Well, I was unsuccessful in the two interviews, but it was interesting seeing two new towns. I went to Southampton, a small port town in the South, for the first interview. The town had a beautiful park in the middle of it, which was more wooded and generally nicer than the one outside our room. The town was quite good about bike trails as well. There were bike paths next to the major sidewalks. This is a great improvement over London, where you have to bike in the roads, which are already overcrowded and full of angry drivers. I thought the interview went pretty well, but there must have been other good candidates as well.

For my next interview I went to Sheffield, an old industrial town in the north, famous for steel construction and other metal work. It is not a big steel town anymore, and is in the process of reinventing its downtown. They had a really nice winter gardens (like a really nice greenhouse) and several free art gallerys near the center of town, a Victorian town hall. In addition, construction was going on everywhere in town. I think it will look very different in five years. My interview took me out away from town to the hospital medical school. I had to take an SQL and HTML test before the interview. I think I did okay on both, because I studied some for the SQL part, since I haven't done that in years.

It turns out, by coincidence, I have another interview in Sheffield for a different university a week from Thursday, so hopefully that will pan out better. Meanwhile, I am still applying for other jobs. Hopefully I'll get some interviews at places that are a bit further south.

Victoria and I have been busy these last couple of weekends. For the last weekend in January, I took her to Canterbury for a weekend trip away. It was a nice town with a beautiful cathedral, and a giant wall most of the way around it. The only bad thing was that we had a bus at 7:30pm to go back to London on Sunday night. Everything tends to close at 5 or 6 on Sundays in the UK, so we were outside in the freezing cold for almost two hours waiting for the bus.

On the 5th of February, we went to Oxford and stayed with Victoria's sister Gillian. It was Victoria's mom's birthday, so the family had a small reunion at Gillian and Nigel's house. We went out to lunch and dinner in Oxford and spent the night there on Saturday. It was a good trip, and I got a birthday cake out of it. Victoria's mother made me a cake ahead of my birthday, which was a really nice thing to do.

This past weekend we didn't really do much. Friday we went to a cafe and played Pass the Pigs, a game which involves rolling pigs instead of dice. On Saturday we slept most of the day. On Sunday we went to Trafalgar Square, in the center of town. There was a large Chinese New Year festival there, complete with parade, fireworks, and stage performances. The square was so packed it was difficult to see anything, so we met up with Chris, Gisella, and Natalie at a nearby tea house. Unfortunately, getting to the tea house was near impossible. We had to walk through Chinatown, which was so crowded that everyone was just pushing each other, and no one was going anywhere. The woman ahead of me almost got in a fight with another woman. It was a bit scary, like gridlocked traffic for pedestrians. I was worried I might have a claustrophobic attack. Things were not helped by the many people performing in the street with Chinese costumes that large groups stopped to watch. The tea house was quite cool looking, with blue windows and aquariums everywhere. I ordered a tea that ended up tasting just like what I think tea in Chinese restaurants in America tastes like. I basically randomly chose, so I guess it was a good choice, as I like that type of tea.

I've done some more interpreting over the last week or two, including interpreting at the hospital, and for a research project. I'm also creating a web page for the project, and dealing with various computer issues they have.