Hello everyone.

Just thought i would let you know that i am in nepal.

Got tummy ache at the moment which isnt fun but everything else has been amazing

I am in the process of photobucketing my pics so will post a link when it's done.

(the net is not too fast here)

Hope you are all doing well

Byeeeee

Anyway, I've been steadily uploading albums to my replacement-photo-gallery-of-the-jour Google's Picasaweb.  This little pic comes from a gallery from Chester, in 2005.  Heh.

Whens the next bar crawl? hehe ;)

Today, for the first time in about 3 weeks, i am pleased i have been too slack to go swimming for a few weeks.

I found out it was closed.

The ceiling fell into the pool....

"Quite clearly having a grill fall from the ceiling is obviously extremely regrettable for everyone and the council responded to the risk by closing the pool immediately and is working hard to deal with the consequences"

Oops

(Full Story Here)

Could someone please remove my login from here.

cheers

Since there is no function to bump an old thread up to the top like most sites i've had to do it this way, anychance someone can do the above.

A man walked into a bar and asked for a double entendre, so the barman gave him one.

A helicopter was flying around above Seattle when an electrical malfunction disabled all of the aircraft's electronic navigation and communications equipment. 

Due to the clouds and haze, the pilot could not determine the helicopter's position.  The pilot saw a tall building, flew toward it, circled, and held up a handwritten sign that said "WHERE AM I?" in large letters.  People in the tall building quickly responded to the aircraft, drew a large sign, and held it in a building window.  Their sign said "YOU ARE IN A HELICOPTER."

The pilot smiled, waved, looked at his map, determined the course to steer to SEATAC airport, and landed safely.  After they were on the ground, the copilot asked the pilot how he had done it. 

"I knew it had to be the Microsoft Building, because they gave me a technically correct but completely useless answer."

The past few weeks have been fun, interesting, hilarious, annoyed etc.

A friend from USA came to see me for two weeks.  Her first time here, so i was like "oh my god" what do i show her here.  Came up with the local towns first, Hitchin, Letchworth, Stevenage.  Then from friday to sunday we had a massive piss up and a bbq.  It was a great laugh.  Saturday I think that 4 people started at 10am, and we got to the bbq at about 3pm, i think.

Thanks to Carl and Babs for letting it be at there house.  :) Cheers guys.

Well for a short cut, we drank for 3 days, and had a bbq for 3 days, it was awesome.  and there was some sun.  Not that us english people were bothered, but my friend was freezing, since when she left it was like +39'C, so she thought it was cold.

On sunday we popped into hitchin to the Rhythms of the world.  They changed the venue this year to the proiry grounds.  Well i must rate this years ROTW at 2/10.  It was not the same.  It was rubbish compared to other years.  I hope they do not have it there again and bring it back to the town.

After staying there for about an hour, we left and went back to the bbq to continue drinking....again.

The following week we did various things, like head to london and did some shopping.  Thursday we headed off to Newquay for 4 days, so could have some clubbing time.  hehe, and followed with more drinking.  Izabela never heard of snake bites, so i thought it best to show her what they are....she loved them.  after having 3 or 4 we were pretty pissed then and this was only about 5pm though.  But we carried on all night.

My nan just had a knee replacement, so that was the other reason for going to cornwall.  She doing ok.  Bless.

Came back on sunday and just slept.  since the previous night we didnt get to sleep until 5am.  Way to much drinking on saturday.  Although we did go back to my cousins mates' house and play on the WiiFit, which i must say is great hilarious fun when your all pissed up.

The rest of the week was just looking around.  back to hitchin n stuff for lunch and drinks.  Unfortunatly we didn't get to cambridge, which i kinda hoped we'd get too but ran out of time.

Im off to sleep now.  Tired.

I mean seriously, What the FUCK!

What is a guy supposed to do to keep a girl happy round here?

Just under a week later and I still don't know what I did wrong!

I mean, It's all very good saying "it's not you it's me" but give me something to work with!?

Three years!

If you aint already heard, Dancer broke up with me.

Is there a way to make these posts members only?

I am happy to update you all with my life, i just dont want it accessible to the universe.

If not, i have moved to 0-soliloquy-0.livejurnal.com.  Some posts are open but most are friend only.  If you are interested i can add you as a friend.

Thankies

Afternoon all been a whie since i posted, had so much work and crap to do.

Recently when in the past few weeks i have ripped a tendon in my knee by an unfortuante accident.  SO i have been home bound for the past 2 weeks.  *sucks*

Well i decided to partake in the next gen gaming era, and brought myself a PS3, and i was actually suprised at how good...no, GREAT the graphics were.  Love it.  Spent most of my time on GTA 4 and the Bourne Conspiracy, which just rocks as a game.

This week got my american friend over for two weeks, so gotta show her around england...hmmm its her first time here.  yikes...no pressure...  ;)
Gonna show her london, cambridge, milton keynes, newquay and some other places that pop in my mind.

Otherwise work is not too bad, still installing systems across the south of england, so thats cool.  When i was at swansea, i stayed in a hotel called "the village" its a new hotel group that are upcoming, and i must say without a doubt this is defo one of the best hotels i have ever stayed in.  Go them... 

Just wandering if any upcoming events...? bar crawls etc?

This is a long one...

Ok.  So i have moved.  For those interested, this is how it went:
(spelling is likely to be shocking - sorry)

Thursday night saw me up til 1:30 am doing last minute packing before my parents arrived the next day with the van.  My key for my new place was put in the post on Tuesday night, but it still hadn't arrived.  I called my landlord who said that he had a spare but we would have to meet on the M25 somewhere as he lives in reading.

The friday morning arrived earlier than i would have liked.  I was up at 8.30 ready to shift my things down the 3 flights of stairs, to make things easier to load into the van.  Luckily my landlord said i could put stuff in their livingroom in the morning, so i started to shift the boxes down there.  My current landlords said the post could be anywhere between 10am -12pm, so i was egarly keeping an ear out for the letterbox.

My parents arrived with the van at about 11 and luckily i had managed to get most of it down stairs by then.  I had even managed to get my 32" tv downstairs on my own which i was quite impressed about.  We took my bed apart and packed up everything into the van.  My snake was put into a box with a thermal heat thing that you use for muscle ache, stuck to the outside of the box to hopefully keep the temperature a little bit warmer for her.  She is shedding at the moment so wasnt in the best of moods.  anyway.

We did very well at packing everything and even had room to spare in the pack of the van.  My flat looked like a bomb had hit it with random bits of rubbish scattered around the place, but i didnt have time to sort it out.  It was coming up to 12 and the post man still hadn't turned up.  We were nearly ready to set off, my dad securing things with rope, when i spied the post man.  I ran up to him and asked if he had anything for me as i needed my key to my new house and thankfully he had it in his hand.  That was a blessing at least.

The van was quite a ricketty thing and had one of those 1 1/2 seats next to the drivers seat.  My mum had come along for the ride because she wanted to see my place and see where i will be working.  Unfortunatley my mum is quite a bit larger than i am, and im not exactly waif like, and we had to both squeeze in to this cramped up front seat.  There was practically no leg room and given that my Mum said i was to sit in the middle, i had the gear stick almost constantly jamming into my leg.

The journey in total took about 9 hours.  This is a long time to spend with my parents at the best of times.  Sadly on this occasion we were all tired, irritable and uncomfortable, and had to sit in the M25 rush hour traffic while there were also road works and an accident which didnt help the traffic situation.  We also ended up taking the wrong turning off the M25 which meant having crawled at a snails pace to the turning we had taken, we had to crawl back up the M25 only to turn around again.

We got onto the A24 eventually and managed to refuel.  It cost £90 to refuel the tank.  My dad also picked up 4 tinnies and a bottle of wine from the station.  I think he was feeling the strain.

Once we arrived in Worthing, we tried to find my flat.  We asked around for a bit and eventually we were pointed in the right direction.  The location is spot on.  My flat is about 10 paces from a Co op and about 10 paces from the nearest pub.  Excellent.

Given that it was now 10 oclock, we decided that we wouldnt be unloading stuff that night so my dad just pulled the van over slightly as there wasnt anywhere to park, switched the engine off, and helped me move my snake into the flat.

It felt very odd letting myself into a house i had never seen before, at 10pm at night.  I opened the door to be greeted by a very small set of staircases, with a small bathroom on the left, up a few more stairs to the top landing where there were 3 shut doors, and a small kitchen.  I was told that there would be a key in the door of my new room, but none of the doors had keys in.  I could hear some music or something coming from one of the rooms so i knocked on the door.  It was quite a sureal conversation.  I introduced myself and said i was moving in, and wanted to know which room was mine.  The girl who opened the door didnt know.  It is her BF who lives at my place, but he couldn't come to the door because he has a "bad eye" (?!)

I tried the door next to theirs and there wasnt a bed in there so i assumed that was my room as i am bringing my own bed.  It is a nice size but a little grubby.  There were stickers on the wall and stains on the carpet.  There is also no living room which makes me a little bit sad.  The kitchen and the bathroom are ver small, and i was just feeling so disheartened by it all.

After getting the snake inside and we all got back into the van, my dad tried the ignition.  It wouldnt start.  It sounded like a travel hair dryer.  He tried again.  Same thing happened.  Great!

Luckly the car that was parked in front of us had moved, so we pushed the van into that space.  Unfortunately the back end of the van hovered over the yellow line, and to top it all off, the area is permit holders only.  We left a note in the windscreen and called the police to say that we were goign to have to leave the van there, because if we called teh AA, they would want to tow the van and we still had all my stuff in the back.

We left my worldly goods in the van (totally uninsured, as my goods are only insured once they are inside the house), and went to check into a hotel.  It was nearing on 10:30pm now and we were all knacked and hungry.  My dad and i cracked into the tinnies and we decided what to do next. 

Food was next on the agenda, but the hotel dinning room had stopped serving, so we went on a hunt for a restaurant.  I was very doubtful that we would find somewhere that would serve after 10:30, but after asking a very drunk chap where the nearest restaurant was, we managed to find a really nice chinese.

It was quite a posh place, and given that we had been lugging stuff about all day and travelling for a long time, we were all smelly and scruffy so it was a bit embarrasing.  Luckily they were still serving food though and it turned out to be really nice.  I was feeling very woosey at this stage.  The day before, i had gone to the doctors to get injected with a load of fake nasties that i might come across in Nepal.  This had started to effect me and i was even more shattered and out of it than even i realised.  I was struggling to concerntrate and answer even simple questions like what i wanted to drink.  The meal was very nice though and im looking forward to going back there, less spaced out.

I got to my room, and decided that i had to take a shower before goign to bed.  I couldnt get the shower to work and it almost brought me to tears as i was just so worn out that the slightest thing upset me.  Eventually it started and it felt really good to get cleaned up after the day i had.  I went to bed and was ready to collapse when the people upstairs decided to shout at each other.  This lasted til about 1am,

I finally managed to crash out when i was awoken by a repeat performance at 6 am SIX! i mean really.  Safe to say i didnt have a very restful night.

The next morning we went for breakfast at about 8am.  This was when they first serve breakfast on a weekend.

When the doors opened and we went to sit down, we were suddenly ushered to tables that had the letters A, B, C and D on them.  This seemed quite odd as there were a lot of made up tables, but obediently i went along with what the chap said.  My dad however realised that this was set up for a party, and told the man that we werent with them, and suddenly this man's reaction to us changed dramatically.  He was hidiously appologetic and offered us any table we wanted.  It transpired that the hotel was host to a German party.  We discovered this when the waitress came over to ask what hot breakfast food we wanted.  She said "ooo those germans keep going through all the food.  They will be making up their pack lunches with that lot you know.  We also have a bunch of nigerians staying here at the moment"

I was so suprised at that closed minded attitude.  Every member of staff were treating these germans with distain.  I couldn't believe it.

We left the hotel and returned to the van.  The van still refused to start, so while my mum passed me things to take into the flat, my dad called the AA.  They turned up really quickly, and after the chappy looked at the van for a bit, it was concluded that it was indeed buggered.  The AA man said that he could tow us back, but there was still al ot of stuff in the van.  What he suggested was that he could tow start the van, but first we had to remove some of the stuff out the back.  The AA man then went on to help get my stuff out the van.  How nice is that?

The van was tow started but once the engine started we were unable to turn it off, because it wouldnt start again.  This meant we had to keep the engine running while we got all the stuff into the flat.  THis also meant we had no time to put together my bed or anything.  All of my stuff is heaped into piles in my flat. 

My dad started to have a massive nose bleed while shifting my stuff whcih was quite worrying.  It eased off and finally after maanging to get everything in, i locked up my bedroom door and heading for the van.

The journey back was a bit odd.  It was lucky that we had filled the tank up the night before, because we were unable to refuel given that we couldnt turn off the ignition.

My dad's legs started to cramp from holding the same position for hours, and each time we pulled over so he could stretch it out, we had to shout at him not to turn the engine off.  It is just instinct to turn the key when you pull up.

I ended up having to go back to barrow with the parents, because there wasnt enough fuel to go around lancaster, and get teh van back to the depo.

Got back around 7ish so the journey took about 8 hours in total.

In other news:

Watched St Trinnians which i thought was quite funny.

Cleaned my flat and gave back the keys on Sunday.  This felt really weird.

Currently staying at Chloe and Jons which is really nice, but it does seem odd that i am now officially a lancaster visitor.

Went to Laura and Dans to watch Die Hard 4.0, each indian food and say farewells to monica and steve.

Got today and tomorrow left at work. 

Tuesday night im going to Mung Mee for tea with lesley and andy

Wednesday i am hopefully going to sallys to paint murally goodness

And hopefully thursday and friday i will be visiting people in manchester.

Then heading back to Worthing.

It's going to be a busy and expensive week.

I go away for a bit and you all start writing stuff.  What's all this about mozzfest? If you want to do Nottingham thats fine with me.

Right,

lets see, what new with me.

Work is fine.  I don't hate these people...  yet.  They seem to think I'm somekind of server genius having pulled them out of a situation and having the work ethic to monitor the servers after things were fixed. 

Living with people in ok.  I don't think they realise quite how loony I am.  They seem to like me, like most people...  I've always found that odd.  Though if I want to I can get on with most people.

Last weekend I caught up with Nd.  He's been having a rough time lately so we spent some quality "man time" together.  This involved takeaway and 15 hours of drinking.

Anyhow, thats me, hows you?

I see the panic buying Chelsea Tractor driving masses have descended onto my local taxation stations petrol stations like the idiots that they are and have completely drained them all.  Total idiots.  Sussex: dry.  How's the Great Mass Hysteria of June 2008 where you are?

Just checked prices for Oktoberfest.

Flights are pricey, but not amazingly so.  However the cheapest hotel we could find was nearly £500 for just three days, and it wasn't even in Munich (instead in Eching 25 miles away).

When we take into account flights, accomodation, food and perhaps most importantly beer money it all adds up to at least a grand, probably more if the absolute cheapest hotels are unavailable or you want to actually be in Munich somewhere.  You could probably have two weeks in the Caribbean for the same price!

Basically it looks like Oktoberfest is impossible on at least my budget.

I don't write about anything much nowadays, but I've been reading various economics blogs and have come to the following conclusion.

This country's current economic problems are mainly caused by stupid investors taking money out of the bursting bubble that is the housing market and putting it into the emerging bubble that is the oil market.

Us poor consumers are caught in the middle.

If I were in government I'd shoot stupid investors.  And remove the tax on beer and petrol.  It might not be a sound economic or social policy, but at least people would be able to travel to work and to drink away their sorrows without getting into too much debt.

3,2,1....

Good evening.  All I have to say is "This is my first post".

(Finished)

So, for my first post how did you think I did eh? Did I waffle too much?? Did I take too long getting to the point? Maybe I should have cut it down a little...hmmm...maybe to just "This is my first post" without the "Good evening" bit??

OK, OK.  I will leave it there and let someone else with something to actually say post. 

Thanks for reading.

To: Lancaster University Alumni & Development Office

Dear Sir/Madam,

Thank you for your letter dated 13th May 2008, in which you notify me that you have been attempting to contact me at my parents address.  Firstly, I feel that I must congratulate you at your success in writing to me in order to notify me that you are unable to write to me due to the fact that you do not have the correct address.  Many people wouldn’t have tried this strategy, presuming that it would be doomed to failure, but the fact that you have persevered against all odds and, may I say; against all reason is indeed a credit to you and to the university.

I am also thrilled at the opportunity you are giving me to donate money to the university.  I often lie awake in bed at night and wish I could contribute something, so that other students may benefit from the experience of attending university at Lancaster without having to pay those awful fees and whatnot that require the taking out of a student loan.  Indeed I often come up with new and novel ways of getting into further debt in order to finance these charitable donations, but alas the Student Loans Company say I am only eligible for another back-breaking loan if I am actually in full-time education, and presumably do not consider your cause worthy enough to make an exception for.

I am heartened however to hear that the 2007/08 Friends Programme telephone campaign is generating an excellent response already – perhaps it is the case that you do not in fact require my help? It will certainly make it easier for me to obtain some funds for you – instead of working to pay off additional loans I could instead perhaps work to pay off my other bills and original student loan? I am certainly pleased to hear that my fellow alumni are doing much better than me financially, in any case.

Still, it will be saddening for me not being able to get that warm happy feeling inside, knowing that the beneficiaries of my charitable donations “really appreciate” my generosity, and “enjoy getting in touch with their predecessors”.  I’m sure I would have really appreciated a donation when I was studying for my degree, if it wasn’t for the fact that no-one felt like donating anything to me.  To this day I regret this fact, and can only imagine the opportunities this general lack of donations led to me being derived from.

May I ask what subject it is that the students involved in the campaign are studying at Lancaster? I can only assume it is telemarketing, and while I’m sure the telephone donation campaign provides valuable “real world” work experience for students, I do worry about the long term future career prospects of these students as more and more of these kinds of jobs are outsourced to places like India and Malaysia.  Speaking as someone who works in an industry plagued by this “outsourcing” trend I would want your students to learn from my experiences, and perhaps switch their degree from Telemarketing to Management Science or something so they can be the people managing these Indian callcentres and perhaps in the future be in the financial position of being able to donate to your future campaigns themselves.

Unfortunately as it seems that I won’t have paid off my student loan until at least the beginning of the next century, and as of yet have neither won the lottery nor obtained a highly-paid job in stockbroking, I’m afraid there isn’t much chance of me being able to contribute anything to your worthy cause for the foreseeable future.  I would therefore appreciate it if no further “easy and convenient” direct debit donation forms were to land on my (and indeed on my parents’) doormats in the future, and if you would also refrain from contacting me by telephone every year.  I promise you will be the first people I approach should I receive any large sums of money in the future – any starving orphans and whatnot in Africa who might have been the beneficiaries of a donation will just have to make do in the case of this unlikely eventuality.

Thank you for your time, and please update your records.

Yours sincerely,

.david