As Fi Bows to Peer Pressure

It’s been over a month since I last blogged and I guess the best reason for that has been the general weirdness of Masters being over combined the insanity of running Orientation Week and then becoming homeless and unemployed. I’ve really done it all this month.

Having finished my dissertation, I settled down to relax . . . for a week. By the middle of that week I was already getting a tad bored and so when I was offered some part-time work at the LSE Accommodation Office for three weeks from the following Tuesday, I jumped at the chance. I met Steph, who was my boss for those three weeks, in one of the pubs at LSE while catching up with fellow DESTIN people. She was organising LSE Halls Orientation Week for those students that turn up in the week before Freshers (Week 0 and 1 . . . the equivalent of NZ O week) and was struggling to get everything sorted in time so I helped out. We ended up organising 150 events, across 10 halls, over 5 days and around 40 returning and ex-students helping out. For those that ever watched/helped me organise the Vic Secondhand Bookstall, imagine that caos and then multiply it by 150. It was insanity, but fun insanity and although part-time turned to fulltime for last part of the three weeks it was awesome fun and I had a great team of helpers and Steph who was magic. We “conned” the Accom Office into paying for 100 tickets for the Globe one night and 100 tickets to a special old cinema in Leicester Square another night. Although I spent most of Orientation Week in the office coordinating logistics and the like, I made it to the odd event and it was great to see the students on the trips really enjoying themselves as they got to know London. A great success I think and a lot of fun to be involved with. Failing all else I shall move into a career in event management I think :oP

Orientation Week ended on 28th September and after a night out with the Passfield Freshers, I went back to Sidney Webb and began frantically packing the remainder of my stuff into boxes to put in storage. My storage unit, which reminds me of an inside garden shed in many ways, is full of all my bits and pieces apart from a small hand-luggage suitcase of clothes, my backpack, and my laptop bag. As of 30 September I was unemployed and homeless in one of the world’s most expensive cities. Such fun!

I’ve been staying in Passfield with friends for the past couple of weeks and on Monday I’m heading to Chi and Nick’s for a week and a half. Then back to Passfield for a few days before I move into my new flat.

Yup . . . as of Monday last week, I have a room in a flat in Bloomsbury (where Passfield is and in the centre of London - WC1). I move in on October 30 and I can’t wait!!! It’s a basement flat with heaps of light in a old secure mansion-block type place with two aussie girls from Melbourne (who didn’t know each other before the flat). They’re fabulous, the flat is fantastic and the room is really nice and gets lots of light despite being below street level (this is what the moat-like ditches are for I hear). The location is AMAZING, the cost is PERFECT and even better is that I can now really really afford it because I also have a proper proper job . . .

I have been hired by . . . wait for it . . . the Church of England (yes that’d be the Anglicans) . . . to work as a policy assistant in the Pastoral and Redundant Churches department. I shall write a little splurge about it all later but it’s a fantastic job and it pays, which is also important, and the people are again amazing and it’s based in Church House in Westminster and I can catch one bus there from my flat everyday and walk home if I want (less than an hour’s walk we think). A complete miracle in London where buses only cost 90p now. It sounds weird, I know, but the Pastoral and Redundant Churches department do some really interesting things and the more I’ve read about the job, the more intrigued I’ve become. Good hours, good pay, good people . . . I really couldn’t ask for better.

It’s been a worrying month for me, not having a place to live from the end of September and being rather unemployed is not the state I really wanted to be in but it’s been ok. The Accommodation Office rang me up the week after Orientation Week and offered me work as a general assistant while I dealt with interviews and the like. The Office is great, the people and fab to work with/for and I’m having lots of fun answering mundane emails and trying to work a database that refuses to do what we want it to. The best part is that I get people coming up to me each day going “I’m homeless, what can you do for me?” and I say “So am I, so I understand how you’re feeling”. I have fab friends here who are very sweet for letting me camp-out with them while my new room becomes available. I have a four-door wardrobe . . . I’m very excited :o)

This is rather lengthy so I shall stop here and work on attending to emails and cleaning the current room I’m occupying. In return for housing, I’m cleaning people’s rooms (a fair trade I feel and they seem happy with it too). I can’t promise any more updates until I’m less homeless but that doesn’t mean I haven’t got anything interesting to say. I promise more interesting/less me-based updates once I’ve moved in.