A red cat went out to play!

So where to begin! This week was eventful in parts. Classes and Uni are now routine with classes that last over an hour and labs that are pretty easy. The weekend ended in bang then though! Mon- Wed were just the same old with a twist at the start by meeting up with Sean Proctor for cocktails at B@1 in Soho which is a fantastic little bar if you are ever in that end of town. The bar men are really friendly and there is a happy hour Mon and Tues 5-8pm and the rest of the week 5-7pm. They make up their cocktails fresh in front of you and have a great selection!! Unlike Tiger Tiger with their pre-made drinks. The only problem with this bar is the downstairs loo's which from Greece with Jamie proved to be great fun when drunk! This evening was very social as it ended nice and early and got home in a good state.
The rest of the week continued slowly but with an interval on Thursday of costume shopping at Portebello Market. This was really fun as there is really retro stuff along the street as well as a fantastic little cake shop, Hummingbird Bakery, http://hummingbirdbakery.com/  , this place has a "cake of the day" so you can get yummy little cakes for as little as £2.95. They are a must!! Charlotte and Nastasia (girls from my class) got their paper for their costumes and I got a few little things too but the attempt at making the costumes that evening didn't go as planned as we ended up just hanging out which was great fun! Friday was supposed to lead to more costume making but we were all pretty wrecked from the week so I just vegged while my housemates got ready for their ball. They went to The Tuesday Society's Halloween ball which sounded fun.

These are two of the girls I live with. They don't have all their photos up yet so I just stole this one. Molly is on the left and Karen is on the right. They said the whole place (a house at London Bridge) was totally decorated and there was decorated food and all. I think I may have to come to one of the Christmas ones to see what all the fuss is about!

On Saturday then Sean helped me find the rest of my costume as I had no tail or ears so they were a must for completion! Into Soho we went as Google told me that was were the best fabric shops in town were. And they were right! They had the most fantastic material! Roisin you would love this place! £4 spent and I had a ton of material to get started on! At 5pm I started to make me tail. Got a pattern online and away I went! It turned out pretty well though I think. Didn't get a picture of it on it's own but I'm sure I'll have one lying around somewhere. It did look like I had killed a cat in my room but at least I was on my way! The girls came over just after 6pm to start on theirs and by the end of the massacre we looked pretty good I thought. The best part of the night though had to be throwing paint on Sean! I think I had a little to much fun :)   So off to Piccadilly Circus it was!

Me as a red cat (Mozilla Firefox), Charlotte as a compass (Safari), Nas as a pokemon (Google Chrome) and Sean just out of work (a painter/painters palate/paint). This was what we were all rechristened once we stepped out the door. On the tube we met a few grim reapers but there was one woman who couldn't stop laughing at our costumes which was great. As we walked down Reagent's street to Piccadilly we realised that we were maybe a little out of place...turns out people in London don't celebrate Halloween and any person we did meet dressed up were foreigners like us. We did see a couple good outfits though. A head-to-toe tiger outfit and some gouls too. We couldn't decide were to go and after being refused into one bar for being dressed up and another because we weren't gay we decided to head back to the old reliable B@1 which was decked out with cobwebs and blood everywhere!! The bar staff were all dressed as zombies and one was spiderman! It was great fun!! Though most of the other people at the bar weren't dressed up but had fun guessing what we were! Though many went for the cat, compass, pokemon theme. Most people couldn't understand why we were dressed up. Sean was asked what Halloween was and I was asked why I wasn't scary. We need to teach these English how to loosen up!! :) Other then that we had a really fun night!! Got a picture with the bar too so I think this may be my new Preachers? Or is that Blasphamey?

 So Internet browsers was a nerdy theme but sooo much fun!! Bring on Guy Fawkes night now and  my Mum visiting and it'll be a nice break before Christmas. Been here 7 weeks now! It has really gone by fast but looking forward to seeing people soon! 7 weeks until I'm home for Christmas but they will fly by! Ooooh can't wait for the snow here too!!! :) yayayay! Hope this blog wasn't too boring. I really don't have that much news but going to try and meet up with Erin and Caitlin again this week as it has been way to long. Didn't get Take That tickets even with my half hour of refreshing to the stupid error messages. I'll still get to see the girls though I hope so not too bad! Got to clean red fluff from my floor now so I can watch Xfactor and Downton Abbey later! Love Sunday evening tv! ttfn!

Hot Chicken Roll please!

So the update this time includes my trip to Nottingham and Bristol. I did a sort of triangle in the last two weeks! The week also included another week of college which wasn't too bad!
   Nottingham first though. This involved a 2 hour train trip up to Daz and Karolina on the Saturday! We wandered around the place which is really nice and much smaller then London!! Karolina cooked us a really nice chicken dinner too and I'm still standing so she didn't poison us :) It was delicious Kar! But we did proceed to poison ourselves with the drink. Matt (the lads house mate), his girlfriend and a friend of the lads from Uni was the gang. We had cookies supplied form Jen (the friend) which were yummy. Ring of fire then sent things downhill!! N'ham was a blur from the random small pub we went to that reminded me of Cape Clear where I insisted on making everyone tip the nice barman to Rock City where my pink shoes turned black! It was a great night though full of scandal (Karolina....) and drunken ATM trips in the club! It didn't end there though. We met people "from" Cavan and other parts of Ireland though their accents were very deceiving....everyone wanted to be Irish in N'ham it was like Paddy's or something! I happened to get a little lost too on our trip home. We got into a taxi which was fine but upon leaving the taxi I managed to lose everyone and start walking home. Turns out I was going the wrong way but Daz came and found me! Hangovers the next day were awful for the lads but Daz made us a fry which was amazing!! The best part of my weekend came when I was going home 1ST CLASS baby!! :) Some how the cheapest ticket back was 1st class. I wasn't going to complain! It was lovely, I thought I could never go back (had to though :(  ) but was great while it lasted!! The weekend was epic and thanks again lads for having me!!
  My week of college was good. We started labs which were boring enough. We just isolated gDNA which  was practically made up for us already though and our classes weren't great either but that may all change soon. They were very genetics based this week so it was easy for the geneticists (or genesis :) Western Cottage folk). My class and I went out to the local pub in East Acton for a day drink which was a nice old man's pub but went to the longest student bar in London on Thurs fivesixeight (or something weird like that). It wasn't thaaaat long but the drinks were pretty cheap. I stayed until the end (like any good Irish would!) with my Polish and Costa Rican friend. We drank out of a viking horn towards the end of the night which was pretty cool!! Hungover the next day for class wasn't good buuut I then got to.....
   Go to Bristol! Man those people speak so funny!! It's hilarious, Emmerdale and that farmer-ish accent is all I can say. Lesley couldn't make it and Erin didn't come in the end so I headed up on Friday on the train (not first class) but had a great time on that from listening to the 73 year old pig farmer who culls 200 pigs a day (in a great Bristol accent) to the boy from London who bought Nuts and Loaded because they came in a bumper pack together though he really wanted FHM but he thought more value and was just going to look at the jugs until Bath (I'm not making this up!!!). Met Kate then and we wandered around Bristol, up, up, up, up Bristol. There are a lot of hills!!! I forgot my camera so there are no photos I'm sorry. We had the most fantastic fat night though on Friday as we were both hungover. Dominoes pizza nom noms and Amish documentaries and Scream entertained us. On Sat it was raining. But thankfully it cleared up just as we went to go pick up Michael from the bus station. We then headed to Nandos!! Yes I do have a problem and yes I did get my free half chicken. Roll on the free whole chicken!! I heart Nandos a  lot! The three of us then started to get ready and played pick up sticks as we had no cards! Kate looked so pretty!! But she deleted the photos of herself....red dress, black tights with the black line along the back and black heels. She had her lips really really vamp red too so she looked awesome! I proceeded to cut my hair after the first bottle of wine. Thank god I knew then to stop though and it was only my fringe...I think it still looks okay. So Kate lives with 14 other people if you don't know and her house is actually fab! All the people are really nice and are really friendly! She had a huge turn up due to her crazy Chinese class coming who brought her a bottle of Baileys that didn't last that long going around. We headed to Mbargo (I think that's how the stamp spells it) where shots were polished off! It was a crazy night were I ended up getting emotional for some silly reason. We managed to get food after the club which I decided I didn't want anymore and then tried to pass out on Kate's bed but ended up on the blow up with her teddy so all was good. No hangover for me today or Kate which was fantastic! Had to get the bus home which was a far cry from 1st class but wasn't too bad except for the lateness on getting into London. Overall though Bristol gets a 10 stars too! Thanks again Kate for a fab weekend.
   This week I don't have as many plans except making my Halloween costume which I won't tell you about as it is really nerdy and I want the photos to do it justice! I will remember my camera I swear!! More lab pracs and Thurs drinks at the Union again! Must find me a job too, money is running out! Part time jobs are scarce in this area. If any one wants to come to London for Halloween or is around pop in or we can meet for coffee or something mature and adulty. Think that's all my jibber jabber for one night. Time for some Downton Abbey! Bye lads xx

"Go on hit me!"

So to start with the title of this blog entry as it definitely needs some explaining! Was walking home from Uni yesterday on the phone to Sean and some two kids infront of me ran onto the road and yelled "go on hit me!" to an on coming van. Just to clear things up though as you all know I'm really bad at explaining things. This on coming van was about 2 minutes away just turning on to the road so they weren't being that brave and they ran off the road as quickly as they ran on to it so there was no danger but just to show you guys how cool my area is! Sean was well impressed :)

    So now that that useless piece of information has been shared to get onto more useless information for all you bored people! Last week as you know was Week 1 of Uni for me and this finished with a Postgrad Mingle at the Union on Saturday night. We got about half the class out which was fun! Beer and vodka was only £2 each!! Going back there some time soon!! Here are some photos of us. Never put photos up before so hope they aren't too big or anything! Oh we had a Radio 1 DJ playing for this too. He was a proper DJ mixing and stuff but he was totally useless!! But the night was good other then that!

This is us in the Courtyard (I think Scientific labeling has got the better of me btw) . From left to right is Petros, Clair, Paloa, Nastasia, Patricia, Wai-Mun, Charlotte, Brash, Sasha and me.

Another class photo at the disco part with the same people but also Carlos and Jo on the left.










     My Suunday was nice and lazy with just a visit into Canada Water to see Erin and have a chat. My week then started Monday and was nice and intense! We were on 10-4 every day except Wed (they have Wednesday's free for sports). They were revision lectures but good to do. Genetics, Immunology, Virology and Applications and methodology. We only had one crazy lady who asked questions and insisted on telling us about her 2 weddings, how she hates her first husband and pees red after eating beetroot! Thanks Dr. A Blakemore! It did get tiring towards the end of the week as they talked through topics so quickly that you couldn't take it in and it was hard to keep interested for so long. Oh oh oh!!! Wait for it!!  They start EVERY lecture on time here! As in if it starts at 10am it starts at 10am not 10:01 or even shock horror, 10:05am! But the worst part is that they don't even finish on time either. They have a scheduled 1 hour slot but all of them went over :( Okay Aine's moan is over. They kept cutting my lunch short and I love my food especially my tuna sandwich (right Andrea, Karolina and Deirdre)!  Today finished with a gym session with my crazy German friend, Charlotte, who has lots of stamina and energy. I was nearly dying but she will be a good motivator I'm sure!!
    Tuesday evening had us all (my class) meet at Oxford Street to have a few drinks and dinner at On Anon. That was fun as I've never had drinks on Oxford Street! Great class party place! We may try the local Wishing Well at East Acton though next time so we can stumble into the lectures after lunch instead!
  Heading up to Nottingham this weekend to see the lovely Daz and Karolina. Cannot wait!! We may have Dids along too depending on her homework. This weekend will bring back crazy stories I'm sure!! I hope! I have also booked my Bristol tickets to see Kate for her birthday! Whoop whoop!! Lesley is arriving next week on Thurs so that's pretty exciting!! I'm flying home on the 20th November for Roisin's birthday and the 19th December for Christmas. Can't wait to get home and see everyone and not have to listen to these crazy English!! :) They aren't too bad but I like me Irish!
   So think that's enough rambling for one blog. If any one ever wants to come to London I have a huge double bed and room with plenty of floor space so you're more then welcome! Ta ta for now!!

Well it's not Cork.....

Hey so never done this before so we'll see how it goes! Following in Andrea's foot steps and may write a blog for anyone that's interested. It will probably be boring as I really don't know what to say!! Here goes..


Moved over here the 13th with my Dad and sister coming along for the trip. I moved into a house in East Acton which is really lovely. I have the biggest room in the house and a double bed which makes a change! Lots more space if anyone wants to come visit. Spent the first week doing up the room and just having a bit of a holiday with my Dad ie. spending his money :) . They left then and let me fend for myself.


I live in a house with 3 other girls who are all working. Karen is from around Belfast and she is working in Theatre. Molly is in fashion and from Manchester I think....Kate then is in a graduate program in Advertising and is from Liverpool but studied in Manchester. They are really nice girls and we all seem to get on really well!!


The first 2 weeks were spent trying to get a bank loan then trying to get an overdraft and then when none of that worked crying. Only kidding but things were tough at first. There is so much to organise over here and they talk funny!! :) I got my phone all sorted though and my Boots card so from then on things got easier. Sean Proctor, Erin Luddy and Caitlin Collins are over here too but they are all east side so I don't see them that often. I need to lure them over here with Westfield and then they'll never leave!


Went up to Cambridge then last weekend to visit Dids and that was fun apart from the rain! It rained a lot but then we went out to a pub/club were they served wine on tap so everything got better as we started to get more drunk! That resulted in Dids' phone walking away from us ( I swear it did because it was most definitely there one minute and gone the next!) . Then Dids introduced me to Nando's and everything was right again! We got her bike sorted and met a really nice girl Gill who will take care of our Dids I think!


This week was the beginning of Uni (in with the lingo!). Met my class for a lunch on Monday and then got a formal introduction on Wednesday which included a fire and safety talk. I am now a proud owner of a card that hangs around my neck like every one else in London. I have a label! We have had classes since then including homework! Our lunch breaks include walking to Westfield in the sunshine and eating at Eat ( Charlottes favourite food place here!). Big postgrad mingle night tomorrow at the Union in South Ken. Dids may be coming down to visit tomorrow so we'll see about that. Other then that, it's hot and then raining, so very like home. The course doesn't seem to be too demanding yet but I'll know come Friday morning when my 5th 10am class begins (I know only 10am but it's been a long Summer!!). Slan go foil and hope everyone is well where ever we may be scattered!!


Aine