Moving Day

Well, I finally found a place. I've been quite stressed of late due to not having a residence, not having a job, and not having a thesis. As of today, the residence is sorted and as of last week, so is the job. I landed a month long contract position at a big international law firm here. It's just boring paralegal work, but the pay isn't bad and it's full time. I started on Monday.

I have been looking for a room to live in for awhile now with little luck. But I finally found a place in West Hampstead. The area is quite trendy and posh. Historically, West Hampstead was where all the servants of the rich lived. Hampstead is the spot for the rich and famous, so their butlers, maids, etc lived nearby. Little has changed. All the rich and famous have houses in Hampstead and West Hampstead is still part of that scene. I don't know if servants live there, but it wouldn't surprise me.

My house is located down an ally behind a row of shops. It's a single room in a 6 bedroom "house". There are two floors, three rooms on each floor. Each floor has it's own kitchen and bathroom, so I only share with two other people. The other tenants are all Americans, Canadians, or Aussies...or so I'm told. It's not a great room, but it will do. It's located in a nice area, just above some shops. I have the front room, so I have a big window that looks down upon the street. It's only for 7 weeks, so if it isn't a great situation, at least it's temporary.

The room is more money than I wanted to pay, but not by a huge amount. It's more that I'm just easily offended that someone could charge that much for a single room. Of course, that's the real estate market here. But, at the end of the day, I took the place for the following reasons:

1) It was available immediately and I could stay until the end of October. I wanted a place this weekend (tired of sleeping on the couch), so as long as it wasn't too dodgy, I was going to take it.
2) It's very convenient to work and school.
3) It's two tube stops away from Ms. Colombia.
4) I'm unlikely to get punched in the face.

Of course, the flip side is that I now work 2 blocks from Real World and live about 4 blocks from her, so that needs to be managed. I've been slowly minimizing my contact with her over the past few months and now that I have a girlfriend, it's that much easier. Still, she's going to want to hang out a lot more, which really means I'll just hear from her on the phone more than usual.

At any rate, the real downside is that there is no internet at the house. I'm used to having the internet at my disposal and that is no good. I don't even have internet access at work. So, I"ll have to go to school more frequently. If there is a paucity of posts, now you know why.

On a totally unrelated subject, I've heard about this guy at school who just started who is apparently my twin. I have yet to see him, but I've heard from several people about him. Not only that, however, yesterday, a total stranger came up to me at school and acted like he knew me. When I didn't respond, he asked, "you speak French, right?" I think it was more shocking to him that I was not who he thought I was. So, that confirms it. I have an evil twin and he's roaming my school.