Folks, I have an announcement to make.

AN announcement. I want you all to be the first to know.*

I've been awfully silent on the job front lately (and the anything else front), but guess what this is?

If you said "a school library in North London where Lyn is going to be the librarian for the next year," you would be correct! And alarmingly accurate in your guessing skills.

I decided that as much as I like working in a law firm with free jelly beans and cute Australian boys that call me "young lady" and give me extra fries because I flirt SHAMELESSLY with them, I'd rather live my dreams and have no money than continue indexing articles about law. Enter the new job.

I start on Monday, and I'm pretty darn excited. The previous librarian retired at Easter-ish, so the 6th form kids have been running the library for the past few months. They've done a great job, but you can kind of tell that the library hasn't seen a professional in a while. That's where I come in!!!

I get two weeks in the library before the kids come back to organize, rearrange, do inventory, weed and make plans for the coming year.

So, there you go, naysayers. I followed my dreams and look at what happened. I got 'em. Granted, I had to get a second job so that I can continue to afford to eat, but it's a really fun job too! (I started it today and it completely rules). I hope my MONTHS of silence has in some small way been made up for by this epic post of epicness.

More wonderful news to follow! Hopefully! Or at the very least some pictures of, like, museums or something.




*2 million internet points to whoever gets that reference. So, likely Ky. And Alicia.

Happy Easter!

Do you ever get to that point where you have so much to talk about that you just don't really know where to begin, so you just don't begin at all? Cause that's where I'm at right now. Um. What do you guys want me to talk about?

I had my VERY FIRST Easter egg hunt today, and it was awesome. The four of us (me and three friends) each picked a room in my friend's flat and hid a frankly alarming amount of candy around. We ate a LOT of chocolate today. For reals. And we watched Mary Poppins!!! All in all, a pretty excellent Easter.

Insane amount of chocolate that we ate today.
Also, there was cake. Yum.

We also spent a significant amount of time today making those bead things? You know the ones. You, like, put the beads on a little thing with spikes and then you iron them and it's awesome? Well, we made a bunch of those today, too. 

Two of my friends doing crafts in the backyard. 

I made some shapes and what have you, and then I decided that the thing to do would be to make historical figures in bead form. Obviously. Internet points to whoever can guess who I made! The first one is a bit misleading because part of his boot fell off, and also he is Day Glow Pink, which I don't think he was in real life. Also, he apparently had blue eyes in real life, but I thought it would look too matchy matchy with the uniform. Anyway. Guess away!

Guess who?

This one might be a bit harder. Again, the skin colour and eye colour may not be totally accurate, but the hair is pretty much bang on. Just sayin'.

Also, guess this one.

So that was my weekend. Hope everyone else had a great Easter weekend!!!! 

Also, I was going to be all, "I'ma blog more, don't worry!" but we all know that's a lie. So, um, I'll do what I can. How's that? 

UK Libraries VS Canadian Libraries. My thoughts thus far.

I should be applying for jobs, but I'm mostly watching the Sri Lanka vs New Zealand Cricket match anyway, so whatever, I thought I'd blog.

Side note: I'm cheering for NZ, but I think they're going to lose. Dang it.

I've been noticing some considerable differences between the ways that libraries are run here and the way they are run at home. For example, none of the libraries I've been to here charge patrons for getting a library card (hurrah!!!). Personally, I think it's a travesty to charge for a library card, but that might just be me. I think that charging for library cards was the hardest part about my job when I worked at the base library back home.

Anyway, that's fine and good and all that, but then I noticed that although my local library system doesn't charge for cards, they DO charge for some other things that I find quite odd. Like, borrowing a DVD, for example, costs almost as much as renting from a video store or even buying it out right! £3!!! You can get movies from second hand stores for way cheaper, and often at HMV for only a few £'s more. Crazy.

Side note: They call secondhand stores "Op Shops" here. Isn't that great? 

Another thing they charge for (and I think this one is the weirdest) is placing a hold on library materials. Even if it's in your library, they charge you 50p to place a hold. £2 if they have to bring the book in from another library! Now, I'm the type of person that wholly abuses the hold system of my library back home. I really, really, really do. I admit that. And maybe charging for it would discourage people who sit up late watching TV, placing holds on movies they will likely never watch. However, I also haven't read a lot of books that I've wanted to read since I got here because there was NO way I was paying £2 to borrow it when I could probably find it in an op shop for much less!

Side note for my Canadians: 50p translates to about $0.78. £2 is about $3.12

What started this whole thing, though, is that I went to do a subject search on the local library catalogue, and it wasn't even an option. I get that most people that aren't librarians tend not to use subject searching, but it should still be an option, shouldn't it??

So, friends of mine, librarians and non-librarians alike, what are your thoughts?

Is it OK to charge patrons for placing holds because they don't pay for cards? Would it be OK to do it even if they were paying for cards? Is the money the library makes from the holds, and the time they save by not having to fill holds that people aren't serious about worth it when you compare it to the books that don't get read and the movies that don't get watched by people who can't afford it or are too cheap to place a hold in the first place? Does the fact that more popular books are available immediately to people (due to shorter hold lists) make up for the cost of placing the hold?

What about charging to borrow DVDs? Do you like it? Dislike it? Do any libraries back home do it and I'm just not aware? Does this prevent people from borrowing them and never returning them? Discourage people from broadening their horizons by picking a movie they wouldn't normally watch because it's free and who cares, but now it costs money so they have to be more discerning? SO MANY THOUGHTS!

Subject searching...should it be there even though some people don't use it? (I'm a firm believer that it should, but mostly because I like subject searching so much).

Non-librarian library users: What are your thoughts? Would you pay to borrow DVDs? Would you pay to place a hold? Other thoughts on the subjects at hand?

What differences have other people noticed in libraries they've travelled to, if any? I WANT TO KNOW!

Also, some of the libraries here, even main branches in large city centres, don't have Wifi. Most of the pubs and bars here do. Maybe if libraries started selling beer they could afford it? Oh, and a lot of the libraries here have social media sites blocked on their in-house computers. Feelings on this? What about the people who can't afford Internet at home, and this is their way of keeping in touch with people? Does the library have the right to decide that Facebook shouldn't be allowed JUST because it's "social media"? It's not like it's porn. Although, some profile pictures I've seen are pretty darn close.

Ok, that's it for now. Seriously, though, I want to hear your thoughts.

Things I Did This Week To Feel Better About My Continued Unemployment

1. Image Googled Handsome Young Adult Authors
(Note: The authors are not young adults, they just write for them)

Highlights:

Neil Gaiman.
Kind of shaggy and dangerous looking? Check and check.

Markus Zusak.
Not only did he write the best book I've ever read, but he's also super dreamy!

John Green.
He's my favourite. So tall! So nerdy! Sigh.

2. Watched an insane amount of Vlogbrothers videos

So, John Green (aforementioned adorable YA author) and his brother decided to spend a year not communicating by text (so, no text messages, no emails, no cards, etc). Instead, they made videoblogs. After the year was over, they had so many fans (a.k.a. Nerdfighters) that they decided to keep going with the project. I've watched about a year's worth of videos so far. There are 800+ videos in total, and i'm doing my best to get through them all. For the uninitiated, here are a couple of videos to get you started.

Intro video:

Favourite video (so far):

3. Ate a dessert that looked like a frog!

A friend and I met another friend for lunch one day this week, and it was SO beautiful and sunny and lovely out. We went to a bakery, got some delicious and cheap treats, and sat in a park to eat them. Excellent. The frog was a little gross, but he was cute, so I ate him anyway. Also, he was made of sugar. So that helped.

4. Bought the novel Paper Towns by John Green and found THIS inside:

Text:
"Hi there! How are you? Lemme ask you a question. Do your Veins Contain Pure awesome? Yes! Then you are a true nerdfighter. Don't worry. It's a good thing! To find out more go to: www.youtube.com/vlogbrothers. DFTBA!"


5. Went to an amazing play with some amazing friends. 

It started out mildly creepy and depressing, had some HILARIOUS bits in the middle and ended up terribly sad and depressing. Excellent play. Excellent.

Best part? It was FULL of poop jokes. Full of them. Favourite lines:

"She's gone to have an Eartha Kitt." and

"She's awfully hard on toilet paper, our Dawn."

I'm paraphrasing, but you get the idea. If not, we need to have a discussion about rhyming slang and why poop jokes are funny. Because they are.


6. Watched a cricket match (Australia vs India).

HINT: If you're ever going to watch a cricket match, you should probably watch it with a former semi-professional cricket player who can explain all the rules to you as you go. This is what I did. It was awesome.


7. Found out that I really really really like cricket. Seriously.

For reals, though. I actually totally LOVED the cricket match I watched, and I now understand more about cricket than I do about football. Or hockey. Worst Canadian ever, right? I know. Meh. Apparently Canada has a cricket team. But, you don't play cricket on ice, so we're pretty crap at it.

The game was SUPER intense to watch. Especially because it was Australia vs India in the World Cup, and I was in an Australian bar surrounded by Australians. And they lost.



Anyway, I'm feeling super lots better and seeing the bright side and eating my feelings lots, so things are looking up! I'm back on the job hunt tomorrow, and hopefully things will go better than they did last time in that they will result in an actual job that I get to have and keep and get paid for!

Well, That Sucked

So, in January I got offered a pretty cool job. Sorry to most of you for not telling you, but apparently I can see the future and I knew that something was going to go horribly, horribly wrong, so I kept it to myself and my family. So...yah, sorry about that. This job was in a place that requires its employees to do a crap load of paperwork before they can start. It requires foreign employees to do EVEN MORE paperwork than that.

Yesterday, after TWO MONTHS of chasing people and banks and institutions for all the pieces of paper I needed, I was told that I can't be hired because I don't have a residential address.

Wait...what?

Yup. And they didn't even have the courtesy to phone me. They sent me an email. Last line? "I wish you every success in finding employment very soon and I hope you enjoy your time in this country." Yah. Thanks. I bet you do.


What kills me is that THEY KNEW when they initially offered me the job that I'd be living in a hostel in London until I started working full time and that my permanent address was the company that sponsored my Visa. They KNEW this, and yet they didn't think to mention to me TWO MONTHS ago that I'd need a residential address in order to pass security clearance. Had I known this information, I maybe would have continued looking for jobs instead of just pissing around London while I waited for my job to start. 


So, it's back to the drawing board. At least I have work in the hostel I'm staying at, so I don't have to pay for my accommodations any more. And I didn't even have to Google accommodation to make sure that I was spelling it correctly. Apparently lots of people get that one wrong. Look at all these employable skills I've got! 


At any rate, I'll likely blog more now. I've got to have something to do to help me procrastinate from filling out job applications.


Oh man, job applications SUCK.

Don't Worry, I'm Still Alive

So, um, sorry about that. Where was I?

I'm actually still alive and still living in London. I'm not at the hostel with all the old men anymore (awesome!) and am back at the place I stayed when I first got to London in December. I'm even with most of the same girls who were in my room on my first day! We've lost a few to new apartments, and gained a couple more, but they're all fantastic girls and have made life here pretty great.

So, what's happened in the month and a half since last I blogged? Oh yah, I caught the plague. It sucked. I seriously was sick for close to 3 weeks, and spent the first two weeks of my diseased time in my hostel room. It did mean that I read about a dozen books, though, so that was nice. I can't remember what all I read, but I did get a reputation for reading about fairies and werewolves, so I think most of them were teen books. And super awesome teen books at that.

After I had recovered (mostly), I did some more touristy stuff with my hostel friends. Here is some photographic evidence.

Abbey Road!!!

Harrods! They have puppies on the top floor.

A bunch of us got SUPER cheap tickets to see Priscilla Queen of the Desert, so we did that and it was great, especially because most of my friends here are from New Zealand and Australia, so they got all the inside jokes that were lost on me. Hey there sentence, have more commas!

GIANT LIGHT-COVERED SHOE

What else have I been doing? Right! My friend Dara was here a few weeks ago, so we spent an entire day at the British Museum. Fairly appropriate considering we met at school while we were getting history degrees. Her parents were in London too, so we set about the museum looking for the 100 objects in the "A History of the World in 100 Objects" series. This was actually a really great way to see the museum. Once I stopped pretending that I actually gave a crap about anything OTHER than the 100 objects, we made some really decent time running through the museum and ended up seeing 94 of the 100. The other 6 aren't actually on display anymore, so technically we saw the complete list of them. Go us!

Alright, well, I'm going to go eat supper now, but hopefully this will be enough to let the world know that I'm still alive. I'll try to be better in the future. Don't worry, this post doesn't cover the WHOLE of the last 6 weeks, so there's still more exciting news to look forward to! (Read: Not really, but there are some more pictures and stuff for me to post, so you'll get to see those at least.) Hooray!

Portobello Road, Portobello Road

"Street where the riches of ages are stowed."*

I am super behind on blogging, I know, and I'll post more later tonight, if I can, but I wanted to do this post up right away while I was thinking of it.

I'm back in London, and staying in a new hostel (it's in a park!! A park full of puppies!!). I've been doing all the free sightseeing that I can this week, as I've gotten out of the application groove because of the holidays, and haven't much felt like getting back into it 100%. So, I've been taking my days until about 3 or 4 to wander the city and see what I can see for free before I head back to my hostel for a night of job applications and avoiding old men. I have been successful at neither.

My sisters and I have this sign on our foreheads that only bored or lonely or crazy people can see. It says "What I am currently doing is not as important as listening to whatever you want to tell me!!" Between conversations with my 75-year-old transgender friend Peta and my 85-year-old hard of hearing friend Graham, my nights were pretty slow on the job application front. Peta did tell me, however, that if she were 50 years younger she'd be "chatting me up proper like" and Graham did ask me out for dinner and then offered to let me stay at his place if I'm ever in Hartlepool. Yup. I've still got it. Anyone know how to get rid of it?

Anyway, that was neither here nor there, but did catch you up a bit. See how good I am at blogging?

Gate to Holland Park and my hostel

On Wednesday, I wandered through Kensington Gardens to Kensington Palace (which is currently under construction) and through Hyde Park. I saw the Albert Memorial, the Royal Albert Hall and the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain. On the way there, I got stopped by this fellow, who was recruiting people to fundraise for various charities. Once he told me he was a filmmaker, though, I pretty much stopped caring about the charities. And let's be honest here, I only stopped because of his beard anyway. And his accent. It was awesome. Check out the trailer for his movie, but only if you're into being COMPLETELY TERRIFIED.

Kensington Palace Gate. Apparently I like gates.

When I was wandering through Hyde Park, I thought to myself, "This really feels a lot like Wascana Park." And then I saw this:

I hate you in Canada, I LOATHE you in England.

 And this:

IMPENDING DISASTER

How many times have I seen parents in Wascana leading their children INTO DANGER because they don't know that birds are the creation of the devil? Seriously. You wanna know what's not good for someone that hates birds? Living in London. They are everywhere. And they have no fear. It is horrible. Thank goodness there are puppies, too.

On Thursday, I went to Baker Street and saw (the outside of) the Sherlock Holmes museum, and went into the greatest store ever, The London Beatles Store. Love!!! I went there on my first trip to London with my buddy Alissa, who is also a Beatles nut. This time I didn't spend any money, but only because they didn't carry the key chain I bought there 10 years ago that finally broke this summer.

The address isn't even actually 221B. It's, like, 237. 

Hurray!!! The Beatles!!!!

I also saw (the outside of) the Tower of London, walked across Tower Bridge, and saw (the outside of) the Parliament Buildings and Westminster Abbey. Westminster Abbey costs 16 GBP to get in. Can you believe it? There can be nothing in there that I would be willing to spend that kind of money to see.

Today I wandered Portobello Road and Notting Hill Gate. If you LOVE being surrounded by people that are walking so slowly you want to stab them, this is the place for you! There were a few shops that were actually pretty cool, and a lot of old things (and I do love old things...not as much as they love me, apparently), but the best part of the entire day was listening to the Ryan O'Reilly Band and Robbie Boyd. I have a feeling they're there a lot on Saturdays, so I might go back next week to see if I can hear them both again. They were awesome. I spent today's food money on the Ryan O'Reilly Band CD. Worth it. My favourite song that they sang was called Gypsy Tree. SO good. The video just has Ryan O'Reilly doing it, but listening to five guys sing it was fantastic.

The Ryan O-Reilly Band. Awesome, awesome band. Awesome. 

Robbie Boyd's shoe is in the corner.
I took an actual picture of him too, but I liked this one better.

On the way back down Portobello Road towards my hostel, I also saw the greatest thing I have ever seen in my life:

This man is carrying a puppy on his shoulder! Can you imagine? 

So that's been me since coming back to London. I still have some Ukraine stuff to get out of the way (like chocolate and food and more chocolate), but this will have to do for now.



* Wow. I'd forgotten how long and vaguely racist that song is. Oh, Bedknobs and Broomsticks. What a great movie. Despite the racism.