Tim W wrote:
Stuart Noble
wibbled on Sunday 13 December 2009 11:39

As an aside, what's a clever bloke like you doing at home looking after
the kids? You'll never really be any good at it you know :-) I can only
assume the wife's even cleverer

Hehe

Well, it's weird. I can cook a wider range than the missus, though she has
some good chinese numbers (being Chinese). Oddly enough I don't mind
housework either. She hates it.

I have a BSc (Physics, 3rd class - too much computer wibbling on the VAX).

She has a 1st class BSc (equiv, Nanjing Uni) and a PhD in CompSci...

I used to work as a senior Linux sysadmin for a well known college in
London. They had a reorganisation. 4 colleagues got the boot, I got a
"promotion" to Systems Manager (the extra hassle, no extra pay) so that was
a signal to move. Next company were a dead loss - so I did a special
development project with a mate's company which went very well. It was near
the end of the first phase that this house came available, so having
concluded that builders were an expensive hassle who couldn't be trusted, we
decided I'll do the house up, with a small call on the odd trade (plastering
and large room tiling in this case) and I'll do the rest and fix the kids.
Gave teh company 3 months notice to ease the handover and remained on good
terms.

The kids had been suffering from being bounced around random nurseries
anyway and we weren't happy having to effectively give most of one salary to
nurseries and have no flexibility (have to get kids at 6pm on the dot, still
have to cook for them etc) so that cemented the argument.

The youngest still goes to nursery, but only to the extent of using the free
time alloted by the government - so he gets the benefit of a couple of hours
playing with other kids.

SWMBO is more ambitious than me. I was happy being a Linux Sysadmin - I have
no aspirations to "management" (I hate people managing). So right now, I'm
helping her with a security course she's doing - we're building firewalls
together on our Linksys (how romantic).

I expect to attempt to return to work in perhaps a year when the house is
done, and both kids are at the same school all day. Not sure what as.
Possibly unix sysadmin somewhere. Or do something completely different.
Ideally something based from home, so I don't have to keep stretching
employer's goodwill when the sprogs are up the creek.

That's about it really.


A fascinating glimpse into modern family life! It all sounds bloody
stressful to me, but then I'm at the age where everything does.

My grandkids (7 & 4) are in a similar situation re being bounced about
to child minders etc. It all kind of works until e.g. somebody comes
home with norovirus and all the complicated arrangements fall apart. Two
weeks of wondering who's going to throw up next, and who you're going to
infect. Bloody clever virus though, because the family as a whole is
either suffering from it or contagious with it for a couple of weeks,
but at least it has the decency not to infect everyone at the same time.

Good luck with it all. Rather you than me. In my day family life was
rather more straightforward