Tag: london living

A new year

Hobbies by the wayside
I’ve become rusty at blogging, diary writing, taking photos and writing social emails. The time I used to spend doing those things is now spent:

a) commuting
b) cooking
c) working
d) hanging out with Damjan
e) relaxing
f) going to the gym

I would like to keep up blogging, diarying, taking photos and emailing. I guess I’ll have to find ways to make other parts of my life more efficient so that I can do what’s important to me.

This week might be a difficult one. I have a rather important report to write by the end of the week. I can do it but the amount of writing that needs to be done might mean late nights in the office. The only bad thing about this, really, is that it threatens my fledgling exercise routine.

Going to the gym
I’ve joined gyms before and have fallen off the bandwagon after a few months. This year, I’m going to try to go to the gym at least three times a week. Without a routine, I stop exercising. This makes me feel guilty.

I’m enjoying the gym, actually. It’s a good way to relax and not think about very much. The only negative is that I end up having dinner at 9 PM, which is quite late.

Eating
So that I can come home and eat dinner immediately, usually I cook a big batch of food on the weekend. Last week, I made ‘Ants climbing up trees‘. This week, Damjan and I made a noodle soup. It is definitely convenient to have dinner already made but by the end of the week, I am usually sick of it.

Why I am an iron woman

Reason 1
This evening I put on the soundtrack for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon then ironed three weeks of shirts!

Reason 2
Again, I tried going to the gym but it was closed (I have a gym flyer that clearly states that it is open 8am-8pm on public holidays). As there was a Sainsbury’s superstore next door, I went shopping instead. Usually, my clothes are already daggy by London standards. I was slightly more embarrassed, shopping in a duvet jacket, 3/4 length tracky-daks and scruffy sneakers.

Despite my desperate lack of fashion, on the way home two people smiled at me and said, ‘Happy new year!’ It felt really nice.

I deposited my groceries at home, which brought me great joy, as signposted in my blog profile. Then I prepared to go for a walk around the local park. On an impulse, I asked Neo:

‘Hey, I’m going to the park. Do you want to come with me?’

Neo’s eyes widened and he smiled a hopeful smile. ‘Let me check with dad. I want to come.’ He rushed off to the bedroom.

Ten seconds later, Damian came out and said to me, ‘Did you ask Neo if he wanted to go to the park or did he invite himself?’

‘No, I asked him. I’m going to do a circuit before it gets dark. Neo’s welcome.’

‘Well, that’s great! Neo will get his coat on, then.’

At the park, Neo turned into my personal trainer — I sprinted after him, whenever he declared a race to the next rubbish bin. He also made me struggle up a rope jungle gym identical to this one I photographed in Cambridge. He then insisted we jog laps around the block before going home.

For the first time, I realised what it must be like to own a large dog and having to exercise its energy away every day.

Exterminate

Today, I looked after Neo for a few hours. We started the day by baking Dalek biscuits.

Compare them to the original:

Not bad, eh, except for us using Cheerios for some of the brass buttons.

In the afternoon, we went to the cinema to watch Mr Magorium’s Wonder Emporium. It was 95 minutes of not very taxing viewing. I overdosed on popcorn.

I went to the gym to undo the damage caused by eating too much popcorn. Despite it not being a public holiday (and me being forced by work to take annual leave), the gym was boarded up closed.

I could have jogged around a park. I could have jogged the 0.8 km home with gusto, instead of doing it half heartedly. But it is now dark and I am a fundamentally lazy person. So now, here I am, blogging instead of exercising.

Banks: doing you a favour

Getting a bank account in the UK is an ordeal.

I was warned of this at the WORKgateways website:

“If you think of the bank as doing you a favour by allowing you to keep your money with them, you will be a step ahead in understanding the system, and less bewildered after your UK bank encounters.”

For the privilege of setting up a basic account, you need one or more of: passport, visa, utility bill, proof of at least three months of income and good credit history. This, mind you, is just for a current (everyday transaction) account where you park your money — no overdrafts, no loan.

I don’t understand the rationale. If anything, the bank can steal your money (because you’ve given it to them to hold) and you can’t take any from them. So what’s the risk to the bank?

When you are a newcomer to the country, it is hard to get an account because you don’t yet have a permanent address. Even if you do have a place to stay, you have to set up a phone/gas/electricity service in your name (making sure you get paper statements, not e-statements!), then wait the month or three before your first bill comes in — then you can set up an account.

I was able to skip some of this bureaucracy because as a student, I got my college to write a ‘letter of introduction’. Even then, the bank would only give me a student account. This student account came with a Solo debit card, which is some kind of ‘training’ card that students and people with bad credit histories are given. Solo cards aren’t accepted by many websites and at crucial services, like train stations.

As a student, I also couldn’t get a chequebook. This is a effing nuisance in a country where people still use cheques for amounts as smiddling as £5. When services insisted on being paid by cheque, I had to ask someone to pay for me, then pay them back.

As you might understand by now, one of the things I was most excited about when I started work was that I could finally get a ‘grown up’ debit card. In the first week of work, I went to my bank to request an upgrade. I was told that the standard procedure was that they had to wait until there were three months income in my account before they could upgrade me.

Well! I thought: If they’re going to be like that, I’m taking my business elsewhere!

So I applied for an account with the Co-operative Bank, which is well known for its humanity, fairness and social consciousness.

A week later, a humiliating rejection letter came in the post.

I JUST WANT A BANK ACCOUNT! Twice already I had to ask my workmates to pay for my train tickets.

My final plan was to get a credit card. In Australia, credit companies practically throw themselves at anyone. I wasn’t poor, I wasn’t a student. They should want my money.

REJECTED!

Furious, I went back to my bank armed with my passport, work permit, work contract, first payslip, a perfect UK credit history, and a steely determination not to leave without a real debit card.

I left with a Gold account. Within two weeks, the bank posted me my debit card and chequebook. The bank has also offered me a credit card and high interest savings account.

However, I only knew they were truly repentent when this arrived in the mail last week.

A handwritten Christmas card from my bank branch! This must be an unwritten perk of being a Gold account holder.

Christmas in London and Cambridge

As I said in my last post, I had a three-part Christmas, reflecting the main parts of my life now. These are ‘home and housemates’, ‘work’ and ‘former Cambridge life’.

(The Damjan part of my life is in Melbourne right now.)

So, Christmas started with our house Christmas dinner.

Andrea cooked a delicious roast chicken with vegetables. I have never had such tasty carrots and brussel sprouts before.

Damian made that beloved New Zealand dessert, the pavlova.

We had a living Christmas tree. An array of Neo’s toys held on for dear life. Every now and then, one of them would commit suicide by throwing itself off the tree.

Headgear quickly got silly. It’s inevitable when you have Christmas crackers. For those not aware, Christmas crackers always have inside them a paper crown, a bad joke and a toy.

Now, onto Christmas at work. It started with an exchange of Secret Santa (Kris Kringle) presents. We had to buy something a person could wear for less than £5. I was given a pink sequined cowgirl hat and a gigantic red feather boa. There are pictures so I might be able to post it on here later. Other people got checkered bow ties, reindeer antlers, helium balloons and snowman masks.

We all put on our silly gear and caught the train to St Paul’s. In the tube, Londoners laughed and pointed. We crossed the Millenium Bridge with the sun setting over the Thames. Lunch/dinner was at a Turkish restaurant.

Being the sustainability team, Juhi and Mariane made office decorations out of old magazines.

Isn’t it intricate? I took my cue from this and wrapped some of my presents in magazine paper.

I went to work on Christmas Eve and then caught a 6:30 PM bus to Cambridge. Rebecca and Ian had invited me over for Christmas lunch. I didn’t realise that in England, everything shuts down for Christmas. There are no tube services, no buses, no coaches, no trains. If you don’t have a car, you’re stuck within a walking or cycling radius of wherever you end up on Christmas day.

Which is why I travelled to Cambridge on Christmas Eve and went home on Boxing Day. Luckily, Bec found a place for me to stay overnight.

I had a really comfortable and happy time. It was good to be with friends for Christmas.

We had rosé wine and quality Christmas crackers.

The jokes were not as cheesy as usual and the toys were keepable. From the crackers, I kept a four colour pen and a shower puff.

For our soup starter, Bec blended cauliflower and leek, then garnished with chestnuts. YUM!

And look at this! Roast chicken and vegetables. At London home, I was amazed by the carrots and brussel sprounds. Here, the sweet potato, potato and parsnips were a revelation.

We had Christmas fruit pudding with custard, plus jelly and ice-cream. But before I could tackle dessert, I requested we go for a walk. My tummy couldn’t handle not having a break between mains and dessert.

This photo was taken at 3:15 PM…

…And this was 40 minutes later! The sun went down very quickly.

Merry Christmas!

Peak hour tube ceilidh

I had my first true London experience of the tube in peak hour. I left work fairly promptly so I got to the tube station before 6 PM. The first train pulled up and it was packed with people in suits. Still, two or three hardy souls beside me managed forced their way in.

‘I’ll just wait for the next one,’ I thought. I was in no hurry — I had a free newspaper to read.

A minute later, the next train arrived and unbelievably, it was even fuller than the last one. Again, I didn’t try to get in. I didn’t have the heart to compete with the other city commuters, so desperate to go home that they were running up and down the platform looking for an entry point, their suitcases and rolling luggages flying alongside them.

‘It’s going to be like this until 7 o’clock, isn’t it?’ I realised. Up the tube line were two major stations. Their larger passenger catchment meant that the carriages would no doubt be filled before a train got to my little station. Although it meant a ten minute walk in the wrong direction, I began thinking I’d have better luck getting on at one of those bigger stations upstream.

The next train arrived two minutes later. What a relief! It was only three-quarters full so I folded myself in, along with the large backlog of bypassed commuters from my platform. This one train managed to clear almost the entire queue.

When our train arrived at the next tube station, I saw a waiting crowd as big as the one that had been at my station. There was no way anyone could get on. It was the same story at the next station too.

‘Don’t worry, people. The backlog is being cleared one station at a time — your platform is next.’

This prompted a mental image of a common dance figure from traditional English or ceilidh dancing. You’re standing in a line and the person at the other end pivots and starts skipping down towards you. As he or she moves, the next person peels off and follows so that you watch a string of people skip past. You know that any second now, you too will be skipping past the spot on which you are now standing.

Tube versus bus

London is famous for its red double decker buses and its Underground of Tube trains. It’s an excellent system, despite how Londoners like to moan about it. True, tube trains do seem to break down a lot and buses do get stuck in traffic jams. But normally, getting from point to point in London is pain free.

If you have an Oyster card, a single trip from zone 1 to zone 2 during peak time costs £2 (AU$4.60). That’s one trip — not a two hour pass, not a return. If I took the tube to and from work, it’d cost me $9.20 every day. A monthly ticket is £89 (AU$207).

On the other hand, a bus trip at any time of the day and through any zone costs £0.90 (AU$2.05). It takes me about fifteen minutes extra to get to work (50 minutes door-to-door, compared to 35 minutes). I can handle that. I haven’t yet had any luck with buses coming home during peak hour. Buses get stuck in traffic jams.

The pattern I’ve settled into is to take the bus to work in the morning and the tube back home in the evening. I get off one stop early so that I limit my travel to Zone 1. A zone 1 trip costs £1.50 (AU$3.45) instead of £2. I walk about 15 minutes to get home from Zone 1, instead of 8 minutes from my local zone 2 station.

I guess I could travel to work from a zone 1 station as well. Therefore, my daily bus adventures are only saving me £0.60 (AU$1.40) a day. Darn! I thought I was saving more than that. I’m saving about £12 (AU$28) a month — that’s enough for one dinner out in town.

Voted into the house

After the trauma of my last houseshare interview, I was obviously in danger of accepting an offer from any strangers who smiled at me and liked Chinese food. Luckily, in my vulnerable state, no bad decisions were made.

Forty-five minutes late, I ran to the next house interview and met Damian and Andrea from New Zealand, their six year old boy, Neo, and Richard, an Englishman who works as a pirate at Madame Tussauds.

They had put up their ad on Gumtree only that morning and I was the sixth person to visit that day. They seemed easy-going, and sympathetically expressed horror at the idea of anyone banning garlic and onion in the house. Other goodness: they laughed at my jokes and have every season of House on DVD.

‘You know I like cooking,’ I said. ‘The other thing is that I really like is dancing.’

Andrea perked up. ‘What kind of dancing?’

‘My favourite is swing dancing.’

‘What kind of swing dancing?’

‘Well, do you know lindy hop?’

Andrea clapped excitedly. ‘I do lindy hop too!’

At that point, I thought, ‘In the bag!’

We talked for a bit longer, then it was time to go. Damian said, ‘You’re the last one we were waiting for before we made a decision. We’ll all have a chat between us now and I’ll call you to let you know what we decide.’

I left the house, thoughtful and tired. It was an eight minute walk to the tube station, then maybe another twenty-five minutes before I could get back to my temporary apartment to make dinner. Then my mobile phone rang.

‘Hello?’

‘Joan? It’s Damian. Have you ever seen X-Factor? Well, it was like that. We took a vote and you’re in. Are you interested?’

‘That’s great! Definitely. I’m really pleased.’

‘Can you come back during the week some time to pick up the keys? I guess you’ll move in on the weekend…’

‘Actually, I’m still near your house. You guys were just too quick on the voting. I can come back now if that’s convenient.’

Five minutes later, I was back at my new home. They gave me the key and I stayed to celebrate with a glass of wine and a home-cooked dinner, which definitely involved garlic!

I’ve been here for two weeks now and have finally gotten my room mostly organised. Here are the first photos. I will eventually rejig things so that the desk isn’t in such an awkward position.

Here’s the widest view I can get with my camera.

I bought the desk online and waited all last Saturday for the company to deliver it. When they didn’t come, I was pretty peeved. The desk arrived on Monday. Luckily, Damian was as sick as a dog that day so was home to pick it up. I spent Monday night, happily wearing my engineer’s hat, screwing things together and twirling my allen key. Now that I have a desk, I am more inclined to be on the internet. Hopefully I will blog more regularly now.

The curtains are quite flimsy and there is a street light outside my window. Orange light filters through, making it tricky to get to sleep. Damjan has given me one of those eye-cover things you got on aeroplanes (what are they called?) and that’s worked well — easier than buying new curtains!

I needed more shelf space but don’t have much room for it. Along with my desk, I ordered a set of seagrass baskets and have stacked them to make a reconfigurable shelf space. I’m really pleased at how they’ve turned out.

The sword in the wardrobe! Whoever can pull it out is the rightful king of England.

You have to draw the line somewhere and I draw it at garlic intolerance

On the weekend that I arrived in London, I started looking up flatshares on the internet and making phone calls. By Sunday, I had two appointments. As you have read from last time, I didn’t have a map so was relying on getting good directions from my potential housemates.

The first one was with Anya. She had a slight accent, which I couldn’t quite identify and gave me a bit of trouble understanding her instructions.

‘Coming out of the station, turn left and follow the road until you get to an intersection. Cross the road, pass a church, keep walking until you see a red banner. We’re the building on the other side.’

It was dark and there was a five-way intersection as soon as I stepped out of the tube station. I knew immediately that it was hopeless. After calling Anya for more directions three times, she agreed to come out of the house and meet me at the McDonald’s outside the tube station.

The flat was neat and colourful. The area was nice. The rent was very cheap. Anya was very pleasant too, although that didn’t help because she was moving out.

Then I met the ‘head housemate’, Angelo. He seemed normal at first. Then he handed to me a piece of paper with a list of house rules. He lectured me about each one. ‘You must always double bolt the front door. Guests can’t stay longer than two nights.’ Okay, so he was a control freak. I could handle that. The rules seemed reasonable.

‘Tell me about yourself,’ he finally asked.

‘Well, I like cooking,’ I said brightly. ‘I’m happy to share a meal every now and then.’

Angelo barked out a laugh. ‘No, we don’t eat together. You know, eating’s not something we ‘do’ really. You just have to eat so we grab anything, eat out mostly. You know how it is.’

‘Okaaaay…’ I thought.

‘What kind of food do you cook?’

‘Chinese food, mainly.’

Angelo made a face. ‘I don’t like Chinese food. I had some once and I asked for no onion. When the food came, there was onion in it!’

I made a sympathetic noise.

‘I hate the smell of onions and garlic!’ he cried passionately.

‘Ah… Well, yes, there’s a lot of garlic and onion in Chinese food,’ I said. Anya was sitting beside me, still and quiet the whole time.

We talked some more about other things, then Angelo came back to the cooking.

‘If you cook, you’ll keep the kitchen clean, right?’

‘Of course,’ I assured him.

‘You have to,’ he said, ‘because this is a communal house and we need to share things.’

‘No problem.’

‘And when we cook, we have to wash up and put everything away before we start to eat.’

Now I was speechless. He already hated my cooking, wouldn’t eat with me and now was telling me to clean up while my food got cold?

At this point, I decided that I could not live here, no matter how cheap the rent was or how nice the room was. Angelo seemed satisfied, though.

‘I like you,’ he declared.

‘Great!’ I nodded.

‘Anya will call you when we decide who gets the room.’

They walked me to the door and I almost bolted out of the flat, already texting my next potential housemate because I was going to be late for my second appointment.

Later that night, I got a message from Anya, saying that another current housemate wanted to meet me. By then, I was able to text back to say that I had found a place to live. You can read about my second and last interview in my next blog post.

Wireless bus

I’ve been living in an apartment in London, which doesn’t have the internet. I am on a coach now, which does have the internet, hence this blog post!

I got to London last Saturday and checked into an apartment that my company rented for me. Damjan and I promptly went off to see Avenue Q, a very funny, rather shocking puppet musical. It’s fantastic. Go see it if you have the chance.

Damjan left on Sunday and I began my permanent-house-hunt. Even though I could live in my rented apartment for two weeks, I wanted to sort out a proper home as soon as I could. Finding a place in London can be tough.

I went to an internet cafe, trawled through websites and downloaded more than 50 house share ads. Then I went back to my internetless apartment and read through the ads properly. Of the 50+ ads, about 10 were in areas I wanted to live and within my price range. Four of them had the right ‘vibe’ so I called them up.

Immediately, two people said that I could visit them this evening. I hesitated.

‘Yes, I’m free tonight. I can come by but you have to give me really clear instructions on how to get there. I don’t have a map or the internet at the moment.’

‘No problem,’ they assured me.

In the next episode of Coconut Joan, you will read about me getting lost, meeting the flatmate from close-to-hell, and getting voted into the house, reality TV style. Stay tuned.