Let's, let's form a company

London, May 25, 2000.

First up: ten points to anyone aside from Ryan who can tell me the
band, album and song I stole the Subject: line from :-).

There hasn't been a travel diary update for a while as there hasn't
really been much of substance to report. But it's all starting to
happen now!  Let me attempt to get this into chronological order
though...

I know I said I wouldn't, but you've got to try everything once. I hate
the person who made that rule, because as "going to the Acton Redback"
is a member of the set of "everything" this means I had to go to the
Acton Redback. But I can tell you, never again.

The excuse was the birthday of one of the guys who was on the Anzac
tour.  I showed up a little early (about 8:30), but there were already
some hardcore troopers with pyramids of cans on their tables and droopy
pissed looks on their faces. The place is basically a beer barn. There
wasn't quite sawdust on the floor or chickenwire in front of the stage,
but there should have been. The first beer I ordered was served to me
in a plastic pint glass (cup?) I commented to the barmaid: "Plastic?
That's a bit rough.". She replied, "Yeeh, if we used glass they'd git
smished over peeples hids".

I picked a spot with a vantage point over the door to wait for everyone
and just watched the punters coming in. It was hilarious, you could
tally them up: Boofhead, boofhead, slapper, boofhead, boofhead,
boofhead, slapper, slapper, stunner (must have been dragged there by
some of her friends), boofhead, slapper, slapper... etc. You get the
idea. Everyone finally arrived and I was actually having a reasonable
time. The music was unbearably shite, but then I'm farily hard to
please at the best of times (!).

By the time the (covers) band started I was pissed enough not to care
that they were even more shite than the piped music, so I started
dancing with everyone else. After a number of Kronnenbourgs I
discovered they had Two Dogs! Of course, like the Kronnenbourg and the
Fosters it is brewed in England and doesn't taste quite the same as the
"Real Thing". The indiginous drink was even stranger than English Two
Dogs though. It's called a "Snakebite" and it consists of half lager,
half cider (Strongbow or something) and a liberal dash of blackcurrant
cordial. I was incredulous the first time I saw one poured. I didn't
taste it, but I suspect they're drunk for the effect rather than the
taste.

After a couple of hours on the dancefloor utterly failing to pick up a
cute little Irish nurse they announced last drinks and closed the bar,
at about 2:00am. There was a frenzy of last-minute propositioning going
on as the band finished and the lights came up, it was quite hilarious
to watch. I also saw a couple of accidents where some sawdust on the
floor would have been handy (urgh). In any case, I've seen enough and I
have no need to go back to a Redback (especially not *that* Redback) at
all.

I have also now been to a Walkabout, to watch the FA Cup final with
Matt.  Chelsea Vs Aston Villa, Chelsea got up 1-0 and it was the most
boring sporting event ever televised. And no, I'm not the only person
who thinks that.  Thank ghod we had a party to go to that night so
Saturday wasn't a total dud.  The party was at a FOAF [that's Friend Of
A Friend] of Matt's, so we went to Camden to meet her after the
football.

The pub we met at was the World's End in Camden -- a goth pub in the
middle of London. It was hilarious. I can't wait to go back to Camden
markets on the weekend, the place is full of fruitloops. It's a bit
like Newtown except blacker with more buckles and without quite so many
women holding hands.  The Doc Marten centre of the universe. Anyway,
after grabbing some more booze and something to throw on the barbie at
the party we headed on to the party.

Finally, somewhere with decent music! It was actually pretty cool, they
had heaps of people, space in the fridge for our plonk (woohoo! I
managed to find a bottle of Peter Lehmann Semillion -- the "booby wine"
-- in Sainsburys!) and a mirrorball in the loungeroom. It was a bit sad
when we went out to put our sausages on the barbie and found a 30cm
diameter Weber-like construction though. Much hilarity and "That's not
a barbie" type humour ensued.

Unfortunately it gets a bit hazy from that point. Someone handed me a
glass of wine, I drank it, and it was all over for me. I ended up
disgracing myself in the front garden and was led back to the tube
station by Matt.  Apparently I made it home and promptly fell asleep in
my clothes. Felt fine the next day though (as you do :-).

Oh, my birthday celebrations came off well too. We met at the Pitcher
and Piano in the City and amazingly the whole eight or ten of us found
eachother in among the sixteen thousand million suits that crowded the
place on the Friday afternoon. Oh my god, the talent! And I was there
in jeans! Oh well.  The brick lane curry was great too and everyone who
had some of the vindaloo was suitably repentent the next morning.

I went out for Jon's birthday too, to a Turkish restaurant. I even had
an Efes (the Turkish national brew, previously encountered in large
quantities on the Anzac tour) and it didn't taste half bad. But the
best thing was eating the food and not worrying that it was going to
give me the squirts.

But enough of that frivolity! What have I been doing during the day?
Waking up, having my three slices of toast-and-Vegemite for breakfast
(I had to bring my own, of course), calling the leads from the previous
day, going into the net cafe, checking the job web sites, having lunch
(I've found one decent sandwich shop in Piccadilly -- not quite as good
as the Deli or the GSB, but close) then going to an interview. I've
seen people at a security consultancy (a bunch of white-hat hackers), a
mob who were just about to launch a web-based "stock exchange" for Wine
(www.uvine.com) and then... Icon Medialab.

I liked these guys from the start. They're a full-service web site
production house. They go from the business consulting and
marketing/branding exercise, through to the visual design and layout of
the site (including human-factors testing) right back to doing the
database backend and the Java business intelligence stuff. Lots of
application server and JSPs, etc (though not WebSphere). It looked like
a really cool place to work too, big, sunlit open plan offices, Coke
machines you didn't have to put coins in... my kinda place.

So, on Monday, they offered me a job! I took it! They will need to
train me on the application server, so they wanted a commitment of at
least six months which is fair enough. Also, because of the training
the rate is a little lower than you might otherwise expect (muhaha, I
love saying that to people who aren't in IT), but I will get a review
after three months.  Before I could start though, I had to sort out my
financial arrangements...

You are now talking to the sole director of (wait for it) "Greyscale
Software Ltd". Don't ask me, I didn't get to pick the name and that was
seriously the best of the options. I even have a business bank account
(hey, I can write myself cheques!). Fun fun fun. Icon Medialab
(www.iconmedialab.net, by the way) have all the details, so by tomorrow
we should be able to sign contracts and I might even be able to get to
start work on Monday! This would be really, really, good.

Next task is to look for a flat... ARGH! You've no idea how hard it is
when you look at the flatmates wanted section of the paper and you
*don't recognise any of the suburb names!*

Staying in the dodgy Prince's Square hotel in Bayswater hasn't been all
bad. Though I can touch the walls without even stretching my arms
completely out and the plasterboard is cracked and peeling under the
window, I do get a "nice" suburban/industrial view of the backs of a
whole lot of terraces and an electricity substation out my window. When
climbing out of this window onto the roof of the room below (no
railings and fully of pidgeon shit, but it counts as a balcony), I
looked across and found that someone else had already had the same
idea.

So of course I introduced myself and met Nina, half Pom, half Kiwi
(both passports, but the better of the two accents), travelling, been
in London for almost a year this strech. The next night we went out for
a beer and a chat, and I found out she's a communications graduate
(though temping as a PA since journalism doesn't pay enough in London)
and quotes Red Dwarf.  The night after that we went out for dinner and,
well, we're going to Cambridge for the coming long weekend :-). The
natives are friendly (!).

So, there's the news! Company, in many definitions of the word! As
always, it's fantastic to hear from you all, and you'll probably hear
from me again after I've sorted out somewhere to live and actually
started "the job".

Cheers, Robert.