London at Xmas Time

Had a lovely catch up at Le Pain Quotidien in Covent Garden today with some good friends today. It was needed after a really difficult week. Here are some pictures from my day out.
*click on the photos to view them in full!

The Joys of Job-Hunting

Whether you are looking for your first or your 50th job, the search for employment will always be annoying and frustrating and time consuming and exhausting and draining and, we could go on forever.

The point is, in our current economic climate, this task involves a lot more than going to find somewhere that needs vacancies, telling them that you want to work for them and then suddenly getting the job. More than 95% of the time, it involves giving lots and lots of companies your CV and never hearing anything back from them. Or, if you are lucky, you'll firstly be invited to a phone/face to face interview or a trial and then hear nothing back from them.
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Having not been able to legally work part-time whilst growing up in Dubai, I was only able to get jobs through word of mouth but nothing where I was able to actively search for it. So this Summer, instead of being fed-up and constantly worried about my student loans and spending from my first year of Uni, I decided to dedicate my summer holidays to finding a job which I could give most of my time to and then work reduced hours when University begins again at the end of September.
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I started the search in late May as soon as my exams finished with an optimistic outlook. I was a hard-working, committed, young and friendly individual who could see myself working in nice and trendy clothes shops such as 'Fatface' or 'Aldo' a few days during the week and most of the weekend. I got my CV together and took it to roughly 5 places in my local shopping centre which were looking for part-time vacancies and also emailed it to a few places on the high-street. Within one week, I had a call back!  They wanted a phone interview which seemed to go well - enough so that they invited me for a face to face interview. I was so excited, mostly because it was for a shop that I regularly used to shop at. (Notice how I now say used to).

As it was my first interview, I was nervous but very excited. After 10 minutes of waiting, I was brought into the Manager's office where I was sat face to face with him for 35 minutes.  He began the interview by asking me what I knew about the brand and if I knew about its on-going feud between its two different owners. This idea of politics and drama within retail business was completely new to me and sounded exciting so I was keen to listen. The Manager then changed topic and started to speak about himself, explaining why he decided to leave his As-Levels at 15 to start sales full-time, working his way up to his current position as Manager of this store, now at 19 years old. As he strangely prompted me at how this was a great thing without any qualifications, I agreed without thinking about it. He then asked me what I would change about the shop for which I had no clue, but quickly cutting me short by telling me what he would change and why.
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15 minutes in, we began to speak about my CV and my past work experience. I have no problem with speaking about myself and was therefore confident to answer his questions whilst trying to make a good impression. With a sheet in his hand, he then outlined some questions from a questionnaire in conjunction with the policies of the shop such as refunds, exchanges and then questions based upon the idea of what I would do in certain scenarios. This was tough as it was new to me, but I still felt I answered well. At the end of the interview he asked me if I had any questions and I wanted to know the age range of his staff, purely because he told me he was 19 years and I was interested to see what age range he was looking to employ. He told me his employees ranged from 16-18. And so my first interview ended there, with no hand-shake but a muttered ''we'll get back to you soon''.
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Overall, I was really pleased with how the interview went - but within 2 weeks, I had heard nothing. Friends and family told me this was normal but I should phone or check with them face to face to see if they'd filled the position with another person. As someone who has a fault for getting intimidated too easily, I proudly gathered up the balls to go and ask the shop what the situation was. I walked in head held high, saw the manager at the end of my line of vision where the cash desk was straight ahead and chuckled to myself at the thought of how entertaining this could be. To my surprise, as I approached the area where he was helping some young girls, he looked up at me, quickly finished with them and scuttled away round the back to where his office is. I then asked the young man behind the cash desk whether they had found someone to fill the position to be told that they had found someone else recently.
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My next experience was after looking online for jobs. I had found a restaurant about 5 minutes' walk away that needed waitresses 3 days a week from 6-11pm. I sent my CV to them in the morning and was surprised to get a call within 2 hours to come for a interview that afternoon. I initially didn't really want to work as a waitress but as my current progress was looking poor I decided I could not afford to be picky in this situation (hopefully not being taken literally!). The first interview lasted 3 minutes long - I waited with about 10 others who had all sent their CV's and during my turn was pleased to be asked to a trial on Wednesday from 5.45-10pm.  I was surprised to do my trial alone but was excited with the concept of working in a restaurant as I had worked in Hospitality and Catering but never in the fast pace of a restaurant or Cafe.

In the first hour of my trial, I was asked to sweep the floor, wipe all of the menus, and remove all of the 7Up Cans and Water Jugs to clean the surfaces under the sink. In the four 4 hours of my trial, the restaurant had just one customer, and lucky as I was, he turned out to be a depressed alcoholic.
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He arrived with his young daughter shortly after I began my trial. I was told to only hand them the menus and collect their food as I was not trained enough to take orders just yet. They seemed happy with their food, until I noticed that the young girl appeared to be constantly getting told off by her large bald-headed father. She kept trying to text on her phone and at one point almost tried to leave the restaurant whilst the father was repeatedly swearing at her. He had a bottle of wine to himself, which didn't cross my mind as a problem until a woman appeared at the door of the restaurant and the girl quickly ran to take her hand and quickly left. The man stayed at the restaurant for another 2-3 hours. He sent the food back, claiming that the chef tried to 'fucking poison him' and refused to pay for 4 of his dishes. He left the restaurant at one point to go next door to buy another bottle of wine and a packet of cigarettes to continue smoking and drinking in the outside area of the restaurant. Finally at about 8.30pm, he got up, stood by the doors looking in to the restaurant and said ''if my daughter gets sick like I do then I'm going to fucking sue you.'' Thinking that he'd finally left, I went to go and tidy his table and collect up the wine bottle that had rolled across the floor. Suddenly, I spotted him across the road staring. I ran back inside and tell the two owners. He then shuffled outside the entrance of the restaurant and shouts in ''I'll get the fucking home office on you lot!''.
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My 'trial' ended at 9.30pm - it consisted purely of cleaning/folding napkins and one unpleasant customer. I was told that they would get back to me within 3-5 days. I heard nothing from them until 2 weeks later when they asked me to do another trial (this time paid) as last time I didn't have many customers. At this point, I had 2 interviews booked for Monday and with a sore throat that day I did not want to work from 6-10pm so I asked them to call me on Wednesday (by then I would know if I had the other job) and then we could arrange the trial the following weekend. By the time they eventually called again, (which was the day of the next planned trial) I had already got a job.
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These are just a few of the experiences I had at the time and whilst these events were going on, I was constantly applying for other jobs that I never heard anything back from. These stories are from the few that took the time to respond. Overall, the whole process was pretty exhausting and miserable. This was mostly due to the fact that each time you venture out,  you must always try to look your best as you are giving a company their first impression of you. The other annoying thing is when you've applied somewhere that you personally feel would be a good place for you to work, they reject you in an interview and 3 weeks later they've still got the same ad up! Eventually, you will find a company who are looking for candidates like you and what seems like the never ending tunnel of job-doom will be over! That's until you have to find another one...

What happened to all the great parties?

I think one of the biggest expectations of University life is the infinite number of memorable house parties and clubbing experiences that as a young and naive highschooler are told will be the highlight of your fulfilling years at University. However, I have to honestly say, not one club or house party I have been to this year has been any better or the slightest bit more memorable than any party I attended growing up. What's more, the irony in this, lies in the fact that I grew up in a country where drinking alcohol is illegal until the age of 21. Maybe that's why it was so much better? My teenage years could be seen like a modern day Arab Gatsby event during the 1920s when Alcohol was prohibited and had to be bootlegged into parties, much similar to my 'Sweet-Sixteen' party living in Dubai where an Indian man commonly known as our 'booze guy' turned up in his toyota corolla with bin bags full of alco-pops to supply my party, without knowing that my parents were sitting in their car at the end of the drive-way watching the night roll-out and eating KFC.

I'm not sure if this feeling is mutual amongst young people here in the U.K and they simply choose to wash over their dissatisfaction with the nightlife here because they want to look like they're having more fun than other people on facebook, but sad as it is to say, I have pretty much regretted almost every time I've gone clubbing in the U.K.
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FRESHERS WEEK IN LONDON

If you're a fresher at a University in London, by now you're going to be pretty familiar with all the regular clubs in London such as Pacha (Victoria), Ministry of Sound (Elephant and Castle), Aquila (Camden), Zoo Bar, Hashtag Thursdays at Picadilly Institude, perhaps the Coronet also in Picadilly and your local Uni bars. This is thanks to the overload of daily notifications you will receive on Facebook as well as the texts and phonecalls from club promoters claiming that you've booked a table for that night and if you don't turn up with 10 other friends, they will lose their job.
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Clubbing in London is not cheap either - an entry ticket is usually around £8-10  and depending on how much you like to drink you could end up paying about 20 pounds for drinks. If you think that's normal try clubbing in Newcastle where I pay about half the price for a better night out. Here's a shocker for you. I went to a club in Picadilly with a friend of mine, at DSTRKT which was advertised on the event as a student club for a James Bond night. I asked for a double vodka and Red-Bull to find that it was £16.50! I almost had a heart attack. Luckily my friend at I pretended that we were part of the Entrepreneurial Society with King's and Imperial University (we are King's Students studying French..) and joined their booked table and free drinks.

Each time I plan to go clubbing, I get really excited at the thought of going out, getting drunk and dancing just like I'm in a Britney Video. In all honesty though, I think it's more the ritualistic element of prepping and pampering beforehand which I get excited about. Sadly, this feeling is shot down faster than a rabbit on a highway when you head off to the clubs in your 'hot of the shelves' 'new-look' high heels that were reduced on 'Student Discount Wednesdays', a banging LBD which is incomplete without that rushed hour of straightening your bleach blonde birds-nest only to get drenched in rain from your walk from the bus to the club. Depending on whether you've previously decided to blow your cash on skipping the queue or not, you'll end up standing about longer than what would be called a 'fast pass' so that by the time you get ushered to the entrance or just the coat and bag drop, your feet will hurt too much in your 'amazing' new shoes and you'll want to get back home to the double-bill of Downtown Abbey, Call the Midwife or Game of Thrones.
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However, if you've been a a keen raver and simply cannot bear the thought of not being able to dance in front of people like I do and put up with the long queues then you'll be rewarded with what's inside..

Have you ever noticed the overriding male to female ratio at clubs? There definitely seems to be a lot more guys than girls these days. If this is really is the case then I'm not sure where all the girls are hiding or what they're doing. Maybe they're at home saving money with their partners having a better time watching late night re-runs of The Notebook and eating Chinese takeout. I wouldn't be surprised as any girl who looks drunk or pretends that they are for reasons why I can't imagine, will have the privilege of  being leeched on by a guy who definitely did not appear to be standing there a few seconds before...
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I've been to clubs, bars, house parties and concerts in places such as Dubai, Bahrain, Cyprus, U.K, Malta, Glasgow, Spain, Australia, Paris, Abu Dhabi and Mauritius and I've never experienced an atmosphere quite like down South. It's the lads in particular who should really take most of the blame here - they behave as if it's their first time on a night out and sometimes as if they've just discovered what their penis means to them.

This makes dancing near them extremely awkward as they constantly bash into you and end up spilling your drink on someone or just dropping their bottle of WKD on those fresh and hot 'new-look' shoes of yours. Extra fresh but now also extra sticky.
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I'm not sure if it's my poor choice of clubs that is the reason behind my dissatisfaction, but the music in clubs nowadays seems to be going from slightly bearable to dismal. It's either lifeless house tracks of single beats that you can only really bob your head to like one of those bobbing head dogs that people stick in the back of their cars or cheesy 90's hits that should only be whipped out at the end of the night when everyone is absolutely beavered and will therefore go home singing along to one hit wonders by Steps and remember what a smashing night they had.

Back in the day, (when I say back in the day I mean back in the 90's when I was 4 years old and had birthday parties with the spice girls on loop) having a night out was about actually enjoying yourself with your mates. Nowadays, I get the feeling that people go out just to prove something to other people. Girls in particular are the culprits here.
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My evidence to this statement is the fact that girls seem to spend almost the entire night taking 'selfies' on instagram. This happens before they get ready, as they are getting ready, in the bathroom before they leave the house, before they leave the house, on transport to a night out, at the club, in a gathering in the bathroom, but not after that as their makeup doesn't look as great. Ultimately, they end up wasting most of the night getting the right hair parting or lip-pout for each photo and thinking of hashtags to go with them:
#YOLO #nightoutwithmagirlz #partyinghard #nightsillneverforget #singlelaydies #wedontneedboyz #lovethem #nofilter #drunk

And so, after my few hours of trying to dance but ending up bobbing on the spot a bit like a broken pogo stick, trying to wade under some warm beer whilst a fifty-something tries to grope the poor underage girl next to me, I think it's time to head home after a long and eventful night, only to find out that it's 11.53pm. I've just about managed an hour.
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Growing up in a country where alcohol is strictly illegal to under 21s, you'd expect that teens in the UAE have the most boring weekends probably getting lost in the depths of the ever-expanding Shopping Malls and riding camels everywhere (as we do). As the Daily Mail loves to identify, youngsters over there have no problem drinking enough to 'forget their own name'. But you know, despite almost getting taken to the police station on several occasions due to my #yolo lifestyle, I loved absolutely every drunken minute of arriving home to my parents' disgrace or having someone call my mum to come and pick me up from random locations because the taxi driver threatened to take me (unconscious me this is) to the police station. Because youngsters in Dubai aren't able to purchase alcohol, we just paid people to deliver it for us, seems a legitimate solution, until you find the drinks are spiked. Luckily that never happened to me. This was just the norm for us, it was either drinking from people's parents drink cabinets or ordering in from the numerous booze guys on someone's contact list.

Being bored in a place like Dubai with nothing more to do that hang out at huge houses (predominantly because of the heat outside and not being allowed to hang about on the streets at night) with lots of alcohol always lead to promiscuous behaviour. I can't remember a gathering or house party where people didn't go into a bathroom or have sex somewhere in the house and this started from when I was about 14. Of course you had the more 'rebellious' crowd who started these escapades earlier on but when all the other pretty young things caught on during year 11, every single gathering turned into some form of orgy and it basically got worse as we progressed into my Sixth-Form. Anybody's bathroom was like an invite to fuck or more politely 'to do the dirty' as my hero Miranda Hart would say, so you'd constantly have queues for the bathroom and people banging on the door complaining and if you lived on a compound with a pool house which most people did, then the changing rooms, showers or bathrooms in there were always full too.
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For example, our 'Freshers' was an event that happened at the start of year 12 and 13 to introduce the newbies into the sixth form. To me, this was pretty much my 'freshers' as these parties were dirty and I mean fucking filthy. The 'FreshMeat' (the name is vulgar enough) which brought my year into our Sixth-form was fairly mild, but the 'FM' for the year below us when we started year 13 was something else... First it was the long-waited anticipation and build-up of finding a house for someone to host FM (and usually the person who did host had a fucking mansion) had to be stripped down and covered with plastic sheets taped to the walls to make sure nothing got stained or broken. When I was in my last year of high-school, this event was an absolute disgrace - people were smashed before they'd even arrived and after an hour into the party everyone was accumulating in the garage of the house to puke their insides up and the rest smoke like chimneys. So if you had an ounce of sobriety left in you, the sheer smell of this toxic mess was gonna hit you so bad you'd never want to smell puke or cigarette smoke ever again.
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People were passed out in their own puke next to one another whilst the rest either attempted to help, take photos, or have a chat and share a fag with someone. And keep in mind this is in a country where its illegal to drink and smoke under 21, and yet these people expected to take taxis home without chundering their guts up  and getting taken to the police station, because I'm sure their parents would be just as proud. The shame or shall I say honour of these events were always recorded amongst my peers on a 'spider diagram' and a 'Hall of Fame' which always comprised achievements by people who were the first to chunder,  the girl who got with the most guys - it was calculated that she must have got with 3 guys every 2 minutes at this event (and it lasted at least 3 hours). These events created celebrities in our Sixth-form, and lucky for these Celebs the teachers always got updated with the 'FM' gossip during the first lesson back on a Sunday Morning (our weekends were Friday and Saturday). I am yet to find any events as shameful as these in London. Perhaps, I am not looking hard enough or perhaps those days will only and ever be a by-product of our high-school years.

Updates for the New Year & Dub all or nothing concert @ Cable London 14th December

dub-all, idiosynphonic & discus records - Friday 14th December

I went to an amazing Dubstep concert on December 14th hosted by UKF and Discus Records at London Bridge's Cable Underground Club. Seeing as I'd never been to a Dubstep event, I'll admit I felt a bit out of place as I was unaware of the dress code and standard set of dance moves people used at such events.

I'm definitely familiar with 'headbanging' move that is common at every heavy-metal, rock etc concert but these guys seemed to be practising a more electronic and what seemed more aggressive variation on the move . The intensity of the 'headbang' was driven and fuelled by the insane, 'out of this world' bass that was shaking the room with every head going down to the beat of the songs. It was a tad embarrassing at first accompanied by my mate who'd been to these events before and joined in with everyone else. But eventually, I managed to get into a  rhythm where I stopped caring and let my body move to the music, (probably looking rather odd but no-one seemed to look twice thankfully).

What I also noticed was different to other concerts was that people were not dancing, grinding, pulling out the regular 'dead fish' or 'raise the roof' moves together like at a Disco or a regular club but everyone on the dancefloor seemed to be jamming to songs in their own 1 meter radius bubbles alone, almost as if in a trance. Then, something I'd never seen before happened. All the men in the room formed a circle, bounced about on the spot before running and bashing into one another in the middle of their circle.

It was like watching a bunch of atoms colliding in the room to the intensity of the bass reverberating within the room. Naturally, I and reassuringly the other females took a step back at this moment, clearly to protect our 'fragile' bodies from being knocked to the floor. Being the 5"1 that I am, I was quite frightened, but got used to stepping far out of the circle whilst this techno dubstep moshpit took place.

The crowd who were at this event were different from the usual student clubs that I sometimes go to as well. There were lots of young people in jeans, t-shirts, hoodies, some were in Spiderman and Pikachu Onesies!?, girls were in the kind of gear that you'd wear on a summer trip to Napa or Magaluf. I noticed this whilst my friend and I had to wait 40 minutes in the Coat Drop queue whilst a guy kind paced back and forth the queue asking if we wanted MDMA(Ecstacy). This definitely made a change from the groups of towering high heels and High-Street dresses that have to be braved on a cold night out in the U.K.

The music at this event would probably take reign as part of my Top 5 Concerts List. The DJS playing were Zeds Dead, Sigma, TC, Cutline, Taiki + Nulight, Tomek N. My friend and I saw Sigma first at 12 and then Zeds Dead whom everyone was waiting for and so rightfully too. I'm a big fan of Dubstep but I don't know a lot of Dubstep artists so it was great to go and see some of the best performing just a few meters away from me. If you've never heard Zeds Dead, a dynamic Canadian Duo, I suggest you lock yourself in a room and play it loud on your speakers or simply play it loud on your headphones (without breaking your eardrums!). I also suggest you try one of the sponsored UKF concerts in the future as not only the music is incredible but the atmosphere is too!

Here's a link to the photos on Cable's Website:
http://www.cable-london.com/broadcast/single/dub-all-idiosynphonic-discus-records-photos

Here are some of their best tracks:

Take a Chance feat. Omar LinX

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsb0-gRtsHs&list=UUsYkUlicwVBtW-pAInUSyPA&index=3

Rude Boy - Zeds Dead
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVaKw5AMfks

Rude Boy Remix with Omar LinX
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgPlzD-Xa_o

The Fight of My Life - Colin Munroe feat. Pusha T (Zeds Dead Remix)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Whe9_6Qo6zo&list=UUsYkUlicwVBtW-pAInUSyPA&index=5

(My Personal Favourite) Massive Attack - Paradise Circus (Zeds Dead Remix)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8C-ZTQJIkU

Undah Yuh Skirt - Zeds Dead feat. MC Mavado
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sisaL6o8xPU

Rumble in the Jungle - Zeds Dead
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fu_7k-VDszA