Jobs and Flats

The place we found to live in temporarily was a kind of hostel/hotel in Shepherd's Bush ("She-Bu") - the obligatory stop for Kiwis and Aussies on their OE. We liked that breakfast was included in the deal, and although it was more expensive than a flat, we knew it was only short term. They only had a bunk room to start with, but assured us a double room was available in a few days. When we arrived, we hardly knew what to think - the room was tiny! And although we had our own bathroom, it was up half a flight of stairs. We decided to suck it up though, and when we got our double room it was a real Hallelujah moment with the sun streaming in and illuminating the huge room. There was an ensuite bathroom with this one, and all the rooms had a wee kitchenette with stovetop, fridge and microwave and a TV.









As it turned out, earning money was just around the corner. After giving up on my decidedly average recruitment company, I accidentally joined another one when I applied for a job online. This recruitment company had an extremely enthusiastic recruitment officer who would have done well working with the hard-of-hearing. She wrangled an interview with Village Vet - a large company with practices all around London. I must have impressed in the interview as they offered me work straight away (well to start in a few days) - at one of their branches at which the vet had fallen ill. The practice was in Ealing - very West London, working 9am-7am days. The work... lets say very quiet. But at £200 a day I was not complaining.

Rob found it a bit more difficult, probably due to the time of year - not many companies are looking to hire just before Christmas. But like a good little house husband he fed the starving beast when she got home from work.

Unfortunately the touristy aspect of our travels dried up at this point as I found myself either at work or travelling to and from work much of the time. We did manage to go and see our friends Katherine and Neill's new baby though - little Solomon, a real wee cutey! We also found time to go and see Buckingham Palace, unfortunately though on the alternate day to when the Guards did their Changing.

So we went round the corner to St James Palace and harassed the guards there... This day was the first day it snowed in London, which we got very excited about!








There was also the odd pub trip and trip to the movies in amongst this. Georgia invited us to a christmas party her extremely talented baker friend was putting on, and we managed to mix almost every drink known to man and end up pretty crook the next day. In fact, that Sunday was a write-off which was annoying as I didn't have that many days off to waste!
We went to see comedy in Chiswick which was very funny, went to see the christmas lights in Oxford Street and Regent Street, saw the amazing hippy balloons down Carnaby Street, went to the Hyde Park Christmas market with Debs and Mike and Mike's brother Andrew and his wife Tracey, went to Harrods (so packed we couldn't move), went to a rock and roll pub in Soho.

We saw the massive O2 arena when I went for a job interview in Greenwich and it actually had a christmas fair inside it, as well as tennis and exhibitions and all sorts of other stuff...

Over Christmas Georgia had planned to go home for 4 weeks and asked us if we'd like to take her room while she was away. We agreed and so ended up back in Bethnal Green. I had the serious job of looking after the 2 fish, because I was "the most qualified". This went well until the day before Georgia was due home. The little fish decided to get extremely ill and start floating on his side... Unfortunately he didn't make it until she got home :-(

Christmas day I had off, fortunately, and Debs and Mike generously invited us to their place to stay Christmas Eve, and go and have Christmas lunch with Mike's brother Andrew and his wife Tracey in Wimbledon on Christmas day. Debs and Mike are living in Wokingham, which is about 45 minutes train ride from Waterloo. It was a lovely day - there was still snow on the ground and we had a yummy croissant and bacon breakfast and then a roast turkey with all the trimmings for lunch, and played Wii afterwards to try and work off the yummy dinner.














Christmas day was the only day I had off between 21st of December and the 2nd of January - so unfortunately Rob and I spent a very quiet New Years Eve in front of the telly as I was exhausted from working so much and had work New Years Day... I went to bed at 10.30pm after watching a couple of DVDs. Ah well, next year will be better... It was worth it this year for the time and a half. £300 can buy us a trip somewhere!

We had great fun living at Georgia's with her flatmate Marianne, and her other flatmate's "replacements" Surani and Sarah, but of course we knew we needed to find somewhere to move on to. Rob had had a few interviews for jobs similar to what he was doing in New Plymouth (tertiary education marketing), and he had been hired by Kingston University, which is in Kingston, SW London on the border with Surrey. Because of the proximity he was really keen on living southwest. We looked at a few flats in Fulham, one really cheap one in Tooting, and the Putney Palace in Putney - a falling down old flat above a kebab shop featuring a kiwi artist who was a little eccentric. Finally we found a flat with a nice big bedroom, a lounge, a dishwasher, and Sky TV - and full of kiwis and Aussies! The main reason we took the flat was the lovely area (just by the river) and the nice flat - And it meant a 30 minute bus-ride to work for Rob. It meant an hour long journey for me but it was the same as what I'd already been doing so no great change. And I was still locumming, so could end up anywhere.

We moved in on the 16th. There is a kiwi guy who does IT, a kiwi girl who's a teacher, an Aussie couple - both teachers, a Polish girl who's a pharmacist, and us. And I mustn't forget Lola the Cat...


Its crowded but there are 2 bathrooms and 2 toilets so it works fine. We do stuff as a flat too which is fun - we went to the movies last Tuesday (cheap movies) and a pub quiz Tuesday just been. Rob's job is going well, and I am hating the long journey to and from work each day but still looking for somewhere closer to home. Village Vet seem to like her and keep giving her more work, which would be fine if they had any practices in South London...


Next on our agenda.... Egypt!

Arrival in London - week 1

The 13 hour flight to London was one we thought we were prepared for – I had planned to get a certain amount of sleep, watch a certain amount of TV and movies, and read a certain amount. Unfortunately the sleep part didn’t happen. By the end of the flight I was feeling very worse the wear. Even the Hugh Grantesque voice of the pilot wasn’t enough to make her giggle by the end of the flight.

Flying over London upon the descent we were struck by how flat it is. Finally we touched down – land never felt so good! We entered Heathrow, travelled on several escalators, and picked up our bags, all set for customs. But to our surprise we exchanged pleasantries with the customs man and before we knew it we were free! We turned the corner and we were almost out of the airport. Strangely enough we found a continuing theme – in Hong Kong and now in London there were always several cops with huge guns standing around. Our first step was to get to Georgia’s house. We decided to get a cab as neither of us felt like we were in the right frame of mind to negotiate the tubes, especially with our life packed into four suitcases and several bags. Georgia had suggested a cab would be about £40. Unknown to us though there are 2 types of cab in London. We chose a black cab, so ended up paying twice that much… But we thought it was almost worth it. Our cabbie was the typical London cabbie – full of all sorts of interesting facts, and if he took us a little out of the way in order to give us a little tour, well, good on him. He asked us what part of Australia we were from. We told him New Zealand. “oh, yeeah…” As an interesting aside, Black Cab cabbies have to sit a full-on test covering the streets of London in order to get their license. It’s called “The Knowledge”. The cabbie took us through the City of London and showed us the little dragons that marks the outskirts of the City. He showed us Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, Pall Mall... It was surreal for us passing through all of these iconic places and I couldn’t help relating them all back to Monopoly.

We reached Georgia’s place and the cabbie gave us a little background into the area of Bethnal Green – namely Brick Lane and its alternate name of Curry Lane, because of all the Bangledeshi immigrants. We were pleasantly surprised to find out how close Bethnal Green is to the City. Georgia was shocked and amused when we told her how the cabbie had taken us on the little tour that he had – and she wondered how that was a remotely sensible route to take from Heathrow to Bethnal Green.

It was great to see Georgia and stay in her lovely warm (and big – for London) flat. The next day she went to work – and we lazed around and slept. It probably took about a week to fully adjust to the time difference. Up until then I would get extremely tired at about 6pm then again at about 9. Rob would get tired around 4pm then perk up after that. We tried to develop a pretty normal routine though and so it didn’t take too long.
On the Thursday (we had arrived on a Tuesday, did nothing on Wednesday) we went out. We decided to get out of the tube at St Pauls, and make that our first sightseeing experience. It is, of course, amazing.
We had a look inside but to get past the reception you have to pay. We decided we’d wait until we were showing someone round before we would pay to have a look inside.

From St Pauls we wandered and found the Millenium Bridge. I was keen to find the Tower of London (unbeknownst to me this was not the way to go...), so we crossed the bridge and – lo and behold – we found the Globe Theatre, of Shakespearean fame. We decided to buy a ticket for a guided tour. It was completely worth it. The tour guide was very passionate and knowledgable about the theatre and we felt like we could imagine exactly what it was like. It made us quite enthusiastic about going to a play in the summer, but also it made us quite keen to sit in the seats, and not be “Groundlings”... Shakespeare wrote his plays with the theatre in mind so it is apparently a very different experience watching a performance in this theatre.

The exhibition hall was also very interesting, and has a lot of information about theatre in medieval and renaissance times, and what happened to all of London’s old theatres (they mostly all burnt down).

In the exhibition hall there are a couple of tapestries from New Zealand! A club in NZ had got together and made these tapestries for the Globe's re-opening.

When we were wandering around after that we came across The Clink – One of London’s first prisons. They have made it into a little museum. There are graphic descriptions of the punishments dealt out to the lawbreakers – including the stocks, ball and chain, drowning, beheading, and of course, hanging. If the prisoner was lucky enough to live he/she would just have to go without food, warmth or bedding.

The rest of the week we pretty much spent flat hunting – as Georgia’s flat was pretty crowded and we were taking over her bedroom...

Interestingly enough we came across some obvious scams while looking for a short-term flat on Gumtree. Places would be advertised in Mayfair and Notting Hill for £100 a week (this is about a quarter of what you would expect to pay in these areas), and we contacted a couple of them, only to receive emails back detailing how the owners of these flats were Reverends, and were off travelling on Crusades for children, and how they were pleased that such upstanding citizens such as us would find it in our hearts to take extremely good care of their places. We never got to the stage where they got our account details for the “security deposit”...
Finally we found a reasonable looking place in Shepherds bush that didn’t require any deposit, and were so sick of looking by this stage that we snapped it up.

Now that we had that sorted we were able to relax a little and we went out Saturday night to a friend of Georgia’s birthday – unfortunately we didn’t last very long due to the lingering jetlag... The next day we went to Brick Lane market – a short walk from Georgia’s place and brilliant. The main bit is indoors and packed with trendy clothes and amazing food. I couldn’t resist and bought a handmade necklace, and dreamed of the day that I will have made some money to shop with... Rob stuck to lamb curry.

Hong Kong 10-17 November 2009

Our OE started with an 11 hour plane ride to Hong Kong. Being economy class, it was not the most comfortable trip in the world as there is not a heck of a lot of leg room, but was made easier with the little personal TVs with choice of movies and TV and a huge selection of music.

When we got to Hong Kong, we were overwhelmed at first by the size of the airport. Thankfully it was around 10pm so it wasn't packed with people. We had our first experience of their train systems just travelling to the baggage pick-up section of the airport! This photo is of us being overwhelmed, tired, excited... crazy... Then we had a luxury bus experience, where the shuttle bus from the airport to the hotel had big polished wooden armrests and leather seats. We were suitably impressed. Then excitingly, our hotel room was upgraded, so was nice and new, albeit kind of tiny. Like many things in Hong Kong...

The time difference was about 5 hours behind NZ so didn't take too long to adjust to. But the currency in Hong Kong is around 5.7 X the NZ dollar, so it did take a while to figure out if things were cheap or not. There is a huge variety of prices that you can come across - there are a lot of designer shops down Nathan Road - the main road in Kowloon, and where our hotel was, where you pay through the nose, and then of course the markets where you can haggle down to very small prices.
When we arrived it was quite late so we didn't get out and about till the next day. We just explored round where we were staying to start with.

Going down Nathan Road is an experience. Indian men line the street at about 5m intervals, popping out and thrusting cards at you as you walk past - they say "Suit for you Sir?", or "Watches?" or "Pretty dress for you maam?". You quickly learn to shake your head slightly as you come up to them and avoid eye contact. The streets are extremely crowded - which was good for getting used to what London was going to be like. The East Asian games were coming in December, so the streets were extremely clean and there were little workers all over the place sweeping and cleaning. There are subways everywhere for going under the streets. The drivers are pretty mad so you don't want to be crossing any main roads.

Down the end of Nathan Road is the Harbour. There is a kind of Boulevard called the Avenue of Stars - like in Hollywood. There are stars and sometimes handprints for Chinese film stars and directors like John Woo, Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee. There are also great sculptures, all very popular with people carrying cameras... These are just a couple of the photos we took here:

Every night they have an amazing light show, with lights shooting up from the big buildings across Victoria Harbour, on Hong Kong Island.





There is a Space museum there too, with the history of space travel worldwide - very interesting, and free. Rob came across this poster there and just had to take a photo! Nothing really to do with space but come on - a Chinese Dame Edna?

That night we went to the night market on Temple Street, which sells all sorts of knockoffs and we picked up an ‘authentic’ copy of the Michael Jackson movie This Is It (complete with Russian subtitles and the odd person in the cinema it was recorded in popping out to the toilet). We got some dinner there, but we bypassed the alive sluggy things and went for beef instead...

The next day we were going to go to Ocean Park, but when we got to the ferry terminal, we were accosted by a pretty Scottish girl who got us to fill out a survey then had a scratch card as a reward. Surprisingly, I got 3 stars, which only 5 lucky people would get! And it meant we got a great prize!

To claim the prize we had to go to "The Gold Coast" which was a wonderful resort with golden sands, and they would pay our taxi there. She shooed us into a taxi and off we went. On the way, Rob had qualms... When we got there, the lady paid our taxi, but while she was off getting change we wandered over to a line of people waiting for a shuttle bus and - shock horror! They had also won the 3 stars! And they had had to sit through a 90 minute presentation on buying a condo there (only $20000 per year for the next 38 years)... and the prize was not a laptop, or video camera, but the dream holiday which was basically a voucher to stay in one of their hostels for a week. So we hopped straight back on the shuttle and since it was too late to go to Ocean Park we went to Lantau Island instead.

It is really easy to get around Hong Kong - there are buses, trains and ferries and you can get an Octopus card that you just scan at each place and it takes the fare off it. On Lantau Island we went to see the Giant Buddha - but almost got waylaid when we got there by the amazing 4 story outlet mall at the bottom of the cable cars... Eventually we took the cable car, and got a glass bottomed one, which we were extremely pleased about when we realised it was about 5 km of cables, travelling over amazing forest and rivers.


You go up and up and up and eventually get to the top of some hills, then there is the Giant Buddha. Which you still have to climb a huge flight of stars to actually get to.

There is also the Po Lin Monestry up there which is amazing.

While we were up there the cloud closed in pretty damn quick and we could barely see 1m in front of us... As we were walking back to the cable cars all of a sudden we realised there was a large shape next to the path which resolved itself into a cattle beast, chilling out by the path! Rob wanted a photo but at the same time didn't want to get too close - just in case...

When we got a bit further along, the bull's mates were there in a paddock with an incomplete electrical tape "fence", and they decided to put on a show for us.

It was very eerie travelling back on the cable car as the cable seemed to just disappear into cloud. Also there was no daylight savings so by the time we got back it was pitch black. Lucky the outlet mall was open till 9pm...

Friday we fulfilled my wish to go and see the pandas at Ocean Park. This is a big theme park at the bottom of Hong Kong Island. We got the ferry to get over there which took no time at all. We met some friends on the ferry...

Travelling to Ocean Park on the bus took a bit longer...
We saw An An, an 8 year old panda, first thing, who was sitting contentedly munching on bamboo only a few metres away. The glass seemed like no great barrier.


One of the staff took a photo of us with An An in the background. After this we saw an amazing acrobatic act by the "Sky Dancers"
- I had some fun with the Sky Dancer clowns - then we ventured off to the bottom half of the park - the bit with all the rides! This is the view of the bottom part of the park, taken from a big rising tower ride on the upper part of the park:

We rode on the roller coaster, the wild river ride (and got drenched), the ferris wheel, the abyss (where you are lifted 100m in the air and then plummet to the ground)and the eagle - I could've done more but we ran out of time!
They also have a marine show 3 times a day - being the only white people in the audience we got picked out to "play" with the sealions - we got to make them wave, salute and clap... Very cool! Of course - we couldn't take photos ourselves, we had to buy the official ones! But that was the only real touristy thing we bought, so it was justified...

The dolphin show was very impressive, and we both felt very jealous of the trainers.

The rest of the time we were in Hong Kong we pretty much spent wandering around the shops and markets - we went to Hong Kong island again also and went to Stanley Market. This area of Hong Kong is where all the ex-pats hang out so compared to everywhere else we went there were lots of white/Europeans.
Rob's favourite part was the Electronic market, where there is an area devoted to electronic shops. We decided to buy an i-phone there as they are unlocked and in the UK you have to buy them with contracts and it works out more expensive - as well as there only being 2 networks that have them... Funnily enough every shop seemed to be out of them! Only one little backwards shop had them, and even then we had to wait for about 30 minutes for them to run off and get one from another shop. Luckily it all worked out OK and its very cool, and has come in extremely handy in the UK when it comes to finding out where we are, what tube to catch and for playing games on the tube. I also bought a laptop with a webcam so I could Skype people. Big thanks to Matty for his advice via text on which one to buy!

All in all Hong Kong is a city of contrasts. East meets west, modernity meets tradition, shopping districts with Armani, Gucci and Prada and street markets where bargain hunters thrive. We will definitely be going back

We were sad to leave Hong Kong, but excited at what the next leg of our journey would bring us! Stay tuned for London adventures - coming soon...