Before I start this, I know my theme keeps changing. It seems that the kick ass themes that I choose are almost always guaranteed to throw a wobbly as soon as a new version of the fantastic Wordpress is released. Also following feedback from my review group (well I think it was Matt H and Andrew) it has been a bit confusing about which time frame I am referring to in my posts. So to clarify this it following off where the last post ended (yes we’re still roughly in September 2007, where I went into work on Monday in London as opposed to Birmingham.
Ok so I did slightly miss out of the last post the fact that I did go out after work on the Friday for drinks. It was a weird and surreal experience for me, having a small birthday celebration in London which I wasn’t used to at all. By no means am I a country bumpkin with webbed feet or anything, but for someone that isn’t really used to living in the city, it was strange being in the middle of a bunch of tall buildings and a lot of people and thinking to myself “I now live here”. I sort of purposefully don’t tell people about birthdays because I don’t like a big deal made anyway.
On Monday I met up with the 2 guys who I would be working with for the next few weeks and we walked to our new home from 9-6 weekdays, which happened to be in Monument, just north of London Bridge. As I was still quite wide eyed and new to the city (I still am really) having been only there for a week, I spent a lot of the time getting used to thinking in the morning, on the train and tube, how lucky sardines are being dead and packed in a steel can. It was also novel for me to look out over the Thames as I walked across London Bridge every morning and evening, which as I looked around me, I was the only one doing it as the robotic suits were staring forward determinedly hurrying to work. I was quite pleased at being slightly compensated by the incredibly high living costs in comparison to what I was used to by the free stuff that I was getting. Free papers, free tissues, soup, curry sauce, coffee, tea etc. they all came in handy at some point.
Work was work and in the months to come I saw a bit more of London, even though I am now living here I still manage to feel like a tourist. I was slightly puzzled at why there was a different camera in similar positions on London Bridge filming people walking to work. I think there may well be more than enough stock footage of sped up people walking across bridges for news reports or whatever, but I could be wrong. I managed to see a few things that I’d not seen before such as Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square. I even watched 3:10 to Yuma in the Premiere Odeon place although the £15 or so for a single ticket only went a very short way to compensate me that my bum cheeks could be occupying the same seat that has been graced with the likes of Tom Hanks or John Travolta. The film itself was rather good, albeit absolutely no different to seeing it at any other cinema. Actually I’ll rephrase that, it was no different to seeing it at any other cinema apart from the Futurist.
In the months to come I was also able to increase my exposure to London a bit more. The irony of being shown round London by Jonathan from Cork, Ireland was not lost on me. We went to the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum which are now free. I guess a lot of things may change in the space of about 18 years which is the last time I visited these. We spent most of the time in the History variant and didn’t have much time for the Science one which did seem a lot more interesting in my opinion but we have since revisited it to give it a fair chance.
After word got out about my enthusiasm for Lord of the Rings with my work colleagues (or perhaps come to think of it, it was the random Rings quotes in normal conversation…) me and a couple of the inductees went to see the Lord of the Rings musical down Drury Lane. It was great being able to feed my obsession a bit more; the sets and costumes were fantastic and I’m still trying to work out how they made Frodo disappear in front of my eyes (and no, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a trapdoor).
Other than the above, I don’t have much to say about the months September-November 2007 or rather I’m betting there is loads but I can’t remember. Oh yes that does mean that you can hear the faint jingle of bells, see the green of holly and hear “Holidays are coming, holidays are coming…” for the next post.
I’m doing something slightly different for this post; for those readers who are violin players, get yours ready on my cue. Following on from the last post, I moved to London into my Dad’s house for the first week of work. The first week consisted mostly of sitting around doing very little, until I, and a 3 others from the induction were told that our first project would be in Fleet helping a client test all their systems from a move from XP to Vista. I wasn’t entirely impressed after asking several times that projects that I would be assigned to we be exclusively in London and the answer was ‘Yes’. I have got used to people saying ‘yes’ when in fact what they mean is ‘no’ (which is quite hard to tell, yes? No?), I think this was a case of the answer being different before and after being accepted for the job.
I spent Wednesday, Thursday and Friday shadowing a project in Aldgate, for a major bank who were rolling out a new mortgage checking website. However, on Friday after luinchtime, I was surprised to receive an e-mail from my line manager about a project in Birmingham and that I had to join a conference call in half an hour about it. I rang him up and explained that this was not ideal since Birmingham is in the West Midlands and I had gone to a bit of trouble 6 days earlier to move out of the East Midlands and into London. It didn’t cut it and I was in no position to argue the point really and besides I didn’t really mind, so after I joined this call I was informed that my hotel was being booked and everything. I used this point to ask for a laptop because Internet access was likely to be blocked where I was based at, and I may need to reply to consultancy e-mails, fill in timesheets and the like and I managed to go back to head office and pick one up the same day.
The day after, Saturday, happened to be the titular birthday when I did…pretty much bugger all. It was my first proper weekend living in London and celebrated by going into Croydon with Dad, bought some socks and underwear just because I’m rock and roll and it was my birthday. I even had to pay my dad board, which may have been a little ill-timed of him to ask for, and received no gifts from anyone in return and without being too materialistic, I din’t really expect to be ending my birthday worse off than I was before. -Ok go ahead with those violins- Before you get too sentimental, a few days later I received a Amazon voucher from Tom, which I bought ‘The Movies’ for the PC and ‘Brain Training’ for my DS. I was also lucky to receive a letter from Mr. Foster with some expertly painted artwork on the cover, containing the new Harry Potter audiobook. Ok and granted my friend also bought me tickets to go paintballing (which we only used 2 weeks ago). All of which I am of course very lucky to have received.
Other than that, I really did nothing, other than have a Chinese, watch films and generally veg out. I also received a call from my manager to say that I, in fact was not due in Birmingham on Monday after all and could turn up in head office. Therefore the timeline went something like this: Tuesday - Going to Woking on Monday, Wednesday - Going to Woking on Monday, Thursday - Going to Woking on Monday, Friday - Going to Birmingham on Monday(frantically join a conference call about this within 30 mins), Saturday - Stay in London on Monday. Such is life and the best made plans I guess.
I’ll leave you with this musing that I thought about whilst watching a great series that I’ve recently watched called ‘From the Earth to the Moon’ which followed NASA’s adventures during the space race. In 1969 when NASA put the first man on the moon with the aid of computers probably less powerful than my mp3 player, NASA in Houston were in regular contact with Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong, whilst they were on the moon. So why the hell in the year 2008 does my mobile phone lose reception every time I jump on the tube?!
It’s still a case of blogging when I have time and can be bothered and so I offer another museum piece that is a previous event in my life. I’m pretty honoured that I have been asked by several people where the latest installment of my ramblings are. Some of you may notice the new look to the site, the new version of Wordpress broke the skin and I had to get a new one so I hope it’s not like using a cheesegrater on your eyes.
Having quit my old technical support role, I somehow managed to impress an interviewer enough for them to offer me a job. After accepting their…acceptance I was kindly booked 3 weeks in sunny South Africa for work training. I’m not overly sure why they do the training there, they do have a big office building there and dedicated training rooms, whereas their London office doesn’t and frankly I wasn’t to argue with their reasoning. If somebody had said to me when I was lying in hospital, that I’d be in South Africa in little over a month’s time, I would’ve thought you would be utterly off your rocker.
It started with meeting the trainees in the office in Woking. This was hard enough for me to find, armed with a Google Map printout and my belongings for the next 3 weeks, so I was slightly concerned about navigating a foreign country, even if it was English speaking. It was weird as it was my first time outside of Europe and whilst in South Africa, I didn’t find it strange to be referred to as ‘from the UK’ what I did find unusual was to be referred to as ‘European’.
It started off with the usual stuff that I was dreading, ye olde introductions. Having got past the formalities, introductions and a slap up meal, we were carted off to the airport. Experiencing the paranoia of today’s world first hand after we were scrutinized by men, machine and dogs, passport was a ‘yes-yes’ bottled water was a ‘no-no’ and there seemed to be an onus on inspecting shoes. Although they did find a tiny village of conscious people in my shoes, no chemicals or explosive devices were present or found so I was good to go. The flight was OK, despite myself being a bit apprehensive about it and I got to watch Spider-man 3 which I thought was pretty good, despite people telling me otherwise.
We changed plane in Johannesburg after a mad rush round a frankly insane airport that’s shaped like a horseshoe, except the directions tell you that the quickest way to go to your terminal, are both the long and the short way. Needless to say, we ambled our way unknowingly the long way.
We were placed in different hotels dotted around Durban and I was quite enjoying our place with frankly a lovely lady, who may have talked a bit much, but was a quoting legend almost as much as Detective John Kimble himself. The first day ended and we were shown to a lovely local restaurant called Nourish and after taking a tip off my brother to try the steak in South Africa, I wasn’t about to disagree with this. It was the stuff of dreams, the ambrosia of steaks, melt in your mouth heaven…should probably shut up about food before I turn into Jason Biggs.
We spent a vast amount of our time in the office training, which I guess is fair enough, but it was pretty intense, I mean straight after we got off our plane and went to the training centre we were instantly in for lectures and work. I remember that first night pretty well, we were all exhausted and only a few days later, we had an exam - compulsory to pass, so the stakes were pretty high.
The first weekend we were there we went to a fairly local bar in the town and on Sunday, it was a trip to the beach in Durban. It was a pretty cool day; nice and hot and we saw in a local sea life centre, lots of cool fish and some South African penguins (which I didn’t know existed) though I think they were not the gay variety, for those of you that know what I mean by that. We also got to see something which I wanted to see since I was little; a dolphin show, which I enjoyed thoroughly even if the dolphins probably weren’t the happiest, what with being in captivity and all.
The weekend after, we set off groggy in the morning to an authentic Zulu village within ‘The Valley of a Thousand Hills’. We were treated to some tribal dancing, where I thought they were going to poke my eyes out with their sticks, but they were only actors anyway. We then went to what was called a safari park, but had a disappointing handful of different animals such as zebra, wildebeest, antelope and that’s about it. The park also had a bunch of crocodiles in it which were interesting to see, especially at feeding time. We were told that the oldest croc there and also the largest was a bit grumpy then; his wife had just bitten of one of his toes and they weren’t speaking to each other. There was quite impressive array of snakes as well, including the Black Mamba of Kill Bill 2 fame.
Another day we went to action cricket, a sort of cut down version of normal cricket in an indoor arena. After a long and not too awaited return for me to sports, I proved why me and sports don’t go together, although I didn’t do too badly at bowling. Though in saying that, there’s no real way of saying if it was me that’s good at bowling, or the person batting that is rubbish.
The weekend after, we actually were still in the office on Saturday and yes I know I can’t complain as I was getting paid to be there. On Sunday, we did ‘Canopy Tours’ which consists of you going down sort of death slides, but without a seat, and you’re strapped in a harness. Some of them were pretty fast and some of them quite slow, but you could sometimes enjoy the scenery as you were zooming past. The knack of knowing when to stop on my first go failed me and I realised the hard way of how difficult it is to pull your own body-weight up an incline with your arms, when you’re a heff.
The final night came before we knew it and after the final exam, all there was to do was to celebrate in a lovely restaurant in Durban, which we were told we were lucky to have as it was a bit costly and over the normal allowance for events. It was absolutely lovely, we got free tribal markings of facepaint, a serenade from a band and some great food. Let’s be frank even though I don’t smoke, any restaurant that has a cigar menu has to be good.
The flight back went as well as can be expected when airlines go wrong and bums (which aren’t yours) are in your seats and you have to get on another flight. Durban airport was still as confusing and they even had a room to check in guns, can you believe that?! I saw Blood Diamond on the way back, which turns out is pretty good.
When I got back to London and travelled back to Kettering, I was utterly exhausted again. I went to sleep and woke up a record breaking circa 24 hours later (yes, 24 hours asleep!) when mum played an evil trick on me, saying it was Sunday and I had to move to London. The day after, Sunday, I had notime to recover from the trip and I packed all my belongings into a car and moved into London to my dad’s house, ready for my first day of work in London on the Monday.
Pictures from South Africa are available for those of you familiar with a website called ‘Facebook’. I’m sure that if you’re reading this, then you’ve probably already seen them. Also signed up for a Flickr account for those of you that are interested, but I haven’t had the patience to upload any photos from SA yet.