Suddenly, from nowhere... an update !

Ok, three people commented on the lack of posts here - which is a lot in the micro-world of blogging. Besides, one of them was my mother, so what kind of son would I be to ignore my own mother ;)

I am assisted with getting today's blog going with the handy firefox plugin ScribeFire, which offers you a little pop-up writing panel, which allows you to quickly start typing when the mood strikes, as well as easily adding links to the page you are looking at. Recommended to all firefox bloggers out there... yes, both of you :) - or maybe not - I just finished this blog post, clicked the wrong thing, and lost everything without a warning message. So it's a power tool without a safety catch :(

Today's post will be sidestepping my #1 project of weight-loss with a simple "click the Traineo link" comment. Things are going pretty well, I'm feeling healthy, and have gym sessions, cycling to work and now an occasional swim at weekends going for me. I have also signed up for the BUPA London 10,000 run next May, which is the furthest I have ever ran (and then that was almost 6-7 years ago !)

Moving on to more important housing news. Mimi has moved in with me, and along with Jon and his girlfriend we are cosily filling our 2-bed / 1-bath house. Not TOO cosy yet, although occasional morning waits for bathrooms and tripping over drying suggests that 1 month is the longest we can sustain this these days ! At the end of this month, Mimi and I move onto out new rental place in Barnsbury (which is located here). It's a basement flat with a large bedroom, kind of modern interior, good storage space and a large shared garden at the back. There is also a large park space infront of the house, which might be fun next summer. The garden is shared with the house above, which I am led to believe has a lady occupying it who is often away and quite friendly, so that sounds like things should get on fine. We have men and large vans hired for the move, otherwise it would be just me lifting the heavy things, which wouldn't be great, not with my back...

Yep, more back problems for me. Nothing major, just a slight stoop which was quickly "popped" out a large and brutal Aussie Physiotherapist. It has caused me a bit of neck pain, which became aggrivated at a recent trip to "the electric ballroom" rock / metal club in Camden. I probably didn't need to be rocking out TO THE MAX, but when in rome... Anyway, it's all on the mend now, and I'm sitting much straighter at work, the threat of a post-rugby victory trip back to the defeated antipodean physio filling me with dread. All that neck twisting, if done a little too hard, might... <shudder>

Well, I had some more here (before losing it) about writing (still ticking along a little), coding (not ticking along at all) and finaces (£240 mystery transaction with Tesco being disputed - people, check your bank statements every 2 months, it can pay off !) but they will have to remain part of my signing off paragraph for now. Apologies for the break from blogging, hopefully I'll have some more news closer to the BIG housemove. And once Royal mail stop sitting about drinking tea, they might deliver my camera from the repair shop so I can get pictures too !

Going down...

Ok - diet plan is on for a good start. I got some scales, which kindly placed me much closer to 19 stone than 20, and then got a little more serious on exercise. Three to five times a week is the plan, with cycling into work and the gym offering the best chances for exercise.

So far I am hovering just under 19 stone, but hoping to see that continue to drop slowly. It's easy to get disheartened - weight loss of more than 2lbs a week is quite unsustainable so not likely to happen. Need to keep vigilant on bad foods and getting to the gym (always tricky to fit in around work) especially as winter rolls in...

[EDIT] ---> Come celebrate in voyeuristic web2.0 style by tracking my fitness and weight loss at Traineo (click the button in the sidebar, or click here).

My name is Ben

My name is Ben, I am 30 years old and I live in London near Tower Bridge and work for UBS investment bank in the IT section. I take these facts pretty much for granted, although a 20 year old me would of been fascinated to hear them.

Today I am sick. Which means in between the napping, I have a day off. Not a "day off" like the weekend where I can go out and do stuff, but a day out of the often fast moving stream of life. Indeed the weekends, whilst fun and fulfilling, are rarely "days off" nowadays.

I often wonder why I am doing the things I do. I don't recall choosing them. Well, maybe I chose between X and Y or this and that, but I never sat down and said to myself - gosh, it's a big world of stuff, what would you like to do in it ? I rarely picked holiday destinations, often led by convention or friends ideas. My set of job interviews were somewhat dictated by the pushiest head hunters.

I guess what I feeling today is I don't spend enough, or any, time on these questions. It's not like my lack of decisiveness has led me into a corner - indeed, most of my choices were based on "which life direction leaves me with the greatest number of choices still open". But this thinking may of prevented me from following a hidden passion or interest I really hadn't considered for myself. And later in life, where commitments are more prevalent such as house buying, career progression and settling down, decisions can be made harder by this attitude of keeping options open.

My name is Ben and I am 30 years old. My options are open. It's time for me to start thinking about using them, rather than simply keeping them open. I currently live in London, currently near Tower Bridge and current work for UBS investment bank. All these could or could not change; but they can if I want and so can I, as I choose to, when I choose to. And realising this should not be scary, but totally awesome :)

Spoon are great and so is Italy and so am I

Joyful is I, for today my pre-ordered Spoon album entitled "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga" arrived. For those unacquainted with them, Spoon are a superb band, probably one of my favourite of any genre. Catchy chords and tunes, a great singer (Britt Daniels), many different sounds in each album - like the Eels or Blur perhaps - and solid song writing skills add up to a several superb albums, the latest of which might be the greatest. Don't take my word for it though, go listen for yourself.

Just came back from a long weekend in Italy, seeing the Palio horse race. Photos should find themselves onto Smugmug once I've found a spare minute - not likely to be too soon though as this coming weekend sees me off to Wales for more partying and boys-weekend away fun. It's combined with some hardcore outdoor walking too, so net the health might not suffer to much...

Finally today was my financial exam. Felt like I did quite well, but no results yet. Hopefully an e-mail later today will supply that. I guess the last exams I did were many years ago, and I've always had a certain expectation to not just pass but to pass them well. So fingers crossed for 95%+ then :)

[BREAKING NEWS] I got 93% - which I am still pretty bloody happy with :)

Reflection is my real word of the day

Feel like a lot of change and projects are flowing around in my life at the moment, and wanted to take a few minutes to capture where I am at with each. And also mark any progress on them, once I can stop spending ALL my spare time on facebook - if your not signed up then your rapidly becoming part of the minority, as even technophobic friends appear there every day. It's becoming big. It may even become an e-mail killer for some groups. Come see. Anyway, on with the life projects:

Project #1: Lose weight

Well, this is going to be a big one if I am to ultimately aim for the "recommended" weight of around 15 stone. So step 1 is... lose weight ! By which I mean just track SOME weight being lost over the next few weeks, ensuring I've got SOME healthy habits in place to achieve that. I am also keeping a track of everything I eat and drink to help spot where things are going badly in my diet - it also works as a source of guilt as I fill it in as well ! I also have an upcoming 3.5 mile run I am training for, which helps toward the "keeping active" part required for any weight loss program. Ran 5km in the gym last night - very knackering but rewarding !

Project #2: Write

Nothing as grand as writing a novel, but I do enjoy writing, if not for the reflection it brings, as well as a chance to try out words from my word-of-the-day update, which I quite like, although I wouldn't go as far to say that I venerate it. This is ticking along nicely - I have this blog, and another Java / software blog I am trying to keep writing too. Finding this other blog is left as an exercise for the reader for now :)

Project #3: Code

Should be easy - it's my job. But there is coding and then there is Coding. Depending on the role, some task only allow a limited use of coding skills - indeed banking is often a job where the bulk of the work is business analysis and the actual coding can take second place. So I continue to have my side-project of "virtual vampire", and other opportunities are floating out there too. Haven't done much coding on VV for a while though... bad Ben :(

Project #4: Finances

An ongoing project now nearing some degree of completion. This was basically the thought that in general if I want more financial stability, I can either spend time working harder to earn more money, but equally I could spend time managing the money I do have better. The recommendation here has to be Money Saving Expert, a neutral website by Martin Lewis for managing your money better. So I have moved any spare coins into ISAs, better savings accounts and soon will move to a new current account paying twice as much interest as the old one. All these little things add up, and will help me build up a nice nest egg to throw at a mortgage when I am ready for such a thing. Also tracking my spending using some software is good for the guilt mirror effect (similar to Project #1 !).

Project #5: Learn

Did a training course recently at work on some basics of finance that had been long overdue in my career. With the test looming next week, I am discovering the joy of proper learning again. I equally enjoyed learning Spanish over a year ago, and want to keep that feeling going. Getting some basic Greek in my head could help for a trip to Greece this year. Professional certification courses also help with strengthening my CV and developer skills. Guess I need to think more about this one - first things first, I've got a finance test to revise for :)

So that's my life, split in project form. Of course it's not that clear cut in reality, but it's the beginning of a set of goals. Reflection is good for nailing down the "why" behind a lot of what I am doing, and this "why" should help me hammer out some life goals. And these don't have to be active goals as such, even passive goals can help with making decisions, which is basically where I see my weakness. In ways I've drifted a long time without firm goals, and that's a shame, as I think everything is much brighter and more interesting when you've got something to work towards.

Did I mention facebook ? Join us ;)

A lot of large projects on the go

Having gotten home at 4:40pm after a financial derivatives training course, I really thought I was going to make good headway on virtual vampire. It's now 10:15pm and I've just cleared my plate !

Eating up that time in fairness was cooking a nice dinner, doing the homework for the course and a big gym session. I am trying to get fit for a number of reasons - firstly there is a 5.8km run coming up in July (the chase challenge) and I would like to be able run it in around 35-40 minutes. Secondly was a warning for a friend of mine that 30-45 years old is "heart attack alley" so really not the time to be neglecting exercise, and finally a had a health test last year that reported all was fine except for two things; firstly my anerobic / lung capacity was a little sub-par and secondly I am medically obese.

A little shocked that I was in this category, I looked at the statistics, and anyone with a BMI (Body mass index) of over 30 is obese. His chart was nice enough to have an extra "obese II" category for BMI in excess of 35, which I am far from, but being in any of the bright red areas doesn't strike me as a good thing long term. I am used to having a weight around 18 1/2 stone (118kg) for much of my adult life, but to drop to the (still orange coloured) overweight section I would need to drop to 17 1/2 stone (111kg). So I was a little shocked to find that using two different sets of scales, both confirmed my current weight to be 20 stone (127kg) putting me at BMI 34... nearly obese II.

Ok, so it's early days with the gym - around 8-10 weeks so far I think - and coming into Summer there should hopefully be some seasonal weight drop to help me along. But I think I am going to need to look at the little things more harshly now, and look at other opportunities for exercise to supplement the gym sessions.

Right - might get 30 mins on virtual vampire now. As long as each day I work towards goals (gym, writing the blog, software projects) then it shouldn't get me down, because I know what I'm working towards and I know it's things I enjoy and want to improve. It's a lot of investment of time, but cutting out the distractions of life (computer games, idle TV) and working more efficiently at work should all give me the time I need to fit it all in.