| Chocolate bar assignment |
[2nd February 2012|05:37] |
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To my mild bemusement, I received this two days ago. What would you do?
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| O men |
[21st January 2012|00:47] |
So I was catching up on my fwiends page tonight when I saw this post of  extemporanea's, which includes the following suggestion:
Pick up the nearest book to you.
Turn to page 45.
The first sentence describes your sex life in 2012. My books were in other rooms and I did not know which one would be closest to me but I was determined to take the risk. The nearest book turned out to be one of Iza's. The first sentence on page 45 reads:
"Dusk fell, and in the glow of the strengthening stars I could see the murky shapes of the elephants still holding firm with iron defiance." |
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| Your table will be served eventually. So will you |
[20th January 2012|09:09] |
Hello.
Life is good. Life is busy. Interestingly, I behave much less like a busy person than I used to, yet I am getting more done.
It still takes a long time to do things. There is still a long list of things that I feel ought to be done immediately - but since I only have one "immediately", most of these things are waiting and will continue to wait for some time.
I am much calmer about this than I used to be.
Some of the waiting things involve communication. I probably owe you an email or a reply. These will happen, as soon as possible, which also means eventually. In the meantime, I am enjoying my life with its faster (if still slow) pace of getting things done. I hope you are enjoying being you too. |
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| Homebound |
[2nd January 2012|23:21] |
Simon's Town is a villagey area in the southern reaches of Cape Town. My mother and stepfather live there with two extremely angular, well-loved cats. Their house perches high on the windy slopes of the mountain, overlooking the sea.
When I was a teenager, the house was a cottage and my room was tucked underneath it, accessible only by its own direct door to the outside. For a teenager, this was heaven. Now I am older and the house is larger and my old room is the guest room. This is where Iza and I stay when we visit.
It was difficult to leave that place tonight, not only because of old memories, but because it felt like a home for both of us, a sanctuary deeper than a mere holiday venue. It was the ideal place to end our holiday.
Now we are on our way to our London home. We're sitting in the departure lounge at Cape Town International, despite various officials' initial refusal to believe in our temporary passports. (Now they have faith and we are saved, hallelujah.) We fly soon.
We've had a truly wonderful holiday, in the original sense of it being full of wonders. Feels like we've been away for ages. I'm sad to leave, but happy to be going... home. |
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| We had joy, we had fun, we did admin in the sun |
[31st December 2011|13:45] |
After intensive bureaucracy wrangling, we now have the following:
- Polish temporary passport, required for Iza to leave SA and enter UK, valid for 3 months without restrictions.
- South African temporary passport, required for me to leave SA, valid for 12 months without restrictions.
- British temporary passport, required for me to enter UK, usable only for my specific one day journey.
Measured in cost per usable day, the British document was 2,600 times more expensive than the South African one.
The important thing is that we are able to fly home as planned next week.
I haven't had time to reply to all emails yet. Until I do: thank you everyone who sent kind words and offered assistance. The support of family and friends has made it much easier to navigate the challenges of the last week.
We are both doing very well and we have been enjoying the sunshine. Here is a photo AHS Cara took of us lazing near a river in the Cederberg about 10 days ago:
I wish you an enjoyable New Year's Eve and a brilliant start to 2012. Make the most of it; it's less than a year until the world ends :) |
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| A Serious Unfortunate Event |
[25th December 2011|19:10] |
Iza and I recently experienced a nasty little instance of South African crime. The good thing is that we are ok. (That outcome was not guaranteed.) The bad thing is that our valuables, including passports, are gone.
This somewhat distorts the rest of our holiday, which will now be centred around the fun of attempting to secure 3 emergency travel documents, each for a different nationality, in the space of 3 working days. We'll continue to make the best of our time here - the incident was nothing if not a lesson in the impermanence of things and the significance of living the moment - but there will be a knock-on effect on some plans.
Kirstenbosch on Saturday the 31st, as announced here, will not be happening. I will email everyone who responded to ensure they're aware.
I still have my UK phone. I also have the temporary SA phone with the number given at the end of that same post.
If I have made any sort of plans with you, I'll be in touch, hopefully later this evening. Some things will change to "don't know, might contact you at the last minute to see if you're free".
The unwelcome adventure occurred a few days ago. We've spent the time since then dealing with practicalities, and chilling in Knysna with my family. Happily, we had a thoroughly enjoyable xmas, and I do hope you did too. |
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| See you in Cape Town? |
[13th December 2011|07:13] |
Iza and I will be visiting South Africa soon. We leave London on Friday night and return early in the new year.
Previous visits have involved rushing from one individual/couple/household to another, trying to fit in as many of the local friend-clans as possible. This time we're spending most of our time travelling outside Cape Town, or with family, or both. We're hoping the clans can be persuaded to come to us. Can you?
Kirstenbosch gathering
On 31 December, probably for the whole afternoon, we plan to be in Kirstenbosch. If you're in Cape Town that day, it would be great to see you.
The idea is for it to be a completely fluid event, with people arriving and leaving whenever suits them during the time we're there. Hopefully we get a combination of a small group gathering and some individual time with everyone.
If you think you might make it and would like to be kept up to date on specific arrangements, weather contingency plans, etc, please email your contact details to me by Friday 16th (see below). Most helpful would be to get your SA cellphone number, because it'll be easiest to use SMS to stay in contact while we're in town.
How to contact us
Now until Fri 16 Dec - my personal email address - [firstname][surname]@yahoo.co.uk without the square brackets of course, and note the absence of a dot between the names
Sat 17 Dec to Thu 22 Dec - no reliable method; in emergency you can try my UK mobile number
Fri 23 Dec to Mon 2 Jan (late pm) - temp SA cellphone number:
Zero 0
Seven 7
Eight 8
Five 5
Nine 9
One 1
One 1
Nine 9
Two 2
Four 4 |
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| Flood and food |
[18th October 2011|15:40] |
On Friday night we were sitting down to dinner when I heard a dripping sound.
The sound was made by droplets of water falling to the floor after making their way through the ceiling.
The guy upstairs was not at home. More droplets came a-dripping, some of them through our ceiling spotlights. Electricity off, then. Water was also gushing enthusiastically out of an overflow pipe on the side of the building, a narrow flood curving down into the neighbours' garden. Noah's Arc.
Miraculously, the landlord's agents had been on holiday on Thursday and Friday, which meant that instead of their answering maching saying "call back during office hours", it said "if you have an emergency during office hours, call this mobile number". The man who answered didn't seem happy to be called outside office hours, but he rapidly appreciated the gravity of the situation - gravity that was threatening to collapse our ceiling. He summoned a local plumber.
The plumber appeared short and shortly. He tried to cut off the water to the property, but failed. He then concluded what I had been expecting him to conclude but was happier to let him do the concluding of, and smashed through the lower glass panel of the front door to the upstairs flat. I held a torch for him. The door was now like a confused pessimist: half empty of glass.
The fault was found to be with the float in the toilet cistern. Normally, when a toilet water tank is full, the float ball floats up, the float arm is forced up, and the flow of water is stopped. When the tank is flushed, the water flees, the float assembly falls, and replacement water flows in until the tank is full. But when the float ball breaks away from the float arm, the float arm falls and stays fallen. Water floods in and stays flooding. The people downstairs hear dripping as they sit down to dinner.
On the subject of dinner, last night I cooked! This is a rare event, only slightly more frequent than water coming through the ceiling. I made this sauce but added chestnut mushrooms, baby corn, courgettes and spinach. We had it on conchiglie pasta, accompanied by a pleasant Pinot Grigio.
Meanwhile, apart from a few minor stains, the flat appears to have entirely recovered.
Yes, yes, recovered from the leaks! Not my cooking. We still have to do the washing up. |
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| Repeat Progress |
[19th August 2011|23:10] |
Higher up and higher we spiral
When we get high enough we'll drop the bomb
But the higher we go the smaller the bomb gets
And the higher up we'll have to drop it from |
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| London tonight |
[9th August 2011|00:54] |
This isn't one of the promised updates covering recent months; it's just about tonight. Apparently, since I have started journalling again, I am journalling again.
I'd been planning to swim tonight because: Poland; eating too much; drinking too much; exercise but not enough to compensate for the aforementioned. Instead I was hanging out with the MD and the head of finance because big stuff is happening in my company and I'm better off in that loop than out of it. More about which another time.
It was the end of the day and we were watching the news. Footage of London burning.
On that subject: What. The. Fuck. This isn't political protest, though in the broader sense there's politics under it. It's mostly hopeless angry and savage greedy and pointless tragic. No-one really knows what it is yet. It's a portent of a long-predicted future of gated communities and armed riot police on street corners - maybe. Or, more likely, it's a brief chaotic flash, an explosion born of complexity, momentarily shattering the illusion of control, clear only in hindsight, which won't stop the experts from finding out they knew everything about it all along. It's a sign of the times. Control is an illusion because control means prediction and prediction is on the way out. I so predict it.
London tonight is one face of uncertainty. It's rather ugly. In the near future we'll see many more of uncertainty's faces; thankfully some will be beautiful.
On the same subject but more practically: It's happening near friends (and it kicked off on the weekend very near some friends). But I am lucky. It hasn't come to my neighbourhood yet and almost certainly won't unless absolutely everything goes to shit, which it almost certainly won't. The greatest risk to me in the short term is that my weekend plans might go squiffy, which I suppose is quite low down the list of Britain's worries.
So in the office we talked about the riots before going to the pub to talk about our corporate stuff. On the way the MD mused about the side of London we don't see. We live in a bubble, he said. I didn't tell him how much time I spend outside that bubble. Instead I said, yes, we think of the Goldman Sachs guys as living in a bubble (ha ha, amateur sociologist/economist crossover pun; though I didn't point that out) but we ourselves are so insulated from those who have no prospect of a decent job.
We got to the pub and stood outside sipping beers chatting in our big responsible business bubble when CRASH. A chair had broken because an older suited man had leapt on a younger suited man and pinned him to the ground with his elbow on his throat, murmuring drunken threats into the young man's terrified face. The two City of London police officers who had been standing on the corner ambled over and separated them expertly, diplomatically, gently. The older man went inside to leave his email address so he could be invoiced for the chair. (City of London officers are thorough in their approach to dispute resolution.) Then the two businessmen left, arm in arm, the junior executive supporting the senior partner, who patted his back and grinned fondly at him like a best friend or an abusive but ultimately loving dad. Pop?
London tonight, man.
I hope everyone I know stays safe until this thing blows over. Statistics tells me you will but prediction, you know, isn't what it used to be. Please be careful. |
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| Is me |
[6th August 2011|20:09] |
Greetings, Approximately Fifteen People!
That is: LJ fwiends who still check Livejournal (perhaps about 12) + Individuals who have this blog on their RSS readers (guesstimate 2) + Anyone else who just happens to have checked here in the last couple of days (maybe 1) = Approximately 15. Hi there.
The last sensible stuff I posted was about a trip to Poland in April. I'm in Poland again now; have been for the last week; will be home tomorrow pm.
I haven't been following LJ or Twitter at all and so am properly out of whatever loops may have been looping these past months.
Various things happened between the Poland trips and I'm thinking of doing a series of updates over the next couple of weeks - subjects like Work; Malta; Mosquito Bites; etc. We'll see how far I get. Watch this cyberspace.
How about you: what up, bruvs generic? |
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| Informatically, To Whom It May |
[5th August 2011|09:15] |
For your safety and our protection, we are obliged by law. We would therefore be grateful; kindly do not, failing which carefully consider. Regretfully your enthusiasm is very much appreciated, however we are unable at this time. In more auspicious conditions under no circumstances, subject to regulated procedure. This has or may have been recorded and will not further affect your credit rating except as specified.
For which we thank you,
The Manglement. |
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| How I faced my forgotten phobia in the forest |
[25th April 2011|13:55] |
Until Thursday, I'd entirely forgotten that I have an actual phobia. It's a sort of fear of heights, but more specific. I can stand and look over cliffs with no problem. What I have trouble with is climbing or moving at heights, especially when I start on the ground and get to about my head height. Then I freeze.
( Some background: it lay dormant for more than 20 years...Collapse )
So. Fast forward to Thursday, when we went to a sort of adventure park in a forest outside Olsztyn. You climb 9 metres up to a platform on a tree, then walk, clamber, swing, precariously balance, etc. from tree to tree across a series of wires, nets, ropes, narrow wobbling logs, hoops and so forth. It takes about an hour to go round.
Iza went up first. I started second, got to about my head height, and froze. I remembered: I can't do this. I tried telling myself all the sensible stuff but it was too late - I was already frozen. I gave up and backed down. At least now I have the confidence to say no to something that doesn't feel right for me without feeling embarrassed.
But as Iza's brother and girlfriend climbed up, I started to reconsider. I have indeed outgrown a lot of weaknesses since I was 16. I have much better control of my mind. Phobias are truly not my style. I was free to walk away; I was also free to prepare myself properly and then do it very slowly, one rung of the ladder at a time.
I told myself all the sensible stuff and started up again. Very slowly. It was the most difficult thing I have done in quite a long time but I made it to the platform.
The first obstacle was the hardest (though not nearly as hard as the ladder up). After that it was mostly fun. And a while later it was all fun.
Nine metres is high. That's Iza reaching the starting platform:
( Do-You-Want-Some-More?Collapse )
At the end of the course we had an opportunity to climb to a higher platform - perhaps 15 metres - then fly down a 120 metre zip wire slide to thwack into some padding in another tree. I had a few butterflies about the climb but did it with reasonable confidence.
Oddly I was pretty relaxed about flinging myself into the air 15 metres above the ground suspended only from a wire to hurtle 120 metres forwards, while everyone else was much more reluctant. It's a bit like flying in an aircraft: it's all down to the equipment and statistics. Once you're in the air, there's not much you can do to screw it up. |
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| From a working holiday to the life we'd be living if we lived in Poland |
[24th April 2011|18:48] |
This has been in part a working holiday for me. When Iza suggested going to Poland for 8 days rather than a long weekend, I said ok, but only if I can have unfettered access to a decent internet connection. This turned out to be entirely necessary. Despite having finished the main Thing I needed to deliver for my project, I ended the week with several urgent tasks outstanding. That's how every week ends, of course, but when you go on holiday you can't just pick up again on Monday.
Except this time I could. On Sunday I wrote emails for most of the car journey; on Monday I worked almost a full day via Citrix remote login; and I've done little bits and pieces since then, including some personal business that had been dismally neglected. I feel great. I'm relaxing and having fun and getting things done, all nicely mixed up together. So to the people who knee-jerk parrot-phrase generic garbage like "ooh, you need a proper break" I say: fuck you, you know nothing.
I detest it when generic advice is given to a specific person in a specific situation. Especially if that person is me.
My, how did we get onto that? I was telling you about my holiday. Which included spending a night with our friends Andrzej and Kamila and their four year old son Mateusz. They're about our age, lovely people but in many ways very unlike us: they're a wholesome, decent family living the respectable middle class dream in a nice house they built in the suburbs.
Now you can be as cynical as you like about family life, but there's also something undeniably wholesome about it, especially when the kids are younger. It's a good energy to be exposed to from time to time. Also, children are wonderful.
Before I could start relaxing with our hosts, I had a bit of work to finish. Damn middle-aged hooligans - they sit in your garden wearing their business school hoodies, tapping away on their BlackBerries, emailing instructions back to their gangs in the office:
( Do-You-Want-Some-More?Collapse )
One unpleasant bit of personal business I've taken care of on this holiday was a long-overdue email to our landlord, accepting a whopping 15% rent increase. This means we pay £130 more per month, which hurts, but we were getting a good deal before and sadly the new rent is reasonable. Bugger. |
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| The Knights Who Say... |
[22nd April 2011|14:12] |
Usually when we visit Poland, we travel straight to Iza's parents' house. The journey from our place to Luton or Stansted, the flight to Gdańsk and the hours-long drive to their house outside Olsztyn are all rather tiring and rather boring. You end up eight or so hours later, feeling you've expended a lot of effort to get from sitting at home to... sitting at a slightly different home.
So this time, Iza's sister Agata picked us up from the airport and we drove down via Malbork, where we explored the castle. I'd had no idea what an important site it was. I was told there was some castle there which had probably been held by the Templars at some point. But no. This was Ordensburg Marienburg, built by the Teutonic Knights in the late 13th century, shortly afterwards occupied as the capital of their Prussian state. At the time it was possibly the largest castle anywhere - certainly the largest Gothic castle in Europe - and it would have been one of the centres of the late mediaeval world.
It must have been quite a rush being a Teutonic Knight. They were a monastic order; they were knights; they were the wealthy rulers of an independent state. They were the warriors of God, at the pinnacle of pretty much everything that officially mattered in their world. It made me think of the phrase "masters of the universe" as applied to modern investment bankers. Perhaps if you were a member of an elite unit of Special Forces Goldman Sachs partners you would feel similar.
The Teutonic Knights were utter bastards, of course, especially if you were a pagan in Prussia when they were crusading there. The same, adjusted for history, might be said of a Goldman Sachs SAS unit.
We found this odd set of enormous, dangling metal balls, employed here in a futile attempt to crush some sense into me. I leave it as a test of the filthiness of your imagination as to what they might be:
A clue as to their likely real purpose: they are hanging on the inside wall of the main gate into the central keep (or "High Castle" as my guidebook calls it).
( Do-You-Want-Some-More?Collapse )
I was also reminded of how much I love my little Canon Ixus 860 IS. Bought in 2008 iirc; fits into the palm of my hand; operates acceptably in a fairly wide range of conditions; and when the light is good, the colours are fantastic (yay Canon). Still the ideal travelling camera. |
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| Flight |
[17th April 2011|07:52] |
Hello personages. I've not been here for a while.
You may have noticed that the LJ site was down rather a lot in recent weeks. This was due to DDoS attacks which may have been orchestrated by the Russian government's cyberwarriors to silence an anti-corruption blogger - if so, eloquently making his point for him.
I was going to link the term "DDoS" to an explanation for the tech-illiterate. But even the tech-illiterate know how to look things up on the internet now. Frankly, if there's any general knowledge question you don't have the answer to, it's because you don't want the answer. Which is a wonderful state of affairs, not least because it makes explanatory linking redundant (if not downright insulting).
As for Livejournal's reliability problems, they had nothing whatsoever to do with my lack of presence here. The reason I've not been blogging is that from after Iza's birthday, until Thursday, every single moment - where "moment" is defined as "potentially productive block of 10 minutes or more" - has been devoted to mission-critical activities. The mission was the successful conclusion of the project I've been working on since October. The mission was accomplished.
I feel very good about this, not only because I triumphed over considerable challenges to create something new and useful and powerful. The self-inflicted pressure has also been tremendously helpful to me personally. It has changed me in some small ways in which I wanted to be changed. Old bits of coal are now diamonds. Which is useful if you want to cut hard substances or impress chicks; less so if you want to burn fossil fuels. And I wore out this metaphor several thoughts ago.
Anyhooo... Now it's holiday time, and we're flying to Poland in half an hour. A Templar Teutonic castle, a spa resort, an obstacle course, the much-loved lake and forest, egg painting, whisky drinking, a long-missed sister and a water pistol war are all promising to feature in my near future. Back on Monday (25th) night. You have a good week too. |
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| The unbearable cuteness of being... a polar bear |
[29th March 2011|08:48] |
Many young children like bears. This may be because of teddy bears. As far as I remember, my second-oldest fluffy toy was a brown teddy bear. (The oldest was a monkey that I now remember as rather threadbare.) But my particular thing about bears wasn't teddy-based. And it wasn't just about any bears: it was polar bears that fascinated me. Baby polar bears.
This is the book that did it:
I was given it when very young. As you can tell from the fact that I scanned the cover a few days ago, I still have it. It contains no fewer than 35 chapters, each one a poem, article, fable, comic, story, etc. - about bears. One of them was a real-life story about Pipaluk, a baby polar bear born at the London Zoo.
Look at him:
Now I don't know what effect that photo has on you. Probably you think it's cute. But you can't have the faintest idea how profoundly it affected a very young me. It wasn't just cute; it was the Platonic ideal of cute. I imprinted on that picture.
( About the polar bear cult in my head... and a songCollapse ) |
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| Dinnertime conversation |
[27th March 2011|21:44] |
"That's a lot of food."
"Yes, but it's not much currency."
"Um... you mean it didn't cost much?"
"No, I mean if you took it to a bank, there wouldn't be much you could exchange it for. There really isn't a lot of currency in that wok. Hm... Not much concrete there, either."
"Ok, now you need to shut up."
The relationship continues to be wonderful. She keeps promising to kill me, but never actually does. |
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| Dodgeful arter |
[21st March 2011|20:01] |
I have a confession to make. I don't like art galleries. I don't like putting a box around some things and calling them art. "Art" (or indeed "stuff") is more delightful when it's encountered by surprise. Provided, of course, that you notice it. Maybe galleries are so that people don't have to pay attention all the time in case they encounter something artistic. I prefer to imagine a world in which all the treasures are hidden in plain sight and only visible if you look at them right.
"Right", and indeed "art", being pretty relative terms here.
Last week's Beware the Ides of March post was one of these pretty relatives. Due to my brainstyle, further infected by some academic training in psychology and literature, I enjoy playing with patterns of meaning. I say playing because, ironically, most of the time I don't think meaning is particularly meaningful. Just fun. But fun in the same way as playfully rearranging molecular structures with your mind would be fun.
So I produced an incremental word-inversion thingy, because... I don't know why. It just fell out of my head. Then I illustrated it by linking each of the transformed words to an image on the internet. That started as an afterthought, yet I had more fun with the pictures than with the words. Most of the images were just funny illustrations but a few were a bit clever. Such as "match"... match = bout and match = firestarter... so I posted a pic of an inferno match (look it up). Or "excise"... excise = tax and excise = cut out... so I posted a pic of a piratical skull-and-cross-scimitars banner urging the purchase of cigarettes abroad to avoid UK tax... so there's your tax link and there's scimitars for cutting... and, hell, many people want to "cut out" smoking (ok, that last one's dreadful, but as a subsidiary pun we can let it pass).
It's not the things themselves, it's how they're arranged. It's the links, and I don't just mean the html. That's reality, after all: Reality is mostly nothing, arranged very cleverly.
Some of you spotted everything I've mentioned and more. Some played along. Some saw only a nonsense word game. (Quite rightly.) Would you have looked differently if it was labelled as "art"? If I'd thought I was doing art, I wouldn't have done it at all, because (a) I'd have felt I had to do it properly and I'd never have had the time; and (b) I know I'm no good at visual art. Labels, huh.
Instead I roughed it together spontaneously in an hour and a half in the middle of the night when I was short of sleep and had loads of urgent work to do but somehow knew that its sheer triviality made it important, and that doing it would be alright. (It was. I had a very good week at work. And I bet this is partly why.)
There were two words I couldn't find adequate images for, so I made some.
Id... Freud's ID card...
Ides... the day the Roman dictator was assassinated... the 15th... XV as a vote and a revolution... with quite a lot of that in the world right now...
It's not the things themselves. I stole the components. It's not the skill of arranging them: technically, these are poorly done. It's the concepts. It's the interpenetration of potential meanings. It's the invitation for you to make the links.
Next time I won't tell you what I'm doing. Just like the time before last.
And yes, I know there are good practical reasons to have art galleries. |
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| Today beware... |
[15th March 2011|01:42] |
(aka If You Let A Monkey Type Shakespeare For Long Enough)
Beware the Ides of March!
Beware the Ids of March!
Beware the Ickes of March!
Beware the Oods of March!
Beware the Ergs of March!
Beware the Eggs of March!
Beware the Ex of March!
Beware the Itch of March!
Beware the H of March!
Beware the Arch of March!
Beware the March of March!
Beware the March of Marchand!
Beware the March of Marshals!
Beware the March of Matches!
Beware the March of Etches!
Beware the March of Execs!
Beware the March of Excess!
Beware the March of Excise!
Beware the March of Insides!
Beware the March of Signs!
Beware the March of Eyes!
Beware the March of Ides!
Be where there's idling in your march.
Beware the march of your ideas. |
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