Well isn't it nice to be in demand? My new job sees me... well, since I've not been updating this blog terribly frequently of late, I should begin by pointing out that this is my new, new job. My last new job vanished amid a flurry of funding withdrawals. Anyway, as I was saying, my new job sees me straddling several different teams, and since I started last week I've been scurrying backwards and forwards across the office to catch up with various people. This had not gone unnoticed and so today I was moved around desks in an effort to minimise my scurries.
All well and good, except that my new desk appears to proportioned for someone slightly more statuesque than I. Its surface is placed several inches higher than any sensible desk top ought to be. Raising my seat high enough so that I can actually type comfortably leaves my feet dangling disconcertingly in mid-air. I sat there with my legs swinging backwards and forwards aimlessly for a while, in a pleasingly childish manner before going through numerous contortions in effort to find a position of comfortable equilibrium. I eventually ended up sitting on leg, with the other resting on top of my PC (a tower system set on the floor under the desk, just in case the mental image was confusing).
It's more comfortable than it sounds, honest.
Look at this. A blog just sitting there, all alone and abandoned.
Someone should take the poor thing under their arm. Fix it up. Turn it around.
Transform it into something worthwhile again.
But where to find such a person?
Hmm...
Just over a week back in London and I'm wondering if I've gone native already. The city seems much as it ever has to me. Whether up or down umbrellas are wielded in a position calculated to cause most damage to the innocent bystander, a phenomenon I've not noted anywhere else in the UK, and tourists seem to hone in on me to ask directions as though I have the aura of someone who knows their way around the place. Which of course I do.
There are changes I've noticed of course. A preponderance of waxed moustaches, for example, is novel to me. A new trend, or an indication of a Dali convention in town perhaps. Who knows?
A new billboard near Leicester Square also demands attention. Large scale video screens in cities the size of London are nothing new, but the sheer brightness of this instance makes it worthy of notice. It is literally dazzling - its glare is visible from some distance and I first mistook the glow in the sky it cast it for a spotlight. Not only is it painful to look it but it is spectacularly obnoxious. Environmental graffiti. Sadly it was being used to advertise a worthy cause, which mitigates my loathing for it, but I hope it's not a sign of things to come (pun unintended).
Hmm, A ladybird is crawling up my bedroom wall. Not something I'd expect to see in January, but a welcome sign nevertheless - I've long been fond of ladybirds. Not that I believe in such things, but I think I'll declare it a good omen for the year ahead.
The TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) website is one of those wonderful sites spawned out of the internet which gives me the warm fuzzies when I think out the future of humanity.
TED is a series of annual conferences which brings together groups of genuinely fascinating people and sticks them on a stage to talk for up to 18 minutes a time. The site now hosts about 200 videos of these talks and there are some absolute delights amongst them.
Perhaps because my newly minted niece isn't far from my thoughts these days, this talk stuck in my mind: Five dangerous things you should let your kids do, but there are many more.
Browse, watch, learn, enjoy.
I hate packing at the best of times, but the prospect of leaving for the next several months adds extra melancholy to my mood. It shouldn't really. I'll be back for regular weekend visits over the next few months, so it's not as if I'll be completely absent, but it did kick in yesterday as I was sitting on the sofa with my four month old niece sleeping in my arms. It's been remarkable watching her progress over the last few months. Her increasing awareness of the world - those tiny eyes which were once so tightly closed now seem to see everything - as well as her ability to interact with it. Her favourite trick at the moment is grabbing things and then immediately trying to fit them in her mouth. Fingers are a notable target.
After watching her progress so closely I feel sad that I'll be missing so much more of it.
My initial thought was that this new blog would be a clean break from my prior attempt at blogging. A fresh start, a blank slate. Tabula rasa.
After writing two entries, however, I already recognise my stylistic and syntactic quirks, and realise that it's still the same person writing it. However I might have romanticised the new directions this blog may take, it's an extension, if not an outright continuation, of what's come before. On that basis, I imported the contents of my old blog lock, stock and barrel.
Some entries will likely look rather odd, since I've yet to perform the same sort of customisations on which my previous blog relied, and some features (notably the stylesheet switcher) and links may not work. I may fix them at some point when I have a moment, but please treat my archives with care and kindness. They may be slightly fragile for the foreseeable future.
Four hours. Fours hours I spent carefully tending to a pan full of boiling water as I slowly caramelised a tin of condensed milk, prime ingredient in the BBC's pecan banoffee pie recipe.
The end result was worth it, although I couldn't resist making a couple of minor alterations to the recipe. Substituting pecans with maltesers and chocolate buttons for example, and using chocolate digestive biscuits for the base (sweet tooth? Me?). The final product received near universal praise from those I forced it upon (as though after four hours I would take "no" for an answer).
But four needless hours I spent.
Why needless?
Clearly I must confess my ignorance of the contents of the supermarket shelves. It's possible to purchase tins of pre-caramelised condensed milk. Who knew? More importantly, why didn't the BBC tell me?
I'd probably be more upset at this discovery where I not still experiencing the rosy glow of a post chocolate banoffee pie sugar high.
Mmm. Chocolate.
I would have titled this entry "everything old is new again", but it's a phrase I've overused on previous blog entries once too often.
It's apt though. It's almost 2008, and there's plenty of newness heading my way in the New Year: new job, new city, new people, new place to live. A new blog seemed only fitting. Whether it's aptly named is another matter. A dear friend asked that I should keep her up to date with my forthcoming adventures, or as she put it somewhat less delicately "the ensuing chaos", so I credit her with both this new venture into blogdom and its title.
So yes, new job and new city for me, the former being the reason for the latter. The city isn't entirely new I must confess. Rather I'm heading back to the sprawling metropolis of old London town, a place from which I departed just over three years ago to return home. While I never ruled out a future return to London, I'll admit that I didn't see it happening quite this quickly. It was a case of opportunity knocking. Or rather opportunity emailing somewhat mysteriously via a third party, and then arranging for me to sign a non-disclosure agreement before finally revealing itself before me with an offer that was, and I may yet live to regret these words, too good to refuse.
It's not quite a complete return to London, I must stress. The virtue of being head-hunted, I discovered inadvertently, is that it provides an avenue for negotiation. Though the job was tempting I made it quite clear that I'm not interested in a full time return to London. I have a life up here that I've been slowly piecing together over the last few years and I'm not about to leave it lightly. I asked instead whether it would be possible to divide my time between the office in London and working from home in Edinburgh. The answer, to my surprise, was "yes", so the coming year will see me living a tale of two cities.
I have yet to work out the logistics of exactly how this will operate. The new job is for a start up company, the details of which I'm not at liberty to divulge (I take my NDA's seriously), so there will be a lot of work setting things up initially and I've pledged myself to be in the office full time until things settle a little. I've optimistically budgeted 3 or 4 months for this process but I'll be very surprised if it turns out to be remotely close to accurate. But when things quiet down I'll likely be working for two weeks up in Edinburgh followed by 2 weeks in the office. I see much travelling in my future.
I'm still in a state of flux about these forthcoming changes, flip-flopping between excitement, trepidation and outright fear. I travel down on Wednesday and spending the first week finishing things off at my current job, then I have a week to my own devices to settle a little before starting again. I'm most excited about working in an office again, amongst real people. Excellent company though I am, after three years of home working I've become all too well aware of the limitations of my own company. Being able to bounce an idea off a nearby colleague is invaluable and I look forward to being able to do it again, even if I am daunted by the calibre of people I'm likely to be working with.
Regardless, my intent is to make regular contributions here to keep people up to date with what's going on in my life. Perhaps some contributions will be more regular than others - we'll see.
In the mean time, allow me to wish you all a somewhat belated Merry Christmas, and a considerably more timely Happy New Year.
May you live in interesting times!
I've mentioned before how money in my life is held in some weird karmic balance that I don't fully comprehend, such that sudden influxes of money are more often than not matched with sudden outfluxes to more or less the same value.
It seems to hold true for other aspects of my life. Take today. I opened my blinds this morning to reveal slightly less in the way of daylight than I was expecting. And rather than blue sky, I seemed to be staring at... portaloo. Canary yellow portaloo at that. Once of the consequences of the work that's currently taking place on the building it seems. Worryingly, the work is scheduled to last 18 months. The thought of staring out my window at an absurdly yellow portaloo for the next 18 months is vaguely depressing.
On the plus side, however, the light in the stairwell was magically repaired this morning, which means that I'll no longer have to unlock my front door in pitch blackness when returning home at night.
It seems small recompense however.
Years ago I remember watching a programme on the BBC which featured various celebrities describing their favourite books and authors. A few moments stick in my mind even now, chief among them Stephen Fry's description of his love for the prose of P.G. Wodehouse, author of the numerous Jeeves and Wooster novels amongst others.
His reading of a passage describing the sun languorously sloping across the floor of a room as another morning arrived was wonderful to behold. Fry is an actor clearly born to read lines written by Wodehouse.
This then is my reasoning why this alarm clock is a work of utmost genius.
"I'm so sorry to disturb you sir, but it appears to be morning. Very inconvenient, I agree, sir. I believe it is the rotation of the earth which is to blame, sir."
Indeed.
