London Street Diary - 18/02/2013

Today I have learned you cannot rely on public transport in London at any time. I took bus in advance to be in work in time, but my bus was almost half an hour late what led to late arrival to Starbucks. I desperately want to buy a bike and be not reliable on some public services. Though my shift went well and I was enjoying it. Each day I am trying to make hearts on lattes and I am improving. Maybe I will be able to make nice hearts this week, since I have a long shift tomorrow. After end of my shift I went to Southbank to look for a book market under Waterloo Bridge mentioned in my previous diary entry. It was really small market with not many books and couple of them were interesting for me. It is surprising you can find in different UK bookstores (even on this market) a lot of books by czech writer Milan Kundera translated to English. I have read just one of his book - The Joke and I liked it. If you would like to own books from my photo written by him, let me know. After visiting book market I went back home, because I was tired. In the evening I was skypeing with my good friend Martin: http://styridsatdva.tumblr.com/ He is currently working and living in Switzerland and it was great to chat with him almost 3 hours. We have always some topic to talk about, so I am never bored of his companion. There are few friends like that and I really happy I have them. I hope I will be spending more time with them in my future, because most of them are far away right now.

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London Street Diary - 17/02/2013

My day started in Starbucks doing a morning shift. It was a horrible one, because nothing was working (card machine, coffee machines, tourists!!!, me and other things as well). It was so tiring and I was so glad when I finished it. Afterwards I went exploring town with Matt and we were later joined by Lea. We went to Shoreditch to see some new places, cool markets and shops. There are many places worth visiting in London and you are not able to manage to see them all in short time. We have seen the first photo booth (automat) placed in London and great Boxpark with big containers changed for shops. I have realized I am not enough overwhelmed by everything, but London is an amazing city and you have no way how to not enjoy it. As Lea said, here you are not afraid of missing some event, because you know there will be another one. There are also tons of nice cafes and shops and markets and streets and everything and you can walk whole day and you still end up just in one part of London. However, I cannot imagine starting own business here, because it must be so hard since there is a strong competition. But I think that people will always find their favorite places and will be regularly go there and it can be owned by me. I am planning visiting my favorite cafe more often than other ones, but I want to explore other. I need desperately some bike to be able to explore further parts of London without spending money on bus or tube.  Barclay’s is offering pretty good hiring of cycles and I will try it next week. I have already found some English books worth trading to Slovakia and I will make a list of them soon with possible prices. You will be able to kind of “pre-order” them, if you will be interested in buying them. Moreover I am going to make a spreadsheet in which you will be able to write me your wishlist which I will use for deciding what is worth buying here. There is a book market under one bridge, which I am going to visit soon, maybe tomorrow. I hope I will finder there books for good prices worth sending back home. All books will be available through brother’s secondhand bookstore Kartpatský Lovec (Carpathian Hunter) in Pezinok: http://www.facebook.com/KarpatskyLovec I am so excited to start buying books, but I need some starting cash which will probably arrive next week. I will bring more info about books soon.

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London Street Diary - 16/02/2013

My today entry will be short, because I am tired and have no energy to write longer post. Today I was doing two major things. Cleaning my room and our flat, because it was my turn this week. It took me a while to have all things done, but it was not hard at all. In addition  whole afternoon and evening I was with my best friend Metjush from Slovakia. He is visiting me and Lea in London and he will stay here until Wednesday. We went today to science museum, which was really weird and we were both kind of disappointed. I have seen much much better museums even in London. Afterwards we take a long walk from museum to Shoreditch to get a cup of tea in my favorite bike cafe. It took us almost two hours to get there and we were so tired after that. Even the way back home was kind of tiring so I ended up sitting in my bed and having no energy at all. I really liked this day and I so happy I have spent it with Metjush. Moreover we were brainstorming about my future project, what I would love to start at some point. But it needs time and more thinking before sharing it. But it will be so tasty. Here is my new tumblr: http://starttracker.tumblr.com/ I will post there all music stuff that did not fit into my daily music blog, but I still like it so much. It will be more tumblrish blog and I hope you will enjoyed it. 

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London Street Diary - 15/02/2013

My sleeping habits are totally destroyed, since I was chatting with my friends from America and spending whole night doing that. I am going to bed so lately and then I am sleeping till afternoon. Also the another reason why I am always late in the bed is my Start-track. I was preparing my new awesome mixtape made by Spencer Radcliffe from Athens, Ohio. Here is the second mixtape: http://starttracker.bandcamp.com/album/athens-ohio.  Some other friends promised me do their own mixtapes and it looks like I am gonna  have more than 7 other mixtapes in next few months. I am totally excited about that and want to continue with doing compilations for rest of the year. I am just doing it for myself, because I really love listening to mixtape made by my friend for my blog. I like to explore tastes of my US friends and get to know local scenes. Moreover everyone is so happy of it and that makes me more wanting doing such thing. I feel like music is becoming the most important part of my life and want to give it more. My music blog is updated each day with new stuff and I am considering starting another tumblr blog with more random music stuff as videos, songs, art covers and other things. My Start-track is not suitable for that, especially not for instant reblogging and I am totally bored of posting on facebook and seeing that nobody cares about it. At least on tumblr is a huge community of people interested in good music. After creating second blog I will be able to clear my personal blog a little bit and keep it more oriented on diary. I will start it next week because this weekend my friend Metjush from Slovakia studying in Edinburgh is coming to London for a short visit. I will spend most of the time with him exploring the city. I am looking forward that. Today I had movie evening with my friends with a tasty dinner (I was again overeat) We were watching Safe House, but it was not a good film at all. We were also playing PS3, but I was horrible at that. I cannot play with gamepad. The flat in which we were having the movie evening was so nice and it was located near Thames River in docks. I just love the buildings there and even the beautiful sight. I wish I was able to afford such nice place. Also I have remembered what I wanted to mention in previous entry. I served to Slovakian people in our Starbucks on Thursday for the first time. It was fun, because they did not realize I was from Slovakia and when I had spoken to them in Slovak they were totally surprised and were not able to response to me properly. Today I hat chat with my flatmates about our week and especially I was talking with Robert, who has set all things up for me here. He is a really nice guy and we both agreed that young people should live on they own and move out of their parent houses. It is the most important thing in life of young person to move to another level of living and to experience life with more responsibilities. I did that and I am not regretting any minute of it despite I am missing my room, siblings and parents too. But when you want to live on your own, be more free, you have to leave your parent house. It is so common in Slovakia to live with parents and it need to be changed. I want to be an example how to do that. Lastly, I had put on tumblr some recordings of my own wannabe songs. You can check them here: http://nielenjelen.tumblr.com/tagged/demo My entry is already long enough, so I will save other things for later posts. 

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caveofdoubt:

“Nobody” | Julia Brown

yeah, i’m a nobody
but i’m yours

420lovesongs:

song 64 is another from ryan/pill friends. this time called ‘prayers’. it’s a demo (tape recorded - as is important later) with just acoustic guitar and vocals. i’m excited to see where it goes and i hope he does something with it for a new pill friends release/one off thing even. it’d be great with cello or something but it also stands alone really well with just guitar. it doesn’t lose any of ryan’s nihilistic charm but it also doesn’t lose any of his pop sensibility - this is probably one of the catchiest songs i’ve heard from him.

the ending, he said, turned out how it did because his tape player started dying while recording, but i think it sounds awesome and adds that layer of strange, dissonant darkness that ryan’s songs so often collect one way or another.

‘you know i’ll let you down’

ok I’m moving to philadelphia to hang out with Ryan

And here is the second wannabe song “Cemetery”

I have made some recording of my wannabe song “Living Room”.

One day I want to have some of my songs posted on 420 love songs http://420lovesongs.tumblr.com/, but I am so far ahead from all great people featured there.

London Street Diary - 14/02/2013

There is one day in the year which I have always hated and it was Valentine’s day.  But today proved me the opposite and I really like my day. I spent most of my day in store doing my long shift. I was a little bit tired, but it went ok and I was in really good mood despite my hate day. I was expecting couples and Valentine’s bullshit, but nothing such happened. Even in the morning I have written some poems, so I was also creative today. But there were other things which are making me so happy about my day. After my shift I went exploring the city and walked almost two hours with no special direction. I ended up in beautiful cafe-bar “look mum no hands”: http://www.lookmumnohands.com/ It is stylish bike cafe with really nice atmosphere and great tea and cakes. I have tried some and I enjoyed it so much. I really like that place and I would love to return there again. I think such cafe should be opened one day in Bratislava, when it becomes the city of bikes. There some activists trying to change the way of cycling in our capital city, but it requires even more energy than people are giving it now. I sometimes imagine the Bratislava will be the Portland of Slovakia, but there are many things to do before that happen. Maybe Trnava will become sooner the bike city and I will help to open there  such lovely stylish cafe-bar with good coffe and tasty cakes. Bikes are just awesome and I want to get my new one as soon as possible. I was finally skypeing with my sister, when I was sitting in the cafe. I really like her and I miss her so much. But the most important thing about my day was the concert of Dan Deacon at Village Underground. It was just amazing. The support, Mozart’s Sister from Canada was not good at all, but Dan performed such energetic show. He also made people to do some stuff like dancing in the middle of pool created in crowd or fans were using his app responding to sounds of particular song and showing different types of color light. The show was noisy, trashy and the crowd was dancing all the time. We even made long row of people making kind of gates with their hands and people were passing through it. I was totally overwhelmed with all things happening and still I am. I could write more about it, but this entry is already too long. I will write more about it next time. I know I was planning to write about other things, but I cannot remember them now. And the main point of today: I have to rethink about my hate towards Valentine’s day from now on. 

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infinitycrush:

juliabrown09:

hooray! you can now stream or download the full and finished versino of our new song ‘nobody’ via this rad rad 4 way split from topshelf. it features us, old gray, modern baseball, and the hundred acre woods. if you buy it all proceeds go to a charity. but here’s our song from it if you wanna check it out. it went up on 420 (as a live demo) a long time ago but this is the full band version. i couldn’t be happier with it. it’s also a love song in a very traditional and not dark sense so i’m happy it’s coming out today :)

i remember in the parking lot of walmart, watching a truck catch on fire - soon enough you were gone again. mystery is our curse, like in the fall i found out i’d been poisoned - two whole weeks gone. 

summer spent with you at your parent’s house, came home and drove all the way to towson. one of you still owes me money; throwing up in the parking lot of walmart - wondering if i’d fall in love again.

yeah i’m a nobody but i’m yours

my favorite people write my favorite songs vol. 49303 
this song is catchy and great

eternal love

London Street Diary - 13/02/2013

Today I had my first shift in different store near Tower of London on Byward Street and it went pretty well. However, I was all day doing sampling outside the store. I was carrying a tray with samples of hot chocolate or mocha or vanilla spice latte and offering it to random people passing our store. I liked it, but it was cold outside. This store is just half a year old, so they have to do such promoting. Even in our store we do similar things to attract more people to our store, because there are many other coffee shops near us, which are our competition. I have finally experienced the feeling how it looks like when you offer free stuff. I was just wondering why someone is not willing to take free chocolate drink. Another funny thing I have learned today is that you cannot toast sandwich, because it is against health & safety policy. LOL. However we are gladly doing that in our store, so I can enjoy my favorite Starbucks’ sandwich toasted. In the evening I was just resting and listening to new stuff, which my American homies have sent me. I feel always involved with the scene when I get all the stuff from the first hand (by musicians themselves). Today I also have got a compliment for my English, what is happening pretty often and I am so happy for that. Even I got a compliment for my blue rain coat by random guy on tube station. It was fun that someone was asking me, where I bought it. I was sorry to tell him I have got it from H & M in Slovakia and it was the last item in that store. It is my favorite clothing right now and I enjoy wearing it even if there is no rain. But you are never sure whether there will be no rain in UK. The weather forecast is a useless thing here. 

F.