Hello All!

Just a quick entry - about to rush off to the airport to go hiking for a week in Scotland!

What have I been up to? Well too busy to update the site, unfortunately. Mum and I only had a week in Italy (have to finish those entries!) and then her partner Russell came over. After I walked them round in circles in London for a while, they decided to rent a car and did a 10 day road trip through England, Scotland and Wales... they've seen more than me now (*bastards* !).

Social life is picking up too - I had dinner the other week with Kah Leng, who I studied with but didn't ever really get to meet. She's still just as bubbly as ever - and tis nice to speak to Australians - I guess I forget how much I normally have in common with them! (errr.. although that might seem quite obvious!)

Work's been a bit less stressful recently... and in the last two days I've been at a "Web standards and accessibility" conference. Met some interesting people, but didn't really learn as much as I would have liked.

Anyway... after having a farewell dinner at Jazz Live (www.jazzlive.co.uk) for Mum and Russel, I've had a short snooze, packed my bags, and am about to rush off like a madman to hike! I'm hiking with Stephan, Martin and Jim, from Glasgow to Fort William ("The West Highland Way"). It'll take us 7 days of hiking, plus a day in Glasgow on each end. Should be fun - should see all my new gear :-)

I've set up this website so I can post to it from my phone! But it won't notify you so if you want to see up-to-the-minute posts of where we are, then you'll have to return regularly in the next 9 days or so.

Okay that's all or I'll miss the plane!

Will write more later, hope to catch up with some of you after the 19th.

Good Evening!

When I last wrote to you, I was just about to move... now I'm moving again!

Well, on the 24th that is... but *I know where I'm going*!

Tonight Rob and I went to the estate agents and put our holding deposit on an apartment in Baltic Quay. We're on the first floor (which is quite high - I think the ground floor apartments have mezzanines), and we have views over the quay (with boats! like them better than the empty ones) towards Canary Wharf. We're paying for the views though - we only have one living space - an open plan kitchen-lounge-dining... but all of the rooms have views so it's quite good! I suppose after living in just-above-student-accomodation for the last 2 years it'll be good to splurge a bit. Sam's dinner parties will have to kick off again!

So in other news? There's not much! I'm working working working and our product goes live on Monday. Supposedly the old server will be switched off a week after that, so we're not out of the woods yet! But after that, and after I move in to the new place my social life should pick up again. At the moment I'm trying to get used to cooking with electric hotplates! Grrrr annoying but the new place has them too so I'd better get used to them!

Ohh and on Sat I'm doing a "from scratch" G&S performance in Blackheath. Get in touch if you feel like seeing Sam on stage... :-)

Cheers and hope you're well!

Good evening!

It's nearly 3am... I should have been in bed ages ago - cos I'm moving house tomorrow!

Life has been scarily busy in the last few weeks. Lots of work, but the product I'm working on is looking quite nice! Social stuff has been a little less hectic - apart from the Easter long weekend when Shane was over, and we partied and hiked and dined and talked... was great - and I even had time to set him up with my housemate Andrea (haha although I deserve very little credit!).

That was just after my dinner, which went *so* well. I had a great time and it seemed to be that my random friends did too - there ended up being 25 of us all in all. Got tons of cards and pressies - must remember to have big birthdays more often :-)

So I'm moving in with Rob in Gallion's Reach for two weeks. We've left ourselves with barely no time to find a new house too! So there'll be no rest for me for a while. I'm mostly packed... well actually that's a lie - I've finished most of the hard stuff, only the easy stuff to go (clothes into garbage bags etc left). Tomorrow and Sunday I'm hiring a van. It should only take 1 trip to go with all my gear to Robs place... then on Sunday we're going to go for a cruise somewhere... have never driven in London! Maybe I should have paid the extra for the reduced insurance excess... ;-p This week I've been socialising in between packing - Rob doesn't have a TV so I've been soaking up a bit more than normal, and talking to Andrea and Phil lots... tis going to be sad not to live with them anymore! But after 2 years I think I'm going to like moving randomly.

At least with no TV I should be able to put more time into publishing photos online! Haha I know I always promise that but it just may happen.

Cheers & take care guys... Big changes! Onwards and upwards! (after a good sleep tonight!)

Good afternoon!

Hope you've all been well. Life quite good at the moment - I've actually tidied my room! *wow*. haha but about time cos the landlady will be bringing people around to see the room soon. Only a swift vacuum left then it'll all be done... well kinda - I still haven't thrown anything out! And I definitely need to... moving is going to be such a pain!

House hunting is slightly paused at the moment. Rob and I suggested that our 4 (or 5) person house hunting group split in two. Should make it much easier for us all to find places - there's so few 5 bed places on offer! So at the start of April I'll be moving to Rob's place near City Airport, then when we get kicked out of there on the 24th of April we'll move into our next place - probably somewhere near Canada Water? Seems quite nice... with completely different housing than I've been in up until now. A change is as good as a holiday, they say...

But there are holidays in the works too. Next week I'll be zipping somewhere with Shane for one of the easter days... and partying the night away. On Easter Monday there's a country walk with Martin and the timeout walk books gang. And Mum's flight is sorted out now - she's coming on the 17th of May and leaves on the 5th of June, and one of the three weeks we'll zip off to Italy. Sure the couple of months between now and then will fly.

This weekend has been excellent - Friday night I sat with Phil and Andrea chatting outside! The weather is getting nicer... now and then. Has been ages since I made use of our garden! Yesterday I went into the city and had brekky with Claire in the sun, then after sorting out this airline ticket I headed back to Blackheath to meet up with James & Fiona and their friends. They're getting married in a few weeks - due to the presence of quite a few little ones we were throwing frisbees in the park rather than drinking in the pub - was nice to be out in the sun though. I'm really not used to having little kids around anymore!

Last night I headed up to Joe's 26th at Loop on Dering St. It was quite a lively place, and our Mr Cannon does have cool friends. Am a bit croaky today though... am trying to recover my voice for my dinner though!

Tonight... I'm dragging nearly 30 people to Sarastro on Drury Lane. Most of them have no idea what the place is like, so should be an entertaining evening! I've got some people coming up from Guilford which is really great, and will have a chance to introduce some groups of people that I think will get along really well! I'm really looking forward to it!

So... back to the vacuuming for a bit. Thanks for all the birtday calls and stuff in the post :-)

Good Evening!

I'm living such a weird life at the moment... spending way too much time away from home, getting nothing practical done... but I'm mostly on top of the boredom thing. Now just have to make sure my life is balanced enough that I don't end up killing myself!

OK... I'll run you through the last month and a half. I came back from skiing and there was work... only.

And work was good! Really interesting. I've been given the opportunity to develop improvements to our system that I suggested - a freedom I didn't imagine I would have within the first few months at Mintel. But apart from work, my social life wasn't really going anywhere. Life in my house has been much quieter since Lee left, Phil's been doing temp jobs and saving cash, and Andrea's been studying *sigh* so the really good backup of sociable housemates was fading rapidly... but somehow I think I overcompensated :-)

Firstly, I started dragging Claire to salsa! We go to a Tues night class in Lee - Debbie is one of the teachers, she's really good and taught at the old class I used to go to (the one that burned down... did I mention that??). Since I spend the whole day sitting these days, it's so good to move about a bit. I *need* to go back this week - we've missed the last few lessons!

Next, I started meeting up with random friends. I met Joanna and Mike in Krakow during summer, and they moved to London about a month afterwards. They came over for dinner before Christmas, but then I hadn't seen them for ages. We met up for a couple of nights in Feb, ate at some really nice places and saw some jazz. We saw the "Fat Cats" at the 100 club - Linn invited me and suggested the venue, but in the end she was too busy sorting out a deal for clients (on a Sat night) to be able to join us! Perhaps life isn't so glamorous for lawyers, after all :-( ... Anyway back to the point, Joanna and Mike have now both got architecture jobs and seem to be settling in quite nicely. I *must* introduce them to my other group of random cool friends I've been catching up with recently, the walking crew.

At the end of last year (before it got reaaaaly freezing! Ohh haven't mentioned yet that it's been snowing tons here!) I went walking with a group of Germans and Dutchmen to Henley Bridge... The "walk ringleaders" are Stefan and Martin... they invited me to the Battersea Beer Festival a couple of weeks ago. There's a club here called CAMRA (the "Campaign for Real Ale") and they run these events... well try to imagine a crowd where the average participant has a 10-inch wavey beard (Werzel Gummage impersonators, all of them??). Haha but was really good fun, and tried some nice ales (the best - Farne Island Pale Ale, brewed by Border [& Hadrian??]). I dragged Tony and Petr from work too, so was nice to get the IT guys out and about a bit.

The weather wasn't too nice, but they were planning a walk on the Sunday, and I ended up walking the eight miles between Otford and Eynsford with them... it was spectacular - we wound around oast houses and climbed up and down muddy hills to reach a couple of castles and a Roman villa... although it was after I'd been out with Mike and Joanna at the 100 club, and hiking on 3 hours sleep was a bit testing at times! Lunch was Pheasant and veggies at the Kings Arm pub... love trying random food :-) Mind you still haven't done the whole jellied eel thing yet!

And in the last few weeks - work has been *really* busy. I worked on Sat for two weeks running, but needed last weekend off (more about that in a sec). We're working on a new release of our new product monitoring site GNPD... the current plan is to have the site ready for testing on the 14th, beta release on the 21st and full public release a month later... fingers crossed! Hope there's not too many weekends of work required as it's quite tiring.... and really cold in the office.

But still managed to get out and about... after the first Sat I worked there was Liz's (walk leader Stefan's gf's) birthday party (at South London Pacific... haha cheesy name but they make really good cocktails and a really good atmosphere). We danced until 2-ish, and I didn't feel like going home - had to make the most of my one day weekend! So I went with Martin to my old crepe shop on Old Compton St. After walking round in circles for a bit (err a bit concerning cos we both think we've got good direction sense) we managed to get there. Hrmm don't think I mentioned this story last summer - I dragged some teaching collegues there near the end of the school year, then went there with Phil the week after... and spent too much time talking to the really friendly Polish waitresses behind the bar. I had such a good time talking to Ursula that I realised that the whole talking-at-work thing was quite annoying, and I *GAVE HER MY NUMBER!*.

Arghh! I'd never handed my number to a waitress... it was really quite odd... I walked away and thought "Sam, you idiot, you were just having a nice chat and now she'll think you're weird!". I didn't want to seem like a stalker so I never went back... until this time with Martin a couple of weeks ago. I didn't expect the same waitress to still be there (as I thought they were only in London for summer) but she was! I didn't mention anything to her about what had happened 8 months ago, but as I sat sipping my capuccino, she asked "are you Sam??". I couldn't even remember the poor girls name, but she remembered who I was, when I was in the shop last, and what I used to work as... turns out that they were so busy on the night I was there that she had lost my number. "No problem" said her friend, "he's been here two weeks in a row, he'll be back again soon"... and silly Sam goes and disappears for 8 months! We're in email contact now so hopefully I'll be able to drag Ursula, her boyfriend and her crepe-shop friend out and about at some stage.... tis always good to meet randoms :-)

OOh and then the next week I worked I went *proper* clubbing. I'd like to go more often - tis not often that I go to a big name place. I went to "The End" with James, George, and his girlfriend (gee I'm bad with names at the moment!). It was quite good - but as you can imagine I was pretty tired after working the whole week and going out straight from work on the Saturday. I definately liked the quieter, funky room better than the loud electronic one... Hrmm won't be much longer that I can avoid being firmly mid-20s!

So it's not been all fun and games - been doing *something* productive - I'm moving out! I've been here for nearly 2 years, so it's about time to move on. After the clubbing night I went to Canary Wharf to meet up with my to-be housmates - I'm looking around at properties with Katie, Rob and Nasrine... After discussing where we wanted to go and researching for a week, we took off and saw two properties Saturday, and saw another one tonight. Currently we're looking pretty much anywhere east of Vauxhall, west of Surrey Quays and north of Clapham (inclusive). I'm not too picky, so long as I have a dining room where I can talk to my friends while I cook for them in the kitchen! :-) I'm handing in my notice tomorrow, so I *need* to find somewhere... otherwise I suppose I'll be dumping my gear wherever I can and crashing with someone ;-) But nahh I'm sure it will be fine. Buying my Mum a flight over from Australia for a combined xmas/bday present so moving in April should be a good plan to ensure that I'm settled before she arrives in May.

Wish me luck people! I'm actually having too much fun looking around properties, so shouldn't be too hard to find something.

Ooh details of my birthday dinner here tomorrow! But for now I'm going to fix a cuppa and get an early night. Keep well :-)

... sounds ripe for skiing!

Happy new year! Hope yours was OK! I was at a Chinese restaurant with about 30 others - was quite a nice sized group. I may write more about it later - but since it's a friend's friend's restaurant and some of us got food poisioning after eating there I'll have to be quite careful - don't really believe in using the internet to fling accusations at others.

... continuted ...

... so on the 31st I was out with Mrinmoy and Kim, and dragged Andrea and some of her uni friends along. After the chinese meal, I strolled about with Andrea and her friends, and visited "Lisa's favourite" ice-cream shop... mmmm! Tis quite good when you can get into nice places on NYE easily - although it ended up having a much reduced menu!

So twas quite an early evening, really... home by 3am on the 1st. That day I dragged myself out to Glynn and Kelly's place (Lee's brother and nearly-sister-in-law) at Watford. We played pictionary.... which I love... but it was even better cos Kelly has a huge easel and paper that she uses teaching - all plays with huge pens are so much more fun!

So like I mentioned before, being ill wasn't good - I ate a huge dinner at Kellys, and didn't have too much to drink - everyone was making fun of me the next morning - but they weren't convinced when I mentioned "I'm not hung over, I'm ill". I had to miss a Dim Sum lunch with Linn, and Katies birthday drinks... which was really disappointing... but at least I recovered quickly enough. A couple of days later I took Andrea to accident and emergency - she hadn't been able to eat anything for four days! She was fine in the end, but as you can imagine quite knocked about. Mrin mentioned that some people had commented about the wine being bad... so perhaps that was something to do with it, as food poisioning normally happens much quicker than 36 hours after eating!

So at least I'm well now (in mid Feb, finishing this entry)... after flu, food poisioning and a couple of colds in the last few months I think I'm finally out of the woods :-)

Hello all,

It's 1:40am on Christmas day... time to sleep!

I'm at Ashley & Kylies, we've had some mulled wine, played a few games of Uno, and I've just got off the phone to all of Mum's side of the family. Will have to speak to the rest after I get some shut-eye.

Nat & Daz, friends of my cuzs from Canberra are here too - they're quite crazy, but are livening things up quite well.

Tomorrow (well, later today, after some sleep) I have to cook brekky, then we'll rest and open pressies, then I'll have Kylie's turkey to look forward to! ;-)

Enjoy your day - will fill you in on the contents of the piles of wrapped goodies under the tree soon!

Cheers,

Cheery Sam @ Christmas!

Hi All!

Hope you are well! Tis December - there's Christmas deccies around everywhere here (the Regent St ones are really nice - will have to post a photo) - but not at my house! Will have to sort that out, really... well, after I look after Intl xmas cards that is ;-)

There's been *no* time for any shopping recently. Following on from my last entry, I did manage to go to Reading for Steve's bday. We ended up at an 80s club called Reflex, which had rotating rubiks cubes and lit up space invaders suspended from the ceiling! It was quite a late night. The next morning I got up (err or was woken up by Steve's snoring! Haha at least that was the weirdest part about sharing a studio flat with a couple!) at around 11 and had time to walk around the high st for a bit before rushing back to watch Wigan vs QPR at Loftus Rd stadium. I met Pete's dad, who talked to everyone - it's nice to see people from other parts of England who aren't afraid of asserting their personality amongst stand-off-ish Londoners! After the footy and a swift pint I zipped back to the West End, and met up with Claire for dinner! We went to a Soho pizza bar that has jazz 7 nights a week... it ended up being excellent value for money, so will have to keep it in mind for future bookings!

On the Sunday we had a musical rehearsal, the Monday a technical rehearsal, the Tuesday a dress rehearsal, and then the real performances began! I ended up having quite a few people come to see me! Thanks to all who made the effort to support me & Centenary. For all those who are too far away to make it, I *will* get around to posting some pics... promise :-)

The Saturday of performance week is always busy - After the matinee we went to the same restaurant for lunch that I'd been to the night before (err so I should remember the name!) and then performed the evening performance. We packed up the set really quickly (even though it was quite a mammoth construction). I think I made it to the cast party at around midnight... we ate and drank and sang till around 4am... and I slept amazingly well.

But instead of resting since, I've been trying to keep busy - I guess I don't want to feel like my life is empty after the show has finished! So I went out for lunch and to the Dulwich picture gallery with Andrea on the Sunday, went to salsa on the Monday, cooked dinner for a large group of people on Thursday (including Mike & Joanna who I'm delighted to see again after meeting them travelling), went out with Rob from work and met Mrin on Friday, and went to visit Lee in Norwich on the weekend!

Lee's new house is *really* nice. He's got quite a good deal worked out from his work for travel and living expenses. He's living alone in "Keswick Halls", and has a ground floor apartment with views looking out to tons of grass and trees.. including nice plump phesants! I'm not the pheasant plucker... :-)

I ended up at Anne-Marie the nurse's birthday. I had one night to see Norwich, and I think I did OK - we ended up at this "super-club" called Mercy... it was quite huge. We left quite early, but it was a good plan as we had to line up for a taxi, in the rain, for more than 1/2 hr! I was a little hyperactive and went from the front of the taxi queue back to where Lee was asking if we could share a cab with anyone... haha poor Brits aren't used to random people talking to them! The next morning Lee cooked up a big breakfast and we went driving - first to Great Yarmouth to see where Lee is working now, then around to Cromer (which is much more civilised!). After a look in a gallery and a nice cup of tea and cake, it was time to go back to Norwich for the 3hr coach to London.

Then this week I'm at it again - went to salsa, cooked another meal for guests, met up with Claire for coffee... I don't have much on for the next couple of days but on Sat I'm organising a dim sum lunch, in the evening I'm going to watch some jazz with my cousins and on Sunday we're perhaps looking around St Albans.

Arghh! One of these days I'll come home from work and sleep at 7pm!

Take care & catch you online... before xmas?? I'll try and be more proactive in replying to those emails!

Hello all!

I always like to keep busy - but life is a little ridiculous at the moment!

Work is quite interesting! There's tons to learn - so it's taking quite a while to understand the current systems before I can start improving things. On Monday we start a big project, so that should give me a little more direction!

But it's a bit of a mad week to be starting something big - it's production week next week! I have a rehearsal tonight, then rehearsals all the way from Sunday, and through to the final performance Saturday evening. If you're thinking of coming then *please book online* as then we're not so stressed about selling tickets!

But that's not all, folks! It was Steve's birthday yesterday, and tomorrow I'm going to party with him and Katie in Reading (err or is it Windsor? I should really remember where he lives!!). Tonight Katie and I book our skiing holiday online (in early Jan, we're going to Val Thorens in the 3 Valleys region, France). On Saturday I might go to see a football match too... will have to speak to Pete tomorrow.

Phil's back from Thailand too! Tis nice to have another guy in the house! We went out for dinner at Nandos last night, and met up with Beth (who we hadn't seen in ages!). Andrea (my new housemate) came along too - it's nice to have a social house thing going still, even after Lee's gone. Although he was back last weekend - we went out for an expensive dinner on Fri night, and on Sat we went to Claire's birthday/bonfire night party. In between, I went on a really nice hike with Stephan, Martin & friends. There were 2 Germans, 5 Dutch people and me... I had to be at Paddington by 9am (on a Sat... arghh!) and we caught the train to Henley (just over an hour away). We walked for about 3 hours before lunch, ate a *glorious* meal (not your average pub food!) for 2 hours then walked for another 2 hours. It was such a nice day! It's quite rare for me to be invited out to stroll the countryside - something that I hope will change.

More about work and the City later - but for now lunch is over! Back to the more programming...

Good afternoon!

I start work tomorrow - eek! Will be good to get back to doing productive stuff! I start at 9, so it's an hour later than I used to (try) to get to Langley, but now I'll have to contend with peak hour traffic - at least until I work out how long transport will take I'll probably give myself nearly 1 1/2 hours end-to-end (although if all connections work it should only be about 40 mins door to door).

Daylight savings ended last night, so we're now switched back to GMT. It did mean I got an hour extra sleep (a good thing!) so today I'll have time to do some shopping for food, and perhaps for work clothes? Working in a "smart casual" environment will be quite annoying - what, I've spent the last two years collecting nearly 30 ties and now I can't wear them??? Haha I think my cartoon ties should be locked away anyway, so that I'm not too much of a shock to the conservative city establishment ;-)

So I've had many lets-celebrate-cos-Sam-will-soon-have-money dinners and outings. Last Friday I played football with my ex-colleagues (ouch! was hurting after 3 months of not playing!), then went to a few pubs. On Saturday I met up with Katie and Steve, and we had nice Turkish food at Sofra in St Christopher's square. I zipped off at about 8:30, and was on my way to meet Simon for his birthday drinks when I bumped into Pete heading *away* from the party - the crazily loud and squashy atmosphere at Zigfrieds on Hoxton Sq was a bit much, so I can understand Pete's preference for quieter places. So I grabbed a drink with Pete for an hour or so, then headed over to Zigfrieds to meet up with Simon and his friends. Hoxton square is a bit scarily trendy (err compared to dress-down Greenwich!) but was nice to be dragged to a new bar. We ended up at 333, even though I was *completely* against going there - but it was quite fun in the end... I guess the group you're with always matters more than the place, although there did seem to be better music there this time around. I ended up dancing till 4, and night bussing home to crawl into bed around 6am.

Last weekend Tracy and Richard came to London to visit - it was quite odd as I knew about 5 months ago that they were coming, but hadn't heard anything since! They called on Sunday, and I planned to meet them on for dinner. I walked them to Leicester Square, and then along to Covent Garden. We ate at Sarastro, another Turkish restaurant (arghh two nights in a row!) but it was worth it for the live string orchestra and opera performances! Although, Tracey seemed more interested in the erotic wallpaper!

So I was able to relax a bit last week. Neil invited me over for lunch last Tuesday, we caught up, ate pasta and I checked out his electronic music studio setup (ohh many gadgets!). Then Wed morning I went up to Birmingham to visit Claire. She toured me around on Wednesday, then we went back to her parents place at Kings Winford in the evening. On Thursday we looked around the Black Country Living Museum (err a bit like Sovereign Hill except they were mining coal, not panning for gold!!). It was a little chilly, but was interesting to see all the old buildings that they'd saved from around the area. It seems to still be growing - they've acquired a whole street worth of shops from around the area somewhere... must be a nightmare to dismantle, transport and reconstruct the old buildings! It's interesting how solid the buildings are compared to the timber? built Sovereign Hill ones from around the same era - It would be interesting to find out if the need to be sheltered more thoroughly in cold climates was the reason people from colder regions developed more technology centuries ago?

I arrived back in London just in time for my rehearsal on Thursday, and slept very soundly! Thursday was also Shannon's 29th birthday, and I had suggested we go to Souk in Litchfield St for his dinner on the Friday. I took my new housemate Andrea along, and Shannon had assembled a group of 9 people at the restaurant by the time we arrived. It was a great evening of tasty moroccan food, meeting Shan's sister and friends (properly this time, not just them staring at the back of my head at the theatre) and drinking fancy beers at the Porterhouse. Of course we finished with coffee and dessert - I led the party to the Gelateria "Ciao" just by the octagonal travel agents. They have scarily huge icecream-cake-topping-fruit-chocolate-liqueur monstrosities! It ended up not being too late an evening.

Yesterday I managed to catch up with Kylie and Ashley (my cousins). I hadn't seen them since proms in the park (a couple of months ago) so it was good to chat and find out what they've been up to. They saw Rufus Wainright on Friday, and last night went to see Franz Ferdinand. Today they're moving house! So perhaps I'm not spending too much money, compared to them! I took them to Carluccios in St Christopher's square - it's just opposite Sofra that I'd been to the week before. Dining out for lunches *is* cheaper than dinners, and the food was quite tasty!

Yesterday was Denise's 23rd - I forgot she was young enough to never catch up to me! She's working as a full time stage manager now in Singapore, so doesn't perform too much magic any more. It's been more than a year since I spoke to her, so was nice to have a short chat. Wish I wasn't so bad with this long distance communication stuff! Anyway she's going to head over to the US sometime soon for a month. Hope holidays work out so I can meet her there for a week or so - roaming New York with crazy Denise? Now *that* would be fun!

Haha all this fancy food, and today I feel like eating Burger King! If you've visited the Lewisham branch (and had to deal with the homeless-almost-residents and ridiculously bad customer service) you'll know why that's not a very good plan. Although a Nando's burger would go down quite well too! I *need* to be taking packed lunches to work for the next month!

Off to chase bargains and food - catch you soon!

Hello!

Just a short message tonight - I have an interview tomorrow! I'm all a mixture of nervousness and looking forward to talking about what I've done! The job is a graduate development position using a wide range of technologies - it sounds not too much like I'd be "stuck only programming"... I'd be happy to do that for 80% of my job, but a day a week where I get to do systems analysis or client facing work would suit me perfectly!

Tonight has been excellent - I went to the Banquette restaurant at the Savoy with Claire, and then we went to see Chicago at the Adelphi theatre. I can't really do too much to prepare for the interview, so it was nice to be out (and not worrying too much about what I'm going to say!). Keep your fingers crossed for me people! :-)

Rehearsals are going well for Pinafore - I need more people to come this year, yhear? (grrr!!) Any and all visitors from Aus most welcome as well! ;-p

Here's a copy of the flyer... I'll have to put more photos up soon too! (yepp, slack I know!!)

Cheers & keep smiling ppl!

Good evening!

It's about quarter past six... and I'm off to a rehearsal in a little over an hour!

It's been quite a random few days. Last Friday night I met up with Louise (she was partying with her Mum, loads of sisters and many crazy friends). We toured a few Canary Wharf pubs and ended up dancing away at Brodies. I was drinking quite slowly (working on Sat) so was still dancing crazily at the end of the night. She's off to Africa for a big Safari tour, then hits Australia and perhaps New Zealand too? Might call in a few favours for tours when Louise and her friend hit Perth!

Then on Sat we had leaving drinks for Lee. He's packing at the moment so he'll be ready to shift everything this Sat. It was quite an icky rainy night, so we didn't move about much. On the way there, Katie tried to convince me (again) to perform HMS Pinafore with the Centenary Company. This time, I agreed to - I originally thought I might be elsewhere in the capital or in the country by November, but with these IT agencies being annoying that's not likely to be a problem now! So I have about 6 weeks of rehearsal until the performance??? **arghh!** I've got a lift with Paul to Avery Hill where the rehearsal is, so that makes life easy as well.

So I was sleeping in today - Haven't had any calls from my temp agency for work this week... but I got a call from Sharon, about a training position *I hadn't even applied for*. Now that's the way it's supposed to work (haha I like to be head-hunted!). So tomorrow for 1/2 day and Thurs for the day I'm training a Bank of America employee in advanced Excel/VBA. They also have a 6-week position that I might look into... the rate isn't as good as the constultant-training, but at least I know I'd have a steady flow of income for the next 6 weeks. The pay rate for the longer term position is more than 50% on top of what I was earning at The Telegraph, so I won't be complaining! So turns out I will have cash to afford accomodation, food and performance fees after all :-)

Life is looking up... and have been listening to HMS Pinafore on my MD all day... tis quite exciting to think about performing (as I don't have a classroom to hyperactively jump around any more!).

Hope everything is OK - look after yourselves... do something mad and random (errr, like joining a theatre production that performs in 6 weeks!).

Hello All!

I'm working today... super last minute! But more on that later.

I've been back in London for a little over a week. My last couple days in Bozen were excellent, Magdalena and I hiked for about 5 hours, with 2 hours resting atop a 2,563m mountain! Was really beautiful. After Magdalena taking too many photos of me wandering the slopes, we drove back to her place for my final sudtyrolian dinner.

I'd brought some Australian wine to give Magdalena's parents - little did I know that they had bought me some Vin Santo and Cantuccini to say thanks for cooking them dinner! Was an excellent alcohol trade. After chatting to some randoms on the Monday, and buying some shoes (shopping in € is nicer than shopping in £!) and some local wines, I said some sad farewells and zipped off on a train - well, kind of zipped off - the trip took around 12 hours to get back to Lewisham. I did meet Paul, an Aussie who has been here about as long as I have - he talked almost as much as me (shock, horror)... well actually more so at times, so neither of us got much sleep on the bus or plane either. Will be kewl to get to know some more people from home, before all remnants of my accent disappear! (more on that later...)

So... since I've been back? I bumped into Seher while I was on the way to a Pizza Express dinner and then watched Much Ado About Nothing at the globe on Tuesday. I briefly met Shan's sister and her friends... not really the best venue to meet people! I reckon they'd know me from behind now though, after looking over my shoulder for the second half of the play. It was quite interesting - an all female cast(!). Supposedly the women had their revenge in the late 1600's and all-female productions were popular for a while immediately after the "only men can act" stage of history. The actors were good enough that you tended to forget that they were all women. (errr.. is "actor" a gender neutral term these days? I was explaining to the Magdalena's sudtirolian friends about the transition to "police officer" from "policeman/woman" etc... but is actress still actress???)

On Thursday last week we went to see Parkinson. He's on ITV now, and we were in a bigger ITV studio (we've been often enough to the south bank studios now that we have a "usual" theatre we go into!). He had some good guests - Dame Julie Andrews ("the hills are alive... with the sound of millipedes!"), Michael Palin, and Ant and Dec (a popular celebrity duo that present many prime-time TV shows here). We also saw Jools Holland and Tom Jones perform live... and Parkie is just so nice!

Friday I got a message from Shannon - I met up with Serena and directed him, his girlfriend Sylvia and her two friends to meet us at Tattershall Castle, a boat Lisa had introduced me to across from the London Eye and down the river from Westminister. We had a drink or two, then went and danced at Motion for a while. We finished off the evening at Balans, a late night cafe on Old Compton St. I got home after 3:30, and heard tonight that Shan and Sylvia didn't make it home till after 4!

Saturday was *really* quiet. Everyone was away! I had the house to myself for most of the weekend... which was - well, quite weird actually. I'm not used to too much quiet. Although the only change is that I don't feel guilty about not doing my dishes quickly!

I went for a walk on Sunday, to grab a coffee and get some fresh air. I sat outside my usual cafe (a gormet deli/cafe next to Blackheath station) for the first time. I actually ended up speaking to random people in London! It was a really nice change - almost as if sitting outside makes tons of difference. Perhaps people don't feel so intimidated as they do inside (which is much more squashy). I was talking to a couple who live in Blackheath whose son visited Australia a few years ago, and to a young doctor and his girlfriend who were looking to buy a property in the area. I was thinking about how the people around me matter more than the place I'm in, and I think if I'm able to carry over remnants of "lone backpacker travel conversationalism" back to London then that can only be a good thing - I mean, if I can speak to random couples in Bozen (haha I thought this couple were asking "can I borrow your seats" but instead they were asking "can I sit down") then why can't I keep doing it here? At times it's best to NOT do as the Romans do.

On Monday I went for a meeting with Lisa at Seyner Benson. It turns out they have tons of work available at the moment, so they were quite positive about the chance of me getting work for next week. So all this week I've been speaking to permanent IT employment agents, trying to find a position that I'm suited to. It turns out that I'm "overqualified" for graduate placements, but "underqualified" for positions with a couple of years experience required? It's quite frustrating! But I have a couple of agents to call back in the morning, so I'm remaining positive.

On the way into town on Monday, I spoke to another mad random. I met this Saudi Arabian guy at Lewisham station, and we were joined by another guy from Bangladesh. We all sat together on the train and heard the Saudi's life story! It was quite interesting... in summary, he was a young doctor in Saudi Arabia in 1979, and ran away to Britain via Kuwait, Basra, Baghdad, and (?)Spain. It turns out that a 10 year old prince had come to see him for treatment, and hadn't been happy, so complained. The complaints went all the way to my train friend's father, who told him to apologise to the prince. Supposedly not wanting to apologise was a good enough reason to flee. I thought this was an excellent story until the guy told me he hasn't spoken to his dad since. Errr... I'm sorry, but that's a pretty small thing to cause you to run away from your dad for 24 years! I did start telling him this (as semi-respectfully as I could, of course). I mean, his dad is 78! And supposedly very fit, but still... and when his dad came to visit him about 10 years ago, he went to Amsterdam for a few days! So I guess at least his dad has seen his own grandkids, even if not his son. I was feeling *very* worked up after this. I mean... argh... Pride is shit!

OK... back to me :-) I was supposed to call Lisa today to find out about work for Monday. I called at around 11, and she was on the phone, and gave me a call back at around 11:30. "Are you available to work the end of this week? Starting this afternoon?" she asked. I thought (arghhh shower shave iron dress wake-up travel eat think-talk-and-look-alive) but said "yes!". So I got ready in a semi-rush and zipped off to the foreign desk of the Sunday Telegraph! It's quite an interesting environment - Topaz and David opposite me discuss what foreign news articles will appear in this Sunday's paper, while I field calls from Iraq, Karachi (and less interestingly) Spain, Australia and America. I'll only be there until Saturday - yes, work on the weekend but after 3 months holiday it's nice to be productive. I really just want them to have a copy of Access so I can start optimising some business processes!!! But perhaps as a temp I'm not supposed to be so proactive! They do have an interesting UNIX (?) ncurses-style system that I can play around with, although it's a bit too mission-critical to be too adventurous.

So Seyner Benson... last time they said "do you want a job in 2 days?", this time "do you want a job in 2 hours?"... fabulous stuff!

And I had guests coming for dinner too! I had invited Shannon and Silvia over for dinner, and cooked for my housemates too. Lee and Phil helped out with much of the cleaning and setting up, and I cooked like a madman. We ended up having a real feast of (properly fried) pappadums and sauces, lamb rogan josh and chicken bhuna (err with some pineapple sauce?). With pilau and plan rice. Accompanied by the San Magdalena wine I had bought, and some Australian red. And then some icecream, cheesecake and coffee. And then some Vin Santo and Cantuccini! Consequently we are all very full and quite happy. (err perhaps why I'm writing too much at the moment!)

Hope you are all well. I'm working (yay! weird thing to celebrate but... yay!)

Hi all!

Can't believe it's 2 weeks since I got back from holidays! And what have I been up to? Well.... not nothing... but I haven't been tremendously productive.

Today was the first day that I woke up in the morning for ages. I've been keeping bad hours for so long that it's been really hard to sleep until about 5 or 6 am, by which time I naturally wake up in the afternoon. It's been like permanent Sunday sleepins! and I'm sick of them! Today was my last full day in London for a while (more on that later) and I had some final bits and bobs to tidy up at work. I managed to get in by 10am, and worked through till after 3. Tis all done though! Organised for the teachers to start (on Mon or Tues next week?).

And while they start work, I'll be going on my next holiday! Lee has invited me to head up to Halifax with him between the 2nd and the 6th. We're catching a train up there 1st class (thanks to his Dad) and going on a 21 mile charity hike on Sunday. We also have plans to go to Blackpool - they have "illuminations" which are switched on for the first time this weekend, and also the highest roller coaster in Europe! If any of my ex-students are reading, imagine Mr Yeates sleeping in while you drag yourselves to LPGS next week :-)

I get back on the 6th, and have a week here before I head off on another holiday - I'm visiting Magdalena in Bolzano! After training with Lee up north perhaps I'll be able to keep up with marathon girl, although I wouldn't place any money on it. A week in the alps should be extremely relaxing as well, and you all know how I enjoy short stays with "international locals". After a week of northern Italy I'll *really* need to get a job. So back to London it will be after around 10 weeks of relaxation?? :-)

This entry seems very reverse-chronological... reminds me of CV stuff. (Check out my newest CV if you want) On the job front: I'm applying for development and consultation jobs, but am *really* interested in the consulting ones. I see development as a route to consulting, or would like to find a 50% devel, 50% consulting position. There's tons of jobs advertised here - I applied for a dozen or so last week, but should be able to better that today and tomorrow. I like the fact that with consulting positions I can emphasise the more diverse skills I've been using while teaching - I'm guessing that employers looking to fill specific programming positions don't value diversity in employment background as much. Best case scenario is to apply now, interview in 1 week and be working in 3 :-) I'm not expecting that though - on Thursday morning I'll start sending CV's to other agencies, including temp agencies.

And the last 2 weeks? Well having Shane over was great. We hung out, made fun of Kylie, gave Shane lessons on inviting girls out, drank some beer, wandered about (if you tour with me, it's unavoidable), and ended up watching a 1919 German silent movie The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, with musical accompaniment by Geoff Smith on multiple dulcimers (yes, I have been doing my research :-p ). I enjoyed it, but it was a bit too weird for the cuzs. He zipped off without us really having a huge night on the town! A shame, but it does sound like he is quite keen on coming back in a year or so and staying longer.

Shane left, and I thought I would be able to save some cash, but Lisa only had a couple of weeks left in London! So I've been out with her at Sarastro -an excellent, opulent cabaret restaurant, to lunch in Lewisham, to dinners at the Giraffe at Kensington, and to a wild night on club boats, restaurant boats and to (someone-knows-someone-so-we'll-get) free entry nightclubs. She leaves in the morning to go to Dubai and teach Ballet. Good luck Lis!

Other than socialising, I've been doing tons of computer stuff. Well, kind of tons. I'm convincing myself that I don't want to be a support technician! I installed a DVD burner and 160GB HDD just before I left for Eastern Europe, and when I got back I bought an 8 CD Debian set. So just operating system wise, I've been installing Debian and fixing up windows (which is a little unstable!). Just a warning - there's another weird hard disk size limit at 137GB, and it's fun to work around... although my case is complicated because I'm using a free four or five year old computer with two operating systems. At the moment I've only got 1/2 GB that's not working properly (it was to be my Linux swap space), so I don't think I can complain too much!

I'm also thinking about changing the site design here quite a bit. You've seen my maps? I'm really beginning to like CSS - they didn't really take too long to sort out. The map creator is quite hacked together, but usable enough (it's only really supposed to be used by me!)- but if you're curious click here then try dragging the map star around yourselves.

I'm intending to artsify the website. Functionality is good, experimentation is better. This current design is a little too cold for me at the moment. The problem is that (apart from increasing the font size, which I should have done before) usability will have to go down slightly for creativity to increase... and I'm not artsy in other ways at the moment, I need an outlet! So you'll have to put up with changes in the next couple of months. It does mean it's sidetracking me from uploading photos, but they *will* follow soon-ish! Let me know what you think of the changes when they appear - constructive criticism is always good. [Last minute addition: Check out a conceptual sneak preview]

Ummm OK I was going to add more. But... it's late and I need to fix my body clock!

Till next time :-)

*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

Hello All!

Hope you are well. I've got tons to write about actually, but I'm too busy to write a 2,000 word message this time. This is the second chunk of this message that I'm writing, so hope it doesn't take me too many sittings!

Anyway the last few weeks have been quite interesting. There's been some big news (I'll give it to you in slightly the wrong order).

I had my bday last Wed... it was really quiet. Too much work and not enough play and all that jazz... So, since I'm 24 I'm old enough to be enrolled as a GTP (Graduate on-the job trainee teacher) now. I spoke to my training manager last Thurs, and when I mentioned this, she said that the rules had changed, that the school was no longer a registered training body, and it would have to reapply to be a certified registered training body (or some other such nonsense) before it could enrol me in the course. Arghh!

So... I've been doing all this training work (well, OK not tons, but more than none!) with a view that it would be assessed, and then it turns out I can't be enrolled and assessed now, I have to enrol directly through an institution (a university).

Arghh. So this means that completing a GTP programme could perhaps take a bigger chunk of the year. I also found out a month or two ago that once you have graduated, you still can't stay in teaching and be qualified unless you do a NQT (Newly qualified teacher) year. ... all delays to the game plan.

So. On the spot, I told my training manager that I would be leaving after the summer term.

Now it was real! I'd been talking to tons of people for a whole year that I was going to leave, and I had finally told someone "above" me. It meant that I had to think about writing resignation letters! I'd never done that before, but I wrote them last weekend and handed them in last Monday.

So where does this leave me? Well I have seven school days left in this term, then two weeks off (have to call my rellies Elizabeth and Jim and see if I can visit over the Easter break!). After that I have a six week half term, a week off, then a final six weeks teaching then I'M DONE! Twill be quite sad, actually!

The reason why I have to leave now is all to do with holidays - it means that I will be looking for jobs over Summer, and being paid for 6 weeks! All very nice. So the game plan is to send off resumes to agencies during Easter, then start applying for individual jobs during the Summer half term - this will mean that I'm applying when I have 6 weeks of work remaining, but 12 weeks of pay still coming in (plus perhaps a month extra from back pay??). So fingers crossed!

The other recent news is that the Auslan Tuition System that I was developing at UWA is becoming commercial! Exxxxcellent. I get a percentage of any profit the system makes, which is nice. It's hardware dependent at the moment, which is quite annoying, as only a small percentage of people will be able to use it. I'm thinking about asking for a recent copy of the source code so I can make it work on more computers... this should also help me sharpen my IT skills too! Have to first talk to the technicians at work, cos I may be able to score a free computer. At least it's some more "commercial" development experience, I suppose.

So it hasn't *all* been work and no play. Last weekend I was sick of marking so I went to Borough market. It has tons of stalls selling really nice food. Brunch was a venison burger... yummm. Then I went into Tate Modern (on the last weekend of the sunset exhibit) and looked around the entire first floor for a while.

I ended up on Oxford st. I wanted to buy a sifter... brits don't really know about these! I'd been searching high and low. Fiona recommended John Lewis, and I found one in there for quite cheap. I also bought a really nice lamp (which was *not* cheap, so much for saving) - it is one of the ones that can tilt and extend and stays where you drag it, but it glows upwards as well as downwards :-) Might be a bit strange putting a piccy of a lamp online, but I really like it! *sigh* retail therapy!

This week - I've been relaxing a little more. After doing tons of Yr7 marking over the weekend, and on Monday, I went out Tues for Beth's bday (ate lots of tappas! Yummm) and then last night I went to a pub in Blackheath to watch Arsenal vs Chelsea. I'm actually sleep much earlier than normal after a drink or two, so I've been more refreshed than I expected at work.

Tonight I have a parents' evening, tomorrow I'm playing football then doing a music quiz, Sat I'm probably out with my colleague George in the city, Tues I have the final one of Katie's pub quizzes... hrmm so there's a bit on my plate.

And tonight after parents evening I'm baking Anzac biscuits to bring to department meeting Fri!

*grinz* Take care folks!

And a big Happy 22nd to my bro Benny today!

Hi!

Just wanted to upload this PDF that I created - it's a map of everywhere I've been in Europe, and how I got there. Hrmm pretty pointless perhaps, but it does show how much more I have yet to see! It's 461KB to download.

Good Evening!

Ooh February! Can't believe that one month of 2004 has gone by already! I was planning to update my website yesterday, so that I had at least one update in Jan... oh well! Just means that I have tons to write about now!

I last wrote just before Christmas. Christmas away from home is quite strange - there was only 3 of us for xmas day, so twas quite quiet. Kylie did a top job on the turkey! We sat around and had a really relaxing day. It was quite interesting arriving there - on xmas eve I went out for lunch and dinner, and in between went to a xmas carols service at Royal Festival Hall - it was really good! I expect I was singing a bit too loud, I'd already had a few glasses of red wine by then! (It was a bit of a sign of things to come, because it seemed that every day for the next week everyone was drinking!) So, after having a huge day on the 24th, I arrived at Kylie and Ashleys, and the first thing they offered me was mulled wine! I was rightly pickled in the stuff.

Consequently, I slept until 10am on xmas day - which was quite annoying, as my family at Gran & Pa's for lunch had already left! At least I'd called them on Christmas eve to say hi. After a big cooked brekky, I tried to ring my Dad's side of the family (at my Auntie Pam & Uncle John's place), who were outside saying goodbye to each other and didn't hear me calling! Arghh! Was really frustrating! At least I was able to talk to quite a few rellies in the couple of days after xmas (when my mum was in Adelaide for her birthday).

All of my housemates were away during xmas, off at their own relli bashes. I spent quite a bit of time with my old housemates (who are travellers) so that was nice, and spent the rest of the time shopping! Last year I bought clothes at the post xmas sales, and didn't need to buy much more for the rest of the year - this time I tried to do the same, and at least half of what I bought was a bargain... I'll have to see if I wear the rest of the clothes to see if they were worth the cash! I bought some CDs and tshirts over the Internet as well, and that's a first. In addition to breaking the £25 barrier for t-shirts and finally purchasing my long awaited fantasy novel continuations, you could say I've been spoiling myself a bit!

So, here's a bit of a list:

• A wok from Dad


• A nice bluuey jumper, from Kylie and Ashley

• A "revolution or death" shot teddy t-shirt (errr... yepp perhaps my taste is getting weird! It's got a couple of teddys in cuban army hats, one with a gun, and a third one's been shot! All in black-and-white and sketchey.)


• A "Captain Caveman" flying-through-the-air t-shirt


• A "Yosemite Sam" tshirt! I'm always looking for these, but they're hard to find. I ended up getting it through the net, it has his head, and just a line suggesting where his hat is, and two "floating" guns. :-)


• Three dodgey, cheap cartoony ties - 3 for a fiver! I have *way* too many ties now, and too many crazy ones to be even semi-respectable! At least my year 7 students appreciate them!


• I finally succumbed to modern fashion, and bought some pre-worn jeans! Now I seem to wear them all the time too! Don't know who invented button up flys though... grrr!


• And the basics - Two long sleeved t-shirts (good for regular coldish English weather) and a grey woolen jumper from Next, two short sleeved shirts for £8 at some bargain shop, and a black and grey v-necked jumper from around the corner in Lewisham


• My fancy filtered kettle! Water here is really quite hard, so the kettle filters the water before boiling it. Cost more that $100AUD though, a bit steep really. And now I've locked myself into paying for filters every month! Cups of tea are noticably nicer though.


• Some new CDs, both bought online - I bought Nittin Sawhney's Human from play.com, and it was much cheaper than going to the CD shops here (thanks for the tip, Sarah!). Even though he's a UK artist, it's hard to find his CDs in shops. If you think of Deep Forest as Africa-meets-pop, this is India-meets-pop. Interesting :-)


• Jamie Oehlers' Velocity I had shipped out from Australia (ChaosMusic). Perhaps not as good as Strut (but then I've been lovingly listening to Strut since I bought at UWA's Acorn cafe all those years ago!). I thought it was really new, but it was recorded a couple of years ago? I'm wondering if this means there is soon going to be a *third* album... will have to check it out. Mum says that Jamie's moved here, so will have to look out for some gigs.


• And then my fantasy books! They both shrank to small paperbacks for Christmas! The 10th book in the World of Time series by Robert Jordan Crossroads of Twilight and Robin Hobb's second book in her newest series The Golden Fool. I've finished them both already! Now... the world of fantasy fiction is quite strange. If you're like me, venturing there will have you continually interested, and never satisfied! It seems I wait for a whole year for the next book to come out in a series, then stare at it for 6 months on the shelves until it shrinks to a small paperback, then read it, and be so into it so I finish it in a week! Then the cycle continues... so there's about 70 or 80 weeks of annoyance for one week of enjoyment! Grrrrr!!!! I could write tons about both of these authors, but I'd better not start :-) At the moment I'm reading Ash - A Secret History my Mary Gentle. Dad tried to read it, but couldn't get into it. Mary's novels *are* harder to get into than most others, but are quite unique and interesting when you've read a bit. The Orthe book is really good - not often that fantasy books are written in the first person!

OK, that was a bit longer than I intended. As you can see, I did go a bit crazy... and I'm supposed to be saving up for when I change careers! Will have to make a concerted effort to save in the next couple of months.

So for the New Year - I went with Phil and Lee to The Electric Ballroom in Camden for NYE - it was quite a good night - dancing to cheese the whole time! But in the end it was really frustrating... they lost my coat in the cloak room! Their system was really bad, and they ended up admitting people to the ballroom so they could find their lost coats. We handed over our three tickets, and only got Phil's coat out! We had to wait until everyone had left the club, and then Lee and I went in to check for our coats - we found Lee's but not mine! The most annoying thing was that my glasses were in the pocket! Grrrr.

The resolution has taken quite a while. I had to call a few times, in the end the ballroom said they'd reimburse me £30 for my coat and £70 for my glasses. While not *happy*, I was quite surprised that they offered me that much, as I'm not sure if they are legally responsible for the belongings in my coat. At least it shows that if you maintain your integrity and tell the truth, things do work out OK, if not exactly well. So I went and had my eyes checked yesterday, and will pick up two pairs of specs (buy one, get one free) next weekend. I'll probably start wearing contacts as well, as my eyesight is getting worse! Only a smidge though, as I've only gone from being 0.5 to being a 1 (short sighted in both eyes). Getting to the stage where I can't really lipread what the students at the back of my classes are saying, which is quite important while they're quiet little ones!

So, I guess my verdict on The Ballroom is that it's OK to go there, but not to go anywhere near their cloakroom!

There's a couple of NYE pics below. We did meet Debbie there, who's far left in the pic of Phil and the girls. I popped in to see her at "The Jordan", the pub around the corner from here where she works... it's in between a hospital and an undertakers! *cheery* :-) Check out her friend licking Phil's earlobe in the photo! Hrmm he does seem to attract the weird ones!

This year - well there's been all manner of interesting events! There was Lisa's birthday party, which was really fun. I've never been to a house party at my old house, and Phil and I left at 3am, so it must've been quite good! You can see the cheesy photos below! Will have to ask Phil to place a comment about the Lesbian kiss! :-) I think Tim had quite a good time too :-)

I've started Salsa dancing as well! Lisa dragged me & Mrin there two Mondays ago, and I went with Lisa and dragged Lee last week. I'm going to try and go every second week from now on - I usually need to catch up on sleep on Monday evenings! It's in Catford at The Green Man at 7:30, and only costs £5. Let me know if you want to come along! The teaching is really good and it's quite fun. In some ways I think Ceroc is better - you can dance to more styles of music - although because it's partner led you still probably need to be dancing with someone who is used to a jive style anyway. At least salsa is salsa (well, more or less I believe).

This weekend has been really relaxing - just what the doctor ordered! Last weekend was a doosie though. On Friday night I went out with all the Centenary company people, to The North Pole (the fancy upstairs piano restaurant part). The food was nice, and I chatted to Katie for ages, which was great, but as usual I was really tired after work. I didn't even really mingle much... the centenary rumour mill will be turning even though there's nothing going on at all! *sigh* the story of my life, these days... But I don't think this is the place to start ranting about frustrating & confusing women! On Saturday, I went and had lunch with Lee in Neil's Yard Cafe (a really cosy place - probably where I'll bring most... or should I say... ANY! ...visitors I have... *blatant-nudge-get-organised-you-people!*), then we went for ice skating at Somerset House - which I won! I guessed that there were 73 sweets in the jar, when there were really 74 for one of the Palmer sisters fundraising events. I took Katie, Lisa and Lee, and we skated for an hour. None of us fell over, and I managed to go quite fast, but still haven't really learned to stop! Must sort that out sometime! :-) I didn't take any photos, which was a bit disappointing! We then had some cocktails, then went to a greek restaurant and met up with Beth, and then went to The Porterhouse for drinks... hrmm bye-bye cash! At least the skating was free!

I thought I must be missing something - perhaps I am, or perhaps I've just been reading too much! That's probably it.

Well, I have a bit more time, cos I've pretty much stopped watching TV. Now I won't turn it on as soon as I get home. These days I usually fix a cup of tea, do some dishes, thaw out some dinner sooner rather than later, talk to housemates... read... umm... yeah perhaps I waste as much time reading as I used to watching TV. But at least I can't read when I'm brain-dead-tired, and I sleep more. I *can* watch TV for hours in that state.

This has brought about a new problem - yo-yo sleeping! I'll be dead tired one evening and sleep at 8pm, then I'll be really alive the next night, will have to catch up tons of work, and end up getting only a few hours sleep, then I'm back to being really dead again! Not such a good pattern, Sammy... I suppose it beats being tired all the time. I think bad sleep patterns are par for the course as a UK teacher though! Especially this week, as I've got a parents evening which will keep me at school till 8pm or so. And this is after going to see "Never Mind The Buzzcocks" (think, Good News Week but more musical) being made on Tuesday, and seeing Neil and all his gadgets performing with some year 10 girls in the school cabaret on Wednesday. Arghh! I suppose the last two are of my own making... but you've got to live, right? haha.

So OK. Going to sign off now. I'll try and write to you at least once more this month. On the horizon is meeting up with Richard! He's come back to his birthplace (he left here when he was 10). He's in Ormskirk now, and will be down in London *sometime* soon? And I'm supposed to be cooking a dinner for Tim and Katie (except Tim doesn't know yet, and Katie's too busy. Tim also doesn't know that he's probably going to help me to be social secretary for Centenary next year, even though I'm too busy and don't really want to do it! *arghh* such is life!). Hrmm weird note to end on.

Hope you are well! Keep smiling.

Your mate in London, Sam.

PS. Yes, Australia day was quite strange here. I went Salsa dancing! So not really part of the Australians-in-London culture at all. I guess a couple of times a year that annoys me, but most of the time I'm happy being Australian in my own way... hopefully by showing a different attitude to life, rather than just showing how to drink lots and be loud! Hrmmm... I guess it's hard to define what makes you Australian... but I'm not losing any of it!

... till next time folks!

Christmas this year is shaping up to be quite good! I'll be having a mini-family christmas with my cousin Kylie and her husband Ashley. It'll be nice to have a big cooked meal - Kylie is going to try and cook a turkey for the first time, so we'll have our fingers crossed about that!

Other than Christmas day, I don't have too many plans - my potential visitors aren't coming... I didn't really consider travelling during these hols, because I had an invite from my cousins for xmas, and because I thought I would have people over! Probably a good thing though - I've travelled for the last two sets of holidays, about time to bum around the house and relax! Ohh and work as well - I have a bit of a backlog left from all this travel - although I finished work last Fri, I went back in for a bit today, and will probably head back in for quite a while tomorrow. Pei has decided to come to Europe for Christmas and a few days after, to Madrid and to Barcelona. Shame she didn't plan it earlier, haven't been to Spain yet. It's so much cheaper travelling with a bit of notice, that I don't think I can justify taking off really last minute!

Christmas eve is shaping up to be quite big. I'm going to have lunch at some restaurant, then go to carols at Royal Festival Hall, then go to TGI fridays for dinner before going up to Kylie and Ashley's place... unfortunately means I'll be carrying tons of stuff around everywhere!

Then on the 28th I'm going to RFH again to see a Strauss concert - strange to go to a venue twice in a week when I've never been there before, but is nice to have some plans when most people here are really busy! Phil will be back and is coming to the concert, and Lee comes back before New Years - we're all going to the Electric Ballroom at Camden, so should be quite a good night - will be partying till 4 - although will have to find somewhere to kill time for a couple of hours until peak hour transport starts again!

The last few weeks have been quite good, but busy! The charity concert went really well (see pics below) - I had drinks at my place afterwards. Was good to entertain again, except we did seem to attract a lot of music students who didn't bring any alcohol! Was still quite fun though, will have to plan to have people over more often.

We went to another pub quiz as well - there was only 3 teams this time (compared to 10 last time), so it was easier, but we improved from 2nd place to 1st! So we won this big bottle of tequila, which has a small dent in it already :-) We caught up in the final round of the quiz, which was all cheesy Christmas stuff! I never realised I was so sad - I knew all the 9 names of Santas reindeer, knew what the 11th day of Christmas was, and remembered how Frosty the Snowman came to life! Just a shame that I can only *really* contribute to one quiz a year!

So enjoy the festive season. Remember to come and visit AND LET ME KNOW IN ADVANCE :-) Well, at least a little in advance :-)

Hope Santa brings you everything you've wished for!

Hello All,

Hope you are all well! All of you southern folk must be getting used to warmer weather. When I spoke to Mum today it was "oh, it's not very warm, it's only 28". Here it's getting dark and icky... although frost covering everything in the mornings looks quite pretty! At least I'm keeping myself busy... the weather doesn't bother me that often (to the disbelief of many people!)

So since my last message... I've finished the production! Which was quite sad... I mean, you rehearse for all that time, then only get to perform 5 times! But I had a blast and met tons of great people. The whole "musical network" is starting to work again, I'm already involved in a charity concert that's on this Sat. ... but I'll come back to that.

I've posted some photos from the show below - unfortunately, stage makeup is designed for long, and not close distances... it comes out quite freaky in some of these photos! The cast party was rea