Christmas in Oxford

I got to the Fairhearts on the 20th of December. The trip on the the train and bus were uneventful. Del and Lachlan met me at the Park and Ride.

The house was in a bit of an upheaval as Del is putting up new cabinets in the kitchen, and all the stuff from the old cabinets had to be moved out from the kitchen. The cabinets look lovely and Anne will be happy once they are all done. Next project is new flooring for the living room in February.

We did some Christmas shopping on the 21, for the Saturday before Christmas the shops were busy but more crazy busy.

Christmas Eve we went to Ade and Beata's for the traditional Christmas Eve dinner. Lots of dumplings and fish. Very tasty. Christmas Day was the usual opening stockings and then presents. Del made a chicken with all the sides and Anne made cabbage rolls. 

Anne and Del left on the 27th for Belfast and left Lachlan and I to our own devices. We had fun.

Monday Lachlan and went to town and the Story Museum, then to the Christmas Market for a ride on the Carousel.

On the carousel.

In the hundred acre wood.

The masked reader.

When we were walking back to catch the bus home we saw Ade, walking with some friends of his. I know two people in Oxford, what are odds I would see one of them in the street!!

Au revoir Paris

I am at the Gare du Nord, just waiting to board the train to London. It has been a good week here, but I am also excited to go and see the Fairhearts.

The visit to the Louvre was good, I decided to go on the late closing night and it wasn't really crowded. I did get to see the Mona Lisa, did not take a picture as I did not think I need a reminder of what she looks like. I enjoyed the other paintings and sculptures. It is a lot  of walking. One thing that surprised me was the .Starbucks in the middle of the museum. It sure seemed out of place. 

Police sightings were nicer a couple of cops on bikes and a couple on roller blades. Not sure how the roller blades could stay up withput tripping, the streets are cobblestones. 

The temperature was around 9 degrees all week, and the number of people all bundled up because of the cold made me laugh a bit. Lots of fur coats too.

Went to the Eiffel Tower, but did not go up it. There was also a Christmas Market there. 

I really liked the area I stayed in. Lots of restaurants, grocery stores and specialty ones like fishmongers, meat, cheese,l bakery etc. Lots of English speakers too working in the area. Easy access to the Metro.

Line ups this morning at the train station were really long. Lots of people traveling for Christmas. I did see Santa and he gave me a candy cane!!

Paris

My flight over was fine, I did not sleep much so have spent the last few days fighting jet lag. I don't bounce back like I used to.

The apartment I have is nice it's in the second arrondissement and quite close to the Louvre. I have not been there yet but have a ticket for Wednesday. Sunday and Saturday I spent in the area of the apartment. It is mostly a pedestrian area so fairly quiet but easy to walk around.

This afternoon I went to see the newly reopened Notre 

Dame Cathedral. It only reopened last week so I wasn't sure I would get in but the line moved quite quickly. It really is beautiful. 

The audio guides to rent from the cathedral were not ready yet, but I was able to download one from the internet to get a better sense of the history of the  cathedral. Love the internet.

One thing that kind of creeped me out though. I had just gotten off the train and walking to Notre Dame and I saw about 8 policemen walking towards me with machine guns in their arms. I would have taken a picture but fear that they wouldn't like it and might arrest me stopped me.

I also went to a Christmas Market. There was a guy selling roasted chestnuts, some nice looking cheese and lovely jewellery. Even Santa was there.

I find food is quite expensive. Some stuff looks like the same price as home but then I remember the Euro is twice as much as the Canadian dollar!!

I cancelled my trip to the Normandy beaches, with the Canadian dollar being so low it would have cost about 500.00 and I felt that was a little too much.

Layoff update

Overall, the company was aiming for 130 people to take voluntary buyout packages. Total actual subscription was 165 and about another ~20 laid off on top of that, so a reduction of close to ~190 people, around 40% of Canadian office staff. 

I didn't take the package and wasn't laid off. Some people were demoted, a few were relocated (to the branch office in Phoenix) and a few were promoted. As expected I was shuffled to a different job (lateral), as a manager again, with three people to do the work previously done by five. It will be messy but we should be able to pull it off, it will just be very time-intensive and we will have to cut a lot of things, which I expect lots of people won't like but otherwise it won't work. Morale is low for everyone left, which will be fun. 

In addition, the company did a lot of retitling of jobs. Most people ended up with worse titles, which is a big deal for a lot of people, especially in the corporate world when you are dealing with external counterparties (e.g. some people that were "directors" were retitled as "senior leads", which sounds a lot worse and doesn't map to other the titles of other companies in the industry). Titles are free so I'm not sure why they did this particular aspect. Basically everyone has a new job or a combined job with fewer people so it should be interesting for a year or so until things stabilize. My title actually improved and I didn't get demoted, so really I came out of it OK except for the upcoming chaos.

It's been a rough couple of months so I'm looking forward to Christmas. On that note we put up our own Christmas tree for the first time today. It's a real tree and, though it is dropping needles like crazy, makes the house smell great.