Change Everything. Again

At this point I've been doing this blog for a little under a year and a half. It was started because I had to sign up to comment on another friend's blog. Since I had the opportunity to create a blog I did.

Let's be honest though, I've never really known what this blog was all about. It says it right there at the top. I just said whatever I felt like saying, whether it made sense or not.

Now I do have something to say. Or more accurately I have a framework of ideas in which to say the same things. I don't know if it'll properly work, I don't even know where it's going. But it's there so I might as well use it. So I've created a new, hopefully better blog called Change Everything. Again. For some reason it makes more sense to start in a whole new blog rather than continue this one. It's something to do with new beginnings.

I will still keep this blog alive, but really it'll be more for funny anecdotes rather than anything else. I seem to be averaging about one post a month here, so I'll stick with that for now probably. But really if you want to know what's going on with me then you'll need to check out the other.

Be warned, there's a lot of it...

This morning so far...

06:00 - Alarm goes off. Get up and jump in shower.
06:05 - Jump out of shower, throw on yesterday's clothes.
06:10 - Eat cereal bar and have a glass of water.
06:15 - Leave Sister's house
06:20 - Arrive at Train Station, buy ticket and diet coke.
06:23 - Stare at company's London office and try to work out if there's anyway I could work from there today.
06:35 - Get on train. Fail to fall asleep.
06:45 - Get off train at Clapham.
06:46 - Realise I should have gone via Waterloo.
06:54 - Get on slow train that crawls through every station known to man.
06:55 - Fail to go to sleep again.
07:57 - Get off train at Basingstoke. Go outside to have two cigarettes. Trade texts with House mate in Southampton who works in Basingstoke.
08:10 - Get on train at Basingstoke. Fail to sleep again.
08:37 - Finally fall asleep.
08:42 - Wake up at Southampton. Grab free magazine as get off train.
08:43 - Leave station, start running.
08:44 - Stop running, start walking and decide it's time to start going to the gym again.
08:49 - Arrive at flat. Dump free magazine on kitchen table whilst I change.
08:51 - Leave flat with coat with work pass in pocket.
08:51:10 - Leave flat with coat with work pass in pocket and watch.
08:51:20 - Leave flat with coat with work pass in pocket, watch and train ticket. Start running.
08:51:25 - Stop running, start walking, decide to go to gym tonight.
08:59 - Stand on platform swearing at train that left 30 seconds early. Try to decide if it's actually worth getting into work two hours late or if I should just go back to bed.
09:00 - Realise my train was delayed and I was swearing at the wrong train. Try to hide unsuccessfully.
09:01 - Get on train.
09:02 - Realise I left free magazine on kitchen table. Get bored.
09:16 - Realise I have no idea if this train actually stops at the piddly little station in the middle of nowhere that I need.
09:29 - Get off train at the piddly little station in the middle of nowhere, start walking.
09:55 - Get to work.
09:55:20 - Realise work pass is in other coat's pocket.
10:00 - Start working. An hour late.
10:01 - Go to breakfast.
10:02 - Get caught enroute by boss1. Talk to him about a problem.
10:30 - Write an email to boss1 explaining exactly the problem he needs to fix.
10:35 - Get nabbed by boss2. Talk to him about a problem.
11:00 - Finish email to boss1.
11:01 - Write an email to boss2 explaining exactly the problem he needs to fix.
11:30 - Get breakfast.

And after all that I still got to work earlier than Steve... :)


Disclaimer: some dramatic license has been used here. I can actually run for longer than a minute.

I could be wrong

But I think there should be a ban on all "half hour" meetings that last over six and a half hours.

To be fair it did turn into two meetings with an hours break for lunch. The second one came about to try and stop the large rambling asides that kept croping up in the first meeting. I'd also say the second one was better controlled than the first one. The first one had a tendency to ramble all over the place completely ignoring the original point of the meeting, which in my book is a waste of time. It might be a very interesting waste of time sometimes (it wasn't in this case) but that's beside the point.

The second one was however split into separate topics and various people were called in throughout depending on who needed to be there. Unfortunately my job at the moment seems to be to be at everything and learn everything so I wasn't allowed to escape...

Which leads onto the whole London topic. There appears to be a weird view that I'll turn into some sort of SuperCam down there. I'm pretty sure they realise that I'll need to sleep at some point, but I'm not sure if they've factored it in...

Nothing to say

But by almighty heck I'm going to say it.

Another day in hell

Yesterday was Columbia Turnpike day, which of course means again that I'm horribly hungover. As usual the invite got lost in the post and went about two days beforehand from my work email therefore only went to people who's emails were there then.

I really need to fix that.

Anyway there was a great moment early on when I looked around the table at the first eight or nine people who had arrived. There was a random collection of old friends who hadn't seen each other in years catching up and people who had never met before nattering away like they've been friends for years. It always amazes me how quickly that happens.

It was just a real shame that most of the people I actually wanted to be there weren't.

Random acts of Madness

Last night I went to a boat cruise in aid of cancer research and epilepsy. It was black tie so I wore my kilt. I have no idea if that's what led to the randomness of the evening, but I like to think so.

First off, because I didn't particularly fancy walking through town in a kilt, I booked my second ever taxi in Southampton. It made it around the corner before it broke down. Pushing a taxi to one side whilst wearing full black tie wasn't quite what I'd had in mind for the evening. To make matters worse the driver gave rubbish directions to where we were so it took the replacement taxi a good fifteen minutes to find us.

But I got over it and continued onwards to the boat. Where I discovered there was a raffle (charity remember) which included in it's prizes a two litre keg of Grants Whisky. Since I was the only person there in Scottish dress I decided I was going to win it and since by this time I'd had a few drinks I announced that I was going to win it.

Six pounds worth of tickets later the first ticket was drawn. It was the first ticket I'd bought. The power of positive thinking I guess.

After the party ended I stashed the whisky in a friends car so I could go on to the pub. Unfortunately one pizza later they decided they were tired and were going to go home, so I went back to get the whisky and hence was on my own when I tried to get into the pub. Apparently they don't like someone who's admittedly slightly drunk going in with a two litre keg of whisky. Which is probably a good thing all things considered, I think I'd had enough to drink.

This did however leave me with no ride back through town and no-one to share the ridiculously priced taxi with. So despite planning to not have to walk through Southampton, I did. It wasn't actually that bad. Although in a further bizarre twist of fate I quickly discovered a rather attractive blonde lady walking with me. I'm not sure if she was trying to escape someone or if she was just bored like she said, but I decided I was going to walk her to the club she was going to. I also bought her a chocolate bar, because, well why the hell not? Unfortunately the club was a bit of a dive and not really feeling the need to be turned down entry I made excuses and legged it.

I then discovered that the reason the walk hadn't been that bad was because of said cute blonde girl. Every idiot and their dog wanted to know how I wore my kilt. Fortunately by this stage I wasn't too far from the flat so I managed to sneak through back roads with only a few oh so witty rejoinders. What do people expect you to say when they ask?

But the randomness didn't end when I got home. Oh no, I arrived to be informed that someone had broken into the flat. Steinar had heard the door open just after eleven and he came out a few minutes later to find a complete stranger in the kitchen. The stranger then ran out the front door. Steinar thinks the stranger had something under his arm but it was dark and he can't really say for sure. Nothing appears to have been taken anyway so no idea what was going on there really.

So at this point I did the only sensible thing and started drinking the whisky. It was the only thing that made any sense.

Day tripping

The annoying thing about my current project is that every so often I get sent up to a little place just outside London. Actually it's not really that annoying since it gets me out of the office for the day, but it's a two hour trip there on the train which seems a little bit like eternity. I really do wonder sometimes how I've managed to commute so far for so long.

Anyway, usually when I get sent up I have some great big project to do. Something that I can really get my teeth into and enjoy for four hours or so. Last Tuesday however I spent the morning heading up with a rather large box with the express purpose of hot-swapping a part over. This basically means that I unclip a part from the back of a machine and then replace it with a new part without turning the machine off. And it probably took longer to explain that than it does to actually do it.

So it was rather annoying to get there and discover that I'd taken the wrong part up.

I'm going back again tomorrow. I've managed to scrounge up a few other jobs so I might actually have to spend a good hour there now, but basically I've got a four hour round trip to do one really important and ridiculously quick job, and two rather mundane and boring jobs.

Bugger.

300

The plot of this movie is hloosely based on the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. It tells how 300 Spartans came to hold the pass of Thermopylae against might of the Persian army, which numbered over a million soldiers. Oh, apparently some Arcadians helped out the Spartans as well, but whatever.

That's the basic plot of 300. Or as I like to call it the first five minutes. Once that's out the way you can sit back and enjoy an hour and a half of comedy violence and partial nudity. There's some crappy subplot about the Spartan Queen gathering support, but really this film is all about the action. And by that I mean violence. I mean really, I think the length of the film is based solely upon the amount of blood they can afford.

It is based upon a Frank Miller comic, and so it does suffer a little from the Sin City effect (i.e. the visual style is pretty to start off with but quickly becomes boring). But did I mention the comedy violence yet? Oh, and if you think this is mainly a blokes film, bear in mind that the vast majority of the nudity is provided by the 300 six-packs that are being thrown around the screen...

Very Important

I just got yet another obviously hoax chain email. I've replied before and I've tried before and quite frankly I've had enough. So I'm going to do the only thing left to me. Pay attention.

No email will give you something for nothing. It's a con. Delete it and don't send it on.

Any real email will have a date in it. If it doesn't that's because it is ridiculously old. Delete it and don't send it on.

No company would be involved with an email and not include a link to a website. Delete it and don't send it on.

You will be warned about bad things via the news. Not email. Delete it and don't send it on.

If you do forward an email on, please delete all the old email addresses on it first. Otherwise it's just a long list of email addresses for spammers. Alternatively: Delete it and don't send it on.

If you've carefully read what I have just written then know that this email was created on 04/04/07. It is a chain, but it serves no purpose other than making my life easier. Your's too, which is a bonus. Could you please send it on to two other people? Thank you.

If you haven't read a single thing I've said then this email will cause you to DIE in the next 24 hours unless you forward it on to at least 5 people. THIS COULD HAPPEN TO YOU!

My problem is...

...when I was younger I was told that I'd either turn out to be very weird, or very funny.

It turns out I'm a fish.

Shaving by Candlelight

For those of you that don't know the bathroom in my flat it has a frosted, blue glass arch around the doorway. It wasn't frosted when we moved in, but that's a whole other story. It also has glazed windows which lead out onto a huge square full of streetlights. This has very little relevance to the following story, but bare with me, it's important.

Getting back from work where I'd been lifting and moving all day, I was kinda sweaty so I immediately jumped in the shower. The shower radio was set to Classic FM (it surprisingly good to shower to, most of the time). The problem with this radio is that thanks to it's position it's remarkably hard to find a station with a good signal, so changing it is hardly ever done. If you do happen to change it then you pretty much stick with the first station you find since you'll never find it again, or any other station, if you carry on looking.

Unfortunately this time Classic FM was doing the travel news. Now I might be a little weird here but listening to the travel news in the shower when you don't drive doesn't really seem like my cup of tea. With some trepidation I changed the station - and immediately found some weird, possibly Israeli, radio station that to be honest I didn't know existed. However it was playing music, and I knew that I'd never find another if I carried on looking. So I bit the bullet and went with it. I mean what else could I do?

So there I was, showering away to this bizarre station, when the lights started to flicker. At first I thought the circuit was going or there was a power fluctuation. Then the lights cut out - but only the lights in the bathroom. This left me showering to weird Israeli music lit on one side by the blue glow through the glass arch, and on the other side by the orange street lights from the square. It was truly surreal.

I finally finished showering and, after a quick fiddle around with the bulbs to check they worked, I came to the conclusion that there's some dodgy wiring in the ceiling somewhere that finally failed. So no lights in the bathroom.

Which left me with the interesting prospect of working out how on earth I was supposed to shave. Since I have a heap of candles in my room the obvious answer was by candlelight. It worked surprisingly well. It somehow gave a much more powerful feel to the experience. Next time you shave (if you do shave) I recommend it. It's... freeing in a way.

It also returned me to a realisation that I've had a number of times - all the events of our lives are essentially meaningless. They're simply defined by the moments where for some strange reason something simple and ordinary is promoted to something that is somehow sublimely powerful. It can be anything: a look, a laugh, a smile, a tear or even a shave.

It's a moment that you can't plan and you can't predict but which nevertheless tells you that everything is going to be okay. Somehow, it's all going to just work out okay.

Cultural Sittings

Last night I went to the Ballet with a friend and her parents (and before anyone starts leaping to Valentine type conclusions, she's just a friend and her boyfriend hates Ballet). The Ballet in question was called Marjorie's World Unhinged and was completely unlike any idea of Ballet you have. It involved films being shown on screens and dances with balloons and dresses. It was rather good though. It took the first half for me to really get into the style of it, people dancing to the spoken word was not quite what I expected. Vignettes of sound and movement, a ballet class seen from above (with two people dancing on the floor).

One of the later dances involved a man dancing with a dress and pretending it was his mother. It was scarily believable the way he got the dress to move, like there was another person there.

It was also the type of show where I think it will take me a while to put all of the different pieces together. Every dance was a sort of dream in a way, and had that odd, dream like quality to it where nothing is quite what it seemed. A father and son dancing became an older man dancing with his younger self and back again.

To be honest, I don't think I'll be able to put a proper feeling on it for another couple of weeks or so. I'd also like to see it again just so I can properly appreciate it.

But overall I think i enjoyed it.

A walk in winter

Like most people who spend a large amount of time around computers, I have a series of websites that I visit. Some of these are nearly every day (or at least every time I get online). Some of them are only once or twice a year.

One such annual page is York Stories, a lovely page about wandering around York. It's part blog, part tourist guide, part guided walk list and basically a wonderful site. So I was very interested to see the authors thoughts on walking in winter.

Obviously with the return of the walk to work I've had a bit more freetime to just generally think about walking, and I think they've got it wrong. Yes, there are plenty of walks about the outside world. Walks where you see and do. But at this time of year the walk has to be less about the outside and more about the inside.

Because there's something about the rhythm of walking that makes it almost meditative. It switches off part of your brain, and you find yourself floating along, moving without thought or direction until the destination is reached.

There's a wonderful quote from the West Wing "At night we become poets". Okay, it's a wonderful quote in context then, but I think it's true of walking as well.

When we walk we become poets, and the entire vagaries of life are met and matched by our stride.

I am feeling sleepy...

It's possible that I might just possibly get a good nights sleep this weekend. I might not, but you really never know. I seem to be in one of those periodic stages when my social life has gone slightly crazy. Definitely a good thing, but also... Well, a nice long lie in would do me wonderfully well!

Still gym tonight and then hopefully an early night.

Oh and the new project is going really well. It's slightly frustrating at times, since everything depends on everything else and I'm currently waiting on four separate people in order to finish four separate jobs. Somehow I get the feeling that it's all going to come crashing down on me at once :) But that doesn't matter so much, it just means there's something to look forward to.

I'm starting to think that I thrive on pressure.

But all the same, I'm back in the place where the working day flies past, even though it feels like I spend half of it twiddling my thumbs (it's not true, but it feels like it sometimes). I think that makes a huge difference to job satisfaction!

It also appears that there's a continuation of this project in London for six months. It'll be mostly sitting in a hotel room, but if I am offered it I'll be sorely tempted to take it up. I'm probably the obvious choice since I don't have a family so it's won't be as bad for me. Plus it's not like I don't know anyone in London!

Even if I would never want to live in London. Who knows? Maybe I'll be converted!

New Job

Well not really, I'll still be working for the same company but it's a completely different project on a completely different site so it feels like it's a new job. I'll be working in Christchurch for the next six months or so.

The downside is that the site is about two miles from the nearest train station so it looks like I'll be walking for a while. At least until I work out buses anyway.

The weird thing is just how energised I feel about the whole thing. Even if it is the same company it's a huge relief just to get out of Portsmouth. I guess I didn't realise how much I dislike this place, but then you never do until you go do you?

It's only for six to nine months and then I suppose I'll be back here. But then to be honest I might just use the end of this project as an excuse to move on to other things. We'll see!