I’ve been offered a job! Kind of.
Small consultancy firm, friendly company, had an interview a couple of weeks ago, went well, spoke to the Big Boss today, who wants to offer me a job.
I’m really excited about this – it’s the first job that I’ve come across since the Fast Stream that has really excited me. I’ve been applying to others, which I’m sure would have been fine, but nothing that really made me excited, like this one did.
We shall see.
Andrea told me that she’d have written totally different things to me about our trip to Scandinavia. I asked her what she’d have said, and this is it:
Well, its been nearly two years since we went so Ive probably forgotten lots of things, and I cant look up the place names because I lent my travel guide (which is clearly superior to yours by the way, but that goes without saying;-) to a friend. But I think you will still find that we remember different things.
Its weird leaving a country by going to another country. A friend came to carry all my stuff back home to Germany, and I felt as if I was just going on holidays and come back to Coventry afterwards.
We had taken an overnight bus down to Stansted, arrived in Stockholm at about noon, falling asleep at random places. Well, thats what happens when you want to travel cheap. (The next night proved to be much more comfortable, slept in a boat that was slowly moving with the waves.)
Stockholm feels like a nice place, laid out over several islands. The underground is great, every station is a piece of art. Sadly, they have got a bit of a traffic problem. Wherever you are, you always have a big crossing or a major road in sight. But people where very friendly – the bus-driver would chat to random passengers – quite relaxed, a lot of trust in fellow citizens.
We took a boat through the archipelago islands yesterday, passing islands with just a tiny house and one tree on them, and spent the night on a small island called Finnhamn. It had mostly summerhouses; some people seemed to camp there for life. Two former soldiers had taken their children on an adventure weekend. You dont imagine that you are just outside a big city.
From Stockholm, we took a swimming hotel to Helsinki, which incidentally my grandparents had been a few years earlier. Got completely soaked on the way to the peer, so we abstained from buying the welcome photo on which we could have been mistaken for wet rats. The cabin we were upgraded to was really nice, Max shower gel liked it so much that it stayed there. The boat was too big to be shaken by the waves, felt like being in an ordinary hotel…an ordinary hotel with a duty free shop, where I introduced Max to Strohrum.
Helsinki is a wonderful place. A lot got rebuild during the 18th century so the architecture is very coherent. Its a bitRussian, a bit Swedish, a bit Finish. On the fortress island just outside Helsinki were You are leaving the American Sector-style signs in all three languages, especially my friends from Berlin really liked that. We stayed in Helsinki over the weekend. It was lovely weather, lots of musicians around the city, and lots of tourist guides speaking more languages than Ive got fingers on my hands (or maybe more than Ive got on one hand, but still.)
We took a train to Vasa, the famous lakes of Finland passing by. I would have liked to stay there for a bit, but Max probably wanted to go to Sweden quickly and I was already deformed enough by the mosquitoes we had near the city.(Thinking about it, deformed is probably French, but well…) We took a boat over to Umeåin Sweden, intending to go to Oestersund but ended up in Sundsvall, a nice small town without tourists but lots of randomly coloured dragons, probably designed by the same artist who brought the cows to Luxembourg. We walked around a little bit, grumbled about our incapacities in timetable reading (Apparently, neither a degree in law nor a chemistry PhD enables you to decipher letters into words.) and decided to make the best out of it by taking the train to Narvik. (Later, I got told of by a Swedish Erasmus Student for not having stopped in Luleå, his hometown.) We travelled all night and most of the next day. Impressive landscape, changing with every hour we went further north into higher mountains and bigger forests to become less vegetated in the very north.
Tromsø really feels like a place in the Arctic, even the hot weather could not defeat this impression. Not that I have any experience in how the Arctic should be like, at least the several museums about the region, the life there in the past and expeditions to the North Pole gave you a feel for it. People in Tromsø are longing for colour, so the houses were particularly brightly painted here. I went running in the morning in a swampland valley, at the end of it, there was, dont know if you can call hat a glacier, at least a big block of old ice in lots of different colours. Really impressive.
From Tromsø, we took a train down to Trondheim, only being interrupted by a piece of rock the train collided with. (Max slept through the entire event. Fortunately, Norwegian sounds a bit like Bavarian so I could understand what was going on.) The must have been quite close to derailing because we even made it on the radio news.
In Trondheim, we stayed in a repurposed students union. (The toilets had been turned into showers, just a showerhead above a toilet seat.) There were lots of other travelling students. Some Australian guy talked to me for about 15 minutes, but I guess Ill never find out what he actually said. In the dorm adjoining ours I met some French people and spent most of the night there. Nice sometimes not to have to make the effort to speak English.
We took the Hurtigruten down to Bergen, the former post boat is now turned into a cruise boat for German tourists in their 60s. I was a bit disappointed because from the boat, you dont really see much. In the end, we took the Flåmsbana to get at least an impression of the fjords, which was truly amazing.
We were running a bit short of time, so we only had 2 hours in Oslo which we spent sitting on a square by the station…watching a man in a pyjama shaving his eyebrows.
We spent our last night near a buzzing whatever it was in Stockholm. Could have been anywhere else because Stockholm at night did not seem to be related anyhow to the city we had started our trip at.
I arrived in Lübeck at about midnight, was home by three and had to work at seven in the morning. My boss sent me home at nine because I kept speaking English to random customers, which was funny for everybody but the parties involved. So by the end of our trip, I had finally gotten used to speaking English all day, most inappropriate then though.
I just came back from a week in Brussels, working at the BP/Innovene/Solvay site – I’ll write about my work separately.
Due to some Seafood Expo, we were staying in a youth hostel in Anderlecht, called G̩n̩ration Europe Рnice hostel, decent breakfasts, fairly rough area of town. A particular highlight was rolling up there in a BMW executive car! Last night spent in the Hilton Brussels Рwhich was pretty much as expected for a 5 star business hotel. Excellent breakfasts.
Brussels is a great city if you want to eat out – there are so many nice restaurants, and many fit in the “decent, reasonably priced” category which is so hard to find in the UK. I especially enjoyed Le Paon Royal – an excellent bistro on the square by Église Sainte Cathérine. I had Chateaubriand with frites, which was excellent.
We also liked a noodle bar called Suki, on rue des Poissonners (near the Bourse). It’s a tiny place, but serves up really good noodles, rice, and pad thai – nice and cheap and very tasty.
The public transport system in Brussels is pretty good – a comprehensive network of trams and busses, which seemed to mostly run on time. The route to the site at which we were working was a mass of roadworks, which caused some delays (and shaken fists from the locals), but that was the exception rather than the rule. It is considered bad luck to have to wait more than 5 minutes for a bus during the daytime.
All up, a very enjoyable trip. More photos, as ever in my gallery
One of the more amusing forwards I’ve received recently (english summary at the end):
Wer erinnert sich nicht an das glorreiche 1:0 der deutschen Fußball-Nationalmannschaft im letzten Spiel vor dem Abriss des altehrwürdigen Wembley-Stadions? (Wie sehr die Engländer diese Niederlage geschmerzt hat, lässt sich übrigens gut in David Beckham “My Side” nachlesen) Nun ist es an der Zeit, Didi Hamann für seinen Sieg-Freistoß (ca. 25 Meter Entfernung, flach über den nassen Rasen ins untere linke Eck!) entsprechend zu würdigen: Mittlerweile ist das Wembley-Stadion wieder aufgebaut und zum Stadion führt eine neue Brücke, die noch namenlos ist. Deswegen hat die London Development Agency einen Wettbewerb ausgeschrieben, bei dem der Name gewinnt, der am häufigsten genannt wird. Und das ist unsere Chance! Also hier für “Dietmar-Hamann-Bridge” voten: http://www.lda.gov.uk/server.php?show=ConForm.9 In der Begründung bitte angeben: ‘In tribute to the player who scored the last goal in the old stadium’ P.S. Schickt den Link mal an alle Freunde und Bekannte und/oder stellt ihn in die bekannten und internen Foren – wäre doch gelacht wenn wir die Tommies nicht noch ein bisschen ärgern könnten…
Who doesn’t remember the glorious 1:0 win for the German team in the last game before the demolition of the venerable Wembly stadium? It’s now the time to properly commerate Didi Hamann’s victorious free kick. The new Stadium is being built, and will have a new bridge to it, which is still nameless. So the London Development Agency is running a competition, where the most popular suggestion wins. This is our chance! So, vote for “Dietmar-Hamann-Bridge”: http://www.lda.gov.uk/server.php?show=ConForm.9 In the reason please put ‘In tribute to the player who scored the last goal in the old stadium’. Send this link on to all your friends, and internet forums etc. It’d be fun if we could annoy the tommies a bit more…
Writing about: Through the Lens
I was looking at some of the images in Through the Lens yesterday, and a two of them in particular got me thinking somewhat, both taken in the early ‘30s. The first shows three children of around 12, wearing traditional Dutch clothing, all happy and smiling. The second was taken on a flight from Amsterdam to Berlin, and shows the passengers getting their in-flight meal, and I noticed especially a young woman to was looking out of the window, looking nervous.
I wonder what happened to them? I know the woman survived her flight, but did any of them survive the darkness that was about to envelop the world, unbenownst to them? Are any of them still alive? The children would be be around 85 now, the woman pushing a hundred.
Who will be looking at my photos in 70 years’ time? What will they be thinking?
Writing about web page http://www.hlx.com/en/
Just thought I’d share the love. Ryanair annoys me so much that any alternative is a good alternative.
HLX are now flying from Coventry airport to Cologne/Bonn (Köln/Bonn), with tickets around £16 including all taxes. Pretty useful for western Germany, and also Belgium and Holland. The flights are at sensible times of the day, and you don’t have to get down to Stansted.
Bring it on.
Long-distance-relationships are hard.
My girlfriend is German, we met while she was studying at Warwick, but only got together once she was back in Germany, been together about a year now. Basically, things are going well.
But occasionally things happen that are much harder in this kind of relationship. Tonight, she fell and cut her head open, so I got a call from her friend letting me know that she was in hospital.
I think she’s ok – being kept in overnight for observation, but haven’t been able to talk to her yet.
These things are much harder when you’re in a different country.
Writing about web page http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3912205.stm
UK Independance Party MEP Godfrey Bloom joined the European Parliament’s women’s rights committee, and promptly said:
“No self-respecting small businessman with a brain in the right place would ever employ a lady of child-bearing age… I am here to represent Yorkshire women who always have dinner on the table when you get home. I am going to promote men’s rights.”
God Help Us.
On the plus side, hopefully their MEPs will all have been locked up for this kind of discrimination or for fraud before too long.
Writing about web page http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/click/rss/0.91/public/-/1/hi/world/europe/3820607.stm
(Originally written 2004–06-18 21:47)
Well hoo-ra. Now we just have to wait for an ill-informed electorate to reject it in a referendum.
I did read a good suggestion somewhere a while back, that the referendum should include a multiple choice questionaire about the constitution, and your vote would only count if you scored more than 70%. Very reasonable, I thought.
And I just saw on http://www.britainineurope.org/ the results of an opinion poll:
Q.1 In March Tony Blair announced the government would call a referendum on an aspect of Britain’s relationship with Europe. Do you know if this is about:Whether Britain should:
- Join the euro? 29%
- Sign up to the European Constitution? 32%
- Leave the EU? 12%
- If the EU should enlarge to take in new countries from Eastern Europe? 6%
- Don’t know 20%
This is frightening.
Writing about web page http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=531995
(Originally written 2004–06-16 08:07)
The Independent has an excellent front page today, discussing the benefits of europe. Here are some highlights:
After UKIP’s shock successes in the European elections, Tony Blair said yesterday withdrawal would be ‘extraordinary foolishness’. So what would it mean for Britain?Economy
Britain would suffer a permanent loss of £23bn a year if we pulled out, says the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, an independent think-tank.
Economic growth would be lower by 2.5 per cent, according to some leading economists’ estimates.
Travel
100,000 Britons work in EU countries and 450,000 Britons live in them, including 200,000 pensioners.
British holidaymakers have the right to free health care in any member state with the E111 form.
EU airline deregulation has halved the cost of flights, causing a massive travel expansion. EU rules now mean airlines must offer compensation if they overbook.
Social reform
Workers would be unable to bring sex, race or disability claims against their employers.
The 48-hour working week, regular breaks between shifts and a minimum 11-hour rest between shifts would also be obsolete. There would no longer be a statutory four-weeks annual holiday.
EU directives give two weeks’ statutory paternity leave and increased maternity leave.
Trade
British businesses enjoy tariff-free access to the largest market in the world; 55 per cent of the UK’s trade is with the EU. Every year the UK imports £129bn worth of goods from its EU partners and exports £105bn to them; the total is more than half of all our global trade.
In contrast, trade with the US is £52bn annually, about 12 per cent of the total. Not in these figures are services, such as banking and insurance, worth £160bn a year, which might be hit by withdrawal.
Some 3.2 million jobs are directly associated with the export of goods and services to the EU. About 750,000 businesses trade with our EU partners.
We need the EU more than it needs us: 9.5 per cent of the UK economy is trade with the rest of the EU; the reverse figure is 2.4 per cent.
If Britain withdrew, businesses would have to obey EU regulations to trade with Europe, without power to amend them.
Law & the constitution
An army of lawyers and two or three full parliamentary terms would be needed to disentangle Britain from Europe. No one has any idea of the cost.
The Government would have to repeal hundreds of EU directives in UK law.
British representation at the European Parliament and Commission would end. Trading laws that would affect us would be passed without consideration of their effect on British interests.
Environment
Catalytic converters would not have been made compulsory without the EU and there would have been no ban on leaded petrol.
The 1994 EU habitats directive bans interference in breeding places of endangered species. It has been used by campaigners to prevent roads, housing and industrial projects.
EU curbs on sulphur emissions from French and Spanish power stations limit acid rain that falls in Britain.
Consumer
The cost of phone calls has halved thanks to the EU’s liberalisation of the telecoms market.
The cost of electricity to consumers fell by 6.5 per cent between 1996 and 2001.
EU deregulation has introduced competition on airline routes once jealously protected by national airlines.
The European Commission has taken action against the British Government over customs officers stopping travellers bringing unlimited amounts of alcohol and tobacco for their own use into the UK.