the headache to Leeds

I'm currently growing a lovely headache by being a true Chinese and using the free Wi-fi on the train from London to Leeds. I've taken my laptop with me, and it just seems a shame (or more likely a waste and an affront to my Asian senses) not to capitalise on the freebie so I can send emails and download tracks. I suppose however that any cost benefit on this trip will be neutralised in the outrageous cost of the ticket and the panadol tablets that I will need to consume later.

I finished with the NHS Counter Fraud Service last week. I was a little sad as I felt that I had started to make inroads - of getting to know people and of starting to get good at my job. My final task was to release the report I had been working on for the past 5 months - it will be launched as a national document for best practice, and I'm pretty proud of the work that I've done. The task before that was slightly less happy - I did my final assessment of a hospital's counter fraud arrangements, and awarded a provisional fail mark.

Happy days indeed.

I'm sure many of you are aware that I've booked my round-the-world ticket from London to North America and Australia. I'll be seeing my sister who has just moved to Toronto, and then will be spending a couple of days in the Bay Area of San Francisco. I'm a bit of an old hand now at the Caltrain - it's a great journey down the Silicon Valley heading past famous places such as Menlo Park where Thomas Edison lived. From there I'll fly out from San Jose to Denver where I'll be heading to a family reunion. From there we'll be driving through Utah and then heading back to LA for my flight home back to Australia.

I would hereby like to announce that my headache is in a holding pattern and heasn't decided whether to emerge or not... And that the man sitting opposite me (despite me requesting a non-table seat) is chewing gum in a most annoying fashion.

I can't concentrate any more, except to say that a party that David held a couple of weeks ago, I managed to make an entire room of PhD physicists and PhD art historians laugh, spilt red wine on my only nice polo top, and drunkenly agreed to read a book about art so that I would feel superior to everyone in the galleries I visited with my knowledge on art. Though, I must say that I am currently a bit bored of seeing countless depictions of the last supper, the resurrection of Christ and the birth of Christ.

If anyone can show me a good collection of finger paintings, then I am sold.