Brad's Moving Out

So, after a long and arduous search I finally found a nice place to live. Let me tell you, it wasn't all that easy. When I first got here I spent a few days sending out email after email after email on Gumtree. It was a website I found in the states and the locals told me it was probably the best site to look at, even while here. I think I sent out 15 or 20 emails in the first few days and got 7 replies in return. The interesting bit was that 6 of those replies were scam artists.

Here's how it works. Once they know you're interested, they take down their add and tell you they figure you're the one who's going to get their apartment. It starts out the same way each time. The proprietor states they live far away and want to make sure that you have money to pay the rent before they come to town to let you see the place (some times from another country). But, they don't want you to pay them, they want you to use Western Union to send money to a friend of mine, any friend, someone I know that they don't. Then, when the friend receives the money order take the receipt and send a copy to the renter. It sounded dodgey, but I wasn't exactly sure how they'd get the money if I only sent a receipt after the transaction had been made. From what I learned later, apparently Western Union is very lax with security and the scam artist would just stop by their local office pretending to be your friend and trying to pick up the money. The other problem is that Western Union says it's your own fault for being dumb and won't pay you back. Luckily I didn't go this route, but it was VERY disheartening that out of seven responses, six were scams.

But there was one person who was an honest seller, so I went to see her. The place was kind of messy (not dirty, just stuff all over) and had a bunch of young Arab kids. None of them seemed all that happy to see me. But perhaps it was just because I was invading their home in the evening. I know I wouldn't have liked to have some random person checking out my house while I was watching TV. The girl was a student who was going home for the summer but couldn't get out of her lease for only 3 months, so me renting for the summer worked perfectly. I wasn't super thrilled about the place, but I said I'd take it. With all the scam emails I was getting I wasn't sure I was going to find anything else before my hotel days ran out. She said she'd get in contact with the landlord and get back to me. I told her that if I hadn't heard from her by Sunday I'd send an email.

So Sunday morning came and I still hadn't heard from this girl, so I sent an e-mail before I went out wandering the town. I came back Sunday night and hadn't received any response. So I waited.

On Saturday, while doing my laundry at a local laundromat, the nice Thai girl working there gave me a copy of the local newspaper. We had been talking about my attempts to find a place to live and she knew that the paper had a bunch of rental classifieds in it. So on Monday night, since I hadn't heard from the Arab girl yet, I started compiling an Excel list of info that I could use to call all the people that were renting places in the newspaper. It took a little while, so it was too late Monday night for me to start calling any of them. But now I had a list. There were also a few email addresses in the newspaper so I sent emails to those people. The two email people responded, but one place was already rented, and the other had a possible renter coming over so they wanted to see how that went before talking to me.

Tuesday I wrote another email to the girl with the apartment telling her that I assumed the reason she hadn't written me was due to the fact that she hadn't heard from her landlord and that I was going to start looking for another place to live. She wrote back and said she thought she had written back on Sunday but noticed that the email had been stuck in her outgoing folder and hadn't been sent. She said that she still hadn't been able to contact her landlord, but he was coming over on Wednesday so she'd talk to him them. I told her that I was going to keep looking for places just in case, but I wouldn't commit to anyone until I heard back from her.

So I started calling through my list of roughly 30 people. About 12 or 13 of them answered the phone but the only person who had a place available that was willing to rent for 3 months lived in a city that was 20 or 30 miles away. So I had whittled down my list, but I was getting no where fast. I only had another 5 days before my time at the hotel was up. I was a little worried to say the least.

So I went back to my desk and checked my email. It turned out that the landlord who was having people coming over to look at their place wasn't very thrilled about the people who had shown up. The possible renters seemed a little bit too odd for this guy because they were a couple trying to rent a small room with a single bed and they were covered in tattoos and didn't seem like very nice people. So, he was wondering if I could call him to set up an appointment to come see his place. I called him right away and tried to set up an appointment with him for later in the week, but he wanted to meet me and asked if I could come over that evening (it was already 9 pm). I said okay and got on a bus and headed over.

The guy's name was Cesar and he was a Brazilian/Italian man living here with his wife and son. They had a double room and a single room, but they had rented the double room to their friend Francesca from Brazil, so they only had the single room left to let.

They were such nice people! The thought of living in a nice family home with friendly flatmates was much much more appealing than living in a messy small house with 4 other college students. They were so nice that I said I'd move in with them on Sunday and they were ecstatic to have me move in. So I emailed the Arab girl back and told her I wasn't going to rent the room from her. She emailed me back on Thursday saying that she hoped I was still coming, but she hadn't been able to talk to her landlord yet. I sent another email back explaining what had happened, and I haven't heard from her since. So I think I probably avoided a big set of problems not moving in there.

The family here is so nice. My room is clean and neat. I did have to buy sheets, pillows, and a quilt cover, and there's no dryer here so I have to hang things up. But the environment seems much nicer. Isabella, the wife, was even nice enough to bake me a cake for my birthday. The day after my birthday I added them all as Facebook friends (because they asked to be) and they found out I had moved in on my birthday but hadn't said anything. She felt that they should really do something, so she baked me a nice chocolate cake with coconut which was very tasty.



So here's a picture of the house I live in. My room is the top left window. It's small but I have a lock so I can leave my stuff in there without having to worry too much.



These are just a few pictures of the area around the place I'm living now. It's really quite a nice little valley with lots of greenery all around. And there's a double decker bus that stops right at our front door that takes me all the way to work. So it seems that everything turned out all right in the end.



A little elementary school down the hill from my place.



A picture of the street I live on.



A picture of the park down the hill from my house.

Arundel: Castle of the Duke of Norfolk

So today I went to see a right and proper castle. I took a bus ride from Brighton to Arundel Castle. This is an image of the castle as we drove up through the mist. Unfortunately it was raining pretty hard when I got there, but at least the first part of the tour was inside. This will mostly be a picture filled post with few words. But I'm sure no one will mind.



This is the river that goes around the castle who's name I don't know.



And here's a picture of one of the roads in the city in front of the castle.



But this is what we came to see, the seat of the Dukes of Norfolk, Arundel castle. Unfortunately, like some other British places, I wasn't allowed to take pictures inside the state rooms themselves due to the security system that was in place. Apparently the flash in certain cameras can mess up the security cameras. Since they don't which models use them, they just ban all photos inside the house at all.

It kind of makes sense though, because this is the first castle I've EVER been in that actually has modern inhabitants. The last Duke of Norfolk died in 2002 and the new one is currently using the castle as his main place of residence. They have a few kids who are mostly university age from what I heard. It's a very nice and warm place to live. I almost thought I wouldn't mind living there, but then wondered about my choice when I saw the wooden toilet platform. But I bet they have normal toilets that they just didn't show us.



But once we were out of the state rooms we could take pictures outside. And so we went up to the original Normal keep from William the Conqueror's invasion (1066).









But I now I feel a little more sympathy for Geoff and his fear of mideval stairs. I could barely get down these things with my backpack on. And more than once I thought I was going fall down. They couldn't have been more than 2 feet wide and each step was probably a foot tall and maybe an average of 6 inches wide.



But getting up the stairs allowed me to get some really cool vistas of the surrounding area like this view of the chapel on the castle grounds with the cathedral of Arundel (which I didn't go see) behind it.



And here are some pictures of the vistas from the top of the castle





Then I went outside and took a bunch of pictures of the really cool castle.


















Then there was a separate entrance to the grounds of the castle which were really cool.



And there were roads all over that could take you from one part of the castle to another. Very rural England.




Besides the castle, there's a nice formal garden that they have too. These are an example of the fountains you see as you come in.



This is a picture over most of the garden from one side.




And this is looking back from the other side.



In that little house on the end had a tall fountain holding up a replica of a crown. I don't totally understand it's significance, but it looked interesting.



They also have a few paths with things growing over them. I also think I saw a patch that had lettuce growing in it.



Although it is a castle that the public can wander around in, there are a bunch of places we can't go. It's nice how they can be hidden in among the foliage so that you almost miss the fact that they're here.



This is a picture from inside the chapel on the castle grounds.



A picture of the resting place of one of the previous dukes, I suppose. I didn't have much time left as the last bus was going to leave for Brighton fairly soon.



And a nice picture of the stained glass at one end of the chapel, over looking the burial casket of another Duke and Duchess.

Ghost Walk of the Lanes

So instead of going to a movie, I thought I'd try something a little more British instead, a walking tour! The only one that I knew about around here was a ghostly walking tour talking about spooks and spectres that haunt the Lanes in Brighton's old town. It was kind of fun especially considering we go down to the Lanes for lunch most days, so now I know a little more history about this part of town. I'm sure it would have been much more exciting if you were into ghost stories, but the actor playing our guide was decently entertaining none the less.



Here's our story teller telling us about old John Robinson. Yeah, I hadn't heard of him either. Turns out he might have been an inspiration for the Scarlet Pimpernell as a younger man, helping nobles escape the French revolution. Later in life he went to the middle east as an adventurer and became a mercenary. Unfortunately he fought for the wrong side and lost his eyes to a hot poker. An English gentleman took pity on the man, who was now a beggar in Tehran, and brought him back to England. Somehow, the beggar made it back to Brighton (where he was born?) and currently he haunts the old center of town now called the Old Steine. The plastic head was used as a replica of him due to the missing eyes.



There was another story about a young french women (portrayed by the long haired girl on the story teller's right) who was accosted in her room by a spirit (sounds provided by the chap on the story teller's left). It was pretty funny seeing their reactions to the story teller trying to get them to play out their parts, especially when he brought out a fake rubber hand so the guy could act out the spook's cold hand running along the French lady's thigh.

The Circus Comes to Town

So as Huw and I got back to the park we were greeted by this guy brandishing a whip. I think he was just trying to be peculiar.



Further into the park we came upon a bunch of younger guys dressed as garbage men. Well, at least the suits looked like garbage men. Orange jumpers and yellow vests. They were practicing their tumbling. Sort of like Mike and I used to do in the backyard only these guys were good at it.



Then we ran into the 9 foot lady, otherwise known as Mrs. Stilts.



When we finally got to where the crowd had assembled this is what we found. Remember, at this point Huw and I still didn't know what was really going on. All we knew is that there was a SHOW!!! about to start and with so many people here to see it we figured it might be good.



While we were waiting for things to start random people were wandering through the crowd, like this man with the red umbrella. He was also very peculiar.

While a random guy with a microphone had started trying to entertain the people with music, this guy was walking around. The MC started singing a strange song entitled "The problem with the weather is the people". It was just a weird song about how people never like the weather. They were singing it in a round and trying to get the crowd to join in. While this was going on the red umbrella man put a 2 litre bottle of water upside down on his umbrella watering everyone around him while he kept dry. He wandered through the crowd soaking everyone who didn't pay attention enough to notice him coming. The red-umbrella man also flirted with a few older ladies as well, even going so far as to duct-tape himself to one of them.



Then, finally, something started. And we had this girl (I think it's a girl) climb up the apparatus in front of us and start doing some trapeze work.



Everything from swinging around to flips and hanging upside down by her ankles.



Then we had some more girls practice their trapeze acts (3 per side) along with a few guys dancing on poles around the grounds. A lot of them apparently were students with one of the girls performing even though she had finals the next day.



After hearing some gasping we turned around and noticed that there was a guy behind us who was walking on a tight rope 15 feet in the air. Turns out there was also another 'ring' on the other side of the park (which I don't have a picture of) with a lady hanging from a hula hoop and doing some more trapeze work.




Then they played a game that I think is the closest thing to Quidditch I'll ever see in real life. (For those who don't know what Quidditich is, it's a game Harry Potter plays on broomsticks). This game was all about 'style'. The players on each team (the crosses and the naughts) had to get a volleyball from one end of the grounds to the other. The reason it was like Quidditch is because most of the people playing were trapeze artists, flying through the air passing the ball from one to another attempting to score on a hoop hanging in the air on the other end of the pitch. They even had a 'slow motion' replay where they showed us how many things were actually going on that we didn't notice at full speed (the acrobats did a lot more flips and other tricks during the slow motion replay).



Before they started the actual game the referee noticed that one team was down one player. But not to worry, the naughts had brought in a ringer. A ringer who was warming up by walking a tight rope above the main tent! It was too far away for me to tell how he got down but I think he actually played in the Quidditch match too.



After the game, out came the fire dancers. I tried to get a good shot with the fire cannons going and all the juggling and fire-martial arts going on, but the photo really leaves a lot to be desired. Luckily I took a video instead and it came out fairly decent:





A higher quality version can be found here (30 MB). At least it should be there once it finishes uploading.



At the end everyone got up for the final curtain call. A set of similarly dressed girls (who had been wandering the crowd at the beginning) were supposed to be holding balloons at different points around the ring. This girl lost hers before they started, but like a trooper stood there with her hand up as if she had a balloon.

To conclude they all let go of the huge white balloons and there was a medium sized fireworks show to cap off the night. All in all, I was very glad we had decided to show up. Even though my legs were incredibly sore from walking all day then standing in one place for an hour and a half.

So it turns out the reason they had this circus here at all is that the park used to be a winter quarters for a traveling circus a long time ago. The circus donated the park to the city as long as the city always allowed it to be use for circus performances. So all the performers were local amateurs circus people who were performing for free to keep the circus alive in the hearts of the citizens of Brighton.

Around the Town of Brighton

So after checking out the skate park I figured I'd wander around town for the rest of the afternoon until I went to a variety show that was going on later that night (which turned out to be canceled). So I wandered around the park a little and noticed a large group of people doing random things.



Here are some ladies teaching young kids how to walk on a tight rope. The ones teaching are those in the funny hats and swimsuits.



And a little further down the way there were a bunch of people learning to hula-hoop. I thought it was kind of odd until I saw the whiteboard. It said that someone (whoever had put up the whiteboard) was teaching people to unicycle, hula-hoop, and walk a tight rope. Apparently it had been going on all week and whoever it was was going to put on a show this evening. It didn't say what type of show just that at 8:30 there would be a preshow and at 9:00 was the SHOW!!!! I did end up going to that but that's my next post.



After walking through the park I headed to the centre of Brighton to look at the little shops they had.



There was a traditional old comic book store with boxes and boxes full of comics of all types. To me it looks just like a stereotypical comic book store, which I don't think I've ever really seen before, just on TV.



And there was a nice man with a bonzai store. Notice that there is no floor, just planks and some gravel. He told me that "It's so I don't have to Hoover." I asked him if he had just traded the hoovering for weeding to which he replied that he hadn't pulled a single weed since he started the store, 20 years ago. It was interesting to learn that, according to the proprietor, you can make any plant/shrub/tree into a bonzai tree. The term bonzai refers to the way you style it not the type of plant itself. He said he had a redwood bonzai, a lilac bonzai, and an apple bonzai if I wanted to buy one.



As I moved through town I headed back towards work. This is the clock tower that sits just up the street from the office. I don't know that it's really that important, but I've heard lots of people use it as a landmark so I thought I should take a picture of it.

Once I got to the office I noticed that Huw was there as well, so we decided we'd go have some Fish & Chips at the famous Fish & Chips place on the Brighton Pier. The fish was pretty good, even though I sat down to eat so I didn't get the famous newspaper wrap. They were good enough I'll have to go again, although I don't know what will happen to the newspaper if I add as much vinegar next time.



While we were heading down to the pier we heard this loud music coming from somewhere. Turns out there were some kids who had a first floor apartment with a balcony. They decided to serenade all comers. There is a basist and guitarist plugged into small amps and a drummer who, as we all know, is loud enough without an amp.