More interviews, Amanda gets a job, beautiful parks...

What’s interesting living in a new place is getting used to the new sounds around you. I’ve learnt to tune out from the sirens that seem to be constantly screaming. I swear the police and ambulance just put them on for fun sometimes in that they seem to well always be on. And I no longer here the church bells clanging away. I love walking through the park near our house to get home in the day time. Birds will be singing and without fail, I will see two squirrels on the very green grass – it’s just gorgeous... Oh and this photo on the right is of Battersea Park (and there's more further on).

Ok, some new music I’ve discovered while I’ve been here: The Gossip and Patti Smith – two women with amazing voices and they're not even from here. Razorlight is another great band. And there was this huge free festival that went on this weekend called the Radio 1 Big Weekend – insane line up but unfortunately all the tickets were given away months ago – so I’m forced to watch it on digital tv instead. Oh and I found out I that one of my fave bands ..and you will know us by the Trail of Dead is coming to London - yay!!!

Anyway, my bestest news ever is that I’ve scored a job – I start working at BP in 2 weeks time (on Tuesday 5th June) as a Sharepoint Admin – great job, great company, the site is amazing with onsite doctor, dentist, dry cleaner, café, restaurant, country club etc etc. Here’s what I’ve been up to this last week and this coming week – I’m hoping to do some touristy stuff like go on the red double decker open roof buses. And next week I’m heading off on a day tour to Stonehenge, Windsor Castle and Bath. So here’s the week that was:

Tuesday 15th May

Today, I got my hair cut, coloured, highlights etc at Atlantic hair. 85 quid later – it actually looks pretty good – the highlights stand out more now – and my justification – I need to look good for interviews and my fringe was getting in my eyes and driving me nuts. After this I headed to Argos – my new favourite shop and bought an electric blanket. I’m sure the people thought I was nuts – but it’s been really cold and boy it was nice to dive into a warm bed that night.

Today I saw the BP Sharepoint job advertised on one of the job websites. I applied. I rang the agency. I finally got hold of someone. They’d already seen my CV before, but for some reason didn’t think I could get to the job at BP – which as it turns out – it only takes me one tube and one train to get there – about a half hour trip. Anyway, after speaking to them and clarifying that I *can* get there quite easily, they sent my CV off. That’s the thing with the majority of recruiters and agencies here – you have to ring THEM to get the ball rolling to get them to even look at your CV, even if you’ve already sent your CV and applied for the job already etc – it’s the opposite to what I’m used to, but that’s just how it is here generally.

Oh and today I saw the sun! I ran outside into garden to absorb some sunlight like an excited child before it quickly vanished again. That night, me and Steph had some red wine and chocolate and watch some bizarre tv – “How to look good Naked” – a show kind of like Queer Eye, but ends with a semi naked photo shoot, and a previously frumpy and now made over woman doing a strut down a catwalk in her underwear in front of 2000 people.

Strange but fascinating tv here… I’m also enjoying watching music documentaries on digital tv here such as the “The Seven Ages of Rock” series which I watched on Saturday night just gone featured Jimi Hendrix . I never realized Jimi Hendrix made it big here in London first before he went back to America. I’m so going to have to find a copy of his performance at Monterey – it’s a defining moment. Anyway British documentaries are in a class of their own (and no offence, but Australian tv leaves a lot to be desired).

Wednesday 16th May

Today, I had an interview with GTA who are a travel wholesaler. The job was working in their helpdesk maintaining and updating various websites. All was going good – I got up, cooked a big breakfast – didn’t want my tummy rumbling in the interview. Watched the morning news. Went to have a shower. No hot water. Left the tap on. Still no hot water. I couldn’t go to an interview unshowered! Then all of a sudden someone was bashing on my door and it was the electricity reader man.

That’s the other odd thing here – you have to let the gas and electricity people into your house to read the meters. It’s a bit unnerving letting a potential lunatic into your house. Anyway, I said to him – by the way – our hot water isn’t working – and he offered to look at our gas boiler and presto he adjusted some setting and yay hot water. Anyway, I got a tube to Barbican, amazingly got there on time, had the interview – the two guys who interviewed me were really friendly and reminded me a lot of the people I used to work with – but oddly they couldn’t tell me what the salary was?

As it turns out I was actually offered this job the week after, but I’d already accepted the BP job by that point (and the BP job is way better / what I want). That afternoon, I heard back from the agency about the BP job, and they wanted me to have a phone interview with them – so that was lined up for 4pm that day and it went for 20 minutes and I thought it went quite well at the time.

Thursday 17th May

The agency rang me again first thing, and said my phone interview went great and wanted me to come in that day to meet them at the agency. So I was getting ready and literally about to leave the house when the agency rang me again and said change of plans – you’re going straight to BP for your interview instead.

Yay, so I went out to BP and met with them and had my interview chat / in their giant café on the upper floor. I’m going to take some photos of this site once I start work – it’s amazing.. Anyway, caught the train and tube back to Brixton and went to Marks and Spence and picked up some fish, fetta and salad ingredients for dinner (yum). Opened a bottle of wine, Steph got home, we sat down and had dinner together and got ready and headed out to the Dogstar bar and a few other clubs. Big night.

Friday 18th May

Hangover. My head hurt in more ways than one. My phone rang and woke me up. It was the agency. I’d gotten the BP job. The agency wanted to meet me finally. I arranged to go in later that day and went back to bed but was so excited that I couldn’t actually sleep. I got myself together eventually and dragged myself on the tube and headed to Mansion House station. I got some takeaway on the way. I met the lady from the agency, got some paperwork out of the way and was on my way.

Got the tube home and what was really cool is that at Victoria Station there was a busker / guitarist and his sound echoed all the way from the tunnels to the platform – but what really made me listen and enjoy it was that all the songs he was playing were all piano songs, but played on guitar – it was strange, delicate and beautiful. Anyway, dragged myself home. And I have to say all this walking everywhere everyday – it’s good exercise and all my jeans starting to fall down as a result! Who would’ve thought I could survive without a car.

Saturday 19th May

Well, by the time my weekends have been coming around, I’ve been so busy running around during the week that I’m happy to veg out a bit, hang out at home and catch up on washing, housy stuff etc. Tonight I watched some live footage from the Radio 1 Big Weekend festival going on and the Jimi Hendrix doco. I can’t believe he was only 27 when he died. Terrible terrible shame..

Sunday 20th May

Today I went to a charity music gig held in Battersea Park. The Brits love their parks over here – so green, so huge, and so beautiful. I caught the bus there which was interesting because I had absolutely no idea when I was supposed to get off – but I actually got off at the right stop and navigated my way to the park with my A-Z (mini map book). Actually finding the gig was also interesting because the place is so huge, but I eventually found it (I headed toward the music).

I met my new friend Josh there (and his friends), sat in front of a giant pond / lake with people in sailing around in row boats and peddle boats, sat back and enjoyed the music. Really nice day – want to go back there and explore more of the park and have a picnic – but get this – barbeques are banned in most of these parks! Hmph.

That’s one thing I want to buy or build over here is a bloody barbeque, and have one with a real wood and fire and none of this coal burning stuff. And get this – they even have disposable barbeques here - it's an aluminium tray with coles and wire grill section on top.

Anyway, that's the week that was - stay tuned! - Manda :)

Interviews, Soho, Camden Town, live bands and more..

Monday 7/5/07

Monday night I headed out with my housemate Katie and her friend Woody (aka Mark pictured in the photo) into London itself into Soho which I discovered is kind of well – gay central. First of all we went to a bar called Trash Palace, then to a club called the Ghetto (how appropriate). A live band called Language played there who were actually really good – you can listen to their songs on their site. And being in a gay nightclub was somehow strangely comforting because I didn't have to worry about being hit on - I was just there to have a good time!

Anyway, I had a bit of a boogie after the band finished. Songs that got me up and dancing (and jumping around lots) were LCD Soundsystem – North American Scum, Rage Against the Machine – Killing in the Name Of and Muse – Hysteria (god I love the guitar solo toward the end of that song..). Needed a good dance. On the way home, I saw the giant gold Freddy Mercury statue where We Will Rock You is playing, Big Ben, the London Eye and a few other things which got me excited. Didn’t go to sleep until about 3.30/4ish. Yikes.

Tuesday 8/5/07

Today my long awaited second suitcase of stuff from home was arriving by courier. There was no way I was leaving the house until it arrived. When it finally came mid-afternoon – it was like Christmas opening my suitcase –I’d forgotten what’d I’d packed because it seemed so long ago. Of note, I had my big fluffy towels, my warm and daggy tracky dacks, my pink flannelette leopard print pj pants (very attractive), my bathrobe, my duck down doona (yay!), and a picture of Kiddy which I stuck on my wall. I slept very happily that night all rugged up in my doona – was nice to have some things that made me feel “at home” again. Oh if anyone feels like sending me Promite or Aktavite – email me and I’ll give you my address – can’t get either of them over here!

Thursday - Friday 10-11/5/07

Thursday was my “planning” day. I had to figure out how to get from Brixton to Staines for an interview on Friday. The job wasn’t actually in Staines (it's in Feltham where their Data Centre is), but that’s where the interview was. And after finding out it was going to cost 70-80 pounds to get a taxi there, I quickly decided public transportation was my only option. After doing various searches on tube and rail websites, I had to get the tube, 2 trains and a cab from the train station to the interview (whoa). I made it from the tube to Victoria train station where fate was actually working in my favour – it took a good 5 minutes lining up to buy my train tickets – there was a huge queue (I hadn’t put this into my timings), but luckily my train was delayed by 5 or 10 minutes – if it hadn’t have been I would’ve missed it and the connecting train that I had to transfer onto and the cab waiting for me at the other end.

So I made it to the interview and I was actually early. The job was for a Technical Author (it’s a SharePoint related job) working for T-Systems – I think the interview went well – it went for a solid hour - was quite intense and they're a huge company. I’ll find out next week what the outcome is I'd say. I also have another interview for a different job lined up on Wednesday in London itself – so we’ll see what happens. After the interview I made it all the way back to Brixton, went for a chai latte at Cafe Nero, got home and out of my interview clothes and stupid high heels (ow).

I plonked myself on the couch in the living room and listened to Queen – A Night at the Opera – which someone dear to me from home recently recommended that I download and listen to it (I love Queen incase you hadn’t figured out yet). In particular, I was told to listen to “You’re My Best Friend” (and a few other songs) – because they’d been thinking about me on the other side of the world (click the link to read the lyrics). Now I've heard and I'm sure everyone else has heard this song a zillion times before - but I sat there and *really* listened to the lyrics and I cried for the first time since I’ve been here. Music makes me cry sometimes – it’s powerful stuff.. It was a happy and sad moment in one. Beautiful and heart felt words and lyrics..

Oh, I forgot to mention that on Thursday night I ventured out to Camden Town with Josh – a friend of a friend from home to see some live music. I have to say, all this getting around on public transport, catching the tube and trains here and there has really boosted my confidence knowing I can get from A to B (via X, Y and Z). I was kind of mentally “scared” of doing these things initially – but now I know it’s nothing to be scared of at all. I have my tube map, the public tranport websites are great, there’s signs everywhere and having an Oyster card makes things even easier (it’s a swipe card you put credit on instead of buying tickets and you can top it up online). Anyway, Josh’s brother was in a band that was playing at the place where we were going to in Camden Town. The lead singer - her name is Amy and she’s in the photo with Josh – turns out before she was a singer, she was a dancer and was in the Muse – Our Time is Running Out music clip – there you go!

Anyway, that’s all for now, hopefully next time I post another blog entry there’ll be more / good news on the job front. Oh also, I have a really good phone card offer at the moment - I can call Australia for free on Saturdays during May from my midday to midnight - which is Saturday 9pm to Sunday 9am Brisbane/Australia time - so if you have a landline, email me your number so I can call you (I seem to mostly have people's mobiles - doh!) - but it's for May only (and other random months during the year). Speak to you all soon – and someone please send me Promite and Aktavite!! Oh and I saw my first squirrel and fox the other day too! Manda :)

Oh PS: I found out Mogwai (one of my favourite bands) was DJing in a local club here in Brixton – but it turns out it was last weekend – I missed out – damn! I am definitely living in the right place for music though! Bye! And PPS: If you see photos of food / dinnerplates on here - I like taking photos of dinners I cook at home when it looks fab / yummy. AND PPPS: good luck to 2 special people who start new jobs on Monday :)

Settling into London and TOOL is coming to Brixton!

Well this last week has what I have called “getting my life organised / sorted out” week. On Tuesday I moved into the new house. I’m all unpacked. I did lots of washing. I cleaned windows. I mowed the lawn! – which is something I’ve managed to avoid most of my life. The lawn mowers here are strange.

It was orange, electric, had no wheels (wtf!) and a rubber bottom – it was like some strange sort of electric hovercraft lawn mower hybrid that’s supposed to glide seamlessly over your soft lush green grass.

This device would never survive in Australia with our brown stick like excuse for what might have been grass a long time ago. Now this lawn hadn’t been mowed in quite some time (see before and after shots), and extra caution had to be made to not mow over the long cord. And surprisingly, because the grass is so soft and green here, the mower does actually “glide” over it. Anyway, enough about mowing (moe, moe, moe) – I mowed and it looks great – now let us never speak of it again.

What else have I been up to – oh – I’m supposed to be having an interview soon for a Technical Author / Sharepoint job. All my work clothes and suits were totally crushed from moving over here so I took my new snazzy Cue business suit that Bahadir bought for me before I left (thanks!) to the dry cleaners. So anyway, have been busy applying for jobs online, walking into town everyday, running errands, sorting things out.

Friday night, Steph, her friend El and myself had dinner here and then headed out to a local pub – the Effra. Had my first pint of beer here. We then headed to the Brixton Bar and Grill for more drinks. There was a friendly dog walking around and underneath tables (odd, but cute). Anyway it was pretty late so we decided to head home. We walked back to Steph’s old place and I started to walk back to the new house.

Now near the new place there’s this giant church. The front half is actually a church, the back half is this pumping night club called “Mass”. So curiosity got the better of me, and I went inside by myself. A large black lady (ie the bouncer) frisked me and my bag very thoroughly inspected. A 10 pound covercharge later (yikes), and I was in. Clearly everyone in this place was on drugs, jumping up and down to loud doof doof dance music with glowsticks – no drunk person could possibly have this much energy.

A lot guys weren’t wearing shirts which led me to thinking they were possibly gay - but I wasn’t particularly interested in finding out. I had two drinks and got chatted up by a short unattractive French fireman (ugh) whose opening / pick up line was “do you want to sleep with me”. (Clearly the answer was a big fat NO). So, I walked home by myself – which was a short 2 minute walk – but don’t worry! There’s CCTV (security cameras) everywhere here – even on my street – so if anything bad ever happens at least it’ll be on film :P

Anyway, on Saturday, the girls moved all their stuff in and I decided to cook them up a storm as I knew they would be exhausted after the big move. I’d already done my fair share of packing, moving and cleaning back in Brisbane, so I was not envious of their situation. So I cooked up a big serve of Spag Bol with salad for us (see photos). I’d bought the ingredients fresh from the markets which was way cheap – I’m going back there to get all my fresh food! Yum.

So at the moment, I’m just settling in, “trying” to save money until I get a job, plus the weather has been pretty crap (cold, rainy etc) so it’s a good excuse to stay in at the moment – and (!) I just got the digital tv tuner card working here so have been watching a an all day Scrubs marathon curled up in bed (there’s like tonnes of free to air digital tv channels here – way more than Australia). Anyhoo, once I start working, I’ll hopefully start doing some more exciting things and venturing out further.

Also! - I just bought 2 tickets to TOOL (oops and yay!) who are playing at the Brixton Academy www.brixton-academy.co.uk at the end of August. Their first show was sold out, so I just HAD to buy tickets - and don’t have anyone to go with yet either! Anyway, the Brixton Academy is a legendary live music venue here. Loads of cool bands play there and it’s one of the things I do want to do here – see lots of live music. So once I get a job, I want to go see these bands who are touring the UK this year: Muse (again), Mogwai (again), the Bravery, Keane, Bloc Party – and there seems to be tonnes of music festivals going on all the time too. So am keen to check some of them out at a later stage. Oh also! I also want to go to some musicals – especially “We Will Rock You”. Looking forward to some culture!

Oh also, I am now also on Skype for anyone who uses it – just search by my email address, and when I get myself organised, I might actually be able to ring people! Talk soon – Manda :)

London so far

The flight from London to Dubai (Sat 28th April) was fantastic. I got one of those amazing seats you only dream about when you’ve got crappy economy tickets. It was a window seat. And it had no seats in front of it! I could stretch my legs out as much as I wanted. The night before was a big one – we went out for Greg’s birthday at the Hyatt Dubai overlooking a marina and then later went onto a Shish smoking place on the water (ie, you smoke fruit flavoured stuff through a big long pipe thing). We got home at 3am, I got up at 6am to pack. Hence the good seats on the plane were badly needed – I had several powernaps on the way over.

Steph greeted me at the airport – she seemed to have a hangover equally as bad as mine. Was good to see a familiar face again. We caught the tube from Heathrow to Brixton and filled her in on the whirlwind of events that got me to this point and place in time. I also couldn’t have carried all this stuff by myself as there are many stairs in the tube and I had 4 items of luggage to well - lug. Thanks Steph!

Now no matter how much you read, research, google, fantasize, ask people about a place (I even tried zooming right in on googlemaps), nothing can actually prepare you until you are standing there in person and then it actually becomes reality. I felt like I had landed on another planet. My holiday was over. Reality had resumed. Welcome to Brixton.

As I left the tube station into the main street of Brixton, it was busy with, well, Jamaicans! Coming from a predominantly white population, this was a temporary surprise. I love “people watching” and it’s fascinating watching the people of Brixton. The clothes they wear, the crazy hair braiding, dreads, colours, all the different accents, catching snippets of people’s conversations..

We got back to Steph’s place, and dumped my bags (finally). We headed out and I was given a walking tour of Brixton. We headed over to our new place which we will move into on Tuesday. I can’t *wait* to move in – sleeping on a camper bed with my stuff strewn all over Steph’s floor bedroom floor is ok for a couple of days, but I can’t wait to unpack properly and get myself set up in the new place. It would seem our new place actually has a decent garden. No where as huge as my last backyard, but we do have enough grass to mow! Oh, did I mention everything here is green? The parks are beautiful and huge. And it doesn’t get dark til about 8.30pm. My other observations are - no one wears helmets when cycling, everyone drinks and smokes, there's no such thing as a 100 pound note here (as I disovered when stupidly asking for one at the bank).. oh and www.argos.co.uk is my latest discovery - think cheap and Ikea, but there's nothing on display - just catlogues everywhere, you write down your order and they bring it out from behind closed doors!

Anyway, the only bad thing is, that I’ve had the sniffles as soon as I got here – have to take tissues everywhere with me grr. The weather is nice as it’s heading into Summer here. However, it is still a bit nippy in the morning and evenings. When I go out in the daytime, it’s warm enough still to wear thongs, but still cold enough that I need a jumper or cardy. And if you walk around for a couple of days in your thongs, the bottoms of your feet will go dirty and black (already scrubbed my feet to get rid of it).

The other thing that I’ve rediscovered here is my feet (apart from scrubbing them). In that life with out a car is well interesting and if I want to do absolutely anything or go anywhere, I have to walk. This initially was a mental barrier, but it’s good motivation to get out and discover Brixton (and exercise as well). So today Steph headed off to work and I was left to my own devices. I walked down to my bank and changed my address to the new house. And yes it is a terrace house and because it’s on a corner, we only share one wall with the neighbours. Anyway, after that, I went to an internet café and started applying for jobs. I then went for a walk and found a café that made Chai Lattes – yay! So I relaxed there for a while, and went for another walk through some shops and the markets.

The markets here are fascinating, in that there’s so much fresh fruit, veg, meat and fish – I can’t wait to move into the new place and go to the markets to get fresh food to cook for dinner.. And it’s right around the corner from the tube station as well – so it’s very central. It will take about 5 minutes to walk from our new house to the tube. So after my big morning out, I headed back to Steph’s house when an agency rang me about one of the jobs I’d applied for a few hours previously. Woohoo! They’re forwarding my CV onto the employer – will find out if I get an interview in the next day or so. I then decided it was time for a much deserved powernap…

I headed out again later on to a different internet café – which was crap – my external hard drive wouldn’t connect. Grr. And I had no administrator rights! I’m not going back there. And I can’t find anything that even resembles a computer/electronics store – I want to buy a USB/flash drive. I then headed to the Lounge café/bar which is a cruisy little café and had an early dinner and some fresh juice. One of my favourite songs was playing - You Are My Angel by Massive Attack. And whilst sitting in this café it occurred to me that even though I was miles from home with none of my friends around (as much as I miss them), I was actually content and comfortable sitting there relaxing with my own thoughts. I didn’t feel like some loner / loser sitting by themselves. It actually momentarily felt ok to be by myself. Freaky. There is a flipside to this though - I do like to share my thoughts and get them out of my head – which is why I’m really liking having a blog. Instead of dear diary, it’s hello world!

Anyway, I have found unsecured wireless internet at the new place (yes have moved in now! - see all photos of the new place below, plus photos from last night in Dubai). And thanks Rach and Stu for looking my cat Kiddy - I miss him very much. Enjoy the photos - Manda xox.

A "before I get trashed" photo in Dubai.

Me, very ready to move into the new place..
The new place...





Our garden etc

Me, Steph & Katy in the new place..

The outside of our house!