... and I'm too tired to go out and enjoy the beautiful weather. Things have been really good, just been running around so much this week, getting up early and going out every night after work. I'm gonna stay in tonight and relax tho.
My job is going well. My boss Martha is really nice and was very welcoming on my first day. I have a seat by a window and a brand new computer, I was very pleased about that. The building I work in is about 5 floors and there are 40 or so staff members in the building. There are another 30 next door, and Martha took around to meet everyone today. I won't remember anyone's name of course. There's about 15 people that work on my floor, and it's all open plan here. It isn't the norm for them to have cubicles in the UK, it's not part of the work culture. So the room is open with no partitions and some desks face each other, some face away, and you can see everyone. I thought at first it would be really annoying, but it's actually not a big deal. No one really looks at anyone else's computer, I doubt they care what the other person is doing. The main downside is that you can't really have a private phone conversation but as far as I can tell, people just go outside on a little balcony to talk, which is where the smokers hang out as well.
On Monday, my first day at work, Martha took me out to lunch with another lady who just started a few weeks ago. We went to an Italian restaurant and sat outside and ate pasta. They were like, do you want some wine? And at first I said, no I'm okay, but then when the waiter came Martha was like, let's just get a bottle, you should have some. Can't turn that down. :) So we hung out for awhile talking and Martha filled me in on some of the history of our group and the brands I'll be working on. The other lady was pretty funny, she used to work at NME and a bunch of other places. She was telling stories about a friend of her who is friends with the Prince of Brunei (the Sultan of Brunei's son) and how they were doing shots with Michael Jackson cause he's friends with the Prince. And how the Prince comes and hangs out at her house and sleeps over and he has a car full of security guards that have to sit outside the house all night.
After we finished the bottle I was a little tipsy so I didn't have any more, but the other ladies had another glass. I love that they are so laid back about that here, and about being social in general. At work you don't have to hide the fact that you have a social life and pretend your job is the only thing you care about. In London it's normal to be social and to have drinks and to talk about things like that at work. This guy was telling a story today about eating hash brownies. It's just so much more relaxed. People still get their work done and are professional, but there isn't the whole fake corporate work culture there is in NY. Like people don't say shit like "How was your weekend? Great." when they walk past you in the hallway, that kind of thing. I dunno how to describe it really, but anyone who's worked in a corporate office knows what I'm talking about. It just seems more normal here.
On the other hand, I'm not sure how I feel about the drinking with co-workers thing. I've always had a rule about getting drunk with co-workers after work. I never do it, I'll have a few drinks but I always make myself stop and go home before I get drunk because I just think it's such a bad idea. But here it's the norm to get wasted with your co-workers. I'm still leaning on the side of it's a bad idea. I'd rather just have a few drinks and keep it professional and save the drinking for real with my friends where I don't have to worry as much about what I say or do.
So my first day was a nice experience, a long lunch with some pasta and wine, and being introduced around. The last few days have also been good, just meeting with a lot of people from the other departments like sales and editorial and learning about their jobs and their history with the company and the brands. Talking to them about what kind of needs they have for online marketing and what projects they see as being highest priority for me to start first. I think the work I am doing will be really interesting, I'm in charge of 3 online brands. They just launched two of the brands recently, and one is about 4 years old but the website just had a re-vamp, so they all are really in need of strong marketing plans. I already have a lot of ideas and they seem very receptive to them, so I think it is a good fit.
My hours are 9:30 to 5:30 and for the most part everyone leaves the office around 5:30-6:00 so that is cool. Sometimes people stay late for projects but that doesn't seem to be the norm. They also do events and conferences (like MacWorld, PCWorld, etc) and Martha told me there's a dinner coming up she wants me to attend with her that's black tie. There's a big company get-together in a few weeks, so it seems like there will be some fun stuff outside of the office as well.
Things with the apartment are good. I live with Jorge (we share his room), Nuno, and Rose, who is from Florida. Rose is really cool and although she's not here that often (she works at a coffee shop around the corner so she's there or out with her boyfriend mostly), but when she's home we hang out and talk shit. She's a photographer but I haven't seen her work yet, been meaning to ask her to show me some stuff.
Nuno is also gone a lot, he works long hours at the restaurant. I hung out with him all day Sunday though. There's a really cool market down the street from us on Brick Lane on Sundays. Brick Lane is this long cobblestone road with shops on either side. On the weekend they have a market along it with vendors selling everything from meat and cheese to reggae mix CDs, bikes, cell phone, clothing. At the end there is a huge warehouse type building that has a giant indoor market. One side is all clothing and the other side is stands with all different types of food: japanese, brazilian, ethiopian, mexican, greek, etc. It's really really cool. The food all looks so amazing but Nuno tells me what's good and what's not worth it. He loves to go there on Sundays and get these vegetarian Ethiopian wraps that are really good, but this Sunday we went and got octopus balls from the japanese place. It sounds gross but they are so good, there are 6 little balls that are lightly fried and are all soft inside and in the middle they each have a little piece of octopus. They put fish flakes and japanese mayo on top and they are really just yummy. Then I got some passion fruit mousse from the brazilian place.
Afterwards we went to this bar called El Paso. Nuno and Jorge are friends with the girl who's family owns it. She was super sweet and we hung out talking to her for awhile, then Joao came and met up with us. We got a bunch of food there and it was really good, I didn't expect to have Mexican food in a pub London, but it was done really well. The boys were teasing me because I was saying that I couldn't get drunk or stay out late since I had my first day of work in the morning. I said I couldn't have any more than 3 beers, and I had to be home at 11 and iron my work clothes. They were like, whatever you are going to be wasted, get home super late, etc., there's no way.
So after El Paso we went to another pub to watch the Real Madrid vs. Real Mallorca football game for the Spanish league title. As most of you probably know, I love soccer, so I'm pretty stoked to be in a country where I can watch it a lot. I love going to pubs and having pints and watching soccer / football (I'll just call it football from now on, you'll know what I mean). The game was a big one because it was David Beckham's last game with Real Madrid before he starts playing in LA. Real Madrid won 3-1 and everyone was pretty stoked. The game was good, but of course just as I went to the bathroom, someone scored and someone got into a fight, so I missed part of the action. Oh well.
I'm not sure what team I'll support yet. I've been asking around to see what teams people support and why, and trying to figure out the difference between them. So far it seems like Chelsea is kind of like the NY Yankees in terms of them having a lot of money and doing well and everyone saying it's cause they can buy players. I gotta learn more about all this tho. I definitely want to go to a game, although Joao said it's not really that fun because people act like such drunken assholes you can't always enjoy yourself. I want to go anyway. Definitely when Mom and Barry come over we'll go. I should ask Barry which English team he supports...
After the game we went to another pub to see Liam, who is the singer in Joao's band, spin records. He played a lot of cool stuff including Jonathan Richman and some oldies and country music so that made me happy. And guess what? I only had 3 beers the whole time, I was home by 11, and I ironed all my clothes. I win :)
After work I've been meeting up with Jorge & Joao and some other people and going out to dinner. It's fun but I can't really keep doing that until I get paid in pounds cause the exchange rate is killing me. My job only pays monthly (apparently that's the norm here) and the next payday is on the 25th, so I won't be on the payroll for then. The guy Chris that does the HR stuff told me they could probably give me some cash to get by, which is super cool of them. It's difficult to get a bank account here so I have to work that out. I went to Citibank after work today and I won't bore you with the details, but basically it'll be a pain in the ass but I should be able to get one soon.
I bought a cordless home phone so I'm going to set up Vonage tonight. Which means I should be able to call you guys a lot more easily now. Hopefully it won't be a bitch to set up. I got my computer finally on Monday but I haven't been able to set it up because I have to get a converter to convert the power. It's a pain in the ass, I can't just plug anything in. For small stuff like a cell phone charger you can use these plug adaptors and plug them right in to the wall, but larger electronics like my computer run on a different power level and if I plugged it in like that it would blow. So I have to get this special power adaptor and I'm not exactly sure what is the right one, people keep telling me different things. Even the Mac store in NY wasn't quite sure. The other option is to have the power cable on my computer switched out, but I think that costs like £60 and I'd have to lug my computer back and forth to the Apple store, so it's not a simple process.
So I'm using Jorge's computer for now. None of this is a big deal, but I do just want to get settled already. Jorge was really sweet and cleared out a bunch of space for me on his shelves and to hang clothes, so I was able to unpack most of my stuff. I'm sleeping on a futon mattress in the corner right now but it's actually quite comfy so that's cool. I went to this store yesterday they have here called Argos. I've never seen anything quite like it, apparently it's an institution here, it's been around forever. You go in, and they just have a big row of these giant catalogs. You go up to one of them, and you just look through the catalog and write down the ID number of the item you want. They literally sell everything. From furniture and appliances to clothing, gym equipment, cameras, bedding, iPods, you name it. It's like Amazon or KMart, but just with this one giant catalog.
So you type in the ID number of the item to these little computer things and it tells you whether they have it in stock. I picked out some stuff I needed that was in stock and then I went to this kiosk and paid for it. You take your receipt to a counter and wait for them to call your number. So I'm thinking, they must have this huge warehouse and it's gonna take like 1/2 an hour to get my shit, like IKEA. But not 5 minutes later they call my number, and there's a bag with all my stuff. Awesome. My new favorite store.
I've been walking around as much as I get the chance and checking things out. The culture here is pretty similar to NY so there hasn't been a lot of culture shock for me. The stuff that is different I enjoy. I love the architecture, all the buildings here are so beautiful, even the old decrepit ones look really cool. I love that everything is crazy old. The advertising is very quirky and much racier so that's fun. They have all kinds of weird snacks like roast chicken potato chips and stuff like that, I've been sampling some of them. They have some sort of thing called a Pasty which is a pastry stuffed with meat and nuts and stuff. This guy at work said he would cook some and bring them in for me, I guess Pastys are traditonally Southern food, where he's from.
All the boys are going away for awhile. I haven't really contacted my other friends here yet like Rory, Gabriela, Sabina, etc so I'll probably do that soon. Joao is playing Glastonbury with his band this weekend and then he is going to Portugal for a few days. Jorge is leaving Sunday for Portugal because his band is playing a big festival next week, opening for Mastodon and Metallica (which is why Joao is going) and then they will be on tour in Portugal for a month. Nuno is leaving Sunday for Portugal as well to see Jorge's band and his family for a week. I wish I could go to Glastonbury and Portugal but sadly I have to work. Oh well, there will be other fun stuff to do.
I miss Rick a whole lot and that's been pretty hard. I try not to get really upset about it and we've talked on the phone a few times already so that's been good, but overall it's been tough for both of us. I knew I had to give some important things up to do this, and I'm happy to be here, but being without Rick and all my friends (and Lint) has definitely been a big sacrifice for me. Something I'm just beginning to adjust to.
I haven't had a lot of time to email everyone, so hopefully this blog will be somewhat entertaining and will keep you guys updated on what I've been up to. Please email me when you can and tell me how you've been doing. Until I get my computer set up I won't be able to email a whole lot, but email me and I'll write you back when I get more organized. I also have a shitload of pictures to put up on my gallery that are on my computer from my going away party, DC, and all kinds of other stuff. So I'll put those up soon as well. Hope everyone is doing good!
My job is going well. My boss Martha is really nice and was very welcoming on my first day. I have a seat by a window and a brand new computer, I was very pleased about that. The building I work in is about 5 floors and there are 40 or so staff members in the building. There are another 30 next door, and Martha took around to meet everyone today. I won't remember anyone's name of course. There's about 15 people that work on my floor, and it's all open plan here. It isn't the norm for them to have cubicles in the UK, it's not part of the work culture. So the room is open with no partitions and some desks face each other, some face away, and you can see everyone. I thought at first it would be really annoying, but it's actually not a big deal. No one really looks at anyone else's computer, I doubt they care what the other person is doing. The main downside is that you can't really have a private phone conversation but as far as I can tell, people just go outside on a little balcony to talk, which is where the smokers hang out as well.
On Monday, my first day at work, Martha took me out to lunch with another lady who just started a few weeks ago. We went to an Italian restaurant and sat outside and ate pasta. They were like, do you want some wine? And at first I said, no I'm okay, but then when the waiter came Martha was like, let's just get a bottle, you should have some. Can't turn that down. :) So we hung out for awhile talking and Martha filled me in on some of the history of our group and the brands I'll be working on. The other lady was pretty funny, she used to work at NME and a bunch of other places. She was telling stories about a friend of her who is friends with the Prince of Brunei (the Sultan of Brunei's son) and how they were doing shots with Michael Jackson cause he's friends with the Prince. And how the Prince comes and hangs out at her house and sleeps over and he has a car full of security guards that have to sit outside the house all night.
After we finished the bottle I was a little tipsy so I didn't have any more, but the other ladies had another glass. I love that they are so laid back about that here, and about being social in general. At work you don't have to hide the fact that you have a social life and pretend your job is the only thing you care about. In London it's normal to be social and to have drinks and to talk about things like that at work. This guy was telling a story today about eating hash brownies. It's just so much more relaxed. People still get their work done and are professional, but there isn't the whole fake corporate work culture there is in NY. Like people don't say shit like "How was your weekend? Great." when they walk past you in the hallway, that kind of thing. I dunno how to describe it really, but anyone who's worked in a corporate office knows what I'm talking about. It just seems more normal here.
On the other hand, I'm not sure how I feel about the drinking with co-workers thing. I've always had a rule about getting drunk with co-workers after work. I never do it, I'll have a few drinks but I always make myself stop and go home before I get drunk because I just think it's such a bad idea. But here it's the norm to get wasted with your co-workers. I'm still leaning on the side of it's a bad idea. I'd rather just have a few drinks and keep it professional and save the drinking for real with my friends where I don't have to worry as much about what I say or do.
So my first day was a nice experience, a long lunch with some pasta and wine, and being introduced around. The last few days have also been good, just meeting with a lot of people from the other departments like sales and editorial and learning about their jobs and their history with the company and the brands. Talking to them about what kind of needs they have for online marketing and what projects they see as being highest priority for me to start first. I think the work I am doing will be really interesting, I'm in charge of 3 online brands. They just launched two of the brands recently, and one is about 4 years old but the website just had a re-vamp, so they all are really in need of strong marketing plans. I already have a lot of ideas and they seem very receptive to them, so I think it is a good fit.
My hours are 9:30 to 5:30 and for the most part everyone leaves the office around 5:30-6:00 so that is cool. Sometimes people stay late for projects but that doesn't seem to be the norm. They also do events and conferences (like MacWorld, PCWorld, etc) and Martha told me there's a dinner coming up she wants me to attend with her that's black tie. There's a big company get-together in a few weeks, so it seems like there will be some fun stuff outside of the office as well.
Things with the apartment are good. I live with Jorge (we share his room), Nuno, and Rose, who is from Florida. Rose is really cool and although she's not here that often (she works at a coffee shop around the corner so she's there or out with her boyfriend mostly), but when she's home we hang out and talk shit. She's a photographer but I haven't seen her work yet, been meaning to ask her to show me some stuff.
Nuno is also gone a lot, he works long hours at the restaurant. I hung out with him all day Sunday though. There's a really cool market down the street from us on Brick Lane on Sundays. Brick Lane is this long cobblestone road with shops on either side. On the weekend they have a market along it with vendors selling everything from meat and cheese to reggae mix CDs, bikes, cell phone, clothing. At the end there is a huge warehouse type building that has a giant indoor market. One side is all clothing and the other side is stands with all different types of food: japanese, brazilian, ethiopian, mexican, greek, etc. It's really really cool. The food all looks so amazing but Nuno tells me what's good and what's not worth it. He loves to go there on Sundays and get these vegetarian Ethiopian wraps that are really good, but this Sunday we went and got octopus balls from the japanese place. It sounds gross but they are so good, there are 6 little balls that are lightly fried and are all soft inside and in the middle they each have a little piece of octopus. They put fish flakes and japanese mayo on top and they are really just yummy. Then I got some passion fruit mousse from the brazilian place.
Afterwards we went to this bar called El Paso. Nuno and Jorge are friends with the girl who's family owns it. She was super sweet and we hung out talking to her for awhile, then Joao came and met up with us. We got a bunch of food there and it was really good, I didn't expect to have Mexican food in a pub London, but it was done really well. The boys were teasing me because I was saying that I couldn't get drunk or stay out late since I had my first day of work in the morning. I said I couldn't have any more than 3 beers, and I had to be home at 11 and iron my work clothes. They were like, whatever you are going to be wasted, get home super late, etc., there's no way.
So after El Paso we went to another pub to watch the Real Madrid vs. Real Mallorca football game for the Spanish league title. As most of you probably know, I love soccer, so I'm pretty stoked to be in a country where I can watch it a lot. I love going to pubs and having pints and watching soccer / football (I'll just call it football from now on, you'll know what I mean). The game was a big one because it was David Beckham's last game with Real Madrid before he starts playing in LA. Real Madrid won 3-1 and everyone was pretty stoked. The game was good, but of course just as I went to the bathroom, someone scored and someone got into a fight, so I missed part of the action. Oh well.
I'm not sure what team I'll support yet. I've been asking around to see what teams people support and why, and trying to figure out the difference between them. So far it seems like Chelsea is kind of like the NY Yankees in terms of them having a lot of money and doing well and everyone saying it's cause they can buy players. I gotta learn more about all this tho. I definitely want to go to a game, although Joao said it's not really that fun because people act like such drunken assholes you can't always enjoy yourself. I want to go anyway. Definitely when Mom and Barry come over we'll go. I should ask Barry which English team he supports...
After the game we went to another pub to see Liam, who is the singer in Joao's band, spin records. He played a lot of cool stuff including Jonathan Richman and some oldies and country music so that made me happy. And guess what? I only had 3 beers the whole time, I was home by 11, and I ironed all my clothes. I win :)
After work I've been meeting up with Jorge & Joao and some other people and going out to dinner. It's fun but I can't really keep doing that until I get paid in pounds cause the exchange rate is killing me. My job only pays monthly (apparently that's the norm here) and the next payday is on the 25th, so I won't be on the payroll for then. The guy Chris that does the HR stuff told me they could probably give me some cash to get by, which is super cool of them. It's difficult to get a bank account here so I have to work that out. I went to Citibank after work today and I won't bore you with the details, but basically it'll be a pain in the ass but I should be able to get one soon.
I bought a cordless home phone so I'm going to set up Vonage tonight. Which means I should be able to call you guys a lot more easily now. Hopefully it won't be a bitch to set up. I got my computer finally on Monday but I haven't been able to set it up because I have to get a converter to convert the power. It's a pain in the ass, I can't just plug anything in. For small stuff like a cell phone charger you can use these plug adaptors and plug them right in to the wall, but larger electronics like my computer run on a different power level and if I plugged it in like that it would blow. So I have to get this special power adaptor and I'm not exactly sure what is the right one, people keep telling me different things. Even the Mac store in NY wasn't quite sure. The other option is to have the power cable on my computer switched out, but I think that costs like £60 and I'd have to lug my computer back and forth to the Apple store, so it's not a simple process.
So I'm using Jorge's computer for now. None of this is a big deal, but I do just want to get settled already. Jorge was really sweet and cleared out a bunch of space for me on his shelves and to hang clothes, so I was able to unpack most of my stuff. I'm sleeping on a futon mattress in the corner right now but it's actually quite comfy so that's cool. I went to this store yesterday they have here called Argos. I've never seen anything quite like it, apparently it's an institution here, it's been around forever. You go in, and they just have a big row of these giant catalogs. You go up to one of them, and you just look through the catalog and write down the ID number of the item you want. They literally sell everything. From furniture and appliances to clothing, gym equipment, cameras, bedding, iPods, you name it. It's like Amazon or KMart, but just with this one giant catalog.
So you type in the ID number of the item to these little computer things and it tells you whether they have it in stock. I picked out some stuff I needed that was in stock and then I went to this kiosk and paid for it. You take your receipt to a counter and wait for them to call your number. So I'm thinking, they must have this huge warehouse and it's gonna take like 1/2 an hour to get my shit, like IKEA. But not 5 minutes later they call my number, and there's a bag with all my stuff. Awesome. My new favorite store.
I've been walking around as much as I get the chance and checking things out. The culture here is pretty similar to NY so there hasn't been a lot of culture shock for me. The stuff that is different I enjoy. I love the architecture, all the buildings here are so beautiful, even the old decrepit ones look really cool. I love that everything is crazy old. The advertising is very quirky and much racier so that's fun. They have all kinds of weird snacks like roast chicken potato chips and stuff like that, I've been sampling some of them. They have some sort of thing called a Pasty which is a pastry stuffed with meat and nuts and stuff. This guy at work said he would cook some and bring them in for me, I guess Pastys are traditonally Southern food, where he's from.
All the boys are going away for awhile. I haven't really contacted my other friends here yet like Rory, Gabriela, Sabina, etc so I'll probably do that soon. Joao is playing Glastonbury with his band this weekend and then he is going to Portugal for a few days. Jorge is leaving Sunday for Portugal because his band is playing a big festival next week, opening for Mastodon and Metallica (which is why Joao is going) and then they will be on tour in Portugal for a month. Nuno is leaving Sunday for Portugal as well to see Jorge's band and his family for a week. I wish I could go to Glastonbury and Portugal but sadly I have to work. Oh well, there will be other fun stuff to do.
I miss Rick a whole lot and that's been pretty hard. I try not to get really upset about it and we've talked on the phone a few times already so that's been good, but overall it's been tough for both of us. I knew I had to give some important things up to do this, and I'm happy to be here, but being without Rick and all my friends (and Lint) has definitely been a big sacrifice for me. Something I'm just beginning to adjust to.
I haven't had a lot of time to email everyone, so hopefully this blog will be somewhat entertaining and will keep you guys updated on what I've been up to. Please email me when you can and tell me how you've been doing. Until I get my computer set up I won't be able to email a whole lot, but email me and I'll write you back when I get more organized. I also have a shitload of pictures to put up on my gallery that are on my computer from my going away party, DC, and all kinds of other stuff. So I'll put those up soon as well. Hope everyone is doing good!
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