Wimbledon Withdrawal

I have loved being back in Vancouver so far (with the obvious downside of being hubby-less for a bit) but this week is difficult because Wimbledon has started.

By far my favourite iconic London event, I'm still mad that I only made it there 2 years out of the 5 summers that I have been in London. I think the first year I was too lazy to figure out the complex system, a second year I stupidly booked a trip home to Vancouver that coincided with it, the third year I had just started my new job at Sky and didn't feel I could take the piss and ask for more holiday right away (having started on 1 June and then immediately taken 3 days off to go to Cinque Terre - no regrets! Still one of the best holidays ever. Seafood spaghetti from Aristide in Manarola, you will always be in my heart).

Finally, in 2010, I made the effort to take time off and go. We were completely ready to get up at an ungodly hour and queue up in the morning, but miraculously Keith managed to score some of the 500 Centre Court tickets online at Ticketmaster right at 8pm. We had 3 computers going and he managed it. He didn't even go - Kate and I were the lucky beneficiaries. That year marked the first time in 33 years that the Queenie deigned to grace Wimbledon with her presence, so that was one of the 3 times that I have seen the ol' girl in person, within spitball shooting distance. (The others were at Royal Ascot, where to be fair, she shot by on a carriage and I was 5 people deep behind the track railings. The other was at the Queen's Summer Garden Party at Buckingham Palace, where I was too busy chowing down on free afternoon tea to even stand still during the anthem when she walked out of the palace). She had come to watch Murray play, which we got to see at Centre Court as well. We also got to see Caroline Wozniacki (SNOOZE) and I think the third match might have been Nadal. All 2nd round matches of course, so easy wins for the seeded players.

Last year, we didn't manage to be so lucky with the Ticketmaster frantic clicking, but Keith and I committed to the cause and got a cab from our Clapham Junction flat at 4:30am to join the queue. We obviously didn't beat the people that had been camping overnight in the field, but we we timed it perfectly to beat the first load of public transport Wimbledon wannabes. Still we were 1086 and 1087 in the queue (still have the queue cards in a scrapbook!) and nervously waited, having no idea how many tickets they release for each court during the day. I remember well that we were in front of two guys in their early 20's who had WALKED from Central London after a night of clubbing and hadn't slept at all. We admired their dedication. In hindsight, I'm glad we didn't get the tickets online. Queueing and the anticipation was as much a part of the experience as the Pimms and strawberries and cream were. When we got our Court 1 tickets we were ecstatic. We watched Djokovic and Tsonga take out their 2nd round opponents. Tsonga being by far the more entertaining player to watch - big fan.

So this year it is with great sadness that I 1) sleep 2) sit in the office while all of the action is happening. Unlike in the UK, neither Wimbledon or BBC's live internet feed of the play is available, because it is geo-blocked. BOOOO. Last year I didn't even need the internet feeds since I worked at Sky and smack dab in front of me is a 55 inch television which we would turn to Wimbledon everyday as play started at noon. (Completely approved by our Director who despite having his own personal TV in his office would come out and OOOH and AAAHHH as he cheered Federer on).

Making it even worse is that Keith scored Center Court tickets online AGAIN this year and went yesterday where he watched a match that is going to go down in the fact and history books - Nadal losing in the 2nd round to Rosol, ranked 100 in the world. Epic. And I missed it!!!

Why didn't I just wait until the summer was over to move back???? Oh yea... because I didn't want to do another year-end at Sky. Happy year-end, Sky friends!

Back to Real Life, the old 9-5 (in this case 8:30-5)

Well after a month away from work, reality is cruel. How quickly one gets used to waking at 10am, and how jarring it is to then reset your body clock to 7. So confused is my poor internal clock that I have jolted awake an hour before my alarm every morning. I think Keith’s morning paranoia has, by osmosis, seeped into my subconscious as well, because I think it is largely to do with not trusting that my alarm clock will ring, because it is a new alarm clock. It hasn’t earned my trust yet. I am wiped out after a 4 day work week!

Some highlights so far:

free lunch! the grateful ones out of us would say, what a nice company. the jaded ones would say, what a way to keep you working at your desk throughout your lunch hour. To you jaded ones, I say, it did not stop me from walking to the mall to exchange a top at H&M today after I devoured my chicken wrap.

After 3 years of enduring the Sky canteen, which got pricier and pricier as time went by, which started turning microwavable pasties and sausage rolls into meal options, and served up watermelon and feta as a "prepared salad" choice, this is a wonder. Let's compare my previous paid food options to this week's free lunch menu

At Sky
- above described canteen
- The Coach and Horses, a 10-15 minute walk to the closest pub serving food, which someone saw a mouse in once
- Cafe Society, which cannot even be bothered to melt some cheese on a jacket potato. How can you eat your jacket potato with solid cheese? quel the f***?

This week's menu:

Monday

·         Jerked Spiced Chicken w Apple Chutney

·         Grilled Vegetable Stacks w balsamic glaze &fresh basil

·         Roasted Potato Medallions w Caramelized Onions

·         Broccoli Crunch Salad w walnuts and Orange Creamsicle dressing

·         Southwest Cesar Salad with Chipotle Dressing

Tuesday 
 

Sandwiches and Salad

Wednesday 

Vietnamese Subs

Thursday

·         Miso Soup

·         Build Your Own Chicken Tiger Bowl w Tangy Cabbage &Spicy Yogurt

·         Teriyaki Tofu Bowl

·         Basmati Rice

·         Soba Noodle Salad w Sautéed Mushrooms & Bean Sprouts

·         Pickled Cucumber Onion Salad

Friday 

Pita Wrap Cafe

Well there goes the diet. I am going to try to be good and get lots of salad and just a bite of the nice mains. Works for the days that there are salads (i.e. this week, not Weds, and not Friday). Did pretty well on Thursday:

 I will of course only ever put up pictures when i do well.

Unemployment

My last day at work at Sky was today, and my work leaving drinks was last night. Somehow a leaving drinks tradition has started whereby the leaver has to drink their name in shots - i.e. one for M-A-Y L-E-E. That's a pretty short name relatively speaking, and I got let off easily - I did the MAY and that was it. M for Malibu. A for Absolut Vodka. Y for Yagerbombs (spelt poorly, should be jaegerbombs).

No hangover today - I am slowly tricking myself into believing in my drinking invincibility again. All I did at work today was show up at 10, go to the pub for lunch for 2 hours, then put together a reading pack for someone who is going to join the team in 2 weeks, and then get a leaving speech from my first boss Simon and my successor Stu. Then I said my thank you's, during which I of course cried and couldn't look anyone in the eye (it reminded me of how I was making my way fine through our wedding vows until I looked Keith in the eye and then blubbered/snotted my way through the second half of the ceremony). Then opening my embarassing card (full of drunken pictures of me at the Christmas parties!) and lovely presents (my first Tiffany blue jewelry box!), a piece of cake, some hurried goodbye emails, and that was it. Handed my laptop and access card over to Stu and called it a day.

I don't think I'll really feel it until Tuesday rolls around and I don't go into work (Monday is a bank holiday here) but it already is a bit weird. I have only ever left two employers in my grown up career - KPMG and Thomson Reuters. Although at KPMG I think of KPMG Vancouver and KPMG London as completely separate places. In Canada I was trained, did my exams, made some of my most enduring friendships (my three bridesmaids all came from KPMG Canada). When I left KPMG Canada I thought I was going to be back in 18 months, so didn't really have to do a mental or emotional goodbye. At KPMG London, I was sick of audit, and hadn't really grown or really put in the right effort in my year in the UK. When I left, it was well past time to go, and I had stayed only so long as to sort my UK visa out. It was very much a sense of relief to leave. Besides the significant personal event of meeting my husband there, it really hadn't added anything to my career. So, glad I was there, thank for the inadvertent matchmaking, see you later. It was scary to leave audit but I had no doubts it was the right thing.

At Thomson Reuters (which I still prefer to think of as Reuters) again I made loads of friends, had a lot of fun (month end Thursdays = 5 beers for Andrew and Xav and 2.5 glasses of wine for May, conveniently downstairs in one of the 3 pubs attached to our building in Canary Wharf), got some much needed non-public practice experience, and networked my way into a department move into Group Finance a year later. When I joined I didn't understand fully what my role meant (who does when all you've done is audit?) and knew fairly quickly that I wanted to be in Group Finance instead. Unfortunately that same year Reuters became Thomson Reuters and London Group Finance ceased to exist. Financial reporting being what I considered to be an essential experience area, I gave the newly created technical accounting role reporting into various US-based managers a few months before deciding to jump ship again - seeking work in Feb 2009 right after the global financial meltdown. Likewise, sad to leave friends, but again necessary for the career.

So then we get to Sky, where I've worked for 3 years, and the job has been exactly as it said on the tin, and therefore given me the experience that I was looking for. I learned so much and if I weren't leaving now I would have the opportunity to rotate into commercial finance and learn even more. I'm not saying it's been perfect, and many a day I would hit brick walls that made me want to shoot myself, and it's not like I woke up every Monday morning bright eyed and bushy-tailed, but certainly it has been the most rewarding job I've been at. So when I leave now I know I gave it my all but I'm not sure I've exhausted what I could have gotten out of it yet. Which makes leaving really quite a weird feeling. Weird not really being an apt adjective - wistful? sad? I don't know, but maybe it best sums it up to say: Surely it's not time yet?

I also haven't been unemployed since, well, ever. I got my job with KPMG when I was still in university and was 19 years old. I've never since left a workplace without having already secured my next job. I can't properly start looking in Vancouver until I'm back in Vancouver, so I am in a limbo stage. I am trying to chill the F out given Keith is bringing in income and we have decent savings (and I haven't had a break between jobs since, again, ever) but having no employer is an uncomfortable feeling for me.

Well much packing to do still and leaving country responsibilities, so won't have much time to dwell, just moving on, moving on to the next thing on the to do list. But can't help feeling a little gray and a little blue.