Holiday's

The best thing about working hard and saving money, is being able to go on holiday and spending it!! Although when i went on holiday the first time i went back home. I wont lie i was home sick already after only being here for 10 months!!

I remember flying home. I got on the plane and fell asleep straight away. I remember waking up when we were landing the lady next to me couldn't believe it. I was so tired from working so much!!

It was nice seeing my family again. Most of my friend's were living in London so it was going to be a quite holiday!! John was going to come on holiday two days after me so there was going to be a party anyway.

I got to see my house i had just bought two months before that which was cool to see what my mom had decided to use my money on. She had really done the place up nicely. It wasn't the type of place i would keep for age's, but i had my foot in the property market.

My holiday was 4 weeks long but 4 weeks fly by, there was lots of parties and i really had so much fun. I got to meet new people which my friend's had meet while we were living in London. They needed to have friend's while we were gone, some of them were cool people some of them were strange, but when you are having fun you don't care!!

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Buying my first house

I didn't know what to use or spend all the money on that I had saved. I phoned my mom and asked her what i should do, she told me that i should buy some property. So I got all my bank statements and pay slips together, sent it to her with my money, and that is how I bought my first house, I was only 20!!

It was only a one bedroom flat but it was in my home town, and it was in a nice area (near where all my friends lived - well actually they were all in London with me). My mom used some of the money I had left over and put a new kitchen in for me and painted and carpeted the flat for me, then rented it out.

Which meant that i didn't have to worry about the monthly payments because someone was paying my house off for me!!

I had my first house and I had only been living in London for 8 months, I was quite happy cause I was doing something useful with my money instead of just spending it

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Having money

As I said, we worked a lot of nights. I didn't really have time to buy anything so we landed up saving loads of cash quite quickly. One morning we decided to treat ourselves so we went walking around trying to find a skate shop to buy some clothes and skate shoes.

We walked around for ages (i think we got lost a few times) then all of a sudden we landed up finding a toy model shop that sold remote controlled cars. The shop didn't open for like 2 more hours and we were so tired from working all night, so we went home to sleep.

After three hours sleep we went back to the shop, we were like kids in a candy store, we bought two of the best radio controlled cars. We had to build them which was the best. We did that in 12 hours before going back to work...!!!!

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Thing's do change quickly

Well by this time all my friends from South Africa had arrived. There were 8 of us in total. It was like we had brought Edenvale (where i lived before) to London. The bad times were behind us and now we were living the high life, going out all the time really living the SA Style in London.

We knew a couple of people living in our area and we would go to house parties, those weren't that cool the people were crazy, but there was alot of partying, partying partying..

John and I were working in the same building at the time. One day I remember our manager saying that one of the other guards was leaving and they needed an extra person to work, I opened my big mouth said let us work his shifts for the extra money, everyone agreed and we started working nights.

In the beginning it wasn't too bad, we would come home play games watch TV etc, but towards the end we would come home go to sleep wake up and go back to work. We worked 73 nights with only 2 days off during that whole time. We sure did save lots of money but we missed alot of good times with our friends.

One morning we came home to find broken glass by our front door, blood on the pavement. We went straight in and woke everyone up to find out what had happened, a house party they said. We had miss it!!!! John and I were not happy about that, so we tried to stop working so much.

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Good Times?

They say that bad things always come in three's.. well a couple of night's into the job i had to work in the building i still work in now. We had to stand outside during the middle of the night. I had the 2am shift outside, and as i said before it was the middle of winter, i was freezing my ass off!! wondering if i had made the right choice moving to London.

The 3rd thing to go wrong was meeting one of our house mate's i will go into that another time, let's just say that UB40 is not in my top 100 bands!!

But things do change and change they did, we had some more friends come over, and it was starting to feel like home away from home, i had money from working quite often i had my friend's and we started going out enjoying London.

We really enjoyed place's like the Walkabout (Ozzie, SA pub/club), Long Island (it closed down a few years back but the was a really good place-specially in summer holiday's when the American girls came over).

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xBox 360 games

Bad times

After about a week and a half of working we landed up getting fired i wont go into the reason for it but we were scared that we were going to get kicked out of the country.. We had been paid twice so we had some money(more then we had arrived with) so we sat around playing games, we did try look for another job but not as hard as we should have been looking.

By this time another friend(Rob) had arrived and we were really enjoying ourselves, but burning money really quickly, rent was the killer.. we couldn't find a job and we started to get worried about not having money. One of our house mate's was working in security and he said he could get us a job, security is a crap job(long hours worse pay) but by this point we couldn't say no cause we didn't have money which was a big problem..

We needed travel cards to be able to do the training course which we didn't expect, there was only one way which we where going to be able to go to the training course, one of us was going to have to phone a parent, after some talking i decided i would call my mom, what you have to remember is that the exchange rate was 13 to 1 so i was asking for quite a bit of money.

My mom said she would give it to me but that was the last time she would do it, as she wanted me to learn a few lesson's which i could understand, that £100 saved 3 lives cause without it none of us would've been able to stay here..

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Friends

A week after i arrived here my friends from South Africa started arriving too, having close friends in a new place really does help. I had found a job by this point it wasn't the best job but it was work(and i sure needed the money).

I managed to get John(my first friend to arrive) a job with me so that he could start getting some money in straight away which i think helped him. Our first pay cheque was bigger then we thought it would be but it was still crap..

The first thing we went and did was get something good to eat(living on toast at that stage) while we were walking home we decided to go into the GAME shop, straight away we bought our first game's console it was a PS1 so it wasn't the best but it got us through our first month of being in London.

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Job Hunting

"Job hunting" i had already worked before but arriving here looking for a job in a big city was an eye opening experience, sales and marketing, tele sales, sales this sales that i thought to myself is that all that they do here is try sell people things. So i thought the best thing to do is go to an agency! Dressed in the best chothes i had with me i went to some interviews. Wow they really helped i had another interview with an employeer the next day!! just as well i had only £200 left at that stage..

The next day dressed in the same best clothes that i had at the agency i went for for it, put on the whole best interview situation that i could(you know how it is with interviews you tell them what they want to hear) the guy said i was perfect for the job, i couldnt be believe i had only been here 4 days i had i job whoop whoop!! i didnt even know what the job was, he said i should go with a fellow named James he would show me what the job was about..

James was a funny guy seemed happy about you he was and what he was doing, so i followed his lead. he said lets get started and on the tube we jumped to another strange part of London, we came to this big apartment block, i was thinking what is going on here. James then started knocking on doors selling insurance for the blind! Great a bloodly sales job!! i followed him around the whole day watching him knock on one door then another...

At the end of the day of me humouring James he said i was perfect for the job, he said i should go back to the office and they would talk to me about pay and hours, i shock his hand said thank you very much see you around soon, THEN WENT STRAIGHT HOME that was not for me.

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First week in London

Living in london what an experince its been so far, i started my journey on the 16th of march 2001(man its seems like yesterday!!)

I was the second one of my friends to move over here. Byron was the first one to arrive in london three months before me, so he was a little bit more street smart so to say..

Leaving south africa in a summer month (where it never gets that cold) to winter in london. My mom arranged a friend of hers to show me a house i could stay in, it was in a place called Stratford talk about scary.. but it was my new home away from home so i made the best of it.

My mom's friend (Angie) then decided that we should go sight seeing. It sounded like a good idea at the time. We went to all the usual places Big Ben, Tower Bridge, St Pauls etc etc. let me tell you when sight seeing in Londons winter, take more then a etines jumper cause that isnt going to help at all, it also started raining while we were walking around, half way though i kindly said to the Angie through chattering teeth that i would really like to go home i was freezing!!

Back in my new strange home i had to meet my new family (house mates) and the landlord! what i strange guy he was, he showed me around and kindly said to me that if ever someone comes around to get a meter reading for the electrity that i must turn them away and say come back another day(he was stealing power from the old lady next door)

The following day i was eager to start looking for a job seen as i only had £400 on me knowing that i had to pay my landlord £50 rent with a £50 deposit that day, and still had to go buy some food for the week ahead, my money was going quickly already!!

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