Which is not to say that we are ready to hit the tracks, not by a long shot. Thanks to Dee’s hard work on the weekend, we have a good idea of times and trains for the “Orient Express” leg, all the way from London to Moscow; the “Asia” leg is somewhat more … flexible. Not just because it’s my task and I was too busy mucking about with a website, but also because (from what we read) you can’t buy China train tickets more than 10 days in advance, unless you want to pay a premium (sometimes double) to a Chinese travel agency. Which we don’t, have you SEEN the exchange rate for the pound at the moment?!

Working out where we go in China is the next step, obviously, and while I’m doing that Dee is comparing the prices of individual tickets versus a Eurail pass. Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Malaysia is mostly a set route, copied from every package tour ever run (Ha noi, Hue, Ho Chi Minh City … Vietnam is a thin little slice of countryside, so there’s not really any other way to go), while we still need to confirm the flight/ship back to Australia — Dee just got a response from the freighter people who said the ship is all booked out for the rest of the year. She also said that everyone online seems to know a guy named Hamish who organises this kind of thing…

We also need to finalise shipping our stuff back down-under. The idea is to get a container, or part there-of, and fill it with those few items we own (and Dayna’s Wii if we can pack it before she notices ;-)). By the time we get home, then, it’s waiting for us somewhere – mostly probably at Mum’s (Ann) or at Mum’s (Tricia), but we should probably get the okay from them before a bunch of boxes show up on their doorstep I guess. The packing/shipping gives me a chance to write a little home inventory web-app, since all the open source ones seem to be lacking in some way. It’s mostly working now (for a single user with access to the database), but I’ll polish it up and drop it on SourceForge before we go.

Meanwhile, it was an early start this morning, with a 5am incident call for Dee (ongoing). We will not be missing these, that’s for sure.

Climate-change is brilliant! Picture it, Britain: a Winter Wonderland for six months of the year, and a humid, tropical oasis for the other six. With resulting destructive and violent storms in between, of course.

The walk this morning was fun. The city is pretty under a layer of the white stuff, but there”s not much chance to look up and admire it – eyes down on the treacherous icy foot paths and snow-covered cobblestone lanes, else it’s argon over titanium for a bruised and wet behind. And I don”t think the few people in the office would appreciate me “dropping trou” and drying my undies on the heater the way I can with wet socks …

It’s warmer, and thicker, than when it snowed in Edinburgh. The wind is icy, but perhaps the built-up office blocks provide more cover against it. Overhead, a grey ceiling looms like an enormous doona (duvet) stuffed with snowflakes, trapping what heat comes from buildings and people and cups of cocoa and warm crumpets. Oh dear, I’ve made myself hungry.

Do I venture out? It”s snowing again now, I can see through the windows, laying down another layer. Think I”ll dry my socks first …

I’ve tried to get up at the same time, but I’m really not a morning-person. On the other hand, I’d happily stay up ’til dawn watching anime and drinking saké, so maybe my “range of consciousness” is just time-shifted a couple of hours. In any case, even not getting up at 5am has lead me to be tired at work, so I’m really looking forward to clocking off at 17:30 tonight.

S’posed to be good weather this weekend, so a barbeque will be in order at some point; the AFL grand-final is tomorrow afternoon (Australian time) so perhaps we can roll that in too. (Dee will say she doesn’t like watching the footy, but like every red-blooded Aussie girl she really does. I have to believe that.)

glennji: I still hate the Met: Northern Line canned at 8:50am this morning; took me another 40min on the bus to get here. It’s 45min walk from home!

Yep, I’m blogging tweets now. So I slept in this morning; Danielle got up at 6am, and whilst I could’ve followed her I found it far easier to roll over and bury my head in my pillow. Easier at the time, but I suspect the Universe was trying to tell me something.

So I got up at 7:30, which is plenty of time really. However, I thought I’d take the train because I was running perhaps 10mins late – I put it down to an extra 10 minutes trying to find all my rarely-used gym gear and pack it. I walked up to King’s Cross and crammed onto the third south-bound Northern Line train; the first two trains were too full to do more than shuffle closer to the doors.

So, finally crammed in, sweating like anything but a pig (they don’t sweat you know), counting the stations left ’til Bank/Monument. And at 10 to 9, Old Street, plenty of time left to get to work, the bad news – signal failure (which I’m sure is a euphemism for, I don’t know, “Charlie in Control is drunk again”. Or something).

We sat for 5 minutes, waiting, hoping. The driver announced that we were stationary “until further notice” but still we held on. Then the station-manager announced that they were hoping to “turn some south-bound trains into north-bound trains” and the ensuing despair caused a mass exodus. I was lucky enough to be one of the first out the door, and raced ahead of the human tide through the ticket/flood-gates and out onto the street.

Now, those of you who know me know I don’t have a good sense of direction, and so I was feeling a bit scared that I would walk off in completely the wrong direction. Then, unable to find either a) a taxi or b) an ATM so I could pay for a taxi, I would eventually end up in Slough. Or Hogwarts. Luckily for me, the exits were signposted, and I could have a reasonably good chance that “City Road South” probably headed south through the city. I walked to the nearest bus stop and hopped on the next appropriate bus.

The whole trip took over an hour; It’s only a 40 minute walk.

For me it began with a cup of green tea, rather than a coffee, and I’m feeling somewhat weird so I don’t know whether it’s because of that or just whatever was giving me a headache this morning (which is still around a little bit, despite taking nurofen). I think it’s probably the headache thing. Perhaps the small glass of Russian vodka last night was too much for me? Yeah, I doubt it too. Anyway, I don’t know if I feel weird enough that I should go home and lie down … or if I am just wanting to go home, and therefore building up the weirdness in my estimation of it. Does that make sense?

I guess I can call the first couple of weeks a “honeymoon period” and be thankful for it.

In other news, I’m about to enter my last year of “twenty-something” (for this lifetime at least).  Pretty exciting – I only have 12 months left to be immature and irresponsible, after which I have to settle down and buy a station-wagon or something (I’m not entirely clear on this part).  I’ve so far got an R. Buckminster Fuller book – awesome! – and Dee says she’s already got me a gift but I think she’s fibbin’.  She’ll be out tonight looking, or make an excuse to “go do the grocery shopping” tomorrow, “oh no, I’ll do it, you stay here and drink peppermint schnapps, too-roo!”

It’s a weird place inside my imagination, but at least it’s never dull.

I’ve been up for a while — around 6:30 — and it’s now after 9am, so it’s not like I couldn’t get in early and catch up on some of the always-present, always-urgent, never-scheduled, always-stupid tasks that seem to get punted down upon us (from manager to manager all the way down to the lowly “plebs”, the betas, the only ones who actually seem to do anything — us, in other words). Take yesterday, for example: as well as the what-the? comment from my manager, I spent the good part of the afternoon needlessly pasting names and details of all our user accounts into a spreadsheet … even though the names all exist in a shiny little “single-sign on” database application. Oh, and the fact that we’ve got well over 70,000 users — more than will fit in a single Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. It’s stupid whichever way you cut it. And that’s before even considering the security implications of having a list of user details on a network share somewhere.

Today I have to write my “Personal Development Plan”, despite the fact that it seems that our department has been set up as a kind of fly-trap — once you’re in, you’re not going anywhere. So, hmm, this year I want to develop my sitting-around-waiting-for-stuff-to-break skills, along with my answering-stupid-questions-from-stupid-people abilities. Yay team!

I had to work, for one thing. A 20 minute job, apparently, but I was still there at 3am, 5 hours later — and was called back in when I woke after lunch time today. It’s fixed now, but why must these things be so complicated?

It has convinced me that I have to get a new job, however. I’m slated to move departments, so hoping that happens sooner rather than later (although despairing of it ever happening at all) and then once I’ve been there for a while I may look at moving again — I don’t know that I can do the kind of work I want to where I currently am, and the more bored I get the more my quality of work suffers.

Dee got word of her bonus, and it’s not too shabby (certainly worth staying until February to receive it, anyway) so we’re going out for dinner tonight. It should be enough to pay off our debts once and for all, and then we can actually start saving some pennies. Possibly towards a mortgage — a “death pledge” — but it’s not worth buying a house at the moment so we’ll just bide our time I think.

I need another holiday already. Stupid work.

Update: I’m back at work again, the morning after. Got here at 6:30 to run some tests and make sure everything was working (it is). Feeling a little less hostile today, perhaps because I’ve granted myself the privilege of coming to work in “casual clothes” i.e. t-shirt and jeans.

Dinner with Dee last night was good — an unassuming Italian restaurant in the West End. Great food (mmm, calamari) friendly service and a decent house wine. We might even go back!