Sunday 25 April 2010

Working in London . . . well if you call that working!

So fully moved in, and I've become acclimatized, well sort of . . . I’ve found the essential things in my area: the supermarket, and the field, park and court to play ‘pick up games’ of football. I also started working on the hospitality side of things at Shakespeare’s the Globe theatre. I guess years of doing hospo work during my studies have actually amounted to something? Well it got me here didn’t it! It pushed me to go half-way across the world, and I’m super glad that I did! Alright, nothing out of the ordinary has happened yet, (if it did it probably wouldn’t be posted on this blog anyway), but the entire experience in itself has been awesome. I simple walk down the road to the supermarket is buzzy, now drugs needed here – life is the drug! Just the fact everything is so foreign, but then so similar in other ways (I’m in an English speaking country with much history linked to New Zealand.) Still I’m left bewildered and amazed!

And working at the Globe theatre has been a nicely cushioned beginning to London life. Except the first night it has been a very easy work. The first night I was in the bar, a ‘destination bar’ on the river Thames, working with very cool barmen and waitresses. Many of the barmen are artists of some sort, with that same old’ cliché of slaving in hospitality to pay the bills, as they try to attempt to make it in their chosen pursuit. Nonetheless, a real interesting lot of intelligent guys. Jack the actor. Anthony or Josh (I get mixed up) the designer. Jasmine the fashion designer. Very cool cats indeed!

However, technically I wasn’t hired to work in the bar, since that night I've been working in the piazza, selling snacks and coffees – it’s piss-easy work! I’m not complaining, yes the pay is shit, all I eat are sandwiches on shift, and the job isn’t very challenging – but I see it as the first stepping stone for my trip. Stepping stone for what . . . Well for one, I just got accepted into a program to teach English in Nice, France. Even though my French is rusty. or shall I say non-existent. Who cares - I get to live in the South of France for 7 months – not a bad life!

For now anyway, working at the Globe is not so bad. It actually feels kind of special. I mean William Shakespeare performed his most famous plays in the vicinity where the re-built arena now sits. Across the river Thames is St Paul’s Cathedral, the most prestigious and famous cathedral in England. I mean renaissance art-work plasters the ceiling; you know it must be an important site. And with the perfect spring weather we’ve been having, the view of the Thames, London Bridge, and all its surrounding structures in the moonlight, makes it seem like some vital history has made its way to such an area.

So I dont have a job that will take me places in a career, that is not the point, I'm here on an O.E. - a career, if any, can come later!

P.S. Photos to come! And the next blog, will be about socializing in London, if I start meeting people and socializing that is – ha ha!


Posted by at No comments:

Tuesday 20 April 2010

What it’s like to actually live in London.

So it has rolled over to the two week mark of my trip today . . . how do I feel then, being immersed in this population of over ten million people.


This all depends on how much money you earn, its true money makes the world go round, London is no exception. If anything, this large metropolitan city is well attached to the value money holds in society as a social signifier.

Even when I was playing football with some British-Africans teens in the run-down suburb of Elephant & Castle close to where I live (in Kennington, one of the nicer parts of the South East); one lad was more concerned about how valuable his boots were than the actual game, his side lost anyway. I don’t blame him though, you’re a product of your environment. For these kids, it is a dream of having everything they desire, it seems to be closer than ever imaginable, as many of these kids know people who went to their school, and now have turned pro. These working-class footballers of colour are their idols, from humble beginnings – to being able to have anything you want – that is the magic for them. I too was sucked into the natural trends of capitalism, along Oxford street, the world's busiest; there, I purchased a pair of Adidas running shorts for seven pounds – you cannot get a meal for that cheap in most restaurants in London city!

When I was staying with my brother’s friend (a successful businessman); I felt I had a higher social-standing, since I lived a short walk away from the glorious Hampstead Heath, an area where many rock stars and actors reside. I even happened to have my first celebrity sighting, asking Matthew Goode (currently a flourishing British actor) for directions to the famous park.

Even when I went out on a Friday night with an old school mate from South Africa, I matched him drink for drink! However he is a financial advisor for Rothschild Investment Bank, while I will be waiting tables earning just above minimum wage, therefore it would burning a much deeper hole in my pocket than his. Don’t get me wrong though, it was a great ‘catch up’, nearly like old times – still sharing the same bond as we had in South Africa as kids. However if he had to see where I was living in comparison to his place, there would naturally be a divide, his apartment costs more than double a month than I’m paying; my shitty little box room is in a run-down government tower,


one cannot compare.

Despite my box room, small bed, minimal cupboard space (my bag is still semi-packed with clothes), and generally little living allowance, it has been refreshing outlook for me. A privileged kid from New Zealand, with parents who provided me with everything I needed, and more; therefore this has put much more effort into doing the simple things one needs to survive. So it may limit my constructivism in the leisure time stakes, the up-shot is it has been a challenge of coping in this unforgiving place, possibly a test of a naive weakly willed character. But some character? No doubt! The destination is really the journey. I’m not close to making it to London just yet; I’m still on the travel path – making progress inch by inch. You could say, I just boarded the plan in New Zealand and have a 30 hour flight ahead of me - still a way to go!

Re-invention has the potential to be the biggest refreshment of this journey; it could be like trekking through a sweltering hot desert for many hours and finally coming to lake. This lake can turn into a mirage though, so I must be careful, the prize is there, it is how I decide to venture towards taking it. Nevertheless, I have all this power now; I can re-create myself in the ways I've always wanted to change - getting rid of my weird social idiosyncrasies. If they remain, it may limit my perserverence; a road-block to me achieving something or going where I want to go with my existence. London just may be a metaphor as an excuse to journey away to find myself. So I better stop there, psyco-analyis has taken course, and I've fully navigated away on a tangent that may never return. Nonetheless, stay installed, because next time I will go into details about my job and socialising in London!
Posted by at 2 comments:

My first 10 days in London


Writing this on the 15th floor of the final destination of my adventure (for now anyway), it has been ten days of real intrigue for my banal existence. To be quite honest, nothing out of the ordinary has happened, rather lots of little incidents that have collected together to formulate a totally new perspective for my life!

How I’m perceived and my perceptions:

I don’t even know how I see myself or who I am exactly, but for this blog, I’m going to keep it as simple as possible, which is never easy for Gil, yes I just spoke in the 3rd person, I fully went there. Okay, so I’m labelled, defined or have been calling myself a New Zealander.


Those of you who really know me know my identity is more complex than that.Nonetheless, after playing football with British youngsters all of African parents, in a caged astro-turf pitch on this densely populated island, and being the only white guy on the pitch, they were amazed that I could play football well. And when I told them I was from New Zealand their jaws dropped, and it dropped through the floor when I the hit net on several occasions. Upon meeting a Turkish worker at the railway station, I understand we are here for different reasons, and he didn’t understand why I was in this “shit place” (his words). He has to be in London though, he sends money back for his family weekly. Or the bank assistant who I opened my account with, came from Malawi, he funded this trip by selling car parts in Joburg. While the Polish owner of the restaurant, who ‘knows of’ New Zealand, and so cannot believe I would leave such a terrific place. And of course I didn’t have to leave New Zealand. I’m not here illegally, or in dire need of earning money because I cannot feed myself back home – I’m here for pleasure, for experience, for hedonism, to get away from something or to go towards something else. My situation, like all of the Kiwis and Aussis, is different to those from Africa, parts of Asia and the Middle East, we had a choice and they didn’t.

Flat-Hunting:

I must say if you really want to see London, and I mean ‘really’, not the ‘I’m taking photos of every church, gallery, or public building, from there to Buckingham Palace’: Go flat-hunting! Okay that is a stupid idea if you’re a tourist, but you really see behind that glossy surface of the place, the real London. If I came to London for two weeks and not two years, my perception of the place would have been very different. I would have gone to every tourist spot, staying close to the centre, venturing to the nice areas like the West End or along the river (BTW I haven’t been to Soho or Chelsea yet). Checking out flats in East London is an experience in itself. East London is known to be more gritty, have lower-income bracket persons, and be less glamorous than London’s ideal. So I went to see a place in a suburb called West-ferry. The suburb is a 15 minute walk in-land from the water. It is filled with government state housing, the place I was checking out was one of many, horrible looking brick complexes, something more akin to prison walls than that of residence for us every-day civilians. What shocked me was walking along the dock, a complete disparate world emerged, with sea-side apartments etc. And Canary Wharf the suburb which separates West-ferry from the water, is a mini metropolis of bankers, with HSBC, Citi-bank, and Bank of America skyscrapers taking to the sky. So despite the mix of Indian, Bangladeshi, and Pakistani, working class families just a few miles up the road, you have work professionals dining in top restaurants, socializing in parks and exercising in Virgin-run gyms. Gentrification at its finest? Quite possibly mate!

Checking out Golders Green was another kettle of fish all together, London contains every type of kettle imaginable. Golders Green for one, is packed with religious Jews. You would be hard-pressed to find a bacon sandwich here. One lamppost has ‘Free Gaza from Hamas’ tagged on it, Jews really suck at street art – the free Palestine tags I’ve seen (in Wellington) are far more artistic. Anyway its cool that next to Ben’s Bagels is an Iranian food speciality store, if only those actual governments (Israel and Iran) could exist peacefully together. And this is what London is, people from all walks of life, from every single country and culture you know of, think of, or can ever imagine, living with the idea of obtaining a better life for themselves and their family. For instance I met a half-Indonesian (Muslim) and half-Italian (Catholic) lasse in Mother Bar (which is just like Khuja Lounge in Auckland, one of my favourite clubs FYI). Or how about showing up to a flat viewing, where your land-lord lives with his Ghanaian brother, who is fresh off the boat (quite literally).

The Tube:

Riding the tube is an experience in itself. Unless you know someone, people do not utter a word to one another. Even though it has been constructed in a way that you sit facing your fellow passenger, it is, just looks and gestures, no such concrete communication is ever attempted. Not only this, people, no matter the time of day, look drab and tired, and totally emotionless. Then when you take the tube at rush hour, it is first a placid, non-contact fight to make it onto the actual tube, and then you’re squashed with your fellow Londoners. And despite all these bodies millimetres away from each other, not a word is muttered, you are concentrated together with several other beating hearts, but you are totally alone – there is no love here! However one day on the tube, the sombre vibe was lifted, a group of children on some field trip added a refreshing tone to the typically sour proceedings. Laughing, asking silly questions, and just being free-spirited, was a welcome change to my usual tube experiences. Children they’re great aren’t they, they are totally ‘real’ and express themselves organically, staying true to how they feel; not suppressing t

Fuck social norms. This was definitely not on the mind of one commuter. A young Caribbean Englishman, departed the tube station not walking briskly and silently like others, but rapping the words to some song for all to hear, strutting in that ‘gangster’ way as he made his way up to ground level. People were bemused, ‘You don’t do that’! ‘You get to where you need to be, that is the sole purpose of the tube’. Well I think this black-man just wanted an audience, he certainly got one, but nothing close to a pleased appreciative lot, as shown by the digusting look on the faces’ of the eldery Londoners.

Note: I strongly suggest no families with young children to travel at extremely busy times. Seeing that I witnessed two little girls screaming and crying to get out, as their parents got them off before their final destination as it was overly too intense for them.

The Strangers I’ve met:

I’m not alone in my thoughts that no-body utters a word on the tube. I met 62 year old Bob at the underground station – who proceeded to tell me (during our tube-ride), that nobody has ever spoken to him on the tube. I replied, I can’t help it, I guess it’s my Kiwi sensibility , or maybe it’s one of my ‘special’ qualities. He also said never in his history of being in London has there not been a cloud in the sky, but today the sky was totally blue, totally. This is not because, London rarely has good weather, but because the planes fly everyday emitting cloud fodder in the skies. At this moment though, time pending due to the volcanic ash here and all around Europe, few air-spaces have been open. This is much to the disgust of my brother’s good friend who I stayed at for a week (upon arriving to London), as he had a weekend planned skiing the French Alps with an English bird. My ‘brother’s friend’ described by my other brother as the civilian version of Jason Bourne, or the plebe’s Matt Damon. Fairly short and stocky, he is a bit Jason Bourne, totally independent and successful, he moves by the beat of his own drum – travelling when he wants and seeing who he wants. Like when Jason Bourne initially had the CIA to answer to, he answers to rich property investors, same difference! By any means, he is no longer a stranger, but someone I could aspire to be. He came to London ten years ago, at a similar age to me, now he is obviously fully settled, living his own dream.

And the last stranger I’ve met on my journey thus far, leaves me puzzled and in disagreement. When sitting in the stands watching a football game, I speak to this English person about everything but the match – it says a lot for the quality of the football (Championship relegation battle). But what is more boggling is the fact he gives me his anti-immigration sentiments, as England is heavily in debt and possibly heavily over-populated, while the government feeds, houses, and takes care of some of these desperate migrants – leaving the country in a bad state. Yet his parents were also asylum seekers, and the United Kingdom provided for his family at a stage of desperate need, so surely he should sympathize?
I empathize. I’m a multi-culturalist or a believer in cosmopolitanism. This is where no matter your creed or race, a wealthy community has the moral obligation to care for you if they can. Since the United Kingdom has the capacity to take in these migrants, it raises the question if you trek a million miles or take to the rough waters to gain entry into a land of opportunity and a chance at a (much) better life – who has the ethical right to say no to such heart and desire, because they will born in less fortunate circumstance? No way that aint fair!
So to finish I quote the British national anthem, “for Britain’s sake defend our mother, prince, and friend . . . God save us all”!

Posted by at 2 comments:
Labels: , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)