Drifting Aimlessly

May 14th 2005
Bayswater, London, England.

After such a good start on the job front one might expect my next journal to contain some hint of prospective employment. Nup. I have spent the last week watching tv and dvd's, ambling about London, and spending entire days on various seemingly small tasks like going in to Trafalgar to pick up my mail, researching a bit on Newquay (I'm thinking of going there for the job hunt), paging through endless/useless job guides, and surfing the net.

London is just so big. I do not know where to start - should I get an apartment and then start approaching the local hotels and pubs in that district? Should I continue paging through these newspapers and such which have very little in the way of unskilled employment, and then get a place close to the job? What if I get a place and sign all the agreements and such, only to be offered a live-in position? What kind of job do I want, anyway? Pub, reception, au pair? Who could I use as an au pair referee? Do I want to be in a pub environment? What about all that smoke....and drunkards….

From my observations so far, the best way to get a job in my industries are to approach them and ask about vacancies. Hell, my first day here is proof of that. Bu where do I start? What district is best for Aussies, and/or casual work? Do I even want to stay in London? Newquay sounds so nice and eventful and touristy, and it's by the sea, which I really miss, but am I just avoiding doing something proactive right now? And what if I get to Newquay and there are no jobs? That's going to waste some time.

But what happens in a couple of months if I do get a job here in London? I want to go to Pamplona and see the running of the bulls in July. I want to be in Scotland for the purple heather-hills in August. I want to be anywhere but the UK when winter comes. Who's going to employ somebody for only a couple of months? Do I lie about staying? Am I just making excuses to avoid going out and trying for a job? It has always come so easy for me. I've only really been in one job interview, and I was already employed in another at the time.

I'm a bit lost for company, too. How do I meet people? Should I just go to pubs and hope for the best? My previous travel buddies were all met doing activities or in the hostel, but I don't like my roommates in this hostel and I have little money for activities.

Okay, okay, enough of the insanity. Sorry. I'm just feeling maudlin. I'll work it out. Oh, and everybody feel free to email me with news of home, by the way. When you spend as much time on the net as I do these days, it sucks to always be looking at junk mail. If y'all don't start writing me I'll give up on the net and keep a written journal and then you'll not hear from me for years and years. Which may well be a good thing for some. It certainly couldn't hurt my own reputation if I just shut up. Blah.

Let us begin again.

My first week back in London.... minus the insanity. Well, the initial hostel was actually a hotel with hostel rates on a couple of dorm rooms. It was really rather nice, in the same Bayswater district as I am now, and even had a key to the Leicester Square private gardens. Yep, that's right, I got to hang out and have lunch in my own private garden - along with about half a dozen residents, but it's a big square, so I barely noticed them. For those whose brows are creasing as you read, the easiest explanation for what I'm talking about it to watch "Notting Hill" with Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant. Yes, it's true, for those of you who have seen it. London really does have private parks for the resident's whose flats or houses circle a park, and everybody has their own private key to the gates. You get to sit there in your park and laugh at the glimpses of pedestrians walking past....nah, nah, nah, nah-nah, nah, you're not invited.

It's really rather lovely in there - no dog poop, few people, though in this case the park was mostly just manicured lawns, trees, benches, and thick hedges around the perimeter to shut out the public (no pretty flower beds or kiddy swings), but it was lovely and peaceful. I think it's an excellent conception. Of course, in the olden days they were created for the express purpose of keeping peasants such as myself out. I have no doubt that most would have been the private property of only one of two very wealthy families. Which makes it all the sweeter to sit in the patchy sunlight and revel in the idea - just for a moment - of being gentrified.

But apart from the park usage, the hotel could be a wee bit of a trial. The dormitory rooms were hidden away on one of the top floors - and no elevator in sight. The stairs were so narrow and winding that no two people could pass at once. There was only one television downstairs and it always had sport or a music channel on it. The kitchen was not self-catering, served only the breakfast crowd, and I was forced to spend more money than I would have liked eating out or buying easily assembled food from the supermarket.

But it was clean (except the stairs: very moldy) and safe and I met four lovely Canadian girls there. We hung out for a couple of days and I really enjoyed their company. Chelsea had an absolute talent for accents and had us all in stitches by occasionally imitating the perceived accent of Canadians, which is a slow-witted, stilted tone with an "eh?" on the end of every sentence. Try watching Fargo and you'll know what I mean. Incidentally, it’s the only Canadian-based movie I'm aware of (was nominated for awards, etc), and yet they had never seen it.

The girls were very conscious of being perceived as American, since that's what they sounded like, and had Canadian badges and emblems sewn all over their bags. I found a quiet amusement in this sometimes. When we went into Piccadilly and so forth a couple of times it was pretty funny to watch them adjust the Canadian flags so that they were easily seen. I guess it's not much fun to be an American these days - outside of America, of course.

But after a couple of days they left for Amsterdam. We exchanged emails and hugs and then I promptly left the hostel and went searching for something more economical. Something with a telly... after two months of going cold turkey, I was dying for a hit of a favourite show.

I found myself locked into a week-long stay in the hotel I'm in now. It was really cheap to do it that way, but unfortunately I thereafter realised that the place is a dump. The floor has not been vacuumed in many, many years, but the beds are clean as long as I throw the top duvet away before sleeping. The bathroom is really moldy and I swore that first night that I would never shower in it. But most of the mold is in the ceiling and the walls, and at some point I broke down and am now spraying the shower cubicle before going in. If it weren't for the telly in my dorm room, I'd be demanding my money back. But after two months without any OC or Desperate Housewives... I find I will do anything, sleep anywhere, for an episode.

The weather in London is beginning to warm up. It's so chimerical in the UK, though - did I ever mention my second day here, after arriving from Thailand? I woke up to rain, but it turned sunny fairly early and so I ventured out. To my amazement, at one point during the day, and within a period of about half an hour, it went from sunny to hail - yes, HAIL - to distant thunder and light showers, then back to sunny again. How weird is that?!?!? I finally understand the English fascination with their weather. It's not because they are so boring that there's nothing else to talk about (though I suspect that plays a part), but more an astonishment with the quixotic nature of it. I understand that the science behind it is that there are three different hemispheres clashing together all the time - the warmer south, the arctic north-west, and the windy east. Or something like that. So it's like three weather gods constantly batting it out for domination, and the skies can turn from sun to rain in the matter of moments. In Cairns, you can see it coming for hours, the slow change from sun to light rain; but here - boom!

I spent some time hanging out in Hyde Park and that's the explanation behind the photos. I think that they're pretty, they account for some of the time I've spent here and some of what I've done, and that's about as deep as it goes. I wonder if they clip the wings of the swans to prevent them from flying away.....

Oh, guess what?! I have finally achieved my dream of eating Chinese out of a take-away box that looks just like in the movies! Not a plastic container, but a cardboard/plastic white container box with folding flaps, again, just like in the movies. It was so cool, though the actual food was pretty gross. I love Chinese food, but this place had really lousy tasting fare. So, anyway, it was worth it to realise a dream. Yeah, yeah, Big Dreams, I know.

I am constantly frustrated by an inability to convey everything, to remember every notable anecdote and every passing travel acquaintance. I sometimes download my photos and look through the entries for somewhere to put a favoured pic of a travel buddy, only to find that I forgot to mention them when something more exciting happened. So there are many holes in my stories and every now and then I become aware of that, and it's very frustrating. Then, on the other end of the scale, I have days like today where I just waffle on about crap because I have another half hour of computer time already paid for and am sick of job/accommodation searching. So there's an explanation for the above waffling.

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