was a bit angry in my last post. it was written on my phone whilst sat at a desk at work with nothing to do. one day i am going to get a contract and will start working quickly as opposed to being made to sit at a desk like a lemon for a couple of weeks, with nothing to do. also i was talking shit when i said i had never started a contract like this. fact of the matter is that most of them have involved me sitting on my own at a desk for a few days....or weeks with nothing to do. its a good thing i have this blog to remind me, because it looks like i have the ability to delude myself and block out the bad times. still, i suppose selective amnesia is not a bad thing in this case.
i feel much better today partly because i was introduced to some people in another office, that i will be working with eventually, and partly because i got internet access on my pc at work so i applied to a load of jobs and it looks like i have a telephone interview next week and i also got a lot of calls about other contracts. that always lifts the spirits a bit. will walk away from my current contract if any of these others comes up.
today i have mostly been listening to intepol - lights. i heard a new interpol song a few months ago and i wasnt that impressed with it, but this is much more like it. i really do think they are quality band and i can not recommend their first album 'turn on the bright lights' highly enough. for me it is one of my most favourite albums ever. if you have the means i highly recommend you pick up a copy.....then book a plane ticket to california....rent a car.....and drive around LA at night with it playing on the stereo....or just stick it on your mp3 player or stereo and prepare to listen to an album thats more sincere, intelligent and interesting than nearly everything else around at the moment.
Never started at a new contract like this. No one in my team is based in my office. Was shown to a desk and have been left there. Have been shown how to do hardly anything and have barely had any communication with anyone from the same team. Today there seems to be hardly anyone available even on email. I know we are mercenary contractors but its fucking rude and disrespectful to be treated like this. Fucking amateurs.
day 2 of my new contract and its properly shit. had a call with my team leader who is based in another city, and it turns out i am the only person in the web team in london. it means i have no one to ask or show me around their systems. i know its going to be a painful contract.
i was also told i would be working with a development team and my boss made a point of saying that the guy i would be working was rude. what a strange thing to say to someone new and before i had even spoken to this other guy. anyways, today i was talking to that particular developer and it turns out he actually is rude. what a wonderful reputation to have. famous for being rude.
anyways, i am trying with great haste to extracate myself from this contract by finding something else. went to meet someone about another job going at a fund management firm and we shall see how it goes. i really am not in the mood to spend the next 6 months dealing with assholes and doing nothing but webservers and not utilising any of my other skills. you just become brain dead after a while. were it not for a vmware project at my last 6 month contract i think i would have turned into a vegatable after 6 months. that project kept the blood circulation in my head going.
was watching tv this evening which is not something i do a lot of. i did come across 2 rather contrasting programmes and watched a few minutes of each one as a comparison. one was about peaches geldof and one was about a tribe of mongolian nomads. peaches geldof spent the entire time being photgraphed, hanging out with her friends, changing outfits, and talking about herself in a very boring and self obsessed way.
the program about the nomads followed a clan treking across mongolia to their winter base. a family living off the land, raising their children including a disabled young girl. they talked about their way of life and it showed them living off the land and being self sufficient. they talked about aspirations for their children and the hopes that their children might not have a life as hard as they had and the hope that they would get an education and a choice of what to spend their life doing. they had a dignity and honesty and a selflessness that was humbling. they built their own shelter and tended to their own livestock and killed and grew their own food. remarkable wonderful people with a human capacity to survive in very tough conditions and yet they all seemed happy and content and had immense diginity.
meanwhile on the other channel we had peaches geldof talking about herself in her new york apartment, talking about herself at a fashion shoot, talking about herself in london and talking about herself on a trip to the country with her mates, and none of it was interesting or informative.
i watched one programme with complete admiration for the people in it, and i watched the other programme show someone show themselves up for being a vacuous nothing with nothing to say or learn from.
i know it sounds a bit harsh on peaches but in the 3 months i had between contracts i found myself reading voracioulsy about history and current affairs which was something i have always been interested in since school. it makes a change from reading exam guides and technical manuals about the lastest version of some microsoft or citrix product. i also downloaded lectures and books and listened to them on my mp3 player. i might not have earned any money in the last 3 months but i enriched my mind a little bit by reading about rwanda, congo, chile, afghanistan, haiti, nicaragua, vietnam and the middle east, and mongolian nomads this evening. it makes the trivial seem even more so.
if you fancy something a little lighter i suggest you read the motley crue autobiography, the dirt. imagine what young moneyed rockers in 80's LA might do, and then turn it up to 11. its mental but also entertaining.
today i have mostly been listening to bat for lashes - pearls dream.
first day of the new contract and hopes are not high given initial impressions. the office is ok but it feels a bit dead inside and i already picked up a bit of an atmosphere. like all banks, they have had let a lot of people go and it just feels a bit like they are running on a skeleton staff and everyone seems really quiet.
i was told today that i would be working on their internal web team doing some projects. it doesn't sound very exciting but it is what it is. i will carry on looking for other contracts but i will also try and stick thjs out in the meantime although its going to be very dull. there was a documentary on tv about the chilean miners that were trapped underground for 3 months, and i think my new contract is going to be a similar experience. just need to keep thinking about the money and summer and california.
today i have my mostly been listening to angels and airwaves - hallucinations. my title banner at the top of the page was a picture i took when i was at the beach in san diego. i wish i there now.
had confirmation that my start date at the new contract is monday, which is good. downer is that i wont be based in the city but somewhere else. actually it might be good to work in another part of london and its still quite central. also it appears i will be working on a specific project, whatever it may be. all will be revealed when i go there on monday. dont you just love surprises.
weather was nice this week and for the first time in about 6 months i rode back from the gym in just my t-shirt. it was a beautiful day on wednesday. went out last night with a few of the guys from football and had a really good night out. i dont know what was the occasion but there were some ridiculously good looking women out at the bar we were in last night. always good to go to a place with some nice wallpaper. we got out the place just after 2am and trains weren't running so had to walk home about 40 minutes last night. no bother as it was nice and peaceful and much better than getting a night bus.
managed to get hold of a HD copy of the documentary, inside job, and it was very good indeed. it does make you feel slightly embaressed to work for these investment banks that have very little morality in the way they seem to clearly rip clients and institutions off, but i work in technology and dont sell toxic derivatives telling people they are a good investment, so i am not directly implicated. anyways, if you have the means i recommend a viewing.
today i have mostly been listening to bruce springsteen - atlantic city. there are lots of concerts bootlegged on youtube and most of the time the quality is flaky but the sound on this is very good. this is one of my favourite springsteen songs ever. this is also one of the reasons i go to the US every year. growing up i used to listen to a lot of springsteen and it really struck a chord with me. enjoy.
the other 2 really good contracts i was up for are still in process at the moment. i heard back from both agents saying that they might have some news in a day or two and wanting to know if i was still available. i told them i was, despite accepting a contract. hey, until i know where and what exactly i will be doing at the new place, i am not going to turn down the opportunity of anything.
this afternoon i got a call from the contract i accepted asking if i could start tomorrow if need be. i said yes if they really needed me then, but i am going to miss my days off work and going back to the rat race. needless to say i didnt win the lottery last weekend and i am not in argentina as i write this. in fact nobody won the lottery last weekend and its £117m this friday. i will buy a ticket.
was talking to a friend of mine about what he would do if we did win the lottery, and he said he would get a dedicated leased line to his house and subscription to megaupload and rapidshare and download lots of music and films. the idea of buying media was not even something he could contemplate but spending thousands of pounds per month on an internet connection seemed logical. it amused me.
speaking of media from internet connections, i watched this the other night and its a very good film. christian bale is wicked in it. it was a lovely high definition bluray rip as well. got to love that interweb.
today i have mostly been listening to at the drive in - one armed scissor. they played it on the radio the other night and its the first time i have heard it played in years. this is a performance on the jools holland show and whilst i do like his tv show, the audience seems to always full of what appear to be middle class media types who probably got tickets from friends who work at the bbc, sitting around at tables sipping beer and trying a little too hard to be cool, clapping and nodding their heads out of time to the music. i refer to these people as cunts. that might be a lot to extrapolate from looking at people but its what it seems to me. i think they probably all just like listening to razorlight and coldplay and anything else popular that radio1 and the NME tells them. would have loved to see their faces whilst they watched this performance and tried to avoid being hit by a stray piece of furniture or a flayling limb.
i had that short telephone interview a couple of weeks back which was pretty straightforward, and after it they said they would call me in for a proper face to face interview. i didnt hear anything from them for the last couple of weeks but yesterday i got a call from the agent and he said the bank wanted to offer me a contract.
its all very strange. they have never met me, they have spoken to me on the phone for 20mins and now they want to hire me????. they have given me the vaguest outline of what the job will be. weird thing is that they are paying quite a bit of money, but it all feels so amateurish despite them being a big bank.
i accepted it because its not like i have any other solid offers at the moment. will just have to see how it goes. i think the next couple of weeks will be spent on the usual security checks they make you go through whenever you start work at a bank. in the meantime there are a couple of other good roles i am up for and will blow this out if any of them come through. this situation is a carbon copy of what happened here. its like groundhog day and now is also the time things might come rushing through. have always said that i would allow myself to be unproffessional once and walk out in mid-contract if something better came up. i still have my unproffessional token. what are the chances i will have to use it in a few weeks.
had football on wednesday night and it was fantastic as always. i think i would be the happiest person in the world if i could play football everyday, although my knee is a bit sore at the moment so its probably a good thing i have a week of rest before we play again.
not much else happening aside from the usual shit. someone i know died on tuesday night in a motorcycle accident. he wasnt a friend of mine, just someone who was a friend of a friend. i have always fancied getting a nice bike but they are just too dangerous. when i was 4 my dad had a motorcycle accident and broke his leg, and was in hospital for 6 weeks. he hasnt been on a bike since. if i lived somewhere not so congested and was close to quiet rural roads it might be worth getting a nice ducati or honda for leisure riding.
above is a picture of my lovely new flat. have been taking friends round to see it this week. sometimes when you buy something, you then see something a while later that is better. it was like that when i bought my bicycle, but it hasnt happened with my flat. it was a ton of money but no regrets and havent seen anything i like better.
its a £90m lottery jackpot tonight so i bought a ticket. actually i bought 2 tickets so that if the first one was not the winning numbers i have a backup and that one will definitely win. i have picked out a nice house for about £3.25m and a nice nissan gt-r. will also be off to argentina for a week or two as well.
today i have mostly been listening to the cure - trust
the start of a new week . the estate agent has been showing my flat to a few people already and he thinks it will get rented out soon. he is giving me the impression its busy and as long as its done in the next month or so, i will be happy otherwise it just consting me money in mortgage and bills and i still aint landed a new contract.
applied for a few more contracts so we shall see how that goes. lots of things on the go.
am training as usual and as the forecast is dry this week i will cycle to the gym and make sure i get a couple of good sessions in before the weekend. we have football on wednesday night instead of the usual thursday as its st patricks day and i play with a bunch of irishmen and they have some drinking to do that night.
a while back i wrote a post about trust fund kids and i heard something interesting a couple of days. one of my friends who has got most of her money from inheritences and not from actually working or being good at her job, and is friends with another girl i know whose dad is really rich. i mean silly rich in the hundreds of millions. my friend is always chasing after her not because she is a nice person and enjoys her company but because they have shitloads of money and its the lifestyle she herself aspires to. its really quite shallow and obvious if you were to see it. me, i dont really give her the time of day to the girl with the hundreds of millions because she is dull when i used to see her and has nothing to say and is not remotely interesting. i wont hang with someone just because they are rich because it doesnt impress me.
anyways there was a story in the newspaper about that girls dad and how he had been criticised by US lawmakers for asset stripping a company he had bought and basically looting the company for millions including money that should have gone on an environmental cleanup caused by the company he owned. also, despite being a british citizen he is based offshore for tax purposes, and yet it came out that he had given millions to a political party a couple of years ago. he is also mixed up with payments to various 'associates' in government and in the establishment and its all looking very shady, as one MP described him.
i forwarded the story to my friend who is trying to best mates with the girl whose family the scandal is about, and she kind of dismissed it and papered over it. now i am not one to judge but i think i will at this point. i just thought it was interesting how people who measure their life by money are so willing to ignore any other details about someone else if they also have lots of money. also she is very judgemental and can be quite patronising and talkdown to people and yet if anyone should be looked down upon it should be her friend and her family who have made millions from making payments to politicians, looting companies and other shady things, which i shall not go into, and yet the fact they have money makes them blind to it. the way i was raised, my family would be embarressed if i was ever famous for doing something illegal or crooked. maybe we have a different set of values, and its something that you cant put a price on.
anyways, i know i can be very snobbish about music. i know everyone has an opinion but it doesnt mean i am not bemused by people who like razorlight or the libertines or spaced out minimalist electro or 50 cent or jazz or lilly alan or calvin harris or hotchip or a tonne of other stuff which is just shite.
anyways after all that, today i have mostly been listening to swingfly - singing that melody. mindless pop music from sweden i think. they played it at my gym and i thought it was a good tune. lyrically its not going to have robert smith worried but urbane pop does have it place and this is one of the better tunes in a world of lady gaga and the black eyed peas. there are 2 versions of the video. the recent official record company version which looks like it was filmed on the set of a childrens tv show, and this one which has strippers in it and the singer with the red hair looks fitter. it was a no brainer.
i finally got the keys to my new flat today. in an ironic twist, santander, who are useless and who i had to constantly chase up to do anything, called me to ask me if i might be interested in insurance. i told them to fuck off, in not so many words. will post some pics tomorrow when i go there in daylight.
had football last night and it was very good as usual. slept like a baby when i got back home afterwards as well. was lazy and didnt go to the gym during the week. it looked a bit showery and i didnt want to get caught cyclying in the rain and also i wanted to apply to as many contracts as i could and to be home to call agents. had a few calls and we shall see how it goes.
today i have mostly been listening to the cure - six different ways. no video but its not needed. lovely stuff.
well we have exchanged contracts on the flat and it all looks like it going to be done by the end of this week or the beginning of next week. everything is signed and all i am waiting for is for an instruction from my solicitor to transfer the balance of the deposit, which he will then pass on and we are done. thank christ. its been such a long process. will have to rent the place out initially but depending on how things go i would like to get in there in the next year or so because its a lovely place.
have been applying for contracts but things are very quiet. its been the strangest start to a new year ever. i have known nothing like it . am hoping that now that all the banks have been roporting results over the last month or so, and paying out their bonuses, they can now concentrate on planning for the rest of the year and that might mean they might need to take on some people with particular skills. maybe. anyway its been really nice having the time off. am sleeping like a baby and feel thoroughly rested.
i got into a bit of a debate with a guy i used to work with who has views very similar to the chancer, in that he is a bit right wing and he also happens to be south african. he posted on his facebook a story about how disgraceful it was of a youth leader of the ANC saying he would nationalise 60% of the mines of the anglo american mining corporation. it was a bit of a red rag to bull with me, as i know a little bit about the history of anglo american and how they made billions from apartheid and slavery in south africa. anyways the guy didnt like it when i said it was a good idea and that the poor people of SA might benifit from the resources of south africa as opposed to a foreign company based in london. he disagreed and took the side of the billion dollar multinational corporation that made its money during apartheid and slavery. very poor showing.
usually i dont get involved with shit like this but when someone is so blatantly talking shit i cant resist it and its just unfortunate for him that i have been reading a few books about latin america and africa recently. also thought it was a little cheap for saying i couldnt comment on a company operating in south africa becuase i had never been to SA. he posted a comment about protests in egypt and he hasnt been there as well as posting about zimbabwe and he hasnt been there either. it means i shouldnt have an opinion on iraq or chile or egypt or china or vietnam or venezuela or the 150 countries in the world i havent been to. what he should be doing is disecting my argument and stating facts. amateur.
today i have mostly been listening to wolf gang - dancing with the devil. new fresh music.
so did anything happen this week like i thought it would?. er...no. i forgot i was dealing with a bank called santander, who couldnt organise a bum rape in a barracks. they have been uttlery useless and its been such a pain, spending the week chasing them up. a single fax that was supposed to be sent on monday eventually got sent today in the afternoon, too late for us to close the deal on the flat before the weekend so it goes on for another week.
its really reminded me of working in banks and the types of people that you get there. i shouldnt be surprised at santander because i have worked for some of the biggest japanese, german, american and british banks and there is that lack of common sense amongst a lot of the people that work there. no one takes responisibilty for anything and no one uses initiative or any creativity. people like mark zuckerberg or sergey brin or bill gates or steve jobs wouldn't survive 2 minutes in a bank not because they aren't clever enough but because they are too clever and have too many ideas. banks are for people like the chancer or nobhead
it doesnt reflect too well on me working in banks, but its the most lucrative thing i can do with my limited intelligence. i move around in a desperate attempt to not carry the stigma of a particular organisation and to not become to institutionalised into their way of (not) thinking.
speaking of banks, the place i had a technical telephone interview with, and that said i aced it and would call me back to arrange a second face to face interview, have not been in touch. another bunch of muppets. i got a call about a short 3 month contract this afternoon but i blew it out. money wasnt quite right and i didnt want to lock myself into something that was lame. i have only really been on the market for 6 weeks and thats not long enough to start panicing and start taking anything.
had football last night and it was good. it been very cold and as much as i love cycling i just couldnt bring myself to cycle to the gym since last sunday. its too fucking cold. will force myself to go tomorrow and sunday so hopefully i am free on monday to deal with the idiots at my bank.
today i have mostly been listening to birdy - skinny love.
