I woke rather abruptly at 4am thanks to a mouse in my room. I didn’t really get back to sleep after that so today was a long day
My first two meetings were with BT then I met with Talk Talk.
My final meeting was at openreach
I’ve no idea what we actually spent of baby oils etc.
After my disastrous attempt at staying awake last night I slept really well until I woke up at 3.30am.
At 6.30 jane drove me to twyford station where I got a ticket just as my train arrived and I was in London by 7.30
I then did my old work walk to Tottenham Court Road which was fun (although quite noisy as I was dragging my wheels suitcase behind me)
I reached my hotel just after 9am and was able to check in to my room which was a bonus.
My first meeting of the day was ten minutes walk from the hotel and was really good so i’ll definitely have something interesting to put in my trip report when I get back to work!
My second meeting of the day was for the technical advisors for a telecommunications technical journal. The meeting was held in the BT archives building so we got to see some of the exhibits, such as the first ever uk phone book and various Busby merchandise!
After that I had coffee with a few of the guys from the meeting and then I bought some new shirts for the rest of the week.
This evening I walked down to Leicester Square as there was a premier for Night At The Museum 3. I think I saw Owen Wilson, Ben Stiller and Ricky Jervais , but here they are on a big screen (and in life just behind the black wall).
Meanwhile jane the girls have been having their own fun
Jane says: Saw linda kate and Anita at henry st gsrden center for ages. Then took kez to Hannah. Then went to pats then back to get kez and stayed there fir agez. Now its now. Im gping to talk to ed so byee
So there you go
Look, a knitted nativity
We finally got to jane’s parents 31 hours after we left our house.
The flights mostly went well with the only problems being the transit at Los Angeles which was bizarrely chaotic
I’ve attempted to grab these shots off my phone so haven’t attempted to look at them on any detail. Hopefully enough to be going on with anyway.
This afternoon we’ve been for a walk down tj new and i’m flagging!
you can track our flight here: http://flightaware.com/live/flight/ANZ2 we leave Auckland around 10.45pm NZDT on 13th December and arrive in the UK around 10.40 GMT on the 14th if you are playing along at home.
we did our packing and various tidyings today. after lunch we had a quick family present swap
i got jane some postage stamps with my face on them
she was delighted
last day at work for me and jane. jane had a teacher’s barbeque thing where there was three hours of leaving speeches!
i sold one of my pictures to a colleague who is going to give it to her mum for christmas. that was exciting!
and i realised i’d forgotten to post this on the family blog. it’s a couple of my pictures featured in one of the main New Zealand newspapers:
kezia spent the day at a theme park then went to the dentist
i went for a festive walk in the humid summer heat of auckland and found some christmas decorations in an air conditioned shopping centre.
jane had school and esther watched korean dramas all day
and i saw three guys wheeling a safe away
two more sleeps until fly-day
i had my work christmas lunch today on waiheke. it was the funniest one i’ve ever been to.
it was a 15 minute walk from the ferry to the posh winery for lunch. 15 minutes if you go the right way that is.
unfortunately the person who organised it took us the wrong way and 45 minutes later of going up and down steep hills, we still weren’t there! so we asked a dog walker who told us we’re gone the wrong way almost at the start of our walk and would need to retrace our steps back 45 minutes! So instead we ran sneakily across a posh person’s garden, climbed through an olive grove and emerged in a rockery by a road. we called the vineyard who (eventually) sent a 6 seater car to pick all 8 of us up.
but unfortunately the car got the handbrake stuck on! luckily i was able to release it and all was well. we got to the restaurant about the same time as our final two colleagues who left the office an hour later than we did!
anyway, much fun was had by all, and there was a good secret santa with the yankee swap feature which is all the rage these days
kezia had youth today
jane doesn’t know what people did in the day, but it probably involved esther and kezia watching korean dramas
jane had school
Kezia had her last day so her and esther are on holidays.
some of my colleagues had a teddy bear’s picnic meeting
I’ve got lots of pictures but can’t share them as out Internet is broken. Fibre fault. Boo. (fault got mended)
I had work and did some Xmas shopping at lunch and saw people filming the power rangers movie.
Sorry forgot to update yesterday. I worked from home as we had all our lights replaced with led ones to stop the house burning down. And esther went out to her friends house while kezia and Jane were at school.
