Also see my post to on the Google Mobile blog.

Of course, at the time I would never have thought I was going to stay this long, get married, have children and be on course to spend the rest of my life in this country. So it wasn’t quite as significant a journey then. We were only going for a year, to study, maybe for two to get some work experience. But looking back now, our slow cruise up the Elbe in the sunset certainly marks one of the most defining moments in my life.

We arrived in the East End after a 24 hour journey, tired, excited but perhaps also a little scared. Sebastian had arranged for us to stay with a friend of his who lived in a huge loft apartment in Lana House on Commercial Street, just opposite Spitalfields Market. The area was already up and coming back then, but it was still extremely rough, dirty and poor. I remember that we went out to play basketball on a small court around the corner on that very first afternoon and that this felt incredibly comforting. It wasn’t the kind of thing that tourists did. We had only just arrived, but it already felt like we belonged. It was a great start.

In light of this month’s failed attempts to set off car bombs in London and at Glasgow airport, allegedly by a group of foreign doctors and other medical staff, one exchange of messages found on Irhabi007’s computer, in a folder marked “jihad”, makes intriguing reading. “We are 45 doctors and we are determined to undertake jihad for Allah’s sake and to take the battle inside damaged America, Allah willing,” ran part of it.

He put this stuff in a folder called Jihad? Are you kidding me? Next to the folder called Uni, or Holidays, or My Music? Crazy really…

So, I set out last week to acquire a whole number of gadgets. Of course, when you live on a building site and have builders in your house all day, your requirements change. Because they have some cool stuff. And once you have borrowed their Makita, DeWalt or Bosch Professional tools, you suddenly realise that Black & Decker or any of the junk you get sold at B&Q or Homebase just doesn’t do.

I wrestled hard with myself for several days, looking desperately for reasons to acquire a Makita LXT cordless drill, ideally the LXT202 combination of a combi drill and impact driver. Some of the guys on site used these and they are just unbelievably awesome. In the end though, I saw reason and settled for a Bosch GSR and GDR 12V combo on offer at Axminster. I am looking forward to working with an Impact Driver, as I have never used one before. People tell mythical stories about them.

To lay our 10″ oak planks, I really needed a mitre saw for cutting. I had always wanted one, but this was finally a good reason to get one. Again, I went for a Bosch model, that is amazingly compact, the GCM8S. It cuts 270mm wide, just what I need to for our big boards. It also came with a free stand which I have been using as a generic workbench.
Finishing the boards in our, mostly, small rooms doesn’t justify the use of a big drum sander and I don’t like the edge sanders you can typically hire. They create too many ridges. Clearly I needed a hugely powerful Belt Sander. The Makita 9403 is the real deal, a big mama of a sander which I picked up at Axminster and used to finish off the bedroom floor beautifully last weekend. A real winner.

Finally, working with the floor boards requires a planer, and I went for the economical but decent quality Ryobi EPN-7582N. Works like a charm.

Of course, I probably wont get any of the work done that I have planned, but at least I now have all the tools to do it, theoretically :)

Also, you can now sign up for Gmail or Google Mail without an invitation.