Demolition man

Over the last few weeks I've done a fair amount of gardening work. After taking the tree down which I wrote about last time, I cleared a load of brambles and other spikey things from the back, went down to one mates allotment and helped her weed out the vegetable patches and wheelbarrow a load of compost, and on saturday last I went down to another mates allotment, very near to Old Trafford (hawk, spit!) to help him destroy the dodgy looking ramshackle glasshouse there. It was a cool bit of demolition work, we had a crowbar each and managed to take down the double-glazed windows that had been used for a roof on the glasshouse. I only banged my head once, and my friend, lets call him Dr Leverenti, escaped with just a nail gash on the top of his head.

But mostly I'm afraid I've been lost in the world of Assassin's Guild Brotherhood on the Xbox. At first I thought it was just a Tomb Raider clone with the fancy dressing of being set in Medieval Rome, but I've found it highly compulsive. Its very violent, and graphically so. When I was a fair bit younger I played an awful lot of computer games, in many ways they are a waste of time but I do find playing them quite relaxing. Even when you're running and jumping over the tops of buildings and assassinating people by sneeking up behind them and breaking their necks.

And I can do it guilt-free because I've finally got a job sorted out. I start next week so this is my last week of freedom. I'll be working for a medical communications company in Knutsford, mostly writing up clinical trials reports for drugs companies. It seems to be a thing that a lot of ex-science researchers get into. When you realise that you're not going to be a PI (Principle Investigator i.e., the head of a lab), the only way is out of academia really. With the new job I'll still be able to use a lot of my science knowledge and be able to focus just on writing. I was never the most practical person in the lab anyway.

So I'm looking forward to being out of the house, earning some money and basically being useful again. I don't know how I'm going to fit the yoga into it all, as I'll have to leave the house about 6.30 in the morning to get down to Stockport to catch the train, and probably won't get in until about 7 at night. So unless I get up at 4am or something I'm just going to have to go to a class.

The next couple of blogs should be awesome tales of office life, I bet you can't wait!

The joys of job hunting

Third week back in the UK. Now the festive (fetid?) madness has dissolved I have no excuse in not looking for work. At the moment life is ok. I am staying at a friends house, a bit overcrowded but otherwise everything is fine. Living in Stockport now, a new area to support. Still travelling! I have now managed to live at just about every possible point along the river Mersey - from Wallasey and Liverpool, Runcorn, Widnes, Warrington, Didsbury and now at the source.

Daily routine consists of getting up when my girlfriend goes to work (about 6.30AM), doing some meditation and then yoga. Breakfast while checking emails and then job searching, CV and application writing all morning. In the afternoon I've been doing pilates and trying to learn Italian (for my next trip - heheh) and then cooking up something for when my other half gets home. Ah, domestic bliss.

Today I have the joys of the jobcentre - I've had one paranoid call of them already this morning. Apparently I was supposed to put down on their form that I had spent a year abroad - although I considered it a holiday, they don't. Also they seem suspicious that I am staying with friends, as if we are all married or something. (Is marriage just a way for the state to package people off into units of dependency?)

So to summarise: Gissa job!