Tag Archives: Oxford

Clarissa

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In honour of returning home (and due to the fact that my local swimming pool has now been shut down, meaning I have to hike all the way to Blackbird Leys now if I want to swim), I have finally taken the plunge and bought a bicycle!

Her name is Clarissa and she’s beautiful. She was 50% off in the student back-to-school sales, and she’s very ladylike – nice low bar, and a basket and everything!

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She will now be accompanying me as I wobble about on Oxford’s roads – drivers beware!

🙂 Continue reading →

New job…

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Well, the funemployment was extremely short-lived!

I think I mentioned in a previous post that I was having a bit of a job dilemma, and after thinking long and hard about it, I decided to take the short-term gig in Oxford. It will be great for my CV (it’s an extremely well-respected NGO Consortium) and it’s only 4 months, plus it will give me a chance to see a bit more of my friends and family for a little while, and remind everyone what my face looks like etc.

It’s a really interesting job, and I’ll get to travel to Nicagarua and Burkina Faso for some learning events I’m organising on cash and livelihoods, as well as going to Madrid for some project meetings, and I’ll be recruiting and managing a bunch of consultants delivering various projects.

So, it’ll be nice to be home for a little while, and spend some time with my lovely cats, and I plan to go overseas again in January.

Another interesting and fun thing is that since I took this job, I have been asked to interview for at least 3 other jobs that I applied for, so it’s a relief to know I’ve reached a place in my career where I can relax and breathe a bit, and not have to worry too much about being unemployed! One major NGO wants to put me onto their register/roster of emergency people (I’ve so far done an HR interview, technical test and technical interview….) and another NGO I applied for a job with wanted an interview, but I said that I’d already taken a job and wouldn’t be free til January. They came back and said they might have found some short-term cover for the post if I was still interested in taking the job in January? So they might hold the job for me! However that one’s in Afghanistan, so I’m still mulling….

And then today yet another NGO wants to interview me for their roster! I’ve got so many interviews lined up I barely have time for my new job! AND this one wants to fly me to Norway for a face-to-face interview! Quick mini-break to Oslo here I come!

It’s nice to be back in the office, seeing lots of friendly faces and remembering all the little ups and downs of open-plan office environments. Should be fun!

Home, Holidays and The Next Thing…

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Hello again my lovelies!

Well after all the excitement of leaving parties and lovely presents, in which I got given an amazing model fishing boat which is now my pride and joy, AND an umbrella hat which is the most awesome thing ever, I have now left the Philippines, and am at home, back in the UK.

The flight was fine, and I even had enough space to spread out and lie down across the empty seats. The excess baggage was expensive but in the end I only had 29 kilos, which frankly after being in the Philippines for 1 year, was not too shabby at all really!

Since being back home in the UK, I’ve had a lovely time hanging out with my mum, sister, and niblings, getting lots of cuddles, trips to the spa, arranging to see friends and other such lovely things. Continue reading →

The one with all the excitement!

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Well well, it has been an exciting week!

So, some work-related context first: My manager C (now ex-manager) and I developed two water and sanitation e-learning courses on behalf of several NGOs in a consortium. It was a beasty piece of work that got bigger and bigger, and ended up taking us about 2 years to do.

However, we’re dead chuffed with the final products, which are available online here if you fancy taking a look (the courses are called Technical Project Management for WASH emergencies, and Information, Education, and Communication for WASH emergencies). We also managed to produce them onto CDs, and in French, and the feedback from staff out in the field has been fantastic. However, even better was the fact that we got shortlisted for an e-learning award! We presented our courses to the judges back in September, and were invited to the very swanky e-learning awards dinner to find out if we won. Our category was for ‘Excellence in content production – not for profit sector’, and there were 5 other organisations/companies who were shortlisted in our category. The ceremony itself is all very elegant and formal – black tie, including a champagne reception and a 4-course dinner at the Mariott hotel in London (Ooh-er Mrs!). The e-learning company who developed the courses with us very kindly paid for our tickets to this shin-dig, as well as putting C and I up in a hotel in London for the night. Continue reading →

Eggs is eggs…

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You’re never too old for a soft-boiled egg with marmite soldiers…..

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Plus I hardly ever get to use my awesome egg cups….

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Now if only I could perfect the art of actually making a soft boiled egg…. So far attempt 1 was hard-boiled and attempt 2 was semi-hard boiled….

Very disappointed in both Jamie and Delia….

However I will persevere – practice makes perfect!

Technological mystery solved!

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So, yesterday at work, a colleague of mine basically blew my mind. He also solved a little mystery that has been puzzling me for quite some time.

As all you avid readers and fans of my blog will know, I’ve had quite the rocky relationship with technology (and for those of you who don’t know, click on the “Technology” tag in the tag cloud on the right to read about the South Korean toilet incident, the library incident, the ceiling fan that tried to kill me, the clocks, the digital blood pressure machines, and the many many computer incidents…)

In other words, I kill technology. To date, I have: crashed countless computers (including 3 separate incidents where I crashed an entire room full of networked computers), killed a brand new electric lawnmower, a microwave, a large number of clocks, not to mention the toilet and fan incidents…. Continue reading →

Falling in love on the M1

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How could I have known when I woke up this morning, that today would be the day that I would fall in love?

I should probably start at the beginning. I had to be in Durham this week for a work thing, so I got a rental car to drive up north. It’s about a 4-5 hour drive, so the plan was to load up the car with all the equipment, drive up the day before, spend the night in a BnB, do the event the next day, and then drive back down south again.

So there I am, halfway up the M1, when it happened. I fell completely, madly, deeply, head-over-heels in love. Her name is Glenda. She has tinted windows, power steering and six gears (Six! My last car only had 4 gears! What does the extra one even do??). I know it’s unconventional, but never in my life have I driven an actual new car before. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever driven a car that was made in the same decade.

It was the smoothest ride of my life. It was like gliding gently over the tarmac in a cloud. All of the cars I have ever driven have been old and quite shaky, and getting up to 70mph on the motorway was a chore – you have to grip the steering wheel for dear life as each bone-juddering moment you assume the entire car is about to collapse beneath you.

But not with Glenda. Glenda drifts gently into 70 as if it’s nothing, even with the driving rain and miserably grim weather, cushioning your body in her ridiculously comfy seats, absorbing all the shocks while pumping out funky tunes on her awesome sound system. I never thought I could be sexually attracted to a machine, but Glenda may well have turned me. She is like champagne, and she makes every other vehicle I’ve ever driven seem like hot Bovril. It turns out that after all these years, I am a car person after all – I just hadn’t met the right car. I’m not even embarrassed about the fact that she’s a Ford Focus Estate and not some tiny little sporty number. She may be on the large side, but our love is pure and transcends such labels. Continue reading →

Another update from the world of Maya…

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Well well well, it has been a while, hasn’t it?

I guess what with not travelling so much anymore, and so on, that I just seem to have less to write about (other than my cats, but that seems to perpetuate the stereotype about sad single women in their 30’s and has inadvertently encouraged people to treat me as such, so I’ve decided to stop doing writing about my cats, no matter how hilarious they are).

Continue reading →