It has been eight months since I arrived in London as I write this. The time has flown but arriving feels like yesterday.

For the first few weeks in London I was lucky enough to stay with the Wilkinsons - friends of Mum and Dad who I had meet a few years early back in New Zealand. They lived in a lovely house near Wimbledon in South West London. Having a place to stay made my arrival so much easier and less stressful and I am very grateful for the hospitality.

My job search started the day after I arrived. I had been keeping an eye out for things for a few weeks but had no started to apply for anything. I updated my CV and registered it on a couple of web sites and before I knew it I was being contacted by recruitment agencies with roles to consider. I had no idea that it worked this way so it was a nice surprise to have other people doing the hard work for me.

In the meantime I had a bunch of boring admin stuff to do. The first task was to open a bank account. Almost every bank in the UK requires proof of address in order to open an account. This was a problem for me obviously as I had no permanent address at this point, and also nothing that could officially link me to where I was staying. Luckily Lloyds Bank did not have this requirement (I found out later that Lloyds was the parent company of the National Bank in New Zealand. They have the same dark green/black horse branding) so I was able to open an account with them. Next on the list was applying for a National Insurance Number. I also had to get a new phone as the one I had been using in the US was locked to only work on the US network I was with.

I also started looking for somewhere to live. This was complicated by the fact that virtually all landlords require proof of employment. I didn't want to live alone so I started looking for existing flats that were looking for a new flatmate. There were plenty of listings but also an insane amount of competition. I decided to hold off for a bit while I sorted out the job.

Thankfully that didn't end up taking too long at all. I soon had a phone interview which led to a proper interview which led to an offer which I accepted. It's a web development job at a cool company right in the heart of London. I would be starting the following Monday.

I had been staying with the Wilkinsons for close to three weeks at this point which had made things much easier. They had family coming to stay so it was time to move on. I found a room on Airbnb in Victoria (just a few minutes walk from the Houses of Parliament) where I stayed for a couple of nights. It was hard to know how long to book accommodation for at this point as I didn't know when I would find a flat. I then moved out to another Airbnb room in North London which was miserable. It was really cheap but also cold and damp and dark. I had now started work so at least I was away for most of the day. After that week was up I was lucky enough to be offered an open ended stay back at the place in Victoria. I ended up staying for almost a month and got to know the lady I was staying with really well. She often made food for me and was really interested in what I was doing. It was really nice and personal and is something I wont forget.

In the meantime I had started flat hunting again in earnest. I was starting to understand just how crazy the market is. I had been taken to see some flats by a letting agent where I was shown rooms. I did not meet any of the tenants but was expected to be interested in signing up on the spot. Even worse I was told that all of the places I had seen already had offers on them, I just had to show up earlier (and likely with more money) and the room was mine. There was one flat that I visited (along with about twenty other people at the same time) where I was told that I had been chosen to take the room. This was great until the next day when the two current flatmates realised that they had gotten confused and also offered the same room to someone else.

At that viewing I just happened to talk to another guy (also named Chris!) who was also looking for a place. We talked about how hard it was to find anywhere and without really thinking I asked if he wanted to try and find a place together. I figured that it might be easier to rent an empty two bedroom flat rather than find a room on it's own. Long story short after an exhaustive search with dozens of viewings we finally found a flat. It is a really nice place in a area called Parsons Green which is in Fulham, South West London.

Hyde Park in Autumn

I had been living out of a suitcase for over five months by the time we finally moved in so it felt great to finally unpack for good and discover all the odd bits that I had been carrying around at the bottom of my bags.

It's now been nine months since we moved in and everything has been great. It's a really comfortable place to live which good access to the rest of the city and plenty of food and shopping nearby. It also has just the right mixture of action and quiet.

Since arriving in the UK I've travelled around a fair bit which I'll go over in some other posts.