Update on life in London

As everyone had told us, finding work in London wasn’t a hard thing. Before getting job offers, Warren had 4 interviews and I had one.Warren has a 6 month contract as a Marketing Manager for Waltham Forest council. He is responsible for activities in Environmental Services including launching a compulsory recycling programme in the Borough and organising a marketing plan for the area. He is essentially managing 3 people to work on marketing communication. In the first month he managed advertising for a campaign to show how the Council and the community are all together and can support each others beliefs etc. Work for him has been busy as most of the terrorist suspects that were arrested and charged as part of the alledged bomb threats on the London flights to the US are from Waltham. The council has the highest proportion of Muslims in London. One of the houses involved is a 5 minute walk from his work. So they have had all of the world's media wanting to meet with the Leader of the Council (like the mayor) and the team has been managing this. It has been stressful but interesting at the same time. He helped to organise the Council's tent at a large local Festival a few weekends back as there were fears that some Muslims were going to have a protest march during the Festival but nothing happened. So work will be interesting for him for a while longer.

I have a 6 month contract as a Quality Control Chemist for Glaxo Smith Kline, one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world. The factory is in Beckenham, Kent. It’s a bit of a mission to get to work, involving 15 minutes walking, 3 trains and a tram. But when it’s all running smoothly it only takes me an hour to get to work and 1 hr 15 to get home.The site is mostly an R&D one, but I work in the manufacturing sector where we make a heart drug. My role is in the raw materials department where we test all the raw materials used to manufacture the drug and also some materials for R&D. The systems are similar to Colgate but Glaxo gets audited by the FDA so their rules are a lot stricter. You have to pay a lot of attention to detail as the smallest mistake picked up by the QA department who review our results can delay the release of materials to production. So far, it’s been fairly relaxed as I haven’t been trained in all the test methods but the department is under strict deadlines and being short staffed, things might get a bit pressured once I’m fully trained.

So once we had contracts we could move out of Jacinda’s basement! We were very grateful to Jacinda and her flatmates Kate and Darren for letting us take over their music room for a month but with all 5 of us crammed around the table of their small combined lounge/kitchen/dining room, things got pretty crowded. That's us at dinner in Putney a few days after we arrived. The flat hunt wasn’t too difficult; we only looked at 4 places and had moved in 2 weeks after we started looking. We are in Putney, about a 10-minute walk away from Jacinda’s place. We have a view of the Thames river but no outdoor living or sun- which might take a bit of getting used to considering how I lived in our conservatory in Wgtn. But the good news is the central heating – yay no more waking up to a 4 degree house and wrapping up in scarves and beanies just to watch tv. Putney is populated by Kiwis, Aussies and Sth Africans so it is a lot like home. We like the area as its 20mins to the city but quiet and safe and the shopping is pretty good. (Not so quiet on Friday and Saturday night though) We looked at areas that had a better commute to work – Brighton would have only been 15 mins to work for me and 30 for Warren but it’s known for it’s drugs and crime so we opted for the longer commutes. We live in a 3 bedroom apartment with 2 Australian’s, Sean (IT Professional in mid 20’s) and Karen (teacher in early 30s). They are both easy going and really nice and the flat is clean, tidy and modern. We have the end room right away from the living room so it’s really quiet (apart from the noise from Heathrow but there’s no avoiding that). We also have a giant room and a king size bed which is unheard of over here. So we're all settled now so hopefully we can get a bit of travelling in before the dark and dreary London winter sets in.