the first week

well, it's been a little over a week, and my first full week of work is over. work itself isn't too bad, it's getting a little better. it still involves a lot of phoning people to get information about their products, and searching the internet, and looking through "good practice guides" for figures and space requirements and stuff like that. I'm apparently in the "building service engineering" field right now - I don't think this is where i'll end up in the end. To the left is a picture of 30 St. Mary's Axe, it's pretty close to the office I'm sitting in right now. I haven't gone to see it any closer than this picture shows, but perhaps I will one of these days.

Last night I went to a lecture by a guy who became the world's first cyborg. He has had chips implanted into his body to run tests to see what was capable. When he entered his university hallway, the light would turn on for him automatically, the door to his lab would open when it sensed him approaching, and a voice would welcome him to the room. They've hooked up a machine to rats' brains and they can essentially control these rats through machines using a remote control, it's insane. Also, they've implanted chips into a man's brain to essentially cancel the effects of Parkinson's disease - they had a video which showed him in a very advanced stage in that he couldn't walk without help at all, he had bad tremors, etc. When the power packs were turned on, he got up out of his chair, and walked around like you or I, it was phenomenal. Anyway, you might be wondering about the picture up there on the right - one of the guys I went to the lecture with looks exactly like rick bruiser from Super Punch-Out, it's uncanny. One of the other guys looked just like John Frusciante with his new short hair. The guys I went with are all Irish, around 24-26 years old I think. Ken, Angus, Bryan, and Dermott were the fellas I hung out with after the lecture - we went for some Thai food (ginger beef was amazing, and I had a Tiger beer, like the Thai restaurant with Don Macdonald). After that, me and Ken and Angus went to a pub and had a few beers and crisps (chips for you canadians). I had a Fuller's Ale first, then a Hoegaarden, both of which were pretty good.

Also, despite the huge storm yesterday (which i didn't notice until I tried to make my way through the insanely packed Liverpool St. Station), we've had such warm weather, it's ridiculous, like 12-15 degrees above zero. Quite a difference compared to Halifax, which I hear had like -30 degree weather.

Oh, anyone who wants to look at an article about the lecture guy, follow this link:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/05/12/visionary.warwick/index.html

Anyway, that's about it from me for now.