Well its about time I put up some news. Mostly this is for "me Maa" who wanted to see some more pictures and information about whats been happening since I arrived. I am going to start at the beginning though from when I left Sydney, so you'll have to wait until I get another post or two going to get the latest news.
I had one minor issue leaving Sydney and that was paying for excess baggage. I kind of expected it but hoped I might get away with it.. Oh well, at least I have everything I could need here including stuff for summer months and more importantly winter months as well as my snow gear. When I arrived I decided to take the tube to Julie Kraegen's where I was kindly allowed to stay for two weeks (Big thanks to Julie and all the flatmates who made the stay just lovely. I wont miss the dodgy hot water system though!).
Leaving Heathrow on the tube, I suddenly realised I wasnt in Sydney no more, and had those feelings of dread like "What have I done!?" Didnt last longer than 10 seconds though, and I quickly became very excited and open eyed about the what lay ahead! Carrying all my luggage on the tube wasnt so great. This wasnt helped by my incorrect choices of tube lines, costing me some uneccessary baggae handling. Im sure the District line has bitten more than just the inexperienced traveller.. just have a look at the tube map and find Earl's court. They should have called that station Octopus central !! After some unnecessary portering of my own luggage, I finally got to Jules' place in Kilburn park.
On the Sunday when I arrived there just so happened to be an F1 race on. Ive been following F1 all this year and Mark and I have been going for McLaren and Renault respectively. This year would have been a record number of wins in a row for Ferrari and so both Mark and I were happy to see any team put them away. It just so happened - this year has been a nail biter right to the last race and I was dead keen to see the race that day! With nothing else to do I wondered if that would be possible. I hadnt realised that Jules was perhaps even more a fan than I was, and so not only did I get to see the race, I also had a mate to watch the race, with the same support for McLaren as what I had back home ! We spent the day knocking back plenty of cans of beer and watching that race.
For the next two weeks, I got myself somewhat sorted for work. I really wasnt doing any real work though, which gave me plenty of time to *try* and get myself setup in the UK. Catching the tube was good fun during these 2 weeks. Its a great public transport system (or at least when you've just come from Sydney your sure to think so.. apparently this 'wears off' as you get more and more caught by unexpected delays - Ive been minorly affected so far.)
I had used FirstContact to get a bank account going, as this is probably the hardest thing to get in the UK. Not really - I got my account easily enough after going to the FirstContact office armed with my paperwork. By far the craziest and difficult thing was trying to get a National Insurance number. This number is their equivalent to a tax file number. To get this, I made a call and spoke to someone who (in a very efficient way indicating her experience at doing this) rattled of 8.. Yes 8.. different numbers to me. I frantically wrote them down and said: "What do you want me to do with all these numbers" to which the reply was: "Call them.. and when they dont answer.. keep calling them. They're the right numbers". What can you say to that ? I called the numbers - they didnt answer. About a week later I hit a website again and found some other number secretly tucked away in the depths of some UK government webpage. This one actually answered - and I got an appointment setup for the Saturday before leaving to Utah. Unfortunately, I missed that appointment that morning - Thanks Claire for the good night out :) .. and still to this day dont have a NI number..
I went for a walk around London bridge and Tower bridge one day for a brief bit of sight-seeing (the only sightseeing I've done so far..
The following is totally copy - paste from Danvito's website, thanks Mate !
London Summary:
Days There: 13
Countries visited since leaving Australia: 1
Coolest thing: Catching the F1 with Jules
Weirdest Thing: Thinking canned beer is great, and what a bargain - 99p.
Worst Thing: 2 Pence coins, not only are they copper and large, they're worth "Fuck all"
Best beer: Kronenbourg 1664 (France)
Weather: Surprisingly sunny / blue skied.
Next stop: Lindon, Utah.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Blogspot.com bites !! I cant attach pictures anymore to this post so Im just going to add them to a seperrate blog entry Farken!
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