Jobs, certification and places to stay

So last night a recruitment agent called from London. It was quite exciting. It's only been 4 days since I put my new resume up on jobsite.co.uk. The job that he was offering to put me forward for was a permanent business/systems analyst role at £41,000 per year. I had to think about it, but I turned it down because I'm more after a development role, even though it would be interesting, I don't want to waste their time by getting the permanent job and then 3 months down the track leaving for a higher paid developer role.

The phone call only lasted about 3 or 4 minutes, but I spent the next 30 going over it and wondering if I made the right decision. I'm pretty sure I did, there'll be other opportunities. I'll start getting desparate in 1 months time when I'm over there, but for the moment I think I can hold out for something better.

It was interesting though, throuought the entire phonecall I was accutely aware of how non-british I sounded compared to the agent. It was kind of disconcerting, I'll have to cultivate an oxford accent as fast as possible.... Not that I have a very aussie bloke type accent, but I still felt like I was speaking sloppily..... I think I'm thinking about it too much.

We've booked the Hotel in London for the first two nights. We're staying in the Thistle Victoria. (Thistle is a chain of hotels) about 500m away from buckingham palace, so I guess the first photos you see of us over there will be standard touristy looking ones out the front near the statue. here's the link to the google map to show how close it is (click), the hotel is pretty much directly on top of victoria station.

So 13 work days to go! Yay!

so today I finally went and took the first of two exams necessary for my Oracle certification and I passed! wooo! one more to go and I can add "Oracle PL/SQL developer Certified Accociate" to my resume. it wasn't that hard really, but that's the way it's designed, you're not supposed to be able to do the tests unless you've had a year or so industry experience. seeing as I've had 9 years, it shouldn't have been difficult. next exam is on the 12th.

I've nearly signed up with one umbrella company, they seem really good, they've passed my resume onto a recruitment agency who will be calling me tonight to get a bit more of an Idea about what I want for a job.

Debbie's well, Posting on this blog is WAY, WAY WAY, down on her list of priorities, I'll make her write something before we go though. She's finished her certificate III in office admin although she's waiting for one module to come back. She's now working on fixing up her resume as much as possible and fretting about cleaning up the house.

thought I'd keep a little graph of my emotional state for posterity. normally I don't get stressed about anything for long periods, don't get excited about anything but today both my stress levels and excitement levels are above normal..... I guess because it's less than a month to go until we make the biggest change in our lives since getting married.

Andrew's emotional state:
Stress:
1.......*...........10
Excitement:
1..........*........10
Tiredness:
1...............*...10
Outlook: Optimistic.