Dan Makovec’s blog

What a difference a month makes!

Gaa! It’s been over a month since my last posting!!!

Well, what can I say. My world has pretty much turned upside down since then. For my own sanity, I’ll have to make a few separate posts here covering all the stuff that’s happened.

In my last post I was 10 days out from leaving Yahoo.

The last week at Y! was extremely hectic. Given that with me being there, our department had an engineering staff of 2 (other folks had left or changed departments), there was quite a lot of work depending on me. In fact, we had two major project deadlines that needed to be hit before I left (at least one of them was deliberately set to coincide with my leaving so there’d be minimal handover effort).

Suffice to say, I spent a lot of time at work. I did end up joining the Bayswater gym - and it was actually pretty good!

The best facilities I’d used (although for that price they *should* be pretty good), and the shower was great too. The shower was actually a highlight, as I’ll explain…

In the time I spent in London after moving out of Turnpike Lane, I lived in 3 hotels, all around Kensington Garden Square, Bayswater. I only lasted 2 nights in the first hotel. The breakfast they served was crap - cornflakes with stodgey milk, and a few dry bits of toast served up on a prison-style kitchen. The room, while a decent size, was lacking the fridge I was promised, and was pretty dirty. The floor looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in months, and I found used condom wrappers in one of the drawers. The worst part though was the shared bathroom facilities.

Having travelled a bit and used a few hostels, I had become used to shared bathrooms and all that they entailed. The bathrooms served up by this place though, honestly weren’t fit to shower cattle. If you actually found a bathroom where the light worked (or actually existed - as opposed to a hole in or bare wires hanging down from the ceiling), the sight that awaited you was pretty grim. Broken toilet seats; bowls that, frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if had never been cleaned; and the shower - fancy a bit of hose pipe coming out of a hole in the wall, hooked up to a broken tap handle? It’s not like there was a shower cubicle per se - the showering contraption was just mounted in one corner of the 7 foot high ceilinged, slimy tiled room, and the water drained out through a hole in the bottom of one of the walls. About the only saving grace was that you didn’t (couldn’t) use the bathroom at the same time as anybody else.

There was one half-decent bathroom - this was the one I’d inspected when I’d gone to check the place out - although the next week when I went back, it was closed because of a plumbing fault. I’d also accepted the (somewhat cleaner) dirty state of the room I’d inspected as the cleaners were currently in there tidying up after the previous tennant - so naturally I assumed it would be spic by the time I arrived.

After having just seen Brian off, I was in a pretty depressed emotional state as it was. I knew that if I was going to stay in that place for a week, let alone a month, I’d be completely miserable. Even Scotty, my teddy bear, looked depressed sitting on the table top in my room. So I decided to check out early - and lost most of my payment after the hotel refused to refund any of my cash.

In summary, if you ever visit London, avoid the WEST TWO HOTEL on KENSINGTON GARDENS SQUARE.

Next stop was just around the corner at another hotel whose name I can’t even remember. Not that it matters - they just went out of business the day after I left. Kinda a shame - it was nice enough and the people friendly. Breakfast was also half decent - eggs on toast, jam, baked beans.. the usual for English breakfast fare (although lacking the bacon and sausages). The room was tiny - enough space for my bed, and a little fridge with a TV on top, but had an ensuite - which suited me just fine. I even got over the fact that I had to use the TV remote to prop open the vertically sliding window - the counterweights had fallen off years ago, and the fact that it was on the 5th floor of a building with no lift and very narrow, steep stairs. The fun there lasted about two weeks…

Now, there’s something that Brits do that I’ve never seen anywhere in the world. A few years ago, somebody must have decided that water pressure in the city is too poor and heating too difficult, so they invented a little device they call the Power Shower. Essentially, this is a pump and 2400 watt electric heater that sits on the wall inside the shower cubicle, with the mains water going in one side and a flexible hose with a shower head on the end coming out the other. From the very first time I saw one of these contraptions, I knew they were a recipe for disaster.

I’m sure you can guess what can happened. Ever since I moved into the room, occasionally the shower just wouldn’t heat up.

Water would come out, but be icey cold. The first few times this happened, I called the manager, who “fixed” the device, as I would go down to the gym for an 8am workout and shower with the other (*hot*) boys before work. Eventually I discovered that the thermostat was just a bit wonky, and that by turning the temperature dial back and forth a few times I could get the heater to kick in and give me satisfaction.

About 2 weeks into my stay, I got up in the morning to have a shower and noticed it wasn’t heating again, so I turned the dial until the light came on then walked back into the bedroom to get my towel from over the radiator (there was no room to hang it in the bathroom). I came back into the bathroom and raised my foot to step into the shower, when there was a loud crackling, and sparks and smoke started shooting out of the heater unit, and little arcs of electricity snaked across the water. Needless to say, I didn’t use the shower again. The manager told me it would take a week to get it fixed, and there were no other rooms available. Given the amount of luggage I had to move around and the fact that I was busy at work with just over a week to go, I settled on getting a reasonable discount for my room, just going to the gym every morning for my shower - at least I’d make sure I worked out every day, and I still had my own toilet and hand basin.

When that week’s tennancy ran out, work was just about over. I decided I wanted a little luxury, so moved into the Best Western on the other side of the square for 4 nights, before I’d leave London for some travel. The rate was double what I’d been paying previously, but I had my own DOUBLE bed, shower, BATH, cable TV and a decent continental breakfast. Unfortunately the room was a smoking room, but I’d packed enough deodourant and cologne to completely neutralise the smoke odours (with the added bonus that you could smell my room from all the way down the corridor). I took a few nice long, luxurious baths over the next few nights, and whiled my final days in London away.

Work finished up fairly smoothly, if at a frantic pace. Most of the deadlines were met (not all - but then you never meet all of them), and I left the team there on a good note. We had a big team dinner, and my fellow remaining engineer, Dmitri, flew in from Munich to help with the hand over and enjoy the festivities. It was sad to leave, but I knew it was time for me to move on. The next phase in my life awaited.

I’m worn out just from typing that - need to work on my blogging stamina. I’ll tackle my travel around England in my next installment, and hopefully get right up to date with the latest exciting developments happening right at the moment (more flying about to occur) as soon as possible. I just hope I can remember everything!