Friday, April 11, 2008

Sick, Tired, and Homeless.

It's not all as bad as the title makes it sound. I apologize for not having blogged in a while, but you'll have to bear with me for a while longer, as I really haven't had any time to sit down and just gather my thoughts, and write a blog post, or an email that I've been desperately wanting to write, to let you all know how I'm getting on.
However, at the moment, staying with my relatives outside London (I say "homeless" because it's their home, not mine, so I don't have a "home" yet,) the commute has been killing me. Here's a typical day so far:
7:30 Wake up
8:15 Get Richard or Elizabeth to drive me to the train station
8:30 Arrive at North Fambridge train station
8:34 Get on the train
9:34 Get off the train in London, Liverpool Street station
9:40 Get on the tube, Central line, westbound
9:50 Get off the tube at Oxford Circus
9:55 Get a coffee (real coffee, not decaf)
10:00 Arrive at office
~12:30 Have lunch
6:00 Leave office
6:00-9:00 Travel all over London to go look at rooms for rent
9:34 Get on train at Liverpool Street
10:20 Transfer to different train at Wickford
10:34 Get off train and into waiting vehicle (Richard or Elizabeth again)
10:50 Arrive back at house
10:50-11:30 Look at flats online, sent emails to arrange to look at them
11:30 Fall into exhausted sleep
As you can see, the only thing resembling free time in there at all is when I'm on the train (thankfully there's always seating, so I'm not standing), and in the morning I'm still half asleep, and in the evening, I'm completely exhausted from pounding the pavement for 3 hours looking at places. I have 2 more to look at tomorrow (Saturday), but so far, all the ones I've looked at have either been dumps, people I don't really want to live with, or, the ones I've liked, there's been so much competition, and they've selected other people. I really hope one of the ones I look at tomorrow works out, because I need to shorten this 3.5 hour (round-trip) so that I can actually have some time to relax, get over this cold, and then start getting out to explore London and meet people. I won't feel anything like comfortable in this country until that happens.
Thank you SO much for the support, all you who have emailed, blog commented, or IM'd me these past couple weeks. It's very comforting to know that even though I'm feeling a bit alone and isolated here, you're still thinking about me. I promise some more blogging and some personal emails once I've gotten settled here.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Derek! I emailed you a secret weapon, let me know that you get it ok.

Cheers,
-Ben

Derek said...

Confirm weapon receipt. Deployment scheduled to commence 1400 hours GMT, with package delivered to final target by 1930.
Thanks :)