arrivalintheuk

Arrival in the UK

2008 - 02-08

Well, it’s been a busy week since I got here. I have a UK bank account; I’ve been running around two very different areas of the city looking at flats; and in the meantime, even got some work done. It’s all good.

The London Eye, with Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament;

St. Paul's and "the Gherkin" (far right)

I’ve played a little hooky along the way as well. I slipped into the London Aquarium earlier in the week. Pretty uninspiring really. They have a couple of great habitats that are just poorly designed. They could be way better. Their small tanks, with the tropical fish are really nice though. It’s not bad, but not really worth the price.

On Thursday night, after looking at some places, I met a friend for dinner and we wandered around the north side of the river, trying to find someplace to have dinner. After dinner, as we were heading back to the train station, we ended up in Chinatown, and realized that it was Chinese New Year. It was pretty cool – some pictures are attached below.

A couple of images from China Town London

All that running around this week has had me on and off a lot of trains, and I have to say after the first week, I’m really impressed! I’ve been taking the train from Woking to Waterloo a lot. Maybe because Woking is a fairly major (assumption on my part) commuter suburb, but the trains are fast and frequent. During the day, trains show up every 5 to 15 minutes, and get me to Waterloo in about 30 minutes. It’s contributed significantly to me deciding to live in the city. In addition, they’re (so far) always on time. Today, the train was scheduled for 15:41. It arrived at 15:39, and left right at 15:41. I’m sure it’s not always like that, and no doubt in a few months I’ll be bitching about the train service, but for now I’m really impressed.

It seems that my travel schedule for work is about to kick off! Next week I get to (at least stop in) three new countries – Sweden, Estonia and Denmark – quite the week! Stockholm is only a layover for the flight to Estonia, but it’s a four hour layover, so I may try and pop into the city quickly. We’ll see. I’m in Tallinn, Estonia for a couple of days, and then off to Copenhagen where I have a presentation at a small conference. Very cool. There should be pictures…

And finally, tonight I think I may have found a place! I’m going to have an offer made on it anyway. It’s a little more money than I wanted to spend, but still within my budget. I don’t want to jinx it, so I am not going to say any more, until things are finalized.

Oh, and I booked a trip to Germany in March to see my friend Fraser. :-)

2008-02-06

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