Almost packed. I just have a tiny bit more to sort in the morning. Then the movers are due in around 11.
So for the most part I’ll be offline for the next few days. I do have some work to do at some stage but I’m hoping it can wait a few days. I’m tired and I’d rather just get the move done and then worry about everything else.
Once the movers are done I aim to go out for a nice lunch somewhere and possibly head into DC for a last round of photos at the Mall. Then Tuesday morning I think I’ll do a last trip to the zoo to say goodbye to Butterstick.
Have a picture from the archives but newly spruced up, some commentary on it here
Ah drunken typing. While I made sure to label and tag all the photos, I wasn’t bothered to correct tpying here. The thought did pass my mind but well I was in a hurry to get to bed.
So, an excellent night out with way too much to drink. There was a couple of pints in Fadó beforehand, one good and one not so good. This lead a text from Greg berating my lateness so we wandered into Rocket and had many drinks. Then we moved onto Gordon Biersch and had lots more drinks. There was only one shot as I recall, I was told what it was but I don’t remember. It was quite mild. Other than that it was mainly beer and beer and then more beer.
Other than the beer there were lots of laughs and lots of good people so yes an excellent night out. I’m not doing too badly with my Sunday so far. I’ve finished all my shopping and got most of my packing sorted. Lunch was an admitidly very unhealthy but completely necessary 5 Guys burger and fries. It hit the spot very well.
I can’t think of anything else to type at the moment so have a photo:
Drunk. Good night, good people in DC. Yay Lorna, yay Ed, boo Travis.
Ugh driunk. Sleep now. goodniht
I am an idiot of the highest order.
First, and for the record, I have never slept with any barstaff*. Obviously this should be followed with some comment about not for lack of trying but I can’t recall ever really doing so. There was girl I worked with in a bar back in Dublin that I had such a crush on but that kinda fizzled out after a while.
Pint-Sized Ireland: In Search of the Perfect Guinness is a great book. I have been collecting copies of a similar book as presents for some people in the US before I leave. I was looking for more of that in Barnes and Noble in Georgetown when I came across this one. I figured it would do for one and that I’d have a read of it first. I just finished it in the pub this evening and it was pretty good. It’s one of the few recent books that does a good job capturing some of the spirit of Ireland.
So as I say, I was in the pub this evening. A good few months ago my friend Nick was over for work and crashed at mine for the weekend. We stupidly listened to Schro and hit a local club for the Saturday night. We were the youngest people in there by a long shot. It was, as best I could tell, an over 40s and twice divorced hook up spot. So we had some dinner and some drinks and we caught up and that was good but it was hardly a great night out.
However the food was pretty damn good and it’s quite closeby where I live here. So a couple of weeks later I stopped in and had dinner on the way home. Food was good, it was fine in the early evening and the bar staff were pretty nice. This became a habit and I’d stop in there once a week or so with a book or newspaper for a quiet dinner and a few pints. Ya know often enough to know the staff by name and to have them know what I want to eat and drink. It was pretty good.
Tonight I had what’s likely to be my last dinner in there and it kinda sunk in that I’m finishing up here when I paid my bill and said goodbye. With so many gone from the office and V leaving drinks not till this weekend there hasn’t really been anyone to say goodbye to yet. Have I ever mentioned that it’s odd over here?
One of my many leaving drinks in London was in a bar nearby work. It was, and I suspect still is, a shit hole. However it had exceedingly attractive bar staff, or so I was told. First it was Nick who started going there on a regular basis for the straight Polish boys he never had a chance with but liked to look it and then Rich took up the mantle with, the admittedly very cute but in a long term relationship, Karolina and so it took way too much of our money and our time for several years. Anyway quiet leaving drinks in there with Nick and Rich became less than quiet. While Rich left early on, we had hooked up with one of the previous barstaff and her sister. I was quite dunk that evening but and overwhelming memory remember is a sense of vague guilt when Rich walked back in around 11.30 after being somewhere with his girlfriend. I’m not sure why the guilt…okay I have an idea and Nick’s recollection seems to indicate the same reason but he was trying to avoid the advances of a young drunken Irish girl (the fool!!) and so is not a reputable witness and I choose to disregard his testimony!
Anyway the point is I guess I really am leaving. In just a little over a week I’ll be back to heading to Hammersmith five days a week and seeing what that life brings for me now.
Now where is that dunk thread?
*barstaff of course being the politically incorrect term for barmaids.
It should be easier this time around. It is easier this time around but why oh why does it feel like such an uphill struggle?
My apartment is now in a total state, I’ve done a little bit of packing in every room and a lot of taking things out of their homes and putting them on the floor/bed to be sorted. About 5 minutes of that and I suddenly think must check email or must do this and do that.
I mean I know I have people coming in to do the bulk of it next week but I think I’d much rather just have the boxes and get it all done myself. Then I think no that’s silly I should just do the basics and figure out what I need to live on here and in London for what could be a few weeks.
I hate getting stressed over things that I have no reason to get stressed about. I’m going to keep at it for another hour or so and then I’m going to the pub to have some dinner and perhaps a few pints to make me feel better.
“Fear less, hope more; Whine less, breathe more; Talk less, say more; Hate less, love more; And all good things are yours.”
Apparently a Swedish proverb.
Okay so about a week ago Derek asked:
How do your expectations for your future now old up to the ones you had five years ago? Ten years ago?
(I assume she mean hold instead of old)
I’m not sure that’s actually what I’m going to end up answering here but it’s what kicked off this line of thought. I suspect that if you change the word “expectations” to “hopes” then perhaps I’d be giving a slightly better answer.
So first off lets jump back 10 years. It’s 1997 and right now I’d just be coming up to doing my Leaving Certificate. (This is usually for ages 17-19 and is for teenagers leaving secondary school.) I’m still living with my parents just outside of Dublin city. I may have been seeing a girl called Trish in or around this time, my terrible memory isn’t clear on that timeline.
So then I’d have been planning to pass my exams (though not doing too much about it) and go to college. I wanted to study something computer related. My top choices were probably various computer science degrees. I don’t think there would have been much else really going on at that time. I’m sure at the time there were things that were important to me but not really grand scheme of things ya know? So, yes ok go to college, get a degree and then get a job down the line.
Actually having said that there would have been other things but it’s a lot of the stuff that I look back on and wonder just who I was back then. Some of it is just so alien to who I am now. It’s odd how so much can change, actually all of that was just odd.
I think that I’d have expected to still know some people from then that I don’t now. Sticking with school in that case, I’d thought I’d know David and Finbar and Jonathan and Jennifer and maybe even Amanda and Claire (<- I don't know when, but sometime there is so much to write about in this line). I’m not so sure on much of that. It really is at times just a blur. Some of those ended badly, some just ended and some I guess just I don’t know did something else. It’s odd in a way how few people who were important to me then are important to me now. There’s only a few of them and for the most part those are totally different relationships.
Man just thinking about all of that really does leave me wondering about so much.
So moving swiftly along lets get into five years ago
Context for this one. It’s 2002 and I’ve been living in London for 2 years. I’ve just about settled down in London at this stage. I have a group of friends, mainly from work but this would grow a lot more in the next year or so.
My memory in this case is aided quite a bit by blog archives back as far as then…although I’ve just remembered that I have my 1997 diary here with me. I don’t think I want to dig that out but perhaps. So believe it or not on this day in 2002 I was actually flying to DC from London for work. This actually means that I had just gotten a new job. I had moved from uh what I’ll call web development into localisation. I was pretty unhappy in the former so I was quite pleased with that move.
I was seeing Karen at the time but she lived in Bristol and it was getting to be quite an issue for me to travel back and forth so much. So I guess we can sum this up as a new job (hi Dave!) that I liked and had gone out and fought for and a serious enough but with some issues relationship.
Hopes and expectations then would have been to learn localisation, work through all the toolset, master them and use them to complete the new clients. That all came true. My standard answer, and it partially remains true to this day, to being asked in reviews where I wanted to go was to say that I wanted my bosses job. It was true then, it’s semi true now but technically my boss is European CTO and that’s a few years off for me. Ugh that is technically he’s my boss till he gets a director in for us, he is EU CTO. Outside of work I was building up more friends (it was around now that I started meeting people through the WEF), I was thinking of owning somewhere and there had been early (very very very) early discussions of living somewhere with Karen. The distance eventually killed that, I could not do it anymore but those would have been the thoughts at the time.
So that was then, and then and this is now. I have a new job with a whole lot more responsibilities. It’s a job that I hoped to have someday, I reckon I’m about 2 years ahead of my planning for it. The work here in the US really worked in my favour. I have just put in the paperwork for my first proper direct report and I’m looking forward to both of these challenges over the coming months. Not really any particular hopes or expectations longer term for work really. The whole structure and roles have changed so much that I first need to do this job and figure out what there is for me before I can have hopes.
Obviously I have the move back to London and I’m working to get all of that sorted out. I’m looking forward to getting back and seeing friends and seeing what else there is back there. I do want to get a degree at some stage. I’ve been trying to do this for the past couple of years but the chance to move to the US trumped it. Now I’m going to take a much more active role in pursuing that. I don’t know if I’ll be ready for it by the coming college year but I have some basics I can get going on.
I’m still hoping to own somewhere. I don’t know when that’ll be. It’s a little while off, maybe 12-18 months maybe a little longer. It is getting a little closer but not as fast as I’d like. So I guess that’s one big one.
I suppose I can say that some of them hold up and that some of them have grown or perhaps matured is a better work along with me. I don’t think I ever really had unattainable hopes, to be honest as I write this if I were to make a list the ones I’ve achieved outweigh the ones I have not. The big gaps as I see it are not owning somewhere but I’ve still got a couple of years to go before I hit the average buying age and of course I’m single. The year in DC has hurt the latter almost as much as it’s helped the former. So guess it’s fair to say I’d hope to work on both of them.
Oh duh of course. Now I have a hobby, a real one. I’d expect to keep taking photos and I’d hope to have more published and perhaps someday to be able to make some money from them.
I don’t know if I can summerise now and then. I hoped for the same things that everyone does I guess I can say that at pretty much everytime in my life I’ve had some of them and at everytime in my life I’ve always hoped for others. And well wasn’t that a shit summery?
I’ve think I’ve typed close to what I wanted to tpye and I think I’ve said what I was thinking about but I don’t think I’ve answered the question. And so it goes.