Not Unemployed!

I've just heard news; I have been offered, and accepted, a job as a wind turbine control systems consultant engineer. I start in two weeks, which gives me time to get my family settled when they arrive tomorrow, on a fairly generous package. The place is about three minutes' walk from Bristol Temple Meads train station, so transport is easy. They also give five weeks' annual leave each year, one week better than Australian companies, which is a nice bonus.

The worst thing? I can't tell Kylie. She is in Singapore airport as I write, getting ready to get on a flight to London. It will be one more good thing for when she gets here.

Can I work for you, please???

Applying for jobs in the UK is often a bizarre process. Their equal opportunity employment legislation seems to be quite extreme, to the point that companies will require you to fill out a survey asking some quite personal questions so that they know exactly which minority you fit into before they can employ you. One company wants to know:

• Gender (complete with a note that if you are currently undergoing 'gender reassignment' you should state your future gender, not your past gender);
• Age range;
• Sexual orientation;
• Religion;
• Nationality;
• Ethnic origin; and
  
• Whether you have a disability.

I would have thought that actually this sort of data would lead to discrimination, rather than reducing it. It is all terribly PC, too; you are never asked such a simple question as, "What is your ethnic origin?" You are always asked, "What do you consider your ethnic origin?" or "Do you consider yourself to have a disability?" Nationality and age are the only two exceptions; even gender is, "What do you consider your gender to be?" with, of course, the disclaimer regarding those undergoing 'gender reassignment.'

I am one of the unwashed majority; I am a youngish, white, Christian, non-disabled, married, heterosexual male. I hope it doesn't count against me. The way this survey is worded, I could claim to feel like a youngish, yellow-skinned, lesbian Eskimo Rastafarian with no legs, and no-one could accuse me of lying (no-one who'd never spoken to me before, anyway). I wonder if it would help?

Cooking

I know the title of this blog is supposed to be just a pun, but I can't resist a comment on cooking, and, in particular, sausages.

The British know a thing or two about sausages which Australia's butchers could learn from. Even the cheapo pork snags I got from the local Co-op (a bit like the local IGA in Aus) were very tasty indeed, and will see me through many a cold evening without complaint.

I also found a bottom-of-the-range Peter Lehman Shiraz for "half-price" at £3.80. It is OK, but a poor reminder of home.

Ambition

OK, this guy is ambitious:

http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/01/dodgy_cheque/

I mean, who thinks they're going to get away with that?

Shops

Douglas Adams famously predicted that civilisation would end when every store was a shoe-shop. This happens because competition between shoe manufacturers drives down price, which lowers quality. As shoes last for less time, people need to buy shoes more often, and so more shoe shops are built to fill the demand. This in turn increases competition, which drives down price, which lowers quality, which increases demand, and so on.

This prediction is in fact perfectly correct and is happening right now in England, with minor detail changed: Not shoe shops, but mobile telephone shops.

Every single shopping district I have seen has at least five mobile telephone shops. At a minimum, there will be O2, 3, T-Mobile, Vodaphone and Carphone Warehouse. There is also likely to be a Phones4U and some others I can't think of. You seriously can't throw a stone in a shopping district without smashing the glass at the front of a phone shop.

However, it seems competition has not yet driven price down to the point where they will sell me a phone on reasonable terms. I went into one today. Asked to sign up a phone on an 18 month contract. Explained that I was newly in the country. Now they want me to pay £9 a month for the handset, and £15 a month for the service, all this for 18 months. It sounds to me like a license to print money. Nonetheless, they have to run a credit check first. Why? I asked. Because we're offering you credit, came the reply. I wanted to scream, No you're bloody not, you're asking me to fork over fistfuls of cash, but thought better of it. They ran the credit check and, of course, I have no credit history here. So, what can they do for me? They can sign me up for a contract to pay them £24 a month, all right, so long as I'll put down a deposit... of £300. You read right. Three. Hundred. Pounds.

Where do these people get there license to print money? I want one! Admittedly it's only a deposit, which they will pay back after 12 months, but it's still a serious amount of money (about $700 Aussie, for the... erm, Aussies out there).

Sigh. So I guess I'm stuck with my pay-through-the-nose-as-you-go phone. Ah well.

Bath

I've spent today in Bath, and for once I had my camera on me while I was somewhere interesting.

For starters, Bath has narrow, narrow streets. There are a fair number in the old city where they haven't even bothered to upgrade them for cars, because you'd struggle to get most cars down them. This one is an exception, which they haven't upgraded so that they can hold street markets in it:


This street has its very own C.M.O.T. Dibbler (for the Pratchett fans):


As well as street musicians:


And this rather hopeful gentleman, who ducked just that fraction of a second too late when he saw the camera:


Bath has lots of nice churches:


(Sorry about the one on its side there. I can't be bothered dealing with it, you'll just have to turn your heads.)

The second of these had a group of people sitting on the steps smoking something they almost certainly aren't even supposed to possess. When I walked past a few hours later, they'd added some quite large containers of alcohol to the mix. It looked like being quite a party.

Something I've noticed is that I don't think I've seen one beggar or homeless person since I arrived in the country. This could be because I only go to nice bits where the police move such people along, or because they're really not there, or because they've all been kidnapped by aliens. Not sure.'

Bath Abbey has some quite exquisite bits:


Again, apologies for the bits-wot-face-the-wrong-way. The problem is that my camera detects which way up it is being held and marks the image with which way it should be rotated. My photo manager and image editor both also respect this marking, and handle it transparently. Only blogger doesn't realise that the image needs to be rotated.

I saw the baths, and the Pump House (much mentioned in certain novels by Jane Austen):


The word 'Roman' is perhaps a bit misplaced there, as most of the building in fact dates from the 19th century.

Actually this is a trend I have noticed in a lot of 'old' buildings. A lot of churches claim to date from the Xth c, where X is a relativly small number. In fact there are a few bricks or part of a wall that dates from that period; the church was invariably destroyed in the X+3th century, then largely rebuilt in the X+7th century, extensively refurbished in the 19th century and has since had significant work done on it.

Not sure why this guy is still hanging around:


Though it may be worth it, since he seems to get lucky on occasion:

You may have noticed, from the more architectural photos, that the buildings of Bath tend to be a fairly consistent colour. They are all made of local stone, called, inventively enough, Bath Stone. I am told that now any new building in the city has to be faced with Bath Stone, to preserve the look.

It's a lovely stone to have built in, but it gets a bit monotonous after a while. I also have trouble finding anything, because all the buildings look the same.

Anyway, it is getting cold now the sun has gone down, and my laptop battery is about to give up the ghost. Farewell!

Life

I am sitting in the beer garden of a little pub on the Avon river, just next to a marina full of pleasure barges, with a 'point of bitter' as they say here. England has turned on her sunny best, everything around is green and alive. There is a simply adorable couple two tables over, who are being unbearably cute.

I've been a bit down this week about not having work and my own lack of activity in finding it, but right now, the river is singing, the beer is flowing, the couple have just walked off to find somewhere more private, and life is good.

Or it would be if my internet connection worked a bit more reliably...