FeedsMy entire office just shuddered – either something has just exploded or we’ve had an earthquake…
UPDATE – something belonging to BT exploded underground. It managed to blow one of those rectangular manhole covers out of the ground as well as rock nearby offices…
UPDATE – my office is being shut for the afternoon because half the building has no power, and we’ve got no running water. Most of us are off to the pub…
I’ve just found out that the charity I work for is looking to make 30-35 people redundant.
Crap.
For the next week I get to share my office building with Ofsted, who will be spending a week checking up on the training side of the charity I work for. As long as they don’t want to talk to the web guy, I’m sure we’ll get along just fine…
The student loans people caught up with me today, and so I am now £41/month worse off. Bastards.
I did however finish my 6-month new-starter probation period at work today, and I still have job to go to on Monday, so that’s kinda nice…
Last night, I had to say goodbye to Tracy, who is heading off back home to South Africa.
I may have only known her for 5 1/2 months, but I am going to miss her immensely – she’s one of those rare people who manage to effortlessly combine smart, sexy and sassy whilst being tremendous fun to be around. It’s a cliché I know, but I genuinely feel that my life is richer for knowing her. I’m actually a little teary-eyed writing this.
Tracy – I wish you all the best (and come back soon!)
One of my colleagues (Tracy) is leaving for South Africa shortly, so some of us went out on Thursday for ‘a farewell drink’ (although she’s not quite gone yet). My memory is somewhat hazy, so I’ve partially reconstructed the night with some help from some photos that probably shouldn’t ever be made public…
17:00 – Stop work
17:05 – Leave work
17:25 – Arrive 06 St. Chad’s Place (which is quite nice actually – but busy)
17:55 – The first 2 bottles of wine have gone
18:30 – My legs refuse to take me on a straight-line path to the loo.
18:45 – Food arrives (well, 4 bags of crisps).
??:?? – (lots of photos, no idea what happened)
20:45 – More food (2 massive bowls of chips, which are polished off in about 5 mins)
21:20 – Left St Chad’s, and moved on to the Big Chill. I remember having trouble walking the short distance between them.
21:30 – Decided I’d better start drinking a bit less, or I’d never make it home. Had a coke, and watched some drunken dancing by my colleagues.
21:50 – Started drinking again (onto Vodka and Coke)
22:10 – More dancing (including me this time)
??:?? – (I know we stopped dancing, and sat down for a bit. Then we started dancing again)
23:30 – Started on my way home (cos I don’t live in London like some people…)
01:30 – Got home.
01:45 – Went to bed.
06:45 – My alarm went off…
07:45 – Pondered the ethics of vomiting on a packed commuter train. Decided it would just be plain rude. Also shameful and embarrassing.
08:05 – Came out of Liverpool St. toilets feeling much better.
From what I can remember, it was an excellent night out. But ugh.
Thursday night, whilst waiting for the trains to restore themselves to semi-normality, I went to the official opening of the Jester Bar (their bar-within-a-bar) at The Cross Kings with a few people from work. To celebrate the occasion (and bring in the customers!), they had free food and free entertainment.
They didn’t just have typical pub entertainment either. They had some very impressive magicians. And a creepy vampire guy, who when he wasn’t on his perch (often upside-down), played stalker. He was quite impressive actually.
Everyone else who went considers it a brilliant night out. I happen to agree with them completely.
Creepy vampire guy having a rest
Levitating a cigarette
Bloke wondering what the hell kind of pub he just walked into
Creepy vampire guy scaring Bridget for the umpteenth time
Bridget and Tracy demonstrating what they like to do to random guys they meet in bars
Q: What has a mouth that doesn’t speak, and a bed but doesn’t sleep?
A: A river
Q: What does an auctioneer need to know?
A: A lot
Q: Who invented fire?
A: A bright spark
Q: Where did we go for our Xmas lunch today?
A: The ever-excellent Cross Kings
Q: How long were we there for?
A: Approx 3.5hrs
Q: How many people went?
A: 13
Q: How much did we spend?
A: Over £400
Q: How?!
A: Not sure of the exact figures, but it was something like £120 on lunch itself, £270 on alcohol and a £40 tip.
Q: Would we do it again?
A: Absolutely
Thursday was my work Xmas party. We hired out an entire pub (Newmarket Arms), and had a fun (albeit cheesy) 6 hours (5pm-11pm). It’s also the first (and last!) time that I’ll find myself at the front of a conga line…
I’ve just come back from a work ‘away day’. We went ice skating at Somerset House (with mulled wine afterward), followed up by 10 pin bowling at Bloomsbury Bowling.
Both parts of the day were enormous fun. I was a little nervous before the ice skating, because I’d never been before, but it turns out that I’m actually fairly good at it. Not good enough to skate backwards or anything, but good enough to get around the rink without falling over1 or holding on to the handrails.
1 although I was knocked over twice by kids – at least one of whom I swear was actively targeting me, because he nearly knocked me over again later…I never lost my balance because of my own skating activities
Yippee!
On a side note, I’ve now been there 8 weeks. They’ve just flown by which can only be a good thing.
I turned 23 yesterday.
Although I didn’t really celebrate yesterday, I did on Friday with my workmates – a nice pub lunch at the Newmarket, and then drinks after work at the Cross Kings. Hadn’t been in the Cross Kings before, although it did come highly recommended. It looks quite run-down, but has a unique atmosphere – the lighting was a combination of neon + candles, the bar staff were very friendly, the wine list was excellent (according to those who know about such things…), 2 cats, cheap drinks and very comfy sofas. We liked it so much that we’ve decided we’re going to have the departmental Xmas lunch there (I didn’t even know we got a departmental Xmas lunch!).
Other things I learnt – ages of colleagues, details of their primary schools, various other mundane personal details, and that one of my colleagues is a lesbian. That means that I now know a gay bloke, a lesbian and a bisexual bloke. Always nice to know a different type of person.
Personal
1) Release DVD Profiler Companion 0.35
Work
1) Finish tweaking design of new-look e-shop.
2) Add checking of membership information to ‘members-discount-checkout’ for said e-shop.
3) Work out how exactly how I’m going to implement a ‘Student Learning Zone’ thats been in low-level planning (’we want’) for 18 months by mid-November (project budget = £0).
4) Start implementing what I planned in (3).
Last week, I started my new job. Not as soon as I’d have liked, but better late than never!
My 1st week went like this:
Monday: Started at 10am, got introduced to about 30 people. Promptly forgot the names of 25 of them. Was given a quick overview of the website, and the back-end processes, and left to it. Discovered that my department consists of 2 men (my boss’s boss who has his own office, and myself) and 11 women. The male/female ratio in my old job was pretty much the reverse.
Tuesday: Had a couple of one-to-one meetings with people telling me what they do. This allowed me to remember 2 more names. Started work sanitising navigation on the site. Shared a tube train part of the way home with a colleague, which allowed us to get to know each other a lot better.
Wednesday: Couple more one-to-one meetings, and meeting a couple of people who had been off Monday and Tuesday. Found the most recent invoice for web hosting services, and had to read it twice because of the outrageous prices being charged.
Thursday: Another meeting, another name. Got throughly fed up with the CMS software being used. Every change must be pushed live afterwards, but if you look at the preview and want to change something, you either have to publish->quickly edit the screwed up page or delete the pending change competely and start over with the currently published page. Got shown the fire exits.
Friday: Finished sanitising the navigation, started looking into options for online payment processing and went out drinking with 7 of my female colleagues and an ex-colleague of theirs (also female). Not been alone with that many merry ladies before. Left most of them in the pub around 8.30, but not before (personally) drinking a bottle’s-worth of overpriced wine. I now know them a whole lot better than I did before. Tried to take a photo before I left, but the flash on my mobile is apparently useless. The pic below has been heavily processed from the original 3 megapixel image, and is the best I can make it!
I’ve been offered a Web Developer job at the some children’s charity that I’ve never heard of.
I’ve taken it.
I’m a very happy person.
I’ve only just recovered (although I did work Wednesday 6am-2pm, party 9pm-3am, and work again Thursday from 6am-2pm, all without any sleep).
On the way to Eros Nightclub, the coach had to stop at Harold Hill to pick up more partygoers (turned out to be only 1 person from that store!). Whilst we were waiting, some kids set a car on fire in the alley opposite. 6 fire engines came to put it out. Must have been a slow night or something for the fire department.
Once there a good time was had by almost everyone I know. Bala didn’t drink, and had a miserable time. Not sure why he went. Babu and Annaliese also didn’t drink, but seemed to have a fairly good time. Leanne and Emily were both sick and couldn’t make it – Emily had been really looking foward to it as well.
Stewart and Sid bought me some £15 drink whose name I can’t remember comprised of various shots (Silver something). It had a nasty kickback, although I think that was idea.
Becky was completely mashed all night, and kept grabbing me and dragging me places (she’s bigger than me!). Being the life/soul of the party is a side of Becky I’ve not seen before. Someone else having a great time was Scott – he had boys and girls after him all night!
Fairly predictably, just about everyone made an effort to look good (working in a burger resturant limits your normal options). Sid, Helen, Rachel and Kirsty especially.
Mo who finds everything funny anyway, was often in hysterics – sometimes for good reason (Tom asking Kirsty for her phone number, getting it and then watching her snog some other guy for the rest of the night), sometimes for no reason whatsoever (me giving Rachel a friendly kiss). Mickey was often the cause – he spent half the night on the slots, and half the night trying to dance with girls who rapidly moved away.
Some pics stolen from the nightclub website below. I know at least one non-nightclub-staff person was taking photos, so I might have some more in a couple of days.
Annaliese, Dan and Allison
Becky and someone I don’t know
Tanveer and Tom
Bala, Me (I think!), Scott, Mo and Helen
Becky surrounded by lots of random other people
There’s a stock shortage at work, because the main stock distribution centre is located 400yds from the fire. The entire UK is being supplied from 2 secondary warehouses, which are struggling to keep up. Deliverys are being capped, non-food items aren’t being delivered (cups, napkins etc), East Finchley (Head Office) have set up a ‘crisis centre’.
I also heard today from one of the delivery drivers, that the roof fell in on one of his mates in the canteen Sunday morning after the blast, so I don’t expect things to get back to normal very soon.
Oh yeah, and my boss’s boss’s boss is dropping by on Sunday morning to ‘have a chat’. Sunday mornings we struggle due to lack of staff, so this really isn’t going to help.
Ever find that there are some people you encounter who just annoy you from the moment you meet them? I’ve got one as my new boss.
Yay me.
Since early-October, we’ve been selling charity Xmas cards at work. Now angry emails are emanating from ‘the hierarchy’, because we aren’t selling enough.
I really don’t understand – (a) the company isn’t making any profit on them, and (b) it seems fairly obvious to me that many won’t be sold until December.
What is there to get stressed about?
Today we had a bomb scare at work. Although it was obviously a kid’s schoolbag that they’d left behind, some bonehead in the BP garage we share the building with phoned the police, who told us to evacute the building. 10 minutes later (remember this could have been a bomb), 2 policewomen drove up, and could be seen laughing through the car window. After a brief chat about the situation, and 10 mins on the radios back to HQ, they went into the building to look at CCTV (weren’t allowed to touch the bag). When they emerged, they told us that yes it was left behind by a kid, and it was safe to move.
All in all, we were shut for an hour 