London baby, yeah!!

Alright so here I am then. Officially landed in London where I'll be basing myself for the next however long.
Flew in on Wednesday night from Abu Dhabi on what was possibly the best flight of my life thus far.
A nice 8 hours which breaks down to about 4 movies and a couple of episodes of scrubs, food was fantastic and because the plane was less than half full I got my first choice. I had a window seat and the seat next to me free and had I been of a mind to crash out for the flight I could have snagged a row of four all to myself but it was a day time flight and I like to look out the window. I got some pretty pictures too which I'll try and attach for you. It was as all flights should be but clearly cant. It was about 1 degree in London when I arrived. Dark but with a clear sky that made it feel colder. I battled my way on the underground with my suitcases so I could get myself to Charing Cross to catch a National Rail train to Sevenoaks where Katie lives and where I'm staying for the moment. Felt kinda proud of myself to be honest, negotiating my way through London on my own laden with all my worldly goods. Katie had to work the next morning so I got myself up and set off to wander around Sevenoaks. I had to find a HSBC bank so I could open my account and deposit the sterling I had been nervously carrying around. What can I say of Sevenoaks? Its very hilly I can tell you that, really really hilly. After trekking up to the high St from Katie's I eventually found the HSBC bank and opened my account with a lovely young man called Matt who asked me “why the hell do you want to come half way around the world to Sevenoaks?” Since I've taken off on my big journey I keep meeting a bunch of people who tell me they'd love to do this, love to just take off. I don't really know how to answer that, I think if they want to do it then they should. I think the thing is though that to a certain extent it seems like to do this you just wander away and get on a plane but you don't, it took about a year of organising and a certain amount of time to reconcile myself to the fact that as many plans as I might want to make, ultimately by doing this I leave a lot of what happens in my life up to chance. Which I like for the moment at least. Its a ride. I just try and enjoy things while they're in front of me and then look for something new when they are gone. And so, on Thursday I enjoyed what my little bank friend Matt might call the dubious delights of Sevenoaks. Wandered through all the little streets and alleyways, had lunch in a pub with a gorgeous open fire, got myself a UK phone and tried to figure out how I can get myself connected to the net for as little as possible. Ohh here's a good tip in case you didn't already know it, McDonald's have free WiFi over here. You can go on their website and find out if the McDonald's near you has Wifi and then just wander in and connect. Very handy. Some coffee places do as well like the coffee republic if you bring your own laptop but Starbucks have a deal going with T Mobile where by you have to register with them and pay to log on wirelessly. I don't know if they do that back in oz, I never really needed to find out. I probably ended up walking somewhere in the vicinity of 25km around Sevenoaks got a teensy bit lost on my way home, well not so much lost as I ended up finding a long way, I also found a laundrette which came in handy for getting my washing done at least and I saw my first squirrel. Went to Tesco's and got Katie and I some dinner, a roast chicken, potatoes and frozen veg which probably came to about 3 pound food isn't too bad here cost wise if you go to the supermarket and are prepared to do a bit of cooking yourself. Friday was interview day, got up in the morning and wandered up to Dunton Green to catch the train into London. I'm trying to not complain too much about the cold because its pointless and I knew it would be cold when I came here but that morning was freakin cold I'm telling you. Got to Victoria Station and bought myself an oyster card and caught my first double decker bus to Chelsea for an interview with Sky about a job with them. It went really well and from what they were saying I've pretty much got it but as with any large corporation they have a recruitment process that they go through so I had to do some testing for them as well which was no problem. I have another interview for a different company on Monday, that one is based in Waterloo so I get to go to the borough markets as well. I should find out about that job within a few hours of the interview which means by the time I head off to Sweden on Tuesday morning I'll know if I have a job. We're staying in the Yotel at Heathrow on Monday night so we can just roll out of bed and into terminal 5, I'm looking forward to it. I'll take you some pictures and post them when I get back. I've spent the weekend so far being kinda domestic, took my washing to be done at the laundrette, went to Tesco's with Katie and we got the ingredients for Christmas dinner which I then cooked and we ate while watching the X Factor final, strangely compelling viewing, maybe all this air travel has pressurised my brain. It finally stopped raining on Saturday night as well, it started sometime on Friday night, I wish I could send some of that back to Australia, particularly to rain on Bendigo and over Dad's new rain tanks. It is eye poppingly green here. Tiny, narrow, ancient and green. I'm waiting for snow, hoping for snow. Of course I'm getting snow in Sweden but snow over a metropolitan area is different to snow in the middle of no where. There's this kind of hush that it gives everything which I find beautiful. Next stop Sweden and the Icehotel.
Oh your pictures this week are of the moon somewhere over Kuwait, Mountains somewhere near Tehran and the sunset and the lights of london from an Airbus