Battered & Bruised

Part of the changes to my life this year, that I set about planning towards the end of the last one ( year not life !!! ) was to do my best to become more healthy.

 

Thus a regime of more sleep, better food, more exercise and less fizzy drinks has been the order of the month, and to date its been a mixed blessing.

 

Although eating after 11pm is never the best idea it is still true that eating healthy food after 11pm is better than eating junk food. Also having a take away pizza, chinese or indian may seen like a bad idea but there again, only having a fatty meal once a week is better than having it four times a week.

 

Cutting out the fizzy drinks was a real heartbreaker, as for all its sins I do enjoy a glass of fresh coca cola, and as for cherry coke and traditional lemonade, well ... that's my three most favourite drinks all gone in a single stroke. If its any consolation to me its that I have only totally given up carbonated drinks for lent, and so after Easter they are back on the menu, even if at a vastly reduced number as previously.

 

Thanks to the encouragement and partnership with my former lodger Sharon, I have also taken up going to the gym at least two times a week, but it is this part that has hit me hardest, due to my now apparent lack of any physical fitness. Looking at my body from the outside few would say that I am either fat or look unhealthy, however after just a few nights training whats going on in my insides speaks a whole different matter.

 

Aches, pains, stiff joints and bruises appearing out of nowhere are testiment to the fact that its been far too long since I have engaged in enough activity to think of myself as fit. The likelihood of me entering this years London to Brighton cycle race is dimishing with each day as I feel progressively more unfit.

 

When added with my other friend Ann's desire to go trampolening for just one hour on Friday night, I must say that this seemed to me to be an easy chance to grab a few health brownie points for little or no effort. Oh how wrong I was, or to put it another way ... when I'm wrong im not just a little bit wrong, im a whole wrecked body wrong.

 

My wrists feel as if they have been removed and then replaced through surgery, my back feels like ive been used as a football pitch, and I feel as fragile as man made of prawn crackers .... the slightest wrong move and ill come apart.

 

However, despite these seeming complete body fitness breakdowns, I am determined to at least put in a good effort to carry on with my health kick, before it ends up as yet another good idea let down through any lack of commitment or effort on my part.

 

Assuming that I make it to my birthday in April, I hope to be able to spend a week travelling around Greece, which should perk me right up, and then in August I've a wedding in Scotland to look forward to.

 

Thus, by the time that I get to next January I should be in a great shape to go on the caribbean cruise for 14 days, that I have recently agreed to go on with yet another friend called Nikki.

Alone and lost in a strange land

I could tell that something was not quite right even as the old and decrepid train pulled into the station. There was no mistaking the mix of confusion, fear and panic in the faces of the others around me wherever I looked. Why the train was even allowed to pull in and had not been held up further back along the tracksbaffled me, but what was immediately clear to me was that I needed to get away.

Although I could not smell or detect any combustion in the air, already a mass of sweaty men wearing brightly lit thick jackets and hard hats were rushing past me, all towards the very place where until seconds ago I had desperately wanted to be myself.

The general hubbub from those around me had made little sense to me before this frightening scene, but now they made no sense whatsoever and all I could think of was finding the quickest way out and away from the growing pandemonium. However this was a place that I had never been to before, had no map to guide me and was miles away of where I had planned and expected to be. Heck, most of the people here weren't uttering noises that even closely resembled a language as far as I could gather.

'I have to get out of here', the thought echoing around and around in my head, 'I can't take this any longer', and without wasting a moment more I decided to try and make a dash for it on foot. Pushing through the croud I made slow but steady progress til I finaly emerged into the dim morning light, the air fresh away from the reak of so many bodied being crammed together.

Only once I was round the corner and heading off in what I hoped was a northerly direction did I risk getting my phone out to check if I could get any reception. Cursing its befuddled software that had only recently stopped its web browser from working I was now all alone and seemingly helpless to finding a route.

Conscious of how fast the time that was slipping away, time that I did not have freely to give, I continued to walk in as straight a direction as I could manage. For perhaps the hundreth time I regretted not making more of an effort to find a cheap watch with a compass on it, something which would be worth its weight in gold in a tight spot like this.

In the distance I could occasionally see the banks of the river, however no matter how hard I tried I could not seem to make headway towards it. This also compounded my stress levels as all of the bridges that did cross it did so above the level at what I was currently, and so ironically even if I could get closer to locate one, I would then also have to do a significant amount of backtracking in order to actually get on the damn thing.

I had hoped to spot a taxi whilst walking, but my luck was still as poor as ever, and not knowing if there were any buses that ran nearby let alone what route it would take if I was able to get on one, meant that my journey continued on foot for some time. Far behind me now I could not hear the chaos and furore of the train station, but as I could not spot any smoke or flames in the early morning sky I guessed that the fire was either contained or no more than a false alarm.

Heading deeper into the city I passed strange buildlings, one even with the image of a masked man distplayed proudly on its side. Not wishing to delay myself in such a place as this I quickened my step and tried to avoid the fertive gaze of anyone that passed by.

Finally, after almost all hope was gone, I rounded a corner and came face to face with the tube stop for Elephant & Castle. Relief flooded through me as I was now only a few short stops away from Oxford Circus, and with luck the false fire alarm has not spread along the track so I would be no more than twenty minutes late for work this day. Thus ended a most extraordinary morning.

Irrelevances

The other evening, during one of our frequent family gathering ( one of the many blessings of coming from a huge family is always having a christening, wedding or birthday party to go attend ), my brother-in-law mentioned to me that he feels that my blog is a diary.

My initial thought was that he clearly has not been reading very far back, but secondly that perhaps a few more mindless rantings and ravings every now and again can make it feel more unique and less like a pin hole camera from some bizarre soap opera.

So here, back by public demand, are a few more things that are less diary entry comments and a few more like minor irrelevances :-

If your a child from a large family and you ever have the insane desire to write your name on ever playing card in the pack, then always remember to write in neat handwriting or to take them with you when you grow up and move out, to save the embarrassment of future generations mocking both your stupidity AND your writing technique.

If the most vivid and easiest recollected childhood memory of spending any quality time with your brother-in-law is walking home late at night from the nearby cinema in a semi-drunken state and shouting out " Beanie Sauce" at the top of your lungs, then you really ought to get out more.

If you are spending all your days watching television soap operas and Hollywood dramas in the misguided belief that things could actually happen ... WAKE UP ... ITS NOT REAL. Things like that can and do go on all the time, but only to people who have a life more exciting that sitting in front of the goggle box, which excludes you I'm afraid. So if you wonder why you don't ever end up with the busty secretary, the nymphomaniac hotel maid or the blond bike from the local nightclub its probably because you haven't lived in the real world enough to have developed the social skills needed to bag them in the first place.

If your wonder why you can't ever win anything on e-bay, it's more than likely because your not watching the auction right up to the very last few seconds. The serious e-buyers set reminders and actually place their sniping bids in the last two minutes. Therefore, unless you put your highest bid at double what you expect to pay for an item you can almost definitely expect to be pipped of your current winning bid by a mere 20p and not even know about it until you have already lost it.

Shall I go on ...

Well if you insist...

If you are going to write a travel book then best you visit the place twice, that way you will be giving yourself two bites of the good-story-apple, and on the rare occasions when you have nothing happen on either journey, you can always fall back to the old reliable method of comparing it to what it used to be, what the last place you visited was or to what how it was or wasn't what you expected. What NOT to do is do a complete running commentary of every meal you have or to try to mention as many road or street names as possible. Finally, if you can mention anything mildly erotic or risqué then that's a definite bonus as there has never been a truer age old saying than 'sex sells' !!!

2007 officially (un+) starts Friday

Yahoooooooo, I cry aloud.

 

After a very overlong sluggish start to the year its finally about to all start happening.

 

The event that I have been waiting for since before Christmas has finally arrived. Yes, thats right, the remortgage papers have been signed, sealed and delivered and will be fully realised on Friday so you can imagine the huge sigh of relief that I will release when I wake up on Saturday morning.

 

The bad news is that I will then have to make over two dozen phone calls to get all my loans & credit cards all clear, information updated and with zero balances.

 

The good news is that I made sure to request just enough left over to treat myself to a few mini luxuries, so this way I still feel that I'm actually getting something out of all this. Thus a few pairs of jeans, the odd t-shirt and finally a wardrobe that matches the rest of the room to store them are all likely to be on the cards.

 

Other good news is that I have joined a gym with my friend / ex-lodger Sharon, and so together we are hitting the mats a couple of times a week, and equally now if ever I feel like a half hour swim that will be free too. Plus in keeping with this theme, I have decided to do more home cooking and, despite my lodgers distaste for fruit and vegetables, I'm going to see about getting as many of my five-a-day as I can from now on into the bargain.

 

Staggered over the course of the year I can now happily pencil in the rest of the major D.I.Y. chores that I can't get away without doing for much longer, such as repairing the fence post and panels after last months hurricanes that did quite a number on my poor dilapidated old one, as it's not quite covered by the insurers coming under the ever increasing 'act of god' sub-section.

 

With a bit of luck from some friends, I might be visiting Rome next month, which will be cool as long as the Italians are more friendly and agreeable than they were on my last trip there - amid the now infamous "Egyptian Xmas Vacation". And then no sooner do I get back than I will have to send my passport off to get it renewed so that I will have it in time for anything I want to plan over my birthday week.

 

And also with the remortgage checks now in the past, I can press on with the search for a new career path this year, and I am quite happy with my updated CV, although it could do with the odd laser hologram, 3D image and cartoon of Bert's smiling face in the corner to really fully personalise it to me. On a serious note I have also created a new email address for myself that appears more professional than this one, plus then it's easier to keep track of the fully professional mails.

 

It seemed that everywhere I went people were going on about the travel writer Bill Bryson, and so I borrowed a copy off my friend Ann and finished it in double quick time. Funny, insightful, intelligent, but nothing radically different to what I feel I could do, or even have done already with some of my blog entries.

 

Possibly his use of grammar is more accurate than mine, and he has more weight of years experience, and more journeys travelled, to draw upon for inspiration and comparisons, but I don't feel that those alone are enough to say that his stuff is genius and mine are just average or slightly above par, so again that has given me a lot of confidence to try my mettle in the same field.

 

With no women problems to distract me, the year seems open to virtually every possible avenue that I wish to follow and so for once I can honestly say that the future has never looked brighter.

 

In fact the only thing that I really do still have my doubts over is if I really do want to learn to drive. I truly understand and appreciate that it will further open up my options tenfold, but I equally hate the damage they currently do to the environment, the cost involved, and the ease at which they leave you open to so many different kinds of official red-tape with regards to government tracking, fines, permits, insurance and so on and so forth.

 

As soon as I found out back in December that me and Maribel were over I knew that I would be spending this Valentines Day alone, so with advanced notice I've already prepared myself for an overdose of romance everywhere I look and have planned a trip to a London Movie ( no it doesnt really matter what the film is ) a snack and then a late train home.

More Insanity

It has never ceased to amaze me at how computer programmers seem unable to add a couple of lines of code that prevent their latest accounts package from producing a statement of chaser for less than a full pound, but in fact it actually seems to be getting worse.

 

In the last week we have both received a statement / chaser for the princely sum of £0.00 ... and then to top that off a letter threatening legal action for -£2.36 ( or some other credit less than £5 ).

 

So not only are they actually owing us and not the other way around, but they are still sending letters informing us that unless we allow them to pay us, or possibly unless we send an invoice of our own, then they will take us to court! I've heard of accountants trying to tie things up right to the penny, but even for one of us this kind of action seems extreme.

 

But even this pales into insignificance to the letter that we received in today's post. One of our big corporate customers, who occasionally send us requests for property valuations, have updated their own accounts and order processing centres, at what appears to be a phenomenal cost.

 

However they in their wisdom ( slyness ), have decided that rather than accept this as their own one off charge, they have decided to pass on the costs and have thus created kickback to themselves from both customers AND suppliers alike.

 

As such, from now on, anyone who wants to receive work orders from them must pay a one off "subscription and support fee". That's right, before you can even start to do any work for them ( which they want and is for their benefit ) and before you can bill them for any work done you must first pay them for the privilege of being able to receive orders from them.

 

And here was I thinking that financial blackmail was against the law!!! It would be totally remiss of me to point out or in any way mention which Commercial Instruction Distribution centre have dreamt up this money making scheme, so I wont say which. What I will say is that whenever I personally think of them I cannot help but think of the awful pun of 'tree-skin hen-action', but that's just me I guess!

Banking Madness

There comes a time when you wonder whether its you or the rest of the world that is fast heading towards a place where it's all just empty white spaces, lacking anything sharp and soft padded walls in every direction.

 

Then you browse a book, spot a newspaper article or overhear a joke on a passing train and you feel sure that it is indeed the rest of world that is heading that way and your safely on a travellator going the opposite way.

 

But what really boggles my brain, is that there still seems to be a large enough number of intelligence people who all become frustrated at the same things, yet nothing changes in the long run. I would have thought that with enough people all noticing the same things then surely one of them would be in a position of authority somewhere to rectify said problem, but no, days on end the same problems occur time and time again.

 

For example, I phoned up my current mortgage broker to request an increase to my lending and was given a quick and helpful answer and a promise that as long as I send them the usual bank statements and proof of income that I should have the money in next to no time.

 

Being that my first step towards a more eco-friendly was to request my banks statements via email, and that they refused to simply take forwarded emails to me as they were then unable to verify their origin, this presented a small but hopefully minor glitch to an otherwise smooth application.

 

However trying to get copies of my last few bank statements proved to be much harder than logic suggests it should. Firstly they would not accept the internet printed copy statements as they were not on official bank headed paper, and to compound the immediate frustration I was unable to request copies of the statements from the website.

 

Then after a seeming eternity of flicking between different pop-ups all of little of no use whatsoever I finally managed to track down a phone number to dial. After the expected palaver of selection enough options from the automated to have hacked into NASA and named myself the next pilot to head off into space, I was told that I would be unable to request them automatically and that they were putting me through to the next available member of client customer services.

 

Gee, there's a shock I thought to myself. So after one finally answered, having probably just returning from the furthest reaches of the neighboring office, and then retelling all my details for the sake of security, I was then told that I had missed the days print run and that they would be printed off tomorrow and I should receive them within the next 7 working days. In actuality it only took 10, so her off the cuff underestimate wasn't that far off, more's the pity!

 

Following the call I realised that it would actually be quicker to go into a branch the following day and get them printed off, which is what I then planned on doing. Heading into the bank the following lunchtime I saw that the queues were already backing into the street for the main tills and the internal cash point machines. However they have recently installed a new smaller machine, for the sole purpose of printing off statements.

 

Thanking my good fortune and cleverness for thinking of this, I proudly strolled up to the machine and inserted my card to request the much needed statements. And yet, despite the fact that online I can access statements up to a year old, and the bank itself stores all records for up to 3 years in its main archives, the machine on display is only able to access the last two months of statements.

 

Two months ... in all my life every time I have ever been asked to provide copies of my bank statements for anything it has always been three!!! Just like the throwing of the Holy Hand-Grenade of Antioch, the number of the counting is three and three is the number of the counting. Four is not the number of the counting and neither is two UNLESS of course its followed by three.

 

Credit cards; mortgage applications; bank accounts; savings accounts; changing doctors; HP agreements; drivers licence; passport; visa application; job employments, no matter what the reason may have been it has always been three months. Every bank in the land knows this, so why on earth would my bank ( which offer mortgages themselves let's not forget ), go to all the trouble of creating a device and having it installed in every branch right across the globe that only lets you print off two months of statements?

 

It is not only a colossal waste of their time, money and effort, but it also achieved the impressive achievement of getting me even more frustrated and irate than I was before it was created or installed.

 

Thus defeated, I was forced to regain the queue I first saw, that now snaked out past the door and around the corner of the following building ( no doubt where their telephone staff are all huddling together and laughing in wait until it is their time to answer a customers call ), until I was able to be seen face to face by one of their main booth tellers .. who promptly told me that they could not do it there, and that I had to return to the main help desk next the entrance / exit.

 

Having already blown every mental fuse that I had at that point, I fought hard to keep in mind my own glorious golden moment I was going to look forward to as soon as I left this circus of insanity, and retreated back to where I had been directed, where I was finally able to obtain my own holy grail and then left to come back to work, hungry as my entire lunchtime was now over.

 

All in all, I felt that an awful lot of trouble and inconvenience had been incurred on my part and for no real benefit or use, as they must surely already have all my details still stored on file from when I applied for my first mortgage with them less than 18 months ago.

Google vs MSN

Q) What is the better search engine, Google or MSN ?

 

A) For me the answer is clear and undeniable, its a handsdown winner ... Google.

 

When I click on Google search and input my full name, I can find my own blog, plus my entries on a number of other blogs and forums around the web. Thus a full * * * * *

 

But when I chose MSN I can only find a fraction of these, and none that take me to my own blog. Only a wimpy * *

 

No wonder folks like Google and MSN is getting less and less used by the world at large :- when a guy can't even use it to find his own blog on MSN but he can on its competitors search engines, its time to switch !!!

Effusive

Effusive ... meaning " Unrelenting emotional and expressive : gushy "

 

Let this be a lesson and rude awakening for all those who think having friends abroad is a waste of time or that their English is too poor to understand.

 

At the age of 30, and considering myself to be fairly well read across a variety of genres, I cannot remember once coming across the word "Effusive", yet one of my foreign penfriends used it in a sentence like any other common or everyday word.

 

I had to look it up myself, just to be sure that it wasn't a spelling mistake, and was humbled when I had to accept that it was correctly used and more apt than any other word that I would have used in its place.

 

"To obtain true wisdom and enlightenment, you must first accept that you do not always know better and then open your eyes to the world around you to see what it will teach you next." - Dickon Springate, February 2007