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For the last month or so, we’ve been having a heatwave!  It hasn’t been quite so warm for the last 7 days, but before that it was very hot, with temperatures frequently reaching 30 degrees C.  Late last month, we went for a walk at Hoveton Hall Gardens, which was a nice way to spend a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon.  One evening a couple of weeks ago, I bought Mum and Terry a meal at Malaysian Delights.

Last Sunday (probably the hottest day of the year so far) we went to the beach at Sheringham.  We sat on the beach for a while, but the tide soon came in, so we couldn’t sit there for too long.  It was amazing how quickly the tide came in!  We had a lovely walk around the town too.

The good thing is that it won’t be long until we go on holiday to the Lake District.  We will be staying at a holiday cottage in Grasmere.  We have stayed in Grasmere before (in 2004 and 2005) but this time we are staying in a larger cottage as my nieces Anya and Emily will be coming as well.  Near Sour Milk Ghyll there are 2 cottages side-by-side, and this year we will be staying in the larger of the two.

This week (on Wednesday evening) I went round my friend Naomi’s house.  We had an Indian takeaway and we watched the film Van Wilder.  The film was very funny and I enjoyed the evening.  Naomi’s sister Sarah was also there, as she is currently on holiday from university.  It was good to see them both again.

A few really bad things happened this week.  Firstly, our cat Holly has fleas, so we’ve had to spray the house to try and get rid of them.  Also, my step-dad Terry has really bad back pain.  It first started a few weeks ago when he was leaning over to cut the hedge.  He had back pain for a few days, but it wasn’t too bad and it soon went away.  However, on Thursday morning the pain came back with a vengeance. On Friday he could hardly move – he couldn’t walk very far and he couldn’t drive either.  As he can’t drive, he hasn’t been able to visit a chiropractor.  On Friday evening we looked through the Yellow Pages and Terry phoned a chiropractor and he was told to use a hot water bottle and an ice-pack on his back (alternating between them every few minutes).  The chiropractor said that eventually Terry should feel well enough to be able to drive their practice.

Late last week we heard the news that our local woodland could be cut down by property developers.  There is a link to an article about this in the local newspaper here.  If you scroll to the bottom of the article, you will see that I’ve added a comment of my own.  Everyone in my family is very upset and angry about the proposals, particularly my grandmother as she often walks her dog there.  Last Saturday we went for a walk through the woods – this could be our last chance to do so before the houses are built.  Fortunately, the proposals haven’t actually been given the go-ahead yet, and we are hopeful that the local planning authority will reject the plans.  Here is a link to some photos I took of the woods last week.

Work is still going well – I am currently working on new websites for several weekly London newspapers.

This has been one action packed month! So many things have happened that I’m not sure where to start!

On the 13th of May I attended the Norwich City football club victory parade with Mum, my sister Suzanne and my nieces Anya and Emily.  Norwich City came top of Division 1 and they are being promoted to the Championship for the new season.  I’m not really a football fan, but I like the atmosphere of the victory parades – the last one was in 2004.  We all had a good time.

The following weekend, we went on a bluebell walk at Blickling Hall.  I always enjoy going on bluebell walks and I took many photos.  A week later we spent an afternoon at Redwings Horse Sanctuary.  The weather has been nice and sunny recently, so we have been going out more frequently at the weekend.

Towards the end of May, I received some good news at work.  My manager told me that I’d successfully completed my 3-month probationary period and that from then on I would be officially treated as a permanent member of staff.  I was so happy!  In general, work is going very well.  In the last few weeks, I have been studying more JavaScript and jQuery.  I think I’m getting the hang of jQuery – some of the things you can do with it are very effective.

I’ve been out clubbing with my friend Kay twice in the last 2 weeks.  I really enjoyed going clubbing last week – I felt as if I was in an extra good mood and I enjoyed it more than I normally do.  Yesterday I went with Kay and some of our other friends to watch the England match at The Woolpack pub.  There was a photographer from the local newspaper, the Evening News and they took a photo of us in our England T-shirts.  This afternoon I got a call from Suzanne saying that she’d seen the photo on the Evening News website.  I was so happy when I found out that our photo had been used!  It will probably be published in the paper version of the Evening News tomorrow, so I will have to remember to buy a copy.

On Wednesday evening I went to the cinema with Mum and Anya to see Streetdance 3D.  It’s one of the best films I have seen for a long time.  It featured a lot of famous street dance acts from shows such as Britain’s Got Talent and Got To Dance, including Diversity, Flawless, George Sampson and Akai.  The soundtrack was very good and I enjoyed the story as well.

Overall, it’s been a very exciting month!

The last month or so has gone well.  I am still enjoying my job – I have created 7 sites so far, but none of them have gone live yet.  Hopefully it won’t be too much longer before that happens.  Last week I had a catch-up meeting with my manager and he said that he’s very pleased with my progress so far, and that he’s received positive feedback from my colleagues.  We also discussed what I would be doing once I’d finished building all these new websites (which should be sometime in July) – he said that I would be involved in making further improvements to the site and adding extra functionality, such as geo-tagging and improving the event search pages.

Towards the end of April, I had a meal at Mambo Jambo’s with the IVC social club, which I enjoyed.  I also got myself a new hair cut (which I prefer to my old one) and some new clothes for the spring and summer.  We revisted Burlingham Woods for another walk, but almost all the daffodils had died out and the bluebells weren’t yet out.  There were a few primroses though.  We plan to go back again sometime to see the bluebells.

Last weekend was a bank holiday weekend, and on the Saturday night I went clubbing with my friend Kay and her work colleague Rachel.  I met Kay out of work and we walked round Rachel’s house to get ready.  We then had a meal at Artorio’s restaurant on Riverside, which was really nice.  I had meatballs and spaghetti.  Then we went on to Lloyd’s and Chicago Rock Cafe.

On Thursday it was Terry’s birthday, so on Friday evening after work we all went out for meal at Malaysian Delights.  I had so much rice and noodles that I felt too full up to have a dessert, which is unlike me!  It was a nice evening though.

Yesterday morning I went to watch my niece Emily play football for her Norwich City girls’ team.  They were playing against Gorleston Rangers, and the match was held at the recreation ground just down the road.  It was freezing cold (ridiculously cold considering it’s May!) so I had to wrap up warm with my winter clothes!  It was also very grey and drizzly.  During the main part of the match, no one scored so it had to go to extra time.  In the end, Emily’s team lost but everyone thought that they played very well.  I had to warm up in front of the fire when I arrived back home!

All in all, I’m still very happy and 2010 is turning out to be a much better year than the dastardly 2009!

I enjoyed my Easter holidays last week (I had Good Friday and Easter Monday off work) and I went on a couple of daffodil walks.

For Good Friday, we spent most of the day taking Easter eggs to our relatives. On Easter Saturday, we went for a walk at Burlingham Woods, which is somewhere I’d never been or even heard of before.  It was a very enjoyable woodland walk and it was nice to be out in the fresh air.  I took several photos whilst I was there.

For Easter Sunday, I had a quiet day at home.  Mum bought me a Mars Easter egg and Terry bought me a Lindt Lindor one (which is my favourite chocolate).  On Easter Monday, we went for a walk along the riverside in Norwich.  There’s always lots of daffodils there every spring, in a wide variety of colours.  When I was younger (up until the age of 10), I often used to go and visit the daffodils there as my Dad lived in a flat just across the road from the river.  I always used to enjoy running amongst the daffodils and I even used to pick some and take them home.  Click here to see the photos.

Last night I had my belated birthday/Easter party with all my best friends – Naomi, Sarah, Kay and Gemma.  We had a meal at Frankie & Benny’s – the awkward thing was that they would only accept a booking for 5.30pm (they had another party booked for that table at 7.30pm), whereas Kay doesn’t finish work until 6pm.  So we had to book the table for 5.30pm and we had our drinks and starters while we were waiting for Kay to arrive.  Kay arrived at about 6.20pm.  Luckily it all worked out fine and we finished in good time – we even had enough time for dessert.  Then at 8pm we went to the cinema to see the new Nanny McPhee film.  It was very funny and we all really enjoyed it.  We also exchanged Easter eggs, which led to me getting 2 more chocolate eggs – a Crunchie egg and a Dairy Milk Buttons egg.   It was good to meet up with all my friends again – due to a couple of them studying away from home, it is only once or twice a year that I get to see them all together.

Work is still going well.  A couple of weeks ago, I went on a week-long Prestige training course which was held at the office.  I learnt about the Prestige system and how it interacts with the Polopoly content management system that I use in my day-to-day job.  I also learnt how to use Adobe InCopy and InDesign.  Although those programs are mainly aimed at print designers, it is still useful to know and InDesign does share several features with Photoshop.

I’ve also completed my first full website, for a weekly newspaper based in Hertfordshire.  It has been tested but it is not live yet – hopefully it will go live some time in the next few days or weeks.  In the meantime, I’m working on a website for a Devon weekly newspaper – I’m currently about 80% of the way through it.

I’ve also been studying some web development books in my spare time in the evenings and at weekends, in order to learn more about JavaScript and PHP.  I’m particularly interested in learning more about jQuery – one of my colleagues uses it a lot and he says it’s very good.  Overall, I’m very happy with the way things are going in my new job.

I’ve been through a rollercoaster of emotions over the past couple of weeks. The main events that have taken place were my 26th birthday and my leaving date for my old job.

My 26th birthday took place on Monday and I had the day off work. I went for a walk in Wymondham, where we visited the Creme Cafe for a milkshake and cake. I then bought a book of facts (well, questions and answers) from one of the local book shops. In the evening, we went out for a family meal at Mambo Jambos, which is one of my favourite restaurants in Norwich. The food was served very quickly and the meal was good – the only bad point was that the chicken was a bit chewier than normal.

My main birthday present this year was a Nintendo Wii, which came with a Mario Kart game and Wii Sports. I played the Mario Kart game round my sister Suzanne’s house during the Christmas holidays and I enjoyed it, so that’s why I wanted to get my own Nintendo Wii. Other presents included a new silver necklace from my Mum, a Lady Gaga CD from Suzanne and a book about the weather from my sister Sarah.

It was my last day of my old job yesterday. It felt really weird walking out of the office for the last time, knowing that I’d probably never walk through that doorway again. After nearly 5 years, leaving your employer behind is a big thing. I had mixed feelings about leaving, especially as I had been there for such a long time, and when I first started working there I thought that I would stay there for most of my career. I never realised that the industry/economy would change so much and that so many people would have to leave. I worked in several different departments while I was there, picking up lots of varied experience and meeting many nice co-workers along the way. I always felt well-respected by my peers and I received good feedback from my managers and internal customers. Overall, I think it was a good place to work, it was just a shame about the instability and the fact that there were so many re-structures. I felt sad to be leaving my colleagues behind, although nowadays it is much easier to stay in contact with people using sites such as Facebook and Linked In.

Having said that, I’m really looking forward to my new job, especially as it’s been my dream for many years to become a web developer. It will be a great new opportunity to me, and I’m pleased that I’ll be able to undertake more training.

On my penultimate day, my manager presented me with a leaving card signed by the whole department, and they had also organised a collection for me. My leaving present was a £30 Chapelfield gift card. I didn’t have one of those large presentations where all your colleagues gather around your desk and you have to make a leaving speech. My manager thought I’d find that too intimidating, so he took me to one side for 5 minutes and gave me the card and present privately. I was surprised, but in some ways I was relieved as I was worried that I might feel upset doing a big presentation. I remember my Mum saying that she had a big presentation when she retired from her typing job a couple of years ago, and she felt a bit tearful.
I spent my £30 gift card on a Super Mario game for my Nintendo Wii. It brought back memories of when I used to play Super Mario games 20 years ago – a lot of the characters and music are still the same.

On Friday 5th February, I went out for a big family meal at Zaks restaurant, to celebrate being offered my new job. I know that seems like quite late considering I was offered the job in early January, but that was the only date when the whole family was available and not working.

You may remember that last year I had my blog turned into a book by a company called Blurb. I decided to re-do it so that I could include all my blog entries from January 2005 up until December 2009, so that it would cover a full 5 years’ worth of blog entries. This time, I had 3 copies of the book printed, so that I could give copies to my sisters. I handed out the copies at our Zaks meal. Sarah has already read her copy from cover to cover – she said that she couldn’t put it down and she also said that I should be very proud of it.

On Sunday, I went on a snowdrop walk in the woods around Morton Hall. I had never been on that particular snowdrop walk before, and I really enjoyed it. I took a lot of photos which I have uploaded to my Flickr page. As it’s been very cold this winter, some of the snowdrops weren’t yet fully open, but it still looked pretty. I love the flowers of spring, especially daffodils, snowdrops, crocuses and bluebells.

It’s taken me a while to get round to updating my blog, and I’ve already mentioned this on my Twitter and Facebook updates, but I’ve found a new job! And I’ve fulfilled my dream of becoming a full-time web developer!

It was Monday night 3 weeks ago that I received a call from the interviewer, to say that I’d got the job. I was delighted, especially as it was a challenging recruitment process – in total there were 3 rounds of interviews and I also completed a programming test. The first interview was fairly generic, whereas the second interview focused on my ideas for the company’s website. The third interview was shorter – the interviewers asked me to talk them through my online portfolio, to explain how I built each of the websites I’d developed. At the end of the third interview, they set me the programming test. I was asked to do the test in my own time – it consisted of 7 pages of programming code in the Velocity content management system, and my task was to identify the error which was causing an image to appear in the wrong position on the website. I determined that the problem was due to an error in a loop. I emailed the answer to the interviewers and it was just a couple of days later that I received the phone call offering me the job.

I was so happy that I called all family and friends to tell them about my new job. They were all pleased for me. That night, I slept better than I had done for ages – I felt so happy that I had fulfilled one of my dreams, that I would no longer have to worry about searching for jobs, and that I would be working for a company which is (hopefully) more stable, so I won’t have to go through restructures every couple of years. Hopefully I will be more settled and happier in this new job.

I then faced a nerve-wracking wait for my offer letter and my contract to arrive through the post. Once I received my offer letter, I handed in my leaving letter to my existing employer. I say “leaving letter” because I’m not actually resigning, I’m just taking my redundancy a couple of months earlier than my agreed redundancy date. My manager was happy for me, although he was sad that I would be leaving. I sent out an email to all the people with whom I’ve worked over the last 4 and a half years, to let them know I’d be leaving the company. My manager and my co-workers wished me well in my new career. I received lots of nice emails, even from people I hadn’t worked with for over 3 years. It’s good to know they still remember me and that they still care. I plan to arrange a leaving party for my co-workers on the Friday after I leave the company.

As I was required to give 4 weeks’ notice, I won’t be leaving my current job until Wednesday 17th February, and then I will start my new job on the following Monday.

In the new job, I will be working for a local newspaper publisher, developing and maintaining their websites. My late grandfather (on my mother’s side of the family) used to work for that company, working on the printing presses, so it is good that I am following in his footsteps. I’ve always been interested in newspapers, and I never imagined I’d end up working for a newspaper publisher.

I will be having a celebration meal at Zaks with my family on Friday evening, and I’m really looking forward to that. I’ve also had more copies of my blog book printed (covering January 2005 to December 2009) and I will give these to my sisters on Friday evening, as they asked for copies of their own. These arrived today and I’m pleased with how they turned out.

At the end of July, not long before my holiday in the Lake District, you may remember I wrote a tweet saying I’d been offered a voluntary part-time web developer job at Norwich IVC, the social club of which I’m a member. I was offered the job because the previous web developer decided to quit the committee. At the beginning of September, I started working on the site, although it only takes me a few hours each week.

I haven’t made any changes to the design of the website, although I do hope to convert the site’s HTML template into a WordPress theme when I get the time, so that it will be easier to update. I’ve never actually created a WordPress theme of my own before, so I hope it won’t be too difficult. Over the last few days, I’ve mainly been working on the members’ forum, as I’m now the main adminstrator/moderator. I’ve also been sorting out the domain transfer, so that the domain and the web-hosting are both with the same company.

Even though it’s only a voluntary job (in fact, all the jobs in the Norwich IVC social club are voluntary) I think it will be a good way to gain more experience of developing websites. It will also be useful to add to my portfolio, which I haven’t got round to creating yet! I did have an online portfolio about 4 or 5 years ago, but it was very basic and it’s now very outdated, so I deleted it several months ago.

At work I’ve continued to build more self-serve reports in Oracle Discoverer. I’ve also been helping a co-worker to build some Recruitment self-serve reports – this brings back memories of when I was in the old Automation Team in the first 3 months of 2008 as our aims are similar, although I feel a lot happier now than I did back then. Oracle Discoverer is very different from Microsoft SQL Reporting Services (which is what I used in the old Automation job) and in many ways it is easier to use. With Reporting Services, it seemed to take weeks to build one self-serve report and get it tested and signed off, which really frustrated me as there was a lot of waiting around. That wasn’t totally the software’s fault though – part of the problem was that we often had to rely on other people to create the datasets and fix any errors, which added delays to the process. With Oracle Discoverer, I can build a simple report within an hour or so and all the datasets I need are already there.

In my old department, there is a weekly lottery bonus ball sweepstake. Most people in the department took part, and even though I left in May, the organiser still allows me to take part. (Several ex-members of that department still take part as well). On my first day back at work following my holiday, there was an email in my inbox saying that I had won the sweepstake for the previous week. I’d won about £80, so I decided to take Mum and Terry out for a meal at Mambo Jambo’s restaurant on Saturday 12th September. It was a good meal – this time I tried something different. I had what they call Reggae Chicken (a kind of jerk chicken), whereas usually I have Memphis Chicken, which is Cajun chicken served with sour cream. I had a butterscotch sundae for dessert, but I found it rather sickly so I didn’t eat all of it.

I applied for a couple of jobs last week – one is for a Data and Change Analyst and the other is for a Continuous Improvement Analyst. Both of these jobs sound very similar to what I’ve done in the past, with regards to improving existing reporting processes. The reason I’m applying for these jobs is because my current secondment is due to finish at the end of April next year and I don’t think it will be extended as a lot of reports will have been automated by then, so there won’t be so much work to do. There are nowhere near as many jobs available nowadays as there were 4 years ago when I first graduated, so I am a little bit nervous about what will happen in April next year. I haven’t heard back about either of these 2 job applications yet, but I thought it was best to start applying early, given the current situation. I will start looking for jobs more seriously in the new year.

That’s about it for now. September has been a good month so far.

Last week was quite a weird week for me. A couple of embarrassing things happened. Firstly, I decided to go to McDonald’s for lunch on Wednesday as I hadn’t been there for quite a while. I ordered a milkshake, fries and chicken nuggets as usual. They didn’t give me a tray; instead they put the fries and chicken nuggets in a paper bag. I headed over to the condiments area to get some tomato ketchup: you have to pick up one of these little paper cases and then pump the sauce into it yourself. As I didn’t have a tray, I decided to put the paper case on top of the lid of my milkshake and then head over to the nearest empty table. Even though I was holding the milkshake steady, the paper case containing the tomato ketchup flew off the top and fell to the floor. I stood there horrified as I saw the ketchup splat all over the floor and some of it even landed on a nearby table! I was really scared that some of it might have landed on someone’s clothes or in someone’s hair, but luckily that wasn’t the case. I picked up the paper case (which still had some ketchup left in it) and I told a nearby member of staff what had happened and apologised for the mess. The really embarrassing bit was that just after I’d finished speaking to the member of staff, the same thing happened again, although luckily it wasn’t so bad the second time as there was less ketchup left in the case. The man laughed and said “You’re a nightmare, you are!” I then picked the paper case up again and tried to find a table. However, there weren’t any empty tables downstairs, so I thought I would try upstairs, but getting to the stairs would have meant having to walk past the area where I had dropped the sauce. I was too embarrassed to walk past that area again, so I just left the building and I ended up eating my food outside, even though it was quite a cold, grey day!

The second embarrassing thing happened on Friday morning on the bus on the way to work. Often when I’m on the bus in the mornings, I go on the internet on my phone, just to check my emails, Twitter/Facebook updates and things like that. My keypad is set up so that whenever you press a key, it makes a clicking sound, just slightly louder than the click of a computer mouse. I was replying to someone’s status message on Facebook, which meant that the keypad was making the clicking sound each time I typed a character. We came to a stop, and the woman sitting in the seat immediately in front of me suddenly turned round and said “Excuse me please”. At first I thought that maybe she was unfamiliar with the area and she was going to ask me which stop she needs, but what she actually said was “Could you turn the volume down on that keypad. It is annoying.” So I put the phone on silent. I did feel embarrassed though – I never realised anyone would find that noise distracting and no one had ever complained about it before. In future, I’ll put my phone on silent before using it on the bus or in any other public place where others could be distracted.

This reminds me of a funny incident which happened when I was at the cinema with my friends when I was about 10 years old. The cinema was full, so we couldn’t all sit together – my Mum had to sit a couple of rows behind us. There was a woman with a little boy sitting in the seat in front of me. I had a carton of drink and after I had finished it, I flattened it so that all the air gushed out. I saw one drop of juice come out of the straw and it landed somewhere in front of me. The woman in front turned round, with a really angry look on her face, and she started shouting, “If you do that again, I’ll ask the manager to remove you from this cinema!” To this day, I’m not exactly sure what she was angry about – whether it was the noise of the air gushing out of the carton, or whether it was because a droplet of the juice landed on her head. However, during the rest of the film I hardly dared move a muscle! I felt that I couldn’t enjoy myself after that. The woman’s face reminded me of a really strict teacher I had a few years earlier, but I don’t think it really was her. When we left the cinema, we laughed about it and my friends didn’t let me live it down!

The weekend has been better though. Yesterday I went to the Lord Mayor’s Procession in Norwich city centre with some other people from the IVC social club. I had a good time. By coincidence, it turned out that the lady hosting the event for the IVC was the daughter of my science teacher from high school! She was there as well, and she was asking me what I had been doing since I left high school. After watching the parade, we all had a drink in a local bar and then we went to watch the fireworks display.

This afternoon we went to Thrigby Wildlife Gardens, a local zoo. It was a nice sunny day, although it only took us a couple of hours to walk round the zoo as it is fairly small compared to the other ones in the area. I took lots of photos which I’ll upload to my Flickr page soon.

My studies for my Microsoft certification are proving to be a bit of a struggle, although I think this is mainly a matter of finding the time to devote to it. Out of 700 pages, I’m currently up to about 100. I was hoping to finish the book by the end of August, but I can’t see that happening now! (There are 3 books in total, and I was hoping to complete them all by the end of April 2010, as that’s when my current job finishes). A lot of the material is very advanced, in fact it is even more detailed than my computing science degree. At least with my degree course, I had proper lectures and seminars where I could get help where necessary, but with this course I’m all on my own, which makes it more difficult. I have even started to wonder whether the course is right for me after all. I think I’ll have to start setting aside an hour each evening to study, and then I’ll see where I am in a month’s time. If by then I still don’t enjoy it, I may as well give it up and find another course to study instead.

Over the last month I have been very busy learning my new job and there has also been a lot going on outside of work too.

My sister Suzanne’s wedding took place on 28th May. It was a really nice, sunny day. I wore a pink dress which I’d bought from Coast in House of Fraser. I bought my whole outfit from there, including a pair of shoes, handbag and necklace. Both the wedding service and the reception were held at the Oaklands Hotel. My nieces Anya and Emily were bridesmaids and they both made speeches during the service. In the early evening, we all had a roast dinner with beef and Yorkshire puddings and there was also a buffet for the guests later on in the evening. Suzanne and her new husband Paul are currently on their honeymoon in the Maldives, although they are due back tomorrow. For the first week of the honeymoon, Anya and Emily stayed round our house, and for the second week my other sister Sarah stayed with them in their own house.

I’ve been to the cinema a couple of times – firstly to see Coraline in 3D, which was really good as the 3D was very realistic. It seems that 3D technology has moved on quite a bit since I was younger – it is much better compared to the days when you had to wear those red and green glasses. The second film was Night At The Museum 2, which we went to see last night. I really enjoyed the first one 2 and a half years ago and I thought it was really funny. This one was good too, but I think overall I preferred the original.

I’ve also been on a few walks in the countryside at weekends – a month ago we went to Thornham in Suffolk. We last went there a couple of years ago, but this time we had a meal in a local restaurant and we also visited Hoxne, which is another pretty village nearby. A few weeks ago we visited Fairhaven Gardens, which I enjoyed as we hadn’t been there for a few years. Then a couple of weeks ago we visited Redwings Horse Sanctuary. I took photos at all these places and you can see these on my Flickr page.

Towards the end of May I co-hosted a nightclub night with another member of the IVC club. We went to Optic nightclub and I really enjoyed it. However, not as many people turned up as I expected, as a few people said they were ill or something else came up so they couldn’t make it after all. This brings me on to my next topic – I’ve been ill yet again. About 3 weeks ago, I caught a cough and cold. I was actually coughing quite badly at Suzanne’s wedding, but luckily I managed to keep quiet during the main service! The cough has nearly gone now, but I still felt really tired and run down last week.

Now that it’s the weekend I’ve finally got time to blog about the non-work related things I’ve been doing recently.

During the Easter weekend I had my belated birthday party. We had a meal at Old Orleans restaurant and then we went to the cinema to see The Boat That Rocked. The best thing was that all 4 of my closest friends could make it – we hadn’t been out all together for several years! It was just like the old days when we were still at high school.

In April I hosted my first IVC event of my own – I arranged a meal at Malaysian Delights and 9 people attended. I was really pleased as it all went well. I’ve got a nightclub evening coming up soon, so I’m looking forward to that. Last week I went to Quasar Elite (the laser-gun game) but I wasn’t very good at it – in fact my score was the lowest out of the whole group! I enjoyed it as it was a new experience for me, but I don’t think I’d be that bothered about going there again. At least I now know what it’s like, as I have been curious about it in the past. I didn’t really expect to be very good at it, but I wanted to give it a try.

2 weeks ago I was sick and I had to go home after being at work for just over half an hour. This was the second time I was ill in the space of a month. No-one else in my family caught this bug, so I’m not sure how I got it – it could’ve been something I ate. I felt very weak and lethargic for most of that weekend. I went to Felbrigg Hall Gardens with Terry, but we had to return home after less than an hour as I felt so tired and lacking in energy. There weren’t that many flowers in bloom anyway, but I did take a few photos.

On Wednesday it was Terry’s 65th birthday. We plan to go to Malaysian Delights (what yet again, I hear you cry!) tomorrow evening to celebrate.

On Thursday 28th May it will be my sister Suzanne and her fiance Paul’s wedding. Finding a dress to wear at the wedding is proving to be difficult so far; I rarely ever wear dresses these days, and the ones I tried on yesterday evening didn’t suit me. Suzanne has her hen night on 16th May, so I’m looking forward to that.

My new job has been going well, mostly. I’ve created several ad-hoc reports so far. This morning was very tense though – I completed a report to a very tight deadline. I wasn’t totally happy with the layout of it, but I thought I’d better send it out anyway in order to ensure I met the deadline. All the necessary data was there, although the report wasn’t very elegant or user-friendly. I had to create the report using a pivot table in Excel, and I’m not an expert in constructing pivot tables (yet), although I know enough to get by.
This morning, I received a phone call from the person to whom I sent the report. I wasn’t too worried about this, as I thought she was just going to ask me some questions about how to use the report. However, it actually turned out to be a complaint! The lady said that she wouldn’t be able to use the report to extract the figures she wanted, as the drop-down menus weren’t working correctly. All the figures were there, but it would be very time-consuming for her to get the high-level summaries with the report in its current format. She didn’t sound really angry, but she wasn’t very happy as she urgently needed the report to be ready for a meeting later in the afternoon.
She was quite senior – in fact she’s the head of a department. I was really nervous during the phone call and I could feel my voice was a bit shaky, and that made me feel embarrassed. I apologised for the problems with the report and told her that I would make it my top priority to put it right, and that I’d ask other co-workers for advice if necessary. She seemed a bit happier then, although she said she definitely needed the report by mid-day at the very latest.
Straight after the phone call, I told my manager what had happened, and he helped me to rebuild the report. He was very patient with me and he showed me exactly what to do, so I should be better at creating pivot tables in the future. The new version was a lot easier to use, as you can easily see the summarised data. I managed to get the revised version of the report sent out just after 11am. I felt so relieved!
When I came back from lunch, my inbox contained a thank-you email from the lady, and she said the new version of the report was much more user-friendly. I was very happy about that, and it helped to put my mind at rest.
On Tuesday and Wednesday morning I had a co-worker training me on how to do ad-hoc reports and I was “shadowing” her for most of the time. Unfortunately she had to go home at mid-day on Wednesday because she was ill, and she hasn’t been back since then. So I’ve been completing several ad-hoc reports on my own, although I have been asking other colleagues for advice on where to find the raw data when necessary. I probably haven’t had as much training as I should have done. I would’ve preferred to have had more training before I began handling actual customer requests on my own, but I don’t suppose there was much that could’ve been done about it. I do feel bad though, as I hate to feel that I’ve inconvenienced someone, especially someone who is quite senior within the company. In future when I’m creating a complex report, I think I’ll ask one of my co-workers to peer review it before I send it out, until I build up more experience. Maybe I’m being too harsh on myself, as I’ve only been in the job for a week so far.