Finished my first full week of work since leaving Mallies - the 5 day working week is really far too long! Everything is going well so far. Naturally the first thing I did was clean and reorganise my office (Tony had a habit of keeping paperwork all over the place and anyone that saw my desk at work would know I like a nice clean desk!). Despite trying to clear a backlog of work, the week was fairly uneventful with no major problems. One of the Partners and junior solicitor left on Wednesday so we went out for lunch, got to meet the crew from the other office as well which was nice. Been here now for over 3 months which is the longest time I’ve been away from home. Strangely I’m not really homesick, sure ... read more

Edinburgh is still great and still chock-a-block with tourists everywhere, the locals must hate it. Walking down the main drag along the Royal Mile there are thousands of people and every step there is a street performer or someone touting for you to come see their show. There are crazily dressed people, random zaniness and a great vibe - see pics. Tuesday was spent doing a few tourist things and visiting the Andy Warhol collection at the National Gallery. The exhibition included all the iconic pieces (the Campbell’s soup cans/Brillo pads/Coke stuff; the Marilyn/Liza/Elvis/Jackie Kennedy portraits) and also included some stuff I wasn’t aware of like his fascination with death, war and religion and the fact that h was a massive hoarder and hardly threw anything out and his collection included 612 archive boxes of ‘time ... read more

A bit late but this site went down and lost all the blogs entries ... Beer here there and everywhere, you can drink beer pretty much anywhere - on the street, on public transport, at work and at any time of the day (why not have a beer on the way to work???). Claire Munro blogged about Prague being nuts for beer (the beer on the marathon was classic), but Berlin mist be almost as bad and when a bottle of beer is cheaper than water there’s something seriously wrong (although awesomely good) about a place! Speaking of which, went out Wednesday night with a couple from Melbourne I met on my tour the other day. Went back to Tacheles which is awesome outside at night and with random live music and being surrounded by the ... read more

I’ll keep this one brief. Had Thursday off this and then was on my own at work on Friday (I survived that little test). On Monday work will decide what happens from now on - hoping to be free to go traveling mid week. Weather has been crap, Thursday was all sunshine but the rest of the week has been almost non stop rain which caused flooding down south. I’ve had a cold the past few days, going to an outdoors gig last Sunday in the cold and rain (huddling under my umbrella) probably wasn’t such a smart idea …. Thursday night I went to an amazing gig, Canadian singer songwriter Feist. From slow and smooth numbers, a little rock and some cool dances, she was perfect - definitely one of the best voices going ... read more

Of course my grand plan of leaving the office for a retail/service environment fell through a while back, but I was hoping to get work in someplace other than a law firm (no offence guys, but …). Well, you guessed it, I will be working in a law firm. Still this job is about as far away from Mallies as one can get. The assignment is for a tiny little firm called Otten Penna in Northenden. Otten’s are primarily a legal aid firm and act mainly in family law and probate with no big corporations in sight. The way legal aid works here is that funding is sought from the government and private firms act for the public, the firm then seeks payment from the government within in the allocated budget. The firm has two branches, ... read more