It’s hard to believe I’m now in the UK 5 weeks, it’s been a whirl wind month with lots to do and see and that’s just the house hunting! Looking back at it now it’s hard to believe I got on a plane less than 24 hours after I got home from UDS and went looking at houses I must have been mad. I was rather fortunate that a lovely dear friend and her family collected me from Heathrow as I honestly don’t know how I would have gotten from there down to Farnham.
The weekend I arrived it was Guy Fawkes night, aka build a bonfire and set it on fire! So being the token tourist we went to the Farnham session lead by candles up a hill and into the grounds of a castle, it was rather pretty and something different to experience.
I viewed a few places to live that week, some places were dives! worse than any student accommodation I’d ever seen and others were fine but you’d never even hear back from them, rather like job hunting all over again but for a place to live! I’ve eventually found a place to live sharing with 6 others from all over the place, but one of the house mates works in redhat who uses debian, what are the flipping chances eh!
So I moved to the UK to work for Sirius, and it’s been an excellent move and proved to be rather interesting, some of the things I’m working on now is organising the UK ODF Plugfest to happen in February, help organise an education conference happening in April to do with open source and education. Behind the scenes I’m working with some education groups and other types of groups in the UK talking to them about using open source. Everyone in the office has been so friendly and helpful which makes things a lot easier! Having a boss that is understanding when it comes to booking time off to go back to Ireland due to flight costs or snow issues is a bonus and something I’m not used to at all so it is appreciated.
Things I’ve had to get used to, STERLING! and not converting it to euro or go crazy at prices, trains, how they run and how to get home and to work via them when they don’t run or stop elsewhere! I am fascinated by the train folks, the people who read on the train standing up, answering emails, or applying make up, how they do this when the train is moving and randomly stops is beyond me.
I don’t know what the next 5 weeks or 5 months will hold for me in the UK, but it’s going to be interesting no matter what and I’m going to enjoy it and meet some new people and get to meet others I’ve been talking to via irc or ml , we plan on organising a Ubuntu UK rugby pub day! so do keep posted!
