Calling all Londoners

Yes, yes, I know that I've completely smashed any hopes of writing an entry a week for a year, with my 2 month hiatus from journaling. I've done stuff, seen people, been places and worked a hell of a lot. That about sums it up, really.

I do, however, have a sort-of urgent request for any and all londoners who might chance across this entry, though. A friend of mine is coaching it to London from Edinburgh this coming Monday, and is flying out to a conference thingy in Bulgaria on Tuesday morning from Gatwick. I'm hoping someone may be able to put her up on a couch or something just for Monday night.

Please lemme know ASAP if you think you may be able to help out!

Bill Bailey!

The last week or so has been quite quiet an uneventful. Work is going well... I got a pay rise (!!!), I'm settling in to the pattern of work, and after being here for a month I now feel like I'm starting to get on top of python and django. Huzzah for that.

I went out shopping on Saturday and ended up spending far too much money on a whole bunch of books, and I picked up a NES gun and duckhunt for ubercheap! Now I just need to get a NES to play them on...

Anyway. Onto the title of this post. Tim and I discovered that Bill Bailey was performing in Edinburgh as part of the fringe, but his show (on today) was all sold out. However, we discovered that he was compèring part of a Guilded Balloon 21st birthday gala celebration the previous day (yesterday), so we decided to get ticket to that instead. It was actually really fun, a whole bunch of comedians had 10 min slots, and the show went from 8pm to midnight, so there was a whole lot of comedy. And, of course, Bill Bailey was there. And he was good. And, of course, I have now completed that task I set to see Bill Bailey! And after the show, Tim and I went down to the stage entrance and waited for him to leave, and I got him to sign my guitar hero guitar. Because, y'know, that's an awesome thing for him to sign. He did look a little bemused by it, but hey. Rawk.



So that was fun. While we were waiting for Bill Bailey to come out of the theatre, we bumped into an old school friend of Tim's, and we ended up going to a bar with her and her friend. Cue far too much beer and a 5am bedtime. Needless to say, work today wasn't particularly fun! But. Bill Bailey! I met him! And he signed my guitar! Woo!

It's been a busybusy week.

Lots of stuff done this week! Been busybusybusy. My parents did the long trek up from Southampton on Monday with all my boxes, and I took the afternoon off work to unpack the car, then wandered around Edinburgh for a bit with them, as they had never been up here before. Mosied on over to IKEA a bit later to pick up some shiny new bookshelves, then had a bit of a DIY construction party with Tim, Rebekah and Roh where we built everything and unloaded a few boxes of books onto them. Hooray books.

The rest of the week was pretty normal, then Silje came to visit on Thursday and stayed through until early Sunday morning. So Friday and Saturday involved alot of drinking here at the flat. We all went into town during the day on Saturday though, and caught the very start of the fringe... *lots* of street performers and people all the way down the Royal Mile. After doing a bit of touristy sightseeing we went to Frankenstien for some drinks and stuff, and met up with Lena, a swedish friend of mine from California who now works in Switzerland, and Drew, another friend from California who Lena was visiting here. I hadn't seen her since I left Cali 2 years ago, so it was nice to catch up.

Oh, Tim and Silje and I went to see Wall-E on Friday evening. Awesome movie, loved it to pieces. So cute and cuddly and awesome. If you haven't seen it already, go and watch it now!!

The Dark Knight

As I mentioned in my last post, yesterday consisted of watching Prince Caspian and The Dark Knight. And oh my word, was Batman good. Heath Ledger played Joker to perfection and Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine were their usual spectacular selves, even in supporting roles.

My parents are trcking up to Edinburgh from Southampton tomorrow with all my boxes of books and dvds and stuff. As such, I am currently pondering furniture solutions, as I don't have any bookshelves or storage units. Thinking that the Flarke bookshelves from IKEA might do well, if I get 3 or 4 or them. Also need to pick up a TV unit and a desk somewhere.

In other news, the Edinburgh/Fringe festival is coming up fast, and I should probably start looking to see if there are any shows I want to see before they all get sold out. Is anyone thinking of coming up for the Fringe?

Busybusybusy

So. What have I been up to over the last week. Hmmm, lets see.

Thursday, meal at T&R's. Some sort of Dutch meal, very tasty.
Friday, Tim came over and I cooked a strange mushy mash of a meal. Tasted quite good though. Watched a few Black Books episodes.
Saturday, mooched around all day then headed over to T&R's for pizza and The Incredibles.
Sunday, mooched around some more, then cooked an awesome Corned Beef Pie for Tim and Rebekah and Roh while they played Guitar Hero, then we played Monopoly. Which was fun. Tim won hugely, even though I conned him into giving me half the board (at the end of the game I had every street property on the first half of the board. I even had hotels all of the first 5 properties, but I got assessed for street repairs, which scuppered me :( ).

On Tuesday Joanna (Tim's sister) came to visit, and we all went out to an awesome Italian restaurant where I had a mahoosive pizza. Then Tim and Jo and I went for a walk around the Shore area (very pretty waterfront area about 2 mins from my flat), then Jo and I watched movies until stupid o'clock. Which, considering I had work the next day, might not have been the cleverest idea.

Wednesday was a little mindnumbing, although I met up with James and Pete (two of the guys who interned at Sun with me in California) for lunch, which was nice.

Ummm. Let's see, that's about it for this week. The plan seems to be to try and watch Prince Caspian and the Dark Knight in the cinema over the weekend, and I really want to try and fit Wall-E in there too somewhere. Hmm. Oh yes, and my parents are driving all my stuff up on Monday, so that will be good too.

I'm currently abusing my Virgin XL TV package by watching lots of (don't ask why, because I don't know) Abba music videos. And oh my word, but does their video making skills leave a lot to be desired. Funny though.

The new flat

So, in celebration of getting internet connected here (a zippy 20Mb/s cable connection, woooo!), I decided to answer all the calls for photos by filming a short walkthrough of my new flat. Nothing special, but it beats a bunch of photos.



Enjoy!

First day at work

After spending the last few days trying to settle into the flat (largely unsuccessfully, due to feeling rather ill and not being able to sleep much. Boo.), I woke up nice and early this morning, ready to start my first day at work! Woohoo.

It was, as you'd expect, full of all those fun introductory stuffs like health and safety talks, best practise things, and general orientation thingies. I spent the afternoon wrestling with svn (version control, how I hate thee) and managed, eventually, to get a dummy "blueprint" Django site up and running. Hurrah. Now to learn Python and Django uberquick.

ION, my Virgin Media stuffs appear to have not arrived yet; No internet/phone/tv for me means no photos of the flat for you. Sad. If they don't deliver today, it'll be at least a few more days until I get the stuff because they'll likely deliver when I'm not in tomorrow, so I'll have to arrange for redelivery to work or somesuch for another day this week. Which sucks.

IOON, I've completely messed up my budgeting and am mega strapped for cash. And I still need to get my stuff up to Edinburgh from Southampton somehow. At least baked beans on toast is somewhat healthy, eh?

A Man, A Plan, A Flat, Edinburgh.

Following on from my last entry (over a week ago now, shocking!), not only do I have a job (which I will hopefully start on Monday) but I now also have a flat! It's a large place with a huge lounge, 2 double bedrooms (one ensuite), an awesome box/computer room complete with free computer, nice kitchen, a big bathroom with a spider-shower.

I found it on Thursday, after 2 days of frantic flat hunting and about 7 other property viewings. Paid the holding deposit that evening, and put the rest on my credit card on friday. I'm now very poor, seeing as how the advance payment was deposit (one month rent + £200), first months rent, and an admin fee of £120. Still, the reference checks all went through at the start of the week, and I picked up the keys this morning. Wooyay! I get proper internet on Monday (this is going through my phone at the moment), so I'll post some photos once the 20Mb broadband gets switched on :D

In other news, it was the wotmania Edinburgh Gathering this weekend, and I met Paul and Angie in addition to Tom (who's floor I've been staying on since last monday). Met up with them first on Thursday along with Roh and Camilla at the National Museum, and mosied around there for a while before going to the Frankenstein pub. Showed Roh the video I took of the flat place (as Roh is going to be my flatmate), she liked it so I payed the holding deposit.

Friday involved beggaring myself by putting £1200 on my credit card, then meeting up with everyone for meals and stuff in the evening. Saturday was the "main meet day", and we did a walk up to Arthurs Seat (big hill just outside the main but of Edinburgh) where I got a massive hayfever attack and my eyes swelled up to the size of cannonballs. Not nice. And then it started raining. Awesome.

After the wonderful views and picnic lunch (it didn't actually start raining until we were heading back into town, thankfully), we headed back to the musuem thing where we went to a hands-on sciencey area, and totally pushed lots of buttons. Highly amusing, then went to the Jekyll and Hyde pub for food and drinks.

Sunday was nice and relaxing; Tim and Bekah's for champagne and strawberries in the afternoon (along with a 50 hour long game of Once Upon A Time), followed by Wetherspoons for drinks and food.

Monday and Tuesday I mostly spent reading books in Costa Coffee, with a spectacular view over central Edinburgh. It's really rather a pretty city. Oh, and I signed my work contract on Monday.

Today I picked up the keys for the new flat, moved it, got registered for council tax, got TV/Phone/Broadband from Virgin Media set up for next monday (seeing as how the house was already ready for it, it made sense to go with Virgin. Less setup fees), and then cooked an awesome chocolate chili con carne. And chocolate brownies. Except the chili didn't really work that well, and I burnt the brownies. :(
But Tim and Rebekah and Tom and Roh all came over for a mini flatwarming, and they all ate it, and at least said it was tasty, so that makes me feel a little better.

So yes. I've spent far too much money already, and shall probably spend more tomorrow on duvets and bookshelves and drawers and stuff.

An end of an era.

I guess that all this time I was just looking in the wrong place, because on my first day here in Edinburgh, I seem to have found myself a job. Who would've thunk it?

The job is Web Development, using the python-based platform Django, and although the salary isn't *quite* what I had hoped it would be I'm aware that what I wanted was quite high, especially for my first "real" job. The office is nice, and the people seem fairly friendly. So yeah. I'm really quite happy.

The job starts "as soon as possible", and while I'm doing Wotmania stuffs this week I'm thinking that I could start work next week, and then come back home once my parents break up for school, then pack all my stuff into boxes and drive a van up. Mammoth journey though.

Now I have the enormously fun task of finding a flat. And the first task seems to be getting references. Anyone have any suggestions as to who to get them from? I don't really have a previous employer/landlord. I guess I could possibly get one from the temp agency I worked at. Maybe University for the other one?

Also, what's the deal with council tax? I mean, seriously... an extra £100 a month?
Oh, and I get to start repaying my student loan now. And with inflation the way it is, the interest is getting quite big quite quickly. Yikes.

I can stop worrying about not having a job, and start worrying about not having any money ;)

Fancy dress is fancy.

I quite randomly found myself in Canterbury this weekend, all thanks to the wonderfulness that was Jen and Matt's birthday celebrations. Caught a train with Dave on Friday afternoon, and arrived in Canterbury around 6pm. Dropped in on Mike and Jen (first time I'd ever been to their flat, strangely enough) for a couple of games of the new Smash Brawl game for the Wii, then went to the Dolphin for drinks with various people I hadn't seen in ages. Was good.

Saturday involved lots of pubs and lots of people in fancy dress. Started off at East Spoons, then went to Seven Stars, then the Dolphin, the finished up at the Penny Theatre. Around 12 hours of drinking in there. Was very good to see everyone again, and kinda made me wish I was back in my first year at Uni again. Canterbury really is an awesome little place.

Anyway. Back home now after a 3.5 hr train journey back to Sotton. Now I've got to back my bag and get ready for a 7hr journey to Edinburgh tomorrow for an interview on Tuesday and a Wotmania Gathering next weekend. Hoorah \o/