I had an email from teach today asking how my job search was going, so I thought I'd reply here in case anybody else was wondering too.

I'm into the second of three weeks of temp work, back at the company I worked for two years ago. I'm still not sure it isn't going to be fatal. I have learned a lot in the last week and a half. First, I've learned that I was entirely justified in leaving this company, and also in thinking that I should have left years before I did. Second, I've learned what a truly awful thing a negative attitude can be. In an entire eight-hour day at this company, I never hear one remark about ANYTHING from ANY of the other staff which is not complaint, hatred, cynicism, general negativity, or moaning self-pity. All week, every day. I can't believe I never noticed it when I used to work there before. It's only now that I realise exactly why this job did what it did to me.

Today, I only worked there in the afternoon because I had a Coastguard job in the morning. It was just a mundane job, moving a broken down boat from one part of the harbour to another. After that, we had to go to three navigational harbour lights which were on the blink, and remove the lights and bring them back for somebody to fix or replace. It was the most glorious day. Driving the boat was like driving on a road, the water was so flat. There was hardly even a ripple, the water was sparkling blue and the sky was too. There wasn't a single cloud and the air was freezing cold but whenever we stopped moving the sun was warm. It made me think, once again, that I'd be insane to give up the chance of doing this full-time just for a nice secure job in the Office of Negativity.

Last weekend I had an interestingly different experience with the air patrol; there is a new "mobile comms" setup which puts all the Coastguard radio and nav gear (which was previously built into the plane) into a sort of big heavy box thing with handles, and the idea is that you can then use it in any available aircraft, if anything goes wrong with the Coastguard plane. So we had to go up in some random different plane with this stuff to test it. That was sort of fun. I learned that it works OK, mostly, if you don't mind sitting there in the middle of so many cables and plugs and wires and antennae and curly cords that it takes you a week to extricate yourself again. Also, before this test flight, one of the flying instructors who teaches at the same airfield where we're based came in, requesting a couple of morons to go along as passengers on an hour's flight with one of his students. (They were doing a thing where the student had to fly a fully loaded plane; weight differences make it respond differently.) So I went along. AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH! I learned this: never go flying with somebody who is in the process of learning to fly a plane. Aaaaaaaah! Aaaaaaaaaaaaah! [pauses to unclench white knuckled grip on edge of desk just at the memory] I almost got airsick for the first time ever. And I also added this phrase to the list of Things You Don't Want To Hear From A Flying Instructor:

"HOLY *%&$!! Give me the controls NOW!"

Also, you would be AMAZED how hard and how high a Cessna 172 can bounce on landing. Never again. Woo.

So I am still looking for any sort of work on boats which will get me time towards my license. It's winter and the wrong time of year to be looking, but a large amount of charter boat owners now have my name and phone number, and I've talked with lots of people and put my name on a lot of lists. So, it's just a question of hanging in there and doing whatever temp work I can get, to pay the rent until some boat work turns up.

Brunnen-"if anything develops, you'll all be among the first to know"G