Tue, 31 Dec 2002

author Tim	location Golders Green, Greater London, England
posted 14:29 GMT 01/01/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/UK/England/London/Working in London 1 ( all photos )

Happy New Year! And a Job! ( 38 photos )
New Year's Eve was another interesting day. Early on, I was quite suprised to answer the mobile to a job offer! They didn't even want an interview - just turn up on Thursday ready to go! Who was I to say no - the money is good enough, and it's only a two-month contract, so it fits in nicely with us saving hard and running off to travel around the rest of Europe, and still maybe making our August return tickets.
I don't know a huge deal about the job yet, except it is quite near Liverpool Street station (about 30-40 mins travel time), and working for an outsourcing company who have the government contract for the Transport for London Congestion Charging project. They seem to want me for a UNIX Support/Admin role, which sounds interesting, if a little different to what I was aiming for.

So, after the excitement of that had worn down, we sat down to work out what we were going to do for the evening to celebrate the New Year. We had had a few offers, but nothing really ticked our fancy, so we decided just to jump on a tube and let the rest work itself out.
First stop was Leicester Square, where we eventually found some truly terrible food and service at one of the many Aberdeen Angus steak houses (read someone else's opinion of them here, which is not to dissimilar to ours). I refused to pay the "compulsory" service charge (the service was non-existant and the food terrible), so we left quickly, looking for somewhere better to spend the rest of the evening.
Eventually we located one of the only places you could get a drink without a twenty-five pound ticket, which was a great little bar just off Leicester Square. After a while though, we were treated to some more great British hospitality, and rudely told that we had to move our table, because they needed the room. So we did, but found the new location was right between four smokers. Left there pretty quick.
Here started our big wander around Central London - taking in Oxford Circus, Whitehall, Westminster, Southwark (where they had some pretty blue lights near the London Eye) and a couple of bridges along the way. We decided that we would spend the new year watching Big Ben chime away, along with several thousand other revellers packed outside Westminster. It was a nice relaxing way to do it, until the huge crush of people madly deciding they wanted to get out caused several sore bones. No lasting damage was done, and we eventually made our way back to the only open tube at Charing Cross, then came straight home.
So it wasn't the most outrageous, crazy New Years we have ever had, but it was certainly quite memorable. We were on the whole un-impressed with London's efforts compared with Sydney - no fireworks, Trafalgar Square was closed (complete with huge signs saying "Nothing to see here, move along", or something to that effect) - we had chosen the most interesting place, apparently. There was something going on at the Millenium Dome, but we only found that out the day after.

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