All 6 entries tagged Sutton

Post Christmas

Christmas was good. I was at home with the family and had a christmas pretty much like last year. Nothing special but it was good.

I now have a DAB clock radio and a Digital Freeview Set-Top Box so I’m right up there in the digital age now :).

I’ve just been to Tesco and on the bus on the way back home I saw another rubbish sign on the bus.

It’s hard to take a good photo on a moving bus with a rubbish camera but you can just about make it out. It says “Please do not speak to or obscure the driver’s vision while the bus is moving” which is not what they mean atall. Rubbish!

I also made a great discovery of some mayo in Tesco. Not very exciting for most people but I love Heinz mayo. Previously I could only get hold of it by nicking handfulls of the little sachets (pictured) from restaurants and bars. Now I’ve found the bottles at Tesco my dream has come true. OK so I have to get the “Light” stuff because of the amount I eat but it’s still very good mayo and half price at the moment.

You may think me sad but, hey.

: 03 Jan 2008 21:05 |  Tags: Bus Christmas Grammar Mayo Mayonaise Sutton |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Red Wine

To my great annoyance I just spilt red wine on the carpet of my room after saying to myself, “must be carefull not to spill any”. Well that’s not the most annoying bit. The most annoying bit is that I now don’t have a red wine stain, now I have a clean spot that means I’m going to have to clean the rest of the carpet. Hmph.

Well, it’s not been too long since the last post and not much has changed. I’ve been to the gym a couple more times and quite enjoyed it. I should have gone tonight but I think I pushed something a bit to hard last time ‘cos my left calf hurts, so I didn’t go.

Tomorrow I’m going to attempt to get into work an hour early so that I can leave early to be able to get to BBC Television Centre for 5:30. I’m going to the filming of another new comedy show (first one was Crawford Park). This one is in a similar vein to Crawford Park and is called Lab Rats.

A sitcom set in a university science laboratory written by Chris Addison and Carl Cooper. Somewhere in the tangle of rooms and corridors that is the St. Dunstan’s College science building work, and for the most part live, the occupants of the Arnolfini Research Laboratory. The Arnolfini is used by the University for flashy-looking projects, random research ideas and as a revenue-raising lab for hire.
The show stars Chris Addison, Selina Cadell, Geoff McGivern, Jo Enright, Helen Moon and Dan Tetsell.

I’m doing well with TV & radio tickets recetly. I went to a filming of “Bea & Sam’s Big Spread”

Bea and Sam invite you to their raucous show, as they hold celebrity culture by its ankles and shake it… hard. Through their charming, honest, self-deprecating stand up, savage sketches and ridiculous pastiche of songs from eighties cheese to West End hits, this is a toxic concoction

at Teddington Studios a couple of weeks ago and I also have tickets for a recording of “Out To Lunch”

Radio 2’s leading comedy showcase returns for a fourth series. Join brand new host Russell Kane (Big Brothers Big Mouth guest host, “His rise to meteoric heights is about to begin” Metro) for the best stand-up and sketches to hit the BBC this Autumn.

for BBC Radio 2 at a theatre tomorrow (with free drinks), a recording of another new comedy called ”...And Then You Die”

’...and then you Die’ is a brand new comedy panel show all about why life is one big disappointment! Alongside a panel of both up and coming comedians and some well known faces is our host. Who just happens to be a puppet.It’s funny, outrageous and just slightly miserable.

in mid October and then a recording of “Not Going Out”

Now that his flatmate Kate has moved back to America, Lee (Lee Mack) is faced with homelessness when his best mate and landlord Tim (fellow stand-up Tim Vine) puts the apartment up for sale. Unable to buy the flat himself, Lee is forced to rent the spare room from the flat’s new owner, Tim’s sister Lucy (Sally Bretton). Unsurprisingly, the arrangement turns out to be far from perfect

at the end of the month. Should all be a lot of fun.

Anyways. If I’m going to be getting in to work for 8am tomorrow I need to be getting to sleep soon so that’s all from me for now.

: 04 Oct 2007 22:16 |  Tags: Carpet Gym Red Wine Spill Stain Sutton Work |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Anoher … And So Soon?

Yes, it’s a blog entry within 2 months of the previous one :P Anyway …

I am finally a fully paid up member of a gym with a Direct Debit to take £47 out of my hard earned pay every month :(. I’m going for my first time as a member tomorrow to have an intorductory session with a trainer. I’m not sure exactly what happens but I think I get shown how to use more of the features of the machines than I did on the trial day and then we decide on an excersise plan for me.
To be honest, ever since my trial half hour when I spent about 3 mins on each machine I’ve wanted to get back and spend some more time there. I got a good feeling after the first time so I guess that is a good sign and hopefully will encourage me to go quite often. I’m planning to go about 3 times a week at the moment but that might change depending on how I get on with it once I start for real. Wish me luck.

At work I am now working on my first project that has anything to do with anyone outside of our department. As such I have to work to someone else’s time-frame on this one as they are relying on what I write in this system to be able to write the system that they’re working on. It’s also quite an important project to get right as it is is an online card payment system which will be used for all our magazines and conferences across the world *gulp*

Well, I have to be at the gym for 11 tomorrow so I suppose I ought to go to bed now then :)

Night

: 21 Sep 2007 22:20 |  Tags: Gym Sutton Work |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

I've got a bit rubbish at this …

.. havn’t I?

The rest of my 1st day in 2 mins was that I went with all the other students working in the web departments. We sat around in the kitchen area of the WSG floor (4th floor) and the heads of departments came and collected the people who were working with them. I was still sat there at lunch so I went with them to the Italian down the street where the company paid for our lunch. That was OK. It turned out when I came back that I was supposed to be on a completely different floor in a different department to all the other students. We eventually found out where I was supposed to be. I was meant to be on floor 14 in CSG. So eventually I got to where I was meant to be just in time to go to a presentation and then go home.

The next 3 weeks was speant doing training in central London. THat was a lot of fun. We didn’t have to be in ‘til 9:30 and we got a morning tea break, lunch and an afternoon tea break. Almost every lunch we went to this great Italian sandwich shop just across the road where they serve the best toasted sandwiches.

During the last week of training I found a room I liked and in order to secure it I had to pay the deposit on the morning of one of the weekdays. To do that I had to phone up Martin (my brother) and get him to go onto my Online Banking and tranfer the money from my savings into my current account. I then had to go from Pecham Rye (where I was at the time on my way into London Bridge) to Sutton which is 2 slow trains. I eventually get to Sutton then had to find a Natwest becase the cash machine limit is less than the deposit amount. Eventually I paid the deposit, got my key and went to the training, only about 3 hours late.

Since then it’s not been that eventfull. We moved offices from the 14th to the 2nd floor of the office block, so now I walk rather then taking the lift :). I’ve completed about 3 projects now and it’s all going well.

On Sunday afternoon I went and had a free trial day at my local gym. It’s part of a Holiday Inn, but only a tiny part. I was looking for a gym with a pool and was expecting something like at University (I wasn’t a member, just saw it on the open day). I should know that nothing is ever quite as large as at Uni but this only had about 8 machines and a tiny square pool. I was expecting a whole floor of machines and a lenghts pool. The other downside of this one is that it is also open to all the hotel residents so there are probably quite often kids in the pool.
I’m going to see another gym this Wednesday which is a little further away and doesn’t have a pool but sounds a little bigger. I’m going to have to weigh up all the factors to decide which one I want to join. I don’t know whether I want a large or small gym or whether a pool is important or not. I guess it depends how comfortable I am there more than anything else.
I’ll have to see, if this one is’t great there is one other within walking distance in Sutton.

I shall have to start blogging more again, and to steal a signoff from J …

I’m Still Here

: 17 Sep 2007 22:51 |  Tags: Gym House London Rent Sutton Work |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Work etc…

Ok. Long long time and no blog entry, but that’s the way it’s been since the last one.

Exams were horrid, at one point I thought I was going to get forced to withdraw or at least have to retake some but I managed to get an average of 73% which is a 1st again so all’s good.

The week after exams was WSAF (Warwick Student Arts Festival) which was all good fun despite the rain and living a bus journey away. I can’t remember many details at the moment but it was all good.

The week after that I started my placement year job at RBI (Reed Business Information) in Sutton, London (Surrey/Greater London really but London sounds cooler). Being straight after Uni I didn’t have a chance to find accommodation there so I got a 7-day train ticket for ~£70 and commuted down.

I left home at 7am monday morning to get the train(s) to be at Sutton by 9am only to find that reception didn’t have any record of me atall. Great! After some phone calls he verified that I was actually starting work and I got a day entry pass and a voucher for a free cup of tea or coffee (with my name spelt “Payne”). That was fine.

We then went into the AV Theatre (small room) for induction. That all seemed fine until it got to the end and HR came round to get everyones Passports, NI nos and signed forms. What signed forms? When was I told to bring my passport? It appeared that I was supposed to have had a pack with all this info in and my contract, to sign and return, through the post weeks ago. Since I hadn’t received anything I had assumed that it was all sorted on the first day.

As you can see, my first day went really, really well. That’s only half of it. The rest of my 1st day will come tomorrow as I want to go home now.
I’m still at work writing this as I don’t have internet at home at the moment, will do tomorrow though. Woo.

See ya

: 24 Jul 2007 17:28 |  Tags: Commute London Rent Room Sutton Tired Work |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Holiday, Placement, Laptop etc

Not much memorable happened during the holidays. I went up to London to see Golden Balls (see prev entry) and ended up missing it. I had gone to grenwich, ‘cos I had 6 zone travelcard, to find the zero meridian line and got on the DLR too late to make it back in time.
Mum, Martin, Bethany and I also went to Chessington World Of Adventures for a day, with some Clubcard vouchers. As we have been going to foreign theme parks on holiday recently it seemed relatively tame but was still quite fun.

Over the holiday I applied for about 6 or 7 work placements for next year and have so far only heard back from 1. I went to an interview for Trainee Web Developer for RBI last week and thought it went really badly. There were some things that I really should have known that I didn’t, but he seemed very impressed with what I told him about the BHF Photo Gallery and Satnet Online . I was supprised 2 days later to be offered the placement, so now I’m looking for a place to live in Sutton (London) for that year. The only down side of this placement is that it starts on Monday July 2^nd, which is the 1st Monday after the end of term.
Just to make this worse, all my exams are in weeks 8-10 of this term, with the last one being on the Saturday of week 10, the same day as the WSAF stage goes up. WSAF then continues thoroughout that week, but in order to get settled in in Sutton before starting work I think I may have to leave part way through that week, which is a shame ‘cos WSAF it a whole lot of fun, especially the last evening. Nevermind, I think a 16k placement has to come 1^st. There’s always another WSAF in my final year.

Finally, I have got myself a new laptop. After ages of only having a laptop without a screen I now have a nice new one with Windows Vista Home Basic. It’s quite cool even though it’s massively graphically bloated. I bought an extra 512Mb of RAM with it as it only came with 512Mb which I knew would be no good atall.
The speech recognition is really quite cool. It works with any program that uses standard windows buttons etc. You just have to read out the text on the button or link and it will click it, and to fill in fields, just say what you want to type. It’s still not flawless, but it is a lot better than IBM Via-Voice from a few years ago.
I may still yet reformat it and install Linux instead. We shall have to wait and see.

For now. Adios

: 22 Apr 2007 22:04 |  Tags: Holiday Laptop London Placement Sutton TV Vista Wsaf |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem