We've Already Voted

Our voting papers for the upcoming New Zealand general election arrived over the weekend. We voted by post, and mailed the ballot papers to New Zealand House in London as directed. The rest of you back home will just have to wait your turn :-)

Bracing Ourselves

It seems we are about to get our first dose of Scotland weather… it’s been quite mild lately but look at the attached weather report, by Monday it will suddenly be -1 degrees Celsius! We might have to crank up our heating in the flat. We’ll be fine, but we’re worried about George.


(click on the image for a larger version)

Meet George

We would like to introduce you to George, our friendly neighbourhood squirrel. He hangs around a lot, seeing what’s going on, stopping to say hello, trying to find any food, that kind of thing. We see him a few times a day, he never seems to go too far.

One Day In London

Today I went to London for the day, for a job interview. The timetable was tight to say the least:

• 8:00am Depart Edinburgh Waverly station
• 12:42pm Arrive London Kings Cross
• Underground & bus to interview
• Interview
• Underground & bus to train
• 4:46pm Depart London Euston station
• 9:40pm Arrive Edinburgh Waverly station

My potential employer was kind enough to provide me with train tickets, tickets to purchase food on the train, and a London bus/train day pass.

The train trip down was fantastic. I was book on the quiet coach, which is no cellphones, no noisy gadgets, whisper only. The train does have WiFi however I found it didn't work too well for me. I had a window seat at a table which was great. The sun was coming up and the land had wonderful hues as a result. The land in Scotland and Northern England is very scenic. The train initially took a coastal route, through gentle rolling hills, crossing through cute towns, and cities I've heard of but never visited. Once well into England, the land is flat as a pancake as far as the eye can see. On the way I saw two nuclear power stations (a novelty for me), an aerobatics team practicing a few miles away, and lots of sheep. In New Zealand sheep have black bums, in England sheep have black faces. I'll leave you to ponder that thought! Anyway my train ride was restful and passed quickly.

I had been provided detailed instructions of exactly where to walk, train and bus, door to door at each end. The instructions were perfect and minimised my travel time in London. The end result was that all I saw of London was underground, escalators, and buses.

As for the interview, I won't say much except that it took all of the time allotted, and as we ran out of time I ran out the door!

My train trip down wasn’t quite as pleasant. It started out OK, for the first hour or so it was daylight and the view was interesting as we departed London. I was in a window seat with a guy sitting next to me and was feeling a little squashed. After about 2-3 hours, he got off and I could spread out a little and stand for a stretch. The remainder of the journey was looking good. Next thing, we stopped at Wigan station and it was announced there was a power problem up the line, and they had no idea when we would move. We sat there for an hour. Then we were all sent across the platform to wait perhaps another half hour for a different train. That train took us on to Carlisle, about an hour away, there again we were put off and had to wait another 15 minutes for another train to Edinburgh. I didn’t arrive at Edinburgh until 11:45pm. Not a nice way to end what was already a day.

For the record, the trip down to London was National Express (enjoyable!) and the trip back to Edinburgh was with Virgin (blah!).

Quote Of The Day

"Mummy, does the driver know the bus is moving?"

- stupid Scottish kid on bus

Where do we live, you ask?

From Edinburgh Castle, we could see our home at Pilrig, which is about half way between Princes Street and Leith (where the water is). Here it is for you to see. As our flat is on Level 3 of our building we can't see the castle out our window.


Click on the picture for more detail.

Edinburgh Castle

A nice sunny day, and with not much happening on the job hunting front, so what better to do than visit Edinburgh Castle? It sits high above the city on a foundation of solid rock, with panoramic views of Edinburgh from 3 sides, seeing both old and new town.

I went a little under-dressed, not knowing what a cold stiff wind blows up on top of the rock where the castle. It must be freezing up there in winter. Lucky for Helen she had warmer clothes on.

The castle is really a collection of buildings, almost a small town, within a single fortress. There are cannons galore and a couple of museums tracing Scotland's history of war. A busy lot they were too, back in days of old. Also some history of Scotland's royalty and some treasures on view. Overall it was well presented, not at all tacky like some tourist attractions, actually genuine and with a good amount of things to see.





There is a "One O'Clock gun" that fires once at 1pm precisely every day. We crowded around with all the other shameless tourists to watch the big bang. It wasn't quite as loud as I expected but plenty of people screamed.

Getting connected - Phone & Sky

Well we've made some progress on the technology front.

Since Helen arrived in the UK, she's been using a Vodafone wireless internet connection, which runs on a USB device, this was the easy way to get up and running. This has been very impractical since I arrived, because we've been sharing the internet. Also the coverage isn't the best at home, so the speed is very slow and it drops often. This has made life rather difficult.

We've now ordered a BT phone line, from 22nd October we can make local calls using that for much cheaper than using our prepay cellphones (again, the only option on first arrival). Unfortunately BT will charge us £125 to connect the phone line. While we are still living on New Zealand dollars that hurts!

To get broadband, the best deal overall was to have Sky installed. It will cost us £49 for the installation, but for that we get Sky+ (same as MySky back in New Zealand)and a whopping 8MB connection with a 40GB cap. Modest by UK standards, but huge by New Zealand standards. The sky and broadband combined will cost us £22 a month and the BT phone line is another £10 a month.

So we're getting probably more service than we were in New Zealand, for approximately the same money.

We would have loved to install Sky+HD (same as MySky HD back in New Zealand), the install cost is currently only £75 but it would cost an extra £10 per month although there are lots of HD channels to watch. Unfortunately because we don't yet have jobs, and don't yet have a TV, that is hard to justify right now. I would have loved to have gone with that but it just isn't viable.

Interestingly full Sky HD services here including all channels requires two satellite dishes installed. That must be a result of the amount of bandwidth required.

The funniest thing is, we don't have a TV yet so we have MySky+ but no television. We really just have to get it installed as a package now to get the broadband which for us is a necessity. Not only would we incur the cost of a TV, but we will have to pay a TV licence which we're just not ready for yet.

So watch this space!

Portobello, Edinburgh

A quiet Sunday with not much happening. We took the bus across town to Portobello, a seaside "resort". Given it's no longer summer, the area was very quiet with just a few down at the beach letting kids and dogs let of steam. It was a lovely sunny day, nice and warm, although I am sure the water is cold.

The seaside walk looks like it would be busy in summer, with fairground attractions, fish & chip and ice cream shops etc, all no doubt hanging on for better weather to bring in the business. Photos showing days gone by makes it look like "the Brighton of Scotland". Apparently its popularity decreased after WWII when international holiday destinations became cheaper and more popular.



Perhaps we will visit again in warmer weather for another look.

Peebles

Being Saturday, our day off from job hunting, Helen and I jumped on a bus and rode to the town of Peebles, which is about an hour from Edinburgh. The bus driver was the first person I've met who just didn't understand a word I was saying. Certainly from his reaction I wasn't speaking English. Most amusing.

It was a beautiful sunny day and the ride was very scenic. Like being in New Zealand with green paddocks, sheep, cattle, goats, hay, the works. Like my Livingston trip, the bus route took in a number of smaller town & villages on the way.

The bus dropped us off on the main street of Peebles, which had a large number of genuine local shops, along with a few chains from the city. The local shopping was cheap and friendly, we had a modest lunch for £3.55 and picked up some home-made pies from the butcher to take home for dinner.



We ducked down a few back streets and alleys.


We visited the remains of Cross Kirk Church, which dates back to 1261.


We took a walk along the River Tweed, where people and birds were fishing.


Certainly it made for a very pleasant and relaxing day.

There are a number of things to see around Peebles, but many are just a bit far to walk to, so we are sure to return someday by car to check the area out more thoroughly.

Livingston

Today I took an excursion to the nearby town of Livingston to meet a recruitment agent. There are a number of jobs on offer here. So it was an opportunity to also get a glimpse of the town.

The bus ride out there was interesting, approximate 1 hour duration. Much longer than the train ride but more scenic and took me closer to my destination. And being a double-decker, I got to sit up front on top for good views. Once outside Edinburgh, the bus meanders its way through country back roads to a number of small villages, each is obviously a really old small village of very old shops and houses, surrounded by more modern houses. Certainly an interesting journey. It was fun seeing our large bus squeeze down narrow streets and sometimes cars had to reverse up to let us through!

Livingston itself was brief for me, the bus jumps off the motorway and almost straight to a giant shopping complex which is still being extended. I think it's the largest I've ever seen including some big ones in the USA. I had street maps to find my recruitment agent which weren't useful, the town is built for cars and not very pedestrian friendly. I got lost and luckily had left myself plenty of time. Once I found where I was going I realised it was right next to a mall exit, so once I knew the way it was about a 5 minute walk back to the bus termainal.

My walk took longer than expected because I witnessed two guys having a serious punch up in the mall, everyone formed a big circle around. It was pretty violent and one guy was covered in blood, once security broke it up everyone moved on and as I was further away two policeman were on their way. They would have been too late though.

With that excitement out of the way, I had another bus ride back only this time it was raining and the bus windows were all steamed up so not as scenic.

The train would definitely get you to Livingston quicker, but getting to the mall would be another challenge. I'm sure to figure that out for next time.

My first full day in Edinburgh

For my first full day in Edinburgh, I awoke to lovely fine weather (I've been told not to get used to that).

Helen and I left the house about 9am and first of all walked and bused up to Princes Street. Most shops weren't open and the street was quiet. We walked down the street taking in some window shopping and a few sites, then headed up to the top of Royal Mile and down to the bottom. That took in a good couple of hours. Everything eventually got busier around us as shops opened and tourists awoke.

The city is beautiful, very green, and so much to see in the way of heritage.

Next we caught a bus to Ocean Terminal where we did a little shopping and purchased a dinner set so we have something to eat off. Ocean Terminal is home to Royal Brittania and I got to see her from the outside, but will save the visit for another day.

We took our dinner set home, then headed off to Tesco to do some grocery shopping. That took quite some time, my head spinning with all different brands and flavours. Helen wanted me to cook nachos which is one of our favourites, it took us quite a while to find suitable ingredients but the end result was quite tasty.

I was starting to expire due to jet lag, but Helen didn't want me crashing too early so we headed out again about 7pm to Asda/Wal-Mart for a look around plus we purchased an ironing board. It's a beauty, the cover is white with multi-coloured polka dots. On the way home I really was falling asleep, holding on tight to the ironing board, waking only for when the bus went around sharp corners or braked suddenly. Helen was wishing she had the camera as apparently it was so funny.

Well enough excitement for one day, and now job hunting commences.

An easy trip

My travel from New Zealand to Scotland went without any problems whatsoever. I was especially impressed with the new Heathrow Terminal 5, which is practically brand spanking new. Certainly the terminal is bigger than Wellington, and possibly even Auckland International airport. For all the problems I've read about, I found it very well organised. There were a large number of shops there. I saw more variety in consumer electronics there than at most shops I've seen.

I arrived at Edinburgh airport late afternoon, to rain, and apart from a visit to the Lothian Buses to purchase a one month bus pass, I went straight to our new flat to settle in.

Not long now

Well Mike has arrived safely in London, he has managed to check in his luggage for his BA flight and is now making his way to the new Term 5 ready for his flight to Edinburgh. Me I am tidying up the last few things here at the flat and will be heading off to the airport via the City and the Gyle Centre, great shopping at the Gyle Centre and a big M&S to help make the time pass.

Observations from LA

Well after a good nights sleep (only interrupted by Richard, Peter and Helen skyping me around 1am my time which will teach me for leaving my laptop going) I had a brief outing to get some breakfast. For starters, the hotel here is having a "mad screaming loony idiot" convention which upon further investigation is a convention for Hot Topic. Everyone is either emo or covered in metal and tattoos (like the Blink 182 guys). So I wandered down to Dennys where the place is full of nerds in their forties all wearing various Die Cast collectors shirts. Turns out the Annual Hot Wheels Collectors Convention is on nearby also. It's quite scary seeing so many grown men who love toy cars, all in one place. Anyway apart from that excitement, I had a skillet with eggs, bacon, sausage, hash brown, spicy onion/pepper mix, salsa, tortilla, and bottomless lemonade for $10. There's no financial crisis here that I can see, all the working class are worried about is the size of their breakfast. I was full and I had the smallest meal in the house. God bless America!

I made it as far as LA, no problems

I did have to pay some excess baggage for the NZ to LA leg, which was to be expected. I spent today doing a spot of window shopping (can't buy, suitcases are too full already). Tomorrow afternoon I catch a 4:30pm flight to Heathrow.

Chaos in central Edinburgh

Well today was the first day of the tram works to start in Princes Street. You through traffic in Auckland was bad if there is a accident...it is nothing on closing a section on Princes Street in Edinburgh. Edinburgh is in the middle of putting tram lines in and there has been some work going on down Leith Walk for weeks now amongst other places like St Andrews Square, but today they closed down the junction around Princes, The Mound and Hanover Street, (sorry about the photo, taken from a webcam I didn't have my camera on me today)

Anyway all traffic including all the buses are being diverted from Princes Street up Frederick Street, then along George Street, down Hanover Street, then back onto Princes Street

Well because of the round abouts and the fact that George is already busy and is only single lane each way the city came to a stand still, it was taking the buses 35 mins to run one block!!! Pure madness I tell you. Not sure what they are going to do, they recon this is going to go on for 14 weeks!!!! The buses drivers were not impressed the time tables are all out and everyone is pissed to say the least. For me however I found it all quiet entertaining :o) I got off the bus before the divert, walked the block and hopped on an earlier bus, a bit of that Kiwi "thinking outside the box" stuff.