Workin' 9 to 5:30...
(edit from 3rd Dec: I wrote this a week ago, at which point Blogger froze and didn't let me publish it... so now here it is.)
Yes, I'm workin'!
I started about two weeks ago (shortly after my last post), after which point I became horrendously busy attempting to find a place to live. I ended up taking the contract position out in the middle of nowhere, which was a lucky decision in hindsight. The work is fairly interesting, the people are pretty cool, and the commuting isn't so bad... yet. We'll see how I feel about it in a couple of weeks. :)
I'm working in a place called
Guildford in Surrey county, and it takes me about an hour and a half to get to work. There's a fast train that leaves London Waterloo station and takes about 45 minutes to get there. I pass though fields with cows and autumn trees on my way to work. It is most definitely Not London... as in, people would travel here on a weekend break from London. It's like living in Sydney and going to Katoomba or Wollongong to work.
My main focus is now finding a place to live, which has been quite hard. I'm searching around Angel, which is where Gabs, Cally & Phil live, but there's a lot of competiton for flat shares. There are also some very dodgy places around. I don't think I'm being overly picky, but I don't want to spend 150 pounds a month living in a dodgy place. I wish I had started looking 3 weeks ago (even though it wasn't an option because I was stressing about finding work), because very few places are available right now... most are advertised for weeks in advance. Plus it's getting close to Christmas which means places are becoming scarce.
I'll be glad when everything is settled and I can relax and start figuring out what to do for Christmas.
predicate logic and alcohol do not mix
I'm sitting in an internet cafe on a saturday afternoon revising predicate logic.
One of my recruiters has sent me some exercises to review in preparation for a job at a large financial institution. The thing is, I'm pretty sure that I swore off the stuff when I finished PSDB way back when in 2000. I may have even had some celebratory coffee/cake type meal to mark the occasion. And yet six years later, I'm giving up an (admittedly grey and not very warm) saturday afternoon to revise predicate logic. I don't even remember the rules!!! It's very vexing. I might even quit while I'm ahead and not do the interview to save myself the trouble of being rejected later.
On the topic of jobs, I've had a lot of calls since my last dreary post. Vicki gave me some hints on how to update my resume and suddenly everything started moving very quickly. I got offered two jobs - one contract, one permanent. While the contract is very attractive in pay and work content, it is out in the middle of nowhere working for a 4 person company whose .NET experience is a collective 3 hours. The permanent is great in terms of people and location, but sounds as exciting as watching mung beans grow. It's going to sound insane, but I might turn them both down. Which puts me back to where I started five days ago. :( And revising predicate logic on a Saturday.
I drank a lot of alcohol last night too (just to de-stress, mind you). My head did not feel like it wanted to do predicate logic today, but I got up and made it learn.
I did have a break mid-afternoon to see Tokyo Chutei Iki, a wacky Japanese jazz group here for the
London Jazz Festival (playing for free at a bookstore in London. Free is good.) The group is made up of 10 baritone saxophones and they have lots of fun with their performances - jumping up and down in time with the music, wandering amongst the crowd, sitting down, lying down, taking photos of themselves in the middle of the performance. It was great! They also have a performance tonight, but at 20 pounds I can't really afford it at the moment...
I coincidentally ran into my cousin at the Jazz performance so I spent a couple of hours with a coffee and catch up. It was good a good excuse not to do predicate logic.
Predicate logic and alcohol do not mix.
this one time, at band camp...
Agi and Rodney simultaneously sent me the link for the 2002 band camp video which is now online. After feeling very dejected for most of the day, it really cheered me up :)
I called my parents and Cameron this morning to hear some familiar voices. And I bought some mightily unhealthy "comfort food" garlic bread. And I ate some swiss walnut pie, too.
Can't wait till job hunting is over.
stupid
the act of spending pounds when one does not earn any.
hello everyone!
Don't panic! I'm alive and well. At the moment I'm staying in Gabby's flat in Islington, which is a great suburb full of trendy bars/cafes/shops. I like it so much that I want to move here, if I can find a suitable place.
The job hunting has been going okay. Companies do most of their hiring through recruiters, who are very slimy individuals - about on par with real estate agents, but even more greedy and transparent. I had a whole spiel written here about how much I dislike them, then I realised it made me sound like a whinging pom so I deleted it. :)
The English love their gardens, so I've made it a point to try and see as many as possible. I visited Kew Gardens with Gabby last weekend where they had an Autumn festival (basically, lots of pumpkins and apples and cranberries on display) and it was a really relaxing and soothing afternoon. It was the first clear day I've had in a long while, so it was great to do something outdoors. The trees are turning, the air is crisp, but the days are getting shorter :( I also visited Regent's Park, ostensibly for a jog, but I managed about a total of 500 metres before giving up. I'm so unfit. :p
I've come to the conclusion that people who whinge about food in London don't really cook for themselves - the food hasn't been THAT bad. I'm actually quite impressed with the range of cheese at the local supermarkets - there's about 20 different varieties of cheddar, all from different regions in the UK. Meat is kind of expensive and doesn't look all that great, but you can get lots of different varieties of raw foods that I've never seen in Sydney except in specialist health shops. Fruit and vegetable quality seems okay. I'll just stick to what looks like it's in season. So, don't worry mum - I'm eating properly.
I visited IKEA earlier this week, but I wanted to dedicate a whole entry to the visit, so it'll have to wait until later.
I've tried so many times to write a blog entry, but every time I find something interesting to write about, I'm nowhere near a computer. Then when I do finally get access to the internet (we're "borrowing" wireless at Gabby's place but it's not very reliable) I'm too mentally exhausted to write anything down. Dealing with calls from recruiters who want you to apply for PHP consultancy jobs when you're looking for .NET contracts would probably wear anyone down.
It's getting cold in London - the sun came out this week and the temperature dropped by 3 or 4 degrees. Oh, the irony.
