As of Saturday, December 13th 2008, Jules and I are engaged!

A big part of my moving to London (and when I say big part, I mean all of it) was to be with Jules, my girlfriend of then 2 years. I knew if things were good then I would ask her to marry me. Well, things turned out good, are still good, and as of December 13th, we are officially engaged!

The ball started rolling on December 1st when Jules met me at Victoria station after work. I gave her a little silver box, resembling a little like a ring box, with a chocoloate and a note inside. The note read that I would be giving her something sweet everyday from now until Christmas, just to tie her over before she can open her Christmas gifts.

So everyday she had a little box waiting for her, with a little note in it and sometimes even a present to go with it. The plan was let get her to expect these boxes and not to think that they were setting up for something big. She later confessed that she felt a little nervous watching me casually pull out a ring-boxish box the first time, but thought "naw, he can't be proposing to me in the middle of a station. Especially not since he pracitically tossed the box at me!".  Perfect, my plan was working.

Twelve days had gone by, and twelve boxes had been opened. On Saturday, December 13th, I made sure the day went on as normal. We went to the mall together, she started work, and I went to my Jiu Jitsu class. Except this time, I went after class to get a haircut and some flowers. I got home and told her parents of my intensions and got their blessings. I cleaned up her room, piled up twelve boxes on her bed, and even got changed into a nice shirt and sweater.

I mean I HAD to get changed, really. I don't care what you say, but proposing in my ThunderCats t-shirt would NOT be a good idea.

9pm rolled around and I went to pick her up from work. We went to a pub to get some dinner, and when we got home, she quickly dashed upstairs to speak to her folks without even glancing at her room. 

I waited patiently downstairs for her to finish her chat with her mum.

What I didn't count on was that the X-Factor finale was on at the same time. For those who don't know the X-Factor show, it's American Idol but better. Leona Lewis was discovered through the series a couple years back and this year's winner, Alexandra Burke, gave an emotional performance of Leonard Cohan's "Hallelujah" to win this year's crown. Simon Cowell is also a judge on this show; go figure that Simon Cowell is to blame for any mishaps of my perfectly planned proposal.

Jules watched the final moments of the show with her mum upstairs, even shouted down "Ant, X-Factor is on!"

Who cares?! I'm about to ask you to marry me!!!!!!!!

 

After a long while, I couldn't take it any longer. I marched upstairs, dragged my poor unsuspecting soon-to-be finacee down to her room to the twelve boxes that I had set up.

I also had left her camera in front of the boxes with a video for instructions...

She started cracking open the boxes after watching the video, at first not suspecting much. But as she opened more boxes to pieced together more letters, her spidersense went tingling. Why are the letters coming together like it's spelling "Will You Marry Me?" Why is the room exceptionally clean? Why are there roses beside the bed? Wait, why is he in a smart sweater? Wasn't he in his ThunderCats shirt this afternoon?

After she had opened all the boxes and pieced together the message, I got down on one knee and asked her to marry me. 

Am I ever glad she said "yes"... or that would have been embarssing. :P

Enter The Ping Pong

Just... awesome.

Only in London

Something rather amusing...

The company I work for delivers lunch to us everyday. We order from Marks and Spencer's lunch menu and it arrives usually around noon. But today, instead of lunch, we get this email:
=============================

Dear all


Due to road closers around Portland House (the Queen is visiting parliament) the M&S delivery chap is unable to bring our lunch in….but we have a plan… we are going to go and meet the delivery guy at Victoria bus station…please be patient with us, it will be delivered to you as usual as soon as we collect it.


===================================

Sounds a bit elaborate just to bring sandwiches in, doesn't it? Her Majesty The Queen has personally delayed my lunch. I feel honoured. And hungry.

Monkey Business

A friend of mine, from back in my future friendly days, has started a new line of momwear called Monkeywear. Dads can wear them too, I just think they look so much better on moms. Gone are the tacky extra peripheral baby carriers, here's a slick new way to take your baby around. I think it's genius. I swear I'm not getting a cut for saying this.

Monkeywear is the runnings for the SavvyMom Mom Entrepreneur of The Year award, a well deserved award for a very innovative product. Please go vote for them!

http://www.momentrepreneuraward.ca/MomBio.aspx?momID=265

Record Breaking

In 5 minutes, it will be July 21st. Which means that I will have officially beat my "longest employment in London" record. Hoo-rah!

Out Geeked

Jules recently discovered that you could purchase old school Nintendo games on the Wii and play them for under a fiver. She was quite excited when we downloaded Mario Bros. 3 and told me that she used to play it religiously. I really didn't believe her until we started to play and man, she knew EVERYTHING. She knew when to jump, where to jump, where the secret coins are, etc. etc. etc. I kept dying and was watching her play in complete amazment. I just got out geeked by my GF! Makes me feel proud somehow.

I later downloaded Double Dragon. For a game that has a character named "Abobo", it's held up against the test of time pretty well.

Goody Goody Gumdrops!

A month ago, I blogged about the dodgy experiences I've had with job opportunities that I found on Gumtree. Ironicly, I'm now blogging about the best interview experience EVER thanks to the site. This past monday, after a gruelling week of coffee making (I'll blog that later), I travelled to North London for an interview I had set up via Gumtree. I went in with no expectations, partly because I was so jaded from previous experiences and partly because I didn't have time to look up the company.

When I walked into the office (which was a residential unit tranformed into office space), I was first greeted by a friendly lady followed by a DOG. Before the lady could say "I hope you don't mind dogs", the large canine (for those who remember Jesse, they're about the same size) jumped all over me and I was goofing around with the playful pet. The owner of the company came out, shook my hand, and we were off to do the interview. The woman turned out to be the creative director, and she joined in as well.

There was just something about these people that I instantly clicked with. When they talked about the company and the position, they weren't just talking business. They were talking career paths, passion, work/life balance, team atmosphere, and being honest and transparent with one another in the company. I felt safe to completely open up and talk about my career and life goals, which resulted in the best time I've ever had applying for a job. For an hour an a half, there was more laughter going on then there were canned interview questions like "what are your greatest weakness?" or "what do you see yourself doing in 5 years?". Well, those questions were asked as well, but when they asked them, it felt like they actually cared for the answers that I was giving them. To sweeten the deal, the company does marketing for restaurants and hospitality businesses, and I was to be their studio project manager.

The company felt like it was on the same page with me and I will be in a position to contribute enormously and learn a hell of a lot at the same time. I ended the interview by saying "I came in here to see I was a good fit with the company and vice versa. If so, great. If not, no hard feelings." They responded to that with "Don't worry, you're going to be a great fit." I felt extremely confident that I got this job, but then you can never be certain until they offer you the job, yeah?

For four days, I anticipated their call. I didn't care if they called with a positive or a negative response, I just wanted them to call me with SOMEthing. OK, I lied, I wanted them to tell me that my gut instinct was right and I will start work soon, but either way I needed closure. It's very rare that I feel so certain about a job and felt so excited to be part of a company. Even with my last gig, I felt a bit of reservation. Well, we all knew how that turned out.

On friday afternoon, I got the call to join the team. Not only am I relieved that I will be working again, but I'm also very certain that it's with the right company this time around. It'll certainly last longer then three weeks. ;)