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.