Wednesday, October 24, 2007

First Interview

Today was my first interview had a long trip down the district line all the way to Hammersmith.
It seemed to go ok


but they gave the job to someone else

the agent thinks it might be some one cheaper

Monday, October 22, 2007

English Sporting Weekend

Saturday, the English rugby team, got through to the final, amazing. It was a bit of a long shot but we dared to hope. A painful match to watch (watching England nearly always is) and a bit sad in the end.

Still there was Lewis on Sunday to win the Grand Prix and cheers us all up.

Oh dear perhaps next time.

I think I'll stop watching sport for a bit, not that I watch much before.
Still in both cases an amazing achievement to get as far as they did.

Friday, October 19, 2007

CV go live!

Finally managed to get my life on to two sides of A4 and ask my Mum to read through it to check it made some sense.

Posted it up on to Jobserve.com on Thursday and got about 20 email straight away
and the phone has been really busy for the first couple of hours.

One agent said said it had been download 10 times already and then was in a couple of hours. I looking for a contract in Central London around the 300 a day mark, to start with. I figure that about right for 12 years experience in IT.

So fingers crossed and I had better start revising for any technical tests I may be asked to do.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Complaint Letter

Dear Lastminute.com

I wish to complaint about my recent holiday to Rhodes as booked through your web site (I reported my complaints to the local rep on 8.10.7). I wanted a quiet, warm, stress free holiday to recover from an operation I’ve just had. I wasn’t after much, a nice room, some nice food, a swimming pool and a gym to help regain my fitness.

I paid 600 pounds for this holiday and I don’t feel I got my moneys worth by a long stretch, In fact I feel I have been miss-sold too. The holiday was advertised as a ‘dreamlike Deluxe 5 star hotel’ however the room was very basic needed and multiple maintenance work was needed to be done on it, in the first case just to make the room safe.

The holiday was rated as 5 stars and this definitely wasn’t. You do point out on some of your other holidays that standards are a bit different in some countries, but that is clearly stated in the advert and was not in this case. I don’t expect any 5 star accommodation include two single beds, of slightly different heights, push together to make a double when the room is clearly designed for a double bed (the double bed head board was nailed to the wall). Supplied in the room was a single hand towel and a single medium sized towel (not even bath towel size), 2 rolls of toilet paper and nothing else. Nothing to make it a 5 star experience at all not even a bar of soap. When advertising a 5 star experience you think of such things as mini bar, a kettle for tea making, a range of TV and radio channels, furniture that isn’t worn and shabby, a room which doesn’t need things fixing and perhaps even some toiletries.

Where I would agree the all-inclusive part of the package was good, the main lobby and the swimming pools were fine; but practically nothing else was of even a moderate standard. The Fitness Centre and Sauna was a shabby little basement room with a nearly unusable multi-gym and no sign of the sauna at all. The advertised Scuba diving lessons and hire were non-existent.

The room was in such bad repair, ignoring the minor faults, I had to call out maintenance 4 times. First time was to fix the high cupboard door that was dangerously hanging off making entering the room unsafe. Then it was twice to try and make the hot water work. Finally once more to repair the patio door which fell off its hinges.

Room facilities were not as advertised or perhaps only the barest minimum to cover the legal definition. The ‘Satellite TV with international channels/ music radio’ was 1 English TV channel only, BBC World, and that was only after I had retuned the TV to get it. No radio channels that I could find.

You advert specifically lists what is not included in the holiday and you didn’t mention that the In-flight meals were not included as you do on some of your other holidays – on the way out as I wasn’t warned and so I was pretty hungry after 14 hour journey there. And on the way home, 9 hours stuck with Thomas Cook only a single drink and sandwich at the airport and nothing on the plane during the appalling journey home.

All these problems left me much more stressed and tired than before I left and I now feel I would not want to wish your organisation on my worst enemy.

Last Physio

Now the insurance money has just about run out (the day after this visit), I went to see my physio for the last time and get a list of stuff to work on in the future.

He said my goal should be to do 20 one leg 'squats' with weights either in the hand or perhaps a rucksack. He also said I could join a gym and use my bike again.

At the gym I want to focus on the leg press and leg curl and he said my skiing trip in March is a good target to work towards.

The leg is still shaking and I need to keep up with the stretches the goal of the 20 repeats is a still quite a long way off. I can start kneeling down and siting back on to my heals (that's really painful at the moment!).


In the future I should always include the stretches the balancing and one leg squats in an gym routine from now on to try and keep the level of use up.

Basically his message was build up the muscles and good luck.

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Off on Holiday

its raining here
is not raining in Rhodes
so I'm packed and I'm off for a week in the warm tonight.