UPDATE FROM SOMEWHERE AROUND FEBRUARY 16

Well, it's 9:00 am on a Sunday morning, and I am sitting at the kitchen counter at my flat in Camden, and my three roommates are in the living room, still up from Saturday night, and a little the worse for wear. I was in the living room with them until the battery gave out on this computer, and the only electrical outlet I could find was in the kitchen (Well, there's one in the living room, but it obviously has televisions and things plugged into it.)

Benny has just come in here to apologise for being "loud and obnoxious." I told him I'm not bothered, well, because I'm not. My other two roommates, Korinne and Megan, are also a bit out of it, but far more coherent than Benny. I like them all a lot.

Drunken people are always so sincere. It's cute.

Benny is calling all of his friends in turn. He started this at about 8:00. Most of them were out partying with him or with people he knows for the majority of the night, and he's aware of what their reaction will be to getting a telephone call at this hour on a Sunday, and somehow this is the very thing that makes ringing them up seem like such a fine plan

So, yes, I've moved to Camden, which is about as far from Gipsy Hill as Las Vegas is from Salt Lake City, and I'm not talking physical distance. Thirty miles geographically, and light years idealogically. The funny thing is that I'm working in Brixton, which is actually closer to Gipsy Hill than to Camden, but it takes me roughly the same amount of time to commute there. Transportation up here is a lot more convenient. I'm also literally a five-minute bus ride from Laurence's house, and I think even closer to Andrea's, although I haven't visited her yet since the move. And since my flat is right next to a prison, escaped convicts will have a far easier time getting to me than they did when I was in Spokane.

Camden reminds me a bit of the Mission in San Francisco, although most people would probably draw parallels to either the upper Haight or even Telegraph in Berkeley. It has a bit of the hippie element to it, but the reason I'd put it more like the Mission is that...well, it's a bit rougher the way the Mission is. One of those neighborhoods that is a bit rough but you feel pretty much safe, or as safe as you do anywhere in a city. Sure, I wouldn't feel totally at ease cruising around alone at 3:00 am, but in a way I'd feel more comfortable doing that in a neighborhood like this than in some quiet suburb, because there are bound to be at least some other people wandering around.

It's funny how my attitudes toward that have changed since moving to a city. I guess if I had been visiting here straight from Delta Junction, I might have felt frightened by the presence of other people, but you kind of learn that sort of thing—which people are the ones to be frightened of, or maybe where the limits are. The people who might look at you like you're mad if you tried to strike up a conversation with them are sometimes the same people whose very presence makes the street safe.

Yes, I did say that I'm working, and with that and the whole reference to Camden thing, you can probably guess that things have been happening in my life, although I've been offline for most of it. So here is the update.

I was down in Gipsy Hill, fairly incommunicado. It actually ended up being a bit of a good thing, because really I have spent so much time job-hunting here, that I haven't done much else. There are two reasons for that—one is that I came here with very limited funds. Really, just enough to get around and look for a job. So I couldn't afford to do anything from a financial standpoint—just get to and from an Internet cafe. I haven't been able to develop much of a social life, because I can't afford to go out for coffee or invite anyone over for dinner. I was aware of what I was getting into—sometimes when you want to do things in your life, you have to sacrifice for them. And this is, hopefully, a short-term sacrifice.

But it wasn't just financially that I was constrained. I felt that until I had a source of income, I had to spend as much time as possible attempting to get a job. So any time I spent doing something else—visiting someone, going to a museum—was time I was taking away from looking for work. So I did very little of it. I averaged one non-work thing per month.

But being stuck in Gipsy Hill meant that I was unable to get to the Internet cafe, so was forced to spend most of my days wandering around, exploring the surrounding areas. I found a library where I could have one hour of free Internet access per day, so I did that and spent the full hour sending off job applications (I didn't really have time to email anyone or anything like that—the connection being what it was, one hour was roughly enough time for 5 job applications) and then after that, I just had hours to fill.

So I discovered a few things about the neighborhood. I met three cats, who introduced themselves as Montmorency, Imhotep, and The Other Cat Who is Indistiguishable from Imhotep. I learned that there were at least two other train stations within a fifteen or twenty-minute walk, so I had other options for getting into the city. I also discovered a street down which buses run, so if it was absolutely necessary to get somewhere after the trains all quit running, I could, although it would take literally at least two hours to get anywhere near where I was trying to go.

So it was really nice, being able to wander around a little. It made me feel a little more like I was living somewhere, as opposed to just sort of camping in some room.

Of course, I had no food, but the up-side of that was that I couldn't fill empty hours with cooking and eating, which is something that is easy to do. And there is a definite down-side to having a lot of time alone, but I won't talk about that right now.

At any rate, I had purchased a round-trip ticket from San Francisco, and was scheduled to return on February 6, which is roughly 1 week ago. The deal was that if I found a job before it was time to return, I would simply not get on the plane.

On the bright side, Peter, the odd housemate, had quit hitting on me for the most part, as a result of our little tiff over Christmas. On the, er, darker side of the same coin (how many other metaphors can I mix in here?) this meant that Peter was not super-keen on having me stick around forever. So he gave me a sort-of eviction notice in mid to late January.

So, I ended up having a couple of interviews while I was down in Gipsy Hill. I called Michael in a panic, and he gave me the money to get to the interviews, which I might add was a very nice thing to do. I really don't know what I would have done without him through all of this. He's always been there for me to cry to when things are going badly.

The job that looked the most hopeful was for a radio ad agency. They called me in for a second interview, and of course, they told me that the day I would hear back from them was...the day before my flight was scheduled to leave for San Francisco.

So I knew that not only would I have no money if I got this job, but I'd also have no place to live. But then, I'd be in the same boat if I went back to San Francisco. I have a lot of friends there, and I'm sure if I asked I'd be able to spend time sleeping on couches for a while, but really, there's only so much advantage you can take of your friends. But, you know, I'd figure something out. This may be a good or bad thing, but I've had to do that a lot.

So the day before I was supposed to leave, I got another call, offering me a different job. It was the people who had been flaky in December. Oy. And it turned out—all right, this is really weird—but the job I wanted, well, the hiring guy said that they weren't going to hire me, but he'd really like to get together, well, socially. Does someone want to explain this to me? Is that weird, or is it just me?

Scratch that. It is just me. These things don't happen to other people. I am convinced of it.

Anyway, there I was, with 24 hours in which to figure out whether or not to risk my future taking a job that would keep me here, with no plane ticket home, and no money. If they flaked again, then I would be in serious trouble.

Add to this the fact that my friend, Michelle, was visiting my last week here, and you can guess that I was a basket case. Actually, it was *really* nice to have Michelle around, because I was at the point where I needed a friend, and didn't have any over here. (Laurence was not around, for reasons which I might explain later.)

So, very long story short, I decided to stay. Then, the day after I officially missed my flight, the recruiter for the flaky job called me and told me that she was having such trouble getting these guys to sign a contract, that she was just going to write the whole thing off. So I was here, without a job, and without resources.

Things sorted themselves out in a weird kind of way, the flaky people ended up signing a contract, and I started work on Monday.

With the flu.

Which I contracted over the weekend.

In the meantime, I had running all over London, trying to find a place to stay. Let's just say there are a lot of freaks in London, and leave it at that. (It is occurring to me as I type this that every little aspect of my last two weeks has been a "long story," and I'm trying to break this down into small bits without lots of details.) Finally, I met these three Australians that I'm living with now, and within 24 hours of meeting them, ended up being roommate #4.

Meanwhile, back at the job front. I started on Monday, and as I mentioned, had a really bad case of the flu. I tricked Peter into driving me and my things to Camden (long story), but left all of my money at his house. So he arranged to meet me at the tube station on his way to work, and I grabbed the money (he was late), rushed to the store to pick up several kinds of flu medicine, and then got to work barely on time. I spent the day sneezing and trying to pretend I wasn't sick.

Day number two arrived, and I got a telephone call from the people who were going to sort out my work permit. I had paid them what came to somewhere over $500 before moving over here, for which they agreed to a) look for a job for me, and b) sort out work permit paperwork for me. They had agreed to the details, told me to go ahead and start on Monday, and that they would work everything else out after I started work.

So, anyway, I got a call from them on Tuesday, my second day of work. I asked them if they would mind if I called them back. I then had to ask my boss if he would mind if I called the agency, and he told me I could do this from a conference room. I hated that—I mean, it's my second day of work, and I'm asking to make a private call. But this woman had told me that she left the office at 2 pm, and I knew that a lunch hour wouldn't be enough time to get things sorted.

So I took the call in the conference room, and everyone could tell that it was a very TENSE conversation. Why? Because they told me that as compensation for working out my work permit paperwork, they would be taking 30% of my income. Yes, you heard me, 30% of my income.

You can imagine my reaction to this.

At any rate, this woman ended up yelling at me, threatening me with deportation, telling me to find someone else to take care of the work permit (also informing me that if they weren't going to do my work permit that working at this job was illegal, and she was going to report me to the Home Office), and hanging up on me.

She then called the recruitment agency that had gotten me the job, and tried to get me fired. She told the recruiter that I had sworn at her on the telephone and that she had been forced to hang up on me.

I was having a good day.

Oh, by the way, the reason she hung up on me was that I told her that I would not pay them 30% of my income because they had not done anything to help me find a job, which is what their half of the contract with me had been. I told her that if she sent me a list of people she had contacted on my behalf, with a list of dates, that I would be happy to discuss a reasonable percentage of my income, but that since they hadn't done anything, that I did not believe she was entitled to any of my money. She hung up because I would not budge on this.

So...there I am, at work, and my boss has just overheard a tense conversation. And I know that she has called the recruiter to try to get me fired. I figured the next step would be calling my employer, so I had to tell my new boss, on day 2, what had happened. Niiiice. People just love melodrama from new employees on day two.

So.

The recruiter who got me the job is named Andy. I've mentioned him here before, because he is more of a personal friend at this point than a recruiter. I got an email from him, referring to the work permit agency person, whose name is Marilyn, as "a right old trout." I have no idea what this means.

But as you know, the people I'm working for were really unreasonable when it came to what they did during the hiring process. Total flakes. And Andy was there through the whole thing, and saw that I reacted to it all with perfect calm. So his response to Marilyn saying that I had sworn at her and she'd hung up the phone was, and I quote, "Simone. Swore. I find that extremely difficult to believe." He told me that he was a consummate professional, but that he let her know that she was running a scam and that it wasn't going to work with him. He told me that her accent became less and less posh the longer he spoke to her, and that eventually she did go away.

He then called around and got me the name of a lawyer as well as another agency that deals with work permits. And he called me up, said, "let's slag her off on the telephone, and that will make you feel all better," and wouldn't you know, it worked.

So I had a meeting later in the week with some really decent people who also do work permit stuff, as well as payroll. Payroll, as in, they work for people who are contractors, and take care of all the tax-related things and HR-ish things that you'd usually expect an employer to do. And they're reasonable about it, and although they haven't totally agreed to do this for me yet, things are looking hopeful.

As far as my employer goes, I'm not sure whether or not Marilyn called them, but they haven't mentioned it to me. I did the only kind of damage control I could think of—I went to a pub with my boss and some other coworkers, and fed them alcohol. I figured if we did a little drunken bonding, it would be more difficult for the horrible Marilyn woman to convince them that I'm evil.

Incidentally, I am going to find out who to report her company to, and if I have anything to say about it, I will put them out of business. They're running a fraudulent scheme. It's not quite as big a deal to me as it would be to someone who came from some other country—I mean, Andy's first reaction was, "Doesn't she know you come from the most litigious country in the world?" Seriously, you don't really mess around with Americans. We know legal rights, and we're not afraid to enforce them. But what if I had been someone from some small country somewhere? Her threats of deportation or whatever would have terrified me.

Furthermore, she took the $500, agreeing to look for work for me, and did nothing. $500 is a lot of money to me, sure, but I just consider myself $500 wiser. Someone from some small country somewhere would have *really* hurt to come up with that money. The idea that this company is doing that sort of thing to people is outrageous. I'll find someone to report them to, and see if we can't get some of that money back to the people who paid it.

Meanwhile, I'm still trying to find out about Polish citizenship. The Australians I live with seem to think I should just be able to contact the embassy and they'll just *give* me a Polish passport. This is clearly something I'll have to sort out during the week, but you'll forgive me if I'm a little shy of doing *anything* personal at work for a while.