First, I’ve changed job from CIBC to Credit Suisse since last October. Still doing pretty much the same kind of work (C# development), similar area (credit derivatives) but not that similar (lower in both technology & business stack, which was what I wanted). I’m enjoying this current contract, good team & good piece of software too. And I’ve been learning heaps about the business.

In order to get closer to work, I moved house to Canary Wharf, Yep pretty boring location, or no soul as other have said, but ultra convenient for work. It’s 5 minutes walk to work and I’m not under the mercy of The Tube anymore, well except when I’m going out but that’s somewhat tolerable.

Since arriving back from Indonesia/Australia trip, I’ve been making a lot of weekend trips. Namely to Bremen, Hanover, Wales (to watch the World Rally Championship, UK leg), Amsterdam, Oslo & I just came back from a long weekend in Iceland. Each and every location is unique and fun on their own respective quirky way, that’s including Bremen :)

During Chrissy & New Year, I went to Egypt for 2 weeks with Intrepid. You can tell that I’m loving this company ;) That was my second (or third) trip with Intrepid. While Egypt is very touristy, somehow Intrepid can structure the trip to make it really cool & adventurous. Highlights of the trip are spending 2 days & 2 nights doing nothing in the Felucca and the desert safari. The desert is absolutely stunning. Photos are uploaded here: http://vhadiant.sharpcast.com/ and more here by Hieu: http://hobs.sharpcast.com/albums/image/49035_210603721359401

Iceland was amazing, cold & dark, but stunning. After the hot desert of the Sahara, I went straight to the snowy field of Iceland. Incredible, I’ve been enjoying the past few months here.

Now for the scary part. I’ve made up my mind to do the CFA Level 1 exam this coming June. To help my study I enrolled myself on 7City's CFA preparation weekend course. It’s a full Saturday, 9 – 5, course starting this Saturday, which coincidentally is Australia Day. Doh’

Now that I have received all the materials with me (CFA curriculum & Schweser notes) and as I skim through the mountain of readings, I’m wondering what on earth did I get myself into? CFA Institute reckons on average you need 250 hours of study for the exam, of course the more the better. I definitely need a lot more than 250 hours as I have no backgrounds in neither finance nor accounting. And to make things worse accounting is a big part of level 1 exam.

Tough times ahead.

This is more of a promise to myself to keep the blogging again, it has been too long.

Unable to get into Walkabout in Temple & Covent Garden because we were late, we wandered to Porterhouse where there were more locals than antipodean. We were there with imported Coopers, three each in our hands, but all our shouting and cheering were drowned by the "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" of the locals as we watched Wilkinson kicked four penalties to send The Wallabies home.

I could not believe that England went through without scoring a single try. But I guess we deserve to lose, we had too many drop balls, losing ball in the ruck and conceding far too many penalties.

After a few more Magners, I was slightly intoxicated and decided to watch arch rival All Blacks match at home. It was a slight consolation to see them crashed out from the tournament too.

This doesn't make sense, unless you multiply everything by 100. See 13,760 is the actual amount of my spending which was Rp 1,3760,000. And the exchange rate at that day was £1 = Rp 183,680.

The AMEX system must not be able to cope with such a high exchange rate :) I wonder how they deal with Zimbabwean dollars.

I made two purchase around the same amount in Indonesia, using my AMEX card cost me £18 more than HSBC card. This is a good lesson to be learnt, never ever use AMEX outside the original country of origin (in this case UK). I've been using AMEX locally because of its cashback feature, they're giving up to 1.5% back from your total purchase. Granted it's only 1.5% but it's better than nothing.

Anyway ... no more AMEX overseas for me!

I have to say I've always wanted to go to a test cricket match in London. Ideally at The Lord's, but The Oval is just as historical. It's a lot smaller than I expected, we sat at the Bedser stand, on the first row. It's really close to the wicket and we can pretty much see everything. The ticket was a bit pricey at £75, but hey that's one of the 'tourist' thing to do in London :) And no I still haven't been to the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, The Big Ben, St. Paul cathedral and so many others. Ahh so many things to do and yet so little time ;)

Humility is the embarrassment you feel when you tell people how wonderful you are.
- Laurence J. Peter.

This summer of '07 will be remembered by many as the worst summer in living memory. Although recently The Independent annoyingly reminded us that there had been at least 3 other summers that had seen less sunlight, colder or wetter. However, to us young'uns, or people who had only been in England in less than a year ... coming from Australia nonetheless, this year summer is the worst summer in living memory.

I have lost count now how many time our skating plan was ruined by temperamental rain. While a large swathe of the country are flooded. To add insult to the injury, Europe is having a heatwave. Unbelievable, it seems that Europe is currently sending all the rain up here to England.

Having said that, I will stop whining about the weather. There is no point, and hopefully come August we will finally have our summer. I just want to put this dismal summer on record here in my blog, so I can always look back and confirm when someone says that it rains all the time in London.

Now I couldn't be bothered to re-write the whole thing again. Condensing 7 paragraph to 1: I was assaulted last Friday night, three of them, glass bottle smashed on my face, took everything, kicked me again on the face, police came, went to hospital and another detective showed up. Good attention by the police, doctors and the porters. Stupid IE as CMS editor. I'm fine just minor cuts & bruises on my face. Black eyes. Stupid IE as CMS editor.

BBC tries to explain: "The reason for the recent wet weather has been the Jet Stream. This conveyor belt of strong winds, way up in the atmosphere, has steered a series of low pressure systems unusually far-south for this time of year. So instead of hitting Iceland as it would normally, they have cruised across the UK, depositing plenty of rain.

So unless the Jet Stream buckles and heads back north again - we may have to get used to more of the same."

After having amazing May, June has been a complete let down and July is looking like a write off too. Ah well never mind, you just have to take what you get :)

Next of course was the Wimbledon finals, both on Saturday & Sunday. Then we had the British Formula One on Sunday where the local hopeful, Lewis Hamilton unfortunately lost to Raikkonen although he still managed to get to the podium, his ninth in ninth attempt. This kid is going to be huge.

Plus a huge night out at Clapham on Saturday night, last week was a superb week. Too bad about the weather but ;)

I'm sorry, that last one probably didn't make any sense, simply put I'm having a great time (now).

Summer in London has now well under way, but as luck has it, this month the reliable London weather struck. The revellers at Glastonbury will tell you that they were soaked under the heavy rain and muddy field. We went on Sunday for a much more sedate, commercial, but no less fun, Hyde Park Calling. It's a two day festival at London's own Hyde Park, you can choose to buy two days ticket or just one. This year headlines include Crowded House, Peter Gabriel, Jet, Chris Cornell, Joe Satriani and to finish the venerable Aerosmith!

It was raining whole day yesterday, especially at night. On the afternoon, my friend and I bet that the rain will stop so we didn't bring any sort of rain gear. It was raining lightly for most of the afternoon, but at about 6pm the sky opened and it was raining quite heavily until about 9pm. Of course by time we need the poncho, they run out of them in the venue. Luckily a good mate (life saver he is!) nicked a rubbish bag (clean) from Hard Rock Cafe area we made a emergency poncho out of it. I was rescued from the rain. We queued for over an hour for the fried chicken, under the rain, while Chris Cornell is blazing in the background. We then ate the fried chicken under the rain, just on the other side of men's toilet area where guys pissing on the plastic wall and the steam coming out from the urine. Fun ... still it was the best hot damn fried chicken ever.

Despite the horrible rain & mud, everyone was on high spirits and don't really care about anything. Aerosmith put out such an amazing show. The rain miraculously stopped at about 9pm, so we had most of the Aerosmith with some comfort out of the poncho (or rubbish bag for me).

The big surprised was the encore where D.M.C (from Run-D.M.C) showed up to close with "Walk This Way", it was jaw dropping.

I was totally drenched yesterday and did not have my backpack with me, it was not fun. After over 10 phone calls with incompetent Virgin Atlantic baggage claim department, my bag arrived.

It was a really painful and excruciating experience. I suspect the call centre is located in India and often the phone connection is pretty bad. Twice I called and they said the system is down arghh .. Anyway I won't go more on the litany of problems with Virgin's baggage handling department or their delivery contractors (which Virgin didn't even have their phone number the first time I called them), my backpack is here now. I'm so going to claim all my essential purchase in the past 3 days to Virgin.

On another news, the worst US shooting rampage just happened. It's terrible, mood is not good here in the hostel.