Across the ditcH

Well the next pieces of the jigsaw are coming together, in saying that... Karyn has been the 'bread winner' for the last month, and has managed to get us our first pounds!! (of course I have been the solid 'bread winner' before... haha!) After negotiating the joys of getting a UK bank account, we are now officially living of UK pounds... and if you are travelling this way on the Kiwi, or Aussie Dollar you'll know what I am talking about. An example I seem to be sharing a lot lately was of going to see a movie and of course getting some popcorn and drink, cost us a mere£ 26, but after paying, I realised I had paid roughly $80 NZD to see a movie!!! WHAT THE!!!! That is a relatively good night out at a nice restuarant in Welly... Anyways after having heart pupitations, I am now able to enjoy the movies I so love to watch.


Soooooo.... to continue on the theme of this blog, I was going to share our new job situations. Karyn as I said before has been working as a temp at various schools around Central London, and from the outset it wasn't easy and I had her home in tears after having a rough school, but after some TLC she was all good to hit the schools again the next day, and to be honest it hasn't been as bad as that school from then on. She seemed to secure temp position after temp position quite easily and hasn't really had a day off since she started here, which has been a total blessing to us! As you would possibly know the school summer holidays here are from the end of July to early September, and so it was on for young and old to get a fulltime job locked in for the new school year. Well I gotta say I am pretty stoked and proud that Karyn was able to secure her first full-time job on the first interview here... it was no easy task either, in order for her to go for this particular interview she had to teach a full lesson to kids on the fly with minimal preparation. By later that afternoon she was called by the Principal to offer her not the job that she was going for but a position that had just become available that day, to teach year 3 boys in one of the most prestious school in London, called Northwood Prep check the link here, interestingly enough the school has been called 'educational heaven' by a governing school body of London.


So I hear you wondering well what is Mike doing the bum who is no longer the bread winner... well when I arrived I had 3 interviews lined up in the first week here! got over my minor jetlag and went for the interviews all went well, but then I didn't hear anything for weeks on end. I was also given one of the companies a creature test to paint, which was interesting a quite fun to do anyways. I passed this on and waited longer, from there one of the guys sent me an email from a group of guys doing this short fan film called the hunt for Gollum. They wanted someone to paint Gollum and fast, as the release date was looming quickly, whilst it has been crazy trying to get together a texture for gollum in time, it has proven to be quite difficult to get hold of tools at home that you so redily had available at work. But nontheless we are tying up loose ends and making the shot work for the time we have had and the trailer for this looks amazing for a bunch of guys doing this for free!!. In the meantime I was trying to secure some work and I am glad to say that after some 1 and a bit months being here in London I will be starting my job at Framestore (who have worked on Dark Knight, Australia and many others... check link) on the 14th of August... the clincher is that I will be again working on Avatar the movie I was working on at Weta. I had joked with one of the guys before I left Weta that I bet I would arrive here to end up working on Avatar, little did I know that that reality was not far from my door.


anyways I will leave it there, but this has been another blog from across the ditch blogger Mike - dont forget to leave you comments below!