First Day in the City

Wow. What an experience! Just getting to the city was a journey. We started at the Marlow train station. Took the the Marlow Donkey to Maidenhead. Switched trains at Maidenhead and arrived at Paddington. The Paddington train station was huge! I definitely stopped and took it all in. It was bustling with all kinds of people. It was very much like an airport. We caught the tube to Notting Hill Gate then got on another tube line to Oxford Circus. The tube was a bit stuffy and warm. I was totally nervous and uncomfortable the whole trip into the city. I didn’t know what to expect. But as soon as we emerged from the Oxford Circus underground, I immediately spotted Topshop, then H&M, then Urban Outfitters...then I thought “Oooooh, this might be kind of awesome!”

There were tons of people on the streets. Reminded me so much of New York City. At this point we didn’t have a map, so we bought a London A-Z book straight away (Everyone says “straight away” here, everyone). We navigated the streets to my new job and met with the HR woman I had been corresponding with for the past 7 weeks. She gave me a reference letter to go open a bank account. We then went to the bank and attempted to open a UK bank account. It is not the easiest process in the world, but our account should be open by Monday. Once we receive our bank cards we can get a mobile phone contract. Yesterday I picked up a pay-as-you-go phone but I want a Droid again, or maybe an iPhone. Those are only available by contract.

We stopped by a really pleasant park and took a break for a bit to figure out what else we wanted to do that day. I love all the parks around. Lots of people were just hanging out on the grass. We were going to go to Buckingham Palace but I was pretty exhausted, perhaps it was the jet lag. So, off we went back to Marlow...during rush hour! Yikes! Don’t like the crowded, stuffy tubes!

Map from Marlow to my work:
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=10+Berwick+Close,+Marlow,+Buckinghamshire+SL7+3,+UK&daddr=St+Margarets+House,+19-23+Wells+St,+London+W1T+3PQ,+UK+(framestore)&hl=en&geocode=FYX8EgMdtxX0_yk5ZXiY6ol2SDFWPBX1vm6M7Q%3BFVQXEgMdPOb9_ylrqrIGKxt2SDHqVk8Fi2xOBQ&mra=ls&sll=51.575941,-0.780873&sspn=0.011495,0.038581&ie=UTF8&ll=51.564266,-0.458679&spn=0.367936,1.234589&z=10


Marlow Train Station

From First Day in London

From First Day in London

From First Day in London

From First Day in London

From First Day in London

From First Day in London

Still or Sparkling?

Rohaise took us into town for some lunch at Pizza Express soon after we arrived. This would be my first restaurant experience in England. The waiter came to take our drink order. I asked for some water. “Still or Sparkling?”, he said to me. Um, what? I didn’t quite understand what he said. I looked at Eryn with eyes like “I just want some regular water!”. Eryn or Rohaise, I can’t remember, said “Still” and he brought us a big glass bottle of water. I now know that in restaurants here they don’t just bring you glasses of water automatically and keep refilling them, you have to ask for it and pay for it! Lesson learned. (Oh, and when I ordered my Margarita pizza, the waiter thought I wanted the “Hot American” pizza. Wth!)

From Marlow

See more photos here:
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/tmanbeck/Marlow#

Our Arrival

We arrived at London Heathrow at 11:00am. Customs was a breeze to get through, thankfully. We were happily greeted by Rohaise. (She is a niece of some of Eryn’s family’s greatest friends. Eryn has known her since they were young kids.) It was great to see a familiar face in such an unfamiliar place. I was very intrigued when we got in the car and started on our journey back to her house. First of all, Rohaise was driving from the passenger side of the car, pretty weird. I couldn’t stop watching her drive. She was shifting with her left hand and the mirror was angled to the passenger side. “This is so weird!!!”, I said. I couldn’t help but close my eyes at some of the on coming traffic, I swear it looked like they were going to run into us...probably because they were driving on the wrong side of the road! I’m sill not used to it. Just yesterday we watched a car drive past us and I said to Eryn, “Hey look, there’s a baby driving that car!”.

We are staying at Rohaise’s house until we find a place of our own. Her house is in Marlow, which is about 1 1/2 hours outside the city. She is actually staying up North for the summer, so we have her place to ourselves. It is a 2 bedroom house and just a 5 minutes walk from the center of town. Marlow is a very quaint, charming little town right on the River Thames.

From Marlow

This is Rohaise's house, where we are staying.

From Marlow

From Marlow

From Marlow

Packing up and getting there

Preparing for the move was just plain crazy. First step was getting our UK visas which was quite an adventure in itself. It's a process that takes weeks. Before we even had the visas in hand, we had to tell our current jobs at the time we were leaving. That was nerve wracking. More so for Eryn who had a stable, sweet job at Sony for the past 10 years. Everything went through just fine and the minute we got our visas, which I think was 2 weeks before we left, we booked our flight.

Eryn's great friends Mike and Bob drove us up to LAX, so nice of them. We got to hear Bob in action on a conference call which was a real treat (he is a screenwriter) and it was a nice distraction for me. Our long journey had begun. We flew Air New Zealand over. Last minute I ended up upgrading our seats to Premium Economy. The extra legroom and extra seat recline was so worth it! We also got complimentary champagne, slippers, eye masks, earplugs, tooth brush and each seat had it's own TV screen. The flight was fine, although bumpy from North Dakota and all the rest of the way across the continent. Lame. About an hour before we landed, instead of being really excited, I got really uncomfortable. Just knowing that we were going to LIVE there. So weird, even still. But I've accepted this uncomfortable feeling and decided just to go with it. It still comes and goes, whatever.

Back Story

We came to London for a job. The studio I was working at in San Clemente had shut down about 4 months ago. I ended up landing a job at this super lame studio in San Diego about 2 weeks after I lost my job. Since there are not many job opportunities in our industry in San Diego, I decided that maybe now was the time I really went for it. I didn't want to just settle into this job I hated just because it was in SD. Eryn and I talked about our careers and our future and came to this conclusion: If we were going to leave San Diego, it would need to be for one of my 3 dream jobs OR to live abroad. Living abroad is something Eryn has always wanted to do. I was open to the idea. So, I got my resume and cover letters up to date and started applying. There are three companies I have always wanted to work for. One is a George Lucas company in San Fransisco, one is Pixar which is also in the Bay area and the last is Blue Sky in New York. Then I applied to 4 studios in London. I actually didn't even know which studios even existed in London but I got some recommendations from my old college friend Dax.

I ended up getting calls from LucasFilm in SF and Framestore in London. I had FOUR exhausting interviews with multiple people at LucasFilm and I had two very hard and technical interviews with Framestore. I got offers from both studios (woot!) on the same day (ugh). I don't know why offers always seem to come in twos...it makes for really hard decisions. I went back and forth for a week trying to decide. We went through the pros and cons of both over and over. Both were fantastic opportunities and would be great for my career. I had basically decided on LucasFilm, which is the much more comfortable choice for me, but then I received an email from the Framestore recruiter the night before the final decision was to be made ...We found out that Eryn would have the same working rights as me in London AND he would like to interview him because he sounds like a good fit for a position there as well. I read the email aloud to Eryn and literally slapped my forehead, "REALLY?!". I sort of felt like it was a sign, I don't know. From then on the decision was London. How could we pass up this opportunity to live in another country? How could we pass up the chance to travel all around Europe? And so, in 7 weeks we would be getting on a one way flight to fly across the pond.