TGIF

I have survived my first week. The office was busy today and I was able to meet more of my colleagues. Went out to breakfast with the pre-sales team. A lovely greasy English breakfast - eggs, sausage, bacon, beans and toast. Worked for a couple of hours and then went out to lunch with the inside sales team, sales reps and marketing. All in all quite a productive day.

In between my eating I had to book a flight to Amsterdam for next week. With the British Airways strike next week I had a feeling this might not be easy. When I got a proposed itinerary back from the travel agent I was perplexed to say the least. One leg of my flight was to Amsterdam the other was from Copenhagen. While I do have a bit to learn about European geography I was pretty sure that Copenhagen was not an adequate substitute for Amsterdam. It turns out the agent gave me somebody else's itinerary.

I spent part of the day researching cable, Internet and phone providers. I was prepared to be gouged but was pleasantly surprised. Telewest offers bundle packages starting at £ 30 per month. Phone service will include calls to international numbers - yippee. I can add more minutes or different movie channels and the cost will go up but this is considerably less than what I was paying in Boston.

I've also discovered not to cross government agencies here. I called to set up my interview for my National Insurance number today. After answering a number of questions I was told that the system would assign me the first date, time and location that was available. I innocently asked what happened if I was unable to attend on that day due to scheduled travel for work. I was very promptly informed that I can't be jetting off all over the place, if I want to reside in the UK I need to stay put,if I cancel or miss my appointment twice I won't be granted another appointment and will not be issued an NI. Luckily for me the computer picked a day that I will be in town.

I won't be posting over the weekend as I'll have no Internet access. Hopefully I'll be able to survive until Monday when I get back to the office. Luckily I now have a mobile with voicemail enabled.