Life

Things that have happened in my life

2009 in review

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Around this time last year I wrote a somewhat optimistic post about what had happened in 2008 and what I expected to happen in 2009. While I was right about there being a lot of change, 2009 proved to be a very eventful year and not always in the good sense.

January and February

January started well, despite my unemployment – I went to Edinburgh for a job interview and took a few photos while I was there. The interview sadly didn’t lead to a job, but upon my return to Bradford we ended up with a houseful of people – Hari’s little sister and her then boyfriend, and one of our friends from World of Warcraft. As it happens, World of Warcraft would be the thing that would keep me sane for the first few months of the year.

February was when things started going downhill. I was still unemployed, and was struggling to find work, despite being registered with two temping agencies. Then I heard that my grandmother, who had been ill since September 2008, had passed away. While it was somewhat expected, as she has been very ill, the funeral was a big shock. I didn’t write about it publicly at the time but even 9 months on I still miss her. She was 86, and is survived by my grandfather. Also during February, Hari went to Scotland for 2 weeks.

March and April

In March I went on a weekend trip to Dovedale and Sherwood Forest with the University Hiking Club – despite no longer being a student or member of staff there I was still involved, and my parents offered to pay for my place on the trip. As I was still unemployed, the Bank of Mum and Dad came very much into play at this time. To pass the time while unemployed, I started walking more often on my own, and did a couple of canals and disused railway lines near Bradford. Hari was still in Scotland, and eventually came back after 4 weeks. It was then that we agreed that things weren’t working and that the time we had spent apart only came to prove this. On Saturday 21st March, after 3 years and 5 months together, we split up.

April, May and June

During April I tied up the loose ends at the flat Hari and I rented in Bradford, and I moved back in with my parents over the Easter weekend. The loss of independence took a lot of getting used to and I can’t say I enjoyed it a lot, especially as most of my friends were still back in Bradford.

Come May, and things started brightening up. I managed to get a new short-term employment contract back at the University in Bradford, so spent a couple of months staying in people’s spare rooms. I also reached the grand old age of 25, and spent my birthday up a mountain in Wales.

At the end of June I moved to where I live now, in the Undercliffe area of Bradford. While it’s a bit further away from the University, I have good housemates and the house is very nice (and cheap!).

July, August, September and October

The first 2 weeks of July were spent on my first foreign holiday in 6 years, which was in France, around La Rochelle. I really enjoyed the break, which after the ups and downs of the preceding few months was very welcome. There were some really memorable moments, such as riding on a tandem and seeing Fort Boyard.
While my employment contract was initially quite short, it was extended a few times (and now runs until the end of February). August and September proved to be very busy at work, although the latter month resulted in a 23″ screen which I posted about quite a bit.

In October, I visited a friend who had recently moved to Blackpool (she was my travelling partner in France and had been a shoulder to cry on over the preceding months) who introduced me to one of her new friends, Christine. A week later, and Christine and I became an item. We went to see Ash play in Bradford, which was awesome, and have since tried to spend every weekend together.

November and December

A sign that the job market was improving was that I started getting interviews again – one in September and another in November. Despite getting very positive feedback, neither resulted in a job, unfortunately. Also in November I visited Halifax town centre for the first time – not a very interesting event but it’s somewhere I’ve passed through a lot but never really visited.

And finally in December I was diagnosed with an arselump. December was also the first month for several years where I wasn’t overdrawn on my bank account – just in time for my bank to raise the overdraft charges to £1 per day. While I’m not rolling in cash at present, I’m much better off financially than I was in 2008. Christine and I are planning to spend New Year together in Blackpool.

And as for 2010? Well, I’ll be starting it on better footing than last year, with more money and a job. I also have 2 interviews lined up for January, and a weekend break in central Scotland. If all goes to plan, I’ll be getting myself a new computer (probably a Mac Mini again but still not fully decided), and a new mobile phone (probably not an iPhone as they’re expensive, but maybe an Android phone). And hopefully Christine and I may be able to afford a weekend trip somewhere outside the UK, such as Paris, later in the year.

Hope you all have a wonderful new year and that 2010 brings you everything you could ask for.

The benefits of joined-up IT systems

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Today I went to my local GP regarding a lump which I have had at the top of my natal cleft (or ‘arsecrack’ to you and me) for a number of weeks. It turned out to be a pilonidal sinus, a somewhat rare condition affecting 0.026% of the population, but one that is thankfully curable with minor surgery.

Although I have a diagnosis from my GP, it will still be necessary to have an appointment with a consultant at one of our local hospitals (in this case St Luke’s Hospital). Until very recently, arranging an appointment with a hospital consultant involved:

  1. Your GP sending a letter (or sometimes a fax) to the consultant’s secretary
  2. The consultant’s secretary then writes to you asking you to make an appointment
  3. You then telephone the consultant’s secretary to make the appointment

Reliance on the postal services means that this can take a week.

Thankfully we now have the NHS Choose and Book system, part of the much-delayed and massively over-budget NHS National Programme for IT, described as “the world’s biggest civil information technology programme”. All of the backwards and forwards with letters has been replaced with a web site, which allows GPs to book appointments with consultants instantly online, often with the patient present like I was to day.

This is especially welcome at this time of year, where the postal service is recovering from a series of strikes and has the additional burden of Christmas deliveries. Consequently, I was able to choose an appointment before the Christmas Holiday; I also had a choice of hospitals. Furthermore, I also have instructions for accessing a web site which will let me cancel my appointment online, should I need to.

This is a clear example of a change which has reduced the administrative time of both my GP’s practice and of the hospital consultant, and has resulted in the patient being seen more quickly. And it’s exactly the sorts of issues that a good IT system should aim to do.

I’ll let you know how my I get on with my ‘arse lump’.

Tumbleweed

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Looks like I’ve been a bad blogger and not posted here for a while. Oops.

Here’s what I’ve been up to:

  • The slightly cryptic last sentence in my Blackpool post last month refers to the fact that my new girlfriend lives in Blackpool. Her name is Christine (that’s her actual first name, not a pseudonym), we’ve been seeing each other for about 6 weeks and I’ll probably say more about her as time goes on. It’s a distance relationship but we’ve managed to make time to see each other most weekends.
  • In October I went to see Ash when they played a gig at Bradford Gasworks. They were awesome. They’re also releasing a new single every 2 weeks over the next 12 months, the first 3 of which are out. You can buy all 26 for £11 which isn’t bad.
  • I’ve recently bought some noise-cancelling headphones, which actually do seem to work – my walk to work on a morning is now quite tranquil as I don’t have the noise of cars and the rain in the background, and can instead have my iPod at a lower volume. I only bought a relatively cheap Philips unit for £20 – the sound-cancelling unit is almost as big as my iPod nano – and bar some minor sound distortion they’re good for outdoor use.
  • I visited Halifax on Saturday – another local place that I’ve never really been to before. The Piece Hall is well-worth a visit for the small, independent shops. The rest of the town is nice but mostly full of typical high-street shops, so not worth spending much time visiting. And I’m a bit old for Eureka!, even if it is made of wall-to-wall awesomeness.
  • Firefox 3.6 Beta 3 is out. It’s noticably quicker than 3.5, although on my Mac it fails to start if Nightly Tester Tools is enabled. So right now I’m running with barely any extensions enabled.

Back from France

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Although I’ve been back in Britain since Monday, I haven’t yet said publicly that I’m back, so…
I’m back.

There you go.

France was fantastic – we had really good weather for most of the holiday and went to lots of cool places. I’ll write in more detail soon although I’ve managed to return from holiday during a very busy time at work so it’ll probably be at least the weekend before I upload anything. I also have around 300 photos to sort through and upload to Flickr.

Those of you who don’t follow me on Twitter can read what I’ve posted while away as a brief overview of what happened on my travels.

Twenty Five

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Today is my 25th birthday. Hard to think I’ve been alive a quarter of a century, but there you go.
Presents included a new walking rucksack, which is being put to use straight-away as I’m off on a walking holiday in North Wales this afternoon. I’ll therefore be beyond the reach of the internet but may be using good old SMS to update Facebook and Twitter.

See you on Friday.

End of the line

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I’m going to keep this brief, but at the weekend me and Hari made the decision to end our relationship. She’s moving back home to be with her family in the West Midlands, and I’m going to move back to York in a few weeks to stay with my parents while I search for jobs.

We’re hoping to stay friends, but things just weren’t working out between us.

Looking back, looking forward

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In the past I’ve done an end of your quiz (see 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004 and 2003) but I’ve chosen not to do it this year. Instead, I’ve decided to write a brief entry summing up 2008, and what 2009 has in store for me.

2008 has been mostly a consolidation year after the big changes in 2007. Up until mid-December I was working for the university in Bradford, where I saw my contract move from casual work to a salary, my contract extended, and then subsequently finding in November that it wouldn’t be renewed. I had a couple of job interviews which unfortunately proved fruitless (and with hindsight I wouldn’t have wanted one of the jobs anyway) and I’m now currently unemployed.

Hari and I have also had a good year together. We moved in properly in summer 2007 and have been happy together – for the most part at least – in a rented house that we’re sharing. 2007 was our third year together and while we didn’t pass any other major milestones the future looks reasonably bright for the two of us.

Financially things have been a little hard, as almost everything I have earned has been spent on rent, bills, taxes and groceries leaving little left over for luxuries. Thankfully I have some savings and supporting parents so I’m not drowning in debt. This is why, as much as I’d like to buy a new computer, I’m having to hold off until I have more money left at the end of the month.

2009 is looking to be a year of change, maybe more so than 2007 was. I have already got a job interview mid-January and looking for other work as well, but as I’m not limiting myself to the Bradford area it may well mean moving; the job I have an interview for is in Scotland, for example. Hari is still at university and will be there until the end of May, so it may mean living away from her initially. We have agreed that we want to move away from Bradford – I have been here for over 6 years, she has been here for over 4 – and this would be good time to do it.

Provided I find a new job, and one that isn’t fixed-term and has a decent salary, financially we should be somewhat better off than right now, in spite of the current economic climate.

In terms of how the world will be in 2009, we’re at an interesting point in history. America has elected a (comparatively) young, intelligent, charismatic person as its next president, who is currently “talking the talk” when it comes to sorting out the problems in his country and overseas. This year will prove whether he can “walk the walk”, or whether his bark is weaker than his bite, as it where. We, once again, have unrest in the middle east, due to a minority of idiots with weapons throwing weapons at civilians (I’m talking about both sides here); we have the continuing collapse of Zimbabwe, as well as other ongoing problems in other African nations such as Somalia, Sudan and Congo; and of course there’s the world economies which may well get worse before they get better. For world affairs, it will be an interesting year.

Hope you have a good New Year celebration – I’ll be spending it with a few friends in Bradford – and see you in 2009, whatever it may bring.

Leaping to the Coast

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I’m making sure I post something here today, since I can only do it once every 4 years. No marriage proposals yet, though.

I’m off to spend a weekend at the seaside in the vicinity of Scarborough, which will be nice provided that the weather is better than the wind and rain we have in Bradford right now.

Hospital visit

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I had my first ever emergency admission and overnight stay in hospital on Monday night. Basically it was an asthma attack, but one that was so serious that my own medication couldn’t tame it, so Hari and I took a taxi to the A & E department at Bradford Royal Infirmary, where I was nebulised and stabilised.

I ended up spending the night, and most of the following day, at the hospital, and for a lot of the time I was on oxygen. But thankfully by yesterday afternoon I was good to go home and was discharged in the evening. I’m now feeling much, much better and my asthma symptoms have subsided dramatically, so I’m all well again.

As this was my first hospital visit, here’s the good and bad things about my visit:

Good:

  • A lot has been said about hygiene in NHS hospitals. All the rooms I was in looked very clean, and there were anti-bacterial handwash dispensers quite literally everywhere you looked. Hygiene is obviously taken seriously here.
  • The staff were, for the most, part very friendly and helpful – the A & E staff especially.
  • Food wasn’t bad – better than I expected at least.
  • All the beds had Patientline terminals, so a payment of £5 for the day got me my own personal phone number, about 20 Sky TV channels plus some radio channels, and internet access. It certainly helped to pass the time and let me update my friends via Facebook.
  • And this is the NHS so all of my treatment was free. When you’re hyperventilating and waiting to be seen, at least you only have to worry about getting better and not whether you can afford the treatment, or whether your insurance will cover your treatment. We’re very fortunate to have the NHS in this country and I don’t think everyone appreciates just how lucky we are to have it.

Bad

  • There was a shortage of beds, so when the decision was made to keep me in at about 1am, it wasn’t until 3am that I was on a ward. And then I got woken up by the ward doctor at 4:30am to go through my symptoms, and with all the beeping machinery and people being moved around I didn’t get an awful lot of sleep while I was there.
  • There were about 25 people on my ward, all in the same room, and it was a mixed ward. I’m not too worried about this but there was a patient who was being quite loud and abusive, which isn’t quite what I wanted. But hey, it’s free treatment – can’t have everything.
  • It took about 3 hours from the doctor saying I could be discharged to me actually being able to get my coat on and leave. Admittedly the staff were busy, but it would have been nicer to be back home at 5pm, not 8pm.

Still, on the whole I had a good first hospital experience, and I’d like to thank all the staff there who helped me get better. Especially the A & E staff who were very friendly and helpful. And thanks to Hari who was very supporting during my time of need.

Not quite there

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Last week, I said:

So, with a bit of luck, within the next couple of weeks I could have a full driving license and a proper, decently-paid full-time job on the cards. We’ll see.

Unfortunately, I failed my driving test (although I dispute my score) and came ‘a close second’ in the job interview. Which isn’t much when there’s only one job position available. So I’m still a learner driver with part-time casual work.