It was a sunless day, though a typical one, for northern California beaches.

Went with a couple girlfriends down to Santa Cruz earlier this week, for a much needed respite from work. I’ve been working 6 days a week for the past three weeks, and I hadn’t been able to find time to hang out with my friends at a time that worked for all of us. Unfortunate, but this is what happens when one wants to vacation in Japan during the winter holiday: one must work one’s butt off to get money to do so.

Santa Cruz Beachfront, oh-so-California.

My boyfriend likes to remind that I’m from California whenever the modifier hella slips through. Usually he’s not appreciative of the fact, but this is a pale boy from New York speaking, so I like to think that all comments of his regarding my state are void and invalid.

See? Palm trees. That's my Jill-E camera bag in the front.

The dress I was wearing is now one of my favorites. I don’t know how many people have heard of Desigual, a Spanish design company that opened at least 2 storefronts in New York City in the past year or so (one’s in SoHo, it’s not difficult to spot). They sell these amazing coats and dresses made of a mish-mash of fabrics and patterns that just make me want to drop the $400 dollars the clothes are priced at.

Well, my dress (thank goodness) did not come from Desigual. In fact, I dug it out of a large pile of thrift clothes at a stall in the somewhat sketchy Montreuil markets in Paris and purchased it for the bargain price of 8 Euros!

The full front view of the dress.

Notice the zipper details and the empire waistline.

The patterns remind me of Ming vases.

Hemline.

First company requiring business formal rather than business casual.

So the next few days are less full of pictures and a little more full of moving from place to place. Our next company visit, on the third day of our stay in London, was to UBS, in the old Square Mile of London (also so called are the financial services based primarily here). The architecture is industrial meets modern here, and especially around the businesses.

The first half of the UBS was one of my favorite company visits, since we had an amazing guest speaker, Paul Donovan, who was the director of Global Economics for the company. He gave us a great overview of the current economical outlook from their view in Europe, including notes on the current slow-paced recovery. Crossing fingers that Greece doesn't default an cause domino-like ripples.

We split into smaller groups again after leaving UBS, since one of the interns there had recommended nearby Brick Lane as a great place for international food. In our search, we stumbled across Spitalfields Market in the east end of London, so named for being the Hospital field at one time in history [a tidbit we learned later on a Jack-the-Ripper tour].

Spitalfields market waning at the end of the day. They have tons of clothes here, and I snagged a dress for 5 pounds!

Of course, when we finally arrived in Brick Lane we realized that our intern guide had been somewhat misrepresentational in her “international” designation. Brick Lane is of course home to a plethora of Indian restaurants, not necessarily multicultural ones. You do get to bargain with such a huge selection, and after much debate, we were finally drawn into one that offered us a 25% discount and a free round of drinks.

Day 4 found us back at the university’s London Centre in Heythrope College with an animated history professor giving us a overview of the enormous length of British history and culture. It was a great introduction to our next stop, the British Museum, free but controversial for tightly holding on to its plundered treasures.

The gorgeous covered inside of the museum.

The Rosetta Stone, behind glass.

Acropolis replica.

We walked over to Chelsea in the late afternoon. We had been invited over for a small house party at the home of one of our University’s trustees.

We passed a couple daycare centers on our walk over. Imagine living here!

Obviously staged posh laughter.

Here we are all dressed up.

Day 5 was an early rising: we headed to the U.S. Embassy much too early in the morning. There, we were introduced a bit more to the expat view of London, and privy to a short bomb threat warning, whence were were instructed not to leave the room we had been placed in.

You can also tell that the American Embassy, out of all the places we’d gone to, had the smallest budget, by their lack of coffee and teas. I do believe that a good chunk of their money is going to building a new embassy, set to open in a few years.

The U.S. Embassy

A couple of the girls and I head over to TopShop at Oxford Circus (biggest and busiest) and did a bit of shopping before heading over to our next visit at Virgin Media.

Group photo, actually from a later date, but since I'm having trouble pegging the exact date, here's us in all our formal glory. Such a business outing group photo, yes? You can see our exchange office plastered with these, though we probably are prettier.

Crawled up around 7am on a Saturday (the first time) to do a photoshoot with my friend Megwa to enter into the photo contest at Tokyo Rebel. Meg is the model – she also did the styling and makeup; I just picked a location and snapped away.

The two categories where punk (above) and lolita (below). Winners of the contest, one in each category, get $250 in store merchandise–not that this is very much, considering a dress on this Japanese street fashion site goes for about $300, if not more–and a chance to model or photograph for them.

I’m really not sure what our chances our, but I would say slim. I wish I’d remembered to properly prepare for this shoot, since Meg’s styling is fantastic.