ALWAYS talk to strangers

I can clearly remember learning all about 'Stranger Danger' when I was about 6 or 7. A stranger was any adult I didn't know. Strangers were scary people who were always coming up with clever and cunning plans to steal me on my walk home from school. Never mind that I didn't ever walk home from school, I was taught that's when they were going to strike! I was so paranoid about strangers - even women, because I was that weird 6 year old who read newspapers and knew all about Myra Hindley and Ian Brady. The first word I remember looking up in a dictionary is 'garotte'.

With this in mind, it's taken me a long time to unlearn the paranoid lesson here and replace it with a sensible approach to life. You see, after moving to the other side of the world, I've learned you should ALWAYS talk to strangers! I don't mean it exactly like it sounds and we should all be running around shouting at each other and trying to engage in conversation with every person we should meet (but Jesus, London! A friendly smile every now and then wouldn't go astray!) But I think the lesson we all need to learn is that (with common sense) we should absolutely not be afraid to talk to strangers!

Just since I have been in London, I have had some amazing adventures with complete strangers!

When I was on my way to Berlin to meet friends from high school, I was travelling alone. My flight left so early that I was actually forced to catch the last bus to the airport and wait until 6.25am when my flight departed. As I arrived at the bus stop, I saw some others with suitcases and asked them if I was at the right stop. A lone girl and a lone guy said I was. When the bus arrived, I started chatting to the girl behind me in line - asking where she was off to. We sat next to each other on the bus and chatted for over an hour. We were both waiting for early morning flights so I asked her if she'd like to set up a camp with me on the floor of the airport. I said I had chocolate and Red Bull and she offered some chips (crisps for my UK friends). As we got off the bus, I stood beside the lone guy from the bus stop. So I told him of our plans and invited him to join us. He eagerly agreed and when we were settled, he bought us all hot chocolates. It was a fun six hours. The girl was able to get some sleep knowing her stuff wouldn't get stolen and the guy and I chatted about Italy and travel. We had breakfast together when the airport shops opened and at 6.25am, I caught my flight leaving behind Roxy and Francesco, my new friends!

Roxy, me and Francesco in Stansted airport

When I arrived in Berlin, I had over 24 hours to spend on my own. I made my way to my hostel and steadfastly refused to sleep and risk wasting a second in this new, amazing city. So I took a bus tour and saw some incredible sights. I had already decided I would be pushing myself so had bought a ticket to the Fun. concert. Stupidly, I misread 2100 as 7pm and arrived two hours early for the show. I joined the queue of excited Fun. fans and kept my ear out for a chance to talk to someone. Sadly, I was thwarted by my lack of a second language as everyone around me spoke German or French so I just waited. And waited.

Finally the gates opened but all people with online tickets had to present their tickets at a booth behind us in the line. The group of girls behind me gathered all their tickets into one pile and passed it to the closest girl who went to hand the whole stack over in one go. On a whim, I tapped one girl on the shoulder and pushed my ticket towards her. "Could you do mine too, please?" I begged. She handed my ticket on to her friend and turned back to me. In very good English she asked me why I was by myself!! Turns out of the three girls, two spoke very good English! The other spoke both French and German. The girls asked if I'd like to watch the concert with them. They shared their Pepsi, held my place while I bought my tour shirt and took photos to pass the time. We had a blast!

They stayed behind to hunt autographs from the band. I was forced to drag my poor body that had been awake for near on 42 hours by then back to the hostel leaving behind Carole-Ann, Lea and Celine, my new friends!

Carole-Ann, me, Lea and Celine at the Fun. concert

In my hostel, Simon, one of my high school friends had finally arrived and after a big day, we were in our bunks resting. A nice guy who was staying in our room started chatting to us and ended up inviting us out for drinks. Well, Simon was too tired but I was determined to have fun. After all...

So we wondered down the road from our hotel chatting. He was Brazilian and had seen quite a few European countries. We traded stories of our adventures and compared notes on our home countries. He bought a round of drinks and I bought the next round. The next day, Andrew, my other friend from high school arrived. Simon and I waved to him from the hostel room window as we saw him approach. Then we decided to hide in the bathroom while the Brazilian pretended to have booked out the whole room for his birthday and convinced Andrew he was in the wrong room. He played the part perfectly and I still laugh thinking about poor, confused Andrew while Simon and I stifled giggles in the bathroom. Then the four of us went out for dinner! It was fantastic, but he had to leave to go to the next country that morning. But when Fred left, we waved goodbye to our new friend!

Andrew, me, Simon and Fred at the hostel bar

The next night everyone from room 505 at the hostel was having drinks. I went downstairs to get something from the room. On my way back up, I noticed the button for calling the down elevator was crooked so I tried to straighten it - accidentally pressing it. When the doors opened for no reason, a  girl was standing there by herself. I apologised for pressing the button. She said it was ok and she was trying to decide if she should go to the bar or the lobby. I said 'the bar! Come on! Come back up with me!' So she did. I have never got along with a girl so quickly and so well. We were chatting about everything and sharing stories. She was American, travelling Europe. I sadly learned she wouldn't be going through London but we swapped Facebook details and hung out all night! I know she will gladly host me in New Jersey and she knows she is welcome in London anytime! My biggest regret of the whole Berlin trip (which will one day be rectified) is I didn't get a photo with Jennifer, my new friend.

Jennifer

Then there is the pinnacle of these stories. The absolute epitome of why you should always welcome a friendly stranger in to your life. Matt, my best friend in all of Europe! All of the Northern hemisphere in fact!

Zombie Marilyn Monroe and Tony Stark

I met Matt in a pub when I was with my brother. The series of little coincidences that lead to our actual meeting is astounding considering how much he has affected my life here in London. As much as falling off my scooter sucked, if I hadn't of I would not have met Matt as I would have been at work that day instead of testing out my recovery with a small day out before returning to work the very next day. We met when he called my brother out for making fun of the way Americans write the date backwards. We started chatting and nearly two hours later, swapped Twitter details. Matt came to visit me after my shift the next day and we went out to London Dungeon the week after. We've pretty much seen each other every week since. I introduced him to football and made him a Liverpool fan and he in turn taught me about baseball and made me a St. Louis Cardinals fan. For Christmas I bought him a Liverpool jersey and he bought me a Cardinals one. I took him to his first EPL game and one day, he will take me to my first MLB game.

Me and Matt at Anfield

When I went to LA last year, he arranged for his sister (who is an incredible girl who I am lucky to call a friend!) to play tour guide for me on my first night alone. We got on so well that I left Disneyland early to spend my last day with her before heading back to London.

Me and Matt's sister Boo in LA

When his sister visited recently, we spent heaps of time together taking in the sights of London.

Matt, me and Boo on the River Thames

Matt asked me to join a co-ed softball team with him and now we play every week. I have in turn made some more amazing friends on the team who I hang out with outside of softball.

Evan, Matt, me, Kieran, Krista, Aneil and Sam
Just some of the Basejumpers softball team!

I've also met Matt's other sister and even his Mum. Matt has hung out with my dad and was even with us when he visited his childhood home for the first time in 50 years. One day soon I am going to go to America and Matt will show me around his parts. I hope he comes to Australia so I can teach him how to throw a boomerang and wrestle his first croc.

I was talking to a friend from my softball team and he seemed shocked to find out how Matt and I met. But without that friendly act nine months ago, I wouldn't have even been having that conversation with a softball teammate. I have had some amazing adventures and these are only some of them. I love my life in London and the people I have met are a huge part of that.

And it's all because I ALWAYS talk to strangers.

Miss SAMawdsley xx

Questions:

• Have you had some amazing adventures with strangers?
• Have you ever made friends with a stranger?
• Has talking to a stranger ever gone wrong for you?

Dear Mum, I'm sad on my trip of a lifetime.

This is an actual email I sent to my Mum this morning. I guess this is the honest side of my adventure.

Hey Mum,

I wish I knew why I seem so 'not myself' to you. I think you hit the nail on the head when you said I'm "very tired and a little lost". I think because it's "Seamus & Carol" I feel a bit like a third wheel. Not in the bad way, just that there's nobody here who is just for me. A friend or anything.

I don't think I'm homesick because like you've said before, I just didn't have much in Australia keeping me there. I mean, I miss certain people of course, but not "home" so much. Home isn't even there anymore. That was demolished during my first week of being here. I even managed to have a moment about that.

But I am having fun. I've been to a Liverpool game. I've been to Tower of London and London Dungeon. And I've reminisced about our adventures. Remember how we found London Dungeon to begin with? That was so much fun and a story I love telling. Last night we went to see Rhod Gilbert, a comedian & I laughed so much.

I've made a friend, I know I've told you about him, & he texts me every day so I don't feel so alone sometimes. And if I do, I can talk to him about it. He was really good to me last week. Texted me for hours telling me everything would be ok. Said I could call him - but I wouldn't because I was crying. He made sure I was ok. Walking into the pub the day we met him was the best decision I've made since being here, I think.

I know that makes it sound terrible. Sometimes it all gets too much. It does. I admit that. But I'm ok. It's also hard because like last night, Tuesday night, I said good night to Seamus & Carol. I said "Good night, see you... err..." And we figured out I won't see Seamus until Friday and Carol until Saturday. That's how I live. So even though I live with Seamus & Carol, I get really lonely.

I don't think I've made you feel any better about me writing this email. But I just want you to know I am ok. I am having a blast and I'm starting to make friends - with people from work and strangers from Twitter. It's the twentieth century! Or the twenty-first...? I can never remember.

I'm going to make a list of things I want to do on my days off so I have things to look forward to. I can wake up, look at my list and say "What am I going to do today?" And I think I'm going to ask work if I can drop back to four days a week. Four nine hour shifts is still 36 hours a week, so I can still have my pocket money working those hours. At this rate, I'm earning money with no time to spend it, which is great for my bank balance but bad for my sanity! :P

Anyway, I love you lots and I'll talk to you soon. Sorry I wasn't able to talk yesterday morning. I was off to work...

Love, Sammy Seal

xx

At the Natural History Museum! Dinosaurs! 

Traitors' Gate!
Tower of London: My favourite place in London! 

Shooting stuff. 11 out of 12 stuffs! 

You'll never walk alone!
At a Liverpool game! 

Wembley Stadium for England v Ukraine!
My two best guy friends have gone now... :( 

Miss SAMawdsley xx

Questions:

• Have you ever been sad when you're meant to be happy? 
• Have you ever had people sense you're not OK when you yourself can't even verbalise why you're not OK?

Of hot pink scooters & teal blue hair

So here's a fun fact. I've been to England three times in my life. In that time, I managed to visit the Accident and Emergency department before Saint Paul's Cathedral. That has to be some kind of record. Albeit, not one I deserve any sort of kudos for.

So I moved to London three weeks ago. No big surprise there. Back in Australia, I used to injure myself a lot. Maybe a small part of me had hoped that this was something about air pressure, my relative position in correlation to the sea level or my distance from the equator. Or maybe just the amount of football I played. Apparently it's not. It's just me.

Week one of my new life in London found me with a double barrel shotgun in my hands for the very first time. This would give people who knew me cause to seek cover or flatten themselves in an attempt to preserve life and limb. But you see, I'm not uncoordinated, just unfortunate. Only I came off injured from my first ever attempt at clay pigeon shooting. That means the target is not only small, but moving through the air at a very fast rate. I shot 11 of my 12 targets before retiring with recoil injury. The trainers were stunned into shock and awe, I'm not exaggerating. My military trained brother only shot five from 12 so, you know, I think I can say I am a natural with a shotgun - as long as I don't have to shoot it any more than eight times or I am in severe pain for days.

Week two started on a positive note! I got a job at a lovely pub! I was so full of energy I went home and washed the dishes from last night's dinner - and promptly sliced my pinkie finger open across the knuckle on broken glass. My brother was very ill and I like to think he would have taken me to get stitches if he wasn't a mere shadow of a corpse. Instead, he cleaned the wound and patched me up while I put on my brave face (read: cried & curled up on the couch in the foetal position).

I did not let a minor flesh wound dampen my spirits however and sought a mode of transport. I took this task very seriously. After all, I am 27 years old. I am a published author. I have new employment in a prestigious pub on top of the second highest hill in London. So how did I choose to get to work?

On this.

Don't worry, it's made for adults. Or kids that weigh up to 100kg. Whatever, I fit on it, ok?!

And this was fine for my first few shifts. It was better than fine, it was fun. It was a conversation starter with my new coworkers and the patrons at the pub. Oh, and the feeling of flying down the second highest hill in London, daring myself to hold off on the brakes, feeling the wind in my (now blonde, purple and blue) hair was simply breath-taking.

Going home on Friday night / Saturday morning at around 2am and realising as I neared terminal velocity that I had no brakes thanks to a light dampness on the ground was breath-taking in a completely different way. In a split second, maybe even less, I had to decide whether to chance it with actually reaching terminal velocity before careering out on to the busy road this hill intersects with and hoping I could control the corner at full speed (if I made it over the speed bump alive, that is) and that no cars, trucks or buses would be wearing their usual path down that main road - or abandon all faith in a safe passage and simply abort the mission there and then.

Well I made my decision and I stand by it.

Ok, so I didn't stand for long.

My feet couldn't keep up as I tried to run at the speed my body mass was travelling at. Basic physics. Or gravity. Whatever, I stumbled and hit the bitumen. Hard. I ripped open my new shoes, tore three holes in my woollen tights (and the skin underneath on my knee and my ass cheek), grazed the heels of my palms and the pièce de résistance, smashed my entire shoulder into the ground as the lower half of my body collapsed. My skin was saved by my work shirt and Edgar Allan Poe hoodie.

Aptly, my iPod played "Goodbye yellow brick road" and Sarah Blasko mourned her own sad story about a painful road through my headphones. I sat in the gutter and cried. My hot pink scooter lay abandoned and skewif in the middle of the road. My hair, once free and windswept, started to matt to my face in a mixture of tears, sweat and light misty rain. Finally, with all the dignity I could muster, I picked myself and my scooter up and limped back to work.

My coworkers haven't known me long but even without my expressive face, it's not hard to tell when a girl hobbles in, mascara streaked down her face, hair a mess, holes in the uniform that minutes ago was pristine and dinosaur backpack hanging askew, something went wrong. As Wayne, the head chef put it to my boss, "Evel Knievel here didn't make her jump."

No Wayne, she did not.

I haven't been back on the scooter yet, but I will. It's too much fun. I will however, be purchasing a helmet. My mind boggles at the lack of laws here that allowed me to ride legally without a helmet. I also marvel at my own stupidity that I thought I was too cool or too invincible to wear one.

For the last four days I've been throwing up and at times, fighting in and out of consciousness. I've been in a lot of pain. I had to go A&E to get X-Rays. Thankfully and miraculously, nothing is broken. I have done severe muscle damage to my shoulder, will still be in a sling at the end of the week and have only today (Wednesday) managed the admirable feat of typing with two hands. Obviously, I haven't been able to work, thus haven't been able to get paid. I've relied on the generosity of my brother and future sister-in-law to keep me fed and looked after - including fetching my spew bucket and washing my dinosaur PJs for me when the fevers have rendered them unwearable.

In conclusion:

Expectation!

Reality.

And I'm going to Saint Paul's Cathedral before I kill myself!

Miss SAMawdsley xx

Questions:

• What's the worst accident you've been in?
• Do you remember the slow and painful process in a blow by blow, second by second account?
• Have you ever been sick or injured in a foreign country?

Adventures in red tape

In case you haven't heard, I moved from Brisbane, Australia to London, England last week. Bit of a change if I'm honest. I quit my comfortable, safety-net job and landed in London with a plan to live with my brother and his fiancee and hope that... well, hope that everything turned out ok.

The most daunting part of this whole expedition (other than the flying part, of course) was getting a job. Europe has made no secret of its tough economy and from what I read in the media, jobs are few and far between. So my plan has always been to get a bar job and study to attain my referee's certificate and start refereeing football.

I signed up for my referee's course before I left Australia so I had already outlaid £130 in the hopes it would lead to steady work (and, in all honesty, career advancement to say, refereeing the women's world cup!?)

So you can imagine my surprise when I found a pub that I fell in love with, cheekily asked if there were any jobs going, was asked to drop off my resume and attended a job interview where I actually answered the question "So how long have you been in England for?" with "well what day is it? Tuesday? Then one week and one day!" I got the job.

Turns out that was the easy part. I am a British citizen thanks to my lineage so I am entitled to work here. I am also entitled to not work here and claim benefits. But I've never claimed benefits in Australia and so I don't plan to do that in England either. Upon being offered a job, it became apparent that I needed a bank account for being paid and a national insurance number (NIN). Back in Australia, this is like a tax file number, I guess.

Making the call to get the NIN was horrible. The woman on the other end of the line sounded a special breed of mind-numbingly bored of her job and very suspicious of my motives.

"And why do you want a NIN, miss?"

"Because I want to work. I've been offered a job and I'd like to take it."

"And why don't you already have a NIN, miss?"

"Because I've only just got to England."

"So when did you get to England, miss?"

"A week ago. September 3."

"A week ago? And you say you already have a job, miss?"

Not the best response, apparently. So I have an appointment with them on October 1. Might have been earlier without the attitude, I suppose. But today I got my letter explaining when my appointment would be and how I needed to bring proof of identity and proof of address.

I got excited about this letter coming today because I planned to go into town to open a bank account. This letter, sent to me at my address from a government agency would be great proof of address to get my bank account. Or so you would think. I chose Barclays because they sponsor the English Premier League and I've always wanted a Barclays account. They turned me down because my letter from a government agency was not sufficient proof of address. I needed something more - you know, like a bank statement. The lovely Barclays' guy, who saw the obvious redundancy of the situation since I was sitting with my brother, who I live with and who has all the proof of address they needed, had a minor coughing fit that sounded something like "Go to Lloyds of London. They'll probably give you a bank account but do it today before this bank account application denial goes on your record and nobody will give you a bank account." I hope he feels better soon.

So on a hunch, Seamus and I went to Lloyds. Barclays guy was right. They didn't care that all I had was a letter of confirmation of an appointment with the NIN people as my proof of address. Not at all. But they were not taking my word for it that I had a job lined up. No sir. They wanted a letter from my future employer stating they would be letting me work behind their bar. Seriously. To open a freaking bank account. Not a credit card, I didn't want their money, just an account for my own money to sit in and the bank to earn interest on. But of course, I didn't have this letter of employment yet because I needed to provide my future employer with some bank account details for them to complete my employment. Oh yes. Bureaucracy gone mad!

So I had to traipse up the hill to my pub to get my future manager to write a letter saying "Yes, Samantha will be working for minimum wage pouring beers for the good people of London. Please, for the love of Batman, give her a damn bank account so our patrons can get beer!" Or something to that effect.

I returned, letter in hand (with a With Compliments slip stapled to it, for that official touch) to finally get a bank account with Lloyds of London. Now I can start work at The Castle tomorrow.

On the way home, I nearly died of laughter when I realised something.

The NIN people mailed me a letter demanding my proof of address.

I opened a bank account using the NIN people's letter demanding I get proof of address.

I will get a bank statement with this same address on it.

I will take this bank statement, obtained using the letter of demand to get proof of address, to my appointment with the NIN people and use this statement as my proof of address.

Red tape. Not half as sexy as it looks.

Miss SAMawdsley xx

Questions:

• Have you ever been the victim of bureaucracy gone mad?