The Flying Adventures of DOUG

My mum and my sister have been in London since Monday night, so we've been doing all the touristy stuff.

Oops, start at the beginning. So, I accepted that job on Tuesday morning, and asked to start the following Monday, which was fine. So I've had the whole week free to hang out with my Mum and Ally, who arrived on Monday night!

Tuesday we just hung out and walked around a few places. Went on the London Eye, which was actually pretty cool. Wednesday we did a big bus tour round central London and checked out Harrods, then Mum and Ally came back to Pascale's flat for tea. Yesterday we went to the Tower of London and had a very dry-humoured Scotsman as our guide. He was great. In the afternoon I split to do some shopping for work clothes, then met up again in the evening to see the Lion King. It's fantastic, and I highly recommend!

So today I slept in. I'm catching up with Ally later to go to the London Dungeon, but right now I'm off to the gym. So, fun Dungeon today, and work begins for real on Monday...

Also, a couple of guys from Christchurch (James and Lyndon) are here now, too, so maybe catch up with them tomorrow. So busy, it's great!

Have spent so much money this week. Will be great to start earning pounds!

- is having a job offer. So I've made progress!

I was phoned on Friday night, right at the end of the day, and offered a position with the company I interviewed with the other day. It's a research and development position with a recruitment company, possibly turning into a position as a recruitment agent later on. So far they've offered me a trial period of two or three weeks where I can go along and observe and do some basic work and figure out if I like it or not (and they can see if they like me, which seems fair). The good thing is it's not a full-on committment, so I can keep on looking around and seeing what's out there.

I've also applied for a position as a Junior Technical Author, which I'm pretty excited about. It means training to write documentation for computer programs and stuff, like users' manuals etc., but it's pretty well paid, and after a little while (couple of years experience) I could be commanding salaries of £35-50k. Also, a lot of well-know authors started out as technical writers or journalists. So I hope to hear back about that this coming week.

Either way, I have something to go on with.

Take care everyone!

Ok, so I'm in London. But I'm not just in London. I'm in London with a suit. I'm in London with a haircut. And I'm in London with an interview this afternoon, and another one tomorrow!

Firstly, the suit. I was just walking down Oxford street, stopped to casually look in a shop advertising £100 off Pierre Cardin suits, and spotted one that I liked. Fortunately, it didn't really fit properly. But then they got me another one. But it still wasn't perfect, you know? If you're spending £159 you want to get something you really want. So then they talked about alterations. Taking up the trousers, tapering the trousers, tapering the jacket, letting down the sleeves, taking the total cost to £235. So I said, no, too expensive (phew!). And so the price came down a bit. And I said, look, I can do it for £200. So the price came down to £205. So I said, give me some time to think about it. And viola! The price came down to £199.15! So now I have a perfectly tailored suit, 100% wool, Pierre Cardin, in a dark charcoal gray, for under £200. I told Pascale, and she said: "You bargained in London and won? Unheard of! We're not in Turkey now, you know."

Secondly, the haircut. On my walking around Lewisham, where Paz lives, I noticed a sign in a window asking for hair models. So I went in, organised a time, and this morning got a very decent haircut for £5. And £12.50 is cheap, so I'm pretty pleased with 5.

Thirdly, the interviews. I applied by email for 7 jobs yesterday, and by last night had two replies saying, "We're keen, but we'd like more info," so I sent in more info. I did a test on Microsoft Word and Excel at an agency yesterday, and scored really highly, so the people from the job as an HR assistant are really keen, and I'm going in tomorrow (Friday). The other job is as a recruitment consultant for teachers to work in London schools, has better pay, and they do recruitment drives to Ozzie and New Zealand, so I have inside knowledge. I sent them my CV last night, phoned them this morning, and must have caught them just in time, because I'm going in for 3pm today! So, any teachers who want to work in London, I might soon be your man!

Anyway, in other news, I've been tripping all over the place getting myself set up for London life. I'vc joined a local gym. I've bought a travel card for the trains so I can jump on and off as much as I want. I activated my bank account on Tuesday, and decided on a phone and plan but didn't sign up yet. It's weird, going on a contract for your mobile is MUCH cheaper than prepay here, and people call a lot more than text, and every contract comes with a free phone! I've also made friends with a lovely South African couple who are working as relief teachers here. I have a morning run date with Ben this weekend around Ladywell Park, and his wife Fatima is the only Christian I've met so far out of a whole raft of ba'hai, so we get on well.

Well, I should get sorted for the day, I suppose. I've been organising stuff on Pascali's Mac laptop, and it's taken half the day. Wish me luck for my interview this arvo!

Contrary to all my expectations, that's exactly what I'm experiencing so far. London has been putting on the charm.

Yesterday I got up pretty early and almost woke up two sleeping bodies in the lounge. Apparently everyone else had stayed up until about 4am, so I was the only soul stirring. I explored all around Lewisham village, which I really like! People keep making jokes about how dodgy an area it is, but it seems really nice so far. At the leisure centre they let me in for free to "have a look around," and I got to have the weights room all to myself and do a proper workout. Then I went down to another, flasher gym to compare prices, but there were no membership consultants in, so they couldn't tell me anything. The fact that they have membership consultants suggests it may be out of my price range... Felt so good to use my body again, so I'll go down to the leisure centre again today and see if there are different people on the desk ;) I will sign up, I just can't until I have a UK bank account fully sorted (and preferably an income...)

After wandering all over Lewisham and buying some groceries I went back to Pascale's house. Oh, and the sun has been shining the whole time, ok? Sat around with some of her friends having a long discussion about social evolution and what Ba'hai think about it (most of the people I've met so far are Ba'hai), then went into Greenwich for lunch. It's really nice! We strolled through the park near the former Naval Academy (now the university) which was designed by the same guy as St Paul's cathedral, so is very pretty as you'd expect. In the Greenwich markets we bought good food (salad, cashews, sour cherries, chocolate brownie, sushi, polenta roulade, frittata, dried pears, cranberries, and razzapple, which is pieces of apple soaked in raspberry juice), then took about half an hour to meet some more friends of Paz, and settle on the grass in the park to eat and talk. Meanwhile, the sun shined and I took off my sweater! That's right, jeans and a tee-shirt sufficed! But that's not all: on our way back through the market I bought some Havaianas (the best jandals in the world, just ask Matt) and wore them for the rest of the day. That's how nice it was. Mmmm.

So, the friends I met at Greenwich were Nick and Sarah-Jane (hope I got that right!) who are kiwis here for about 5 months so far. I've been picking up lots of bits of info about the sorts of jobs people end up doing, and how much you can reasonably live on, etc... I've also met a South African couple, Ben and Fatima, who are really nice! They were here at Pascale's the first night, and came around again last night for my birthday. They are seriously lovely people and I hope to get to know them better. I cooked a lasagne without any lasagne but lots of veges and some other kind of pasta and bucketloads of cheese, and beefed up the remains of a salad from the night before. Pascali cooked a fantastic chocolate cake, and a guy called Stephen (who seems really nice but talks so seriously all the time that when he starts joking around you have to pinch yourself and mentally change gears to keep up) brought around bags of pastries and sweet things. Very spoilt. So nice to have great people around for my birthday when I'm only here a day! Pascali is great like that: instant circle of friends.

So today I'm 24 and frustrated that it's another public holiday. I'm the only one, I'm sure, but there are lots of things I want to get on and do, but everything is closed! I can't get a sim card, buy some pants, get a haircut or talk to my job-agent people. :(

So that all starts tomorrow.

I'm at Pascale's place in London now.

Emily and I went out last night and met some of her friends at a bar where some excellent jazz musicians were playing. It was so cool; we drank Bailey's and Amaretto, and then I almost fell asleep in my chair, so we went home and crashed.

This morning we bludged a ride on the tram and Emily saw me off at the train station. Ar, I was really sad to say goodbye, cos I had such a wicked time, and it was so good to have an ordinary friend around who knows you really well so that you can just relax and not care about anything. Miss you already, Emily!

In Amsterdam I took another superb ezyjet flight to Luton, paid too much again to get the train to Lewisham (very easy) and bowled on up to Pascali's house just in time for dinner. Roast kiwi lamb! Also met about 15 of Pascale's friends and was totally overwhelmed, watched a movie with them, and now they've all gone out to a Fun Fair (it's where you go to have fun) and I've started crashing like a downhill wheelie-bin race.

Tomorrow I check out the local church and leisure centre (these are of equal importance) and sort out my UK sim card for my phone. Pascale's house is really nice, and is super close to the train station, a park, and a shopping mall. I can't wait to work out tomorrow, I feel like a rubber band.

Wish me luck with the job hunt that starts this week!

It's been an energetic two days... Having finally made it to Amsterdam, hanging out with Emily and Adrian until about 2am, then crashing, I got up the next day, posted on my blog to keep the fans happy, and took off!

I took a pretty meandering route through the Hague to Mauritshuis, where Vermeer's paintings are. I got in free with Emily's Museumkarte, and they have a really good free audio tour. I could have stayed for ages it was so interesting. And normally I have a pretty limited attention span for looking at old oil, but the audio-thingy gave brief, interesting comments on techniques, historical context, anecdotes, art debates and symbols to look for.

From there I walked to the Peace Palace, where the Permanent Court of Arbitration was set up by Tsar Nicholas II and 26 original member countries in the early 20th century. Now it also houses the court where countries can sue each other. It's where Bosnia-Herzegovina sued Serbia for genocide, the first case of it's kind. It's most interesting for me because Emily has been working for the last three months on a case against war criminals of the former Yugoslavia, and she filled me in on some of the crazy history of that region, and Milosevic the uber-baddie. It's strange to think that a war that formed a constant backdrop to my childhood (on the news, talked about at school) is still being sorted out and put to rest, if something like that ever can be. Apart from history though, the Peace Palace is incredibly beautiful. They have four gigantic Ming vases in one room, that must be worth millions each. In the Japanese room the walls are covered in a giant tapestry that took 50,000 people five years to weave! Think about that for a second. One cool thing was that that room was set up for a meeting of all the ambassadors later in the afternoon, a meeting that only takes place once a year, and all the chairs were embroidered with the appropriate country's coat of arms. New Zealand's is much nicer than Australia's, I have to say.

After that I went to another museum to kill time, again for free on Emily's museumkarte, and arrived late at the buildings of the Criminal Tribunal of the former Yugoslavia, where Emily worked, and met her colleagues/bosses for drinks. It was some of the most interesting conversation of my life, listening to the Military Investigation team members talk about scurrying down Sniper Alley flanked by tanks, being shot at during take off in planes, and tracing witnesses for statements sometimes years after events only to find they had died six months before. Some of them have been here since the mid-nineties. It was Emily's last day, and I think she's going to miss it a lot.

Today involved mostly walking all over Amsterdam, which we visited by train. The Van Gogh museum was great, but I had very sore feet, probably aggravated by getting up at 6am and going for a run because I couldn't sleep. Oh, during my run there were crows all over the place and man are they creepy! Amsterdam was pretty, but super touristy and crowded (public holiday), so overall I prefer the Hague. Especially after coming back here in the evening and eating sizeable portions of fantastic Indonesian food on the cheap. Two people for 15.80 euros! So good, especially considering that one pancake in Amsterdam cost us 6 euros.

Anyway, my contact lenses are about to permanently fuse to my eyeballs, so I better go. Flying to London tomorrow to meet Pascale and get started on the great American Dream! Hang on...

...and here's an update since then. I'm in the Hague!

Having flown from Sydney to Dubai (it was 14.5 hours) changed planes, and flown another 7.5 hours to London Heathrow, I was feeling like a draft letter that's been screwed up and thrown in the bin. I know I slept on the flight to Dubai though, because I definitely was not conscious for that long. I got chatting to the Ozzie girl in the window seat who was on her first international flight to do a two-week mission stint in Uganda. We played a really dumb 2-player trivia game on the cool Emirates entertainment system, and talked, and she slept a lot. It was great having company. The food was good. I watched Little Miss Sunshine, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Step Up, two episodes of Extras, five episodes of Scrubs and two of the Simpsons. And maybe more, there are literally hundreds of movies and you just pick it, start and pause it, fast forward, etc. Pretty cool.

Oh! One of the coolest things was being able to watch take off, flight and landing on the screen, via cameras mounted on the front and underside of the plane. You can change views, and it zooms in on the ground a bit if you're high up, as long as there's no cloud. Isn't it amazing how sunny it is above the clouds? England looks surprisingly green from the air.

Dubai airport is huge. It just goes on and on as far as you can see. Well, as far as you can be bothered seeing when you're as alert as I was feeling. What else? The food was good, my ankles only swelled up a very little bit, and the small of my back feels like damp cardboard.

I'm going to the Peace Palace today, and possibly a museum or two, one with some paintings by Dutch hero Vermeer. You know, the guy who did that portrait of Scarlett Johannsen wearing a head scarf? I probably shouldn't have called this post, 'Den Haag', as I haven't seen anything yet... will do better later.

To complete my travels: From Heathrow I caught a coach to Luton airport for a cool 17 pounds. That's worth about a bus ride to Dunedin, if you'd like to compare. Happily, though, I met a German guy on the bus who's living in London, so I've made one friend already. He was the only person who had to sit next to a stranger, as everyone else had two seats to themselves. He wandered all the way to the back of the bus, realised he was stuck with SOMEone, and I moved my bag. So glad I did, because we talked all the hour and a half to Luton, and hung out in the airport for a couple of hours until he flew to Germany for Easter.

Something about travelling makes me strike up conversations with random people. At the Heathrow bus station I got chatting to an Indian family (I assume Indian because the guy was a sikh, but I'm not too clued up on who comes from where on the sub continent). They needed help figuring out when and where to catch their bus, so I (the box-fresh immigrant) helped them out, and ended up listening to the turbaned, white-bristled man talk about importing, NZ/Aussie agriculture, the decline of British self-sufficiency and how people can't be trusted to pay for newspapers anymore. He's been in England for over 50 years, so he had a lot of opinions, and I didn't get much of a word in, but it was nice to talk, and he and his wife were so stoked that I would talk to them and help them out. I almost thought she was going to kiss me when we said goodbye!

So, Luton to Amsterdam, then spent 10 minutes trying to get a phone to work with my credit card to phone Emily and let her know I was on my way. Then the train ticket machine wouldn't accept credit without a PIN, so I had to buy some food to break a 20 euro note (that's weird, no euro symbol on this keyboard - dollar sign instead). THEN I noticed the huge, yellow, illuminated ticket office where I could have gone instead and paid over the counter. Long story short: arrived in the Hague, met Emily and a Kiwi guy working in the Hague, and helped them figure out that they both rock climb. Emily's had her gear here for three months and hasn't climbed once because she had noone to go with... She thought. So, walked through town, stopped for a drink, walked on to Emily's apartment, showered, washed hair, slept, got up, had porridge, and here I am. Almost 11 now, so one hour is almost up, and I have things to be and places to do.

Later.

Hey folks, here's an email I sent out from Sydney, about... two days ago?

I'm in Sydney airport!

I had to get off my plane, I guess so they can clean it and bring on heaps more food before I get BACK on to go to Dubai. The BIG leg. It's massive, like 14hrs! Or 19... I can't remember, lots anyway. Feels like I've been flying for ages and I've only done the tiny bit. Man.

Anyway, I'm dying for some water and grizzling internally about the new rules about liquids. Luckily noone has noticed so far that my favourite hair product is actually 125mL, not 100, otherwise I guess it'd be gone. And it costs $15 so I'd be very cross. It's so weird, they make this big pedantic fuss and then noone really bothers to check. Like you could really do anything with that much stuff. Surely no more than you could do armed with the metal forks they still permit us to eat our dinner with.

All the transiting-to-Dubai passengers had a minor panic after we got off the plane. We were just let loose in the international terminal and couldn't see our ongoing flight on any screens. It turned up on the other side of the terminal, which some intrepid British folk discovered, so now we're all sitting around for an hour waiting to go back to the same seats we just peeled ourselves out of (think chewing gum).

Well, have a ball, I know I am...

... or will be, in about 24 hours.

Man, so soon.

I've had two farewell parties now, both with AMAZING food, and excellent company, and as I was seeing people off last night it felt like I was leaving a little bit at a time myself. I can't wait to get on that plane, but when you come to say goodbye to people you realise you're not going to see them again for a while. A long while. So you say, "See ya," instead.

I'm glad I'm going. I'm excited about all the possibilities out there, you know? Like throwing darts blindfolded. Who knows where they could end up? Hopefully not in your own foot I guess... I have to say, though, that I'm a wee bit nervous. In a good way? Hmmm. Things aren't exciting unless they're a bit risky.

Anyway, half-packed = half-ready, so I'm pretty much on schedule.