the adventures of pinkaholic girl

can has job?

2009-04-27T19:03:00.000+01:00

hullo folks, it's been a while since I've written anything, mostly because we've been away for the last 5 months. But now we're back in London, and it's all about coming back down to reality. :( We've been back for about 6 weeks now, and we've noticed quite a few side effects (some good; some not) which have arisen from the credit crunch.

Firstly, the interest rate is at a ludicrous 0.5%, which means that we're better off investing in llama farming than putting our money in the bank. Transferring it home isn't really an option either, because the exchange rate kind of sucks. (I recommend you switch to the one- and five-year views on the graph for some real entertainment.)

Secondly, a whole lot of shops and chains have just disappeared off the London shoppingscape after going into administration. This includes some huge ones like Woolworths (sort of like the K-marts of the UK) and Zavvi (ex-Virgin Megastore emporiums). On the flip side, there are lots of sales around in the stores left standing to entice the un-crunched shoppers to buy up. There are also some really good deals for hoity-toity restaurants in the capital - presumably because their old clientele are pinching the pennies and don't want to eat at posh restaurants every week. We've dined at several Michelin starred restaurants for cheap, and had some great 2 course weekday lunches for just £15. hurrah :)

Thirdly, it is totally a renter's market out there. The recent drop in house prices means that a lot of people aren't willing to sell their houses at the moment, so there's a surplus of properties for rent. When we got back, I expected to go through a month of hell, looking at dingy flats that were way overpriced and having to make decisions about renting them on the spot. Not so! We had a week to browse through virtually all of the properties available in the neighbourhood before eventually putting an offer in on a ridiculously cheap flat 5 days after we first saw it (and during that time the rent dropped another £25 pounds). In any other year, you would have made an appointment during the afternoon to view a flat at 6pm, and in the 3 hours between it will have gone. So, no complaints from me on that one.

Lastly, which brings me to the title of this post - the job hunting. Job hunting in London is never fun anyway, but this time around it is particularly discouraging. Previously, I've been able to get a dozen job specs and at least a couple of interviews lined up before one week is out, and every time I put my cv up on a job board, I'd get harassed by agents for months afterwards. These days, I can count on one hand the number of times I've talked to an agent in the past two weeks. I've had one phone interview for a permanent job that I know I don't want and every single job I apply for online is met with a blank wall of silence from the agency. Ouch :(

The ultimate irony in all of this is that the flow of finance jobs hasn't seemed to abate at all - there are at least four times as many finance jobs advertised compared to non-finance. So here I am, a victim of crunchy credit, trying to find a way to get a recruiter to speak to me, when people who contributed to this mess can still earn a living.

Someone, somewhere, owes me.... big time.

travel blog

2008-10-30T02:10:00.002Z

Niall and I have a travel blog, where we're going to document our adventures for the next few months. See you over there :)

some light entertainment

2008-08-29T16:34:00.003+01:00

I know it's been a long time since I've written anything, but it's Friday (thank god); now everyone can relax and enjoy some Human Tetris. I've seen it before, but there's so many related videos on youtube it just doesn't stop being funny!!!

A simple guide to winning French Open tickets

2008-06-02T20:52:00.002+01:00

You know the best way to win French Open tickets?

1. Submit an application in for the ticket ballot, fully expecting that nothing will come out of it.

2. Queue up a semi-clashing holiday to Euro Disney on a whim after seeing a commercial on TV.

3. Wait paitently until the tickets start to be allocated. When it seems unlikely you'll get any (as if you're going to win semi finals tickets to a grand slam anyway), go ahead and book your non-refundable holiday.

4. Wait three days, and presto! Tickets will arrive.

5. Get out your wallet and book another non-refundable ticket to Paris.

As Niall said, I think the chances of us winning the ballot tickets became almost certain the moment we committed money to the holiday. But I'm really excited, it's going to be awesome and full of people dressed in stuffed suits and amusing signs in french :)

(For the record, that's the only time that I have ever seen a commercial for Euro Disney on TV. Spooky.)

The Fat Stack

2008-05-12T22:53:00.004+01:00

So I've been gymming it for 3 months, I'm feeling healthier and am 2 kilos lighter. I'm finally tackling some of that heathrow injection and I feel good. Yay me :)

Having said that, I'm now going to dive into fat theorem. There's always a pattern to the way that people gain weight (and the UK is a great place to do that). As all your hard-earned muscle and general health gets replaced by flab, one lucky part of your body is the first to receive the extra fat and the last to lose it.

The fat stack works like a programming stack. Last bits added to the stack are the first to be removed, but the bottom of the stack always takes forever to go, because you fluctuate by adding stuff or removing stuff from the stack. It's like building a pyramid with bricks. You lay your foundations first, then each subsequent layer is carefully piled on top of the previous ones until you have a masterpiece. When you want to deconstruct it, the bricks at the top are the first and the easiest to go. The top layers are tiny! You'll get moving and feel like you're making progress in no time. However, as you make your way down the stack, you realise it gets progressively harder. Unfortunately those pyramid foundations are rock solid, and large. They'll take the most effort to remove.

Everybody has a different foundation of fat. Thigh-based-stacks are common. Other people will start with the hips, maybe the abdomen, or the arms. The fat will eventually spread its wings and anchor itself everywhere, but it has to start somewhere.

Me? My fat stack always starts with my face. That's right: I have a face-based-stack. This has the unfortunate affect of making people think that I am chubbier than I look, which is kinda frustrating, especially in photos :p I don't think it's very common, but I'm only guessing here.

I envy people like Nigella Lawson, because she's got a really thin face in proportion to her body. She can take that "never trust a skinny chef" saying and sprint with it, cause when you look at her face, it doesn't give away the size of her body. She can eat with impunity and still get away with it. Jealousy! (I think hers is a chest-based-stack, which probably makes her the envy of many women who find that the chest region is the first to pop off the stack.)

I will continue on my gym regime until I get some movement on the face. I need that loss, baby. I remember seeing a girl on CSI miami who shares my fate. Maybe we should get in touch and start a support group.

It's raining, it's.... pouring?

2008-03-10T13:59:00.001Z

It doesn't normally rain much here, but we're getting some crazy weather because of a big storm cell from the atlantic ocean. It's even hailing a little bit (I literally mean a little bit, the hail is less than half a centimetre in diameter). This country's public transport sort of falls over whenever anything out of the ordinary happens - 3 cm of snow, winds blowing leaves onto tube lines, temperatures of 30 degrees bending the tracks, etc - so it'll be interesting to see what happens in rush hour tonight.

Of course, today is the day that we decided to eat at the local Japanese restaurant and got caught in the storm on the way back. Was worth it though. :)

The beginning of a new era.

2008-02-21T18:38:00.001Z

Today is the beginning of my new and exciting life philosophy. Like
the Summer of George, it is a time that will change my life for the
better. A time for action. A time, ladies and gentlemen, that will
bring me happiness, enlightenment, and hopefully some rock-hard abs.

Today, for the first time in my life, I joined a gym. :-o

A real life gym, with a real life monthly membership fee of £63, with
real life intimidating gym eqipment monitored by real life peppy
instructors.

I've done the "I can wuss out at any time by adopting a pay-as-you-go
strategy" trick before, which served me nicely in Sydney and
Marylebone, but my daily commute has once again hit an hour and a half
round trip and I work late (read: old habits die hard, OR I'm a lazy
sod and don't get to work on time so I need to stay back to make it
up), so when I finally get home at 7:30 or 8pm, I'm hungry. The last
thing I want to do is forego dinner to exercise, especially since the
gym near my home is choc full of people all the time. I've walked past
the pool at night and seen lanes shared by up to 8 people. Like,
what?!

Enter: the opening of a new gym near work late last year.

I've heard people at work raving about this gym, so I bit the bullet
today and went to go and visit. This gym is soooo shiny. The change
rooms have wood panelling, are nice and clean and supply you with
endless white fluffy towels, free shampoo and conditioner. There are
HAIR STRAIGHTENERS you can use to style dry your hair before you go
back out into the real world. There's a steam room, a pool, a huge
room of brand new gym equipment, a boxing ring, a golf simulator, and
when the summer comes around there will be a rooftop garden with bar
so you can go and relax in the sun after your workout.

The best bit: because it's so new, there's nobody in there right now.
woohoo! I toured at lunch and there were 4 people in the pool, 10
people in the equipment room and about 8 people in an aerobics class.

I've signed up on an opening special monthly rolling contract, so
technically I haven't actually committed myself to exercising for the
next 12 months, just the next 4 weeks. I bet I'll either be a brand
new gym enthusiast by April, or 10 kilos heavier. Hopefully the
former (with bonus rock hard abs :-)

the green park buskers

2008-02-14T00:36:00.004Z

London is a very organised city. The transport system in particular is engineered to handle huge people volumes, and it does quite well. I can't express how much more enjoyable and easy it is to get around in London than Sydney. There is an excellent site to help you manage your ticketing and journey planning, which kills CityRail in comparison. You can expect trains to leave on time here, and tubes to come every 3 or 4 minutes on average. Most bus routes run every 5-10 minutes, so you're rarely waiting around with idle time like you are in Sydney.

The Transport for London site will find you the quickest route from A to B using all forms of transport, and it's pretty accurate - a mammoth task considering that London has 12 tube lines, hundreds of bus routes, overland train routes and light rail, all of which you'd need to know to get your connections right. When things go pear shaped on any given route, the journey planner will take the stuff-ups into account and calculate you a new route. You can elect to receive daily SMS alerts about line stuffups at a time you nominate (e.g. at 8am) to help you work out how to avoid problems, and you get emails to notify you of line closures on the weekend several days in advance. Handy.

You can also organise all of your ticket purchases online and avoid queues, because your ticket is an RFID card called an Oyster. I buy weekly or monthly tickets for the tube, but I've also got a random store of cash on the card for "pay as you go" journeys when my ticket has expired or I travel beyond its boundary. It basically means that I don't need to worry about actual paper tickets for any non-standard journeys I make, because the card calculates it for me. How brill is that? The best bit is that I can set my card to automatically top up the random store of cash whenever I fall below a minumum balance, so I actually never need to talk to a human being at a ticket office, ever. That's seriously hot.

Anyway, I'm digressing from the point of the post, which is this:

Buskers in public transport thoroughfares. This city, bless its little organised heart, has turned busking into a licensed activity, at least in the tube system. I find it so amusing that London has worked its organisational mojo on a normally haphazard and impromptu event, and turned it into something orderly and regimented.

The basics of it is that there are designated "busking areas" in certain tube stations, carefully placed in out-of-traffic-flow areas, where people who have been auditioned can show off their talents. (I'm not sure how strict the auditioning is these days though.) The busking area is marked by a semi-circle of paint, and you get fined for busking out of these areas - probably because they've worked out the probability of an unruly busker causing major delays on the Circle line by holding up foot traffic in a major thoroughfare. Who knows.

I travel through a major interchange station - Green Park - every day on my commute to and from work. It is notorious for its extremely long corridors to change between lines, which gives it plenty of room for a busker area.

Sometimes (mornings especially) the buskers are unwelcome because they interfere with the music I'm listening to on my iPod. They'll take up half the walkway with their keyboards or guitar amps and force the stream of traffic into a narrower flow, making it difficult to overtake the hordes of tourists with suitcases bound for Heathrow Airport. I'll walk briskly past on the "nuisance" days.

At night however, I'm much more open to the songs they play, and sometimes you get some really awesome and unusual people. Like the guy who was there tonight, singing Italian opera, or trumpet players with some funky jazz numbers. I've had a a bad mood mellowed by a busker who had an accoustic guitar, a beautifully husky voice and a sign at his feet saying 'smile :)' The buskers are an interesting variable in my normal routine, it reminds me of a different lifestyle and activities that are so unlike my current life. I like that the music can sway me one way or another. I've never had a busker put me in a bad mood (you can always walk away from them!), but I have had ones that make me linger and put a smile on my face. Whatever London is doing with their buskers, it works for me.

mac rumours

2008-01-15T17:43:00.001Z

So I'm sitting on http://www.macrumorslive.com/ (thanks Paul!) waiting for Steve to announce what shiny new mac toy will be released in laptop terms. He's clearly getting through the boring stuff first and building up the tension before getting to what everyone actually wants to hear.

I want a tiny mac book pro type thing. I don't need a touch screen, just something nice and light and uber sexy :)

It's a nice distraction from working out how to deploy workflows in SharePoint services when you don't have MOSS installed....

christmas time in the city

2007-12-19T18:27:00.000Z

Wow, this year has really flown by. Especially the second half! Seems like only yesterday it was June.

In a case of history repeating itself, I am once again going to be unemployed over Christmas (but willingly), going to spend Christmas day in London, and then I'm hopping on a plane and flying to Seville, coming back before New Years' Eve. Heh. There is one big change, in that most of the Christmas period will be spent with Niall and his parents. I'm pretty sure I'm breaking several "parental holiday laws" by going on one 2 days after meeting said parents, but hey. At least the shopping in Seville is teh AWESOME, especially the shoe shopping. I know that Vik is agreeing with me all the way from Mexico.

As I mentioned, I'm currently unemployed, and I'm loving it. This week has mostly been sleeping in a whole lot, plus some christmas shopping, followed by TV and more sleeping. I have an unsigned agreement to go back to my old workplace in the new year. At first I thought I'd be insane to do it, but the new contract will be working on a shiny new project (no maintenance! hurrah!) that will be using .NET 3.5, and has the potential for really large scope in the cinema industry, which is cooooool. I've even bought reading material to supplement my learning while unemployed. How keen is that?

I also finally, finally, finally have internet again. I can't emphasise how exciting this is for me. w00t :) I think it was 13 or 14 weeks without internet all up, which is positively criminal for someone in IT. I'm back to hardcore planning of holidays for next year. Niall and I are working out a schedule for a weekend in Sweden at the icehotel, staying in one of their art rooms if we can swing it. Plus some husky dog sledding and wacky adventures on snowmobiles to remote places. PLUS I need to build a snowman... I've never made one!

Other exciting news is that as of the 4th December this year, I am a highly skilled migrant. The visa gives me another 2 years in the UK without restrictions on working, and it makes it much easier to find work as well - less hoops to jump through. And now, if I stay another 3 on top of the existing 2 years, I'll qualify for a british passport......... ;)

Thankfully most of the chaos that has featured prominently in the last 6 months of my life - moving house, no internet, last minute parental trips, sorting out visas - has settled down now, so bring on Christmas, even the freezing cold weather. Things are looking up :)

Bringing the crowded house down!

2007-12-12T00:35:00.000Z

[this is an old post from my internet-less days that I'm still catching up on!]

I've just come back from the Crowded House concert at Wembley Arena in London and it was f-a-n-t-a-s-t-i-c :) There is another concert on at Royal Albert Hall on Tuesday which was the only advertised concert for a long time. I'm missing it because I'd booked tickets for me and 17 other people at work to go outdoor ice skating, and I was really disappointed I wouldn't be able to see them. However I found out about the Sunday concert just four days ago by accident, when I took a day off work last week and hung around at Niall's recouperating from a cold and mooching on the internet. I bought the tickets on ebay the same day for cost price, so it's pure luck that I got to go at all.

Somehow they managed to make Wembley Arena - a venue the size of the entertainment centre - seem like a small, intimate room. It was one of the band members' birthdays and they were all in a good mood, very chatty and engaging and the sound quality was really good where we were sitting (right behind the mixer stand!) so it all combined to make it a fantastic experience. Our seats were in a really great position because we were centre block, first row behind a bunch of seats that had been left clear because there were cameras positioned in the mixer stand that were going to block peoples' view. So I could see the whole concert all the way through, yay :)

They played a mammoth 2.5 hour set, which included about 4 or 5 from the new album, and a lot of old favourites that were on the Recurring Dream album. They encouraged a lot of audience participation, dancing, clapping and sing along, which was what made it so engaging. The best part was they came out for a second encore which lasted more than half an hour which was very impromptu and very fun. You could also purchase the concert live on CD (which would be ready 10 mins after close for collection!), so of course many people did that before and after the concert was over. The actual purchasing/collecting of the CDs was a bit haphazard, but I'm sure it will be worth it when it arrives.

I ran into Daniel at the start of the concert - I imagine there were a lot of people there who were Australian or New Zealanders, I'm sure I would have known a few people in the crowd :) Tam included, she had tickets with friends sitting just one row behind us and to the left!

This was probably one of the best concerts I've been to, which prompted me to make a list of my favourite gigs (in no particular order)

- Gomez, Enmore theatre Sydney, 2000
- Moby, Hordern pavillion Sydney, 2000 (?)
- George and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Sydney Opera House, January 2001
- Crowded House, Wembley Arena London, December 9 2007
- Motor Ace, Manning Bar Sydney University, 2001
- Muse, Zepp Nagoya, March 2007
- Porcupine Tree, The Forum London, November 2007
- Nelly Furtado, Hammersmith Apollo, February 2007

nerd quiz wednesday

2007-12-05T13:53:00.001Z

Bring out your inner HTML nerd.

Go on, you know you want to....

http://www.justsayhi.com/bb/html_quiz

real estate agents are woe.

2007-12-01T21:35:00.000Z

If I hadn't mentioned it before, househunting is quite demoralising in London - flats can be on the market for just a few hours before they're snapped up. House hunting is a full time job and you need to go and check relevant websites for new availabilities at least 2 or 3 times each day - preferably more often if you can sneak the time off work to do it. Then you need to call prospective agents and landlords from the ads ASAP, and the first question you ask is, "is your flat still available?"

If you have a viewing for a flat booked in 24 hours, there's a chance it will be gone by then, so you have to be ready at a moment's notice to drop everything and go and see a prospective property whenever an agent can get you a viewing, and the sooner the better. We had three viewings cancelled on us because of that - one literally three minutes before the viewing was scheduled, and after we'd all left work early so we could get there. Grr.

Then there are all the fees associated with renting a place. Some agents (ours included) charge you draw up the contract, and for conducting reference checks. The banks also get in on the act, with mine charging £8.50 to supply the reference to the agent! Then there are all sorts of other mysterious and sneaky fees that are thrown in, like an "inventory charge" where some dude goes around with a clipboard to say what's currently in the flat so you don't nick off with it at the end of your lease and dispute the fact that it was there and undamaged in the first place. Some agents like Foxtons will even charge you just to apply for a place. How nasty is that?!

Because the real estate market is so hot, agents don't really have to do a lot of work if they're letting sought-after properties. People will offer rent above the advertised rate in order to secure a property if they really want it and they know it will go fast. Anything that's reasonably modern with nice furniture will get snapped up within the day. Your real estate agent can do about ten minutes' work to get the property let out and then sit pretty on the fees they charge to manage the property, so the upshot of it is they don't really give a crap about you, or it, once the dotted line has been signed.

We've been living in our flat for almost a month now, and we've had an annoying collection of problems that includes:

Broken washing machine when we moved in, fixed after 10 days
One set of keys for 3 people for the first 14 days - the previous tenants had taken a set to mexico, and the agent hadn't paid for the third set so they sat in the building office for a while, not able to be released until paid for
Random junk lying around the flat when we moved in, including a giant pink stuffed monkey and half a bottle of wine (ugh)
A broken window that doesn't shut properly - awesome in winter - still not fixed
A broken heater in the same room!
A shower bracket that was installed by the Polish handyman that sprays water straight into the shower curtain, above my head.

Of course, when we call to report these things our smarmy real estate agent gives the impression of immediately getting "straight on it", but never actually does stuff unless you chase him. Repeatedly. We're not his biggest fans.

I seriously think I'm in the wrong industry here. Recruitment and Real Estate - that's where the money is, and also where the large moral vacuum is...

it's clementine season again

2007-11-29T14:23:00.001Z

Clementines seem to be a wholly "english" thing to me, since I hadn't seen them in Australia before. They're pretty much seedless mandarins, and when they're in season they're exceptionally tasty. Outside of season they're difficult to peel and can be hard and sour, which is not so good. The fact that they're back in season again reminds me of winter last year, wandering up and down the church street market on saturdays with cold air and grey skies. I can't believe it's been a year since I was doing that. Where does time go?

some more wandering around the hammersmith farmers' market at lunch today reminds me of all the different Christmas comfort food that is around here - mince pies, Christmas puddings, brandy butter, clotted creams, bread and butter pudding, stollen cake, yule logs, and all the different types of preserves and jams you can eat with all of it. I never delved into any of this food while I was back in Sydney, and there's a large range of other foods you get used to here that aren't available at home. It's going to be hard to leave it all behind when it's time to go back...

breaking the compiler is Not Good

2007-11-28T22:45:00.000Z

[more in a series of posts made while I was internetless.]

I broke the c# compiler today. Not a temporary I'm-kind-of-broken-because-of-some-strange-state-I've-managed-to-get-into broken, but actually reproducibly broken, to the point where it throws up lots of error messages with CAPITAL LETTERS and SYMBOLS and helpfully suggests that you try to examine the code at this suggested line (and above) and try to make it "simpler".

I think that just about sums up my day.

It feels really depressing to be stuck at work for another two weeks while everyone cool is leaving this week (or has left already). I'm now working by myself tidying up the rest of the precore-core merge, and generally feeling unmotivated because there's nobody there that I can whinge to about day to day happenings on the team... and I'm really starting to feel it after three days. But I have to admit that it makes financial and mental sense for me to work those two extra weeks, then take a break. I'll take myself on holiday over Christmas and then release the recruiter hounds in the new year. Especially since I've just moved into an expensive flat and spent 750 pounds on a visa to let me stay in the country, I can do with the extra dosh :P I had been planning to take some time out to learn some WCF/WPF, and part of the new drive is that I was thinking about installing vista, so why shouldn't I just... buy a new laptop that already has it installed? hehehe.

So this is all tied up in the "which new laptop should I buy?" dilemma that I have been musing on for easily the last two months. The two main contenders are a Sony vaio of impressively small size and even more impressive battery life, and a MacBook(Pro) for it's sheer mac-iness and dual boot ability. I've been wanting to build up my unix skills again and maybe think about developing things on macs. I've had lots of other stuff on the burner lately which has made it difficult to think about, plus the fact that I don't have the internet at home so I can't research anything, so I've just been "um"-ing and "ah"-ing over it. I think I'm leaning slightly towards the mac, since it gives me a lot more new features and software than the sony will, and it's pretty unlikely that i'll use it on the go to warrant the sony's size... but the appeal of a laptop that is so small is SO strong. Imagine taking that thing on planes and on holidays - it would easily fit in my handbag, it's that small. But Paul has told me that there is a mac convention sometime in January where they might be releasing some kind of mini mac laptop, which would suit my needs perfectly. The only hitch is that I have to wait until january! arg.

anyway, since I'm still recovering from my flu-like illness I should take myself off to bed. Impressed that I've managed to wrap all this up before midnight, yay for me!

for the record, I've been listening to a lot of porcupine tree lately - I think they're the new snow patrol of winter 07.

Phil and Cal Reunion

2007-11-27T23:57:00.000Z

Met up with Cally and Phil tonight for a bit of a reunion, which was quite fun! those kids have spent the last three months travelling around the mediterranean and aren't at all sick of the travelling, which I heartily admire. We spent a few hours at the Elbow Room in Angel, which is a pool bar that lets you hire the tables by the hour. Had some very average food for dinner, except their "fat boy" chips which are hand cut chunky chips that are TWICE fried. Mmmm....

Was kind of cool catching up with a few different people that I don't see very often, like Mendel and Tim - who's always full of odd conversational pieces like "it takes 8 minutes for light to get to earth from the surface of the sun. How long does it take to get from the sun's core to the surface?" The answer is apparently 200,000 years because of the sheer density of stuff that is around the sun at this point in time and the frantic pace at which these reactions are happening all the time.

We also had an interesting discussion about nuclear bombs, and the ethical question of if you were Einstein, how would you be feeling right now having to live with the fact that you invented a technology that was so destructive? (as he must have been doing?) And at this point I learned something that I didn't know before - that the scientist who was working on the same thing for the Germans, a Nobel prize winner - apparently made an error in the formula calculations he used in their bombs, which made them ineffective. The question is whether or not the error was a mistake, or on purpose? And if you were in the same situation, what would you do? THe history goes that this scientist (whose name I don't remember) had a meeting with a Danish counterpart, Bohr, during the war and there is a lot of speculation surrounding this meeting. The danish scientist believed that the Nobel scientist was asking about it because he genuinely didn't know about the error, but I think many people are supposed to have believed that this scientist would have known the answer, and made the error on purpose to stop the Germans.

It also reminded me of the recent anniversary of the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and how the crew of the Enola Gay didn't regret what they did at all. I think it would be nice to have that level of unshakeable faith in *anything* that you've ever done, because I certainly know that I don't. I think there would be plenty of events and circumstances in my life that would make me re-think decisions I'd made and their effect on others. Or, mroe accurately, anything that affected myself only I could happily deal with and move on with my life, but if I made any decision with such a wide-spread magnitude and the level of destruction as a nuclear bomb I think it would haunt me forever. I'm not sure how you would move on with your life unless you had some kind of inner faith that what you were doing is completely right. Which Tim, at dinner, offhandedly commented something along the lines of "yeah, you would do anything in wartime". It makes me realise how different society is these days - no limits, no threats, nothing to worry about on any great magnitude. Just the need to keep one's mind busy.

goHome = !onHourlyRate :(

2007-10-26T16:48:00.001+01:00

It's a friday afternoon and I am dying. My brain doesn't work, I'm fed up working with this offshore "architecture", our site code is a piece of crap and the weather is miserable. The only thing that is redeeming this day is that it's friday and there's an hour and 14 minutes left of the day.

Since all the big guns are out in the U.S. forming deals with other companies, there's hardly anyone in the office and my team lead just up and left. He's on a daily rate.

Me, I'm a sucker who switched to an hourly rate. I'm not going home for another hour and 13 minutes. :(

a music mix day

2007-10-16T22:40:00.000+01:00

hey kids.

I've been really grumpy today. My facebook profile even says I'm 100% grumpy (although I am probably down to less than 50% since leaving work behind and eating vietnamese food for dinner).

Today was a real mix of things, music playlists included. I think I managed to listen to an album from each of the following today:

- PJ Harvey
- Radiohead
- Justin Timberlake
- Snow Patrol
- Bloc Party
- Damien Rice
- Death Cab for Cutie
- Fuel
- Garbage
- George
- Panic at the Disco

8 hours sitting in front of a computer all day sure does leave you lots of time to be listening to tunes.

On the work front, I ended up accepting an extension to my contract to the very inconvenient end date of November 30, right before Christmas. yay. So I'm kind of on the lookout for new work but now less enthused about it than I would have been two weeks ago when the whole topic of it all came up. Bleh. I'm leaving on the same day as another contractor, and we're both counting down the days now. I'm contemplating installing a countdown meter in my task bar just to hammer the point in. I definitely feel myself being less than enthused about random tasks I'm given, which is contributing to the grumpiness. It's not good for the soul...

On the housing front though, I have a new place sorted!!! I'm going to be moving in with Paul and Tam at the beginning of next month in a swanky apartment up north. It has a dishwasher, people. A dishwasher! The apartment is right next to a gym with a rock climbing wall! Now I have no excuse for not exercising and getting rid of that extra weight that the lacklustre British summer didn't quite take off for me :p The only other downside is that I'm moving to Zone 2. Which, for the non-Londoners out there, equals crapsticks. Zone 2 is one zone too far from where it's at (i.e. central London zone 1).

Anyway, I'm hoping I'll get more time to blog from this point on. I really regret not being able to reflect on a lot of things recently - I've just been way too flat out juggling everything that needs juggling just to stay afloat. I look forward to having my own space and my own internet and my beautiful shiny dishwasher. :) And all of the inevitable trips to ikea and other homeware stores to furnish the new digs! We're calling it "The Cheese" in honour of the two varieties our nearest tube station is named after: Swiss Cottage.

internet! zomg!

2007-09-19T20:02:00.000+01:00

It's been five weeks since I've had internet at home. I'm currently sitting at Niall's place after lugging my laptop halfway across London so that I can enjoy lounging on a couch while deciding what moves I will make in the five simultaneous games of scrabulous I have going. I'm also blogging (clearly evidenced by this post), upgrading iTunes, house hunting, reading up on what I need for my HSMP, doing some internet banking, researching ahead for a trip to Bath this weekend with the parentals, coveting laptops, and generally not really relaxing with all this internetting because I have a list of things a mile long that I need to get completed.

Curses to the flatmate who cancelled direct debits for the internet account then conveniently "forgot" to tell us that she'd done it, with the end result being a £200 cancellation fee and NO INTERNET FOR FIVE WEEKS (and counting).

It seems like the world is conspiring to keep the internet away from me. None of the flatmates are interested in signing up for a new internet plan for the house because I suspect they are all thinking of moving out in the near future. I know I'm keen to get out of there. Call me crazy, but I have hygenic objections to nobody ever washing up, and salmon being left on the counter overnight then put back into the fridge all smelly and uncovered the morning after.

Lucky for me, mobile broadband is the Next Big Thing in London and you can get a tiny usb modem for your laptop and a data plan for only £15 a month for 3G of data allowance. Which means you can take the internet anywhere! You can be sitting in a park and browsing right from there - wherever you have mobile reception you can check your facebook wall. How hot is that?!

Unlucky for me, this Next Big Thing is so popular that three, the provider with the new cheap plans, has literally sold out of the internet. The modems have been sucked dry from every London store and there's a backlog of internet orders that won't be fulfilled until October 2 (probably worse now since it's about a week after I was told that date).

I'm currently getting my daily gmail/scrabulous fix from work *sends a thank-you prayer to the gods of lenient Small Medium Enterprise internet policies* and random email fixes on the weekend from the local net cafe. Unfortunately the net cafe doesn't allow you to connect anything USB related to their computers, so I haven't been able to update my flickr photos or even draft blog posts on my laptop to upload later. :p

If it's a little while before my next blog update, you know I'm still suffering from internet withdrawl. I live in hope that I will once again be connected to the actual world from home some time in the near future. If it's any later than the near future, I think I might go insane...

three hundred and sixty five days later

2007-09-03T19:33:00.000+01:00

It's been a year since I left my hometown of Sydney with nothing but a backpack (and a laptop, and suit, and high hopes of earning pounds with some european travel thrown in). I can't believe the time has flown by so quickly, it seems only yesterday that I was standing at the airport, crying my eyes out as I said goodbye to my family and friends.

I do miss some aspects of home, but I think that moving to London is the best thing I've ever done. I've learned so much about myself and my surroundings; how I fit in to the world and what I want out of things. I've travelled through Canada, which was one of the dream holidays that I never really imagined I'd do until I was "grown up". I've seen a few European cities and countries that I never thought I'd get the chance to visit. I've challenged myself work-wise, met a lot of new and interesting people, and made choices and plans for my life that I didn't think were possible a year ago.

That period of upheaval was one of the most impressionable times in my life. I was with faced so much uncertainty of my own doing... I had no choice but to treat it positively. But short of moving to yet another city in the world, I doubt that I'll ever be able to replicate the feelings and thoughts that I experienced back then. Having to deal with all the random thoughts and emotions you go through when you move over here makes you grow up pretty quickly, so while this year has been short, I felt like I've moved quite far ahead relatively in my life.

London is always challenging and never predictable, but I like that. Life here is driven by what you make of it, and I guess my move over here has coincided with a stage of my life where I'm a bit more willing to take risks with work or seize travel opportunities I wouldn't have before. There are also many charms in this city that I have yet to tire of, I am nowhere near ready to go home :)

I wanted to post something more poignant (or at least a bit more "....here's one I prepared earlier") but because of snowballing circumstances, including having our internet account at home cancelled two weeks ago and a 3-day tube strike, I find myself sitting at an internet cafe after a 90 minute commute home on the bus, randomly babbling on about whatever comes to mind. I'm posting this in conjunction with another post that has been on the draft backburner for a while, which captures a bit more of the feelings I've been having lately. I hope this passage makes sense, but even if it doesn't, it felt kind of important to me to write something up to mark the occasion... one year since I've left home, and what a fantastic year it has been. :)

the "P" word

2007-08-30T17:30:00.001+01:00

This morning started like any other normal day. The sky was grey, the tube was crowded. I was late to work, trooped into the morning Fishbowl meeting (so named because one side of the meeting room is curved and made of glass) with my mug of tea, sat around, nodded a bit, and we all did a quick status update on team progress. Nothing new.

However.

As we finished up, I was about to leave with the flow of people - but was requested to stay in the meeting room.

Oh no.... danger flags! I don't like "stay behind" meetings. They worry me.

I was right to be worried. My manager told me that the company is planning to foist off all the contractors in the near future, and they wanted to discuss the word "permanent". Hmmm.

My whole working life here in the UK is based on the premise that I learn some new technologies in different contracts, hoard all the pounds, marry an english guy, and then run back to Australia and build an extravagant castle or maybe a remote tropical Queensland island. It's not an outrageous plan. Permanency doesn't really enter into the equation.

I like working here though. The people are cool and the work is interesting. It reminds me a lot of EDI in the early days crossed with nineties dotcom perks. For example, the kitchen is nicely stocked with free bread (white, brown, pumpernickel, bagels), fruit, jams and fruit juices. They chauffeur the staff out to the MD's house in windsor for a BBQ and use of his pool, table tennis table, trampoline and croquet set for a picnic day out. There's an office cinema downstairs (for "quality control", or possibly tax writeoff) and the building is in an old church and has lots of character. It's less than half an hour for me to get to work. They gave the development staff free Archos media players to use as "development tools" that they could keep (sadly, I missed out on this perk, but I'm holding out for the next round whenever it comes). It's like there's a magic river of money here and they are happy to share it round.

The other thing is that I get a lot of freedom and autonomy here. I can implement new ideas, and I don't get brushed aside as a contractor who needs to shut-up-and-do-the-job-you're-hired-for-please. I dislike the thought of having to go back to zero in a new contract, since they don't often let contractors come in and give them the power to change things.

I'd happily stay here on contract for a while, but am I ready to work as a permanent? knowing that I'm tied down, earning less money and doing the same job with more responsibility? Or should I cut free to my next contract and have to deal with the horrible world of jobhunting again?

visitor season

2007-08-14T22:16:00.000+01:00

hey kids. I know it's been a while since I've written anything, but I've grown out of the habit and once that happens, it gets increasingly harder to get back into it. There's been lots to contemplate recently, and it's hard to put it down in words generally... I have, however, been enjoying the recent sunshine in London. I bought a shiny black frisbee a few weeks ago and it's been put through its paces. My poker set has also been put through its paces recently with pleasing results, heheh :)

Anyway, news on the home front is that after a whole year of being over here, I'm finally getting VISITORS. I'm getting more than one group of them actually - there are people from my old work visiting at different times, and then the parentals will be popping by to see exactly how decadent my life is in London Town. I'm quite excited to be meeting up with people! I figured a lot of my freeloading friends might invite themselves over this summer, but no go so far. (btw, kidding on the freeloading. love you guys :)

So anyway with the Parentals announcing their arrival, I'm busy planning a european itinerary with twenty five days' notice in high summer. It's a challenge but I figure I can worm my trip to Brugge in there somehow, and I'm looking forward to seeing them again.

Soon it will be my one year anniversary since leaving home. September's going to fly by...

you might forget the past, but facebook won't!

2007-07-23T21:25:00.000+01:00

Facebook is amazing (and just a little bit scary). I have had one of those 'blast from the past' days, where random people from your past that you haven't seen or heard from in ages suddenly reappear. Two people from different places where I used to work emailed/messaged me today, and the crowning glory on the cake was someone that I haven't spoken to in about 8 years somehow found me again on facebook. :) It was a really welcome surprise.

It blows my mind that things that I thought were well and truly in the past can be revived. It reminds me of other musings I've had in the past, about people and relationships and how they change. Life is so fluid and unexpected sometimes... especially when something from the past comes back and reminds you of things you forgot, or may never have noticed in the first place. :)

comfort eating

2007-07-12T17:27:00.001+01:00

argh. I've just inhaled banana slice I bought at the Hammersmith Farmers' market today. On the plus side it was deliciously tasty, but on the minus -- it doesn't fix any of my bugs :(

wimbledon

2007-07-12T00:07:00.000+01:00

This post has been a looong time coming. But it finally sees the light of day! A round-up of my wimbledon experience this year :)

PART ONE: THE ACQUISITION.

It's 8pm on a sunday night. A group of friends in the city of London are on a five-way skype conference call. They have been brought together by a common goal: to score some of the few available tickets to Wimbledon centre court the next day. The task is difficult - the site restricts each person to only two tickets, and the group want a total of eight - but they are ready for the challenge.

The level of anxiety is high. Backup plans are formulated; fallbacks set in motion. Failure is unthinkable. The alternative is lining up at 4am outside the gates in the unpredictable London weather (no, thank you.) Having prepared as much as possible - preregistering accounts, saving credit card details - they sit and wait, nervously hitting refresh periodically... but not too periodically, lest they get blocked from the site. They have nothing to do but wait until the clock ticks over to 8:30 and the tickets become available to buy. Everyone knows their task: as soon as you see the tickets online, let everyone know. Then buy like there's no tomorrow.

At 8:25, one of the party is disconnected from the conversation. A brief panic period ensues, but abates when he rejoins the conversation a minute later. The group is twitchy, nervous. They don't need anything unexpected to happen right now.

Each person has a different time on their clock, so some people hit 8:30 earlier than others. Some get to 8:30... but still no tickets. 8:31... no tickets. F5. wait. F5. wait... when will it end?

Then suddenly: a flurry of activity. The cry of "it's on, it's on!" cuts through the air, and everyone immediately refreshes their page. Some can see the change immediately, but unfortunately others are greeted with the same blank interface saying "no tickets available yet" with every attempt to buy. There is stress and confusion. Why are some allowed to buy and others aren't? why??

The dust settles 15 seconds later. Three of the five have managed to get tickets allocated, but the others are faced with a stonewalling message saying there are none left to buy. There are enough tickets allocated to cover the six on skype, but the relief is short lived, as one of the party is having trouble getting their switch card details accepted. Noooo...! Four confirmed tickets; two that may be lost to the pool if the two minute limit for completing the transaction is reached. Will they get so close only to stumble on a technicality? Panicked, they ask for confirmation of which numbers are supposed to be used and try again, but still no joy. The card just doesn't work. Fed up, they take drastic action and pull out their Australian credit card. The group prays that they have made it in time.

The request is submitted.... and rewarded! success! Six tickets in hand! They celebrate with relief, and now only have to wait until the morrow.

(I wrote the previous passage that gleeful night, buoyed by a natural high. Now...)

PART TWO: WHY LONDON WEATHER SUCKS.

We should have known by all the previous days that the rain was almost a certainty, but we'd planned this date weeks in advance. AND having gone through such an ordeal for the tickets, we felt lucky just to be going at all.

The night before I had gone to an internet cafe to print out the tickets, and at 67 pounds each they were not cheap. I had almost 1000 australian dollars of Wimbledon ticket mass in my posession, and it was making me n-e-r-v-o-u-s. Bigtime.

There was quite a bit of security at the entrances because of the recent car bomb attempts over the weekend. Traffic was slow and people/cars were being searched, which I was happy to put up with... it made me feel safer, but there were a lot of people and crowds anyway.

First impressions: Wimbledon is very green. There is green paint, green fences, green seats, green staircases, green buildings, green signposts and roofs and merchandise. The grounds are quite large and very purpose built. You can see giant rooms for the press; radio station facilities, first aid quarters, merchandise shops and stalls. There's a hint of a hidden members' world on the grounds -- sightings of (appealingly warm and dry) restaurants or covered terrances with people in them, but without any visible entrances. Wimbledon would be a nice place if it wasn't raining, but when it's wet there's just nowhere to go.

The rain did not really let up all day - we had at least five interruptions because of showers. When we arrived it was raining and play was delayed until 11:30, so we scoped out the grounds for a bit. There are three main courts (Centre court, Court 1 and Court 2), and a lot of outer courts where there are normally doubles matches or some of the juniors matches going. However, because of the rain messing up the schedule there was a Nalbandian vs Baghdatis match being played on one of the tiny outer courts with three rows of seats on either side that I was keen keen keen to see, but we had no chance of getting seats to.

We settled into our centre court tickets, which were in a surprisingly good position... as Phil said, we avoided "tennis neck" because we could see the whole court in one go :) The arena isn't nearly as big as I had expected either - it always looks so big on TV! But I felt quite close to the action. Unfortunately because of the buying process our six seats were in pairs that weren't really close to each other, so we swapped around a bit. Phil's fascination with ballboys and grunting female players made the rain-delayed morning quite exciting (as did his Maltesers and Pringles) while I brought 'sensible food' and a camera with video capabilities into the equation. And oh, did we make good with the photo and video...

First off was a Justine Henin vs Patty Schnyder match, which gave me a healthy new respect for womens' tennis. You don't realise the amount of power and talent they require to play -- it always flattens out when it translates to TV. I can only imagine what it would be like to watch Roger Federer or any other really great player at a grand slam. There were some really good rallies and the end score didn't quite match up with the quality of tennis; it seemed like a pretty close one in my opinion, but Henin won in the end.

Next up was THE match between Serena Williams and Daniela Hantuchova. Yes, the one where Serena collapsed on court because of a calf muscle strain and continued playing afterwards, and eventually won. It was a truly marathon event that was about 2.5 hours of play over a period of 6.5 hours thanks to all the rain delays :p I am ashamed to say that even though it was one of the most exciting matches of the tournament, I just didn't appreciate it because I was feeling impatient, frustrated and rather damp. I had seat-swapped to Niall's territory in another corner of the stadium where there were two of the most irritating children ever invented sitting right behind us. ARGH. Combined with the perpetual on-again-off-again rain, and a desire to see this match end so that Roddick and Mathieu could start theirs, I wasn't a very happy camper.

We were supposed to get four matches that day, but with the rain we only managed the first two, and only just. :( I was quite disappointed on the day that I didn't get to see any mens' matches. However, a day or two later I got over all the selfishness and was just glad I got the chance to go, which is more than most people can say.

And next time, I'll be there for a Roger Federer match. Just watch me. :)

zomg!

2007-07-11T23:04:00.001+01:00

noooooooooooo...! my poor eyes! they hurt!

fear of the unknown no longer

2007-06-30T21:15:00.000+01:00

(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!

2007-06-21T23:48:00.000+01:00

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

2007-06-12T23:28:00.001+01:00

This is a really interesting read, posted up by Cally on Facebook.

hello :o)

2007-06-12T07:30:00.000+01:00

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. :)

2007-06-01T23:31:00.000+01:00

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. :)

I've seen Daniel Radcliffe naked.

2007-05-22T23:16:00.000+01:00

Yes, it's true - I've now seen Daniel Radcliffe naked. I was looking for a facebook group that says just that, as a sort of joke, but they all actually sound a little bit scary considering he's still underage. UNDERAGE, people!

In other news, Phil wrote a cool summary of the Munich and Amsterdam trips, and also posted revealing video footage of his failure as a man. It's riveting stuff, you should go watch it. I also feature prominently in another video in the hofbrauhaus, and yes, I really need to upload that artwork Phil... it's on The List. :)

your-internet-history | /dev/null

2007-05-21T22:19:00.000+01:00

I tried to check my old yahoo mail account today to see what was in there, but alas! I haven't logged in for over four months, so the whole thing has been deleted. :(

I've had that email account since year 11, so there was a lot of mail in there from my school and uni days. Lots of banter, angst, x-philean/buffy ravings, mailing list hysteria, websitery, and conversations with random internet friends that I'd made... email was a very important slice of my life, since I counted myself rather socially inept at the time. I hadn't read most of it for years, but it was something I'd keep if I could.

It's a bit sad to think that a whole chunk of my internet life has been wiped out because I met arbitrary criteria for a random batch file running on yahoo's servers. I'd probably pay to get my account back if I could, just to download all the mail.

Ah well. That'll learn me. I cried (not really) when my hotmail accounts were nuked, and made a vague attempt to try and get my yahoo mail saved off somewhere back then, but stopped when it became Too Hard.

It's a bit like losing a computer hard drive... or two... in the space of three days, which happened to me in Sydney a couple of years ago. Oh, I cried then - no more ICQ history, no more old website designs, some lost photos, and the effort of having to rebuild and get all your settings just right again. And then having to do the same for my work machine. :p The pain of it all!

negotiating London

2007-05-18T00:10:00.000+01:00

I never realised how hard it is to get around London until I couldn't walk properly. My usual 30-second commute to the tube took about five minutes on Tuesday, and I missed a tube and two buses getting to work because I was just too impaired to negotiate stairs or long distances comfortably. I can't imagine what it would be like being permanently disabled or in a wheelchair. You couldn't do anything without a car, really... so, youth and mobility - don't take it for granted, kids! very soon you'll be old and crusty and mumbling about young people not appreciating their youth.

Anyway, my ankle is healing fairly well. I can get around at about 3/4 of my normal speed, but I'll probably need the bandages and support for another week or so. No more frisbee for the forseeable future... I can see myself spraining it again during a game and everything going horribly wrong.

A lot of random six-degrees-of-separation stuff has happened to me lately. When slightly tipsy on Wednesday night and devouring a late-night chicken burger, I found out that one of my colleagues and I share an ex-workmate who moved over to London a couple of years ago. I used to work with him back in Sydney at my very first full time job, and my colleague worked with him in London. Ha! Also, I was travelling on the tube tonight with another colleague when we found out that we both went to the same primary school in Sutherland for a couple of years, but not at the same time... though we do know the same people. AND, I also found out that a friend-of-a-friend (whom I've never met) has friends who work in a company back in Sydney that I knew a few people from. So, the world is feeling very small right now.

Otherwise, I'm feeling very unhealthy right now. I've eaten at home only once this week, and that was Monday when I couldn't go anywhere because of my ankle anyway :p So terrible. (Feeling guilty is probably not going to stop me from going for vietnamese food tomorrow night, though... mmmm...)

Hope you are all staying safe and enjoy your weekends :)

ankle sprain

2007-05-14T22:08:00.000+01:00

I sprained my ankle today thanks to all that wonderful London rain.

I'm not so enamoured with it now :p

I haven't sprained my ankle in years. It wasn't my dodgy ankle either, it was the good one, which means I guess they are both dodgy now. It actually hurts a lot more now than it did at work after I had sprained it. sigh. :(

photo of the day

2007-05-13T22:59:00.000+01:00

I finally updated my photo of the day collection on flickr. yay me :)

rainy days

2007-05-13T12:36:00.000+01:00

It's been raining in London a lot the past few days. I got a good drenching walking around on Friday and Saturday, which has never happened to me before. I don't even own an umbrella now, because when it "rains" in London it really is just a vague sprinkle of water that you can walk around in for half an hour before you start feeling wet.

Anyway, I like rain. A lot. I used to love it in Sydney when there was a complete downpour and I would sit at the window and watch it fall down. It's a very calming and soothing experience that I never get to have in London, so this week's rain has been a treat. :)

Check out these two wacky people when they got stuck in the rain waiting for a bus on Friday night.

Earlier in the evening it was much more sedate. You'll note that we are all dry, and that my hair is different than what it was in Sydney :)

I want to thank everyone who called/emailed/messengered after my last post as well... I really appreciated it. I didn't realise I sounded so down, but it was a really pleasant surprise to hear from people out of nowhere! *hugs* to all. The rain this week has pretty much made it an introspective week, but a good one. :)

temporary lifestyle

2007-05-09T00:06:00.000+01:00

When I'm alone and not busy, I'm frequently confronted by the question "what am I doing here?"

The "here" can mean anything from "London" to "contracting" to "being single" and "sitting at home when there's all sorts of exciting things going on in your city right now". It never used to bother me when I was cruising along without much purpose, but now it seems like I just don't have any, and it's not a good feeling.

Everything I do feels like it's so easy - I do what I please whenever it suits me, and there's virtually nothing that stops me from doing it. I don't have to overcome financial obstacles or save up annual leave. After three years of having everything on demand, I need something else huge and new and different in my life. What the 'thing' is I don't know (my ticking biological clock calling? :p), but not knowing it just makes it a lot harder to remedy...

My lifestyle feels very temporary to me. A bit like I'm filling in time until some new challenge comes along to make me focus my attentions and efforts into something useful. I try and create new challenges for myself (like... moving to London) but they don't really end up being what I'm after. (But don't get me wrong - I like it here, and I'm much happier here right now than if I was back in Sydney still working at my old job and wondering what I should do.) The search for the real challenge I'm supposed to be tackling just continues in the background.

I wish I had the comfort that uni and school provided - knowing that even if you idle away this week or month or semester, you're still on an ultimate goal of getting a piece of paper with your name on it at the end. You know the end result -- it's the journey that makes or breaks the experience for you. Right now I'm on a path ending in a passport full of stamps (way cool), but is it enough? I'm too busy keeping myself busy so I don't have the time to think about the answer...

all fired up and nowhere to vent

2007-05-07T21:49:00.000+01:00

No merit in this post - 100% venting.

I came home from my weekend away and found a half-drunk McDonalds soft drink sitting in my bedroom. Grrrrr. Why would you drink a McDonalds drink in someone else's bedroom and then leave it there? More annoyingly, how long has it been sitting there?? Did it get left there on Friday night and have three days to fester?

Two of my flatmates deny all knowledge. The third doesn't eat McDonalds as far as I know, and is unlikely to be eating it in someone else's bedroom.

why?!?! argh!!!! Flatmates are totally overrated!!!!

I'm MORE annoyed than I would otherwise be, because our last day in Amsterdam was cold and rainy and we all had lack of sleep from the night before, and our flight was crappy, and in spite of this I had some thoughtful things I wanted to blog about.... but instead came home to old food in my room. BLEH.

hilarity!

2007-05-04T00:38:00.000+01:00

I had a massive panic attack and thought that Mothers' Day was THIS sunday when I would be in Amsterdam and probably unable to make phone calls to Australia, also that I hadn't arranged any flowers or anything and mum was going to hate me forever.... turns out it is the NEXT sunday (13th May).

so in the midst of the panic I was brainstorming with my brother over gmail about what to get her, when he started panicking too. He sent an email to a whole bunch of people going "isn't it THIS sunday?" just before I googled it and discovered that it is the 13th instead. Now he looks stupid in front of a whole lot of people for not knowing the date (as opposed to me, who is admitting this to an unknown quantity of people over the intermaweb).

But anyway... don't panic kids. It's all good. You have another week to sort something out. :)

UPDATE without WHERE = uh oh...

2007-05-02T22:32:00.000+01:00

I wrote a great SQL command today that lets admins direct a downloadable data stream to a different computer for any given user. Yay me! There was only one tiny bug. I forgot to put a WHERE clause in the command, and now our director of development has downloaded the entire catalogue of movies the company has ever sold onto his laptop. Seems he's got a lot of space on there. (Lucky it was only on our dev environment. phew. :)

enough geekery; I'm heading off to Amsterdam on Friday for a weekend of flowers and debauchery, so I'm sure there will be photos of things that are pretty as well as things that are pretty illegal come next week. I'm a little bit apprehensive about Amsterdam; I've heard Stories. I'm also arriving by myself late at night, which really creeped me out in Munich, so I'd like to stop making it a habit. Note to self: next time, get earlier flights. However! I'm keen on the Van Gogh and Anne Frank museums, and we'll be spending some time admiring the tulips in the flower park, which should be colourful.

It has been super warm in London recently, many degrees warmer than average for this time of year (go global warming!). As a result of all this balminess, people are gradually waking up to the fact that there is actually an environment, and we need to stop screwing it over. Out of seemingly nowhere there are huge campaigns to reduce packaging and waste, and 'Carbon footprint' has become the new buzzword of '07, used to describe the level of impact you have on the environment. For example, camping has very little carbon footprint; easyjet flights are like pouring a dirty big vat of ugly sludge over a pretty rainforest, and taking ten of them a year is like running your own Pacific Gas & Electric company. In the past few days I've seen two TV news stories, advertising campaigns on the eco-friendliness of companies, new slogans to help people reduce their carbon footprints, and I just finished watching a TV show where this guy had hand built his family's self-sustaining home from scratch, all from environmentally friendly and recycled materials over eighteen months... This is not to say that everyone's changing their habits, just that a lot of the big companies are advertising the fact that they're being more environmentally friendly (ironically probably increasing their carbon footprint in the process). The Brits are a bit like the japanese in the packaging stakes - they make food portable for busy people, environment be damned. A news story on BBC this morning showed individually wrapped apricots inside a plastic bag of apricots. Isn't that just crazy?

Anyway, the advertising got to me, and I considered my current carbon footprint on the earth. I came to the conclusion that staying in Sydney was probably the best thing I could have done for this world, since we have no recycling in my building, we waste water, leave lights on, read free newspapers that generate 12 tonnes of paper wastage each day, eat packaged food, buy extremely cheap non-sustainable goods, and take our dirt cheap holidays overseas on a regular basis.

I have to start doing something better for this world :p

sick at home

2007-04-25T19:47:00.000+01:00

I'm sick at home. :(

I sprialled rapidly from fine and perky at work at 9, to blank nauseous staring at a computer screen by 2pm. I left at 3, had a full blown sore throat by 4pm, napped for a few hours, and now face the choice of going to my much anticipated Paolo Nutini concert and making things worse for tomorrow, or forfeiting the tickets and making a new enemy out of the friend-of-a-friend the other ticket was promised to.

what to do?

munich

2007-04-11T22:47:00.000+01:00

I went to Munich over easter and had a ball :) There was a lot of drinking over the weekend, mostly in beer gardens in the sun. The weather was lovely, around 15-20 degrees and sunny with blue skies for most of the time we were there. Munich is renowned for all the german stereotypes - traditional costumes, sauerkraut, bratwurst, giant pretzels*, steins of beer.... we were only too happy to partake of all of this.

We did a really cool cycling tour of the city, which was especially fun after we stopped at a beer garden for an hour and sampled the local brew. It was led by an english guy who was taking his first ever tour, and somehow we had managed to lose Zarina on the way to our first stop so he freaked out about someone having stolen one of the bikes on his first day, hehe. Poor guy. It all turned out fine in the end :)

The viktualien markets are fantastic and well worth a visit, and German bread simply rocks my world. I was in grainy bread heaven!

We visited Neuschwanstein Castle in the alps, a giant fairytale castle that provided the inspiration for Disneyland's castle and was a vaguely running joke from my years of old (i.e. high school) when we all wanted to own castles in Europe.

The highlight was the beer gardens, including the largest beer garden in europe at a place called "Laim". Hahahaha! I think my favourites were the ones in the English gardens, particularly the one by the lake on the northern side... I think it was called Seehaus. (Our afternoon of dozing in the English gardens was also great, while germans energetically played frisbee or badminton or practiced tightrope walking around us). I didn't end up drinking my own stein while I was there, although I did drink from quite a few other people's. And I downed a few half litre mugs of beer and shandy, which wasn't a bad effort!

On saturday night we went to a clubbing district on the west side of town called KultFabrik. Imagine an old warehouse area where all the factories have been turned into clubs -- if you get bored of one, you just walk into another 10 seconds away! What a brilliant idea! We had a GREAT night out, and german guys seemed to be much less sleazy than their corresponding English lads. The music was recognisable pop or mainstream dance, which was my kind of party :)

We also paid a visit to Dachau. Any words I use to describe the experience seem trite, so I won't really try... you should visit if you can, and prepare yourself.

Overall I'd have to say Munich has been one of the best trips I've been on so far. I'd booked it on a whim and had no idea what to expect, maybe that's the secret :) The weather was good, it was easy to get around, there's lots to do (I'd still like to visit the Deutches Museum which is basically a giant nerdy science museum). I'm also very keen to travel the rest of Germany when I get a chance!

Big thanks to Cal, Phil and Zarina for making it fun!

* n.b. not actually in germany. also, not edible, so consume at your own risk.

viral networking

2007-04-04T22:13:00.000+01:00

I've joined Facebook. Go find me there if you know who I am. :)

prize winning photographer!

2007-04-04T11:34:00.000+01:00

this is it, folks: the prize winning "funniest photo" from the Shoot Portobello Lite competition! We ran out last Sunday, found a sign and bought it on a whim, beacuse we didn't have any props. Now we're prize winning photographers. :D

Guess what our prize is? FREE COMPUTER COURSES! hee hee! it's so ironic it hurts.

angel tube stunt

2007-03-30T10:17:00.000+01:00

To everyone I know who lives and works at angel, watch out for people who do this.

part time nerd

2007-03-29T20:08:00.000+01:00

You know what I don't get? People who read programming books in their spare time. I happened to come across this blog post and got a little bit scared that the guy is reading three nerdy books at the same time. Three! I'm not sure which one of us is the odd one - me, who likes programming but leaves the geekiness at work, or he, the fully immersed nerd.

I am not a full time nerd. I don't read blogs (which is probably bad), I didn't know what WPF was until I read it in a job description and was forced to google it (tip: if you had to click on the link to learn what it was, then you're not a full time nerd either), and when people make jokes about nerds in the software community, I don't laugh because I don't know who they are.

Yeah, ok, I have Visual Studio installed on my laptop. But I only did it out of necessity of needing something to program with while researching stuff for interviews. I don't actually use it to build anything useful... Except maybe Cameron's buggy competition generator that eventually got me swearing at whole new levels when it wouldn't run like it was supposed to.

The irony is I'm still classified as a nerd by people. Nerdy people call me a nerd! it happened just yesterday. I don't think it's fair that I, the part time nerd, can be painted with the same brush as the guy reading three nerdy books in his spare time (n.b. if you the reader are actually the nerdy guy who is reading this through referral links, then please don't be offended because I'm not doubting your ability at all, you just happened to become my example. I totally respect all the work that you and your kind do. Go Microsoft.)

I think I'm just feeling a bout of nerd insecurity, like I ought to be doing more to earn my nerd title (and possibly also land a job. That could be useful.) I know as soon as I get a job though, I'm going to fall back to my non-nerdy ways of watching downloaded TV episodes with a mug of tea and some impulse-buy M&S chocolate muffins.

God I can't believe I've posted three things today. Clearly, I'm having a busy busy day. But hey, if you're a nerd and you are reading this, if you have any good blogs out there that I might be interested in reading, post them would ya? :)

wow, that was embarrassing

2007-03-29T16:20:00.000+01:00

I had a lunch with the people from my old work today.One of my colleagues mentioned that they were having lunch at one of our old haunts and I agreed to go to surprise everyone, because my busy busy schedule of being unemployed had some scope for lunch. And it would be cool to see these people again.

Anyway. I turned up at this place and there were twenty people there, including some managers and other people I sort-of-knew-but-not-really. I'd crashed the farewell lunch of one of the guys who was moving up north. Oh god. I was only expecting 3 people to be there! I now also looked like a desperate loser because I have no job and I'd come to have lunch with all these people who did have jobs and it was almost like I'd thrown myself into their path just "by chance" and coincidentally, did they have any work available?

argh. how embarrassing.

victories of a small nature

2007-03-29T11:32:00.000+01:00

A little while ago I received an email from the recruiter that screwed me over on the first contract I got in the UK. I did a double-take at first; I thought we had pretty much agreed that he was a slimeball. But no, my eyes were seeing correctly and he had actually sent me an email asking my availability for a new contract.

There was split-second indecision while I contemplated how to respond. Should I ignore his email? Did he really think I was going to go for this contract? Should I write back and clarify that I'd rather embrace a career in sewage recycling WITHOUT SHAMPOO than talk to him again?

Hmm. What to do? Well, while I'd been thinking, my mouse cursor had gravitated towards the buttons at the top of my email client. It paused over one particular button, almost a suggestion, just a little hesitant, seeing how I would react. It was an interesting choice. Should I? Would it be right? It seemed a little mean.

Who cares... If recruiters don't have morals, I don't need to either.

I clicked.

With one simple action I classified all future emails from this person as "spam". I can only hope the spam works universally across gmail and he can never email anyone else properly again.

quiz nerd heaven

2007-03-27T16:34:00.000+01:00

http://www.quiz-zone.co.uk/

Browse all quizzes and go for the excel ones.

So far I've got 48/100 on the cartoon quiz (with 7 "close") and a miserable 23/100 on the music video clip quiz, but I've never really been into music videos so that's my excuse. :)

too funny

2007-03-26T22:52:00.000+01:00

hee hee!

I just did a BrainBench certification test in ASP.NET because a recruiter asked me to do it. The recruiters have asked me to do the BrainBench tests before; it gives them an indication of whether candidates actually know the technologies they're trying to get a job in (and thus how much they can market you to get as much money out of you as possible!)

You can actually use online resources, so google comes in very handy while you take the test.

Now, I spent 3 years doing all winforms, all C#, all the time. I've had about 3 months working in ASP.NET... yet I scored higher in the ASP.NET test than I did in c# last year. In fact, I apparently scored better than 98% of other candidates and have NO weak areas in this technology at all. I had to google at least three quarters of the questions and guestimated half the answers.

TOO FUNNY!

I want a diplomatic bag too!

2007-03-25T22:08:00.000+01:00

So, I'm back in the UK. Crappy weather has followed me - a week ago it was sunny and 15 degrees, now it's cold and windy and puffy coat territory again.

The leadup to my flight from Tokyo to London was pretty cool. I had spare yen, so I spent some time wandering around shops and contemplating last minute souvenirs (I bought a pink Hello Kitty banner thing for the hell of it), then got through immigration and realised I should've spent my money on duty free cosmetics. Heh.

While I was checking in, I saw two hot english guys carrying giant white canvas bags, kinda like mailbags, with "HRM Diplomatic Bag" written on the side in thick black letters. They looked like props for an old 1940's movie that a bank robber might carry out of a bank with a giant dollar sign printed on the side. I found out later that they get to travel in Business or First Class as well, which means that I think being a diplomat is going to be my new ambition. Especially if I get to carry bags with "HRM Diplomatic Bag" written on the side of it. (Isn't it kind of defeating the purpose if you're drawing attention to yourself that way? won't people then be tempted to steal the contents of your diplomatic bag than if it was going incognito? If I was being paid to steal their stuff it would certainly make my job easier.)

Anyway, this got me thinking: what can a guy who already has an english accent AND is attractive possibly do to get any better?

- Have a diplomatic passport. (the guys on the plane were totally sorted.)
- Get flight discounts with a major airline.
- Own Ken's house. Or Pete's house.
- Get the freebies that Robbie's job delivers - DVD boxed sets, concert tickets, movie screenings, CDs... jealousy!
- Work at Pixar. Or Google.
- Own a tropical island with a bungalow over the water. And a boat to go with it, so we don't have to swim to and from the bungalow all the time...

Best bonus of the flight(s) to and from japan was that I had a spare seat next to me each time. Flying on weekdays is the key to victory!

seven months of daylight savings!

2007-03-25T09:45:00.000+01:00

ohmygod, I just discovered that UK daylight savings lasts until the end of October. That's seven months of continually happy happy warm warm sunlight. It's like getting all sorts of birthday presents at once - you can't buy that kind of joy off the shelf!

it seemed like a good idea at the time...

2007-03-11T00:27:00.000Z

I had dinner with some ex-work folk last night.

I think this photo just about sums it up.

currency luck

2007-03-10T13:01:00.000Z

It's the phenomenon whereby you are about to embark overseas, and the currency you need on the other side goes up in your favour by 10%, then plummets once you have exchanged your money, leaving everyone else crying about their sucky exchange rates.

I have terrible currency luck. Last year just before I headed off to Canada, the Canadian dollar was at 0.91 a few weeks before I left. But when I actually went to convert my dollars into Canadian ones, the exchange rate was at 0.86.

Now, the Yen is at 90. If I'd been clever and exchanged my money last week, I'd have gotten 95. That'll learn me.

north shore soccer mom

2007-03-08T11:57:00.000Z

I got some great practice at being a North Shore Soccer Mom today. I started with some light morning exercise, went shopping, then got a french manicure and pedicure which was a fun new experience, hehe. If only I had some other north shore soccer moms to meet for a brunch or lunch after a yoga or pilates class and just before picking the kids up from school, i'd be all set.

I can't wait till I'm a millionaire and then I'll buy one those super massage chairs and foot spa all-in-one things. Or maybe I'll just add a pedicurist to my house staff.

the photo project

2007-03-08T01:46:00.000Z

I've been taking a photo a day for a week so far (yesss! only 358 to go!) but already I can see I'm going to have problems.

a) I always, always have more photos that I want to put into the album

b) Sometimes I want to change the photo, which kinda defeats the purpose :p

I know other people doing the project have been "rationing" their photo subjects over several days to keep things going, and I've already started doing it too. I had a great photo of my dog taken on the same day as a run on the beach, but I really like the symmetry of this photo so it won. I'm going to attempt to take more photos of the dog on another day when I don't have anything interesting up my sleeve. :)

Here's one I took yesterday that was contending for the honour, but in the end Eugenia's Shoes won because i love the label... and I did, in fairness, spend a large chunk of the day shoe shopping. hehe.

degree of maintainability

2007-03-07T10:06:00.000Z

I was called high maintenance for the first time in my life yesterday. It made me laugh because I don't think I am... but just for a totally impartial second opinion, I took this very reputable and thorough scientific test to prove it once and for all.

The verdict? I am MEDIUM MAINTENANCE. In your FACE!

You Are Medium Maintenance

You aren't as hard to deal with as some girls
But you aren't the most laid back chick either
You're easy to deal with 90% of the time, but watch out for that 10%!
If the guy you are with has good intentions, then calm down a little
But if he's really screwing up, don't waste your breath - move on :-)

Are You High Maintenance?

Seriously, if there was one of those blood tests or something that would tell you your degree of maintainability beforehand, it'd make everyone's life easier. You just take it when you're a kid, and you know for the rest of your life, and it could be one of those things you discuss with people over the first date dinner:

"yeah, my maintainability is high, but my predisposition for shoes is in the low-medium range which I think makes up for it, don't you? How did you score on accepting directions from strangers?"

"30 dollars is a small price to pay to not be an ant"

2007-03-05T11:06:00.000Z

So I won't be an ant in my next life. This is my consolation for opening my mouth while shopping today, hehe. I could have bought something for $30, but stupidly asked "oh, is that for the both of them?" and doubled the cost to $60 (not that I should be complaining, because I thought it was going to cost me $90 in the first place!)

Anyway the funny thing was I think the guy at the counter was actually trying to help me not pay the full price, so I did the deed all by myself!

In other musings, why is it that a hot pair of jeans is naturally the ones giving you the worst muffin top effect? And is it still wrong to buy them anyway?

p.s. thanks to B. for the quote! ;)

25

2007-03-03T14:29:00.000Z

I'm now 25! It's been a very mellow and low-key season of celebration - like having a two week party instead of one night of hectic festivities.

It's been really great catching up with people like the St Georgians and Alison's crew, and lots of friends from the old workplace. There has been much brunching and dining and a wee bit of shopping in between :) The weather was a bit uncooperative when I landed, but it fined up yesterday, and today was just gorgeous.

I've been eating lots of food and soaking up some views along various beaches so far (Saturday - Coogee; Monday - Balmoral; Tuesday - Cronulla; Wednesday - Freshwater). Went up for a day trip to the Hunter Valley today with Cam, Bunny and Khanh which was lots of fun - got to play some games on the wii as well! and I think Cam & I will be driving down to seven mile beach sometime next week.

I'm going to try my hand at a photography project, taking a photo a day for a year. I was meant to start on my 25th birthday but forgot :p hehe. I think it'll be an interesting experience and give me an excuse to whip out my camera more frequently since I carry it around with me almost everywhere anyway!

I'm immensely glad that things turned out the way they did and I could come home to Australia for my birthday. I'm sure if I'd been in London I wouldn't have made the time to reflect on stuff in general or appreciate everything that's happened in the past year.

I feel like I've got lots more to say, but I have drafts of 4 or 5 posts since I've been in Australia that keep getting interrupted/not finished due to laziness, so I'm determined to let this one see the light of day regardless of completion :) Hope you're all having a good time and stay safe!

J is for Jackass

2007-02-26T09:57:00.000Z

CRACK ME UP! I was watching this new TV show on channel 7 called The Rich List with the fam tonight, and one of the lists was Names Used in the Nato Phonetic Alphabet. My mother suggested "J for... Jackass, right?"

I seriously couldn't stop laughing for a good five minutes. I didn't even know jackass was in my mother's vocabulary.

(aside: I've only been gone for 6 months and suddenly everything on TV has been replaced by a reality/quiz show??)

A disaster coming on in slow motion

2007-02-20T07:44:00.000Z

I've just tried to check into my flights with Singapore Airlines and have been given the rather ominous message:

This passenger cannot be found in the PNR. Please check the passenger details.

What exactly is a PNR, and WHY am I not in it? I knew this was trouble as soon as I wanted to change my flights and couldn't find anywhere on their website to submit a request. What kind of crazy airline doesn't have an online request form? Anyway, so I tried to call Singapore Airlines, and waited for 20 rings before a machine picked up and shoved me on the end of a queue that I wasn't the front of after 30 minutes, so I hung up in frustration. In the end I emailed some random customer service department to have my flights changed, and nobody replied to the email, so I went through the whole charade of calling them again only to be told that someone read the email and booked me on the flight already. The only thing is, I had to call Air Canada to get the eticket reissued, because I started my ticket with Air Canada, and they're now apparently ruler of everything that is My Ticket. So I called Air Canada and spoke to a lovely lady who picked up after 3 rings and told me that she couldn't reissue it because I wasn't appearing in her passenger list, but she kindly offered to call Singapore and sort it out, and then called me back and said that yes, I was booked on the flight, but no, I can't get my ticket reissued because I'm not in some mysterious list of passengers (I'm guessing a PNR) but I'm most certainly booked on the flight, I just need to go to the airport to get my tickets sorted out.

*deep breath*

You know it: the Disaster Waiting To Happen feeling, when it starts tingling at the base of your neck and creeps up slowly into your headspace before exploding in a myriad of colours and pain when you realise with dismay that the airline have f!#@ed up and you are left standing at Heathrow with a suitcase full of Friends DVDs and Harrods foodstuffs and it will be another seven hours before the next flight has a seat for you by which time you will be transiting in Singapore for 13 hours because of the wacky flight curfew rules in Sydney and the next two flights being full.

Please, please, please don't let that happen to me.

stop press!

2007-02-20T00:18:00.000Z

ohmygod! Niall updated his blog!

that is all I have to say. hehehehe :)

nothing to poker stick at!

2007-02-12T21:35:00.000Z

(haha, I make pun in title!)

I hosted my first poker night on Saturday. You would probably know that I'm not a huge drinker, which is a terrible thing to be in London, because that's all that people do here. But to counteract the non-drinking thing, I've been trying to organise activities that don't involve just "going to a bar" or "going to a pub" as the main focus of the evening. Hence: poker.

Poker is good because it's wholesome fun for all the family, you don't smell like smoke at the end of the evening, and it still lets people drink. You just drink while playing poker! Ingenious.

There were seven people squished around my living room table, and once everyone was seated there was no room to squeeze through to the kitchen or the hallway without climbing over furniture or some such thing. Not quite the poker-table-in-the-middle-of-a-dramatically-lighted-boxing-ring scenario, but we make do with what we have.

We had a 35 pound winnings pot, which I came close to winning, but tragically didn't. Kudos to Phil (I'll get you next time. ;) It was lots of fun, reminded me of the heydeys back in Alexandria when there were ten people around the table and the games frequently ran into the tiny hours of the morning. Ah, memories :)

Can't wait till the next poker night!

the sound of music

2007-02-09T00:03:00.000Z

I took Gabs to the London production of The Sound of Music as a thank-you for letting me stay at her place last year. (the local term is to "doss", but urban dictionary has all all sorts of frightful definitions of that word, none of which is the one I'm after, so I'll just leave it be.)

Anyway, coming out of that performance, my reaction was: best musical ever!! I've never had so much fun in a musical before. The sets are fantastic, and so elaborate - you never see any stage helpers because all the props are wheeled in on a conveyor belt. The kids are terribly cute, and all the performers are top-notch; Maria especially. I think they did every single song from the movie, and a couple more that I hadn't heard before. The costumes were wonderful, and I was frequently surprised by the number of quick changes they did in the wings of the stage. Sometimes there would be about 30 seconds between someone going off and coming back on wearing something completely different. (How, I ask you?!)

If you're going to be in London, I definitely recommend this. Don't worry about Tina Arena in Chicago, just go and see this musical. Right now. Yes, even if you're in Australia. You really have to see this thing.

Thanks again for everything, Gabs :)

australia vs denmark

2007-02-07T00:12:00.000Z

And so it was: thousands of Australian fans and about three Danish people convened on Shepherd's Bush to watch the Socceroos play Denmark on Tuesday 6th February 2007. It was one in a series of friendly matches being played around London that night, but it was the only one that counted ;)

Unfortunately we ended up losing 1-3, with Denmark scoring their first goal about four minutes into it, and it all going downhill from there... but this was my first football match experience in London and it was fun. There wasn't much leg room - anyone over about 5'5 was smushed up against the seat in front - and it was absolutely freezing, but we got a mexican wave going during the game, AND I purchased my first item of patriotic green and gold coloured clothing, which economically doubles up as a Brazil scarf (if, hypothetically, I was a Brazil supporter).

When the game ended, the only pub on the way to the tube was completely empty. If we'd won that night, I'm sure it would have been a different story.

muffins

2007-02-04T22:07:00.000Z

I made muffins tonight, the first time I've done in 6 months. They're banana, oat and raspberry muffins, adapted from this recipe.

I'm currently enjoying the fruits of my labour with a nice mug of earl grey tea. There's nothing in your life that a spot of baking won't fix :)

Also, due to popular* demand, I've enabled comments on the blog. So if it takes your fancy, you can comment your little hearts out, and I will even reply! what a deal!

*a popular person demanded it, and so it was done.

the best and worst of London

2007-01-31T21:30:00.000Z

I'm in a list making mood, so here are my 5 best things about London:

1. The transport system is heaven compared to Sydney, even with all the weekend trackwork. When it's running well, you never have to wait more than a few minutes for the tube, and all bus services are pretty frequent - at least one every 10 minutes (usually more), which a far cry from the one-an-hour 963 service at home which stops running at 6:45pm.

1a. By extension, the Oyster card, which is your all-in-one ticket for most forms of public transport. You can buy your weekly online, monitor all your trips (and so can British Government I suppose), and even get your money refunded if your card gets stolen.

2. The TimeOut guide, which shows that there's so much stuff to do!

3. No dangerous bugs or creepy crawlies anywhere. The worst thing I've seen so far is a daddy longlegs spider in my wardrobe. This may change in spring, of course...

4. Marks and Spencer food, which is a bit like a gourmet supermarket with lots of upmarket ready meals as well as good raw ingredients. Delicious!

5. The work culture is much more relaxed here. If you turn up to work on time, you're already ahead of the pack. AND you can go home at the correct time and not be accused of being a slacker, because half the office is leaving with you!

5 different things about London compared to Sydney:

1. Free newspapers are everywhere, and are actually quite popular. People leave their newspapers behind on the tube for others to read when they've reached their stop, which could be seen as either socially acceptable littering or a public service depending on your point of view.

2. There are very few shopping malls! Most shops are just along the streets. Also, absolutely everything in London is part of a chain. Everything. All the pubs, restaurants, novelty shops, delis... even the cute little french patisserie run by an actual french couple down the road is a chain store. They just hide it better here than in america.

3. It's not unusual to have carpet in your bathroom.

4. In London you don't get wheelie bins, you just put your rubbish bags straight on to the street to be collected by the relevant people. It feels so uncivilised throwing stuff into the street!

5. London really caters well for singledom and travellers. The number of single-sized, traveller-friendly portions of food, cosmetics and toiletries available is incredible. I suppose a large proportion of London's population are people like me, but the amount of effort that has gone into producing products for that target audience is amazing. You don't need to cook for one in London if you don't want to, and you can still eat quite healthily. Most rooms for rent are furnished alraedy as well, so you don't need to start from scratch.

5 bad things about London:

1. Most supermarkets are only open for 6 hours on Sundays, from midday to 6pm or thereabouts. Don't ask me why, but if you haven't planned your Sunday meal in advance, you're in trouble.

2. Limescale. I think the limescale is responsible for everything tasting bad because you use the water in all your cooking :( Even tea, which should taste marvellous over here, loses its flavour.

3. People are allowed to smoke in restaurants, cafes and bars. This is going to change in July with the introduction of anti-smoking laws, which I am only too keen to welcome.

4. The de-layering and re-layering dance, which is performed every time you walk into or out of a shop or restaurant in winter. It might be 5 degrees outside, but every office building and shop will be a balmy 23 degrees for your comfort. Only it won't actually be comfortable, because your arms are awkwardly full of puffy coat/jumper/scarf/gloves/beanie.

5. Losing mobile reception when you go into the tube. It means that if you're running late or stuck on a train, you can't call anyone to tell them you won't be there!

I also think London is a very environmentally irresponsible city, much worse than home. The volume of rubbish generated every day from pre-packed sandwiches and free newspapers would easily bury Sydney. Even fruits and vegetables are pre-packed! If I want to buy zucchini (sorry, courgettes) I have to buy them in a plastic wrapped pack of three.

People use their clothes dryers at home if they have one, because there's no outdoor clothes line, and very little space indoors to hang your clothes up anyway. They might also have their gas heaters on 24/7 to combat the chill. Then there's the super-air-conditioned office buildings and shops, and all the budget airlines which are doing terrible environmental damage with their emissions (which I admit I will take full advantage of, so can't really talk on that front).

There are also shops like ikea and ASDA that sell household goods at insanely low, non-sustainable prices. I mean, spending 19p on a set of kitchen cooking utensils is ridiculously cheap - It definitely costs more than that to make them in the first place, at least environmentally. And it frustrates me that I continue to shop at these places and perpetuate the cycle, but I can't stop myself! I can spend 20 pounds on an item, or I can go to ikea and get it for 2 pounds. What will my kids say when they're living in a houseboat because the water levels have risen so much? :p

the suit theorem

2007-01-30T21:56:00.000Z

I don't think I've explained my suit theory before, but it goes something like this. If you take any guy - good looking or not - and put him in a nice, well-fitting suit, his rating goes up tenfold. Now, I'm not claiming to be the first person to notice this, and the theory doesn't apply to every female observer, but it's definitely a part of my own personal superficial rating scale.

The suit factor is a multiplier, not a simple addition to a score, so a George Clooney in a suit will benefit much more than an ugly and balding 50-year-old. In fact, the suit theory might hinder the ugly guy because if they were standing next to each other, every female would be so blinded by the attractiveness and charisma of George in a suit that they'll completely ignore the fact that there's another person standing there. He might even get injured in the mad rush to get close to George.

Now, there are a lot of guys in London who wear suits, which suits me just fine (hee hee, I made a funny!) There are finance people who look very important, reading actual newspapers they've paid for printed on different coloured paper than most plebs in the carriages, dressed in expensive suits with a trendy euro scarf, going about their daily money-making business. During Christmas time I saw quite a few men in tuxedos on the tube heading to some party or other, which was often a bright spot in my day. (Tuxedos are a whole different class of suit altogether, but sadly you don't get them very often.) It was just so incongruous seeing these men dressed to the nines, often with a female in hand, doing something so mundane like catching public transport. I wasn't complaining.

Anyway, all this brings me to the point of my story: I casually observed a Jude Law lookalike on the tube this evening. He was wearing a suit and reading the paper, which was all fairly normal for after work. At Euston Square, he reached the end of his paper, fished out a pen, and started doing a sudoku puzzle. It really warms my heart knowing that there are good looking nerds out there.

Love at first night

2007-01-29T23:10:00.000Z

I've moved into my new room, and I LOVE it. with CAPITALS.

I haven't technically finished putting everything away, but I'm getting there. It's amazing how much stuff I've accumulated over the course of three months. (I should have taken a photo just so you could be amazed along with me.) I easily have three times as much stuff like clothes, toiletries, bags, household goods, random stationery items... but the bonus is that I can put it all away in a drawer or a cupboard now. I'm very excited :)

In other life news, my contract is halfway over and I'm going to be back in Australia in less than a month. It feels so surreal. I have to admit that I'm looking forward to this holiday the most out of all the travelling I've done so far this year. Everything else has been influenced by my emotional sensitivity about moving away from home, or being exhausted and not having a steady home to go back to, or not having any money... but this one is just going to be great. And SUNNY. And full of friends, and eating, and big boys' cafe french toast brunch with bacon and maple syrup. And it's gonna be birthday-licious. :)

snow in London!

2007-01-24T22:50:00.000Z

It snowed last night! My very first London snow! I had no idea anything was different until I walked outside and noticed that most stationary things were now white. Very pretty :) There was probably about an inch or so, maybe a bit more, which was enough to cover cars and stick to trees but not be slushy to walk around in. My friend mentioned that someone had built a little snowman on Fulham bridge, which I thought was really cute.

This is apparently the most snow that's fallen in London since 2003. It was nice to get something in return for the cold!

hello, japan!

2007-01-21T22:16:00.000Z

I'm stopping by the land of Hello Kitty on my way back to the UK! I will be visiting Chito-san in his japanese mountain retreat with super fast broadband. My goals for this trip include going to Nikko, another bike riding day in Kyoto, actually eating sashimi at the Tokyo Fish Markets (as opposed to going all the way there and then piking on it), and maybe a visit to Takayama. The cherry blossoms are supposedly in bloom in late March in Tokyo, so if I'm lucky I may get a look-see. :)

If anyone is going to be there between the 14th and 23rd of March, do let me know, we can say hello!

the cardinal rule

2007-01-21T21:47:00.000Z

I managed to get my hair cut on the weekend, but broke my cardinal rule of hair cutting: never get your hair cut shorter than your shoulders.

I was over-enthused, and forgot to convey this to the hairdresser. I said "sitting on my shoulders", which somehow translated to the hair that I have now. Which I'm not going to post a photo of, because if you want to see it you'll have to make the effort to visit me. Or, wait till I arrive in Australia and by then it will be past my shoulders and we will no longer have a problem. ;)

the unfunny side of irony

2007-01-20T00:57:00.000Z

It's Friday! Hooray! I was really struggling to do anything productive this afternoon. By about 4:30 I was severely over it and ready to go home, but I hung around till 6 because I want to get paid those extra one and a half hours. Yay money!

I found out that alison has been taking a photo a day and posting it on flickr. it's such an awesome idea, I wish I'd stolen it and just not said anything.

Meanwhile... I had big plans for this Saturday. Originally I was going to day trip out to somewhere (anywhere), just to get out of London a bit. But the weather forecast made me re-think those plans to shopping in London (since I got paid TWICE this week, once for my old contract, and once for my new one!) and getting my hair cut. Then I found out that we are having an open house all day tomorrow between 11 and 4:30 to replace my flatmate who is moving out, so if I'd like to meet the people I will potentially be living with, I'll have to stay home.

I finally have money, but no day trip, no shopping, and no hair cut. :( irony just isn't funny unless it's happening to someone else.

I lost my scarf today :(

2007-01-18T23:49:00.000Z

Somewhere between the number 38 bus route on Farringdon rd and Foyles bookshop on Charing Cross rd, there is a beautiful teal scarf that is now forever lost to me.

I bought that scarf in France, and I really liked the colour. :(

more photos are online

2007-01-17T23:34:00.000Z

I've gone on a bit of a photo uploading spree, but none of the major holidays are up yet (they're too hard to tackle :)

You can see the new photos on flickr. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed, there's a link on the bottom of the page somewhere...

remember figlet?

2007-01-16T22:40:00.000Z

relive your figlet memories right here!

room swap!

2007-01-16T21:34:00.000Z

My flatmate is moving out in two weeks. You know what this means?

I get her awesome room!

I really shouldn't be so happy about it because she's cool to live with, but the room is so much bigger and brighter than mine (and doesn't have blue carpet) that it's so worth it....

I will be 100 pounds a month poorer, but oh-so-much richer in other ways. I'll have a TV! Natural light! More drawers! Space! (potentially more noise! but that's okay!) I can shop for bed linen and not have to worry about clashing with blue!

Awesome!!

p.s. If you know anyone who wants to move into a new place in London, and they are a) cool and b) clean up after their kitchen mess, then let me know!

bored?

2007-01-16T00:13:00.000Z

need to waste time? look no further...

there are sites out there that list the answers, but I trust you're not going to cheat. Otherwise, where's the fun in that?

Ooh, and just to share, I joined my local library tonight as well, which also rents DVDs! How awesome! I went a bit nuts and borrowed lots of things. Hopefully I will not be forgetting to return them :p

one hundred things

2007-01-14T22:33:00.000Z

It's been a while since I've written one of these. If any of the people who wrote one of these on the board ages ago reads this, write a new one and we'll swap! :)

Here are one hundred true things about me.

one
I'm listening to french pop/rock artist Sinclair as I write this list, introduced to me by Gabs' french flatmate.

two
In the last four months of 2006, I only worked for four weeks.

three
Mushrooms are my favourite vegetable.

four
I once had a huntsman land on my head in primary school, and didn't notice until about five minutes later when everyone else saw it and freaked out and formed a giant circle around me. I cautiously reached up to my hair, felt something kind of scratchy, screamed, and flicked it off with such vehemence that I think I broke some of its legs when it landed on the floor. A classmate scooped it up, put it in our empty fishtank and called it Victor. We eventually had thirty three Victors in the course of that year. I think the event has scarred me for life.

five
I prefer toast to fresh bread, unless the bread is less than 6 hours old.

six
I feel like I grew closer to my family after I moved out of home.

seven
Being anywhere mountainous has the ability to take my breath away.

eight
I don't think I've ever seen Mary Poppins in its entirety.

nine
I like drinking hot water just by itself. No, it's not that weird, ask any Asian about it, ok?

ten
I can't stomach violence, horror, or anything even vaguely disturbing in movies anymore. I'm not quite sure what that means about my mental state compared to ten years ago when I could watch anything, but it's strictly dramas, some action, and the good old romantic comedy now.

eleven
I love sesame seeds on anything.

twelve
I really miss sunshine.

thirteen
I love sticky date pudding in butterscotch sauce.

fourteen
I really hate cigarettes and don't understand how people can smoke them.

fifteen
The first guy I ever had a crush on was named Lachlan.

sixteen
I'm allergic to coffee :(

seventeen
I used to stay up till 3am on weekends in high school before I even felt tired.

eighteen
I really like playing board games.

nineteen
I think I find it easy to meet and make acquaintances, but very hard to make close friends.

twenty
Life always seems different between the hours of 11pm and 5am.

twenty one
My oldest friend, who is one of my best friends, is someone I've known for 14 years.

twenty two
I used to wear reading glasses.

twenty three
I buy postcards like crazy when I travel. It's kind of cool, because I've started putting them on my wall in a giant work of art to remind me of where I've travelled.

twenty four
I feel like I'm getting more average in intelligence with every passing year.

twenty five
I would like to take more of an interest in clothes/hair/make up/etcetera but I'm not sure how bothered I can be.

twenty six
I'm a really messy person. My bedroom at home is atrocious.

twenty seven
I can't stand kitchen mess, though.

twenty eight
Living room clutter is OK, as long as it isn't food related.

twenty nine
I would like to own an SLR so I can take lots of pretty photos.

thirty
It annoys me when people talk about things they don't know.

thirty one
I used to feel very alienated from most 'normal' people throughout school, but I feel like I'm trading intelligence for social skills now. I'm hoping the exchange will halt soon.

thirty two
I spend way too much time on the computer.

thirty three
Hazelnut is my favourite flavour of anything, as long as real hazelnuts are used.

thirty four
If I got a tattoo, it would be on my lower back.

thirty five
I have never cooked rice without a rice cooker.

thirty six
I own Moby Dick but I've never finished reading it.

thirty seven
If I don't get enough sleep, I eat a lot.

thirty eight
I have eighty two pounds in my bank account right now.

thirty nine
I really, really, really hate recruitment companies.

forty
I failed my Ps first time round.

forty one
I passed them the second time round going to a different RTA branch.

forty two
I want to do more exercise.

forty three
I sleep very deeply.

forty four
I have eaten lots of eggs since arriving in London.

forty five
My flat has creaky floors.

forty six
I don't think I could ever travel extensively again without having a home to go back to.

forty seven
I don't like eating rice much any more.

forty eight
I really don't like limescale. It's everywhere in London.

forty nine
contracting > permanent work (despite many of the associated hassles)

fifty
I have almost 50,000 frequent flyer points for Singapore Airlines.

fifty one
My dog's name is Jasmine.

fifty two
I've eaten at Tetsuya's, ranked number five in the fifty best restaurants in the world.

fifty three
I wish I was a tidier person.

fifty four
I think I used to get along better with guys than girls, but this seems to be swapping over.

fifty five
I prefer the company of taken males to single males, because I'm afraid of saying something to a single male that may be taken out of friend context.

fifty six
The most expensive pair of shoes I've ever bought was $200 Australian dollars, which isn't really that expensive. The next expensive pair was about $140.

fifty seven
I liked uni better than primary school which was better than high school. Getting out of formal education was ten times better than all of that combined.

fifty eight
I think I have fairly good organisational skills... as long as it is something I want to organise and I get over the procrastination element to do it.

fifty nine
I'm a 'jack of all trades' person rather than a specialist at anything.

sixty
I am really, really looking forward to eating yum cha back in Sydney.

sixty one
And a peach. You can't find peaches in the UK. (Nectarines yes, plums yes, apricots yes, but no peaches!)

sixty two
I think I am generally very happy.

sixty three
I miss the smell of mangoes.

sixty four
I wish I was more decisive.

sixty five
I am ready to stop being single.

sixty six
I just need to find a nice English lad to fill the void ;)

sixty seven
I would like to be able to play the guitar, but I'm so lazy I never forced myself to learn it properly.

sixty eight
On the scale of toasting, I prefer a darker and crispier toast to a wimpy light dusting.

sixty nine
I like sitting at the window and watching the rain fall. Ironically, you can't do that much in London because when it rains, it just drizzles.

seventy
The best holiday I've ever had in my life was snow trip Japan 06!

seventy one
I like being childish sometimes, like running through fountains or jumping on jumping castles.

seventy two
I wish I had wavy hair.

seventy three
I once got hit in the head with a baseball bat in primary school. There was no blood, but there was a giant lump, and it really, really hurt. The teacher didn't take me to the sick bay or anything because it was five minutes until the end of the day.

seventy four
Sometimes I wonder if that baseball bat changed the person who I am today.

seventy five
I love long car trips... especially if I'm not driving!

seventy six
I sing along to the radio.

seventy seven
I have stopped baking desserts.

seventy eight
I don't actually have the utensils to bake desserts :p

seventy nine
I live with a French girl, a Russian girl, and a German-Persian girl.

eighty
I'd like to have two or three kids one day (at least one boy and one girl).

eighty one
I can't drink most soft drinks any more. The type of sugar in them makes me feel ill.

eighty two
One of my feet is bigger than the other. I can never remember which one.

eighty three
I just finished mopping the floor in my flat, because it was really gross.

eighty four
I wish I read more books.

eighty five
I really like the smell of mulled wine.

eighty six
I have eleven pairs of shoes. This doesn't count the ones in Australia.

eighty seven
If I'm honest with myself, The X-Files is responsible for my current career path.

eighty eight
How sad.

eighty nine
I try to be punctual, but sometimes time just runs away from me. I'm trying very hard to fix the punctuality thing.

ninety
I have a packet of mint slice sitting on my bedside table. Unopened.

ninety one
I have never felt the need to manage my spending until I arrived in London. (It's not because London is that expensive on my income, but I don't have any reserves of pounds to draw on. Unfortunately, this is likely to last until May.)

ninety two
I own a pair of red snow mittens.

ninety three
The last movie I saw was Stranger than Fiction.

ninety four
I envy people who can do as they please and not worry about what everyone thinks.

ninety five
I used to crave hot chips with a passion throughout high school. Anytime I smelled them I had to stop myself from buying them. I wasn't always successful.

ninety six
But my willpower was much stronger back then.

ninety six
These days, I don't crave anything as intensely as I used to.

ninety seven
My ideal night in involves cooking a meal, eating a whole lot of food and watching a teen/chick flick movie. Or playing board games.

ninety eight
I am going to be a nigel over the next few weeks as everyone flies back to Australia for Australia Day!

ninety nine
My toenails are painted a metallic burgandy red.

one hundred
My Australian credit card got suspended two weeks ago because I forgot to pay the bill. Oops.

I'm coming home.

2007-01-13T14:07:00.000Z

23rd of February - 14th March. mark it in your diaries people :)

why I hate recruitment companies

2007-01-07T23:29:00.000Z

I really, really hate recruitment companies.

They are a bunch of lying, incompetent, smelly, no-good, soul-draining money grabbers who only ever have their own interests at heart. There is seriously nothing they won't do to make money, and it's really disheartening to think there are people out there who choose to make a living by screwing people over every single day of their working lives.

Recruitment in the UK is split into two streams - permanent and contract. Every time a permanent agent lands someone a job, they get paid a lump sum of money. I've heard figures like 5,000 pounds per job, which seems outrageous and explains why they don't care if they screw you over, as long as you sign on the dotted line. Contract agents get a certain amount of money per day you work, which ranges from zero to however much they can fleece off the top of your contract rate while you're not at your bargaining best. This also explains why they don't care if they screw you over, because once you've signed a contract you can't change the rate, and some contracts have clauses saying they you can't leave halfway through. My experience with recruitment agents has varied from 'okay' to 'terrible'. The two I happened to sign on with so far have fallen into the lower half of the scale...

My first recruitment agent:

Called me EIGHT times in the space of 90 minutes after the interview to pressure me into a decision
Completely lied about the length of contract by a factor of three to make me accept it
tried to deny that they'd lied about the contract length AND the amount of money they were earning from the contract (as reasons to not pay me more money for a 1 month contract vs. 3 month contract)
Attempted to re-sign me even after the whole "oops, I know we screwed you over" situation
And the worst part: they screwed up a week of my pay and took it back from my payroll provider. A week is a lot of money when you've only worked for one month. They STILL have not fixed it 16 working days later, despite me calling them numerous times, re-faxing my timesheets and emailing them twice. And I called them first working day of the new year, was assured I'd get paid before the weekend, and still have no money!!!

My second recruitment agent:

Lied about the contract length (although only by weeks instead of months this time)
Gave me wrong information about the start time so I turned up late and looked like an idiot on my first day
Lied about the fact that they are working exclusively with this client... which they aren't
and are probably making about a 100 pounds per day from me after I found out how much the other recruitment agency were paying their contractors

It makes me fed up more than anything else... it's really maddening to go into the job hunting process EXPECTING to be lied to and screwed over. I don't care that they make money, I know they have to, but I'd think 20 pounds a day per contractor is reasonable, not a hundred. They'd have thousands of contractors signed on anyway, they can't be classed 'poor' by any stretch of the imagination. All their hard work is at the beginning of a contract; once they've set up the agreement, they just sit back and watch the money pile up in their account. It just makes me cranky.

That is my rant for the day. I just really, really had to get it off my chest.

vietnamese food is SO tasty

2007-01-05T00:11:00.000Z

Vicki and I ate Vietnamese on Kingsland Road tonight. It was so cheap, and so worth the walk - Kingsland Road is inconvenient to get to, but has so many good Vietnamese restaurants.

We had actually planned to go to "the best vietnamese food" restaurant, but it was closed (presumably for the holiday season). So instead, we went to one with a "certificate of hygiene" which was equally as good, if not better.

How do they make the grilled pork so tasty? It's a mystery.

As an aside, I love how Jane Espenson tells people what she eats for lunch every day. I don't blog nearly as often, but I think it's a funny quirk. I had a lightly spiced vegetable curry soup from the news cafe opposite The Guardian offices in Farringdon today. Only 3 pounds with malted grain bread. Bargain!

Is it the weekend yet?

2007-01-04T21:55:00.000Z

I've worked 2 days in the last 24, and I want a holiday already. How tragic is that? I haven't actually done anything at work yet either - there have been big problems getting the development environments set up, it's all SharePoint Server 2007 stuff, so nobody knows anything about anything. But I'm recovering from a cold (well, two colds), and I think I got quite attached to doing nothing all day... so is it the weekend yet?

I had a pretty good holiday season (aside from having no money). Christmas dinner at Jen's was plentiful. We had multiple ovenloads of food, which has never happened to me before. And we had about six different things for dessert. So delicious!

Spain was great, we burned through our savings and soaked up sunshine. I bought a really cute pair of shoes and two beautiful leather bags, and some earrings and miscellaneous other stuff. I spent 600 pounds all up, and now I'm left with less than 300 in my account. I'm waiting on a week's pay from my crappy ex-recruiter who revoked the money in error. :p It's kind of scary having so little money to my name, living paycheque to paycheque...

Actually the real reason I'm poor is that I've been spending all my money on TICKETS. Mmmmm, tickets.... they're comparatively much cheaper than you'd pay in Australia, and there's so many events to go to. I'm going outdoor ice skating at Somerset House and Hampstead Heath, will be seeing The Nutcracker ballet, and Nelly Furtado. Then there's the Australia vs. Denmark soccer match in February, and The Dirty Dozen Brass Band that played at last year's Jazz in the Domain which I'll go to if I can get my airline tickets sorted for the right dates. I'm flirting with the idea of seeing Cirque de Soleil in February... and maybe Justin Timberlake in July. And I missed out on Paolo Nutini tickets in April for 16.50 when I could have bought them! Kicking myself now. :p

borough markets

2006-12-23T23:26:00.000Z

I went to Borough markets yesterday, which is the market that Jamie Oliver likes to zing around to on his vespa. I had a good time browsing through the various stalls and tasting samples, and particularly because it's close to Christmas there was a lot of activity going on. My purchases included:

* Mulled wine
* Mulled apple (the non-alcoholic variety I drank before I'd eaten anything!)
* Truffle butter for Christmas dinner
* A cowboy cookie - an oat cookie with belgian dark chocolate, cranberries and walnuts
* Pistachio and date shortbread rounds
* A venison burger
* A dark rye sourdough loaf with sunflower seeds

It was a tasty haul, but Borough is not known for its bargains, so it was an expensive one. But it's only Christmas once a year :)

Speaking of Christmas dinner, this year I'll be spending it with my cousins - one who lives here, another who is over to visit - and a few friends. We're doing the whole traditional Christmas dinner and eating turkey, Christmas pudding, mince pies, custard (the English like their custard), brandy butter, etc. Since I can't be home, it's the next best thing :) I'm really looking forward to it!

I have work!

2006-12-21T23:49:00.000Z

Some good news - I have work again! hooray!

I got a contract working for a web company for the first couple of months next year. This is a Good Thing, because it means I can hop down to Australia for a couple of weeks in March and catch some sunshine before daylight savings goes :) And I'm glad it got sorted before Christmas so I can really enjoy the break.

I found out my brother got offered a job on the same day, so it's smiles all round for the family today. Yay!

Vicki and I ate Japanese food and watched The Holiday in celebration. It was just the kind of fluffy movie I was in the mood to see, so I quite enjoyed it.

unemployed spending

2006-12-20T22:48:00.000Z

Isn't it tragic that when you are unemployed you have more opportunity to spend money that you really shouldn't?

Today I was feeling a little bit bored, so I thought I'd hop down to Oxford St and browse some shops in the evening. I came back with a gorgeous cashmere sweater.

I've never owned a cashmere sweater in my life, I'm not sure why now is a good time to own one, but there you go.

I really shouldn't have eaten that...

2006-12-19T00:20:00.000Z

You know when you've eaten just a wee bit too much food and you think, "I really shouldn't have eaten that"?

I've been having that feeling ALL day. Today's menu included:

8am, Marylebone, my kitchen, eating a nutritious breakfast for the day ahead:
- 2 x slice of Vogel's Soy and Linseed bread (best bread ever.)
- 1 x Earl Grey Tea
- 1 x satsuma

10:30am, Canary Wharf, Carluccios, casual interview:
- 1 x English Breakfast Tea

12:30pm, Canary Wharf, Itsu, killing (lots of) time while waiting for recruiter callback:
- 1 x take away bowl of 'Chicken Teriyaki' noodles which was neither very Chicken nor Teriyaki
- 1 x Ginger Zing juice with apples, ginger, mint and lime
- 1 x pack of Organic Sesame Crunch Popcorn

3pm, Farringdon, Starbucks, killing time while waiting for interview that never eventuated due to recruiter stuff-up:
- 1 x hot chocolate
- 1 x berry scone

7pm, Green Park, Boudin Blanc, dinner with Niall:
- 1 x wild mushroom risotto
- 1 x lamb shank with potato, olives and green beans
- 1 x fried banana thing

9pm, Green Park, some random pub:
- 2 x Baileys on ice

The Heathrow Injection is well and truly on its way...

mmmm... chicken salt.

2006-12-17T18:05:00.000Z

I have a lot of mish-mashed thoughts that I'm just going to ramble about today. Consider youselves warned. :)

The past week has been fairly eventful. Unfortunately the 3 month work contract that was supposed to last me through until February had the plug pulled on it last week, so I'm looking for work again right before Christmas. It's entirely my recruitment agent's fault; they told me it was a 3 month contract, but the company hiring me was offering only a 1 month rolling contract. Even though the company and I had worked out the dupe about a week into my contract, I didn't think it was going to be that bad because the company expected some work to come through at the start of December. Unfortunately the new work didn't eventuate, and won't until January at least, so I'm back on the job market.

Admittedly, looking for work hasn't been as bad as I expected. I've been to quite a few interviews, there are a lot of people looking for workers to start as soon as the new year begins, and some even before the new year (and they're permanent roles too, so I'd be getting paid public holidays!) Some recruiters are all in a panic as well, because if they haven't met their recruitment targets then they're desperate to get people into roles. I'm just in a bit of a dilemma, because I don't want permanent work. And the stress of job hunting takes its toll. Every day I wake up not knowing how I'll feel at the end of the day. I can be depressed, elated, optimistic then dejected in the space of three hours, and I hate it.

I got interviewed for a contract role last friday which I'm quite desperate to get, but I'll find out tomorrow whether or not I'm the lucky one... and I have to give an answer for a permanent role that I've been offered tomorrow as well. The problem is I'm hoping to visit Australia in Feb/March next year to use up my return ticket, so I don't want to use up 2 weeks of leave in a permanent job to visit home instead of visiting europe... :) So on that basis I think I'll keep trying for contracts and see how that goes. But then again, things change so quickly here who knows what I might do in 24 hours' time...

On happier matters, last week I visited the Australia Shop in Covent Garden and melted into a nostalgic puddle. Imagine a whole wall of Arnott's Biscuits, ETA Barbeque sauce, Vita Wheats, Picnic Bars, Twisties, Vegemite, Kraft Peanut Butter, Lamingtons, Cottees Cordial and Pizza Shapes... it's a boring old scene from your local Woolworths, but I went nuts and spent 18 pounds on things that would have cost me about 15 dollars in Australia. :P My shopping basket consisted of:

* Tim Tams (for guys at work)
* Mint Slice (for guys at work)
* Vita Wheat 9-grains (for Gabby)
* Cheese Twisties (for Cally)
* Edgell's Creamed Corn (for Vicki)
* Picnic bar (for Niall)
* Caramello Koala (for Phil)
* Wagon Wheel (for me)
* Chicken Salt (originally for Phil until I found out his parents had shipped some over, so now I inherit it. Mmmmm....)

It was really fun, and even funnier seeing everyone else in the shop clutching bags of Allen's Strawberries and Cream or Nutri Grain for dear life. Nowhere else would you be able to buy a basket full of junk and justify it. Imagine working in a place that makes everyone feel so happy... it would be like working in a miracle factory! At least now I know where to go if I'm feeling homesick. :)

Last Tuesday I went to The Royal Ballet's production of Sleeping Beauty with Gabby and Cally (very cultured, no?) It was really amazing seeing the strength these tiny ballerinas, I wish I could do even a quarter of what they were capable of. The costumes and music were fantastic as well, we all left feeling quite inspired (kind of like the time when we saw The Devil Wears Prada and wanted an unlimited fashion wardrobe at our disposal).

It only hit me this weekend that Christmas is a week away. If you aren't shopping and running into the crowds and hearing the muzak in the shops, it doesn't seem real. But this weekend I saw carollers on the streets (bad ones), and harried mothers, and lots of Hamleys bags stuffed with toys of all descriptions. I walked along Oxford St a bit last weekend which was crazy, so I don't want to think of what it was like this weekend. I'm looking forward to Christmas dinner with my cousins in Victoria. It should be a good day of excessive eating. Mmmm... excessive eating...

I've also got another holiday planned - Vicki and I are going to Seville in Spain between Christmas and New Year. Flamenco dancing, Tapas, and hot Spanish guys... what more could we ask for? ;)

Cam was hosting a Christmas party last night, so I called while it was on and got to speak to him, Bunny, Khanh and Ian. It made my day and sounds like they had a great time, even with the Turkey debacle. Actually, hearing about the turkey debacle only made it sound funnier. I miss you guys, enjoy the snickers pods while you have them!! :)

I hope everyone is having a great time in the leadup to Christmas. May you all eat to excess and not feel guilty about it! :)

rss feed

2006-12-09T19:41:00.000Z

I have one. Actually I've always had one but have never linked it... if you haven't worked it out, it's http://pinkaholic-girl.blogspot.com/rss.xml.

stop and think

2006-12-09T17:49:00.000Z

I read a line in a book today: "I wonder whether I have already met the next person I will sleep with, or whether it will be someone currently unknown to me."

Before you get carried away: I wasn't thinking about who I will next sleep with. It just got me wondering about the intricate webs of people I've known in my life and how they fit together; particularly how my relationship with people changes over time.

When I meet someone, I do a bit of compartmentalising. I know it's not very nice, everyone is individual, yada yada, but I do it anyway. People get put into their appropriate categories like "flatmate", "friend", "I know you from uni", "colleague", "someone you must put up with because it's for the good of the nation", "I can't quite remeber your name but I'm sure you trod on my foot once", "nice guy at the cafe", etc.

Once someone has been compartmentalised, I expect them to stay there. Nothing much happens in day-to-day life that would promote someone from "I know you from uni" to "flatmate", "friend" and "you trod on my foot" simultaneously. So when someone does move compartments, it always takes me by surprise. I never realise they've jumped to a new ship until we're having dinner every weekend in between movies and bouts of DDR.

For instance, at my last workplace there were so many people who I knew from uni. At least half the development team came from UTS, so I recognised a lot of faces even if I hadn't met them before (and I was probably more familiar to them because I used to work at the support desk - handing out printouts was really quite a stressful job). So when I started work, everyone was automatically in "I know you from uni" and "colleague" head spaces. I might even have been "that annoying chick from helpdesk" to most of them. But it didn't occur to me that the "uni people" I met years ago would become "colleagues", and some even "close friends". I never thought I'd be sitting alongside them in 3 years' time having coffee with them every day, planning dinners, going ballroom dancing with them, going to their weddings, drinking in pubs together halfway across the world. I still have images of people sitting in labs looking studious and scary. And laughing at a Gantt chart in my IS assignment when Cally and I were merely trying to fill up page quotas...

I guess the point is, I have a healthy dose of respect for all the randomness (or possibly predestined aspect) of fate. I'm intensely curious about the future and how quickly it changes now. Will I be working alongside the coffee guy next week after learning he's secretly a C# guru on sabbatical? Have I met the man who's going to heroically rescue me from some crazy situation in 3 years' time? Am I going to have kids and grow old with a guy who's currently in the "trod on my foot" compartment?
Will neon green make a comeback in 4 years' time? It all really makes you stop and think...

Like on the monopoly board

2006-12-03T22:56:00.000Z

I've moved into a place in Marylebone! I've been telling people it's Marylebone "like on the Monopoly board" so they have some point of reference. (Or, at least, they will have heard of it before.)

After 10 days of fruitless househunting on gumtree, I got lucky and found a place which was available immediately - I moved in two days later. I'm living with 3 other girls aged 23 - 25. It's a flat in a converted mansion, which makes it feel very grand olde english as I walk up the front steps.

I moved the rest of my stuff in yesterday, so the room looks a bit like an explosion of clothes and plastic bags at the moment... cooked my first meal last night, filled my tiny allocated cupboard and frige shelf with food, and will be cooking at various points during the week. Oh, the satisfaction :)

In non-moving related news, I went to see the Shell Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition at the Natural History Museum with Niall today. The photos are really amazing, as are the stories behind some of them (often involving camping out for hours, or lying in flamingo poo, or swimming around in freezing water terrified of leopard seals, etcetera). There's also a category for junior photographers, which was really impressive. All the photos are pictured on the site, so you can browse around for yourself.

I'm also interested in going ice skating at Somerset House before winter is up, hopefully when my cousin Bel visits over Christmas. Having an ice skate outdoors is such a novelty :)

Workin' 9 to 5:30...

2006-11-24T21:30:00.000Z

(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

2006-11-11T16:53:00.000Z

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...

2006-11-08T23:47:00.000Z

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

2006-11-05T21:36:00.000Z

the act of spending pounds when one does not earn any.

hello everyone!

2006-11-03T23:39:00.000Z

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.

the land of baguette and cheese

2006-10-19T23:55:00.000+01:00

There's so much to say about this France trip that I don't know where to start. The sights have been wonderful, having a car is so handy (I even learned how to drive manual - now THAT's exciting) and we've been just going wherever the flow takes us, for the most part.

The highlight so far has been the town of Chamonix near Mont Blanc, Europe's tallest mountain. The scenery around this area is a sea of orange, red and green leaves at this time of year and it's beautiful. It actually reminds me a lot of Switzerland, I travelled through the Swiss alps at about the same time last year, so all the memories of that trip are coming back.

There have been a lot of tiny european roads that wind their way around hills and valleys, and old medieval towns with their castles and cobblestone streets. There have also been overdeveloped tourist towns and some creative sign language when our very limited French vocabulary has failed us. But everyone has been very friendly and helpful, especially in the far out towns where fewer people speak English.

We haven't gone too crazy with food, although our last leg (Lyon) is known as the gastronomic capital of France so I'm sure we'll be eating well there.

I've taken a million photos. Anyone who's gone travelling with me knows how snap-happy I am; well, I'm nothing compared to Cameron. We've taken a lot of panoramic shots which I hope to upload soon. I've put one of Jasper up (see previous post).

Anyway, the travelling portion of my holiday is just about over. It's been fun, but I'm ready to stop living out of a suitcase now... :)

my new toy

2006-10-19T23:00:00.000+01:00

Cameron has this cool software that stitches photos together.

Here's a panoramic shot of the town of Jasper. Larger sizes are available. Would suit 4 monitor display. :)

Preparing for Battle

2006-10-08T20:57:00.000+01:00

I'm back in Edinburgh, we just finished the tour this evening. I have mixed feelings towards it, but for the most part it was fun. I'm earmarking time to update with details later. Right now I'm mentally preparing myself for the 10 hour bus trip back to London tomorrow...