Thursday 18 January 2007

What the hell is a "Field Class"

So, I've been plotting the great escape from England since, well, about 10 minutes after I got here. Someone emailed me about a Job in Singapore with an investment bank and I got all excited. Earlier in the week I had a telephone interview at rise-and-shine 7 o'clock in the morning with the development manager of said investment bank and his big dot net question was "explain what a field class is". ?@!!!. I've never heard of it and I went with an admission of the same while suppressing the urge to try and sell a bag of blag.

He was a friendly bloke and said that it was "a class that could not be inherited". I just mumbled a bit and we moved on. Today I got the dreaded we'll-keep-your-cv-on-file letter and decided to do some research on this bastard "field class" that actually is a type of goo that prevents you from leaving England as opposed to an uninheritable code block.

The font of all knowledge that is Google, says a field class is many things but no reference to uninheritable code could I find. And since you've arrived at this post as a result of a Google search for the meaning of "field class" let me definitively explain, once and for all, that a field class is a very sticky goo that keeps you in England. Q.E.D.

Update: thanks smartass, I now realise he was talking about a sealed class...

Wednesday 17 January 2007

Contracts and Commitment

Are blogs places where you rant about your pet hates? No? Well, you know what really grinds my gears? I know you don't really want to know but I'll tell you anyway. Contracts. Long term commitments to pay money for something I don't really know if I'll want in a couple months time. I'm an impulsive character by nature and sooner or later any commitment I've made comes back to bite me in the rear.

My mobile is pay and go. I don't want to be paying 35 quid a month to shout into an outdated brick that has the battery life of a celebrity marriage.

In the UK there are some things you just can't have for love or money, without a contract. And at the top of the list is gym membership. Now who wants to be committed to that beyond January 5th? Nobody, that's who. Oh, and fit people. But I'm not nobody and I'm certainly not fit. So when my wife's sister said she'd take over my membership contract I was laughing all the way to the bank. I mean telephone. Only there are some contracts you can't get out of and you guessed it, my gym membership is one of those. I've decided that corporations who don't let me do what I want are victims of Borg assimilation. And since there's no recourse for someone who's put there name on a Borg contract, I resort to the last refuge of the consumer who screwed himself. Yes, complaining online, as noisily as possible.