English Bodies

From "Table Talk" by AA Gill, The Sunday Times, Style section (July 31, 2005):

"What is it that makes English bodies so spectacularly repellent in the daylight? It isn't simply the clammy, adipose, maggoty-white flesh, with its zits and lesions and dry, scrofolous craters. It's the distribution that so noisomely offends. The softly curdled lumps that hang like fungus on beech trees, the swaying underarms, the double nuggets of cheesy flob behind the knees, the exhausted, stretched, who-cares haggis of gut, the shuddering, horrified backsides, with their wrinkled, slippery clefts and creases, the thighs pitted like rain on cold sand -- all of it shaped and moulded and bulged by waistbands and straps that were hopeful three years in the past."

Nervous, nervous, nervous for my job interview on Monday!!

~K

Slowly rolling again

I gave my two-weeks notice yesterday at the ol' Monk. Was a little nervous about it especially since another kitchen porter quit/walked out last Thursday. Despite this, they were supportive and really appreciated that I had given two weeks notice as opposed to just not showing up all of a sudden. They must have really had some irresponsible people coming through there to feel that way! Anyway, I'm going to work through August 6th and perhaps a couple of days the week after IF they are in a bind. Seems like they're well on the way of replacing the other guy who quit, though. Four or five applications came in already.

Tomorrow we're going to drive down to St Albans to check it out. Next week we'll go to Bournemouth and check out Winchester on the way back. Then it's just a bit of a waiting game to see if K gets the job. I'll get a room in London and come home on the weekends. Hopefully, by the end of August we'll have been able to decide which city to move to and have found a place to move into. Looking forward to it.

And I'm definitely looking forward to not doing dishes or cleaning mussels, though I definitely will miss the people in the kitchen. Good bunch of blokes.

-RP-

Next...

We had just about recovered from the shock of Rich's job offer on Monday when we got a wrench thrown in the works. Yesterday I received a request-for-interview letter from Bournemouth University regarding a job application that I had sent them several weeks ago. The job is a researcher position in the Centre for Creative Media Research (http://media.bournemouth.ac.uk/ccmr.html). The excellent thing about this job is in addition to the salary they also will pay tuition for a PhD if so desired. I had sent my application in nice and early and hoped that I might hear from them. Well the closing date came and went. Two weeks went by and no news, so I assumed that I was not on their shortlist. I moved on mentally, not thinking about it anymore and looking for other interesting possibilities. Then on Monday Rich got the London job and our attention was immediately focused on figuring out where we wanted to live, giving notice to our current employers, etc. The letter's arrival on Thursday was a HUGE surprise! The interview is scheduled for August 1 at 1:45. The complication now is that we don't know where we should be looking to find a place to live. If I get the B.U. job, then we need to look southwest of London and we'll both have a 50 minute commute. If I don't get the B.U. job, then we need to be northwest of the city to allow for the easiest possible commuting for Rich. So we are now on hold until after my interview - hopefully they will make a quick decision. With Rich's job starting August 15th and my last day of work at the theatre on August 26th, we don't have much time to get ourselves moved before our lease ends on August 31st.

When things happen, they sure seem to happen all at once!

~K

Survey says...

I participated in a survey about blogging a couple of months ago. It was undertaken by the Nanyang Technological University. They just sent out the results and have also created a blog to display them. If you're interested, go here:

Weblog Ethics Survey Results

-RP-

It's REAL

OK, I've sort of gotten through the shock of this job landing on me all of a sudden. K and I talked it through yesterday evening. This morning I called the guy back to talk about the start date. I told him I'd be happy to start on the 15th, but understand that they need to have someone asap. Offered to start as early as the 1st or to split the difference and start on the 8th. He said it was better for them admin-wise if I start on the 15th. That way they can "induct" me when they induct the other two who are due to start then. So, it's settled! I'm starting on the 15th. He's sending the contract, salary offer, and terms&conditions today.

This gives us a little less than 4 weeks to get "sorted". I'll keep working at the restaurant until the weekend before I start the London job (though I'm going to wait a bit before telling them I'm leaving... chickenshit). And I'll really buckle down on the dissertation so that I have a rough draft FINISHED before the 15th. Then I can use the last two weeks of August to proofread so it's ready to turn in by September 5th.

We're moving to London! Well, the outskirts of London.

-RP-

This is the initial reaction

HOLY CRAP!!!

So, here I am... working away at the Belgian Monk, trying to write my dissertation during my time off, waiting for another viable archiving job-offer to come up, when all of a sudden there's an e-mail from one of the people that interviewed me for the London job. He tells me that one of the people they hired has gotten a job elsewhere and will be leaving in a week... need a replacement as soon as possible... would I like to do it? I have a minor heart attack (not really). Typical, I've "moved on" and then I get the job!

The thing is... I sort of saw this coming. Last week, "L", one of my classmates in the archiving course who got the London job, was offered a job at the archive here in Norwich. We heard about this on Friday when we saw her at "A's" house, another one of my archiving classmates. We talked about the "what if" of them calling me as a replacement and I said that I would first have a nervous breakdown and then accept the job. Walking home that night, K and I talked about the "holy crappedness" of the "what if" and told ourselves, "Nah... there are others they'd call in." But in the back of my mind, I was getting pretty nervous about it.

I know... why get nervous about it, it's a great opportunity, etc.? Well, I'm not a normal human being. I operate under a whole series of strange neuroses and odd codes of conduct. I was nervous/freaked-out because a) I have just started my job at The Belgian Monk and to have to tell them "Sorry, I'm taking a job in London" after only three weeks (and pretty much doing the same thing to them as K did last year) is not going to be a fun experience and I really don't like screwing people over; b) once I get into a "routine" (this one being: work at the BM, write dissertation, apply to other archiving jobs or see what happens with K's applications... yeah... she hasn't told you about that yet) I get a bit nervous about changing it; and c) trying to figure out the logistics of starting a job in London (as far as figuring out a place to stay temporarily, or getting a place that we can completely relocate to, or commuting from Norwich every day until we figure out something else) is daunting if you ask me. But despite all that, I certainly couldn't possibly turn the job-offer down. And I didn't. (I did have the mini nervous breakdown (so to speak), but a tall beer and a shot of whiskey has calmed me down a little.

After getting the e-mail, I forwarded it to K with a caption saying "OH MY F*CKING GOD" (the asterisk wasn't there in the e-mail). She called me back immediately and told me to call that guy immediately. I told her I would rather throw up and then finish doing the dishes, which I lapsed into doing because I didn't know what else to do with myself for a moment. Nonsense! So, I finished doing the dishes anyway (but didn't throw up) and I called the guy. He said that if I wanted the job, they would like me to start as soon as possible, but asked if I needed time to think about it. I told him I'd definitely like to take the job, but the only thing I need to think about is when I could start, that I needed to give notice at my part-time job and sort out a place to stay in London. He asked me to call him back tomorrow. Will do.

Now we just need to figure out how to pull this off and then I need to give notice at the restaurant (I like those guys!).

Still too shocked to think about the positive side to this turn of events...

-RP-

Life in the U.K.

I was thinking just the other day that the 10 months we have lived in England have been really eventful. Lots of pop-culture stuff happening here:

The Royal Wedding of Charles and Camilla
A National Election
EU Constitution Consternation
Glastonbury Music Festival
Wimbledon
The Live8 Concert
The G8 Summit in Gleneagles
Tony Blair is President of the EU
and now, sadly,
The London Bombings

For such a small country there seems to be an awful lot of activity. I have to say that I have come to care a lot about England and am starting to think of it as home. Never thought I would feel that way!

~K

ANNOUNCEMENT

We have been unaffected by the terrorist attacks in London today. We were nowhere near London during this time, but a couple of my classmates may very well have been affected in some way. Will give them a call today to find out.

Who did it? That's what everyone is wondering about. The world's infamous terrorist organizations are all clamoring to get credit, but it seems clear to me that it was just some militant French nationalists angered by the IOC giving the 2012 Olympics to London. Well... you can't rule it out, right?

-RP-

---

London Bombings - Full Coverage on Yahoo! News:

"Four blasts rocked the London subway and tore open a packed double-decker bus during the morning rush hour Thursday, sending bloodied victims fleeing after what a shaken Prime Minister Tony Blair called 'barbaric' terrorist attacks. At least 40 people were killed and more than 350 wounded. Two U.S. law enforcement officials said at least 40 people were killed. In London, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Brian Piddick said at least 33 people killed in the subway system alone."

British Swear Words

A good, informative article from the BBC about the silly language they speak over here...

The Origins and Common Usage of British Swear-words

Mussel Man

I can now officially say that I officially have an official part-time job. In fact, two cropped up at the same time, the results of many attempts at "casting the net" and "reeling something in". After coming back with an empty net several times, I suddenly had two: a sporadic job as a "conference porter" (i.e.- factotum) at UEA and a job as a "mussel preparation person" in the mornings at The Belgian Monk
. I decided to go with the mussel job because it was more regular than the other one. However, I did end up saying I would work for a couple of days at a conference at UEA this week. Sort of regret agreeing to that, but oh well.

The Belgian Monk is the place where K worked for two weeks when we first got here, so it's sort of funny that I'm in there now. Should have sprung for that a long time ago. But again... oh well. They have also given me a "kitchen porter" position on Saturdays. So, I'll be working from about 11am to 3pm on Monday - Friday cleaning mussels and a split shift as a kitchen porter on Saturdays, 12pm-5:30pm and 8:00pm to finish (around 11:30pm). "Kitchen porter" means "dishwasher". It's good, mindless work that I can just churn through while my mind flits around with other topics like the dissertation and "the future". And it's £4.95/hr, plus tips. A decent boost to our "household income".

I do, however, feel a wee bit guilty for being an accomplice in the death of thousands upon thousands of small, saltwater mollusks (the mussels and the barnacles attached to them). Murder in the 2nd degree (I think), but damn do they taste good when cooked in cream, geuze, and leeks!

-RP-