New House, New Bread

So, if you remember, a little while ago we bought a house. A little while ago (about two weeks now), we moved in, and since then have been slowly sort of synchronising ourselves with it. For me, meshing with the new house has involved things like unpacking (of course), going for a run, making stock, baking bread, planting a lime tree and (eventually) blogging about it all. Feels good.

The bread in question is currently cooling on a rack in the kitchen, and despite being a bit of a funny shape I think it's ok. I was worried about how the starter would cope with being moved, but it seems to have managed. I think that sometimes I'm a bit overprotective of it. On the stock front, we managed to defrost the freezer a while ago (not on purpose) and so what better reason to make a full five litres of chickeny goodness? Beef stock this weekend coming, plus possibly some Spanish-accented pork rillettes if I can be arsed.

Work, then. Work is mental. I'm wondering if I've not bitten off a bit more than I can chew, as what started as a relatively simple website re-platforming has turned into the mother of all heaving, beastly complicated program of work, encompassing CRM, contact centre applications, claims management and a fair bit more besides. Add in to that a healthy dollop of intra-group politics and a business that's totally unaware of how to take control of the technology development process, and you have something of a challenge.

It's an enjoyable one though, and so far we seem to be making progress. I'm still confident we'll deliver something by the end of the year; I'm just not totally sure what. It'll be fun finding out though.

Snow, hard work again, honeymoon

Our last holiday until our honeymoon has just happened, and as most of you will already know from emails, Facebook and Twitter, it was an incredible four days spent at Mount Ruapehu, snowboarding, eating, drinking, snowboarding, and generally not being at work. This last bit was good, as it's been a fairly intense three months (only three months!!) and I was beginning to fear a little bit of burnout approaching.

So, for those of you who're not in New Zealand, Mount Ruapehu is an active volcano in the North Island, about four and a half hours' drive from Auckland on a good day. We were boarding at Turoa, and staying in Ohakune, about 20 minutes' drive down the hill and a genuinely lovely little town. The mountain's profile might be recognisable to some as Mount Doom from Lord of the Rings - it's more covered in snowboarders in real life.

To save a bit of time, we headed to Hamilton on Wednesday night, to stay with the Kiwi's sister and other half, which shortened the morning's drive by an hour or so and provided a great lasagne courtesy of the younger Kiwi. Stupidly early on Thursday we headed south, and some time after breakfast we could spot the mountain in the distance. We were on the hill by mid-morning, my initial nerves about having forgotten how to do it long gone by the end of the first run. That said, it was only December we were in Whistler.

Thursday was good - Friday was better. The snow was some of the best I've seen in all my three snowboarding trips; as good as Whistler at its best. They'd had 10cm on the Wednesday, and the perfect balance of clear, sunny days, cool temperatures and cold nights ensured it stayed deep and soft until we left. Saturday was good, but busy - obviously word had spread and the world and his dog had made the trip to the mountain. Sunday we managed a good breakfast before making an unhurried journey back home through stunning scenery.

Work, which we temporarily escaped, is intense. I can't speak for the Kiwi, although I know she's mentally busy, but for my part the pace and strain are fantastic. I've just convinced the business to hire another member of staff to support me, which should help, and with another project workstream about to kick off I'll need it, I think. Development is moving slowly even so, which is a bit of a concern as I'm burning through my credibility with every extra dollar I spend without showing a result. Hopefully I've built up enough of it to last another six weeks or so.

As for the last point - we have booked our honeymoon finally. Torn between heading from a southern hemisphere summer to the UK in February, and going to a beach not far from here, we chose the latter. We're going to Aitutaki, a tiny island north of Rarotonga, in the Cook Islands. Following a long time without any time off, and a wedding to boot, I think a week spent on a beach doing as close to nothing as possible will be just the thing.

How is it nearly JULY already?

I promise this won't be a monthly thing - constantly harping on about the way time seems to be speeding up, when all along we know it's all part of the theory of relativity; the each passing month and year being, relatively speaking, a smaller part of the whole thing.

Anyway, things do seem to be going rather quickly. Like when, during a meeting with a mortgage advisor (another story...) this evening I said I'd been working for four weeks. The Kiwi corrected me with the actual story - six. Six weeks of brain-melting, mind-bending getting my head around not only the wacky world of insurance but a rather labyrinthine group of companies to boot. It's a weird one - a massive mental challenge in understanding stuff, but comparatively little in the way of stuff to, like, do. Still, I'm keeping myself busy by making outlandish promises and then struggling to keep up with them, usual story.

In other news, we have a dining room table! This is a bigger deal than it perhaps sounds, but I'll not go into the detail. Trust me, it's changed our lives. Eating sitting at a table still feels like a bit of a luxury. That, and being able to go places without cadging a lift off the Kiwi or ruining yet another pair of shoes. The car is turning out to be a lot of fun, something to look forward to at the end of the day. It's in the garage at the moment having its wheel alignment done, which I'm hoping will correct a little niggle it's been having lately where the power steering gets a bit twitchy.

Here's a thing for all of you back in the land of sensible driving: the New Zealanders are well known for their love of adrenalin sports, being the No.1 place in the world for life-threatening leisure pursuits. This extends to driving, apparently, with a road rule (A RULE!) which says that if you're turning right into a road, and an oncoming car is turning left into the same road, the oncoming car has to give way. They sort of slow down and tuck their car into the kerb, whilst you wait to see if they actually are stopping or not, and they keep moving because they don't know whether you're going to turn ahead of them or not, and then you both step on it at the same time and narrowly avoid a collision with either the car in question or one of the many which get bored of waiting and swerve around you both. This rule appears to be designed to make even the simplest manoevre something which gets the heart pumping and the adrenalin flowing. I'm not keen on it, as you might have guessed.

Other than that, not a lot's been going on. We work, we cook, we sleep. And it's brilliant.

How is it JUNE already?

Seriously, I turn around for five minutes and half the year's gone - is this what getting old's all about? A gentle nudge from my sister reminded me yesterday that I'd not actually posted anything in quite some time, let alone anything that wasn't about baking, so here we are - another post which might not be all about breadmaking.

Work has been taking up an indecent amount of my time lately, as I seem to remember it doing back in 2008, and on the whole things seem to be going well. The pace is somewhat slower than I'm used to, so on the one hand I can seem reasonably dynamic without too much effort, and on the other the stress levels probably aren't as high. The Kiwi, on the other hand, seems to spend her entire day moving at 100kph, so we're in slightly different zones for an hour or so once we get home.

What I'm doing at the moment isn't really for discussion this openly, but suffice it to say we're making some very definite plans to move forward, taking overall company strategy and working out ways to implement it in some hopefully market-changing ways. If my plans come together, all should become clear. Fingers crossed.

In other news, I bought a car today - my first one ever (aged 31). Living either in Manchester or London, both places with pretty good public transport networks, I've never really needed a car more than four or five times a year, so renting has always been good enough. However, living in Auckland, not having a car basically means you either remain confined to a walking distance around your house (during which you will get rained on), or put yourself at the mercy of public transport, which effectively means you will probably get where you want to go, but probably not before the moon has gone once around the earth.

So, and I know precisely who's going to take the piss at this point, I bought this:

Quite simply, I have always wanted a sports car. On the shopping list for me were the following:

• Engine in the back
• Two seats
• Roof that comes off

... and this little Toyota ticks all those boxes (even if it is technically mid-engined) and fits neatly into my price bracket. Whilst it's only a 1.8L, it weighs about as much as a matchbox and thus manages to be quite, um, quick, whilst the proportions make it superbly balanced. I drove four of them yesterday and any lingering doubt that I was doing the right thing went right out of the window. So, provided it passes its AA inspection next week, it will be mine before the weekend.

It has a frankly hilarious storage ability, about enough room for an overnight bag and a pork pie, but that's part of its charm, I reckon. Anyway, it's my first car. Forgive me for getting a bit gushy about it.

On the bread front (and I couldn't write a post without it), I've been baking every weekend, with the exception of the one we went away for recently (to Mount Maunganui, by the seaside). The bread's getting steadily better, with the flavour deepening and mellowing, and the texture getting more relaxed and open. I have two loaves proving right now in fact, basking in the glow of our electric heater along with the Kiwi. It's cold here at the moment, cold and sunny, and our electric heater, oil-filled heater and dehumidifier have been working overtime. Can't wait to see our power bill for this month...

Brilliant

The waiting is over - this week I agreed terms with an employer, and I start work on the 19th May. After five months of not working, this is an overwhelming relief. We're not entirely out of the woods yet though, as there are bills to be paid at the end of this month which my pro-rated pay won't cover, but hopefully a client for whom I've been doing a little work back in the UK will actually bother to pay me for it at some point during this month.

I don't think I'd realised quite how much being unemployed had affected me. Friends of mine have told me in the past that my job (whatever it was at the time) was always far too important to me, and it's true to an extent that my sense of self-worth is entirely wrapped up in what I do for a living. So to be out of work, to me, is to have no social worth. Entertainingly, I don't view other people like this - this rule only applies to me, you understand. The Kiwi and I had a celebratory curry on Thursday night and I realised that I was smiling properly for the first time in ages; smiling with total happiness, without that lurking feeling that had been telling me up to this point that, until I had a job, I had nothing to smile about.

So I suppose there should be a learning experience here in finding self-worth in places other than the workplace, but I suspect I'll not really take it on board. This is the usual way of things.

And what of the job? Well, suffice it to say it's in the insurance industry, and involves me forming and implementing a strategy for the online channel. Currently the online arm of the business is... me, but over time it'll need to grow. The main challenge in moving a mainly offline business to a true multi-channel one is predominantly a cultural one, and although the top level of this organisation is open to the concept, it'll be convincing the troops that'll be the 'pushing water uphill' element of this particular engagement, I suspect.

I'm going to remain coy in this forum about who it is, so I can be reasonably open about how it's going, but most of you probably know. Very excited about starting indeed, they're a good bunch of people from what I can see, with a very clear and pragmatic view on the next steps for their business. Prior to that, though, I have a week of genuine holiday to get through, so with that, it's back to my baking... on which more later!

We continue...

Anyone who ever listened to Radio 1 in the early 90s surely can't hear those words without remembering Pete Tong's radio show, each track preceded with those sternly intoned syllables. Weirdly, I notice that noble-minded but severely irritating Gok Wan has adopted exactly the same intonation pattern with Every. Single. Sentence. he utters. Bugs the hell out of me, even though I have to tip my hat to his efforts to reverse the trend in body dysmorphia among women. A trend which, walking around the UK, I saw absolutely no evidence of. Curious.

Anyway, that small digression aside, this week has begun much like the others, with visits to recruiters and not a lot else. For some reason the Wii has stopped working, hopefully something to do with the fuse - I have yet to replace the plug with one of the worryingly fuseless NZ ones, so perhaps I'll get round to that today. This little event will be the highlight of my week so far, replacing one of my key distractions at the moment - along with Facebook, Twitter, numerous blogs and the odd bit of cooking, the Wii makes up the group Things Which Keep Me Sane at the moment.

Twitter I continue to find fascinating. For some reason though, what fascinates me most about it isn't the application itself, or even the ecosystem of other bits and bobs which use it, but the way it's exposing a very basic human need for interaction, boiling down this need to very simple components; sharing, informing, questioning, assisting. Twitter is just a vehicle for this sort of thing, and in time will be seen to be one of many increasingly refined vehicles - the important thing is the human component.

This got me thinking a bit lately. I've said before that good advertising is relevant advertising, both in terms of content, context and timing, but I suppose a slightly cynical refinement of that would be in saying that advertising is good in inverse proportion to how irritating it is to an individual. This adds an extra dimension to the whole thing, in terms of how likely I am to be irritated by the mouthpiece of the advertising message: TelstraClear, for example, are right at the top of my shitlist right now, so even their fairly bland advertising gets my blood pressure up.

On the other hand, before Christmas, I was getting discount vouchers emailed through from friends at the rate of two to three a day, and although none of them were remotely relevant, it didn't really bother me all that much. Perhaps if they had all been from the same person, I might have politely asked them to stop, but my point is that I'm more likely to put up with spam from someone I know. It's like a 'micro-irritant', as opposed to the macro-irritants we get every 10 minutes on commercial TV. Questions about Twitter's moral responsibility to allow users to filter out commercial (or technically, semi-commercial) traffic are pointless. My feeling here is quite the opposite - Twitter has an obligation to allow and even encourage commercial use of the service - users themselves have the responsibility to control what they do and don't want in their feeds. I'll happily put up with my friends spamming me every now and then if they're getting something out of it.

Anyway, since I left work in the UK, I no longer have a professional blog, so you'll have to put up with musings like this on this one.

On jobhunting

I have always hated jobhunting with a passion. More than once I've resigned myself to a few more months working in a job I've outgrown purely because I hate the whole process. I hate the constant disappointment, the way your personal worth is evaluated in terms of keywords and qualifications, and the way nine recruitment consultants in ten actually bother to read your CV, let alone take the time to understand what it is that you do. For someone like me who has a fairly shaky grip on my own self-esteem, it's a challenging process.

I don't think I've hated it as much as I do right now though. Two months after arriving in the country we've still to gain any real traction with anyone or anything, and as we come to the end of our interim cash, what's irritating me the most is the creeping sense of desperation, the sense of needing something from someone, the increasing feeling that I'm going to have to take the first thing that comes along and just be grateful for it.

Past experience doesn't help, either. All the positions I've ever worked in have come about through a personal contact, one way or another, with the possible exception of Virgin Digital, and as a colleague there rather unprofessionally told me once, I only just got that job, mainly as someone much better pulled out. So I don't have a huge amount of faith in the recruitment community, you could say.

Anyway, there's a little insight into what's going on at the moment. I applied for a few more things today, so chin up, this might be the week. I should probably take a leaf out of Melvtopia's book and find the hidden positives here... watch this space. Next week, if there's still silence on all fronts, I'm going to the pub.

And asking them if they have any jobs going. Backpedalling 10 years in my career could be just the thing to do, who knows?

Back on the horse

I'd not actually realised quite how long it's been since my last post. It's been a little strange, but I've been trying to get started again for a week or so, but for some reason haven't been able to crack it. I think it's got something to do with the volume of stuff that's going on at the moment; it's having a sort of 3 Stooges effect, where everything tries to get through the door at once but nothing can.

In a nutshell, since the last post, the following things have occurred, which most of you following Twitter and/or Facebook will already know, but here we go, in no particular order:

1. The Kiwi's got better
2. We've found a flat
3. We've bought a sofa, a fridge, a washing machine, a bed and a TV, along with a whole load of much less interesting stuff
4. The Kiwi's bought a car
5. We've each met with numerous recruiters, with varying degrees of success
6. We've planted some spinach and some spring onions - I'm drying some chillies to plant the seeds too
7. We've had another engagement party (any excuse)
8. We've eaten pies (multiple)
9. We've been to the beach (frequently)
10. I've got a New Zealand driver's license (looks a lot like the EU one)
    
11. I've been blogging a bit at http://www.eatingauckland.com
12. Our shipping arrived, with the only thing broken being a salad server, not bad out of 48 boxes
13. We've unpacked most of it
14. I've got back into Mario Kart and Guitar Hero
15. I've got hold of some English Marmite, but I'm not entirely sure it's quite the same...

You may notice the omission of the crucial 'we've found jobs' point, which is because we haven't yet, something that's soon to move from frustrating into problematic. The economic situation over here is pretty awful, it's true, but mostly due to lack of confidence and a bit of scaremongering. The exchange rate's not great (for New Zealanders), but realistically it's not as bad as the media would have you believe. Nonetheless, business in general is declining to commit to much expenditure, and some organisations are using the situation as an excuse for 'pro-active cost cutting', ie restructuring. The employment laws here are notoriously strict, so much like in the UK, it's hard to get rid of someone useless once you've employed them. The opportunity to make people redundant is apparently too much to resist for some.

So on the whole it's been very quiet on that front. At the moment I'm having a positive-looking conversation with a business that I'm quite keen to be involved with, so we'll see how that goes. More news as we get it.

Day 2, Kiwi on drugs

Our second day of reality in Auckland. Over the weekend, the Kiwi was bodysurfing at Pauanui (something she's irritatingly good at), and she apparently managed to damage some cartilage in her ribcage. Following a long walk this morning, the dull ache turned into agonising pain, so much so that she couldn't move at all without hurting. It got so bad today that I took her to a doctor, who diagnosed the problem, prescribed no fewer than three different painkillers to be taken together, and told her not to do anything energetic for at least two to three weeks, taking painkillers constantly, remembering to breathe and trying not to get pneumonia and so on.

Apparently unloading boxes and moving into a new home comes under the heading 'anything energetic', so getting our 48 boxes moved around might be interesting. Still, she's fully spaced out at the moment and experiencing the joys of prescribed chemicals, which is better than lying down in what looked like unbelievable pain, so she's on the mend, I think. My only real concern is that, true to form, she'll be unable to actually rest for longer than, ooh, 30 minutes at a time, so I'll be enforcing some serious 'do-nothing' rules for the coming three weeks. After which I'll be waited on hand and foot, oh yes.

On the job front, had a meeting with a (rubbish) recruiter this morning, which was good only in that it reminded me what wearing a suit was like again, and helped brush up my skills in talking about work things, which are a bit rusty at the moment after 5 or 6 weeks off. Interestingly, had a call from an old acquaintance which might prove profitable as well, taking me up to three opportunities about which I'm quite excited. Next week everyone here comes back from holiday, so I'm taking it reasonably easy this week and expecting more to happen as of the 12th. Which, by the way, I'll be starting a fair way before those of you in the UK. Ha.

Explanation

Following on from yesterday's brief post, let me go into a bit more detail about the shape the next few weeks are going to take. As I've worked with laptops provided by work for the past four years or so, I've not had to buy a computer of my own since, like, 1999, so the prospect of leaving my place of work and subsequently having no computer was a bit daunting.

So I put aside a bit of cash to buy one, and mentioning this to my current work, they told me not to worry, I could buy my laptop off them for about a quarter of my budget. Nice. Thing is, I found out yesterday that their policy is actually not to sell laptops to leavers; something we could have done with knowing before we shipped the Kiwi's laptop to NZ.

So I got a bit stressy about it and generally acted like the world had come to an end and so on. And then I realised that it's not all that bad - I have an iTouch which can deal with emails and internet access, and there'll be the odd PC available most of the places we're going. And it's saved me a fair bit of cash too.

The upshot of this is that, whilst I'd hoped to be entirely blogtastic during my travels, it might be a little less prolific than I'd intended. Posting from the iTouch, whilst mainly very convenient, doesn't lend itself to particularly wordy posts. That said, I'm sure that's no bad thing where I'm concerned!

Stuff moves on here in the UK, this week's mentally busy for me and I can feel the physical effects of several flavours of stress building up. The Kiwi's under slightly different stress at her place, but stress all the same.

More later - last post from this machine on Friday, perhaps...

Two sorts of limbo, 80s soundtrack

So it's a Friday afternoon, about four pm, and I'm officially clockwatching. I've got myself into a bit of an odd situation at work where I'm sort of on standby for two reasonably big things, putting finishing touches to big-ish presentations for both but not... actually... presenting them. Once the clients are ready I'll spring into action, but until then I'm a bit devoid of busyness to be honest.

With this in mind, I'm here waiting for five pm and pub time, experimenting with iTunes 8's 'Genius' tool and actually finding it rather helpful. I'm normally a curmudgeonly old soul when it comes to software having the audacity to second-guess my musical taste. Although I'm always going on about Last FM, all I really use it for is for the glorious statistical wonder that is my listening habits - geeky I know but something I find genuinely fascinating.

In terms of Genius, I'm actually rather enjoying it. Whilst I don't actually take any of its' recommendations on what I should actually buy, I do make use of the playlist generator a fair bit. For example, being in a bit of an 80s mood this afternoon, I stuck on Scritti Politti's 'Word Girl', feeling the need for a bit of that sleepily precise bass and all. The playlist Genius made out of it looks pretty good so far, with a bit of Elvis Costello (I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down), The Specials (Do Nothing), Depeche Mode (See You), The Smiths (Girlfriend in a Coma) and plenty more besides. Weirdly including the Keane single 'Spiralling' which I actually rather like. Am I a Bad Person?

So ok, it's not technically recommending me anything, as everything that's in my iTunes library is there cos I put it there, but it's doing a good job of getting my mood I reckon.

This weekend will hopefully see the arrival of my completed visa medical, which will be dropped into the NZ embassy on Monday morning along with the numerous other bits of paper and things that they require. Apparently it can take about three to four months from now, so I'm rather hoping it'll be a bit quicker. The timescales don't bother me, as I don't see myself needing to start work til the beginning of Feb, but what is a bit of a concern is the lack of a postal address or regular email access between Dec 1 and Jan 5.

Hmmm. Let's focus on this working out ok, shall we? Fingers crossed, everyone...

Woo for the internets

I've finally got around to buying a domain name - rather wish I'd done it years ago but there you go, every day's a school day, isn't it? So I've gone and bought my first name last name dot co dot NZ, and currently there's nothing of any real worth there but just owning it is immensely satisfying. I've just got dot net as well, and am considering going to the arse who's parked surname dot co dot NZ and seeing how much they're going to charge me for it. Imagine how cool that email address would be...

Anyway, beyond my absurd geekiness, stuff is definitely good right now, although the Kiwi and I looked through the diary to try to find a spare weekend before we leave, and horrifyingly didn't find ONE weekend we can fit anything else into between now and then. We've got the whole of November free to do moving stuff, but other than that it's pretty much full, which in many ways fills me with dread - apart from anything else it makes it all seem so very close...

On the moving front, things continue to fall into place. HSBC have just added NZD to their supported currencies on their international current account, and the job trail is warming up, I think, as the housing market is cooling down, which is precisely the way I want things to go. It's almost time to start my visa application too...

On that note, my train's just pulling into Cambridge, so off I go to bang my head against the client's wall for another week. What fun.

Houston, we have a sore head

It's the last day of the conference and I'm hiding in the main hall, pretending to be working so that no one will try to talk to me - I'm suffering a bit from what's basically been a three-day bender and am in no fit state to talk retail strategy. It's been a lot of fun though and, despite the lack of sleep, insane heat and the occasional moment when I realised I was completely out of my depth, I'm really glad of the opportunity to do this. I'll be coming home with a sheaf of business cards, a pretty good understanding of how partnering with Microsoft works, and a firm resolution to detox next week.

Naturally, the thing I'm looking forwards to the most is getting back to my London, my flat and my Kiwi, but there's a whole lot of time in between now and then; two flights (including that horrible connection again) and hopefully not too much stress. What I want to do right now though, is just go... to... sleep...

Houston, we have a conference

A bit of a day of firsts for me, yesterday (or at least, the past 36 hours or so, thinking in terms of days is challenging at the moment). Getting into the Virgin Atlantic lounge was one, all lovely and great and all but somehow not quite the land of dreams I'd hoped for. Perhaps, because we only had about 30 minutes in there, I didn't really get the full effect. That said, it was a damn sight better than the alternative, fast track security and free wine and all.

Second on my list was actually flying Virgin, which it sort of surprises me I've not done before for some reason. Although the promised upgrade to Upper Class didn't materialise, I was in Premium Economy, which is better than it sounds. I spent most of the flight in the bar being force-fed red Bordeaux by the barman.

Third was actually being late for a flight. I know how anal this sounds, but this is something I just. don't. do, and haring through Newark airport trying to negotiate the (irritatingly chatty) immigration and customs people, pick my bags up, re-check in, go through security AGAIN (this time with the plebs) and get to the gate isn't really my idea of fun. Travelling's mental enough without that sort of stress, and to top it all we proceeded to spend the next hour on the tarmac. Fortunately, for some reason I was in first class, which meant there was a lovely lady on hand to make sure my wine glass didn't get empty. So much so that I had to pretend to be asleep so she'd stop.

So after all this, we got into Houston at about midnight-ish, which as far as my body was concerned was 0600. Getting a good 6 hours' sleep meant today's been reasonably ok, but I'm not sure how tonight's going to be - a networking cocktail thing followed by a dinner we're hosting for some people or other. I'm currently wearing a pink striped shirt with a frankly enormous collar, which I'm rather enjoying - most Merkins are so excruciatingly dull and conservative with what they wear that I'm standing out as if I was wearing a clown suit.

Fortunately we're taking cabs everywhere. I don't imagine they like pink shirt-wearers here, it's still very much a moustache and cowboy hat sort of place*. Over lunch, I was introduced to the various forms of the contraction 'y'all': 'y'all' refers to one person. 'All y'all' refers to more than one person.  And, dear god, 'y'all's' means 'your'.

Needless to say, my accent has moved into the sort of RP register of which Laurence Olivier would have been proud. I might even start drinking tea.

 

*yes, the irony hasn't gone unnoticed. The Village People are probably seen as 'good hard-workin' decent men, 'cept for that injun' by those who remember them.

Sore head, busy week ahead...

I am physically destroyed. We went to a wedding reception last night, which was brilliant, danced like fools and drank like bigger fools, and wore a lovely new suit which I'd bought the previous week at Ted Baker as part of a horrifying splurge of clothes-buying. Tremendous event it was, both bride and groom looking superb and very happy indeed.

But this morning was a bit of a challenge. In fact, the whole day has been, and I'm a little concerned about the impact this is going to have on the week to come. You see, I found out on Tuesday afternoon that I'm being sent over to Houston (yep, the one in Texas) for a week to attend a conference over there. I'm flying out on Sunday afternoon, back on Friday morning, mental schedule in between and hopefully I won't have to present.

Now, today should be the day on which I print out all the stuff I'll need in order to get onto flights and into hotels etc, and although I'm fairly sure I've done all I need, I'm also acutely aware that I turn into a bit of an idiot whilst hungover so I'm bound to have forgotten something crucial. Ah, well.

So there we are, little me representing my company's retail function to lots of Merkins. It's either going to be REALLY REALLY GREAT or horrible, and I've decided to shoot for the former. If there's interweb access at the Houston Holiday Inn Express (I know), I'll see if I can squeeze out a blog entry or two whilst I'm there. Wish me luck...

One Year In

Oh, and I forgot to mention. I've been in this company for exactly one year today, and what a year it's been. Tremendous stuff, feels very good indeed.

Run of the mill mentalness

So I'm sitting here at my desk in London, wondering why I'm so dog tired, and then it hits me - it's 0745. I'm precisely one hour early, and for no good reason. Note to self, if you're going to get up that early, either don't, or do some exercise or something. I blame the Kiwi, she's the one who's always in shockingly early, she works way too hard that lass.

Anyway, so in the lead up to the Move, a few interesting things have been happening at work. Firstly an offer of a contract came in with a different employer, which would have enabled me to save a fair bit of cash and, being self-employed, would have some decent tax benefits. So I took this offer to my current employer, told them the context (ie the Move) and the offer, and fortunately they came back with a counter-offer, despite the impending Move. This slightly changes my role here, and adds a huge amount to my workload, but the benefits are... tangible.

This will rather annoy the party who made the original offer, but I suppose it's all about No.1 when it all comes down to it. The rest of this year should be a bit of a challenge.

Back to reality today though, it's one of those 'head down' days where I finally get around to writing up stuff I've been talking about for weeks. Visio and Excel will be getting a bit more of my attention than they're used to I think, oh joy.

Oh, and I've decided that the new Martha Wainwright album is about 85% brilliant, the new Elbow album is still 100% brilliant, and I'm undecided about Santogold. Seems about 40% brilliant, about 50% meh, and 10% barking (and not in a good way). Recently I've had two songs going round my head constantly: Kate Bush's 'Moments of Pleasure' and Elliott Smith's 'Tomorrow Tomorrow'. The latter has been ringing in my ears since New Zealand (March), and is now feeling like a sort of muso-y tinnitus. Could be worse I suppose. Both of those last links will enable you to play the full track should you wish - just press the Play button.

Exits are here, here, and...

Good lord - has it really been that long since I posted anything? Things have been rather hectic since, admittedly, but there is an element of laziness about the last few weeks that I'd be wrong to deny. My running record to the right says all you need to know about that.

Work-wise, am more in Cambridge than anywhere else at the moment, have managed to get rid of the Bradford thing (I think) and am back billing more or less full time. The Cambridge thing is taking a little time to get off the ground, which is how come I'm writing personal blog entries during office hours.

Recent non-work things have been somewhat more eventful, me finally cashing in the Kiwi's birthday present from last year on the weekend and flying an actual HELICOPTER, of which I'm inordinately proud. 30 minutes in the air was all it took to convince me that 1. it's brilliant and 2. I'm crap at it.

Now, I can pat my head and rub my tummy at the same time, which I've been told qualifies one to be a helicopter pilot. Although I've suspected for some time that the actual exam is a little more taxing than this, the real dexterity required to pilot something that moves across all planes of movement using highly sensitive controls is something else entirely.

So, when the instructor hands you the controls, with the aircraft in a perfect hover, and you make no perceptible change to any of them AND YET the thing lurches violently 30 feet to the left and jumps 20 feet in the air whilst lazily spinning anticlockwise, you start to appreciate why he's been so smug for the past 20 minutes or so. Brilliant fun.

In other news, we've got ourselves a Wii Fit. It's ace. Oh, and I've entered the London Duathlon, so I'll let you know how that goes. I think I need to get my bike out of the cupboard sooner rather than later.

Oh the glamour pt 2: Bradford, Cambridge, London

I'm writing this post on a train, reflecting on how much this particular environment will be a feature of my life this week. The two projects I've found myself on lately (the Irish thing does indeed seem to have let me go... fingers crossed) are helpfully located in Cambridge and Bradford, so I've seen a bit more of Kings Cross than I normally prefer to of late.

Small mercies: the majority of the work for both can be done either at my home office near the city or the offices of a creative agency in Piccadilly, but nonetheless this week I'm in Cambridge this afternoon and tomorrow afternoon, Bradford Wednesday and Thursday and hopefully London on Friday but who knows.

Both are good, fun, broadening projects which I'm enjoying a lot at the moment, but the travelling thing does put a bit of a dent in my life and my cashflow (racking up near £500 in travel expenses every month can be tricky to manage). Still, I'm not complaining, it pays the bills, most months.

Last week I ran another wine tasting for the team at work, with attendees from various other parts of the business taking the numbers up to around 30 or so, an improvement on previous evenings and weirdly for some reason suggested that a room of 30 people is easier to control than 20 - or perhaps I'm getting better at it, I dunno. Still, they seemed to enjoy it, and for the Facebookers amongst you the photos are up on our company group somewhere should you wish.

The weekend which followed was great, if surprisingly brief, with E&T coming round for dinner on Saturday night, which involved a morning's barging round Borough Market and Tesco and an afternoon's increasingly frantic cooking. Most of it went well, with the notable exception of me screwing up a lemon meringue pie AGAIN - this is turning into something of a culinary nemesis for me.

I'm sure I've made it perfectly at least once, but for some reason over the past few years they won't hold their shape properly. It all generally tastes great, but it's just a bit runny. I set some of the curd separately this time, and it set perfectly, so I think it's my meringue that's the problem - I think I need to spend a bit more time making sure it's properly robust, otherwise it sags a bit and (I think) causes the filling to sort of unset.

The Kiwi has got tickets to the wrestling tonight. Can't wait.

Toys, changes

Now I know I've said this before, but I think I might just be finally off the Irish project. There'll be a few bits and pieces I'll probably be hassled about in the coming weeks, but I'm now committed to two main things: an entertainment project and a pitch for some retail work, both of which are intriguing and exciting to say the least. This all kicks off on Monday. I'm also coaching a junior BA onto the Irish project - hopefully this won't take up too much time but we'll see, I suppose.

This weekend's been fun so far - yesterday the Kiwi and I went to the 'Opportunities New Zealand' show to get some info on things relating to moving there; freight, money transfers, jobs and so on. I'm not sure how helpful it was, but we did meet a shipping company who seemed to know what they were talking about, and I picked up a brochure from a recruitment person who had lots of technology delivery jobs by the looks of it. I'll be the first to confess that this isn't precisely where I see my career going, but it's the most likely option in an industry where ecommerce isn't really happening at any scale.

We also had a look in Trailfinders for flights over there via Canada (snowboarding), terrifically expensive as always, but some reasonable deals to be had and to be honest we'd sort of expected it wouldn't be cheap. Irritating that a single ticket is about the same price as a return though, not news to me but it always gets on my nerves. More on this as it develops.

In other news, I have a new toy to share with you. In the box on the right, I've linked up my Nike+ account, which shows all the running I'm doing. It's a little widget that fits on my running shoe and onto my iPod, which then tracks my pace, distance and times, and when my iPod is connected to my PC, uploads all the data to my profile on the Nike+ website. Brilliant.

In fairly typical fashion, I bought the widget and then had to buy an iPod; fortunately I picked one up on eBay for not very much. Today's run was to the tune of the new Elbow album, which is brilliant. I got the new REM one the other day too, but it still leaves me cold, much like every other thing they've ever done. I've really tried hard with that lot, but it's never worked, with the possible exception of Up, which most people seem to think is their bleakest and most depressing album... not sure what that says about me but somehow I found it a little more, um, profound than Shiny Happy People. That song provokes some very dark and violent feelings in me for some reason.