The story so far . . .
Date: Wed, 17 Mar 1999 16:45:30 +0000
This is a summary of what has happened on my great overseas jaunt. This is mostly material covered before, but a few people are new on the To: list , so I hope the rest of you can be patient :-). Also, I may have sent off a partial version a few minutes ago, if so, this one is longer.
- pm arrived in the early September. Since then he has been working at
Imperial College, Dept of Biology. He has been living in a horrible
bed-sit in Ascot. This must have been somewhat alleviated by the fact
that Silwood Park, where the biology department is, is a manor house and
a few new buildings (including a nuclear reactor) in a park of Pemberley
proportions. "How many people work here?" I asked. "About 150." "Plus
how many students?" "150 includes the students." By my reckoning, they
must have an acre each.
- PM eventually gave up the lease on his bed-sit, and spent about a week
sleeping on the floor of his office. The beauty of the park probably
wore a bit thin by then. He had acquired accommodation for us, but
unfortunately it wasn't to be available until 8/3.
- I arrived, bedraggled, on Wednesday, 24th of February. To the best of
my knowledge, one of the passengers died somewhere over the Middle
East. This belief is due to restrained panic in the Steward's voice
when asking if there was a doctor on board, combined with the fact we
were not allowed to leave until 'the old Bill' and a medical examiner
had boarded - and that no one was taken off the plane. I assume sick
people get off first, and dead people get off last.
- pm was there to greet me at the airport, and whisked me off to Cowley,
a satellite town of Oxford. The first 24 hours were "interesting", but
we settled down nicely after that.
- I had a meeting with an agent on the Thursday, late. He had arranged
a job interview with a company on the Friday. Due to a confusion in the
transport system, I was only about **90 minutes** late. I had a second
interview with the same company on Monday at which they made me an
offer. After 1/2 hours thought (in the nearby pub) and a chat with pm,
I accepted. This gave us a weeks holiday.
- We covered the basic "cathedrals and prehistoric monuments of southern
England" before taking possession of our flat. It is a nice flat, quite
big really. Central heating, security door etc. We have a spare room
with a double bed, which is available to friends - but you have to share
with the boxes of things that the furnished flat came with that we don't
want, including the painting of a spanish lady.
- The job is good, but I am still learning my way around. I am not sure
what I am doing yet. It is in Putney, and really close to home. 10
minutes on the train, with 10 minutes walk at either end (I am going to
get fit!)
- &£"&!*!!! foreign food! I ended up taking a day off with food
poisoning yesterday, from my first experiments with pork sausages.
- I have acquired a bank account (with an enormous overdraft) and am
well on my way to having a national insurance number. The world is my
oyster.
- We have even found an Irishman, at our local, to share Guinesses with this evening. Hopefully I have recovered enough from the sausages to allow for this.
There is a good UK map web site, if you are interested in such things, on it you can find the following -
Our address etc ## CENSORED email me! ## This is probably the last "broadcast" message I will send. If anyone is interested in an intermittent "news from the UK" sort of email from me, let me know. I have heaps of views from a foreign perspective that I want to share, move over Bill Bryson and Clive James. Otherwise we can revert to normal, personal email. Please keep using jem@netspace.net.au for the moment, as I want to keep work and play email seperate.
hugs
joan
Back to Words
