fear of the unknown no longer
(n.b. backdated post from 30th June... sorry you kids on the feed, you'll be getting it out of order, but... yeah. :)
I had a bit of a revelation about myself this week.
When I was younger, I used to love my comfy little world of predictability because I understood how it worked. I liked knowing how I was supposed to behave, what was expected of me. I didn't deal with change very well. Anytime I got dropped into a situation I didn't know, I clammed up, hid in my shell and generally had feelings of apprehension and nervousness. They mellowed a bit as I got older and was forced to deal with different situations, but it wasn't something I'd embrace.
Well, I like to think that I have changed. Coming to London and going through the job hunting, the flat hunting, organisation, budgeting, travelling... all of it has slowly opened my eyes to the fact that whatever the world throws at me, I am generally capable of handling it and I'll be OK by the end of the ride. Having to endure the huge amount of stress and change has altered my way of dealing with the world, and made me welcome what comes next in the general scheme of things. I feel more empowered, and capable, and confident of what I can do. Two years ago I hadn't even gone on my first european trip; now I can look at where I am and what I've gone through since then and it seems incredible to have done so much in such a short period of time. That was all less than two years ago; who knows where I'll be in two years' time? I have no idea where I will be, and I like that thought. I like the unpredictability of it all, and I love the fluidity of my life right now. Depsite feelings of uncertainty I've had in the past, it's like a switch has been flipped and it's something to be appreciated rather than apprehensive about. I honestly feel like Anything is Possible, and I will always appreciate London, and the friends that I have - both here and at home - for helping me realise it.
happy summer solstice!
Yay, it's the longest day of the year in sunlight hours! I wanted to do something to celebrate, and it turned out that all my flatmates were home tonight, which never happens (I think I can count on one hand the number of times the four of us have been in one room together). So tonight we finally all went for a drink together. Without the distraction of kitchen/food, TV, or house politics, it was a good chat and an opportunity to see everyone in a different context. :)
I also fit in a swimming session today, so I'm feeling extra virtuous. Yay me! It's cool when the day redeems itself in ways you don't expect.
strange maps
This is a really interesting read, posted up by Cally on Facebook.
hello :o)
ooh, it's been a while. Work has occupied a lot of my head space recently. I've been wrestling with code/database scripts, and frustrating work processes like i) having exclusive checkouts in a team of 20, ii) having an international development team that writes the architecture and communicates seemingly only via msn messenger, iii) not giving developers db owner access to the db server with their windows login.... instead we have fights over the one login available on the development server that has the rights to do anything. (eventually, you get sick of fighting and use the admin account to create another user for yourself so you can actually get some work done. ha.)
I've had a fantastic time outside of work though, so overall there is balance :) I went to Norway a couple of weeks ago, have yet to upload the photos because there are so many of them! but it was a nice trip, I'd like to go for longer and actually hike around some of the fjords. But if you ever go to Bergen, take the cable car up to the mountain tops, and bring some walking shoes. It won't be long before you feel like you're in the middle of nowhere. You can't get much better views for less effort :)
Weekend before last was a trip up to Cambridge to visit Anika, which was seriously
awesome. The weather was absolutely gorgeous - sunny skies and warm weather both days! As soon as we'd arrived, we collected our bikes for the weekend and rode off to her college. I haven't actually cycled along the roads before, so it was pretty scary (especially without a helmet!) but it's a high-student-population-with-bikes town, so the drivers were used to it.
Her college has its own punts, so we made excellent use of the facilities :D you're not allowed to ever laugh at other people's poor efforts at punting until you've tried it yourself. Anika has some kind of sixth sense when it comes to water craft (she is a rower, after all), but Cally and I had some issues with steering. I was experiencing a mysterious gravitational pull towards thick overhanging willow trees, and Cally had the same sense towards concrete walls. After a picnic lunch, Cally and I retired to our room for a rest before our dinner appointment, which involved cycling through the countryside to a gastropub along the river cam for a filling meal. Unfortunately we couldn't stay for dessert, so we did a thing I'm not particularly proud of: went to tescos and bought two litres of ben and jerrys ice creams to eat in our hotel room and cancel out all that exercise! sigh.
Next day we were up and enjoying a full english breakfast at our hotel (mmmm.... fried goodness) before cycling to
The Three Horseshoes, which is a gastropub in Madingley and a really fantastic place to lounge around on a lazy Sunday if you get an outdoor table. Then, to top off the eating tour, we had tea and scones at
the orchard, former haunt of many an author and student. Basically this involves a giant garden and lots of deck chairs and some very tempting bakery goods....
Back to Cambridge, we had a dinner booked in at Anika's college hall, which was a pompous three course affair. Students of the college have to wear their black gowns, and they serve you the main course in stages. Tee hee!
Check out the cambridge photo album for all the goods.
Thanks so much to Anika for being an awesome guide. :)
Next weekend I'm in Paris with Vicki, and coincidentally also Niall who will be there with his folks. I'm anticipating some good food and hopefully shopping. :)
I'm going to vent. I had an intensely gruelling, frustrating day at work today, and the net effect of my day was about three lines of code. I spent the whole day trying to integrate some changes that I'd done into another branch of our product. What should have been a one hour job became eight, because of the utterly ridiculous base architecture we use - which is sealed to us despite being developed by another branch of our company. wtf?! One table in the old system used to have key and value columns, plus a few random others. In the new system this had been split into three tables (the original table, one to hold the keys, one to hold the values), with the actual string values of the key and value fields now stored in
another table specifically designed for holding strings, for internationalisation. That's a five table relationship where there used to be one. Even worse, all the logic for creating and referencing the IDs in this five-table-relationship is done by table functions and stored procs BY CONVENTION, and they were all buggy! I say 'were', because I spent three hours wading through them to find out why my code wasn't working... argh! I have had enough of this week, and dodgy code that I'm powerless to fix. Bring on the crappily paid but emotionally fulfilling jobs.
(okay. It's now ten minutes and some greasy chips later, and I'm feeling much better. So, on with the rest of things.)
To de-stress I am mooching at home and
giggling at random threadless shirts,
even if i've seen them before. The only problem with their tees is they use the same size print on a small girly shirt as an extra large guys' shirt, so the best looking shirts are always the medium/large guys ones, but oh well. I still covet. In fact, all this browsing is prompting me to wear
the only threadless t-shirt I own tomorrow. (I used to have others, but bequeathed them to new homes or left them in Sydney).
Anyway, Cally, Kim and I are going up to Cambridge this weekend to visit Anika, who is a baby PhD in training! :) She has business cards! With her name, and the Cambridge logo on them! How awesome is that?! There will be much punting, cycling, eating of english breakfasts, visiting of country pubs, and a pompous college dinner in store for us. I'm very keen on seeing more of England outside of London, especially now that the weather is getting better. This weekend is going to be an ideal way to wash the work right outta my hair. :)
