Getting Used to London

I got to sleep at around midnight last night, which left me eight hours sleep, but that wasn't really enough to combat the jet lag, but I wasn't late in getting up or getting to Victoria to meet Mi Jeung. In fact, I was early, but confusion over which McDonald's we were meeting at and where to find each other meant I had to wait for her to call me, and then from there it was ok. We made our way to Waterloo from Victoria by tube, and from there, walked to the Tate Modern. It's an amazing building, and we wandered the experimental architecture area and the Real Life floor for hours. The beauty of it was that she actually knows about art, and as it turns out we both studied Julian Opie, and we could talk about art with much less of an explaining tone, and I appreciated that. She studies furniture design, so she took notes and made sketches of form and design, and we had a great time wandering the huge gallery, despite the fact that I was feeling very ill for some of the time. We walked across the Millennium Bridge and bought some food at Marks and Spencer, before realising that at that time, we were both exhausted. Jet lag hit hard.

So I took her as far as I could towards her station, and we arranged loosely plans for the next few days, but nothing solid. I waved goodbye to her as my train left Clapham Junction, and went to the station, where, as I was phoning Dan to ask to meet him, I spotted an old friend who I hadn't seen for about a year. It was Andy, who I worked with at the Entertainer for 6 months, and it was really weird, because aside from a little facial hair growth, he hasn't changed much. Apparently he's designing shoes now, so it's going well for him. I thought he'd changed his number, but it turns out he'd just lost his phone for a while when I tried to contact him. We chatted for a bit, and he kept saying how much weight I'd lost. I realised that he wasn't a friend I wanted to lose contact with, so I'll give him a call sometime and we'll meet up. He hasn't seen my TV yet, so I can show him sometime.

I met with Dan, and we grabbed some food from Tesco's and we chatted for ages about Japan. I don't have many stories about it, but I always have something to say about it. When Dan and Andrew started playing Brian Lara Cricket on the XBox, I just fell asleep for an hour and a half. I'd taken some of Andrew's painkillers because my head had really been thumping, and I feel better now, but I have to sleep. I think another night of rest will get me working better, or at least I hope so.

Not much news, just plenty of desire to sleep and rest and be back to normal from Japanese time.