London Blues

So a close friend of mine told me that the first 3 months would be the tester. If I could make it through 3 months in London then I’d be set. I thought ‘Too easy’. How wrong was I!

When you’re at home you have no idea how lucky you are. When I say home I mean your country of origin. Back in Australia I knew what to do when it was raining, I knew where to get the best laksa, I knew where the things I wanted existed. My life, by virtue of the fact that I had been there since day one, was easy to say the least. When it rained I knew what my options were to play sport, see a movie or just generally keep amused.

In London it’s so different.

In London, from the time you knock off on Friday till Monday morning it’s all about drinking. People organise to meet each other at the pub, the read the paper at the pub, they go online, you guessed it, at the pub. There is very little on the weekends that doesn’t involve going to the pub.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love the pub. But we’ve been here a month and I reckon I could count the days on one hand that I haven’t stepped foot in a pub. Back home I’d be at the beach, going to markets, seeing family the usual stuff. Here my knowledge of these kinds of places is so low and often the weather so inhibiting I have found myself with little in the way of inspiration.

I need to get myself a little more educated on what’s going on and what’s fun to do. I need to find some kind of guide website that will tell me what I need to know and where I need to go. It’s bloody hard to do that at the moment with no web access at home and little time to get on the web at work.

So this weekend I am determined to do the following:

- Go to the fresh food markets at Borough and get some cheap good food
- Cook a proper dinner and impress Karina
- Cook a BBQ if the weather allows
- Clean the house a little (only a little though)
- See a movie
- Go somewhere that isn’t Oxford Circus (any wonder they call it a circus)
- Plan a trip away with Karina
- Pack things for Adele ready for shipping (promise)

In other news I have lost a little weight since getting here. It’s down to stress and not having that much time to eat at work. I need to find more time to exercise. The weekends are going to become so much more important for this in the coming weeks and months. I just haven’t got time during the week at the moment which is sad. But the weeks are for working and the weekends for everything else.

Some other little things I’ve noticed about London:

- People on the tube are pretty dam rude. They smash into you, push you onto the train. It’s a nightmare.
- Dogs really do go everywhere!
- The majority of the people over here are helpful when it comes to directions
- The city in London is busier EVERYDAY than say Westfield Bondi Junction on Christmas Eve
- There are no shopping centres as such. There are shopping areas but nothing like a Westfield (that I have found) that has all the shops inside it. At least not in the city anyway
- The water has made Karina’s hair very fluffy
- The water has stripped all the skin off my hands
- Not many pubs stock Bundy
- Service is awful. From sales assistants to store managers it’s generally shite. All of it. You wait in queues for what seems like weeks and when you ask for in store assistance they’re generally not that helpful. There have been exceptions but all in all I am sick of waiting!

In the coming weeks I will be doing a lot of travel. Here’s a quick summary:

W/C 2 May: Paris for one day
W/C 9 May: Paris for a day and then Hamburg. ZE GERMANS!
W/C 16 May: Montpellier for 3 days and possibly the weekend.

Karina’s not too happy that I’m going to be away. Either am I but it will be fun to do some international travel for work and see how the other half live on someone else’s credit card. I bought a carry on suitcase and a few other things the other day to make sure that I have everything I need. It was all pretty cheap.

More to come on the life of Ben, maybe even later today if I get time. I’m enjoying the blog thing. Need to keep going with it, it’s a heap of fun and hopefully it’ll serve as a little trip diary that I can show my kids one day!