One way to the UK?

Well I realised a lot of things have happened in the last four weeks and I’ve been so wrapped up that I haven’t blogged about any of them; time for an update.Okay so the whole weekend away in Italy I contemplated a new job offer from Healthcare for London (NHS London) and had to weigh up something new against staying with my lovely Logistics Olympics team, and the ‘Olympic Games’.. one had little work and average pay, and the other had promise of more work and incentive of more pay… anyhow I finally decided to take the Healthcare for London job! Dave Peacop, my CLM Logistics boss was none too please, he scowled at me for a few days every time he walked past, and I had some of the girls calling me traitor! And the rest really worried about what would happen when I leave etc. It was really sweet actually to see how valued I actually was, despite the occasional lack of work! It was a big decision too, because Dave and Dion and I had been discussing new work for me to move onto, including setting up and running an interim Delivery Management System and probably moving into the Comms/Security team to deal with site visits and that sort of jazz, which would have been exciting and kept me busy, except unfortunately the pay would have stayed the same.. and seeing as I’m young and love travelling and live with no money (already) in London, the money in the end did tip the scales on my choices.So the new job happened, and then I found out about Snoopy passing away, and then I had my birthday and had to integrate myself to my new job, as well as doing my old job for a week… yup kind of went between the two! It was quite a busy time. I went out for some farewell drinks with various workmates on a Wednesday night (6 Feb I think) and then I had also interviewed (with Janine Heyns from HR) and found a replacement for my job in CLM Logistics that day, so wasn’t feeling to bad. Anyhow yeah it was quite sad knowing I was leaving the Olympics team. I was quite surprised on Monday afternoon, my final time on-site, that the team from there, as well as the girls (Cath and Holly) from Churchill Place came over and we had a speech and present-giving and hugs! Kerry looked like she was about to cry, and all the men in the team were so sweet with their sentiments of appreciation etc that I really felt quite guilty about leaving. I got some gorgeous presents – obviously present buying was left up to the 3 girls in the team! haha A lovely brown handbag (with a name; Joanna), a gorgeous red bangle, a similar bangle-material pony tail cover, a wide brown leather belt and a delicious box of champagne truffles! The card was also very cute (organgutan!) and everyone wrote really nice things inside – so definitely a group I hope to keep in touch with. I do need to organise drinks for first or second week of March, as some of my closest mates weren’t around in my last week (annual holidays). 

So umm yeah, I started my new job and it’s similar to working in DHCS back in Australia, and I feel quite ‘at home’ in the Health sector which is nice – hopefully I won’t get bored easily though (oh no!). But yeah, settled in really well and I think I shan’t have any problems with things to come there.I also started a new gym programme, so doing some proper work now rather than just visiting the gym! It all started because I was in gym and asked one of the girlies for a lower-back exercise (if you know me, you know my lower back issues) and she had no idea, but sent over a trainer when he got into work – great guy. So yeah anyway now I have a 3 day programme, and I also swim (cardio) on Tuesday nights, and then Emma (new colleague, an Aussie!) and I go to a different gym on Thursdays for ‘body balance’ during our lunch break… and then I go Sat or Sunday too to do a catch-up if I missed a ‘programme day’ during the week, or jst to work on more cardio! So 5 or 6 sessions a week. I might as well do something useful with the bad weather, and considering my monthly membership is ‘pre paid’ it’s pretty much a ‘free activity’ for me to go to so often so I’m quite happy with that!  I still think my life over here is lacking the justification it had/has at home, with voluntary work and that sort of thing. I got sent some information this week about doing volunteer work in Thailand which sounds fantastic! I just need to decide WHEN to pay to go and do it, but they sent me the information on conservation, housing and animal care of elephants all in one village! Sounds great hey. Well I think that’s about it… not much happening because I have NO money this month as lately I had Christmas in hungary and Birthday in Italy, and bought two flights to Ireland for Paddy’s day and Easter, and whatever else (tube tickets, gym membership, rent) and due to being paid monthly, for this month I only get a bit from Olympics as I only worked 11 days, and for NHS I’ve missed their monthly pay cut-off day (argh) so we’re going to try get a special payment otherwise I’ll be on the street (haha kidding, it’s never that bad!). Mara and I are going to free theatre tomorrow night and during the day we’re going to go visit some of the free museums!Oh one more thing, lately we’ve seen quite a few theatre shows which have been great to varying degrees! We saw STOMP when Uncle Andy was here, and it was great and so creative (although I thought it would be LOUDER!), then Mara got tickets for Ring Around the Moon and we had 4 tickets so Mara brought Imo (the girl she was caring for) and I took along Naomi from Olympics. The play was such high class, a really really impressive one and so funny and enjoyable! The next week we got (more) free tickets, so Mara and I went and saw The Magic Flute. Now that was interesting – it was South African Opera company, and instead of doing Mozart’s classic on violins and in italian, it was sung in english and the instruments were merimbulas and meraccas and timpani drums! It was ok but I’m glad we had free tickets! So that brings us up to tomorrow nights show… oh and also through Dion, my old Olympics colleague, his lovely girlfriend Amy works at Heineken, who sponsor the Champions League, and so Mara and I got tickets for the Chelsea V Olympiakos game on 5 March!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 at 5:56 pm and is filed under 1. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.