I was all set to write an emo-rific blog entry about how Saturday marked the four week point since I got that text, but then I realised, why bother? Those who care have already put up with my blabbering on the topic, and those who don’t care, well… they don’t care. Instead, I’ll spare us both and instead talk about moving in and my first week of work. Not that hat is much more interesting, but, well, yeah.
As some of you may have already heard, my first day was indeed beset by something going wrong; the lock on my front door jammed, and I was stuck inside all night with nothing but Dr Pepper and Soreen to keep me alive. I fared a bit better the next day, and, after a phone call to the letting agency, escaped from my prison at about 2 in the afternoon. I popped round to West Park Place for a bit, and had a chat with Sarann whilst stealing their internets (not having any at home, natch). Went to IKEA in the evening, and picked up a few essentials, primarily a nice comfy office chair.
My parents arrived the next day, and we made haste to IKEA again, this time with grander designs. About two hours later we left… and then went back again, to pick up Dad who was waiting with a load of stuff that couldn’t fit in the car. After dropping him and the flat packs off, mum and I went to Tesco to get some more essentials, and take a look at the TVs. We found a shiny and reasonably priced LG one, but *gasp*, it was out of stock.
Never fear, because the next day we returned to Tesco and it was back in stock. £lots later, I was the proud owner of a 32″ flatscreen. Next, sofa! Now, a little back story here; the flat originally had a sofa, but the landlady had it removed since I’d made it clear I wanted a cat. To be honest, I was fine with that exchange… but then, I wouldn’t be paying for the new one ^.^. After scouring the billions of sofa shops in the retail park off the M62, we eventually found a fitting one in MFI. Annoying, for an extra £50, we could have got a 2 seater to go alongside the 3 seater we did buy, but alas there was no way they’d both have fit in the living room.
My parents left on the Sunday, leaving me with but a few scant hours to get ready for my first day of work. Top of the list was finding a bus route, as I was 2nd in line for a parking permit for work. After once again stealing West Park Place’s internets, I realised with horror that a 20 minute car journey had become an hour+ commute, thanks to First’s wonderful ‘All buses lead to Leeds’ system. Instead of getting a bus that skirted the outer ring road, I would have to get one into the city centre and then another back out again. Annoyance.
Regardless, I made it to work on the Monday with little problem, even if I was slightly tired. After a tour round the place and countless introductions (of which I can’t remember any), I started getting to grips with C# in the afternoon. I spent the first four days doing the kind of exercise we would get set for coursework; a lottery number generator with ever expanding requirements (though any pretence at realism was completely out the window. My mentor, Manuel, knew this was as ridiculous as I, and made no attempts to hide it. Those crazy GPs!). First it was a simple client side application, then client server, next we threw in a database, some web services, remoting and finally XML parsing. By the time I’d finished on Thursday, I was ready to start my first real project; something that would actually go live once I’d completed it. I started proper on Friday, and by the end of the day had already completed more than my mentor had expected me to. Tomorrow, (or today, as I wont actually be able to post this till I get to work tomorrow. today. argh.) I started on the more taxing parts, dealing with threading and reflection, whilst building on the framework I’d already created. It should be an interesting week.
In between finally living on my own and starting work proper, the last week has all been quite a shock to the system. Part of me is worried that “this is it” for the foreseeable future, but I’m sure once I get my flat finished and find my feet at work I’ll feel much better. Also, I imagine the lack of internets at home isn’t helping, and I really need to get that cat – sometimes the flat is a little to empty. However, need the couch to arrive first, which should be sometime this week. Hopefully I’ll be all sorted by this time next week; fingers crossed. Turns out it’s not going to arrive till a week on Thursday. Guess I’ll be waiting a little longer to get all sorted.
