What's Doing

According to this article in the Register, it could be time for me to make a career change. Bugger.

Anecdotal evidence from friends in the UK indicates that the job market there is not good at the moment. Demand for smashing people with IT skills is at an all time low and if the wife-to-be and I want to work in the mother country it could be hard actually finding someone willing to pay us a decent wage. Of course, it could just be that all of the people I know who are currently looking for gainful employment are just workshy fops (Gary), but I wouldn’t want to accuse them of that until I’ve actually tried to get a job myself.

Our fallback position is to return to Oz after the nuptials are over and the excitement has faded. But strangely enough we would both like to hang around for a bit and prove that we haven’t tired of London, or life.

On Sunday afternoon we are going to the Manly Food and Wine Festival. If you would like to join us in an epicurean feast then we will be on the plot from about 2pm.

If you want to join us, call me on my mobile and I will tell you which stall to meet us at. Be warned, I shall have my digital camera and I shall be taking photos.

I couldn’t resist this one.

Courtesy of Danny O’Brien. If you like the outpourings on his blog, you will love his technical newsletter, NTK. Do yourself a favour and subscribe today.

You can’t make these up, really. An office wide email was sent around the place where I am working this morning. It said;

"Would the person who left a box at reception please come and pick it up"

Which was innocous enough. Until the follow up arrived in my in box about five minutes later;

"Regarding that box, the contents are 5×1 litre bottles of artificial sweat solution."

We have given the real estate agent notice on the lease of our house. The date of departure was largely determined by the dates of our free holiday. Did I mention that it is free? I did.

We are leaving for "The Greatest Country in the World"™ on the 20th of June so we are moving out of the house on the 19th. Simple.

For those not keeping track of our movements, fear not. Coming soon to this very web site is a page dedicated to our location over the next few months. It is tentatively titled "Where are they now?" and will be your on-line guide to exactly which pubs I will be frequenting on which days.

Once more the Australian banking system has singly failed to demonstrate its user friendliness and general dedication to customer service.

I phoned the "customer care centre" of the Commonwealth Tossers with a simple query. Whilst I am overseas, I said to the badly programmed robot on the other end of the line, I would like to be able to transfer money from my account with your insitution to an account in another country. I have the ability to do this domestically by phone or the internet, there just doesn’t seem to be an option to initiate an international transfer. Well sir, the plainly flustered operator said, you can do this with an international money transfer. Marvellous, said I, how do I do that? Well, you go into your branch … <bzzzt> before you continue, I said, I will be overseas its a little difficult to pop into my branch in Sydney whilst I am in London. So they put me on hold. When the barely more educated than an ATM operator came back on the phone line they said that my options were an international money transfer (already discarded) or a telegraphic transfer. Oh, said I, how do I perform a telegraphic transfer? Well, you go into your branch … <bzzzt> Thanks for nothing – tossers.

Dad, this means that the money for the photographer will take even longer than I said, sorry.

Meanwhile, does anyone know a decent financial institution willing to store all of my money?

Now, whilst it is true that I am occasionally grumpy I wouldn’t describe myself as excessively bitter.

The reason I say this? I had to think twice about getting an email address from biteme.com. Of course, it could just be that I am a skinflint and don’t want to pay $2.00 (US) a month for a mailbox at such a stylish corner of the internet. I will let you decide.

The link, by the way, was courtesy of Matthew Thomas.

What is this all about? You move twelve thousand miles and are still forced to watch this steaming pile of garbage. Life is not fair.
<edit>The woman who is under the impression she is going to become my wife has just uttered the words "fun" and "Eurovision" in the same sentence. If that isn’t grounds to reconsider this whole wedding malarkey I don’t know what is.
I am tempted to write something witty and piercing about the message that Eurovision embodies but I shall save that for another time. At the moment I’m trying to stop my ears from bleeding.</edit>

OK. I haven’t been working today, so Bobo will want to know what I have achieved. I have found out that Manly Pool (actually more accurately known as "The Andrew Boy Charlton Swim Centre") is closed from the 21st of June until the 19th of August this year for its annual winter holiday. I hear this year it is going to South America for a little skiing. Lovely.

I’ve also sorted out some storage space for all of our belongings whilst we are in the UK. I have reserved a unit at the Brookvale depot of Global Self Storage. All I’ve got to do now is start packing everything we own into boxes to take there.

So funny.