IPX-Factor Champion

Congratulations to our esteemed Team Leader, Stuart, on his victory in the Intellectual Property Executive ‘Dragon’s Den’ style competition – recieving funding to further develop his brilliant innovation, and rave reviews from all who attended (or at least that one guy who was there that I talked to this morning anyway…)

Congratulations Stu!!!

(Also – how cool are oversized cheques?! I like the bizarre images they evoke of matching oversized pens used to write them, oversized chequebooks to tear them from, oversized wallets to store them in and enormous banks with bank teller windows you can only access by cherrypicker…)

My new home

So I am feeling a little more settled into the Midlands now – I have somewhere to live.  It’s in a suburb called Acock’s Green (yeah, so I giggle too everytime I say/write it…). I have an attic to myself in a four bedroom house. Here is a roughly 360 degree tour of it…

The rest of the house is shared with a guy of about the same age as me with metal hair, t-shirt and goatee and these two retired dudes in thier 60′s. Interesting combo, but everyone is quite nice, and the place is relatively quiet and well connected to public transport. Unfortunately no internet connection as yet – but Im working on it! Hopefully I’ll be back in the land of Skype and Facebook soon! never fear my dear friends and family!!!

Anyway – I found these couple of pictures of Solihull on my camera too, so might as well post them. The first is the church which was directly opposite the hotel I was staying in. Its very pretty but damn those stupid bells are loud – and why do they need to be rung continuously for over an hour every time they start up. urgh… at least I utilised my weekends as there was no danger of me sleeping in?

The next picture is a statue in the main square at Solihull shopping centre – its an ordinary statue, but I must say I do like the addition of the Macca’s drink and the cigarette. Made me laugh anyway…

I’ve Arrived (somewhere else…)

So I have begun the new adventure that is the Midlands office.  At the moment I’m living in a hotel in the nearest town called Solihull.  It’s very pretty – but absolutely freezing! This was taken at Solihull station when I first visited the office last year.

Ultimately I think the plan is to move to Birmingham where there is a little more going on – for example, Primark (those kiddies sure make cheap clothes!).  Plus, a whole lot more shopping in the form of the Bull ring – which is one of the UK’s busiest and biggest shopping centres.  Here are a couple of photos of the main shopping street in Birmingham I took last visit:


So – there you have it. This is where I am til August. Im a little out of contact at the moment because Im not settled into a normal residence yet, so aren’t able to get the Skype or outside of work hours email or any Facebook (gulp!) happening yet. Apologies if you can’t get hold of me. I can still check all email at work though, so all correspondence is not off…!