On Sunday I went to the Southbank Centre for a number of reasons:
The Poetry Comics exhibition at the Saison Poetry Library (Royal Festival Hall) – the largest poetry library in the UK.-
Amazing as the library itself is, this exhibition co-curated by Chris McCabe and Chrissy Williams made it even more so. Featuring works by William Blake, Derik Badman, Bill Berkson / Joe Brainard, Kenneth Patchen, Oliver East, Kenneth Loch, Bianca Stone, Paul K.
Yesterday I was invited to the London Global Art Fair 2015, which takes place May 21-23 at Olympia, Kensington, London.
With 150 galleries from 40 countries exhibiting works by over 500 artists, aged 25 (Nicole Wong and Vivien Zhang) to 93 (SH Raza) from 63 countries across the globe, in walling that would wrap over 13 times around the Royal Albert Hall, London Global Art Fair is as much a market as it is a celebration of creativity, art and culture.
Living in London means being surrounded by culture. For example, in less than 5 minutes’ walk from our apartment, and without even crossing the London Bridge, we have the Tate Modern (Britain`s national gallery of international modern art), Shakespeare’s Globe Theater, Southbank Centre (Europe’s largest centre for the arts: theatres, concert halls and a cutting edge art gallery presenting over 1200 events each year), and BFI Southbank (the leading repertory cinema in the UK, specialising in classic, independent and non-English language films, operated by the British Film Institute).
I have been working at the Google-TechHub Campus in Shoreditch (the “Silicon Roundabout”) London for a few weeks. It is really cool. In no particular order, here are some things I love about this place:
A cafeteria (open to anyone) with terrace, foosball table, bitcoin machine, device bar (to test your developments in many different devices) and even a spacesuit! A small but well stocked library of tech books Very nice team, from security to reception, to admin, to social media… all of them Two levels of office space, one of them (supposedly) “quiet zone” Unlimited supplies of toast and tea, great wifi, and good scanners/printers A ton of areas to sit down and have a meeting, not just the “meeting rooms” Most importantly: the events.
We have been in London for a few days already.
Moving to a new country is not such an impossible task as some people imagine, but it is definitely quite a challenge.
The first thing you have to do is to forget comparisons. No place is perfect, and no place is completely awful. But one can’t help but to be stuck by “peculiarities” of the place. Here are some random ones we have been laughing or crying about:
Saturday, May 2, was our last day at sea. We got up late, but still on time to have breakfast at the Britannia restaurant. At 10 am we attended a very interesting lecture by Aldon Ferguson on Covert Operations in the Cold War. After yet another time change, we had lunch followed by an unexpected nap.
We graciously avoided the Guest Talent Show, and went to the Library instead, to catch up on some work and return the books we had checked out.
On Friday, May 1, our bodies finally caught up with all the pre-cruise accumulated stress, by sleeping until 1pm, taking into account the time change. So we headed straight to lunch (“would you like some coffee with your steak and kidney pie, dear?”), followed by a very nice walk around the deck.
After the afternoon tea we worked with our laptops in the Library. My wife decided to go back to the room early, so she could get ready for the formal dinner and Masquerade Ball, while sipping rosé champagne.
