crazybobbles

As hinted in earlier posts, uka paid England a visit and took a eurostar (an eurostar sounds weird) to see us british folk. For those who don’t know him he’s an amazing photographer who does ickle macro photography and lomo photography. He’s got his own style down to a science and pays quite a lot of attention to detail. But yes, do check his flickr account and see for yourself. I personally love his macro photography but right now he’s getting into the serious world of film and lomo photography (which is also brilliant). Anyway, he had a whole trip planned out in which he made sure he visited all the famous London sights (ie Topshop) and meet up with a few photography friends (including me, Alice and Inn). To be fair his visit was originally to visit Alice but I managed to find a way of yanking him over for a day in London to meet up with the other folks.

Uka taking "fisheye" shots

Anyway the day he arrived I was actually at work, it was far too late to book a holiday and since it wasn’t a full day (he’ll be travelling up to stay at Alice’s place) we’d only meet up for lunch and also goto a lomokev signing which uka happened to conviently pick as a day of arriving into London. We sort of made a rough plan of when he should meet up with me and where (I suggested the Gherkin since it was recogniseable and close to work) and no further planning was involved. Uka was more sucked into planning a super day in London where he’d visit all the places for all his shopping needs (including Cyber Candy, Topshop, Urban Outfitters, you name it!) than the actual meet up point.

Nearer the time I had to do a quick search in our old msn conversations to find out what we had planned because he was already on his way to England and I had no idea when he’d be there. It was pretty funny but I managed to meet up with him standing there aimlessly at the Gherkin (phew). The main reason we met up that time was for me to pick up his ultra heavy backpack to look after whilst he was shopping, once I finished work I would meet up with him again and we’d head to Lomokev’s signing.

I immediately made sure uka went to all the places to eat that you wouldn’t find in Belgium, including a Barney’s (a restaurant that sells sandwiches and burgers), a krispey kreme, and a Thorntons for chocolate. I pretty much porked him up in that 1 hour lunch break I had to meet up with him teehee, he told me I was killing him with food! (NO WAI!). Uka was sort of semi shy, he wasn’t afraid of talking though, and his English was pretty awesome (it had a pretty cool Belgian accent to accompany it too). Another thing I noticed was that he giggled quite a lot, like, quite a lot! It was nice meeting him for the first time though :D. After lunch we said our goodbyes and I went back to the office carrying his huge backpack that nearly made me collapse (not really but I like overexaggerating).

Once work was over I managed to meet up with him again (same place different time) and then we began our quest to lomokev’s signing place. Uka seemed to think there was going to be a huge queue or something so we made sure we’d go there asap to avoid queueing up. It was located near a bar type place quite close to work, he was initially going to take the tube to Old Street and find the place (he had all his places printed out on google maps bless) but I suggested we just walked there since it was a straight walk to the area. Uka told me about the his hectic day of shopping and looking around London whilst I was at work whilst I uhm… talked about work and how busy I was haha. We finally arrived at our destination, Jaguar Shoes. The door said “lomokev signing downstairs” (or something, I dare not question what it originally said).

Down the dark stairs of doom we saw Lomokev sitting down in one corner, we were literally the first people at the signing (hats off to uka assuming there’d be a queue). We were a wee bit shy but eventually we approached him and uka and lomokev started conversing like a house on fire (eg “hey, so what are you doing?” “nothing much, just BURNING THE SH** OUT OF YOU MWAHAHAHAH” “ah ok”). Uka gave kev a lomo sticker which he made and printed on his zink pogo printer (it’s a special printer that doesn’t require ink, made by polaroid) and kev was amazed at it, he first asked uka if he worked for lomo or something because he also gave him a lomo sticker, he said no and yeah… kev made sure he got something in return for the stickers, originally he was going to give him a pound for it but then he traded it off with a poster (slyyyyyyy).

Lomokev's spoils for the signing

I was able to get a poster too for getting two copies of his book signed by kev. The book was pretty amazing, it teaches you both the fundamentals and some other stuff you wouldn’t imagine about photography and whatnot. I recommend you buy a copy of it if you’re into photography, use this link 😉 Uka wanted a quick photo with kev too so we quickly did a photo session of them two together, they were instantly posing for the shot which was funny. We soon took off since uka had a train to catch and I had a gig to catch (more on that tomorrow, I think 3 posts in one day is enough for me!!).

The tube journey was pretty funny, uka got stuck on the barriers because of his sleeping mat being too wide, not only did it get him stuck, it also took down quite a few people haha. I took a few photos of him during the trip which he smiled throughout (surreal when you consider everyone’s gormless expressions in the tube). So yeah, once we arrived at the train station I handed uka off to Alice and headed off to the gig. Good times.