John & Judith's wedding day

It has dawned bright and cool. I can see the faint remnants of a fiery red sunrise out the window towards the east. Here's hoping it will be a gorgeous day. John rang last night and he sounded a wee bit nervous, but he says he's very happy. Judith is lovely. Since we've met her we've realised John has made a good decision. Up till then we were wondering how a month together then two years apart whilst engaged was going to go... But Judith is sensible, and they have lived together for 6 months now. I think they know what they're doing. They've got as much chance as anybody making this committment. And they look happy together.

Mike & Karen (Mum met them in Dunedin in Forth St - Mike is a PhD student in maths, and Karen is an accountant - Mum quizzed Mike on how he sees rubbish bins as volumes and curves - but he doesn't recall that - fortunately!) have arrived in London after touring Europe. Mike is John's best man. They stayed here in our flat from last Sunday, to yesterday morning. Then they had to be in Cranfield (Judith's parent's house) for wedding rehearsals last night. It's been really nice to catch up with them. They are still living in Hobart- they may have started calling tax certificates 'Group Certificates' (they are called IR12's in NZ), but they haven't started called duvets 'doonas' yet. They'll probabaly be there at least another year. Bit of a shame we didn't visit them while they lived there.

Last Friday I chopped my hair off. I was standing in the tube at the start of the week and thought 'That's it!. I went to a hairdresser's on Friday and wavered ever so slightly when she asked what I wanted (after 5 years of saying 'Just a trim, thanks' it was almost an automatic reflex) but said I wanted a change. So, I have a bob - jaw length... Of course, my hair insists on curling funny at the ends; I have to blow dry it to death to get it to stay vaguely respectable. I'll send a photo if I find a decent one.

We've booked our train tickets to Edinburgh for Christmas, then back here on Sunday night. Then, up again on Wednesday night (New Years) and back again on Sunday night. The English don't get the day after Hogmanay off at all. So, I've asked for a day off to join the Scots in celebrating the New Year. The train will get us to Edinburgh at 9pm on New Years Eve, so it had better not be late for the festivities!

First thoughts of London

Hiya. Winter is upon us here in ye olde London town. We received our first snowfall early this week. Chilly stuff. I said to Mike, "Is it raining?" as we were preparing for work Tuesday morning. He opened the window (as the condensation means we can't see through the window) and I stuck my head out. Something looked a bit different, and it dawned on me that the white stuff all over the cars and rooves was snow! Brrr... And set to get worse.

As far as my thoughts on living in the UK go, I still haven't been here long enough to really know what it's like. But, I have noticed some things. One of the amazing things to consider is that, genetically, I am now living in my perfect environment. I have only ever lived in places where Anglo-Saxon people are not native (Maoris in NZ, and Aborigines in Aus). But, when I look around at people here, they all look like me. They have my colouring, my genes, my language... My race is native to these climes. In a funny way, it is the reason why it is so home-like, I guess. The genetic prodigal daughter has returned. Of course, my heritage is Scots and not English... Don't worry, I'll never lose sight of that! But the genes didn't have political boundaries to keep them pure back when we crawled out of the caves, so my analogy does hold true to a certain extent.

Another thing I find myself doing differently is watching people. I've never been one to pay attention to people as I trot along. I think you become oblivious to people when you live in a large city like Melbourne; you sort of switch off when you wander around. But here, you can sit and look at people - and there are sooooo many people - and wonder what their lives are like. Their faces are miserable looking (for the most part, but not everybody is like that) and you just find yourself wondering where they live and what they do. And there are beggars everywhere, pickpockets, massive fraud... I'll be a hardened Londoner yet.

The tube system is diabolical. I use it every day and so far I think it's only been working adequately on 50% of occasions. Today I had to use the overland train to Watford. All trains running in and out of Euston were suspended due to a fire on a train at Wembley. One train was running, and fortunately it was going to Watford Junction, but it stopped at every station from Euston to Watford. Took 45 mins instead of the usual 20. But I got there in the end, although there were still delays when I returned at 1:30 to London. Then, when I was returning home on the tube, there was a station emergency at King's Cross and everybody had to evacuate the station. I had no idea how to get home otherwise, but by the time I had sorted out an alternative route, the station was cleared and I jumped on a tube home. Bit of a nightmare public transport day.

Our wee hoose is cute. It serves its purpose nicely. Although Mum will be disappointed to hear that we are up two flights of stairs. But less steep than at Connaught Terrace, and an internal set of stairs too. They smell a bit musty, but the flat is fine. We have central heating that comes on if the temperature falls below a certain level of comfort (I think Mike has it set to 20 degrees or something). So, it is warm, but not stifling like most places inside in London. They love the heat turned up here! We don't have a couch, but that's about all we need. But, that's not urgent. And if we're lucky, the landlord might buy one for the flat. You never know your luck.

We went to the rugby at Wembley last weekend. It was a great feeling, to be sitting there watching the All Blacks soundly beat Wales. The score was 42-7 but the All Blacks still aren't playing at their best. It'll be nice to see them get their act together against England this weekend. If they win this weekend (and looks likely) then they will have played their international matches this year unbeaten. An improvement over the single loss they suffered last season. Ohhh, it's nice to follow the All Blacks and be world beaters and ignore the NZ cricket team. Although they did well to save the last test against Australia. And they were a bit unlucky in the first test. Still, we wont mention the match against Victoria. Best not bring that up!

After the rugby match finished last Saturday, it took us 1 hour to walk the 200 yards (how ever far a yard is (??) - that's the distance I heard someone behind me say we'd covered. Haven't the Brits realised the rest of the sane world is metric?) to the tube station. It was just like a sheep pen (with lots of kiwis in the crowd there were the obligatory Baaaa sounds that all kiwi men seem obliged to utter when being herded) with people packed so tightly into the cordoned-off street that it was definitely a slow shuffle step to the station. We had a few happy kiwis doing hakas along the way too. It was good fun.

Finsbury Park and first London jobs

Looks like our travelling is at an end for the next six months or so – we’ve moved into a wee flat in Finsbury Park, and our stuff from NZ finally arrived after three months (er, did they really say six weeks when I sent it off in August?!)  Ah, was good really – it coincided almost exactly with our flat being available, so we had it delivered on the day after we took possession on the 18th of Nov.  Up til then, from when we arrived on the 7th of Oct, we’ve been camping in people’s houses – first with friends Richard Theresa at Muswell Hill, who I know from school and Uni, and have been living here for three years now.  But Richard’s sister and her boyfriend came down in late Oct – they’re travelling around the place working in pubs and stuff - so it was going to be 4 in the sofa-bed, so we moved to Simon's for a couple of weeks.  Simon’s bought himself a flat near Waterloo station that is very nice, and is leading a great lifestyle.  He’s getting sick of Treasury though and sounds like he’ll move on to, I dunno, whatever economist people move onto in the private sector.

The flat is quite nice – the area seems okay, there is only the occasional stabbing and mugging to contend with.  Nah, it isn’t exactly Highgate or Sloane Square, but then again it isn’t Brixton either.  Do you know the area?  Seems to be quite liveable to me.  The flat’s on the second floor of some terrace housing (or  ‘Coronation Street flats’, as they say in NZ) and is the same sort of deal as our Brooklyn flat only it’s half the size and you get a view of Arsenal Football Stadium instead of Wellington harbour.  (The stadium isn’t very close but you can see it!).  The landlord just redecorated the place before we moved in and they’ve done a very good job – the interior is very nice.  And, woo-hoo, it’s got a DECENT SHOWER – the first one we’ve found yet in Britain.  Full mains pressure hot water and a nozzle you stand under, instead of some dribbly thing you have to wave over yourself while sitting in a bath.  Lack of showers is probably the biggest mystery to me in the UK.

We’ve also both got jobs now – Angela’s been at hers a week and a half, and I start on Monday.  Things were a lot more quiet than we were expecting – I’m very glad we didn’t listen to all the streets-paved-with-gold optimists in NZ, and brought enough money to cover ourselves.  Basically there isn’t any contract work around at the moment, because everyone wants to work the winter, and no-one wants to offer jobs now because Xmas is smack in the middle of it all.  So about 3 weeks ago Angela started looking for permanent jobs instead (since she can, with her Scottish mum ‘n all) and there were LOADS!!  She was getting about 10 calls a day between when she put her name forward, and when she signed on the dotted line.  She’s working for a group called Spargo Consulting, who just send her out to do work at various client sites.  Me, I got a job YESTERDAY!!  Woo hoo!  I’ve got a 2 month contract with Andersen Consulting, upgrading an in-house system they’ve got to handle their logging of hours worked, to work with their new e-mail system.  Should be straightforward – a bit of money in the bank and then off snowboarding in February!

London - own flat, own computer, Paris trip

Hello from our new flat with our OWN COMPUTER!!!  Ah, at last.  Trouble is, there isn't any furniture in the lounge  so I'm sitting cross-legged with the keyboard in my lap.

The last couple of days have been quite frenetic what with moving in and all, and getting our freight delivered at last.  All arrived safe and sound in perfect nick, even better than I was expecting.  The only trouble is that yes, Britain indeed does have a slightly different broadcast standard - PAL/I instead of PAL./B, as a website I found described - which means  I can get picture but no sound.  All is not lost though... we just need another box to 'translate' the signal into audio and video output - which means we'll either have to pick up another VCR, or (sigh) subscribe to cable, what a shame.  (OR we could try and just buy a cheap TV, but that'd be cheating!)

We went to Paris for the last Thursday/Friday/Saturday/Sunday ... had a ball.  Paris is a really beautiful city.  Amazing it's only 3 hours' train ride away!  We did all the obligatory touristy things - Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre (well the outside anyway... figured we didn't have enough time to go in), Musee Rodin etc.  And we also wandered around a lot and spent a lot of time eating really yummy food!!!  No wonder the Brits have such a bad culinary reputation having to compete with food like that.  We did the Catacombs tour - in the early 19th century, the cemeteries were all overflowing, so they dug up all the old bones and placed them in crypts.  You go down into these cellars and there are thousands of bones in 3.5 km of tunnels.  Creepy!  They were all arranged like a mosaic pattern, with lines of skulls, then femur ends, then arm bone ends, then skulls again...  We stayed in Montmatre, in a place Jennie recommended.  It was good - very run down but clean and comfortable, and cheap.  My French also got me by with surprising ease - and things got easier day by day, once I'd figured out the key phrases I needed 90 percent of the time.

While we were there we also went to see Alien 4, which has been released in France but not yet the UK (is it in NZ yet?) - in English with French subtitles.  It's very good - not as good as the first two though, but still worth seeing, and better than the third.  Ripley's back and she's REALLY mean this time!

Well that's about all for now - we get to watch the All Blacks thrash England this weekend (on Sky at a pub somewhere), then get to see them IN PERSON at WEMBLEY the weekend after.  Got my All Black jersey out...

London - 2 weeks in

We've been in London 2 weeks now and no, we don't either have jobs yet.  A little disconcerting.  We have enough money to last us okay, but the trouble is that no-one will lease you a flat unless you have a job and an employer reference to prove it.  That makes for a catch 22 - you can't look for a flat until you have a job, but once you have a job you can't visit any letting agents since they are only open office hours!!  Ah well, we have managed to secure a flat in Finsbury Park, but this is dependent on us getting work by the end of the month. I guess we just try bribing them with rent in advance if this doesn't happen.  Things are apparently 'quiet' in the contracting business at the moment - I've had my CV put forward to about 5 jobs, and had an interview yesterday (that I'm not holding my breath on, since they specifically require a specialist skill that I don't have), so things aren't entirely dead, but they're a long way off from the agencies ringing you up day and night with jobs that we were led to believe.  I'm glad we brought enough money to cover this - as a lot of people told us not to bother in NZ!! 

Aside from that things have been going pretty well.  It's good to stay with Richard and Theresa and catch up with them.  We're going to go skiing in France in March!  We've got to move on though at the end of the month since Richard's sister Teresa, and her boyfriend are arriving to stay from Edinburgh.  So we'll stay a week with another friend, Simon Hayley, who is a Brit. who was seconded to NZ for a year and we got to know there, and who is a high flying Treasury economist - well I guess he's high flying because he's just bought a flat right beside Waterloo station!!

Then, all things going to plan, we move into our flat on the 11th of Nov.

Another rosy picture we were painted when we left was that our freight would be waiting for us when we arrived in the UK.  Ha ha.  It's not going to be here until mid-November!!  In a way that's good cos we can have it delivered directly to our new flat, but it does mean we don't have a lot of the stuff we would like for job seeking - most awkwardly no computer!  That means we're paying tens of pounds for computer access (£6 an hour) at an Internet cafe, to prepare and e-mail CVs around, and £1 per page to fax CVs.  The worst is that we have to come into London for all this, so we lose time where we're out of touch of the agencies.  We tried to buy a mobile phone but of course you need a UK residential address where you've been continuously resident for three years (one might ask, if you stay put for that long, why would you ever want a mobile phone?!!)  We want one so that we have a single contact number - we've heard nightmares of people being offered jobs at a flat they left months ago (it’s happening to us now, Simon and Richard get all our calls!) - and so that when we're backpacking or something on the continent we're still contactable.  Plus they're really cheap here - £10 for the phone and 5p per minute!

We're going to travel around the next few weekends, to go see people and also to give Richard and Theresa some time in the flat by themselves!  This weekend we're off to Edinburgh to see Vivienne & John & Benjamin; then we're planning to go to Paris on the Eurostar.  Theresa has some cheap ticket vouchers from a trip she made where they were delayed in the chunnel for 40 mins.  We thought they'd be £25 return but it turns out they'll be £50 return instead when we tried to cash them in - ah well, we'll have a think about it but we'll probably still go... still a lot cheaper than the £100 return full 'economy' fare!  Then we'll go to Southampton to visit John.  Somewhere around this is the rugby at Wembley (NZ vs. Wales) and a big Guy Fawkes display at Alexander Palace, just up the road from Richard's flat.  Then there's Christmas and hogmanay at Edinburgh so we'll be busy people over the weekends for the rest of the year!!

London Job-hunting and Flat-hunting

Things are going well in London - we've been here nearly a week now and have (sort of) progressed on looking for jobs and flat.  We've put our CVs around a few agencies on Friday and have had fairly positive noises back. We also looked at some flats on Saturday - there wasn't *that* much around, and there were some fairly dodgy sounding letting agencies too - but we're only after a place for six months so we aren't really that fussy.  There were a couple we looked at from a fairly good sounding real estate agent that were old and dark but clean and not damp, and a good size, so failing anything great turning up tomorrow we may as well sign up for one.  Rent is dear here - even these flats are 95 quid a week, and you have to come up with 4 weeks bond plus 4 weeks rent in advance so there's a big layout first up...!  My friends Richard and Theresa are paying 160 quid a week for a flat similar to our Brooklyn one only a bit smaller, and quite a distance from the central city... so that gives you an idea!  Everything is dear here, even a beer will cost you NZD 10 or so...!  You just give up depressing yourself by converting the prices through after a while.

Oh yes, and our stuff won't be here til mid *November* now!  It didn't make the early ship that it was supposed to, and then the ship it's on is going to be late too!!  It's lucky that we bought a cheap suit each in Thailand, otherwise we'd be stuck for work clothes.  As it is we had to go out and buy things like nice shoes and a tie for me.  I'll have to wear one suit and two shirts until our stuff arrives!  And we don't get our computer til then either.  Ah, the Internet cafe will get a lot of money off us then! Grump grump grump.

Thailand - Bangkok, Chiang Mai

We *love* Thailand!  We got here a week ago and it's been great so far.  The traffic is exciting to say the least but we haven't seen anyone die yet so it must work all right!  Just road "suggestions" instead of  road rules... I am a bit worried because I think I am starting to get used to this way of driving.  Our first day we had in Bangkok, and we just wandered round with eyes wide and mouths open.  We did a temple & city tour which was good.  Then the next morning on the plane to Chiang Mai - Chiang Mai is very nice, smaller than Bangkok so a bit less chaotic and a bit better to wander around in - you don't get touts hitting you up everywhere and stuff.  The Thai people are wonderful huh?  Always helpful and willing to try and communicate with you, even if the ones that don't speak much or any English - it makes things very easy.  Even the touts are pleasant enough (in their own way!  But very good at their job!!!)

So, we got to Chiang Mai at about 10am and checked into our four star hotel that costs all of $50 a night (we're staying on one more night tonight).  Again we just looked around on the first day.  That night we met the people we were going trekking with, our guide Dair and our porter/apprentice guide Dee.  Our trekking group you know from the address list I just sent you!  They were a great bunch, we all got on really well, except for Arno and Verena, who were quite quiet and 'couply', plus spoke very little English - by that I mean they were good to travel with but we didn't have much conversation (even the other Germans found that though!)  Anna and Carlos also spoke hardly any English but we had a great time trying to talk to each other and them trying to teach us Spanish.  The other three  Germans were school friends who were now at different Unis around Germany and were lots of fun.  And MeeSook is Korean born, raised in Paris, now living in Wales...!

The trekking itself was lots of fun.  We saw three hilltribe villages - but they were a bit over-visited and mainstream Thai'ised.  The first one even had electricity and cars!  But it still seemed to be genuine people as opposed to something put on for the farangs.  We walked three hours the first day - the hardest day, walking up hills in 35 degrees and 80-90% humidity is, well, interesting!  Then we stopped at the first tribe, the Lisu.

The next day we walked for another four hours in the morning, but easier terrain - just 20min up hill and then just along the top of a ridge.  The countryside was jungly, but not too dissimilar to NZ beech forest in places (aside from the odd palm!!)  Then, after our fine lunch cooked by our guide, we had a 2 hour elephant ride to a Karen village.  A bit daunting at first, being so far off the ground and the seat was pretty minuscule for my Neanderthal legs, but once you got used to it - and the rubber chicken between my legs and the metal bar at the end of the seat, for padding - it was fine.  Elephants are amazingly sure-footed huh?  And when they detour to eat it's incredible - they just wrap their trunk around small trees and strip them of leaves!

When we reached the Karen village we stopped for another yummy dish by our guide, and some photos of the rubber chicken with the villagers. Sleeping quarters for both nights was a thatched hut with bamboo matting floor - hard but comfortable.  They supplied blankets and pillows, so no sleeping bags were needed, though we brought our silk liners for a bit more comfort.

The next and final day was by bamboo raft that Dair and Dee had knocked together.  It was a tame ride compared to rubber-rafting the Shotover or something, but the extra spice of the raft sinking to calf depth in rough water, and the ever-present risk of it coming apart completely added to the fun...!  This took about 5 hours, with 5 people on each raft.  On the way we stopped at a Lahu village (plus a couple of Akha people who had hiked in from their village 2 hours away to sell us stuff!).

Then it was back in the 'van' - a ute with a canopy and bench seats on the back deck - for another hairy drive back to Chiang Mai, sometimes even on the left side of the road once in a while!  On the way we stopped at a Snake farm which was very sad - a really tacky show and a chance to see miserable snakes, birds and other wildlife in small dirty cages.  Never mind.

After the trek we all went our various ways for washing three days of accumulated grime out and met up again at McDonald’s (Martin's choice not mine!!) - eventually it was 2am and we were all at the 'fake' Hard Rock Cafe, agreeing to meet again in a year for trekking in Spain!

Well better go spend more baht at the night market.