While at Stell's birthday do a couple of weeks ago Ant and I found out that Damo Suzuki, ex-lead singer with Can, was playing at a pub in Huddersfield over the Easter weekend. So, after helping my dad with various bits of DIY, drove over there to see it on Saturday night. First up was a psychedelic band which was pretty nice. Next came a band who produced a sound very similar to white noise for half an hour. Damo looked like he was sleeping through it all sat at the cd table until he bounced up to the stage to create an hour and a half of inspired audio lunacy. At one point I thought my brain was melting.
Went back to Anthony's after that and had a beer to relax. Sunday had a roast dinner at my aunt's, which was cool because we do not have an oven at the moment and roasting or baking anything is impossible.
Monday finished off installing the window sill my dad (with a bit of help from me) had put together for the front room and headed back to Huddersfield to meet up with David and Ant for a 9 mile walk in the rain and mist over some good Yorkshire moorland. Fantastic stuff.
All of which set me up quite nicely for today when I started my new job. Walked from the station to the mill where the office is, with my legs slightly aching from yesterday, for a gentle day of introductions and a look at the project I'll be working on. So far it all seems ok although there are a couple of things that need sorting, like access to Subversion, but the work itself looks like it's going to be interesting. It will be pretty challenging and the hours are quite long too, especially with the journey from my parents' house, but that should all be easier when we (hopefully) get an apartment in Manchester centre.
The journey home was a bit of a nightmare tonight. Got on the Metro with a lot of United fans going to tonight's match against Roma only to have it stop after one station because of a failed tram ahead. This meant waiting to be told to get off for twenty minutes and then getting the bus home making the total travel time back about 2 hours. Hopefully the next few days will go a little easier.

Oh, yeah. Google have done something unthinkable. They've made the personalised home page actually look nice, if you really want. See http://www.google.com/ig.

It has been a strange week, particularly on the job front. I had to finally get into gear and sign on so I telephoned the number I had been given and arranged an appointment for the next day. I was told to be there at 9:45 so I could start filling in the forms because their computer system was down and they could not do it for me. I turned up but the office does not open until 10, which was a bit frustrating. I had to agree my contract for getting back to work, to apply for so many jobs a week and so on, and then my application had to be sent off to assess my eligibility because I had been out of the country for a year, in case I might be foreign or something. I was also given a few jobs to apply for that they found for me on the computer. Apparently they can only look locally but if you go to the website yourself, www.jobcentre.gov.uk, you can do a national search. One of the jobs had to be applied for that same day so I emailed them my CV. Got asked to come for interview the next day (in Reddish, near Stockport), which I thought went pretty well but I always feel the pressure on the technical side because I simply haven't done any programming for a year. And yesterday they phoned up to find out if I would be interested in taking the job. Nothing has been absolutely confirmed yet but it looks very positive. Good opportunity, good salary. Should find out more details the start of next week.

Recently finished Nova Swing by M John Harrison, one of my long-term favourite writers. No surprise, then, that I really enjoyed it. It's a brilliant piece of writing mixing noir tropes a slightly surreal sf story about a group of people whose lives are affected by the site, a kind of quantum interzone where the rules of our universe are broken. The writing is amazing, filled with light, drawing characters that whose motives are often difficult to perceive but are never less than real. In short, do yourself a favour and buy it.

http://www.mjohnharrison.com/index.htm

Seems hard to believe that we have been in the UK for three weeks already. One question that keeps coming up is how weird is it being back which I never really know the answer to. In the first few days, still jetlagged and ragged, it was a bit weird but, for me, it's also coming home. I've done it several times before and I know that it is going to be weird. Probably the strangest thing so far has been standing in the cheese aisle in Sainsbury's paralysed by the sheer amount of choice. Just how many types of cheddar does one person actually need?
Spent the second weekend back visiting various friends in Chester and Leeds. It was nice to see everyone although I did drink rather a lot both times. Cheers to everyone for making us feel very welcome everywhere we've been. Other than that it was mostly just looking for jobs and brushing up on some of my skills.
Last weekend was the time of the move. My parents had agreed to exchange houses with my aunt and her family. My parents had a small, three bedroom terrace just for themselves while my aunt had a large two bedroom flat and two kids so the exchange seemed a fair one. The flat also backs on to a really nice park so it should be a good place to live... once it's been sorted. There's a lot of work to be done and both Zak and I have spent a lot of time cleaning, scrubbing and moving stuff around. Still, it's about at the point where it's livable now and the real work can begin once the windows have been replace. Noddy, our cat, arrived yesterday and is a bit freaked out by it all but he came out to play this morning. He's sulking under the bed again now.
Job-wise things are progressing slowly but they do seem to be progressing. I've had one interview and have another next week so I guess will have to see how it all goes.
It was also really nice to see Interzone with my story in it. It looks really cool and I'm very happy with it. Have to get on with some more now.
Favourite meal so far is probably the grilled wensleydale sandwich I had yesterday with tomato and fresh basil on ciabatta.

So last week my time at the school drew to a close. Got some nice cards from the kids and an incredibly heavy tea caddy from my boss. Went out for one last night at Le Cargo and spent most of Saturday sorting, packing and throwing things away. On Sunday we got to Shanghai by train and went to the Metropole. Had a nice meal at the veggie restaurant Gongdelin and a drink in the Captain's Bar overlooking Pudong by night. Next day we did the cultural thing and went to the museum (but it's a really good museum!) and went to the Yu Gardens place for a look around the shops even though both our bags were heavy and full enough to dissuade us from buying anything.

In the evening we met up with Sly and then went to meet Victor and his new wife (Victor being my friend who is also into GTD). Victor also invited a friend of his who works for Microsoft and we had a bit of a chat about programming, GTD, etc while everyone else looked on, slightly bored. But they also invited me to join with them in working on lifehack.cn, a Chinese lifehacking site and I found today that Victor has set up a Backpack area for us to use.

Next day we met up with Sly again, went to the post office to send some of Zak's stuff back and sold her broken laptop before moving out of the hotel and to Sly's sister's apartment at the end of the number one Metro line. Sly took us out to Windows in the evening, it being a cheap place to drink in Shanghai. Next day Zak and I went up the Pearl Tower and enjoyed the views through the smog on what was quite a nice, if chilly day. Then we went back, cooked some steak for Sly's brother in law and got an early-ish night.

Up at six the next day to get to the airport. Bit of bother there as Zak has two violins and baggage restrictions are pretty tight, especially as we were transiting through the UK. Our plane to Heathrow was delayed so we were able to Fast Track through the security. They didn't even look twice at the violins we were carrying (well, except through the x-ray) which is a bit infuriating with the bother we had in Shanghai. There is no policy on instruments
which is what causes the problem. Anyway, we missed the flight to Manchester, got booked on to the next one and that was delayed an hour as well. So, finally got back home almost exactly 24 hours after leaving for the airport. A long journey.

Just submitted my first bug report to Ubuntu as my Firefox keeps crashing.
https://launchpad.net/bugs/84132

Went to poker for the last time yesterday evening. Kind of sad, but I won two games out of three so it was fun too and I am immortalised in the book for my last week. I suppose I should say that Zak won a game too.