April 7th, 2008 James
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?!
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March 16th, 2008 James
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.
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December 28th, 2007 James
So, we’re only in July on here and I’ll eventually catch up to present day. That’s when it’ll get exciting as I’ll start predicting future based events to make up for lost time
After I lost the use of an internal organ and came out of hospital, which was a cinematic moment akin to Andy Dufrene escaping from Shawshank, I had a few weeks off work, whilst I realised I didn’t really want to go off. Life was good, my friends lent me all the Star Wars films, an Xbox and I had a shiny new DS courtesy of Tom. Eating happened to be a painful affair, although this gradually became slightly more bearable. I went back to work for 4 weeks as and then left, as planned.
The days after I left were pretty hectic, although safe in the knowledge that work had let me be cheeky enough to take my week’s holiday, despite being on leave after hospital. I left on the Monday, Tuesday I was in London where I stayed at my dad’s for a few days, I had an interview on Wednesday, Thursday I travelled back to Watford and Friday I travelled to see Luke for the weekend.
The weekend couldn’t be anything but epic; I mean, c’mon the new and final Harry Potter book was to be released and there was the promise of a game of Warhammer (which I say I hate, but secretly enjoy). I had the utter pleasure of travelling from Watford to Hull via London and through King’s Cross and as a result, I stumbled by chance on an utterly fantastic sight – platform 9 and 3/4 complete with trolley vanishing into it.
It was my second time in Hull and I was there for just over half an hour and managed to be a bystander in a robbery and was almost mugged, I wasn’t too impressed. Here’s how it happened; I arrived in Hull and as it was raining, I thought I’d go to the local Games Workshop, you know, just to keep dry and not to look at models. Besides, it was only whilst I waited for Luke to finish work and pick me up. There was a young man of the visually unsavoury sort who was lurking behind me and asking me lots of questions about models. The shop shut shortly after and I decided to part with some cash in exchange for a model and leave. Imagine my delight when the shady character sidled up beside me wanting cash in the exchange for mystery goods, which turned out to be a model he had just nicked from the table in the shop. Being the moralistic person I am, I tried to shrug him off, but navigating the streets of Hull when you’ve never been there before, on a Friday evening at around 6pm when it’s utterly dead, as it turns out it isn’t that easy. The guy didn’t understand the meaning on ‘no’ and threatened to put me in an ambulance until the dictionary in his limited brain flicked to the ‘n’ words and managed to decipher the meaning of no. He stormed off, smashed the model, to which I promptly returned to the shop (with no reward, may I add, though I can’t imagine there are much marketing value for a smashed landspeeder, well painted or no). The shopkeeper knew the guy as a bad sort and had even seen the guy nick the model.
Luke was then on hand and turned up and whisked me away to the magical land of Driffield (capital of the world) where you can drink water straight out of the tap and it’s as good as filter water.
Amusingly Luke’s entire family was reading the new Harry Potter book by the rest of the day and Luke and we had to largely creep around the house with hand over our ears for risks of leaked spoilers. That day we played Warhammer, I forget who won, but I suspect it wasn’t me and I also had the luxury of seeing Byrd and Rose mansion (though you need a couple of days to see it all!). It seems that they’d done a lot with the place since they bought it and it looked like a very impressive pad. I was especially impressed with the Sky remote that turned on the lights in the bedroom. I was even half tempted to do a finger clicking celebration that I blatantly nicked off Chris. They had cats too, so I can’t complain. Just goes to show that you can still live a good life without your gall bladder, eh Alice?
We then went to a delightful restaurant, where I ate stuff that I shouldn’t have at the time and would have regretted the pain if the food hadn’t tasted so good. It was good seeing everyone and in a way, it’s a shame that I passed the interview for this job because after Luke, Alice and Chris suggested a cunning idea to find a job in Yorkshire.
Sunday consisted of Luke generously ending my torment of avoiding spoilers and buying me the Deathly Hallows, and me reminding my friend that she was supposed to be coming to visit me in Watford the following day to take my belongings back to Kettering (which I knew she’d forgotten). We also went to see The Order of the Phoenix, which turned out to be really good, even if Tonks didn’t have the accent in the films suggested by Stephen Fry in the audiobooks.
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