How Much?!
As an Australian living in London, one of the hardest things I've had to learn not to do is, convert!
I've had a few mild heart attacks coming to grips with paying around $15 for a supposedly cheap lunch, $12 for a glass of wine and nearly $70 for a weekly travel card! (Currency conversions are based on the widely used 'times by three and round up' rule of thumb.)
When you first get here, everything seems expensive – food, alcohol, public transport...everything! Going out is especially depressing - the friends you arrived with are boozing it up big time as they're going home next week (you have to pay rent!). You eat Vegemite sandwiches for days on end (it's not a cliché thing – we just can't afford to buy our lunch!) and you're forever living out of your suitcase!
Even more depressing, is when you flip through a magazine (that you've borrowed) and find that one amazing outfit – the one you're going to finally spoil yourself with and put on your credit card (that's strictly for emergencies only), to find that it's a Chloe number and it costs more than half your yearly pay packet!
Obviously things are little bit different for me now. I haven't been “fresh off the boat” for a long time and I've managed to build myself a pretty good life over here. But I'm hardly dripping in designer gear (and I still eat Vegemite sandwiches from time to time). So I still find myself accelerating through the fashion pages of some magazines in the fear that I might see something I like.
However magazines like Look (where the focus is on high-street fashion rather than designer) have become a regular read for me. I still get my celebrity fix (getting to grips with the C-list celebrities over here is another blog in itself!), but I can also take comfort in the fact that if I see something I like, chances are I'm going to be able to afford it – even on a Junior Media Planners wage.
