christmas time in the city
Wow, this year has really flown by. Especially the second half! Seems like only yesterday it was June.
In a case of history repeating itself, I am once again going to be unemployed over Christmas (but willingly), going to spend Christmas day in London, and then I'm hopping on a plane and flying to Seville, coming back before New Years' Eve. Heh. There is one big change, in that most of the Christmas period will be spent with Niall and his parents. I'm pretty sure I'm breaking several "parental holiday laws" by going on one 2 days after meeting said parents, but hey. At least the shopping in Seville is teh AWESOME, especially the shoe shopping. I know that Vik is agreeing with me all the way from Mexico.
As I mentioned, I'm currently unemployed, and I'm loving it. This week has mostly been sleeping in a whole lot, plus some christmas shopping, followed by TV and more sleeping. I have an unsigned agreement to go back to my old workplace in the new year. At first I thought I'd be insane to do it, but the new contract will be working on a shiny new project (no maintenance! hurrah!) that will be using .NET 3.5, and has the potential for really large scope in the cinema industry, which is cooooool. I've even bought reading material to supplement my learning while unemployed. How keen is that?
I also finally, finally,
finally have internet again. I can't emphasise how exciting this is for me. w00t :) I think it was 13 or 14 weeks without internet all up, which is positively criminal for someone in IT. I'm back to hardcore planning of holidays for next year. Niall and I are working out a schedule for a weekend in Sweden at the
icehotel, staying in one of their art rooms if we can swing it. Plus some husky dog sledding and wacky adventures on snowmobiles to remote places. PLUS I need to build a snowman... I've never made one!
Other exciting news is that as of the 4th December this year, I am a highly skilled migrant. The visa gives me another 2 years in the UK without restrictions on working, and it makes it much easier to find work as well - less hoops to jump through. And now, if I stay another 3 on top of the existing 2 years, I'll qualify for a british passport......... ;)
Thankfully most of the chaos that has featured prominently in the last 6 months of my life - moving house, no internet, last minute parental trips, sorting out visas - has settled down now, so bring on Christmas, even the freezing cold weather. Things are looking up :)
Bringing the crowded house down!
[this is an old post from my internet-less days that I'm still catching up on!]
I've just come back from the Crowded House concert at Wembley Arena in London and it was f-a-n-t-a-s-t-i-c :) There is another concert on at Royal Albert Hall on Tuesday which was the only advertised concert for a long time. I'm missing it because I'd booked tickets for me and 17 other people at work to go outdoor ice skating, and I was really disappointed I wouldn't be able to see them. However I found out about the Sunday concert just four days ago by accident, when I took a day off work last week and hung around at Niall's recouperating from a cold and mooching on the internet. I bought the tickets on ebay the same day for cost price, so it's pure luck that I got to go at all.
Somehow they managed to make Wembley Arena - a venue the size of the entertainment centre - seem like a small, intimate room. It was one of the band members' birthdays and they were all in a good mood, very chatty and engaging and the sound quality was really good where we were sitting (right behind the mixer stand!) so it all combined to make it a fantastic experience. Our seats were in a really great position because we were centre block, first row behind a bunch of seats that had been left clear because there were cameras positioned in the mixer stand that were going to block peoples' view. So I could see the whole concert all the way through, yay :)
They played a mammoth 2.5 hour set, which included about 4 or 5 from the new album, and a lot of old favourites that were on the Recurring Dream album. They encouraged a lot of audience participation, dancing, clapping and sing along, which was what made it so engaging. The best part was they came out for a second encore which lasted more than half an hour which was very impromptu and very fun. You could also purchase the concert live on CD (which would be ready 10 mins after close for collection!), so of course many people did that before and after the concert was over. The actual purchasing/collecting of the CDs was a bit haphazard, but I'm sure it will be worth it when it arrives.
I ran into Daniel at the start of the concert - I imagine there were a lot of people there who were Australian or New Zealanders, I'm sure I would have known a few people in the crowd :) Tam included, she had tickets with friends sitting just one row behind us and to the left!
This was probably one of the best concerts I've been to, which prompted me to make a list of my favourite gigs (in no particular order)
- Gomez, Enmore theatre Sydney, 2000
- Moby, Hordern pavillion Sydney, 2000 (?)
- George and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Sydney Opera House, January 2001
- Crowded House, Wembley Arena London, December 9 2007
- Motor Ace, Manning Bar Sydney University, 2001
- Muse, Zepp Nagoya, March 2007
- Porcupine Tree, The Forum London, November 2007
- Nelly Furtado, Hammersmith Apollo, February 2007
nerd quiz wednesday
Bring out your inner HTML nerd.
Go on, you know you want to....
real estate agents are woe.
If I hadn't mentioned it before, househunting is quite demoralising in London - flats can be on the market for just a few hours before they're snapped up. House hunting is a full time job and you need to go and check relevant websites for new availabilities at least 2 or 3 times each day - preferably more often if you can sneak the time off work to do it. Then you need to call prospective agents and landlords from the ads ASAP, and the first question you ask is, "is your flat still available?"
If you have a viewing for a flat booked in 24 hours, there's a chance it will be gone by then, so you have to be ready at a moment's notice to drop everything and go and see a prospective property whenever an agent can get you a viewing, and the sooner the better. We had three viewings cancelled on us because of that - one literally three minutes before the viewing was scheduled, and after we'd all left work early so we could get there. Grr.
Then there are all the fees associated with renting a place. Some agents (ours included) charge you draw up the contract, and for conducting reference checks. The banks also get in on the act, with mine charging £8.50 to supply the reference to the agent! Then there are all sorts of other mysterious and sneaky fees that are thrown in, like an "inventory charge" where some dude goes around with a clipboard to say what's currently in the flat so you don't nick off with it at the end of your lease and dispute the fact that it was there and undamaged in the first place. Some agents like Foxtons will even charge you just to apply for a place. How nasty is that?!
Because the real estate market is so hot, agents don't really have to do a lot of work if they're letting sought-after properties. People will offer rent
above the advertised rate in order to secure a property if they really want it and they know it will go fast. Anything that's reasonably modern with nice furniture will get snapped up within the day. Your real estate agent can do about ten minutes' work to get the property let out and then sit pretty on the fees they charge to manage the property, so the upshot of it is they don't really give a crap about you, or it, once the dotted line has been signed.
We've been living in our flat for almost a month now, and we've had an annoying collection of problems that includes:
- Broken washing machine when we moved in, fixed after 10 days
- One set of keys for 3 people for the first 14 days - the previous tenants had taken a set to mexico, and the agent hadn't paid for the third set so they sat in the building office for a while, not able to be released until paid for
- Random junk lying around the flat when we moved in, including a giant pink stuffed monkey and half a bottle of wine (ugh)
- A broken window that doesn't shut properly - awesome in winter - still not fixed
- A broken heater in the same room!
- A shower bracket that was installed by the Polish handyman that sprays water straight into the shower curtain, above my head.
Of course, when we call to report these things our smarmy real estate agent gives the impression of immediately getting "straight on it", but never actually does stuff unless you chase him. Repeatedly. We're not his biggest fans.
I seriously think I'm in the wrong industry here. Recruitment and Real Estate - that's where the money is, and also where the large moral vacuum is...
