Just a look back over the last 12 months.
January
I moved back to Christchurch to live, after having spent a few months further south since moving back from London.
Work was mainly around balancing other peoples' understanding and expectations around our use of Kafka.
February
I decided that it would be worthwhile to have a year's subscription for streaming Sky Sports, as some rugby matches that I would want to watch would be on at time when venues wouldn't be open.
Having moved to Christchurch to be close to an office, now found myself working from home as Covid restrictions came back into effect across New Zealand.
March
Got back into some actual coding at work - as opposed to mainly reviewing pull requests for configuration changes for Kafka topics. This became urgent, as the command line interface tool that our provisioning system was dependent on had been marked for deprecation.
April
Had my first direct experience with Covid-19. I only went for a test because a friend had mentioned that a runny nose was his first symptom.
May
Managed to roll my ankle as I was leaving the house for the evening. I thought about going back inside and resting it up with ice etc. - but then decided to try walking off the pain and carried on to a pub quiz. My team won the pub quiz, and I got an Uber home.
A couple of days later my ankle swelled up so much that it was too painful to walk on. This lasted a few weeks.
June
Heard from recruiter that was working as a local sourcer for Atlassian, now that they are fully open to remote working.
Had a family member come to visit for a few days. On the second day they seemed a bit ill so I ordered some more Covid tests - I was okay, but they tested positive and needed to isolate for a week or so.
July
A few stages of interviews with Atlassian.
Went down south for a weekend, including watching The All Blacks versus Ireland at Forsyth Barr Stadium in Dunedin.
Attended a comedy show by Rhys Darby - he's the comedian / actor who palyed the character Murray from the Flight of The Conchords television series.
August
Final stage of interviews with Atlassian.
Received and accepted offer to join Atlassian as a Senior Software Engineer.
New laptop arrived - glad it was a Mac, as I wasn't sure whether that had been something that I had asked about during the interview process.
September
Properly started the new job.
Purchased a decent office chair, and standing desk - all within budget for being expensed back. A welcome improvement over sitting at the kitchen table.
October
More learning about Atlassian systems, and familiarising myself with the services that my team is responsible for.
November
Learning about another existing service that will be moving across to my team for further development and maintenance.
December
Went to Sydney to meet up with the rest of my work teammates - several of whom also had to travel across from other parts of Australia.
Enjoyed my first experience of an escape room, which was the team building exercise that we chose.
Went to Otautahi Smoke - an afternoon and evening of live music, BBQ food and beers in Hagley Park.
