I've successfully debarked from my previous employatorium to find myself a more monified situation. In other words, i got me a new job as a contractor.

I won't give away the exact details as i've always been wiley about such trifling details, so for the moment i'll refer to the company as BIG TIME TV. Actually, i've been working there for a couple of weeks now and am finally settling into the routine of unweaving the tapestry of code and getting familiar with my new environment.

And what an environment! The office i'm working in is only temporary, but i was always thought it was nice enough (they've got taps for still AND sparkling water). However, i was invited to take lunch in the canteen at the main building which is just around the corner and we decided to check out the office we'll be working in once they complete the renovation in August. At first i was apprehensive because it's in the "lower ground" floor and i had concerns that it might be a bit like that scene in the Hudsucker Proxy. I've worked in basement offices before where the combination of fluorescent lighting and computer screens concoct new and interesting forms of headache, but when as soon as i alighted from the lift all fears were put to rest.

The design of the office was amazing. There were wide strips of window panels in the ceiling to allow in natural sunlight, and the room was spacious enough to banish all notions of claustrophobia yet cozy enough to project a feeling of camaraderie. But all of this paled in comparison to the interior design.

Large tech organisations like Facebook, IBM and The Google Search Engine Company often try to be hip by lavishing employees with groovy trifles such as air hockey tables, red furniture and glass meeting rooms. This is actually the norm; the (now-defunct) Symbian Foundation blew money on beanbags and table football and i once saw similar table-based-sports-games-and-plush-seating whilst visiting VMWare on the South Bank. The end result is usually the same: meh. Air hockey is something you play after drinking three bottles of Desperados while waiting for the nearest bowling alley to become available on a more restrained night out. And beanbags are *always* uncomfortable to sit in for more than five minutes. And finally, if you feel you need to unwind at work by foosball or sitting on a beancube, you're a terrible human being - go out for a quick breath of fresh air or suck it up you big cry baby.

So it was refreshing to see that BIG TIME TV had none of that shit - instead the offices were designed to be colourful and imaginative but also amazingly practical. It was almost a shame that i would not be part of this promised land for another three months, but i'm definitely going to be too busy to notice. One of the things about my new role is that everyone - and i mean everyone - knows their craft. Managers started out as coders, testers can separate form from function and engineers trade knowledge like they were at box social. Whereas before i was the go-to guy for various things ranging from a website mock-up to a bugfix to knocking up some art in Photoshop, now i feel like i'm the big league and, God help me, i'm even getting a kick out of the adrenaline that comes when i've got a couple of hours to get from not-knowing-shitsville to finally-figured-out-the-problem. This is a good feeling.

I don't think for one minute that this is going to be an easy ride, but rewarding journeys rarely are. I told myself that i left Nokia because i wanted the redundancy money (and this is true), but every minute i spend doing my new job makes me realise that in all honesty i just want to feel challenged again. Whether or not i will succeed remains to be written in a future entry, so here's hoping.