Julie's Boggle

Hi all
Here we are at the end of another week… For us things are certainly settling into a routine again although my routine of job-hunting will hopefully be changing in the not too distant future! All the agencies confirm that this is a slow time for the job market but they are all (optimistically perhaps?) predicting that it will bounce back somewhat in September.

At the moment I’m up against all the other people with no “commercial” experience in IT and my job searches focus around the word “junior”. With the market being so slow, it’s important to catch job ads as they pop up (on the internet) and be amongst the first dozen CV’s that they get, following up 10 minutes later with a phone call. That doesn’t leave much room for finding an arbitrary temp job in the meanwhile… Fortunately with Tom being employed, it’s not a crisis situation for us and we can wait the market out to some extent.

Last week Saturday we thought to put the good weather to the test and have a braai in our back yard. It had been raining lightly in the afternoon but nothing serious. The previous tenants had left charcoal in the braai itself (one of those portable devices with wheels on it) which Tom tried to incinerate with the aid of a bottle of “white spirits” -we’d call it turpentine- that I found lying around – it was fairly damp though and that mission ended with the charcoal being turfed into a rubbish bag.

Everyone had arrived by 5pm and we made the first movements towards outside around 5.30. That was the cue for the weather to prove itself, and down came the rain. You could almost see it trying to drive Andrew and Tom away as they huddled over the braai under an umbrella, with the rain becoming progressively harder by the minute.

Tom made the leap for the open shed, next thing the half-inflated lilo that lives in there (no, we don’t know why either) came sailing out and the braai was moved into the shed. Further applications of white spirits to encourage the feeble charcoal we were burning helped a bit (although it almost smoked out the two braai attendants) and soon after the guys retreated into the house leaving the shed to smoke quietly to itself. The rain quieted somewhat until Tom’s next venture outside when it started up again with a vengeance. “Movement sensor”, was Gordon’s dry comment.

After the serious smoking stopped somewhat, and with some persuasion from the dry spectators inside, the braai was moved into the glassed-in laundry area with the back door firmly closed. Unfortunately a partially open upper window in the kitchen soon had the house filled with smoke as well.

As Andrew predicted, we had fond memories of the braai for the rest of the week just sniffing the lounge. All told, it was definitely an entertaining evening – much more interesting than your average South African braai… Lets hope the photos come out! The next day we returned the £3 bottle of fire-lighter gel to our local retailer on the grounds that it had not performed at all as we’d have expected a fire-lighter to. According to Tom, you could light a blob of the stuff on one side, and the flame wouldn’t even spread across the blob! More environmentally friendly fire-lighters perhaps.

Tom’s first week seems to have gone alright. They gave him a course for Tuesday to Thursday and he only really started work on Friday. Walking from here, it takes him about 20 minutes each way – less if it’s raining – and the hours they work are pretty flexible as long as they get in their 40 hours a week. Apparently they’ve been requested to be at work by 10h00 (unless there’s a problem) but that’s about as restrictive as it gets.

…

So much for what Julie has to say. I have been instructed to tell you what my job entails. To be honest, I am not yet sure. Something to do with working on the user interface of the company’s product (they only have the one product, called Orchestream Service Activator). After attending a course on the Activator, I have now pretty much learned all about what it does, and that is not a lot. Still, I got a certificate which I am considering putting up on the wall next to my desk.

There are quite a few issues with the software as far as I am concerned, mainly owing to the fact that the design is overcomplicated. The company is huge, employing about 100 people in London and goodness knows how many others in its satellite offices in France, Germany, Canada, USA and Australia. Many of the London staff are software engineers, the salary bill must be huge. Of course none of this is really my problem, but it does present some opportunities for a few innovations from someone like me, promotion here we come!

In the meantime, Julie is keen to start working, I think because she is tired of searching for a job more than anything else. I am keen for her to start working because flying is rather expensive here, and I can’t really justify doing so until we are both earning. Sad really. Julie just pointed out yesterday that where ever I end up flying is going to a fair distance away by public transport and expensive to get to as well! Time to find some paying customers who want to go with me .

Speaking of flying, We spotted a Concorde on finals for Heathrow last week. Very beautiful, and heart-warming to see one in the air as well.

Love from us both
Julie & Tom