The half-way point
01 January 2025I started this decade in Korea watching the Korean 2020 new-year show in what now seems a very innocent time shortly before all hell broke loose with Covid-19 lockdown, and looking back over the subsequent five years there is little I can point to in terms of lasting objective success. Two years later was supposed to be when I finally started piecing my life back together but things did not work out as I had hoped and in all to many respects things actually went backwards. Entering the second half of this decade is not the same square-one I had in 2013 and to a lesser extent 2021 but it is tainted with the pessimism of a weak hand mid-game. Nearer taking less knocks rather than moving on.
The professional situation
Moving back to Britain involved taking up a job that was always a stop-gap since it was within my professional competence but outside my career trajectory of systems-level development. This has at long last been corrected by not only taking up a job in line with this career path but also one that involves neither a long commute nor remote working, as both of these things are in their own ways detrimental to my overall well-being. Due to circumstances with the economy such a job required relocation and this paid off, at least in terms of what I want of my professional life, while also managing to avoid the much more intense need to emigrate again. In comparison back in late-2013 the new job involved emigratimng, and but it quickly became apparent that job was not my long-term interest.
Since I joined the company late in the year I have barely found my feet but in any case details of the work as well as the identity of the company will not be made public for reasons given previously. It not quite the low-level systems-level type of work I had been angling for but companies that do that sort of stuff are generally about “product” and that work is all going abroad. The person who normally deals with new-hires and their backup were both off sick so the first two weeks were chaos, not helped by my company computer hardware having problems with random crashes. Doing tasks was clearly a case of biting off far more than I can chew so while I feel the start of getting to grips with the development enviornment overall productivity in terms of business logic feels disappointing. Then again I am not sure if this could be avoided.
I have yet to work out the full situation of how the company operates as it seems some people are fully remote, but my current impression is they have a bias towards being on-site which suits me perfectly — the office is for work and my apartment is for living. And a major reason why I applied & accepted to work here was because I wanted full-time on-site working to be the normal rather than the exception. Remote working has been name of the game for the first half of this decade and overall and it had not worked out for me. In the future I will give an overview of how my views on remote working evolved but in summary it was a marginally less evil than the daily grind of commuting.
The luggage situation
When coming up it was at the absolute limit of how much stuff could be packed, limiting myself to one very large suit-case and my back-pack since anything more than that would be a real struggle — a good decision as I ended up walking the 15 minutes from station to initial accommodation. Deciding to bring the laptop as well as the portable workstation was questionable but otherwise got things about right given the short amount of time to do packing. Aside from a clothes horse which is one of those bulky but cheap items where it only makes sense to buy new on arrival, and in any case really should have been provided by the accomodation, I had everything that was needed and the opportunity cost of stuff that went unused was of no consequence.
While moving into permanent accommodation could have been done in one or two trips it was far less hassle and effort to do a total of six sorties with the office used as a staging area. I had more than just the stuff I came with a few weeks earlier and did not see the effort to pack as much as possible into fewer bigger trips as being worthwhile, especially after a mix-up over dates meant that there was two-night overlap available for getting everything moved. This was a world away from the dozens of trips I did when moving during Covid which looking back was one of many strains that eventually laid me low. I might still do a round-trip with a car-full of stuff but by the time I've organised that it is likely anything bulky such as my printer will either already be here or a substitute bought new.
The accomodation situation
In 2013 I landed at the airport in a country I had never even visited before and more or less went straight to the office of my then-new company. Getting to know the city, sorting out bank account, sorting out accommodation, and sorting out taxation codes, were all done at the same time — and on top of this many weekends within the first six weeks involved flying back to the UK on the Friday to return on the Sunday because this was cheaper than weekend hotels. This time round I had an accommodation contract nailed down before taking up the job and the company provided somewhere temporary in the almost month-long gap between starting the job and moving into the apartment, and while it was a trek from the temporary apartment to the office it was nice that I de-facto had free living.
The temporary place was a one-bed AirBNB in Student Central at the top end of Oxford Road and in short the block had a battered feel not that different from students halls. Overpowering stench of mould in the lifts but based on letters pinned to the entrance notice-board some sort of work was already scheduled. Apartment itself was generally fine although there were obvious signs of skimping on maintenance and there were several instances of what I am sure are violations of fire code, the locating of an electric convection heater marked “do not cover” below a towel rail being outright dangerous. It was the second weekend when I finally got round to checking the mail-box and it still contained leaflets from the general election so it had obviously not been opened since at least June.
However it was ill-suited to my needs since it had sitting space for several people but no proper desk and I never did any cooking beyond use of microwave. It was day-to-day living in a new city but at least it wasn't the living out of a suitcase of 2013 where I was also sorting out a load of other stuff at the same time. Due to the area most people I came across would have been half my age and while it may be down to being early in the academic year when students have yet to blow their loans, it felt a lot more vibant and welcoming than recent visits to Bristol. The stench of cannabis was an almost daily occurance and the homeless were more overt than in London so the place has serious social issues, but it also felt like somewhere things are happening. Found other arcade and games bars that felt more my type of place than the underground one stumbled across last month and it took me a while to get used to the idea that basically anything in the city centre was only a 15 minute walk away.
The “permanent” accommodation was rather worn out and there were major irritations such as no access to meters, and I soon found faults after submitting my itinerary annotations, but ultimately was paying for proximity to work and having walking time reduced from twenty minutes to a mere six minutes made a big difference to the mornings. At £1,300 a month there was no chance it would be anything like my brand-new London apartment and overall the place obtained was just about reasonable for the price. Previous places I rented overseas were not far off turn-key but this place pushing the definition of “furnished” to the limit given how much stuff was basically end-of-life.
No plates, no microwave, zero cook-ware aside from a roasting trey, and I suspect all glasses and cutlery were things the previous tenant accidentally left. Having to get duplicate bits and pieces for this second home was unwelcome on multiple levels, but but with energy levels being low at the end of the year I was just looking forward to hibernating rather than kitting the place out. Going out to get such stuff was previously part of starting a “new” life but this time round it just feels a choir than a rite. Luckily I was able to source a proper desk which got delivered the last weekend before Christmas, which marked the first time I felt like I was actually rebuilding, and a few items found their longer-term living places.
The social & personal situation
There is no way to gloss over it — coming to Manchester requires building a new social circle practically from scratch and it inevitably takes time, my expectation being that I would be doing well if it gets anywhere by mid-2025. The first month of temporary accomodation was in a student area where people were too transcient for a serious effort at building a social base and being a trek from where I would be longer-term it was not somewhere I expected to frequent longer-term. Of the five weekends in December the first was taken up by the office “end of year” party, two were down south, one was spent getting kitchen stuff, and what was left I decided to spend living under a rock. Contacts in London mentioned associates up in Manchester but at time of writing had not got round to contacting them.
Back in 2020 I was about as close to getting engaged as one can be without putting a ring on a finger but it ended up being one of those relationships that Covid-19 lockdowns ended up destroying, and the final shove that sent me over the edge that summer I have not even come close to recovering from the experience. Rebuilding a personal life is down-stream of rebuilding social circles and even then it is a drawn-out process in itself that also involves a lot of random luck so it is well off the agenda for the foreseeable future; I cannot even take a punt on when it might even have a chance of coming onto the radar. I know a few people who met spouses through the likes of Tinder but to me all those platforms now seem full of people with nefarious intentions.
Prior to Covid-19 I had many times used RyanAir for weekend trips to London and for all its faults doing the same thing with Avanti West Coast is relatively easy. Effective punctuality and the relative costs are debatable but at least travel to/from the stations is a short walk compared to the past travel to/from the airports, so once probation is over I would not be surprised if I end up spending a weekend or two a month back in London. That is pretty much the frequency at which I was going into central London at the time I relocated and with all the strikes and & cancellations the two hours from Euston to Piccadilly is not that bad compared to some of the late-night rail-replacement bus trips I have had to resort to in the past. Factor in delay repay and I am paying on average a lot less than the circa £80 list price for a return.