Day 2: Work Begins

Today was the first day at work and it went really well, I'll get to that in a minute.

After my nap yesterday I went to the mall -- which in addition to being right across the street, is really nice -- to try to set up my iPad with a 3g sim card. Turns out I can't get a prepaid one here without having a UK address and bank account, so I ended up with a pay as you go set up. The problem with that is that I have to sync it to iTunes to activate it. The problem with that is that all of my content is on my Macbook. I've had to go through a lot of hassle to copy all the content onto my work computer, so when I sync it to this computer and it deletes everything I'll still have a functioning iPad for the next 2 months. I downloaded a couple programs that moved everything (I think) but I haven't jumped off the cliff and done the sync yet. That's next on my list of things to do though, so knock on wood.

Rather good, isn't it? (I sound like one of them already, don't I?)

If only Briarwood looked like this, I might go there more than once every couple years.

Also, theres this...

...by far the trendiest looking Krispy Kreme I've ever seen.

Still delicious, though there is no hot and fresh light. :-(

After sorting out the sim card, I went upstairs to a place called Tampopo for some yummy ramen soup. So far I haven't actually seen any traditional English restaurants, mostly international type stuff, which is just fine by me, since I hardly consider English cusine food. That being said, the breakfast at the hotel this morning was great: English bacon (somewhere between Canadian bacon and the kind that we're used to), eggs, toast and coffee. I wish I could have enjoyed it longer, but seeing as how breakfast opened at 6:30 and my de facto boss while I'm here picked me up at 6:45 I had to rush through it.

My "boss" in Bristol, Derek, is a fun guy to work with, though I haven't actually done any work yet. He's got about as good a sense of humor as Mark, my boss in Northville, though it seems quite a bit less dirty (so far at least). To be fair, Mark's sense of humor is dirty enough that he could easily have been an editor for The Kool (may she rest in peace). After Derek picked me up, we picked up another VCA engineer then drove to the Nissan test facility, which is about 30 minutes north of London, for a meeting to discuss a current type approval project they need us to do for them. The two hour commute meant that today was a rather long day; I didn't get home until around 7. By the time the meeting at Nissan was winding down, despite 4 cups of coffee and a Coke with lunch, I was having a hard time keeping my eyes open and not openly yawning. I felt pretty bad about that, but thankfully everyone there was cognizant of the fact that I am still recovering from my jetlag.

The drive to and from the Nissan facility was really nice. We took the scenic route, since apparently theres about 5 ways to get there, none specifically any better than another. It was cool to get a chance to actually check out the scenery, since on the drive from London yesterday I had to focus on staying on the right side of the road and in the middle of my lane. I didn't think to bring my camera, since they're not allowed in any of the test facilities, but I wish I could have taken some photos of the countryside because its really quite nice (am I sounding British again?) Beside the scenery, the drive also gave me a chance to appreciate the cars on this side of the world. So far I've seen more Carerra 4's than I can count, a few Lotus', Bentleys, a VW Phaeton and a couple Audi R8s. Nothing Italian yet, but I'm sure I'll see those soon enough.

I'm going to look into weekend trips for while I'm here. It looks like it shouldn't be a problem to go somewhere nearly every weekend with cheap flights on Ryanair or Easyjet from 20 pounds. I'm still going to stick with my original plan of going to Munich for Oktoberfest in a couple weeks, but other than that I think I'll base my travel plans around where I can go cheaply and when. Seems more adventurous that way I think. I'd still like to make it to Paris though, so I'll make that happen at some point.

I think thats enough for today, I'm off to the grocery store to pick up some essentials and get something to eat.

Cheers!

---Update---
The iPad set up worked! Didn't even need to sync, just had to connect to iTunes.