Nobody ever had a dream ’round here but I don’t really mind that it’s starting to get to me
It’s only fitting that the first post on this, my resurrected blog, would be an ode to two of my favourite things in the world: London and The Killers.
There is nothing like moving to a foreign country to show you that you’re made of much sterner stuff than you thought you were. Up until I moved to the UK, I had no concept whatsoever of what the millenials so fondly call “adulting”. I mean, I like to think of myself as fairly responsible in my own way. But let’s face it, I went 23 years without having to cook my own food, or to do my laundry or pay my own bills. My “life skills” consisted of being able to drive, one that is absolutely useless on this side of the pond seeing as they drive on the wrong side of the road (insert arguments here).
I don’t know who was more petrified of the prospect of my moving to London and living on my own for the first time in my life: myself or my mother. The days leading up to my flight, she kept giving me these reminders like making sure to separates my whites from my colours when using the washing machine, or how not to burn the house down when using a gas or electric stove. The latter she needn’t have bothered with, as I spent the first 6 months of my life in London subsisting on a steady diet of Marks and Spencer’s ready-made meals.
I had a seemingly endless list of things that I needed to organise and see to. There was the question of accommodation, obviously. I had friends living here already and it was easier to just defer to their judgment. How was I to know that Tottenham was in fact different from Tottenham Court Road, and that the commute from work to home would take me through some really rough areas?
And really, who in the world could have foreseen that I would be renting a room in a house owned by a family who just happened to be fond of dogs and that said dogs would be equally fond of my legs? So fond, that they chewed off a huge chunk of my skin one day as I was about to head out to go to King’s Cross Station to meet my mum, thus necessitating my first ever trip to the hospital as a patient.
National Insurance Number. GP Registration. Opening a bank account. Buying an oyster (no, not the kind you eat). Locating my nearest bookstore. And then figuring out where to move after the whole dog bite incident made it impossible to stay where I was. I wish someone had given me a roadmap back then. A how-to guide on surviving London. All I had to rely on were my own instincts, helpful advice from friends and Google.
Fast-forward to five years later and I get to meet batch after batch of wide-eyed fellow countrymen who are trying their hand in London, just as I did.
Some of them I know from school and I invite them over to dinner at my hard-earned flat in Soho and I try to give them the benefit of my experience, patiently answering their questions so that they’d have a much easier time than we did. So here’s my way of giving back. My own version of a survival guide or as i like to call it in my head “How to make sure you don’t end up in an operating room at the Royal Free Hospital within your first six months in London”. I’ll be doing a series of these posts on my blog for anyone who’s thinking of moving to London, or for nurses like me who’ve recently been hired through international recruitment, or if you’re already here and may want some tips on how to make life just a little bit better. I don’t claim to be an expert, and these tips are largely self-referential but hey, they work for me.
Tips and guides on part 2 of this post. Read on, blabbaholics. Xx
Blabbaholics and Bookworms 