My Week in London
Dec. 5th, 2004 11:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yesthattomSaturday night: Got on the airplane and fell asleep right away. Woke up Sunday morning as the flight attendant was serving breakfast. It’s amazing how citrus wakes you up after a long flight. I love Virgin Atlantic service.
Sunday: Checked into the hotel. Went to the office and finally met my new employee Doug in person. We upgraded software together and tried to debug an issue with a tape library that wasn’t installing right.
Monday: Meetings, got cranky with tape library vendor.
Tuesday: More work.
Wednesday: “Team Building Dinner” -- 8 of us went to All Bar One for drinks (they got me very drunk) then to a really nice Italian restaurant. I had a steak covered with gorgonzola and a side of spaghetti with tomato sauce. It was really excellent. While I thought I only had half a glass of wine, in reality they were refilling it whenever I wasn’t looking and I think I had 2 glasses. Anyway... the “morale boosting” portion of the evening was a success.
Thursday: My birthday... Worked then took myself out for dinner and a movie. I saw The Manchurian Candiate (2004) (the remake of the 1962 classic and ate at a nearby chinese restaurant. I had wanted to go to Wagamama for dinner, but they were packed. Afterwards I walked around Leicestershire Square (which is pronounced “less-ter square” for the same reason that “Worcestershire sauce” is pronounced “woos-tah sauce”). I called![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
quietchris on my cell as I walked around, telling her about my day.
Friday: Worked, with a couple victories. Doug found the problem with the tape library (w00t!) and got it working. I completed a bunch of tasks. But the big victory was that after working in the London office all week, I finally understood enough of what was going on in a certain area so that when we had a conference call in the afternoon and were told of an unpopular decision, I was able to push back with credibility because I now knew both the US and UK sides of the issue. After listening to everyone go on for quite some time, I broke in and made some comments and assertions which I was later told “cut through 6 months of bullshit.” Yeah me!
Friday night: Paaarty! Seven of us from work went out to a fancy Japanese fusion restaurant. The food and the drinks were very fancy. At one point the waitress recommended a sake that was 75 GBP per bottle (about $140). (We turned it down). The bill was 57 GBP per person when we were done (about $110). Wow, that’s gonna hurt. Afterwards we almost went out clubbing, but decided against it. I went home and packed.
Saturday morning: Finished packing, went to the office to download my email for the ride home (my hotel room’s internet connection stopped working a few days ago and they couldn’t fix it... oddly enough, I think it was my laptop’s fault since they let me try the connection in another room and it didn’t work there either. Could it be the fancy auto-detect-cross-over thingie that Macs do?) Anyway, I made it to the airport in time.
Saturday evening:quietchris picked me up at the airport, we had dinner at The Scotchwood Diner and then went to my place.
Sunday: Checked into the hotel. Went to the office and finally met my new employee Doug in person. We upgraded software together and tried to debug an issue with a tape library that wasn’t installing right.
Monday: Meetings, got cranky with tape library vendor.
Tuesday: More work.
Wednesday: “Team Building Dinner” -- 8 of us went to All Bar One for drinks (they got me very drunk) then to a really nice Italian restaurant. I had a steak covered with gorgonzola and a side of spaghetti with tomato sauce. It was really excellent. While I thought I only had half a glass of wine, in reality they were refilling it whenever I wasn’t looking and I think I had 2 glasses. Anyway... the “morale boosting” portion of the evening was a success.
Thursday: My birthday... Worked then took myself out for dinner and a movie. I saw The Manchurian Candiate (2004) (the remake of the 1962 classic and ate at a nearby chinese restaurant. I had wanted to go to Wagamama for dinner, but they were packed. Afterwards I walked around Leicestershire Square (which is pronounced “less-ter square” for the same reason that “Worcestershire sauce” is pronounced “woos-tah sauce”). I called
quietchris on my cell as I walked around, telling her about my day.Friday: Worked, with a couple victories. Doug found the problem with the tape library (w00t!) and got it working. I completed a bunch of tasks. But the big victory was that after working in the London office all week, I finally understood enough of what was going on in a certain area so that when we had a conference call in the afternoon and were told of an unpopular decision, I was able to push back with credibility because I now knew both the US and UK sides of the issue. After listening to everyone go on for quite some time, I broke in and made some comments and assertions which I was later told “cut through 6 months of bullshit.” Yeah me!
Friday night: Paaarty! Seven of us from work went out to a fancy Japanese fusion restaurant. The food and the drinks were very fancy. At one point the waitress recommended a sake that was 75 GBP per bottle (about $140). (We turned it down). The bill was 57 GBP per person when we were done (about $110). Wow, that’s gonna hurt. Afterwards we almost went out clubbing, but decided against it. I went home and packed.
Saturday morning: Finished packing, went to the office to download my email for the ride home (my hotel room’s internet connection stopped working a few days ago and they couldn’t fix it... oddly enough, I think it was my laptop’s fault since they let me try the connection in another room and it didn’t work there either. Could it be the fancy auto-detect-cross-over thingie that Macs do?) Anyway, I made it to the airport in time.
Saturday evening:
quietchris picked me up at the airport, we had dinner at The Scotchwood Diner and then went to my place.
