Archive for the ‘Travel’ Category

Back to Work

Thursday, August 23rd, 2007

I’m back at work this week and with a vengeance: a six week engagement in London. The customer’s adjacent to Paddington station so I’m taking the train up via Reading. So far this has been pretty painless with trains on time and even getting a seat except on the section from Reading in to London. This morning the passengers were an odd mix of the normal suited commuters and the (Wellington) booted Reading Festival goers. The only slight annoyance has been that, so far, my 6:30 start in the morning has seen me getting up before Emma.

Tour of Britain

Thursday, August 16th, 2007

413No – I haven’t been reading Harry Potter all of this time. We’ve been away on holiday for the past couple of weeks and without network connectivity for most of that time. Our primary destination was the Scottish 6-Days orienteering event held on Speyside, up in the Highlands of Scotland. However, we decided to make the most of my being off work and have a fairly leisurely drive up there showing off Emma to various relatives on the way.
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Out to play

Tuesday, July 17th, 2007

410Yesterday we headed over to Itchen Valley Country Park for the afternoon. As you can see, Christine had fun on the play trail whilst Emma slept. We then went for a walk round the woods and up to the top of the meadows – all fairly pram friendly if a bit muddy given the recent weather. We’ll have to remember to avoid Monday or Tuesday next time though as the cafe is closed.

Wye Valley Butterfly Zoo

Tuesday, July 17th, 2007

404We were visiting Christine’s parents in Monmouth last week and on Thursday had a trip out to the Wye Valley Butterfly Zoo at Symonds Yat. There’s only the one medium sized glasshouse but it’s home to a good collections of butterflies. Emma didn’t last more than a couple of minutes inside though as it’s kept pretty humid. You’re given some identification cards which I’ve used to label most of the photos I took but there are two I haven’t got: one I forgot to label before deleting my photos of the cards and another that didn’t appear on the cards at all. If you know what they are, please let me know!
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RHS Wisley

Saturday, June 23rd, 2007

372We had a family outing yesterday, joining Sarah Rollins and young Thomas at the Royal Horticultural Society Garden Wisley. The rain generously ceased shortly after we arrived and didn’t restart until we were sat in our third restaurant/cafe of the day and almost ready to depart. We started by exploring the new fabulous new Glasshouse, due to be opened by the Queen next week. After a very nice (if expensive) sandwich we then wandered around the grounds, Christine and Sarah discussing motherhood whilst I snapped away the camera (photos on Flickr). I could easily have spent a few more hours there but we caught the start of the M25 rush-hour(s) as it was.

WSTC Day 5

Friday, April 27th, 2007

I’m sat at McCarran International airport now and can’t wait to get home. I’m so tired now that I may even sleep on the plane (something that I can’t usually manage). There were two slots this morning and I went along to hear what the Distinguished Engineers had to say on the subjects of SOA and ESB. Rob High (SOA Foundation Chief Architect) was presenting on SOA Advanced Technology – Today and Tomorrow and Kyle Brown (SOA and Emerging Technologies) covered ESB Best Practices. The latter provided some excellent advice on getting started, designing and implementing an ESB. Hopefully this will make it out as a whitepaper or developerWorks article.

Vegas (again)

Sunday, April 22nd, 2007

I followed in Andy’s footsteps today, getting the 10 hour flight from Gatwick to Las Vegas for the annual IBM WebSphere Software Service gathering. With only just over 3 weeks until B-day I’m trying to minimise my time out of the country but it means I don’t have much time to recover from the flight before launching in to the technical sessions tomorrow morning. The buffet dinner this evening was a good chance to catch up with some of my colleagues from around Europe and further afield that I have worked with over the past year.

Persian dining in Düsseldorf

Friday, April 20th, 2007

I’ve spent the last two day’s in the German city of Düsseldorf. Sadly I didn’t see much more of the city than the view through the window of the taxi going to and from the airport. We did, however, eat out at a very nice Persian restaurant in the city centre on Thursday night. Of the four of us, I was the odd one out when it came to deciphering the menu. Two of my companions were native German speakers and the third, an American, could read pharsee. As well as being able to give excellent advice on menu choices, I’m sure his banter with the waitress also helped with the service.