July 12th fell on a Thursday back in 2012. L dropped me off at the train station after work (timing was tight - she had to run back to the office right as we were about to leave to grab some documents proving that she was single in preparation for her upcoming marriage to her German beau. #internationalmarriageproblems? - but luckily we made it with a bit of time to spare). As we zipped down the Autobahn, she told me about how nervous a bunch of the other people in the office were about her driving. Yeah...
The Thalys train takes just over three hours to reach Paris from Cologne. The bright red and pink seats were a little jarring. And because Thalys services France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, all the announcements were made four times: in English, French, German and Dutch.
It was already dark by the time we reached Paris Nord station, since it was past 10pm by this point. A few months prior to this, a few of us had been joking late one night about how it'd be pretty cool to spend Bastille Day in Paris. That toss-up plan was about to materialize - S and L were set to arrive in Paris the following day.
*Street art photo previously featured as part of this post.

A bit of background first - so I'm interning in Marketing/Communications with a B2B tech start-up this summer, and as a result, spend a fair amount of my day absorbing concepts like "ROI" or "content marketing" or "C-suite" by osmosis. The other day, I found a really cool marketing campaign that I also happen to have a personal anecdotal story about (since "storytelling" also seems to be big in B2B right now).

A few years ago, KLM - Royal Dutch Airlines had a promotion where they were sending out personalized luggage tags - free of charge, no purchase necessary, no catch. (They were really nice tags too; my dad took mine a few years ago, crossed out my information and wrote his on it in Sharpie...but I digress.) So obviously this was a sizeable financial investment on KLM's part, sending out thousands of personalized tags, printing them, shipping them, etc. And on the surface, it may seem like money poured into an abyss without an immediately tangible ROI.

I believe at the time KLM had been undertaking a re-branding endeavor and really trying to get their name out there. I remember debating whether to order a set of tags at the time, never having heard of this airline and being all suspicious about providing personal information on the internet and whatnot. But I did, as did thousands of others.

A few years after that, last summer, when it came time to book my flights to Europe, I remembered that airline that had impressed me with decent quality luggage tags (brand familiarity), and eventually went on to book 5 flight segments through them (although two of those segments were actually flown on Delta Air Lines, whom they've partnered with). Was my actual flying experience with KLM a positive one? Yes. Would I fly with them again in the future? Most definitely.

Let's step back for a moment, crunch some hypothetical numbers. Since the tags are being printed as bulk orders, let's price the cost at say, $5 per order. Add on $5 for shipping. So say these "gifts" cost the company $10 a pop. For each converted customer who ends up booking a trans-continental flight in coach, that's $1,000 to $2,000 a go. Business/First class may stretch up to $5,000. So now you've got the customer for the first go round. If you're investing this much in customer conversion, then presumably you have faith that you're offering a decent product and expecting customer loyalty. Even if only a small portion of those who were presented with the promotional gift became customers, the campaign more than pays for itself.

There's something about stressful periods that's just oh-so-conducive to food - both in terms of stress-eating, and stress-cooking. So picking up where we left off: on the 19th, I wrote my second exam in the morning. At night, we headed over to A, D, M, M, and J's apartment for a 'One Last Time' party, since they're moving out at the end of the month :( It was great to see everyone and catch up though!

Saturday was super unproductive, consisting basically of procrastinating, watching movies, and dealing with some administrative EC stuff. (There was an alien movie that I watched like a decade ago that I've been trying to find again for years - after watching it, I'm pretty sure it was Alien: Resurrection. Less scary now that I'm actually within the recommended age range, haha.) And then at 6pm I realized, uh oh, needed to get dressed/presentable and get over to Pickle Barrel for our 6:45pm reservation for our team dinner. (I made the reservation, and yes, sometimes I like to pick less common times, okay.) There ended up being 9 of us, and it was a pretty good time. I got the grilled turkey burger + sweet potato fries; it was good! No photo though.
Sunday morning A, M, S & I went for brunch at Rose & Sons, which was a super adorable venue and boasts "comfort food". S and I were feeling lazy so we decided to bus over instead of walking, but that turned into quite the debacle. First, the bus did not show up. (We were also waiting at two separate bus stops.) So we catch the next one, halfway through the trip, S panics and insists we need to get off the bus, we do so, realize we got off too early, I reacted pretty quickly and suggested we just hop back on, S insists we're only like 3 minutes away from the restaurant anyway. We weren't. It was more like 1.5km away (so about 13 minutes). The food (first photo) was definitely worth it though.

Afterwards, the four of us headed to Ezra's Pound, since it was such a sunny day (and we were all putting off studying). (I've also compiled a massive list of cafes I want to try, so it was nice to check another one off.) We left M at the coffee shop, walked A home, and then S and I spent the rest of the afternoon holed up in the library.
Soon, we were struck with hunger pangs and headed back out in search of more food. We ended up settling for Vietnamese food at Anh Dao. The dish I got (some sort of Bún thịt nướng?) reminded me of this one restaurant we used to go to all the time in high school. Haven't had this kind of food in a while now. Then it was back to the library, and L joined us (and the two of us went on a Timmy's run).
Didn't go out for prepared food today, but I did go grocery shopping - and ended up with 2 bags of Doritos and 4 TV dinners. Which is kind of terrible, because I've had adequate self-control up until this point to not buy any chips this entire school year (minus the 3 bags of Crispers, and the time I had to buy chips for an EC event). But I also bought lots of fish, which is supposed to be good brain food. May be wishful thinking that it'll pay off in time for my next exam... Anyway, collaborated with M on dinner; I made lemon herb salmon steaks. They turned out decently.
Also tried making chili in my rice cooker after dinner tonight; this didn't quite turn out looking like conventional chili. It tastes okay though, and for a first time (free-styling, no recipe), can't complain. So yeah, basically my last couple of days have revolved around food in a major way. But I also dragged myself to the gym tonight, so in the end, it all balances out :)

In hindsight, this past semester has been varied, and not what I expected (but then again, it wasn't like I went into this semester expecting anything in particular). Some things worked out better than expected, others didn't work out at all. There were missed opportunities, and unexpected opportunities. Highs and lows. Positives and negatives. At the end of the day, there's only tomorrow. And that should be sufficient reason to remain optimistic.

I wonder what tomorrow will bring...

So I got this great idea to try container gardening (since I won't have access to a real garden this summer, which is kind of a bummer). But hey, balcony gardening is the next best thing? Although the wind levels might be too harsh this high up, so they may need to be kept inside after all. These are Burpee bush Blue Lake 274 beans. They've sprouted okay, but it remains to be seen how they'll fare.
Explored Kensington with D last week. Can you believe I'd never actually been? After being in this city for three years now... Anyway, we also wandered down some side street where they had a bunch of park exercise machine things, which were pretty cool (and of course I felt the need to try most of them - what can I say, still a kid at heart!). We also tried churros for the first time - yummy!

There was also a  lot of varied and cool street art; the undersea fisherman above is just one example of tons of really well done artwork.
^ Dessert with M & L last month. We don't get to see each other as often now that we don't live on the same floor any more, so it was nice to go for dinner (Korean food at Ka Chi) and then dessert and board games afterwards. (That was actually a super insane day - had been at a conference since early in the morning, and then after dinner, grabbed some groceries and ran into C on the way home, so she came over with me. Before she left, A came over too, and along with M, the three of us ended up chatting into the wee hours of morning.
Yeah, basically a bunch of random photos from this semester are all getting conglomerated in this post. So back in February, went to an event hosted by Faze magazine with J, where Penguin had some of their Breathless Reads tour authors signing books. We got to meet Beth Revis, and I got my copy of A Million Suns signed (and I already had a signed copy of Across the Universe), which was cool. She's very warm and super nice! (I look a little sloppy/over-excited in the photo, but oh well.)
All of the colourful sticky notes! Prolonged agony for almost two more weeks, but we're getting there. So. Many. More. Readings. Sadly.

Then we did lots of walking around, popped into The National Gallery and looked around quickly, then headed to The British Museum.
It was kind of humbling to see all these amazing relics - so many pieces of legacies of humanity collected in one piece. Due to time constraints we weren't able to explore everything, but we did get to get out the ancient Egyptian and Greek exhibits, and some miscellaneous modern artifacts.
^ Not sure what was happening here, but look at all the police! Very differently uniformed from those in Belgium. Next we headed over to Westminster Abbey, where the Royal Wedding took place in April, 2011.
The architecture in London - in Europe in general, really - is phenomenal! So many photogenic buildings.
After wandering around some more, past New Scotland Yard and through a park, we checked out Buckingham Palace. And seeing as how we were three Canadian expats, we couldn't exactly leave without taking a photo of Canada Gate... (Awkward tourist photobombs continue)
Harrods, a quintessentially British department store, was next on the itinerary. The inside is amazing, definitely very next-level. The chocolate section was insane, the seafood area was really cool, the coffee selection was impressive, and it was just all around awesome. 
I don't actually remember what we had for dinner - probably grabbed something quick from Pret A Manger and booked it over to the Apollo Victoria Theatre for Wicked. First time seeing a West End musical (well, first time in London, period), and wow, what a first! The entire cast was phenomenal, and put on a great show. Rachel Tucker's voice, just wow.

JANUARY

• Started the chronicling on this blog   
• Saw Brodinski & Gesaffelstein perform at Wrongbar on their Bromance tour

S had to work on Friday, so I started my second day in London alone with a quick breakfast at Pret A Manger. (Those places are everywhere!) Then I headed over to King's Cross station in search of Platform 9¾ (there's a trolley half-smashed into the wall apparently), but alas, wasn't able to find it.

I didn't really have a set plan for the day, and figured I would just wander around and see what I saw. Unfortunately the weather wasn't nearly as nice as the previous day, raining off and on for the majority of the morning. I passed through Regent Square Gardens, and then Tavistock Square.
The park is filled with a number of memorials, including the likes of Virginia Woolf, Louisa Aldrich-Blake and Gandhi. (Reading Hind Swaraj and Other Writings for a class this year.) Apparently Tavistock House was Charles Dickens' last residence in London.

It's kind of amazing, the sheer amount of history at every turn in London. I went and checked out the Wellcome Collection. The displays were remarkable, ranging from a thought-provoking syringe + blood tube wall display to a library of the human genome to droppings and fleece samples from Dolly the sheep to tools from antiquity.
Some historical highlights included Charles Darwin's walking stick, Napoleon Bonaparte's toothbrush, literal chastity belts, and a fragment Jeremy Bentham's skin. ^ a little gory, but at the same time, kind of cool. Learned about Bentham's Panopticon in a critical theory class last year, and it plays a role in my current WIP.

Next up was the Grant Museum of Zoology, at UCL. The diversity of organisms is truly striking, when you really think about it. They also had a bunch of skeletons just casually chilling on the second floor banister (below).  
Did I mention it was a day filled with museums? The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology was up next (also part of UCL). L was headed to Egypt later on in the summer, but since I couldn't go, getting to see some artifacts on display was the next best thing.

Pretty hungry by this point, as it was late afternoon by now. Since I was already on campus, I went to the UCLU's (University College London Union) Print Room Café. The prices were quite decent, so I didn't think the portions would be too big, and ended up ordering the nachos and grilled halloumi. Definitely got a weird look when I went to pick up my food. It was delicious though. 
What can I say, halloumi's got me hooked. Although I haven't been able to find any back in Canada yet, unfortunately. Salad rocket/arugula is pretty big over in Europe. Went to some really big bookstore after this, but the name escapes me at the moment. Then I headed over to the National Gallery, which is home to loads of priceless paintings. Only managed to pass through a small portion of the rooms before having to leave to meet up with S. Seeing Van Gogh's Sunflowers in person was pretty cool - it's a lot smaller than expected.
We took a bunch of photos in Trafalgar Square and then headed for Indian food for dinner. (The British really love their Indian food!) It was a good thing that the food was delicious and filling, because S gave me a fairly crazy walking tour afterwards. I'm not entirely sure where all we went, but we crossed the Thames and wandered along the river bank for hours. There were street pianos and a giant purple cow stage (udderbelly... idek). The Tate Modern looks fairly cool at night, the trees all lit up and everything. Fireworks went off at one point.
Millennium Bridge looks awesome at night (below). It's awesome how from basically any point in the city you can see numerous landmarks. That really cool dome in the centre of the photo is St. Paul's Cathedral, which is a piece of really remarkable architecture.
After some timing mishaps with the bus, we finally got back to Bloomsbury. Getting to the hostel, I'd panicked a little when it seemed like I hadn't brought my plug adapter, and ended up charging my phone through a computer in the lobby for about half an hour. There was a bookshelf that functioned on the principle of take-a-book-leave-a-book, so I read for awhile. There was a copy of Catching Fire with the UK cover, but the inside inscription indicated that it had belonged to someone from Endeavour Hills in Melbourne, Australia.

It's more than a little amazing how travel brings the world together.

So getting to London involved: street car - bus - plane - train - and then I was at Victoria Station, where S came and picked me up. (Originally he'd considered coming to get me from Gatwick - and holding up a sign with my name and then pretend not to recognize me on purpose - but decided that he only values our friendship at £18, so it wasn't worth the train ticket haha.)
So all summer, S has been pulling 'I told you so's all over the place. Before leaving for London, I asked if I should bring shorts to London, and he was all like, "no, it's London, we don't wear shorts here." I arrive, and of course this is the one day when it's boiling hot in London. -_-

We ended up doing a quick walk by some of the major points (Buckingham Palace, a park, the London Eye, Big Ben, etc.) and then booking it over to Piccadilly Circus so I could go buy shorts. Sticky jeans are no fun!
London is just so alive. So many people (and so well-dressed and polite too!), so much activity, so much cool stuff to see. It was actually pretty impressive how far we managed to walk in one day.
British telephone booths! (Although I've seen identical ones in Canada as well.) I don't imagine these see as much use nowadays, what with the prevalence of cell phones and what not. (Or handy, if you're German ;) I went inside one for a photo and it smelled like urine, unfortunately.
We ended up just grabbing dinner at Covent Garden as well. Alas, can't remember the name of the place we ate at. It was pretty good though! (Although I'm not a huge fan of rocket/arugula.)
Trafalgar Square! This would be a place where we would end up many times over the course of the next couple of days.
All in all, the London trip started off with a fully packed, insanely awesome first day!

"Something has changed within me, something is not the same. I'm through with playing by the rules of someone else's game. Too late for second-guessing, too late to go back to sleep - it's time to trust my instincts, close my eyes and leap!"