As some of you might know, it is my 40th year and it would seem a shame to let it pass uncelebrated. So I am intending to have a series of activites throughout the year to mark this occassion. Let me know if you would be interested in coming along to any or all of the following. Or if you have an idea for something I have missed.
Neil Hopcroft
A digital misfit
North of the Cuckoo Line
The whirlwind stops spinning, just for a moment. Long enough for me to write a little about how things have settled here. I’ve started working for Service2Media in Enschede, we have rented a weird house/flat in the centre of the nearby town of Almelo (home town of Wubbo Ockels, the first Dutch astronaut and twinned with Preston). Let me know if you would like to come and visit.
Of course, the complications are that I’m actually working from England part of the time, and Holland for the other part, so I’m commuting between and working from home. Which is something that is going to take a bit of getting used to. This is probably not a long term arrangement, but will continue for a while. But it does mean that there is rather more whirlwind around for the forseeable future.
I am intending to head to the Nokia Development conference in London in a couple of weeks, so let me know if you are going to be there and we’ll see if we can meet up.
When did I turn into the kind of person fellow travellers talk to?
i couldn’t understand the announcement but the sigh from my fellow passengers made it clear. I’ve got as far as almelo with no sign of a train. Oh well.
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Thats my first 2 week stint in Holland over and I’m flying home (if I can call England that these days?) before the football madness takes over the country on Sunday. I’ll be back in England for the next couple of weeks, does anyone know of anything happening in London any evenings next week? Or anyone want to meet up one night?
is this the future?
has anyone seen a stray de lorean yet?
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won’t you come awaltzing with me?
for some ill explicable reason there is a marching band playing waltzing matilda on their fourth circuit of the block. I guess there’s not much to do in lonneker on a weeknight.
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Britain: escapology by philosophy
Thats not the Britain I know.
According to my calculations I need only five of the six litres of Cola I bought to get my recommended daily calorie intake. Maybe I was a little over eager, but even two litres in I’m still melting.
The mackrel sky is going to turn to thunder sometime soon, the air is getting closer. This weather does nothing for my appetite, but a kilo of strawberries helps – the punnets didn’t look that big when I ordered two of them.
Theres still a whirlwind going on in my life. I have landed in my new role as a Symbian developer at Service2Media in the town of Enschede in the Netherlands, only a few miles from the German border.
Commercial decency prevents me from talking too much detail, suffice to say that its a small company making software for mobile phones, but you’d probably guessed that much already. I’m staying in a small hotel in the small town of Lonneker, a couple of miles north of Enschede, and getting lifts to the office with the Ukranians. Who are mostly quite fun, but appear also not to have gotten the hang of dealing with the local cyclists – silent killers and then some.
The hotel were trying to lend me a bike this morning but I had already gone into town. I’m not sure I could hold my own on these streets anyway.
The current plan is that I’m working half and half from here and England, two weeks in each, but quite how that is going to work out I don’t know yet. Its a short term solution for six months until we all see how it works, and then probably be more continuously in Holland.
Last night brought lots of excitement, with Holland playing their next game in the world cup – one day I’m going to live in a country that is at least represented by a non-horrible colour. Orange? Really! Anyone got any suggestions. Still, at least it meant the journey home was quiet, and would have been quick if our driver hadn’t taken us on an accidental scenic tour. Oh well.
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There has always been something wrong with my face
…book. The modern wonder has locked me out for daring to login from another new network while they are still giving out my data to all-comers. Ho hum, i’ll stick with lj for the moment.
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Going double Dutch
…or is that half Dutch? I’m flying to Amsterdam to start my new job today. More info when the whirlwind stops.