Talking to Randoms

Hello All!

I'm working today... super last minute! But more on that later.

I've been back in London for a little over a week. My last couple days in Bozen were excellent, Magdalena and I hiked for about 5 hours, with 2 hours resting atop a 2,563m mountain! Was really beautiful. After Magdalena taking too many photos of me wandering the slopes, we drove back to her place for my final sudtyrolian dinner.

I'd brought some Australian wine to give Magdalena's parents - little did I know that they had bought me some Vin Santo and Cantuccini to say thanks for cooking them dinner! Was an excellent alcohol trade. After chatting to some randoms on the Monday, and buying some shoes (shopping in € is nicer than shopping in £!) and some local wines, I said some sad farewells and zipped off on a train - well, kind of zipped off - the trip took around 12 hours to get back to Lewisham. I did meet Paul, an Aussie who has been here about as long as I have - he talked almost as much as me (shock, horror)... well actually more so at times, so neither of us got much sleep on the bus or plane either. Will be kewl to get to know some more people from home, before all remnants of my accent disappear! (more on that later...)

So... since I've been back? I bumped into Seher while I was on the way to a Pizza Express dinner and then watched Much Ado About Nothing at the globe on Tuesday. I briefly met Shan's sister and her friends... not really the best venue to meet people! I reckon they'd know me from behind now though, after looking over my shoulder for the second half of the play. It was quite interesting - an all female cast(!). Supposedly the women had their revenge in the late 1600's and all-female productions were popular for a while immediately after the "only men can act" stage of history. The actors were good enough that you tended to forget that they were all women. (errr.. is "actor" a gender neutral term these days? I was explaining to the Magdalena's sudtirolian friends about the transition to "police officer" from "policeman/woman" etc... but is actress still actress???)

On Thursday last week we went to see Parkinson. He's on ITV now, and we were in a bigger ITV studio (we've been often enough to the south bank studios now that we have a "usual" theatre we go into!). He had some good guests - Dame Julie Andrews ("the hills are alive... with the sound of millipedes!"), Michael Palin, and Ant and Dec (a popular celebrity duo that present many prime-time TV shows here). We also saw Jools Holland and Tom Jones perform live... and Parkie is just so nice!

Friday I got a message from Shannon - I met up with Serena and directed him, his girlfriend Sylvia and her two friends to meet us at Tattershall Castle, a boat Lisa had introduced me to across from the London Eye and down the river from Westminister. We had a drink or two, then went and danced at Motion for a while. We finished off the evening at Balans, a late night cafe on Old Compton St. I got home after 3:30, and heard tonight that Shan and Sylvia didn't make it home till after 4!

Saturday was *really* quiet. Everyone was away! I had the house to myself for most of the weekend... which was - well, quite weird actually. I'm not used to too much quiet. Although the only change is that I don't feel guilty about not doing my dishes quickly!

I went for a walk on Sunday, to grab a coffee and get some fresh air. I sat outside my usual cafe (a gormet deli/cafe next to Blackheath station) for the first time. I actually ended up speaking to random people in London! It was a really nice change - almost as if sitting outside makes tons of difference. Perhaps people don't feel so intimidated as they do inside (which is much more squashy). I was talking to a couple who live in Blackheath whose son visited Australia a few years ago, and to a young doctor and his girlfriend who were looking to buy a property in the area. I was thinking about how the people around me matter more than the place I'm in, and I think if I'm able to carry over remnants of "lone backpacker travel conversationalism" back to London then that can only be a good thing - I mean, if I can speak to random couples in Bozen (haha I thought this couple were asking "can I borrow your seats" but instead they were asking "can I sit down") then why can't I keep doing it here? At times it's best to NOT do as the Romans do.

On Monday I went for a meeting with Lisa at Seyner Benson. It turns out they have tons of work available at the moment, so they were quite positive about the chance of me getting work for next week. So all this week I've been speaking to permanent IT employment agents, trying to find a position that I'm suited to. It turns out that I'm "overqualified" for graduate placements, but "underqualified" for positions with a couple of years experience required? It's quite frustrating! But I have a couple of agents to call back in the morning, so I'm remaining positive.

On the way into town on Monday, I spoke to another mad random. I met this Saudi Arabian guy at Lewisham station, and we were joined by another guy from Bangladesh. We all sat together on the train and heard the Saudi's life story! It was quite interesting... in summary, he was a young doctor in Saudi Arabia in 1979, and ran away to Britain via Kuwait, Basra, Baghdad, and (?)Spain. It turns out that a 10 year old prince had come to see him for treatment, and hadn't been happy, so complained. The complaints went all the way to my train friend's father, who told him to apologise to the prince. Supposedly not wanting to apologise was a good enough reason to flee. I thought this was an excellent story until the guy told me he hasn't spoken to his dad since. Errr... I'm sorry, but that's a pretty small thing to cause you to run away from your dad for 24 years! I did start telling him this (as semi-respectfully as I could, of course). I mean, his dad is 78! And supposedly very fit, but still... and when his dad came to visit him about 10 years ago, he went to Amsterdam for a few days! So I guess at least his dad has seen his own grandkids, even if not his son. I was feeling *very* worked up after this. I mean... argh... Pride is shit!

OK... back to me :-) I was supposed to call Lisa today to find out about work for Monday. I called at around 11, and she was on the phone, and gave me a call back at around 11:30. "Are you available to work the end of this week? Starting this afternoon?" she asked. I thought (arghhh shower shave iron dress wake-up travel eat think-talk-and-look-alive) but said "yes!". So I got ready in a semi-rush and zipped off to the foreign desk of the Sunday Telegraph! It's quite an interesting environment - Topaz and David opposite me discuss what foreign news articles will appear in this Sunday's paper, while I field calls from Iraq, Karachi (and less interestingly) Spain, Australia and America. I'll only be there until Saturday - yes, work on the weekend but after 3 months holiday it's nice to be productive. I really just want them to have a copy of Access so I can start optimising some business processes!!! But perhaps as a temp I'm not supposed to be so proactive! They do have an interesting UNIX (?) ncurses-style system that I can play around with, although it's a bit too mission-critical to be too adventurous.

So Seyner Benson... last time they said "do you want a job in 2 days?", this time "do you want a job in 2 hours?"... fabulous stuff!

And I had guests coming for dinner too! I had invited Shannon and Silvia over for dinner, and cooked for my housemates too. Lee and Phil helped out with much of the cleaning and setting up, and I cooked like a madman. We ended up having a real feast of (properly fried) pappadums and sauces, lamb rogan josh and chicken bhuna (err with some pineapple sauce?). With pilau and plan rice. Accompanied by the San Magdalena wine I had bought, and some Australian red. And then some icecream, cheesecake and coffee. And then some Vin Santo and Cantuccini! Consequently we are all very full and quite happy. (err perhaps why I'm writing too much at the moment!)

Hope you are all well. I'm working (yay! weird thing to celebrate but... yay!)

Posted by Sam at September 30, 2004 11:37 PM