I've been going out quite a bit lately and meeting loads of new people. Mind you, maybe only every one in five people seems to respond to my e-mails, but, hey, the point is, I am getting out there and meeting people. I finally feel as if the person I was back in Singapore - the one whom everyone thought wouldn't have a problem moving to London and getting to know people - is back. And if you had asked me whether I thought this was possible earlier in the year, I would have thought it highly unlikely.

And I guess that I should really give myself some more credit. I mean, I stuck it out here when I know that more than a few people in my position would have headed home. I mean, losing your job and then getting dumped out of the blue by someone you were madly in love with? I'm fairly certain no one would have blamed me had I decided to pack it in and head home to my beloved friends and family.

But I didn't. To be honest, the thought never even crossed my mind. And I think I'll just take a few moments to acknowledge that what I did took a certain amount of courage and gumption, and that I am, in fact, one tough cookie, even if I didn't feel like that at all earlier this year.

And I'm still getting out there and trying to meet fun and interesting people... and I have! Mind you, it's not as if I emerged from the relationship with MD entirely unscathed. The sheer idea of getting into another relationship still sometimes sends me into a complete panic, something which isn't entirely great given my age. I'm sorry, but giving another person the ability to hurt you in ways you didn't think possible? It's just not something I'm willing to even consider at this point in time.

But, the point is, I'm back. I may not be entirely happy with life - I guess I never will be as I'm one of those people who's designed to be mildly discontented with everything - but I sure am doing my best to enjoy it!

Ah, man! U2's Rose Bowl gig will be broadcast live on YouTube at 3.30 am tomorrow (i.e. in four hours). I'd love to stay up - or wake up - and catch it, but I doubt that'll be a good start for the week given the hectic schedule I'll be on. I've got something on for every night of this week: house dance on Monday, drinks parties on Tuesday and Wednesday, Live at the Apollo on Thursday and another dance workshop on Friday... and then, of course, there's Halloween this weekend. I still haven't figured out what I'll be doing then, but I sure hope I'll be doing something fun!

And, yes, I know it's been a year since I went to New York and precious little has been blogged about it thanks to all of the painful events that occurred before and after the trip. Still, I believe I have most of my notes about what I did and how I felt during the trip in my e-mail, having written long e-mails to the then-boyfriend and now-person-I-no-longer-even-speak-to, so, hopefully, I'll be able to get some of that up on this blog some time over the next few weeks.

Edited at 7.30 am: The entire concert will be rebroadcast on the official U2 channel. The setlist can be found here.

Bedrock's 11th anniversary at Matter was amazing, as always. A Bedrock night is almost always guaranteed to be a great clubbing night, regardless of the company, or the venue. This time, I went with P., who's not terribly fond of matter, even though I don't mind it. He finds it's too full of people dressed up in prom dresses and high heels and/or from Essex.

I don't really notice that too much as a) I am usually too busy dancing, and b) if I am dancing, I am usually doing it with my eyes closed. That's how I get around it if the crowd's not great.

In any case, I wasn't dancing with my eyes closed on this night. This night was too damn fantastic for that. I haven't been listening to the Essential Mix on Radio 1 or John Digweed's show on KISS FM for quite some time now, but I do still love me a good clubbing night, particularly since I've started attending Ryan Chappell's house dance classes. Not that I really need to learn how to dance to house music. I've been doing it for ages, and I know I look good. 

Hee.  

But back to Bedrock. Danny Howells, whom I've yet to get a chance to see*, was the supporting act. Given his calibre, I figured that meant Diggers would be getting on around 2 am. As it turned out, I was wrong, and he only played for two hours and vacated the turntables just as we arrived. I bet he was jetting off to some other superstar location for the main set!

But who cared?! That meant a six hour set from Digweed!

We somehow managed to find a place near the seating area on the balcony overlooking the DJ area. Awesome, even if my camera failed to capture any photos of just how cool the view was. 

Digweed, behind the turntables, selecting his next tune

Still, we came to matter to dance, not (merely) to watch, so we made our away to the other side where we could dance without bumping into any furniture. The view there was just as nice, as these not-great photos show. 

It was incredibly packed, so I didn't get a chance to get on the bodytronic dance floor, of which I'm a big fan. D'oh! Still, no matter where you were, the sound was just as good, and you were surrounded by equally passionate fans. I'm sure the thousands-strong crowd completely agree with me, even the guy in the Bugs Bunny suit who was both incredibly sporting, taking photos with many people on the dance floor, and also a really good dancer. I couldn't get any photos of him, however, as it was too dark, and I'm glad I hadn't drunk too much or I would have chalked it up to that!

An incredibly talented DJ, paired up with an amazingly talented DJ who's been at the top of his game since house music began (fine, maybe not that long, but since it began for me)... = many fantastic musical moments (for example, this one). 

We left around 4 am, having danced and drunk our fill. I was still exhausted from the week I'd had, having been up since 9 am on Saturday. I'm getting older, unfortunately, and the late nights where I used to be able to stay till closing time aren't happening anymore.  Perhaps I should just have wandered into Room 2, which I hear was just as bangin'.

Here's to many, many more Bedrocks! 

As we left, we noticed this gem of a sign. 

Kudos to anyone who a) has enough money to go to both matter and Fabric on the same night and b) is hardcore enough to handle both venues in the span of a few hours too! I don't know if matter offers this on all nights, but if they do, it'd be a tempting way to get home seeing as Farringdon's a lot closer to where I live than North Greenwich is.

* Apparently, Danny will be headlining at an afterparty "from 3 am till stupid o'clock" this coming Thursday morning. I'd already been tempted to take a half-day on the 29th so as to accommodate a potential interview and then going off to Live at the Apollo in the evening, so maybe I should just go the whole hog and take that day off! 

Brief musical interlude:

Currently listening to Girl Talk (real name: Gregg Gillis), to whom I was introduced via CG during that oh-so-memorable-yet-still-probably-incredibly-meaningless-in-the-grand-scheme-of-things-night.  I've always loved mash-ups (probably because the one most important thing to me in terms of life and work is variety), and, given this, Girl Talk's a real find. If you haven't heard his stuff before, try his live mix at Yale's Spring Fling earlier this year, courtesy of freeculturemusic.

Other tunes which currently rock my playlist include Vampire Weekend - Horchata (who knew a beverage could inspire such a quirky song?), Jay-Z featuring Alicia Keys - Empire State of Mind (an ode to New York which I didn't expect to grow on me but has after a couple of listens) and Chairlift - Bruises (a really poppy tune in which lead singer Caroline Polachek sounds amazingly like Feist).

All of the photos for Shoot Spitalfields are now up on Shoot Experience's web site, and the winning photos can be found here.

In addition, a selection of photos from each team are currently being exhibited at the Old Truman Brewery (F Block, room T4) on Brick Lane until November 4th as part of Photomonth Photo-Open. The exhibition will be open from 11 am to 6 pm daily. Admission is free.

I hope you'll pardon the fact that I'm still making a big-gish deal out of this. It's just that I've always loved taking photos and I recognise that the probability of my getting another photo exhibited is very, very low indeed.

Other people who've blogged about their Shoot Spitalfields experience include fellow winners, Londonist and MatJazz. I'm glad they're just as over the moon about the whole event as my team was - and still is!

However much pleasure I take in any Liverpool loss (unless they're playing Arsenal, Chelsea and now Manchester City), the goal that resulted in their defeat yesterday simply should not have been allowed to stand. Seriously, a beach ball is not a normal occurrence in a game of football, and the fact that the goal was headed straight for the keeper until it deflected off the beach ball should have been taken into consideration.

I really want to know what happened to the fan who threw the beach ball on, as does Sky Sports. I read that it was thrown on by a kid sitting in the away end (i.e. so it was thrown on by a Liverpool fan), and, man, knowing football fans, his dad is lucky to have made it out of the Stadium of Light alive!

The last couple of days have more than made up for the weirdness of the first half of the week. 

On Thursday, I learnt how to dance like Beyonce as taught by one of the better, non-intimidating teachers I've come across, in a great studio that can be lit up like a club, thereby enabling all of us there to get our sexay on without feeling embarrassed.

Then, on Saturday, I attended An Evening with Kevin Smith which is essentially a Q&A session with the writer and director of Clerks, Mall Rats, Dogma and Chasing Amy. Kevin's not a stand-up comedian, but he sure knows how to tell a funny story. There was an interesting mix of characters at the talk, most of which were stoners and geeks, but, hey, those are who his movies appeal to. I haven't watched a single one of his movies myself but have seen previous Evenings and liked his frank and, well, very open way of talking, so thought he was worth a shot in spite of the high price tag. Among the people who asked questions was a pre-op transsexual who was incredibly open about why he was going down the path he was going, a completely-stoned not-at-all-funny stand-up comic from Liverpool, and a guy who, I'm sorry to say, came across as a complete and utter loser when he complained about his life and how depressed he felt, confessing he DJ'd in the evenings to "numb the pain of his meaningless existence" but couldn't do it anymore because the people attending his gigs were getting younger and younger.

And then today. Today! Today was Shoot Spitalfields, organised by Shoot Experience. The Shoot series is essentially a photo treasure hunt consisting of eight clues, five of which refer to a specific destination in the area in question, and the remaining three are open to interpretation, as long as they're linked to the competition's theme, which was "communicate" this time around. The event started at 11.15 am and ended at 6.45 pm, including a break of an hour or so between submission of entries and judging. There were 60 teams in total, each consisting of between two and four members.

It was incredibly fun just roaming around the area and trying to think of creative, fun photos to do with each clue, and I'm proud to say that I managed to crack four of the five location-specific clues, although we weren't terribly good at the more creative clues. I even came up with a really good idea for one of the clues, even if I do say so myself, and we were very disappointed when it didn't win, as we felt it was a lot better than the eventual photo which won that clue's category. We felt it was the best overall photo, but we'll concede that perhaps it was difficult for the judges to get through all of the photos, and, perhaps, they tried to give each category to a different team. In any case, when it came up on the slideshow, lots of people laughed and applauded, which made me happy (mais naturellement) even if I got very embarrassed and pissy doing the photo as, let's just say, my part got me a lot of unwanted attention from passers-by.

In any case, another one of our photos won in another clue's category, which surprised all three of us, even though I acknowledged it was different from the rest of the photos and very well done, even if it wasn't the most original idea in the world. We got rather panicky when they announced our photo as being the winner as we didn't know what to say. I mean, that photo was a test shot, and, pretty much a fluke, as we could so easily have missed out on that opportunity had we not spotted that particular location-specific prop.

Woo hoo!

Speaking of props, a lot of people seemed to have their own props with them, including, but not limited to, a scrabble set, an antique telephone and rubber ducks. In previous competitions, some people built miniature replicas of the locations, while one team seemed to have whipped up a superhero costume on the day itself.

I'm glad I didn't look at the previous winning entries. As it stood, when the organisers showed a couple of the winning entries prior to kicking off the competition, we got a little stressed as we didn't think we had anywhere close to that amount of creativity in us. 

So, yes, as you can tell, I'm immensely chuffed we won something. It was fantastic fun, and I'm looking forward to Shoot Portobello taking place next year. Unfortunately, I don't know Portobello as well as I know East London, so I'll be far more reliant on my Blackberry during that competition!

Today has most definitely not been a good day. Yes, it's been raining all day and getting very cold, but I could have tolerated that with my usual good cheer (or some degree of good cheer, even if it's not usual) but:

This morning, one of my dangly earrings, which I wear every day as it's my safest, nicest of earrings, broke. That was almost fine, as these pair had lasted me for over a year, so I figured I'd gotten good mileage out of them. Nevertheless, I was very fond of them. In any case, I needed to leave for work, so I put on another pair of earrings.

After work, I got all the way to my final destination on the train only to find that I had not taken my travelcard with me. Just the other day, I thought to myself that I had to make sure I had it on me at all times because I wouldn't be able to get another ticket refund, this being the second time I'd forgotten to take it with me. I'd been worried that this might happen as I was in a hurry to leave the office as I had to meet up with a friend.

This was still almost okay.

So I met up with my friend and we walked in the rain to - get this - a charity fund-raising singles night. Yes. That's right. We mingled with other people but didn't really find anyone extremely attention-grabbing.  That being said, I did think two Australian blokes were a little on the cute side and rather amusing, so I thought, why the heck not, I could give them my number, even if neither had asked for it. Except... they were friends, so I didn't feel too comfortable giving them both my number, so I ended up just giving the guy I ran into first my business card with my mobile written behind it. However, this Eastern European-looking girl who he clearly knew had come up to him and was chatting to him in a very familiar manner. She also looked incredibly fierce. Even before I passed him my card, she really seemed to be glaring at me. 

I shrugged. I didn't care. If it were my boyfriend, I'd be flattered that other people thought he was cute. And heck, the worst thing that could happen is that he wouldn't call. No biggie.

It did hit me about 15 minutes after I left the pub that I was absolutely and completely mortified that I'd done that. Freakin' A! I should just have used the "I would like to get to know" form they'd passed us in the beginning... although I did think it wouldn't be great as he probably wouldn't have any idea who I was the day after or what not.

Ugh. So pai seh.

But that's not the worst part. The worst part occurred at the beginning of the event, when I noticed that one of my earrings had gone missing. And this pair was a gift from a dear friend, and she'd given them to me just about a month ago, when I returned from Singapore. I know for a fact that the earrings were one-of-a-kind and I'm really gutted that one's gone missing and I'll never be able to replace it. I might turn the remaining one into a necklace but I haven't the faintest clue how to do that.

I really liked those earrings too. F***!

If Singapore saw a significant month-on-month growth in GDP for September, and the UK saw a plunge in the pound vs. the US and Singapore dollars this week, I am afraid the culprit is yours truly.

With the dawning realisation that I had better send some money back home double quick-time in order to pay off my credit card bills  for what turned out to be an incredibly extravagant return home, and cursing the whims of the global economy which saw the pound drop from S$2.37 the last week I was back home to the S$2.25 it is now, I sent home what proved to be close to 12% of Singapore's average GDP per capita to pay off my bills and taxes for the next five months or so. 

Man, I hope bonus time comes soon.

The flights, not to mention the drastic changes in weather, seem to have played havoc with my skin. If you ever catch me slapping myself, it's not because I'm crazy, it's because my $%"$% eczema has flared up and it's driving me crazy. I'm doing my best not to scratch, but (and there's always a but) I'm failing miserably. I've finally fallen back on the tube of Cortizone-10 I purchased from the US last year, only to read that it's not meant to be used anywhere on or near my face. I know it can thin the skin; that's the main reason why I discontinued the use of the prescription-strength steroid cream after using it for seven days, and the rash seemed to be subsiding, but, damn it, it seems to have flared up during the weekend.

Ugh. I hate my skin sometimes. And in a place where it's so damn hard to get a GP's appointment, especially considering I don't work anywhere near my home, and, hence, my GP... ARGH!

So, last night, I was looking fabulous. I had a great dress on, my hair looked fantastic (it's like the only thing which doesn't ever let me down, and, having looked it this morning, would agree with that opinion, because I apparently have Leighton Meester's hair), and, all in all, I looked gorgeous.

This was according to a fair number of ladies at the function I was at, and, as we all know, the female compliment is a lot harder to get than a male's. 

And, still, no male attention whatsoever. What's a girl got to do?!