My friends often ask me how I find out about a lot of the cool events that I either go to or tickets to go to see.

Mainly it’s all through just reading the papers and local magazines (like the TNT) regularly and looking out for small (or big) sections talking about upcoming events.

Sometimes for ticketed events it’s more me knowing that they are coming up and then booking as soon as the tickets go on sale.  Often over here for concerts/festivals/big events the tickets will go on sale up to a year before the actual event.   When they do go on sale as well sometimes (like with the big festivals - V/Reading, etc.) the tickets then sell out within an hour or so.   Other events like Wimbledon or a Cricket match at Lords require you to apply in advance and then get put into a lottery draw to see if you get anything (though with Wimbledon there’s only a 10% chance of actually lucking out with a ticket option!)

Of course then there are the random things that you just happen to walk past and see.   Was walking through Trafalgar Square the other day when there was a big tv screen getting setup and a few cameras and random people around.   Picked up the following brochure

Went along later on to try and go in, but even though I turned up 15 minutes before the start time they had already clsoed off the square due to “health and safety issues”.  When there were more people outside the square than in it!  England is a funny place sometimes.

Still walking around London you can sometimes come across lots of cool events that are happening, you just have to keep your eyes open and your ears listening, who knows what you might find!

Or check out some upcoming events on my Google Calendar

Well it’s that time of the year when everyone gets a bit sick/ill/flu-ey..  Whatever you want to call it.   Of course if you travel via tube or train it is also pretty hard to avoid anyone else who might have it as they cough or sneeze over you, or if you avoid it on the transport you will probably have some workmate who comes into work and says they are fine..  even though they look Death’s close cousin.

The main way I’ve found to help ward away the bugs is to regular exercise and have lots of fruit.  I’ve  got my own smoothie machine and normally have one with some ginger even couple of days.

What happens over here if you do get sick is you obviously need to go see a doctor..  Hopefully your registered already, if not this in the important bit

Before you get sick you need to find who/where you local doctor is and go and register with them!  This is important, otherwise they won’t want to see when you do try and go there when you are sick

Of course I found out the hard way a number of times that your local doctor might not be that helpful.  If you are sick and need to go see them ring up as soon as possible on the morning.

When I rang my doctors once on a Monday when I was sick I was told that all the “available” appointments for the day were already gone.  (Obviously there are a number of pre booked appointments with different people).  They asked if I was quite sick.. I said yes.. They said if I was really really sick, then to go the A+E of a hospital.   Otherwise I could get an appointment for the Thursday.   Yes four days later.   I didn’t bother, I was either going to be dead or ok by that stage.

What I did however do is the in between option.   If you can’t get any help from your doctor, there is both an NHS Direct phone line you can call for advice.  It is actually staffed by nurses so it’s not like someone in India is just going to take a message.

Or there are a number of NHS Walk-In Centres available around the country.   The closest and easiest one for me to get to was in Soho Square.  (Which meant that I had to take the tube to get there, now you can see why you can get sick on the tube!)   Sometimes you might have to wait quite a while to get help, it depends what time you go, how many people are working there, and how many other people are generally sick.  I was quite quick when I went there, took about 20 minutes after filling in a few forms and then a doctor/nurse saw me, checked me over and gave me some medication to get well.

Hopefully it won’t happen to you, but there’s the basic options available when you do get sick (apart from 999 obviously!)

Well London isn’t a cheap place to get a haircut.   Looking around at a number of hairdressers you’ll see that even a guy’s haircut is at least about 25 pounds (or a lot more depending on where you go).   I know that in New Zealand the haircut’s are about the same dollar amount, yet the exchange rate between NZ and England is 2.5 to 1! Also it’s a lot cheaper to get a haircut in somewhere like Bangor, Wales than it is in London.

Of course just because your paying this kind of money doesn’t mean your getting a better haircut than elsewhere.  I remember watching some hair dressing award show, or something random like that and a guy there made the comment about how many other businesses can you work in where when you go out to a nightclub party and the company buy’s bottles of vodka at 150 pounds each!

However there are a few options available.

1.  Go somewhere else apart from London! Overseas country trip, or even a visit to somewhere else in England.

2. For guys (and I think girls), there’s a chain with a few branches around London called Mr Toppers.  They charge 6 pounds for a cut.  Though saying that they pretty much only use cutters and you’ll could end up looking a bit like you just enlisted in the US Army.  Well that’s what happened to me.

3. There are a number of salons that have training schools and constantly need models (This normally work’s better for girls rather than guys though, as they don’t need to cut men’s hair as often).  If you pick up the free daily paper (The Metro), then often in the back page’s of that there will be ad where it says hair models required.  Toni and Guy regularly advertise and with a coupon it’s normally 5 pounds.   You can also just try them direct, though you then have to pay around 15 pounds. (Look for the Academy).   Vidal Sasson also have a training school.  But wary though, the haircut’s might not be exactly what you are after as they will be done by students.  Because they are students they have to check regularly with their tutor which means that your haircut will take several hours, prepare for at least a whole afternoon!

4. The final option is to just go to somewhere that’s not so cool and trendy, at least suburb wise if not shop wise as well.  I’ve found a number of hairdressers that do a decent men’s haircut for around 10 pounds in places like Kilburn and Clapham Junction.   Most of the expensive hairdressers are of course in the expensive areas.  Have a look around the more normal/cheaper areas and a give them someone new a try, who knows you might get a great deal and a great haircut!

So your living in London (or the UK) now and want to check out the rest of Europe (or maybe even fly home to see the family).. well there’s a lot of cheap airlines out there that will let you do this. Saying that of course a number of them are actually going bankrupt at the moment, so check out your insurance before you do and normally pay with a credit card as that gives you money back protection if you spend over 100 pounds.

The two best site’s that I’ve found for checking out flights (and wished I had known about them when I first arrived!) are Skyscanner.net and Kayak.co.uk

Skyscanner check’s a number of airlines, but it’s good in that it includes the budget ones (e.g. Ryanair and Easyjet) in the searching. It has a number of great options if your living over here. You can get it to show a calendar view so if you want to go someone in particular but aren’t sure when you see which weekend (or days) are the cheapest to fly there and back on.

It also has another option (which I would have liked to use on a couple of weekends) where you just say I want to fly on these dates and it shows you which places are the cheapest to go to. While if you are finding it hard/expensive to fly to the place that you want to go to, use the Map option and look at nearby airports. It might be cheaper to fly to a nearby airport and then take a quick train to where you want to go.

Couple of drawbacks with the site though - the price’s aren’t real time, so you might find a cheap flight, but then click on the Check Flights option, that connects with the airline’s website and your 30 pound flight might then suddendly become a 80 pound flight. However it’s worth knowing that if your looking at some airlines (Ryanair in particular), they seem to change their flight prices several times over a day, and definitely over a week sometimes. This can be both increases AND decreases. While the second drawback is that those cheap flights could be flying out at 6am! So more a pain than anything else.

Kayak.co.uk as mentioned is another great site, though it’s orginally an American one (kayak.com) so it’s still developing the UK options. One great thing about Kayak is that as well as checking many different airlines it will also look at other stopover routes that might be available to you that can be a lot cheaper, either through the airline’s direct or through other Airline ticket pricing sites.
For example I was wanting to fly to Turkey for ANZAC day, and had left it a bit late.. only booking a week or two before ANZAC. So all the direct flights were quite expensive. However I found a flight going via Germany (as it flew with Lufthunsa). I checked out on the Lufthunsa and exactly the same flights would have cost me just over 1000 pounds on their website, booking through Kayak it took me to Cheapflights.com which had the same flights for only 300 pounds! How’s that for a saving!

Another great thing with Kayak is the slider’s that is has on the left hand side. So while it might give you plenty of options for some destinations, you can use the sliders so that it only show’s you flight’s that leave after 10am (so you don’t have to catch those stupid early morning flights). While you can do the same thing with the length of time you might like for stopovers.

There are of course all the other usual flight comparison type sites - lastminute.com, expedia.co.uk, opodo.co.uk etc

But remember it’s not all planes in Europe! If your ever going somewhere last minute, or have time up your sleeve and want a different type of journey, why not try a Train? The Seat61 website has a great wealth of information about this, or you can buy the book The Man in Seat 61: A Guide to Taking the Train Through Europe

I managed to get a last minute ticket to a World Cup Quarter Final in Berlin, Germany in 2006. Obviously lots of people were flying over for it. So it actually worked out cheaper (and much more of an experience) to take the train. Left from Waterloo station on the Eurostar on Thursday evening and after one change woke up around 7am a bit before we pulled into Berlin station! Definitely a different experience from the full body searches and limited luggage amounts allowed on most airplanes nowdays, I even got to have a shower on the train before I got off!

Good luck and cheap travelling!

p.s. If you book the Eurostar, watch out!  When you go to the site it charge’s you more if you say you are from Britain, the cheapest country to book trips from is New Zealand.  Seriously.  A newspaper printed that a return Paris to London will cost you 54 pounds if your Australian, and it’s 154 pounds if your British!

One of the great thing’s about London is that sometimes it’s quite easy to see famous events and celebrities that you might not normally see at home (unless you live in LA!)

There are regular Movie Premiere’s held in London, most of the time they are all held at Leicester Square at the Odeon Cinema.  Though it depend’s on the show sometimes they are also held at the Empire or the Vue, or not even in the square at all…   Though if it is a big blockbuster movie it will be held there.

Check out what’s coming up by looking at the Westminster What’s On website as they regularly list what Premieres are going to be shown or check the papers as some of them are advertised.   They also usefully list a number of other events within Westminster worth checking out for free.

If you are going to turn up for one, if you do want to be in the front row to actually meet people you will most likely have to turn up around 3/4pm to be able to get a good spot for a movie that won’t start until about 6.30/7/7.30pm.    So be prepared to wait, obviously it all depends on the movie though.. For the last Harry Potter movie there were some crazy Germany girl’s that actually slept the night in the Square so they could be first in line for the premiere!  (Though they don’t normally put up barriers/fencing until the early afternoon of the premiere)

In the few time’s that I’ve been along, I’ve been able to take a number of photos of stars and personally shaken hands with Tim Robbins, Daniel Day-Lewis, Pedro Almodovar, Vin Diesel.

All depends on the movie, but the bigger one’s normally have a lot more of a show as well as well as other non-movie celebrities.   If they movie’s not that much of a blockbuster you’re likely to have Jordan and Big Brother winners (or losers) coming along.  Yet if it’s something like a Star Wars/James Bond/Harry Potter, etc it’s going to get people like Madonna, some of the Royal Family, and other A-List “Hollywood” type stars come along.

If you keen to actually walk along the red (or blue/green/pink) carpet, very occasionally some of the movies do a Charity screening for the Premiere and if you contact the Movie Distributor or the Charity you might be able to get tickets so you can see the show.   Though this is quite rare, and the tickets will be expensive (think 60 pounds+) and hard to get.

Good Luck and have fun!