easily, a led flashlight with a uv light, and supposedly, we are to be getting free invisible ink type pens. Awesome. Thus ended the early morning.

After that, from what I can gather from my memories, I believe I went around with my roommates to the grocery store to buy food. I'm not quite sure. It was either that or I bought food. Either way, I went somewhere and then back to my place to eat lunch or something. Killed some time before I left with my flatmates to go on a tour of the city by foot by a tour guide. Excited as I get to see the city a bit before exploring crazily on my own.

After having our midday meal, our group set off to find this person who would guide us through the jungle that is Central London. (As I type, it is probably the 6th siren I've heard today. It happens everyday.) Being separated from the rest of our group, my flatmate Monica and I went off with this tiny, pink-jacketed old lady who started off our tour right in front of the "school." (I quote school because it's really just a building with rooms in it, not a university at all. It's like a cram school situation. People either live next door to the school or where I live, which is more nicely kept flats.) The building across from school was the Trades Union Congress, which meant that if any strikes by workers occurred during our stay, demonstrations would take place in front of the building and we'd get to witness it all. It's a ghastly statue at the front of it.

Anyways, besides the facts stated above, she talked about how the aristocracy of England came to be and how it works today. Very hard to remember the facts but I'll spot the incorrect shit here. Man, I really want to write a story from doing this thing. Let's write one Annie. Yes, let's. Agreed. Why not pick up the old one and start it again. Blah blah. Journal wernal. Facts(?): Forgot a lot of it... but some king of England gave out the titles Duke and Earl to the first ones of those titles as a way of gifting loyal subjects with taken land from monasteries destroyed and such. Pretty sure it was King Henry the Eighth but what the hell do I know. So, he gave land to the first Earl or Duke of Bedford which is where I live and then to pass it on after only girls were left, they married the daughter off to another great aristocrat nearby which then combined the fortunes together, leading to the creation of Russell Street and Russell Square. She then proceeded to tell the girls to marry any dukes or earls as they are filthy rich and still own most of the land people use in London, no matter how ugly or uncharming the man is.

Since London suffered heavy casualties during WWI, much of the city's architecture relied of being built fast and re-developing the city over design and restoration. This explains why there are really not too many nicely designed buildings in my area. We went through an alley way sort of street which seemed shady to me, but is probably not and ventured onward to the more interesting parts of the city. If I were to try to get back to where we toured, I would have no clue and be lost, especially since I didn't know anything about where I was as it was only the 2nd day. After several twists and turns, we ended up at Soho Square (mind you, squares are parks) and stood in the middle of the park where we blocked traffic from many directions due to the smaller but still enormous group of students on her tour. Apparently, the Soho area used to be a rich, aristocratic area but as London lost its glamour to the rich, the poor started moving in and took over, thus creating slums. In the later years, Soho became the center for media entertainment. In one of the buildings around Soho Square, Paul McCartney's office stands and used to showcase all his gold record awards but have been recently moved to a new office. A little ways down and the 20th century fox studio is also in that same area. There is also a St. Paul's church, I believe, in the same vicinity. What was curious was that a lady was tacking apples onto a giant board and made art from it. It was to promote Swedish culture in the Square as a Swedish fair was going to be held.

We finished staring and taking pictures in the park and left to wander through other parts of Soho, which is another borough or city or town in London... I DON'T KNOW what it is. On our way through the streets, she pointed out a large building with scaffolds in the front and how it used to be a great lord's house and was lavish and beautiful inside, though probably no longer used as a house. As we walked along the front of it, she also explained why some homes have blocked up windows or filled in windows. At one point in London history, the government imposed a glass/windows tax which meant the more windows, the more taxes you had to pay. To prevent the window tax, most owners just filled in their windows to be exempt from paying more taxes. Lovely tax to pay. How ridiculous. Not sure why this tax exists but its a British thing.

As we strolled down the street of supposedly diverse shops and restaurants, we happened to noticed a sign above the entrance to some flats with the world Model on it. Now, if you knew history, you'd know that prostitutes at one point, had to operate like this in England as it was no longer legal to solicit business on the streets. No more streetwalkers, but prostitution is still legal. A good tip off is that there is a red light next to the model sign and above, the rooms have names of the girls you can hire for the night. Hence, models are ladies of the night here in London. As we kept walking, we passed a lot of interesting shops and many theatres that played musicals along this area. London is, after all, a great city of the arts and theatres are found everywhere. I leave myself here as I need to sleep for my cinema class tomorrow... what a boring blog I have. And its even more dull when I say it's boring. It's a like a boring placebo, only its more like I gave you another dose of the boring drug and its now traveling through every single vein and artery and capillary in your body. I hope you die from boredom from reading this.

Anyways, it's the next day now.

Lost on Tubes

It's been almost a week since I've arrived in London and I've finally decided to make a blog to log what I've done over here. I haven't done too much things so this won't be hard to write down everything. Obviously, this is more for myself than for anyone to read since knowing me, I'll quickly forget what I've done and who I've done it with. Pictures will pop up later but not now.

August 23, 2011

After an uncomfortable ride on the plane for roughly 10 hours, I have arrived at my new home for the next 4 months. I brought with me, only a duffel bag and a normal purse/bag as carry-on for the plane. I followed the masses from my flight to claim my luggage. Confused as usual in these situations, I looked all around the room trying to figure out where my luggage would pop up. I saw what looked like my bag and tried to get a closer look but had to walk all the way around and drop my duffel just to drag my heavy luggage off the conveyor. After getting my bags sorted, I went through customs smoothly and was off to figure out how to take the Tube to get to school. Of course, I stood confused first, like before trying to figure out where I went for the customs line... silly me. Anyways, I remembered the e-mail from school telling me how to get to school from two different tube lines, so I decided... stupidly, to take the line that no longer stopped at the station I needed to get off on for school. I stood there lost in the tube entrance trying to figure out how to buy a ticket from the machine, only to ask someone who pointed to me the LINE for PAPER tickets. Thank god, or I would have been standing there, heaving with my heavy luggage and bag for hours, as a lost soul.

After pissing off the ticket seller at the window (because he could not understand my American accent and I could not understand him), I got my ticket with directions on how to get to school and was off to ride the tube. I got on the tube and took up two seats the entire ride until I saw that people needed to sit down and moved my heavy huge duffel bag onto of my huge luggage that was already blocking the aisle. After reading the tube map on the train for awhile, I decided to transfer to another line just because the walk was going to be too far to get to the school from and the heavy luggage was no fun to walk around with. Now here comes the fun stuff. After getting off the first train, I walked in teh wrong direction for about a few seconds, only to realize the exit was the other way. I blocked everyone's path with my luggage and tried to make my way up stairs to the next station to get onto the train I needed. From here, I climbed my first flight of stairs and second flight to get to my destination. After scurrying to get onto the next train, I rode it backtracking for only one stop and proceeded to exit. This was the killing part of my journey.

I was already tired and winded from the heavy luggage and the unexpected heat that met me since I arrived in London. By now, my arms were already tired of carrying all the weight. So, after seeing that I had to carry my luggage up... 5 flights of stairs was not a welcomed sight. Not only did I have to stop a lot, I also blocked a lot of people from getting up the stairs. After I emerged into the light of London, I wound up on the great street of Oxford (not that I knew where I was at all). I asked a group of elders in front of me where Tottenham was and they pointed me to, well, the street perpendicular to the street I was already on. Silly me.

So, I ventured on and made my way through dangerous traffic and hordes of people to reach the school. After arriving, I was greeted with a locked door and stood outside for about 30 seconds until another student in the program pulled up in a cab with his mother. Luckily, a lady who worked in teh office was coming back from lunch, I suppose, and let us in. I was giving my keys, along with the other boy and we made our way to the apartments of Bedford Place. I parted ways with the boy and his mother to my own flat, a couple "blocks" down, and was lost on how to get into my flat until a man from the office saw me. Funny, to enter my flat, I use a sensor key to open the door. Everything here is opened by card keys or sensor keys except our own flats. I should say the sensor key is for the entrance to the complex I live in

Long account I know, but really, I just want to document it all. Long story short, I got lost a lot in what to do and literally almost got lost in the city. Found my way to the school and flat eventually and met my flatmates and roommates. End of the first day. Really didn't do much after coming in except unpacking. I believe I ate ramen the first night as I did not go grocery shopping until later on. Didn't meet too many others in the program as everyone was busy unpacking, resting, or not even in town yet. FIRST DAY HERE DONE!