Friday, August 12, 2011
Room of fresh flowers.
So... London.
I never thought I'd end up working here. But life has a weird way of twisting and turning in entirely unexpected directions.
I have no idea what's in store for me in this big busy city. I can only hope that it will lead to something great, and wonderful.
On Arrival...
My flight was very enjoyable, as usual. This time, I had all four seats in the middle row all to myself, and sprawled across them as if I owned the plane - much to the envy of my fellow passengers, I'm sure.
Immigration, however, complicated things by sending me to "Health Control", where an officer tried to make it impossible for me to enter the country by demanding copies of my chest x-ray.
Me: "What chest x-ray?"
Officer: "To check for TB."
Me: "It was not a requirement to apply for my visa."
Officer: "But it's a condition of entry."
Me: "I wasn't told of this... Is it a new requirement?"
Officer: "It's been a requirement for 42 years."
42 years? Really?! After asking the lawyer who helped me with my visa application and a couple of wasted minutes on the UK Border Agency website trying to hunt down this elusive requirement, it remains... elusive. I guess I shall just wait for the letter from Dear Officer telling me to get a chest x-ray, and then think of a zillion different ways to resist it (or get it for free).
Bother.
Ride away
I booked a car service to take me to my new (temporary) home. This turned out to be an extremely wise decision that cost me 55 pounds - as opposed to the 90 pounds if I took a Black Cab, or the 9 pounds if I took a coach with a 40 minute wait at Victoria Coach Station, or the less-than-9 pounds if I took a 1 hour 30 minute ride on the tube with 4 heavy bags and risk developing suicidal thoughts.
Cab driver was a nice Sri Lankan fellow called Vijay, whose grandmother turned out to be from Malaysia. He gave me a tour of the city as we passed by various famous sights, and was so enthusiastic that I pretended to be a first-timer to London just to avoid taking the steam out of his sails ;D
On arrival, I accidentally overpaid him 20 pounds. He very kindly returned the money, and then helped carry my luggage all the way into the house ("I help because you so nice, wanted to tip me 20 pounds *grin*").
New Place
Stratford, where I will be living for the next couple of months, is an unexpected delight. I knew nothing of it except that it is the site of the 2012 London Olympics, so I was expecting somewhere full of concrete and construction.
Rather, I found a busy community that is completely multi-racial and multi-cultural. Almost every second person I see on the street is non-white, and it would be foolish to assume that when someone opens their mouth to speak, it would be in English. I've not been surrounded by so many different languages/dialects in one place!
The town itself is full of curiosities. There is a church next to a sauna, and a school for the deaf. Walking past a small roadside market leading to Stratford station, I saw a white man wearing a white apron around his stodgy belly who sells "halal lollies". Inside the shopping complex, there are random fruit and vegetable stalls lighted with yellow lightbulbs, selling everything from kiwis to breadfruit and something called "ca ca" (which looks like a green guava with a deep cleft down one side).
There's also a shop that invites you to "Eat Well",
a rather unfortunately named "Jerk Centre" (selling jerky, I presume)
and a pub that proclaims itself the "Birthplace of Iron Maiden" (although a quick google search reveals no connection of that sort).
And yes, these are all on the same small road a couple of stores away from each other. (Sorry for the non-great quality of the pictures, blame the mobile phone).
Home for the next 3 months.
The townhouse I'm living in is on a quiet, leafy, residential street. My landlady, Patricia, has taken 2 days off to redo her roof (which involves extremely dangerous stunts such as climbing onto the roof through a neighbour's window and gas-burning tar and sawing wood and exposing live wires and cutting insulation). Not sure how someone as thin and slender as her manages (she's a doctor by day :P)!
Patricia also likes to house visiting tourists (she offers them accommodation in return for help around the house), so there's an endless flow of people in the house. At the moment, there's an Australian girl on her GAP year who is flying off to volunteer at an orphanage in Uganda tomorrow. The other house mate, Rachel, is an English doctor who is also moving to Uganda after having earned enough in London for her to "work for free". Surely Uganda is not such a common destination! But tonight, we have 2 Uganda-bound persons under the same roof.
Street view.
View from my room
My room.
Well, it's getting late and I should go to bed now. I hope all goes well for me from here!
(As opposed to last night, when I tried to get into the toilet without my glasses on, pushed the door in the wrong direction, and promptly BROKE the freakin' door. Never knew I was that strong?! Luckily Patricia didn't banish me from the house for disabling the toilet door on my first night .)