Uh... what was I saying again?

Still no luggage. Three days now. No clothes. And because it's Christmas all the shops are shut so I couldn't even go and buy new ones if I wanted to. This is getting ridiculous.

That aside, I guess one would say that I am having a reasonable time here. We went out drinking last night (In Germany? Say it isn't so!) I think we got back home some time around 6am. I'm still feeling rather drunk actually, which is why I am writing in short sentences. I took my camera out last night and there are a few amusing pictures from last night to show. What will not be shown is the video Stefan took when we arrived at the club. In said video, I am clearly looking at the camera (at least when my eyes are open I am), so I can claim that I was "dancing for the camera", however if the video is representative of how I looked last night then it could explain the strange looks I was receiving and why people were avoiding me. (And no, it is not how I look generally when I go out and any discussion about my dancing will be duly deleted)

Hopefully I'll be able to put some photos up while I'm here so you will be about to see some of the things I've been talking about.

It's much later now - I was writing the above at about 2pm, then Stefan rightly pointed out that I should do this later (like now) instead of during the limited daylight hours. So now it's 5:45. I'm feeling better, but still not very good. We went and looked at a castle that's nearby, then we went to a Tower next to the big lake here and watched the sun set while Stefan held me in his arms.

Ok, so the last part, holding me in his arms, obviously didn't happen. But we did watch the sun set and knowing Stefan I'm sure he was thinking that he wanted to do that.

He says that we're going out drinking again tonight. I don't know if I can handle that... I'll definitely be 'taking it easy'(as much as one can when drinking in Germany)

I made it to Germany, finally: my bags haven't

Well shit, do I have an Airport story.
Useless, useless, useless.
I won't go into all the details at the moment, but basically:
1. I was at the airport in plenty of time, and my flight left about on time (I think), but I was not on it. I missed my flight due to being messed around by the BA staff and their lack of organisation and communication.
2. Was booked into the flight tomorrow morning after being told that was the only one available.
3. Went and spoke with someone else and was put on stand-by for the 2pm flight.
4. Was put on the 2pm flight (which left at about 3pm). Hurray! Almost....
5. Arrived in Hamburg, good, great, made it. Unfortunately my bags, along with about half the other people's on the flight, didn't make it.

So now I'm in Germany with nothing to wear and no toothbrush...
We are going to pick up Stefan at the airport now. Perhaps, hopefully, my bags will be on the flight with him.

To Germany tomorrow ... perhaps.

I am due to fly to Germany early tomorrow morning, unfortunately it remains to be seen if and when I will actually make it off the ground.
For the past few days most of London and the South-Eastern surrounding area [where Heathrow is] has been covered by "dense fog". British Airways (which is the main user of Heathrow) have cancelled a large percentage of their flights during this time: ALL domestic flights and most flights to Paris and Brussels (Claiming EuroStar is a viable alternative), as well as quite a number of "short haul" services. They fly 4 flights to Hamburg a day; today my flight number (the first of the day) was cancelled along with the last flight, however the two in the middle did depart. 2/4 ain't so bad? Perhaps. Yesterday ONLY my flight number left, and all the others were cancelled, meaning that there were no flights from Heathrow to Hamburg by BA for about 30+ hours. The good news is that according to the BA website at the moment they are "intend to operate 95% of short haul services tomorrow" (except flights to All Paris and Brussels are cancelled and domestic will start after midday).

The "fun" part - They are saying "call and confirm the status of your flight before departing for the airport, and don't travel to the airport if your flight is cancelled". However, to get to the airport on time I have to leave at about 5am. The Customer Service webpage shows the lines open at 6am.

The Irony: London has probably the most airports of any city - there are Five in the surrounding areas. British Airways, the big, reliable, major British Airline operates primarily out of Heathrow (and unsurprisingly are the airports main user).
The other 4 airports only have minor disruptions, some no cancellations at all.
I chose BA because of the "convenience of Heathrow" (it's on the tube line) and because BA were a 'proper' airline. Had I chosen a different airline and/or a different airport, this whole fog situation might not have been any concern to me.

Finally, amusingly, Stefan is due to arrive into Heathrow at 2pm and leave on the 5pm flight to Hamburg. I didn't have time to ask him, but I suspect he is flying British Airways as well. I really hope I'm not still waiting at Heathrow when he gets there, however it's possible that somewhere between 0 to 2 of us make it to Hamburg tomorrow, which could mess up plans a little. [But again, going by their 95% claim, perhaps it will all be ok)

Other than the flight concerns? I was at work until 7pm today, making sure things were sorted during my time away. We went down to the pub around midday and about half the team went home from there. I seem to have a habit of suddenly finding all these things that need doing before I leave 20 minutes before I was planning on leaving. Or maybe my problem is the way I classify something as 'necessary'.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

I'm considering deleting some of those comments in the previous posts. Certain things I was not intending on speak of via this medium.
Monday Gone (effectively); only 4 working days left and then I'm on a plane to Germany.
Two weeks off, no work. I haven't even been working for 2 months and already I'm so excited about some time off. That doesn't actually bode well for the future...

When I get back from Germany I'm going to be looking at getting a two-bed room thing - kind of like a College dorm I think. It's not what I really should be getting, but it will be much better than where I currently am. I'll get around to finding a proper place... eventually.

Got an E-mail from Jons this morning. I didn't even consider previously that I should be hitting him up for free accomodation as well. Thank you for bring that to my attention. Expect to hear from me some time in the near future.
On that note, anybody else who is around the European region (which can be as large as necessary; have passport; will travel) and is feeling like that need more Kiwi in their life, let me know. I'll see what I can do about helping you through that.

I have to go make dinner some time soon. I'm not particulary used to making dinner for one; not in recent years at least. So I've been doing the unthinkable - keeping leftovers and a day or two later (sometimes, other times they sit in the fridge and then go in the bin, as usual)

It appears I have run out of things to say. I am currently fighting the urge to ramble on about nothing just for the sack of it [and appear to be losing].

I'm going to go now.

Counting down the days until Christmas

Not because I am particularly excited about Christmas. I'm not. I'm not a Scrooge; I enjoy Christmas, but for the second year in a row I'll be away from home, which I am fine with (after all I'm doing it by choice) but it's not going to be "Christmas" for me in the same sense. Not the Christmas that I am familiar with.
I am excited about Christmas because I get to go to Germany, I get time off from work, and, as ashamed as I am to admit it, I get to see Stefan. [Oh how that is going to come back and bit me on the arse later - don't get any ideas now]

Looking at another flat tomorrow (fingers crossed, but not expecting much).

I've said most of what I need to say about work already - Very unexciting. Far too easy and unchallenging. Waiting for the end of the project to see where I get put next.

Sorry to be brief, but I'm running out of [internet] time now.

Managed to go for a run again yesterday. Unfortunately I expect the weather will make my saturday morning (early afternoon) runs exceeding unpleasant in the near future.

Later.

6 weeks on, what do I have to say about London?

Um.... I'm not really sure. I still don't have a place to live, but on the other hand I haven't really been looking for the last few weeks. I haven't really had the time to worry about it, nor did I have the money. I got paid finally on Thursday, so now I finally have money to spend. However, I'm going to try and avoid spending as much as possible because a) I don't earn that much really and spending money here seems not an unwise thing to do b) the thought that £1 is basically NZ$3, or that £20 is NZ$60 makes me not want to buy anything here at all. Every pound I save here is worth 3 times as much in NZ. Every pound I spend is $3 I could have saved.
That said, I'm still going to enjoy myself when I can. I'm going to visit Stefan for Christmas, which I'm looking forward to, and I will take advantage of the cheap flights to a number of cities around Europe during the next year.

I was saying today that (at the moment at least) my lifestyle in San Jose was so much nicer than it is here. It definitely was a relaxed time. I might have to consider making my way back there at some point...

Went for a run today. In fact, I even managed to go for a run on Wednesday night. That was good, but I don't expect I'll be able to keep doing that, especially with Winter steadily approaching. It's quite frustrating not being able to do anything during the week. Really the only chance I have to exercise is in the weekends.

It's Saturday night but I don't really feeling like going out. I think that Andrew and I are just going to end up sitting around at the hostel, watching a movie, drinking, whatever. It might sound like I am depressed. I'm not depressed. I don't get depressed. I am simply feeling rather apathetic. But then again, I was reasonably apathetic to begin with so I don't really consider it much of a change.