I’d originally started writing this post at Green Park station last night (Thursday 3rd April), but the rest was written today

It’s 9:15pm and I’m currently standing at the entrance to Green Park Station, which as I stand is about a 100m walk from the front door of my office.  Tonight, like any normal night, I left at 6:00pm, as such I’m no closer to home than I was the better part of four hours ago.  But there’s no usual story of drunken antics or other similar fun, I’ve been stuck on a packed Jubilee Line Tube train with no air, fans and only emergency lighting the whole time.

I have to say, a fully clothed Roman Bath packed with pissy London commuters is not my idea of a fun way to spend a few hours, but there wasn’t much I could do but laugh.  And like human evolution, accelerated at a thousand times the normal speed my nose has evolved in the way I can now say, without doubt, that I can identify the sweaty smell of almost any human being, young or old, male or female, white collar or blue collar, black or white and of course the most pungent of aroma…. me.

People got really funny, really quickly in that situation and started to panic, like repeatedly pulling the Emergency alarm was going to do anyone any good, as the driver had to explain several times:

“Ladies and Gentlemen, I realise everyone is upset, and quite frankly I am too, but there’s not a lot of things I can do at present so I’ll just ask you to stay calm.  Please note, pulling the emergency handle on the train repeatedly will not help the situation, and no, there are no toilets on this train, and no, I’m not allowed to let you off the train to walk down the tracks”.

I think the worst thing was, because of the power cut, the driver couldn’t communicate with anyone at the stations or other tube staff.  It wasn’t all bad though, finally, just before 9:00pm the London Underground cavalry and Police arrived and we walked off back down the tunnel to Green park.  That was the coolest part about it all.

The best photo I could get of the tunnel, wish I’d got more

Things I learnt:

• It’s never not an option to go to the toilet before leaving the office
• If the power goes out completely, there is no communication at all with the upper world (apparently due to using an inferior/cheap communication system)
• Old style wireless/CB (I’m assuming) still works with other drivers along the tunnel
• London tube tunnels are nothing like the New York tunnels you see in Law and Order or dodgy 80’s cop movies.  At least on the Jubillee line, noone could live down there, and so my thoughts of a subterranean London civilisation have been all but dashed.
• Once again, its never not an option to go to the toilet before leaving the office

Update: BBC News Article - Hundreds trapped on Underground

Changing Situations

Today (April 1st) marks the day that I start at my company as a permanent employee, and also that day that I cease to be a full-time contractor, at least for the time being, anyway.  It’s brought about an aura of uncertainty, not because I’m unsure of what I’m doing, but because of that fact that taking a paycut is often hard to justify.

I’ve had the choice though, to stay on contracting and miss out on possible bonus’s, promotions, as well as all the normal benifits like holidays, sick pay (hooray, I can take a day off again) and private health care.  I’m hanging on to the thoguth that whilst I was getting better money contracting (by no means, fantastic money, mind you), with the holiday and sick pay, I’m not that much worse off.  And I found about a fantastic little nasty called Employer’s Natiional Insurance Tax, which for some reason I was stupid enough to have been paying myself, missing out on the grand total of almost £1,000 cleared cash in hand per month.

This is what I’ll be expected to wear to the office, now that I’m permanent

Renewed Motivation

But the worry at the change in career path has renewed my motivation to pursue out of work projects and whilst I’ve had a couple of fairly unproductive months, I think I’m well back on track down the path of success. At least I hope so, anyway.  So far I’ve:

• 75% completed the first of the ShanCo projects, an experiment in collaboration, team work and fighting the good (SEO) fight to thrive for a win in this web world.  I can’t say too much because not only would that ruin the surprise, I’d be sure to dissapoint as well.
• started to draw up plans with an old mate from University;
• and done the same with some friends from work, thinking about a couple of huge ideas one of the guys came up with that could quite likely revolutionise the London Texas Hold’em scene as well as a couple of other ideas as well.  If I can help, that is!

Budgeting & Finance

Another thing I did, whilst fretting about the incoming financial situation was draw up a quick budget for the next few years.  I’m amazed time and time again, just how much money we waste, and how easy it would be to save a fair chunk if you put your mind to it and watch out on the frivilous bar rounds (£36 on five drinks on Saturday night!).  I’ve found in the past if I’ve had something that i’ve needed to save up for, drawing out a budget and clearly working out exactly much we needed to save, and exactly how much we can save if we stick to the money we intend to live on each week.

It’s probably a no brainer for most, and a sign of immaturity, but sticking to my money guide, which took me about 20 minutes to knock up in Excel should help in this matter, especially when I consider all the things we’re going to have to pay for in the next few months, such as the Big Event and the nicely priced Holiday to Russia in July.  Hell I’m going to enjoy my holiday pay though!

I know, before I say anything, its been a long time between posts, and before my last it was a fair while between those. I’m in a definite state of limbo recently, in regards to pretty much everything and I’ve just let a few things slip. Like my bear for instance:

… Only Kiddin, it doesn’t look near this bad.

Anyway, I just worked out, within the last week that the British Home Office was in the process of tightening up their immigration laws, and as of March 1st 2008, its not going to be so easy to get the Highly Skilled Migrant Visa (HSMP) anymore. This sucks for me, as after July 1st this year, I’ll have used up my allowed employment time (12 months out of the 24 month holiday Visa).

I have earned enough, however to apply for the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme, which allows me to work pretty much anywhere, and 5 years in the UK without restriction, and best of all the time counts toward residency. The rules change slightly after Leap Year Day Day (29th Feb, 2008) though, the main causes for concern being that the cost now rises by £400 pounds (from the already expensive £750), and you need to go back to your home country to apply for it. There are many other changes to, like the fact having an MBA doesn’t automatically qualify you for the Visa now, and some of the points for various skills have been reduced somewhat.

But then the story gets worse….

Not only will I have to go back to Australia (if I chose this path after the cut off date), I’ll have to wait 4 months killing time back home until my visa request is processed so I can come back again! So, on current flight costs I’ve worked out the total cost of getting a new visa at:

Cost Of Visa: £1150

Cost of return Flight: £900

Lost income in work time: ~£16,000 (minus £ lost to tax)

Time spent saving up now so I’ve paid my share of the rent and food, and general bills/expenses: at least 2 months

That hurts, it really does. So I’m in a mad rush now, to try and organise all the paper work and cash required for the visa application (I’m willing to pay the £200 person to person interview fee for obvious reasons) by the 28th of February. It just depends how quickly my university can send me over the Proof of Completion of Studies form. I have my degree, and my transcript, I even have my high school transcript. But to the British Commission, that’s just not good enough. You need a letter from the chancellor of your university stating that at the majority of your course work was taught in English.

The fact I went to an Australian university (and have a degree to show for it) doesn’t cut it. They need proof, and solid proof at that.

I will do whatever I can to avoid making the trip back home though, not that i woudn’t mind seeing friends and family, on the contrary. I’d love to, just it is a huge drain on time and money.

Visa time it is….

There’s a few things I’ve really wanted to do since moving to the UK, and visiting Scotland and seeing snow were a couple of them. I was lucky enough to be able to see both on the weekend as we flew to Glasgow Prestwick airport and drove to Edinburgh to spend friday and saturday night.

OMG, Snow!

Before Friday morning, the most snow I’d seen in my life was summer sludge in the mountains in Canada when I was 12 years old, so this was awesome. After I got over this monumentous event, we quickly got on our way to Edinburgh, with a couple of sneaky detours to check out the snow covered landscape.

Note to self, “When driving in snowy, icy conditions the car (quite obviously) does not stop, or handle as well as it would on a normal dry road, its more like driving a boat, ‘Oh, you want to go that way, waaaaiiit a second’, and so on”

Edinburgh is a small-ish city (Yes, even by Perth standards) , of around 400,000 people, even though I’ve been told this balloons out to over 800,000 during festival time in August. I didn’t hear this until we were about to leave, but was shocked by this, as walking down the main street on Friday afternoon (admittedly it was peak knock off time), was possibly worse than walking down Picadilly in London in the same time period, in regards to pedestrian congestion anyway. What was also interesting, was that the way we approached the city was from the south, saw the first sign alerting us to the fact we were approaching Edinburgh City Centre (at this time we were still in snow covered farmland), and within about a mile we’d gone over a hill and were suddenly smack back in the city centre. I found this odd, as I’m used to the usual suburban sprawl for kilometres and kilometres in directions from the CBD. We did notice, however, that leaving the city in the other direction on Sunday there was a much larger distance to the cities edge, so basically its just a strange shape.

The really striking thing about Edinburgh though, is the amazing amount of things you can do within walking distance from the centre. The entire city is overlooked by the Edinburgh Castle, and there’s at least two or three other palaces/castles in the immediate area, as well a host of cathedrals, churchs, museums, galleries, etc all within minutes of each other.

The view of the castle from the Street just outside the Hotel

Looking back toward the hotel from the street below the castle

On the second day we went straight to Edinburgh Castle in the morning, the castle itself is absolutely amazing, perched so high above the city. The rooms and apartments are nothing like the English castles I’ve seen or Versailles in France, as they were very basic, but the rest was definitely worth seeing, and the Audio Guide is packed full of useful tidbits and stories about the history of the castle and how it survived so many seiges by the English over several centuries.

Awesome, isn’t it?

I’d highly recommending seeing this fine example of a city if your in Scotland, or the UK, its small enough to do most things in a few days, its got a whole lot of history, and a whole lot of character, and appeared to have a good night life with a feel good attitude toward getting horrendously pissed. Enjoy!

A few facts (should be much longer and more interesting, but this is me):

• Haggis is especially tasty, I’m just annoyed I didn’t get to feast on Black pudding again.
• Scottish Beer (Tennants, McEwans, Caledonian, etc) is sold with a number designation in shillings, like McEwans 60/- or McEwans 90/-. This apparently was a the traditional measure of alcohol content by the monetary amount worth of grain that went into each bottle (I hope I explained this right)
• King James VI of Scotland (Mary, Queen of Scots, Son) became King James I of England a year after becoming king of Scotland. This is significant as he was the first King to rule over England, Scotland and Wales. Why they allowed him to take the English throne considering how much the English and Scots were at battle I’ve no idea. I can do history, really I can.
• Edinburgh to Glasgow Prestwick airport is about 60-90 minutes drive away, though surely its just easier in future to fly straight in to the cities airport.

Enough Said…

Edit: Or maybe I should elaborate. Whilst watching Most Haunted on TV the other night, I wasn’t sure what was scarier. The paranormal movements and spooky (yet totally invisible and farcicle) beings in the castle, or this stellar gentleman.