Not Manila tho’, it just keeps the dial cranked up. 

It’s a weird city, a complete culture shock as I expected something a little different. I was expecting Hong Kong, Manila is much more like Mexico City — if that comparison means anything to you.

It’s a good place tho’, my overall impression has been favourable so far. It’s massive so getting around takes a while, and I’ve not had much change to explore many areas. But being massive means that there’s always somewhere else to explore. 

Plus I’ve already lost money playing poker so I know I can do that as sucessfully as I can anywhere else. 

I’ve no real idea how the interview process is going, I think I’m putting a good impression of myself forward, but we’ll just have to see how it all goes.

One, go to bed three hours before you need to get up (after copious amounts of booze) and manage only one hour sleep due to the general worry about the next day.

Two, lock yourself out the flat while putting the bins out and have to do a twenty minute walk/run to the nearest friend that has a spare set.

I’m impressed by my lack of panic when I discovered what I’d done, glad I did it last night and not this morning …

Now I’m in the airport and generally calmer since that’s the first hurdle done. Although the reality of what I’m doing, interviewing for a job on the other side of the world, has only just started to hit.

Never mind, the wine will calm that down.

I’ve already been scolded by airport staff for drinking at 7:30am in the morning, she was gone before I could explain that somewhere else in the world it’s half nine at night

And I’ve just finished prepping for a trip to Asia, I leave tomorrow. 

I’ve had four days in Edinburgh between trips, it’s been a little hectic. 

So don’t expect too many posts for the next week or so. 

All of next week is a bit of a two-way job interview for the position in the Philippines, there’s a proper sit down interview on Tuesday too. After that I’m stopping off in Hong Kong to catch my breath before heading to Guangzhou to spend a few days with one of our big customers. 

Eeeek.

Hopefully after that I’ll be back in Edinburgh and I’ll have time to post about my experiences. 

Unless my boss decides to divert me to see someone else, since I’m in the area …

Mmmm, bacon.

So I can now reveal where I’m going. I’m going to Manila. 

In the Philippines. 

For a job interview. 

Eeeek. 

It’s with my current company which is why they’re shelling out for the flights and hotel. And the fact they’re paying to send me must be a good sign. 

But still, eeeek.

I’ve just noticed that the travel authorisation request form for my division, a huge global division of a massive global company, is written in Comic Sans. 

Come on, this is a form that people use to request permission to spend thousands of pounds of the companies money and it’s written in a font more suitable for a ten-year olds birthday card. 

I know I’m disproportionately annoyed by this. Hey, at least I’m posting. 

I’ll post about why I was filling in a travel request form if it gets approved …

I’ve returned to the land of the loner, having lost my flatmate over the weekend. So I now have to play the lifesize equivalent of one of those slide puzzles where I shift all my furniture around to create enough space to redecorate the bits that need done. Still, it’s all looking possible. 

Before the decorating (but after the CV updating) I need to do some planning for my (probably) final holiday this year as next week sees me head off to the furthest away parts of the EU. 

All of this is a roundabout way of saying that posting may be a bit light over the next month or so. I’ll try not to leave a multi-month gap but we’ll see.

I should have some job losing/hunting info once I get back from my hols and there’s still a ton of outstanding country posts but I’m way behind with my photos.

This is about the BBCs reaction. They’ve unveiled a special page: bbc.co.uk/downturn

Easy to remember URL, snappy graphics, special fonts, lots of content. New graphics are already on News 24 as well.

Eh, could you at least pretend you’re not beside yourself with glee that we’re “on the brink of recession.” 

How long have they had that ready to go? You just know they don’t have an equivalent ‘upturn’ page. 

It makes you wonder what they do have ready, lots of pre-done obituraries I imagine, but do they have terror attack pages, nuclear strike, alien attack?

The closest they’ve come is “Bet you regret spending all that money jetting around the EU now!”

Which is nice of them. I needed reminding.

I have only a few countries left to visit and the flights are all booked. So I’m confident that by the end of the year I’ll have visited every country in the EU in 2008.

I may have to cancel a planned trip to Dublin, but I’ve been there before and I spent a night in the airport this year which is probably enough to calm the completeness freak in me.

I’ll post more about the whole experience once I’ve got the separate country posts up, hopefully before the end of the year, but maybe not.

It’s easy to think I would have been better off, financially, if I hadn’t been doing this but I doubt I would be. Past experience proves that I’d have just done something else with the money anyway. I’m not really a saver.

I’m in the happy position of having a few months, at least, of employment to sort out my finances. It could be a lot worse.

All this does mean that there’s unlikely to be a new resolution for 2009 … unless my life becomes much more settled before then.

So what is it ? 

The truth is plan B isn’t really a plan to find a new job, it’s a plan I’ve had for a while to set my self up to either leave my job or take a sabbatical and sod off travelling for a bit. 

It revolves around finding out how I can rent out my flat while I’m not here, then sorting out my finances to accommodate that and powering through the inevitable list of things I’ll need to do to make it all possible.

So this morning a nice man from Broughton Property Management came round and provided me with details of the finances and that big list of things to do. 

Fortunately almost everything on the list was stuff I should really do anyway. So there’s no harm in doing it and then being prepared for the possibility of renting. 

This doesn’t mean that I’m definitely sodding off to foreign shores, either for employment or just for fun, I’m simply getting myself to the position where I could do so given, say, a few months notice. I could just take another job in Edinburgh, and I might. But from experience I know that after the initial challenge wears off I’ll just fall into the same old routine that I’ve been merrily following for eight years. 

It seems like this has come along at exactly the sort of time I was thinking of changing things up, it’d be foolish not to at least investigate the chance of moving abroad for a year or two. Maybe even junking telecoms, or even software, and doing something else. I googled ‘Poker Tournament Director Jobs’ this morning … 

There’s still lots to sort out, and lots of potential for things to change between now and then. So next year I may still be in Edinburgh, retiring to my couch after a hard day to watch whatever dross is on telly.

Or maybe I’ll be sitting on a balcony in Malta doing contract work on my laptop and sipping white wine. 

Yes, I know the reality isn’t going to match the dream, but I can still dream. 

And that Malta dream isn’t realistic.

I don’t sip wine.