Flats Flats Flats

                So we’ve ticked getting jobs off of our list and now face one big obstacle: finding a flat. We’ve been hoboing it up on my aunt’s couch for a month and a half and it’s time I start sleeping by myself. The only problem? Finding a flat is really hard and expensive. The BritBound Facebook page frequently has people advertising rooms but it’s never what we want. Either it’s only one room available or you’re sharing with too many people. I kid you not, I saw someone offering a room in a 3-bedroom flat where each room has three girls sleeping there. NINE people in a 3-bedroom flat. I actually am pretty sure that’s illegal.

                We had already toured our dream flat, the one in West Kensington, but it was time to get realistic. Today was the second day of our weekend and we had purposefully set it aside for flat viewing. We saw three places today. The first two we viewed through an agent. The first flat, in Sydenham, was okay. It was a bit old – the furniture looked very worn – and the second bedroom was basically a closet. We moved on to one in Forest Hill. It was a 3-bedroom but the price was ridiculously cheap. This is when we realized that we would not be using an agent. To get a flat through an agent you have to pay £150 each for referencing. Then you pay a £200 holding fee. All this before you even move in, at which point you surrender ten weeks’ rent. We were expecting a deposit but all those extra fees are just ridiculous. Not to mention you have to prove your combined income equals rent times 30. As in, a combined income of 36-39K. It’s ridiculous. There’s only 12 months in a year, why do we need to prove we can pay for two and a half? The second flat was nice-looking but I hated the building. It looked very estate-like and not very homey until you actually got inside. It’s also smack in the middle of two train stations and picturing walking home late at night, I didn’t feel safe.

                We were feeling pretty dejected about the whole thing when we went to our third viewing in Gants Hill. We had found this one through Spareroom (www.spareroom.co.uk), a flat website where you pick your requirements. The rent was ridiculously cheap but the flat is quite far out of the city: in zone 4 (we were hoping for zones 1-3). The road it is situated on is quite nice. I could definitely picture myself walking it late at night and not worrying about getting raped and murdered. It’s also about five minutes from the tube station. The night bus is excellent, with stops through all the major points of central London. Did I mention the rent is cheap? It’s furnished and two-bedroomed, like we wanted. We would need to buy a couch and a TV but we’re saving so much money it doesn’t matter. It looks like that might be what we do. I just have to find out what the utilities cost and then we’ll give them permission to reference us. Hopefully we don’t get screwed there. We still can’t make times 30 (we’re more like times 28) but I’m going to hope for the best. Who knows? I could have my own flat in the next week or two!

I Has A Job!

                Finally, after sending out an insane amount of job applications with no response (or at least no good responses), I was starting to lose hope. How long can Sarah and I stay in London if we are unemployed? On a frustrated whim, I applied for a job advertised on the BritBound website Wednesday morning. That afternoon they called me and we had a phone interview. I was invited to attend a group interview Friday at their offices. Finally! Some progress. The only frustrating thing was I had to purchase their standard uniform before the interview. Which meant Thursday Sarah and I ventured into Bromley to visit The Glades Shopping Centre and pick up the articles of clothing. Sarah was getting some too, as she had applied for the job shortly after I received my phone call.

                Before we began hunting for clothes we ate at a restaurant recommended by Imogen several weeks prior, called Belgo (www.belgo-restaurants.co.uk). I love mussels, which some people know better than others (my Mexico peeps) and I have been talking about wanting mussels for awhile now. It was the perfect opportunity. They have a ridiculously cheap lunch deal where you can get a half-kilo of mussels and a drink for £7.95.  Needless to say, it was delicious and I will definitely be going back. After a satisfying lunch we started looking for the items we needed: a black tie, a black long-sleeved collared t-shirt, and black pants. The pants and tie were found easily at Marks & Spencer. The shirt was difficult. First, it took forever to even find a men’s plain black t-shirt. Then we had to figure out the size. How do guys do it? And how do girls figure out their guy’s shirt size? I am not built like a man and I have these things called boobs. So after three different stores we found some passable shirts at Debenhams. They are rather bulky in places but I didn’t have time to get a fitted shirt. I had been dreading the price tag on the shirt since the last time I picked up a men’s shirt was when Sarah and I dressed like Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson for Halloween two years ago and it was expensive. Much to my surprise, the shirt was actually the cheapest item!

                Friday was interview day and I wasn’t actually that nervous. I am quite confident in my interview skills and I have had a group interview before. Sarah returned the company’s phone call (they called while we were shopping Thursday) and ended up being placed in my group interview, which alleviated the pressure even further. We had to head all the way to Knightsbridge for the interview and, as we tend to do, arrived quite early. We wandered around Hyde Park for awhile before heading in to the interview.

                I would talk about the job but I had to sign a confidentiality agreement. Sorry. Suffice it to say that we both got through the first part of the interview and were invited to attend an all-day assessment – the final stage of the interview – Saturday. From 9:30am to 5:00pm. In Camden. And the trains weren’t running again this weekend. Sigh. So we woke up really early and took a bus, a tube and another bus to get there. Early again. We finished at 3:30pm which was earlier than anticipated and nice. What was even better was that we both got the job! Yay for no longer being unemployed! The best part of the job is that it’s flexible and you pick your hours, which means we can continue our job search and even get another job on the side. It’s actually kind of perfect for right now. And we can find a flat!

                When we got back to the flat we both got emails scheduling us for shifts for the week. I’m more nervous about the first shift, which Sarah is not working with me, than I was about the interview. It’s also intense – I work two shifts in two different parts of London Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I guess I’ll really be getting the hang of public transport. And Sarah will have to figure out how to find places on her on. We should really probably get phones…

You would think we would celebrate getting jobs but we were exhausted after three days of preparation and interviewing and whatnot so we just ordered some pizza and watched Gossip Girl and went to bed before midnight. Because we are the coolest.

Sunday we stayed in the flat enjoying our last day of doing nothing. Monday we technically weren’t working but it was still a very busy day. We had to go to Camden for 9:30am again to do a training course required for our job. It was supposed to go from 9:30am to 4:30pm but fortunately ended at 2:00pm and was ridiculously easy and boring. After the session Sarah and I, along with our friend Jeremy who also works with us, went to Camden Market to try and find the last remaining uniform items. We were semi-successful and ended up wandering the entire market trying to find things. I’ve heard about Camden Market and it lives up to its reputation. They have the coolest shops and stalls. If I had money I would buy so much stuff.

Sarah and I were booked to view a flat at 7:00pm and we finished our Camden wandering around 4:00pm. We decided to pop into a pub to wait and we chose The World’s End. I don’t know if I mentioned this from the day we went to the zoo but we died when we saw it. For those of you that don’t know, The World’s End is a movie about an alien invasion pub crawl. It’s British, obviously. So the first time we saw a pub actually called The World’s End we died of shock. So it made sense to pop in there and have a couple drinks while we waited.

We then hopped on a bus to West Kensington. It was a bittersweet flat viewing. We knew ahead of time that, realistically, we couldn’t afford it. We were hoping it wouldn’t be that nice or it would be too small and we could justify it. We were wrong. The flat was gorgeous and all the furniture, bedding, utensils, etc. was included. We wanted it so bad but at the end of the day, do we want to be able to eat out or go to clubs or go to movies? Because if we got this flat it wouldn’t be happening. So the search continues…

Tuesday was my first day at work. Like I said, I can’t talk about it because I signed a confidentiality agreement. But it was not as worrisome as I originally predicted. The guy they had me working with is kind of my favorite person ever and most of the people are really nice. By Wednesday I was put in a position to boss people around, which I liked. It’s pretty exciting but I hadn’t worked in two months and worked ten hours the first day so I was exhausted by the time I finished. I’m shocked I managed to get back to the flat.