16th, 17th: really tired. Resting. Meeting Amanda

On Thursday the 16th I was feeling very tired. Lack of sleep from the previous few days had caught up I think. I was also still feeling quite down about leaving and everything. It seems very sudden that I find myself away from Nottingham, not to go back again.

I spent the day sleeping and thinking about things.

In the evening I was very hungry so I went across the road and bought the worst pizza ever. The cheese was like rubber.

On Friday the 17th I was trying to lift my spirits a little bit. My Mum sent me a message earlier empathising about how I was feeling sad about leaving etc. She mentioned the sometimes frustrating realisation of the 'transcience' of life and that gave me some thoughts. I have a book of different meditations that can be done which get the brain to think in different kinds of ways in order to help someome become a little more well rounded. One of the meditations is about the transcience of life. You have to go through a series of thoughts on how everything is always changing and always will be, and ways in which to come to terms with that. It is a kind of idea that trying to hope that things will always remain the same is a sure path to unhappiness, and I had to remind myself of that now. I had not previously realised that I really was precisely trying to hope that things would be a certain way, even though the world determines that they should be some other way. And there was no way I could change it so I had to just accept it. This realisation could hopefully make me feel a little better about things.

I had to check out of the Generator hostel today. I moved to the Clink hostel which is fairly close.

Have to throw away the shoes. They're too heavy for the plane...

I was quite worried about my luggage. I had way too much stuff to take with me on the plane. I asked at some places nearby who transport luggage. About the cheapest was 69 pounds for 5kg shipped to Australia. I thought that was a bit expensive.

At 5:17 I met Amanda at the train station as she was coming down from Nottingham that day, ready to go home. It was nice to see a familiar face again. I think I've come to the realisation that travelling with company is quite a nice thing to do, if you really like the people. Amanda had a bit of luggage with her so I helped her take it to her hostel. She was staying at one that was quite far out of London, near to Heathrow airport. So we caught the Picadilly line there. The train was very very crowded. We travelled quite far and finally made it. It was a fun adventure.

We got out of the train station and her hostel was right on the other side of the street. We went in there, and then we went out to get some food. We walked down the street and found a Nepolese restaurant. The food was really amazing. They gave us a great amount of naan bread and also rice and the curries of course. I ordered a second one because it was so good, but I couldn't eat it all because it was incredibly hot. I've become unconditioned from hot food.

After that we went for a walk through some suburbs. Then we drank some beer at a pub for a little bit. And then we hung out for a while more and then I said goodbye.

I tried to get the train back, but all the trains had finished! I had to wait for the late bus. It was 12:20 or so. The late bus took quite a while getting there. Amanda went back inside because she had to wake up early to catch the plane the next day. The late bus arrived, I got on and sat on the top floor at the front so I had a great view. The bus was probably the slowest bus ever. It stopped at almost every stop, and the driver was very unsure, so he was very slow. Finally I got to Trafalgar square and then walked the rest of the way back to my hostel.