So, if you didn't guess from this post, I think First Great Western Rail are a bunch of fucking idiots.
To this end I sent them a letter telling them quite what I thought of them. And guess what happended. The other day, I received a letter from them.
Guess what it was? A response to my complaint? Haha, yes that would be rather good wouldn't it.
No, I get junk mail... marketing info. 'Would you like to have a weekend away in Oxford for the paltry price of 84766746767676780903670984 bejillion pounds?'
Well no actualy, I spend enough time on your shitty trains during the week, the last thing I want to do is dignify you with my presence at the weekend.
Tossers. Seriously, are they running a train company or a steaming juggernaut of badly planned and late running shitty PR?
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Skipping the Country II
They always say the beauty is in the detail however when it comes to working out moving abroad, the detail is not at all beautiful and is actually verging on the mildly overwhelming.
Getting to Australia and finding somewhere to live is the easy bit. I could do that in a weekend. The hard bit is finding a job out there and getting a visa to be there and having a job in the first place to support myself. At the moment I have three options…
The first option would be the best but is rather plagued by ‘technical details’ imposed by the Australian High Commission. This is the basic semi-permanent independent work visa which has no majorly restrictive conditions and allows you to stay and work in Australia for up to four years. However, to qualify for this you have to reach a certain number of points; specifically 120. I have 105. Their requirements are very high and short of being an experienced Doctor, or having a large amount of cash to invest in the Country (which I don’t) you don’t get to qualify.
The second option is the most preferable however involves a lot more ‘up front’ work and effort. This option involves me getting a job in Australia, whilst still in the UK, and securing a visa on the basis of that. Due to a shortage of planners in Australia, as in the UK, I am told that with my experience there is a reasonable chance of this. However, securing an actual job first appears to be an uphill battle. For a start I am not in Australia and am therefore unlikely to be the prime target of any Australian firms recruitment campaigns. Added to this I have no Australian planning experience (obviously) and at present, little more than a fleeting knowledge of the Australian planning system. This is a difficult route to proceed along.
The final option is, as I like to call it, ‘the seat of your pants option.’ This involves travelling on a working holiday visa. This allows me to stay and work in Australia for a period of one year subject to some rather irritating conditions. The first is that I cannot work for any Australian employer for more than three months (or maybe six months… I am still confused by conflicting advice on this). This therefore puts me in the ‘temp’ planner working bracket and means that, in essence, I will have to go out speculatively and find a temp job there, hopefully as a planner. There are some opportunities to get a temp job before I go but judging by the temping market this will be literally only weeks in advance, if that.
This option has the advantage of being able to extend the ‘working holiday’ visa by a further year, but in order to qualify I would have to do three months of my first year doing ‘regional work,’ ie. sheep shearing or fruit picking etc. in order to qualify. And to be blunt, I am somewhat unconvinced that I want to do that and how that would actually look on my CV. The difficulty is that this visa wasn’t really designed for me; I am looking at picking up my career and planting it again in a different country for a little while, not go on holiday.
At present I have not picked a route, however I have made at least one contact that I think can address some of these issues. I am not expecting this to be any easy journey by any stretch of the imagination however, fingers crossed something will work itself out, this is all early stages after all.
Then again, I could just try and find myself a nice Australian girl to marry, not too sure what Claire might say about that mind.
Getting to Australia and finding somewhere to live is the easy bit. I could do that in a weekend. The hard bit is finding a job out there and getting a visa to be there and having a job in the first place to support myself. At the moment I have three options…
The first option would be the best but is rather plagued by ‘technical details’ imposed by the Australian High Commission. This is the basic semi-permanent independent work visa which has no majorly restrictive conditions and allows you to stay and work in Australia for up to four years. However, to qualify for this you have to reach a certain number of points; specifically 120. I have 105. Their requirements are very high and short of being an experienced Doctor, or having a large amount of cash to invest in the Country (which I don’t) you don’t get to qualify.
The second option is the most preferable however involves a lot more ‘up front’ work and effort. This option involves me getting a job in Australia, whilst still in the UK, and securing a visa on the basis of that. Due to a shortage of planners in Australia, as in the UK, I am told that with my experience there is a reasonable chance of this. However, securing an actual job first appears to be an uphill battle. For a start I am not in Australia and am therefore unlikely to be the prime target of any Australian firms recruitment campaigns. Added to this I have no Australian planning experience (obviously) and at present, little more than a fleeting knowledge of the Australian planning system. This is a difficult route to proceed along.
The final option is, as I like to call it, ‘the seat of your pants option.’ This involves travelling on a working holiday visa. This allows me to stay and work in Australia for a period of one year subject to some rather irritating conditions. The first is that I cannot work for any Australian employer for more than three months (or maybe six months… I am still confused by conflicting advice on this). This therefore puts me in the ‘temp’ planner working bracket and means that, in essence, I will have to go out speculatively and find a temp job there, hopefully as a planner. There are some opportunities to get a temp job before I go but judging by the temping market this will be literally only weeks in advance, if that.
This option has the advantage of being able to extend the ‘working holiday’ visa by a further year, but in order to qualify I would have to do three months of my first year doing ‘regional work,’ ie. sheep shearing or fruit picking etc. in order to qualify. And to be blunt, I am somewhat unconvinced that I want to do that and how that would actually look on my CV. The difficulty is that this visa wasn’t really designed for me; I am looking at picking up my career and planting it again in a different country for a little while, not go on holiday.
At present I have not picked a route, however I have made at least one contact that I think can address some of these issues. I am not expecting this to be any easy journey by any stretch of the imagination however, fingers crossed something will work itself out, this is all early stages after all.
Then again, I could just try and find myself a nice Australian girl to marry, not too sure what Claire might say about that mind.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Skipping the country
So Bng is/was thinking about Japan. I am also thinking about moving to a different country for a while. Australia to be precise. I am still investigating jobs, visas and accommodation however I can’t find any decent reason not to go. The draft plan at the moment is to move out to Australia at some point between the end of the UK summer and Christmas so we get two summers. Thinking Sydney/Melbourne area or maybe Brisbane for the weather, try to get me a job before we go and get a working visa otherwise we will (hopefully) find temp planner jobs out there on a working holiday visa. This may then be followed by a similar arrangement in New Zealand (where, fyi, they are lot more amenable to letting you stay permanently than Australia). This is, of course, early stages so ‘the plan’ may be subject to variation/amendment.
To say I am amazingly excited about this is an understatement. My Mum however, not so much.
To say I am amazingly excited about this is an understatement. My Mum however, not so much.
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
New year
Well, I don’t know about anybody else but the past few new years I have had have always been a little bit disappointing and a non-event. Usually festivities have involved a house party of some description and much booze and the final midnight countdown and post midnight celebrations have always been a little, well, vanilla. Don’t get me wrong mind, for those of you that have been there, it has been good catching up with people and seeing friends etc. but the big event was never as ‘big’ as I was generally hoping for.
So, this new yearI we did something a bit different. But I will come to that shortly…
My brother was moving house on new years eve, from Reading to St Albans. And I was helping out. Everything was proceeding fine before our merry jaunt down the M4 ground to a very sudden and complete halt. At which point our little convoy of a van and two cars finds out via the radio that the motorway has been shut, with us on it, due to a large accident and according to the radio; ‘nothing moving very soon’ which left everyone a little despondent to say the least.
This was made doubly irritating by us being at the very back of the queue, literally there were four cars behind us and then the motorway was closed and nothing further was coming. If we had been moments later onto the motorway we would have missed the whole thing. So we sit, and wait, and wait. Meanwhile Nick sees new years eve turning into an evening on the M4.
However, a police car turned up and sat at the back of traffic. Initialy I thought this was to ensure no law breaking jaunts by rogue elements taking a backwards trip along the hard shoulder (or the whole motorway to be honest because nothing was coming). However as it transpired after a short wait the police car got cars to do a U-turn and escorted us back the wrong way up the (non-functioning) motorway and off the wrong way off the entry ramp at Slough Central. And of course, as we were at the back of the queue, we were first off and sneaked past all the traffic queuing off the motorway onto local roads. So pleased with that and thank you to Thames Valley Police.
Anyway, moving of brother was sorted, albeit a little later than planned and involving a collision of van with car, oops, nothing too serious mind.
So back to Maidenhead in time to meet Claire where we were staging our evening in, avoiding chaos in town and on transport, with a nice meal and cocktails.
At midnight a bottle of champagne was popped from the balcony to the tune of multiple fireworks going off across the town which we had a fantastic view of.
And, do you know what, going back to the reason I started this post, it was one of the best new years I can remember, at least since that year with the three zeros.
Here’s hoping everyone else had a good new year too and wishing you the best for the year to come, it, for me at least should be an interesting one… (maybe more details on that as events transpire).
So, this new year
My brother was moving house on new years eve, from Reading to St Albans. And I was helping out. Everything was proceeding fine before our merry jaunt down the M4 ground to a very sudden and complete halt. At which point our little convoy of a van and two cars finds out via the radio that the motorway has been shut, with us on it, due to a large accident and according to the radio; ‘nothing moving very soon’ which left everyone a little despondent to say the least.
This was made doubly irritating by us being at the very back of the queue, literally there were four cars behind us and then the motorway was closed and nothing further was coming. If we had been moments later onto the motorway we would have missed the whole thing. So we sit, and wait, and wait. Meanwhile Nick sees new years eve turning into an evening on the M4.
However, a police car turned up and sat at the back of traffic. Initialy I thought this was to ensure no law breaking jaunts by rogue elements taking a backwards trip along the hard shoulder (or the whole motorway to be honest because nothing was coming). However as it transpired after a short wait the police car got cars to do a U-turn and escorted us back the wrong way up the (non-functioning) motorway and off the wrong way off the entry ramp at Slough Central. And of course, as we were at the back of the queue, we were first off and sneaked past all the traffic queuing off the motorway onto local roads. So pleased with that and thank you to Thames Valley Police.
Anyway, moving of brother was sorted, albeit a little later than planned and involving a collision of van with car, oops, nothing too serious mind.
So back to Maidenhead in time to meet Claire where we were staging our evening in, avoiding chaos in town and on transport, with a nice meal and cocktails.
At midnight a bottle of champagne was popped from the balcony to the tune of multiple fireworks going off across the town which we had a fantastic view of.
And, do you know what, going back to the reason I started this post, it was one of the best new years I can remember, at least since that year with the three zeros.
Here’s hoping everyone else had a good new year too and wishing you the best for the year to come, it, for me at least should be an interesting one… (maybe more details on that as events transpire).
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