I hate blogs, they seem like the most self-centered egotistical exercise, but I'm lazy and I'd rather do this than email everybody. London is pretty rad, its crazy how quickly its suddenly begun to feel like home.

I've moved into a house in New Cross, which is right next to my new college, in an area thats fifty percent fried chicken shops and neighborhood drunks and fifty percent big wide tree-lined streets and old beautiful houses. I live in the Garden Flat (at 18 Jerningham Rd, New Cross SE14 5NX London, send me stuff!), which has a blue front door and a big scruffy back garden and three lovely housemates. I live with a couple, Tom and Vanessa, who are both working full time in the city, as engineering eco-science type people, and Sam, who's a Masters student and part time DJ. They've just completely renovated the flat from scratch so everything is covered in paint sheets and smells deliciously toxic. We think we have a mole living under the house because something keeps burrowing along and raising the floorboards, meaning its a bit of a lottery whether or not the doors will open and close each day. Big red double-decker buses go right past my front door, and I'm one train stop from London Bridge so its easy to get into town. My room is little and square and white and brand new pristine clean, so i've set to work destroying it with my brand new set of textas.

I don't start school for another week and a half so I've been exploring London and searching for the perfect bike, in between shifts at my new job. I work in the worlds cutest, brightly colored psychedelic cupcake store in Covent Garden, called Candy Cakes. I work Friday to Sunday making coffees and sandwiches and generally contributing to the global obesity epidemic by stuffing tourists faces full of cake and sugar. The cakes are pretty amazing, they're really bright colors and exotic flavors and they pile them up so high its like working in a little fortress built of cake. Unfortunately, its a pretty horrid place to work since you never get a break, the shifts are really long, its minimum wage, and you end up filthy and covered in brightly colored bits of icing. As soon as my housemates get sick of eating cupcakes every weekend I'll probably start to look for something else.

We're not allowed pets in my new house, which is a tragedy, so the hamster/gerbil I have dreamed of for so long is going to have to wait (or live quietly in the bottom of my wardrobe). I'm consoling myself with our vegie garden, in which there is one lonely beetroot which looks like it needs a bit of love. I've also been trying to feed my way into my housemates' hearts by cooking massive and overly ambitious vegan pies. I may just be trying to distract myself however, from the fact that (as everyone keeps pointing out to me) I have no friends.