It's been a while

It's been a while.

And so the London cycle is over. Like the name of our last party, we say goodbye to London and we leave for the world.

Even though London is like traveling with leaving home, it's time to actually touch it.

Thank you all for keeping our company thru this year and a half.

This will be the last post of this blog, and we will finish with a little video where we tried to show our London Life.

Goodbye London, see you soon...

Tranx Birthday

Some days ago we had the Birthday Party of my long time friend from Uni, Tranx, Ricardo for the family. He is working in Sony but he also works on weekends in a Pub so he is very keen in drinks preparation. So he challenged me to do cocktails for everyone coming to his house. And so we did, like a production line me and Ricardo and with the help of Sara and others we supplied everyone with spicy Mojitos and some classics to prepare for the rest of the evening.
It was great fun and our team worked smoothly. Who knows in the future....

It was also the first and almost only day of Snow in London!!! So after the dinner .. Snowwwww Fighttttt!!!!!!!!

Me Tranx and Nando!!!

Production Line!! Cocktailing

Sara's Photo Art

Clown Garnish!!!! 

Team photo before the War!! 

Sara targeting the cameraman!! :)

London close to an end

Hi people!!!

just to confirm that this blog will be closed in a little more than a month.

2nd of April we will be back to Portugal finishing our London Adventure.

We can't wait for the next one...

Board Games and Cocktails! Geek Spirits

What an unusual combination. It's what we can call a sophisticated world of Geeks!!!!! :)
Our friends Karl and Melanie invited us to a Sunday day spent at their house in Woking playing our great board games and enjoying the glamourous company of the quintessential cocktails.
Once more I brought my trade tools, together with the proper booze and fresh fruit and the result was as it was expected, crazy board games and night finished with a famous bottle drinking game.
We brought also with us our Italian flatmates and Hugo and Andre, so we spend a terrific day.
Cocktails go well with everything don't they?

Woking Cocktail Bar Open 

Hugo enjoying his Chelsea Rose

Sara doing her mixologist experiments 

Coriander Mojito, my creation

Can we still focus????

Unusual combination, cocktails and brains

Uhhreee Drinking Game!!!!! A shot for the one that drops the cards blowing

Drinking game winner, Melanie!!! With more shots of course!!!! :)

New Year Working @ The Hurlingham

So against all expectations we spent another New Year's Eve in London!!!! And once again working, but this time I did not finish before 12 so I could not start the year with Sara who was also working.
I had a long night working until 5am so Sara joined us and because we were not that busy we had some nice moments together with all the staff from Hurlingham.
Italians, Mexicans, French, Malis, Polish, Mongolian, Portuguese ahhh and yes, English!!!! Great staff, great people great night!!!!

Happy New Year Guys!!!!

Our great Mongol! :D Timuulin

Forget the customers!!! :D

Happy Year 2012!!!! With my best customer! :D

Sara almost Staff!!!! :D

El Classico in London

As a Portuguese football fan I love to watch classic football matches that are nowadays nothing more than a Portugal vs Spain. From one side Mourinho and Ronaldo our best football references in the world after Eusebio and on the other side two of the best football references from Spanish speaking, Guardiola and Messi. Nobody can stay indifferent to this matches and I like to watch them properly. In a great space, good atmosphere and with both sides watching. So I've been organising sports nights in some pubs and more recently in a bar with an amazing wide screen that they use to movie screenings. I invite also spanish friends because it brings competition to the audience!!!
Spain is still one top but we will see at the end...

big screen with HD quality

Adrian and Keith, my Goense mate

Keith Adrian and John

Me with Keith Ib and Victor from Barcelona

Fair Play! Taking a picture with Victor's jersey

Sliding Birthday

My 26th Bday party was celebrated with all our friends in a quite uncommon way. Throughout the city, there was a multiplicity of winter programs and activities like, for example, in Waterloo, the Christmas German Market, full of food and drink stalls; and the London Eye experience, where you could opt for a ride in the giant wheel or just be adventurous and wear some ice skates. Well, that's exactly what I thought it would be the perfect way to celebrate my Bday.

The result was a funny end of a Sunday afternoon, with lots of laugh and adrenaline (happily, no one fell in the ice ring, but almost...), finalized by a well-deserved mulled wine and traditional german food to warm up our bodies and spirits. Thanks to all who could come!

(Left to right) Paola (Mimmo was too scared to even try...), Ibrahim, Joao and Maria. It was common to ski in group, it was saffer...:)

The rest of the "warriors"!

Charging batteries at the German Market (Waterloo).

DHL Xmas

As a strong tradition in UK, company's Xmas party have to exist no matter what. A place is booked, some food included and if lucky some drinks.
No difference from DHL's and we even managed to have a lots of free drinks, using the account of the General Manager who was quite drunk.
It is also tradition to get drunk, even if you are 50 years old and the most senior person in the room. You dance, shout and do all crazy stuff like weddings, and next day we are all around a table acting serious has nothing had happened.
Very strange this people from the North... :D
These are some of the pictures. The place was crap, but we had some fun!!!!

Me, the big boss and the great Aravinda!!!!

Celso and our boss Tona!!!!

Tina Turner and Freddy Mercury

The Imperial Trust Team

Sarah's Birthday

30th of November was the special day. Sarah's day!!!! :D
I took the day off and we spent the day in the center of the World, Greenwich!!!! Where everything begins!! Beside all the special characteristics of the place there is also a great museum of Clock evolution. How did time keeping started in the world? How did everyone in the world had the same time when the only mean of communication was the telegraph? Very interesting indeed. We then had a special event on the Planetarium where we learned about constellations with a very funny French astrologist.
To finish the night we went to a Lebanese restaurant!!! but without the belly dance!! :D Delicious!!!
It was a wonderful day, finished with a colorful cake!!!
Happy Birthday Sarah!!! :D

Greenwich Hill!!! Beautiful area

The center of the Universe

There is a laser above London with Longitude 0o

Special Garnish

Dream Theater @ Old Trafford

For every football lover to be able to watch a match at this stadium is part of a life goal!!! And indeed you want be disappointed. The atmosphere is amazing and you can breath football even before going to the stadium.

I was lucky enough to go with Tim a mate whom I met playing football and who supports intensively Man Utd. I took me to one of the oldest pubs in the city which is full of football history with pictures from the last 60 years of fantastic teams and games.

Yes indeed it was a great European Football night, and for the first time in history Benfica finish the game celebrating!!!

Sorry Tim, European second division for you this year!! :D

Me, Tim and his local mate

George Best at his Best

Go go Benfica

Our View

Sorry Tim!!! :D

We are back on business guys!!!!

And the cloud of doubts and delays is over. We are sorry for so many weeks without news but we must confess that our moral was at the lowest level since we started this adventure.

We only started to save money in the second half of the year, and for that we had to sacrifice even more our life here, just as an example, in the last 6 months I believe we ate out of home 2/3 times!!! And in 14 months I went out for drinks twice!!!!! We don't do anything that costs money besides sport to keep our sanity. We have the gym and my football, which is now only twice a week. We also have the cinema pass, for 15 pounds a month unlimited movies. This means I watch an average of 8 movies per month, nothing good escapes from me!!! And I say I go because our schedules are very frustrating. I wake up at 7am to work, Sara starts to work at 16.30, I finish work at 17, Sara comes home from work at 2am!!! So our coincident time is from 2am to 7am!!! It's like 2 ppl living alone in the same house. We also have been working weekends all this time, I for example come home every friday and saturday at 5am!!!  And for a long time we did not know when we were going to leave.

But, after we decided and reaching the end of the year we started to really the end of the tunnel we are back to high voltage. It has been a great waste to live in this magnificent city without really living it to its most, but it may be a strong reason to come back properly. Future will tell.

Yes, the year started we a shopping frenzy to take advantage of the Christmas sale. Our shopping list is extensive, you guys can see it here. Our objective is to buy everything we need, including the travel insurance and flights (around 3500£) and have 6000£ to start our journey. That will be possible at the end of March. So the departure is confirmed for April!!!! Uhhhh Uhhhhh

The next posts we will try to recover everything that happened in this gap. But the countdown is on... 75 days to ignition..... :D

Meet The World Project Update

After one year since we started our travelings we need to assess the situation and share it.

To be loud and clear, our dream of travelling around the world will happen, one way or another.

Our idea of coming to London to save money quickly and learn the hospitality skills has proven to be of greater difficulty. The recession is also in London so the great time of good and easy wages is gone. After 8 months in London working in lower conditions we had not save a single pound.

So in the Summer we decided to save in the thing that made us spend more money, dinners out and drinks. We also stopped doing costly extras (like paintball) and opted for free or great price programs. (using groupons) This attitude with the extra job I got has finally given us proper savings and we hope to reach the end of the year with 5000 pounds of savings.

Sara has also decided to look for a job in her area, since it will improve her cv and will contribute to increase our budget. It's been quite hard to find in London and she has to make an online assessment to be able to provide a service that will increase the possibility of getting a job. We'll see...

In the meantime we have been trying to find a job in the Cayman Islands (nowadays in all Caribbean islands) and due to the hurricane season and also recession (it's true Caribbean is also in crisis) we got nothing. We are trying everything, from bartending to management ( I have 5 different CVs ) but until now, almost zero feedback.

I'm even going to do a Personal Assistant course (for free using the hospital training) to get a diploma and apply to be a PA in all the financial companies in the Caribbean. Now that I'm a bartender why not a secretary? ;)

So our decision is made, if by March we do not find a job, we will have enough money (8000 pounds) to go for half a year without it and the journey will start.

And we'll try to make it start the most adventurous way by taking a ride in one of the hundreds of boats that cross the Atlantic with the help of volunteers... a type of boat surfing instead of couch surfing ... and off we go... :D


Posted in the 'Cloud'

BoardGameGeeks

Yes, I managed to find more geeks like me!!!! And yes, we had a great day playing what we like, board games!!! :D

We played a classic and much awarded game Settles of Catan (http://www.catan.com/) and then a recent game base in the fantastic TV Series, BattleStar Gallatica. (http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Battlestar_Galactica:_The_Board_Game)

The Gallatica game is quite interesting because it's a cooperative game, meaning we all play against the game not against each other but there are 1,2 or 3 traitors between us. So there is a lot of intrigue and acting.

I've met Karl and Melanie in a board game event and so they have come already twice to London (they live in Woking) to play with us and our italian flat mates.

We had a hell of a great time!!! And the Humans lost....

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...