About this time last year, I wrote this, a review of 2008. I did one for 2007 too, so might as well do one for 2009.
2009 started with some uncertain ill health, that turned out to be gall stones. I had my cholecystectomy in February and have been a reasonably good health ever since. My weight has slowly crept up toward my pre-illness weight, but thankfully still about 5kg down.
There was quite a lot of travel in 2009, starting with a long weekend in Dubai in February for wife’s birthday. Amazing place.
At Easter, we had a long weekend in Cornwall/Devon, giving Herman a mini road trip.
In June we had a much longer road trip; two weeks through France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland and Germany, taking in the Alps, Italian Lakes, French Riviera, Black Forest and generally some of the Best Driving Roads in the World.
We were to return to Belgium in August – Antwerp this time for a minibreak, and another chance for Herman to play with the trains.
In September, we left Herman at home and travelled to Turkey for a week and met up with my mother-in-law, sister-in-law and niece, and a very nice time it was too.
We would have gone to Belgium (Brussels) again a couple of weeks ago if it wasn’t for the wrong kind of snow in Calais 
Finally, for travel, I took Herman up to Aberdeen for Christmas, visiting my dad and stepmum. A bit of drama on Britain’s roads, but generally OK.
Work wise, this year started out very well, rebuilding business with Nomura and generally things were good.
By the middle of the year, long hours and weekends were ramping up my stress levels and I began to look for an exit strategy. This culminated in a move to Barclays Capital in October, where stress and work levels have dropped to the floor, so much so, that I’m seriously craving challenges for this year.
Family life took a bit of a dent toward the end of the year, and apparently there was a credit crisis too.
So, for 2010, I will try to strike a better balance of work, personal and family life, reverse the weight gain trend and generally stay healthy.
Winter travel in UK
2009 sees another winter where the UK seemingly can’t cope.
For us, it started with an aborted attempt to spend the weekend in Brussels before Christmas. We were to take Herman on Le Shuttle and across through France and Belgium.
We got as far as Junction 8 on the M20 before Operation Stack kicked in and kept us there for several hours.
In this case, the snow had closed the ferry port in Dover (M20 feeds this) and in addition, the French weren’t letting trucks off the boats/shuttles onto their motorway system out of Calais.
Further, Eurostar’s trains encountered the wrong kind of snow and so Eurotunnel had to use Les Shuttles to rescue passengers.
The prospect of waiting up to a day to get to Brussels (which was in a blizzard) just for two nights stay was looking grim, so we bailed out and went back home.
My next journey was a few days later, driving up to Aberdeen.
This was surprisingly easy. M11, M25, M1, A50, M6 – completely fine. Stopped overnight in Preston, then onward the next day to Aberdeen.
This started out OK, but due to black ice and trucks jack knifing on the motorways, I was diverted across country (B roads then A71) and this was a bit hairy, with about 40 miles of untreated twisty country roads. Herman became a snow plough in places and nearly ended up in a ditch a couple of times – very slippery – but got through OK.
Aberdeenshire was supposed to be under 3 miles of snow, but the last leg up the east coast was actually fine, only thwarted by the last 100 metres by the slippery and steep untreated road up to my dad’s house.
Compared to a friend’s attempt to fly up to Edinburgh from Luton, my journey was really easy.
On the way home now. Last night I drove down from Aberdeen to South York, via Newcastle. Again, mostly easy, with only one scary high speed black ice bit on the A697 where Herman fortunately kept going in the same direction 
Side note – Coldstream is a very nice little town to stop for a break, as the parking was free and the toilets immaculately kept.
Just had breakfast and waiting for the sun to come up a bit for heading off for the final 3.5 hours.
Finger crossed it doesn’t all end in doom!
Update: arrived safely, and typically, it was just raining heavily for the last 20 miles to London.
So we went to Pirate’s Beach Club in Tekirova, Turkey for a bit of sun and to catch up with some of my in-laws.
Warning, the link above has very annoying background music – music they played a lot at the resort itself.
This beach resort is unsurprisingly themed on pirates, although thankfully more Long John Silver than Sumalian, and it’s not really in your face – just everyone wearing stripy shirts and a hanky on their heads.
The resort primarily caters for the Russian market and so everyone except me was Russian and all the staff speak Russian, although a few did speak a bit of English too.
This was fine for my family, but a bit weird for me, especially as all the events and activities were in Russian too (but very very good). Fortunately, the weather was nice, I had a good book and the bar was free.
Mostly, though, it was great to catch up with my sister-in-law, who I hadn’t seen in eight or nine years and her daughter who I’d never seen. I do quite like being an uncle.
Travel notes after the jump…
We’re off to Turkey!
Mother-in-law, sister-in-law and niece are already there (a beach resort near Tekirova, apparently) and we’re heading off on Saturday to meet them. I’ve never seen niece before and haven’t seen the others for a few years, so very much looking forward to it.
I’m also half way through serving my notice in my current job and start my new job on October 12.
All in all, makes for a relaxing time
Last month, we took a break from the madness of work and headed over to mainland Europe with Herman for a two-week tour of seven countries.
It’s taken me a few weekends to sort out all the photos on Flickr, and whilst I’ve posted a few notes on Facebook, I’d thought I put up something here to round it off, mostly disconnected thoughts on travel related topics… Continue reading »
The last few weeks have been quite difficult for me.
Work has been generally unsatisfactory as there is way too much support/management and not enough hands-on development work. This was made worse by my boss taking a couple of weeks in Asia followed by three weeks on holiday, and all this at a particularly busy time.
Net result? ultimate responsibility, 60+ hour working weeks and being permanently on call.
Well he’s back now, so at least I no longer have to cover his role and generally having an extra body in the team spreads the support load around a bit more.
I even had yesterday (Friday) off in lieu of the bank holiday I had to work a couple of weeks back. Very nice turning the raspberry off
Good news now is that I have one more week in the office, then two weeks off on holiday. Hurrah!
We’re going on a Euro road trip, in part, inspired by the Top Gear search for the best driving roads in the world.
Itinerary goes something like this:
- London -> Luxembourg -> Geneva -> Nice+Monaca
- Nice -> Menaggio (Lake Como) – staying 3 days
- Menaggio -> Davos – staying 3 days
- Davos -> Baden Baden – staying 3 days
- Baden Baden -> Spa -> London
The six days in the lakes/alps will see us visiting Col de Turini, the San Bernadino Pass and Stelvio Pass as well as many other interesting bits. The trip up through the Black Forest is supposed to be amazing too.
All in all, should be eight countries/principalities and something between 3800 and 4000 km
Can’t wait. Herman’s quite excited too
We’re in Canada this weekend.
At least that’s what the weather report in our hotel’s reception would suggest.
We’re actually in Trebetherick, Cornwall, England, but the fool who got the weather report just typed ‘cornwall’ into the BBC weather website and got ‘Cornwall, CAN’ instead.
Wife spotted this when it claimed lows of minus seven.
Anyway, when bringing this to the attention of the receptionist, she said something like: oh it’s right, but best to look out the window.
Gosh, is that a moose I see?
We’ve just got back from a mini break to Dubai for my wife’s birthday.
We stayed at Al Qasr in the Madinet Jumeirah resort – this is near the palm island and adjacent to the Burj al Arab.
The resort is a bit Las Vegas. It comprises two hotels, a shopping centre and access to another resort hotel and the Burj al Arab, all with their own themes. They are all connected by electric buggies and abras (boats) on an internal water way.
Because of this, it’s possible to see and do lots of different things without actually having to leave the resort. Given that the rest of Dubai appears to be a shopping mall and building site (like Vegas) this is probably a good thing.
You don’t see many arabs there and the (excellent) service and hospitality comes mostly from people from south-east Asia. You do occasionally see a local in a thawb and ghutrah, but usually propping up a bar (somewhat surprising).
Weather was quite good, although a little strange. It is warm and sunny in the mornings, but overcast and cooler in the afternoons and actually quite chilly in the evenings. Quite pleasant actually, although you do need to get your beach/swimming done by lunchtime.
Dubai doesn’t strike me as a particularly cheap place to visit, and this resort was particularly expensive. You get the feeling you’re going to be cleaned out as soon as you arrive, with Rolls, Bentleys and Lamborghinis parked outside, then you see restaurant and bar tariffs and you’re left wondering if your normally ample credit card limits are going to be sufficient.
However, I’m left feeling it was pricey, but not a overpriced – good value of money, if you will. Certainly the best service I’ve experienced.
The one bit of the trip that’s not so great is the travel. The flying time is around seven hours or more with 45 mins drive time at the Dubai end and 90 mins at the London end, so for a four day trip, that’s a lot of time squeezed in a metal box.
Will I go again? Yes, I think so. Probably in four or five years time. Like Vegas, it’s always changing, so next time, there will be more to see. I’d particularly like to go up the Burj Dubai.
Today, we’re leaving the chilly British weather for Dubai for four days. This is good because I haven’t actually had a proper full day off work since New Years Day – even reasonably free weekends sees me having to do something, usually at some weird hour.
So looking forward to it enormously.
Apparently it’s not snowing there, but it is at Heathrow, so perhaps we’ll not be going at all…
About this time last year I wrote this, a review of 2007. In the same style, here comes a review of 2008.
I started the year employed, for a company called Lehman Brothers, and clearly that didn’t last out the whole year. Barclays bought the US bit of Lehman after the bankruptcy, and Nomura eventually bought out most of the rest. I’m now doing pretty much the same job at Nomura. So I did manage to end the year employed, but the axe is looming, so who knows what 2009 will bring.
I followed up my plan to end my reliance on public transport and in early April, I took delivery of Herman. We’ve now done about 5500 miles and have not crashed or collected any parking/driving offences. Hurrah!
Travel-wise, we’ve mostly stuck to the UK, visiting much of Kent, Surrey, Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, Somerset, Cumbria, Snowdonia, Yorkshire and several visits to Bluewater.
We did escape these fair shores briefly, with a visit to Barcelona.
I ended the year with a bit of ill health, but seem to be recovering ok now.
Hopefully, 2009 will have as many or more of the good bits of 2008 and none of the dodgy bits.
Update: Clearly 2008 was a year for memory loss too. My wife reminds me we also had a few shopping days in New York (pre-banking collapse, obviously).
