…or, in the world of work: 0 days to go.

Yep. That’s it. I’m not longer a Systems Engineer. I’m unemployed.

Mental.

It’s been an odd day… packing the desk was rather sad, but gave me a chance to go through some of my old things (my “first day at work” starter pack, the 2001 company calendar (complete with lots of weekends reading “Uni” for all those times where I went back to see mates), print outs of photos of drunken evenings with the FBL guys), which was nice.

After a pub lunch, I was given a leaving presentation in the afternoon, which was a) massively embarrassing and b) quite humbling – as I guess these things are. Some stories I’d entirely forgotten about caused a great deal of cringing from me – and laughing from those watching – but that was more than made up for by the goodbye card signed by loads of people and the ace presents… including… yes… ANOTHER SQUAGE:

They’re like buses…

Mr Paul Grimsley and your better half, I salute you both :-)

As I said in my leaving speech (aside from the snarky remarks about technical career paths ;-) ), thanks to everyone for being such good fun to work with. You’ve given me lots of good memories of the past 5 years – I’m going to miss you!

And who knows, with hindsight I might even miss work.

*COUGH*

Toodles :-)

Pat

…which marks my final Monday at work and my second from last day there.

I’m feeling very, very nervous now… not just because of the fact that in one week I’ll be wandering around New York without a job care in the world, but because James at work’s decided to buy some of this for his crazy beefcake regime:

Fortunately those nerves will subside seeing as I’m only working with him for another day. Well, I say “working”. It will be my last day, after all :-)

Anyway, til tomorrow (I might be a bit tipsy if it’s in the afternoon (getting a lift in from Beefcake Barry))!

Pat

P.S. Big thanks to Sissel Anita for providing a fine selection of hard rock tunes for me to listen to whilst rocketing around valleys / throwing myself off bridges… who knows, it might even give me the courage to go through with the bungee. Probably.

…and I’m SO amazed.

Today I went to a pub called The Landseer in Islington, as part two of the “Pat’s Leaving and Pauly’s Having a Birthday” weekender. Loads of mates from Uni turned up, which was brilliant.

What really has made today amazing are the things that they’ve made / created for me on my trip around Oz:

1) Radio Shows!
A whole 9 shows, made by various mates (Dave, Pauly, The Mark, Chanmander, George, Stu B, Lev, RTJ, Bobince, Russ and Mr Paul Hardman) – totalling 11.5 hours – for my listening pleasure on my journey around the world! Utterly ace of you peeps, thank you so much!!

2) Sir Iain McDonkey’s Guide to Australia
For some while, RTJ and myself have had a strange injoke going on about loving horses (well, we pretend it’s a joke…)… so he thought he’d get me something that I might find amusing very useful on my travels.

I definitely didn’t piss myself for 10 solid minutes on receiving it. No. Ahem.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you… Sir Iain McDonkey’s Guide To Australia:

(click on the picture to view the whole 8 pages…)

3) Crazy I Dog Thing!
Made by Sega Toys, and grabbed from Japan by Ness and Lee when they went their recently.

It’s a cute little pink robot dog thing that dances to some Japanese pop tunes when you press its nose.

I’m not going to describe it further yet as I’m going to get some batteries for it and take a video for you to enjoy :-) I wonder if people will enjoy it playing Japanese pop at full blast on the plane…

4) THE BEST THING IN THE WORLD
Courtesy of Si and Ruthie (created, in fact, by Ruthie’s fair hand)… this came in the form of a smallish box with a HP logo on it. Previously my experience of HP branded boxes has gone along the lines of:

“Vague Interest… Gradual Excitement Increasing… Box Opening… Disappointment At Some Crap Print Cartridge.”

Not today. No. Today went along the lines of:

“Interest… Gradual Excitement Increasing… Box Opening… Utterly Speachless.”

You see, for the box today contained this:

HE’S EVEN GOT EYEBROWS AND A CHEEKY SMILE!

AMAZING :-D

Something to take photos of at various locations all around the world? I think so!

5) Summary
You guys rule :-)

Toodles,

Pat

…and after waking up on Rob’s floor at 8am (having fallen asleep at about 2am) I trundled back home, dozed about for a few hours and then went to the land of London for the “Pat’s Leaving and Pauly’s Having a Birthday” do at Buttoned Down Disco @ the Forum in Kentish Town avec my Uni mates.

Met up with Lev and Jess first to have a meal – ended up in China Town in a lovely restaurant with great service, great food and a name I can’t remember.

I’d be such a good marketer.

Anyway, after that and a packed tube journey Lev, Jess and myself arrived at the Forum quite early on (it, er, hadn’t opened)… and sat looking at the results of the bubble machines on the overhanging entrance roof.

Once it’d opened we wandered in to be hit by a wall of noise (it was a touch loud), so conversation was, er, limited to start – but that was fine as there were 2-for-1 deals on Carlsberg through the evening.

Well, I say “fine”. It did lead to some “interesting” dancing.

“Sadly” the only photo I have of the evening doesn’t feature any of my terrible the odd dancing, just the club (as taken by my mobile phone):

There are many more embarrassing photos from this evening, which are no doubt making their way to the net as I type, I’m not going to give you any clues as to where to get them :-)

Anyway, after about an hour or so of mental dancing the music went very odd so we spent the last bit of the evening sitting at a table having a SLIGHTLY… SLOW… AND… SHOUTY…. CHAT… over the music.

After a while we all trundled home – well, I crashed at the Ealing Flat Of Fun (cheers for the sleeping space dudes!) – and looked forward to lunch at The Landseer on Sunday.

Right, tired. Going to sleep. Yes!

Pat

…and as I write this the hangover has finally subsided. Not a particularly fun morning, although managed to get through with lots of tea and chocolate. This afternoon I managed to confuse my workmates and myself as I explained some rather unpleasant VBS and Windoze Batch Script code that I’d kinda forgotten about… the process wasn’t helped by us all being rather worse for wear.

Oh well, hopefully the conclusion of handover stuff on Monday will be a bit better… although given that I’m going out on Sunday night I suspect this may not be the case!!

Also, as he’s going to be on a training course during my last two days of work I’m not going to be seeing Gib at work ever again (er, apart from when I come back. Yes).

I’ll be meeting up with him next week but still, it’s a little strange, even sad… Gib was also feeling the sadness * when I took a photo of him:

* “sadness” may be “eagerness to get away from Pat taking stupid photos”

Tonight I’m going to be going to Rob(a.k.a. The Baron)’s house with some of the other FBL gang to watch some Mighty Boosh, eat pizza and have a few drinks.

Hangover? What hangover?

Til tomorrow…

Pat

…Pat seems to have forgotten the exact amount through the results of going out to the Chelmsford Comedy Club last night, not having to drive and consuming one or two pints.

This is a blog for yesterday – Pat’s original intention was to blog when he got home from the comedy club. For some reason (possibly being unable to type – Pat can’t remember) he didn’t get round to it.

Might have something to do with behaviour like this occuring:

Oddly I seem to be suffering effects similar to Pat today – feeling a) tired, b) as if a farmer has just spread muck in my mouth and c) like someone’s playing steel drums in my head. How peculiar.

Anyway, yes, that’s my excuse for a short entry today (well, yesterday)… nnngh.

We’ll have to wait and see if Pat’s alive enough to do today’s entry later, cos this is more than enough staring at a computer screen for me today.

Til then,

Squage
—
Unwell

…and today I spent most of the day worrying about the amount of stuff I’ve still got to sort before leaving work on Tuesday.

Well, it was less “worrying about” and more “mulling over”. Worrying implies that I’m not going to the other side of the world away from all of this in a week or so :-)

Either way there’s lots to do and very little time to do it. It’s going to be quite a contrast in a week.

This evening I went out for a meal with the folks, my brother and his girlfriend, which was really good fun – with very tasty food (yep, another evening of thoroughly healthy eating…)

Plus there was the added bonus that one of the waiters looked like an Indian Sylvester Stallone.

I hope he didn’t hear me humming the Rocky theme tune (which I didn’t actually realise I was doing until it was pointed out to me by my brother…)

Anyway, not much else to say today… other than the following:

My plane tickets arrived!

It’s a funky “electronic ticket” thing, which is a single ticket reference for displaying at all the airports, which I can duplicate online / at home as needed – thus never worrying about losing tickets!

I’m really going, aren’t I?

Blimey.

Mind you, with journeys to/from work like this, I can’t pretend to be worried:

Pat

…and it’s funny how some things never change.

When I was at school, my favourite times of year were during school holidays. When I am at work, my favourite times of year are during school holidays.

Thanks to Half Term, my journeys to work this week are literally halfed in time. It’s uncanny how few 4x4s there are on the road too… strange, that :-)

Anyway, once at work I’ve had a productive day. Got some more handover stuff done at work and fixed a few issues that’ve been going on for a while, which is nice. Also, it was a very nice today so got to grab the one nice thing about our office – the view of the chapel by it:

Managed to get some currency ordered this lunchtime for pick up next Tuesday, so that’s another key thing sorted. Also got a cheque cashed in today for that much needed boost… (hooray for the overtime that’s planned later this week!)…

Tonight, after a fast journey home I went out to the joy of TGI Fridays in Bas Vegas (twice in one week… this whole “getting fit” thing is going oh so well), catching up with Angela, Ellryn, Ash and Chanel.

Twas really good fun (despite a waiter who was something between fun and a cock… not sure what), had a good chat and a laugh, caught up on lots of gossip and was just great to see the peeps!

It was sad to say goodbye at the end of the night though.

• Angela – great to see you, sorry I won’t see you before I trundle – take care and have a flippin’ ace year!!
• Ellryn, Ash and Chanel – great to see ya too, I’ll see you at the leaving do/in work!

Toodles,

Pat

…or 2 weeks…

…or 1 fortnight…

…blimey. That came around quickly.

In 2 weeks time from now (11pm UK Time) I’ll probably be in a restaurant in New York, wondering what the next year is going to hold and feeling a mixture of excitement, happiness and gut wrenching worry that it’s all a crazy mistake.

I can’t wait :-)

Neil (you know, him from “Being At Work With Me” and “Going On A Crazy Round The World Tour, Which Coincides With Mine At Christmas In Melbourne” fame) has 0 days to go. As I type this he’s on a plane to Thailand.

Wow.

Despite him deciding that he wanted to leave my lovely employer, I can’t help thinking that he was in two minds:

As you can see, he’s really quite sad to be leaving the office.

:-)

Have a top trip Mr Craven – see you in Melbourne!

Pat

…and I had a lovely time at The Landseer in Islington today with other Uni mates. Amy and Paul brought their lovely new son Tom along for the experience and he seemed to enjoy meeting everyone (well, ok, he was alseep almost all of the time but hey let’s not get into the semantics…).

I know for a fact he’s going to love the present we got him:

YES! It’s a big dinosaur, with squeaky bits, scrunchy bits and a mirror… and it’s big and green. You may have noticed that last bit actually.

Anyway, after a nice lunch and catch up we all went our own way and I had an amazingly good journey home (in that it was reasonable without too many massive delays – which is amazing for a Sunday…). Shame it was pissing down for my 15 minute trundle back home.

Drowned rat? Ho yes.

Still, our team just came second in my local’s pop quiz (we normally end up about 4th of out 7), which a) made up for it and b) was quite a nice way to say toodles to it for a year (I’m out and about next Sunday).

In hindsight I shouldn’t’ve had that third beer though.

Still, it’s only Saturday I guess. I nice lie in tomor… sorry? What? Whatday? Sun… ?

Ah, crap.

Pat