Saturday was a good day, and it wasn't. The rover was booked for its yearly MOT so we drove in to Saffron Walden and, after a few turn arounds, found the garage. The mechanic had been recommended by someone at work and he was going to have a look at the brakes, which had been mentioned at the last MOT, and then test the car. While that was going on, we went window shopping in town and had breakfast at a decent little greasy spoon called Mocha.
The MOT didn't go according to plan at all. when we called the dude to see if he was done, he told us that the car needed work done. a lot of it. It needs a complete new exhaust, two back tires, break pads in the front and possibly shoes in the back. Parts and labour in upwards of 500 quid. That's the bad news. The good news is that he's going to try and give us a good price for all the work that needs to be done, as well as a full service and have it all done by next monday. [In retrospect, that was optimistic as hell as it turned out to cost upwards of 850 quid, which is probably more than the car is worth at this point in its life. Still, according to Katy, it's like driving a new car right now, so at least some good came out of it]
We had plans to have dinner with Phil and Caroline, but it was now rather difficult to get to their place. Being cheeky, I asked Phil for a lift so we were still on for dinner. It was a nice evening, with lots of food and lots (and lots!) of wine.
Another bit of bad news was that we found that it's physically impossible to get a taxi at midnight on a saturday night in the middle of nowhere, unless you've pre-booked it. We hadn't, so after a dozen futile calls, we resigned ourselves to sleep on an inflatable mattress in the middle of the sitting room and Phil would drive us home tomorrow morning in time for me to get my cab to Heathrow and for Katy to go to work.
The morning was rough. I did something incredibly stupid which was to go to bed drunk without rehydrating myself and my head let me know just how silly that was at 5am. Lots of water later and a few advil, my headache cleared and the trip to Heathrow and subsequent flight to Brussels was routine. Once we'd landed, we got our kit and took the train to Antwerp. Hotel check in went surprisingly smoothly and we went to get some food. We found an italian restaurant close by that had good food but a truly weird italian landlord that was just… well weird.
The food was good and plentiful and reasonably priced, so I'm willing to put up with eccentricities. We chilled at the hotel for a bit then went to the conference center to pick up our conference packs and get dinner. We actually skipped dinner cause we were too full from our late lunch, so we only had hot chocolates at a little cafe near the venue.
I'm looking forward to the conference as it promises to be really, really interesting. at the same time though, I wish I was back home giving comfort to the katylady. She's feeling rough physically and low mentally. Her job is stressing her our and putting her in a bad place. A hangover and a dodgy stomach really aren't helping today either. as much as I'm looking forward to the conference, I'm looking back to being back in cambs to be with her :(
The first day of the conference went well. I had a decent night's sleep, given the fact that the bed is smallish, and the duvet doesn't cover me completely. Still, it was ok. Had breakfast at the hotel and we decided to walk to the conference center. We thought it would only take about 10 minutes, but that turned out to be closer to 25. It was a miserable, grey day too. Fun fun fun. The good news though is that the pastries they serve for breakfast at the conf center are simply sinful. I mean… I had 3. I'm a bad bad man, but I couldn't help myself.
In my defence though, it was a good thing because I had to skip lunch because they only served pre-packaged sandwiches with no ingredient labels on them. With all the sugar I had in the morning, I have to say that I really wasn't very hungry by lunchtime.
I managed to snag a Duke stress ball and a raffle ticket from Sun (it's a classic gimmick, they throw the stress balls in the crowd and the people who catch them can enter a prize draw – except that the speakers forgot to throw the thingies during their talks, so I just walked to one of the speakers at the end of the session and simply asked for one :D)
We got back to the hotel and chilled again before going to dinner. With my lack of lunch, I was feeling ravenous. The evening was a bit disappointing. Our guide was a typical man, who was convinced he was leading us to the promised land of good restaurants. After 20 minutes of walking in the rain, we settled for the first one we could find where we could all eat. It was ok. Decent food, but pricey and it took a solid hour for us to get the food after we ordered. When it was time to go back to the hotel, we decided to go for the cab option. It took another 20 minutes for the cabs to arrive. Sometimes, I really, really miss Taxi Co-Op…
Then there's the bank saga… I didn't have time to get any euro before I left the UK so I've been bumming off people here as I only have pounds on me. The night manager told me that there's an ING cash machine “nearby”. It took 15 minutes to walk there in the pouring rain for me to realize that it won't accept either of my cards. I was not a happy camper walking back to the hotel. My coat and jeans are currently hanging up to dry. They should be fine by tomorrow and I'll try again at other banks if I can find any.
I also found out that the hotel wireless network is extremely wonky. For some asinine reason, I can log on correctly the first time I get a new daily access code from the lobby, but if I hibernate my computer, I need to stop the DHCP and DNS client services on my laptop, flush my DNS cache and then turn everything back on before I can connect properly *. Still, it works – which is more than I can say for the wireless at the conference center, which was abysmal. It's almost pitiful, given the fact that this is an IT conference…
Ah well, off to bed now.
* Having said that, it might honestly be my laptop. It seriously need a complete reinstall. It's starting to act truly bizarrely at times…