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Early this morning whilst fetching a parcel from the Post Office Depot, I bumped into a friend who I'd not seen in a while. It turned out she now works at the Shepherds Bush Empire, a great big Live Music Venue near where I live. This got me thinking about the vast amount of Giggery surrounding all of us lucky enough to live in London, that I have been pretty lax in partaking of.

After a little live-music-based research I was faced with bad news and good news. The bad being that OK Go did a full tour of the UK as recently as January, and so are unlikely to be back any time soon (bloated "festival" line-ups notwithstanding). The good news -and it is SO GOOD- is that Death Cab for Cutie are currently skipping all over the world in some sort of gigging frenzy at the moment, and despite having hit London in February are back again in June for 1 date, before flying off the Germany for more of the same. Needless to say, I'm going.

Anybody who's ever looked at my last.fm stats will probably have a pretty good idea how excited I am about the prospect. Yay!

EDIT: We've got stall tickets incase anyone else wants to join us.

Hello again lovely Afterlifers. Admit it, nobody else reads this! Though it's likely my own fault for being slack with my blogging…

So anyways, I have a brand-spanking shiny new job, and it's exactly the kind of job I've been wanting for the past year and a bit. Having finally accomplished what I've been working for for so long is a bit of a shock to be honest, but a very welcome one.

Not only is it sweet agency client-side webwork, working on small parts of the vast web-empires of various household names; it's also located better than I ever could have hoped, on the South Bank, 3 minutes for the Tate modern, smack bang in the middle of the the cultural heart of London, if not the UK. If I look out the window to my right I can see the London Eye, and if I look out the one to my left I can see the Gherkin. Walking up the riverside past all the artyness, theateryness and the skateryness before crossing one of the many bridges towards Soho or the city proper, you really feel that thrumming vibe of London, which -for the moment at the very least- I absolutely love.

In other news, I retrieved a lead for my battery charger from home at the weekend, so I should be able to take/post pics again soon. Which means you'll all be drowning in pictures of New York, as well as new ones taken as I traipse along the river every lunchtime.

So! As everyone knows I spent a week in NYC recently. It was pretty sweet, as you can imagine. Highlights included:

Artyness:
Starry Night by Van Gogh.
The Persistence of Memory by Dali (the melty clocks one)
I'd Rather Sink?Than Call Brad For Help, by Lichtenstein.
Some Monets.
A few Rothkos.
A few Miros.
Way too many Picassos.
The Met, with all it's loot.
The Guggenheim (the building, not the contents).
MoMA: the building and everything in it.

The Views:
From the plane while we flew over Newfoundland.
Through and across Central Park, in snow and ice with bright skies and sun shining.
From Brooklyn bridge.
From top of the Rockefeller center.
From the Staten Island ferry.
Of Time Square and the uber-shininess.

General:
"Stepping down" and other supposedly English phrases.
Teaching the natives the meaning of the word "Rubbish".
Burger diners at 5 in the morning.
Bizarrely shallow, archaic and scary slightly subway system.
Polish food. (Think sausages and cabbage.)
Giant pizza, where 3/4 of the weight was in the topping.
Coffee in huge cups with free refills.
Giant portions in general.
Mad clubs with 300 queues.

New York city is a such a well-known place, being in so many films, songs, comics, games and TV shows, that everyone has an idea in their mind of what New York is. I think the best part of my trip there is that now, after wandering around Manhattan for so much of the week, the image in my mind is of what it actually is. Smells included.