Hello World

Hi Gail and Richard! Hopefully you have the link for this now :)

Yes yes, long time no post, blah blah. There's just not that much been happening! Here's an update though.

Firstly, some of you may recall that before I left I took part in a Diva wrestling match. If you missed it you can in fact watch it on youtube! Here's the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcFhGLMjyEs

It's had over a thousand views in the week or two it's been up, awesome! Pretty funny I think :)

Joe and I have been working away at our jobs, trying to save up our pennies in order to have our fun holidays. Managed to have one of them last weekend - we went up to Glasgow and Edinburgh and saw Grant and Tanya, and Kerry! Very fun. Grant and Tanya live in Glasgow, doing their thing. Kerry is pretty much a backpacker, lives and works in a hostel and has been travelling around Europe, what fun :) Edinburgh has its fringe festival on at the moment, and we went to a show (it was by the Spontaneity Shop, which is the company I'll be doing some classes with in September). Was good fun. Check out photos, they'll be uploaded soon I hope.

Driving up the country was pretty exciting, big three lane motorway the whole way with great big service stops every 10 miles or so, very convenient. It kinda made our little State Highway 1 and its desert road section seem a little inadequete... But I do miss that road, it's exciting ;)

Hmm what else is happening.. Next Monday is apparently a bank holiday, which means we get the day off. It's not a special day or anything, it's just the bank wanting a break or something. Fine with us! Three day weekend to chill at home and catch up on things like posting things to friends, cleaning the house and planning our holidays :)

Please write to us/me if you haven't heard from us for a while, I love emails and I want to know all the gossip!!

Mwah

We interrupt this radio silence to bring you..

I've been very slack. And I don't even have the excuse that I've been working so hard - I got that job 2 weeks ago and still haven't started! They're checking my credit history etc for the last 6 freaken years and when they're done then I can start work. I've written to my recruiter a bunch of times but haven't heard anything about a start date. Grr!

So instead of working and earning sweet pounds, I have read a couple of books, watched a lot of Buffy, and spent the last week sick with a cold. My sleeping is alll wrong (when you don't need to get up first thing in the morning, you kinda don't) but I am keeping a pretty good house while Joe is at work. He's a very lucky boy. When I start working he'll have to start helping more :)

The improv workshop I mentioned in my last post went well. It was cool actually doing some improv again, and interesting to work with new approaches. I can't say I totally agreed with all aspects of the new approach, but that's part of the experience of being in a new improv land, I get to hear different opinions about it all. The idea is that the workshop will happen again and repeatedly, potentially finishing with a long form show, so if the workshops are run at a time where I can actually make it, then I'll be there!

While at the workshop I met a couple called Amanda and Lucas, who took names and contacts for people interested in meeting up for more workshops, and I went to the first of such workshops on Sunday. It was really fun! If not a little long, it's pretty hard to work for a whole day without a really clear direction. I'm definitely planning to go to more of those (happily the Sunday train to London is heaps cheaper than a regular ticket) and potentially will be working on some show ideas with Amanda (she's mentioned some ideas but nothing concrete yet).

I may also actually lead some of the workshops, being one of the more experienced players in the gang of people, which is at the same time daunting and exciting! It's amazing how much I've soaked up over the last, wow, 12 years of improvising. And I've noticed that by explaining my approach to games/exercises etc, I'm able to define my approach. So that should be an exciting and fun new thing to learn over here!

In other news, Joe's work still loves him. We're heading to Ireland during September to visit some other O'Sullivans, and will also be seeing Jennie and Kerry while they are both in Edinburgh/Glasgow. I haven't seen either of them for ages so that is really cool :)

Ooo I know something else, a couple of weekends ago there was this river festival here in Bedford, the riverside was utterly packed with people and stalls and the river had a big parade of boats going up and down. Check out the photos, I will upload them now :)

Okay, miss you kids :)
Love Jen and Joe

Edit - I just remember the other super exciting thing - The other day we went to the movies (saw Wall-e which is super great and everyone should see it) and on the way we walked by some big old trees and saw A SQUIRREL!!! SO so cute. I took some pics on my phone, working out how to get them off the phone and onto the computer so when I do it will be added to the album. But yeah, how exciting is that! Probably not much for the locals, but it was great, it even did the little nibbly thing with its paws to its mouth, arrrrghhh so cute :D

Can I get a hallelujah

So I found this job last week and applied, and then hounded the recruiter, then had an interview yesterday morning at 10:30. Left the interview, waited at the bus stop, got a phone call from the recruiter - would I like the job? Why yes I would!

I will be an intranet support analyst for Barclays, working on online reference material for the customer support team and other teams. So it's kind of using my experience from my last two jobs combined :) Yay! They're also fine with the fact that I am planning to leave the country eventually, and I think I will have a 6 month contract with option to stay on as needed/desired.

In other good news, I'm heading to London tomorrow to attended a workshop on Long Form improv led by a fellow called Ben Hauck, who I'm fairly sure is the fellow on this site: http://www.benhauck.com/
I'm very excited to be doing improv again! The job however will mean I can't just swan off to London during the week for classes. But I might try to find something closer to home or in the weekend to do.

Oo and I found out that Bedford has its very own Fringe festival! Sadly it looks like there's no improv on the card, but there is some stand up comedy, so next Monday I'll be dragging Joe off to the opening comedy night :) If we're still here this time next year maybe I'll get an improv show in...

Not heaps else happening in the world of Jen and Joe - there has been talk of a trip to Ireland with the rest of the O'Sullivan family sometime in September, so that is cool. I'm starting to think about what we can do for Christmas, it could be pretty amazing to have it somewhere like Spain or France or somewhere Nordic and snowy! We'll see, we may have visitors at that time so it could be our first Christmas together at home :)

If I haven't written to you for a while, please write to me! I am slack but I love mail and promise to reply...

Kisses and hugs

The day I met Super Chris

My days consist of getting up late, playing computer games, walking to town, searching for jobs online and cooking dinner. Cooking dinner is the most fun part, made roast lamb last night (NZ lamb as it turned out, I didn't realise til I went to open it, oops carbon footprint!) and have been having fun with pasta. Joe is pretty stoked to come home to delicious dinners every night :)

I am yet to find a job, which is pretty frustrating. There's only so long one can spend doing nothing at home. And sleeping in is incredibly tiring, how does that even work? Signed up with a recruiter who is meant to be putting me forward for a decent 6 month contract at the moment, but haven't heard anything yet. Fingers crossed I get an interview this week, I don't think I can handle much more of slouching around...

I've finally met Chris and Milly! That's Joe's brother and his wife, who live in London. We went out last weekend (like a week ago) and stayed with them for a couple of days. It was really fun, they made us delicious margeritas and mexican food, and took us out to the London Eye and a neat Banksy exhibit near Waterloo Station. Check the photo album for pics (also nice sunset pics from our house :D)

Between the Eye and the Banksy stuff, we actually rescued someone. There probably should be some lead up to that...

When we went to get on the bus in the morning, we noticed a poster at the bus stop advertising a lost man. Apparently Luis had gone for a walk the night before, and hadn't come home, couldn't speak any English and was probably very lost, please call us if you find him.

Well, as we wandered around near Waterloo Station looking for Banksy, Chris turned back, and then said to me 'Jen, is that the lost guy?' I wasn't sure, but he went back to talk to him. The dude was looking very lost, and didn't speak any English, looked a bit dirty and tired too. We worked out that he spoke Portugese, and so I tried out a few spanish phrases (they're kinda similar, right?) Worked out that his name was in fact, Luis. Was that the name on the poster? We thought it was.

So, Chris went into the Station to find some bobbys and we stood on the street with Luis waiting. Joe then shared our delicious banana cake with him (we bought it at the Borough food market, which is by the way AWESOME) and he very much liked that :)

Cops came out, we tried a bit more to communicate with him, then the coppers told us to move on and we waved him goodbye. Moved on to the Banksy, lots of warm fuzzy feelings and slaps on the back for Chris (he was of course modest :D)

We got back to the bus stop at the end of the day trip, and realised that yes, we had in fact found the lost man! Chris then called the number on the poster to check that he'd gotten home, and he had, yay, and then Chris said 'No no I don't want you to send me anything, we're just happy he's home, no no really. You're welcome. You're very welcome ..etc etc ..."

Basically, High Five Chris and you rule :D

The next day we went to the British Museum and checked out some of the Egyption, Greek and Roman artifacts, which were pretty cool but kinda lacking context. I think I'll enjoy going to Greece and Rome and seeing the actual things in their proper place. Should be awesome :D

Anyways, since then it's pretty much been Jen the homebody, Joe the hardworker. I'll apply for some jobs before I go to bed. Soon I will start knitting or something. Oh noes...

Coming to you LIVE from Bedford, Bedfordshire

It's odd being in a Shire.

So not that much more has happened since our last post, although I have finally uploaded the rest of our pics from Japan so go check that out! Joe started work yesterday and it looks like it's going to be fun - Joe described it as a good balance between the fun of games development and the well paying but souless pure IT work :D It's good and casual, he was overdressed in a nice shirt and jeans yesterday, which he's happy about (back to scruffy jeans and tshirts) and he doesn't have to get to work until 10 if he so chooses. Still needs to do an 8 hour day, but yay for optional sleep ins!

I'm still job hunting; had an interview on Sunday but the position was a little too high pressure and demanding for my tastes. 10 hour days with sporadic breaks and two weekends a month doesn't really sound like a good arrangement to me. So I have continued to scour the online job adverts for interesting roles.. Hopefully something good will come up soon. Although my objections to being a lady of leisure are as yet reasonably few :)

We're moving into our flat on Thursday, a day later than we thought but still good. I'm oddly excited about the prospect of making house - there's a bunch of charity shops in town and a reasonably well priced homeware store so that will be my project while Joe is at work. How very domestic..

I think once the house is set up I'll put a lot more effort into job hunting. I'll sadly need to do some shopping (sob) and get some more dressy type clothes for interviews, I currently have a wardrobe designed for travelling comfort :D

Bedford is a pretty nice place. There's a few pics of the area on the online album, it has a nice river (tis a bit brown but oh well) and nice shops. Observed a bit of unnecessary chav violence the other day, which was a bit scary. We were sitting at a cafe (a rubbish cafe unfortunately) eating some hamburgers and had just enjoyed a fantastic performance from a three year old (he climbed up on a park bench and belted out a song, when finished yelled 'shall i sing it again mum??' ) when there was a bunch of shouting from across the street. Two gentlemen (read: chavs) yelling at each other, one smashed a bottle on the ground, the other retreated and they walked away from each other.. Five minutes later the one who retreated returned with some mates, and headed towards where the first fellow had gone.

A bit scary but apparently a rare happening, at least during the day. I think we'll avoid central town on Saturday night :)

Anyways here's a list of wee observations I have made in my first week of being in the UK :D

Every house, business, building is made of red bricks. I don't understand. Lucky brickmaker.

The news here is awesome - I heard the word 'cockup' used on prime time news, what the hell

The money is annoying. I finally worked out the pattern for how to tell what money I'm holding. Two and one pound coins - gold. Fifty and twenty pence - silver, seven sided. Ten and five pence - silver, round. One and two - bronze, round. However, ten and two pence are bigger than twenty, and fives are the smallest. I have been standing at shop counters looking confused, and finally just handing over a twenty and getting yet more confusing change. Grrr

I love London tube station names. Such as: Old Street, Bank, Borough, Temple, Monument.. It's like they're the only ones in the city :D Surely there's more than one Temple? Or Monument? Other names are just funny, like Elephant and Castle, Canada Water, West Ham, Mudchute, Cockfosters... Teehee :D

Kisses

UK? OK!

Or Jen will what? Lack of punctuation creates suspense, Joe!

Anyways, so after hanging out around the Tokyo central JR station, and have possibly the most expensive bad coffees ever (500 yen and they were rubbish) we headed back to Narita and checked into our second hotel, the Holiday Inn. Not quite as flash as the Hilton but still very comfortable.

The next morning, we got up at 6:30, took the complimentary shuttle to the airport and started the next long haul flight to London. We got to the airport at 8, flight left at 11, arrived in London at 2:30 UK time, then through customs and off to the Tube at around 4, and finally got to Comber House in Camberwell around 6. However in Japan time (and our personal body clock time) it was 2am by the time we could relax... Suffice to say we've been pretty jetlagged the last couple of days, hence the delay in getting this up..

After a very long sleep, we spent Sunday pretty much doing nothing; we went outside only to find a supermarket for food supplies. It's really hard to work out good prices on things when you're working in a currency that is worth three times as much as the money at home. Let alone deal with apparent rises in prices (it all seems like a rise!)

Anyways. Since arriving we've pretty much been doing paperwork - applying for bank accounts, looking for flats, getting cell phones sorted out (if anyone wants our numbers just email!) and watching BBC news. Took some time out from our busy schedule last night to go to Spamalot - it's pretty much Holy Grail as a musical, and was so so so funny... Best line was from Patsy, King Arthur's servant and coconut clacker:

Arthur - Why didn't you tell me you were a Jew?
Patsy - Well, it's not the sort of thing you admit to a heavily armed Christian...

Just beaaauutiful. Apparently you can't make it to West End if you don't have any Jews, so good thing really.

Also had dinner at Porters, an English restaurant, was pretty delicious and sooo filling. I had yummy sausages and mash (but flasher) and Joe had salmon and prawn cakes (not as good as my sausages).

Today we'll be trying to set up viewing appointments at flats in Bedford, we've got our eye on a couple and I have my fingers crossed for one in particular...

I took a few photos around the place yesterday so will put those up asap. Write to us!

Sapporo to Tokyo

Phew, sorry we haven't posted in a while. We've spent most of our time since the last post travelling.

So now we are in London relaxing at my brother Chris' flat, which is awesome. But there was a lot that has gone on so this may be another long one...

So where Jen left you we were going to head out to the Sapporo Beer garden. We went there and it was nice. Sadly there wasn't any english so we just looked at the pictures and models. They had a big diarama setup of how beer is made, but it was elves in a magic garden making it, but they covered the basics.

We tried out some beer there and it was very nice. Jen had one and i had two, so we were feeling a little tipsy :) as we headed back to Sapporo to meet Olivia for one last night of Yakitori which was delicious.

So the next day we did the mission down to Tokyo, which was going to be 12 hours spread across three trains. During the section to Hakodate the conductor went through checking tickets, but when he saw ours he said something in Japanese at which we responded with "huh?". Our tickets were entirely in Japanese and i wasn't even sure that they said Tokyo on them. He looked a little troubled then went and got someone who spoke some english. She told us that we couldn't transfer at Hakodate to Hachinoe as our tickets said, but would instead transfer earlier. We we're a little concerned, thinking perhaps we had stumbled onto the wrong train, a reasonable assumption.

So after a small amount of panic between us, i went off to find the english speaking lady again and verify what our tickets said and to just make sure. Her english was pretty bad so i couldn't use sentences. But after a bit of trial and error i figured that our tickets said what i thought they did, and we had got on the right train. But that today there was some sort of problem at Hakodate and everyone would be transfering. So everything was fine, they transfered us where we needed to and we didn't miss any trains :)

We got to Tokyo before 8, and took a train out to Narita airport. Tonight we would be staying at the Hilton :D

The Hilton was pretty awesome, we had arrived late and decided to have room service for dinner. We donned our free robes and lived like kings for the night :) It was soo good to have a big soft bed.

In the morning we went out to Tokyo to see some of the sites. We missioned around a little bit didn't go too far from the station, went to the Imperial Palace, which you can't really look in, but we milled around the outside anyway. Took it easy for our last day in Japan.

I'll stop here because i'm getting tired :) Hopefully i'll finish this soon, or Jen will

Thanks for reading