Feels like London

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Or so I hope. A whole bunch of my favourite bands (namely The Griswolds, Velociraptor, Cub Scouts, DZ Deathrays) have been in the UK for The Great Escape music festival. Of course, I wish I was there. I love England in particular. I love English people. I wish I lived in London (for at least a bit, anyway). (I also wish I lived in Brisbane, but that’s a story for another day.) I am waiting out for a music festival that will have a lot of my favourite bands. There has been Groovin The Moo, and Splendour in the Grass, to name a couple of festivals. But the one that has really been my cup of tea, especially speaking from experience, is Homebake. A lot of local talent, a really chilled festival, and a whole heap of bands that I do like. Homebake isn’t until early December, so I’m going to have to endure this freakishly cold autumn and a possibly colder winter before that rolls around.

It’s about 14°C here (~57°F), which isn’t cold at all, and perhaps I should feel lucky that it doesn’t get colder. But if I love England so much, I should be getting used to temperatures of zero, really. I love the cold a lot more than the heat, but that would be my choice out of the two extremes only. Otherwise, I would gladly choose autumn or spring as my desired year-round season. That said, it is still autumn and it’s really cold, considering.

Last Wednesday it was Fern’s birthday, so I met up with him and his friends on Friday to eat street food and have dessert. There is an Asian market down in Chinatown on Fridays, and most of the time I forget about it. I can’t remember if it’s every Sunday either. We went down there eating takoyaki — well, I chose the vegetable balls — which was only about $8 for a box of eight balls. We sat out in the cold wind and ate, and somehow, despite the chilling breeze, it was nice.

I didn’t know any of Fern’s friends (except Anna) but it was nice hanging out with them all. Very nice people who didn’t make me feel left out at all. I’m usually a bit shy to hang around friends-of-friends, because sometimes I may be the odd one out and the only one who doesn’t know everyone else. But I had a good time with them. Later that night I went to see one of my favourite bands, March of the Real Fly, who had put my name on the door so I could get into their show for free. I photographed, as usual, so it was just another gig, really.

I’ve been skipping several gigs lately, in the sense that I have them in my calendar, completely plan to go, then bail at the last minute or the day before. I guess I haven’t been feeling up for it, and travelling/transport is usually an issue. I used to wish that I could drive and/or had a car simply to get home from gigs and concerts, but now that I think about it, I doubt I’d go to everything even if I did have a car. To be honest, it’s kind of draining. I enjoy what I do, but it’s good to have a break from it every now and then.

Speaking of breaks, semester ends in a few short weeks… got some work to chug out (two essays), but I hope I’ll be okay. I’ll only have one big subject next semester, then I’ll be free! I am not sure what to think. I think it’ll just be fantastic to get out of school. I feel good, though, that I’m abiding by Jeremy Neale’s old quote, “Stay in school”. I am positive “Don’t do drugs” was in there somewhere, and that’s usually teamed with “Eat your vegetables”, and I really have been eating a lot of lentils lately, not to mention I’ve never done [recreational] drugs.

As part of Project Simplify Georgie I’ve decided to kill a few bad habits and develop some good ones. As part of my life learning I have decided that I need a bit of routine in my life and I can’t be spontaneous all the time. I need to stop wearing my retainer erratically, eating so much chocolate, sleeping late and spending money on food when I can cook my own. To remedy this, I am still steering clear of this notion of “goals” and ticking things off a list. Rather, I want to break these habits by doing the opposite (wearing my retainer, eating less chocolate, sleeping earlier, cooking more often, obviously), but not by setting specific times or numbers. I believe a good idea is to give myself a range and an acceptable space to do it in.

For example, I won’t just cut out chocolate cold turkey, because I’m bound to get cravings. Instead, I will wean off by letting myself have a treat twice a week, then reduce it to once a week. As I’ve noticed I sleep at around 12am to 5am, I will attempt to sleep between 10:30pm and 1am.

These life lessons sound ridiculously easy and like common sense in text, but until you evaluate your life and your bad habits and what you complain about, you don’t realise that it isn’t so easy to actually stick to.

Comments on this post

Hey Georgie! I have been roaming around in your site for quite long already so it’s just time I finally drop a comment (hope it isn’t too weird). ♥
I share your love with England! And the cold season too. It’s just unfortunate I don’t get much of so. And your Simplify Project is really cool. Now I’m compelled to do something similar. So good luck on all that, I’m sure you’ll pull it off. :)

As someone who’s used to the year-long subequatorial summer heat, I have trouble coping even with temperatures of 14 °C :( I can’t imagine what winter life must be like — my mum even tells me I’d freeze over once I step out of the house in winter. Anyone would pick cold over heat given a choice though, myself included just as long as it’s not too cold…

I really like where you’re going with your life learning. It’s good to have space in order to keep these habits manageable without letting them affect you more than would be healthy. Of course, it may not work for everyone, as it depends largely on the individual. But I can definitely attest to gradations in my sleeping hours helping me to sleep earlier: I went from between 5 am and 7 am to between 3 am and 5 am, then even earlier! I still have bouts of staying up late every now and then, but I try not to let them bother me too much, because everyone has their uptimes and downtimes.

All the best with this endeavour, Georgie! ♥

London or just England in general has always been in my list of countries I have to visit in life. XD English/England sounds so sophisticated to me haha tea and cakes and stuff. ✌️

Cold over warm weather anytime! I’d like to live in a 14 degree celcius country too~ it’s too warm in this part of Asia, meh.

Nice step for a change. Giving space to your life, huh..maybe I should try to do that to myself too so I won’t have to feel like I’m being held back for enjoying things – food, especially.

I’ll be the first comment to pick heat over cold then. XD Glancing at them they seem to be coming from people who live in tropics. In my opinion they don’t know what cold is, so of course it sounds nice compared to the heat. (Like you said, 14°C is not really the definition of cold, though it is very cold already. ) I suppose they can try to say the same thing about me and that I don’t know what heat is, but I just spent a few days in Hong Kong ♥ and I’d much rather live in that heat. And it was definitely HOT. Hard to breathe. Humid. Maybe about 36°C.

From what I have heard about England, it’s not that cold. It rarely falls under zero or snows. If you have the chance to live there it might be great for you, because it will definitely snow enough to satisfy your inner never-seen-snow-before-omggg, but not snow so much to annoy you. ;)

Now that the semester has ended for me, all I am thinking about are life lessons. Such as maybe sleeping before 5AM for once. /bash

I’ve seen snow many times before! It just doesn’t snow where I live. I don’t really live in “the tropics”, but Australia is an extremely warm country and it’s common to have temperatures hit over 40°C in the summer. So there you go — I live in a warm country but much prefer cold!

Hello Georgie! I’ve been running away from blogging, blogwalking and etc for a while since I’ve been busy with school. And suddenly, I decided to catch some of your latest updates on your blog (well it isn’t latest anyway, 2 days past haha)
I love England and I kinda love winter although I never face that season before, but I wish one day. Well 14°C is still considered as cold depend in Malaysia, it’s extremely hot here, I guess around 34°~35° or something like that. I wish I could lay down on an ice-like floor, maybe? Mwehehehe.

57F would be considered very cold here! I guess I’m more used to hot weather, so I’d prefer it over cold. Though I agree with you that I’d prefer autumn or spring year-round.

I’m glad you had fun hanging out with Fern’s friends! I feel awkward around friends of friends too, but it’s good when they still include you into their group. It’s not fun feeling like the odd man out.

After a while, I stopped going to gigs. It really was draining, and the costs eventually added up. I haven’t been to one in a long time, but I kind of miss it. Even though one of my favorite bands was in town, I ended up skipping it too because it was a hassle to get to.

Good luck on changing your bad habits! I’m trying to do the same. I’m pushing myself to sleep earlier, cook more, and drink sodas less. I think slowly changing them is the way to go. Going cold turkey is hard!

Have you heard of the blog wanderlustful.me? There is a Canadian who is doing the exact thing you wrote about here: just picking up her life and moving straight to England. She’s not there yet at the moment, but she’s got her visa and travel plans in place!

Good luck on changing your sleep habits! I’d love to see them work, seeing that I’ve got similar problems myself! And I do know that once you reduce/cut sugary things from your diet, it is easy to resist the cravings. (Or maybe that only applies to me. But I hope that it applies to you!)

Thanks for sharing that, Stephanie! Actually, one of the guys from Velociraptor is apparently going to stay in England after the tour, until he gets sick of it and wants to come back home. He pretty much left behind everything as well. (To be honest I hope he comes back soon!)

That’s how I feel about Brisbane though — really tempted to live there for a few months when I graduate, see how I like it, see how it goes. Not fully decided on anything yet though. :)

I feel 40°C is a pretty common temperature to hit in the summer, even here (Beijing) where it’s -10°C in the winter. It gets that high back home too, though most of the year it’s quite cold. :P It’s all up to preference though. I live in cold city and prefer heat, though most people here prefer cold!

And my bad about saying you haven’t seen snow. I didn’t really target to you specifically haha. I have a friend who lives in Newcastle, Au and she needs her inner never-seen-snow-before-omgg satisfied. I’m going to guess you saw mountain snow, which is fresh and clean, unlike city snow. /pow