Primark, Catch Ups and Tube Strike

I've moved to Miss Amandine's place in Paddy now where I'll be basing myself for the duration of the glia meeting. I don't know if this is being reported elsewhere, but the Tube workers have decided to go on strike today (Monday 3/9), scheduled to go for 72 hours. This has prettymuch crippled the city. It took Smee two hours to get from Kensington to Canary Wharf (about 30-45 mins on the Tube), whereas I considered walking 2km while carrying my luggage to Miss Amandine's place because the buses were so packed. But she rescued me in the end! While I'm glad that I don't have to take the Tube to get to the conference, I'm worried about how on earth Lydia is going to get here.

But to recap what I've been doing for the last few days, after spending 23 hours on a plane, I went out with Pooey on Friday night to catch up with the Circle and various other *Meldon* people. Many familiar faces were there: The Grand Empress, Jade, Jessabella, Peishapan, Cam, Honda etc. It was almost like being back in Melbourne! I ended up crashing at 11pm, no doubt helped along by the declaration that being in a different continent constituted a *special occasion* and that no drinks limit applied.

Circle girls and Me

Cam eats some chips

The weekend was pretty much all shopping and eating. After waking up at the inhumanly early time of 7am on Sat morning, Pooey and I began our shopping adventures. We started off at Bicester outlet centre where I had to remind myself that , yes, 99 pounds is cheap for a designer handbag...but that's still about $AUD250. On Sunday I was introduced to Primark (or *Primani* as Amandine calls it) where a jumper of decent quality was being sold for 5 pounds. I got some things :)

And then I went back on today and got more :D