Category: London

Happy New Year and a lot of loose ends

thegirlinthecafe

Chinese New Year
China in London

The nice thing about living in London is it’s diversity in cultures. There is a rather big Chinese community in London, and yesterday was the celebration of the Chinese New Year. The Year of the Pig has now officially started. The streets look beautiful with the red lanterns and there are a lot of activities going on the coming days. A good way to get an introduction to China before actually going there.

One downside of this is if you happened to have booked a trip to China quite a short while ago. Normal people would prepare that some time in advance so there is time to get all the visa’s in place. Other people, people who don’t think that much about things, don’t prepare at all. And then it can happen that you find out that it’s the Chinese New Year, which is an important celebration for the Chinese, so important that the Chinese Embassy decided to close for a few days.

The same Chinese embassy that was supposed to take care of my visa?
Yes them exactly.
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Eye’m in the red for you

thegirlinthecafe 7 Comments


It doesn’t matter where you’ve been – how far
It doesn’t matter how run down you are
Or if there’s nothing perfect left in your heart
No, it all means nothing, it all means nothing, it all means nothing at all, at all

I’m on the edge for you
Losing my head for you
I’m in the red for you
Tonigh, tonight
Until my hopes fall through
There’s nothing else I can do
I’m in the red for you
Tonight, tonight
I’m on a rescue
 (Tina Dickow)

I’ll return soon with stuff that makes a little bit more sense, my head is a bit busy with my film script, travel planning and things my head should not be busy with, at all. In the meantime, London knows exactly how I feel, and I might have taken one of my best London pictures yesterday. Beautifully dramatic. The Eye was in the Red for this, and I am in the Red for you. I’m on a rescue.

Here is the whole picture. A few more New York pictures are in the pipeline, before I get back to London for a short while.

The Sultans Elephant 2

thegirlinthecafe 1 Comment


The Sultans Elephant in front of The National Gallery

So what did I do all weekend you wonder ? Well I walked behind a huge Elephant. I didn’t plan to, but I simply had to. After friday’s impressive appearance I wanted more. So on Saturday, it swept me off my feet again, first of all by appearing even more beautiful and secondly by stopping all traffic on Trafalgar Square (which is a very busy point in London) and march on until it stood right in front of the National Gallery. Incredible. Fantastic. Magical.
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TGITC NI

thegirlinthecafe 2 Comments

Warning Sign
Warning sign

– Do you work round here?
– Yes.
-Interesting?
-It has its moments
A lot of paper.A lot of pens.

That immediately came to my mind, when I entered the Toothing Jobcentre Plus Office (cool name huh?) to have my interview to get a National Insurance number. (Needed to be able to pay incometax – why do I want that in the first place ?)
But after a lot of questions, digging in my past, and a lot of pens and a lot of papers, well they always end up asking the obvious question : “Why did I come to London ?”
And everytime someone ask me that – I don’t have a clear answer. Not one than fits on a form like that anyway. As the real answer being “Ehrm, well I saw this film, and, bla bla bla bla bla, and I got a hunch that London could be a funky place to live, and so – here I am.”

See I am probably never going to get a NI number with an answer like that. So the answer ended up being “To Work”. Gosh, how boring. And I know it isn’t true.
But she seemed to be satisfied with this answer, and looked through all the papers, proving I was the girl, and saw my bank note. “Ahhh, HSBC bank” she said.
“Yeah” I said, “so would it be possible to get an NI number with “42” in it?”

It will take them 8 weeks to decide if they are going to give me an NI number or not. Did I overdo it with the “42” ?