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London’s Calling

Whew… so I’ve dropped the journal ball, haven’t I?  Let’s see if I can get a bit caught up.

This last weekend was fantastic.  I was thinking about going out to Bath but I decided that after such a crazy three weeks, it would probably be a good idea to relax at home, get familiar with the neighborhood and do some things around London.  In the end it was a great choice because the plan to go to Bath and the nearby Stonehenge would have been instantly scrapped once I realized that it was Summer Solstace weekend and about ten million hippies and wiccans were going to be doing scary pagan things at Stonehenge.

Instead, on Saturday, I went to the National Portrait Gallery and saw Phantom of the Opera.  Oh wow.  Alright, so first off, the National Portrait Gallery was stunning in itself.  It’s a fabulous building and has, as one might expect, absurd numbers of portraits from every historic style and era all the way up through modern day (there were paintings of Middle Age saints and the pop celebrity who was in yesterday’s gossip rag).  But by far the most impressive to me was the only surviving portrait of the Brontes.  I’m a bit of a Bronte fanatic (Charlotte Bronte write Jane Eyre, among other novels; Emily wrote Wuthering Heights and Anne wrote The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Agnes Grey) and it was so overwhelming to see this portrait.  Their brother, Branwell, painted it and it’s very basic but it was found, years after they all had died, in the closet of the second wife of Charlotte’s husband.  It’s still got the creases from where it was folded up for all that time.

Then I went to the theater where I had gotten last minute tickets for Phantom, which I hadn’t seen since I was 7.  I got the cheapest tickets, and I was seriously in the nosebleed section – I mean, I was a football field’s length away from the stage at least and about 30 metres above it.  I was a little nervous about how it would be but as soon as the play started I forgot how far away I was… that is one of the most stunning musicals of all time in my opinion.  It’s sexy and gorgeous and funny and sad and I absolutely loved it.  Because I hadn’t seen it since I was young, I had forgotten, or never properly understood, a lot of it and I really enjoyed seeing it again.

On Sunday, I took a very slow day to relax and enjoy being in my flat.  My flatmate Ann and I spent a lot of time together just chatting and then she had to go babysit for some family friends and I took a long walk around the neighborhood and good some household supplies I needed.  Unfortunately, the day was a bit of a disaster overall.  I managed to have my debit card frozen (you know… they were fine when I was withdrawing money from an ATM, or shopping at convenience stores but when I bought a bedspread and a mirror, that’s when they decided something was fishy.  I did tell them I was *moving* to England!); destroy 1/3 of my clothing by changing it’s color in the laundry; lose our curtain by leaving the window open during a really high wind; and was forced to throw out a bunch of food that had gone bad.  Oh well, it’s a learning experience and I can’t say I was that upset about it because… well, it’s hard to be upset about anything really since I’m enjoying myself so much.

This is my first full week of work.  Things have been a bit slow the last few days as I have to wait until the new version of the site is live sometime this week before I can start properly promoting it, but I really like the people and it’s been fun getting to know all of the London events scene.  My commute into work is a bit of a trip – I walk about 10 min to the underground station, I take the underground for about half an hour to 40 min, I come out in the downtown financial district of the city where I catch a bus which takes about 15-20 min to get me right to my office.  The bit on the bus is gorgeous and at some point I’ll need to take pictures of the route.  That reminds me that I still need to put pictures from the last few weeks… eek!

Alright, well, I think I’ve been at least partially redeemed for my lack of updates and hopefully I’ll have a chance to post again before this weekend!


BUSY

I’m alive! I’m doing well! I’m super super busy with work and getting settled! At some point I’ll post an update that is coherent and informative and doesn’t use so many exclaimation points!


Brit Slang

I’ve been bad about updating lately – incredibly busy getting settled in the new flat. I had Monday and Tuesday off from work (I started today) so I did the incredibly touristy bits of London including Westminster Abbey, Trafalgar Square, The Museum of London, The National Gallery and I stood under the London Eye but decided I didn’t want to pay 40 quid to be stuck in a tram with a screaming baby for an hour. I’ll go back later for that one :).

Today was my first day of work. It was actually a half day as things have been so busy with a site relaunch, everyone slept in this morning.

Really, I don’t have too much to say in terms of an update, I’ll have to do a full proper update at the end of the week. To tide you over, I promised a friend that I would do a glossary of some of the better British slang. Here are some of my favorites, or the ones I use quite a bit.

A bit of a lie-in = sleeping in
Absolute pants = complete trash
Fit = hot/sexy
Loo = bathroom
Tube = the subway
Ace = brilliant/fantastic
Naff = uncool
Football = soccer
Rounders = baseball (or something vaguely like, but really only played by females)
Pitch = field
Queue = line (as in, “stand in the queue or your won’t get your ticket!)
Smart = well dressed, put together, looking sharp
Taking the piss = making fun of someone or something (as in “she was taking the piss out of me for being an American but I knew it was all in good fun because that’s how British humor works”)
Spanner = monkey wrench
Uni = college/university
School = elementary school or middle school
Zed = zee (the last letter of the alphabet)

Also, for your further edification, these things have fairly negative connotations in Britain:
community
community service (implied you’ve been in prison!)

I hope you are all now prepared to come visit me here!


New Flat!

Just a quick update until I have time to write more (and add more pictures!) later.


Wow.  So… so much for avoiding the massive posts.  To be fair, I’ve been quite busy so haven’t had time to take things as they come and write them down.

To be honest, most of the last few days hasn’t been particularly interesting – looking at untold numbers of flats in all parts of the city.  I guess the one plus side to flat hunting is that you get to see the city in which you are living.  Because I don’t think I ever would have ended up in Hackney on my own (and trust me, you wouldn’t either).  Tuesday through today was pretty much full-time flat hunting, with a slight break to pick up a job.  In London, it’s very common to flatshare.  This means you live in a house with other people you don’t know (at first) and it’s really hit or miss what you end up with.  There are flats from groups of all students who have group dinners and all live in the sitting room to groups of various aged professionals who live in a place without any sitting room at all and never see each other.  And that’s just the good range of options.  You can use your imagination.  In any case, I’ve seen quite the range.

The best part of the week was when, on Wednesday night, I had dinner at the home of this absolutely wonderful woman named Kim and her husband.  Kim is a good friend of my uncle and aunt from when she met my uncle while they were traveling the world themselves (like I’m doing now!).  They’ve stayed friends and Kim was kind enough to cook me my first home-cooked meal while in London (and what a relief that was after so long having eatten out!).  It was a very fabulous and a bit surreal experience.  I say surreal only in that on top of the delicious food and the champagne she was very liberal with (having found out it was my birthday only a few days previous), I had mentioned I was going to the Dierks Bentley concert later that summer and she insisted putting him on the digital radio during dinner.  So, I was just the slightest bit tipsy from champagne, in London, with people who knew my family but I had just met, eating a delicious homecooked meal, talking about classic literature, and listening to an American country music star.  I have to say, it was fantastic.

The only thing this week that could compare is the fact that tonight, after four solid days of searching, nearly 20 flats and some pretty dodgy experiences, I have finally found a flat.  I had been out all day and had come back to Mimi’s place to relax for a bit and have a quick dinner before my last look of the night.  I was so disappointed in not having found a good place yet, and exhausted after a week of running about the city, I almost bailed on the last viewing but finally dragged myself out to go see.

The flat is owned by a landlord who lives out of the city but currently inhabited by a 24 year old girl named Ann who works as a radio broadcast producer for the BBC.  She runs a Girl Scouts troop, loves Doctor Who and Harry Potter, is very tidy, a bit of a techno-geek, despises smoking, and has been nearly as panicky about finding a flatmate as I have been about finding a flat.  I planned to stop in for five minutes then run back to relax and ended up staying for two and a half hours chatting with Ann.  I’m moving in tomorrow.

The flat is in a perfect location, in Hammersmith, which is a neighborhood on the west side of the city, north of the river.  It’s a really posh neighborhood and almost all residental families but with a really fantastic scattering of shops and pubs and restaurants in the area too.  It’s going to be about a 45 min commute to work, but that’s about standard for the city (some places were a lot worse!!) and it’s very reasonably priced given the area.  I have my own double room, we share a (huge!) bathroom and there’s a giant sitting area with attached kitchen and eating area.  The flat is a bit plain at the moment but we can decorate it as we like.

I’m so so happy and I’m really glad I went with my gut instict and agreed to move in (and to keep looking before!).  It just feels like the right move and by this time tomorrow I’ll be in my own place!  In the morning, I’m going to do a bit of shopping for proper bed linins and such but other than that, it’s all furnished!  Ann is actually out all weekend so I have the flat to myself to get settled and prepare for work next week.

Hopefully over the weekend I’ll have some time to related some of the funnier stories of my flat hunt experience but for now, I’m happy to have someplace safe, comfortable and best of all, friendly to live!  I’m getting well-earned night’s rest.
Two weeks and I’m set with a job and a flat.  How ace am I?