Marques's weblog

On to the sophomore slump

Does anyone even check this anymore or not? God writing a blog is so taxing. That reminds me, I still need to do my US taxes and fuck now my UK ones are due as well. International living is hard. Anyways I sit here in bed in the waning minutes of my one year anniversary in London so I guess I kind of have to write something right?

This year has went by super duper fast and yet many memories still clearly sit in my mind. I remember the first cab ride from Paddington to my temp housing. I was sitting there in the cab with what would be all my belongings for the next 5 months and wondering if I would ever be able to figure out the route the driver was taking. I now could practically walk it blind if I had to. It is amazing how well I now know this city and it is scary how much there still is to know. It definitely makes Seattle seem small.

After I got to temp housing I struggled to carry my stuff to the front door only to find no one waiting for me. My new home was a bench that I laid down on and basked in the sun and nearly perfect weather.

My first home in London


Eventually the person would show up and let me step into my first place in London. I think I spent about the rest of the day sorting all my stuff out since it had all been. My only goal for the day was to get me some McD's as a reminder of where I came from and after getting a little lost, it was eventually mission accomplished. I passed out at 2 only to wake up 3 hours later.
My first meal in London


The early wake up time really wasn't too bad because the next day I had to go in early for what would turn out to be many early morning releases this year. The release actually got postponed till the next day for reasons outside my control, but that first day would start what has probably been the most successful year of my somewhat short career.

SEO pages for hotels

It is kind of shocking really because when I say that I moved here for the city and not the career, I really mean it. I moved here to take on a dev lead position which I had already had in Bellevue so there was no immediate leg up there. Sure I had hopes of really turning London into a center for development, but that certainly was a stretch. However for the most part that has happened and it was not all my doing, but I was definitely there to shape it when the decisions were made. Originally I was to manage 3 devs and maybe a 4th. By the end of October I was managing 3 onsite and 4 offshore. Now I manage 4 onshore and 9 resources offshore. Our pipeline has been super successful so it is hard to imagine how this might grow over the next year.

I wish I could say my good friends here have multiplied like my directs. I mean there are definitely people I would miss if I left here, but I am not nearly as entrenched as I would like to be. In my head things in Seattle are quite idealized. I mean it was a slow go for 5 months there, but once it started at the beginning of 2003 the friendships became pretty cemented. I mean it is kind of insane to think how quickly we went to hanging out every weekend and many weeknights. I definitely don't have that yet.

Some of my experiments to rectify this have definitely been misses. Fuck the first place I lived in was horrible. I guess I got a good experience out of it, but no friends. It did teach me how to do it right the next time though and living with Matt and now Vanessa has been great. Other than the fact that none of our dietary habits/restrictions overlap making it impossible to cook as a group, the situation seems pretty ideal.

Matt (roommate), myself, Vanessa (roommate), Sling and Noah


London is a tough town though. When I lived in DC, I always used the reason of it being a transient town for a reason to not move there. I never really thought about London being like that, but it is and now I know why transient towns aren't the best. I don't know many people my age who plan to stay in London. I have met quite a few people in the last months and half of them won't be here to see the ball drop on 2010. Even while they are living here they are rarely around. It amazes me how often someone in my household is missing. We may go the whole month of July without a full house. That is kind of crazy. This really does hurt one's ability to get a groove. I guess I just need to make more friends on the no fly list or something.

All these factors of course only makes me wonder about what I want with this experience. Well that and the fact that it is all anyone ever asks me. I spend a lot of time thinking about this, probably to the point where it is somewhat detrimental to the whole experiment. The answer is still that I don't know. I guess I always feel antsy about where my career is going. For some reason I always feel like I need to reset it, but honestly I don't know if I have a good answer as to why. This decision of course has the added stress of determining when the queen puts her dainty foot to my ass and kicks me out of the country. It all kind of gives me a greater appreciation for why Amazon loves the indentured servitude of the Canadians.

Even outside of work I am confused to my purpose. It actually bounces between that and why I think I need a purpose. I am by no means alone in these thoughts. It seems like everyone is just wandering around trying to figure out what is what in their life.

Bridge to where?


I guess it is best to just grab onto the concrete. I know I have my antsiness, but it is somewhat negated by the fact that I still haven't even put a dent into what I wanted to accomplish in Europe. I still haven't been to Scandinavia. No Poland, no Italy and no Turkey either. This of course is balanced against the ever daunting task of knowing London better.

So in the end I don't really know where I would rather be so here I stay. I can't really tell if that is a good thing or a bad thing, but that is probably a thought for another day. I am pretty good at procrastinating and if I am lucky maybe I can put it off another year.

After all only time will tell I guess.


In the mean time I should probably try to blog more.

Panic on the streets of London

So if you didn't know shit is going down in London.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7975597.stm

The G20 summit is in town and with my presidents first visit comes oodles and oodles of protests.  They are protesting capitalism, Irag, globalization, protectionism, climate change and whatever else is running through their hippie heads.  Obviously not all aspects of their outrage are without merit, but I do think people have let themselves get a little too distracted on things too big or too little to make a difference. 

When I travel the only English channels are news channels and so I have no choice, but to get deluged with the news in the world around me and for that past couple months this has mostly been about the financial crisis.  On my most recent trip to Mallorca I was forced to listen people go on and on about the AIG bonuses paid out.  Yes it sucks that part of the govt money went to bonuses, but the deal struck is the deal struck and people going rabble, rabble, rabble afterward really isn't productive.  Especially when the answer to those rabbles is consideration of a bill to tax the bonuses at some absurd percentages.  The idea of such a targetted bill is quite appalling.  I am not a fan of the bonuses, but some of them were probably contractually justified and others were probably justified given the price of litigation required to remove them.  All the rabble, rabble, rabble did was increase the costs associated with it.

Refocusing on London, the opposite is likely the case.  The sights are set too high.  Make peace, end capitalism... Turns out capitalism is probably not the root of all evil.  It can probably be shown to just the opposite most of the time.  It could use some fine tuning at times thought.  Yes it is possible for people to be irresponsible/greedy and yes this can cause hiccups, but it isn't just the bankers that were guilty of this.  Blood on main street is justified as well.  And yes I guess it is possible for capitalism to have overdrawn on its credit, but stuff like this has happened before and I have yet to be offered tickets to the Thunderdome.  So we have to kind of move on and fineM tune the system.  Throwing food at bankers and complaining that you have nothing to eat when you get home gets you no where.  A lot of the protestors probably aren't that radical, but they get drowned out easily.

From the accounts that leaked into the office it was pretty crazy in the City today where all the banks are located.  Even though the banks were prepared people still got in.  I guess some firms told their workers that they would lock all doors at 8am and not let people out till 5pm just to make sure no one slips in.  They were also encouraging people to not wear suits

After work I went down to see the protests.  I couldn't even get close because of all the cops blocking stuff off.  Evnetually I found an edge where I could see the crowd.  It was greatly diminished, but still there.  While taking a photograph I actually saw a guy in a suit get pushed down by some kid.  Just annoying.  I will try to have pics for tomorrow, but don't have them off my camera yet.

So in these times turbulent times I wonder to myself, will life ever be sane again?  Likely, but people probably have to let it become that way.   Eventually people will stop throwing food at bankers and complain when they get home and have nothing to eat.  ,In the mean time I like drama so I am going to be a gawker of the carnage and  get some pictures.  It sounds like it is pretty crazy, but honestly I am more worried about the ever watching eye seeing me down there than the crowd.  Oh that and tear gas, I loathe me some tear gas.

On this day in 1984...

Turns out CCTV cameras are a lot like the Sun. If you stare at them for too long, you may never see the light of day again.

I need a better picture, but if you can't read it the poster states the following

"A bomb won't go off here because weeks before a shopper reported someone studying the CCTV cameras."

The overall message here is nothing new, but the delivery is uniquely British. Anyone that lives with a mass transit system or has been to an airport has seen these signs before. They say things like

"Report suspicious activities"

The UK likes to make their PSAs more real and the "more real" is often done by including a scare tactic. Here they are actually showing you the people you would be saving.

What makes this ad more interesting is that it is actually attributing the bomb not going off to two devices. Clearly the first is the reporters role in preventing changes. The second one is more subtle though. They are also kind of patting themselves on their back for CCTVs doing their job well enough to be a barrier to terrorism. I mean without the CCTV, regular people wouldn't get the chance to be heroes. They would just get blown up. Kind of makes you want to high-five every CCTV camera you see on the way to work, right?

This PSA treatment isn't restricted to just anti-terrorism ads. Take a PSA for taking unlicensed cabs:

"Think there's no harm in taking an unlicensed cab? Ask a rape victim."

I saw this PSA for the first time and it took me a second to see what they were saying and then I was appalled. I mean the line is shocking in itself, but when you break it down it seemingly characterizes rape victims in a very poor light. The first part questions common sense and then the second part implies a direct connection between rape and the first sentence and therefore some sort of blame. Rape is already a crime where people struggle with fault and for a government to imply this at all seems kind of irresponsible.

Some day when I actually talk to a British person it would be interesting to get their take because to the American foreigner these things are just shocking.

...And you know I probably am wrong by saying the CCTV is a classic British PSA. The more British PSA would probably show a bomb already exploded and blame the reader for letting it happen, but then again maybe they couldn't figure out how to fit in the CCTV plug with that treatment.

A new hope err... I mean home

The old place

So I know I have never blogged about it, but anyone who has talked to me since I have been over here probably knows that I have kind of struggled with my living situation since I have been here.

Toward the end of July I had felt that I had pretty much settled into the city. I had found a flat that I really liked. It was exactly where I wanted it to be. It had two large flat screen tvs. What more could I want? So I put a deposit down on the room I wanted. Then the lovely real estate practices in London taught me a thing or two about the big city.

With a week before I moved into the new place I finally got my contract and it had me leasing the smallest of three available rooms. It is actually the room that was advertised, but when I went there two larger rooms were also available. There is a reason that I didn't try to put in a deposit for that room. It was just way too fucking small.

The next couple days I spent frantically trying to find out what my options were. Problem was my bank had messed up so the landlord actually had both the first months rent and deposit (same as first months rent). I had no hopes of getting that back so this meant I would be walking away from a shit-ton of money. Ultimately I had to move in and work it out from there.

Move in day was devastating. I was already of course tainted by the fact that I got screwed over with my room. I dropped off my meager belongings at the place knowing full well that they would be I would have until I moved out. I had yet to actually take on anything I shipped over here other than my bike even though it was all waiting for me somewhere in Essex.

When I returned home from work that day I just laid on my bed with my feet hanging off the end and stared at the ceiling contemplating how the first act of my grand settling in London made me feel more like a transient at a hostel than a resident. My only comfort was a book I picked up on the way home called "I lick my cheese". It is a compilation of notes left to flatmates. Hopefully this was painting an extreme picture and not something I would have to deal with.

Other things just seemed to compound on top of my already sour attitude. The first night I was greeted by a roommate who was... what's that saying about kites? Anyways she went off on me for having my fan running while I was away. This was in a smoke filled living room. When I woke up ashtrays were still full of old butts. I threw them out. When I asked that they throw them out the next day I only woke up to find a whole new batch creating a stench.

Like I said three rooms were open so technically we were almost all on level ground in terms of seniority, but I had no interest. I tried to impart some opinions into the settling of everyone, but things were too busy at work for me to even get home while they were up. Then I started traveling heavily. In the first 6 weeks I had lived there I had only spent 3 weeks staying there.

The roommates were pretty nice for the most part. Seriously they could have been a lot worse. Even the kite person was extremely nice when she was not with the kites or drunk. Socializing was a bit tough because they would be in their rooms when I got home and gone when I woke up. Even on the weekends I wouldn't see them a lot. I tried hanging out with one of the couples once, but they had Italian friends over and were only speaking Italian. I don't speak Italian so I went to watch Friends because they speak English.

Over time though I preferred not seeing them because I couldn't really hang out in my room and this schedule mismatch gave me some sense of control over my me-time. In the end it is a lot to throw yourself in with 5 strangers. This seems weird given that I used to live in a house with 50, but I think moving to a new city has a lot of do with this. Also there things were so huge that you could find someone who did what you wanted to do.

The place too was nice in general I mean it had a lot of area and even when people were smoking in one room you could usually go watch tv or hang out in the other. The biggest problem with the place was that it had accumulated so much junk over time that the place could never feel like yours. It could only feel like those who had already left. With all my stuff in storage it seemed like this is something that would not change.

In the end no matter how much things got better they would likely not be good enough so I needed to figure something out.

Pictures

My room


The photo set
http://www.flickr.com/photos/marquesk/sets/72157609723885170/

The new place

So ever since I found out that a coworker, Matt, was moving to the London office I figured we could give a go at living together. He got here in October and so we started to look for a place. We looked in a couple different areas, but mostly focused on Shoreditch and Camden Town. The latter being where I live now. This process was different than the first one because in the first case I went through essentially an ad on craigslist because it was a flat share. Here we were going to find a 3 bedroom, get a lease and rent out the extra bedroom. This exposed us to a whole new side of shadiness in the leasing industry.

So after about a week of viewing we found a place and wanted to put an offer down. Now they way it works here is that once you want to start the offer you pay the leasing agent a weeks rent and they will take it off the market. Now that you have put that money down you can start the offer process and if it accepted then that money goes to the rent. If not then you get your money back.

Well we put our money down and the offer took a couple days to settle, but we had our offer and a move date. Things were looking up an up for Matt and I. And why wouldn't they? We had went through a reputable leasing agent. I mean they had used the motto "Your soul agent". That makes you feel warm inside.

Well the leasing agent was like the whiskey those dogs give you in the Artic. You may feel warm now, but you likely just end up colder in the end. Four days later we got a call that someone else had outbid our accepted offer now they wanted us to up the ante. It would have put us all in and we weren't ready for that given that we didn't know who the third roommate might be so we passed.

We were both so pissed. The idea of something to their store kept running through my head, but the CCTV cameras make a compelling argument not to do that. My final idea was to put the letter "AS" on piece of paper and then slap that over the "Your" in their logo.

The next day I went into the office to get our money. I walked through into the back and was informed that I was interrupting a meeting. Our agent walked me back out and and I had him give me every reason why it was not their fault. He said he could get my money back and I was like "You will get it back now" and so he went upstairs and got it.

In the end it is not really their fault it is the failure of the system. They lost commission just like I lost my home. The fault in the system here is that there is no such thing a single leasing agent. An owner can lease it through many agents at the same time. So our leasing agent took it off the market and guaranteed to not show it. Maybe they did and maybe they didn't, but another leasing agent did show it and that person put down a higher bid. That means we got fucked. So the lesson is that unless you have moved in you don't have a place to live. This system makes no sense to me because it just seems to cater towards shady dealing. Sometimes I wake up and wonder if I am in Moscow or something, but then I realize I am not because at least there you know things are supposed to be shady.

The good thing is that later that day we saw the place that I now write this entry from. It has some pluses and minuses over the other place, but ultimately I think it is better and slightly cheaper. Only time will tell.

The current place is right where I thought about living after being here in January. It is near the heart of Camden Town, but on the Mornington Crescent side. Some things are a little further like Hamstead Heath Park and the big Sainsbury's, but all the key things are super close. This also means the move is short. If shopping carts were easy to come by you know I would have used one, but they are not and I didn't have my tools to make a dolly so in the end it was just me carrying a couple loads of my crap from place to place.


View Larger Map

The rooms in this place are pretty big. I would say that overall the place is bigger than my place in Seattle which means it is gigantic in London. My bedroom is probably larger than in Seattle too and I got my own bathroom again. Sweet. My own bathroom is actually a big thing. I find this is just one of the conveniences I have really grown accustom to over time and it is hard to remove. Sharing a place matters a lot less when you can still go to the bathroom without getting dressed.

My bathroom


One added feature of this place is that it has the biggest fridge ever for a London place. It has both a full height fridge and freezer. Even though they are both skinny they are way bigger than anything else I have seen here. Now if only they had a ice maker.


There have only been a couple negatives so far.

• The boiler broke 2 days into living here. This left us with no heat and no hot water. This would have been less of a deal if I hadn't been home sick for a couple of these days. This is fixed now.
• The smoke detectors seems to be invisible. It really seems like there should be some of these, but I really haven't seen any. This is only a concern because Matt and I both have a lot of electronics and I don't have a lot of confidence in the systems here. I mean they have fuses in all plugs. Seems like that speaks to a larger problem.
• We don't yet know how well sound travels or who our neighbors are. It appears that they are mostly families or old people. When I first came into the place an old lady gave me the stare down and asked me what I was doing there. I told here I was moving in and it took the porter (oh yeah there is a porter) to explain to her that I was moving in. I have seen this old lady just sitting in the lobby at least 5 times in 8 days. She kind of scares me.
• This place isn't going to be cheap. We do probably need to find a third and that will be hard because Matt and I are both hardly going to be around before Christmas. Also we have no idea what power bills will be. I expect them to be astronomical. This would worry my less if Expedia's stock was over the change in my pocket.

So my stuff has arrived and I starting to get it put away and settled in. So yeah things are looking good with the living situation. Hmmm... this brings up other worries. Well I will deal with those later.

I am guessing there are a lot of things that I don't remember since so much has happened with regards to my living situation here in London and so much of my life is based around it. I will leave those for future stories or most likely just forget to write about them.

Photos

My room
This is missing. Check out the photostream. Hopefully I will get more pics up in the days to come.

Park out our windows


The photo set
http://www.flickr.com/photos/marquesk/sets/72157609482957175/

Halloween sucks here

So if you know me then you know I love Halloween. It is a chance for me to try to be far too clever for my own good and come up with a costume that only makes sense to me. 3 months before the holiday comes around I start to freak about my costume. October is then mostly spent with me making a costume as I watch the baseball playoffs. So you can imagine how disappointing it is for me to live in a country where it is an afterthought.

The fact that people here didn't celebrate it kind of put me in a state of denial with regards to how it approaching. I contemplated what I would do for a costume and how I would theme my party, but all those thoughts revolved around being back in Seattle. In reality I didn't know if I would have a costume or even go to a party. I tried to fly somewhere to make it more special, but that never happened either.

Eventually I got a text from my friend Miguel saying that he had a party for us to go to. Even with that, I was unsure how to reply, but ultimately I said I was in. I still didn't have a costume, but figured I could fall back to my Jesus costume that I bought for a superhero party I attended earlier. See that is the problem. This country loves to dress up, but when the holiday comes along to do so they don't do shit. Lame.

So it was the big day and, for a country that doesn't celebrate the holiday, the costume shops had huge lines outside. Finally Miguel got back to me and the party was in some far off land I had never heard of called Woolich. I asked my coworkers where this was and they said it was near Greenwich (pronounced Grinich, this matters). As soon as they said that I had my costume. I would go as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

As soon as I got home I needed to hit the costume store. I had some ideas in my head, cut didn't know where I could get my supplies. Where are you when I need you Jo-Ann Fabrics? At first I couldn't think of how I would do the green and this ultimately caused the biggest flaw in my costume. In my head I kept thinking about I would be a lot of green or something that is green and then be "greenish" mean time. The reason why this led to my downfall is because having that run through my head caused me to lock on the "ish" and miss out on the "wich" which would have been really easy to pull off. I did fail here.

The costume store was packed and I was actually one of the last let into the store. This was fortunate for Miguel because I could attempt to pick up stuff for him. All in all I spent an hour in the store and ultimately only bought two things and none of them were really used. I had hoped to at least get a flava flave clock, but they didn't even have that.

It was all of 8:30 which meant that nothing was open except Sainbury's, but grocery stores are lame here and don't have anything except groceries which meant I wasn't getting my clock there either. I was kind of devastated because it meant I would have to use a marker to draw a clock on my clothes. Turns out they don't even have a marker. Ouch.

Luckily the market across the street which has lots of random shit had random wall clock and it even had a screws so that I could attach string to it. Probablem is that I didn't have string. All I had was a green clothes line and of course no wire cutters. After trying various cutting tools I had to break the line by heating it up over a gas burner till it got white hot and then pulled it apart.

• Greenwich - I am pretty green
• Mean - People with swords are mean
• Time - I have a clock don't I

Cause I'm GMT


Finally Miguel and I headed out. He was going as Willie Wonka, Johnny Depp style. As we headed out Miguel warned me that it would be lame and that only the Canadians would be dressed up. I was dressed up so that point I didn't care.

So obviously I got a lot of stares. No one on the tube was dressed up. Where were all those people clogging up the lines at the party store? The best was on one of the trains a girl sat across and chuckled until she asked what I was. It took like 3 tries for me to explain it to her. One problem was of course the lack of a witches hat, but the other was actually a comment that I made to Miguel on the train prior. I said to Miguel, "You know I bet people won't even get it because of how you pronounce the town.", and I was right. Even as I broke it down to her she was getting really stuck on green part of it. The good news is that once she got it she loved it. She even said that if she ever dressed up she would steal the costume just because it is so great. This reaction ended up being par for the night. I think people just weren't use to any sense of originality.

So we got to the party at 11 and one guy was already leaving so you knew the party was going to great. We opened the door and no one was dressed up. The hosts were dressed as tourist, but that was it. So depressing.

This was not a halloween party, it was 10 people sitting around drinking on October 31st. I was one of 2 people that didn't work with Miguel or at Google. Even though nothing was happening I did stay quite late, but that is mostly because I didn't know how to get home. I quit drinking around 2 and then didn't head out till 5:00.

The good thing about London is that you can get home at night, but it just takes forever. For me it took 90 long minutes. I got home at 6:30 and hit the sack right away. Obviously I was upset with London, but at least I was happy with myself.

A look at what could have been

Price Is Right - Halloween 2007


Won't go fully into it, but definitely not poo - Halloween 2006


A hand - Halloween 2005


A bear - Halloween 2004


Stay Puft Marshmallow Man - Halloween 2003

Cue overly loud intro music

So few will probably get it without explanation, but this is a reference to The Office. It is hard for me to watch the intro without Yachi's voice saying "Maaarrquesss turn it down. Its too loooooud." Technically I am not very good at converting the text in to Yachi's voice, but you can picture it. This is partly because I watch the TV at a volume a "couple" steps higher than herself, but also because the very end of the intro really does become obnoxiously loud.

Anyways to the point of this whole post, I have finally posted pictures from the office. They are on my flickr account which I am really trying to use. There is a plug in that will export directly from iphoto to flickr and this gives me the best chance of actually maintaining photos there. If it could only sync I would be in heaven.

As you can see from the photos, the office is wide open. There are very few barriers and the only thing that protects my "me space" is a little green thing that is not even fully attached to the desk. Everyone at the table is on my team so when there are any issues that I need to speak to them about I just turn and say "I have an issue I would like to speak to you about". Obviously this can be quite distracting at times, but the immediate turn around really helps so I am still unsure where things sit in terms of productivity.

The problems I have with it have less to do with the openness and more general design issues. For instance I have worked in an open environment before and it was nice because there was adequate meeting rooms to aid privacy. Here there are few conference rooms and they are always booked. There are these green thingees which are meant for small meetings, but I am kind of already too big for them. Also I am too loud for them (but you already knew that). We also have phone booths (the old London office had these too) to use for personal phone calls, but as they clearly state inside, these too are not sound proof. For the most part I have been able to cope, but having phone interviews is a little weird because other people tend to overhear the questions you are asking. Afterwards they tell me how they would answer the question and I do my best to try and not un-hire them.

Another complaint is that IT thought they were doing us a service by putting fancy plasmas in the conference rooms. Problem is they are quite small and useless for reading a document from anywhere but the front couple seats. It just makes no practical sense.

Finally the space is already too small and we have only been here 2 months. Our group is supposed to grow and I am already gluing my divider down in preparation. The 2 months is at least one month longer than it will take the new Bellevue offices to run out of space with its new offices. That plan seems to almost rely on attrition to fix the over crowding. Problem is they will probably get their wish.

The office actually reminds me a lot of the Seattle Public Library. It looks great and has bright colors that make it look cool, but it doesn't quite function like you would expect it too. This all being said I still like it more than the Bellevue office and when you throw in the surroundings it is almost impossible to beat.

There is shopping and food everywhere as soon as walk out of the building. For some reason I though that our offices were in Picadilly Circus before I got here, but they are actually in Covent Gardens. The area is pretty touristy, but I can get past that. It is close to Leicester Square which is where all the big movie premieres are. It is also situated among an innumerable amount of theatres. Within a 5 minute walk I can see any number of performances like Hairspray, and Spam-A-Lot. Chicago is on the same block. Not my thing exactly, but still cool.

Of course it satisfies the after work drink requirement too. Usually we just go on Friday's but as you can see from the pic there are plenty of people in the streets drinking even on Thursdays.

On a (long) side note, I am also making an effort to geo tag my photos. Some of the tagged photos are pretty rough. For instance I have put up my Beijing photos and at this moment they are all centered on Beijing. I am not ready quite yet to place every single photo at the location it was taken. However for place like London I am trying to be a little more specific.

One of the primary reasons I kind of wanted the iphone was because it will do his automatically. I have found it to be a little sketchy, but as long as it gets one right it is easy to fix the others. Doing my other camera has proved a bit trickier and I have found a solution though using google earth.

This ended up leading to a personal triumph. It will be boring to you so feel free to skip this paragraph. For some reason using the application to update the exif info on my photos was not working properly due to an error. After investigating I found that there was a way to suppress the errors however this wasn't really an option with the program. Luckily I was able to find the perl script which was doing the updating and alter it so that the warnings were ignored. In the end this was really simple to do, but still felt like an accomplishment. One because I don't really know perl that well and it kind of goes to show that language knowledge is pretty transferrable. Secondly it makes me feel better about not writing my own application to do this sort of thing. Being able to program is supposed to give you this power, but honestly I am too lazy to do anything about it. It was good for me to find a problem and then work through to a solution.

Here are some flickr links.

Office photos

Flickr home

Flickr map

Only my spirit remains

Seriously can anything else break? I have already posted so much today, but today is filled with so much frustration and it just kind of piles up on other things.

For one thing my fan is already dead. My nice, gorgeous, stainless steel, nearly 100 dollar fan is dead. It has actually been dead for like 2 weeks. It lasted a whole freak week or so. Pathetic. British craftsmanship is all about style and not quality and this fan is the unfortunate product of that. Every day I watch Fifth Gear and all they do is talk about how British cars are so sweet, but they wouldn't buy one because of the quality. I need to figure out how to return it, but the maid here threw out the box so good luck on getting that exchanged.

Of course there has been the ongoing saga with my bike. After three trips to fix spokes I eventually had the back wheel rebuilt. This was so frustrating because I really felt it cut down on my ability to get around the city. It didn't break this weekend during a 30 mile ride so hopefully I can close the book on that one.

Today the landslide started when my watch, my beloved watch died. The time of death appeared to be at 10:50 GMT this morning. The second hand appears to have exhausted itself and now only twitches. I mourn its passing quite a bit. Technically it is more of a vegetable though because the digital part still works. I could get by with that, but out of sentimental reasons I have always left that on Seattle time and will likely not change it. I guess I could get a new one, but don't know what the best way to move on is.

The landslide ended with my apt. I haven't written up anything on it yet because till this point I was almost sure it was going to fall through. Last night was the first night I felt I had a home to move into next and with one reply today those dreams where put on hold. Today I was supposed to finalize things and the landlord sent over the contract without clearly stating the room I was moving into. Being anal I fired back asking him to clarify that in the contract and low and behold he had switched the room on me. I don't really think there is any way I can fit into this room which is by far the smallest of the three offered. I am so pissed about this. I called and he was basically like "Well in my notes it says you will take whatever" and I was like "Notes, what notes there was never a record of me stating that and in the email I explicitly stated which room the down payment was for." I even have him replying in acknowledgment. The conversation ended with him trying to talk to someone there and try to get someone else to trade or something, but if I am going to hold out for the larger room I have no expectations whatsoever that someone else wouldn't do the same. I don't know in the end it will probably come down to when the deposit hit the bank. This of course would make it a big deal that my bank fucked up and caused the deposit to be a day late.

This shit is so shady here because he can turn around and unload this room in a second and so I have no leverage. Honestly I think I will get my deposit back, but I will be in limbo until I do. Also my bank was awesome enough to send the deposit twice so he actually has my first months rent too (customer service may be the most broken things). I'm fucked.

Like I just got here

So it has been a month and honestly I don't know how much has changed since I moved here.

I am still living out of a suitcase.

I still haven't figured out my next living situation.

I still don't have a fucking cell phone.

So in many senses things are the same, but I am getting much more familiar with city and making good progress there.

The cellphone is what lead to my first frustration of the day. I had been waiting to get the iphone until there wasn't much of a line and today was the day. The line only took me an hour to get to second from the big show. Then it took me 30 more minutes to make it to the big show. After 30 mins more of a verification I was lucky enough to find out that they couldn't sign up people that haven't been residents for 3 years. That was sweet. I am so glad I spent two hours on that. I told the guy they should have put that on the website and he assured me they did. However in the big showdown I won. He went to the page and was only left with the comment that "well it should be there". To which I said "Yeah I know". Apparently I have to go to O2 directly, but they only get new stock randomly. My schedule isn't one that works with randomly.

Anyways I went back to work accomplished nothing and then eventually was pulled into getting a couple drinks with the team. I had a new report start this week so the team had a reason to celebrate.

Later on that night I decided to wonder around shoreditch which is close to where I live. I strolled around for a bit and eventually saw a bar that had something I had been missing quite a bit... a juke box. The bar itself was quite plain and small, but the juke box was awesome. There were way too many songs for me to chose between. The songs I did pick were:

Man who sold the world - Nirvana
Dance Commander - Electric Six
Big mouth strikes again - The Smiths
Mr. Brightside - The Killers
Burn my shadow - UNKLE

I was really impressed with the UNKLE cd because many people would consider it to be a worst done by UNKLE, but honestly it is one of my favorite CDs of all time. It just has amazing flow and feeling. A lot of that comes from the accompanying vocals for many of the songs. Ian Stansbury (The Cult) does two songs and his voice is amazing.

Anyways the place was too small to do much so I just grabbed a beer as I listened to my songs play. It was a bit wierd because it would play all the songs on a cd together regardless of whether or not they were put in together. So 'Dance Commander' played with 'Gay Bar' even though it was put on before my songs. That was weird, but hey someone requesting 'Gay Bar' is never a bad thing. It also meant that I got three Smiths songs in a row even though I only played one.

Anyways I was getting ready to leave when some people came in from outside and sat on opposite sides of me. The guy started talking to the girl and then the girl started to talk to me. It was clear that she just didn't really want to talk to to the guy.

She started to ramble from there. She was quite drunk and it started off quite rough. Apparently she is fan of horticulture. She said that like 20 times in a row. Anyways we talked for a bit about politics and that was nice since I have had few conversations outside of work since I have been here. Just when it was going well she exited stage left though to hit the bathroom.

In her place I substituted her roommate. Again conversation was going well until I told her that she should probably check on her friend that had been in the bathroom for quite some time. So then she exited stage left. Apparently stage left is a black hole because they never came back. I wanted to say bye at least, but the bar was closing down so I was forced to exit stage right.

I moved on to a bar which I had been to before called Catch. It always seems to be full of a lot of hipster's on the bottom floor and then live music upstairs. I really like Catch because it is free and the upstairs gives you a feeling that you are part of something great at its beginning.

I went to the upstairs and was immediately puzzled by what was going on. There was a single person on stage whom I assumed was a man at first look. The voice seemed to match. Upon further investigation the singer had super long hair. As I got closer I noticed that the singer had no shirt on and had decent sized saggy breastestes. I have no fucking clue what the person was supposed to be. I mean I really was confused because I could have sworn it was a man, but it doesn't matter what a man does he would not get breasts like that.

Overall the performance was ok though. Technically I don't know what he/she was doing there either, but it was ok to listen to. There was a drum machine and sometimes he/she sang and sometimes she/he did spoken word. There were definitely plenty of people familiar with the performance though.

After this I decided to head home. I got some late night food and ran into another American. He was from New Orleans and was here for school during the summer. He had been to a Devotchka show. This was somewhat troubling for me because I totally would have went to that show, but didn't even know it was going on. This is the problem with London. It is just too big to figure out what all is going on. That may be the hardest thing to master about this city.

So now I sit at home writing this and watching a show called "England's Missing Top Model". The premise of the show is kind of dumb because they try to find handicapped people and then pick the best model between them. What makes it weird is that everyone has a different disabilities and so I don't feel they are all on the same playing field. Some have one arm, some can't walk, but some are just deaf. While being deaf sucks it just doesn't seem to be a blocker to being a model as much as not being able to walk. The only reason why I mention this is because even though this is England's show there are non British people on there and one is from Seattle. Seriously why do you need to import people for a show like this? How do you end applying for this from there? The Seattle girl is the most annoying of all and is mostly just a brat. She seems normal, but I guess has nerve issues because of a car accident. She also has an purple cast on her arm that has never been explained. In fact her being on this show might confuse me more than the performer at Catch. Well at least she is wearing a Dick's shirt. Seattle represent.

Well that is a month. I'm out.

Till next year SW19

If you don't live in London then you likely don't know what SW19 means, but that seems to be a favored term for the All England Lawn Tennis Club. Today it all ended with a really great final. To be honest I felt like I heard a lot about it when it started and a lot this week, but not too much during the week. I mean it was on TV every night, but it is not like you see bars making a point of it or anything. It is something like this that reminds me just how big London is. In other cities this may be an all consuming thing, but here there are so many things going on that you actively need to try and keep up with such a large event.

I really enjoyed the advertising campaign for Wimbledon leading up to the tournament. It showed clips spliced together of tennis greats volleying back and forth. The voice over was done by McEnroe which is weird being American and all, but it was an added bonus. I wish I could find it, but hopefully you saw it.

The problem with the clip is that it reminds you of how good the game used to be when there was much more volleying and less brute power. It makes you wish that everyone had small rackets again. Honestly we grew up watching the majors after getting home from church, but somewhere along the way it just seemed to lose its interest and even when I played in high school I rarely watched. I know it is all tied to the style of play, but I definitely think that is part of it.

The final today was an amazing match and had more of that classic feel even though Nadal is a power guy and Federer's serve is so outstanding. In the end I really wish Federer would have won, but at least he didn't go down in 3. I just don't care for Nadal's style, be it in terms of play or fasion. Like between every point he wiped off his left arm. I mean i can bond over sweating, but that was just ridiculous. Federer just seems much more classic.

The final was was also good because there were quite a few spots where I could picture myself making the same unforced error. In their case this was largely because of the wind. In my case i don't need the wind. It did make the sport feel more approachable though. Even though I was not totally caught up up in the Wimbledon excitement it did make me want to get back into tennis. I am left wondering what sports I can be active in over here and this seems like a pretty good candidate.

Next year I am definitely going to try and catch a match. I would have liked to this year, but I just couldn't get my stuff together. I guess Wimbledon is the only major that doesn't presell every ticket. The whole weekend before the first Monday's matches there were families camped out waiting to get in line. According to one person I talked to out here even if you leave at like 3 the second Monday or Tuesday you can probably get in to see some action.

Don't trust anyone over 300

That is the saying I wanted to put on a shirt for Friday. I don't think anyone would have got it, but it would have been funny to me at least. In any case don't worry the fact that Friday was my nation's bday was not lost on me. From the point at which I accepted the offer I had already planned on taking that day off and I did. The only problem was that I didn't know what I was going to do with it. Turned out to be none to glamorous.

I started it by adventuring to a new part of town on Thursday night, but it was fairly boring. I ended up making my way home around midnight and upon entering a little market, picked me up some bud tall boys for the weekend. On the way home the clock hit 12 so I cracked one open and let the celebration begin. Actually that was the only celebrating for the night. When I got home I talked to Natalie and Tim to catch up and then called it bedtime.

I had told coworkers that I was going to spend Friday drinking bud and finding a hot dog to eat, but it ended up being much less fun. I spent most of the day trying to make sure my deposit on a place got transferred to the manager(I will write more about that later). The other big task was to fix my bike.

The first day out with the bike I broke two spokes. This is worrisome because I had broken two right before I left. I decided it is about time that I learn how to fix these because being dependent on a bike shop is not really something I can afford since turn arounds can take days. So I got the spokes earlier in the week, but didn't have the tools. I picked those up and then setup the goal of getting the spokes in. The tire would need trued as well however it was already getting later in the afternoon so that would have to wait. I got off the gear cassette and inserted the spoke, but for some reason I could only get it threaded on to a certain point. I tried using oil. I tried backing out the spoke and putting it back on. I tried a different spoke, but eventually I tried to go America on it in honor of the day and that just broke the spoke off at a point where there was nothing I could do. Lesson learned, the tire is now at the shop.

So after fucking up my tire it was time to get cleaned up, dressed in red, white and blue and meet up with fellow patriots from work. I had debated going out with work people because this would probably never happen in Seattle, but I didn't really have anyone else to celebrate with so off I went, with a bud in hand of course. Since I hadn't had a chance to find a hot dog yet I did the easiest thing I could do. I picked up some McDonald's. I didn't really know what Ronald would think entering a McD's while drinking a beer so I put in my back pocket. This proved amusing when I dropped my change and had to bend over to pick it up. After several attempts I just had to admit defeat and take the beer out of my pocket to pick up the money. I needed the change after all because change here really isn't change. It is money and a lot of it. One of the coins I dropped is worth like 4 bucks. If this was the US then I would have said fuck it. Then again if this was the US I wouldn't have had a beer in my pocket would I?

So I was off to find my coworkers. They were supposed to be at a bar near work call Detroit. The bar was kind of nice which means that it was nothing like Detroit at all. I mean there were no feces on the ground and the hallways were too narrow for most people from Detroit to even fit through. I assume the owners had never even been there and assume they only took the name because of its association with techno.

After that we moved on to some bar called Roadhouse. This place again was nothing like its namesake. This seems to be a trend. It is like in Arrested Development when they go to the American restaurant in Wee Britain. Unfortunately there were no donuts on the menu. However this place did have a happy hour and it turned out to be quite kick ass. On the menu it said "Two Second Beers for 2.75" and that beer turned out to be Coors Light. Whoa yeah. 2.75 is cheap for a beer of any type, let alone two of something that contains so much rocky mountain refreshment.

While we were also at Roadhouse I gave Britain what may prove to be my most significant contribution to its culture. We were sitting there eating and one of my coworkers used the slang term "cho cho" to reference a vagina. I had never heard this term before and asked it that was the new slang to replace "va jay jay". No one at the table had every heard the term va jay jay before. I told them about Oprah and they were astonished, but agreed that it was the best term ever. In a year from now I am going to go to Glasgow and someone will say va jay jay and I will be able to turn to them and say "Did you know I started that?". Also in the conversation I found out that a coworker is friends with Joel McHale from The Soup and even went to his wedding. That is pretty sweet. Maybe I can meet him if he ever comes to London.

Oprah's va jay jay

After finishing up at Roadhouse we meandered to other bars around work. They were all basic pubs. We had a discussion about what we missed from the US and honestly one of the things I miss is the fact that different bars have different feels. You get that some here, but for the most part every pub feels exactly the same. Some will serve food, some won't, but they all have the same beers and mostly the same atmosphere. Like I said I know the other places are out there, but I think they get drowned out by the common ones. I also miss salad bars and good deli sandwiches. They have Subway here, but not much else. There are many things, but I can cover those some other time.

Eventually the crowd dissipated. I went home to regroup and then eventually went out and walked around bar area near where I live. I didn't really see anything too exciting though so I went home and called it a good bday.