If I must be
honest, I wasn't planning on writing this post today but... f*cking hell, I got
out of work and thought I would be able to stay at Café Nero in Piccadilly
Circus to organize myself and start doing some important stuff I have to do and guess
what… yeah, no internet. What the h*ll is going on? I mean… it was supposed to
be working and, in fact, everyone who is sitting next to me and got a macbook
instead of a windows is able to work with their computers. Too bad its not me.
Had loads of things to do but I guess it will have to wait till… well, Sunday,
as I am working tomorrow and Saturday. Yeah, great.
Anyway… at
least I’ve got time to sit down (no coffee, guys… - what I lie, I just bought
myself another one -) and just tell you a bit more of whats been happening
lately. Havent had the time to write a big post (I know!) but I am back now and
its great to say this cause whenever I sit and write a bit, I feel closer to
who I really am which, I think, is good. So here it is guys, straight away from
Piccadilly Circus, the new post about the things I’ve learnt in the past
months.
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Maybe it’s to hard on myself to say it was a
mistake but it definitely wasn’t a good idea. I should have known from the very
beginning when I saw the look on my friends’ faces the moment I told them I was
taking my things and moving to London to be an au pair. Yeah… c’mon Carmen, you
must be kidding! Oh, no… I wasn’t. And I became one. For two months, guys.
I don’t know what made me make that decision
but it just happened: I finished uni and a great internship as a film
journalist and then I said… what am I gonna do now? Well, the plan was clear in
my head cause I always wanted to move to London but how? Well, I took the
easiest way. I knew becoming an au pair would give me the opportunity to settle
down in the city. I would have a roof, food and some time to think (as if I do
not overthink enough everyday) but not a little thing went as I planned them to
develop. In the end I found myself in my beautiful London, in a beautiful house, in a
beautiful area but living with a crazy family.
I’ve heard so many bad experiences of friends
who became au pairs and had to leave cause they were crazy but I thought it
would never happened to me so imagine how surprised I was when I realized I was
living the same experience.
Honestly, guys, there’s mad people out there and
mad mums. Mums who wouldn’t let their kids going to the park to see the little
ducks cause they have to come “straight home”. Mums who wouldn’t let her kids
play with other kids cause “they already have each other”. Mums who would not
pick their au pairs up from the airport and left them alone in the middle of
London with no place to sleep cause they have to have dinner with some friends.
There
are mums out there guys… mums who would not invite her au pair to have dinner
with the family or that would forbid them to go outside their bedroom after
10pm cause the stairs are old and the noise bothers them. There are mums who
would hide food from their au pairs cause they “eat too much” and there are
mums that will not care at all if their au pairs are sick and would make them
work as usual. Anyway… I think you get
my point so… as soon as I could I took my things and left the madhouse. Was
then becoming an au pair a mistake? I don’t think so. I just had the bad luck
to end up with a disgusting family, plus I am not the au pair kind-of-girl at all. But it also gave me good things like… free time to enjoy
London as a tourist and also a great amount of time to learn more about how to
survive in the city cause honestly guys, there’s no madhouse such as London
itself.
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Yeah, guys…
I am completely right when I say this and most of you will agree with me. Not
only in Spain where things are really, really bad these days but also in the
UK, where people are struggling day by day to find a proper job. Cause believe
when I say there’s loads of shitty jobs out there. No kidding.
I actually
spent one month sending CVs and cover letters anywhere I could imagine cause I
desperately needed a job to survive. I remember days when my contact lenses
where just dry cause I had spent too many hours in front of my laptop. I would
correct again and again my CV and print loads of them and handle them to many
places only to get rejections (hell yeah, eh?).
It's actually a difficult task
to overcome. It’s like a map that takes you to nowhere cause maybe you read an
ad and you are interested in some exciting post and you expect they will read
your CV but then you get an answer and the answer is that they are not
interested and that your abilities and skills don’t match at all with the type
of person they are looking for so you get depressed... and you see no point in
sending any more CVs or in writing a thousand cover letters.
The waiting
is also something that kills you little by little. Most of all if you have a
deadline, just as I did because for me it was one month or I will end up in the
street. And I tried, guys, I tried so hard to find something within my field
that I can’t count the number of applications I sent. It was just frustrating
and I was in tears almost every day. I couldn’t find the way out of the
situation.
Anyway… (as it always happens) out of the blue I found a job. Great company, great people. It had nothing to do with my
degree but hey, this job meant the opportunity to remain in London and free time
to settle down in the city so I took it. I desperately took it.
If I must
be honest, eventually all the companies I applied for called me back offering
me jobs. Most of all great shops and Café Nero as well! Not any of the companies
related to my degree got back to me, though. So… my advice is this: you
planning to move to the UK and find a proper job? First of all, you must have
time, loads of time and patience (I am trying to develop this last one, btw)
and money and... why not? Felix Felicis as well (liquid luck, in case you haven’t read the Potter
books!). Things will turn out fine in the end, for sure, but don’t expect a miracle. You will have to start taking random paths first.
PS: I am a
health bar manager, btw.
PS 2: They
also called me from the Harry Potter Shop (located at King’s Cross Station) after
3 months of handling my CV and invited me for an interview… so I now have 2
jobs.
PS 3: Some
days I have to work 14 hours in a row.
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If in the
last lines you’ve been reading about me crying and struggling to find a job, I
don’t want you to imagine me trying to find a house. Took me one month and a
half and I basically cried a river when I finally found it. Btw,I don’t know
why I am using the word “house” cause its not. Its just a room, guys, a really
beautiful and cozy room but not a house. You will never be able to rent a whole
house in London… LOL!
Some people
would say that it is not difficult to find a room (there’s loads of agencies,
you know? And loads of websites that will do the dirty job for you) but it
actually was for me. The problem with the agencies is that you start living in
a house and the people who live with you change and they come and go and the
agency literally doesn’t give a f*ck about you and the people you live with. I didn't want that so I did it my own way. I just created a profile on the internet and started
looking for places (double rooms) in nice areas of the city.
First of all, I was looking for something big (I didn’t
want to feel in prison) and close to a tube station. You think I was asking for
too much? Not really but well, I did 25 viewings more or less and I visited
almost every part of London. Took me hours and tears and I saw nice and expensive
places and also shitty places. I saw rooms
that were dirty, houses to be shared with weird and scary people and little
rooms with no space at all. I freaked out when I found about the prices which
yeah, depend on the area and the size of your room and stuff but they are
around the 550 pounds per month, which is a lot for just a room (and this price
not always includes the bills!).
During the
weeks (looong weeks) I spent looking for a room I was lucky enough to have a
friend with a cozy flat who let me stay there. It was a great location but the
situation was complicated. I was sleeping in a couch which was in the middle of
the living room and I had to wake up every day at 5am to get to work and
whenever I arrived back I just had dinner in front of my laptop trying to find
a place that I could call my own. I had (literally) no space in the flat and my
suitcase stayed in a corner with all my messy clothes inside. Honestly, guys,
it was not easy at all and I bursted into tears a hundred times (or more!) I
thought the situation was never going to end.
The days I
was not working at the Harry Potter Shop I did viewings and I visited and
explored tube stations that I didn’t even know they existed like Seven Sisters,
Caledonian Road, Acton Town or Stockwell. I got lost numerous times trying to
find an specific street and I pretty much lost the faith and thought I was
never gonna find a proper place to live. It was a difficult task cause London’s
so big… DAMN! When you come to visit the city you can’t even imagine how big it
is and yes, living here has NOTHING to do with coming to spend a weekend. In London you do not live, you just survive. And that is what I was
doing so from the very beginning I tried to organize my priorities: house or
flat? How many housemates? Oh wow… do I want a single or a double room? The
bathroom must be nice!! Would I go North or South? West or East? Which Zone? Is
this a dangerous neighbourhood? (like…. let me think, Elephant and Castle,
maybe?) and the list of options and possibilities just went on and on. And I’m
not good at making choices! C’mon… I don’t know how to choose what I want for dinner in a restaurant so how I was supposed to choose things like these?
In the end
I got my pieces together and found a great house in a place that… well, a place
that I really like. I live in Kilburn (North West London) and my house is so
cozy and nice I cant believe I was so lucky to find it. My room is big and I’ve
got a beautiful double bed with an amazing duvet cover! Oh, I got a great
kitchen and a really nice bathroom, as well as a big wardrobe (Thank
God!). My house is located less than one song away from the tube station and I
share the flat with the nicest italian girl ever.
I moved in two
months ago and I am completely happy here. I like the area and I have great
buses that take me straight away to central London. I love the Jubilee Line so
its cool to have it nearby and Kilburn High Road is one of the best places to go
and visit different types of pubs, plus I’ve got Primark just 10 min walk
from my house. How does that sound? It was one of my friends who decided to look up this part of London and it was a good thing cause we never planned to live in Kilburn, but we do not regret it at all.
Now the
time when I was a rouge wanderer seem so far away and whenever I stop and think
about my homeless situation, it seems to me as if it never happened. Yeah, how
cool is the human mind that makes us forget the bad things we experience? I guess it was just time to grow up and I had to do it. I did it. I chose. It was difficult, yeah, but it was also worth it.
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I know I
said it before but I have to repeat it: living in London is not the
same as coming here to visit the city. Everything sparkles whenever you come
for a weekend and enjoy the red buses, fish and chips and the free museums but
hey, London’s difficult as f*ck. And its so fast that one day you open your
eyes and its Monday, next day is Friday and the day after that you have been
living here for 6 months.
And I am trying to understand why this thing happens,
I mean… sometimes I am in the tube, heading work or going to Central London and
I see myself from the outside, running, always busy, always in a hurry… with no
time for myself. Londoners have no time to sleep, eat or read. C’mon… are you
kidding me? It seems that surviving in London is taking the energy our of me!
Have you ever thought why there’s so many fast-food places to eat at? Yeah,
cause no one have the time to sit down and eat properly. Cause you find
‘meal-deals’ everywhere you go (crips + sandwich+drink for 3 or less!!) and you
see people reading in the tube, just enjoying themselves cause whenever they
arrive at home, finding the time to do it just seems pretty impossible.
And yeah,
London’s devouring me as well. I am always (I mean it, ALWAYS) in a hurry and I
work so many hours between my bar and the shop that whenever I am home I just
want to go to bed. Hadn’t had the time to stay in my room watching a movie or
writing some stuff for ages! C´mon Carmen… what happened to you? Have you really turned
into a busy Londoner? Well yeah, I should won a BAFTA and an OSCAR for the
scene I am in cause I turned into a busy Londoner without even noticing it! And
the only thing that comes to my mind right now is that beautiful quote from
Gone With The Wind that says “Do not squander time, that is the stuff life is
made off”. So if you are planning to
come and live in this messy city, make
sure you buy yourself a great diary to organize your time and don’t let
London take extra hours from you. And I want to do that now. I want to take the
time to appreciate where I am. I need time to keep settling down and doing
things that will help me grow.
Mark my words, London’s selfish and packed and whenever you’ll
offer it your hand… it will try to take the whole arm.
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I am pretty
sure you have had plans. I am pretty sure everyone has got imagination. A vivid
imagination that helps them develop dreams and images of how they want things
to be. Sometimes we just stay in our rooms staring at the ceiling (if we are
lucky, there will be fairy lights in there) and imagining how great life would
be if something happened this way or if that person would say those things and if
my family were this or that way... Has it ever happened to you? Have you ever been lost
in those images? Well, I have been. So many times I can’t count them and yeah,
the people who really know me understand that’s the way I am. I like fantasy
and dreams and feeling you are able to do anything if you try hard.
Well, that’s
not the case anymore. I am not talking from a negative point of view, I am just
trying to be honest with myself. I was delusional about every little thing. About
life, in general. And I think its something that happens to a lot of people.
You just think things are going to be different, in every possible way. Maybe
you think you will become someone important if you really try, maybe you think
that when you grow up and live your own life away from home things are going to
be amazing or maybe you think that when you study a certain degree you will become who
you truly are. For me, it was London. London and its beautiful streets and
beautiful people and magic. It was London and its life. Its vibrant, you know?
And then again… you grow up. I don’t wanna be dramatic but you start to learn.
You learn about peoples behaviour, about how things really work in the real
world and you get disappointed. By so many things that I can not explain. Maybe
it was that person who left and broke your heart or maybe it was a dream that never came true or it was your plan to travel the world and never come back. But then again...you do not feel the way you planned.
There is so
many things that have happened to me throughout the years. I have lost
important people who were part of my life and I have seen reality at its worst.
And still, I wake up every morning and face the world with a smile (or at least
I try to). If I could write a letter to the person I was when I turned 17 I
would give some good advice to my inner self. I would tell a younger me not to
dwell on dreams and forget to live. But I can’t. When I look at the mirror
sometimes I don’t recognize myself. Things have changed so much for me in the
past months that I see my reflection and feel as if a different person is
looking back at me.
The things
we experience make us who we are. The people that love you or hurt you change
you everyday. And the world is so much
difficult outside that you have ever planned it to be. There’s good news,
though cause "the world is so much stranger than you imagined, its so much darker
and so much madder. But it is also so much better”. So hey, fill your head with whats important
and be done with all the rest. I am sure that now that I moved out of my house
(and my city and country!), that I really have everything I ever wanted, that I
live in London and that I have had so many experiences since I arrived,
nothing turned out to be the way I imagined. Every little detail has been different. But real London is so much better than what I thought in the very beggining. The things that have happened to me are far much amazing than I have planned them to be. I learnt and I grew up so now I know I don't want an illusion, I want reality or nothing. I have been changed for good as I am striving to be more me than I
have ever been. And this is a good thing, I think.
CarmenJimenezV
