Hey Guys,
As some of you know the 'le tour de france' came to london on the weekend. It had been something id been looking forward to for a while, in fact ever since i knew i was coming over here. On friday evening after work i headed to trafalgar square for the riders presentation. As i headed down i immediately regretted not bringing my camera with me as i knew there would be a huge crowd. I made my down just as they were about to start. After a short video promoting the race and a few facts about its size etc they presented each of the teams. It was good to see the riders up close that i've been watching on T.V for the last few years. I waited around till that had finished and then a pop band came onto play. They were pretty average however i stuck around and read the paper for abit before heading home. The next day the racing would begin with a 8km time trial through hyde park.
On saturday morning i helped Dan clean the house up abit before i got some keys cut from a place down the road. Matt went to the pub down the road while i took a train to the closest station. I walked into the park and already there was huge crowds three hours before the start. I bought myself a souvenir t-shirt and then found a nice spot along the road to watch the riders warming up. Even as they were warming up the speed they were traveling at was quite impressive. I took a few pics and then found a nice spot on the grass where a big screen was located. For about an hour they had a long caravan of cars which were mostly advertising, people speaking into megaphones, throwing away freebies, girls waving etc etc. They had a few kangaroo cars promoting south australia i think as well. Anyway when that was done and dusted i got to watch some more riders warming up around the course. Then finally the race was on with the riders going by at a furious pace in approximately one minute intervals. After about an hour of hugging the railings with other people in close proximity i headed for the grass and relaxed there to watch the big name riders do their thing. Attempts to meet up with Matt and co proved futile due to the HUGE crowds (least a million came out to watch it) and my phone battery dieing. Still it was a good day out and i enjoyed myself.

On monday i had the day off work so i decided to head off to, yes you guessed it, another museum. This time it was to be the Imperial war museum as Dan had reccomended it and plus im abit of a fan of modern world history. Arrived their around 12ish and was immediately mpressed by the huge guns outside the entrance to the building. In the main hall there was a huge array of different vehicles from world war 1 and world war 2, most of those being tanks. I headed downstairs to the ww1 exhibition. They had recreated a trench that you could walk through which was quite realistic and the conversations from the dummies added to the immersion. The actual info was laid out really well, with plenty of interesting things to look at to go with the boards on topics. They had a 5 min show that ran every ten minutes which recreated what it would be like in a bombing raid in London. After 3-4 hours in there i headed home slightly exhausted however its another place ill have to check out again in the near future. Bye!

Update: For those who are interested, here's a couple of pic's of the two main counter's i've been working on. Note the charcuterie stuff is all wrapped and covered because i took the photo after we had closed, but u get the idea.

Working in a big city....

Last week while i was in the hostel where we were staying i got a call from a temp agency asking me if i could make an interview for that afternoon. I quickly got into gear to get ready and headed for the tube following the directions that i had been given in the txt message. In some back alley in london i found the place and headed up not really knowing what to expect. After filling out some forms i had an interview/discussion with a nice lady regarding a job at a place called Fortnum and Masons. She described it as a really posh upmarket place where all the 'richies' went shopping, wearing suits, top hats etc. She told me she was waiting for a phone call to get more details about the position but it seemed they needed staff immediately so i was told that id be contacted soon. All was going well so far.

The next day i was at a bit of a lossreally know what to do as Matt had gone to work and i had checked out most of the stuff in the area i.e parks, museums etc. After meandering in the park for a while i got the call i had been semi expecting with the information i was to start tommorow! After pondering on it for a while i headed off to buy some clothes in Oxford street. I thought i had better look the part if what i had been told was true. I ended up buying a cheap pair of shoes, socks and a shirt.

Friday was abit crazy for me to say the least. I got up early in Euston (north London) and headed towards picadilly only to find when i got there that the station was closed. I promptly got out of the station and tried get my bearings. There was police tape all along Leicester square which i thought was abit odd, by this time i was wishing i had allowed more time. After consulting my trusty A to Z i eventually found the street i was after and made my way up the six floors to the HR department. It turned out i wasnt the only one late as i waited for nearly twenty minutes before being told what i would be doing for the day. Due to the lack of staff i was placed in the food hall in the hands of an Italian, the man responsible for the cheese. His name was Marco and he was very friendly. The following few days i worked with the ham's and salami's with a man called pieter who is from Poland. He has a very thick accent but again hes quite friendly and happy to help me out when im unsure about something. Working with such nice food has been the best part of the job, having tried some joselito off the bone. Its a spanish ham that comes from a semi wild pig that feeds mostly on acorns. Very tasty but also extremely $$$ at 15 pounds per 100g or you can buy the whole leg for a cool $3000 AUD. The worst part about the job is the often boring intervals of time when there are no customers and seemingly nothing to do other then wait...and also the slight inconvenience of having to walk up 8 flights of stairs to get to my break, sign in for the day etc. The job was meant to only be for two weeks but hopefully that gets extended abit longer so i don't have to find another job in a hurry as this one pays pretty well and is quite good on the whole:) Ive got tomorrow off work, yay! Ill have to write next time about the tour de france prologue that went through the streets of London last Saturday. Till then, Bye!

hmmm museums

So what have I been doing with my time your wondering. Well being the frugal person that I am I like doing things that are cheap or even better free. It just so happens that all the museums in London are just that i.e. free. So naturally I wanted to make the most of it and check them all out. Just abit of a recap first…On the friday of our first week matt was quite ill, even to the point of fainting in Dan and Alice's kitchen. So afterwards he promptly went back to bed. Not to be seen again until 5.30pm that afternoon. I killed the time by making use of the free wireless internet matt and I had discovered in Dan and Alice's lounge room. I eventually left the house and made my way to the internet café across the road. I printed out a cover letter and a CV for position at a bike store in fulham I had found. After doing that I walked down the road and handed my CV and application form into the bike store. I don’t think I gave the man a good impression as he pressed upon the need for being ‘passionate’ about cycling, which I am to a certain degree. Ill admit though that I don’t know a huge amount about parts and components etc but I was very keen to learn. He then muttered something about there being no actual positions at that store despite it being advertised to the contrary. I left feeling slightly down however I knew there would be more jobs out there for me. I got some lunch and headed down to the nearest job centre plus to inquire about applying for a NI number. I was told you needed a job first so that turned out to be a short visit. In case you don’t know NI stands for national insurance and you need one to be able to get taxed at the right rate and claim any tax back. After that I went to the local library and browsed the net briefly until I went back to find alice and matt eating lunch.

The next day was a similar state of affairs with Matt not feeling very well and thus confining himself to bed for the day. I decided id go somewhere and since Alice was heading into town I tagged along with her on the bus. I got dropped off at a stop close by to the museums, well at least three of them anyway. I thought id check out the V & A or Victorian and Albert today and maybe go to the science museum as well. Wed beeen to the v &a previously but only seen the photography section. I went to the medieval sculptures room and was confronted by huge plaster-casts reaching to the very high ceiling. It was quite impressive at first, as it took me a while to figure out they were just copies and not originals. On display were several coffins, walls, and tombs amongst other things. I preceded to the iron section after that for all things made of iron i.e. locks, keys and anything else you can think of. Adjacent to that were little bronze statues approximately 20cm high that were still quite detailed, there was little 5 min movie being displayed of the method used to make such a statue. A little further along there were stained glass windows which were quite good I thought, Again there was a short clip of how they were constructed which I found interesting. There was a large area full of silverware which had many interesting treasures in it such as goblets and miniature castles. Things you might find at a banquet would be an adequate description. That was about it for the V & A.

The science museum was the next on the agenda. Walking in i came across to me a different vibe then the museum previous, as this was certainly more children friendly. I looked at a temporary setup on penicillin at first which I found quite informative and insightful, I was not aware that pharacueticals and anti biotics came about through this drug. I went upstairs and saw large red plastic strips draped from the ceiling for the plastics exhibit. I didn’t find it all that interesting to be honest even with my little bit of knowledge of plastics through having studied chemistry. The exhibition next to it was on everything to do with ‘time’. In other words the history of clocks, watches etc. It was cool to look inside watches and see how they function. I was oblivious to the fact that quartz watches measure the time though the millions of vibrations recorded every second in the stone. They even had an atomic clock on display. On the main floor was a huge room full of objects and information on space travel. I learnt about the V2 and the space race in the 1950’s between the USSR and the U.S. The huge room at the end contained all sorts of pieces to do with the modern world.

The last and in my opinion the best museum I last saw was the British Museum. The ‘wow’ factor when gazing at the entrance to the building was most definitely bigger here then any of the previous museums I had seen. I knew I would be in for a treat. The main hall with the information desks in it was a pretty awesome sight. Matt got hold of a tour book and we headed off in the direction of ancient Egypt. It was really good despite as i got to take it all in while Matt was in the final stages of securing a job. We did however visit the museum twice over the next two days and got to see a good portion of what it had to offer. The mummies section was cool with lots of interesting stuff to see and read about. A slight annoyance was the large number of school kids who were present so it would probably be wise to go when its not so busy. I am so far behind in my blog its getting out of hand... hopefully soon ill have an update of my experiences of working in London. Till then Bye!

Seeing the sights

Today we had a pretty relaxed day, not getting out of the hostel until nearly lunch time. We had breakfast at 8, which consisted of musli and sweet bread with jam, not to shabby. After that we spent a fair bit of time browsing the net and matt and i caught up with the relies back home. We made our way down to Fulham on the tube. Its a suburb in south west london where lots of aussies live so we thought we would check it out as a likely place to live. I came across a bike shop looking for staff so i thought i might apply for a position in the next few days. Matt had a couple of phone calls from agencies, one which lasted nearly ten minutes, eventually we found the road we were looking for after getting slightly lost. After we had checked out the streets we took a train up to Westminster. Big Ben was quite an impressive sight as was the houses of parliament. Matt took off for the toilets while i took some snaps of the london eye. We walked round to the london eye and i got to see how popular a tourist attraction it was. I plan on going on it at a later date with a few more people who havent done it before. After seeing some painted up dudes doing strange poses we headed to trafalger square. Along the way we came across a few guards two of which were on horses so matt suggested he take one of me in front of a guard. Im looking very touristy with matt's massive camera bag slung round my shoulder.

Once we'd arrived i took a small video to illustrate the busy atmosphere. It was a nice day so there were plenty of people about. For some reason i had pictured it in my head as being bigger then it was, however it would still pack a huge crowd. We took a few snaps and headed up to the National gallery. The first section was all renaissance gear, i only however found one Leonardo piece which was a sketch. This surprised me abit, however the collection was extensive and most impressive. There were some german paintings from the same era in the adjacent rooom one of which was particualry large and showed two aristocracy men. A tour guide was giving a speech on this painting discussing its significance. There was a strange looking streak at the bottom which i was puzzled about, this was later revealed to be a skull. It was a cool optical illusion which when viewed from the side resembled a normal skull. There was such a large amount of amazingly detailed pictures i admit my appreciation began to wain after half an hour or so. The last works by van gogh i liked, just for their simplicity.
It began to rain so we made our way to the subway, not sure where to go next. Eventually we decided to go back to the hostel, quite famished. We ended up in this dodgy pizza place just up the road for tea, a decision we almost immediately regreted. The all you can eat advertising had drawn us in but the lead in our stomachs afterwards left us wanting more...or less depending which way you look at it :P With an aching belly clogged full of cheese we went for a walk down the side of hyde park and up oxford street. It struck me how the city never seemed to slow down even when it got dark. It gets dark around 9.30 pm here which takes abit of use to coming from hobart. I got tired soon enough so we hopped on a bus home and that was the end of another day!

Ive Made it! :)

Im in London! What an awesome feeling. Its bizzare being so far away from home. Anyway where do i start. After a rather restless night on saturday i got up and realised today was the day! It was time to start getting excited :P The morning was fairly uneventful, nicki and matt turning up a little late to the airport but apart from that everything went well. After checking in it seemed like a second later we were saying goodbye, i got abit emotional there too for a second. It was short lived however as matt and i strolled onto the tarmac for our approx 24 hour journey to the English capital.

On the flight to Bangkok we were pleased to find each seat had its own screen and a more then adequate movie selection to entertain us. I watched shooter, followed by The road to happiness and finally Pride and Prejudice (I was tired and needed something low key i.e. boring) lol. Matt managed to get an hour or twos worth of sleep in but i couldn't for some reason, i think the bright lighting might have had something to do with it. The food wasnt anything to write home about, some fish curry and chicken noodles i think. Weird time to eat though when its 12 in the morning, i they must still run on Bangkok time even when flying out of Melbourne.

On arrival in Bangkok airport we got off the plane and walked onto to some buses to ferry us to the airport terminal. Only two hours wait and we hopped on another plane. You could sense how tired everyone was cause there was hardly any talking. I couldnt wait to kick back and get some well earned rest. We ended up having a spare seat to share between the two of us, so the extra leg room was definitely appreciated. We both set about getting comfortable in the hope of getting sleep asap and it worked out well. The 12 hour flight seemed alot shorter then the one previous.
Once we arrived at heathrow we got through the passport control pretty speedily, the lady only asked us a few questions and that was it! We were free to go :D After waiting for what seemed like forever for matt's luggage we headed off down the hall and were greeted by Matt's sister Rosie. We then proceeded to make our way via train to our hostel in Kensington. After a slight hickup we arrived approx an hour and a quarter later.

After dumping our bags at the hostel we went for a walk through the nearby Kensington gardens. It was quite a sight with the huge oak trees and lush greenery. The rest of the day involved briefly at a couple of museums, the Victoria and Albert and The National History museum. Il definitely check those out again...the highlight was a 3/4 scale t rex that moved and roared at people watching from nearby. Probably the thing that struck me most about London is the amount of old buildings in the city. It really gives you a sense of the history of the place. By about 5 oclock matt and i were pretty knackered so we checked in and slept until the next morning. I think were going to check out a few suburbs today and get a an idea of where wed like to rent a place. Until next time, Catchya Later.

One sleep to go!

so tomorrow i leave for London :O Im abit nervous as you'd expect but im sure ill be right with Matt having done this before. Today chilled with the relies who came down on friday night, so got to say goodbye to the cousins before i head off. Got a few unexpected b'day (not ill august) presents from my mum, a travel diary book, Europe map book and a nice jumper, so that was cool. Ive nearly finished packing, just waiting for a few things to dry on the line and ill be set to go. Ive been putting off getting too excited so i can still sleep properly, but tomorrow i better start getting amped!! well i better go and get ready for tonight... ill hopefully have a few pics ready for my next post. Talk to you in London :)

Less then a week to go!

gday there,
Welcome to Gad's OE (overseas experience) blog. This is my first post in what will hopefully be many as i record my thoughts, actions, experiences and photos on my trip overseas. It is now less then a week till Matt (my bro in law) and I leave for London (we leave on Sunday the 17th June). For some reason i am yet to get really excited however i am sure my anticipation will start to build over the next few days. I finished work for good on saturday in what was essentially a long stint as a checkout chick (2.5 years). I am glad that i have finished that job however it probably wasn't as bad as i made it out to be. The money im sure will come in handy over the next little while.
This week i will have a few tasks ahead of me, the primary one being packing my bags! Ill have to find a list of some description and make sure ive got everything i need. The past few weeks ive been in ebay buying mode, getting difference things such as a laptop, camera, bag etc. Im hoping my International Youth Travel Card will arrive this week also as i sent away for it quite some time ago now, from what ive read it will be pretty useful. Another item i have to address is my CV for the UK and photocopying all my important documents i.e. passport, travel insurance etc. Well thats all i can think of for now, ill post again closer to our departure!
Catchya later,
Gad