Martin Orr's Blog

Basingstoke

Posted by Martin Orr on Sunday, 22 July 2007 at 19:30

Since the end of June I have been in Basingstoke, Hampshire. I am working for a web development company, Sygneca. It is a small company with four employees; the Managing Director is Jon Pretty, who until June was IT Officer for TCMS (Trinity College Music Society). I have mainly been working on a project management system for internal use, and some other small projects from time to time.

I am renting a room about twelve minutes' cycle from my work (although there is a big hill in between). There is also the landlord and one other man living here. The landlord was originally an engineer, but now an executive coach; and the other man trained in telecoms. Basingstoke is full of hi-tech companies. While it had existed as a small town before that, it was mainly built in the 1960s with lots of very similar estates separated by dual carriageways.

I am coming home to Belfast on Wednesday. On Saturday I am going to Zambia with a church group to build houses with the charity Habitat for Humanity. After two weeks in Zambia, I will be back in Basingstoke for another month.

no comments Tags accommodation, basingstoke, sygneca, zambia

Eating in College

Posted by Martin Orr on Sunday, 19 November 2006 at 09:19

Just to continue a little on the food theme, I thought I would clarify to you how I normally eat. The College Hall does three meals every day, except for Sunday breakfast. Lunch and dinner are cheap - £2.30 for a main course and dessert. Breakfast is pretty expensive. I usually go to Hall for dinner, or sometimes for lunch if I prefer the menu. Normally I have a simple lunch in my room, and a bowl of cereal for breakfast.

I am too lazy to cook for myself - going to Hall is much quicker, more friendly and probably cheaper. In any case, the hobs have been removed from our kitchens last month, because they do not meet recently-introduced safety regulations. The College are looking at what can be done to bring the kitchens up to standard, but say that it does not look likely that this can be done - I think because the kitchens are too small. Such are the difficulties of living in an old building - it turns out it was built in the 1820s, although I would have imagined it was older than that (hence the name "New Court" I suppose).

-- Martin

no comments Tags accommodation, cambridge, food, trinity

Room Ballot

Posted by Martin Orr on Tuesday, 21 February 2006 at 13:50

The room ballot, when we choose our rooms for next year, will take place on 6th March. The way this works is: the second years have already made their choices and the college has allocated rooms for prospective first years, so we get what's left. We are assigned a random order, then choose rooms in that order. Next year the same list is used in reverse order, although people who get firsts are moved to the top. I am 44th out of 199 which is reasonably good.

no comments Tags accommodation, trinity Read more...

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