Birmingham, Buckle up!

At 5:45 in the morning my phone woke me up. Time to wake up and start the day. We took the train from Guildford right up to Birmingham. Walking through the mailbox we arrived at The Cube at 9:40. Here I got passed my visitor badge, to be in the Highway England company (part of the government), and an initial report on the SRN (Strategic Road Network) to report on. Whilst I was reading through the 36 pages my aunt received some phone calls and had some meetings at the table. During one of the meetings which lasted longer than expected, I went to the data analysts. Antony was the first to describe what they do when Andrew popped in to explain further how he is finding new ways of displaying the data. Apparently every single week the fire alarms are supposed to be tested, so that is what happened. And it went on and on, continuously saying something along the lines of; "THIS IS A WARNING, we are testing the fire-system. Please remain seated, please remain calm."After a good ten minutes, I swapped over to Cristopher and Paul who frightened me. They did so with the maps and how Cristopher deals with all the data, that comes in and is re-formatted by Paul, and maps it. They showed me some of the programs they work with and how all roads are 'zig-zag' because otherwise, the people get bored. After spending a good hour with all the analysts I headed back to my aunt, continued on my questions before heading out to a building near the cathedral to listen to my aunt give a 'speech' at a team meeting. Once we were done and not disturbed anymore by other meetings and conference calls we headed over to the train station where the first train was cancelled so we went shopping. An hour later we took the train back home on which I continued working on the SRN initial report assignment. We arrived home a good two hours later where, together with my cousin and Sylvia, we played games.

PS. Some of the systems they use are copied from the Netherlands, because they think we are so advanced :) .