Onboard

Looks like my 1:1 with my manager are going to be on a Friday afternoon in this job. I think that’s nice because I can talk about what I’ve done this week and prepare for next.  Maybe it’s a bit close to the Monday morning team meeting for me to have new things to report next week but I will see how it goes.  We have also been asked to start logging time in the internal system. All I have to do is log my time against the product; it doesn’t need to get broken down further. It’s a time tracking system built into Jira but I’ve never used it before. I figured it out, it’s quite simple - the main issue will be if the two booking codes that I have been given ever change. I’ve set a calendar reminder to fill the timesheet in every week.

We knew that today was going to be different because we are going down the our flat on The Island. It feels a bit odd to write that after all these months of on-off-on about the place.  Unfortunately, the last FastCat from Portsmouth is 8:20pm and there as no way we’d be able to get away early enough. PY has limited flexibility at the end of the day normally and the end of Friday seems to be busier. So, we decided we’d take a train about 6:20pm head to Portsmouth Harbour and then walk around to the car ferry which has a 10pm sailing.  It was quite odd walking through Gunwharf Quays later at night as most of the shops are closed. Although the restaurants are open it felt quite deserted.  Nonetheless we made it with about 40 minutes to wait.  While the car ferry does take foot passengers, the waiting room is not geared up for a lot of people. We had no idea how it all worked so spent time in the waiting room and then outside where a group of people were gathering (and they seemed to know what they were doing).  Eventually we boarded.

When we got on board we made straight for the little coffee shop, opting for a couple of mini wine bottles to pass the time. It’s really a quick crossing, tonight about 40 minutes so it’s over before it’s really begun.   

What we did know is that a bus from the arrival terminal is quite hard to get. Although there is a bus stop at the Fishbourne terminal there are very few buses that pass. I could only find two a week on the timetable.That’s not helpful to the foot passengers.  Luckily, PY had booked a taxi to take us into Ryde. It was quite easy - although our taxi turned up after many of the others had left.  It was bit strange trying to give directions to our flat when we don’t know the names of the surrounding streets. But we got there about 11pm.