As I got off the Underground train at Paddington station, I realised that I’d forgotten to pack dress shirts. GBP 77 later, I had 4 Van Heusen shirts. What an expensive omission.
I’m currently sitting in my hotel filing this on the hotel’s broadband. The hotel in Trowbridge had no internet access at all. I got on a train yesterday and had four seats all to myself. However, I wasn’t prepared for Cardiff, where I had most of the downtown main train station to myself at 7 pm. Ate a quick dinner in the only cafe that was open, then got on the train to Ystrad Mynach. It was a two-car puddle-tracker. When I got off at the station in YM (It’s too tiring to write the entire name), I called all three taxi companies in YM listed on the notice boards at the station. One was now a fax number, another was non-working, and the third was only able to send a taxi in two hours’ time. I called the hotel and pleaded for a taxi, and they sent one in about 25 minutes. Meanwhile the local teenagers were congregating nearby and, the night being dark, I was a bit worried, but I got here in one piece.
The hotel is a combination hotel and country club, with a leisure center and a golf course. Too bad that I think golf is human fetch. They do have broadband access (GBP 7.50 for 20 hours) and the TV is quite posh (flat screen, lots of options). There is also a TV over the bathtub, oddly enough. No mints on the bed. I miss mints on the bed.
So I got up and, after being told it would take 1/2 hour to get to the customer site, asked for the cab at 8:00. It took 5 minutes to get there. The site is a high-security one, so they took my cameraphone off me and I had to be escorted whenever I went to the loo. What a pain. The class is mostly motivated, with a couple of old hands who know everything. Old hands are difficult to teach this stuff to, because they believe they know everything. If they don’t pay attention, they’ll miss some stuff and get hauled up on the exam. There was also building work going on in the next room. It sounded like a combination blast furnace and a horde of mice scurrying up and down the walls. At one point one of the ceiling tiles disappeared and a face appeared in it. We did our best but there were no quiet times to be had.
So, now we’ll see what the dinner is like here. There is no place else to go so I shall just have to take whatever I can get. Breakfast was a rather hurried affair (it’ll be much more leisurely tomorrow because the taxi won’t be here until 8:30) and the food was kind of sad–one might expect that kind of English breakfast in a seaside b&b.
Anyway, cheers to all and hopefully I’ll be home on Thursday but reading all your blogs in the meantime.
Addendum: I tried to file this from the hotel using its broadband. Unfortunately, while I could see my blog I couldn’t post to it. So I’m posting this on Thursday night, with addenda.
The dinner was quite good, but of course while they needed reservations, it didn’t say so anywhere. So I had to sit in the smoky bar waiting for a table. The steak was very nice, but they put me right under the tv. Everyone was watching me eat.
The delegates at the site were a bit too laddish, I’m afraid. They were all nice guys, but I think that probably only 6 or 7 of the 8 will pass the exam.
This evening when I got home I saw my emails (750 or so of them) and one was from someone who wanted me to fill in for an ISEB course tutor who had to take one day off during a course. I said, “Why not?” and called him. It turns out that he got my name from a Google what took him to a reference on my online CV. What a surprise! More money!