Why Does Houseshare Always End in Tears?

I moved out of home when I was 18, so you'd think I'd know enough about the world to avoid putting myself into a houseshare arrangement at the age of 30. I know I haven't always been perfect (sorry Tash for the clothes graveyard - I have improved somewhat since then) but the list of crazy flatmates is long and exhaustive - there was Chris the steroid pumped protein shake freak, the ex DJ Sally ‘please make no noise’ Sound, not to mention Zoe the Salsa dancing man-eater just to name a few but I hadn't envisaged adding any more names to the list! With all this worldly knowledge behind me, you'd think I might have worked out that houseshare really isn’t worth the few pennies in savings! However, having come to London with the very clear objective to save money and run, in our blind optimism (it had been a year since we’d been in the real world after all) we figured it was the most viable solution... oh, the fact that no real estate agent would talk to us without jobs or bank accounts may have been a secondary consideration. I will also add that I thought it would benefit Konrad, who had the luxury of being cooked and cleaned for by his mother for 27 years, to have flatties for a few months. How can one go through life without this experience? (In blissful ignorance I suppose).

Firstly, let me say I think Konrad is one of the most anally retentive men I’ve ever come across... sorry sweetie, you know I love you but there is a reason your nickname is sudsy and it’s got everything to do with the exfoliating gloves, the bottle of bleach, those perfectly hung suits and your daily obsession with washing everything in sight! By all accounts you sound like the perfect flatmate however your complete lack of tolerance for anyone who is slightly below par in the cleaning stakes is perhaps something you needed to work on – every cloud has a silver lining! You like to run a clean and highly ordered life! You are used to spending 3 hours vacuuming one room, breaking out in a sweat when cleaning the bathroom, scrubbing the dishes until every last piece of bacteria has been removed! I know you think that's what everyone does and I know you think you're not highly strung but that 'my way or the highway' attitude to shared living perhaps wasn't always the best tack to take.

The signs were there the day we moved in... the 3cms of dust on the picture rails, the 3 month old splash of yoghurt down the back of the fridge, the caked on exploded egg in the microwave, the flatmate that locks her room, wears thongs in the shower to avoid the dirt (that's flip flops not a g-string for those who need an English language translation) and lives on Sainsbury’s Tikka Masala ready meals. We ignored all of these and approached the situation with zest and enthusiasm! This was going to be great! We will do a bit of cleaning to begin with (about 5 hours in the end) and the house will be ours and liveable. We will inspire them to keep it clean by ‘setting the right example’. They will want to keep it that way. We will change ourselves and the world of our housemates forever – never to look back!

I successfully counselled Konrad through the first month, however not long after he burst into the living room to find a pair of jeans being dried on the radiator with the couch in the middle of the room. I wasn’t actually in the room but all I heard was "this is not a Chinese laundry!" being yelled at the top of his lungs. Okay so maybe he was being a bit unreasonable and others did have certain rights in the house too but the next thing we are being told by the righteous one was "this is a democracy" - hadn't she ever heard of 'Konrad the Despot'? And how can we now be denied access to her pots and pans (that were only worth 10 quid 3 years ago) in this democracy? We don't eat ready meals! Nor are we able to use that stanky arse microwave!

Anyway, I could go on to list another 30 odd incidences including taking our wet washing and throwing it on the dirty floor, constantly having to pick up long black hair from the bathroom floor, watching the garbage bin overflow until the bag burst, finding wax strips with body hair stuck to the to the top of the garbage bin and the piece de resistance, putting a dirty dish in a clean dishwasher and re-running it so as to avoid having to unstack it. Yes they're all true! Come to think about it though wearing shoes in the shower to avoid cleaning actually does take the cake.

Houseshare is a democracy though I suppose and we are all allowed to behave however we like as we all pay rent... fair enough... but finally, I snapped. There was this "this is about everybody" line that I was subjected to last week. Sensing the mounting tensions, Santosh decided to approach me for a 'discussion’... wanting to clear her name of all wrong doing before we left. The conversation went something like this "I think it’s unfair that I should do any cleaning, if the other housemate involved does not do his fair share"... I don’t remember much else... all I know is my blood started boiling and I yelled "you are so f*&n lazy.... watching us clean for 6 months is completely fair and democratic then? I love your long black hair... it gives me pleasure to have to pick it out of the shower every morning". Yes I suppose I had finally lost it too! Maybe a little immature of me but that 'all about me' logic had just gone too far - even though the fact that she used to vacuum her room up to her door and happily watch us do the rest of the house had been grating on my nerves for a while. So it’s all gone pear-shaped again - another flatmate relationship to the grave! This one will be remembered as Santosh - The Democratic One... it’s about everybody as long as I don’t have to lift a finger for anybody!

Chatting to my sister on messenger this morning, she did point out that all this will in fact be good practice if we ever decide to have children. She tells me through great experience that it is all about them - you clean the place, they trash it, you clean it, they trash it and then never give anything back... sorry Mum, it must have been awful!

Houseshare rant complete, back onto our travels – this is supposed to be a travel blog after all. The 6 month money run is over – our mission is complete! The work contracts are drawing to a close and we are ready to pack it all in and resume that more glamourous life of skiing, travel and adventure. Most of you reading this probably think – geez guys, you're not living in the real world. Back on the road again? Aren’t the frivolities over yet? Aren't you going to finally realise you have to settle down, progress your career, have a family and lay claim to some assets. Yeah maybe? But not until we’ve skied Verbier and Chamonix, seen NYC and the States, learnt Spanish, scaled the mountains to Machu Pichu and partied in Rio :). Maybe then we'll think about settling down... or maybe we'll just have to start up a business in the Alps :)) Only time will tell.

Let me just finally reflect on our experiences of the last six months for a moment. London to me is like an unsettled relationship... you love it, you hate it, you want to leave but you don’t. It gives you money but restricts your freedoms. It makes you laugh, cry, get angry and all fuzzy inside... and then finally you leave but with some fond memories of all those experiences and emotions and you’re glad that you went there but not sure if you’ll ever go back again. You know what they say, if you make it to 6 months you’ll make it to 2 years, if you make it past 2 years you’ll make it to 5. I guess we’re not going to make it much past 6 months so perhaps it’s been a fairly superficial experience. We do feel like we’ve gotten to know it a little bit, fall in love with it a little bit and despite that we’re now ready to move on.

Thanks to everyone who helped make it an enjoyable time here. Garth in particular who just kept inviting us to those crazy Clapham BBQs. Thanks to you and your lovely friends we managed to develop some sort of social circle whilst we were here and we’re really looking forward to gatecrashing Shazza’s farewell party on Saturday night and calling it our own :). A note to all the visitors as well – Mick and Bel, Nora, Scott, Dany & Clare, Billy, Antho & Amanda and most recently Art. We thoroughly enjoyed seeing you all and it was great that you could share our experience of London with us.

I’ll leave you with some final photo impressions of the UK, including a recent trip in the rain up to the beautiful university town of Cambridge.

Cheers and we’ll look forward to blogging next from the Alps.

Is that the ghost of London? ... Garth in supernatural mode.



Art and the 75,000 Pound Mammoth Tusk in Harrods! Just what you need for your townhouse back home.


Riding the London bus!


Outside Jamie's Restaurant after an excellent meal.


View from St James' Park


St Pauls Cathedral


One of the hundreds of Ferraris driving the city on a daily basis!


First Tripod Shot with NEW camera - a few things to master but we'll get there


Cambridge


Cambridge


Dedicated sightseeing in the rain - Cambridge



PS: And for those that are interested here is a rough itinerary of our plans for the next 6 months:

March 3 – 7: Verbier, Switzerland
March 7 – 16: Chamonix, France
March 16 – May 4: Val d’Isere, France (Will have an apartment so if you're in the area please stop in and stay!)
May 4 – 7: Paris (One last stop in one of my favourite cities)
May 7 – June 3: London, Edinburgh, Scotland, Lakes District, Cornwall
June 4 – July 18: Canada & US
July 18 till the money ends: South America
Sept/Oct: Arrive in Oz

A Quick Vitamin D Hit!

It takes a little while to come to terms with living a pseudo civilized, routine life in Hampstead and although not unhappy it seems that our zest for life recently has been somewhat tempered. So we’re living in a pretty swish part of London – we have the odd 17th century public house (with some fantastic Ales to had), this amazing French creperie (that’s been around for 27 years) on the High Street, a boulangerie or even two for that matter selling pretty decent French breads and patisseries – but it seems like there’s just that something missing. I mean having to suspend yourself like Superman over a crowd of people on the Central line Tube every morning while trying to make it to the office on time (though mildly amusing at first) doesn’t really tell the whole story either. No, to fully appreciate it, you need to feel the gloom descend on the city gradually, observe it engulfing the commuting public, sense the tiring mood in the office and find yourself reading in the Daily Mail that “20% of British children are vitamin D deficient”.


You wonder why really? So the sun only gets out of bed after you’ve had to. You spend the first moments of your day sandwiching yourself into crowds of people so as not to risk having to let every train pass you by. But you’re indoors all day absorbing reasonably healthy doses of ultra-violet radiation from you computer screen – surely your body’s metabolising that somehow? Ok, so by the time you finish the daily grind it’s already been dark for a few hours but hey there’s always 2 or 3 hours of sunlight that you could catch on the occasional sunny weekend… I mean you could get lucky! Then again perhaps you could even spend a couple of hours every week in the solarium to get your daily dose… that said, not wanting to risk potentially becoming some manic depressive statistic we instead headed to the Alps for that very much needed vitamin D hit (see title pic).

It was just in time too I reckon as having been uninspired to write anything for a while chances were that the soap opera of our lives could have been pulled off the air… hmm perhaps not (as I do like the sound of my own voice) but it was really good to be back on the continent, get some sun, spend some time with friends, put a few turns in and contemplate the meaning of life. (The answer by the way we figure isn’t actually 42 it’s more like 44 when you add more ski time into the equation – very important!).

Rewind back to Nic’s last post in late October and though the weekends always seem just that little bit too short we’ve nonetheless managed to keep ourselves manically busy. As mentioned, the day after her post we found ourselves at the London Wine Show and it didn’t take very long at all for us to have tried sufficiently enough wine for me to be tasting all sorts of things in the wine on offer – interestingly most things did in fact have strong overtones of ‘plums’:). It’s worth mentioning how good it was to get such a broad exposure to the product on offer from across the world. Literally every “new” and “old” world region was covered. We sampled from Chile and Argentina to California to some of the best from France – mind you, despite their trying to re-gain market share we had to pay for the 50 pound a bottle ‘premier cru’ from Bourgogne that we tried and just refused to pay 10 pounds a taste for the 150 pound bottle on offer at the same stand. (Don’t these guys get it? It’s supposed to be free… it’s a Wine Show!). Anyway, bang for buck the Goulasz award for ‘best at show’ goes to a 12 pound Malbec from Argentina – fruity, velvety and awesome. As for the Frenchies, the fact that their product is so stupidly overpriced here really isn’t doing them any good – drink French wine only when in France I say! Nor is the fact that Australian wine is very well regarded here also; be prepared to pay through the nose for anything that’s worth drinking – Jacob’s Creek, Hardy’s, Rosemount, etc, aren’t actually worth drinking, nor are they worth the 10 pounds they’re selling for! Guess it’s probably a good thing that English don’t know any better… the half price Spanish Tempranillo from Sainsbury’s is usually the better pick we reckon.


Moving from Wine onto Cars, MPH the following weekend was in fact just as the ad said… Car Heaven! An impressive amount of beautiful toys for me to drool over followed by Jeremy Clarkson (who interestingly is being petitioned to replace Gordon Brown as PM – what would happen to Top Gear if that happened?), Richard Hammond and James May suggesting the introduction of new Olympic sports for 2008 such as; dodge ball played with 3 series convertible BMWs armed with tennis ball canons and; car football played with Suzuki Swifts and one great big soccer ball (sorry I mean foot ball). I wonder if we’ll see them in Beijing?

A couple of weeks hence we found ourselves doing the Friday night after work run out to Heathrow for an all too rushed weekend with Scott in Amsterdam – great to see you again mate. It was all a bit dazed and confused really but we visited a few ‘typical tourist hang-outs’ (mum I didn’t inhale I promise) and somehow managed to avoid getting run over by those crazed “farjars” on their bicycles (ref Goldmember if you’ve never heard the Dutch being referred to as that). While we did also manage to make it into the Rijksmuseum for a brief visit – we’re really not as uncultured as would seem – we mostly wandered the beautiful canals, noted the roaring trade being done in the red-light district on Saturday night, ate these really tasty deep fried pastry balls and took entirely too many average happy snaps. (Damn this flat, hardly existent northern European light!)




Other notable highlights since have been; our visit to Worthing to see Nic’s Aunt Marian, Uncle Colin and cousin Amanda – this was followed by staying a night at the English seaside town of Brighton (inviting isn’t it? – see pic below); paying homage to John Lennon at the Abbey Road studios; strolling down the canals of Little Venice; and finding a recognition of Australian greatness while on a visit back to Brighton to catch up with Mike and Daisy (pretty self explanatory really, though I will add that given that there just aren’t enough Australian trained baristas here we’ve both just switched to drinking tea in any case).






Of course it would be remiss of me not to admit being somewhat taken aback by British greatness too – despite the fact that they can’t do something as simple as make a decent flat white… in fact most of them don’t actually know what one is… and for the record a Gingerbread Latte from Starbucks doesn’t constitute a real coffee!! Its American crap catered to the unsophisticated, jacket potato with beans and cheese eating English palate!! Anyway, back to noting British greatness (could be the only time ever you know), I was particularly awestruck on a visit to Greenwich, where after seeing John Harrison’s first attempts at solving the problem of longitude (he was the inventor of the world’s first marine chronometer – H4 was accurate to 5.1 seconds over a period of 2 months on it’s test sea voyage) and looking down the Prime Meridian of the World from Observatory Hill, you really have to acknowledge the fact that this is the epicenter of Western civilization.


Coming into Christmas its worth noting too how beautiful a festive London is (see pics of Covent Garden below), as is that this year was my first ever traditional English Christmas – being Polish we’ve generally always celebrated on Christmas Eve. It was fantastic to spend Christmas with Anthony, Amanda and Maya (who we were meeting for the first time – congratulations again on a beautiful baby girl guys) and Amanda’s parents Steven and Jenny in their home in Wantage, just outside of Oxford. We really enjoyed spending time with all of you and also feasting on the traditional English Christmas lunch foods of Turkey, Goose, Gammon, roasted vegetables (including parsnip), and of course Christmas pudding with custard and brandy butter.




Starved of sunlight and carrying an additional 5 kilos each following all that Christmas cheer, need I mention how good it was to end the holiday break with an all too short a visit back to Val d’Isere. It was fantastic to be so warmly received by the entire crew (you know who you are – you seem like family to us), to spend an amazing New Year’s Eve with you all and to be back in our surrogate home in the mountains – can’t wait to get back there soon. Also, a brief apology to all those whose lack of physical condition we were so completely oblivious to last season. Gradually working ourselves into the skiing we didn’t even notice how physically demanding a sport it is and the pain felt on day 2 this time around was I guess our comeuppance.



Finally a very Happy New Year to everyone… we wish you all a fantastic 2008 and look forward to reporting on our further adventures as they fall due.

The Daily Grind - October Edition

For Internal Use Only – not to be distributed to the outside world


I’m starting to feel a certain pressure when it’s my turn to write the blog. Sir Konrad takes his blog writing responsibilities very seriously and well I’ll be the first to admit that he is far more creative than me. This pressure is exaggerated by the fact I’m feeling particularly uninspired of late and it’s all too easy just to log into Facebook, SuperPoke someone and log back out again (I fear we are now only able to communicate via a bunch of all too generic facebook apps). Also, it’s back to work and I feel like my creativity has been sucked out of me and I’m now able to summarise our life in the last month via a series of bullet points and action items!

* It’s getting cold and dark – ACTION: Buy coat and gloves
* I live for the weekend – ACTION: Keep myself amused by forever booking weekend events.
* If we leave home after 8:15am we can't squeeze into the sardine can that is the tube – ACTION: Get out of bed earlier (not easy).
* Avoid being diagnosed with the worst of London diseases ‘The Heathrow Injection’ - ACTION: Exercise after work in the dark and not drink 5 pints a night (but what else is there to do)

… but to spare you from that misery, I’ll move away from the bullets and into a little attempt to make a story out of our life in the last month.

Let’s start with work. Much to my shock, horror and disgust I'm back at work - hey I knew it had to happen eventually – but not to me? I was always going to stumble across some form of inherited wealth or meet a rich sponsor one day. But alas, I am now working long hours, servicing the marketing/ customer reference requirements of Microsoft (and that’s likely why I feel I've lost all my creative inspirations - customer reference is some of dryest work I've ever participated in ... then there was that stint in teleconferencing I guess). Anyway, apparently I am doing such a great job of this they have now offered me a position full time, with the promise of training courses and a prosperous future! I’m not quite sure how I manage to fool people into believing I’m doing such a great job – though this is not the first time this has happened to me :) Luckily I’ve somehow managed to ‘postpone’ having to make this decision until after xmas.

Konrad is also working long hours – staring at performance spreadsheets and numbers 9 hours a day. Not nearly as glamorous as being a ski-man or professional happy snapper (slightly better paying however :)). Unlike me, he is on an hourly rate and god bless his cotton socks, spends entirely too much time worrying whether or not he should bill for that toilet break? Too honest for the big smoke I tell you :). My response is always bill, bill, bill – go for the overtime … he on the other hand keeps arguing that is is all about being honest. Investment Management? Honest? Am I missing something here? ... he is keeping his creative spirits alive by capturing the mood of the city on his way to work the other day.



Moving onto living for the weekend, we ventured out on our first weekend away in Europe a few weeks ago. It was a Ryan Air/Stanstead express jobbie so by the time we actually arrived in Stockholm it was some 12 hours later (4 hours on buses/3 hours on trains and 2 hours in the air :) - take a good book!). And before we knew it we were back in the office with distant memories of head banging in a rock bar with a bunch of Swedes, while conveniently missing getting beaten by the Poms in the rugby. But we did have a great weekend and thought it a very beautiful city. No signs of 80s Swedish tennis stars or Abba but we did spot plenty of Volvo drivers and IKEA stores! Oh And lots of blondes. I made Konrad try the salty licorice and he almost threw up :) We much preferred the sushi and vodka that was also on offer.




There was also our weekend away in a ‘Wicked Camper’ with the John, Paul, George and Ringo - ‘I am the Walrus, Coo Coo Coochoo’ (our van which had the Beatles plastered all over it drew some attention to us whilst we pottered through the English countryside). We spent the Friday night sleeping in the centre of Oxford after a visit to a uni rock bar (I'm not sure what the obsession with rock bars is), followed by a trip up the “Romantic Way” through the Cotswolds and up to Shakespeare’s birthplace in Stratford Upon-Avon. Our Saturday night in a camp site near Cheltenham was rather chilly but hardened after 3 months of the European summer, we had no trouble cuddling up together in 5 degrees. It was a great weekend and we thoroughly enjoyed visiting the towns and hamlets along the route – just beautiful. Pub lunches, afternoon teas, autumn trees, rolling hills – picture perfect really :)




We had a surprise visit from our favourite Swiss friends Cony and Fabian. Thanks to them for all that Swiss chocolate! It’s confirmed – the Swiss definitely make the best chocolate in the world. What else can I say – 5 bars consumed in 2 weeks! Shame we didn't make Fifteen but Konrad is still talking about that frogs legs starter in Angel - I need to get over my childhood phobia of frogs before I verify whether this was actually edible or not. Thanks guys for a great night – it's always really enjoyable to see you both and we look forward to hopefully going skiing with you in February/March. I think a good time would be just after French school holidays finish in the first week of March? Let me know what you think.

Speaking of skiing, we are both looking forward to a New Years trip to Val d’Isere to see the crew! Can’t wait to ski and party with you all for 5 days!! I missed last NY due to terrible gastro so really looking forward to using those tickets I purchased for last year’s bash at Bar l’Alexandra! Phil please put our names on the door for this years soiree. We are also very much looking forward to spending Christmas with Antho, Amanda and Maya! Finally we get to meet the little person that we have seen so many pictures of!

We are commencing 10 weeks of lessons en Francais next week (at our appropriate levels). Konrad was most pleased to be graded as a ‘false’ beginner and seems to have learnt about 10 weeks’ worth of lessons during his time in the shop in Val last season. So watch out Frenchies, we will arriver a Nouvelle Annee et en Fevrier with a whole new vocabulaire pour parler avec vous. Ooh la la, tres bien, impeccable, absolutement parfait!!

This weekend it’s exhibition time and we are going to the ski and snowboard expo on Saturday (just to investigate those Canadian and South American resorts we want to visit in 2008) ... speaking of which if anyone wants to meet us for a ski in Chile/Argentina around August 08, then let us know ... we will be there! Sunday it's a trip to the London Wine Show (this is our world tour of ski resorts and wine regions after all), where we will be sampling many fabulous wines from around the globe – all for 8 quid! I know what happened last time we ended up trying to be cultured at the Australian Wine Show but this time I promise I’ll spit some of them out :). As for the Slavic Warrior (for those not in the know – Sir Konrad has been aptly renamed after some heroic stunts on the ski slopes), well he can’t promise as much and is likely to roll out of the event muttering ‘plums’ under his breath. I look forward to it! Wine shows are always a good place to taste as much expensive wine as you can in as short a time as possible. Monday morning back on the daily grind could be difficult.

Next weekend we are off to the MPH show, where Konrad tells me we will be seeing fabulous cars and Jeremy, Richard and James blowing things up. Have I been conned into believing this is going to be fun? For all fans of Top Gear, well it’s the same crew doing a live show at Earls Court in London and Konrad is VERY excited about this! So I’m going along for the ride (ha - pardon the pun!)

And after that we’ve got a weekend of fun in Amsterdam with Scott. I’m not sure what plans he has for us but I’m sure we’ll have a great time. I hear there are other things to do there besides consume illegal substances not available anywhere else in Europe! (or visit live sex shows). The Van Gogh Museum or Ann Frank's house perhaps? Any other suggestions welcome? This is a blog after all people and no-one is blogging anymore. You’ve all moved to Facebook! We’re in desperate need of a comment or two. Let’s bring Blogger back to life!

Finally, whilst we’re talking about collaboration (another Microsoft buzzword I seem to use all too often these days), we’ve just worked out how to use Skype and GoogleTalk (oops sorry client, not supposed to use that G word) ... have attempted to get Messenger voice chat working but without much success. So whichever one of those you are on, you now have no excuse not to call us for FREE! Send me your details and we’ll give you a buzz!




That’s it for now. Take care and we’ll write again soon.

xxxx

Like sand through an hourglass

There I was on the phone to my old boss Adrian, you know just saying G’day as I’m prone to doing, shooting the breeze, seeking some form of encouragement, trying to recapture a fleeting sense of self worth (maybe not a bad a thing in my case), when he added “I really enjoy reading your blog Konrad… it’s like watching a soap opera… you wonder what’s going to happen next and hang out for the next episode.” Quite taken aback, I’m not sure which shocked me more, that our adventures were being likened to “Days of our Lives” or that I was hearing an Englishman call a spade a spade :) In that vein however, into our 7th week here in the UK I thought it was about time that I put pen to paper and for both your and my amusement to present the comedy, the tragedy and the drama that has been the Goulaszes’ transition back to life in the real world, in London.

Maybe it was because we had become used to living life at a certain pace, maybe because Garth in his characteristic directness had made it clear that we should only inhabit his living room floor for so long or maybe it was just because we had once again had to lug all our worldly possessions to yet another place and wanted desperately to unpack as soon as was possible but we literally found ourselves hitting the ground running as soon as we arrived in London. Only an hour or so into our first morning we had already identified 5 apartments we had wanted to see that day and with notepad in one hand and London mini A to Z in the other, we darted out the door to brave that typical English summer weather – a beautiful 12 degrees and drizzling.

Popping into both banks along the High Street in Clapham Common – you know just to investigate how we would later have to overcome the task of setting up bank accounts (with no jobs nor a fixed address) – before you knew it we’d found ourselves with mobile phone numbers and we were organizing apartment viewings for that afternoon. In all truth we only saw the one apartment that afternoon; the price was an exorbitant 300 pounds (or 750 bucks) a week + rates and bills, the apartment a not too special one bedder and we really didn’t even pick up on the fact that the landlord was in fact justified in thinking that he was doing us a favor – even though at the time we really did think he was ‘having a laugh’ (to borrow a saying from the Poms). A couple of expressions of interest later, on our second day on the job, with a visiting Nora in tow, we found that even a private apartment between a mosque and a pornographic cinema required referees and jobs and so forth. Not to be too disheartened however (it’s not easy to get a Goulasz down), we had already thought about changing tack and decided to look into sub-letting a room from a dodgy Polak called Lukasz; who’d already rented it out to someone 2 weeks hence. Suffice it to say, with Nora as our witness, this was the low of our search for accommodation – I still wonder how they managed to get a double bed into a room as small as that one. Anyway, we only dealt with one other eastern European (pretty sure she was Polish too) who tried to let us a room short term in a place that had already been sold but where the parties were in the process of exchanging contracts (hey, there’s a two week dossing window there!). Fortunately we ran into 2 Jewish guys that wanted out of their house-share in Hampstead the following day. I guess we really couldn’t believe our luck; lovely area, great big place, good room mates, relatively cheap and a property management company run by two Greek blokes called Nicos and Adonis who couldn’t care less whether we had jobs or money for food or bank accounts or whatever. Bit heartless perhaps but nonetheless just the way we like it.





With a roof over our heads we next had to attend to the task of getting ourselves off the Australian Peso – you know it really doesn’t buy you very much on this side of the world. CVs were updated with the utmost urgency and even losing access to an unsecured wireless LAN from Garth’s place (sorry about that mate but honestly it was just a matter of time until you guys lost your free internet), was really only a tiny bump in the road; our resolve was absolute and no hindrance was going to stop us from getting highly paid, professional, short term work in London! That was of course until we encountered the London variety of that pariah of the business world: Enter the Recruitment Consultant!

Following a fantastic few interviews in that first week out of our Hampstead living room office, there were Directorships aplenty; the opportunities here were just mind blowing, the dynamism, the energy, the buzz in the market was electric. And coming into the Bank Holiday long weekend, having a couple of pints with Dany and Clare, you couldn’t contain our excitement and enthusiasm; Sam said “this will be an amazing opportunity”; Rachel said “you’ll be employed sooner rather than later”; Mary “the market is starved of your experience”. Now I know what you’re thinking, you guys weren’t born yesterday... c’mon… and yes I guess you’re right, we should have known that the only skill ever exhibited by the trusted recruiter is spinning a bit of a yarn and that one should not to believe a word of it. I’m not making excuses here (ok maybe I am), but look we’d been traveling for a little while, we just weren’t used to hearing nor spinning bullshit 24/7.

Now, to offer a fair account, there must be some admittance of naïve stupidity on our part; as there is. Nic’s never been too comfortable lying (even though she’s fantastic at it :)); and me, well I’m just absolutely useless at offering any less than all the information in the world on any particular subject (just get me started); and while this did result in each of us flunking one client interview in the first two weeks of job hunting, following this seemingly unstoppable momentum in the first week, the otherwise unemployable, friendly Job Spec to CV matcher was literally no where to be found. The task for us had thus become that of recruiting recruitment consultants and hounding them to be put forward for any job whatsoever. In the frustration Nic had even considered adding ‘tea making’ to her list of job skills (this is highly prized here I believe) as she presented to a secretarial recruiter who wasn’t quite sure whether her diary management skills (read ability to use Outlook) were quite on the mark for those top-level ‘sechetary’ jobs.

With Pesos running thinner by the day, when Mick and Bel, completely chilled from lazing on a yacht off the coast of Turkey, came to relieve us from our stir crazy living room existence we really had no idea what was going on. Nic’s verbal acceptance of a PA position she hadn’t even interviewed for was still under consideration and I guess my posse at the time of 7 recruitment consultants had finally felt somewhat obliged to put me forward for a few jobs but the question really was what the hell are we doing here again? I’m not sure we’re having all that much fun going nuts here in our living room! Within this environment it was obviously great to have close friends offer us encouragement, get us out of the house and make us drown our frustrations (literally) for a couple of days.





Taking matters into our hands the following week, Nic applied for a job direct, had two interviews in quick succession and got a Senior Account Manager position in a marketing agency on a 6 month contract. I ended up going direct to an employer for a pseudo permanent position (yes we had even considered staying here indefinitely) only to also interview twice over the following 2 weeks… and well, I’m still waiting to hear back from the employer, who’s recruitment manager has since gone on holiday. Since then, now two weeks ago, I’ve recruited 4 other recruiters (which makes 9 interviews with recruiters over 7 weeks… that’s got to be worthy of a record?) and off the back of one of them I found myself in front of a good investment management house for a Performance Analyst position this week which has now been officially offered to me – highly paid, professional, short term work in London! Success! Third time lucky, though I suppose it was only a matter of time until perseverance finally paid off. (Having said that we could have done without the stress – we are supposed to be on holiday after all!)

Whilst the transition back to life in the big smoke has definitely come as a rude shock to the system we have of course managed to have a few crazy adventures over the last few weeks here just the same: Apart from the whirlwind visits of Nora, Dany and Clare and Mick and Bel which I’ve already mentioned, we were stoked to be able to get together with Garth and Billy Boy (who was visiting on business) for a one night only rendition of “Val d’Isere, yeah, yeah, yeah” (ref La Meilleure Station du Monde post) in Covent Garden – you get your arse back here Billy! Nic managed to resurrect a long lost friend Sarah (from her last ski season in Meribel) through Facebook, which resulted in us finding ourselves out in Bracknell (South West of London) a few weekends ago for her 30th Birthday: We did a day trip out to Bath, Stonehenge and Windsor in a Smart Car that looked very much like a 2Lt Ford Mondeo (sixT rentals – great value!). We’ve managed to run into some interesting types at a Hampstead institution called the Duke of Hamilton; like Ricardo the mild mannered writer who’s convinced himself that he was once a gangster in Kings Cross (Sydney) and his derelict white wine spritzer drinking artist/painter mate Grant from Zim’: We’ve found ourselves unwittingly consuming someone else’s Veuve Clicquot and accompanying white chocolate raspberries with Garth at the Tabby Cat Lounge: We had the pleasure of attending Adrian’s 60th Birthday dinner in Cobham & Stoke d’Abernon – Happy Birthday again! Not to mention the obligatory sightseeing of Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, The London Eye, Piccadilly Circus, Regent Street, Portobello Rd, Borough St Market, Camden Town, Brick Lane just to name a few. Suffice it to say despite the hardship and drama there have been more than a few laughs along the way.











We’re off to the Cotswolds this weekend in a ‘Wicked Camper’, there’s Manu Chao on Tuesday, we’re flying to Stockholm next weekend, an Amsterdam trip has been booked in with Scott, John we’re still waiting on our Edinburgh invitation :) and given that the money will now be flowing in the opposite direction for a while we’re bound to have a few more laughs to share with you into the future.

‘Til next time.