Inquisitive Wanderer

I got a brand spanking new Lensbaby from the States. I’ve wanted one for years, but they went on sale last month and I finally made the plunge. If you don’t know what it is check out the website. It’s kind of like a grown up Instagram. It’s a completely manual lens that won’t let you use any of the auto settings on your camera and lets you select focus certain areas of the photograph and distort others. There are lots of possibilities! I tested mine out yesterday and am quite pleased with my first day results. Looking forward to trying this baby out all over London! Also it’s light so it makes my camera easy to pack, unlike my giant telephoto lenses. Here are the results…

If you like you can see more or download Wallpaper sized versions in my DA Gallery.

Belated blog post about Saturday. It was a great day and pretty much represents why it’s so fantastic to be living in London for a year. First of all I went with a friend to a book signing by my favourite living author Brandon Sanderson. He writes excellent Fantasy books and if you’re interested I recommend starting with his Mistborn trilogy. In addition to creating really rich worlds the characters themselves have a lot of depth and the struggles they face in the books really make you look at the way you view the world. Really top notch fiction. I got his newest book autographed and had my picture taken with him.

The signing was taking place in Forbidden Planet, which is basically a haven to every Sci Fi and Fantasy book, movie or television show of all times (although sadly under representative of Lord of the Rings.) It is massive! Upstairs is memorabilia and downstairs are books and dvds. I got a box set of the first season of Doctor Who for £19 (originally £69) and a few Christmas presents while waiting around. Brandon was actually early and came out about 15 minutes prior to the scheduled appearance for a Q&A session. He’s very amiable and outgoing and was not at all the typical stereotype of an introverted writer.

My favourite anecdote was concerning the Wheel of Time, which is a series he took over from another writer (Robert Jordan) after he passed away. I know most of you haven’t read this so I’ll try and keep it concise. One of the mysteries in the series (which has been going since 1990 and currently consists of 14 tomes roughly 800-900 pages each) is “Who killed Asmodean?” So much so that people have bumper stickers with it and fans have written pages and pages of theories on the matter (with 900 page books you can see how there is enough material to formulate a fairly academic theory.) When he got the notes on the last books from the Editor (who was also Robert Jordan’s wife) there was a fan theory printed out about who killed Asmodean with a post it note stuck on saying “This is right.” I just love that.

It was pretty cool to be in a room of people who had pretty much read all of the Wheel of Time and all of Brandon Sanderson’s work and several of us struck up conversations while waiting in line. Also, he had extra copies of the Mistborn Alloy of Law Broadsheet (aka Newspaper) they were giving away at Comic-Con this year, which I admit I had been pretty envious of even though you can download the PDF from Tor.com So that was cool…

On the way to the bookstore I had spotted Jamie Oliver’s brand new restaurant Union Jacks. According to Jamie’s website, “it’s where wood-fired flatbreads meet great British flavours.”

It’s hands down the best food I’ve had since coming to the UK. New favourite! It’s basically structured like a pizza…a round flatbread with toppings, but the flavours are really different. Mine was pork with cracklings, watercress and apple. It sounds a little strange, but it was delicious. They also have veggie friendly flatbreads.

All of the ingredients are completely British, down to the £2 glass bottle of “the Best British” Spring Water. It was a little pricey, but it fed me for two meals. Definitely a great treat! I ended up carrying the pizza box around until I found a cafe in Seven Dials.

I ordered a cup of tea and sat there for a couple hours doing my reading for the week. By the time I’d finished reading I had the rest of my pizza for dinner. I was quite pleased to discover that my cup of tea had one of my favourite quotes by C. S. Lewis on it…

Then I set off on foot for Lindy Hop walking past plenteous Christmas lights, through Trafalgar Square and along the Thames. I ended up passing a lot of places I’d been separately, but hadn’t put together in a mental map. All in all a pretty fantastic day!

I had a Cadbury Double Decker with lunch this week. It’s one layer of nougat and one layer of rice crisp cereal so it’s kind of like a mix between a Snickers and a Crunch bar. Watch this 1980s advert advising you to have a Double Decker if you’re feeling “peckish.”

Pretty good, but I’d prefer a Picnic.

My Rating: ★★★ out of five stars