We got up with a bit of a struggle at 4.30am, and quickly walked down to Lancaster Gate Tube Station at 5am while it was still rather dark. The tube station was shut even though the first tube is meant to be at 5.11am. We decided to walk up to Marble Arch Tube Station, which was also closed. For lack of a direct bus, and the fact that time was passing rather quickly, we jumped in a taxi and headed down to the Embankment Tube Station to meet everyone else going on the tour to Paris to watch the All Blacks play France tonight! I managed to catch up on a few ZZ’s on the coach to Dover, before we boarded the ferry to Calais. Apparently this is the first ship Brendan has ever been on ... read more

Nick managed to wake us up at 2.30am. We slowly stirred out of bed, put some clothes on and jumped into the waiting taxi outside. We drove out to Stansted Airport to catch our 6.25am flight to Berlin. We arrived in Berlin at about 9am and got through customs without any bother. We caught a U-bahn (train) to Warschauer Straße and checked into the Sunflower Hostel, which will be our home for the next few days. With the boys as our tour guides, we accidentally got off the trains a stop or two too early at ‘Berlin-Ostbahnhof’, and found ourselves wandering the back streets of Berlin. We found a lovely church, Michaelkirchplatz, with big formal park-like grounds surrounded by large autumn trees that carpeted the grass below with its leaves. It was really quite stunning. We ... read more

I got up at the rather early time of 6.30am and got ready for my first day at work for MWH! I left home at 7.30am and made my way down to Marylebone Train Station in hope to catch the 7.53 train, but missed it by about 2 minutes! Thankfully there are regular trains to High Wycombe, so caught the 7.59 train instead. I read my Bill Bryson book ‘Notes from a Small Island’ that Ben had given me for Christmas last year on the way. I decided to start reading the book again, as now I am a lot more familiar with the locations and names that he talks about (I had no idea what ‘Mark and Spenser’s’, ‘Waterstones’ or ‘Boots’ were until I came here!), plus I have been to some of the towns! ... read more

Monday - hopefully my last interview! Well, for now - as I have to make a decision this week!! I got up early and headed to Waterloo Train Station. On my way I got a call from my agent at RGB following my e-mail to him this morning. He assured me that the place I was going to were not just land contamination experts, but also did general engineering as well. Anyways, it was too late to pull out now. While I was waiting for my train I grabbed a sandwich and received a call from James in NZ. We chatted for a while on the train to Guildford and told him how my interviews were going so far and also got an updated of all the news back home. I arrived in Guildford with only ... read more

After a bit of a sleep in, Brendan and I went shopping to get him a blender, and needless to say he got dragged around all the department stores on Oxford Street. We had a bit of an afternoon nap (yes, getting old) then gathered up all of Brendan’s stuff, and saw him off at Waterloo Train Station for his return to his new flat in Southampton. I walked to Westminster Station and caught the tubes back home. While I was in the Bond Street Tube Station transferring tube lines, there was an alarm going off and continuous message sounded over the loud speaker for a specific engineer to go to the Utilities room. Shortly later, just as I got to the top of last flight of stairs before my platform, a new announcement came over ... read more