valentine's day: take the orange pill

A weekend of Codral, Beechams, and Sudafed nasal spray was not enough to return me to health, so Valentine's Day saw me spending the day in bed, but not for reasons of amore. Actually, I dragged myself out in the morning to see our friendly GP—completely free on the NHS, gotta love this country sometimes—who concluded it was most likely viral, but gave me antibiotics to be sure in light of our flight plans next week. So while Morpheus offers the choice of the Red Pill or the Blue Pill, I'm content to be taking the Orange Pill for this week.

And maybe there's some sense in there too, because if the Blue Pill was blissful ignorance, and the Red Pill “The Truth”, maybe the Orange Pill could be thoughtful uncertainty or something. That would describe our launch plans at this time. While we know when we'll be leaving, where we're travelling on the way, and the date we'll finally sight the Long White Cloud again, beyond that things are pretty hazy. I'm exploring jobs, and we're still open about cities. Bronwyn is waiting on my lead on this one really.

And I realised, actually, this is the first time I've ever been in this position. If we don't end up stitching up a plan before we depart, it'll be the first time I've ever been a completely floating free agent. From primary school my intermediate and high schools were pretty much set (ignoring the Wellington College misfire in the middle). I'd enrolled at Vic before leaving school, and been accepted by Massey by the time I'd finished my first degree. I'd lined up employment as I graduated from clinical training, and obtained my London job while still in New Zealand.

But there's time yet to turn that Orange Pill to Red. I've a job interview this coming Thursday night—Friday by Wellington time. They initially offered it to me for 2pm Friday, though as this equated to a 1am start here I asked for a recount. We've settled on 9:30am their time/8:30pm mine. A reschedule of my leaving drinks after work to Friday and we're sorted. It sounds like a good job; one of a handful I'm current investigating. We'll see how deep this rabbit hole goes...