weblog for Sound and Vision SSII
for the last few days i’ve been taking it easy. working nights but during the days touring london, going for long bike rides, runs, and visiting museums. i’ve also had time to work on my website. i’ve updated the movies page and the folio page. everytime i look at the site long enough i feel it is missing something….or many things. i’d like to take a class i web design to work on my site further.
tysonandrew.com
atys
0300 hours saturday morning: i finish a double shift at the bar and get home to my packed bags waiting for me at my place. i do a 180 back out the door down to roseberry taxi stand were we get a taxi 1/4 mile down the road to farringdon station. the cabbie charges £5 ($10) for a £1 journey. after we are dropped off that the farringdon station i take out our train tickets to gatwick. the same tickets i bought at the ticket station a day before for £18 ($36) from the ticket guy who said there’d be a train leaving from farringdon to gatwick at 03:19. this was not the case. we found the station totally shutdown and gated up. so we had to call the cabbie back up and pay £50 ($100) for him to take us to the airport. he drove like a bat out of hell all the way there (even though we had plenty of time) so when we finally go there we practically feel out of the zippy little toyota.
after check-in we did some shopping at duty-free and had some food. the easyjet flight boarded and the flight was short and sweet with a good landing. we arrived at malpansa airport which was dirty and crowded. packed onto a bus for the 50 min ride through the funky industrial wasteland that is outter milan. as we neared the city it got worse. we passed through long brown avenues that stretched as far as the eye could see and passed row after row of graffiti covered dirty public housing. almost every billboard had a 90% naked woman on it advertising everything from mobile phones to olive oil. all major streets had prosaic trolley cars from the turn of the century. while all other euro cities now have futuristic trams that look like more space crafts than trollies milan still has pre wwII shoeboxes on wheels powered by a messy net of thick cables overhead. it was like the entire city was under a fishnet stocking. the mean looking cabbie took us to the intersection of our hotel and dropped us off. it still took us 10 minutes to find the best western wading through crowded streets with all of our luggage.
when we finally found the hotel we checked in and walked up to the fourth floor to our tiny dark room that had a view of the alleyway behind the building. i took a long shower and changed clothes then got onto the internet to order a flight back to London. there was no way i was spending £151 per night at a junky-still-under-construction best western with no gym, spa, or pool in a closet of a room that overlooked a alley where old ladies hung their bloomers out to dry.
i found it was cheaper to buy one-way tix from ryan air than to change the easyjet tix. the catch was that the flight left at 6am so we’d have to do the 3am shuffle all over again. whatever, as long as i was getting outta dodge that was fine. we decided to take a walk around town to find a good place to eat. we had paninis and gelatos then looked in a shoe store and strolled in a dirty public park where huge piles of dog/people crap covered the tiny patches of clumpy uncut grass with shady young italian/gypsies lurking about. we got back to the hotel and sat around watching cnn euro until falling into a restless sleep until jarred out of bed at 3am with our wake-up call.
we caught a cab back to the train station and another dirty bus to bergamo. we were both hungry so i went to get us some coffee and pastries but to my dismay found that i only had a 100 euro note which is completely useless. every cashier i presented it to reacted the same as if i had presented them with a handfull of feces. each cashier stood back in horror and spit out a long distressed string of italian adjectives and adverbs proclaiming ‘how dare you come up and try to pay with a 100 euro note!!!’ so we just sat at the gate hungry in a mob of chattering schoolgirls and gypsies. we where then bused to the ryanair flying schoolbus where the chattering schoolgirls screamed, laughed, and giggled the entire way to stanstead.
upon arrival the clean and modern stanstead airport was a sight for sore eyes. we took the express train to liverpool st establishing a little normalcy to life. we then walked back to our flat from farringdon station and are now just trying to forget what an awful trip we just had. i think i need a another 5 months to recover spiritually, emotionally, physically, and financially before i go on another ‘vacation’.
the breakdown:
there:
plane tix lndn £90
train tix to gatwick lndn £18
cabb tix to gatwick lndn £50
bus tix from malpansa to milan £20
cab tix from trains station to hotel £2
hotel room milan £151
…and back
wireless internet to buy tix £5
cab tix hotel to train station £6
bus tix from milan to bergamo £12
plane tix bergamo to stanstead £90
train from stanstead to london £30
tube from liverpool to farringdon £12
£486 travel
£80 food
£566 or $1,100 for an exhausting trip to a shit-pit. money well spent.
I am officially finished the spring term at CSM and all is well. i passed the term but like most of my fellow students did so with a grade of: satisfactory. no gold stars or accolades.. just a pass which is fine with me. i received insight from my tutor and was told that while i definitely put a lot of work into my project i need to choose quality over quantity. whatever..
after wrapping things up at school i headed to work where a law firm made up of mostly giant rugby playing south africans drank more than any group i’ve ever seen before. ‘two more beirs!’ they’d say in a mixture of english, dutch, german, and what ever other accent thrown in. they went strong until i had to practically turn out all the lights and bang on pots and pans to get them out. the strange thing is that i will see many of them none the worse for wear tonite at happy hour. last night they prob left the bar at 3am went to another bar til 5am then were all at work by 7am like nothing happened. if that were me i’d be in the hospital. i don’t know how they can do it.
well, gotta pack my bags for milan.
aty
The other day i was at borders in angel and was checking out all the design mags. i was in a hurry so i picked up the latest issues of ICON (based in London) and the periodical Domus (out of Milan). when the checkout girl scanned the Icon it flashed up 5 pounds, which hurt considering i automatically do the dollar/pound currency exchange for everything here so i just paided $10 for a magazine. ouch! as if that wasn’t bad enough she scanned in the domus which rang up as 11 pounds or $22. double ouch!. $32 for two magazines. needless to say for now on i’ll just go to the school library to check out any mags.
after being shell shocked on the price i took the mags back home and have been reading each word…i figure i should considering what i paid for them. i must say i LOVE icon. the graphic design and layout is 2nd to none. the articles are clear and to the point and photography is amazing. i wish i could say the same for domus which is written first in italian and then translated (not very well) into english. they also have every article split into a italian section and an english section. why not just print an english version and an italian version? what if Vogue came out with one issue each month with each article split up in english, french, german, and italian.
needless to say i don’t think i’ll be buying any more issues of domus…. icon? well, as cheap as i am i just might fork over the $$. it’s worth it.
aty
this morning i woke up with the sun shining brightly. i decided to take advantage of the bright weather and go on a long bike ride. i grabbed my camera and bianchi and rode first down to CSM to put some school stuff in my locker then i headed north from southampton row up to hamstead heath via camden high street. i rode thru all the goth punk stores which then turned into upscale little boutiques as i approached hamstead. upon reaching the large park i turned around and made my way back to hoburn/clerkenwell. i think i’ll try to bike all of london before i have to pack up and head back to nyc.
now i have to ride back to school for a send-off party for the german and italian students who are heading back to their perspective schools. it’s too bad b/c they are the friendliest kids in the class. now that they are leaving csm will be a pretty dull place.
after the party i have to go into work at old china. i have to work each night including st paddys day… then catch a train at 3am to catch a plane at 4am to milan. should be fun
tys
Since i’ve been here in london i’ve worked bartending at a small dim sum bar off of rosberry ave near the farrigdon tube stop. it’s a nice family owned place. the food is really good and the people are friendly for the most part. it is the only place i can work at with my busy schedule at CSM. working in a bar here in london is very different than working at a bar in nyc. besides be lower paid you get hardly any tips. in the states i’ll admit i am a bad tipper. unlike my friends who usually leave at least a dollar everytime they order a beer i will wait until i leave after about 6 drinks and leave about $2. when i eat i always tip about 15% of the bill. this is the bare minimum and i am sort of ashamed of myself for being such a tight wad.
over here they never tip and unlike in germany there is no service charge added to the bill. they just don’t tip. during a busy friday night rush where there is standing room only i will have guys and girls (yeah, there is no gender difference- both are cheap) will wait and wait for that 10 pence change. just picture this… you are with a bunch of friends sitting in the back of the bar and you are sent to get 5 beers. you head over to the bar and order but want to get back quickly to talk to friends right? wrong. no you will wait and wait for that 10 pence… even if you are about to piss your pants…even if your properly wasted on your 10th beer… no, that 10 pence is very important and you will wait and wait.
i remember at a local nightclub in nyc i saw bartenders pour overflowing buckets of dollar bills into a communal trashbag that i’m sure is filled up and divided up at the end of the night. here, we are lucky to get a few pounds from people who eat. it’s really sad. but… i guess that’s their culture….not mine.
It’s finally warming up here in London. The cold, drab air and cloudy skies are breaking up and the daffodils are blooming in the parks. i am working longer hours at a local bar in order to pay for a trip to milan next week. my class will visit different design studios and factories. i’ve only been to milan years ago so it’ll be nice to explore.
i will try to keep an updated journal over the next few weeks. i guess i just lose modivation when i re-read my blog seeing how awful they are. oh well, what can you do…
ATT
