Monday 20 June 2005

London, my new home


I am here in London now for three weeks. A big thanks to Jim who let me use his apartment until I had found a houseshare and another thank-you-jim for reccomending me for the new job. Sometimes things just seem to work out magically.

The overnight busride was, well, quite long. Not much legroom and not very comfortable. I heard it was supposed to be quite hot in London, fortunatly it was not. Rather cool an windy at the time I arrived.
The next days I spent online, searching for houseshares in London.
I had no clue what to look for except that I knew I wanted to live with at least 3 more people and I did not want to live too far away from work. Alot of the offers where taken or I just got a mailbox to talk to. On sunday I was able to have a look at on of the houses. Of course I had no clue of how long it would take me to makie my way around town, I am just not used to theses distances here, but I am getting there :).
Being almost an hour late I finally got there, had a nice chat and was shown around the house. The room was not too great, kindof small and a bit worn out. But the housemates seemed great. The living room was nice and there was a little(large for London I heard) garden and a large kitchen... We had tea and chatted for about 4h... Well, I would have taken the room right away but since I had not looked at any other apartements I figured I should keep looking around to have something to compare. And so I did. Two more I looked at, which were much closer to work but (quite) a bit more expensive. The rooms themselfes where nicer and larger too but I did not get the right feelings torwards the housemates. That was pretty much it. I called up the first place to tell them that I wanted to be their new housemate.
I would move in on the following monday, so I crashed at Jim's place for the rest of the week.
Work started on wednesday, company meeting on thursday with champange and after work pub on friday ... what a start.
On saturday I was invited to a party in my new place.


It was kindof a birthday and move-out party, I guess for me a move-in party :). I decided to just stay at the house for the next couple of days,crashing in the living room untill I was given my room.

So my first regular week started. Taking the tube to and from work.
It is an hour to get there and an hour to get back home. I am using the time now to actually pick up a book and read. To some of the people that know me this may sound very surprising, but I am enjoying it. (Thanks Marco, for the quite inspireing :p book "Wenn das Leben ein strand ist, sind Frauen das Mehr").

Time is flying by and I cannot believe I am here in London now for almost a month. I have not realy seen much of the city yet, though last weekend I was out with one of my housemates to explore varois types of stone on housefronts. Well, we ended up walking along the thames, listening to streetperformers and just enjoing they day.


Other than that I have seen a number of pubs. It is quite hard to avoid them and why should one. Fridays its after-work-pub time. And no, you don't go home first get changed and go out. Skip that and just enjoy a few rounds of beer and then go home. Well, it's great getting to know new cultures and ways of doing things! And to make sure I do I am trying to not say no to any offers that may come up. This weekend is quite quiet and I finnally have some time again to post an update. Its hot outside, 31C and I have been pretty much just laying in the sun, reading a book and having a great time with my housemate. We all have a sunburn now and sweating like ... , well, anyways.



Here I am now in London, it's been great so fare and there is so much more to see and experience ...

Thursday 2 June 2005

last days in scotland


Time was flying by and both Eric and I wished for just having and extra week. Unfortunatly we have to do with what we got.
Erech was quite bussy fixing little holes in the pipes he had just put. Poor him. Not very motivating to see water dripping when one thinks it is all finished. After a couple valve bursts and some soldering and testing and soldering again he was finished and can proudly say to have put in a complete new heating system into the house. He hooked up the boiler and voila, we had hot running watter for the very first time in these 4 weeks.

Slowly the radiators where starting to warm up. What a great feeling. Not that it realy changed the temperature in the house, because we didn't have them on long enough, but it was nice for just a few minutes. While Erech was working on the pipes I managed to finish up the kitchen.


Another proud moment. After which I started to do more work in the new bathroom, putting up stud-work We also checked if everything will actually fit the way we planned. And it did.


Well, and we didn't believe it but we actually got our phoneline, just a few days before leaving. Fantastic, isn't it?
I find it quite amazing how fast BT was working on it. It only took them a whole month. Now, the interesting thing was that it was due to unexpected problems they came across. Like finding rocks where they wanted to put a post into the ground. A rock! Well, I suppose it is rare to find rocks along the road in country side scotland...
Anyways, I had to leave for London on Friday night from Aberdeen. So, not much time left.
We made a last visit to the Glenlivet destillery and Erech got me a nice bottle of cast strength whisky.

Our last job we did together on the house was putting in the self levelling compound in the bathroom.
I took a nice bath at the neighbors and off I we went to Aberdeen for me to catch the night bus to London, a 12h ride ...