An eventful 8 months in London

Yes, its been a long time between blog posts. But like the red cups, I'm back.

So much has changed in my life in London since I last wrote: I've started a new job with a new employer, I've taken to riding a scooter to and from work and I've become involved in setting up a Tenants and Residents Association in my local neighbourhood.

Which gives me lots of new things to write about - riding through London traffic, the highs and lows of neighbourhood politics, the area around where I now work and so on.

Throughout it all, LondonForFree has kept ticking along. And now it will have its blog back.

I hope you'll enjoy the new set of posts over the coming months.

Why I live in London

I might have said this before but one of the main reasons I live in London is for the range of opportunities available on the work front. Jobs that I doubt there would be many, if any, of back home.

This article says it all, really.

And then this link is another example of why I love living in London. An opportunity to work with people in places I doubt I'd ever get to from Australia. And do a job I would probably never get a chance to do if I lived there at the moment.

One day I will definitely go back, that's for certain. So I intend to make the most of the job opportunities that come my way while I am living here - I suspect that once I go back, my work will be very different.

Probably working for my dad , wherever Smeaton Grange is :-)

A great place to work

Last week, I had the pleasure of arranging a forum for around 50 work colleagues. Now, in many places, the options for a venue would probably include the local hall, a breakout room at the office and maybe some place no more than an hour's bus or train ride away.

But in London, the choices are amazing. Last time we held this forum, we were able to hire Shakespeare's Globe. A really nice venue, and it included a back stage tour.

This time, our options included Tate Modern, Vinopolis (a wine museum), the Energy Clinic and the one we chose, HMS Belfast.

HMS Belfast turned out to be a good choice. The day we held the forum happened to be the hottest day in London so far this year. Around 26 degrees. And we had a lovely venue right on the Thames, sunshine on the decks and veterans to conduct guided tours for us.

There are probably not that many cities in the world that offer such venue choices for conferences and meetings. One more great thing about London.

Finally, I completed it.... and my job search begins

The big news for this week is that after 3 years of coursework, I have finally completed my Open University course in computing.

I received news on Friday that I had passed my final module, which is great as I had no intention of re-doing it if I hadn't. Web Server management, so totally dry and boring.

Soon I will have a nice Certificate in Web Application Development to hang on my wall beside my two accountancy ones and my project management one (or maybe I'll file the accountancy ones away as relics of a previous life!)

So, what to do next? Hmm, maybe I'll take a year off studying and try and sort out my work situation which now desperately needs addressing. And then maybe do a course on London history or genealogy for a change.

I've been studying computing courses with the Open University since 1997 so its probably high time for a break. The great thing about this recent course is that it was all coursework based and involved online studying (I guess e-learning). Added another angle of interest to it.

Anyway, back to my work situation. I love the job I do and I enjoy working with my customers but I feel my opportunities to widen my network and get into new business areas are limited.

I'd like to find something that allows me to broaden my customer base beyond one area and extend my network beyond the confines of London.

So its time to change my job.

But I like my employer and love the sort of work I do - so, it's a no brainer, really, I just need to find another role working for the same employer doing a similar sort of role but for a different area of the business - and I think / hope I discovered it last week.

Fingers crossed, it will be brilliant if it comes off.

They say things happen in life for a reason and maybe what I had to deal with this past week at work was meant to happen as it triggered me to look for something else - and the opportunity I found wouldn't be more ideal had I written the job spec myself.

Let's hope office politics doesn't get in the way and prevent me from being offered this new role.

The best and worst of London

The Sydney Morning Herald web site recently ran an article about The Best and Worst of British.

It was actually about the fun and perils, well mostly perils, facing any young Aussie backpacker who ventures over to London for a working holiday.

The "worst" fell into three areas:

- accommodation and how expensive it is

- employment and the British working culture

- public transport, particularly the tube

No surprises really.

But once you work out ways of dealing with them, London is still a great city and has loads to offer visitors.

Ok, it might also be overcrowded and dirty but tell me a place that isn't these days. I hear even Sydney, god forbid, has started to go downhill and Melbourne is now "the" place to be in when you live in Oz.

Work, work, work

Apparently, last Friday was Work your Proper Hours day.

This is one of those subjects, like smoking and hunting, that everyone seems to have a strong view on. You are either for or against it, you either do it or you don't and having a day to "celebrate it" - like National Non Smoking day - is probably not going to change your attitude or behaviour.

Personally, I can't remember a time when I worked my "proper hours", apart from when they coincided with the hours in which I could actually work. e.g. the hours when the shop was open.

[But retail staff probably can't even do that anymore, unless they do 16 hour shifts or longer, I guess.]

And its never bothered me. Perhaps like a lot of people, I just work to get the job done because I enjoy what I do.

But equally, if I ever feel I need a break from work, I just take it. And this is more likely to do with someone or something that has really annoyed me to the extent that I adopt the "flight not fight" mentality - than with the hours I have worked. I'll just shuffle my commitments around so I can leave work early or go in late until I feel ready to cope with the situation again. No big deal.

What I did find interesting was the article in the Guardian which said that, according to new research, public sector staff work longer hours than their city counterparts.

Having worked in both the public sector (for 8 years) and now a city-type organisation for the past 7 years, I find this laughable.

For a start, most public sector workers I knew then and now get paid overtime. Or if its not overtime, its flexitime. Whereas city businesses, like the one I work for, pay no overtime at all apart from to junior staff. So public sector workers often have an incentive to claim longer hours.

I can't recall any public sector colleagues, apart from some schoolteachers I know, ever working weekends doing unpaid overtime. However, I have known loads of city workmates who have spent Sundays travelling to get to their place of work for the next week - unpaid of course.

And when I think back to my public sector days, I probably worked just as many hours as I do now. Except that I got credit for the extra hours in the form of flexitime, which equated to around 6 extra weeks, yes weeks, a year holiday!

Which meant 6 weeks of not working - as opposed to 6 weeks' of extra hours simply given to my city employer.

Public sector workers work longer hours? Next, they will be saying that chocolate doesn't actually make you fat.