city skyline, museum, duvets, lemon lime and bitters and a London survival kit

What do all these things have in common? They're all in this blog post!

There's a lot of information in it, some of it useful, some of it is just musings that may make you think that I like the look of my own typing. but I'm not going to apologise, because you can just skip the text and look at the photos if you like, or you can read on - it's your choice :D. I've also embedded a lot of links into words, so whenever you see blue text you can click on it for more info.

also, as always, the photographs on here are reduced in size and quality. if you'd like a larger (more suitable for printing off) version of any of them, just send us an e-mail and we'll send you the larger better version.

First up we had a few seconds of sun on the weekend so I took the opportunity to take some photos out the bedroom window. These are all shot standing in approximately the one spot, leaning out our window.



As you can see, We've got an excellent view of the city skyline. it's really a beautiful place view. the distinctive cone-shaped building is 30 st mary Axe. affectionately known as "the Gherkin" or occasionally "The Crystal Phallus" in parody of the Crystal Palace build during the world expo of 1851.

British Museum

Also on the weekend, Debbie and I went to the British Museum . here are some photos we took there:



The big chunk of rock at the start is the Rosetta stone possibly the most famous chunk of rock there is. Debbie took two photos of the great court and I made an attempt at joining them together to make a pseudo panoramic view, but it obviously doesn't do it justice. it's quite spectacular. there's a better photo on the wikipedia entry linked to the museum.

so in preparation for our new house, yesterday I went out and bought a Duvet:


for all you aussies who are curious, I'm going to tell you about my duvet buying experience. I know it sounds extremely mundane, but you always hear about the tourist destinations and attractions, and never about where to buy groceries and every day stuff. so here it is:

there's a company called Marks and Spencer who seem to be the British equivalent of Myer. so I caught the tube to Bond street and went to a nearby M&S. there are heaps of them around, but I'd never actually gotten off the tube at bond street before so I thought I'd give it a go this time. on the third floor there's a whole bedding section with marks and Spencer brand bedding mostly. all the Duvets (I had to force myself to start saying Duvet rather than Doona...) have "TOG" ratings to tell you how warm they are. basically it goes like this as per wikipedia: Lightweight summer duvet: 4.5 tog, Spring/Autumn weight duvet: 9.0 - 10.5 tog, Winter weight duvet: 12.0 - 13.5 tog. I bought a polyester "all seasons" set. which is one 4.5 and one 9 duvet. the idea is that in summer you use the 4.5, in Autumn and spring you use the 9 and winter you combine them to make 13.5 togs of snuggly goodness. of course, if you're Debbie and I, Debbie uses the 9 and I use the 4.5 for most of the year and we buy a second one for me when winter comes. the duvets were 7' by 8' and cost £85 and I also bought some pillows, bringing the total cost to £115. the Hungarian goose down ones were obviously quite a bit more expensive.

So then naturally I went down the escalators to pay. the checkout was quite a way from the doors and hidden behind racks of clothing. Normally in Australia, the checkout ladies either put your product in a bag or tape a bag to the outside of the box to say you've purchased the item. this lady said that they didn't have a bag big enough "is that ok?" and just handed me a receipt. on the way out I walked past two door guards who were chatting about something and didn't notice me at all, let alone check to see that I wasn't walking out of the store with stolen merchandise. Debbie also has had a similar experience when shopping for groceries. she had purchased her food and walked to the door. she expected the doorman to want to see inside her (very large) purse, and sort of asked expectantly "do you want to look in my bag". the guy gave her a strange look and said "why would I want to do that!?!" Debbie explained that the practice was common in Australia to reduce the amount of stolen goods and the guy indignantly explained back that "we're in the UK and we don't look in people's bags". it kind of shocks me really. we're used to people assuming that we're stealing something if we're carrying a backpack in a shop. Anyway, as I walked out of the marks and spencer, I could just picture people stealing duvets and selling them on the international bed linen black market... obviously in league with the cradle robbers who deal in smaller sheets and blankets.


Essentials guide to London

bear with me here:
Quite a while (years) ago I read a book on management that talked about the business boom in Japan in the aftermath of WWII. one of the western business experts commented to his japanese counterpart that he had noticed an oddity in people's learning curves. what he had noticed after long experience was that the initial learning or understanding would continue at a fast pace for a certain period and then plateau. then followed a period of no learning where the person would be seemingly unable to learn more about the particular subject. after this period learning would restart and continue at a faster pace than the initial curve. He had consistently recognised the the time taken to get to the second learning curve was approximately 3 years and wondered if the japanese guy had noticed anything similar. The japanese Business person said that he had definitely noticed something similar, although it was his theory that it took 7 years.

I've noticed the same thing continually. When taking on something new, there's a period where you absorb information quickly. then you hit a stage where you think you know it all. then after a while you need to get a bit humble, admit that you don't know it all and then the real learning will start. This is evidenced by teenagers knowing everything, university graduates knowing everything, people new to the workforce knowing everything, people who have just read a book on public speaking thinking they should become a professional public speaker, people who read a book on carpentry who then go and make a mess of their kitchen. I've also noticed it time and time again in my involvement in the hobby lockpicking community. within 6 months of my learning, I had aspirations to write a how-to (despite the plethora of guides out there already). a year after that I looked back, realised how little I knew and laughed at the other people new to the subject writing how-to's... a while back (years) , I also wrote a guide on how to write PL/SQL, which strangely enough was actually useful to the people that I was working with. this was well before I had even thought of getting my Oracle Certification. how little I knew.

The reason I explain all of this is, today I came to the realisation that I know everything there is to know about living in London and I should write a guide for those less fortunate individuals who would absolutely have no idea about how to survive here. After slapping myself in the face a couple of times, I complemented myself on recognising the learning plateau and resigned myself to wait for the second, more thorough curve.

I just thought you should know the reason why I'm not going to bore you with an "everything you ever need to know about london" essay.

However I will offer this:

Andrew and Debbie's London Essentials kit for those coming to London for a month or so:

These are the things that we found very useful or wish we had from the start. no condescending know-it-all guide stuff here, just a be prepared list.



A fold out Map of central London: Free from most hotel foyers.
This little map is very very good. it has clearly marked street names and points the way to good restaurants and theatres. there's a tube map on the back if you need it also. if you have nothing else, take this everywhere.

a Tube map: Free from any tube station
this pocket sized thing will be invaluable. it looks complicated at first, but it's really quite simple to follow. just know that sometimes it's faster to walk between stations than it is to catch a tube.

Oyster Card: this is the cheapest way to get around London on public transport. if you're going to be here for a week or more, get yourselves one of these. the basic Idea is you swipe your card across a reader at the start and end of your journey if you travel by tube and only at the start if you travel by bus. you can load up pay-as-you-go credit on it or you can buy a weekly for however many zones you will be traveling. the second option is better as you can travel as many times as you want within the zones you have chosen. 3 zones (from the centre of the city to balham where we will be living) is £27.60 for a week.

Bottled STILL water. 70p

Buy still water. if you're going to be walking lots, you'll want still water, not sparkling. sparkling water is far more popular over here than it is in Aus and they sell them side by side so it's easy to pick up the stomach cramp inducing sparkling water by accident.

A Prepaid Sim card: £5
We picked up two vodaphone sim cards. one of us pays £5 per month and we both get unlimited free calls to each others mobile. very very useful. Take your mobile from Australia. it will work over here - all you have to do is stick your sim card in and activate it. you can then buy extra credit whenever you want. lingo note: they call it a "top up" here, not a "recharge" as they do in australia. (same goes when you want to "top up" your expired oyster card.)

Camera:
so you can take embarrassing shots of yourself in the mirror.

GOOD walking shoes:
sure, you may look good in those high heels or trendy suede slip on's but you'll be hating them after a days walking around. sure, you may look like a tourist with your sneakers, fold-out map, camera around your neck, backpack on your back and bottled water, but that's because you are one. I recommend leaving 2-3 days worth of beard on your face for good measure. as an added advantage, you're less likely to get robbed because you look like a poor backpacker.

Tissues:
it's occasionally cold, windy and wet. just bring tissues (wet hand wipes would go down well also, although not essential).

breath mints:
after your complete english breakfast, you can walk around all day with your breath smelling like bacon or you can carry breath mints.

Mobile phone charger:
don't forget to bring this from Australia

Conversion plugs:
it's handy to buy one or two of these before you come, but you can also get them here so it's not that critical. if you want to keep using your phone and charging your camera, you'll need them eventually.

Notebook:
not so essential, but good to have

Pen:
a notebook is fairly useless without one of these.

an A to Z or something similar:
your fold out tourist map will only take you so far. if you want to go exploring outside the central area, you'll want an A to Z street directory. there are other brands with different formats and different sizes but I prefer this one. most of it is taken up by street names and only about 1/3 of it is actual maps, but if you need to find a street, it's either google maps or your trusty A to Z. I generally don't go out without it now.

a Debit card:
not essential, but very useful. it's a trivial thing to set up a UK bank account with HSBC before you come over, you can then transfer over however much money you want to spend and have a local debit card to use. they have different card readers over here and will often look at you funny when you give them an aussie credit card which doesn't have the electronic chip in it. HSBC will also extend you £500 credit and give you a credit card if you want that facility. try to get a card that hasn't had the numbers and name blacked out for my privacy.


hair Straighteners:
uh..... how did those get in there? Debbie insists they're an essential London Survival tool......

The Times:
all over the place in London, you'll find that people stand on corners and shove local newspapers in your face as you walk past. you'll also find that towards the end of the day a considerable fire hazard of these builds up on vacant seats in the tube. while they're mildly interesting if you want to find out what drug addicted singer Amy winehouse is up to or want to read about how the rolling stones (aren't they dead yet?) defied a smoking ban and lit up on stage at the millennium dome, these newspapers are absolutely worthless if you want to find out anything important about the world.

I highly recommend The Times as a good paper. at only 60p you'll get some good information about what's going on in the world of finance and banking and other dry, but important subjects. over the past few days, there's been quite a pithy commentary on the latest unfoldings of the sub-prime mortgage crisis that's hitting the financial industry etc.

that's it! this is pretty much all you need. although I forgot to include the photo of the backpack you need to carry it all in.


just as a random comment: no one knows what a lemon lime and bitters is here.... they look at you funny and say "what was that?" we've tried it about 3 or 4 times. the only luck we had was with a french barman who said "I haven't heard of it, but it sounds like you want lemonade, a fresh lime and juice with some bitters?" we nearly jumped for joy.

Nostalgia

Just some going away pics courtesy of mum and Dad :-D

We miss you guys!

Clouds, Property Searching and Richmond park

So it's only been cloudy twice this past week, 3 days the first time and 4 days the second time. I literally havn't seen the sun since before last time I blogged. This unfortunatly has lead to an anti-glut in the number of photos I've been taking. It's basically been wet, windy and cold. kind of like a Queensland winter but without the sun, colder and with some extra wind and something they call rain.

So the past week I've been tripping arround nearly the entirety of London looking at property from Kew to southgate, to mile end and bethnal green, poplar, colliers wood, tooting and Balham.

it's been exausting, but we've finally settled on a place in Balham which is just 2 stations south of where we're living at the moment. on the way I've spent many hours on the tube, and visited most of london. it's been fun and I think I know my way arround pretty well now. on the tuesday I visited a property in kew which was nice but unfurnished. I took the opportunity to have a quick peek at richmond park:



ok, so those photos are fairly boring, but I didn't go very far in. it's a very nice place to walk your dog, jog or ride your bike and there were heaps of people doing just that. when we get settled down we'll likely go and have a bit more of a look. the pictures above represent about a tenth of the actual park - it's massive, and has wild deer etc. very cool.

anyway - here's some piccies I took of the flat that we'll be living in while I was viewing it.
a decent sized kitchen:


living room (that won't have all that junk in it):


and bedroom:


there's obviously a bathroom also but it wasn't all that exciting to show.

in other news, Patrick stewart, (the guy who plays captain picard in star trek next generation and proffessor xavier in X-men) will be playing the lead role in live performances of macbeth from the second half of september until december! I am hoping I get a job by then so I can afford to go see it! (for those of you who don't know, patrick stewart is actually a classically trained actor and was performing on stages well before he became a TV star.) www.gielgud-theatre.com

It's cool stuff like this that is icing on the cake of living in London. :-)

hurry up and come over to visit!

A great day!

Today we had an excellent day!

So we started off with French toast, which I have been gradually perfecting over the past 3 weekends. I think I've got the hang of it now, so my promise is that anyone from Aus that comes over to stay with us, will get free french toast for breakfast :-)

So anyway, the highlight of our day was that our good friends Debs and Kenneth came to London to visit. They've been living in Leeds for the past 8 months or so and have been touring around Europe recently.

so what do 2 young couples do in London to pass the time?



After buying four of these, we went to the Notting Hill markets again for a bit to pass the time.

but then.....

yup! we saw our first Musical since coming here. it was absolutely Brilliant. having listened to the soundtrack before, I got excited when the songs I knew started up. The story line is different to what we expected, but we really loved it!! it was great not really knowing what it was going to be about. I highly recommend it to anyone who gets a chance to see it.

We saw the Matinee at 2:30 and got out at about 5:30 ish. the "half price ticket" booth had only 25% off for the tickets, but it was still cheaper and we got excellent seats in the stalls close to the stage.

Afterwards we went to Belgo again and I finally got a photo of the Mussels which I just had to get again:



here's some more photos:





it was absolutely great seeing good friends in this place where we don't know anyone :-) it was kind of sad to say goodbye at the end of the day.



in other news, we saw the Bourne Ultimatum last night - very very good. We loved the whole trilogy. it's like the anti-Bond.. Bond has his gadgets and his suave and you always know he's going to win, but with Bourne, there's no gadgetry, just Bourne. Very cool.

Rooter!

so we've successfully installed the wireless rou..rooter at the house we're staying at.

This means only one thing.......... Expensive phone calls between the UK and Aus are now a thing of the past as we can now skype!

E-mail us for when a good time is for you and we'll be online!

Clapham

We're here!!! it's pronounced "Clapum" of course.

it's so much nicer than our old place, the streets are cleaner, the people are friendlier, the sun shines that little bit brighter and the house! We're in the "attic" which is actually bigger than our room at our previous place. although it lacks a desk it makes up for it by having an ensuite.
oh, and WE HAVE A SHOWER!!!!!!!!! we have to switch on a pump to get the water up to the third floor, but by golly, IT'S A SHOWER!!!!

The couple that we're staying with have two children, one nearly 3yr old and another about 4 months. the downside is unfortunately that the shower pump is in the 4month old's room and so we have to time our showers to when the baby's awake so we don't disturb her with the noise of the pump.

the double bed we've been given is the spare bed because they "bought it, but it was too soft". and the duvet (I thought this was a fold out day bed until debbie translated "doona" for me) is extremely thick and warm.

The shops allong the high street are very cool, more coffee shops, a propper butchers and the Sainsburys (woolworths/coles equivelant) is far bigger. There's a whole wall of choice of bread and there's the normal selection of brands for everything else. the sainsburys in kennington only had 1 or 2 brand choices for each product. it's just a better place to live.

Saturday night we had a home made beef stew with the family and got to know them a bit better - they're a lovely couple, very like us in many ways, so we get along really well, and debbie of course was supurb at breaking the ice with the 3 year old girl, who warmed up to us very quickly.

last week while I stayed indoors mostly, I spent a lot of time whatching youtube videos on how to cook different food, so sunday morning I tried my hand at french toast. it's really very easy and it's not all that decedant either, it's just eggs and toast really. and so everyone had a couple of slices each. very tasty.

So today (monday) I've bought a headset and microphone and a wireless router (they pronounce it "rooter" here, I've got to force myself to say it this way...) so we should be able to start skyping sometime soon which will be good, because I spent £10 on my last call to Australia!

Job search is comming allong nicely, Got two applications processing. Apparently it's a little bit slow this time of year because people go away on holidays and are hard to get a hold of. Not desperate yet though so I'll bide my time and keep exploring this amazing city.

My advice for people comming here, if you're not on a tight deadline to go see all the standard touristy stuff, just spend a couple of hours walking down side streets and alleyways, there's Amazing little coffee shops and quaint little resturants all over the place that actually make good coffee and cheap, high quality food.

I'm recovering very quickly from last weeks bug. I've got the vast majority of my energy and at least as much appetite back.

I think tomorrow I'll go check out Richmond.

Keep sending us e-mails! we really appreciate the contact!

it's the small things

I'd have to say, dispite the fact that London has 10 million people and that it's one of the world's global financial centres and was the heart of the entire british empire for however many years, one tends to expect big and grand wonders so much that when something small and unusual comes allong it jumps out at you more than any great marvel of human achievment.

case in point: Warning signs in Australia generally are constructed either in a positive light as in at the train stations "behind the line is fine" or they try to persuade people by fines "stay off the tracks or it's a $150 fine" or occasionally similarly to "Warning, high voltage present" or in extreme circumstances, "warning, danger of injury".

In London however, dispite the fact that at every tube station there's a nice lady's voice politely asking everyone to please "mind the gap" between the train and the platform, the British certainly don't pull any punches if something is really dangerous:


The above sign works it's greatest effect of course if said out aloud in a deep, suspense building movie-commentary voice. "what is the one force in the universe that could possibly prevent our hero from crossing over that barbed wire fence? that's right, it's the....... DANGER OF DEATH".

anyway, it made me laugh and it's now a recurring joke between Debbie and myself.

So I've been mostly bedridden this week - I've had a fever and completely lost my appetite. on wednesday I went to a walk in medical centre and they gave me some antibiotics (would rather not post details on the web, but it's a 7 day course of Cefalexin if you were wondering Jill).

Tomorrow we move to the our next homestay place in Clapham. I sincerely hope debbie posts something about her week on the blog, but I've given up nagging her about it. She's getting better at using the Web as a result of her job though - it's very cool to see.

no more photos unfortunately this week as I've mostly been a bedridden recluse and debbie's been at work. hopefully we'll get the video thing sorted out soon.

The Biggest, Hugest Chocolate Croissants I've Ever Seen!

Well I had to take this photo for you Naomi because I know how much you love Chocolate Croissants. They were piled up at a little store at the Notting Hill markets on Portobello Road. Unfortunately I didn't buy one as I'm trying to dodge the "Heathrow Injection" which is a joke around here about women putting on weight as soon as they come to London. I guess I'll stick to eating fruit. Don't they look yummy though..........

Marketability

Marketability n. Pertaining to the skill with which a person can manouver through the crowds congregating around weekend street stalls.

So today we went to the Notting hill markets in the north west. Very cool, lots of overpriced "antiques" and other useless junk.

beautiful area though - we're going to have a wishfull look on the net tonight to see the house prices :-).

anyway, unintentionally on the way there, we came accross this quaint building:


apon closer inspection, revealed this:


Very cool. although I didn't feel like it was 1984 in this suburb. very open, very green, lots of trees and friendly unhurried people that stopped walking directly in your path and then start off again just as you start to walk arround them......

it was a lovely day really - very very hot in the sun, absolutely no cloud in the sky here's the main street:


I have an anouncement: I have found the sole cafe in london that makes good coffee.
A Very trendy place called apostrophe, with funky seats, nicely designed space inside, bright and cheery at the front and intimate and dim towards the back of the store. Exactly the way a coffee shop should be. the coffee was near perfect. 9/10 really, the only reason I don't give it a 10 was because they served my Latte in a cappacino cup. The clincher that prooves that it's a good place is that it's right next door to a starbucks and yet still is mostly full. Not that it's all that hard to make better coffee than starbucks, but it just goes to show that local stores can still triumph over american mass produced coffee flavoured swill. Two Thumbs Up!


I've also come to a couple of conclusions after a week of being here:

1. Native English speakers are in a minority (americans don't count)
2. people born in England don't work in shops.

Even at the markets today I was extremely hard pressed to hear a british accent. italian, eastern european, japanese even, but not one English. We're living with a polish couple and an indian lady in a house owned by a turkish guy. all resturants are owned by the italians or french and all waitresses are from the chech republic, sovakia or Belgium.

on another note, I went into Burger king today for brunch.... I wanted to order an aussie burger but realised that they didn't have one. :( closest thing was really an "Angus" which came out drowning in BBQ sauce and I literally had to go up to the counter and ask the check out lady where the bacon was.... the burgers may be better at Hungry Jacks, but they certainly aren't at burger king.

At the end of the day unfortunately I had to walk fast to get home in time to go to the toilet. guess it was God's way of beating it into me not to eat Burger king.

prior to that however, we once again hit Oxford street in search of a shirt for debbie, found one that she liked finally (after 2.5hrs of standing arround yesterday) yay!

oh - I forgot to mention. Yesterday we went and had lunch at canary warf. it's very very nice. I ordered a "pint of coke" which was really weird. Canary warf reminded us of brisbane, it's more open, the people seem freindlier there's water and parks and tall, new buildings. I wanted to go check it out because the jobs that I apply for are usually in the square mile of London city or in canary warf. I infinately prefer canary warf and even if it means I have to change trains and take 40 mins to get into work, it would be worth it for the sake of my mental health. the whole place is newer and cleaner nicer with a cool shopping mall and nice cafe's dotted all over the place.

here's where we had lunch (click)

No photos there unfortunately, I got sick of carrying arround a backpack all the time. nevermind, when I'm working there, earning 600 pounds a day, I'll take some photos and post them ;-)

Debbie has something to say!!!

Yes, it's what you've all been waiting for. I thought I would save this exciting moment for something really exciting........like...........I HAVE A JOB!!!



So here is how the story goes.........I met with a wonderful company 1st Contact, which Andrew has adequately explained to you about (thanks Kath so much!). They set me up with a Recruitment Agency on Tuesday 31 July. They interviewed me and ran a few tests like Excel, Word, Power Point and my typing speed. All of which I was pretty pleased with the results. Then they would give me a call if they had anything.

So by Wednesday, 3 long whole days (the inpatient perfectionist coming out now) of applying for jobs and recruitment agencies who just say "send us your CV and we will get back to you. There is no need to call us" Yeah right! I became a bit discouraged :( Being unemployed was becoming harder to cope with. Well after praying to God for help that night, I woke on Thursday with a brilliant idea.

I scanned my emails and saw that a recruitment agency asked when I arrive in London to give them a call to register with them. HALLELUJAH!!! So I gave them a call and met them in the afternoon. They tested me again on my skills - a spelling one this time and Stefan I got 27 out of 30! Amazing hey! Then we had a bit of a chat and they offered me a contract (2 weeks in one department and 3 months in another department leading to full time if I wish and am suitable) with a brother type recruitment agency of theirs. THANK YOU GOD. It's in Piccadilly and is 9am-6 pm Monday to Friday. It's paying 12 pound per hours which is in the higher end for my qualifications. I checked out their website and they seem to have a very fun/work hard and be rewarded work culture with Friday drinks and an overseas holiday each year for their staff :) Anyway I won't get too carried away....I haven't started yet.



So the London life is looking up. Catching public transport is so easy as they come every few minutes. Yesterday we waited 4 minuties....that's been the longest we have ever had to wait so far. The tube is really stuffy and yesterday we were stuffed in like sardines in a tin. Lucky I had a handsome fella beside me (Andrew of course) who I could lean on. Since arriving in London, things have changed between Andrew and I. Like he now wins at scissor paper rock. And he wants to go out and spend money and I want to save every penny (literally). I have been coming out with wierd sayings like "Andrew isn't it cool how the land floats on water" (during our plane flight) and last night at dinner eating lobster "this must be a crab claw, lobsters don't have claws, do they?" Oh dear......all this new information and job stress has cooked my brain. Oh well.

Anyway I think I will stop there. Thanks for reading. I will write some more...I promise...Enjoy some more photos :)

Mussels!!!

Mussels...Mussels...Mussels...Mussels...Mussels...Mussels...Mussels...Mussels...Mussels...Mussels...
Mussels...Mussels...Mussels...Mussels...Mussels...Mussels...Mussels...Mussels...Mussels...Mussels...
Mussels...Mussels...Mussels...Mussels...Mussels...Mussels...Mussels...Mussels...Mussels...Mussels...
Mussels...Mussels...Mussels...Mussels...Mussels...Mussels...Mussels...Mussels...Mussels...Mussels...
Mussels...Mussels...Mussels...Mussels...Mussels...Mussels...Mussels...Mussels...Mussels...Mussels...

I just ate a 1kg pot of Mussels!!!!

http://www.belgo-restaurants.com/

yes, a 1kg pot of mussels (including of course the shells, although I didn't eat them also).

oh, and by the way, debbie is about to post.....

drumroll................

Hyde park

So we thought we'd spend the day at beautiful hyde park!

It was lovely, very sunny, very green and grassy, lots of stupid englishmen joining the mad dogs in the midday sun trying to get burnt as quickly as possible.

unfortunately, although we took a camera, we neglected to put the battery back in it from charging it the previous night so no photos.

we got ripped off with by an icecream dude - 1.80 for an icecream cone and about a tablespoon of icecream..... We saw our first squirrel, and our second and our third. I don't think they'll ever not be cute!

We thought about doing the London eye, but thought that it could be our reward for getting a job. we also thought about going out to dinner, but as soon as we came home debbie fell asleep until about 6:30.

I don't know if I've mentioned it, but the sun stays up until about 9:30ish! so I walked to the shop in broad daylight at about 7:00pm last night to get stuff for a stirfry. I guess every silver lining has a cloud, so I don't care to think about what winter will be like.

Anyway, back to the job search