Why not learn Russian?

By wanting to travel around the world, it gets very useful to learn or improve language skills. Since we are in the world capital, where you can listen to dozens of different languages while you're walking along Oxford Street, London as also to offer hundreds of associations, clubs, exchange groups and whatever you want to name, most of them for free.

We've been attending several meetings by the London Language Exchange & Social group (http://www.facebook.com/groups/llanguageexchange/), from meetings in bars, where the main goal is to meet people from different language backgrounds and "exchange" this valuable knowledge, to karaoke events, where you can listen to songs in japanese.

This time, we went to a French Conversation group, held by the Euro Club (http://www.euroclub.co.uk/public/ - the group also provides classes if you want to develop your skills further in English, French, Spanish, Italian, German and even Russian), and we spent 45 minutes trying to have a decent conversation with a group of French natives that are living in the UK. After that, we turned to English and this time it was them making an effort to be understood. It was a very interesting gig, where we met very nice people and even a native from the Reunion Islands, that we've learned are still under French domain (close to Madagascar, former French colony).

There are a lot of places in London where you can improve English and learn other languages, some of them for a symbolic fee or even for free. It's not an excuse to live here and not to go to one of these events! So, for anyone thinking about moving to London but who is a little bit affraid about the language, don't bother, there are millions just like us!!!

Halloween

Halloween is a great event in UK by the umbilical influence they have from America. It's a night where everyone dresses like carnival, not always thinking in the terror or frightening mood but at least dressed of something.
In the Bar we did a nice party and I had the opportunity to do my first pumpkin. :D It was a glorious night and we had great fun!!!
Hope next year to celebrate it on the other side of the world...

Rum Tasting

Today I had a Rum tasting session with my staffmates. It is important to be updated with the trends of the industry so today was like going to a course or a conference. It was from Mont Gay, the officially oldest distillery of Rum based in Barbados. Despite the Gay name it is related to the family name of the founder and not to his sexual orientation. And a proper rum should be drank straight... :D

Anyway it was fun and simple, a little history, some entertaining moments and the actual tasting of the spirit. The last one, a premium expensive version was the 1703 version. The name it's related to the creation of the company.

300 years making rum. Rum is the spirit made from molasses which is related to sugar cane. That is why, cachaca is a type of rum because is made exactly from sugar cane.

Here u have a couple of pictures of what it was a cosy event:

Bicycle by Night

Last night I was finishing work at 4am and when reaching the bus station the damn bus was just passing by. 30 minutes at least for the next one!!!!

But right in front of the bus station was the fantastic Barclays Bike station. (website)

In Central London there are hundreds of bicycle stations (with 100 bikes each) that you can use taking from one station to another and if less than 30 minutes is totally free.

So there I went, trying to reach the 30 minutes mark in a 40 mins trip by bus.

Despite starting to rain, being lost 3 or 4 times, and going in the wrong direction it was a very entertaining event. The 90 minutes I took told me it was definitively a one off, but enjoying London by bicycle in the early hours of the day is priceless.

After being lost, seeing London Eye told me I was finally right

The highest light tower? Shard, my target!!!!

Thank you Barclays!!!! 

Family Visit

Last week was a family reunion week!!!!

All my family came, parents, brother in law and siblings. We had some amazing days, and also unbelievable weather with 20 degrees by night.

We strolled along the bank side, we went to exciting museums, we had a great night in my restaurant bar, we had a special barbeque birthday party at my Nigerian boss's house,a great Tea in Sara's Hotel, and we finalized with some shopping at the city center. Couldn't do more in 4 days!!!!

Thank you for coming, we miss you even more now!!! :D

Millennium Bridge

St Paul's Cathedral

T-Rex @ Natural History Museum

Dinning at my @Hurlingham

Mamma and Emma

Little Sara and Daddy

Patrick's BBQ Birthday Party

Mammas

Is it the Last Festival (Tham

Last weekend we had very near to our house (in SouthBank) a very interesting Festival with lots of different activities, from food, street , boat, music, etc!!!
We managed to spend the end of the day there, where we ate Portuguese food, heard korean music, watched a Brazilian Carnival Parade, castles in the sand and everything finished with great Fireworks:

Fela Kuti with Boss Toina

The other day I invited my DHL boss and friend Anthonia Okonmah to watch the Fela Kuti Show. He is a national hero from Nigeria who despite beeing very wealthy fought for the poor and she is Nigerian that lived very close to the Shrine, the place where everything happened. He is a martyr because even tough he officially died of AIDS everyone thinks it was the regime that silenced him.
Anthonia is called by her friends Tonia, but I prefer to call her Toina because it sounds very interesting in Portuguese. She asked me to translate because I always laugh when I call her this, so I call her Foolish! :D
It was a lovely evening we spent with her and her husband Patrick, we learned a lot about Nigerian culture.
Here you have some links to Fela history and some pictures of the event.

iBartender

And finally after some weeks looking for a weekend bartending job I found the perfect one for my current experience. My friends James Nassour (Lebanese) which I met in the Bartending School was looking for someone for weekends and there I went. 

It's a new place in Notting Hill, a kind of bistro restaurant with cocktail bar and a small dance floor downstairs. The opening day was this weekend and I had great fund despite felling completely destroyed after almost 10 hours serving drinks!!! 

I'm looking forward to improve my skills knowledge and experience to use in our great journey!!!! you can see some pics of the place here:

Apple Store Playground

We are at this moment in the cue for a chat with the Apple staff about my iPhone that stopped working some days ago. While we wait they give us a MacBook to play around and that's exactly what we are doing.
The result is some fun with the funny app called phone booth.
This is how we look like:

We are Chipmunks

Now we are Bugs

We Cave People

We are DragonBall

We are We

Living in a Boat!!!

Last week we went to visit some friends who live very close to us but in a Boat. Yes, they live in the Thames in a boat that does not move because has no motor, but it does balance with the waves from the river. It's a great experience and after you get used to things falling, they you are ready to live in a river. :D

I met Ibraheem when I went to a tennis meeting some time ago and we have since then been together very often, specially in the Portugal vs Rest of the World matches I organize. He is South African and has just married Maria a Spaniard from South of Spain but who has lived most of her life in Namibia. They are warm and very nice people and are also considering long time traveling. Why not? :D
The dinner was great, with some food specialities, but because he is Muslim and she has also converted and they are currently fasting we had to wait for the sunset to start eating, but it was a great night.

Here we have some pics of the boat and of our friends.

Karaoke Box Day!!

For my faithful followers of the blog this must be a glorious day, since I haven't write anything for quite a long time...

Well, this week I'm almost on holidays, there is not much work in the Hotel, so they left me with a lot of days off. Great for exploring new activities! I found an event posted by a group that I joined some weeks ago, the London Language Exchange Social, which you can find on Facebook (llanguageexchange@groups.facebook.com). First time in my life I sang in front of a group of people I didn't know! Yes, it was Karaoke's night. The venue was in a quite strange and underground-like bar in Soho called "Karaoke Box". For one hour a group of ten we paid £6/p. Not bad...The only if is that you have to consume (I wouldn't go for any food prepared in those premises...) but if you go for a soft drink, it's ok.

I also invited some brave friends that decided to loose the fear of singing (or pretending to sing) in public and they loved the experience. At least it was a good night laughing :P We met really good singers, that probably do this for quite a long time, and it was an opportunity to share experiences of living abroad and mutual interests. If we would do it again? Would you? I would definitely yes!

Girls talk

Nothing better than living abroad and share the house with other people, specially if from other countries, wich makes the experience richer.

The other day, I went for a walk around southbank and the Tower of London with Paola, my Italian flatmate, and we ended up in Borough Market, surrounded by wonderful stalls of delicious and smelly food. We stopped in one that sold traditional Pork Pies and we came home happy with our lunch. Meanwhile, our South African new flatmate, Emma, joined us for a slice of pie, a glass of french red wine and some girls talk! The perfect recipe to unleash memories and a lot of laughs. Better than a morning in the gym! ;)

PS: The editor of this post doesn't feel responsible for the bad quality of the photos, it was under the flatmates request...

Family Visit

Last week my parents had a week trip to wonderful Scotland and in between they spent some hours in London. Even though they caught the days of the riots we had some great moments together. We visited some main spots, like Tower of London and Westminster Abbey and we also visited the Hotel Mandeville where little Sarah is now working. :)
Here are the pictures of those moments: