Highs & Lows

That seems to be the theme for me the last couple days, epitomized today by my excitement over getting two 18 packs of Stella tall cans for only 20 quid at Sainsbury's(!) to the absolute frustration of having one case rip open and spew cans of beer all throughout the bus. Please pause and imagine that situation. That was the first time I really truly missed my truck, getting stuff home on the bus sucks.

Earlier it was the relief of finding a job being followed by actually working that job. I'm happy to be working, but without getting too far into details, it's the kind of situation I would walk away from in a heartbeat back home. The company and the guy in charge are pretty vague, and whether or not anyone has any idea what they are doing is unclear. Also, the expectations of me are higher than I've ever had with the lowest wage I've ever made. Definitely a weird situation. I am learning a lot quickly, and there has been another electrician with me a couple of days who has been great to work with, so it's not a waste of time... yet. I was hoping I could avoid getting certified here, as it costs 500 pounds, but I will be doing that asap to get more money out of this job, as well as open myself up to moving on. At least I've got something to get me through til the new year.

I've been out skating a few times now, finally. Met a friend of Kieth and Helen's, Danny, last weekend and he took me around the financial district with a couple of his mates. It was great to get out and explore, and skate with other people. One of his buddies was a filmer too, might be hope for some rudy 4 London clips. Looking forward to going out with them again.

Yesterday I went on a mission by myself to an area called Canary Wharf, which is the newest part of London, where they are building basically a new city in the East Docklands. The high was cruising the empty Sunday streets of this area of London so different it may as well be another city, skyscrapers, smooth streets and tons of plazas and courtyards. Skated one spot that was more fun than anything I skated in Barcelona even. The low was getting kicked out of that spot, of course. The cop was nice enough, but did make mention of criminal vandalism to the ledges, just to sound serious. I got 20 minutes in, but after mentioning the spot to Danny he said that was lucky. It wasn't the only spot around though, and it was too good not to go back. Definitely nice to see a side of the city that was more modern.

Now that we're settled it's hard not to compare the bad things to what was better at home, such as our jobs/income, and less importantly, that there are tons of skate parks in BC... and of course our friends and family. On the other hand however, we are still able to do something new every single day, and that has been pretty exciting. We recently went to Foster the People at an amazing venue in Shepherd's Bush, and the following night went to a little comedy club in Putney to enjoy some British humour, and some moderate ridicule for being Canadian. Meeting new people and exploring new parts of the city isn't going to get old any time soon.

-Justin

Foxes In My Neighbourhood, Orcas In My Dreams.

Justin and I had our first fox sighting on the weekend. We were walking home from seeing The Adventures of TinTin in the 'cinema', as they call it here, and had a fleeting glimpse of a large fox with a huge tail about a block from our house. The next morning when I was leaving for work there was another one in the driveway across the street from me. It saw me and immediately bolted. It wasn't as big as the first one we saw but I got a better look at it; It was so awesome. They look more like coyotes here than the cute foxes in Grizzly man. Foxes are WAY batter neighbourhood pests than raccoons. (PS I stole this fox picture, but it is a fox in the back yard of a home in London.)


Everything is pretty good here right now with the exception of the job front. Don't get me wrong, we both have jobs now, and I think Justin is going to stay at his for the time being, but we are just getting paid so poorly. I have put together a CV highlighting my office, administration, and reception skills (wink) as it pays at least 2pounds more than I'm getting currently and have been contacted by a few agencies. I went and met with one of them today and had to do all sorts of testing. I found out I type 48 words per minute and that I suck at power point among other things. I guess we'll see what comes of that. I enjoy my job at the cafe and the owners have been really good to me, but I just need to make more money bottom line. I'm spending every day off at an internet cafe online looking and applying for jobs, TV, reception, and otherwise.

On the TV front I have received an insider tip that ITV is going to be undergoing some serious changes in the next month and to keep my eye on jobs there. So I am. I have applied to quite a few TV jobs recently. Just about an hour ago I received a call from an agent who deals with film mostly (I was given her information from Rhys who works at Technicolor here) and she was very helpful and lovely. She gave me some advice on my CV so I just bumped it up, and she said she was going to contact Sony and Disney to see if they had anything available that would suit me. Again, I guess we'll see what comes of that. At any rate it's nice to have people (including all of you who have given me contacts) who are trying to help you out.

London is obsessed with Christmas and it seems that since we have been here there isn't much talk of anything else. There are even Christmas movies already playing every day on TV. We are looking forward to going to all the outdoor Christmas sites we keep hearing about.
Justin and I decided that we didn't want to wake up alone in our empty home on Christmas morning (even though a co worker of Justin's invited us to Christmas lunch at his house which is too cute) so we booked a trip. Turns out the cheapest place (by quite a bit) to fly to in Europe over Christmas is Amsterdam. So I guess it's going to be a very green Christmas for us haha. We've booked a hostel - The Stayokay Amsterdam Vondelpark - but haven't really looked into what exactly we are going to do there. I'm looking forward to seeing the canals. It's certainly not a place that was at the top of either of our lists to visit - but poor ass immigrants can't be choosers.

Our internet should be up and running in a week to 3 weeks. When that happens I'll upload another video here. In the mean time if you want to give me a call please drop me an email asking for my number.

I hope you are all well. I saw there was snow in Vancouver the other day!! How crazy. Send me a note telling me any new and exciting events happening in your life. I'd love to hear from you.

Getting more comfortable here but still missing you all,

Gen

Differences...

Just a few differences we have noticed so far between London and Vancouver...

• Lettuce is called salad
• Dessert is called pudding
• Ranch dressing does not exist here
• Tax is included in every price
• Traffic lights go green, yellow, red, yellow, green…
• Eggs are not refrigerated in the grocery store
• You need to wash your eggs before you use them (I found a bloody feather on one of mine)
• Agents are middle men between you finding a home and a job, and are everywhere
• Subway has corn as one of their toppings
• Spandex and nylons are in fact acceptable, appropriate, and popular pants
• You don’t have to tip bartenders
• A red circle means do not enter, even if there isn’t a line through the circle
• The word stove does not exist. An oven is the baking part and a HOB is the top part, and they can be separate.
• The word 'hot plate' does not exist here
• You can take your drink outside of a pub if you want to have a smoke

Around the flat

Justin came into the cafe I work at and used the wi-fi today and was able to upload the video I mentioned in the last post. Woot!
Gen

Disconnected From The Interweb

Well I have been trying to post a video on the blog for a few days now but have not been able to upload it. We don't have internet hooked up in our flat until November 25th (!) and have bought a little internet usb device called a dongle which basically provides us with the bare minimum connection. It really bums me out because I miss everyone and want to be able to connect! Justin at least has his blackberry so he can go online fine with that, but I am using the phone Ryan and Erika gave me (THANK YOU btw!!) so I don't have that luxury.
It's been like a 2 week internet cleanse for me in a way. It's funny being at the bus stop or tube station alone and everyone is on their phones except me. So I do a lot of people watching. If I want to go somewhere unfamiliar I have to actually write down the directions on a piece of paper... imagine that! Also another bummer about it is I can't upload any pictures into this blog. You will have to use your imagination, how fun!

Anyways, the video I wanted to upload was just a clip showing everyone our home on the first day we moved in (Thursday). It's pretty good, although we have a pretty bad mould problem. Apparently it's really common here. I asked my boss about it and she said they have the same issue, and that most ground floor flats do. We have a dehumidifier and that seems to be working well. Today we didn't turn it on before we left the house for the day and it smelled pretty mildewy when we walked in. If we run it all day we have to empty it 2 times - it's pretty unbelievable how much moisture is in the air.

I started working at a coffee shop called Artisan on the same Thursday we moved into our place. Justin had to take both of our suitcases on the tube so I could go to work that morning as we had to be out of our flat at 11 and didn’t get into our place until 3:30. I’m sure that was a pain in the ass for him, but what can you do. Gotta make that 6GBP an hour!! :) The job has been really great actually although my feet hurt pretty bad. I work with all Australians and if anything I think at this rate I'll come home with an Aussie vocabulary as opposed to a UK one. I really like things there though, but am still hoping to find something much better. It's tough with this internet situation right now though - I can't even load the pages with job postings.

We met up with a couple that Kieren put us in touch with - Kim and Rhys - at a art show and then went for dinner with them. They are super cool and I am so grateful to have people here that we can talk to freely and ask about their experiences. We are meeting up with them again on Thursday to go to 'Curry Club' so they can show us some basic Indian food. Which brings me to the food here...

I swear the Brits do not eat vegetables. Yes we have all heard of mushy peas... but I think that is it. I have tried to find a good salad in this city and haven't found much. The grocery stores here have really cheap lunch combos - 2.50 for a sandwich, drink, and crisps, so for the first week or so Justin and I were eating a lot of that. But now that we have our own place I was hoping to make some real food. EVERYTHING here is available in pre cooked convenience dishes. The grocery stores have probably half of their items pre portioned and pre cooked. It's very odd. And if you go our for food don't expect it to be very healthy. But one pro is that there are sales on booze, and you can but it everywhere. There are probably 12 places within 10 minutes of us we could buy beer. Today we bought 12 Strongbow for 10GBP. Pretty sweet. Oh and one lesson we have learned is that most pub food SUCKS SO BAD. Restaurants are where you eat and pubs are where you drink. In general that is the rule I think. Oh and pubs also allow pets. Pretty much everywhere here allows pets, which is cool? I guess. (Imagine picture of Justin here at a pub drinking a pint with a cat in his lap).

Today I went to a really small Italian restaurant while I was waiting to meet up with Justin after my coffee training in Shoreditch and it was delicious. So simple but cheap (4.50gbp for a nice pasta dish). While I was there an Italian woman sat next to me and was telling the chef personally what she would like in Italian. When he went back to the kitchen I asked her what she ordered and she told me that she ordered pasta with sausage because they make their own sausage in the basement, and that I needed to try some when her food arrived. When it did she cut me off a piece of here sausage and put it on my plate. It was really sweet of her. And it was indeed delicious. I have decided I really like Italians.

One last note - Everyone here dresses really well, like WAY better than we do, so we went to Primark and bough some cheap dressy clothes. Justin got a new coat and some black jeans and collard shirts.... Dapper!!! (Imagine picture of Justin looking dapper here).

Well there is so much more to say but this post is already longer than it should be so I'll quit. Fingers crossed it loads!!

Miss family and friends lots.

Gen

Yeah, but you're a Converter

We experienced our first racism today - We were at Shepherd's Bush tube station at the customer service desk getting some new Oyster cards we could load up with month passes. So while we were giving our information and the lady was (struggling with) entering it in, we also asked how to pay if we went extra zones, or what forms of transportation it covered. Well there was an impatient young chap behind us who told us to hurry the hell up, when although we were asking questions, it was the tellers dyslexia that was making it take slightly longer than it should. So Gen said, 'Well you must know everything' and he said 'Well I live in London'. She replied 'So do I' and he called her a converter. I found the whole exchange hilarious because he was a dumb twat and we weren't even holding things up, and I've never been on that end of an immigrant slowing the process. Fucking converters.

We've been to a good number of tourist attractions in the last week, knocking them off the list. We took the train out to Windsor Castle, which is billed as the largest occupied castle in the world, meaning that some royalty hangs out there a few nights a year probably. It is damn big, and is crazy to think about as a fortress up on the hill 800 years ago. Anyways, I'd been there before with Chris last time I was here, but we had no money to go in, so I was looking forward to it this time. The inside was amazing, mainly the fact that it houses a bunch of the royal art collection, as well as a bunch of shields and armour and guns and swords and shit. All really amazing to see and think about where they've been. Also very interesting was the collection of shit they display that was stolen from other countries they conquered, Ethiopian crowns, Indian golden tiger statues, amazing stuff that they are quite proud to have. Fair enough I guess.



We're at our second short term let right now until Thursday when we move into our place. This one has been a pretty disgusting disappointment, and I sent a very scathing email to the property rental company, which was satisfying. It's certainly not the end of the world, but was very misrepresented online, as well as the wiener who's meant to be managing it has been doing a piss poor job. I'm sure he got ripped into pretty good, which pleases me.


We've been making an effort to explore the areas we're staying, so at the last place we wandered around the trendy area of Shoreditch to a couple pubs (and walked right past a couple clubs) as well as through the financial district and over to Tower Bridge and the Tower of London. We're doing the same here as it's about a 15 minute walk from the London Eye and Big Ben and all of that, so we went that direction last night and again today. Photo ops and memories and all of that.

We've been trying to leave a few empty seats at the edge of our table to invite people to talk to us, which has been pretty successful. We first tried at a pub called Sawyer's Arms near Hyde Park where 4 separate couples joined us and seemed to enjoy our Canadian company, at least enough to all be late for their dinner reservations. It's much easier to find things to talk about when nobody has a damn clue about anything to do with Canada, everything is news to them. We talked to a Swedish couple about hockey, they said Swedes find the Sedins boring. Haha.
Our second attempt at mingling found us at a place near Liverpool St called Dirty Dicks where a group of guys in their early 20's were fresh from a soccer match and on their way clubbing in Shoreditch. They were pretty loaded and pretty high, and were helping to feed any stereotypes of Essex we've heard. They were harmless and kinda funny in an 'at them' way, but any more drinks in me and the Canadian politeness towards their endless dickitry may have faded. Some things are the same here.


We're both really looking forward to settling into Wimbledon and moving on to the next set of tasks. I still haven't really looked into work, although the time is coming up quick as the money drains. We still really have no idea what our monthly budgets are gonna look like, so the reality of our situation here is still looming. But when you look around you see all kinds of people and they make it work, so you have to hope two working people in their late 20's can afford to share a 1 bedroom outside of the city. If not we can at least try to stay long enough to get some kind of credit here that we can default on. As it stands that's Plan B.