Almost Christmas Break...

So Christmas approaches, and with it holidays. Crytek is shutting down for 2.5 weeks over New Year, so I have been planning ways to spend the time. Of course the most important thing is to go home and see the family for Christmas. A canny bargain hunter can get his hands on all kinds of bargains at this time of year - people are practically giving things away during the so-called festive season.

I would like to spend more time at home, however since I get only four weeks holiday a year, I feel I have to make the most of my time in Europe and travel around as much as possible. Therefore I have scheduled visits to a couple of cities when I come back from Australia. Here is my itinerary:

• 24/12 - Arrive home in Melbourne, no-doubt to the rapturous applause of
  the home fans.
• 25-26/12 - Bask in the love and respect of my family and receive their
  tribute.
• 29/12 - Conclude my whistle-stop tour and head back to Germany.
• 30/12 - Catch the train to Ljubljana for a few days, including New
  Year's.
• 2/1 - Head over to Venice for about 5 days.
• 6/1 - Catch an overnight train back to Coburg.

This will of course involve a great deal of travelling time - this is unfortunate, but it has to be done if I am to visit all the places I want to while I'm here. Of course I will keep you all up-to-date with goings on (well at least partially up-to-date with some of the goings on, if past history is any guide).

New Opportunity Abroad

For the past few months, there has been quite a bit of blogworthy action occurring. However, the indiscriminately public nature of the blog medium has prevented me from posting it, for fear that my current employers would stumble onto it.

A month or two ago I was contacted by a representative of Crytek, a computer games company located in Germany. This was in response to a job application I had optimistically submitted several months before that. It had taken them some time to get back to me; presumably they had tried someone else in the meantime. In the meantime, as described in previous posts, I had already taken a job.

The fact that I had only just started this job was unfortunate, but the opportunity to work overseas, and in a prestigious company such as Crytek, meant that I was determined to pursue this chance. The first step was a phone interview. This was conducted by a couple of fellows from the company, one of whom I could understand clearly and whose questions I could answer, and another whose questions were both incomprehensible and difficult to answer. However, despite this challenge the interview was well received, and I was contacted again - this time to travel to Germany for an on-site interview.

This presented a slight challenge. A flight to Germany takes about 24 hours from Melbourne. Overall this meant that I would be away for 5 days, of which 3 were working days. Ordinarily I could probably have organised leave from work, but we were right at the business end of the project, and being granted leave would be virtually impossible.

My only option was simply to claim sickness for the time I was away. The problem with this was that the company was likely to demand a medical certificate to prove my illness. However I resolved to cross that bridge when I got to it - after all, there was some chance that I would have been offered the job before the nastiness ensued.

So I jetted over to Coburg, Germany for the face-to-face interview (some low-quality photos of the town can be found here). This also went well, and after lunch I was offered the job. Therefore I am set to relocate to Germany! On returning, I immediately quit my job, giving myself 6 weeks until I relocate to prepare for the move and otherwise relax.

First Day at New Job

Yes it's true - not only have I mustered the enthusiasm to apply for work, but I have also received it. That's what I call beating the odds. I started work yesterday, which was a Friday. This was good, since it meant that my first week was manageably short.

The company I have started at is called Blue Tongue Entertainment. It is a video games developer that is owned by the global publisher THQ. My previous jobs have also been in games development, so I guess I am becoming quite specialised. Hopefully that won't hurt me later on in my career.

It has been almost 18 months since I last had an office job. The day seemed to drag on quite a lot, but then I didn't really have any given task, except to familiarise myself with the games they were working on and the codebase. Hopefully once I have a particular task, I will be able to get back into the swing of things.

Commuting is quite an issue. The offices are on St Kilda Road, near High Street. Taking the train would be troublesome, as I would have to go into Richmond and then take another train or something out. It is difficult to get parking there as well. I think the best plan might be to drive to the corner of Malvern Road and High Street and then take a tram in. The trip along Waverley Road to that point seems to be not too bad from a traffic point of view.