Each year since then has been so different it’s almost unbelievable. That second year of university I lived with my two best friends from University, and we did little else but go to university, church, cell group, and mess around and have fun. It was the year that I got to know Jay, and met the two Sarah’s, all of whom ended up being my housemates two years later. It was the year I first started playing around with Cisco networking equipment, and then had my first ever telephone interview, assessment day, and successful job application! Dan also got offered a job, and we found a house in Reading. I was still in the University Big Band, and there was a cute girl in my cell group who caught my eye towards the end of the year…

Then in the summer I started going out with my beautiful girlfriend (now fiancée), and Dan, Kita and I moved to Reading, and we started real work! That year was totally different again, living with a new person, cycling to a workplace every day and working 9 – 5 rather than the usual sporadic university hours. I really enjoyed my placement year at Cisco, and I definitely had a great first year with Annie, even if the distance was very annoying. I know that as Dan and I neared the end of our work placements were both looking forward to the final year of university… as well as Dan and Kita’s wedding! My first wedding, and my first experience of being a best man. Very exciting times.

Final year, again, was totally different! I was living just down the road from Annie, with three people I’d never lived with before, all of us in our final year of university. The work-load had stepped up and I hardly saw my best friend any more (he was living further away with his wife, it was odd not to see them both every day). Some of my other friends from my second year of uni had graduated last year and moved back home, so it was sad for them not to be around when I got back to Portsmouth, but a lot of my coursemates had done a placement year too so it was great to be back with them. Though we all focused hard, put a lot of effort into our work and our final year projects, as well as looking for a job!

I applied for only two jobs, both at Cisco, and a recruitment agency phoned me about the job that I ended up taking. I did get through the Cisco telephone interviews and to the assessment days, but the job at Ocado was too good an offer to pass up and I am certain that I made the right decision. I now live in North London, and have a brilliant job with good colleagues. There are downsides, however. Annie now lives 100 miles away, and although I see her every weekend, we were used to living just down the road from each other. However, she still said yes when I proposed to her in October, and when we get married in September I am going to the happiest guy on this planet.

I miss my old coursemates though. We all moved away around the end of June, and although it was good to see them at graduation (and my other group of friends at Christmas) I miss not seeing them regularly, especially my best man! We really do need to keep in contact, but we’re all busy with work and life and it’s just hard.

We’ve all come along away in a few years, from fresh-faced university students to working guys, earning our living and (some of us) living away from home. I can’t wait to see what the rest of our lives has planned for us… I’m looking forward to it! Bring it on.

Firstly, the iPad. I don’t think I need to talk about what it is, what it can do, it’s good points, it’s bad points, etc… as you must have been living in a cave to not know about it. Mine was dispatched on Saturday, so I’m waiting for it to turn up at some point this week. Quite excited really!

Secondly, Annie, myself and my parents went up to North London on Saturday to look for a new place for me to live when I start work next month (as mentioned in my last post). We looked round five places, and settled on the one shown in the four pictures below. It comes unfurnished, so Annie and I are going to have great fun shopping around to turn the flat into a home!

The final year has been quite interesting so far. There’s only two lectures a week that I really don’t look forward to, which I think is pretty good going really. Work load is fairly heavy, and there’s a fair amount of reading to do for a couple of units, but I’m managing so far. Hopefully I won’t end up neglecting other parts of my life in favour of work!

I have more exciting news regarding holidays! I know that Annie and I have already been to New York and Salcombe (though I didn’t blog about it) this year, but we’re now going to Paris in December! It’s going to be soooo exciting. Paris at Christmas… well cool! The Eiffel Tower in Christmas lights… woo!

My alphabet series on Flickr is going quite well… I’ve reached N! My latest photo is below:

Check out the full set on Flickr.

The rest of this post is probably just going to be a few short sentences… so skip over them if they don’t interest you!

I now have Google Wave, so if you want to chat add me on my usual address!

I’ve also been using Windows 7 on my laptop… it’s quite neat so far – a big improvement on Vista! And again, on the OS front, I’ve updated my Mac to Snow Leopard – there have been a few speed improvements, and Expose works better now; but other than that, there are no major changes. I do like the new completely chromeless player window for QuickTime though!

I found this really cool infographic showing 50 years of space exploration (via @Hicksdesign):

The new Apple Magic Mouse looks really cool – the world’s first multi-touch mouse! But for £55 at the Apple store it’s a bit too steep…

Final Year Project definitions have to be in soon – crazy. That will define 10 whole weeks of my life!

Anyway, sorry for the complete randomness of this blog post. Just felt like it!

Saying that speech was one of the most nerve-racking experiences of my life! I’d have been fine if it wasn’t something I had written, and there wasn’t any pressure to make it funny. In the end, though, it appeared to go down well, so that was good! People certainly laughed, and clapped… so I guess I did my job well.

The photographer that they had hired was Owen Roseblade, and the way he worked was brilliant. I can’t wait to see the photos he took! There are a few on his website, available here, use the arrows on the photo to scroll through. They’re simply amazing.

I had a great time with Annie too. She looked beautiful, easily the best looking girl there (with the exception of the bride, of course!), and I’m so lucky that she’s mine :)

Going back to university soon – I can’t believe the summer’s almost over already! But at least I have a holiday to look forward to before university actually starts :)

On Monday night, Annie and I went to see Wicked the Musical, at the Apollo Victoria Theatre in London. She bought the tickets as a surprise present for me a couple of weeks ago, including Monday night in a 4 star hotel in Kensington. It was so much fun!

I would say that Wicked is the best musical I’ve been to see in London. It’s the only one where I haven’t known the story in advance, and it was brilliant. The set was amazing, the songs were good and the story was really good. It ties in really well with The Wizard of Oz, so if you haven’t seen that I would recommend seeing it first, although you’d still enjoy it regardless.

Annie and I spent the Monday and Tuesday wandering round London, or in Annie’s case, hobbling; she sprained her ankle on Saturday and could barely walk! Had a really good weekend though, and I can’t wait to see her again next week.

I finished work on the 12^th June. We had a good lazy Friday, finished the few bits and bobs we had to wrap up and then we headed down the pub. I wanted to get down to Portsmouth, so left to beat the traffic.

That Tuesday, Annie and I went to London Zoo and then saw Blood Brothers. Very good musical – one of the best I’ve seen I think! Sad though, it’s not a particularly happy story. The day after that, Dad came up to Reading and I moved all my stuff out – so I’m now officially back down south, if anyone’s around in Portsmouth and fancies a catch up, then let me know!

I can’t say I miss Reading, but I do miss the guys (and the work!) at Cisco. In a way it’s odd having nothing to do at the moment, having had a 9-5 (and more) job for the last 11 months.

Annie told me last night that she’s booked tickets to see Wicked in London in a couple of weeks! It’s going to be really good. We’ve also got a hotel for the night after, so we can spend some time in London too. Looking forward to it!

There isn’t really any news other than that. You can read about all our house woes over at Dan’s blog. Annie and I spent a day on Brighton beach while the weather was amazing; that was a good day. Nothing much else to say!

I’m quite looking forward to moving into my new house in Portsmouth – but then I’m enjoying being at home with my family too. Suzie (my sister) has graduated – got a 2-1, which is good. She’s now looking for a job, so I’ve put a portfolio of her work online, go check it out.

Oh, and if anyone can think of an idea for ‘F’ for my Alphabet Series on Flickr, that’d be great!

• Avenue Q – Noel Coward Theatre, London (A birthday present from Annie)
• Blood Brothers – Phoenix Theatre, London (Going to see on the 16^th June this year, a spontaneous purchase)
• Chicago – Cambridge Theatre, London (Hannah’s 21^st birthday, going to see on the 5^th June this year)
• Les Miserables – Queen’s Theatre, London (Another spontaneous purchase)
• The Lion King – Lyceum Theatre, London and Minskoff Theatre, New York (Saw while on holiday in New York with Annie)
• The Phantom of the Opera – Her Majesty’s Theatre, London (Trip out with my family)

A fairly impressive list, I think you’ll agree. And I couldn’t possibly label one as the best, although Avenue Q was certainly the funniest.

If you’ve seen any of these shows, what did you think of them? Or if you’ve seen one I haven’t (which there are plenty of…), then what was your opinion of those?

Last weekend was Easter, and it was great to have a 4 day weekend! Annie was here for all of it, and we had a really good time. Saw 17 Again, the new Zac Efron film – it was a good lighthearted entertaining film. We actually had a really lazy time, cleaned the house, and just chilled out. I love spending time with that girl.

We were playing around with my camera at some point over the weekend, got some good shots. Check out my Flickr photostream to see them, though there’s quite a few to click back through!

Today, Kita, Dan and I went to a place called Wallingford Castle. Supposedly there are some castle ruins there, but they were pretty pathetic – only a couple of corners of walls, and that was it. But it was still a beautiful day, and I got some interesting photos of this little chapel and the grounds. Again, they’re on Flickr.

On the work front, it’s still the same as usual! I’ve only got a couple of months left, it’s scary how quickly it’s gone. It won’t be long before I’m back down in Portsmouth, and I can’t say I’ll be that sad to be leaving Reading… However, I will miss work and all the guys there. I passed my CCNP shortly before I went to New York, and now I’m working on my CCIP (Internetwork Professional), though I don’t think I have time left at work to complete it before I leave.

We’ve got more tickets for Ascot in May, and Annie booked us tickets to go and see Blood Brothers in the West End in June. We’re also seeing John Barrowman in May, and it’s Annie’s birthday in June, so it’s going to be a good couple of months! Looking forward to it.

Everything is so big there. Our hotel was really really nice, and was so close to everything we wanted to do. We only needed to take the subway a couple of times, and that was an experience in itself. What with the hotel being only a few minutes down 7th Avenue from Times Square, we spent time in the square pretty much every evening. It was where we ate most of the time, and it’s a really cool place. You can’t get a sense of it unless you go, seriously, no photo does it justice.

We went up both the Empire State and the Rockefeller Center, from which we got completely different views. We did the Empire State on our first evening, at night – we didn’t have to queue, and the city at night from that high is just unbelievable. I’ll put some photos on Flickr as soon as I’ve had a chance to process them, and I’ll link from here. We did the Top of the Rock during the day, and got some stunning 360 degree views of the city, including the enormous Central Park. You can see a couple of panoramas taken from the top below, click the images for a larger view:

If I had the money, I’d go there again straight away, no hesitation. An amazing city, truly amazing. If you get a chance to go, then go.

and this…

But mostly, I think it’s just going to be so great to be away with Annie!

I realise that I haven’t blogged in ages, so you’re probably thinking there’s a lot to talk about, but in reality, there isn’t at all. All I’ve done in the last month (has it really been that long??) is go to work… Apart from the Intensified weekend away on the Isle of Wight a couple of weekends ago. You may recall a few photos I put up from Intensified last year, because it was around then that I started the Project-365. That failed miserably, unfortunately! But now I have my SLR, and a different idea, I’ll get into something like that again.

Intensified was quite good this year – though also quite different to last year. It exploded from around 30 people to around 80 – and still we managed to squeeze into the same room, and took a group photo from the same position:

Last year:

This year:

As you can see, quite a few more people!

Last Sunday, Dan, Kita and I headed off in the car around West Berkshire and a bit into Oxfordshire to go in search of good places to take photos. Our original intention was to find a place called Moor Copse, which was supposedly the inspiration for The Wind in the Willows. We got there eventually, but after a very long detour around various other places. I put a couple of photos on Flickr, but the two below are my favourite of the whole day: