I'm in Oulu, in Finland.
I love flying, and I love the feeling you get when the plane leaves the ground. The fight last weekend was that little bit better, leaving the miserable town which had not been my home for the last two years. I spent the whole weekend with a complete feeling of unreality - I said I would go back and I did go back, but two months ago I didn't know I had any chance, and just a little while before that I didn't want to go back, so a lot of the time I felt like I was just floating. It is sinking in now though, I guess.
The journey up to Oulu was good but pretty routine. I flew from Gatwick to Helsingfors, then got the train up to Oulu. Originally I was going to hang out in Helsingfors and then get the night train to Oulu, but on reflection decided that coming up in the day and staying over at a friend's place was better. I changed my sleeper ticket for a Pendolino ticket, and was about to ask if there was any change when the cashier coolly slid 10 cents across the desk. So I saved money already.First week at work has been great. I am working as a consultant in a small sub-contractor company who work for a larger IT company, and am based on the client's premises. The client are providing me with computers to work on, and gave me a laptop and a ludicrously powerful computer when I got there. They then said “install any operating system you want.” If you aren't in IT you may not get just how amazingly cool that is.
To an extent I still feel that Oulu is the second prize, in that it is good but I preferred the other option. Oh well. Life sucks. Deal with it. Either way, I hated living in England and I hated my old job. I used to loe technology, and I think that I am going to rediscover that love of technology in my new job, so career-wise - irrespective of my past, like break-ups or having lived in Oulu before, but focussing purely on my career, then I have made an excellent move.
My former employer was a defence company called Thales. My grandfather was a conscientious objector during the second world war and I always felt so ashamed to work for a defence company, even though I was in the civil part and not defence. Even if that wasn't an issue, project management and engineering standards at Thales really suck, and I am glad to be out of there.
Slightly random picture. I got this new hat – it's grey and warm, and I wanted to get a picture of it. My friend Matti is a good friend but a rubbish photographer, so I had to make my own pictures.
ANYWAY. This is the penultimate post in this blog. I no longer live in Crawley, so need a new blog about Oulu. Maybe next week though.
