Gobsmacked

Gobsmacked in American means utterly astounded, speechless. Gob means mouth, like "shut your gob!" + smacked and you have been smacked in the mouth and are therefore stupified and speechless. Some uses are, I was gobsmacked by the text message i recieved today, or I'm gobsmacked by this girl's beauty. Which I was but we'll get to that below



Fortnum and Mason is one of the high end brands if not THE high end brand. I sent this to my momma who loves english tea.



A Supermarine Spitfire MkVa WWII model plane kit flown by the brits. I sent this to my dad, a WWII enthusiast. We used to go to airshows together. He used to put these models together.



there's actually a lot of bikers in London. It's just not very safe so like half of the people wear these neon vests.



Sebastiaan is from Holland and is a tour guide at the London Bicycle tour company. He takes groups of like 20 people around London and gives tours in English or Dutch if he has to. It was cool to hang out with all the tour guides from various countries and drink with them after work here. Everyone was doggin' on each other and it was an international bros session.



chinatown in London is pretty small. only a few streets.



Rosie's friend Regina is from Taiwan and showed me Zhùyīn fúhào which is what they use to use to teach mandarin. Its like an alphabet of letters and is only 37 characters so its easier to learn and teach Mandarin Chinese. It was phased out in Mainland China in the 50's but is still used in Taiwan. Here is Zhùyīn fúhào in its own letters ㄓㄨˋ ㄧㄣ ㄈㄨˊ ㄏㄠ. So i guess this is why whenever i would type pinyin (the way of writing chinese words in english) to Ryan in Beijing he wouldn't know what i was talking about because he's taiwanese and uses this.



A 5th of November treat. Actually this was made famous in my mind by the movie V for Vendetta which is about Guy Fawkes and how he tried to blow up parliament on November 5th. Its called eggs in a basket and is butter grilled toast cooked with an egg in the middle. it's easy to make and gets you points for doing something new with a usually boring breakfast. give it a try!





Prams = baby carriages in American. All these prams are for a project Lucy is working on.



Ami's shoelaces frequently just pop undone when she's walking like she's a real life cartoon whose main problem for that episode is how her shoelaces keep coming un-done. If you can see by the left shoe you can see why, her laces are way too long. I think this is a funny thing to happen to a cute girl. If it was happening to me it would just be sad and pathetic.



recently bob finally listened to Amy Winehouse and has acknowledged her brilliance. So now he knows what a blow it was when she passed away. I thought even though she was influenced heavily by ska, and 60's girl groups, etc... that she was making the freshest, realest music out there (even though she hadn't made an album since 2008).



Pudding Lane, another example of Candy Land names in London.



raclette cheese from france is heated on one side and scraped off onto a plate or onto potatoes and stuff.



they were also making amazing looking grilled cheese sandwich things with this cheese too but i ate already so didn't try it. Looking forward to this in Paris if i don't get it here first.



at the tate modern. the artist was korean.



some pretty common beers to find here. London Pride maybe is the most common of the four. but the real star here is Doombar over on the right. I love that stuff.



what's that you say? at the old blue last



Taiwanese pork belly. delish, but not as delish as the pork belly at Ryan's friend's place in Beijing



Taiwanese toast. delish but not as delish as what i had in china. Inside is a creamy stew of sorts and its all contained in a perfectly hollowed out loaf of bread that is somehow completely fried lightly. this one is also 3 times smaller than what i got in China.



F U Chip and Pin!!!! chip and pin is the bane of American's existence in Europe. i have no chip on the top of my credit cards so i can't use them in tons of places.



I saw a lot of foxes in this week where i went to a lot of parties and was a nocturnal animal myself. this is on my street.



this is at Howl at the Moon on hoxton street. My friend on the right is from South African, the barmaid is from Swaziland and she was gobsmackingly beautiful. oh my god. this is not a good photo of her but she was a sight to behold.



so if you saw above the guy from south africa basically looks like jesus with that hair.



a scratch off map to show where you've been in this cool store in spitafields market. all of india is scratched off but only a few finger nails worth of Siberia is gone. and it looks like some exuberant Kazakhstanis and Mongolians had at this map.



closing time at Pimps and Pinups hair salon on the side of spitafields market.

on this hungover sunday i came to meet my friends at the antique emporium to find the place packed and the only available seat was occupied by the owner's other dog (the huge wolf hound was nowhere to be found). I came over and looked at him and he just looked at me and slowly opened up his legs as if saying "what up sh!thead, scratch my mother lovin' belly b!tch, i'm the king here". and so i squeezed in and did.