Wednesday 23 March 2011

Beer (the mandatory intoxicated post)


I love that every time I go to write a new entry I have to read back on my last one to check where I ended. Basically because my days/hours/minutes/whatever are still SO long, everything feels like an eternity ago. Especially when you’ve had as much beer as I have haaa
Buuut, that’s because I have reason to celebrate! I HAVE A JOB IN LONDON ... AND I AM MOVING TO LONDON TOMORROW. Yes, yes I am!!
So I posted my last entry on Saturday, and it is now the early hours of Thursday, and I should be sleeping as I’m working tonight (!?) but I appear to be back to my old self that only requires 4-5 hours a sleep in order to be buzzing around, so that’s fine. And my body now associates train rides with sleep so I can guarantee within ten minutes of sitting on board tomorrow I’ll be ouuuut to it, fantastic. It’s kind of like how people rock babies to get them to sleep, but the adult version? (beer brain)
So on Sunday I had had just the perfect lack of sleep to wake up wanting more which was the ideal way to be before facing a five hour bus ride with an iPod you just killed by unplugging it whilst it was reformatting. And even if I wasn’t exhausted the English countryside is boring enough to make anyone pass out for a good few hours or so.
I literally woke up just as we were entering the greater London district and it was a pretty sweet part of the bus ride to be honest (not that I can speak for the rest of it). We went past all the famous bits and pieces such as Buckingham Palace and Hyde Park and other such statues and buildings and what not that I suppose I will have to go and have a look at now that I’ll be living there!
So I sat there half gaping out the window, half studying my map of the London underground so that I could tackle it like a pro this time, which I so did by the way. The tube fascinates me; it is the ultimate of social awkwardness. Whenever I’m in crowded places I love looking everywhere and anywhere, studying people/buildings/billboards/cars, you name it I will want to pick out every detail from it. So obviously in the case of the underground people are the subjects of my staring. I made eye contact with SO many people, and while they may have reacted perfectly normally (perhaps even smiled, stranger things have happened) before getting onto the tube, the minute they’re onboard it’s like bam, personal bubble the size of the entire carriage. A personal bubble that I do my very best to burst through while closely examining the extreme effort people put into avoiding any form of eye or physical contact with anyone for the entire ride, all while trying to get some form of reaction out of them during this examination process. It would be so much easier to accept the fact that there is someone two inches away from your face, and that if you’d simply acknowledge their existence the journey could be somewhat less strained, but no, the tricks people have learnt to avoid the reality of other people in extreme close proximity to themselves on public transport is simply amazing.
Drunken tube rant over.
So the rest of my afternoon was taken up by finding the backpackers I was staying in (easily, might I add) and wandering around, taking various photos of things and people, enjoying the fact it was actually kind of warm outside and waiting to meet up with Sophie for a drink. Being in the company of someone else from New Zealand was actually the best thing ever. I’d never seen myself as the “I love New Zealand and everything New Zealand related” type, but yeah, it really was good. We agreed on simple yet life changing matters such as the fact that London has a severe shortage of public toilets and rubbish bins. I asked Naomi about potential reasons why these shortages occur tonight actually, the rubbish bin thing is apparently due to people trying to blow the English up through the means of homemade bombs placed inside of them, and the public toilets because George Michael kept getting caught committing lewd acts in them (hahah)
So then I awoke in my dorm and it was time to get ready for my interviews, argh. Naomi had leant me a nice, corporate yet stylish (her description, not mine) dress for me to wear (because god knows I don’t own anything that fits that bill) which was an absolute nightmare to get into. The French guy in the same room as me wearing a t-shirt that said “I love cannabis” on it had to do the buttons up on the back of it for me because I couldn’t reach. He must have been like whaaat the fuck haha. He really was a last resort though; desperate times call for desperate measures. I then cranked the hair straighteners for the first time in the UK, and applied a real face of makeup, and felt horribly unlike myself for 9 o clock in the morning.
Catching the tube in peak business people tube catching time, dressed like every other peak time tube catching business person was off the planet weird (ha). I kept catching my reflection in the window like WHO ARE YOU. I hated it.
I also hated my first interview at vanity studios because the guy was such a knob. They’d selected four people from the applications and made a bit of a deal about what a privilege it was to be selected for an interview ( ha, whatever), a privilege I would have been more than happy to do without. He started asking me general questions etc, looked at my CV for what surely must’ve been a good tenth time, and then said “I don’t like creative people, they’re too flakey”. Um cool? So you wasted my time calling me in for an interview because? Good call on the flakey thing though, maybe I am a bit, but at least my head isn’t stuck up my own arse like his was and it confirmed my initial impression of the establishment which was that was I’d rather chew my own hand off then work in such a pretentious place.
So I made my lucky escape then went off to public transport my way to my next interview in Chelsea.  I also purchased myself an oyster card, like a real Londoner or something, fucking sweet. Means there aren’t no paper tickets for my clumsy self to rip up before getting to use them, and perhaps I’ll be the person helping out the idiot foreigners from now on (ha, highly unlikely, I am that foreigner and more)
Chelsea is CRAZY rich, like craaaaaaazy rich. I was scared to walk on the footpath in case I broke it. I parked myself in Starbucks (as much as I usually detest Starbucks) as it was probably going to be the only thing I could afford before waiting on my interview at the Hollywood Arms.
So that interview went super well (obviously, as I did get the job). The manager is Australian and has only been here five weeks himself, so I feel as though we clicked on this “what is up with England?” level.  He also didn’t seem to care about my nose piercing, or tattoo (always a bonus) so I felt justifiably good after leaving that one.
My third interview was in Shoreditch, East London. COOLEST suburb. I have a few good photos from there that I need to figure out how to get off my camera, so again, I won’t destroy its charm by attempting to describe it myself. I would love to live there though, so much. You will get to see why when I sort my shit out and post some photos.
The interview itself was the scariest wakeup call of my life. It was in a proper office building, for a proper marketing/advertising company, where everyone walked around in heels pretending to be important. I sat there looking, but not feeling the part, while apparently responding to her questions with the answers they were looking for as they offered me a second interview after a trial day (via email afterwards), but I declined. It was like, the beginning of an actual career, a career that I’m most definitely not ready for nor interested in, especially at this point in my life. I potentially would be pretty mint at marketing after making up that shit about the knife with the stainless steel handle when I worked in Stevens “See, because the handle is also stainless steel like the blade the weight is more balanced therefore making a smoother more effortless cut” (ha, what the fuck? People loved it though) Too bad I only did that to entertain myself, not because I had any interest in upping the sales in knives with stainless steel handles.
I then hung out with Caroline at Euston Station while waiting for my train, still in my office get up (yuck). We drank lots of red wine and ate sushi with the most extravagant packaging ever and talked about lots of things – London, life, life in London to name a few. It was amazing. It was also amazing being drunk on the train ride home because I fell asleep in record time and couldn’t stew over the days’ events too much.
Tuesday was probably the lowest day I have had in a LONG time, therefore the lowest day I’ve had since arriving by far. The reality of how trying it really is to find a job hit me, so hard, and I started on this negative train of thought which proved impossible to get out of until way later in the afternoon. It started with me declining the trial and second interview for the marketing job, which I totally don’t regret now, but I did a little as the day went on because I started to convince myself that I wasn’t going to be offered anything else. I spent HOURS refreshing my gmail account every five minutes, waiting to hear back (from the bar job especially) and applying for anything and everything on gumtree.co.uk. Then I’d stupidly expect to hear back within half an hour, and when I didn’t, I’d plunge more into this depressing “I can’t last here” frame of mind.
I’ve never had any issues finding a job, ever (I think that’s more a reflection on how lucky I’ve been, not because I’m the most employable person ever haha) so it was this horrible reality check that I wasn’t quite ready for. That combined with the fact that I’m in a new country, where I barely know anyone, have limited funds which I really don’t want to have to chew through, don’t have a bank account or anything that means I’m remotely ‘settled’ here (not that I want to be settled anywhere actually, but at the time this struck me as being particularly important) and then I felt like I was starting to lose sight on why I’m even here (good thing to ponder over actually, why am I here?) and yeah, horrible downward spiral to be stuck in for that half a day or so (that sounds like nothing actually, but it didn’t seem like that at the time) So at about three pm I finally dragged myself away from my laptop and out of the house (where it was SO nice and warm, like, ACTUALLY warm, amazing) where I got a call from a place that wanted to interview me! Then I decided to go on a mind-cleansing run, which may sound refreshing, but in my case this involves running for at least 90 minutes to the point where you’re so physically exhausted you can barely stand, or breathe, or function. It’s sick, but incredible, and your entire body is in absolute agony and you feel so ridiculously drained, yet so alive, for the rest of the day. Then I got drunk off red wine and vodka. The only way to end such a hellish day.  I also booked my train ticket back to London for midday today in a slightly drunken haze, some kind of premonition perhaps? (hahaha as if, I just knew it was necessary)
So I woke up on Wednesday morning and told Naomi that I was NOT allowed to sit on my laptop all day waiting for something to pop up in my Gmail account, and we decided we were going to make the most of the glorious weather and go on a picnic somewhere and play with a Frisbee or something. Then I said, ok, before we go out I’m going to check my emails ONCE and once only. And thank god I did because I got an email from the Chelsea bar job wanting to hire me!! I was SO HAPPY, I was literally bouncing around the house screaming because I was so excited and relieved. Hence the facebook status with the million exclamation marks. Then we drank lots of Malibu, even though it was only ten in the morning.
Then we went out for lunch with Jan and Naomi’s brothers’ wife and baby (that I was so awkward around -to be expected) and drank lots of beer.
Then I got home and checked my emails and three more job interview offers (which I took, just in case?)
Then we went to the pub with a friend of Naomi’s who has the sickest van. I’ve always had a burning desire to buy a van and travel around and sleep in it and be a bum and visit every surf beach possible and have no responsibilities whatsoever. Anyway, upon arrival we drank a lot more beer.
So my alcohol intake for the day has well surpassed my food intake, so I’m feeling dizzy as fuuuuck.
And now I’m here, and it’s 2am, and I’m MOVING TO LONDON TOMORROW.

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