My day begins with a quick look at the Gills website - sad I know, but I need to know what's going on in my absence! I see a flurry of messages talking about players leaving, players arriving, the manager leaving - my God; I've only been gone for a few days, and things are well and truly up in the air! I contemplate getting a plane home to negotiate the issues at hand, following a personal invitation from Mr Scally himself. What's that noise....my alarm's going off - it was only a bad dream! Thank God for that!

Just to reassure myself, I logon to the website - oh bugger - it's all true! Bollocks! I leave Hugo strict instruction to SORT-IT!

I get to the office at 07:15 for my first weekly meeting. I'm introduced to Chad - oh dear - he's bigger than me! Some of the other guys enlighten Chad as to my comments posted yesterday, and he sees the funny side - phew - I should've known I had nothing to fear, after-all he's ginger!! But there's only a handful of us there - where is everybody??

Hang-on a minute - we're leaving the office to go for some breakfast - at "Bill's Burgers"!! Bloody-hell - a breakfast meeting at the local greasy-spooner - I could get used to this! Only one problem though; the last thing I'm thinking of at 07:30 in the morning is a 16oz steak with a side of fries and salad - I order a bacon sandwich and a coffee - spot the foreigner! It transpires that it's not a proper meeting, more of a 'let's welcome Keith and Randy (another new guy who started this week) to the company' get together - what a nice touch. These guys are so welcoming - when new guys start working with me, they're lucky if they get a tea or coffee with no gob in it!!

Back at the office, I work through my induction - there's a lot to take in, but as inhouseIT UK run a similar product, I'm not really having to learn from scratch - merely adapt to their way of doing things.

I get a call-out to some publishing house - just some simple IT stuff - did I hear someone say Haymarket?? It turns out the company are a subsidiary of Haymarket Publishing - the same company that Kris works for - small world! And the guy I'm doing the work for is English - we arrange to go out for a beer at a bar called The Harp - yep, you guessed it - I'm itching for my first pint of Guinness!

I spend the remainder of the afternoon reading some company documentation, organising my diary, and just generally chatting with the guys in the office. They're managing to keep up with most of the lingo on this site, but we do the whole "does this phrase mean this in your country" thing - it's so relaxed over here. As with any job, you're there to work - and this place is no different in that respect. But how many offices do you know that have an X-Box available to the employees - admittedly, it's used primarily during lunch-breaks and after work - but it typifies the "work-hard, play-hard" mentality here! All the guys are 'hi-fiving' left-right and centre - the camaraderie is like nothing I've seen - but they must go home with sore palms!! (Was going to elaborate on that, but then I remembered - hello mum!!)

I get back to the hotel - with a pile of stuff to read - and what do I see when I turn on the Tele?? Bloody Arnie! Don't get me wrong, I admire the dude for what he's done in his career, and the bold move he's making into politics. But he has THE most annoying voice - GET HIM OFF THE TV!! But I'm not here to watch TV, so I'm off out...

...I don't make it very far - well, the hotel is right opposite the airport, there's nothing around, and I can’t be arsed to drive - I decide to grab some room-service. There's Terminator 3 on the video-on-demand, so I'm gonna flake out to that. Have two jobs on tomorrow - the first one with Craig's sister-in-law, who I met at the weekend - then going straight out for some clothes shopping. Hopefully, tomorrow's entry will make more interesting reading!

END OF DAY 5