Articles Tagged with: london

Glass Half Full

Mission accomplished : moved countries. Since early November, we’ve been camped out in various temporary apartments, hotel rooms, family fold-out couches and sky-beds. This week – finally – the transition is complete; lease signed, keys picked up, and a flat moved into. Life can move on, albeit with a small several-thousand-kilometre shift.

Was it hard? Not really. Would I do it again? Most certainly. Any of my apprehension about moving to London has disappeared amidst a smooth roll back into vfx work (Double Negative) after a successful writing break (major draft done, hardcore edit stage begun). That aside, it’s just great being here – back in a city with a decent enough population density that you can service, pretty much, your every whim when it comes to food / services / convenience / culture / technology / interconnectivity, and suddenly half my daily tech/online arsenal has just taken a major upgrade hit. It’s great being back in a city with one of my oldest, bestest friends. It’s great not only being excited about the future, but re-envigorated with the things I’m still going to be doing in the meantime while the master plan plays out. It’s great that both of us have landed gently on our feet (well, one at least, in the case of my metatarsally-challenged other half) and that it won’t be the case of one suffering in a homesick, whiny pit while the other shines and thrives. I love our new flat. I love the boris bikes. I hate the pessimistic media (which I’m avoiding most contact with like the plague) and hate that people don’t treat each other very politely as strangers here (and the shitty, over-priced, sometimes-horse-substituted meat produce). It’s not perfect, but it’s mostly ticks, not crosses, and certainly more ticks than Australia has been offering up for me these last couple of years.

It’s been hard to find that routine stride this week – not settled, trying to move house, waiting on internet connections – and avoiding actual writing/blogging in the interim. Logistics tend to win in any battle between “sorting out your shelter needs” and “piss-farting around with the written word”; mentally, more than anything. But having said that, it hasn’t been stressful. It’s mostly been smiles, excruciating muscle fatigue (back at the gym regularly after nearly two months) and perhaps a little bit of a finger-up quiet smugness that we made it, and it wasn’t as hard as all that.

Now…. where were we then?


Top 6 Things To Do To Stay Awake In London When Jet-Lag Has You By The Balls And You’re A Little Too Zombied To Go Out

1. Switch off the television, or anything serving up passive video

The only thing worse than enduring Australian freeview for so many years is arriving in London not being able to tune into and enjoy the BBC, my spanking-new Netflix account, or my long-overdue date with AppleTV now that I’m on decent broadband again, without nodding off in minutes. 

2. Turn off the heating – embrace the brass monkey

I still don’t truly get radiators. So mysterious. So few controls, so much that can apparently go wrong if you screw something up with the timing, sending the house into a tropical pseudo-daytime daze at 3am. If cryogenics is good enough for Austin Powers and Captain America, it’s good enough for me.

3. Surf the real estate porn (but not real porn)

Making lists of flats to check out in the morrow and filling bookmark folders with links to random 2-bedroom warehouse-reno’s in Shoreditch is much more constructive than spanking one out and invoking la petite mort. Sadly.

4. Curry

There isn’t a force on earth that can keep an eyelid open better than stuffing every last corner of your digestive system full of meat, chillies and garlic naan. Downside is the rectal hangover, but chances are you’ll still be constipated from the airline food, even after a couple of days, so you won’t need to worry about any of the curry fallout for a while yet.

5. Stop unconsciously doing the timezone conversion; gloat instead

Forget what time it is over there. If anything, replace time-awareness with brutal smugness. Sit on the Timeout iPad app, find music, food and theatre listings way more awesome (slash cheap) than would ever fly in Sydney, and brag about it to Aussies on Facebook. Find a window where you can see a bus route and set your watch by the ludicrous amount of them. Put those mental powers of calculation to better uses such as figuring out how many more beers you can buy with a twenty-note (both with or without conversion), then get back on Facebook and add a P.S. about it on your earlier thread. 

6. Blog about it

Working well so far. While it lasted. Oh god… what to do now… and it’s only just after nine…