Category Archives: Blog

General thoughts on life, the universe and everything. Stuff that doesn’t fit in the other categories!

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Geocaching

Unsuccessful geocachingI was introduced to the strange world of Geocaching over Christmas last year.

For the uninitiated, geocaching is, basically, a high-tech scavenger hunt. People hide things all over the world, typically Tupperware boxes containing various goodies, and post the co-ordinates on a website. Other people then enter the details into their GPS systems and try to find them. It sounds simple, silly even, but it can give you a good excuse to look around an old and familiar area with a new perspective.

As the above picture shows, some caches are more tricky to find than others. Here we tried a “multi-cache,” which has various clues pointing to the real location. We found all the clues but couldn’t find the actual box.

The next day, after lunch in a pub, we decided to look for another geocache. Things were not looking good for a while but just as we were about to give up and go home — two failures in as many days — we found it!

Successful geocache find

Here B and D celebrate our find. It’s the first time D has been and she got quite into it!

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Changes

This year has seen a lot of changes for me already and another one is in the process of happening right now. A few weeks ago I resigned from my job and in a few more weeks I will be starting a new one.

I don’t change jobs every year like some people I know, in fact this is the first time for exactly five years. There are a lot of parallels too. I resigned from SAIC on the 14th July 2001 and started at Anvil on the Tuesday after the August bank holiday. Similarly, I handed in my notice on the 14th July 2006 and will start at Aleri on the day after the bank holiday. They are also both small software companies that specialise in products for investment banks. I will even have pretty much the same job title.

But the reasons for moving are very different this time. I couldn’t wait to get out of SAIC. The hiring manager hadn’t been entirely honest about the role and then refused to do anything to rectify the situation once I pointed this out after I’d been hired. Two layers of management above him stuck their fingers in their ears and sang “La la la” when presented them with the problem, not the kind of behaviour you’d expect for a company with an ethical policy. Anvil was my escape and, in my mind at the time, was supposed to be just a short-term fix to that problem. I never imagined staying there for nearly five years. That’s a testament to the culture and people there.

Anvil is in a better shape now than it has been for as long as I’ve known about it, however for my own personal career advancement it became clear that I needed to move on. After looking for alternatives on and off for the best part of a year I came across Aleri, interviewed and ultimately accepted their offer.

It’s inevitable that after so long in one job that I’m a little nervous, however I think there’s a lot of potential there and I’m excited about the possibilities.

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The mince pie and the ewok

What does a two year old mince pie and an ewok have in common? The answer, it turns out, is “wedding cake.”

Huh?

Let me explain.

Wedding cakes have a bit of a history for us. Americans tend not to be very keen on the traditional British fruit cake, which was a bit of a problem since I got married to a Californian in New York! Even the hotel concierge could only track down a fruit flan which is not what I’d call traditional. In the end we had to make do with less conventional but still delicious “normal” deserts.

We didn’t think much more about it until a month later when we were in California for B’s best friends wedding. She had a big wedding, including nearly two hundred guests. I’m not sure if this is normal, but they had two cakes. One, from the groomsmen I think, was shaped like a burger. The other was more like what most people would imagine at the suggestion of a wedding cake. Except for one small detail. Hiding underneath the top layer, behind some marzipan foliage, was a tiny ewok. The groom is a serious Star Wars fan, and the theme music at the end of the ceremony was not enough to keep him happy!

But back to the fruit cake saga. For our party, my sister-in-law wanted to make one for us but, unfortunately, started getting together the ingredients a bit too late. If you’ve every tried to make one you’ll realise that it takes at least a few days. Kudos for the attempt, though!

My father-in-law wasn’t going to allow the short time-frame to thwart his attempt. The cunning use of long forgotten boxes in dark cupboards was to (nearly) save the day.

Iced mince pieA couple of years ago B brought a Harrods Mince Pie back home for Christmas. It had been placed in a cupboard, then in storage while the kitchen was remodelled and then back in a dusty corner. Now was its time. He unboxed it and, using tinned frosting (icing), transformed it into… well — let’s be honest here — an iced mince pie. Most people refused even to try it, but the few brave souls who did said that it wasn’t as bad as it looked. A valient effort.

Fast-forward a couple more months. It’s now two weeks before our UK wedding reception, a cruise down the Thames, and we’ve just started thinking about cakes. I wonder if my mum would make one for us. I don’t like to ask. It’s quite hard work to make one and then she’d have to carry it two hundred miles south on the day.

Eventually I decide to call and ask.

After some small talk I edge up to the subject. “Would you mind… um… you know…” Well, it was something like that. In fact, she wasn’t going to say anything, wanted it to be a surprise, but she had put one in the oven only thirty minutes previously!

So on the day we finally got a proper, British wedding cake. Everyone was very appreciative. A few people asked if my mum had really made it as it looked so professional!

Thanks mum!

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Thames Cruise

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This last weekend we hosted our wedding reception. Actually, it’s probably our second or third depending on how you count it. But we’re not keeping track as we fully intend to celebrate for as long as we can get away with it…

Rather than book a hall and get people to sit next to almost total strangers for a couple of hours, we decided to hire a boat and cruise down the Thames for a few hours. In the end thirty-two guests turned up in the rain to help us celebrate. We sailed west towards Westminster, then east as far as Greenwhich and back to Temple.

I think a good time was had by all. This was certainly helped by my mums great wedding cake.

One of the disadvantages of hosting an event is that it’s difficult to get behind a camera. I only have a few photographs and none are as good as those you’ll find on B’s blog. Check out the pictures of our cruise.

Thanks again to all the people that came along. It was a special day for both of us.

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Naked

A friend recently pledged to post to her blog at least once a day. It’s quite a target; does that much really happen in our lives to post anything insightful that frequently?

In my case the answer is “no.” I’m not nearly interesting enough, but A is doing a fine job so far as long as you don’t mind that it’s an average rather than actually a daily occurrence! That’s not to say that nothing interesting ever happens to me. Take this, for example. It happened shortly after I moved to London.

I was sat on the Northern Line on the way home. It was later than normal but not that late, say around 9pm. The carriage was busy but not packed. We were all sat there reading books, magazines, newspapers. All was normal.

At one stop, Enbankment I think, a guy steps on. He stays standing where he got on as we continue reading and the guard announces that we should stand clear of the closing doors. The train gradually accelerates into the tunnel.

I’m at that level of tiredness where my eyes are lightly skimming over the words rather than studying every detail. This is how I notice that the man has taken off his ruck-sack and has placed his jumper in it. Not significant in and of itself, I grant you, however next he tucks his t-shirt into his bag. Next his trousers are folded and placed in the bag and finally his underpants.

Ladies and gentlemen, we now have a naked man in the carriage.

But this is England. We don’t make a fuss; we, “officially” at least, don’t even notice. We’re all far too busy reading to notice that there’s a naked man no more than ten metres from where we’re sitting.

The guy casually strides along to the end of the carriage, opens the door and steps through into the next car.

You couldn’t make this kind of thing up, but it happened. I was there. If only this kind of thing happened more often then I could post a blog more often than once a month…