I’m now in a company apartment/flat; Not 100% on how long I can stay here, but I’m hoping that it’s long enough to see out the next week (my first week of work – I start on Monday) and the weekend without needing to hunt for a place. It’d be nice to be able to concentrate on the job for that first week, then just take it easy for the weekend to, as it were, recover from the first working week in almost two years.

And then find a place to move to, because I doubt they’re going to want me living here too long.

I have the place to myself at the moment, though there is another bedroom, so someone else could turn up at some point.
They’ve said they’ll warn me, so that there aren’t any incidents of “Co-worker or REALLY confident burglar?”.

I’ve taken some pictures of the place, but … I’m a bit iffy about posting them, seeing as it’s neither my place nor a place I’m renting, so I won’t.

A cursory glance at rental agents windows suggests that ‘furnished’ isn’t a thing here, or at least not a big thing, so I’m most likely looking for a room in an existing place, or some form of private rental/serviced apartment deal.
History has shown that, left to my own devices, I’m not likely to buy furniture beyond the bare minimum, and I don’t actually want to accumulate more stuff; Not if I’m renting.

A couple of weeks have gone by since The Interview, and … they’ve been sometimes busy, sometimes relaxing, sometimes fun, in one instance gutwrenchingly horrible, and very occasionally productive.

After the initial OhMyGodOhMyGod of the job offer, and some shenaniganry involving getting the contract printed so that I could sign it, I had a couple of weeks to fill before actually starting the job.

The plan was to go to Lon-Don to make some wardrobe changes; While the new job doesn’t have a dress code, I decided that my backpacker attire could do with a bit of a spruce-up, as it were. Or at least a change from the same six t-shirts I’ve been wearing for the past year.
That bit of the plan went fine.

Stayed at the Barmy Badger again; Even got my old room for most of it, though I had to move to the top floor when I extended my stay for a few days. (I got lucky, there had been a cancellation. Otherwise I would have had to find somewhere else to go)

There was a snoring issue, in that the guy in the lower bunk, directly under me for the first night (I moved to the other lower bunk once someone left), was the loudest snorer I’ve ever heard.
Even when I was as far away as it’s possible to get in that room, with no direct path between me and him, he was still so loud that I used the rain-noise app on my phone and some earbuds to drown him out in order to get to sleep.

Not a lot had changed at the Badger; One of the long-term folks (a French guy who’d been there almost three years) had moved, and a new one (a USAian art history student who’d studied in Paris and was lining up a Masters with one of the big art auction houses) had come in.

There were entertaining times at the Badger, most memorable a discussion of how to define when you’ve visited a city/country, and when you’ve just passed through it.
The standard used by one of the longtermers was that he had to spend the night. Didn’t have to sleep, but he needed to have a place where sleep could happen if he wanted to; Somewhere to stay overnight.
Airports didn’t count, even airport hotels, because even if you leave air-side, it’s still a bloody transit area to and from a place, and not the place itself. Dubai International is very nice if you like the Moria-with-Terrazzo look, but DXB is not Dubai, LHR is not London, and WRE is definitely not Whangarei.
We couldn’t decide whether Scotland, England, and Wales counted as individual countries, though the feeling was that they probably should.

Took a few trips, but I’ve got a week’s worth of work-type clothing that isn’t;

1. Patched with inexpert stitching done in a hostel kitchen
2. A Gen Con t-shirt
3. Emblazoned with a geek-related print of some kind
4. From 2006

Also managed to take a day to go and visit Chris in Essex, and to play some boardgames.

It was a fun visit.

The second bit was to go and visit Oxford, on the grounds that it’s roughly as far by train from Aylesbury as London is, but in the other direction, and I’ve not been there yet, so tourism could happen.
Sadly, it turns out that I should have booked earlier. The hostels were either booked or dire, and the hotels monstrously expensive, awful, or miles out.

Such is life – It’s only an hour and a bit from Aylesbury to Oxford, so there’s an easy day trip there.
Or a weekend away, once I get myself sorted here.

With Oxford off the table, and after receiving some unpleasant personal news I’m not going to discuss, I decided to go to Aylesbury early, get some of the work paperwork sorted, and try to relax into the town.
Naturally, the first thing I did upon arrival was to buy a couple of books.

I maintain that I only had to buy them because I’d left my portable battery charger in the bags I stashed at the hotel, and you can’t expect me to have lunch without something to read or listen to.

Something that came up over the course of the interview process is that UK employers actually want to see qualifications; As in, the certificate. Nobody else ever cared.
This is a bit of a problem, because said certificates aren’t with me. They’re in a storage unit on the other side of the world, probably in this box;

As a complicating factor, I’d also forgotten the number of the storage unit.
On the positive side, the University has an online Graduate Database, and I’m listed there, so hopefully that’ll do.

I’m taking a diversion from my Song Title As Post Name theme; This one’s a lyric which seemed appropriate.

More photos, this time from Aylesbury; I didn’t take any on the trip down from Edinburgh, or through London, or out to Aylesbury.

Aylesbury has a branch of the Grand Union Canal, and it runs past two sides of the hotel I was staying in.
Near as I can tell, folks are living in those narrowboats; It’s a designated long-term permit area according to the signs, and there are water/power pillars. There’s also a shower+toilet block, just behind that red boat.

And when they say ‘narrow’, they’re not kidding.

There’s a boat which showed up … yesterday, I think?
I’m actually a bit surprised that they got it through the lock; It looked too long.

And, yes, I did look at what a narrowboat would cost.
The hotel, and thus the basin, is right behind my future workplace, so it’d be convenient as all hell.

There’s a theatre on the corner, with a statue outside of it.

Apparently Ronnie Barker’s first professional performance happened at a theatre on this spot.

A couple more pictures of the interview attire.

I was trying for something a bit arty here – Not sure that it worked, but I do like the colour.

Finally, the hotel.
They have signage about the awesomeness of the beds, and about not being a dick when you come in late, all with these puppets.

Gonna be honest, the ‘people relaxing with their felt-universe doppelgangers’ thing† they’re going with is a little odd, but sort of quirky and fun.

† I’m imagining that it’s a trans-universal conference of some kind. Possibly the hotel is mirrored down the centreline of the bed, and the delegates are sharing rooms.
Alternatively, maybe the Feltverse folks are visiting, and these are staged photos they’ve taken with their counterparts to share on social media.

Put me in mind of the puppet episode of Angel; Until I remembered this music video, which … puts a different spin on it, and makes it a little more creepy.

This is one of those “I Take Too Many Photos” posts; Just so’s you know.

In the space between the phone interview & the face-to-face one, I stayed in North Berwick for a couple of nights.

I’d been told about North Berwick by the other escapee from Pukey Van Der McGee’s reign; It sounded like an interesting place to visit, and then events conspired, as they so often do.

Granted, when I boarded the train to flee the booked-solid Edinburgh (some form of popular ball game was being played; ‘rugby’, I believe they called it), there’d be no firm date and time on the face-to-face interview, so I was anticipating a weekend off. When I got off the train, the phone rang, and that … changed.

Didn’t get as much done on the interview or the relaxation fronts as I’d have liked; The AirBnB WiFi was not, as they say, all that, and the looming terror of an interview involving multiple sections & a presentation on something I’d looked at once or twice did somewhat impact the relaxation end of things.

That said, it’s a pretty spot.
There’s a beach.

There are seascapes and mystic islands accessible only by rainbow bridges.
Or you can wait until later in the year and book one of the Seabird Centre tours; Whatever works for you.

There’s also The Glen (North Berwick Glen), which was very relaxing to wander through, and has the remains of a couple of mills, which for some reason I didn’t photograph.

The AirBnB I stayed at was comfy, and had a nice line in self-service breakfast/snacks, an approach I’d not seen before.

I’d not mind going back there, to both the AirBnB & the Town; There are things I’d like to have seen, but time, and mood, and more immediately the weather, didn’t really allow it.

Over the course of traveling, I’d been prompted by Google Maps to upload pictures of locations, or review them, or confirm/correct information about them. As I’m easily amused, I did this thing.

They have a tool which will show you places needing data improvement in your area, and something which came up was the dire-looking takeaway on the Cowgate in Edinburgh, beside the hostel I was staying at. It had no photos, so I took one during the day, when it was closed, but felt that it might be nice to have one of it actually open.

I was going for “Shining Beacon Of Deep-Fried Carbs In The Night”, but I’m told it’s more “Looming Creepily In A Dismal And Desolate Alley”.

There was another bout of snow which had people scurrying for shelter, and idiots like me out for a walk.

View from the parade ground in front of Edinburgh Castle on a blue-skyed and sunny day.

At the time I figured out that Edinburgh was booked solid, I had no clue when the face-to-face interview would happen.
The hope was next week, but one of the folks doing the interview had a very tight timeframe because of a conference, so that might not happen. I’d booked the couple of nights in North Berwick (could have stayed in an airport hotel, but North Berwick was cheaper and looked much nicer), and then booked a week in a dorm at the dear old Safestay.

Once the interview confirmation came in, that dorm thing had to change, and I was able to switch to a private room for the three nights I needed; Said room had one of those bunks with a double bed & a single, which … gave me a spot to put things?

Also had a view of the courtyard between the two wings of the hostel.
The bar is down there, and the awning you can see to the right covers the terrace for said bar, so I am so glad I wan’t in this room on Friday or Saturday nights.

When last we left our hero protagonist, back in Barely Breathing, the phone interview had gone well, and the as-yet-unnamed company were interested in a face to face interview.

There’s always a gap between Let’s Talk and Can You Do Thursday?, and in the meantime I discovered that Edinburgh was booked solid because of a rugby game. Not following rugby in any way whatsoever, I completely missed that this was happening, so I booked a couple of nights in an AirBnB in North Berwick, a seaside village/town about a half-hour train ride from Edinburgh, recommended to me by a friend (the other escapee from The Horrible Incident Of The Barf In The Night-Time) from the hostel.

Naturally, the call came in as I was getting off the train in North Berwick, confirming an interview on Thursday.
Well, an interview schedule with a bunch of parts to it, starting with the thing which … damn near paralysed me with terror; Use our cloud-based map platform to make a map demonstrating the benefits of said platform, then give us a twenty-minute presentation on it.

Tell the people who know all about the product, by virtue of the fact that it’s their product, all about it.
No pressure there.

This was not helped by the AirBnB having … sub-ordinary WiFi. On one side of the room.
Wasn’t able to get much of anything done on the presentation, but I did at least change my hostel booking from ‘the next week in an 8-bed’ to ‘three nights in a private room’, book a train to London, and another to Aylesbury.

The rest of the time, I did what I could to prepare, which wasn’t much, and spent the rest of the time relaxing.

Back in Edinburgh, it seemed a good idea to make sure that the job interview outfit worked.

Craig wears: Shirt + Cuff Knots from Charles Tyrwhitt, Trousers from Debenham’s, Tie + Shoes from Primark

And to attempt to do the Donald Sutherland in Invasion Of The Body Snatchers pose.

Getting the phone in the way didn’t help.

I spent a couple of days reading and doing tutorials to get up to speed on something I’d never used before, and getting increasingly anxious about what the hell to build for a presentation.
On a side note; Hostel bars aren’t so great as workplaces. Neither is sitting on a bed in a hostel with the laptop on your lap.

Eventually I decided, after being unable to find other data out there which gave me any ideas at all, to map the location data from my smartphone, on the grounds that I had some idea of what it was and what it meant.

I got some of the work done on the train to London (took a morning train on Wednesday, so that I could go to one last Tai Chi class before leaving Edinburgh), and the rest in a state of blind panic† at the hotel in Aylesbury.
Finished building it maybe 2am.

Unpacking that a bit; The finishing touches happened at 2am. That was the point at which I was happy that I’d caught all of the mistakes I could find, and that the thing looked the way I wanted it to.
The point at which it was ‘done’, in the sense of “I will not be adding to this thing”, came at around midnight.

† A shout-out to Gulo T. here, who was kind enough to chat on the phone for a bit & help me to calm down and focus.

Heading for the interview, I figured I had a shot, and was going to do what I could, but that I’d maybe chased myself up a tree with that data; Too much information, so that I couldn’t do any cluster mapping or hot-spot finding without blowing the allowed budget in the free trial of the platform on processing, and I only figured that out too late to do anything about it.

Still, I met a local cat while I was walking around the area before the interview, who demanded to be petted, and then immediately went into murder mode, scratched my hand, and then attacked it’s own feet.
And then demanded more petting when I left, and deposited some fur on my trousers for luck.

They liked the presentation.

I’m not sure whether they expected me to have brought something on a USB stick because that’s what the recruiter said I’d do, and suggested to me that I’d be doing, but … I couldn’t see a way to put an online platform onto a USB drive, so I didn’t; I just asked to use their laptop, logged in, and ran the thing live.

I’ll have to ask them about that USB stick thing.
I’d assumed, given the nature of what they were asking for a presentation on, that presenting it from the website was the way to go, and that Awesome Recruiter’s mentioning of the USB stick was just because he, by his own admission, didn’t know much about the specific platform.

Maybe that was wrong?
Maybe they expected a powerpoint presentation with pictures of the map I’d built?

Anyway, they liked it.
They liked that it was my own travel data, they liked some of the design choices, and they seemed to like the exploration of points which looked to be errors of location, but actually weren’t.

That set me up in a good mood for the rest of the three-hour interview.
The more standard “tell us about a time when” interview questions were fine, and pretty conversational.

Meeting the team, so that I could ask them questions was a new one on me – The closest I’d had to that was at the interview for the previous job, over a decade ago, when we passed through the workplace and I got to say a quick hello to one of the other team members. The other guy wasn’t there that day.

“What’s it like to work here” and “What’s Aylesbury like as a town”, while pretty generic questions, really paid off.
There were enough people that they bounced the reply around, so I got a flood of information about social activity, benefits, some of the charity support, how the company works with regard to folks who aren’t based in that (or any) office, how long people stay there, and a bit about the UK Conference. Also some information on the changes in whether people live in the town, or commute to work from somewhere else.

My thinking on those questions was that a flood of negative responses was a bad sign, and a fairly brief “It’s fine” would suggest that it’s not a company or town that folks were particularly attached to, so didn’t feel the need to ‘sell’ to me.

Like I said; It paid off.

The second thing I’d been dreading (Or more accurately, #2 on the list of things I was dreading) was the Technical Test, but that also turned out to be fine, not at all what I was expecting, and was kind of fun. Not sure whether to discuss the content of the test or not, so I’ll leave it at that.

There was a final wrap-up, and chance to ask questions, and that was it.
9:15 to 12:30, so call it three hours of interview, and it had felt more like the sort of conversation(s) you could have at a Tech conference, or maybe with a somewhat nerdy group at an SF/F convention. Or with hardcore gamers of any type at Gen Con.

Their plan was that they’d interview the other applicant that afternoon, make a decision the next day (Friday), and I’d most likely know by Monday.
This is not what happened.
What did happen is that I got a call from the Awesome Recruiter at 4:47pm, saying that they’d offered me the job and wondering whether I’d like to accept that offer. Which I did.

Contract is signed, and I start on the 20th of March.