Mind the gap...

Greeting Floggers

Sorry I’ve been slack with blogging…definitely not slack with bogging though! I-thank you J
Anyways - it has been a crazy couple of weeks so let me fill you.

LOVE

• Kristy is coming! Yay. Next Tuesday, my friend Kristy will arrive as our first guest at the Clapham residence! She has been frolicking in the European sunshine for the past weeks. We are planning a day trip to Brighton for next Friday. I can’t wait to actually have a friend! Gosh - how sad does that sound! Lol.
• I’m lunching with my friend Michelle on Saturday. Ela and I stayed with her in Epsom when we were here last yr so it will be great to catch up with her and of course see her lil baby, Ethan. Friends all around me this week! Yeyah!! Ha.
• I got my hair done. Feel so fresh and clean. After not being able to shower (see Hate No. 3) it was so good have a good hair scrub - cut and colour. And the best part was that the hairdresser is directly across the road from our apartment. Best.
• Our boxes arrived…not without a hassle of course. See Hate No.1
• I’ve been working as a temp and now have a permanent job. I finished temping with the FA in the legal department last Friday and had an interview for a permanent role at the FA the following Tuesday. I start my new role on Monday so it’s been nice having the week off! I’ll be working in the MarComms function of the FA but primarily with Communications (there are about 8 press officers) and Marketing. I’ll also be working on game days (once they start). Definitely a exciting opportunity and hopefully open the door to other roles around the place. I’ve still got my lil agency friends working over-time to find a specific role for me…but for now, I’m happy and relieved I’ll have permanent work! The role is only 3days a week so I’ll be able to take up another unit at uni and hopefully knock it over quicker than expected. Quite convenient actually.
• We’ve got internet. So I’m feeling quite connected with everybody so expect a lot more emails, face book stalking and maybe some skype dates (if your lucky!).
• I’ve been playing football. I’ve had a few trials with a local team and Chris and I go down to the Common some nights to have a kick. It’s good to be active.
• We’ve booked our tickets to Rome to go see my Uncle. We leave in 2wks today actually. Woohoo…can’t wait! Bring on the wine, pizza, pasta and all things Italian J
• Chris and I have our first Olympic test event coming up. The Badminton World Champs. Ha! Chris and I will both be working at the event - testing out our staff and practicing for the big thing next year. We are very excited about it!
　 　

Hate

• DHL=HaTe. Nothing is easy in London. Chris took the Monday off work to make sure he was home for DHL delivery of the boxes. We were expecting them to deliver by about 11am so when 11.02am ticked over, Chris promptly rang up DHL to see what was going off. Chris was told that delivery of our boxes wouldn’t be occurring today because the dumb woman who I spoke to on Friday sent the email about re-delivery too late on Friday night. They accepted that this was there fault and that they would re-arrange for delivery the next day. Well that’s all well and great customer service BUT Chris took the flippin day off so he could be home for delivery and we can’t keep doing that. Anyways…Chris had to go down to the depot himself and collect the boxes and bring them home in a mini-cab. FAIL. Since then, we’ve sent several complaints to both Pack’n’Send and DHL so watch this space…..
• Rain. So I know in my last blog I was raving about how hot it’s been. Well obviously the weather man is a follower of my blog and decided to fuck things up. He did a good job! Sigh. It’s been raining for at least 4days now. Now I don’t want to whinge too much coz I signed up for this…but seriously. Shoes made in Australia were not built to handle rain. I’m getting use to have soggy shoes and feet. Gross. Rant over!
• And when you’ve been out in the rain all day…one thing you’d like to do is come home and have a nice looonnnggg HOT shower. Not in our apartment. Yup, our hot water is still broken. We worked it out that out of the 21days we’ve been in our apartment, we’ve had 14days with no hot water. Lame. They are meant to be replacing the whole thing tomorrow so hopefully I’ll have some good news to report over the coming days (Don’t tell Kristy!!). Don’t worry I’ve still been washing, just with a bit more effort than normal - we have to carry the water buckets from the kitchen to the bathroom so we can bath. I must admit, I’m getting use to it!

That’s about all I’ve got to report. It looks as if the loves are out-weighing the hates at this stage. Woohoo!

Chris is doing well (in case you were wondering). He’s still enjoying his job and of course loves having me around because I’m the best. We’ve been watching heaps of the Tour seeing as it’s on at a reasonable time over here not like back home. Definitely been some interesting stages and massive achievement for Cadel - woohoo.

Anyways - email me and tell me what you’ve been up to! I know some of you are up to no-good. Ha.

Mind the gap…
Kate xxx

Bit of love...bit of hate

Greetings family and friends,

Another blog update for you to enjoy!

LOVE

It's been a good week in ol' London town, for a couple of reasons.

1. It’s been sunny and flippin hot. London’s summer finally hit this week with temperatures soaring into the high 20s and even hit 30. We took full advantage of the warm weather last weekend and had a BBQ with Mike and Paulina in the common grounds near their place. We bought a cheap disposable barbeque for 3pound from Tesco and cooked up a storm. We also bought a football - so as well as getting some much needed vitamin D, we also got some exercise!
2. I finally got employed! It may only be a temp position but it’s likely something permanent will come about afterwards. I hope so, anyways! As of Monday 4 July, I will be working at the FA in their Legal department as a legal administrator. Yup, same place as Chris but totally different areas and apparently my team is on the other side of the stadium so we will probably only see each other at lunchtime! Oh yeah, lunch time dates in the cafeteria! I also landed a job with London Olympic Games Organising Committee - thanks to Chris. I’ll be a Doping Control Station Manager. I had a full day workshop on Friday to meet other DCSMs and also get a briefing of the role. Essentially, the role manages the entire doping control station at a given venue. My venue is Wembley Park which will showcase the Badminton and Gymnastics. I’m pretty excited about it and it’s an awesome opportunity. Chris is also a DCSM and we will be working shift work at Wembley Park over the course of the Olympics.
3. We moved into our own apartment! Whilst it was awesome living with Mike and Paulina for the last couple of weeks, they were great hosts and I hope we weren’t too much of a burden for them! It’s great to have our own place and be able to properly unpack my 15 pairs of shoes, 8 hand bags, 12 dresses, hair dryer, hair straightened!! Haha…you know! You’ll be please to know Chris has 1 drawer in our closet and a couple of hanging spaces. Oops…he doesn’t know what I put in the shipping boxes either. I’d say we’ll be buying another closet soon!
4. We got a TV! Yay. We have been without a TV for about 3 days which has forced us to talk to each other (lame!) and play some cards! We’ve been to the pub a couple of times and also found this AMAZING Italian restaurant which makes the best pizzas ever. It feels like we are in Italy when we go in there - with their funny language and such! Sorry Ela!! J

HATE

With all love, there must be some hates!

1. All was going well in our new place until…on Day 2, Chris got up to go to work and there was no hot water. FML. So the last two days I’ve been forced to fill up a bucket of hot water from the kitchen sink, take it into the bath, and bathe myself like we are living in the 60s. It actually sucks. The plumber and agent are coming out today to fix it so I’ve booked in for a long soaking bath tonight!
2. We live next door to a army cadet training base. Whilst we feel very safe and protected, there morning chants and continuous marching kinda gets a bit annoying. It was a novelty watching them march at first, but now it annoys me!
3. PEOPLE. So many PEOPLE. For my LOCOG workshop I had to catch the train to Canary Wharf - it’s where all the big banks are and lots of money in this area. The train ride was only 10 minutes but seriously…stinky, fat, ugly, stinky, stinky people on the train…in hundreds! There were so many people I felt like Where’s Wally. Sigh. Such a far cry from the quiet streets of the Berra!
4. DHL. We have two boxes of our personal stuff coming over by freight. We used a local company, Pack’n’Send as our provider to deliver door to door. Anyways, early in the week, DHL informed us that UK Customs had contained our boxes and DHL didn’t know when delivery would be because it all depended on when Customs released the boxes. This was all fine. A couple of days later, I rang them back to see if they had heard anything from Customs. Negative. On Thursday, I get a card from DHL saying they tried to deliver our boxes but missed us. Sigh. So I rang DHL and gave them a blasting because the instructions were to call us with a deliver time so we’d be home. After my rant, the mole asked if I wanted a re-delivery. Of course I did - and advised that either after work or on a Saturday would be great. NEGATIVE. DHL only deliver from 9-5, Monday to Friday. WTF. Seriously. Then she said…oh but you can come pick the boxes up if you want. OMG I gave her a mouth full of my finest language. Not only did we pay for this service, the boxes are at least 30kg each. Hardly pick-up material. Anyways - they are re-delivering on Monday and Chris is going to work from home to make sure someone is here. Safe to say, DHL won the battle. Watch this place for a further rant about DHL, no doubt!

Other than that, life is continuing. We are buying more housey stuff this weekend. We will probably head down to the London Bridge markets tomorrow morning and maybe catch-up with Red too. At Clapham Common this weekend there is a big Feastival. Pretty much like the multi-cultural festival but way bigger. We might go and check that out tomorrow afternoon and get some food. Fatties!
I was meant to be trialing with a football team tomorrow, but because DHL are crap at everything and can’t deliver boxes coz they are re-tards, I’ll have to post-pone the trial until next weekend. I shall keep you posted!

Hope all is well back home. Email me and keep me updated with any goss, please!

Love life, hate DHL…

Kate xx

Flight of death

Greetings friends & family

This is my first blog entry for my London adventure. As you may know, I’ve previously blogged as part of my round the world trip last yr. That blog was filled with hilarity partly due to my sidekick, Ela and her tremendous writing skills. Don’t expect the same laughs from this blog!! However, I will attempt to keep you all informed of the love/hate relationship I have with London while I’m living here.

I left Canberra on the morning on Wednesday 15 June. Mum and Dad kindly drove me to Sydney and I flew out that evening. I was meant to be keeping my arrival date a secret from Chris because I had intended on surprising him. While I was waiting at the airport, he called me…and….well…I gave in and told him that I was leaving early and that I’d see him tomorrow. We were both very excited, although I will mention that he was a little peeved that he wouldn’t be able to meet me at the airport with flowers. Aww. I out-foxed him!!
It’s safe to say that the flight over was rather eventful. All was going well on the Sydney-Dubai leg of the flight until a crew member came on the loudspeaker during the night and asked if there was a doctor on board. I was kinda use to some sort of medical emergency on my travels. On my Tokyo-Sydney flight, some lady had a epileptic fit. On our cruise of the Caribbean, one of the cabin staff got really sick and had to be flown off the ship. Anyways, I drifted back off to sleep. 20 minutes later, the captain came on the loudspeaker and told everyone that we would be landing very shortly in HYDERABAD, INDIA as a passenger had a severe medical emergency.

At this time, I was standing in the line for the toilet. Once the announcement came through, the flight attendants were telling everyone to quickly go back to their seats. BUT…I was busting. Sigh. So I toddled back to my seat…still busting to pee. 30 minutes later. I couldn’t hold on any longer. As soon as the plane touched down, I jumped out of my seat and made a bolt for the toilets. As I reached out to open the door, one of the flight attendants jumped up, slapped my arm away from the toilet door and yelled “Ma’am…GO BACK TO YOUR SEAT RIGHT NOW!” Righto Mum. How embarrassing. She obviously didn’t understand how flippin busting I was. I wasn’t even sitting in a aisle seat so it was very inconvenient to go to the toilet. Long story short, I was finally allowed to pee and it was a-mazing! Ahhhhhhh…
We eventually left India and continued our journey to Dubai. The diversion made us 3 hours behind schedule so I missed my connecting flight to London. Sigh. Emirates were pretty good about it and put me on the next flight and all was well.

27hours later, I arrived in London and I was stinky. I collected my bags and proceeded through the non-existent UK Customs. Paulina was there to meet me - we jumped in a cab and headed to Osterley. I was very relieved to shower and sh*t! Yippeee…happy days! Later that afternoon, Paulina and I headed down to the tube station to pick up Chris. Yippeee…happy days! We all went out for dinner that night to the local pub - it was delicious!
---------------------------------
I had a big sleep in till 12pm. I am very good at sleeping and pride myself on my ability to sleep! Didn’t get my hands too dirty today. Paulina and I went to Tesco and bought some things. I topped up my Oyster card and got a sim card for my phone. Cold weather. Lame.
I had the flu before I left for London and wasn’t feeling the best. I’m on anti-biotics from back home but they don’t seem to be doing the trick. There were heaps of kids on the plane so I probably caught something from them. Nasty.
--------------------------------
Today is Saturday so Chris and Mike are both at home. I woke up during the night with a terrible high temperature so we decided that I probably should see a doctor just to make sure I don’t have pneumonia or anything. We went into Clapham Junction Walk-In Medical Centre. Didn’t have to wait too long before I could see a doctor. The Dr said I have a some sort of virus and that I should rest. Awesome.
----------------------------------------
The rest of the weekend was spent resting. In fact, I haven’t really done anything exciting since I’ve been here!! Ha. I’ve met up with a couple of recruitment agencies and that’s about it.
The rest of the house is now also sick with the bug so I’m not very popular! Bad start to my time in London.
---------------------------------------
What’s coming up?
I’m so glad you asked! Chris and I are going to watch Wimbledon this weekend. We’ll get a day pass and cram as much tennis in as we can. Hopefully we can see some good games. We are also having dinner/beers with Red on Saturday night so that will be fun.
Mike & Pau are off to Paris this weekend to see the Black Eyed Peas concert. I’m slightly jealous and as such am trying to make my weekend as awesome as possible!

Now for my epic sign-off….

Love the energy, hate the vibe.
Kate xx