Current mood:	tired
Current music:	Crowded House

Emergence Bulldozer
So I’ve not updated this thing in a while. That’s pretty normal.

Okay – so it’s been somewhere in the vicinity of a year. A year!

And I’ve also moved to a city half the world away.

Aside from that it’s all pretty normal behaviour on my part.

It was back sometime early or mid August, either the 13th or 14th if memory serves correct, that I landed in London last year. I was supposed to return to Sydney back in early February. Stuff happened, things changed, flights were put off. Et cetera.

People still ask me why I came to London in the first place, and I’m still fairly sure that the reason is simply that I got bored with being in Australia. I had kind of wanted to go to Japan and try my hand at ALT work, but Universities working to different semester structures meant that I’d have to wait out until the end of 2006 to go over, and bumming around Oz just didn’t seem to be the best way to spend my new found, post-University free time. So I booked myself into a quickie bartending course to ensure I’d at least be able to find a job of some sort, and then, after much hollow talk over how I was eventually going to do it, quite spontaneously took the dive for an airfare to the UK.

The flight is a back-breaker. Over 20 hours in the air; it doesn’t help that I seem unable to sleep while sitting up, no matter how desperately tired I become. Only a couple of times during the flight did I suffer sudden rushes of panic as I started to grasp at the idea of just what it was I had gotten myself in to. Setting down in London early in the morning only made matters worse, as I was going to have to force myself to stay awake until later in the evening if I didn’t want to completely destroy my body’s internal clock. Somehow I managed to meet family connection, Beka (I even got asked for directions while finding her workplace in Westminster, in spite of my excess baggage and the rings that I’m sure were around my eyes. How anybody could have mistaken me for local then will elude me for life), got given her spare key and even found my way back to her flat where I managed to stay awake until almost nine in the evening. I woke up much earlier than I expected the following the day, and felt completely fine.

Then a day or two later it turned out there was some trouble with the place I was supposed to be moving to in Tooting, which gave me until the weekend to find somewhere new to stay. I ended up in a shared room in a share house of 12 in Nunhead, a stone’s throw away from both Dulwich and Peckham (two completely different worlds) depending on what way you walked. With rent as cheap as chips and a minimum stay contract of only one month, it seemed sufficient as somewhere to stop over and continue my search as anywhere else.

As it happens, my Birthday was the last day I was able to spend at Beka’s, and the day was most memorable for meeting with Wil in person… and a little girl getting hit by a bus in Leicester Square. That probably would have been more traumatizing had she not somehow gotten away completely unscathed, at which point it became incredible instead.

So back at me new share house, where I would go on to stay for much longer than originally intended, I found myself needing to actually get out and search for a job. That bartending course I did actually came in handy, until I realized a fortnight later that I simply wasn’t happy at all and pulled my last shift just a week after that. Even writing freelance for Hyper and Total Gamer, while trying to get the odd piece into a UK mag or two, and essentially barely making enough money to survive seemed a better option. Then after about a week after that my mobile did an odd thing and actually rang. All I can say is thank fuck that HMV sell games over here.

Called in for an interview based entirely on a promise of product knowledge in my CV, I fortunately kept entirely down to earth and once it became apparent that I wasn’t an arrogant know-it-all I was offered the temp Christmas contract there and then, without having to wait on a phone call (it was only later that I found just how much hinged on me acknowledging that there would always be someone who would know more about something that I do). It was perhaps a little foolish to stall on accepting the gig, but after a couple of days and messy phone calls I got back in touch and accepted the position.
Unlike with a certain bar job, proper training was given here, and nerves were eventually ironed out. Just as well really, as the work isn’t utter hell, the pay’s quite good by retail standards, and in general the vibe in the store was awesome. It was also manically busy, as I was working in the second largest store in London, located on the Bond Street end of Oxford Street – a magnetic hub for ritual shopping.
Some time throughout all of this I came to the conclusion that I could quite easily deal with staying in the city for a full year extra. Eventually I went through with staying, and was then somewhat crushed when I wasn’t kept on after Christmas. None of the Games temps were. Hurrah.
This wasn’t a total disaster, as I had a few hundred pounds in the bank at this time and was getting or organizing spots of work from the likes of Official Playstation, Neo, Edge and n.Revolution, and had also discovered that being a ‘correspondent’ for Oz mags can be pretty sweet at times. My funds dwindled, though, despite somehow living on a food budget of around 5 pounds a week – something that mostly involves eating garbage excuses for food. A couple of failed interviews later and I was getting to the point of desperation, when my phone went off while I was wrist deep in soapy water since I had nothing better left to do than wash up the dirty dishes of 11 other people. Again, thank fuck HMV sell games over here.
I had to await a phone call after the interview this time, which left me as a nervous wreck for the weekend. Thank fuck that the manager at my old store would have kept me on had he gone in for any games staff. And while I could swear that the Troc store has the most tatty staff room in the West End, the vibe is again awesome, and at the moment I’m simply having too much fun to say that I’d trade it in. Would have been nice if I wasn’t left running the games section practically solo during the peak of the Summer sale, though.

So that’s work stuff covered, at least in the day job sense. Freelancing has been going well for the most part, although more reliable net access from my new housing (located in Canada Water, and a massive step up from my previous digs in all respects other than net access) would work wonders. I’ve been sent to both Chernobyl(!) and Poland since moving, and have also made visits to Eidos and Rockstar.
As for other stuff, well, seeing the likes of Maximo Park and the White Stripes live has been very awesome (I even surrendered doing Neo’s lead review on Earthsea for the Stripes!) Surviving front row Queens of the Stone Age is something I will be forever proud of. Final Fantasy XII is astoundingly good, a total reinvention of the wheel and easily the best the franchise has seen since VII (or VI, depending on where your reverence lies – in either case, it’s the best one in ages). Crowded House have actually released a new album, much to my unrestrained delight, and it’s neither more nor less than I expected: heavily understated, gently lyrical and in possession of a slow burning hook. Oh, and that new Transformers movie? I could nitpick, but when the last half-hour or so proved to be some of the most awesomely stupid fun I’ve had in a cinema in a long time, I really can’t be bothered. It’s stupid, explosive and totally awesome – a perfect rose-tinted asset for my childhood, as well as seemingly half the people I know.

Not exactly had much in the way of visitors, with the exception of Steve and Chris, who showed up at my work a day early by surprise. Strange how I can actually notice accents on those guys now. That aside, it was cool to see them again, and hopefully they survived the running of the bulls intact.

Not long until I make a return visit home at all now. Must remember to stock up on CDs and anime while I’m there, and meet up with craploads of people, too. This could well prove to be the most exhausting holiday of my life.