April 19 06

Hi all,

As most of you know, I've moved to England to take up a job at an engineering consultancy named Atkins. I arrived in the UK yesterday to little or no fanfare, but then again it is the Queen's birthday week apparently, so she takes up most of the attention. After a long day yesterday of travelling, I was able to check out the town of Epsom, where my office is located. It's a town of ~100,000 located about 40 km SW of London centre and a hotel near the office is my current home. The town is quaint, with a downtown about the same size as Guelph's. After no luck obtaining a bank account I was able to get a 'mobile' so I can now begin a search for a more permanent place to live. My number is 078.9698.4778 but I think you need to replace the 0 with a 044 from Canada. But that's just a guess.

The area around Epsom is very green with lots of space. I took a walk yesterday up to the Epsom Downs, an impressively large horse racing complex at the top of the hill. From there, there are pretty nice views North of the sprawling expanse of London. It was pretty overcast yesterday afternoon so the pictures don't really do the view justice. On a nicer day I'll have go up there again. London looks to be pretty flat so I shouldn't have an issue touring around on a singlespeed, which I will be obtaining as soon as I get a place to live.

This morning I stopped into the office for introductions. I met only 1 of 3 supervisors as the other two are on vacation/out for the morning respectively. The group I'm in is ~10 people of uniform gender, and all seem like nice folks. They all spent some time introducing me to their various projects, mostly contracts for turbomachinery companies (GE and Rolls Royce) but there is a fair amount of variety in the projects which is good. On Monday (starting date) I'll get a better idea of the role I'll be taking for the time being. I'm pretty excited about getting started there.

For right now, I'm going to head into London proper and likely get lost for a couple hours. Should be good.

-Dan

ps Internet is prohibitively expensive from the hotel so I've decided to do these sort of diary updates until I procure a reliable internetet connection (likely from work). At that point I will begin updating the blog.
dh

Hello all,
Welcome, this is my space outlining my experiences working abroad. For now I'm going to play catch up as I haven't had the means to update this until now (and even now, it's not the best, so bear with me). I've been jotting down my thoughts on the first week in England and will publish them at various intervals. I hope everyone is well and I will be in touch.

-Dan