In an attempt to shame the rest of the family by how many posts I've had in a row, especially considering we don't have Internet access at home yet, I thought I'd tell you all about last night. :-) Nyah!
As mentioned, we had dinner and drinks with Jools and Paul, starting at the Phoenix (a pub) and migrating to a Spanish restaurant for tapas, sangria and some kind of alcoholic coffee. It was fun, although we were at the pub by ourselves for a little while until Julie could manage to pull herself away from work -- I think she's addicted to the stress of IT support! Go figure.
Dinner was awesome, we bought three little dishes each and shared: meatballs, ensaladas (salad), calamari, some omelettey thing, chorizo and yummy paella. All washed down with sangria which, for anyone who doesn't know, is some kind of white wine and lemonade and fruit juice and pieces of fruit floating on top. Pretty good, especially with the hot weather we've been having recently.
What else? Our phone still isn't connected and the BT engineers haven't contacted me with an update (which they said they would! Argh!), so it's unlikely that our broadband will be working by tonight (which it's meant to be! Double argh!). So today we're off to a movie, some shopping (well, window shopping at least), then a housewarming next door.
Anyway, what's everyone else been up to? :-)
Saturday, 11 August 2007
Friday, 10 August 2007
Spiderglenn, spiderglenn
I've been trying to get our phone line connected for over a week now -- you would think it would be easy! Worse, the phone needs to be connected before the broadband connection, since ADSL uses the same phone line. I just spent three hours on the (work) phone to BT trying to get it figured out -- apparently they've sent out an engineer now, and we'll get updates by SMS.
Seriously, how hard is it? So frustrating, especially as I've already organised to have the ADSL connection done on Saturday. Even more galling is the fact that BT have already sent us a bill! The cheek of it! So in righteous fury I stole somebody's hands-free headset, jumped on the phone and set in to do battle with BT. I was on hold for most of the three hours, then transferred between departments getting a little bit of info each time, before finally ending up on the line with the one person in the company who knew what she was doing. A quick line-test, then repeated to make sure it wasn't a once off, and she sent out for the engineer AND contacted the billing department to make sure we weren't paying for a service we'd not yet enjoyed.
Thank the stars there is someone paying attention at BT.
But it's been a bit of a traumatic week really -- okay, "traumatic" is dramatic (heh heh), but it's sporadic and emphatic in a paddock full of haddock. Thank badness it's Friday!
Forgot to mention some good luck on Sunday afternoon: whilst looking for el cheapo bargains, Dee bought a couple of "scratchies" and gave me one ... and I won £50! Nice one! Spent it almost immediately on lunch and (some on) the Wicked tix, but still good to win one. Could've been the £250,000 of course ...
Work this week has been wacky -- lots to do, not a lot of time to do it in -- and my "to do" list has grown and grown.
Dee's had a couple of job interviews now, which I'm sure she can tell you about, so to celebrate we went out on Wednesday night to a Turkish restaurant on Brick Lane (yep, we love Brick Lane). Very nice food, hopefully traditional (it looked that way -- cooked over hot coals under an ornately decorated brass range hood thingy) and not too expensive. It was meant to be our "night out" for the week (weekend notwithstanding -- still have to fill it with glee).
Unfortunately, and here comes the trauma, we got locked out last night by the cleaner! I know, it's very cosmopolitan to have a cleaner, but I think he cleans all the flats in the building and it seemed like a small price to pay (considering we don't have a broom, a mop, etc). Anyway, he arrived just as Dee was leaving, so we were both looking forward to returning to a nice clean house.
Which we did. We just couldn't get in.
When Martin had finished he left and locked all the doors, including the deadbolt which we haven't been using for a couple of reasons (deadbolts are dangerous; there's a heavy door downstairs; it's 93 steps up to our flat; we don't really have anything worth stealing) and therefore left the key inside. Bugger.
With Martin's phone number also inside the flat, we knew we wouldn't be able to track him down. Dee looked, in case he was doing another apartment, to no avail. We also knew that our landlord-neighbour would have a spare key, but the mobile number we had for him was now disconnected! A conspiracy, I tells ya!
Nothing to do but leave a note on the landlord's door, head out for dinner somewhere and hope that he was coming home tonight. We ate at the Dove -- the solid pub-grub place mentioned in a previous post -- and this time I got to try a beer I'd last had in Belgium, the Chimay Blanc (or white, as the brit's would have it). Yum!
The night wore on with no call from our landlord, and we began to despair ever getting in, until Dee had the bright idea of knocking on our other neighbour's door and, if home, climbing over the wall that separates our balconies and in through one of our windows. A bright idea primarily because it would be me doing the climbing, not her. Luckily there's no neighbourhood watch four floors up.
Long story short (altogether: too late!), he was home and I managed to scuffle over the trellis and onto our side -- don't worry Mumsie, it's a fairly low wall and I crossed on the roof side, not the down-down-down to the road side, so there was never any danger. The windows were open (they're quite big windows) so I could quickly get in, open the door from the inside, and stand around basking in the glory of being the hero of the hour.
Even better, we got invited to our neighbours house-warming party on Saturday night, huzzah! So I think a movie during the day, Lis, then a party at night. As for tonight, Dee already organised dinner (Spanish this time) and drinks with a friend named Julie -- "Jools" -- from her old work. We're meeting near Liverpool Station at around 6:30pm. Shouldn't be too late a night but it's always nice to meet new people.
Ooh, before I forget, here's our new address and phone number, providing it ever gets connected. I'll also update the Contact Details page in the sidebar.
26 Minstrel Court
Teesdale Close
London E2 6PQ
+442077396267
Seriously, how hard is it? So frustrating, especially as I've already organised to have the ADSL connection done on Saturday. Even more galling is the fact that BT have already sent us a bill! The cheek of it! So in righteous fury I stole somebody's hands-free headset, jumped on the phone and set in to do battle with BT. I was on hold for most of the three hours, then transferred between departments getting a little bit of info each time, before finally ending up on the line with the one person in the company who knew what she was doing. A quick line-test, then repeated to make sure it wasn't a once off, and she sent out for the engineer AND contacted the billing department to make sure we weren't paying for a service we'd not yet enjoyed.
Thank the stars there is someone paying attention at BT.
But it's been a bit of a traumatic week really -- okay, "traumatic" is dramatic (heh heh), but it's sporadic and emphatic in a paddock full of haddock. Thank badness it's Friday!
Forgot to mention some good luck on Sunday afternoon: whilst looking for el cheapo bargains, Dee bought a couple of "scratchies" and gave me one ... and I won £50! Nice one! Spent it almost immediately on lunch and (some on) the Wicked tix, but still good to win one. Could've been the £250,000 of course ...
Work this week has been wacky -- lots to do, not a lot of time to do it in -- and my "to do" list has grown and grown.
Dee's had a couple of job interviews now, which I'm sure she can tell you about, so to celebrate we went out on Wednesday night to a Turkish restaurant on Brick Lane (yep, we love Brick Lane). Very nice food, hopefully traditional (it looked that way -- cooked over hot coals under an ornately decorated brass range hood thingy) and not too expensive. It was meant to be our "night out" for the week (weekend notwithstanding -- still have to fill it with glee).
Unfortunately, and here comes the trauma, we got locked out last night by the cleaner! I know, it's very cosmopolitan to have a cleaner, but I think he cleans all the flats in the building and it seemed like a small price to pay (considering we don't have a broom, a mop, etc). Anyway, he arrived just as Dee was leaving, so we were both looking forward to returning to a nice clean house.
Which we did. We just couldn't get in.
When Martin had finished he left and locked all the doors, including the deadbolt which we haven't been using for a couple of reasons (deadbolts are dangerous; there's a heavy door downstairs; it's 93 steps up to our flat; we don't really have anything worth stealing) and therefore left the key inside. Bugger.
With Martin's phone number also inside the flat, we knew we wouldn't be able to track him down. Dee looked, in case he was doing another apartment, to no avail. We also knew that our landlord-neighbour would have a spare key, but the mobile number we had for him was now disconnected! A conspiracy, I tells ya!
Nothing to do but leave a note on the landlord's door, head out for dinner somewhere and hope that he was coming home tonight. We ate at the Dove -- the solid pub-grub place mentioned in a previous post -- and this time I got to try a beer I'd last had in Belgium, the Chimay Blanc (or white, as the brit's would have it). Yum!
The night wore on with no call from our landlord, and we began to despair ever getting in, until Dee had the bright idea of knocking on our other neighbour's door and, if home, climbing over the wall that separates our balconies and in through one of our windows. A bright idea primarily because it would be me doing the climbing, not her. Luckily there's no neighbourhood watch four floors up.
Long story short (altogether: too late!), he was home and I managed to scuffle over the trellis and onto our side -- don't worry Mumsie, it's a fairly low wall and I crossed on the roof side, not the down-down-down to the road side, so there was never any danger. The windows were open (they're quite big windows) so I could quickly get in, open the door from the inside, and stand around basking in the glory of being the hero of the hour.
Even better, we got invited to our neighbours house-warming party on Saturday night, huzzah! So I think a movie during the day, Lis, then a party at night. As for tonight, Dee already organised dinner (Spanish this time) and drinks with a friend named Julie -- "Jools" -- from her old work. We're meeting near Liverpool Station at around 6:30pm. Shouldn't be too late a night but it's always nice to meet new people.
Ooh, before I forget, here's our new address and phone number, providing it ever gets connected. I'll also update the Contact Details page in the sidebar.
26 Minstrel Court
Teesdale Close
London E2 6PQ
+442077396267
Monday, 6 August 2007
Dayna visiting us
A quick post (aren't they always?) because, regrettably, I'm at work, but I had to tell y'all about the action-packed weekend we've just shared with Dayna. Tons of fun, but I'm a little bit tired now on Monday morning.
Dayna arrived on Friday and Dee met her at Bethnal Green station -- I was still at work! (Hmmm, it gets in the way, work.) We went out for some drinks and a lot of good Indian food on Brick Lane on Friday night -- by the end of the evening I seriously thought I would never need to eat again. (I later also realised that white wine, although deceptively tasty and easy to quaff in the rare London-evening sun, was merciless if you don't have enough water before going to bed. Still, I recovered soundly by Saturday morning.
Dayna headed off quite early on Saturday morning to meet her round-the-world friends Mez and Carly, while Dee and I took it a little easier and headed out for shopping along the market-esque Bethnal Green Road. Talk about cheap! We had fun searching for housey stuff (pegs, coat hangers, an iron) in the plethora of discount shops and stalls. Our new iron was £5! Bargain!
We met Dayna (and co.) in the city that night and went to see the stage show Wicked -- the true story of the Wicked Witches of Oz. Very funny, very entertaining, great music, fun fun fun! I think Mez and Carly were almost falling asleep tho' -- they'd been up and traveling for some ridiculous amount of time.
Sunday we took it easy. Well, Dee and I took it easy -- Dayna got up early to go meet her friends and do touristy stuff (sensing a pattern here?). Heh heh, probably shouldn't have stayed up so late when we got home from Wicked, sorry Dayna -- guess we were just being wicked. Anyway, we got up eventually (tee hee!) and toddled off to met Dee's friend Emily, stopping at a couple of the Sunday markets along the way -- the Flower Market and Spitalfields. (We'd intended to hit Cambden Market too, but didn't quite make it as you'll read soon.)
When we finally caught up with Emily we were tired (from walking) and hot -- it was sunny! We had to wear sunscreen! I might get a tan! Luckily Emily invited us into a cool underground cinema to see a movie with her -- but not, as it turned out, exactly what we were expecting!
Em's brother was the director, for one thing, which is cool in itself. The film was a documentary about the Zawoses, a family of musicians living in Tanzania, and how they struggled (are struggling) to keep their music alive now that the head of the family has died. Tanzania suffers from the same problems that much of Africa does -- the shortages of food and water, difficulties in education and health, and the epidemic of HIV -- and training the new generations in the music making skills of the Wagogo tribe whilst staying alive is a difficult proposition.
At the end of the film there was a question and answer session with the director and one of the Zawose band members, followed by a live performance! Now we don't generally listen to African music (or even world music really) but the beats and drums and handmade instruments and dancing was so cool! Complex rhythms and timings, harmonies and just such a wide vocal range. Very cool -- I bought the CD to put on my MP3 player and listen to whilst at the gym!
Afterwards we caught up with Dayna, Mez and Carly again for dinner and drinks at "The Dove". Good solid pub grub, and plenty of different beers. Dayna bought a jug of strawberry früli beer, I had one called "Lucifer" (very strong) and then we tried a chocolate beer which was surprisingly chocolatey. (I know, I know, what was I expecting? But it was weird that "beer" and "chocolate" could go so well together.)
So a busy weekend indeed. Needless to say we're having a night in tonight, maybe watching a DVD (we bought The Last King Of Scotland after renting and watching half of it back in Edinburgh). Now don't tell Dee, but I'm trying to figure out how we can cram even more into next weekend ;-).
Could be my wicked side again, I s'pose. >;-P
We'll have to organise to go see Dayna one weekend.
Dayna arrived on Friday and Dee met her at Bethnal Green station -- I was still at work! (Hmmm, it gets in the way, work.) We went out for some drinks and a lot of good Indian food on Brick Lane on Friday night -- by the end of the evening I seriously thought I would never need to eat again. (I later also realised that white wine, although deceptively tasty and easy to quaff in the rare London-evening sun, was merciless if you don't have enough water before going to bed. Still, I recovered soundly by Saturday morning.
Dayna headed off quite early on Saturday morning to meet her round-the-world friends Mez and Carly, while Dee and I took it a little easier and headed out for shopping along the market-esque Bethnal Green Road. Talk about cheap! We had fun searching for housey stuff (pegs, coat hangers, an iron) in the plethora of discount shops and stalls. Our new iron was £5! Bargain!
We met Dayna (and co.) in the city that night and went to see the stage show Wicked -- the true story of the Wicked Witches of Oz. Very funny, very entertaining, great music, fun fun fun! I think Mez and Carly were almost falling asleep tho' -- they'd been up and traveling for some ridiculous amount of time.
Sunday we took it easy. Well, Dee and I took it easy -- Dayna got up early to go meet her friends and do touristy stuff (sensing a pattern here?). Heh heh, probably shouldn't have stayed up so late when we got home from Wicked, sorry Dayna -- guess we were just being wicked. Anyway, we got up eventually (tee hee!) and toddled off to met Dee's friend Emily, stopping at a couple of the Sunday markets along the way -- the Flower Market and Spitalfields. (We'd intended to hit Cambden Market too, but didn't quite make it as you'll read soon.)
When we finally caught up with Emily we were tired (from walking) and hot -- it was sunny! We had to wear sunscreen! I might get a tan! Luckily Emily invited us into a cool underground cinema to see a movie with her -- but not, as it turned out, exactly what we were expecting!
Em's brother was the director, for one thing, which is cool in itself. The film was a documentary about the Zawoses, a family of musicians living in Tanzania, and how they struggled (are struggling) to keep their music alive now that the head of the family has died. Tanzania suffers from the same problems that much of Africa does -- the shortages of food and water, difficulties in education and health, and the epidemic of HIV -- and training the new generations in the music making skills of the Wagogo tribe whilst staying alive is a difficult proposition.
At the end of the film there was a question and answer session with the director and one of the Zawose band members, followed by a live performance! Now we don't generally listen to African music (or even world music really) but the beats and drums and handmade instruments and dancing was so cool! Complex rhythms and timings, harmonies and just such a wide vocal range. Very cool -- I bought the CD to put on my MP3 player and listen to whilst at the gym!
Afterwards we caught up with Dayna, Mez and Carly again for dinner and drinks at "The Dove". Good solid pub grub, and plenty of different beers. Dayna bought a jug of strawberry früli beer, I had one called "Lucifer" (very strong) and then we tried a chocolate beer which was surprisingly chocolatey. (I know, I know, what was I expecting? But it was weird that "beer" and "chocolate" could go so well together.)
So a busy weekend indeed. Needless to say we're having a night in tonight, maybe watching a DVD (we bought The Last King Of Scotland after renting and watching half of it back in Edinburgh). Now don't tell Dee, but I'm trying to figure out how we can cram even more into next weekend ;-).
Could be my wicked side again, I s'pose. >;-P
We'll have to organise to go see Dayna one weekend.
Wednesday, 1 August 2007
Tuesday, 31 July 2007
Monday, 30 July 2007
Wednesday, 25 July 2007
My work on theage.com.au
Hey all.. I found out this morning that the illustration I did of Cheryl was featured on the Age Blogs: Creativity Corner. Each week they set a topic, and you submit photos and the like. Then they choose one image and one poem to show on the page.
Here's the age page - http://blogs.theage.com.au/creativitycorner/
While I'm spamming you guys with links, make sure you have a look at my blog and my RedBubble page.. I've been doing a fair bit of work recently, and I'm seriously considering printing out some samples to send to childrens book publishers. I seem to be getting a good reaction from the work I have up, I even sold another framed print (not sure who to.. was it one of you guys again?) and quite a few cards. I would love to illustrate a kids book.. that would just be fantastic.
Here's the age page - http://blogs.theage.com.au/creativitycorner/
While I'm spamming you guys with links, make sure you have a look at my blog and my RedBubble page.. I've been doing a fair bit of work recently, and I'm seriously considering printing out some samples to send to childrens book publishers. I seem to be getting a good reaction from the work I have up, I even sold another framed print (not sure who to.. was it one of you guys again?) and quite a few cards. I would love to illustrate a kids book.. that would just be fantastic.
Shrek in da house
Here's a picture of Glenn, Dee and me all Shrekked up for Trin's birthday party. You can see that we're enjoying party food too. ;)There are more piccys in this flickr set. :)
*big hugz*
Sunday, 22 July 2007
Thursday, 19 July 2007
Simpsonize me
http://www.simpsonizeme.com/
This is so cool. That's me as a Simpsons character :)
Here's Cheryl
Feel free to edit this post to add yourself :)
Monday, 16 July 2007
New flat, new hair
Now that I've finally got internet access at home again, it's time to fill you lot in on what I've been up to.As you can see in this photo, I've decided to try the summer colour.. I wanted it natural, they took out most of the black and it went coppery-red. Not exactly what I was after, but it will do for now.. it's certainly MUCH lighter than it used to be. And I still don't recognise myself in shiny surfaces!
My new place is a studio flat, so one room for living, a bathroom and a kitchen. Really, it's all that I need. Most of the flat was furnished, which is good - Jon (my 25 yr old landlord) bought a new mattress for the bed and everything, so it's pretty good. I bought some drawers and little tables from Ikea (and even managed to put most of them together.. the small desk drawers have nails when I think glue will be most effective (after bending 5 or 6 nails trying to hammer them in to the layered board the drawers are made of).. anyway..).
This picture and the next are from different points but are the same room - my living area. In the first you can see the corner of my bed (and the corner of the window opposite). In the second you can see my desk and computer (which also serves as my entertainment unit - my dvds are on the shelf at the top. *grin*). I even managed to take those pictures when it was kinda sunny - it's been raining for the last 5 weeks or so..
The final picture is my kitchen. It's not very big, but I don't have to share, so it doesn't need to be big. The oven and microwave work (bonus). The fridge is bar-fridge sized (and in one of the cupboards under the bench). The washing machine works (no dryer, but I'm sure I can deal with that). And there's even a tiny freezer in the storage room, so I can have frozen meals for when I can't be bothered cooking. All in all - functional and all that I need. :)
So, I'll be here for at least 3 months, and it's my intention to be here until my contract at work runs out (which could be end of October or end of April - it's unofficially been extended till end April). However, Jon's trying to sell the flat, so it could all go sour if someone buys for living in, not buys for investment. But until I get notice, I'm happy to stay here. And there's plenty of space for visitors - provided they bring an airbed and don't mind sleeping on the floor in the same room as me. :)That will do from me for now. Anyone else??
Tuesday, 10 July 2007
We're in London Still
Hey Guys,
We only have 2 weeks of work left in Edinburgh weeeee! cant wait. I have had my resume put forth for a role at Goldman Sachs and I haven't even started looking yet! so hopefully all goes well, there are heaps of job spots in London...
Glenn and I flew down Friday night for house hunting on Saturday, start off as a bit of a nightmare, we booked on the last flight from Edinburgh which is 21:45. so we got there early to have some dinner and a few "mood enhancers" (wine) for me. The flight was then delayed for an hour and a half... when we got to Gatwick we took the express train into london which took 40 minutes then had to line up for an hour for a taxi because the tube we need was closed for rail works (happens quite a bit in London), we ended up getting to our hotel at 2am, then had to get up at 6:30am for our first viewing at 8:30am. Needless to say we were a little bit silly Saturday.
But it ended up really well. The first place we had lined up was for a private place i has seen on the internet Friday, as soon as I saw it I thought perfect. great location exactly what we wanted... and it was! We finished that viewing and thought we should see the others, we saw 2 after that than rang the guy back and took it. The second one we saw was a joke! seriously a matchbox and the third was a converted warehouse so okay but no balcony. So after we viewed the third we went to the nearest pub to celebrate and to ring the guy of course.
Here are some pics (one thing to keep in mind apartments in London are much smaller, this one is half the size of our current place but as a great long balcony along the outside) oh and it also has a view of the Gherkin!
It´s a converted school house, top floor so it is going to be great for my very absent fitness level!
We are also going to get bikes so we can cycle to work..
We only have 2 weeks of work left in Edinburgh weeeee! cant wait. I have had my resume put forth for a role at Goldman Sachs and I haven't even started looking yet! so hopefully all goes well, there are heaps of job spots in London...
Glenn and I flew down Friday night for house hunting on Saturday, start off as a bit of a nightmare, we booked on the last flight from Edinburgh which is 21:45. so we got there early to have some dinner and a few "mood enhancers" (wine) for me. The flight was then delayed for an hour and a half... when we got to Gatwick we took the express train into london which took 40 minutes then had to line up for an hour for a taxi because the tube we need was closed for rail works (happens quite a bit in London), we ended up getting to our hotel at 2am, then had to get up at 6:30am for our first viewing at 8:30am. Needless to say we were a little bit silly Saturday.
But it ended up really well. The first place we had lined up was for a private place i has seen on the internet Friday, as soon as I saw it I thought perfect. great location exactly what we wanted... and it was! We finished that viewing and thought we should see the others, we saw 2 after that than rang the guy back and took it. The second one we saw was a joke! seriously a matchbox and the third was a converted warehouse so okay but no balcony. So after we viewed the third we went to the nearest pub to celebrate and to ring the guy of course.
Here are some pics (one thing to keep in mind apartments in London are much smaller, this one is half the size of our current place but as a great long balcony along the outside) oh and it also has a view of the Gherkin!It´s a converted school house, top floor so it is going to be great for my very absent fitness level!
We are also going to get bikes so we can cycle to work..
Saturday, 7 July 2007
Mum, Dad, Nana and the Wii
Mum, Dad and Nana arrived in Adelaide yesterday. We headed around to their hotel for dinner, fish and chips whose delivery took about an hour longer than it was supposed to, but it was tasty when it got to us. Maybe it was all planned, so we'd be really hungry and enjoy it more :)
Today we had lunch at a little bakery near out house and then headed into the city. We drove around for a look, and had a wander through the mall but it was pretty rainy so we headed home after an hour or so. Then we loaded up the wii with Wario: Smooth Moves. It's a game in which the wiimote is used in a wide variety of ways such as the example above (called "the mohawk") and it's a fun game to watch as well as play. I've posted some videos we took in a zip file here.
Oh, and as far as sports goes Dad is a master bowler, but Mum is a master golfer. And Nana is a master spectator ;)
Wednesday, 4 July 2007
Good News
Long time to talk. So everyone remebers my french assignment well it was a compition.....................I got 229 points....................which means I won.
Sunday, 1 July 2007
No more late nights, let's move!
It's been a while, I know, so how about an update?
Last week was my last week in Support, and I'm very happy about that! No more late nights, no more midnight phone-calls where I'm expected to a) know what is going on, and b) actually care. My ex-team, not the most public of folk, decided to do away with the customary goodbye presentation and instead slinked over at around 5pm with a bottle of 15yo scotch whiskey and the whispered caveat: "we're not doing speeches, the office is too quiet. Bye."
Fine by me! I turned up on Monday to the new office, new team, with nary a backwards-glance. I'm a developer now. In the bank, that's like being a real person -- rather than the burakumin status that Support seems to foster. I've thus far achieved nothing of note, trying to get access to everything I might need ... and I've already done more interesting work that anything I did in Support. (In this case, "interesting" means I've written a little application for tracking what I spend my time on. It consists of a little floating "task" or "context" bar which sits above everything else and has buttons for "meeting", "phone", "coding" ... the idea is you can quickly record what you're doing, and the application records how much time you spend on each thing. Perfect for contracting, or even just for the weekly report that we're expected to produce every week. I might even let Dee use it in whatever contract she starts.)
On that, Dee has started looking for new work. It's looking pretty good thus far -- the rate she's asking for seems quite a lot to us, but is fairly tame compared to the market-rate. Even better, as I've not left the company our income continues across the move i.e. we don't have the extra pressure of trying to find both a job and an apartment. Which is good, since finding a flat is a little bit harder than previously expected.
It's not that there are flats available -- more that they move so quickly that we need to just turn up, pick one, sign the lease and come back up north to pack. I flew down to London last weekend -- and boy are my arms tired *badaboom!*. Anyway, it was a 6am flight down to London from Edinburgh and I met a friend (Mark) I went to Uni with who is currently staying near Paddington. The day was long, we saw a few apartments, but nothing was really ideal. Sigh.
I came back to Edinburgh the same day -- it was cheaper that way -- so as you can imagine I was a little shattered the next day. (If unsure, try a sixteen hour day *wink*.) I was, however, conscious enough to go through the photos of the places I saw and discuss them with Dee. No good, time for a change of gameplan -- let's keep the same budget, but start looking for one bedroom places north of the financial district .
Don't worry Mum, we're looking at places close enough to my work (and Dee's projected work) that we can walk in each day, or at least ride bicycles. No "tube" (the London Underground) for us! Not if I can help it, anyway.
Anyway, we haven't found a place yet but will keep you posted. We're planning on both going down next week, so fingers crossed!
Last week was my last week in Support, and I'm very happy about that! No more late nights, no more midnight phone-calls where I'm expected to a) know what is going on, and b) actually care. My ex-team, not the most public of folk, decided to do away with the customary goodbye presentation and instead slinked over at around 5pm with a bottle of 15yo scotch whiskey and the whispered caveat: "we're not doing speeches, the office is too quiet. Bye."
Fine by me! I turned up on Monday to the new office, new team, with nary a backwards-glance. I'm a developer now. In the bank, that's like being a real person -- rather than the burakumin status that Support seems to foster. I've thus far achieved nothing of note, trying to get access to everything I might need ... and I've already done more interesting work that anything I did in Support. (In this case, "interesting" means I've written a little application for tracking what I spend my time on. It consists of a little floating "task" or "context" bar which sits above everything else and has buttons for "meeting", "phone", "coding" ... the idea is you can quickly record what you're doing, and the application records how much time you spend on each thing. Perfect for contracting, or even just for the weekly report that we're expected to produce every week. I might even let Dee use it in whatever contract she starts.)
On that, Dee has started looking for new work. It's looking pretty good thus far -- the rate she's asking for seems quite a lot to us, but is fairly tame compared to the market-rate. Even better, as I've not left the company our income continues across the move i.e. we don't have the extra pressure of trying to find both a job and an apartment. Which is good, since finding a flat is a little bit harder than previously expected.
It's not that there are flats available -- more that they move so quickly that we need to just turn up, pick one, sign the lease and come back up north to pack. I flew down to London last weekend -- and boy are my arms tired *badaboom!*. Anyway, it was a 6am flight down to London from Edinburgh and I met a friend (Mark) I went to Uni with who is currently staying near Paddington. The day was long, we saw a few apartments, but nothing was really ideal. Sigh.
I came back to Edinburgh the same day -- it was cheaper that way -- so as you can imagine I was a little shattered the next day. (If unsure, try a sixteen hour day *wink*.) I was, however, conscious enough to go through the photos of the places I saw and discuss them with Dee. No good, time for a change of gameplan -- let's keep the same budget, but start looking for one bedroom places north of the financial district .
Don't worry Mum, we're looking at places close enough to my work (and Dee's projected work) that we can walk in each day, or at least ride bicycles. No "tube" (the London Underground) for us! Not if I can help it, anyway.
Anyway, we haven't found a place yet but will keep you posted. We're planning on both going down next week, so fingers crossed!
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