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Published: August 6th 2007
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Tower Bridge
...and The Zong Monday 26th March Got a wig clip from a Lebanese Edward Scissorhands and lived to tell the tale. I have to look the part for my first day on the new job tomorrow.
Tuesday 27th March I had my first experience of peak hour on the tube, I now know what a sardine feels like, the crowds flow like a river and trying to walk upstream is nigh on impossible. After getting off at Bank Station I headed up Queen Victoria Street and found myself a half an hour early. Dammit, could have slept in a bit more! I was a bit nervous to start with, but after meeting the guys I’ll be working with for the next 6 months, who are all pretty easy going, my fears were laid to rest. I got set up with my own pc and was shown around by Eiji, my boss, and introduced to all the big wigs on various floors. I have enough trouble remembering names as it is, let alone Japanese names. I’ll never remember them!
At lunch time I walked around, trying to get my bearings in my new hood and purchased a couple of ties/shirts in
Bow Lane, a narrow alley full of shops just around the corner, as one black shirt and a borrowed tie just isn’t going to cut it.
Wednesday 28th March Bloody tube! 5 fully packed trains (and when I say fully packed, I mean the doors were sliding shut on peoples heads) came and left Clapham Common station before I could shoehorn myself on. Then I realised it wasn’t as packed because it wasn’t going to Bank, but Charing Cross - a different fork in the line. Doh! Never mind, my tube map reading skills held up and I plotted a course back to Bank by getting off at Embankment and catching the Circle/District Line over to Mansion House. In the end I arrived 3 minutes late, not too bad considering.
Today I got my very own ID card and card yo-yo. Now I feel special. More low level formatting of hard drives today was on the agenda, the ex-lease pc’s had to be completely wiped beyond recovery before they’d send them back to IBM. At lunch I returned to the swanky clothes shop to return the tie that was falling apart after one day (probably due
The Tube
Everybody nice and cheery as usual Everybody nice and cheery as usual.to my 1000 attempts to tie a proper Windsor knot - I swear you’d have to do a degree to get these right!).
Thursday 29th March Went down to the new Sumitomo building today which is right in-between St Paul’s Cathedral and the Millennium Bridge. There’s still a lot of work going on with getting the place ready but it’s still quite an impressive glass building with a big square open section in the middle of the building for sunlight to come in. Just in our section on our floor there are about 100 desks, each worth about £5000 alone waiting to be filled with up to 8 monitors and a few PCs each.
I walked down to the Thames after work, past a sport awards ceremony being set up (missed Beckham and Posh by about an hour) towards the Tower Bridge. After being in London for a while now it was good to get up close and I finally got to walk on the iconic structure.
Friday 30th March Had a fire alarm go off in the building today, so everyone packed up and walked a few
The Tube
Not so squeezy! hundred metres down the road Not so squeezy!to the muster point. Could have picked a better day for it though, bloody English weather! Walked around Bank for lunch, got lost again. After work headed over to meet Em at South Kensington’s Natural History Museum, but we got there just as it was closing (despite the misleading sign out the front which said it was open Friday nights!)
Saturday 31st March Shoot Portobello! Today Cambo and I turned full paparazzi as we had entered ourselves into a photo competition for the day on Portobello Road, Notting Hill. The theme was music and we were given 10 clues to find the answers to (which were mainly locations), which we then had to take photos of in a creative way. The trusty laptop helped us find all the answers in no time. Then we set off, virtually running from one location to another all over Notting Hill.
Locations included - Jimi Hendrix’ last place of residence, where he was found (almost) dead; Alice Coopers hotel where he kept his pet snakes; XL record company where Tom York (Radiohead) recorded his Eraser album and Island Records, where Bob Marley used
to hang out and no doubt smoke Homage to Alice Cooperup a storm. Portobello Road, being a famous market street and being a Saturday, was chock full of people looking for antiques, clothes, food and other trinkets so getting around was a mission in itself.
After leaving at about 10am and returning to the competition base at 5pm we were both exhausted and hungry. Some free Tiger beers helped us regain some strength though, and the organisers started a slide show of all the teams (about 30) efforts. There were some very creative pics taken by other teams but our shots were definitely up there and we thought we could have won a category or two but we missed out this time. We did console ourselves with the fact that our photo of Jimi Hendrix’ apartment was put on display in an exhibition which ran in a couple of weeks time.
Sunday 1st April A spot of clothes shopping (at a more civilised pace) in Clapham Junction with Em.
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