Fingers Crossed

As of tomorrow, I'll have been unemployed for one month.

One month and just a single interview in all that time.

It's not quite what I expected. I apply for IT management or team leader jobs all over the place and my CV (which everyone says is excellent) doesn't even get me to the interview stage. It feels as if there are so many people out-qualifying or out-specialising me out there that I can't even get my foot in the proverbial door.

Giving up programming six years ago and hoping that my career would progress in another direction at my last job was the worst career move I've ever made.

It's hard not to feel down but I am keeping myself busy, learning to program all over again (which is more exciting than I thought it'd be) and of course sorting out lots of wedding stuff.

Something now gets booked or arranged for the wedding every few days now.
It's project management at its finest and I'm actually enjoying sorting everything out.

Photographer sorted, DJ sorted, transport sorted.... Oh, just another 50 things left to sort now!

Plus in between all this stuff I'm actually keeping fit by doing regular runs on my old treadmill and as of Monday, using the Wii-Fit to strain all those muscles that I didn't even know that I had through the wonder that is Yoga!

See? Life does go on, though I do hope that my holiday doesn't go on for too much longer.

Fingers crossed...

In Suspended Animation

Hello peeps,
I've been unemployed for almost a working week now with no luck even getting an interview as yet. I'm wondering if it'll be like the last time when I suddenly got a load of interviews out of the blue in a huge flurry and got offered three jobs on the same day?! I can only hope.

Although the last week has actually gone very fast and I'm not sure at all where it all went?

The wedding countdown still ticks on. The other half is on the verge of getting a wedding dress (4 months before the wedding is actually cutting it very fine apparently) and I'm sorting out the formal wear for myself and the best men along with finding somewhere romantic to honeymoon that isn't in the middle of its monsoon or hurricane season.

Once again, I've been told that someone may be interested in buying my flat but to be honest I'm not so fussed if it falls through as until I get a job I'd be better off staying put. However if an offer is made I'm afraid with the impending predictions of house price falls, I may not be able to refuse.

But then I'll cross that bridge when I need to.

Free?

So, my last day of current employment was on Monday.

Today was technically my first day of 'freedom.'

I plan on keeping myself busy looking for a new job but today I gave myself the day off. It was the RAF's 90th anniversary today so there was to be a fly past over the Thames that I headed down to see.

It was just the Red Arrows and some Typhoons and it was over in a flash. Impressive but it caught a lot of people (me included) off guard. I was on Westminster bridge in a spot I'd acquired thirty minutes previously. We waited expectantly, looking over the horizon for them to appear but they didn't come along the river as we all expected but cut across the bend and appeared from behind the old city town hall and flew right to left above us.

Luckily my camera was at the ready and I managed 2 shots before they were gone, though both required editing to salvage what were essentially rushed shots.

I rushed off afterwards to meet the other half for lunch but noticed that most of the people on the bridge were staying; expecting more, so I reckon after a while, there were probably a few disappointed people out there. They'll probably have to wait for the 100th anniversary for the full monty.

Lunch was a nice two meal special jobbie at the local Wetherspoons establishment which I then walked off through Mayfair popping into the church in which we plan to get married for a bit of peace and quiet and then onto the cinema for a bit of light entertainment-based escapism in the form of 10,000 BC.

Finally, thanks to a nice bit of retail therapy over the weekend, I'd also acquired an iPod Touch, the Wi-Fi abilities of which I managed to give a good test around London after having signed up to a provider called The Cloud.

Essentially, some places with advertised hotspots didn't work, whilst those in all McDonalds I passed did. I managed to review a proof of our wedding invitations, forward to the other half and approve it with the suppliers alternatively from Westminster Bridge (where a free provider allowed me 5 mins of access if I watched an advert for 30 secs), a park bench in Mayfair (some random connection) and from outside McD's on Shaftesbury Avenue.

It's amazing how Wi-Fi is omni-present though the number of unsecured connections is just silly!