Any Colour You Like

I just made my first espresso with filtered water. BLUMIN EKK! Rich, luscious and with twice the quantity of tiger-speckled crema… I cannot believe it has taken me 7 years before I have bothered to control this clearly most vital of variables!

In what is probably the most corporately cheesy but reasonably cute gesture known to man, my manager has planted me a tree. I now have a certificate for the planting of a brand new elm tree in the Isle of Wight national park which will represent his commitment to my growth and professional development within Vestas. I will have to go visit it once it has started to sprout

I have now got a nice piece of glass fibre on my desk. Things are looking up

I have just finished my third day and all is good. I still don’t really know what I will be up to in terms of project but there is so much going on that there will be no time for boring menial tasks. Vestas seem to really focus on looking after new starters and there is a very elaborate five week training scheme that I am currently working through. It consists of a lot of very well designed flash animation based training (big budget clearly), followed by initial short term projects (which start tomorrow), hands on composite laminating course in Denmark (1 week long I think), visits to production abroad somewhere followed by ansys and ProE training. After all that I finally get to find out what my real long term project will be!

They really care about their employees too. There is fantastic free local organic food for lunch, free tickets for the ferry and water taxi, a terrible HTC phone for business and personal use at home or abroad, table football, free sailing lessons on Tuesdays, football on Wednesdays, a great mentoring scheme, laptop, credit card and a hefty relocation bonus. Anyone else want a job btw? They desperately want people that know what a wind turbine is

Everyone is really friendly and most people seem pretty new to the company. I will be working long and hard and it is going to be very challenging but very rewarding!

Ok so I still don’t have internet, but I am being harassed to such a degree that I have decided to upload these photos from work. The flat is pretty small but quite cheap, is close to the ferry and has both free gym (which I need to start frequenting) and a locked cycle store. If anyone wants to visit they will have to sleep in the kitchen though!

I went to an espresso cup museum yesterday. Yes that is correct. Illy are a brand of espresso bean accredited with introducing the italian espresso concept to the rest of Europe in the early thirties and since then they have been making a very distinctive shape of espresso cup that is used in countless cafes around the world. Every year they send a box of these cups to an artist and see what they get back – it is usually something pretty wacky. These creations are then put on sale in strictly limited editions for sale to the public. I have the 2002 year cups in pride of place back home. Here are two of the coolest out of the hundreds we saw yesterday:

Woop, I have finally got a job. After a mere 45mins discussion at Vestas they have offered me a full time job in the Blade Design department of the R&D Technology Centre on the Isle of Wight. Not sure of my start date yet but it is probably pretty soon. Need to get down there fast and find myself a flat in Southampton.

They have even put a season ticket for the RedJet in the post!!

RedJet from Southampton to Cowes IoW

Elley only gets a few days off this year cause she is in such very high demand, so we wanted somewhere that didn’t feel at all like London for a few days off. I was already in Southampton so we decided to head down to the New Forest for a bit of cycling and a four day adventure.

The roads and tracks were spectacular

Through the New Forest

Cycling

And there were loads of wild horses

Can you see the resemblance in hair style?

And we visited the National Motor Museam (!)

Captivated

XK150 and DeLorean

Pea Car

And all in all it was very picturesque and relaxing

Bucklers Hard

Amongst many other comings and goings I went to the Isle of Wight fora job interview last Friday. Vestas, the wind turbine manufacturers are rapidly expanding their R&D presence on the island and they are very much in need of composites engineers which I am hoping is me. On top of the worlds coolest commute on a jet catamaran and a water taxi, I would also get to work in a hangar adorned with the world’s largest union jack!

Venture Quays