Touchdown

In the sparse few minutes I've had between being in the office, and being out of the office but drinking like it was my job, I think I've actually somehow taken the first tentative steps towards settling in to my new home in Canary Wharf.  To wit: I unpacked 2 out of my 4 bags; I went grocery shopping; I bought a cell phone (or "mobile," to use the local parlance, equal emphasis on "MO." and "BILE.")  Tomorrow, if I am feeling particularly ambitious, I will pick up the phone and call one of my company's relocation officers, who will then go off and set up a UK bank account for me.  This will be largely a symbolic act, seeing as there's nothing to put in for the next few weeks; still, I'm giving this strong consideration, as doing so will be another piece of kindling on the already five-alarm sense of self-satisfaction I feel regarding my newfound Gitter-Doneness: Lo, I Have Accomplished So Very Much In My First Four Days, Just Like a Big Boy Would!

Canary Wharf is nice, albeit a little far off from what most Londoners would call "civilization" (read: any good spot to meet up and have a drink)   There is plenty of history to the area, though: for example, we sit right across the river from the original East India Company warehouse, and this is the neighborhood where Jack The Ripper made his name - there's actually a Ripper museum about a 3-minute walk from my place, and although I have not yet been in, I hear it's excellent.  Oh, and I stopped in at a 500-year-old hole-in-the-wall pub tonight, about 10 minutes up the river walk.  It was about the size of a shoebox, and aside from my roommate Chris, his girlfriend Beth, and myself, other notable patrons have included people such as Charles Dickens, who was a regular. 

Steak pie - typical pub fare.

 

Work is quick a 10 minute jog on the DLR (Docklands Light Rail), while every material thing I could possibly need is 5 minutes away, tucked into some nook or cranny of the sprawling and maze-like mega-mall surrounding the Canary Wharf tube station.

The apartment itself is a typical two-bedroom corporate: boxy and efficient, with the notable exception that the showers seem to have been designed somewhere in Dante's Sixth Circle -- no shower curtain, no glass, water everywhere, and the lever which controls water flow and temperature is so cunningly placed that even the slightest movement while showering causes one to bump it with one's leg, resulting in (a) scalding heat, (b) freezing cold, or most frequently (c) turning the water off entirely.   Otherwise, no great shakes... The place is done up in muted corporate colors, and richly furnished with Ikea's most luxuriously mid-ranged tables, chairs, and couches.  The view, however, is pretty neat - we overlook the Thames, and sit at one end of a large, grassy courtyard, of which a new Nobu restaurant, a glassed-in pool, and the Four Seasons hotel are the other main occupants.  Here are a few snaps from around the house this weekend:

View of the courtyard from our balcony at night.  Four Seasons on the left, Ubon by Nobu in the middle, Thames on the right.

A couple snaps of the living room and bedroom.

The water view is particularly nice.  Today, two tugs manoeuvred a gigantic cruise liner up the river.  It absolutely dwarfed everything on either shore as the tugs ferried it through...

Aside from the first little explorations of the immediate surroundings, most of my impressions of the city have been gathered, as alluded to earlier, in my several nights out in various parts of the city.  Yesterday was Chris's birthday, and to celebrate, we headed to the Duke of Wellington, a pub in the Notting Hill neighborhood where Chris worked during a summer in London 10 years ago.  The beers were good, the live music (courtesy of Davin, from South Carolina, and his guitar) was excellent, and between florist Orlando Bloom (who actually looked a little bit like Shaq) and the carpenter who argued economics with Chris for a good forty-five minutes, the conversation was pretty consistently entertaining.   And, we were even able to mug for the following amazingly kick-ass photos, courtesy of the admiral's hat that the girls in the below photos were, for reasons beyond me, carrying with them.

El Capitan and the crew

El Capitan 2: I Am Not Happy And I Am Wearing Funny Glasses El Capitan