Happy anniversary home - the happy xmas entry

To all readers of "Exit Turner" - HAPPY CHRISTMAS and a VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR !

I shall be enjoying the fine powdery snow of both Europe and Canada over the next month, and I must say I'm rather excited ! Hope you all have a great 2006,

Turner

Happy anniversary home - the end of year thinky entry

It's been a whole year since I got home. And a few weeks - I've been a slack blogger these last few months. This slackness is partly due to being busy, but equally in being busy it's a reflection of how little time I put aside to consider where I am in life and where I'm going.

It has been psychologically interesting to consider the change of tone of my blog posts over the last few years. First I was a nervous blogger, putting down gossip and exciting stories to hold my minimal audiances attention. Then I grew in confidence and continued a gossipy style, with some reflections. Finally, during the travels, I think the blogs quickly covered off my activities and became more a place to sound off my thoughts and feelings of the time.

But now the blog entries have been reduced to monthly summaries with a little thought of the moment. They have been brief flashes of my world right there and then, and together they don't chart my years feelings and thoughts very well at all. And my journal simply gathers dust, of course. Non-electric things find less place in my London life.

I have come to believe that a good part of this is my time in the big city is quite dependant on relationships and social interactions that don't make for good blog material - any musing I might have over a certain encounter could easily be read by the other people involved, who then might be somewhat upset if I was blogging behind there back. Travelling was a more self-realising experiance - much less of my emotional growth was through long-term growth of relationships.

In more concluding words, whilst I feel some regret about the reduced use of my blog, I realise this is part of my becoming quite detached directionally and emotionally again - possibly from a lack of reflection on my life on any regular basis. Given the public nature of blogging, this is possibly best kept in journal form in many ways, but finding those minutes to sit down and write at the end of the day can be hard.

Making good use of the weekends

Weekends have been a rare commodity recently. Much of the excitement was caused by the marriage of two very dear friends of mine, Julie and Alan. We kicked off with the Hen Night, which in accordance with modern ways was attended by a few boys as well. It was an 80's themed romp around Reading's Rephlex "premier 80's venue" nightclub. The main bridal party got their superhero themed costumes on, which made for some good pictures.

Next, just before the wedding, came a long weekend away in Brussels - hearty eating and drinking all around ! Our big night out then invovled goblets of 10% beer, which went down like Coke, and destroyed many a good man. I didn't feel to bad in the morning, mainly due to the little nap I had during the evenings entertainments...

Regratably, this weekend clashed with Alan's Stag night, which I was told was highly entertaining and invovled some indoor fireworks :) The groom and party all survived though and were all in attendance this weekend for the big wedding day. It was a great day, with lots of Reading friends in attendance and plenty of boogie-tastic music and funky fly moves busted out. The party season doesn't end quite there, however - I don't actually have a totally clear weekend until xmas ! Which could be seen as socially enviable, but its also sending a few alarms bells ringing... only 54 shopping days to xmas !

Spain - act 3 of 3 - our heroes reach Valencia

I've let this story drag out too long, so to conclude we reached Valencia, sat in the Cathedral Plaza and had some cervezas. Valencia had a little more going on, we spent time at the aquarium, where we accidently ordered the uber-meat platter and then bloated on that we sat and gazed at our intellectual superiors performing tricks for fishbits. We also got some better food in again, now we were back in proper civilization, before getting a plane home, together this time round.

But in truth, 9 days of random wandering proved to be more irritating than relaxing - the very approach I'd taken when travelling just didn't work as well on a one week holiday with other people along. It's quite worrying to me that I am seemingly unable to plan summer holidays - I think I have always followed another more organised or focused group of mates before ! But with more and more of my friends going away as couples, it seems I need to start planning my holidays a little better - or just saving all my holiday for snowboarding !

Like last year, I think this year will be a three snowboard trips season. No point in working in this city if I'm not able to blow the cash on something I want to do. And right now, the snowboarding bug is biting hard. Went to a ski / snowboard show recently and picked up some socks, shades and wax, but of course what I really wanted was a solar-powered iPod compatible backpack :) Of course, my iPod is still an old 2nd gen one, not compatible with most of the new accessories including that backpack - looks like I'll have to get a new 5th Gen one as well... when they release an 80Gig model of course. And, no, I can't afford all of that :(

Yet ;)

Fear and loathing in Catalonia - part 2

Having qiuckly grown tired of barcelona, we hired a car from AVIS at some extortionate rate, and then ended up being charged about 30% more (some unquoted tax) than they quoted us later on upon returning the car. Damn AVIS. We then drove along the coast down to the town of Tarragona, which appeared to be famous for people standing in big towers, although never found out why exactly. We wondered around during the day looking for some sort of life in the town, and eventually stumbled across a town festival parade going on with dragons, lions and other oddness. All an excuse to drink and keep the kids entertained it seemed, so seeing as we were young, free and without offspring, we drank. But the nightlife of an off-season Spanish town on a Monday leaves much to be desired, and come the evening boredom set in.

The next day we headed on an old roman fort town, complete with castle to walk up the hill to and have a look at. Which we did. We also saw some dressed up girls doing a falconry display which scored highly on the unusualometer and kept up amused for minutes. The next day took us down to another old town, this time with Islamic constructed walls which were free to walk along - although my fear of hieghts stopped me from being able to walk along many of them - I jsut felt sick and dizzy when I even thought about trying.The walls and the town were quite pretty but now we had really grown tired of our "directionless" holiday, sightseeing just wasn't that interesting and the nightlife was none existant - star wars top trumps had become the only way of passing time without winding each other up too much.

The next day we stopped off at some medievel town to see the "hanging buildings" - buildings that were consturcted to literally hang over a gorge... they might have poked out a little, but we felt cheated. The small town food, cheap but still overpriced, left us wanting more of the good cusine we'd picked up in Barcelona - at least we'd have more than beer to look forward to each day - so we pushed the car (or "burro" as it was now known) as hard as we could towards the seaside resort of Gandia, which turned out to be Bendiorn without the nightlife.

It is safe to say at this point, any pretence that this holiday had gone well collapsed - stupid napkin wearing bets were had, tourist beers were brought and tapas food games emerged... we had to get out of here and back to some form of civilisation

Viva Espania part 1 - Barcelona

The first day of my trip out to Spain started on a cold wet English morning - the perfect time to head off to foreign climates ! But the day did not go too well all in all. Firstly my brother had overslept, which meant I boarded our flight alone, made more frustrating then by a 2 hour delay to our takeoff. A choppy landing into Barcelona gave way to grey skys and solid rain all day.

But I went out to make the most of it, seeing the gothic architecture, narrow streets and rain sodden views from atop the cathedral. After walking loads and ticking the tourist boxes, I rested my weary feet in a bar decorated with oragami figures kicking the shit out of each other which was really cool. Then I went back to our room and passed out for a few hours, only to be awoken by my tardy brother arriving from his later flight. I got up, we went out, and crazyness ensued.

The next day was our bike tour day, 4 hours of cycling round Barcelona seeing mostly sights I'd walked to the previous day, but rather than being wet and grey, they were now more colourful and vibrant. We then walked up to some fort, getting good views over the city, but truth be told because we'd run out of ideas of what to do and it was too early to start drinking proper. It should be noted at this point that with we had realised we probably need something to DO on holidays and seeing places for there own sake wasn't really enough. This important lesson was learnt over the oncoming week...

I'm getting onto the holiday part

My holiday plans finally got nailed down over the last few stressful weeks, and I booked myself a flight out to Barcelona, returning home from Valencia, which would give me a long week to see the sights of those two cities and a few places in between.

During the planning for this great trip, I managed to go out on a few other trips. I firstly took some weekends out of London (very nice) to see Cambridge and go clay pigeon shooting, both of which were great fun. The Turner technical setup also suffered a minor setback as my old TV made by Nokia (that famous TV maker) gave up the ghost and went boom. This was quickly remedied with a loverly 32 inch widescreen LCD beauty, which is my new technical pride and joy of course.

The hyperlink clickers amongst you may of noted that the photo gallery has changed - I have moved to a slightly friendlier services (no need to login to view photos, the ability to download a copy in one of five sizes, and some nice "keyword" stuff to search and label photos easily). The Spain holiday photos are on there way up now, I'll try and link in the decent ones in my next post.

Summer, where have you gone ?

Summer's here already ? It's kinda snuck up and feels like it's soon going to be over ! With no summer music festivals to mark the start of summer (Glastonbury) or the end of Summer (Reading) my internal summer calendar is completley shot it seems.

Why have I not been attending my usual music pilgrimages, enjoying the all the pleasures of the outdoors (trees, grass, loud rock music and beers) ? No idea, but it seems an explosion of interest has kicked in for not just Glaston but all festivals. Personally, I think ebay is somewhat to blame - if you have 250 pounds spare, you can spend it on a couple of Reading tickets, safe in the knowledge you can pretty much double your investment witha quick ebay bid.

Which means these events are no longer priced at a "fair competitive rate" to the masses, but instead tickets go quite literally to the highest bidder. And the more I think about who that might be, the less I want to be at these festivals ! Indeed sources have confirmed a rise in the number of bottles of Chardonnay and a drop in Tesco Value strength lager this year. Don't these people have a Nora Jones concert to go to ? Bah...

So what I have been doing with our fairest of seasons ? Firstly, a spot of Espanola, as I enrolled on a 7 lessons course on basic Spanish to kinda keep the learning going. It's quite good, although a lot of commitment to do homework and learning. I keep my books in my "man bag" and revise on bus journies and whilst waiting for people in the evening, but I suspect I might drop the ball at least one week before the end. This course happens on Mondays, so the learning to cook project has been sorta sidelined for now...

After the course, I have two weeks booked off, but tragically no plans ! Anyone fancy a trip abroad - or for those already out there, anyone fancy showing off there house / town / country ?!? My idea pool so far contains visiting travel companions living around Europe, seeing Japan, going somewhere that speaks Spanish - Spain maybe ! Or maybe finding a hobby / learning course to do for one or two of the weeks.

Ideas and/or offers on a postcard... or an e-mail would do too :)
(I'm on holiday from Sept 10th to Sept 25th)

London Bombings

Today was a hell of a day for Londoners and Englanders all round. Today, for anyone living in a media blackout, London was attacked by terrorist bomb attacks.

I was fortunatley far from the attacked areas, and therefore just caught a hint of tube delays as I entered work. But over the next two hours, I discovered that these slight delays turned out to be casued by the four explosions over the rush hour period. E-mail and a lucky text here and there confirmed everyone was OK. It's only this afternoon that mobile phones calls are starting to come back into action and we can finally confirm everyone is safe.

Work was not happening in the offices of Propero. There was mouse pushing and keyboard tapping, but mainly people were just refreshing the BBC news article to get the latest stories. So in true British style, we all jacked it in around midday and went to the pub.

It's now heading to 4pm, and time to start considering my walk home - it'll take a while to realise what's truely happened I think. I think I had expected such an attack to occur in recent times, after the events in the US and Spain, but I had never been sure what my reaction would be. Well, right now it is a little rage, a lot of shock, but overall it's disbelief. What was this attack hoping to achieve ? "Why" is a word that seems to be used far too often today.

Why would a small pocket of people killing other people with No Warning in anyway change my resolve and attitude towards foriegn issues ? I can understand desperate men making a desperate statement, but this seems a well-thought out attack making an appallingly poorly-thought out statement against innocent people. The attack was against innocents, not powerful leaders, how could that ever change rational human minds ?

God bless everyone I know is safe, and incredible admiration goes out to our emergency and travel services, who have co-ordinated there emergency assistance operation with legendary precision. Time to head home, and grab a beer, I think...

Money makes the world go round

My current conerm is the blog, like my life, may become a bit stale from general busyness and neglect. Work 9-5 is heading more like 9-6:30 as I try and get some good code into my first release at the end of June, meaning home time is "do the basics" of cooking, cleaning and another level of the Gamecube "Jeu du mois". Then blow off steam and booze away the weekend, pausing only to nurse sore limbs and occasational hangovers.

All of which is fine, but since travel I am seeing a greater hole in this pattern. No advancement - no change - nothing new to stir the blood. Whenever this instinct struck on the travels, you just picked up your bag and walked off. In most cases, your roots were minimal and plans wern't neccesary. But the longer you sit still, the more your roots grow, and I do find myself worrying that I am growing deep roots in a situation that I would put down as "acceptable, but no better". I mean, I see lots of my mate and have some good times, but there is all this commuting around and London stresses that I put up with too.

On a more positive note, mt attempts at better cooking has been going well though - every Monday I'm trying to bash out a meal for any housemates who are around and myself. A couple of acceptable meals, and a couple of really nice ones so far. At least in my opinion :)

Equally I have been looking at gadgets and gizmos to play digital video files thourgh my television, before deciding everything was far too "early adopter" and shoddy, and just buying a 10m long Computer -> TV Scart cable and using my laptop to wirelessly drive it all with some remote desktop software. Homegrown solution are always more geeky and fun !

With my retail therapy cash no longer sunk into gadgets, I considered other things to blow it on, and then had a moment of selfish guilt. Before travelling, I used to give a bit to charity, and since I got back and was paying off debts I hadn't considered getting back into that. But having discovered Pledgebank and more particularly the give one percent pledge on it, I am inspired to start giving again. The great idea behind pledgebank is "I'll do this, but only if X other people are doing it too", so you can feel like you are truely working with others to make something happen rather than floating out there on your own. And it truely can be a pledge to do anything.

Happy that I was on track to make a difference (assuming 392 more people sign up !) I then went off on a virtual shop and got myself some funky disc storage for all the DVD-Rs I am collecting these days. Yay gadgets !

Sunnier times

The sun has finally come to England, and things are looking much nicer - of course this is all part of nature's ruse... but I feeling a happier bunny either way.

Getting out into the sunshine has not been so easy though - my ankle, which I broke and got pinned at university, has been getting stiff and sore recently. Not sure why, but thank god for our free health service that I can get it checked... after waiting a week for an appointment <sigh>. Not quite the 24/48 vision we were promised.

Back at home, the new house is looking very nice (finally) now that all the renovation work is pretty much completed. Started looking at home improvements really, in so far as my old television is incredibly blurry and my payslips are burning a hole in my wallet. What was a brief investigatgion of Widescreen CRT televisions appears to have become a more indpeth investigation of Plasma vrs LCD flat panel screens... Not sure our house is quite big enough for any of them, of course, but the whole tech-lust thing keeps me distracted from the fact that my TV is crap, so it's all working out OK :)

Everything is 72.6% better now

Late March took me off to the slopes for the third time this season - pretty decadant stuff ! This time the snow was not a lot better than previous holidays, but the hotter sun meant there were less patches of icy death. So with greater confidence, and some really sh*t hot boarding buddies to chase down the slopes, led to a 72.6% increase of narly-ness, and by the end of the week I had glided over some low rails, fallen off the badly named "fun-box" a couple of times and pulled some "sick" air. Well, about a foot of air, but I landed it and that's what counts !

Pumped up from that, I returned home to discover my housemates had found a few good places whilst I was away, and a few evenings later we had sorted out place. We move in this weekend, whilst also trying to fit in a 10 year anniversary dinner back in Cambridge. It's a bit of a military mission, but I reckon we can pull it off ! I will be living with three other mates from Uni - Jon, Asitha and Tom - one of which (Jon) I have lived with all throughout my time in London. I reckon it's 72.6% better than living out of backpack - in other words it's gonna rock :)

Having upgraded my "phat skillz" and housing, my final exciting upgrade news in my life was today's iPod upgrade. Not by buying a new one (still paying off the snowboarding) but by picking up a replacement battery for 30 quid (with 72.6% extra power than the original one had) ! So this afternoon, using supplied plastic tools, I prised the case off my 'pod, brushed out a lot of crap that had got inside it and managed to fit the new battery without breaking it.

Shit, now I can't buy a new one... ;)

(72.6% of the stats in this post may have been made up to some degree)

No-one ever said it was gonna be easy

Gosh,

New job, moving house and no money. It's all a bit sressful truth be told ! Still, today was the first proper sunny day in England, so it's offcially Spring here I guess. Took it's bloody time...

Breaking down the trinity of stress, new job is actually fine. I am working on fixing my first bug today, after finally getting a groudning in what the project is, where I fit in and what toys I get to work with. But this takes up a lot of my time and gray matter, leaving me a little drained for the now vital task of house hunting.

Four of us are moving in together now - four lads incidently - so, yes, it's true, outside of university I've never lived with a lass ! (phew :) The date is set as April the 18th - leaving just under a month to snag a decent place... and we're not really drowning in places to view right now. Hopefully something will work out, as my "temporary rentals" all expire on that date, and ALL FOUR of us will be onto sofa-hopping !

Finally the lack of money should be sorted come next week - hope so as I'll be off snowboarding then ! Yes, I am taking a legendary three holidays this season... ha ha ha ! But this means I am stretching funds and debts to the max. and will be much happier once real cash is in the bank and debtors are all paid off. I don't operate well under debt, as my government job taught me...

So that's it - bit of a non-update really as not much has changed, but once plans come together and I have a new place I feel I'll be able to get on with sorting out my life and London socials. Until then I'm just rememebering how stress-free and fun Melbourne was... when I had sorted out a house, job and cash, of course !

Hi Hooooooo

After a month of interviews, stress attacks and sofa hopping in London I have finally got a job. In the end, no less than six offers came through (blimey) and the task of whittling them down was tricky. But eventually, I decided to go with a gut feeling as well as sidestep the finacially based jobs to take up a software development role with a small company (20 people) called Propero who are based in Waterloo.

This starts on Monday (ooooo) and has hightlighted the next problem in my so called life, which is that I am still living with my parents . Not relishing the thought of a daily commute, I am looking for a slightly more permanant base in London, but fear I may be sofa hopping for a few more weeks until that all comes about.

Trying not to let my nomadic existance bring me down, several hosuing type offers have appeared, it's just a matter of time ! Plus I don't actually get a paycheck until end of March now, so maybe the low rent situation isn't all THAT bad :) Keep tuend for more first-week at work news, where I predict I will have lots of doco to read, and no computer to work with - just going on past form, you understand ;)

Lost in Les Hooches

Today, whilst boarding, I took a wrong turn. Then another wrong turn. Like Alice down the rabbit hole, I carried on off piste following some snowboard tracks and footprints. Then both sets of tracks stopped, where I realised the boarding tracks went DOWN, but the footprints were going UP. I had followed the tracks of another guy who realised he was miles off course, and unlike him could not easily climb the slope - the snow was too deep and thick.

So I had to continue downwards, onto some tram tracks and then quickly onto a small path which seemed to lead to nowhere... after an hour, the path gained some level of use (footprints, ski tracks and even a couple of cigerette butts). Pleased with my dectective powers I continued down the track and finally after just over two hours effort I got into a town. Remembering the proximity of the slopes to the Italian border, I was relieved to discover the inhabitants spoke French, and that by some learning miracle, so did I. I quickly found a phone, let those waiting for me for lunch know about my exhurstion and temporary absence, and found a tram which took me all the way back up the mountain.

I really just wanted to go home at this point, but the quickest way home was up the tram and down the mountain. Finding the conditions less icy than before, I still put in a full afternoons boarding and took away the pain from icy falls (the snow is crap here - sigh) and mass hiking with a couple of fine choc 'o' rums. A tiring but interesting day in all. Bit dis-illusioned with the boarding part of the holiday, the naff conditions and early starts are just putting me in a foul mood. May just change the holiday into a drinking binge and forget the hard effort, after all, I AM on hoilday :)

Happy birthday to me

Hurray ! I'm older ! 28 today...

And for my birthday, after three long stress filled weeks of commuting and interviews I have finally been given not one but FIVE job offers. Hopefully some of them kept the receipts so I can take them back for a refund... They are all permanent positions in London, which means I am UK based once again, for better or for worse.

Next week I shall be relaxing in the Alps once again with my snowboard and friends. Prefect timing there, allowing me a week away to unwind, relax, mix some bitching cocktails and prepare to start my new career shortly after I get back.

In tech news, I got a new phone (and number - 07917367680). It's a nokia (shame) but it's quite sweet and lets me take little pictures of people that show up when they ring me. Currently I am using inanimate objects for best friends until I get real photos. I can now be amused as Erik rings and a mug of tea shows up. It's funny if your me, anyway.

Happy new year

New year and a new chance to get things going again ! The run up to xmas saw the usual panic present shopping (with added scary lack-of-income worries) and some quality parties with mates from home. Then a wonderful xmas day, full of food and some pretty kick ass presents - heavy books and homewares from my parents and travel books from my brother - mixed messages there. But before I had time to reflect on these, I was whisked away the very next day for a long week of snowboarding in the Alps. How sweet is that ?!!

I had a good week boarding despite a heavy feverish cold and a couple of nasty blows to my arm and butt on the icy pistes. The cold kept my drinking in some form of moderation, and the hallucinations caused by a fever at high-altitude were exquisite ! I got some great runs in, including a great off-piste powder field full of gullies to shoot through. Now I'm back home, nursing my bruised behind and getting ready to take on the new year - grrrrrrr.

Happy 2005 !!!!