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 !