Bug-Man’s Blog

Happy New Year for 2009 to everyone!

My 2008 finished off with a 5-year work permit which I am proud to say will allow me to remain in the UK for pretty-much as long as I want. That’s awesome. I’ve never said this country is the place that I’ll spend the rest of my life but it’s where I want to be right now, so I might as well stay here for a few years yet. There’s so much to see out there!

Lindsay and I are lucky to have a great place that we rent at a good price. Although the financial crisis is hitting people hard, we will be OK. Lindsay has become redundant at his work with many other people but I know him and it won’t take him long to find more work, even in these so called difficult times.

The final 48 hours of my 2008 were quite frustrating, as I went home from work on Tuesday feeling sketchy and ended up waking up on New Years Eve with full-on flu symptoms. Last night I powered on however, and went out to dinner with Nick, Bec and Lindsay, then drove up to Hamstead Heath to see the fireworks display from atop the hill. Cold as it was, we didn’t stay long. I did see some pictures of the London NYE Fireworks display and it was quite spectacular. It would have been fantastic to see it from Southbank but it just gets so, so busy down there. And last night it got to about -3 degrees C, so pretty cold.

As New Years rang in I ended went home and went to bed feeling pretty terrible. I’ve woken up this morning feeling much better and should be over it all in a day or two. Thankfully!

Wishing all my friends and family and any stray readers a prosperous 2009! Happy New Year.

As Spring is drawing to a close London is beginning to warm up and I’m starting to see a side of it that I didn’t expect. I suppose having arrived in Winter I have not had a chance to see London so warm, colourful and nice. When Lindsay and I arrived the days were short, wet, dark and cold, and now they are long, warm and getting brighter!

It is amazing how quickly the sunrise and sunset can change and for the past couple of months the days have been getting longer and longer, usually by a few minutes each day. Today the sun rose at 5:16AM, last week it was 5:30, and next week it will be rising at 5 o’clock. Sunset is currently 8:39PM! The longest day of the year last year was sunrise at 4:47AM and sunset at 9:21PM!

With all this nice weather one would think that it would be a great opportunity to go out and see some more of London’s night-life, but alas, everything closes at 11PM! Confused? I am! One of the biggest drawbacks about London is that when you go to a pub, you’re often booted out before midnight. If you travel, you have to contend with the tube, which closes often around 1AM as well. So what are people supposed to do late at night if they want to make a night of it? I’m not sure! Go into the inner city and go to a few late bars and night clubs I suppose, but you’re not always in the mood for that kind of night, and you don’t always want to wait until the first tubes start running again. There are always 24 hour night buses but they are not always as easy as the train.

Boris Johnson, the new Mayor of London has instigated a ban of drinking alcohol on the tube and bus network effective June 1st. I’m glad I’ve had at least one beer on a train, and boy did it feel weird having come from Adelaide where it’s always been disallowed. Oddly enough, the rail staff are complaining that they will have to be the ones to enforce the regulations, and they are not happy!

Any travel plans? Well, Lindsay and I will be going to Berlin in a couple of weeks and that should be great. We know Justine who lives there (Hi Jus!) and she’ll be our guide, which is always awesome because you get to go to all the places you never would have seen before. Now that Lindsay and I have been to Paris once, if we go back we will probably go to different places to see different things, now that we’ve got all that main tourist stuff out of the way!

Here are a few snaps from a recent trip to Brighton:

I’d hardly call it a beach, considering the whole beach front is made up of pebbles!

Don’t forget, there are many more photos here!

Work is keeping me very busy and I have learned so much about the company in the past three weeks. I’ve asserted myself as Team Leader moreso and am settling in now. It’s tiring work and the days are longer than I’m used to (think 50 minute commute, working 9-6 with a one hour lunch break, and then another 50 minute commute) but I’m happy to be working. Lindsay’s got it easy, working 9:30-5:30 means he leaves for work after I do and arrives home before me! Gah! We may look at moving soon, either somewhere closer to each of our workplaces and Lindsay has suggested perhaps even moving to Brighton, which is quite some distance, but the rail system is faster so the commute is not too much longer. Time will tell and we will see what’s around!

What else is there that I should cover before I go? I’m not sure, but if I think of it, I’ll let you know!

As Lindsay and I have not been able to do anything really touristy around London lately, we thought it would be a good idea to head down to Windsor and visit Windsor Castle. We were going to aim for the 11:00 train and it’s a good thing we didn’t, as it was delayed for over an hour due to a signaling fault further up the track! We arrived at Windsor at about 1:30PM.

As soon as you exit the train station you walk out and are faced with the castle, which sits atop a hill overlooking the town of Windsor. From down in the town centre you can see it from almost everywhere. It’s a very large castle, much larger than Buckingham Palace by the looks of things. The main street heading towards the castle wraps around its outside edge, so as you approach the visitors gate you are walking around the edge of one of the castle buildings. As we climbed the hill we discovered what we feared the most — a huge lineup.

We joined at the end of the queue and eventually made it through to the front doors of the visitor’s entrance. When we finally got the chance to see the ticket counter, we realised we were really only half way done queueing, as there were huge queues inside the ticket counter, and at least 8 ticket counters open. At around £15 per adult on the door, they must make an absolute fortune. We had purchased our tickets at a discounted rate of about £10 through the Great Southern Rail offer. We still had to queue

We finally entered the grounds and you are offered an audio tour. It’s a device that you carry with you and hold up to your ear so that you can listen to the guided tour. In each of the rooms there is a small transmitter broadcasting information. I found the device very annoying so chose not to use it. Wherever we went throughout the castle, there were people walking around with these things pressed up against their heads. Weird. I might have missed out on some of the facts because we chose not to use them but instead we were able to look around for ourselves with our eyes.

The public are granted entry to a very limited area around the back side of the castle grounds and the “State Apartments” block. You can’t go anywhere near the actual internal residency of the castle nor can you enter the courtyard in the centre of the castle grounds. While disappointing, you can understand why. After all, this is a residency, not a museum.

Windsor Castle	Estate Apartments entry/exit
Windsor Castle Courtyard	Windsor Castle Courtyard
Windsor Castle’s very own post box	Castle Heads

You can view more photos on my Flickr feed.

Photography, mobile phones, prams and dogs are all banned inside the estate apartments and the guide staff are very quick to pounce on people breaking the rules. On the occasion that someone’s mobile phone will go off, they’ll prick up their ears to localise it and immediately try and silence the offender.

During visitor mode, the State Apartments are set up with rope barriers in every room, encouraging the public to follow a single loop around the castle. At one stage we walked through a large dining hall, and on the other side of the room you could see people walking in the opposite direction. It took us about half an hour to get around to the opposite side of that room, and it gives you some idea of the scale of the place!!

If you’ve ever watched any of the documentaries about Windsor Castle you’ll know what to expect when you go in, and that is some rather elaborate rooms, all extremely clean and well kept with that “royal” feel about them. Most rooms contain nothing more than some furniture (mostly “acquired by Queen Victoria”) and most of the furniture is carved wood with a felt-style material. Most of the walls are wall-papered with a textured red fabric. Some rooms have what look like “secret” doors, which go who knows where, and they are rectangles of the wall with hinges and handles, so they blend in with the wall rather than being actual doors.

Each room in the Estate Apartments was set up with a specific purpose in mind, yet they all look rather similar. There are several drawing rooms, in which the centre piece is a large desk. One bedroom is shown with a dressing room and a closet however, the dressing room and closet are just rooms with chairs in them, as these are just for show.

According to one of the human guides we chatted to, when the apartments are used for estate functions, the rooms are reconfigured for the purpose. Undoing “visitor mode” means removing all the roped barriers and any signage, replacing the walkway carpet with a much better carpet, removing all the protective plastic barriers and so on that surround the doors and some walls (to stop visitors touching/damaging things) and reconfiguring any furniture as required.

Most of the rooms have a hand-painted 17th Century baroque ceiling, and those that don’t have a fairly elaborate ceiling, usually with a large chandelier hanging from the centre. Of the rooms you are allowed to tour through, there is Queen Mary’s Doll House which is a dimly lit room (preserving the centre feature) with a large doll-house of the castle in the centre of the room. It contains many rooms and miniature furniture and trees/shrubbery. Without the audio tour I couldn’t tell you very much more about it but I’m sure you can look it up on the web

Following that, a China room containing a large collection of elaborate china dinner sets from the 17th century onwards. Each set is probably around 50 pieces and most of them are fairly ugly, although you can appreciate their historic value. Many of them are used for actual functions and this is clearly visible by the chips and breakages on some of the pieces. Again, according to the tour guide there is a large rubber sink installed elsewhere in the castle which is used to clean these pieces, very, very carefully!

Beyond these rooms you enter into the rest of the castle. The first area appeared to be a weapons display, with suits of armour hundreds of years old, hundreds of pistols and rifles from every era, swords and other weapons all on display. Glancing around you and looking in the glass cabinets, you are looking at an evolution of flint weaponry and guns. Look up and there is more, as the ceilings are all at least two stories high, walls laiden with more and more displays.

Beyond this room are dining halls, the crimson room and the turquoise(?) room, the apartment areas I mentioned earlier (drawing room, bedroom) a hallway and chapel. I managed to take a few photographs but because of the amount of people and staff around the place it was very difficult to get any good snaps. With respect to the castle I won’t post these on Flickr so unfortunately they won’t appear in this blog. You’ll have to go and visit for yourself

Our day ended with a trip to the gift shop, where I asked if the Queen ever comes through. “No,” was the answer, “Maybe once a year.”

Lindsay bought me a Windsor Castle scotch glass, and I bought Lindsay some Windsor Castle fudge.

Windsor Castle Scotch Glass

Windsor Castle Fudge

Normally I don’t do very much for Australia Day but considering I’m living in London, but this year Lindsay and I went out and celebrated being Aussie London. Not surprisingly, London’s city streets were packed full of Aussies with aussie colours, flag tattoos on arms, cheeks and foreheads, flags draped over them like capes, and they were all hanging around the Aussie bars, of course. Lindsay, Michelle, Adam and myself went down to Covent Garden where we picked up a few necessary Aussie supplies: Chickos, Arnott’s Shapes, Mint Slice, Ice Magic, Vegemite, and a couple of other Aussie things. It’s amazingly strange standing in an Australian shop with just about every Australian food icon on display. It’s almost like being back home and going to a deli. About the only thing we didn’t buy was a carton of Coopers Pale Ale, for two reasons: a) It was sold out and b) It was £36.90/carton (around AU$80.)

Onwards with our supplies we headed to the pub.

No, we avoided the Walkabout because it would have been just far too busy, but went to another pub instead which we knew served Coopers Pale Ale. Downing a couple of those, we were surrounded by Aussies. Trying to explain exactly what a ‘Bush Pig’ is to Adam the Texan was something interesting and there weren’t too many examples of them around; they were probably all at home in Australia. It was getting late and Lindsay and I needed to head off to Justin’s place where there was a late night Australia Day BBQ. Outside the pub I let out one loud “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie!” and was glad to hear several people immediately respond “Oi! Oi! Oi!” That made my day!

We headed off to Justin’s house and although he lives only a few miles away it still took 1 hour and 2 buses to get there. I carried my backpack with a carton of beer inside of it, and we arrived. We had a good night meeting a few other Aussies, watching Skippy, singing Australian TV commercial jingles and getting drunk like Aussies should. It was meant to be a late BBQ and it wasn’t until 11:30PM that we actually started eating! Nonetheless it was a good night. Here are some snaps:

But there are more on Flickr.

Sunday was spent in bed.

I have a phone interview tomorrow at 4PM for a team leadership position which I’m looking forward to, and another company is also interested in me but they haven’t called me back yet. Both companies have said that work permit sponsorship is not a problem, which means that if I’m successful at either I will be able to work here as long as I am sponsored and not have to worry about this silly working holiday Visa. If Lindsay and I both want to stay on longer I believe there is even room within the bounds of the law to let him stay and work here as well. I’m looking into the details of that!

I thought for something different I’d write you a story. It’s a true story. It happened to us on Saturday night.

Beware, crims!
by Adam Smith

It was a lazy Saturday night. We couldn’t go out because we were on such a tight budget. It’s not like there was that much to do anyway. Passing the time, Lindsay decided to take some empty beer cans out the front to the recycling crate.

We live on a quiet, dead-end suburban London street. Residents walk up and down frequently yet the street is always full of cars. We’d only been here for a month or so and we weren’t used to all of our neighbours yet. There are the people next door who we’ve only ever seen a couple of times, the people upstairs who make noise but never seem to be home, and the little old lady across the street who likes to peer out through her curtains whenever something’s happening in the street. All in all, its a pretty normal place to live.

As Lindsay lowered the cans into the crate he noticed something out of the corner of his eye. Not paying too much attention he looked over and saw a dark man walking out of the house across the street. He was tall, black and wearing a dark, hooded winter jacket. Carrying a plastic bag in one hand he glanced over at Lindsay and began walking towards the train line; the contents of the bag jingling with every step.

Alarm bells went off inside Lindsay’s head as he realised that this was most unusual. The man who left the house certainly didn’t live there, and it was quite strange for the old lady’s curtains to be left open with all of her lights off. Perhaps there was a logical explanation for this. Perhaps he was a relative? A friend? A carer? Or perhaps it was something worse. Perhaps she’d been molested, attacked, robbed or killed? The strange feeling of worry started to set in.

Lindsay returned to the house and summoned me. “What is it?” I said, walking down the passageway.

“I don’t know — you know the old lady across the street? Well I just saw a man walk out of her house with a jingling bag.”

“Do you think something might have happened?”

“I don’t know. Look, her curtains are open. She never leaves her curtains open. Maybe she’s been attacked or robbed. Should I call the police? I’m not sure. Maybe she hasn’t and I don’t want to call the police around for no good reason!” Lindsay said.

Lindsay took me outside and showed me her curtains open. He showed me exactly where the guy was walking and what he saw. With all of the lights off we didn’t want to approach the house and wake everyone without being sure there was something wrong.

“If you feel strongly enough that something might have happened then call it through. It would be the right thing to do I think.”

“OK.”

Something didn’t seem quite right about all of this. I left Lindsay to make his call in private, and walked down the corridor.

Lindsay picked up his phone and dialed. “Hello, my name’s Lindsay. I’m just calling because I’ve seen something strange across the street and I’m not sure if this is the right thing to do or not but I just wanted to make sure she is alright. There is an old lady who lives across the street and her curtains are open and her lights are off, which is unusual for her. And about ten minutes ago I saw a man walk out of her house and go down the street and he was carrying a jingling bag.”

The woman at the other end of the phone asked for a more detailed description of the man. “How would you describe his appearance?” she said.

“He was an African-English male…” Lindsay began.

“Black.” said the woman.

“Yeah. I’m from Australia and I just didn’t know what exactly to say.” Lindsay said, trying to be politically correct. He gave the rest of the description and details and we went outside to wait for the police.

As we stood in the cool London air we could hear police cars off in the distance. They sounded like they were coming from the direction the man with the bag had gone. We wondered if the police had picked him up for questioning. The sirens stopped and we looked at each other. Another set of sirens went off in a different direction, then another. They moved around us but this is typical of any Saturday night in London really. There are police everywhere, so we had no way to know exactly what was going on. We decided to go back inside and wait.

At last the police arrived. They pulled up in the middle of the road in front of the house and we walked outside. Lindsay went over to explain the situation to the policeman through the car window.

“… and I’m just very concerned,” he finished. “It was all a bit unusual.”

“Right, we’ll take a look then,” the constable said, as he and his partner got out of the car. Putting their MET hats on they casually approached the front door, torches in arms. The constable went to knock on the door but it was unlocked and opened straight away. “Hello, is anybody home? This is the police.” they said, as they entered the house.

Lindsay’s heart skipped a beat as he started worrying about the old lady. As the more rational of the two in situations like this I tried to calm him down and stop him from worrying about what could or couldn’t have happened until we know for sure. I have always tried to think like that because there’s no point worrying about something until you know for sure.

Both the inner and outer doors were unlocked and the police wandered around the house with their torches, turning on interior lights. They came outside again and approached us, asking for a better description of the events.

“Did the door show signs of forced entry?” I asked.

“Yes, the door was forced and the place has been robbed. Nobody is home.” the handsome constable replied.

Lindsay let out a sigh of relief that the old lady was OK.

“Do you know where she is at the moment, or where she might have gone?”

“No, we’ve only just moved in a few weeks ago, so we don’t know the neighbours very well yet. But she’s usually home so maybe she’s gone away for the weekend.” we replied.

We hung around for a while to see what was going on as the police questioned a couple of the neighbours and shortly afterwards a van turned up to secure the premises. A woman emerged from the van carrying a tool box. Walking in the dark she stepped right in a puddle. “Fuck!” she let out loudly, as the other two coppers let out a laugh. She stepped into the foyer and worked to secure the doors.

The older police officer came over to shoo us back inside. “There’s nothing more we need from you guys, so you’re free to go back inside. We’ve just brought around some equipment to secure the premises until the occupier comes home.”

“Good luck. Hope you catch him!” I said. The police officer let out a dry “mrhh..” as he walked away, like he’d heard it all before.

We stayed inside and watched the activities for a while longer until we became bored with it. Eventually the police left too and we never heard anything back. We’ll probably never find out if he got caught or not unless they need a witness statement from us, but at the very least we had something interesting to fill our night.

It’s fun being a tourist but I’ve never like to think of myself as one. I am enjoying moving around the city and taking in the sights, however slowly. With Lindsay working every day it leaves us only the weekends to do anything, because as soon as it hits 4 o’clock in London, it starts getting dark. Really dark.

Lindsay and I have now got to know our own area very well, which I think is a good thing because this is our home for the next 12 months at least. This weekend we went up on the London Eye at night time and travelled out to the Tower Bridge area, albeit rather late in the day and we didn’t have much time to do anything else. I would have liked to have gone up but we are being a bit careful with our finances until things get back in shape after that hefty rent payment! These are some things we’ll come back and re-visit just as soon as I feel more safe

Here are a couple of shots from our ‘flight’ on the Eye and the Tower Bridge! You can check out more over at my Flickr feed. I have been keeping it up-to-date as regularly as possible!

The Tower Bridge	The Tower Bridge
The London Eye	The Palace of Westminster
The IMAX Building in Waterloo	A London Eye Capsule

Don’t forget you can view more at Flickr.

I’ve been Geotagging as many photos using Flickr as I can so that you can see exactly where they were taken from on the surface of the Earth, using Flickr’s maps or Google Earth (but Google Earth only receives the last 20. Grr.) I think my next project will have to be automated geotagging.

PS. I thought this was a great little picture with the caption included

“Welcome home from your holiday!”

PPS.
I won’t mention much about how the job hunting is going at this stage in case I’m being ego-surfed by a prospective employer… (Hi Employer!!) and perhaps I’ll blog about it all later once it’s all over and I’m gainfully employed. Suffice it to say there is plenty of work out there and I’m still applying and at the same time waiting for the whole Christmas/New Years period to pass over so that all the HR departments can return to normal.

So the Queen plays Nintendo Wii! Who’d have thought. The press (The People Newspaper) is apparently reporting that a royal source has said that “When Queen Elizabeth saw William playing a game on the Wii after the family lunch at her Norfolk estate, Sandringham, she thought it looked like tremendous fun and asked if she could join in.

“She played a simple 10-pin bowling game and by all accounts was a natural. It was hilarious. William was in fits of laughter. He was enormously impressed at having such a cool grandmother!

“And although she is 81-years-old, her hand-eye co-ordination was as good as somebody half her age.”

So I guess if anyone wants some tough competition, old Lizzie’s your lady.

“William loves his gadgets and boys’ toys so the Wii was the perfect present for him.

“His only difficulty now is trying to pry it away from the queen’s clutches. She showed all the signs of becoming a Nintendo addict.”

Apparently the Wii was a Christmas Present for Prince William. Well this is an open invitation to the Queen to challenge me to a game of ten pin bowling! Invite me over and we’ll have a few beers, crisps and a bit of a laugh!

Apparently the Queen is a bit of a gadget nut and even owns and iPod. Maybe we could swap some music, too I wonder what she listens to. I think perhaps the Spice Girls.

The Queen on a Nintendo Wii Buzz

I just want to wish everyone a happy new year for 2008! My new year’s resolution is to find that great job I want and make loads of quid so that I can travel around Europe properly!

By the time most of you in Australia read this little note it will already be New Years Day so I hope you enjoyed yourselves

For those friends back here in London, have a great night tonight!!

Not too much has been going on lately thanks to the cold and Lindsay being at work during the week. Without work I’ve been going out of my mind at home a bit without much to do on my own. It’s taking some time to find work even though I’m looking constantly. Right now the job market isn’t changing much probably due to the time of the year. I think it will pick up in January again but right now thanks to our change in finances it’s a little more annoying not actually having work. Never mind, I’ll keep looking. There are a few jobs I’ve applied for which I’m pretty confident I’ll get called about but I have a feeling it won’t be until well into January thanks to the holiday season!

Lindsay and I didn’t get up to much on Saturday but went out and did a little more exploring today. We wanted to go up on the London Eye but the fog was so thick it wouldn’t have been worth it! People went up anyway. Here’s a shot of the London Eye and Big Ben during the fog:

While most of our friends here have gone elsewhere for Christmas, Lindsay and I will have a quiet one in this year.