Native cockney Andrew Farrell returns home

(I should probably actually move anyway, because my neighbours are really driving me insane.)

not sure i know either a flatmate or a job, but i'll keep my eyes peeled for you...good luck with the process!

there's a ginger living across the road from me, but I think he is taken.

I could be seen to have been laying the groundwork for this for while, in fairness.

(Are you sure? J.Harris is supposed to be filming in Dublin RIGHT NOW but I suppose he is taken now, too, being married and whatnot.)

Cons of quitting now: Ca$h money, it looks likely. The company is completely fuXoRed, to the point where massive redundancies is the good option (the other was literally shutting the place down).

Pros of quitting now: I will now have to stay awake during my performance review next week. Also, Remember! Forget about the sugar Friday 12 August involves Dancing .

In short, then: $$

I am, to give you some idea, a C/C++/Java programmer, some experience with GUI work, mostly toolkits, no databases.

Do they have *real* Centurians?

We filled a mini-van with stuff, and then my magical sister's boyfriend persuaded me that he could fit in my stereo separates and the cds and LPs. Not so much because I want and need it, but because the alternative is sitting in the shed at home for a year.

I'm having second thoughts about this because

. I don't know if I'm going to have enough space in my room for all this stuff, I was supposed to be going a bit stripped down, and the prospect of having big immovable boxes full of gear for the entirety of my visit here doesn't exactly thrill me.
. I'm not going to get much use out of it, I have a computer to play CDs and don't play much vinyl at all.
. It's not as great as it was five years ago, but not to put to fine a point on it, it increases the value of my unlocked room to considerably past what my housemates would have paid as their deposit. I've only met one of them for more than a couple of minutes, and one of them not at all. And several of them are <paul calf> students </paul calf>

The last is probably the biggest concern, though I realise I'm probably just paranoid.

So, er, does anyone in the Holloway area want to take a stereo system for a couple of weeks, until I get more confidence in my flatmates, or some newer ones? Or just tell me that I'm being daft.

x-post Thanks Martin, though obviously you may retract that if this is too short a notice. I'll try and contact you when I get in.

I've been looking at how I've been doing more or less every 17th, as
that's a monthly anniversary of when I arrived (and so also more
concretely rent day). In short: Jan 17 = maybe new job, maybe new
flat, Feb 17th = not going great, give it another try, Mar 17th = oh
well, it was fun.

So I've handed in my notice at the flat already, and it runs out in a
fortnight. They're not actually going to accept anyone until I've
gone, but if I'm going I'd better start packing early this week. Also
to add insult to injury the very first Doctor Who of the new season
will be the Saturday before I go, so I'll almost certainly be way
behind schedule and unable to enjoy it (IE watch it three or four
times).

Why no job?

The main issue, obviously, is that it's now six months since I last
had a job, five since I moved over, and prospective employer's eyes
are inevitably drawn to that. I've been saying that I spent some time
settling in, and only really started looking in January, which is
quite close to the truth: certainly I only started wading through ~150
job specs a day since then. It's still three months of not-getting-it,
though.

There's a lot of reasons for that: One of them is bad luck with
skills. 80% of those jobs are out the window just because they require
multiple years of database experience, and my nine years in the
industry haven't involved it at all. I've been pig-headedly proud of
this at times - it's the dullest area of computer programming, but the
thing is it's also one of the most crucial, and very experience-based.
I've been working on learning it, and seeing if I can blur that bit of
my CV so that it's not clear that it's only a hobby (see also: perl).

Another reason is that the gentlemen in banks who do interviews can
presumably tell the difference between "Yaaay, banking!" and "Ew,
banking" people, and I am the latter. Also, the whole IT scene being
more than 10 people who know me from college is frankly disorienting
:)

The thing that gives me the most pause is that there have been a few
incidents when the skies lifted and I got set up for a job that I'd
love, and I managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Sometimes by having a brainfreeze in an interview, but more often by
simply falling foul of my insatiable appetite for being slack. This
slightly predates the end of my last job, and has been playing merry
hell with my life since - it's one thing to say "Yes, I do my best
work under pressure", but when you're picking up the book to do some
long-overdue revision at 1am before a 8am interview, you deserve what
you're getting. And what you're not getting, which in that instance
was the dead-cert job at Symb1an. I've been able to get a hold on it
of late, but it's frustratingly random: two great days of Getting
Things Done this week, followed by one spent refreshing LJ and ILX for
8 hours, thinking "I'll get up and go out down the shops in a minute,
get a good start to my day, yes". Obviously an actual 9-5 to go to
might well work wonders here, but if it doesn't, it's no way to be at
the start of a new job.

Also the interviews have been coming thin and slow of late, I'm
starting to wonder if there are actually only so many good jobs
around. Not helped by the fact that the good jobs seems to stay around
- in the first three weeks of March four different agencies tried to
interest me in this perfect job which turns out to be the one from my
glee in January (which obv I didn't get).

Money

So in February, with my main account quite low, I decided I'd push a
little further, and started living off my credit card. I left a little
in my main account because I have an SSIA, and if at all possible that
should be kept going. Things didn't go too well, and so a few weeks
ago I rang up to see if I'd missed the payment yet, and if so, what
the penalty is. Some SSIA's just try and take twice as much next
month, some (allegedly) just say "screw you, here's your contributions
back". They looked it up, and said that I appeared to have two
accounts: I'd forgotten that I actually started saving a year before
the SSIA started, so there's a bunch of money that's been amassing
(yes, I am a money-spaz). So, if I want to withdraw it, I have enough
to do one of (at least) two things:

1 Pay the vast majority of my Visa, move my stuff home in a fortnight,
have a bit left so the SSIA gets paid (it's finishing up in August).
Figure life out.

2 Another month's rent, SSIA, minimum payments on the Visa, living
expenses in the city. Maybe two months, if I can get my dole in
operation. Or, obviously, a job.

So basically I have to decide whether another month will help, whether
it's me-vs-the job market or me-vs-me. Something I don't have to
decide is whether I want to stay in London - I really do, I love the
way that living here has made me think about my life and how to live
it. I was planning on doing so much back when it all looked well -
learning to swim, buying a bike (you're all instinctually covering
your eyes), finding out more about recycling centres nearby. And it's
nice to be able to go out and see a different gig line-up/comedy gig
every night for a week (Okay, in theory it's nice...). And and I don't
want to go back! but I don't want to spend that money for no good
reason.

(PS: yes, I'm aware that it's hard to drum up empathy in a situation
which summarises to "suddenly, I remembered I was loaded!")

Fucking right.

Accentmonkey: wheels are in motion regarding that.

emsk: hooray!

everyone else: you're very welcome.

are you taking the piss or do you think that's as wtf as i do?

I don't know that I can't swim, I've never tried!

i can't swim either. this is not for lack of trying (cf inability to ride bike, which is basically cos i don't want to go through the falling-off stage of the learning process) - i was sent to swimming lessons several times as a child but i could never quite master the, er, co-ordination and stuff?

I didn't learn to ride a bike until I was about 9, and I'm still not very good at that, either.

Anyway, lots of Covent Garden afterwork FAPs are in order, methinks.

Riding a bike is easy if you've learned first on country roads, also if it was at an age when you're expected to fall off things/scuff clothes a lot anyway. I've been relearning recently, and all the balance stuff is fine, it's the not dying under buses that's tricky.

well, i was first taught to ride a bike on a country road at an age when children are expected to etc etc - i got on the bike, and forward momentum carried me a few metres before it toppled over. it hurt and i refused to get on it again and, i believe, threw a tantrum until i was taken home where i could do civilised things like reading.

the only other time i tried to learn was when i was 17, pretty much the same thing happened includingminus the tantrum.

I'm glad I can swim. Mercifully, inability to ride a bike means this will never happen to The Lex.

(* - yes, it's a paper one. I should get that sorted out, really).

seriously way too much coffee today