So.. no idea if people know.. but apparently it’s hard to get a bank account in the UK. Well.. that’s kind of true.. with someone here to answer for you, you can open a very basic one with HSBC – gives you internet banking, direct debits, “pay anyone” etc, and an ATM card, that only works in an ATM. There are limits however, like 200 quid/day total withdrawal (even from a branch).

If you’ve lived in the UK, you’ll know already just how important/convenient having a debit card is. Here they can be used online like credit cards to buy things – which in this day and age, and city especially, is almost essential to daily life. “You’re asking too much” I would have said in NZ.. however here of course the city is HUGE, and you don’t have a car to carry things you wish to buy, and on top of that, the internet shopping thing here has taken off to the point where prices are even 20-30% cheaper by buying off the internet, even from stores with retail outlets.

So.. stupid frustration sitting here without one.. far more than in NZ I guess, hell, when I turned down the instant debit card account (by paying them cash), I thought I was doing the right thing. How wrong was I

Anyway.. we’ve been trying to upgrade our account and Marie keeps running up against the “no proof of address” thing here – to the point where she’s gotten pretty frustrated about it – and me. We keep getting sent things that should be on their list (and apparently are), yet for some reason aren’t good enough.

Fast forward to today. Marie had received her NI (national insurance, or IRD in NZ) number notification in the mail, and rocks into the bank with that (she had been told it was fine), and was turned down. She even asked again about the paid account, and was told that that wasn’t an option now that we had the basic account – WTF mate? (in best aussie accent). I decided that since I had 30 mins at lunchtime before my NI interview.. I would rock in and see what was up – maybe a different branch would have a different opinion.

Crazyness.. I wandered in, was met by customer service person “Hi, I started banking with you 2 months ago, and I really hate not having a debit card ay”. She nearly cut me off with “why in hell wouldn’t you have one of them, come to <name here>’s office immediately”. European chicks – so intense … Wandered into this guys office, and he proceeds to upgrade our account to a normal bank account, with debit cards on the spot, no extra paperwork required from me.

So.. I’m now sitting, wondering if it’s really true, but apparently there are debit cards (just solo cards, with switch cards promised within a month – “He’ll call you when it’s time to come in and upgrade, and he’ll sort it all out for you, I promise”), there’s even apparently a cheque book in the mail, and a 1000 pound overdraft on our account now!

Unbelievable – but I’m not complaining.

Yerp.. today was our first payday in London.. felt pretty good to be honest, we’ve been here one month and three days, doesn’t really feel like it I guess.. It’s certainly a cool feeling to look at the bank account and convert it back into NZ dollars hehe – not something you wanted to do before earning pounds. There will definitely be some celebration this weekend, and some Rugby watching (the tri-nations of course).

The America’s Cup has also been exciting to follow, we lost again today, so it’s all very much on edge.. considering spending the 20 quid for the virtual spectator stuff now, we shall see. I’m definitely following a lot more sport over here – unsure why.. maybe it’s just an easy way to feel in touch with home.

And for the second part of the title.. the bomb scare today.. I normally get out at Piccadilly circus to go to work.. so imagine my suprise when they say the station is closed due to a “suspicious car outside”. Imagine (even more) my suprise when I hear said car is full of petrol, tanks of gas, and nails. Amusingly enough, first thing I though of was Swordfish the movie… All credit to the police/anti terror squads here however, they diffused the situation and the bomb, and everyone pretty much went about their daily business. It’s wierd.. I don’t feel scared about it at all (as one might think), it has been very interesting though, back in New Zealand it was very easy to pretend the stuff we saw on TV was just that, a TV show. Actually  living here has shown the reality of all this so much more – very very valuable in itself.

It’s actually been one of the things I’ve loved the most about being here, is the realisation of just how sheltered life in the south pacific is. Hell – I’m finally getting used to the idea that just because they have white skin, english isn’t necessarily gong to come out of their mouths! It sounds so stupid.. but it’s just something you assume really if you haven’t left NZ.

Bwaahahahaahahah, so couldn’t resist the title.

So I have a job too amusingly enough, working for a media/search type company here in central London (in the west end even – swanky) Waiting for the paperwork to come through nowish, and apparently _now_ the recruiter wants to meet me in person.. wonder if I should shave

Recruiters here are wierd.. I could have a rant, but I won’t.. Marie could do it far better I’m sure.

So.. Beers for lunch today I think, and Bollinger for Dinner – Marie and I bought a bottle when we were in Thailand for this very day.. little did we know it would be so soon, and that we would also have a flat to live in at the time. I’m clearly stoked..

Oh yes, ladies and gentlemen – in the city of the tiny double bed and huge commutes, we have tin-arsed our way into a flat in Zone 1 – Marylebone – with a NEW KING SIZE BED, somewhere I can walk to work in about 5mins more than what I was in Auckland, or 2 tube stops if I am lazy as hell.

We moved in today, on the third (top) floor of a terrace house, sharing with a french, a spanish, an english and a taiwanese. The lounge also sold it for me, the entire wall is glass sliding doors with a baby balcony outside. It’s lovely, has a bbq area as well. We win!

So I am celebrating my last weekend of freedom – I start work on Monday….. we are off to a drum’n'bass party on a boat tonight

I have accepted a fantastic job today, so I am the new International Resourcing Manager for a company called Witan Jardine. – Not exactly what I came to London to look for, but I am very much looking forward to starting.

Which will be on Monday. 5 days and 12 interviews later, countless muppet recruitment agents and some very good ones – and I am employed. Overall, it has been a very interesting experience, and has actually taught me a lot about the UK market and also about my own career and the way I should behave with future candidates. Like actually listening and not making bizzare assumptions, for a start.
I had to negotiate my own comp package, as this role was direct, which was fun, given the candidate in question was, well, me and I had to pull on all my training in a face to face negotiation with the person who will be my boss. Fun, fun.
London has been fantastic, which is great considering I have seen all of NOTHING of it, I have only seen the places on the way to my interviews. So, the next few days, I will be trying to see as much as possible of the city. The tube, and the public transport is amazing – even getting to interviews on time has been no problem at all.

I am loving: Marks and Spencers, Pret a Manger, Selfridges, BBC, people not understanding me, cheap elderflower cordial, british strawberries, Twiglets (weird marmite cheese stick snacks), Pimms in big jugs with fruit and mint and stuff, and the sunshine (I know, who would have thought).

So: onwards and upwards – gah, I have to go back to work, and we have to find somewhere to live. Looking forward to having a few days to look for places,  and I am really looking forward to having my own bed.

Hopefully that will be soon

So.. a week of job hunting has finished, man time flies. Marie’s had a pretty good run, turning down one recruitment offer today because it’s really not what she wants to do, and getting a third interview with the job that she does want – much awesome.

My week had been really quiet till yesterday, when I got a call from a recruiter wanting to put my CV forward for a job with what could be described as a “new media” company here. I interviewed with them today, and it was really cool, definitely seemed like a good place to work and good things to work on, which would provide the challenge and cool environment that I want. The interview went pretty well I thought, and I managed to answer all his questions (including what one essential difference between HTTP 1.0 and 1.1 was – who knows that?!), and I came out feeling great.

Lunch consisted of a pint of amstel and fish and chips I waited till Marie finished her last interview this afternoon and we headed back to L’s together. I’m still loving the public transport here, being able to get places is fabulous.

Then… I got a phonecall at about 5:40pm from the recruiter – they liked me apparently So now I have a second interview next Thursday at 3pm.. no idea what I’m going to do till then, probably rinse out my unlimited travel train pass, and go see things, whilst still applying for other jobs that I see come up.

Best thing ever however… rss feeds from job sites.. you can set up a search for jobs that you like, and instead of having them emailled to you (pain), or checking the site daily (pain), you just hurl the rss feed url into your favourite reader (even http://www.google.com/reader is great), and check it daily for new listings. Much better than checking websites. I also have the gumtree accomodation listings fed via rss, it’s great.

Right.. rants over, bbq at the flat tonight with friends, Hayden Smart and Michael Reynolds are coming over, and it’ll be great to catch up with these people. It’s been awesome staying here, and catching up with Leighton and Cam Mouat.. missed these guys heaps, more than I realised. (cue cutting )

Time for this blog to get a bit more boring I guess, given it’s now time for us to be sensible for a bit, and try and find jobs. I’ve applied for a few over the last three days – there’s heaps out there that all seem pretty good, and Marie has been swamped by phone calls all day.

We head into London tomorrow, going to doss with Leighton for a while, hopefully not outstaying our welcome too much, and Marie has interviews lined up for most of this week. I’m going to keep applying for things, and try and tune my CV a bit more to match what people seem to be looking for. I’m hoping I at least get some bites from recruiters, so I can get some feedback on my CV and skills, and an idea of what’s out there. The comparative silence is a bit demoralising at present – however it’s very very early days.

I’ve been a bit slack of late, however we have now left Thailand, and are in the UK.

Our last two days in Thailand were really good, however were marred by me being very unwell, however some decent antibiotics meant I was improving fast, and could actually get out of the hotel to see things.

We went to the National Museum, which was amazing, there is a group of volunteer women who run tours in all different languages, and we took one of the English tours. This was very informative, and provided great insight into the birth of Thailand, and of the buddist religion. I can definitely recommend doing this trip, and don’t let “helpful” people outside the building try and tell you it’s closed

Friday was our last day in Bangkok, and we went shopping. I was initially after a new cellphone, as they were pretty cheap in Thailand, and my current one was on it’s last legs. The phone I wanted however had sold out all across Thailand, so we went and had a look around a place called Pantip Plaza instead, which is a huge IT mall in the centre of town.

After wandering around this place for a while, it became apparent that prices for macbooks were quite stunningly less than anywhere else, except the USA. We managed to pick up a white 2Ghz macbook for Marie for just on NZ$1500, and she’s loving it. It was amusing to see the nice salespeople (this was an authorised reseller, so quite bling inside) take the laptop and a USB drive, and load office, photoshop and some other slightly dodgy apps onto it for us before we left. Only in Thailand

After that it was off to the airport. Amusingly enough, when we fired up a laptop we found some wifi ssid’s called “AOTInternet” – which is Airport of Thailand. Connecting to these took us to a captive portal login page, but we couldn’t find anywhere in the airport to pay for this service. Amusingly enough, I finally found someone to ask, and she wrote down a username and password with a grin, saying it was actually free. So.. if you’re in suvarnabhumi airport, and need internet, log in with this:

Username: test

Password: test

.. no shit I have no idea how long this will last, but hey, it worked well.

Ahh… go and stay in a 3rd world country for a month, and you’ll get sick at least once – it’s almost guaranteed.

Generally people will catch “travellers diarrhoea” within a week or two of arriving in such a country, and it’s pretty easily fixed with a course of antibiotics, or just rest and good hydration. Clearly what you eat and drink will effect whether you get this, or how badly.

I think Koh Chang made us a little bit blase about such things, all the food on the island seemed to be of very high quality, the rest of Thailand however, not so much – especially in the more remote areas. So, we both ended up waking up in ayutthaya yesterday morning feeling like absolute hell. Huge thanks to the owner of the guesthouse where we were staying, she came out with sachets of rehydration salts and the like, turns out she was a Medical Scientist, or something similar at some point.

We managed to get on the train however, and back to Bangkok, where we taxied back to Kaosan road, and found a room at the D&D Inn. Thankfully this room turned out to be fabulous, nice comfortable bed, hot shower and a (shock!) western toilet. The relief to not have to squat to go to the bathroom was great

We ended up spending all of the rest of the day in bed, and woke up this morning feeling a heap better. Hopefully things will continue improving over the next day or two.

Just a quick picture post, this was from the JJ weekend market.