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.