Change is the only constant

*Please note change of site address: http://trip.samyeates.com*

Hi all! It's what, nearly August... and I haven't written anything since late March? Tsk tsk I know. I really want to keep this web site up, but I'm sure you'll agree that missing out on life today to write about what happened yesterday isn't the best way to enjoy the UK! I guess it shows you how little "free" time I have - so much for having a quieter life in the UK, if any of you remember my hectic Perth lifestyle before I left, that's pretty much where I am now!

I *do* make time to write when there is something more important to write about than to sleep... and that's my upcoming holiday!!! I booked it today, and I'm leaving tomorrow! *ahhh* the freedom of being unemployed and able to decide what to do last minute!

The plans are super-minimal... I leave on a flight tomorrow (Thurs) at 20:30 from Stanstead to Budapest, arriving at 00:01 (ick yes it was a cheap and nasty flight, with some odd Hungarian airline too). I hang around there for a couple of days, then start using an interrail pass (cheaper than the eurail pass I had in 2002, and it allows me 16 days continuous travel!) to zip around Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Croatia! I return on Tues the 17th on a 6:30am flight from Budapest... So annoying times, but the cost so far has been quite cheap! Averaging the flights and rail ticket out over the whole 20 days, it's only about £15 per day for travel. I bought Lonely Planet - Eastern Europe today too - it's 2 years newer than my old guide, plus a slight bit smaller. I think I'll head from Budapest into Prague, then up to Gdansk (didn't get that far north in Poland last time). Will have to email some of my Polish friends tonight or tomorrow! Then I might go hiking between Poland and Slovakia, before heading back through Hungary to hit the Croatian beaches and islands.

I can be *really* indecisive this time, because I have unlimited travel on the trains! I haven't even opened the Lonely Planet yet - will be reading on the way to the airport and whilst on the plane. I'll check if I can get my trip to coincide with any interesting festivals as a priority, and then play it by ear after that. Hopefully will be able to update this site tons!

So, what else have I been up to? I'll work in descending order for a change. Most recently, my friend Shannon has been around! There's tons about him on this site from 2 years ago - I met him in London and we had a crazy random time. He went back to Oz, I stayed here, and now he'll be room-sitting for me while I'm on hols. Nice to know that things will be looked after, that he'll get to hang out with my kewl housemates and that I can afford to travel for a bit longer! The only foreseeable problem is that my housemates will probably want to keep him! :-)

Before he was over I was recovering - my first week of hols after finishing work. I slept, ended up looking like a bum through not shaving and wearing slobby clothes - my room was ridiculously messy. I caught up on sleep during the wrong times too - I was supposed to go and tour Canterbury with Pete but I overslept! :-( As usual, my body clock is always the #1 enemy.

The other thing I've been doing is preparing to practice and learn more IT stuff. I got a bargain basement computer from work, and added a 160GB HDD and DVD-RW (cheap cheap these days!) The idea is to have Win98 & XP & Linux (perhaps 2 dists?) on the same system. For the last 2 years I've been watching my boss open boxes of computer parts he'd mail ordered and had delivered to work. I never realised it could be so fun! Another problem was this website - I lost a chunk of online space (Guy???) and was about to pay my ISP for some more disk space, when I looked into domain registration and hosting... let me say that at the moment I'm quite impressed that I can bring you samyeates.com with more content, and flexibility (with the cost of some reliability??) but for *very* low cost! It's taken a while to transfer everything over though.

I needed to sleep and to slob so badly for a couple of reasons - I had a very active social life in the last few weeks of school and I had tons of work to catch up with.

The end of the school year is normally quite social - Brits seem to love doing more during Summer... guess they just hibernate when it's cold and dark. I've been out to the pub tons, to faculty lunches, to department dinners, and to staff end of year parties, let alone all the time spent out and about with friends. It's been even more hectic than last year - cos it was my last few weeks at Langley! :-(

Hrmm... teaching is odd - and slightly dangerous. Why? Well, when I first started teaching at secondary school it was quite difficult, and I felt like I would have to change my personality for things to work well. The question is, given that I enjoyed it and found it quite comfortable during this last year of teaching, does that mean that my personality has changed... and I haven't noticed? I actually feel like a teacher now! So much for "teaching is a means to diversify my skills - I don't really want to be a teacher"... I would have been quite comfortable staying there. Not sure if schools have that effect on many teachers, but the possibility of getting comfortable and then stuck makes them dangerous to me!

So... I guess that at this stage, my life is about experience, and not comfort. I'd like to think that I'm a competent teacher, maybe even a "good" teacher on a good day (Langley girls - you can comment on this ;-/), but I get the feeling that to be an excellent teacher you have to teach for years. So ambitious Sam... stuck in a super long term job? Not unless I know it's *exactly* what I want to do.

But what do I want to do? I'm quite excited about doing some development work, but I don't want to be shoved into a cubicle, never to see the light of day. My CV is now quite nicely polished so I can apply for either a consulting or development job - however I'm quite prepared to "do my time" coding before moving on to a client facing position. Just have to find an employer who considers a 20-month teaching diversion an asset to my skill and knowledge base. I'm not particularly bothered about jobs - London has such a low unemployment rate that it's quite easy to find jobs doing *something*. I think I just have to stick to random temp jobs until I find interesting positions I might enjoy as much as teaching, but where I get to use more of my degree. In any case, now that I have samyeates.com I can start to author and publish software in my spare time to polish up my coding skills.

OK... back to the story. I also needed sleep because I had tons of work to catch up on - partly because I was so enthused at job hunting that I did that when I should have been marking, and partly because I had a distracting month when I was chasing a girl, a distracting month when I was with her, and a distracting month afterwards, when I wasn't! Quite different months, but all of them not particularly productive, work-wise. So yet another sad story regarding Sam and women… however I am realising that with every relationship I have I am able to clarify in my head what I need from a partner. I guess I don't learn much more than that - I don't actually do much differently or act differently from one relationship to the next??? Although the connection you make with someone *is* quite personal, and of course influences how you relate and communicate.

Haha... although one thing I *have* learnt is not to date women that are leaving the country in a couple of months! (Or to do it with my heart switched off...?? but I'm not particularly good at that.)

So I guess it's mostly down to the luck of finding the "right" fish in the sea! While I'm having fun and meeting loads of nice people I'm not too bothered, although I do think that it's nice to have someone else to look after once in a while - I am getting slightly too good at looking after #1.

OK... Time to get going. Have to pack and get a hair cut etc tomorrow. Will have to write some more on here about what I've done recently - perhaps when I put some photos up! You can leave messages for me on this site, as always, or you can email me- use my new address:
sam at samyeates dot com

Posted by Sam at July 29, 2004 03:54 AM