The time has come to write my closing statements sitting from my desk at the Villa. It has been a really good 14 months living here, despite being so far away from everyone and everything. I'll miss the luxuries of a dryer and dishwasher too...ha, I've been spoiled. Anyway, Internet will be gone for [however many days it takes XNet to reconnect me], which means I'll also be missing out on the Starcraft II launch on Tuesday. Sigh.

It's been a tough few weeks for me, there's been so many things to organise in and out of work, so many things to worry about and plan for; however, there is light at the end of the tunnel and lots of events to look forward to in the upcoming weeks.

Work has been going well, I've been very busy with some good old C# and WPF work. Plenty of things to learn and experiment with - totally loving it. Just got back from dinner with some workmates at New Kor as well, so things at Sidhe are pretty sweet at the moment.

Quick list of notable things:
- I took last Monday off on account of sickness. Ironically, there was some news about one day sicknesses.
- Briefly took a gander at the All Whites parade on Wednesday.
- Had yum char last Friday thanks to the continued success of Flick Kick Football at the top of the UK app store. Not so lucky this week though.

We've moved up in the world and upgraded from the Fortress... to the Villa.

Yes that's right, we are now residing in what we have nicknamed the Villa, which is an apartment block 50 metres down the road from the fortress. We pay $30 more each week but in return we get a nice modern apartment, definitely feeling the warmth, and it comes with a dishwasher, fridge, dryer, carpark, and free access to a heated indoor lap pool and a gym. So awesome. We spent all of yesterday shifting our belongings in the cold, wet, windy Wellington weather, but with much help from Jono's family friend who had a Hilux, we were able to spare ourselves total freezing by piling all the big stuff into the boot and carting it over.

All's well that ends well.

And certainly it ended well with a night at Strawberry Fare! I met up with my home group at 8pm, I was totally starving after not eating since lunchtime, and I greedily ordered a garlic bread for myself while the waitress took our dessert order. Turns out she didn't give our order to the kitchen until about 30 minutes later, and she was so apologetic about it and felt really bad, so she gave us a round of FREE HOT CHOCOLATE, YAY!! And on TOP of that, we had an entertainment card worth 25% discount, so a garlic bread, hot chocolate and a lemon chocolate cheesecake came out to $11.75 for that night.

On Friday night we celebrated Sidhe's 12th birthday with an open bar tab at Red Square. And I got totally hammered, I had something pretty bad and got a headache around 10pm, incapacitating me for the rest of the night. So damn embarrassing. When the bar tab ran out, we relocated to the Terrace for yet more drinking. That's two weeks in a row! >_>

This week coming up is our last week before Alpha, so it's going to be pretty full on. At the end of it, I can enjoy a nice three day weekend in Auckland over Queen's Birthday.