Week 9 and Week 3 .. so to say completed.

Hi there all. Been a while, but things have been.. busy.

Yup, week 3 of work is almost complete and as it falls nicely with the end of the month I spoke to the recruitment agency and they're kewl with paying me for the last 3 weeks' work, rather than their normal 4 week policy. Which is kewl cause the consultancy firm that I'm working through require my timesheets on the latest by Tuesday, for payment of my salary ( after all of the red tape), only at the end of April. Painful, but luckily it'll cover most of everything :)...

Just a thank you to all the people (both in UK and RSA) that's supporting me and Grieks. We owe you all a great big thank you, and where applicable a nice big hug, for those in the UK (and it might just be by inviting us over for this and that, and going with us to the St. Patty's parade), we'll make it up to you hopefully soon... to those in SA (and here too, even if it's just by chatting to us, keeping us up to date, or helping financially) we'll be making the rounds at the end of the year and hopefully treating you all to say thank you for everything :)

Hope you all are doing well, where you might find yourself in the world. And maybe soon I'll post some pics (got the ideal oppurtunity coming up on Saturday : International Dive Show UK )... who knows hey ? :)

10-4
Z

Shoutout..

This one goes out to the lady in my life that's gone through a lot of trouble and tough times to be with me : My kitty kat ( Grea ).

There are so many things I am thankful for that I don't know where to start, so this might be a little disjionted to other people.

Last year Grieks did her honours degree in Marine Biology (B.Sc Hons), when moving into the house that I was sharing with a few of her old residence mates. Having to move in with 4 guys who were..to say the least a handful, particularly in what is considered by almost all people I've talked to as the most stressful year in a B.Sc academic career was a big step. Throw into that pot now the added stress of Zodan thinking he could shift the world and accordingly taking almost all the private time we had into projects and things (I did a lot of work.. really long hours).. then having to handle all the worries that came with the idea of coming to London and then supporting me every step of the way from SA to here and every day while we've been here, all of that while graduating with great results and supporting us the whole way takes one of the most special ladies in this world.

I don't know how to say thank you, and every day I try and do something special for her, all be it in a the smallest way, cause through being just herself she's made me into the luckiest guy on this planet, for that my kitty kat I want to thank you :oxxxxx

Thank you for being just yourself, in being that you make me smile, even when you are just laying sleeping... Lief vir jou my sexy kitty kat.

Jou Z :)

Week 7 and 1...

Yip.. had to take a look at the Win caldendar to figure that one out, but we have been in the UK for almost 7 weeks now (scary thought) and I've finished week 1 of work, which to me is always a nice thing to report..

Work week 1 : An interesting blend of emotions ( as my previous two posts describe in their own way and I'm not going into it again ). Been up and down about it, but mostly it's the normal new job scenario of new things to learn.

Friday was somewhat classic though. My boss and the other developer normally go down to the pub on a Friday afternoon around lunch time, sit down and have a hearty chat about things and I was invited by the developer to join them, my response being that I'm definitely coming with, but won't be drinking because at this time I can't afford it, cash struck for a while (long story, only really get paid for the 1st 3weeks of work at the end of Apr, it's a long story.. believe me).. to which he told me to "behave".. didn't know what that meant until we got to the pub.. literally just down the street. My boss had told me it's not the closest one (while we were walking down the street), which gave me a bit of an insight into what the Brits here consider to be close... as it turns out it's about 3 blocks away from work.. I mean really.. that's not far, considering that I have a solid 10 minute walk to work from Southwark Station ( that one just for you Oct :).

I consider far to be a little more even than what I used to have to walk to get to work from Salt River station to Roedebloem Road (and even that was still a nice walk).

I digress. So ya, went to the pub, walked in, my boss asked me what I wanted and being that the only familiar name I saw on the taps was Amstel on one of them I asked for a pint of the regular (Sorry Craig, no Windhoek over here.. I wish). Boss bought me a round and we sat down to talk about all the green stuff in the pub (St. Patty's day.. officially).

It was all good fun, but 3 pints later (no lunch I must remind all the readers.. of which there is like 4 or so.. maybe :) and about an hour or two later we were heading back to the office to wait for the 17:00 sign off and goodbye from everyone for the weekend to start. Got there, took the 3 bags of crips (SA translation : Lays chips) and munched on that, hoping to counter some beverage effects.

Other than that it's been a quiet weekend. Next weekend there are a few things in the planning, but until then it is going to be a week of hard work to get up to scratch with all the systems I would like to know by around Wednesday, after which I'll hopefully be able to get some learning done on the books I bought when I got here.. some .NET.. hopefully.. soon..

Haven't heard from the G-unit lately, got text from him asking if I would be character witness for him, so he's probably already in some trouble :p Hope to see an update on his blog some time soon though.

Well, got things to learn.Hope ya'll have fun, where ever you might be.
Z

Personal wants...

Howdy again. You might think, sheesh, two posts in one day.. but if I have my way this will be a short one.. heck, who am I trying to kid, I never write short posts.

Actually, the previous post puts it really well : I want to be making a positive contribution already. I think this is the only time that I don't like having to learn something new, when it takes longer to learn something so that I can have a positive contribution to the working enviroment around me. I have always been striving to add good value to all things that I do, and to all the people that interact in my life and those who I feel are really close to my heart.

It just is one of the big things that drives me in life, and when something that really pushes you forward so much doesn't get furfilled [typo galories :)] it all just seems a little.. hurtful I suppose.

My brother says I put to much pressure on myself to perform, and I suspect that he is most likely correct as well, asked my fellow developer today how long it took him to get to grips with the system that I'm learning, and from the answer I got he took a fair while to get to grips with it in totality, and he was a com-sci degree guy. So technically I shouldn't be so hard on my self, but I drive myself by being hard on myself.

You know what... it's going to be better in the morning, I'm going to hit the hay and start tomorrow nice and early.. for a change.

Greets to all.
Z

Something new

As most who have read a part of this blog has discovered, here has a lot more to do with what I think, feel and experience that gets put down here, no less today will be no different.

I'm currently at the office, it is lunch, and the rest of the team is out and about. Rob and Kieran (Irish guy who'll be taking tomorrow off because of St. Patrick's day) are somewhere I think in the building having a little sit down and meeting, most likely actually about me, and I think Paul is out somewhere else.

How do I feel ? At this moment in time ( and for most of the week that's been past), the sensation is that of drowning. I don't know the CMS (content management system) that ITV has bought and is paying support for, although I am working through the manual on how to handle it and have had a hands-on explination of it from Paul about how the crux of it works. To be brutally honest I'm not up to speed with server side JavaScript, but that's not really a problem as I know that it is very easy to actually pick up, and I have been able to do some coding in it while being here.

The overriding feeling over all of this is that feeling everyone gets in the 1st week of : I know my stuff, I know how to do what I used to do, but they do it differently here. I put down the 1st week as being one of those where I'd have to get use to how they do things here, how their CMS works and how I would then code inside of it. How's that going ? Not to badly, the more I read the more I feel comfy knowning I'll be able to do this. What has always bugged me is that feeling that I get that I want to know NOW how to do everything that I need to be able to do, and it just doesn't work that way... [I can see a lot of people thinking : "Duh! Zodan, that's life, you can't just expect to know how to ride a bike the 1st time you get on it and think.. well it's all about balance and leg work."].

Tend to think it's the persona in me that wishes to learn and over-achieve that is driving this feeling of "Come on man, get going in this, you aint stupid, you know you are a fairly bright spark.. go go go".

Think I'm going to read some more, although even doing that makes me edgy because I'm not much of a manual reader than I am a "go-fiddle-with-things and see how they break"-kind of person.

I want to get my hands in the code and get dirty.. quickly, cause I want to start to make a difference. I love getting instant gratification on being a positive influence ( stems from wanting everyone to like me, which over the years has gotten better, although I still know some places where I'm not in the favourites section of the little black book). I love learning, I just don't like that in my case it always feels as if I'm taking to long doing it and getting my mind around it all.

I leave you with on a positive thought : Change is a great teacher, embrace the teachings and life will only better for it :)

over and out for now.
Z

And so it happens.

Yip... it is affirmative. I have a job. Hurray !!!

The contracts and the agency will be going through the approval process tomorrow at the consultancy that I am running the limited company through that'll handle payments and the likes. I will also be briefed on how things will have to run from here on end. That'll happen tomorrow though, today.. I feel good :)

The lowdown : Went for the interview this morning, got there and learnt from my previous experience on last Friday ( still need to blog about it ), and spoke nicely and slowly. Rounding out my words (not like I used to do at Flatspin where I would normally just run through words and have no one understand me.

To be honest : I had a hunch that these guys were looking for someone with a lot more JavaScript capability, which I had used a lot on client side DHTML, and was a bit rusty on (ever since learning that they want me for the job I'm getting a lot of resources down here to hit the learning curve in the next few days). I had thought that the interview went ok, but they were interviewing another guy later today as well, and somehow I thought he might have had more experience than me. And so I got home thinking it was a kewl interview, had fun talking to the guys, but I was expecting the normal call of "Hi Hendrik, I'm sorry to say but they've opted with the other candidate." Which in all honesty I would have understood completely.

So.. come around 16:00 and I hadn't heard from the agent at all I gave her a call to find out if she had heard from the client.. nope.. but she would phone me as soon as she knew. Being that the interview stopped around 11:00 in the morn I wasn't to optimistic, could you blame me.

17:00, agent phones up and says they are really keen and want to know if I would join them for drinks on Friday (this was due to a quark in the interview, but I'll blog about that another time). I said I'll phone the agent back in a little, just needed some time to talk things through with Grea and make sure I was doing the right thing.. at the rate they are paying me, I am :)

So ya.. contracts tomorrow, drinks with the team on Friday and come Monday morning a really nice steep learning curve comes my way :) And to be honest, I can't wait, I've been waiting for a nice challenge in coding for a while, this (along with the fact that I am set on learning .NET in the next 6 months, all be it on my own time [ Grieks says she wants to learn with me.. who can ask for more in a girlfriend ? :) ],) will be a great time for both of us ahead.

Well.. off to bed.. I need some sleep after a good day.

L8r
Z

Belated Part III [Curri....cu...lum... what ? ]

It's way overdue, haven't blogged since I think 21 Feb of something in that order.Sorry to all the millions of fans.. wait.. hit count less 10, right, it's been overdue, live with it.

* I was phoned by the IT manager, asked if I wanted to come in for an interview.
* I replied in the positive, he told me 45 min SQL test, 45 min 1:1 interview, him and me.
* I said, excellent, where abouts ?
* He said : Soho, just off Oxford Street.
* I said no problem, could you email me a link to what your company does.
* He did. I had a look at the site, the salary looked decent. I was keen.
* Went for the interview. Got the test, forgot half of the little SQL I knew, had a great 1:1 interview. Spoke kewl and that's about it, they had another guy come in and he would phone me back.


The thing that now goes and throws a spanner in the works is this. I had that interview on the Wednesday, on the Thursday I had an interview with a consultancy firm. This however was not for employment, but for a different kind of matter. Limited companies.

Now those who are here and have done some homework ( I didn't, not enough anyways), will know what the Limited Company idea is.... a matter of taxes as such.. being that I still want to hopefully get a job in this country I think I'll leave that at that for the moment being.

I went to the consultancy, they got me interested in looking at the contract market and so Thursday started making life difficult, cause.. well.. let's just say that the permanent position wasn't looking so nice anymore. Especially with NI (National Insurance payments, different kind of tax.. )

The 1:1 interview guy was going to phone me back on Friday to let me know if it went ok or not and they wanted me to come back for a 2nd interview. To be honest, I was hoping he'd phone and go "Sorry Hendrik, but we've had a stronger candidate" Instead, he sent me an email, asking me if I would come in for a 2nd interview on Tuesday with him and the IT director.

This is where it goes pearshaped ( as if it wasn't already). I said yes, and here's why. I had basically had a quick interview at the consultancy, not really having a complete overview (they gave me the contract papers, which I took home to go and read, and I was still in the process, and was going to return to them on Monday with the papers).

So come Saturday I read through all the papers and the fine print (they call it fine print for a reason I realised here). And uhm. ya.. perm job.. not looking all that kewl at all now. So on Monday I get the complete haulover at the consultancy. I decide to take the risk, I've gone this far I might as well go all the way.. I had however, discussed all this with Grea, so there were no life altering decisions being made without her at the very least knowing and in most cases giving some great level headed advise about what might happen down the line.

So.. I email the guy of the permanent job, thanks but I have in the mean time received some information that shows that the contract market looks somewhat more interesting. (Or something close to that ? ). I was hoping.. really hoping.. he would email me back and say.. that's kewl, we understand thanks for your time and send me on my merry job hunting way.. uhhmm.. no. No even close.

The guy phones me up, asks me (very politely, he was ever the gentleman), why I might have changed my mind ? So now I know that most permanent positions and desirably filled by people who are going to stay a long while. First line of defense, run the 2 year-working-holilday-visa script. This basically puts it out that I am, by law since Feb 2004, only allowed to work a maximum of.. yup.. you guessed it.. 12 months on the 24 month stay that we are allowed in the UK.

Zodan thinks : "Zodan 1, Permanent job guy 0 ". Nope, he countered that one very elegantly with the "Offer him a work sponsor from the company after the 12 months"- script. Which really hit home hard, as in very very hard. I have to mention here that he did also (during the interview) very nicely throw in the 28 days of holiday on the job perk, excluding the time that the company closes (unofficially) between xmas and new years. Needless to say, this was also hovering in my head at the time.

I had to revert back to saying that I am truly sorry, but would like to use the oppurtunity to check out the contract market and basically burn myself in doing so.

He, yet again very politely, said that he was sorry to hear this as he thought I would have worked very well in their organisation. I wished him well with the other candidate for the job and that I would be one of the 1st people to subscribe to the business idea that they were developing. Which I'm sure I will, at least I think I will.

So ya. That in a nutshell has started the long haul towards getting a contract job. I think I'll fill in the rest of the details at a later time ( although that so seldomely [typo I think] happens that I might be lying here).

I've been at the contract search for two weeks now, of which the 1st week was basically getting my CV up to standard for the UK market, way different than how things are done in SA, and then getting up to speed to how to actually apply for jobs. Things I have learnt in the last 2 weeks I believe will help me in huge leaps and bounds when we go back to SA, in working the market and knowing how to get that ideal job that we are all so looking for.

I want to post more at this time, but it's getting late, and I have interview no. 4 tomorrow morning with a huge company about 5 minutes walk away from Waterloo station, I want to land this one, not as badly as the one I had on Friday morning in Bechtel House in Hammersmith (would have been the ideal job, but more on that next time), but this would be a great financial boost if I can land tomorrow's job.

Hold thumbs people, interview = 10:30 UK time, for those in SA, that's still 12:30 that side.
Will tell you tomorrow who it was with :)

Later
Z