Another quick week & short trips!

Last week was spent finishing off some stuff that had been left the previous week due to the overwhelming issues in the line... Unfortunately the original issue has still not yet been resolved so we would be looking at closing that out this week.

Had a review of my objectives the past 6 months plus setting some of the key goals for the next 2 quarters... I still have to follow up with my manager because we couldn't finish the session last week.

Things are still uncertain as to the future outlook at my company but suffice to say my job is very safe still. On top of that, my manager is very satisfied with the work I have been doing, which is always nice to hear.

The weekend was spent walking under the tentative British skies, but the sun finally came out properly today for a summer day like a summer day! Saturday - Llandudno & Conwy (where one of 4 Welsh World Heritage listed castles are... Very nice walled city not unlike Chester and York but a much more grander castle to protect the town with. Llandudno, like Prestatyn and Rhyl, is just another resort city (actually Tenby as well but that is slightly different in the sense that it's got a bit more for the regular traveller to do!), was coasts/beaches/family-oriented, but did not strike me as having anything to differentiate itself from the multitude of "normal" towns. Conwy, on the other hand, was small and nice, but we didn't have time to go up the city walls. Hui and her mum went with me...
Sunday - we all went to Bath and checked out the Roman bath complex - it was quite interesting and complemented the bath complex Hui and I visited some 2 years ago in Caerleon. Bath is a very unique city with its buildings made of Bath stone - majestic and polished. Like most other old towns the city centre isn't too big, but it's got quite a lot of architecture to see. The afternoon was spent going on a stuffy tour bus to Lacock village (which wasn't much to crow about except it was a really old place and afforded us an insight into the traditional British village), and then to a Stonehenge baked in the sun. We paid the entrance fee and so got to walk around the stones (as opposed to clinging onto a fence outside the stones and trying to zoom in), with an audio guide to boot. Taking quite a number of pictures, all of the same stones standing up may not seem that fantastic... and to be frank I thought the stones should have been a bit taller and mightier-looking than what they turned out to be. Still I think it was a good trip (the lousy bus without proper ventilation notwithstanding) and it was an interesting experience. The driver almost drove off without closing the back door (which he opened to allow the air to circulate when he was waiting for us to tour Stonehenge). I had alerted him to that after Hui told me about it... and as he went to close it, I exclaimed, "Damn, there goes our ventilation!"

Half baked and battered, we arrived back in Bath Spa ready for a round of ice cream (I chose Raspberry and Tiger's Tail - ice cream with orange liquor), listening to some moving concerto music in the form of two buskers in the middle of the square formed by benches surrounding them on four sides. In the shadow of Bath Abbey, and the Spa complex being behind our seats, we soaked in the summer Sunday evening. And so I gave them some money too for contributing to the excellent atmosphere.