lena

My Russian housemate Elena is quite a character. It's been a while since my last entry. Today me and Lena went to Hamstead Heath up in North London. It was quite a nice area of London where wealthy Londoners and celebrities lived. There were big and posh houses that were mostly detached. We went to the Hamstead Park which was a lovely big park that you could cycle in, walk your dog or just go for a lovely stroll. I saw quite a few squirrels but forgotten to take my camera with me, however Lena had brought her dying one to take some posing ones.

Like a whinging pom now, I have to describe what it's like spending your day with her.

Lena is quite an opinionated girl who is studying public relations in London is waiting for her visa to renew.

I've been out with her a couple of times during my short stay here and I think I have finally figured it out. She is your typical 24 year old Russian blonde(bleached of course), blue-eyed girl that is hoping to stay in London after her studies and not return back to her hometown Russian city in Minsk. She is on a Russian community website where she meets all her random men and takes them along for a ride.

Don't get me wrong but she is a really nice person but I find that Russian girls are only after one thing in a guy - as long as he's got a well paid job and is older that they are (I mean at least a decade) then, only then will they agree to go out with them.

Today we went on 2 buses to get to Hampstead Heath. In saying that, I ignored the nagging feeling at the back of my head that use to say, Lena is a tight and she likes things 'cheap and cheerful' and we might end up walking half of London, in today's case uphill. On the way there, we reached our destination with no problems. I have noticed that everytime she took me out somewhere, it feels like she's only been to the places once and second guesses at the turns and short cuts we should be taking to get there.

For lunch, we wanted to find a little nice cafe to sit in and have a snack. There were many lovely cafes along the road and the weather was quite nice today. As most Londoners would do, Lena insisted on getting a table outside the cafes.... everyone that we passed has seats on the inside which seemed just as appealing to me. Everyone else had taken up the tables outside, I didn't see a problem with sitting inside as the cars that passed by were probably polluting the food and drinks we were about to eat. Half and hour later, we finally found a good enough place to eat which was cheap and had a seat that was indoors but has all the doors opened so the sunshine could reach the table. I was relieved, we both ordered a pizza each.

On the way back, because she didn't want to take the tube as the bus will be cheaper, we ended up taking the bus in the wrong direction. Then she ran out of credit on her oyster card (as usual) and only ever carries 10quid with her everywhere she went (hence my new found cheap and cheerful places to eat at in London). So we had to find a tube station for her to top up since a bus trip without an oyster card is twice as much.

Lena doesn't really have many girl friends and only ever gets along with guy friends, in saying that I found that going out with her meant that we only did what she wanted and if I was to stop and look at the things that she didn't want to see, she would stand around looking bored and ask shall we go if she got impatient. She is quite opinionated and always has to be the one to have the last say.

On our way back, we decided to stop off at Kilburn which she raved about the little shops it had along the high street. So I looked forward to it. Kilburn is a dump. It looks totally run down and is heading towards the rough part of London.

We walked along and I told her I wanted to look in Primark. I wanted to buy some cheap underwear that I could easily throw out. Primark always sell a set of bra and brief for 3quid. When she saw that there was a long queue which was moving quite fast I thought, she said "why don't you go to other shops and I'm sure you can find them elsewhere". By that, I gave up and let her off. Then during out shopping stroll, she wanted ice-cream. We walked passed an ice-cream van and I asked if she wanted it still, her response was "oh if we get ice-cream, I'd prefer getting the one at McDonald's" which was 200metres back from where we were. I was about to slap her. We soon forgot about that.

One great entertainment I find about her is when she talks about the men in her life. She literally have men crawling to be with her, or have them trailing behind. Currently she is seeing her ex from a year ago but is also seeing a 49 year old Aussie guy from Melbourne who is an entrepreneur, but she has no intentions of having a romantic relation with him... so I was curious and I asked her why she was going out with him. She said that he took her out to expensive 3 course dinners in London and that was solely the reason and if he asked her out for dinner again, she would not refuse. She never cease to amaze me with her stories of the men in her life. Another guy who'd I'd met was called Nick (who was a splitting image of Russ) who is in a relationship with another Russian girl from Moscow, is planning to pay for her to come over to London for a month but while all that is happening, he is trying to woe Lena to be his. Lena is not attracted to him because he's somewhat like a commoner and is quite tight with his money however her gestures of affection towards him does not surprise me to see him craving to have more than just a friendship.