Next stop ...
We're on our way back from Bournemouth at the moment. Quite a bit has been going on, and here I've not written about any of it.
The trip back to South Africa was brilliant. Made me realise how much I love and miss that place. I keep on thinking back to the feeling of complete bliss that I had as we landed at Johannesburg International. I was home and knew that there was nowhere else that I wanted to be. At least all of that is fresh in my mind, filling me with an energy that makes me want to do well here and return HOME.
The new jobs have been interesting so far. The first day involved meeting our boss and other people at the Purley office. Our manager seems very nice, but the best thing is that it's a lady - much more comfortable around people of the opposite sex.
Next day was at the Sutton offices. The IT Service Desk is based here, and surprise surprise we've been told that our jobs have been moved there. Heck, we just moved away from there 2 months ago! So that's a 3 hour commute every day now.
Then for Thursday we got told that we were needed in the Bournemouth offices. They needed help installing servers into the new data centre that had been built.
So from Purley to Clapham Junction to Waterloo to Bournemouth we went. Took around 3 hours at the cost of GBP35 each for a one way nogal! Oh well at least work pays.
What a lovely town Bournemouth is - clean, no scary people, the complete opposite of what crap Croydon is like. But the best part is that it's by the sea!!!!!!!
The actual work bit was interesting and we ended up installing servers with Windows 2003 Server on.
Stayed in The Belverdere hotel which was okay. Felt like Fawlty Towers hehe (squeaking floorboards and tacky wallpaper!)!!!
Work had booked two separate rooms for some reason. Odd seeing that the big IT boss knows that the two of us are a couple... Had a nice English breakfast though :-)
So anyway that was last week (week ending 19 March 2004) and we were asked to come back for the whole of the next week.
So that brings us to today! Did more or less the same work, hardest was doing the actual rack-mounting of the servers. Andy seems to have it down to an art now!
Yesterday (Thursday) we went looking for some of the gay pubs - heck we've not been to any "family" establishment since we originally arrived in the country.
Anyway after doing some searching we found out about two pubs called "The Branksome" and "Xchange". We wondered around and found them nestled around one another in the gay triangle (aptly located in Triangle road!). Decided to go to Branksome which turned out to be very much like Bronx in Cape Town.
An amazing feeling to walk into a pub and have everyone look at you when you enter. Ah the great fag life lol!
Had a couple of drinks there and otherwise just enjoyed the entertainment.
Found an e-mail this morning with a password for Internet access at work. Seems that I had one since around late November last year when I was going to be doing Medical Screening for TAD. But somewhere along the line my password was never mailed to me.
Now found out that we'll be in Bournemouth for the whole of next week as well. More hotels and junk food - gets a bit much after a while.
Should be arriving at London Waterloo soon so will sign off.
xxx, @li.