Hello everyone,

So, lots more has happened since my last post.  My UK move continues to be adventurous.
After a fair bit of searching, I finally found a place in London.  It was vastly more difficult than expected because the good places get snatched up so quickly.  Basically, if you're not there within about 24 hours of the place first being posted on a rental website, it's probably already rented (especially if it's half decent).  This made it extra tricky for me to look for a place in London while I was living with Julie in Oxford. 

Eventually, I just started commuting into London daily and surfing the internet from coffee shops in London constantly watching the housing websites for something new.  It was crazy but I finally found something which is pretty good.  The best thing about this place is that I only had to commit to a 3 month contract.  This allows me to discover London and try to find out where the best neighborhoods are.  Since being here, I have found that the neighborhoods vary quite a bit.  One person described London as a collection of little cities (neighborhoods) all crammed into on big city.  Some of the neighborhoods can be vastly different from others.  Right now, I am living in a middle class area that is very culturally diverse; Caucasians are the minority by far.  It's actually quite friendly and everyone seems to know each other and have fun together but it is missing some key things that I enjoy like good food & parks.

The house itself is pretty nice.  I am sharing it with 2 very quite flat mates who I almost never see.  My room is a fairly good size and the kitchen and bathroom are nice and new.  The biggest problem is that there is no living room and a pretty pathetic dining room.  This means I spend basically all my time in my room which does start to get old.

I imagine we will move to a new place once our 3 month lease is up here.  I've already seen some nicer areas that I think would suit us much better.  I'd like to be a little closer to work & have access to a nice park where I can relax and play soccer.  We are contemplating renting a 2 bedroom place and the subletting 1 of the rooms out.  We'll see.

My new job is going well.  It's been fairly overwhelming with new information.  Unfortunately, the skills I acquired at Microsoft on the Mac team are not very relevant to this new job.  I am doing quite a bit of programming.  At Microsoft, I probably only spent about 10% of my time programming but here I'm spending closer to 60%.  This is good though, I really want to learn some new skills and I enjoy programming.  However, it's pretty tough on my brain.  Leaving work each day is like leaving an 9 hour exam.  I am thinking hard all day long and it's exhausting on my brain.

The company itself is cool.  It's fun to work all day on a product and then go home and watch a movie from the site (enjoying the fruits of your labor).  The people here work crazy hard though.  I'd say at Microsoft most people were only working at about 60% capacity.  Here they're working constantly all day.  They work long hours too - usually about 9 hour days. 

One cool thing about working for a small company like this is that everyone knows each other.  This means you can get away with some things that wouldn't be tolerated in a bigger company.  I won't go into too many details but the jokes that are told and the pranks that are pulled would absolutely not be acceptable most places.  I love it though!  Ask me in person some time about the things I've seen :)

I'm headed back to Canada this xmas and I absolutely can't wait!  It's been far too long since I've seen my family & friends and I desperately need this. 

I'm headed out to Oxford this weekend to see Julie.  I'm writing this blog while siting on the train with my laptop.  The trains are great here!  They have electrical outlets.  I can even get internet now while riding on the train because I can share the internet that I get from my mobile phone to my laptop. 

So far I'm really enjoying my new life in the UK.  There are tons of things to see and do here.  I think if anything, I'm really not making the most of it yet.  Once I get into the groove I think it's going to be amazing!
Anyhow, I'm almost at Oxford now.  I'm looking forward to a nice relaxing weekend for my brain.