10 posts tagged “internship”

Just a bunch of photos that I thought I'd share with y'all. And if you're wondering I took all of these.

Sitting

Lord Nelson

unfinished bridge

slides

hyde park

Clock Tower

Today I have officially created a new sport. Possibly one for the Olympics. I title it:
Tube Surfing
Now I bet you're really confused. Here's how it works. You find an empty (or mostly empty) subway car. You'll have to get an empty one to get the good feeling behind it. Also pick a train line that travels somewhat fast (45+ mph). Stand at the back of the car, facing the front of the train (as in when it leaves you'll be pushed backwards by the motion). Stand as close to the little door that connects the two cars and lean against it, provided you won't be thrown out of the door by doing said leaning. Essentially this will be your view of the car:

Subwaycar

interns

Huzzah for group photos (or is it wozzah, like Luke told me...?). Bask in the poses, radiating all that is cheesy about them. Mmm...

Creamy goodness from my office. Just some pictures of the desk area, looking out my window, and a little video tour. Enjoy~

my desk

the street

30-10-06_1205

It's the beginning of week 4 of working here, and its week 4.5 of being in London - It's amazing how long it feels like I've been here, and how much I'm a part of this city now. I think that being integrated into the city has really helped me feel a lot more comfortable here. Thanks to all my new friends for helping me settle in and find a great life to be had here. So now that I've moved I'm really just doing my work and maintaining my now busy social life afterwords.

So far I've:

• Walked in Hyde Park
• Purchased tickets to go to Paris for 3 days
• Been subject to Tube service disruptions more than I care to admit
• Gone to some pubs (okay more than some)
• Eaten at a posh restaurant in Soho
• Gotten lost (er more than once)
• Eaten fish & chips on the bank of the Thames
• Watched fireworks over the London Bridge
• Gotten lost (again)
• Clubbing
• Shopping (Gurrrllll!)
• Touched many a Louis Vuitton bag that I can't afford...
• Moved (w00t)
• Gone grocery shopping in probably the scariest neighbourhood I've ever been in...
• Seen a few celebrities [Kate Moss, Jude Law, Ms. Robo Beckham (aka Posh Spice)]
  

• Directed a tele-conference with our consulate in Belfast
  
• Created public direction information to the embassy
• Documented office locations and floor maps for the entire building (900 people work here so that was hard)
• Discovered and reported on the £500,000 entertainment spending that various people here use per annum
• Met the Secretary of State & the Ambassador
  
• Meeting the Prime Minister on Wednesday
• Developed policy surrounding the embassy housing
• Helped to earn exemption from the Congestion Charge for US Embassy Staff

• Organize/diagram the paper flow for the accounting department, report on it
• Organize/diagram software processes for the IT department, report
• Go out on Property Inspections
• Visualize/report on a re-design for the intranet webpages
• Assist in emergency plan development

Today's picture of randomness:

unfinished bridge

Horray I'm officially moving out of the Shellbourne on Sunday the 22nd. So that means 7 weeks of not paying for that! Hello Bond Street, Hello Louis Vuitton. Not. I'm actually trying to go to Paris for the Thanksgiving weekend. So I'll use the money for that (and add a little posh-ness too ;) ). Horray for that. I just thought I'd share a photo of the new view that I get to wake up to daily:

the view

Cheers~

so I'm sitting at a random desk at the embassy looking out across the plaza out front. people are queueing in the rain to see someone about a visa, there are a few soccer (or futbol) moms in the park pushing prams, and across the plaza is the Canadian embassy. hence the title of this post, if you were confused.

today's been long. they've closed the station that i always change in because its been flooded with sewage. i'm glad they didn't release us to stumble around in it. that explains the constant stink smell it has. so i got to take the long way into work (horray for me). after getting here at 815 i've just been working on my little project which involves digging thru a year's worth of receipts and finding the ones that are for events held at someone's residence. eay you might say...hmm i don't think so. there's £285,000 worth of expenses for one year alone. lovely...

i went out and walked around hyde park area a while back. here are some pictures. as always, click for bigger.

Fountains

In Hyde Park

Statue Thingy

The lovely statue/memorial thingy

foil-age

FOIL-age :)

well after waking up at 4am and falling back asleep only to wake up at 8am again was lovely. i decided today was a perfect day to go play in the bellows of the transit system. i found my way eventually to the embassy, and only after 45 minutes of underground action. it's somewhat of a pain in the ass for me. i had to change trains three times because the one i take only goes one station. so that's super awesome. and that route is the most direct one. oh well. given the distance i went i'd much rather tube and transfer than walk. Here's a PDF Map if its easier for you to visualize my pain.

so i made it to the embassy today and damn that thing is a fortress. 4 layers of fencing, a few road barriers, and about a dozen armed men. and that's just the outside. i mention this only because one of the 'projects' that i get to work on is coming up with an official version of the thrown together chain link fencing.

and its raining again. joy.

So I've been in london for just about 5 hours now.

We made good time when we left Chicago, but that meant that when we got here we had to circle in the air for about 20 minutes because London has a noise curfew that prevents airplanes from landing before 6am. So it was a moot point.

Thursday morning rush hour traffic was about as exciting as one could expect it to be. My hotel is nicely situated - just a few minutes from the southwest corner of Hyde park, there are two or three long streets with lots of different stores that I can drop some cash at, and my room is facing a street that is quiet.

I'm sitting in the first Starbucks that I came along that had wireless internet. Suprisingly it's about the third one I've gone into, if you count the one in the grocery store... Silly Brits are laden with WiFi, but finding one that I can get into is painfully tricky. At the moment I've been awake for just shy of 24 hours. It's a new record for me. I'm trying to stay up as late in the UK day as I can so that I can get into the schedule here as easily as possible. Now that I've sat down my head is kinda dizzy. Oh well.

The flight was about as interesting as 11 hours in a small seat in a pressurized tube can be. I didn't get much sleep on the plane due to the fact that it was 5 in the afternoon in SLC when I tried to nap, and the rude families surrounding me. If you can explain what would inspire a mom to yell at her daughter across 13 rows of sleeping people, please do.

My room is insanely small, but I don't really care. I don't plan on spending much time in it, and the parts that I'm going to use (desk, bed, shower) are present and fully functional. And I'm only spending £18 a night for it. I'll post some pics once I take them. Basically I had to take two trips up the elevator because my bags and me couldn't fit in it.

If you can imagine it, the thing I miss most at the moment is my mobile. It sucks not having one. I'm really tempted to buy a pay per use one, but they're ungodly expensive, and you have to have a UK registered address to attain one. So instead I will just have to go cold turkey. Maybe I will have to take up smoking or something to replace it. There's a trade - brain radiation for cancer sticks. Meh. Whatevs.

I start work on Monday, 2 October. I think that should give me enough time to get adjusted fully here and not be super tired at work.

And I don't know what kind of person would own a car in London - it's insane. I think I'm doing well to have spent a few hours walking around and not having been killed. Maybe I'll get used to that too...

So here's my photo du jour - I took it waiting in SLC for the plane. It's artsy and from a phone, so judge nicely.

shadow