Sunny UK

It is hard to believe that I will have been in the UK 3 weeks tomorrow. Once again time is flying along. I had a great farewell from Boston with drinks out with friends on the Friday night and then a lovely dinner with Kasey on the Saturday night at Rialto. It was a hard farewell from Kasey at the airport but she has booked flights to the UK and will be over towards the end of May for 10 days so we are both looking forward to that.

My last couple of weeks in Boston were busy studying for my Finsia exams. I sat the exams in my last week in Boston at the office of one of Kasey's friends. After each exam I visited the Union Oyster House next door for a cup of New England clam chowder. This stuff is so good, if you are ever in Boston I definitely recommend a visit.

Before leaving Boston I booked a hotel for two nights for when I arrived in London. The hotel was in a suburb called Bayswater which is meant to be very popular for lower budget travellers to stay. After dropping off the suitcase the first task was procuring a mobile SIM. As luck would have it I contacted two friends who I worked with at BT and they were living a couple of blocks from where I was staying. I caught up with them on the first evening and we enjoyed a few beers and they gave me the low down on getting started in the UK. They had arrived at the end of February and had got most of their stuff sorted. They were also very generous and offered me their couch for a few nights which I took up. This was definitely a good start to the UK leg of my trip.

The following days I was focused on getting somewhere to live and seeing some of the sights. Getting somewhere to live was a daunting task. There are a number of websites (gumtree, spareroom, roomtorent) that have hundreds of listings however when you have no idea where you will be working and where you want to live it is hard to narrow it down. My parents were a great help spending hours sifting through the ads and sending me the best ones. The first place I looked at was an absolute hole. I wouldn't have lived there if you had paid me and it was 130 quid/week. I thought if that was what you got for 130 I would have to up the money. Anyhow after looking at a number of places and not really seeing anything that jumped out at me I found a place on the Friday at Queens Park which I was going to take. I had arranged to meet the agent to pay the deposit at 1pm however he called me at 12pm and said his colleague had already leased it and so I was back to square one. I had already made use of my 250 pound overdraft to get the deposit :-) (my Australian money was still being transferred to my UK account)

Feeling a little disheartened, I arranged to look at a place on the Saturday in West Hampstead. It was a newly refurbished flat and the couple that were living there were very friendly. It was more expensive than I had original planned but I decided to take the room. I would move in the following Saturday which worked out great because one of my friends from the Kirribilli Runners was going to France for a weeks holiday and was letting me stay at her place in Islington. It was a great feeling having somewhere to live and this meant I could refocus my energies to finding a job.

I had posted my resume on a number of the UK jobsites prior to leaving Boston but had only received one or two calls since being in the UK. I decided to completely revamp the resume (using Roger's lovely template) and see if that improved the hit rate. It has now been two weeks of countless applications and phone calls to agents. I have seven agents who have put my resume forward to various companies and who I am waiting to hear whether I have got interviews. The whole process is very frustrating and I haven't found the transparency with agencies very good. The job market in the financial industry has definitely taken a big hit due to the credit crunch and this hasn't been helping my cause. Newspaper articles such as this aren't good. This relocating exercise is definitely teaching me some patience and I am confident that something will come up shortly.

Well enough of the boring stuff, now onto the fun stuff. I have been getting around the city a fair bit and have seen all the most common tourist attractions. I must admit walking out of Westminster tube stop and seeing Big Ben and Westminster was an amazing site. The detail in the building is unbelievable.

Last weekend my flat mates, Roger and Marj and myself did a trip to Cambridge. This is a lovely little village and we took a punt along the river Cam and toured along all the famous colleges. We finished the afternoon with a beer next to the river. Photos of Cambridge

On Tuesday Marj and myself took the train to Windsor and toured the castle. Not a bad place to live but if I was the queen I think I would get Heathrow to change their flight paths :-) We also scooted across the river and checked out Eaton. It was great weather which was nice change. Tuesday night I caught up with another ex BT friend, Lara, for her birthday dinner in Farringdon. Photos of Windsor

Well Anzac day in London definitely doesn't cut it. I toured the local area and visited Hampstead Heath (I think I will be doing some running here). I thought I would checkout the local Walkabout (Australian themed pub chain in the UK) to see what Anzac activities were occurring only to be faced with not a single sign of two up or for that matter, any sign of Anzac day at all. Not to worry a few of us Aussies over here celebrated a belated Anzac day yesterday. Photos of Greenwich

Saturday I caught up with Marj and a group of Aussies and we caught the ferry to Greenwich. It was a stunning day and people were out in force. After a hearty Mexican lunch with sangria we ventured up the hill to the Royal Observatory and stood on the meridian line. I got out the GPS and looked at the longitude saying 0 degrees. We celebrated into the night and visited the Shaftesbury Ave walkabout. I tried the famous snakebites and danced into the wee hours.

This blog is a little long but that is my own fault for not blogging more often :-) I am heading to a grill (I assume it is the same as a bbq) tonight with the flatmates which should be good fun. General photos of London