Montag, 6. Oktober 2003
London: Day One
Finally, I am making my trip to London today. Woke up quite early this day, so that everything would be handled without problems. As this is only my third flight, and the first one all on my own, I was a bit excited. On the way to Frankfurt-Hahn there was a moment where I was suddenly shocked, we would go to the wrong 'Hahn'. There are about 5(?) towns called this way, with one being closer to Frankfurt than the one we drove to. To cut a boring story short: Everything was fine, I checked in, was security'd and am now sitting inside the waiting hall for my flight. It's scheduled in about 20 Minutes, and I already went to the toilette for 2 times. I hate to be nervous, because then I'm always afraid that there's no toilette nearby. And I already really miss my Emba. However: Boarding time
And now, just about 9 hours later, I made it back to my notebook and am continuing to write. The flight went easy, and I finally got my very first introduction by real stewardess-artists, waving with their hands and stuff.
The first shock came to me at Stansted airport, where I went with my luggage to board a train. I paid 13 pounds (which is roughly 20 Euro) just for the train ticket to London city, a 45 minute trip. That's what I call expensive.
At least I got to see the surrounding london area architecture. More than a look-alike contest of ragged-down buildings, all seem to be made of the same stone with same room setup.
Having arrived on Liverpool street I met with Jose Fandos, head of the Sonnd-company. Well, he actually did look like I imagined him, aged in the end-twenties (I guess and very friendly and offensive, positively spoken. I had to struggle a lot with my spoken english and stumbled my way across, but I somehow got it working. We then mounted a bus line nearby the great architecture near a Giant Cucumber building. I was told it's called "Gurke".
After a short while of driving and chit-chatting of PHP, phpMyAdmin and such he showed me his new house he just bought with his (swedish) wife and his 8 month yer old kid. A quite artistic looking building with high roofs and three storeys, to which one of them I got assigned. The rooms will be surely looking great, once they're assembled and made up.
Then we went straight to the company, just 300 metres apart from his home. It occupies the cellar of a gallery, and even though it's quite small it has a cozy atmosphere. In there I was introduced to the two co-workers, both being of swedish heir. Their 'mission' is to get the design of the project to work - the project to which I'll be supplying some PHP work and to which I finally got the working name for: Cup of Sugar. Nice title for a dating site was the first thought coming to my mind.
So we went to a Georgian diner nearby and got ourselves some sandwiches and a hot chocolate for me. Of course I immediately burned my tongue with it. Sigh. Added to this was a completely unknown sandwich I ordered because I didn't understand a single word the waitress was asking me, so I ever just nodded. Anyways, after having removed the dried tomatoe from my sandwich it tasted good.
Having done that and having finished our food we went back to the office and I got more precisely introduced to the project and was handed two printouts of their customer concept, which was great fun and professional to read. A lot of nice ideas and nicely skilled design, but that's about it I'll describe about the dating-site project to not give out any secrets.
So at the end of our working day we went to Jose's house and tried to assemble some furniture and try to get the move complete. We worked about 2 hours on a simple cupboard, nearly as hard to assemble as any of our IKEA stuff - but it still was fun to do that with Jose. Their child, Abel, has a great fortune: He's growing up with 3 native languages: A spanish dialect (Venezuelan or something like that, I can't get it memorized), swedish and english. And he's a real cutie, too - just like his loving dad. As I said to him, seeing this makes me want to have that as well...which got me thinking (even more) of Emba, and I was really glad to hear that I can make telephone calls from their at a fraction of the cost my mobile phone. Looking forward to using that
Finally we had our evening dinner, Spaghetti Napoli. Really nicely done with some cheesy-spiced-up sauce and added with completely amusing conversations.
So the end of this day is near, I'm really really tired and curious about what's to come of both the project and London. I'll let you stay tuned, even though you might not want to read it.
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also, garv, das hört sich alles sehr lustig und spannend an! ich wünsche dir einen schönen aufenthalt in good old london;) lass uns nochmal vielsprachige konversation über icq üben -> bonne idée, n'est-ce pas?!
also, viel spaß!!!
claudia
also, viel spaß!!!
claudia