CANADIAN ROBBED IN LONDON

My name is Tim, I'm originally from Toronto in Canada. I moved over here one month and two days ago. I became homeless. I was robbed on my second day of £400 in Soho. That was my money to get me through until I started work. The company that brought me over here is a hotel over by Marble Arch and they were bringing me over as a Communications & Public Relations Manager because I was a Telecommunications Manager in Orlando, Florida for three years. They decided to save on budget and eliminate the position, they didn't tell me that until I arrived here. So when I ran out of money almost immediately I was forced out into the street.

It is something that has changed my entire point of view on things and now I've been furiously interviewing at places, just trying to get some work so that I can get myself sorted, and there's a new hotel that has opened in town and I will find out later today if I got the job to start on Monday, and basically that's how I became homeless. A month ago I was a hotel manager, now I'm out in the pouring rain and I don't have a roof over my head. Everything that I have to get by, through job interviews and everything is located in one bag. When I go for interviews I feel like I'm sliding down the bath hole because I have to transform myself and look like I am an ordinary business person going in for an interview, which is sometimes hard when you don't have a lot of resources to do that. So that's what made me become homeless and I want it to be a very temporary thing.

My grandparents were born both British Citizens, so I have UK Ancestry Right of Abode, which means that I can live and work in the UK. It took me six months to get all the documents for that to get the immigration to come here so this is not going to defeat me, and its not something that I'm going to say "I'm going to give up and go back", because it took me way too long to get here. That's why I'm here I have Right of Abode until 2002 so I will get myself sorted out as quick as possible. London is a place that I've always wanted to come to and it has not been a real great introduction to it.

When I was in Florida I was Telecommunications Manager for the Peabody Hotel which is a 5 star hotel in Orlando, and I was in charge of a call-centre staff of 10, 2 technicians and assisted in night managing duties at the hotel. So basically it was a desk and a suit and a lot of responsibility. It's something that I enjoyed and I came over here to do somewhat of the same job with a bit more of a challenge to it involving public relations as well. I have been here since April 24th and the City itself, it's a fabulous city. I've not perished on the streets like I thought I would when I first found out that I had to live rough. It scared me a lot because I'd never experienced that before so I didn't know what to expect. When I woke up the next morning I was fine and I'm doing okay and so when I got sorted I'll be fine but I'm still right now living okay, I'm not starving, I'm not dying but its just something that I am not enjoying

The doorway of the Theatre that has the musical "Smokey Joe's Café" is where I sleep at night, then I move over the Piccadilly Tube Station when it opens in the morning and the police usually wake you up there at around 10am, and then I'll sleep in Leicester Square Park for an hour or so. The people living on the streets here in London are, 99% of the time, very accommodating and have been very good to me, very accepting of me for someone who has not experienced this before. So I find that most of the people on the streets are more accepting and more human, as it were, than you find in the business world. They look after people more, is what I've found out. That has changed my opinion, you know, when I'd walk along before I'd see someone begging for change, its basically just changed the way I think. I've had a couple of rough experiences. First was getting robbed the second day I was here and then last night I had someone wanting to get the money that I had, I had no money on me. Not thinking, I showed everything in my pockets which included my passport, and my passport was stolen.

There are times when I get depressed because I want to be sorted and want to have my life back to some semblance of normality in my mind; not that I am not surviving here, it just I'll admit it that I'm not cut out for it. My life is a 9 to 5 life, going home, making dinner, watching some telly, getting up in the morning and going back to work and having the weekends off and going on holiday. So the fact that I am unable to do that sometimes depresses me and it makes me want to strive to get sorted as quickly as possible.

I won't go back, this is not going to defeat me, I am way too stubborn for that. It took me too much time to get the immigration to come here through my ancestry. I had to trace my lineage back to the year 1900 and dealing with all that bureaucracy it took about six months so a month of living rough is not going to have me throw my hands up in the air and go home with my head hanging low - I'll make it in London and I'll make it really big in London, it's just that the first scene of the opening act is not the most comical scene of the play.