Posts by Ben Austin
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Just as an aside - Earls Court is in fact not full of Australians and Kiwis. After living there for two years I think I've heard such an accent maybe once on the street, and maybe a dozen times in the local pubs. Yet despite this I keep on getting knowing looks when people ask me where I live (as if to say "haha where else would you live?")
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Well given that it seems most UK bound Kiwis do congregate on London, in waves based on age/life experience I don't find it that odd or lacking that we tend to clump together. In my case I don't so much hang out with people from NZ because we share common origin or values, I hang out with them because they were my friends in NZ and this is a pretty common experience in London.
I would think it is pretty normal for people to seek out old acquaintances when moving to a new place
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I do find this kind of thing a little sick as well, but sadly it isn't confined to Lincoln students - I believe Prince Harry had a similar issue several years ago at such a party. Also, last year I was reading about a military recreation weekend somewhere in the south of England, where the recreationists dressed as WW2 era German forces outnumbered the Allied or British forces by at least a factor of two*. Beggers belief really.
*The article was rather brief and I did read it a year ago, so I concede it is possible that there might be another explanation for this
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I think Canadian or Siberian winter stories win the discussion. Although I think I should get an honourable mention for walking 4KM through London at 3AM during the February 2009 snowstorms with an airline hostess and a banker, as well as our luggage because public transport doesn't run during inclement weather.
The story would be more impressive if we hadn't had the good luck of flagging the one taxi not spoken for in London somwhere around Pall Mall. Walking half way home rather than all the way doesn't really cut it sadly
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I do remember a student party at my flat in Wellington back in 2003 where the crowd was most Kiwi, with a bunch of Germans and 3-4 Americans - those of the latter who were up to discuss politics ended up surrounded by drunks furiously attacking Bush etc. It all ended on good terms but it must have been pretty weird to be on the receiving end of all that.
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Until I started working with a definite majority of British (that is, British nationals or people raised here) I didn't really encounter the class system. That has changed now, and it is pretty dammed weird I must say. I pretty glad that as a foreigner I seem to get put into a separate grouping as I'd hate to have to start playing those games.
Re the violence issue - I've been living in the traditional destination of Earls Court, so between me, the people staying at the 2 star hotels and the various other long term immigrants here, it is pretty safe and I've never seen any violence. Although the Knife Collection Bin that used to be outside the station did kind of worry me
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I used Twitter back in 2007 for a couple of months. It was sort of useful but I didn't find it engaging enough to want to make it a part of my daily activities. Sometimes it is nice to remain a passive consumer of information than a contributor.
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I didn’t intend to downplay the differences between NZ and the UK – they are many and varied – but being in London is different – the city is as Ben says, huge, which means that most of us seem to be able to live within the inner parts of city (zones 1-5), so do not really see regularly the huge depressed suburbs that sit around the periphery of most of the big UK cities, it is a case of out of sight, out of mind.
But that is pretty similar to my experience back home as well. I lived on a farm for 18 years, then North Dunedin for undergraduate, then Kelburn in Wellington for post graduate and then work. This means that my experience of the depressed towns and suburbs is pretty much confined to living through the long decline of rural towns in the 1980s and early 1990s, which was pretty horrible. So I’m not really in a position to pass judgment on the UK in that regard and probably never will be, as the moment I cannot support myself in the UK or when my visa expires I’ll need to come back home. Which sounds like a pretty clichéd middle class experience but there you have it
Oh and Ben, yes I get that as well. I currently have four first names - Ben, Iain, Bin and Benjamin.
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If it gets to the point where I need to move to Newcastle it will probably be a good time to head back home
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Well having now spent a couple of years in London I have to say that from the start it has not felt substantially different from back home. There are all sorts of possible reasons for that, the huge number of expats in London, many close long term NZ friends amongst them, language, the historical connections etc, but whatever the reason it felt just like I was moving to a bigger, more cosmopolitan NZ city.
It hasn’t felt like a different country in the slightest, nor required any substantial adjustments that I can think of, except to slightly modify my phone voice at work, so people don’t call me Iain instead of Ben.