Blog – Page 48 – Where is Phil now?

Yay – off to New Zealand !

Sunday 02 February 2014 – Hong Kong / Sydney and Auckland, New Zealand.

Last week had finally seen some wintery weather arrive, a cold wind and rain made walking the streets of London on the first week after I finished work less fun than I would have liked. Though, I did make it out for a quick look at some street art and the purchase of a new record.

The great news for the week was meeting El at Camden tube station after she finished work on Thursday and heading off to Heathrow Airport to start a two week trip to New Zealand – 22 hours of flying to Sydney, with a lay-over in Hong Kong.

The first leg took eleven hours and was not too bad, the plane was only half full so we were not rammed in like sardines as usual. Service was good and the food and drink not too bad, though of course I did not sleep as much as I would have liked. We arrived in Hong Kong on time and were whipped off the plane and with a group of others taken aside and asked if we would like to be put on an earlier flight to Sydney – we did ! This meant only an hour of transit time – yay.

I had been to Hong Kong once before, in 2007, and did not have the best of experiences. No fault of Hong Kong’s, but I spent eight days of my five day trip in a private hospital with a serious bacterial infection of my liver. I am quite keen to go back there and see the city, it looks amazing, but there was no time on this trip to stop. I did snap a couple of photos out the window of the airport terminal. Good to see the smog has not left the city!

The flight to Sydney was another nine hours, not as long as the first leg, but those hours really dragged and made the flight seem a lot longer. The plane was also very full which always make the flight less pleasant. It was a nice plane though.

We arrived in Sydney two and half hours earlier than originally expected at 7:00 am, it was a bit of a haul though customs but we were soon out of the airport and on to the (very expensive) train to Circular Quay. We had a hotel in “The Rocks” area of downtown Sydney and were very fortunate to be able to get in to our room so much before normal check in. After twenty four hours of travelling a shower was definitely top priority.

We had heard that the view from the roof was pretty cool so we headed up there before we left for a walk. El ha has not been to Sydney before, but as we only have twenty four hours we wanted to focus on the harbour area.

Apparently sunrise over the opera house was well worth the early rise, but there was a very large cruise liner between us and it, hopefully it leaves before then.

We went for a walk around the opera house and over to the botanical gardens when we got a call from El’s Sydney friends and we arranged to meet them in Manly where they were having lunch, which worked for us as we were heading over there later in the day to visit my friend Nicole.

I love the ferry ride to Manly, one of the best harbour crossings, it has great views of both the Opera House and the harbour bridge and on a great day it just a magic trip. It was a great day.

We had a very nice lunch with El’s old London friends, Mel and Ian and then shared a bottle of bubbles with Nicole before heading back over to the city side in the late afternoon. We were both knackered after the flight and feeling the effects of jet lag and no sleep. It was great to be able to catch up with Mel and Ian and Nicole in one of Sydney’s best locations, plus get to see the harbour all in one go. Stupidly I did not take any photos in Manly, though I did get a few when I was there last year.

We had a walk around the harbour side for half an hour and then meandered back to the hotel to try and get some sleep in, before getting up at 5:45 for the sunrise at 6:15. The cruise liner had left while we were out.

We had a reasonable amount of sleep, but I was definitely a bit thick in the head when we got up on time for the sunrise. It wasn’t particularly spectacular, but it was pretty and I am glad we got up for it.

After a monster breakfast in the hotel (well, I had a monster breakfast) we took a cab to the airport, it was only slightly more expensive than the train – and so much easier! We had a late-morning flight to Auckland that was frustratingly delayed, though not by much. With the time difference we did not arrive almost 6:00pm. The airport was busy and it took ages to get out, which was annoying. Auckland airport always seems to be a slightly different configuration each time I fly in, and this one didn’t work at all well – massive bottle neck at customs….

My sister picked us up and we drove up to my mum’s where the whole family were waiting to join us for tea. I was very happily surprised to see my daughter was there, she arrived back in New Zealand for Christmas with her BF and I was not expecting to see them until next week. It was great to see all three “children” together in one place for the first time in over five years. They are lovely !

It was wonderful to see my family again, and introducing El to them was a wee bit nerve wracking, for everyone I suspect, but it all went well and it was a nice evening. Two weeks will seem like a very short time I think.

A brief overview of the last three months…

Wednesday 29 January 2014.

It has been an awful long time since I lasted posted, or even wrote a blog post. Time just seemed to pass by so quickly and the very few things that happened that were note worthy have all become memories as I didn’t have the time or the inclination to type them after they happened. The main thing that has happened, and the number one reason for not writing – or more realistically – doing anything worth recording, is that I have been working !

Now, there is no immediate need to get all excited in thinking that after six months or so of looking that I have landed myself a cushy IT job worthy of my experience and paying me the salary to match ! Nope, I have been working in a pub – earning just over minimum wage pulling pints and pouring glasses of wine. It is work I have sort of enjoyed, but work I am going to cease at the end of January when main bit of news number two happens – a trip back to New Zealand.

To back the truck up a bit – I had become a bit dispirited with applying for IT Management roles and not getting much of a response from the recruitment firms I have to deal with for most of the roles I am interested in. As I have mentioned before, there are plenty of interesting vacancies, but there an awful lot of people applying for them. I guess my two year ‘sabbatical’ is not being seen as a positive by some. I am using that as the reason for the lack of interest in hiring me anyway.

El saw a post on FaceBook from the Queens Arms, a pub near her home in Walthamstow looking for staff for their newly renovated and about to be re-opened premises. I popped in on a whim and ended up being offered a job on the bar with a start a few days later. Not having worked in a bar before I was quite excited about the whole thing.

I have leant an awful lot working there, the work is harder than it looks and I have found it to be physically exhausting. I have met some very nice people there and have had a few good laughs, but a couple of weeks ago I realised it was not for me and have now resigned and will finish up when I go to NZ. I do have renewed respect for those who work in bars and restaurants – some make it look so easy ! I guess I will just go back to being on the other side of the bar in the Queens upon my return.

What else has happened? I have reached a few anniversaries in the past few weeks.
Two years since I left my last IT Management job at PMP.
Two years since I left New Zealand on my travels.
One year since I first met El.

I cannot believe so much time has gone by and while I feel I have not done much in the last wee while I have achieved a huge amount more than I expected when I started to think about leaving work to go travelling, thirty or so months ago. I will have to confess that my original plan, which was to tour Europe in the summer of 2012, has not actually happened yet, I got distracted on the way !

One of those distractions was of course meeting El, we first met on the 25th January last year and we have had some good times since – hopefully with many more to come. Tomorrow we head off on a two week visit to meet my family in New Zealand – via a quick stop in Sydney on the way. El has not been to either place before and I am very much looking forward to showing her around, and of course introducing her to my family and friends. It will all be rather exciting I think…

Then back to the excitement of finding a job again when I get back in February.

A quick summary, I just needed to get this out of the way !!

Here is a photo of El I took at a Christmas night walk of Kew Gardens back in December. It was great fun and was worthy of a blog post. I just never got around to doing one…

Millennium Bridge

28 January 2014 – London

I have not logged into here for ages and have just noticed the date of my last post – wow, it has been such a long time. I do have a post in the wings, a general, sort of quick wrap-up of those missing months, but it has been in the wings for rather a long time. I must finish it in the next day or so as I am heading back to New Zealand for a holiday tomorrow and I do not want to have old blog baggage hanging over my head…

Rather than finish that post off I am going to procrastinate on it further by doing this post instead.

I took a brief walk along the south bank this afternoon, I went to have a look at the Landscape Photographer of the Year photos on display at the National Theatre. I was suitably impressed, and also depressed at my lack of out-put this year, plus the fact I really am going to have to get the Canon or the wide angle lens looked at as the images are really ‘soft’ and I am not sure why.

The secondary purpose of the walk was a vain hope of getting a sunset – though the forecast was for showers, it had been reasonably fine all day. I have been following a couple on Instragram who have been coming up with some great London images lately and I had been looking to them for some motivation, and sunsets always make for some great images.

There was no sunset… But I did like watching the clouds come in from the south and skip over the Thames so I took a few photos of that instead. The light was quite flat and the sky grey so I have converted and them all into monochrome.

Trees by the IBM building.

Rain starting to fall as the clouds cross over Waterloo Bridge.

I was going to walk over to St Pauls as the light was looking quite good and there was the possibility of some dramatic shots, however as I walked up the Millennium Bridge the rain started to fall – and the Big Issue seller scurried away soon after.

I took a few shots of St Pauls over the arch of the bridge, before calling it quits and walking home.

This is my favourite shot from the walk, the clouds were sweeping in, slowly filling the clear patches of sky.

It was good to get some practice in before my New Zealand trip, and I have now decided I will take the Canon rather than the smaller and lighter Panasonic. A decision I had been pondering on for a few days. Whew!

Africa in Focus reunion.

Sunday 06 October 2013 – Cambridge.

I cannot believe it has been four weeks since I was in Edinburgh, and almost five months since I arrived back in London. Time has just flown by and I have just realised this is the longest I have been in one place for almost two years. I may as well mention that I am still looking for a job, and starting to get a wee bit disheartened by the whole process now.

On a more positive note one year ago I was just starting off on my travels on the good truck Malakai in Africa. My trip was comprised of three separate tours back to back to form one long ten or so week journey that was one of the real highlights of the past two years. The first leg of the trip was from Cape Town in South Africa to Livingston in Zambia, via Namibia and Botswana and for many reasons it was the best part of the trip. One of those reasons was the people on the truck, the crew were awesome and the other guests fantastic, we just all seemed to gel. A real surprise that after three weeks of heat and dust and living in tents and the back of a truck we were all still friends.

This weekend we had a small reunion in Cambridge. Canadians Dave and Nancy were travelling again and were passing through the UK and with Sanjeev and Vaishali recently moving to Cambridge from Boston it seemed like a good opportunity to get together. El and I went up for the weekend.

We met Dave and Nancy at Kings Cross Station and we all caught the fast train up to Cambridge, where we parted ways with El and I taking a room in the Lensfield Hotel and Dave and Nancy heading of to Sanjeev and Vaishali’s. It was such a ‘typical’ English hotel – kind of old fashioned, slightly creaky floors, narrow hall ways and a bathroom that sort of worked OK, if you don’t mind the shower spraying all over the floor. It was perfectly fine though!

It was the weekend when a lot of the students were returning to university, so as well as there being a lot of people around a lot of the colleges were closed to the public which was a real shame. We were passing Pembroke College just as a small visitors window was open so we nipped in for a look around. Pembroke is one of the smaller, lesser known colleges – and while it is not as lavish as some, it was still very nice in the grounds.

We crossed the River Cam and walked along the backs of the colleges before crossing back over and watching the punts for a bit, not as crazy as Oxford !

We wandered around Cambridge for a while before heading back to the hotel to get ready for dinner.

We took a taxi to Sanjeev and Vaishali’s house and had a very enjoyable evening with them and Nancy and David. We were also lucky to have a quick Skype call with another fellow traveler, William who lives in Brisbane, where it was very early in the morning.

After a food English breakfast on Sunday we checked out of the hotel and went walking again, the intention was to visit Kings Chapel but it was closed for the day so I had to contend with another photo from the outside 🙂

We walked around again looking some coffee that wasn’t in a chain restaurant but didn’t seem to find many options (A business opportunity ?) so ended up getting a take away from a chain and sitting in All Saints Garden for a while. A nice spot to relax and watch the world go by.

We had lunch arranged at a pub just over the river from Midsummer Common so we took a slow walk along the tow path under some pretty glorious sunshine.

The six of us from last night were joined at lunch by Carol and Jackie who had driven in for the meal. El and I had a train to catch back to London so we were unable to stay for long at lunch, but it was lovely to see them again and much reminiscing was had. We drank a toasts to those who could not make it and a special one to Bill who had a stroke a couple of months after returning to New York – we all wish you the best Bill.

It was a great weekend, so nice to be able to see and keep in contact with such a great bunch of people. I look forward to another one.

A day trip to Brighton

Thursday 29 August 2013 – Brighton.

Wow, another month has almost gone and I am still unemployed in London. I have had one interview since last writing though in the end this did turn into a job – oh well, such is life and all that. Just to let you know, I am actually doing OK with this. I have my moments of doubt that I will ever get a job, but I did know it was going to be tough and take some time. I am pretty happy though, so no need to worry.

Not working does mean I get to get out and about when I am asked and today was my first trip out of London for a couple of weeks. Photographer buddy Steve had a few days off work so we decided to head down to Brighton and have a wander around, sample a couple of ales and take some photos.

I liked Brighton, this time I saw a bit more of it than when I was down there last September. The main downtown area is very orientated to tourism, with some cool markets with some interesting shops.

There is quite a few big murals around the market area and I have put most of these on a separate street art post on my Photos by Phil blog. But I had to include one or two, and these cassettes are just everywhere.

Just behind the shops I found this small scooter chained to the side of a house – weird…

The light was savage so I did not end up taking too many photos, plus I had visited the pier last time I was down so though it was of the key sights in Brighton we decided not to visit it.

We did take a walk along the beach.

And walked around the outside of the totally bizarre Pavilion. It was built in the early 1800’s and has to be one of the more unusual buildings in the UK.

Back into town again we walked down some of the narrow alley ways that run through the old part of town, before stopping for a cooling ale or two before catching the train back up to London.

Though we did not visit this pub with its cool mural up near the station.

It was another good day out, but sadly I was not feeling particularly photographically inspired so ended up taking less than I should have. It is only an hour by train.

This weekend El and I are off to Edinburgh, I hoping I get some photo mojo back then as I have been really looking forward to this trip !

Brighton

I have started a second blog

Friday 23 August 2013 – London.

As I have stopped travelling for a while and my sight seeing of London and the UK is a bit sporadic I have decided to start a second blog that I can use to document my interest in street art and the other bits and pieces of modern London that I see that are really outside the original purpose of Wheres Phil.

The blog is called Photos By Phil and its address is photosbyphilplatt.wordpress.com. Someone else has the photosbyphil address but disappointingly has not done anything with it ! It is linked off somewhere to your right.

So, from now on this blog will focus back on all my sight seeing and travelling and that sort of thing.

Cheers

Phil

A quick trip to Cambridge.

Wednesday 14 August 2013 – Cambridge.

One of the good things about not working is that I do get to go and visit place like Cambridge during the week, and while it was still busy it was not stupid busy. For me this is a very good thing. Seeing as I have touched on the subject of employment I may as well provide a status update. No change. Still no job….

Back to more interesting things. I had arranged to meet up with Sanjeev in his new home town of Cambridge for a wee tour before catching up with another Africa trip colleague, Jackie later in the afternoon.

I took the direct train from Kings Cross and it was only a 45 minute trip, fast, smooth and very on time.

Sanjeev met me at the station and we walked into the centre of Cambridge, as Sanjeev had a bike I decided I would rent one as well and we could ride out of town and visit Madingley Hall, just because it looked nice !

The bike I rented was the smoothest riding push bike I have ever rented, it rode like a dream. Madingley Hall is about five miles out of town and it was a nice country ride on roads that were not too busy.

The hall is now owned by the Universities of Cambridge and there was a function inside so we could not go in which was a shame, the oldest part of the building was started in 1543. It was pretty cool.

Weirdly there was a Buddha figure outside, cool.

Along with this grotesque- which I thought was quite cool too.

It was a lovely spot, very peaceful and calm, one of the pleasures of not being in London !

We rode back into town and down the far side of the River Cam to the town, past the ‘backs’, which is the name given to the backs of the famous colleges on the other side of the river. There were of course a bunch of punts out on the river.

St Johns College (I think, stupidly I did not write the names down!)

Kings College

The Mathematical Bridge

We had a bit of time to kill before we met up with Jackie so we visited the Round Church.

We met Jackie and had a bit of walk around the main streets, we were going to visit Kings College Chapel but there was a 7pound fee and we didn’t have the time to make it worthwhile.

So we did what all true English people do and went to the pub! The Eagle is one of the oldest pubs in Cambridge, dating back to the 1300’s. In far more modern time Watson and Crick used to drink here while unravelling the mysteries of DNA. I guess most places in the old part of Cambridge have an interesting history.

I had to leave after a pint and did not get to catch up with Vaishali who arrived just after I left. It was great to catch up with Sanjeev and Jackie again and I am really looking forward to a bigger Africa reunion in October.

I caught the train back to London and had a panicked time preparing my first tapas for dinner with El in front of the England V Scotland football match.

It was a good day and I am really looking forward to exploring Cambridge again soon.

Columbia Rd flower market.

Sunday 11 August 2013 – Columbia Rd Market.

Sunday was another good walking day and as El had never walked the Lee Navigation tow path that I ran on Wednesday night we decided that today was a good day to do it. El also wanted to visit a market so we decided to add to the walk and start in Shoreditch and visit Columbia Rd flower market on the way.

We up and out fairly early and discovered that the train we were on was not stopping at Bethnal Green station as it cruised on through and kept going all the way to Liverpool St. This made for a slightly longer walk than planned, and I managed to resist any urges to disappear up side streets to snap any street art on the way.

Columbia Rd flower market is incredibly popular and gets really crowded, with both locals buyin flowers and plants and tourists there to see the flowers, stalls and shops and to listen to the rival stall holders with their Cockney accented voices calling “Come on love – 2 for a fiver, lovely peonies “. It is definitely worth experiencing.

Of course as this is the east end and in between Shoreditch and Hackney Rd, there is a wee bit of street art that is just unavoidable ! I did like this sign.

An Alo right next to the market.

After one of the best coffees I have had in London we started the walk up Hackney Rd to the Regents Canal towpath and on back to Walthamstow. Another lovely piece by C215 on Hackney Rd.

It was a long walk and we stopped off for a pint at one of the few canal side pubs on the way. We thought about lunch but food was really expensive, more so than in Highgate yesterday. I am sure the food was delicious, but 6:50 pounds for a burger in a pub on Lea Bridge Rd is a bit steep, even if it was riverside !

Getting up after the pint was a painful experience as both of us suffered from seized up knees and it took a wee while to loosen up again as we walked. Though we did stop for a pretty good roast lunch at The Chequers; a recently renovated pub in Walthamstow market. Apparently Reggie and Ronnie Cray hung out here while they were in hiding from the police back in the 60s.

It was another good, though tiring, day out, a four walk and a couple of pints with El. I definitely cannot complain at that.

No Future – a visit to Highgate Cemetery.

Saturday 10 August 2013 – Ham and High.

The gorgeous weather from earlier in the week continued into the weekend, with mixed cloudy and clear skies and a nice early autumn cool temperature providing the perfect excuse to go outside and do stuff. We have had Highgate Cemetery on the list of things to do for ages and today was the day we finally went and did it.

We took the train to Gospel Oak station and walked up from there, the further north west we ventured from Gospel Oak the posher the surrounding houses became and we were soon walking through the small village near the cemetery entrance and I was eyeing up places to visit for lunch later on… It was all jolly nice as the English would say.

The entrance to the cemetery is up a surprisingly long hill, and I only mean this by London standards, definitely not Auckland standards ! London is just so damn flat any hill is exciting. I may have found a new place to go and run as I really do miss hills, especially a long slow climb. Yes, it is weird…

Highgate Cemetery has two sides, east and west wing, the west wing is only accessible via a 12 pound guided tour so we decided to skip that and just view the east wing which was 4 pound and had the Karl Marx grave – which was its key attraction I guess. I will do a visit to the west wing another day, maybe when it is covered in snow.

The cemetery was initially started in 1839 and expanded over to the east side in 1860. Unlike the majority of cemeteries that are religious based this was purely a commercial entity – and open to all. It was closed in the 1970s when it was no longer profitable and lay in decay for many for years. It is now run by a trust, hence the fee. It is still open for people to be buried there, but there is not much space so I imagine it is not easy. Though there are some well known people here there are also a lot of ‘new’ gravestones of names I do not recognise at all. Some of the more interesting new residents are;

The wonderful author Douglas Adam, who passed away so young in 2001.

And Malcolm McLaren.

The artist Patrick Caufield had the best modern gravestone I have seen.

As I mentioned earlier one of the big ‘attractions’ of Highgate is the grave site of Karl Marx, who has a large memorial on one of the big paths near the entrance.

This is actually a new plot for Karl as further into the cemetery there is an old grave stone and I do wonder why he was moved ? Perhaps to allow for some of his family to be interred with him ? I really hope it wasn’t because the first site was not a big enough memorial.

In the main the cemetery is very overgrown, some areas have been tidied and others are just buried in a tangled mass of weed, ivy and trees. This is one of the key reasons people come here and I would love to revisit in the snow for another look.

We walked back down the hill, past some of the old houses here and then stopped for lunch in the village. The food was not cheap, but it was very very nice !

We decided to walk go home via Hampstead Heath station so popped into the park near Parliament Hill, I definitely will try for a run here sometime soon, a very nice little hill and I can run on the grass as well ! It has a great view of the city of London and there were a lot of people on the top of the hill taking photos and picnicking, we stopped and I took a couple of photos as well.