Week 4 - Job Hunt & Museums

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**Edit**Just have to add, that I had to move to a different blog site, which meant everything had to be reset up. Hopefully this one will last a bit longer! I got the text up to date, just resizing and added pics now for the rest of the weeks so they should come fairly quick for a while.

Monday 5th March

Took off to The Pavement as per usual on a weekday to look for jobs (internet at home has now been pushed back to March 21st !! ). I didn’t get the calls back about 2 jobs I’m waiting on. Starting to get a little bit concerned, but at least it’s provided me with the time I need to study for my MCP (Microsoft Certified Professional) certificate in Windows XP. Hopefully I’ll be ready to sit the exam in a couple of weeks and it’ll look good on my CV.

During the day we decide, with Cambo & Nat, to do something special for the 4 day Easter break and drive down to Bruge - Belgium. Mmmm….beer and chocolate…..As far of as it sounds, it’s only about a 240km drive and a short ferry cruise across the English Channel from Dover to Calais. Its about 120kms to get from London to Dover, and about 120 kms from Calais to Bruge, passing through England, France, Germany and Belgium. We’ve got a few bookings to make!

Later that night Emma decides to go off on one of her “quick” pedals and returns home about 2 and a half hours later after getting lost several times. She’s definitely a determined girl!


Tuesday 6th March

The Pavement again - jobs, emails, ebay and the obligatory £1.60 cappuccino (the cheapest in Clapham, good for tightasses like ourselves).
Checking through my emails, I find one from a fellow Muse fan from France, who’s seen my collection online and writes that he’s interested in one particular rare Japanese “Plug In Baby” CD. I reply that I don’t normally sell the copies that I only have one of, but I tell him to make an offer anyway. As I only paid about $20 for this one (and later got my money back for it, as it appeared to be counterfeit to me, only later to realise it was in fact a genuine release), you could say I was a tad surprised to be offered AU$650 for it. Needless to say, there is now one less CD in my collection. :-)

I decided to check out a few surrounding neighbourhoods via the pushy so I headed down to Belham, which is only about a 10 minute ride. It turned out to be much like many of the other areas around here, like Streatham, Clapham South and Brixton although it did have some bigger stores than Clapham Common, so it may be worth the short trip out to get certain items.


Wednesday 7th March

I went sick on ebay as the price for a lot of things around here is a bit over inflated. Even managed to score a Monopoly travel board game for £6 for those long journeys, it’ll be weird playing it now that I’ve been to a lot of the places on the board (except for Jail that is).

Get a couple more bites on the job front but nothing definite, a lot of recruitment agencies don’t seem to return calls over here so it can be frustrating. One recruiter sends my CV to a Japanese Bank - Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation who reside (funnily enough) in an area called Bank.


Thursday 8th March

I got awoken by a call from a human resources manager working for Sumitomo Mitsui (who will henceforth be referred to as SMBC) and as I rub the sleep from my eyes he proceeds to pepper me with quirky problem solving questions and a few IT related technical questions. I must have done alright as he wants to arrange a proper face to face interview tomorrow in Bank with him and the IT manager.

He tells me the position is a 6 month contract of IT support for the 40-50 traders they have working on one of the floors of their building. Apparently the bank is one of the biggest in the world and there are about 800 people working in the London branch. It’d be a high stress role but would be a good experience to get my foot in the door to the financial industry.

In the afternoon I skeetled off to Battersea Park, which is only about 5 kms north of Clapham. It’s quite a big park, about half the size of Kings Park and has lakes, gardens, and paths throughout and is very purdy. It backs onto the Thames which looks even purdier at night with all the reflections shimmering off it.


Friday 9th March

Well today I had my first interview (well if you don’t count the phone interview) for the SMBC job. After dressing up in my finest threads (thanks Good Sammys!!) I met up with Eiji and Daniel and for about an hour they hammered me with technical questions and other questions. The best one was “The traders can get quite angry if their computer breaks down at the wrong time, if they threw something at you what would you do?” I couldn’t say what I really would have done but I came up with an “acceptable” answer pretty quickly. Overall I did OK, stuffed a few questions but aced most of them; hopefully I’ll get a call back.

Met Cam after work (he works near “the Gherkin” building just down the road) for a few pints of Red Guinness at O’Neals pub, the place was getting amped up for a big one next week for St Patrick’s Day. After the hour long interview it was just what the doctor ordered.


Saturday 10th March

Today we all ventured out to Holborn (near Bank) to check out London’s biggest travel expo. The place was packed as every man and his dog was there to check out the special deals, watch some free talks on various travel related topics and enter competitions to win holidays. Em won a free Irish t-shirt by pinching a special stickered gold coin out of a bucket and I won some shortbread for tossing a fake haggis through some holes in a board. We also got about 15 various pens, a stubbie holder, 2 stubbie openers, 3 keyrings, a diary, a backpack, maps and about 5kgs of brochures (and a partridge in a pear tree).

From there Cam and Nat went to a party and we headed over to the British Museum which was only a couple of blocks away. It’s amazing how close all the big attractions are in London, it is a sprawling city when all the suburbs are included like Clapham, but in the city centre everything is a very walkable distance apart (even though most lazy buggers will still catch a bus or take the tube). Oh before we hit the museum we passed a model toy shop that Uncle Ted would go bananas over; miniature planes, trains and automobiles everywhere.

The museum itself is very photogenic, while looking like an ancient Roman building from the outside; the inside is a different story with a modern style co-existing with the classical look. Stepping into the massive Museum is quite intimidating, with so much white space and a huge clear roof that let the light stream in creating a patterned effect around the interior. The famous Reading Room was right in the middle of the Museum, a huge round room packed with old and interesting books where people can go and enjoy a bit of silent reading. We didn’t have time for such luxuries at the moment, so we entered the Ancient Egyptian wing and had a bo-peep at items such as the Rosetta Stone (all ancient hieroglyphics were gobbledy gook until scientists worked out that this stone was a language translator), pharaohs tombs, sarcophagus’ and many more interesting exhibits.

After getting booted out of this section due to it closing for the day, we had a quick look at another wing with the theme “Life and Death” that had various displays such as an Easter Island head statue, some ancient American statues and paraphernalia, and other freaky looking costumes and carvings. We could easily spend another few days here, but time was getting on so we headed home, feeling very culturally aroused.


Sunday 11th March

Today Em awoke feeling as crook as a dog, so our big plans for the day were forced to be put on hold. Much as I would have loved to stay by her bedside and nurse her back to health, I felt obligated to go out and discover more of the city so I could be a better tour guide for her when she had recovered. I guess it’s my selflessness (and modesty) that attracted Emma to me from the start so who am I to change this attractive feature of myself.

I headed out on the tube to Tottenham Court as this is where Em had to leave her bike the previous day. It was still there locked up to the fence where we’d left it, which was much out of character from one of Emma’s bikes. From here, I headed back towards the British Museum as my camera and me had unfinished business. I wandered through the streets and discovered an awesome street where almost every building was a little guitar shop, selling all sorts of gear from old fashioned stomp boxes to rare £7000 acoustic guitars. Oh to be rich and living in London.

The Museum was just around the corner, and I decided to check out the rest of the Egyptian artefacts, followed by the Ancient Italian section. Lots more mummies, tombs, skeletons and sculptures to see, they even mummified cats, fish and other animals back then. Crazy bunch they were. I also spotted a ghost in one of the ancient Crocodile skin suits of armour which you can see below if you look closely (ok, there may have been a bit of trick photography involved). I gotta say, this is the city to be into photography, everywhere you look a million opportunities for a good snap present themselves.

Time was getting on so I left the Museum and headed down towards the Thames on Em’s bike. Just as I was getting close to Waterloo Bridge, a guy in a horse and coach trotted past me so I thought I’d try out for the paparazzi and
chase him on the bike with my camera out taking pics left, right and centre (don’t worry, I was careful Mum). He stopped halfway over the bridge, right next to a brand new red Ferrari convertible parked on the side of the road. Already in the last half an hour, I’d seen a grey Lamborghini Diablo and a red Ferrari 328. This is where the people live that can afford these beasts. I’m a sucker for a fast car so I let the coach go and concentrated on the sexy Italian (car) for a while. I thought about offering my mountain bike as a swap to the Ferrari owner when he got back, but I’d just had a bike computer and some lights fitted to it so the timing wasn’t right.

The London Eye was eyeing me off in the distance so I crossed the bridge and headed down to the base of it. The whole area was fairly busy with street performers and magicians and cafes and shops lined the river bank. The Eye is really quite massive went looking up from underneath it, me and Em will have to book in on a fine day pretty soon before it gets into peak tourist season. I thought I’d start heading home at 7pm, Emma was sick goddammit and I was dedicated to improving her wellbeing.

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