Monday, April 16, 2007

Easter: Day 4

On Easter Monday we went to Warwick Castle. It was a 40-60 minute drive from MH situated in the historic town of Warwick.

Will Shakespare is from Warwick and did his best work just up the road in Stratford-on-avon. It is full of Tudor era houses where not one wall lines up with the other! Makes you sense the history, when someones house has been standing longer than our country has been in existence (well officially anyway).

Anyway managed to join a queue of about a million people. The English LOVE queuing. Think fat kids and cake and you are starting to get the picture. The English will join a queue, for example, at the post office, even if the don't have anything to post. If you stand with friends in single file it won't take long for a queue to join behind you! You may laugh, but I'm not joking - happened to us at Marks and Spencer once.

Anyway, we managed to usurp the queue because we had Madison. (I knew having kids must have a pay off now and then).

The Castle itself has evolved over the centuries, but the oldest part of it dates back to the 12th century. We're talking Blackadder I days. Man thats old. Although I think some of the people towards the front of the queue might have been there for the opening ceremony!

There are so many things to see at the castle. Each part is self contained, and each part had it's own queue. Suffice to say we didn't get a chance to see the whole thing this time. The bits we did see where awesome. There was a mock battle, complete with Knights and Archers.

There was a tour of the renovated part of the Castle which dates back to 1920. The main hall was amazing, lined with suits of armour.

The thing that struck me was how small the Armour was. I guess people have grown over the last 800 years.

Great day, and we will be back.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Easter Weekend: Day 3

Today we decided to go to a traditional Easter show, which took us to the Kelmarsh county fair. Normally if I was in NZ, I would rather pull my toenails off with pliers, but we're here to have a look around, so I agreed to go.

My navigator got us a little lost on the way there - a 10 minute journey took about 30, but it was a good look around the Leicestershire countryside. It is very similar to South Canterbury - rolling hills and very green. The obvious differences are the lack of stock grazing and the backdrop of the Southern Alps.

We finally arrived at Kelmarsh which is a tiny, one pub village. The fair is held on the "Manor" of a local titled person, but the it was probably similar in size to the Easter shows in rural NZ. But thats where the similarities end. NZ Easter shows are all about who has the best sheep and who has the moleskins with airtek shirts.

The Kelmarsh fair was more about entertainment, with 4 "rings" with displays going all the time. NZ shows tend to be a little more commercial - trying to sell you a new tractor etc.

We saw a display about rabbit hunting, and how it used to be illegal to have Greyhounds, so the locals bred a new bred to get around this. The breed is called a Lurch or Lurchers and they look like a head on between a greyhound and a shrub. Very weird looking dogs, but very good at rabbit hunting apparently. The highlight of this demonstration was a race between a Pidgeon and a Lurch!

The Pidgeon won by a nose BTW.

The other highlight was the birds of prey demonstration where a Falcon was shown off. They are almost as awesome as the motor vehicle namesake! The interesting thing I learnt is that they aren't strong enough to fly straight up and have to go up looking for up draft in concentral circles.

After that much excitment in one day, we decided to go home and rest for our visit to Warwick Castle on Monday.

Oh and another DB9 in the car park!

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Easter Weekend: Day 2

Today we took the Train to London. We booked seats in advance because we were expecting a full train, but it wasn't too bad. I guess people like to spend time outside London on their days off.

Anyway, we met friends at St Pancras and took a quick tube stop to Oxford / Regent St.

We were told before hand that it would be manic, but it was fairly quiet by London standards. Which was nice.

After a shop at Hamleys toy store, we had a bite to eat, and then walked down to Trafalger Square and the Mall. To say that the walk down to the Mall is awesome is a bit of an understatement. We were a bit rushed for time so didn't take it all in, but we really enjoyed our walk.

We had a look at Buck Palace, but Liz and Phil were out so didn't get to have tea with them. By comparison to the other architechture in the Mall, Buckingham Palace is looking a little tired to be honest. English understatement and humility at it's best.

We then walked down to Harrods, which was manic. Last minute Easter shopping I think. I bought a couple of Easter Eggs and we got out fast. We will return when it's a little more buggy friendly.

While we were waiting to cross the street to go into Harrods, there was a Ferrari 430, Lamborghini Gallardo and Aston Martin DB9 waiting at the same round about. Bit flasher than Timaru of a Saturday!

We had afternoon tea at Harvey Nichols which is famous apparently and then took the tube back to St Pancras. The tube was horrible. Each carriage was absolutely crammed with people. Absolutely no personal space, and Madison was starring at about 50 knee caps. She didn't seem to mind too much all the same, but we weren't that keen.

Once off the tram we strolled down to St Pancras and got on the train to home. Good day.

Easter Weekend: Day 1

Today we drove to Rugby to have a look around. We are thinking of moving there, as it's a good central location and only 30-40 mins drive to my work. It has a bit more going on than Market Harborough.

It is a fairly large town, bordering on a City and it's claim to fame is well fairly obvious - when William Web Ellis (Internet to his friends) picked up a soccer ball and went for a run, or so the fable goes.

After lunching in Rugby we went to a lake, which I can't remember the name of. It was fairly small by NZ standards - 600 Acres but it has a road around the outside and is buggy friendly, so there were hundreds of families out for a walk. The only downside was that flies hang around in Swarms and dive bomb you. It is horrible.

Makes Australia look tame by comparison, but the English don't seem to mind. They are a strange lot as I have mentioned before. Oh and everything, I mean everything was open on Good Friday which was a surprise.

Monday, April 2, 2007

First Day At Work

Tpday was my first day at Alstec. They are based in Whetstone, which is a town/suburb of Leicester. We haven't got a car yet, so I had to take the 7:19 train to Leicester, then get the 8:00 number 84 bus to Whetstone.

First F-Up of the day was getting off the bus one stop too early. 60 minutes of walking later I finally found the Alstec complex! Luckily (and unbeknown to me) it was an induction session and I only missed the propagander video. I was fair panicking though!

That went through to lunch. I was taken upstairs into my area just before lunch, but it is company policy for everyone on site to have lunch at 12:30 so I didn't get to meet anyone until 1:30. Also company policy - employees must take an hour for lunch.

Initial impressions are good. Nice people, and it seems to be very interesting and varied work. I will be working on the Airports side of things, with the baggage handling systems, probably doing a fair bit of Handheld programming in C#. More about that to follow.

Work wound up at 5:00 and I rushed to get to the 5:05 bus back into Leicester. I asked some guy who was at a bus stop if it was the right one. He said yes. It wasn't. I found the correct one and caught the 5:35 into Leicester which got in just after 6pm, so I missed the 6:05 train back to Harborough. I also managed to take a wrong turn and missed the train station too, and spent the next 45 minutes trying to find it again.

England is a nice place, but the road signs are simply awful. They are too small and in random places. It is almost impossible to find your way around without a map. Even with a map it isn't easy. I of course thought I knew where I was going and didn't take a map...

Anyway, hopefully tomorrow will be easier.