New title

So, once again this blog gets a new title as I'm sitting here late at night listening to the rain hammer down on my Manchester roof once more.  A new title because I'm back from Sicily with a new job in a new country with a new company.  Yep, it's goodbye SKM Manchester and hello Rio Tinto Simandou project in Guinea in french speaking west Africa.

I spent my last few days in Sicily getting around to see a few places that I hadn't seen before (they pack a lot in for such a little place!).  In this photo I've climbed down (and later up, much harder) a gorge at Avola to explore the pools and waterfalls at the bottom.  I even went for a quick dip as you can see from my wet hair.  Emphasis on the quick - it was freezing!

Then it was time to say goodbye to Sicilia and all the people at ISAB Energy that I had grown exceedingly fond of.  That was really hard - unlike most of my projects at SKM, this time I had been integrated into the client's team and made to feel a part of everything.  They made me feel very welcome even though I didn't speak any Italian at first (although I was pretty fluent by the end).  An 8 month (8 months!!) experience I won't forget.

Still, no rest for the wicked!  I made it home on Monday night and on Thursday a friend from Australia arrived for a visit when I happened to be on holiday between the old and new jobs.  He was keen to tour the Australian battlefield sites in the Somme in France, which happens to be where my grandfather fought.  I also happened to need to go back to speaking French instead of Italian.  When you use happen like that in three sentences in a row clearly you're going to be going to France!

The Somme was an intensely moving experience which I'll blog about later.  First though we went round the beautiful Champagne region east of Paris where I'd never been before.  We went touring in our black Audi A3 (which might impress some people... personally I would have been happy with the Ford Fiesta option!) and marvelled in the endless fields of lush wheat, the dense grape vines grown close the ground to protect them from frost (and to keep chiropractors in business during the picking season) and hundreds of kilometers (I exagerate not) of cellars used to store the most famous product of this region.

Because naturally any visit to Epernay in the Champagne region is imcomplete without a visit to the cellars of Moet and Chandon (there were many other winemakers' cellars we could have visited but who can resist a champagne inventing monk?).  There I learnt more about the process of making champagne than I had ever suspected existed.  Did you know that all important Bottle Turner must turn every bottle every day (left one day, right the next)?  Apparently a top Bottle Turner can Turn up to 50,000 Bottles a day.  And I bet you thought you were good at *your* job.

The weather in France was glorious... for a few days.  Then for our visit to the battlefields we dropped from 31 degrees to 11 in just one day and added some rain to boot.  Appropriately atmospheric though.

.... to be continued.

But in the meantime, the other big news of my life is that I've got a new computer!  Ok, that might not sound like the biggest deal ever, but because work has provided my computers for the last decade or so, the last computer I bought was a 486.  Aha.  That's like prehistoric my friends.  So I've spend the ENTIRE day (and a half) setting up the new beast.  Not that I won't get a new computer with the new company, however a big global mining company won't be quite as relaxed as my relatively small engineering consultancy when it comes to letting me do as I please with my computer.  And I'm the sort of person who needs absolute control of her own workspace (not to mention all of those slightly dubious activities (ok, downright illegal) that might take place with respect to certain movies and tv shows).