So yeah, we cleaned our place on the weekend, and finally moved everything downstairs to Andy’s on the Monday night. (We’ve had the report back from the independent inspector now, and he comments: “Professionally cleaned” — yah!) I headed over to Willesden Green with Dayna on Saturday and got to check out her flat — small, but well apportioned and very cute. A loft bed over the front door makes it feel like you’re on Firefly’s Serenity space-ship. On Sunday we caught up with Anthony and got to meet Noreen (she’s lovely), sharing a couple of drinks at The Woolpack on Bermondsey before traipsing all of 2 minutes to Del A’ziz in Bermondsey Square for some late dinner. (Anthony got us gifts! Inspiration for work and home, very nice.)
The last week at work has flown by too! We’ve had dinners (with Andy on Monday, Dayna and Bruce on Tuesday) and organisation-stations getting our packs down to size — if you’d looked up at Andy’s balcony on Wednesday night you would’ve seen piles and piles of clothes dumped from our packs, with the two of us poring through them and trying to decide what we really really need.
On Thursday we were moving from Andy’s floor to Dayna’s futon, and so carted our newly pared-down packs with us to work. That was fun — it sort of made it more real for me. (Had lunch with Hin and Neil and talked shop; I think I might miss that, so better dust off my geeky blog and do some research & reading while we’re in transit.) That night we had our “friends” (vs work) leaving drinks at the Glasshouse Stores in Soho: it was great to see everyone, and more than a little sad when we had to stumble towards the tube. We’ll miss you! We’ll see you again soon!
Yesterday was our last day at work, and in true “work” fashion I still had stuff to finish off!! (Didn’t quite get our code building and running unit-tests with Ivy and Ant, but it’s almost there and I feel I can leave it in Hin and Adam’s capable hands. (Outsource it, I say!) At 5 there was the typical “gathering crowd”, a little speech from Kirk and an extremely clumsy one from yours truly — I’m never entirely comfortable as the centre of attention — before we (finally!) headed to The Phoenix for a drink or twelve. I got gifts! Awesome, awesome, awesome — thanks Paul and Anna for your exquisite good taste! Inspired by Hin, I’m going to get it engraved with ${CompanyName} 2010 and a concise piece of advice for the future: “DON’T DIE”.
I’m not a particularly emotional creature, normally, but to see so many friendly faces: I think I’ve made more friends here in ol’ London than I ever expected to. Yeah, I’m going to miss it a little after all…
We bought an apartment! A beautiful, quirky three-bedroom apartment on the ground-floor of The Malthouse, nestled snugly in the much-coveted locale of Summer Hill, a medium density community that is close to school, transport, markets, parks, and cycleways.
In the blink of an eye, another weekend has come and gone. It’s a familiar feeling that many of us experience - the sensation that time is flying by, leaving us wondering where the hours and days have vanished to.
After too many years, I’m finally building myself a NAS: network-attached storage, a device for backing up files, photos, and all the data that is otherwise in the cloud. Say goodbye, FANGs, I’m going self-hosted.