Winter, and the next phase

Crunch crunch crunch.

The satisfying feel of frosty grass under my feat. The beams of sunlight filtering through icy tree branches. Cold air nipping at my face. Bursts of condensation following my dog Sadie as she sprints around the white scene before me with a bright pink toy.

Winter is here!

I've missed it. It feels Christmassy.

And I've already received one great Christmas present - a job with Capgemini which I accepted on Friday. I'll be starting as a Graduate Technologist on March 10th, the week of my 25th birthday :-)

So I've got 3 months to find my ideal flat in London. Any advice from Londoners on how to approach this would be very much appreciated!

The Cowboy Poet

The Cowboy Poet

What exactly is a cowboy poet was a question I was asking myself on Saturday evening. Andreas - my flatmate and good friend from Venezuela/Germany - and I were cycling across Scotland (mainly in the rain) and were in a youth hostel about half way across, at the foot of Loch Ness, in a room with two of the most typical Texans you will ever see.

Lanny Joe Burnett, the Cowboy Poet, sported one of the best moustaches I have ever seen, and his wife Cindy was an very smiley air hostess. They were of course Scottish themselves, Lanny Joe being only a fifth-generation Texan with family roots in this country.

This is one of the greatest things about travelling I think, even in your own country - the wonderful and crazy people you meet. Lanny and Cindy helped us make some Hallowe'en costumes for a party that night at the Fort Augustus youth hostel which featured a cast of Americans newly unleashed upon the concept of drinking and Australians telling us stories about "Drop Bears" and killer penguins. Makes the Loch Ness monster sound pretty believable.

Anyway, as a Cowboy Poet, Lanny grew up on a ranch, with a horse named Goldie, and now writes and performs poems about cowboy life in places as far away as South East Asia and West Texas!!

I think we know who to book for the entertainment at Get Golden 2008.

Hugs!

Well, Edinburgh was quite a hug-filled place today.

Why?

Well, this was the basic idea:



That was a guy called Juan Mann who had a very simple idea. That sometimes a hug is all that we need. Now, September 10th has been unofficially declared as International Free Hugs Day all over the world. That video has been viewed over 17 million times, the Facebook event today had over 850 thousand people attending. People just going out and offering free hugs to the world.

What a great idea.

Of course I had to do it.

So I was out in Edinburgh today, with my excellently-engineered "FREE HUGS" sign (thanks Patrick for the help, and Thom/Susie/Adam for the materials) and a warm smile upon my face. And it actually works! After two hours and 161 hugs I definitely felt good inside knowing that I'd brightened up the days of 161 of my fellow human beings.

It was amazing!

First hug was a little schoolboy, then many many students and sun-enjoying-people on the meadows, and some old ladies who loved the idea. Then tourists on the Royal Mile and my 100th "abrazo" somewhere amongst a group from Spain in Princes Street gardens.

There were family hugs, running leaping hugs, hugs verging on acrobatics, group hugs, over-energetic hugs, hugs that were needed, hugs that were funny, hugs from people at work, hugs from people in suits, hugs across barriers, hugs from hastily-opened car doors, hugs from friends, hugs from family and many, many hugs from strangers :-)

A hug. A very simple thing that just makes people feel good.

The world needs more of them.

Graduation and all that

The Spottiswooders

It all happened on Wednesday!! It felt very monumental, with everyone attired in gowns and hoods, a grand ceremony in McEwan Hall, a delicious lunch with mum, dad and Kate, and a champagne reception at the Royal College of Surgeons (another big old building).

It did feel quite special in that ceremony though, sitting amongst all my colleagues after all these years of (mostly, ok, some) hard work, hearing about all the achievements of Edinburgh graduates (the only one I can remember just now is Dunlop inventing the inflatable tyre) then going up there to have my degree conferred upon me by the principal - a process which involves having your name read out, getting touched on the head by the honourory hat (allegedally made from John Knox's breeches!) and him saying "well done on the first Daniel" :-D

And the highlight of the speeches, our "graduation joke", from the vice principal of Herriot-Watt, was: "Changing a University is like moving a graveyard, you don't get any help from the people inside". The best bit though was when someone was introducing IBM Nick and said managing change within IBM was "probably something else akin to moving a graveyard". This got mild, polite and slightly uneasy laughter.

Afterwards there were some cows and some champagne and some wine and some beer and some dancing.

Top Bananas

Top Bananas

Oh, I'm getting the subliminal AIESEC messages in at every opportunity :-) Also, Arthur's Seat is bloody windy. Alex and I went up there to shake off a hangover very effectively the other day. We played a good game of throw-the-banana-skins-off-the-top-and-see-how-many-tourists-you-can surprise before deciding to come down the hard way.

Causing erosion on the site where modern geology was founded, all part of a good day's work.

A couple days after that I ran up the side of the thing (ok, only along the bottom of the Crags, but the steep way). Almost killed me. Felt good though.

Done it!

Yey, I did it. University. After 5 years it is over. It feels very good. For maximum tension, we had to delve into the depths of JCMB (one last time maybe?) to go read the result on a noticeboard, labelled by examination number. And there in the "First Class Honours" section was my number (or at least something that looked very like it, I double checked about ten times!) Anyway it was :-D so very happy me, very happy parents, very happy company taking money off me for a highly silly gown :-)

So, what's next? Well, as Declan is constantly keen to put it, "they've shipped me off to a charity". Yes, I'm off to work for AIESEC for a year. After several applications to different countries (many of them possibly a bit last minute) I finally spent a good amount of time on one of them, got some amazing references together and got the job of MCVP External Relations in AIESEC Venezuela. The job will be excellent - leading an entire country's AIESEC presence within the national team - big national accounts, organising events, managing strategies for marketing, branding, alumni relations, etc. The country looks absolutely stunning. Yes, it's a bit politically and economically unstable (it's ok, I excel at staying out of trouble!) but it will be such an incredible cultural experience, such a difference from here. It will be challenging, it is a bit scary and I'm still not quite sure what to expect but I am sure it will be a fun and very experience-filled year! You've sometimes just got to jump into these things, and this is the time for it!

So on the agenda this month (now that all the extreme amounts of post-exam celebrating, drinking, reuniting and holidaying are over!) is:

• Lots of working at Shimmer to at least mostly pay back Inland Revenue (see Working Lunch on Tuesday for hopefully an inspiring shot of me discussing UML diagrams!)


• More vaccinations (only two more days of risk of Yellow Fever and MMR side-effects now!)


• Lots of planning for the year ahead in the MC


• Maybe squeeze in a bit of work for AIESEC in Edinburgh


• One chapter of Spanish per day, and maybe some more watching of Spanish movies with Jen

So it's going to go pretty fast, then I'll be off for another year abroad, which will be very different in every way to my year in California! I'll be sure to relight the blogging spark over there.

Dan Cunningham, graduand BSc and crazy travel plan maestro

Lazy students

Christmas Tree Heaven

Yes, there are still Christmas trees lining the streets of the lovely area that is Marchmont, Edinburgh. OK, this photo was taken a week ago and things have since calmed down.

Last week did lots of work rolling out a new system at work. Good fun. Honestly. .NET 2.0 rocks. Oooh, this is an actual computer in my room I'm typing from too which is quite revolutionary. It always surprises people when they find out I don't own a computer. Also did some AIESECing, including a meeting with my boss to sell him the Global Source Programme - me wearing a suit to work for the first time *ever*. Anyway, it was very good. They are all very excited about getting some trainees. And there's some kind of exciting mystery news at the meeting tomorrow.

Had a good weekend anyway. 80s themed "pancake" party on Saturday night, although to be honest the pancakes weren't as good as mine. I love making pancakes. But the films were excellent. Labyrinth and Top Gun. I also did some project work and watched a few episodes of the OC.

Happy New Year!!

Fireworks over the castle - Sparkles

All the best for the coming year everyone! Myself I have many many resolutions, but not to get a job as you never stick to your resolutions. I will get one, but it's not a resolution.

Hogmanay was absolutely fantastic. Had about 20 people crammed into my flat (a combination of friends from Haddington, AIESECers and Tom's friends). There was a massive spaghettie bolognaise feast, lots of chaos and mess then off to an AIESEC party for Declan to sell the rest of the 28 tickets we had for the street party, and then to it.

The street party is an interesting thing. About 100,000 people suddenly descend upon Princes Street, all instantly lose all their friends and spend the rest of the night trying to push through crowds and find them again. Luckily, I did. A big bunch of us ended up joyously bringing in the new year to some stunning, mind-blowing fireworks - an absolute onslaught of fire and light and sound and music that just hit us with sheer delight upon our faces. We then made merry, Nicola sold some tiny bottles of rum and coke for about £20, we waved happy new year to a SWAT team overlooking and then all lost each other again (especially Laura, oops).

We ended up being reunited in Marchmont where the whole of AIESEC UK had decided to get chicken tikka pizza at the same time. Then me and a very kilted Big Steve scoured the streets for parties - ended up at one with a load of people from Haddington who I hadn't seen for years, then back to Rach's and Jen's and finally home to fall off chairs in Thom's room until around 6. Beautiful.

Hope everyone else had just as good a time!! After a slightly drizzly and anti-climatic new year in San Francisco last year, I am convinced Edinburgh is indeed the best.

Oh!

Don't you just love it when you're getting your hair cut by an assistant trainee hairdresser for free in your company's salon and she's doing something with a trimmer and a comb at the back of your hair and just exclaims "Oh!" in a very worrying fashion?

It all turned out OK, the senior stylist came along and fixed me up. The entire process did take about an hour and a half though, so think I might just pay next time!

Dan - helping train hairdressers around the world.

Scariness

The hunt for a career has begun. It's all quite exciting, but very scary at the same time. I'm really not sure what I want to do, but I do have a few ideas. What I don't want to end up doing is just sitting in a room programming boring applications. Obviously. I want to be working with new technology, doing stuff people haven't done before and doing things that matter in the real world. Things that are important to people and pushing the boundaries.

The big corporations are shoving everything they can down our throats at the moment and I'm starting to come back around to the idea of them. Graduate schemes, high quality training, flexibility, options to travel, working with diverse groups of people - it's all quite enticing. Of course these things look to be fiercely competitive. But that's a good thing I think. I want a job I will be challenged in and motivated to excel at.

One company on my list to apply for is Accenture. I was at a presentation by them the other day. They are a huge Consulting firm with a big Technology division. I really like the sound of it - working on projects for different clients, travelling lots and what looks like a really good graduates programme. Doing consulting means looking at the bigger picture, deploying things in the real world and getting to work with lots of different people.

They seem like a good company ethically as well. They have a programme called Accenture Development Partnerships where you can go off and use your expertise in developing countries or with charities. To be honest, that sounds like it might be better and (bizarrely) easier to get into than doing an AIESEC Development Traineeship appears to be. Hopefully I'll still get to go on one of those too.

Hello anyone from AIESEC Edinburgh reading this now that my contraversial-sounding post is dominating Google :-)

Anyway, lots more careers presentations coming up. Application forms and interviews are looming ever closer now. It's time to decide what I want to do with my life!

Pizza explosion!

Ready for the oven

About 6 months ago Declan and I made a pact. That we would one day live together and make pizza for the masses. One week ago that dream was realized. As well as making a gigantic mess in our kitchen and significant holes in our wallets, Declan, Tom and I (to varying degrees) managed to summon up not one, not two, but THREE fantastic pizzas AND a tirimisu. This was completely from scratch too - no pre-made bases or sauce or any cheating like that. Raw ingredients, man power, a little bit of creativity and a pinch of narrowly-avoided disaster were what went into these babies. We were very proud of ourselves indeed.

The plan was to have Fliss, Lucy and Bill - the friendly bunch from across the hall - over for dinner to repay them for the lovely dinner they made us a couple weeks previously. But unfortunately all but Lucy forgot about this. As well as the extraordinary feast, they missed out on the Craig Charles Funk Show (things got pretty "funked up"!) and the kind of religious debate that can only be had at 5am after several bottles of wine and several (too many) hours of funk. It's like being a student again!

Also being a student, I've rediscovered, means lots of practical work, late-night lab sessions, late-night drinking sessions, far-too-early-mornings and having to spend small fortunes on course books. This is what I did today in preparation for reading week next week. I really am going to buckle down and make some progress on Graphics, Databases and my Project. All to the soundtrack of the seven new CDs I had to buy from Amazon whilst buying course books.

AIESEC, University, The Founder of the Web...

It's all just too much!

I sprang out of bed bright and early on Tuesday morning for the return to University. After the neccessary shower, coffee (from my shiny new coffee maker yey), orange juice and waking a very hungover Thom from the dead, the three of us headed on our merry way down to the infamous Kings Buildings (where they ship off all the Science and Engineering students to make sure they don't alarm the Arts students). Some were more merry than others, notably me flashing my camera with everything and documenting the whole malarky. Thomas was notably less merry thanks to his over-merriness last night which resulted in a monumental rant about the grumpy old man downstairs, now dubbed Mr Spottiswoode as he seems to be under the impression he owns this street.

So far he has complained to us on three occasions already! The first time was for me "causing a disturbance" by quite reasonably moving in at a very reasonable time of day, the second time for Thom playing his guitar very reasonably and the third for Thom for "slamming" the door to our flat (i.e. closing it). His hobbies appear to consist of complaining, putting up little signs with regulations on them, plumbing, sweeping the hallway, vandalising people's bikes left maliciously in said hallway, complaining about that then sweeping the hallway again just to get him in the mood for some good old complaining.

Anyway, yes, University. It is good. It's quite exciting being back, choosing courses, ready to get stuck in to it all and so on. Should be some fun stuff this year - more lego robots, computer graphics, very advanced databases, neuroscience, etc. It is rather nice living the student lifestyle again, although the pressures of (actual) work seem to be trying to take up all my time (but I'm not letting them).

Today I went to see a talk by Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the world wide web and head of the W3C. So a pretty important chap to all us Computer Scientists, and everyone really. A very enthusiastic and entertaining speaker with all sorts of ideas about the future of the web and more precisely the "symantic web". The idea is a lot like the world wide web but instead of linking documents together, data itself is described and linked up in a structured way across many different domains - scientific research, e-commerce, entertainment, mapping, calendars, history, recipes, what you like to watch on TV, who you know - everything will be described and then we can ask really interesting questions about the whole lot and get information at incredibly detailed levels. For example you could read a scientific paper, trace this back to the exact experimental conditions used: when, where, how it was performed - even things the experimenter did not think about - then use the raw data yourself in some other kind of analysis. Or you could walk into a restaurant and your phone would tell the ordering system your dietry preferences enabling them to serve up a menu specific to you, then maybe you could find out exactly what had gone in to your food, where it was made right back to the field it was grown in and the conditions at the time. You can see there is a huge wealth of possibilities when we start linking all this data together and using/analyzing it in unexpected or unforeseen ways. We're clearly a long way off from all of this but things are beginning to happen with web services, RDF and all those buzzwords. It should all be quite interesting.

Now, my third topic of the day: AIESEC. Declan and I found out who the blue man is today!! It was the introductory meeting of AIESEC Edinburgh. It all started in the traditional AIESEC manner: lecture theatre, dimmed lights, loud music and a swooshy powerpoint presentation. Then there was form-filling in aplenty, them seeming to want to know our entire life histories and previous ten phone numbers. It was a lot like filling in a job application form, but of course there was loads to write about what with all the wonderful AIESEC experiences I've had. So hopefully will get past the screening process and allowed to join in on all the fun! After all that stuff we all headed to the pub to get to know everyone. They seem like a really nice bunch, and there looks to be a lot of interest in the society so I'm looking forward to being "back" in AIESEC again this year. Yey!! I'm so happy they're a proper LC!! It seems they aren't quite as well-known (or financed) as AIESEC US and could do with improving their visibility in the eyes of local companies. I hope I can play my part in developing the LC and being part of the AIESEC experience. Oh, I'm beginning to sound like them. The brainwashing has once again taken effect! :-)

Looks like it's going to be a fun (and busy) year...

Does AIESEC Edinburgh exist?

As part of my "extended lunch break" today I went with Declan to fight my way through crowds of freshers at the Society Fair today. This is the part of Fresher's week where all the societies at Edinburgh University try and lure people in with free sweets and so on. It was absolutely packed, full of a mix of bright-eyed, slightly hungover and slightly lost-looking first year students. There are a lot of societies at Edinburgh - pretty much one for anything you could think of - religions, cultures, big student movements and every hobby or pastime under the sun. Among the obscurities this year was the BBQ Society. I asked them what they do during the winter. You guessed it. They BBQ. They want to move away from just burgers and bangers, maybe try something like fish. It's all about the food apparently.

But the main purpose of the trip was to find out if AIESEC Edinburgh actually exist and were present at the fair. And they were!! With a big banner, lots of posters and a guy in a bright orange T-Shirt (so much cooler than the San Jose AIESEC T-Shirts I must say). I was so pleased I forgot to introduce myself to the guy. They are actually decently organized, with about 30 members and something like 10 incoming and outgoing trainees each year. This is good news, because it means we don't have to take over the thing and run it ourselves (although I kind of would have liked that too). But I will definitely be getting involved in as big a way as I can. Introductory meeting's next Thursday. Can't wait to bring some Bay Area spirit to AIESEC Edinburgh! I'm sure there's so much more they can be doing what with all the other cultural societies at Edinburgh, work abroad programmes and so on. Some strategic partnerships methinks.

Looks like I'm going to have a lot on my plate this year though. There's an unbelievable amount to be done at work (especially in the run up to Christmas) and I need to get moving on my Uni project (as well as all the regular Uni stuff). I hope there's still some time for fun. And eating and sleeping :-)

Potterow tonight to pretend we are back in first year! Then it's Big Steve's birthday in Glasgow tomorrow.

Went to see Me and You and Everyone We Know at the Cameo the other day. Very funny. Go see it.

Pedalling for Scotland

Hundreds of cyclists abandon their bikes for pasta

Drew and I undertook what turned out to be a pretty damn difficult feat on Sunday: Cycling from Edinburgh to Glasgow in the annual Pedal for Scotland charity bike ride. Being a charity bike ride, I think we both thought it would be quite easy, but not so. Quite the opposite. The weather was absolutely appauling (think bitter cold rain hitting you in the face at 30mph) and it seemed to be uphill almost all of the 50 miles. Thankfully, they provided lots of snack stops along the way - a pasta party in Linlithgow (with a folk band - I was transfixed), tea and home-baked cakes in a church somewhere and Tunnock's Caramel Wafers at The Time Capsule near the end.

There were a few comedy moments along the way - me almost knocking over the the Lord Provost of Edinburgh when high-fiving the poor woman at the starting line, a spoke flying off my bike mid-hill and evidence of the practice of fruit-lobbing at cyclists obviously from some of the more cultured citizens of Glasgow. Much relief was felt when we got to Glasgow after about 7 hours, inexplicably beaten by loads of kids who I'm amazed survived the thing. We rewarded ourselves with a good old fashioned Sunday Roast from Wetherspoons. That is the only food you must ever eat from Wetherspoons, the rest is utterly crap, especially the steaks.

Well done Drew for completing "the hardest thing you've ever done"! You are officially more buff than Wee Steve now, if that's what you want. Although I've heard he's been buffing himself up in preperation for the lying on the beach of some Spanish island he's doing right now.

Thanks to everyone who sponsored me. Between the 2000 of us I think about £50,000 was raised for Children 1st and Barnardo's. That's another event to add alongside Bay to Breakers on my annual sporting calendar.

"Home"

Time to get this thing back on the road!

I've been home for about 3 weeks now and to be honest it's been a bit of a rollercoaster ride. The journey home was just surreal - the last trip over the Bay Bridge, last sight of California, hearing all those British accents again queueing up to go home after holidays. It was all a bit scary really, not really knowing what to expect or how I felt about going home. It was a truly fantastic year and I suppose I was just sad it was the end.

Drew of course could be relied upon for some distraction, arriving at the airport minutes before last check-in time, barely packed and having "crashed" his rental car on the way, with Phoebe in tow trying her best to get him successfully out of the country! Anyway, we did make it onto the plane, reunited with Tim of the Mountains and his newly sprouted facial hair.

After playing with Virgin's fantastic in-flight entertainment system which lets you send e-mails and text messages at extortionate rates, it was straight into British culture to prepare us for home - Father Ted, Little Britain and Virgin's guide to London (which bizarrelly talks about going to Krispy Kremes Donut Shop in Harrods as one of the top things to do - something I think most people would associate more with America).

Before I knew it, we were at Heathrow - queues, crowds, lots of people who I'm sure were putting on silly English accents and some very nice sandwiches. Called my Mum to let her know I was back in the country, which was lucky as she thought I wasn't back until the next day. Then a quick flight up to Edinburgh and drive to Haddington and I was home, greeted by a very happy Sadie (dog) and an almost typically indifferent Poppy (cat). Family happy too of course.

Spent the first week settling in to Haddington, walking Sadie and seeing friends from school. Also enjoying all those British things like tea, curries, fish and chips, Neighbours and trying to avoid Big Brother on the telly. And failing to organize cross-Scotland get-togethers (eventually managed this once Declan came up with his car). But Haddington got a bit boring after a while.

So then it was into full flat-hunting mode. Tom, Declan and I were the core team. We also tried to persuade Lewis to live with us but he was having none of it so we settled on just the three of us. We spent an intense week looking at lots of places (and drinking lots of tea at Tom's friends' flat between viewings). They were mostly rubbish - kitchens made out of cupboards, tiny rooms, missing carpets, etc. It must be so demoralising trying to sell these places to people! We were eventually successful and found a nice big place in Marchmont - the really studenty area of Edinburgh. Moving in on the 18th, the same day Germans Marco, Nico, Till, and Christian and Americans Julie and Vena are all coming to visit, as well as probably most of the rest of the UK interns. Should be very chaotic and lots of fun!! Just to make it even more so, we're holding out flat-warming party on the 19th. We're really asking for trouble aren't we? As long as the landlord doesn't pay us a visit and think we're subletting to about 10 people!

The festival has now hit Edinburgh. The place is totally buzzing with tourists, street performers and flyer-hander-outers. All good fun. I love this time of year. Went to see ventriliquist David Strassman last week which was excellent (maybe I'll write a review) and going to go in tomorrow for "Fringe Sunday" in the Meadows or Holyrood Park - I can't remember which it's at. Will try and meet up with some Edinburgh folk for that too, maybe go see a show in the evening. Also on the agenda for next week (not sure how much of this can actually possibly happen):

• see something with my family
• start work (www.beautysleuth.co.uk - honestly. That's what the company I used to work for has turned in to!)
• Stuart's birthday on Monday
• golf in Stirling with ex-flatmates Alan, James and Ryan
• and of course all that moving in, welcoming of visitors and flat-partying.

Great!