Before You Fly to London on Deputation: What Nobody Tells You

02The decision that matters most: where you live after the first accommodation

The company usually books the first few weeks and then you find your own place. That second decision affects the evenings more than anything else and it is often made purely on rent and commute time.

Two things worth adding to those:

• Whether anything is open near you at seven in the evening. Some parts of London are entirely residential and the difference between a road with a high street on it and one without is the difference between leaving the house and not.
• Whether you would rather be near people from home or not. There is no correct answer and it is worth deciding deliberately rather than by accident. Areas with large communities from your own country make the first months much easier, familiar food is available and you will hear your language on the street. Some people find that steadies them and some find it keeps the assignment at arm's length. Both are legitimate. Choosing on purpose is better than ending up somewhere by rent alone and discovering which one you are.

Share the flat if you can. Living alone on a first assignment abroad is much harder than people expect, and the difference between a silent flat and one with somebody in it is larger than the difference in rent.

03Things to sort before you fly

• How you will call home, and when. Fix a rough time rather than leaving it to whenever. The time difference means it will otherwise slide into the only hours you had free, and calls that happen at a known time are easier on both ends than calls that are always about to happen.
• What you cannot get here. Less than you think for food, since London has almost everything. More than you think for medicines, documents and anything requiring a signature from home.
• One thing you like, that you can keep doing. A sport, an instrument, a game, a kind of cooking. It sounds trivial and it is the single most useful thing to carry into an assignment, because it is a reason to leave the room that does not depend on knowing anybody.
• The weather, properly. Not the temperature, the darkness. In December it is dark before four in the afternoon, and people arriving from places where it is not are consistently unprepared for what that does to an evening.

04Money, and the evenings

If part of what you earn goes home every month, every evening that costs money is a decision, and generic advice about London ignores this entirely. So the useful thing to know before you arrive is how much of the city is free: the British Museum, the National Gallery, the Tate galleries, the Science Museum, the V and A and most large museums have free permanent collections, several open late one evening a week, and all the parks are free. A bus across central London on the top deck at night costs a single fare.

What costs money is essentially anything with a table in it. That is the honest line, and it is worth budgeting a small fixed amount for rather than saying no to everything, because saying no to everything for six months is its own cost.

05What we do, in one paragraph

KF.Social books you a seat at a table of six in a London restaurant on a set evening, with other people who are also in London for work. It is 15 pounds for the seat, shown before you pay, and your food and drinks at the restaurant. It is worth knowing about for the week five problem above, because it is a decision you can make in advance for an evening you know will otherwise be empty. Booking is open to anyone over 18 who pays. The restaurant lands about six hours before and who you are sitting with about an hour before, when the group chat opens. Cancelling more than 72 hours ahead puts the 15 pounds back on your card. We run in London only. The tables coming up are here.