Saturday, June 16, 2007

Martin's trip so far, the joys of technology, and feeling old

(Warning: this is going to be one of those über-long "Hmm, I haven't written a comprehensive post in a while" entries, sorry :). I'm in a rambling kind of mood :-P.)

For those of you who don't already know, yes, Martin touched down safely in England this past Sunday. For future reference, if you ever fly out there, plan on having your first day completely lost to travel. His flight took off here at about 9 a.m. our time and landed at Heathrow airport at 9 p.m. London time. On top of that, his hotel is not in London but in Cheltenham, which is a couple hours away from the airport by taxi (and remember he still had to retrieve his luggage and whatnot before getting in the cab). He and the 2 guys travelling with him got to their flat at about midnight...and they were to start their training at headquarters the very next morning, with the cabs coming to get them at 8 a.m.! Needless to say Martin and one of the other trainees found themselves napping here and there through their first day at work, but he is well-adjusted to the time change now.

Martin's hotel flat does not have a land line. His company has provided the flat with a cell phone, but they are only to use it for outgoing calls in the event of an emergency. Incoming calls from here are fine, but we quickly discovered that it is not worth the cost for me to call it; the quality and time delay are awful. However, we have been able to keep in touch in other ways. Each trainee was given a laptop on loan, and Martin has installed Windows Live Messenger on his. At first, this only allowed us to send instant text messages to each other. Yesterday, though, we finally figured out how to get both our headsets working with Messenger so that we could have a realtime voice conversation without the lack of quality and time delay we experienced with the cell phone. We also have a webcam here, and I was able to hook that up so he could see me, his mom, his sisters and the cats Unfortunately he doesn't have a webcam there, though (and doesn't want to shell out the pounds to get one due to the higher cost of everything over there), so we couldn't see him. Still, long-distance voice calls for "cheap as free," hooray! And Catherine was right, we do talk more now that he's in England than we do here, heh :)...

Based on the training he's been doing, Martin is getting quite excited about his new job. He messaged me the other day and said, "Remember how I told you 'I'd love a job where I could sit and compile Linux all day'? This could be that job." He has been trying to get out of the electronics/hardware work he was doing and into IT for years now. Having only his hobby experience and no formal training to put on a résumé, though, he hasn't felt confident applying for IT positions. The fact that one of our guildmates from World of Warcraft was able to help him get this job is a huge blessing to us (see, playing computer games isn't a complete waste of time, lol), especially as Martin had felt the job he was working at was a dead end with no possibility of progression. The fact that Martin will now be making more money doesn't hurt, either :).

*Reads previous blog entries*...hmm, I seem to be repeating myself a little bit...sorry. Anyway, where I was going with this was that because Martin will be earning a little bit more now, we've decided to get me something that will help me when I finally get my career started (hopefully in September...*crosses fingers*)...I am finally getting a laptop :D! Since I'm heading into the world of education (among other reasons), I'm also going to be entering the world of Apple, shelling out the extra cash to get a MacBook Pro rather than a PC. The fact that it comes with a built-in webcam and the ability to access wireless Internet connections also means that I'll be able to keep in touch with Martin even when I go to the cottage with my parents in a couple weeks. I'm not sure whether the wireless connection up there will be good enough for any WoW-playing, but who plays WoW at the cottage anyway? (*looks around with shifty eyes*...)

In other news, today I attended my public school's 50th anniversary. I went to Churchill Heights P. S. from grade 4 through to the end of grade 8. Being back there today was, well, odd. Jen and Mary-Beth and I wandered through the school at various points looking at how small everything was, trying to figure out how we fit into the desks, how we managed to do drama productions on such a small stage, how the entire school fit in the gym to watch Degrassi Street on rainy days, how everyone's instrument cases fit onto the shelving in the music room which used to seem so huge...yeah. If it were simply a matter of seeing size differences, it would be odd enough, but add to that seeing the area where some portables used to sit turned into a playground and the old playground tilled over, seeing the computer lab turned into a classroom and half the library into a computer lab (and being able to see all 4 walls of the library at once due to the way the new shelving is organized), seeing old classmates now taller than me (I was reminded at least a few times today that I pretty much grew to my adult height by the age of, oh, 11), and you start to feel old. Er, wait, I'm only 27. Okay, old*er* :). Mind you, when my former teachers found out that Mary-Beth and I have both done teacher's college and are both looking for jobs with the board, their conversations with us suddenly took on a much different tone, which was interesting to see...suddenly, we were not just former students, but colleagues. Anyway, the weather was gorgeous, and briefly catching up with the dozen or so people I recognized was good (though running into one's high school English teacher at one's public school is also odd). However, though it was a little disappointing that the promised Open Forum somehow got scrapped from the program, it was a bit of a relief not to have to stick around for the full 5 hours or whatever that the event was planned to run in order to see it. It's like they say..."nice to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there." It also seemed like just about everyone I talked to today had another event planned for this evening, including me, so it's good that Churchill decided to make this an afternoon event rather than the evening thing I usually picture a reunion being. Cheers to everyone I saw, kind regards to everyone I would have liked to have seen but who couldn't make it, and as for anyone who wanted to see me but showed up after I left, well, send me a message...that's what Facebook is for ;).

Also making me feel old is that I'm going to attend my nephew's 6th birthday party this evening. Okay, yes, 6 is not that old, but he is the youngest of my brother's 4 children. If he is 6, my oldest niece is 12. Before you know it, she'll be off to high school, then university (or college or the workforce or whatever), getting married...sigh. Oh well, at least this way she'll be old enough to babysit by the time I start having my own children, lol...

Well, I have written way too much again, so it is time to sign off. I'll post my few graduation photos when I can, but since I sent my digital camera to the UK with Martin I am still waiting for my parents to develop the film photos they took. Ciao for now...

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