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Published: December 29th 2005
Broken conveyor @ Sydney Airport
Notice the massive queue behind us!Ed:
Finally get a chance to write about our adventures so far....
Matt's out on 'introductory' drinks with KPMG so I have the night off.. ha ha
Well - the plane trip wasn't too bad -we were seated at around 5 but didn't actually fly out until after 7 thanks to a luggage problem... we had window seats but had an English lady to share the ride for the first leg - she was nice and kept referring to everything as "lovely' and 'wonderful'... anything Matt or I talked about that was her standard response... the British are so polite...
There was this old man sitting behind us that kept complaining about the ongoing delays... first he complained to the air hostess, then the head of cabin crew, then the co-pilot... I'm certain even the captain came out at one stage. I'm sure he just wanted to score an upgrade - but he was unsuccessful - ha! he did however manage to get every meal served first!
After the stop over at Bangkok half the passengers left to we were able to swap seats and had 3 seats to share between the 2 of us... we did
Matt and his mum
Our plane in the background this whilst the old English lady was in the bathroom - we hadn't informed her of our move and she came and set next to us again! It was really awkward to tell her that she had the wrong seat and that she had to go away now.. I left it to Matt to explain... the funny thing is though she still said "it's lovely"!
As you know it's almost impossible to sleep in airplanes so the 3 or so hours we each managed was the most we could hope for. We had about an hour in Bangkok so wondered about the terminal but it to simply put awful there. They had the same duty free shop over and over again stocked with the same outdated perfumes and tobacco. Ugh... Anyways - we apparently did good time as we arrived in London only an hour later than expected - only problem was that for some reason or other we couldn't land so we circling London for over an hour.
After finally landing I got scared that I was not going to be let through customs - I had a work friend that told me that she was refused
Green Park
Buckingham Palace is at the end of that path! entry and was sent back on the next plane (I was later told that she had already over extended her visa and wanted to come back in)... Anywho - so as Matt went through the citizen line, I had to go through a different gate. Not surprisingly, I had no trouble, the officer simply stamped my passport and through I was. 20 minutes later, Matt finally meets me at the luggage collection. He was all sweaty and looking stressed. He goes - where have you been?!?
I said - here... he goes - "I was waiting for you at the gate.. then when you didn't come out I went to look for you and found your jumper on the floor - I thought you had been swept away to some room for questioning!" I couldn't stop laughin... I had been so nervous I didn't realize I had dropped my jumper!
Anyways. After that drama we left the terminal to meet our driver... there were about 100 men with those signs holding names... none of course which said McCarron... After Matt made a few calls the man finally shows up (holding a sign saying McKewin)... Anywho, he wasn't very
Friends Club :-)
Ben, Bec, Mon, Chris and Me smart or very pleasant. He whinged that the flight had been delayed (not our fault) or that there were two of us (not that it matter).
He told us it would take about an hour to get to the apartment... however, as we neared the place he started going around in circles, then he mentions that his satellite nav could not "locate the street"... after driving in circles for 45 minutes he agreed for Matt to call the office for directions (even though Matt had suggested to do this 45 minutes earlier)... poor guy just didn't want to give up on that satellite navigation....
After settling in we went exploring, got bank accounts opened and new credit cards - then we bought some sim cards and did a bit of food shopping to keep at the apartment. The place they got for us is really nice - well furnished and in excellent location - it's in a new part of town and there is some great shopping spots... I've been good and managed to only do some window shopping (for now.. ha ha). My uni friend Bec met us at a bar nearby for a drink that afternoon and she bought us a pocket sized street directory of London (so sweet and so social work)... which has actually proved invaluable so far. That first day we went to bed at 9 but got up at 3, then 4 and then 6...
The next day we met with the Homesearch people at 9 in town. The guy we were assigned (Dominic) - nice chap but man of few words... Matt's small talk skills have really been put to the test... this guy has no opinion about anything! He'd arranged to look at 15 properties in basically 3 locations - south, west and north. West (Shepherds Bush) turned out to be ghetto city so all the properties were a no go... South (Clapham) was okay - but not real practical for Matt to get the work to... and in the north we looked at West Hampstead. This area was the nicest of the lot and has a great vibe about it - great shop strips, parks everywhere, and it is on Matt's tube line. So we decided on 2 properties that we liked there and told the guy to give the agent a call and get the ball rolling on a good deal.
That night we went to meet my uni friend Mon for dinner. She's living in London Tower which is south east and about 2 stations from where we are staying at the moment. She's on the 15th floor so she has great views of the city. She had some interesting pieces of furniture that she had collected from the side of the road... Chris made a really nice pumpkin curry and we'd bought a French red wine which was very nice...
That night we managed to get to bed around 11... and got up again at 3 and 4... (I hate jet lag ness)...
The following day we spoke with Homesearch who informed us that one of the properties we wanted was gone (!) and the other the agent had changed their mind about furnishing it... so we were back at square one. At least we had a better idea of where we want to live so they arranged another day to look at more properties (thurs).
The rest of the day we decided to book a car and go to the airport to pick up the box we had shipped over - this turned out to be a very costly exercise between the car hire (50 pounds), the tolls, the driving-through-london-congestion-tax ( I kid you not -8 pounds!), the customs charge (30 pounds), the admin fee (15 pounds) and the late pick up fee (30 pounds)... the guy at the customs office must have read my face as he took 10 pounds off without me saying a word! Appropriately enough this was the first day that it finally rained... matt dropped me off in the middle of town to meet with one of the recruitment agencies who had been nagging me to go to some interviews.. I explained to them that I wanted to take a week off to get my bearings.. my agent is very nice... so we negotiated that I would attend an interview this Friday.
That night we went to the hottest Jazz club in town with Greer. We watched an American singer (Leela James) who was quite brilliant... jazz as it turns out is not only the blues and she rocked. We were one of the few white people there... but it was great fun. She didn't finish until midnight so by this stage we had been up since 6am so I don't know how we managed to get home awake... at least it was the 1st night we slept right through till 7...
So today we spent the whole day looking at properties again and I think we have been successful. We've put a deposit on a flat in West Hampstead. It a newly renovated 2 bedroom on a second floor above a shop (shut up Nets). The fittings are really nice and it has 2 bathrooms and it has a little courtyard... it's on a main road with great amenities nearby... the whole place is well sound proof so there hopefully won't be any problems with noise. We also get a catalogue to choose our own furniture - that's a bonus as it means everything is new - and we got a pretty good price considering the area - all we need to wait on now is the credit checks... will keep you posted.
Anywho - I was supposed to meet Bec again tonight. She found out Matt was out for drinks and thought I shouldn't be alone. I almost said yes until she mentioned she had some church friends coming over for some group... I asked her if there would be bible reading at this group and she said "sometimes' so I politely declined... :-)
Anywho - as far as London goes so far I'm loving it. There are hundreds of things to do and see and everywhere we go is a new adventure... and we haven't even started to plan our trips away. The cost of things won't be an issue once we start earning pounds which if all things go to plan I should have a job by the end of next week... The public transport is excellent and we are able to get almost anywhere on the tube which we have never had to wait for more than 3 minutes. We are also walking a lot so i'm hoping that in 6 months time i will have at least lost some kilos :-)
I'm really missing you guys and wish you were here to share the fun. We've made sure we got a place with lots of space so you can come and stay with us (you'll have a double bed, ceiling windows and your own bathroom!)... so don't wait and start booking your tickets!
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Jessie
non-member comment
Technology these days...
Hi Matt and Ed! I've only just been able to log on and check out your blog - love it all! Makes me want to drop everything and come join you everytime I hear from you guys! All the rellos have been racking their brains trying to work out how to leave a comment - just thought I'd warn you both before I showed them how!! Keep having fun, love your fav cousin Jess.