London

I went down to London for the weekend. Matt GA was having a leaving do on Friday because he's getting shipped out to Iraq in the next few days, I haven't seen my cousin since before he got married earlier this year and I organized myself an interivew for Monday. So I headed down on Megabus on Friday and went straight to Matt's house. It's been about two years since I last saw him because he's been stationed in Germany so it was good seeing him and all his family again. Dave was also there since he's come over to England to work. Again, I haven't seen him in ages and since he only got to England right when I was leaving at the end of last year I didn't have time to catch him then. So it was reunions all around and good fun. I knew about half of the people who came for the leaving do from running into them over the years while hanging out with Matt so I wasn't totally lost but they definitely were not a group of close friends. The whole night was good with the highlight of the evening occuring around the piano. Rory (I think that's his name, sorry) was banging out the flight of the bumble bees and doing it very well. I was listening with Mackey from the beginning and halfway through Matt's mum comes in to listen behind us where Rory can't see her. Then after finishing he turns to us and says "It doesn't half tire out your wanking muscles." as he shook out his hand. I don't know if it went straight over Matt's mums head but she didn't bat an eyelid. I crashed at Matt's house for the evening and stayed the ext day to watch the England rugby match. We beat Australia and it was brilliant. The ozzies where out. As it turned out the French also beat the kiwis so it began to look like we might have a chance. All I know is that the England v. France game this weekend is going to be good.

In the evening I headed across town to meet up with my cousin and his wife, who had not even met yet. I ended up being half and hour late. It was partly my fault, I didn't leave enough time to get across London, but I was also delayed in leaving Matt's house. Anyway, it was quite similar to the last time I met up with my cousin in London when I was coming from Matts house again and was more than an hour late. So next time I'm going to have to be extra careful to ensure I arrive early. Anyway, we had a couple of drinks at a bar. I was just looking around and Mike Fitzpatrick walks in with some friends. A completely random encounter but we caught up a bit before he went off to join his friends. After a drink or two we headed for some dinner at a great Moroccan place. It was really nice to catch up with my cousin and finally meet his wife and we had a great time talking away over dinner. I ended up crashing at their place for the night and after some breakfast in the morning I headed down to meet up with Jules.

On my way down I had a stop at London bridge and had a look around to see where my interview was and then kept going to Jules' place. We just chilled out for the evening, cooking a Sunday roast chicken and playing Wii all night. On Monday I headed over for my interview. Now after the shocking performance last time round I was a bit apprehensive as you might imagine so I was going to do my homework. I called up a friend who works for them and asked what to expect inthe interview. He said it would primarily be on my work in my PhD so I was ready to study up on my thesis. The problem is that my computer has been dying lately. I think it has an intermitent hardare problem with the memory, but I'm not exactly sure since I've run the hardware test and it came up with an error the first time but not the second time I ran it. In any case, every now and then it just crashes. I get a message that pops up and says "You must restart your computer" and I have to shut it down. Then it doesn't always want to start up again ... sometimes. So I've been soldiering on and until it has a predictable fault I'm going to leave it (since I don't really have the money to replace it). Anyway, before the interview my computer started acting up. I didn't have enough space in my bag for a hard copy of my thesis so I was relying on my computer. I know this sounds silly considering that I should have brought a hardcopy to study for the interview but I didn't find out that tehinterview would probably cover my thesis until I was already down in London. Anyway. the bottom line was that my thesis was on my computer, which didn't want to start up, and I wanted to read through some of it. Not the best situation. Finally I convinced my laptop to play nice and I got a couple of hours looking through my thesis. As it turns out, this wasn't as necessary as I thought. I went for the interview and just talked with the business manager. I would have a more technical interview at later date and also an interview with the MD of the company. So it was quite alright after all. The interview went well this time around. The company is a consulting company so after the usual this is what we do, tell me about yourself, we discussed a few opportunites that might be a good fit for me. It was quite strange because he was talking as if I already had a job at teh consultancy. Saying things like "We've got this and we've got that. Here are some things that we think you'll fit in quite well with" and going on about it also saying "Well if this isn't exactly what you want to do then we can wait for something else to come along." Which all sounds great but at the same time I didn't have a job yet and I didn't work for them. I guess he was just good at his job. He was making me feel really good about the company and giving me all sorts of positive options to keep me interested in the opportunities that they had. Trying to reel me into the company. But it was all quite strange, like meeting with a recruitment agent but being in an interivew instead. But I guess thats what a consulting company is, some sort of recuitment agency. They have to fill their books with good qualified people and keep them on the line while they also go out and find jobs to match them. In any case there are a couple of interesting jobs going and it went pretty well. I might even be back down in London fairly soon to meet some clients to see if I fit what they want. Then I might actually have a job.

I've been thinking about it a bit and it's not the dream job that I've been looking for. It's not working on racing cars. But at teh same time, consulting work is quite interesting. You get to work on a bunch of different projects and gain a lot of experience. And if you want to push your career in a particular direction then you just have to push for those projects. Also, if something better does come up then its fairly easy to get out of in between projects. So it does look pretty good and since I don't have anything else on the table right now then it looks really good. So the interview went well and I crashed at Jules' place again on Monday before heading back up to Leeds on the Megabus on Tuesday. I must say I'm quite happy with Megasbus. Last time I used them they had normal double decker buses but they were using proper coaches this time so the trip was pretty comfortable, especially since I managed to get the double seat to myself. So I'm back up in Leeds now and playing the waiting game again and I'll let you know if this job comes through.