spring is here!

hi everyone,
I thought I should update the blog seeing as I have all this time off ;) Yes, I'm still hunting for the perfect job...nah, just any job really. I had an interview last week at apparently THE agile shop in london. Half the people were actually just preparing presentations for the various agile meetings throughout the week, and the interviewer proudly pointed out the 2 beings in the corner who wrote JMock - I quietly whispered that I'd never used it before, but I'm sure it's good ;) Afterwards though I realised that they seemed to be more focused on being agile (the interview was a pair programming exercise!) and I realised I wasn't prepared to experience a true agile dev shop if it meant losing out on using Spring and Hibernate, so hopefully soon I will find my ideal job!

meanwhile, we have started being tourists and seeing some of the sights. For those who haven't already seen the sights already, here are some photos around town (a few more than morgan would like I'm sure but I like to put everything up, not just the good photos!).

last night we went and watched Manchester United vs Arsenal .......... U18 youth game ;) but it was just as good. It was in the new emirates stadium - they have padded seats! Last saturday night we were hunting around Hammersmith for a pub to watch the Real Madrid vs Barcelona game, and stumbled upon a Spanish pub - we were the only non-Spanish people there so the atmosphere was pretty cool! The people to our left were going for Real Madrid and those to our right (and us) were cheering for Barcelona. It was the best match I've ever seen, with the final score being 3-3, and Barcelona's 3 being scored by Messi .. apparently he's only 19. crazy. so good.

Nec and I are going to go and train with a women's football club next week and hopefully we'll be 'good' enough to play with them! Unfortunately the season's just finishing, but they have a reserves team that's going to play some friendlies so that will be fun :) Morgan and steve are going to play some football with morgan's workmates on wednesday night too; and larissa spends all day in her gym working out, so hopefully this will be our attack against the dreaded Heathrow Injection!

To all those people at Dialect who said that I wasn't going to see any sun - you're all liars!! We have had the most beautiful weather this past week, beautiful blue skies and sun - I keep forgetting my sunnies..but for some reason I've always got the umbrella? ;) - and the temperature has been really nice around 16 degrees or so. Apparently the sky hasn't been so clear before. Hopefully it will stay like this for a while and get even warmer.

Easter's coming up and we're planning a trip to Holland to stay with one of mum's relatives who unfortunately doesn't speak english, and we don't speak dutch! So we'll be brushing up on our pictionary & charade skills, and we've bought ourselves an english to dutch dictionary, so hopefully we'll get by!

We got a place to live on Richmond Way, Brook Green (just near Shepherd's Bush tube station on central line) so we'll be moving there come April 17th which will be exciting!

Well, I think I've covered everything. Keep those emails coming - I get bored at home all day! - esther :)