Third year (placement)

Picking up where I left off (I believe some-when around the end of August), from September 2007 (seems so long ago...) I started working for a years placement at Anritsu in Luton. The degree I was doing at the time included a sandwich (mmmm) placement year, and that was to take place between second and third year.

Before starting work, myself and Dave (who also had a placement there) went looking for houses and soon discovered the main difference between student renting and non-student renting. With student renting, houses are allocated for a year ish (about 9 or 10 months usually) and are allocated from January, for that September. This is because the academic year is fixed, so student will all be started to move in at the same time, for 9 or so months, and all move out again over the summer (so the landlords can fix up any issues with the house (*cough* hole in the wall *cough* simon *cough*) for the next lot of student to move in). Unfortunately for me and Dave, anywhere that doesn't rent to students, will only give you about a week from reserving a place until you move in. So even though me and Dave were trying to be cautious and make sure we had somewhere to live for a year in advance, we had to wait around for ages until just before we were to start work for us to find somewhere. Luckily we managed to get a place reserved for two weeks before moving in, and I moved in about a week before starting work. We had a nice little place, about 5 minutes walk from work, 5 to 10 minutes from Luton town centre (although right at the top of a fairly steep hill), and fairly close to one of the bus stops of the Uno bus route. The flat itself was a living room and kitchen on one floor, and two bedrooms and bathroom up some stairs, with the flat itself being part of a larger house.