London Calling…

On saturday night , I went to a club called Frog, near Tottenham Court Road. The following conversation occurred between the french girl and some guy while we were all in the queue for the cloakroom…

Guy: Hey, would you like a lollipop? (Holds out chupa chup)

A: What flavour is that?

Guy: Eh, I don’t know

A: Well I cannot take a lollipop from a strange man if I don’t even know what flavour it is. My mother told me not to

Guy: Oh, ok. Would you like a cucumber then? (Reaches into jacket, pulls out cucumber)

A: What the fuck?

At this point I almost fell over laughing. It transpired that the guy was swedish, and the cucumber’s name was Dennis. These facts are thought to be unrelated. I love conversations that appear to distort reality through sheer bizarreness.

So it turns out that in fact I am subject to questioning by the fucking spanish inquisition in order to obtain my own bloody money. Charmed, I’m sure. Here is an approximation of my banking experience, note that I spent 10 minutes queuing before I even managed to have the memorable discourse detailed below. My total sojourn in the bank was about 45 mins, making me slightly late back to work.

Me: Hi, I need to withdraw money using my identification, my wallet was stolen with all my cards in it
Clerk: Ok, what ID do you have?

…I hand her my passport and a recent bank statement…

Clerk: Ok, I’ll just go photocopy these

…She disappears for 10 mins, finally returns…

Clerk: Em, this passport expires in july
Me: Ye-es, but its valid now, and its a valid form of ID anyway surely
Clerk: When do you get your new one?
Me: when I go apply for it
Clerk: Why haven’t you?
Me: I travel a lot, I have to give it up for over 2 weeks to get a new one, I haven’t had the chance
Clerk: so you’ve been travelling on this passport?
Me (getting slightly annoyed): Yes, its a valid passport
Clerk (looking cunning): So why doesn’t it have any stamps on it?
Me (getting really quite miffed): Because we live in the EU! I travelled to Ireland and France!
Clerk: I was just asking. Hold on for a minute.

…Disappears for 5, returns…

Clerk: this might take a while to authorise, do you want to sit down?
Me: Fine.

…Finally returns about 15 mins later…

Clerk: Sorry about that
Me: thats fine, can I withdraw the cash now? £90 please

… she counts out 70, attempts to hand it to me, realises she has fucked it up (possibly from the look on my face), and amends it to 90, then finally hands me my fucking money.

I am distinctly unimpressed.

This week holds for me a wonderful new experience. That of having absolutely no fucking money. Have I lost my job? Have I converted to Scientology? Have I managed to squander everything I earned in advance of payday? None of the above. What did happen however, is that my wallet was stolen on the Metro in Paris on sunday. This loss in itself is not such a horrific occurrence. The monetary value of what the wallet contained was well under £10, so I am consoled by the fact that whatever lowlife piece of scum pulled it out of my bag in the crush has gotten almost nothing out of that act. However the inconvenience value is sky high.

Fortunately, my rent comes out by direct debit, so I have no worries on that score. And one of my housemates owed me £25, so I have successfully retrieved that. Since my entire bag remained intact and with me aside from the aforementioned wallet, I also had my keys, my ticket back to London, and my phones. And of course, I had the French girl, who bought me dinner, a bottle of water for the journey home, and translated my irritated rant to a gendarme, who kindly provided me with the necessary papers to prove I had made a statement in case any suspicious charges should manage to appear on my credit card. I doubt this, since all 6 (yes, I have 6) cards were cancelled within about 20 minutes of the incident occurring, but its good to have proof regardless.

So this week shall be a week of living on pasta at home and spending about £2 on lunch a day. I am going to consider it a challenge to survive on as little cash as possible. I have been getting a bit too affluent lately, I realised this morning that I no longer really ask myself whether I can afford to buy things or not. I just assume that I can unless they are over a couple of hundred quid. While this is possibly a natural side effect of getting paid what I consider to be quite a lot, I’m not certain I approve of it. I like it, but that’s of no consequence really. It was nice to be able to just go buy a mattress last week and not have to save money, but these things should be better planned.

I originally wrote this update days ago and never posted it. Tune in tomorrow for an explanation of why all bank clerks should all be ritually dismembered and eaten by dogs. Small annoying dogs.

Disclaimer: The above title is nothing to do with the remainder of the post, and was put there for reasons including “I felt like it”, and “it’s my fucking blog”.

Interesting facts:

Vodafone are a shower of arseholes.

Bill phones are approximately a quarter the price of pay as you go, yet I could not afford one before.

I can now own things which I cannot carry.

Midnight is a stupid time for the tube to stop running.

London busses are filled with thieves, dickheads, and crazy people

I have started to like other people a lot more frequently.

Boring stuff:

I have been losing a little weight since I arrived. Just to supply some background, my weight has widely varied since adolescence. At 14 I was a tubby little lump of sarcasm, At 17 I was skinny enough to have visible ribs, a perfect stomach, and was totally obsessed with my weight. By the time I left college I was getting a bit chubby, and over the following year I got to somewhat overweight. The difference being that I couldn’t care less, and just couldn’t really motivate myself to do much about it. I’m not sure whether I have been gradually losing a little at a time over the past 6 months, or whether I have just been getting used to my appearance, but I think I look a bit better now.

So recently, someone explained a new concept, which honestly had not previously occurred to me. Which was: “Stop eating when you’re not hungry anymore�. I was floored by the sheer simplicity of this idea, and realised that this is my biggest problem. I have to finish food. If I have paid for a meal I am disgusted at the idea of not finishing it. Which is ridiculous, particularly when I don’t actually want it.

There is also the fact that I think I would make a good roman. Leaving aside being named after one of their goddesses, I have some tendencies in common with them. There was a nation who really focussed on physical pleasure. I can completely understand the motivation for the vomitarium, even if I would never actually indulge in the act of regurgitating my food to enable myself to eat more. I really enjoy food. So when I’m eating something I really like, I want to continue eating it despite having no actual need to do so. And of course, it has been ingrained in me since birth to finish my food.

So recently, I have starting implementing a policy of never eating anything unless I am hungry. It is fascinating how differently my diet turns out if I actually stick to this. So it’s a continuing experiment. I’m bored of writing this now

I suppose at this juncture giving a bit of an update without ranting would be a good thing from my mother’s point of view, so here goes.

• The water in my apartment was fixed quite quickly
• My laptop was fixed, but is now full of crap again, because the bulldog firewall is non-existent. But at least I know how to fix it.
• I went to see the Producers, a thoroughly enjoyable and amusing show
• The French lessons aren’t going too badly
• The presentation for the course went fine, and the course was actually quite good
• I love my job, no matter how much I complain about it

Yes, I do in fact really love my job. On the bad days it is stressful, difficult, and they expect too much from me. On the good days it is exciting, challenging, and they think I am capable of things. Of course the only thing that changes from one day to the next is me, and the bad days are currently fairly sparse. So I think its mostly me being tired, or grumpy. Not that this ever normally happens of course, my sweet disposition and natural cheerfulness are a wonderful blessing in that respect. And if you believe that, believe also that the gods will bless you with a happy life if you send me all of your money.

Occasionally, I wonder if I should miss Limerick. Then I remember that its a shithole I hated living in. My friends made it bearable, they made it fun, they made it an amazing experience that I will always remember with nostalgia and amusement. My family make it an anchor, a certainty in life when certainties are hard to come by. But I’m never coming home.

Yes, London is a bit stinky. I’m not certain how I failed to notice this before, perhaps I have had a cold since I arrived. In any case I noticed it today. I wonder if this is symbolic in some way.

My brain hurts. I spend this morning working flat out, because my boss wanted something done in “a couple of hours”. It took 3 and a half. I have not worked out yet whether she knows her original estimate was amusingly unrealistic, or whether she thinks I should have been much faster. Had I ever coded anything this way before I doubtless would have been much faster, as it is .NET is still a bit of an alien world, and our core software even more so.

I was told this afternoon that I am going on a course on presentation skills tomorrow, for which I have to have prepared a presentation. This starts at 9am tomorrow and I am more than busy all day today, so I am not certain from where they would like me to extract one, but its coming right out of my ass, and thats all there is to it.

Work is fucking difficult, its incredibly hectic and very challenging. I love this job, but I am wondering how well I can handle it for long periods of time. Though I have been told that my boss likes to throw people in the deep end to see what happens, so maybe this is part of a test. In a normal working day I concentrate for a far higher percentage of the time than I am used to, or think is normal.

One of my workmates just came over to ask what presentation I would do in the morning, so I said I was going to speak on my past life as a circus performer. He then went on to speak about his journey to literacy while he was in prison. I think I have found another crazy person.

So yesterday, I had to fly back to Stansted still feeling hung over from the previous night, a night during which I had managed to insult almost every member of my family individually, and then told them collectively to go fuck themselves. Or something along those lines. Not that I wasn’t provoked, my family are what you might deem provocative. Upon successfully returning home without being sick, which was a close run thing, what with having to get a bus, a train and then a tube from the airport, I went straight to my precious laptop, which had been left in the kitchen in my absence.

Why was my most expensive possession in the kitchen, one might ask. Does it double as a fridge? Is it useful as a doorstop, or coaster of some kind? No indeed, my laptop is in the kitchen because Bulldog Broadband sent me what is quite possibly the worst adsl modem in existence, and because none of my housemates currently have a PC. While waiting for it to boot up I filled myself a glass of water from the tap, which may not seem relevant at this point but is in fact a salient element of the story.

I open up my web browser, and instantly I am hit by a river of shit. Adult web sites, a hundred different pop-up windows… I am bombarded with pictures of scantily clad females touching each other, and a dozen fucking installation requests from all the pieces of cyber-trash that have managed to lodge themselves in my hard drive. To call myself unimpressed by this turn of events would be the understatement of approximately 4 centuries. It is at this point that I pick up the glass of water, and realise that it is grey.

Exasperated with this clear lack of a correctly functioning universe, I set down the glass of water, and go to get my washing. Upon returning to the kitchen I open the door of the washing machine. I suddenly realise at this juncture that since picking up the glass of water, the part of my brain which is not running through all the possible methods of killing Josh for downloading porn, has been attempting to call my attention to something else, namely “Why the fuck was the water such a funny colour?”, a question whose immense pertinence strikes me at about the same time as the stream of disgusting mucky water coming out of the washing machine.

In summary, our water is bust.

I cannot express in words how delighted and enchanted I am by this new adventure. Perhaps an interpretive dance in which I repeatedly bang my head off a brick wall would encompass my feelings more completely. There have been times in my life when I spend several minutes screaming internally the question “Why is nothing ever easy?!�. I am compelled to admit that last night came very close to being one of those times. I will not even start on how blatantly silly it was of my housemates not to bother leaving any sort of note about said water when they went to bed. Mere moments after I had my incident Julia arrived home, and said the memorable words “Oh, you know not to use the water right?�. My facial expression at this point may or may not have been justified.

I have evolved the theory that my life is governed by some sort of hilarious irony, the source of which I am not privy to. Of course god has a sense of humour, if he didn’t, I’m not sure I would exist. I strongly suspect I am the light relief of the cosmos, highlights every Wednesday night after celebrity big brother. I may not be quality entertainment, but I’m better than George Galloway’s cat impression. Incidentally, he’s my MP. Hah! And on that note of amusing and mildly unsettling incompetence, I’m going to do some work.

Apparently all the people who told me that working in financials involved long hours were entirely correct. I have not even been here for a month yet, and I spent an hour at home last night finishing a report I needed for this morning, because I had training all day yesterday. Since week one I have not left at 5.30. This is of course my own doing. I plan on doing pretty well here. I have no qualms with putting in some effort to that end. I don’t want money I can’t earn.

When I started here, I realised that I was significantly younger than everyone else, and wondered if this would be a problem. Because you see, I never mentioned my age in the interview, it is not on my CV, and they didn’t ask. In England it is not only normal not to finish secondary school until 18/19, it is normal to take a year or two out before going to college, presumably because fees are not paid by the government. So logically, even if I was quite young I’d have started college at say, 19, done 4 years, and then had the year and a half+ of work experience that appears on my CV, making me around 25, at the minimum.

My mild concern was validated yesterday, when I mentioned that my birthday was just after St. Patrick’s day, and a colleague asked what age I would be. After dissembling for a minute I eventually just sheepishly told her, at which point she laughed, and said something like “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to you know, you don’t have to make one up�. This girl is 7 years older than me. Dilemma. I didn’t lie, but what do I do the next time someone asks? “None of your business� is not a good way to make friends in a new workplace.  And I’m not lying about it. But I have no desire to be seen as a kid.

At this point, I could rant on about my emotional state, which has fluctuated lately, and been of some significance. However, I have zero intention of using this blog for anything but opinionated ranting, and updates on my activities for anyone who’s interested. I will not be talking about my feelings, my relationships, or any other drivel like that. That’s nobody’s business but mine, and if I ever had a blog that contained that stuff, it would contain all of it, and I would certainly not be telling any of my friends about it, because it would be about them.

In other vaguely relevant news, we had our first house party, which I deem a complete success, we were all hammered, but no-one made a fool of themselves and nothing got broken. And the clean-up was in no way horrifically tedious the next morning. Ali made lamb curry for dinner last night, and it was incredibly good, I was previously unaware that Indian food is meant to be eaten with your fingers, and found this fascinating, which was doubtless somewhat off-putting for poor Ali.

That’s about it I think. For anyone who wants to know, I will be coming to Limerick on Friday night, and staying till Sunday afternoon, so if you want to meet me during that time let me know in advance if possible, by email or text. And anyone who doesn’t have my English number should mail me if they want it, I think I screwed up my contact details mail somehow and it didn’t get to several people.

I was shocked and appalled to discover yesterday that a train from London to Leeds would cost me £70 sterling return. Clearly my complaints about the cost of trains in Ireland were foolish and misplaced, this is phenomenally overpriced. It would cost me substantially less to get a plane. Not to mention that to get a plane back to London this Sunday would not involve the plane stopping halfway, dumping me onto a bus for an hour and a half, and then a fresh plane being supplied where the sky starts again, 60 miles further on.

On the other hand, the eurostar doesn’t seem all that extortionate, so I am planning a trip to Paris on it. I will admit to having originally envisioned a massive glass tube through which we could watch whales for hours, despite knowing full well that 1. the undersea part of the journey only lasts about 30 minutes, 2. There are no whales in the English channel, and 3. the damn thing is not made of a transparent material of any kind. Its amazing what little fixations the human brain can come up with.

Anyway, I realise I covered my first couple of days here in detail, and then completely left a blank. So I’ll summarise as concisely as possible. I stayed the first week with Agnes. I was stunningly lucky, and found a perfect place to live by Wednesday, but couldn’t move in until Saturday, so she had to put up with me until then. Sophie’s last night in London lasted most of that week, or so it seemed, I wish I could have been a more active part of it, but unfortunately I spent most of the week exhausted, having had very little chance to catch up on sleep lost on the days leading up to my move.

On Saturday I moved into the flat, along with new flatmates Josh and Julia. Josh is a cute Australian, who likes meat and beer, and carries heavy things. He’s also a chemist, who has to be in work by 8am every morning. Ouch. Julia is an assistant photographer, or maybe just trying to be one, I’m not too sure about this stuff. Apparently it involves working for free until a photographer offers to pay you. She showed us her portfolio the other night though, it was amazing. I have limited art knowledge, and no photography knowledge, but I know what has meaning, and on that scale her work is really good. Then we have Halona, who was away at the time, South African chick, but Indian descent, she’s a banker, and a bit of a girl, but she’s cool. Anthony is the token English guy, he’s an assistant photographer who has managed to get paid, he moved in last so I don’t know much about him yet, but he has a good sense of humour, and seems pretty alright.

Agnes and Moise (adorable French guy, I can spell neither his nor her name correctly without switching keyboard layouts) cooked dinner in my new place the first night, and everyone had a really good time, Joanna called over, and Jim even appeared as he was avoiding the Ministry of Sound for the evening. It was a great night, of much drinking and hilarity. Overall, I’m amazed I found a place, and much more amazed that I like everyone who lives there. We’ve all started off fairly equal, as we all moved in at pretty much the same time, and so far it’s been a blast. We get on really well. Hopefully we’ll all be staying at least the 6 months of the lease. I am also the proud possessor of a credit card and bank account. This whole London thing is working out quite well really…

I love it when a plan comes together.

My first day of work was mainly an education in how well-run companies can be. 5 minutes after I arrived I had signed my contract and received a hardcopy, 5 minutes after that I had a desk, a phone line, a very comfortable chair, and had been shown the kitchen, which has a coffee machine, apparently limitless supplies of tea, coffee and cereal (any kind available on request), and fresh fruit every morning. I must admit to being impressed by this. So when I get an email later that day, saying that the massage people are in the office, so could anyone who wants a massage let them know, because a meeting room has been reserved for massages all day, I go from somewhat impressed to downright amazed. Oh, and I can read this mail because by 11am I have a laptop, exactly like everyone else’s, a cute little ibm thinkpad. Which has a docking station at my desk attached to kb, mouse and huge flatscreen monitor. I like my job. At this point I don’t know what my job even is yet, but I like it.

Then I begin to discover what it is. Or rather, what our software actually does. To understand what the software is supposed to do, I have to understand what is actually prompting it’s use. Which is collateral trading. For anyone who, like me of last week, has no idea what this is, collateral trading is the stuff of Nicholas Leeson fame, the management of millions of worth of government bonds, gold, equities, and the swapping around of same with various financial institutions, for (I assume) fun and profit. To say that I now understand this stuff would be parallel with claiming that by learning to drive I could infer how to build an engine, but I’ll get there eventually.

Went to see one flat, which was ok, a little far out, with some boring women living in it, so I wasn’t really pushed about getting it. Then went out with Agnes and her crazy friend Sophie, who is incredibly friendly, but I happened to be wearing a low cut top at the time, and about halfway through the evening she informed me that my breasts were lovely but they were making her horny, so could I stop leaning over to talk to her. I was both complimented and amused by this, but put my jumper back on. Sophie turns out to be moving back to Paris in a few days, and wants to make a night of it. This being Agnes’ week off, she is eager to comply, unfortunately I am about to drop dead of exhaustion, so she kindly gives me her keys, and my evening ends there. Naturally, on the way back I get lost. I reiterate once again that cities should consist of a logically numbered grid. That is all.