toogreytogrind

It was good but also strange meeting up with friends from the MRC last night. Things seem very different but also very same. Lots of people have left, the structure of the unit is different, so there is a clinical operations group now.
They have a MHRA audit shortly and with lots of people leaving sounds like there is lots of work to be done. I've sent an email to see if there is any temp work there that I could do until I get a permanent job.

When I was traveling there was one thing that I did miss, that was getting out and getting some exercise. It was quite easy to hire Mountainbikes from time to time. But always the brakes would be the oposite way around to the normal way here. I see that miss 35 Litres has just been mountainbiking somewhere in the Far East. But if your not used to the brakes being a certain way I guess it's quite easy to jump on any bike and just ride. It's not too much of a job to change them around but quite often the shops just aren't interested in doing it, ie your safety.

The other sport I missed was skating. Now there was a place I found in Uruguay where you could hire inline skates but they were only for hire in the rink and the rink was tiny and the skates weren't that good. So I just got a email from Mike van erp to say that the London Wednesday night skate is starting again this week, so I'll be packing my skates and bringing them back down to London ready for Wednesday night.

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Well, back from the skate and it was a good one. Probably about 150 skaters, well that's a guess. I got to Hyde Park and got my pads and skates on, then sat there on the bench. I was just sat there thinking will I remember how to skate. I finally got up and gave it a go. The funny thing was not having skated for over 8 months, my brain seemed to know how to skate, so did my body, but it was the sensation of moving as a skater that my brain had problems with and I had a feeling of what the hell is going on.

Yet again I find myself without a job. Pessimistically I could be down about this, thinking that I'm going back to where I was before only maybe further down the ladder as I haven't worked in the field of my main career for nearly two years. Optimistically, I can remember a actors' saying "every exit leads to another entrance." or something like that, you get the idea, and I would rather go with this option. Yes, I am unemployed but what about all those doors that I could be walking through. Also talking with one agency this morning, there seems to be some jobs for CRAs with language skills. I would bite there arms off for a job like that.

I booked my holiday with the Jobcentre Plus (can anyone tell me what the "Plus" means) and bought my ticket with Megabus (Not a megabus but cheap and ok) and Sunday morning arrived and I got up to get ready for my journey north to find snow. Shelley was up excited about the snow, Fos the cat was puzzled, but interested by the white cold stuff.

I was still suffering with the cold over here and Sunday was really cold and oh joy I was going north! Peckham Rye was covered and people were making snow men and snow ball fighting.

I remember seeing Megabuses before and they were the double-decker basic buses. I guess that their cheapness had paid and they now have a fleet of new plusher buses like National Express. Ok the buses are not that great in the big picture after Latin America. The seats are narrow (4 across the bus), not leather, and don't recline. Your ticket doesn't included meals and drinks (whiskey). But this is England and the good thing is that the journey time was only 5 hours. Some people behind me were going to Glasgow on the same bus and said it was 11 hours and said how it was a really long journey. I thought only 11 hours that's ok, all the roads are covered in tarmach!

Usually traveling up the M66 and the Edenfield bypass I'm greated by hills on either side not on this Sunday. You could just see the hills through the almost white-out. Considering the snow and I was traveling on a Sunday I had good conections and a easy journey. After stopping off at the Super to get some cervazas I walked up to Edgeside and to my mothers to see her for the first time in over 8 months.

There's been serveral occasions where I felt culture shock in the last few days.



One of them was when I walked into a bar with my friend and everyone was speaking English. I know this is England, so what do you expect. I was obviously expecting to hear Spanish.



Crossing the road. This is something I had to get used to again when I came back from Spain. You have a good look to the left to make sure that there is no traffic coming and then you start to cross to find that the traffic is coming from the right.

I'll update if and when there are somemore.