A Lady in London

Today is the four year anniversary of the day I moved to London. It’s hard to believe that I have been living in London for four years already. When I first moved here I thought I would be back in San Francisco after two years, but now it looks like I’m here for the foreseeable future.

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After nearly four years in London, I am pretty adept at everyday life in the UK. I know how to set up utility bills and open a bank account. I can say “cheers” instead of “thanks” without feeling silly, and order “bangers and mash” without giggling. But there’s one thing that still eludes me even after all this time: grocery shopping.

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Today is election day in the UK. Despite the fact that I’ve been asked “did you vote?” more than five times, I, as an immigrant, am not permitted to do so. But that didn’t stop me from begging all of my friends that could vote to choose whichever party would not revoke my visa and eject me and my fellow migrant laborers from their lovely country.

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My boyfriend has been out of town for the past nine days. He headed out to New York and San Francisco to see friends and enjoy the torrential rains that are currently plaguing the great state of California. This left me by my lonesome in London, feeling a bit lost as I puttered about our empty flat talking to myself and feeling like I should be surrounded by a few cats.

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This week it was time to celebrate my third expat Thanksgiving. Last Thanksgiving I cheated my way out of cooking dinner by ordering food from my favorite local grocer, Rosslyn Deli. In lieu of attempting to shove a huge turkey into my tiny oven and trying to cook stuffing while lacking any culinary skills whatsoever, I left the dinner to the experts and gave thanks for being able to shirk out of my cooking responsibilities.

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One of my least favorite parts of living in London is the UK Home Office’s penchant for changing the rules of my visa. First they changed the name from HSMP (Highly Skilled Migrant Programme) to the yawn-inducing Tier 1. Then they decided that instead of having just an undergraduate degree, you have to have a Masters. Then, after the uproar that ensued following that change, they decided that if you already had the visa, you didn’t have to have a Masters but if you were a first time applicant, you did. It gets even more confusing, but I’ll spare you the details. Suffice it to say that I don’t wish the UK Tier 1 visa application process on anyone.

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After two years of living in the UK, I thought I was done with “firsts.” But on Monday I realized that there are still a few experiences I’ve been putting off. One of those is dentistry.

Okay, okay, so I know it’s a stereotype to refuse to see a dentist in the UK just because the country doesn’t have the best reputation for dental hygiene and orthodontics. Maybe I’ve seen Austin Powers a few too many times. Maybe my former landlady—the evil one with the bad teeth—scarred me for life. Or maybe I’m just averse to dental change.

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Today marks my two year anniversary of living in London. All day I’ve been thinking about my first day in this amazing city. About my Eurostar pulling into Waterloo station, my boyfriend meeting me with flowers, my dinner at Mint Leaf, and the moment in the taxi when it finally hit me that I had achieved my long time dream of moving to London.

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I want a dog. I really do. But I can’t have one. I travel too much, I’m never home during the day, and most evenings I get home late. But I still want a dog. I can’t help it.

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When I moved to London two years ago, I started to notice a common theme among the pubs in my neighborhood: pub quiz night. Naturally competitive and overly confident in my knowledge of random British trivia, I got excited about the idea. My expat friends did not. They completely refused to buy into my idea that it would be fun to subject ourselves to more than our normal dose of ridicule for being stupid Americans.

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A month ago my company moved into a new office in Noho. Formerly known as Fitzrovia, Noho is a trendy area around Charlotte Street in central London. The area has grown on me quite a bit since I started spending most of my waking life there.

Noho wasn’t totally new to me when we relocated in June. I have two friends who live on Charlotte Street, so I’ve spent a few evenings in the area. But being there during the day is different. I’ve been able to explore the breakfast and coffee scene in the morning, the lunch scene at midday, and dive deeper into the drinks and dinner scene post-work.

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My boyfriend was kind enough to upgrade me to Business on my flight home from the U.S. to London.  When I arrived at Heathrow at the crack of dawn, my boarding pass allowed me to get into the American Airlines arrivals lounge in Terminal 3 so that I could take a leisurely shower and get some breakfast before starting my day in the UK.

Being germ-phobic (save for pork products, which I will eat regardless of the threat level of swine flu in London (my last post can attest to that!)), I took a shower with my trusty flip flops on.  No foot fungus for this Lady in London!

At the end of my shower, I stuffed said flops in a plastic bag to keep their moisture from oozing into the rest of my suitcase.  I thought I was being smart.

I wasn’t.

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The weather in London has been hovering around 0 degrees Celsius for the last week. The trees in Hampstead Heath have lost the last of their leaves. I haven’t seen the sun in days, and if it rains one more time this week I might cry. Ah, winter in London. Such an uplifting time.

In order to keep Seasonal Affect Disorder at bay and remind myself of why I moved to this bone chilling grey-skied paradise, I’m going to make a list of things I love about London. Here they are, in no particular order. Please feel free to leave comments listing all the things I’ve forgotten.

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Londoners love to talk about the weather. One thing I’ve learned since I’ve been here is that the best way to strike up a conversation with a stranger is to talk about the rain, hail, fog, snow or other inclement precipitation that has plagued the city that day. Much as people like to discuss how the climate is ever-changing, the depressing reality is that the weather in London is always abysmal.

That is, it was until yesterday. Something happened yesterday that Londoners weren’t quite sure what to make of. A star, known to humans in other parts of the world as the “sun”, appeared out of nowhere and precipitated an obscure natural phenomenon the meteorologists told us to call “warm weather.”

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I just got back from a week-long trip to San Francisco. It was strange and a bit surreal to be a visitor in my own city.

My flights to SFO were a disaster; the London to Chicago flight was delayed, causing me to miss my connection. The next flight out of Chicago was then delayed, so I had a five and a half hour layover at O’Hare. My mom picked me up from the airport around midnight and when we got home I said hello to my dog and collapsed into bed. Somehow I always forget how long it takes to fly from London to San Francisco.

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