the best and worst of London
I'm in a list making mood, so here are my
5 best things about London:
1. The transport system is heaven compared to Sydney, even with all the weekend trackwork. When it's running well, you never have to wait more than a few minutes for the tube, and all bus services are pretty frequent - at least one every 10 minutes (usually more), which a far cry from the one-an-hour
963 service at home which stops running at 6:45pm.
1a. By extension, the
Oyster card, which is your all-in-one ticket for most forms of public transport. You can buy your weekly online, monitor all your trips (and so can British Government I suppose), and even get your money refunded if your card gets stolen.
2. The
TimeOut guide, which shows that there's so much stuff to do!
3. No dangerous bugs or creepy crawlies anywhere. The worst thing I've seen so far is a daddy longlegs spider in my wardrobe. This may change in spring, of course...
4. Marks and Spencer food, which is a bit like a gourmet supermarket with lots of upmarket ready meals as well as good raw ingredients. Delicious!
5. The work culture is much more relaxed here. If you turn up to work on time, you're already ahead of the pack. AND you can go home at the correct time and not be accused of being a slacker, because half the office is leaving with you!
5 different things about London compared to Sydney:1. Free newspapers are everywhere, and are actually quite popular. People leave their newspapers behind on the tube for others to read when they've reached their stop, which could be seen as either socially acceptable littering or a public service depending on your point of view.
2. There are very few shopping malls! Most shops are just along the streets. Also, absolutely everything in London is part of a chain. Everything. All the pubs, restaurants, novelty shops, delis... even the cute little french patisserie run by an actual french couple down the road is a chain store. They just hide it better here than in america.
3. It's not unusual to have carpet in your bathroom.
4. In London you don't get wheelie bins, you just put your rubbish bags straight on to the street to be collected by the relevant people. It feels so uncivilised throwing stuff into the street!
5. London really caters well for singledom and travellers. The number of single-sized, traveller-friendly portions of food, cosmetics and toiletries available is incredible. I suppose a large proportion of London's population are people like me, but the amount of effort that has gone into producing products for that target audience is amazing. You don't need to cook for one in London if you don't want to, and you can still eat quite healthily. Most rooms for rent are furnished alraedy as well, so you don't need to start from scratch.
5 bad things about London:1. Most supermarkets are only open for 6 hours on Sundays, from midday to 6pm or thereabouts. Don't ask me why, but if you haven't planned your Sunday meal in advance, you're in trouble.
2. Limescale. I think the limescale is responsible for everything tasting bad because you use the water in all your cooking :( Even tea, which should taste marvellous over here, loses its flavour.
3. People are allowed to smoke in restaurants, cafes and bars. This is going to change in July with the introduction of anti-smoking laws, which I am only too keen to welcome.
4. The de-layering and re-layering dance, which is performed every time you walk into or out of a shop or restaurant in winter. It might be 5 degrees outside, but every office building and shop will be a balmy 23 degrees for your comfort. Only it won't actually be comfortable, because your arms are awkwardly full of puffy coat/jumper/scarf/gloves/beanie.
5. Losing mobile reception when you go into the tube. It means that if you're running late or stuck on a train, you can't call anyone to tell them you won't be there!
I also think London is a very environmentally irresponsible city, much worse than home. The volume of rubbish generated every day from pre-packed sandwiches and free newspapers would easily bury Sydney. Even fruits and vegetables are pre-packed! If I want to buy zucchini (sorry, courgettes) I have to buy them in a plastic wrapped pack of three.
People use their clothes dryers at home if they have one, because there's no outdoor clothes line, and very little space indoors to hang your clothes up anyway. They might also have their gas heaters on 24/7 to combat the chill. Then there's the super-air-conditioned office buildings and shops, and all the budget airlines which are doing terrible environmental damage with their emissions (which I admit I will take full advantage of, so can't really talk on that front).
There are also shops like ikea and
ASDA that sell household goods at insanely low, non-sustainable prices. I mean, spending 19p on a set of kitchen cooking utensils is ridiculously cheap - It definitely costs more than that to make them in the first place, at least environmentally. And it frustrates me that I continue to shop at these places and perpetuate the cycle, but I can't stop myself! I can spend 20 pounds on an item, or I can go to ikea and get it for 2 pounds. What will my kids say when they're living in a houseboat because the water levels have risen so much? :p
the suit theorem
I don't think I've explained my suit theory before, but it goes something like this. If you take any guy - good looking or not - and put him in a nice, well-fitting suit, his rating goes up tenfold. Now, I'm not claiming to be the first person to notice this, and the theory doesn't apply to every female observer, but it's definitely a part of my own personal superficial rating scale.
The suit factor is a
multiplier, not a simple addition to a score, so a George Clooney in a suit will benefit much more than an ugly and balding 50-year-old. In fact, the suit theory might hinder the ugly guy because if they were standing next to each other, every female would be so blinded by the attractiveness and charisma of George in a suit that they'll completely ignore the fact that there's another person standing there. He might even get injured in the mad rush to get close to George.
Now, there are a lot of guys in London who wear suits, which suits me just fine (hee hee, I made a funny!) There are finance people who look very important, reading actual newspapers they've paid for printed on different coloured paper than most plebs in the carriages, dressed in expensive suits with a trendy euro scarf, going about their daily money-making business. During Christmas time I saw quite a few men in tuxedos on the tube heading to some party or other, which was often a bright spot in my day. (Tuxedos are a whole different
class of suit altogether, but sadly you don't get them very often.) It was just so incongruous seeing these men dressed to the nines, often with a female in hand, doing something so mundane like catching public transport. I wasn't complaining.
Anyway, all this brings me to the point of my story: I casually observed a Jude Law lookalike on the tube this evening. He was wearing a suit and reading the paper, which was all fairly normal for after work. At Euston Square, he reached the end of his paper, fished out a pen, and
started doing a sudoku puzzle. It really warms my heart knowing that there are good looking nerds out there.
Love at first night
I've moved into my new room, and I LOVE it. with CAPITALS.
I haven't technically finished putting everything away, but I'm getting there. It's amazing how much stuff I've accumulated over the course of three months. (I should have taken a photo just so you could be amazed along with me.) I easily have three times as much stuff like clothes, toiletries, bags, household goods, random stationery items... but the bonus is that I can put it all away in a drawer or a cupboard now. I'm very excited :)
In other life news, my contract is halfway over and I'm going to be back in Australia in less than a month. It feels so surreal. I have to admit that I'm looking forward to this holiday the most out of all the travelling I've done so far this year. Everything else has been influenced by my emotional sensitivity about moving away from home, or being exhausted and not having a steady home to go back to, or not having any money... but this one is just going to be great. And SUNNY. And full of friends, and eating, and big boys' cafe french toast brunch with bacon and maple syrup. And it's gonna be birthday-licious. :)
snow in London!
It snowed last night! My very first London snow! I had no idea anything was different until I walked outside and noticed that most stationary things were now white. Very pretty :) There was probably about an inch or so, maybe a bit more, which was enough to cover cars and stick to trees but not be slushy to walk around in. My friend mentioned that someone had built a little snowman on Fulham bridge, which I thought was really cute.
This is apparently the most snow that's fallen in London since 2003. It was nice to get something in return for the cold!
hello, japan!
I'm stopping by the land of Hello Kitty on my way back to the UK! I will be visiting Chito-san in his japanese mountain retreat with super fast broadband. My goals for this trip include going to
Nikko, another bike riding day in Kyoto, actually eating sashimi at the
Tokyo Fish Markets (as opposed to going all the way there and then piking on it), and maybe a visit to Takayama. The cherry blossoms are supposedly in bloom in late March in Tokyo, so if I'm lucky I may get a look-see. :)
If anyone is going to be there between the 14th and 23rd of March, do let me know, we can say hello!
the cardinal rule
I managed to get my hair cut on the weekend, but broke my cardinal rule of hair cutting:
never get your hair cut shorter than your shoulders. I was over-enthused, and forgot to convey this to the hairdresser. I said "sitting on my shoulders", which somehow translated to the hair that I have now. Which I'm not going to post a photo of, because if you want to see it you'll have to make the effort to visit me. Or, wait till I arrive in Australia and by then it will be past my shoulders and we will no longer have a problem. ;)
the unfunny side of irony
It's Friday! Hooray! I was really struggling to do anything productive this afternoon. By about 4:30 I was severely over it and ready to go home, but I hung around till 6 because I want to get paid those extra one and a half hours. Yay money!
I found out that
alison has been taking a photo a day and posting it on flickr. it's such an awesome idea, I wish I'd stolen it and just not said anything.
Meanwhile... I had big plans for this Saturday. Originally I was going to day trip out to somewhere (anywhere), just to get out of London a bit. But the weather forecast made me re-think those plans to shopping in London (since I got paid TWICE this week, once for my old contract, and once for my new one!) and getting my hair cut. Then I found out that we are having an open house all day tomorrow between 11 and 4:30 to replace my flatmate who is moving out, so if I'd like to meet the people I will potentially be living with, I'll have to stay home.
I finally have money, but no day trip, no shopping, and no hair cut. :( irony just isn't funny unless it's happening to someone else.
I lost my scarf today :(
Somewhere between the number 38 bus route on Farringdon rd and Foyles bookshop on Charing Cross rd, there is a beautiful teal scarf that is now forever lost to me.
I bought that scarf in France, and I really liked the colour. :(
more photos are online
I've gone on a bit of a photo uploading spree, but none of the major holidays are up yet (they're too hard to tackle :)
You can see the new photos on
flickr. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed, there's a link on the bottom of the page somewhere...
room swap!
My flatmate is moving out in two weeks. You know what this means?
I get her awesome room! I really shouldn't be so happy about it because she's cool to live with, but the room is so much bigger and brighter than mine (and doesn't have blue carpet) that it's so worth it....
I will be 100 pounds a month poorer, but oh-so-much richer in other ways. I'll have a TV! Natural light! More drawers! Space! (potentially more noise! but that's okay!) I can shop for bed linen and not have to worry about clashing with blue!
Awesome!!
p.s. If you know anyone who wants to move into a new place in London, and they are a) cool and b) clean up after their kitchen mess, then let me know!
bored?
need to waste time? look no further...there are sites out there that list the answers, but I trust you're not going to cheat. Otherwise, where's the fun in that?
Ooh, and just to share, I joined my local library tonight as well, which also rents DVDs! How awesome! I went a bit nuts and borrowed lots of things. Hopefully I will not be forgetting to return them :p
one hundred things
It's been a while since I've written one of these. If any of the people who wrote one of these on the board ages ago reads this, write a new one and we'll swap! :)
Here are one hundred true things about me.
one
I'm listening to french pop/rock artist Sinclair as I write this list, introduced to me by Gabs' french flatmate.
two
In the last four months of 2006, I only worked for four weeks.
three
Mushrooms are my favourite vegetable.
four
I once had a huntsman land on my head in primary school, and didn't notice until about five minutes later when everyone else saw it and freaked out and formed a giant circle around me. I cautiously reached up to my hair, felt something kind of scratchy, screamed, and flicked it off with such vehemence that I think I broke some of its legs when it landed on the floor. A classmate scooped it up, put it in our empty fishtank and called it Victor. We eventually had thirty three Victors in the course of that year. I think the event has scarred me for life.
five
I prefer toast to fresh bread, unless the bread is less than 6 hours old.
six
I feel like I grew closer to my family after I moved out of home.
seven
Being anywhere mountainous has the ability to take my breath away.
eight
I don't think I've ever seen Mary Poppins in its entirety.
nine
I like drinking hot water just by itself. No, it's not that weird, ask any Asian about it, ok?
ten
I can't stomach violence, horror, or anything even vaguely disturbing in movies anymore. I'm not quite sure what that means about my mental state compared to ten years ago when I could watch anything, but it's strictly dramas, some action, and the good old romantic comedy now.
eleven
I love sesame seeds on anything.
twelve
I really miss sunshine.
thirteen
I love sticky date pudding in butterscotch sauce.
fourteen
I really hate cigarettes and don't understand how people can smoke them.
fifteen
The first guy I ever had a crush on was named Lachlan.
sixteen
I'm allergic to coffee :(
seventeen
I used to stay up till 3am on weekends in high school before I even felt tired.
eighteen
I really like playing board games.
nineteen
I think I find it easy to meet and make acquaintances, but very hard to make close friends.
twenty
Life always seems different between the hours of 11pm and 5am.
twenty one
My oldest friend, who is one of my best friends, is someone I've known for 14 years.
twenty two
I used to wear reading glasses.
twenty three
I buy postcards like crazy when I travel. It's kind of cool, because I've started putting them on my wall in a giant work of art to remind me of where I've travelled.
twenty four
I feel like I'm getting more average in intelligence with every passing year.
twenty five
I would like to take more of an interest in clothes/hair/make up/etcetera but I'm not sure how bothered I can be.
twenty six
I'm a really messy person. My bedroom at home is atrocious.
twenty seven
I can't stand kitchen mess, though.
twenty eight
Living room clutter is OK, as long as it isn't food related.
twenty nine
I would like to own an SLR so I can take lots of pretty photos.
thirty
It annoys me when people talk about things they don't know.
thirty one
I used to feel very alienated from most 'normal' people throughout school, but I feel like I'm trading intelligence for social skills now. I'm hoping the exchange will halt soon.
thirty two
I spend way too much time on the computer.
thirty three
Hazelnut is my favourite flavour of anything, as long as real hazelnuts are used.
thirty four
If I got a tattoo, it would be on my lower back.
thirty five
I have never cooked rice without a rice cooker.
thirty six
I own Moby Dick but I've never finished reading it.
thirty seven
If I don't get enough sleep, I eat a lot.
thirty eight
I have eighty two pounds in my bank account right now.
thirty nine
I really, really, really hate recruitment companies.
forty
I failed my Ps first time round.
forty one
I passed them the second time round going to a different RTA branch.
forty two
I want to do more exercise.
forty three
I sleep very deeply.
forty four
I have eaten lots of eggs since arriving in London.
forty five
My flat has creaky floors.
forty six
I don't think I could ever travel extensively again without having a home to go back to.
forty seven
I don't like eating rice much any more.
forty eight
I really don't like
limescale. It's everywhere in London.
forty nine
contracting > permanent work (despite many of the associated hassles)
fifty
I have almost 50,000 frequent flyer points for Singapore Airlines.
fifty one
My dog's name is Jasmine.
fifty two
I've eaten at Tetsuya's, ranked
number five in the fifty best restaurants in the world.
fifty three
I wish I was a tidier person.
fifty four
I think I used to get along better with guys than girls, but this seems to be swapping over.
fifty five
I prefer the company of taken males to single males, because I'm afraid of saying something to a single male that may be taken out of friend context.
fifty six
The most expensive pair of shoes I've ever bought was $200 Australian dollars, which isn't really that expensive. The next expensive pair was about $140.
fifty seven
I liked uni better than primary school which was better than high school. Getting out of formal education was ten times better than all of that combined.
fifty eight
I think I have fairly good organisational skills... as long as it is something I want to organise and I get over the procrastination element to do it.
fifty nine
I'm a 'jack of all trades' person rather than a specialist at anything.
sixty
I am really, really looking forward to eating yum cha back in Sydney.
sixty one
And a peach. You can't find peaches in the UK. (Nectarines yes, plums yes, apricots yes, but no peaches!)
sixty two
I think I am generally very happy.
sixty three
I miss the smell of mangoes.
sixty four
I wish I was more decisive.
sixty five
I am ready to stop being single.
sixty six
I just need to find a nice English lad to fill the void ;)
sixty seven
I would like to be able to play the guitar, but I'm so lazy I never forced myself to learn it properly.
sixty eight
On the scale of toasting, I prefer a darker and crispier toast to a wimpy light dusting.
sixty nine
I like sitting at the window and watching the rain fall. Ironically, you can't do that much in London because when it rains, it just drizzles.
seventy
The best holiday I've ever had in my life was snow trip Japan 06!
seventy one
I like being childish sometimes, like running through fountains or jumping on jumping castles.
seventy two
I wish I had wavy hair.
seventy three
I once got hit in the head with a baseball bat in primary school. There was no blood, but there was a giant lump, and it really, really hurt. The teacher didn't take me to the sick bay or anything because it was five minutes until the end of the day.
seventy four
Sometimes I wonder if that baseball bat changed the person who I am today.
seventy five
I love long car trips... especially if I'm not driving!
seventy six
I sing along to the radio.
seventy seven
I have stopped baking desserts.
seventy eight
I don't actually have the utensils to bake desserts :p
seventy nine
I live with a French girl, a Russian girl, and a German-Persian girl.
eighty
I'd like to have two or three kids one day (at least one boy and one girl).
eighty one
I can't drink most soft drinks any more. The type of sugar in them makes me feel ill.
eighty two
One of my feet is bigger than the other. I can never remember which one.
eighty three
I just finished mopping the floor in my flat, because it was really gross.
eighty four
I wish I read more books.
eighty five
I really like the smell of mulled wine.
eighty six
I have eleven pairs of shoes. This doesn't count the ones in Australia.
eighty seven
If I'm honest with myself, The X-Files is responsible for my current career path.
eighty eight
How sad.
eighty nine
I try to be punctual, but sometimes time just runs away from me. I'm trying very hard to fix the punctuality thing.
ninety
I have a packet of mint slice sitting on my bedside table. Unopened.
ninety one
I have never felt the need to manage my spending until I arrived in London. (It's not because London is that expensive on my income, but I don't have any reserves of pounds to draw on. Unfortunately, this is likely to last until May.)
ninety two
I own a pair of red snow mittens.
ninety three
The last movie I saw was
Stranger than Fiction.
ninety four
I envy people who can do as they please and not worry about what everyone thinks.
ninety five
I used to crave hot chips with a passion throughout high school. Anytime I smelled them I had to stop myself from buying them. I wasn't always successful.
ninety six
But my willpower was much stronger back then.
ninety six
These days, I don't crave anything as intensely as I used to.
ninety seven
My ideal night in involves cooking a meal, eating a whole lot of food and watching a teen/chick flick movie. Or playing board games.
ninety eight
I am going to be a nigel over the next few weeks as everyone flies back to Australia for Australia Day!
ninety nine
My toenails are painted a metallic burgandy red.
one hundred
My Australian credit card got suspended two weeks ago because I forgot to pay the bill. Oops.
I'm coming home.
23rd of February - 14th March. mark it in your diaries people :)
why I hate recruitment companies
I really, really hate recruitment companies.
They are a bunch of lying, incompetent, smelly, no-good, soul-draining money grabbers who only ever have their own interests at heart. There is seriously nothing they won't do to make money, and it's really disheartening to think there are people out there who choose to make a living by screwing people over every single day of their working lives.
Recruitment in the UK is split into two streams - permanent and contract. Every time a permanent agent lands someone a job, they get paid a lump sum of money. I've heard figures like 5,000 pounds per job, which seems outrageous and explains why they don't care if they screw you over, as long as you sign on the dotted line. Contract agents get a certain amount of money per day you work, which ranges from zero to however much they can fleece off the top of your contract rate while you're not at your bargaining best. This also explains why they don't care if they screw you over, because once you've signed a contract you can't change the rate, and some contracts have clauses saying they you can't leave halfway through. My experience with recruitment agents has varied from 'okay' to 'terrible'. The two I happened to sign on with so far have fallen into the lower half of the scale...
My first recruitment agent:
- Called me EIGHT times in the space of 90 minutes after the interview to pressure me into a decision
- Completely lied about the length of contract by a factor of three to make me accept it
- tried to deny that they'd lied about the contract length AND the amount of money they were earning from the contract (as reasons to not pay me more money for a 1 month contract vs. 3 month contract)
- Attempted to re-sign me even after the whole "oops, I know we screwed you over" situation
- And the worst part: they screwed up a week of my pay and took it back from my payroll provider. A week is a lot of money when you've only worked for one month. They STILL have not fixed it 16 working days later, despite me calling them numerous times, re-faxing my timesheets and emailing them twice. And I called them first working day of the new year, was assured I'd get paid before the weekend, and still have no money!!!
My second recruitment agent:
- Lied about the contract length (although only by weeks instead of months this time)
- Gave me wrong information about the start time so I turned up late and looked like an idiot on my first day
- Lied about the fact that they are working exclusively with this client... which they aren't
- and are probably making about a 100 pounds per day from me after I found out how much the other recruitment agency were paying their contractors
It makes me fed up more than anything else... it's really maddening to go into the job hunting process EXPECTING to be lied to and screwed over. I don't care that they make money, I know they have to, but I'd think 20 pounds a day per contractor is reasonable, not a hundred. They'd have thousands of contractors signed on anyway, they can't be classed 'poor' by any stretch of the imagination. All their hard work is at the beginning of a contract; once they've set up the agreement, they just sit back and watch the money pile up in their account. It just makes me cranky.
That is my rant for the day. I just really, really had to get it off my chest.
vietnamese food is SO tasty
Vicki and I ate Vietnamese on Kingsland Road tonight. It was so cheap, and so worth the walk - Kingsland Road is inconvenient to get to, but has so many good Vietnamese restaurants.
We had actually planned to go to "the best vietnamese food" restaurant, but it was closed (presumably for the holiday season). So instead, we went to one with a "certificate of hygiene" which was equally as good, if not better.
How do they make the grilled pork so tasty? It's a mystery.
As an aside, I love how
Jane Espenson tells people what she eats for lunch every day. I don't blog nearly as often, but I think it's a funny quirk. I had a lightly spiced vegetable curry soup from the news cafe opposite The Guardian offices in Farringdon today. Only 3 pounds with malted grain bread. Bargain!
Is it the weekend yet?
I've worked 2 days in the last 24, and I want a holiday already. How tragic is that? I haven't actually
done anything at work yet either - there have been big problems getting the development environments set up, it's all SharePoint Server 2007 stuff, so nobody knows anything about anything. But I'm recovering from a cold (well, two colds), and I think I got quite attached to doing nothing all day... so is it the weekend yet?
I had a pretty good holiday season (aside from having no money). Christmas dinner at Jen's was plentiful. We had multiple ovenloads of food, which has never happened to me before. And we had about six different things for dessert. So delicious!
Spain was great, we burned through our savings and soaked up sunshine. I bought a really cute pair of shoes and two beautiful leather bags, and some earrings and miscellaneous other stuff. I spent 600 pounds all up, and now I'm left with less than 300 in my account. I'm waiting on a week's pay from my crappy ex-recruiter who revoked the money in error. :p It's kind of scary having so little money to my name, living paycheque to paycheque...
Actually the real reason I'm poor is that I've been spending all my money on TICKETS. Mmmmm, tickets.... they're comparatively much cheaper than you'd pay in Australia, and there's so many events to go to. I'm going outdoor ice skating at
Somerset House and
Hampstead Heath, will be seeing The Nutcracker ballet, and Nelly Furtado. Then there's the Australia vs. Denmark soccer match in February, and
The Dirty Dozen Brass Band that played at last year's Jazz in the Domain which I'll go to if I can get my airline tickets sorted for the right dates. I'm flirting with the idea of seeing Cirque de Soleil in February... and maybe Justin Timberlake in July. And I missed out on Paolo Nutini tickets in April for 16.50 when I could have bought them! Kicking myself now. :p
