24 hours of travel sounds like a long time, and it is... except that it didn't really feel all that long at all. i'd like to say that i slept though most of it which is why i didn't notice, but apart from a 3ish hour period before we hit Abu Dhabi i didn't. the inflight movies, my book, and a miserable lebanese man who cried on my shoulder for 15 minutes in the night kept things from getting too dull.
i'd just spent 2 days hanging around Sydney proving to be poor company for Cymun & Yun. the malaise which struck me back in Canberra lingered until my last night in town and only slowly abated while they poured tea and good food into me. my weekend of good food and activity turned into small potions which i picked at and me being croaky and grumpy. the last night had me with Lou and Paul, and Lou's folks. a pleasant dinner out at a little set-course French place in Crow's nest and the next day we were off, trapped in an aluminium can cruising at 39000 feet.
i can say this much from Etihad - they got us here safe, and on time. they might haven't have had the best staff (although i'll not complain much. our main mostie (male hostie) was alright. still, 10 hours into the flight i wasn't going into the toilets without my shoes on is all i'm saying. after 14:40 in the air, we had barely time to scratch ourselves at Abu Dhabi airport (which doesn't look like it's been updated since the 60's) before we were back in the air, then it was another 7:20 across to Heathrow, watching the sun rise over europe with a nice view over the channel before we circled london once or twice and landed on time(!!).
through immigration and customs without any trouble from the sleepy staff and out the door to see a sign with our names on it. Lou's cousin Alex had come to meet us and help get our sleep-deprived arses across London while we quietly freaked the fuck out. after a guided tour of the Tube and busses, we found ourselves in the top flat in a terrace just north of Brixton drinking tea and discussing sleeping arrangements. it's tiny - the living room's about the size of my bedroom back at the flat in Canberra, but it's all bright and airy, the kitchen's nice and the bedrooms are actually quite sizeable and above-all, you can walk into Westminster and Trafalgar Square from here. i know, because today we did it by accident (yeah, yeah, "whoops! i slipped and wound up out the back-end of Buckingham Palace!" - shut up).
since then we've been exploring. the decision was made that we'd go out and a) walk and b) get some sunshine (yes, the sun shines in London. SHUT UP!) so that we could get our circadian rhythms alighed with local, so we headed down to Brixton to pick up local SIM cards, towels (we'd left ours back in Canberra to save weight) and other odds and ends needed to support life before walking back up to the local tube station (Oval). and heading to Tottenham Court Rd to meet up with Moonbug.
i'm finding that somehow i just keep finding places i've been hearing about for forever. for example, we got to Soho an hour and a half early, so we went and found a coffee. we sit down outside a cafe and across the road is Forbidden Planet - a comic store that Shadow went on about at great length. totally random. we're walking through Soho and suddenly Lisa says "oh, and this is Covent Garden!" today we found The Strand (completely randomly - it happened to be the next left). we walk along for a while because it shadowed the river before Lou realised that we'd managed to find Trafalgar Square. next thing we know and there's Westminster Abbey, Dowling St (looks like a demiliterized-zone) and Big Ben.
with TV series and movies ad nauseum based in this place, i guess you're going to see some shit you've heard about, but still...
that's really it so far - not bad for being here something like 35 hours so far. today wound up being a great long walk simply because we didn't have anything else planned. still, we're in the sort of location where you can pull that off. i've started applying for any job that has the word "Server" in the title, but doesn't stipulate "MSCE is essential". we have accomodation here for the next week or so, then there's a likelihood that we'll be heading up to Birmingham for a couple of days. with any luck i'll hear some more from these jobs i've been applying for which will make it much easlier to put some thought into slightly more permanent accomodation.
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