Coffee Pots and Bus Bullies

Things have been ticking along nicely of late. I continue to settle into my new office. My desk is nice if a little(!) hot when the sun goes by and super heats the windows by my side. And by windows I mean walls as the walls are glass. It's a lovely toasty 27 degrees and we're not even in Summer yet.

The powers that be have even put a spanking new coffee machine in the break out area near where I sit. It's less of a fire hazard than the last one from which the smell of burning coffee would waft when someone left the pot on with nothing in it. I'm not sure where the nearest fire extinguisher is at the moment, so secretly breathed a sigh of relief when they replaced old sparky.

Unfortunately the new machine's plumbing has a bit more to be desired as it's not connected up to the main water supply and relies on a bucket of water placed underneath the work surface to operate. And I have seen what that bucket looks like at the end of a day and its not pleasant!

Also, when the milk runs low in the machine it heats up to around about fourteen degrees, so probably goes off quite quickly!

The good thing about all this is....I don't drink coffee. *phew*

Lately it's all lemon and ginger tea in the morning and peppermint tea during the day for me at the moment. I know it all sounds a bit poncey but avoiding tea and coffee's caffeine highs and inevitable lows makes me feel less tired through the day, though it could all just be psychological.

My journey in though isn't as quick as it has been over the past two weeks. The express bus that I used to take doesn't seem to turn up on time anymore and I have to rely on squeezing myself sardine-like into one of the slower buses that stop what feels like every few yards.

And today the bus had tickets inspectors on. A particularly large, Canadian sounding woman got on the bus and proceeded to fine an old Somalian woman for taking the bus 15 minutes before her pass was valid. So in front of everyone else, she got her name, address and then starting asking her for twenty pounds. The poor woman had to get someone else to translate too.

The ironic thing is that I get on that bus so many times and see people not paying only for there never to be inspectors. This time this old woman was the only person they found without a valid ticket. *sigh*

Oh well, I know that she was in the wrong and I guess she won't do it again but it definitely wasn't right to pick on her in the way that she did. I really wanted to say something but was squashed in place on the other end of the bus. Nobody else did a thing.

Changed by deed poll

Today, I decided to change the name of the blog.

As much as I live in and love London, my daydreams are no longer restricted to just it's sphere of influence; so time for a change...

Settled In

So I (and my colleagues) bid our final farewells to Baker Street, uprooted and have finally officially moved to our new office in Marble Arch.

After spending a few days there last week mainly shivering away as they left the air-con on full blast to "clear the system," it was an interesting contrast to be sat there today with my South facing window absolutely roasting away! It's dehydration city, baby!

Our blinds just don't do a good job of keeping the sun out and it's not even Summer yet! *sigh*
I may have to buy a desk fan...

Also, the powers that be have decided that in order to encourage recycling we'll have no personal bins in the new office. Just a few recycle and general refuse points dotted around the building. Which means that if I blow my nose and want to throw away the tissue, I can either leave in on my desk, the floor or get up and walk off to the local refuse point and throw it away there. Good for exercise, bad for work efficiency! As luck would have it I'm only a few metres from said refuse points but some people will have a much longer walk to throw their waste away.

Hmmm, I wonder how long that'll last?

Other than those minor niggles, I have settled in very nicely and even have a slither of a view of Hyde Park (as seen above) from where I sit, though the buildings blocking the view aren't actually works of art.

The main bonus point for me at the moment is the fact that my journey averages about 30 minutes coming in and about 35 mins going home, so not bad really!

Work In Progress

So, it was first day at the new office today and a new journey into work. Okay, well strictly, I can still take the old journey from Acton Town, get off earlier at Hyde Park Corner and walk across Hyde Park to the office.

I'd tried that yesterday on the way home to figure out how long it'd take to walk from the office to the station (15 mins) and to see what other options I'd have.

Today, I decided instead to take a bus to Shepherds Bush (approx 20 mins) and then catch the Central Line to Marble Arch (10 mins,) which would have been okay but for the fact that the main road was closed off by the police and my bus got diverted up to the A40 and then back down to Shepherds Bush the long way! *sigh*

So in fact it took me 40 minutes instead of 20 and I only just made it into work on time.

But the fun didn't stop there. Our office is still mainly a building site. We're only there in a "testing the IT systems" capacity and the rest of the staff move in next Monday. The bits where we're located have been cleaned up but the rest of it is still exposed wires hanging from the ceiling, covered walls and lifts (as in the picture) and various bits of debris.

Oh and the temperature in the office started off at 18 degrees and fell to 15 degrees by the time I had left after 5pm. Brrrrrrrrrrrr!

So there I was in my fleece, jacket and woolly hat for the whole day, trying to work.

I have no idea why but I seemed to be more affected by the cold than anyone else. In fact I was still shivering when I got home. Hopefully I won't come down with a cold over the next few days.

Strangely Mesmerising

http://www.bloglinesimagewall.com

Good Friday

I took Friday off this week. That made it a good day, but things got better...

The sale of my late mum's house went through. It was a one bedroom ground floor flat in a retirement age-only building but it had been on the market for four years now (yes, four!) and I was starting to despair of the monthly, ever-increasing maintenance charge that I had to pay on an empty flat and had thought that nobody would EVER buy it.

But they did, so thanks to this, the second good thing of the day was that I walked into my local Halifax and wrote the largest cheque that I had ever written and paid off my mortgage. I tried my best not to shake as I wrote the cheque. This was a momentous occasion and here I was in front of the cashier trying to look composed as I wrote a large number and then tried to remember how to spell it!

I made it in the end and joyfully handed it over. The cheque, weirdly, had to be paid to me but then you realise that the account, whilst always negative, is still just like any other bank account, just with a lot more zeros and a nasty minus sign in front.

Well, that all done, I popped off to the local sorting office to pick up a new broadband modem that I had ordered from the newly re-branded Virgin-Media (but which they had failed thanks to their own bumbling and the rather bad Parcelforce to deliver to me at work a few days earlier.)

It turned out that they had upgraded my area (without telling anyone, go figure!) and I no longer needed to rely on my faultless though puny (by modern standards) wireless 512Mb connection. So, lo and behold I'm now on a 10Mb connection for the same price as my previous connection. Result!

I finished off the day with a nice meal with the other half to celebrate. It peed down with rain but we didn't care.

It was a good Friday...

The weather in London today

In a word: Wet...

Moving office to here next Monday

And, believe it or not, that is an actual photo and not some fancy Photoshopped thing.

Finally...Vietnam

I have to admit it. I'm never going to get to write up my holiday in the detailed way that I would like to. Who'd going to read it all anyway?!

Sure enough, I started. I even made it past the first day's entry but then ran out of the will to carry on. I have no idea why. Am I just getting lazier?

Anyway, as I said in the previous post, a picture can indeed replace a multitude of words. But perhaps they can all still be a bit confusing without any form of narration. So here's a quick one working chronologically through the photos on http://doobrie.co.uk


First we flew into Saigon (aka Ho Chi Ming City aka HCMC) and we were only there a day and a half, some of the time knackered after our long flight. We checked out a "famous" (according to our guide books) bar called "Apocalypse Now" but found that it was basically just a glorified sports bar with attendant hookers. Alright if you, like the dirty old men that were hanging around the place, are looking for that sort of thing. We ate in a nice family run restaurant one night but then in a more westernised place the second night called "The Underground" complete with London Underground roundels branding all over the place.

Next stop was the Cu-Chi tunnels to the West of the city where we where shown how tiny the tunnels that the local resistance soldiers used to hide and fight against the French and Americans in two wars. And yes, they were REALLY tiny. They had created a larger 100m "tourist tunnel" for us to try out with escape steps every 20 meters. I crawled on my hands and knees, head bowed, broad shoulders scraping the sides with barely no light in hot and humid conditions. It was all a bit crazy! Why any tourist would want to walk the full 100m, I have no idea. Twenty was more than enough for all of us!

We were also shown a lovely array of traps that had been used in the "American" war to severely main or kill soldiers backed up by a lovely mural. Then it was onto the presidential palace and then the War Remnants museum. This had a really good and moving collection of photos taken during the war by professional photographers, along with some not so nice ones depicting the horrors of war.

Then leaving this all behind, we hopped on a boat and rode along the Mekong Delta to a small village where we got to bed for the night in a home-stay. Our beds were simple mattresses (we slept in sleeping bags liners on top) with mosquito netting provided above that we all tucked in under the mattress when we retired for the night. It was actually very nice. The air was fresh (baring the wafts of anti-mosquito stuff that we had all liberally sprayed onto ourselves) and I felt very relaxed out here.

After a good nights sleep and a nice hot shower (okay, it was more of a hostel than literally staying at someones house) we left to go to a place called Chau Doc where our guide's family lived. We jokily asked if we could have dinner at his parent's place that night not realising that he was taking us seriously and all ten of us did indeed end up having dinner cooked by his mum that night! Unfortunately the food disagreed with a few of the group and we all got mercilessly bitten by mosquitoes as the door to their house was left open to give us some fresh air. Oh well!

Next day, itching slightly, we headed across the border from Cambodia into Vietnam. It was a land crossing, so no air taxes (good) but instead we had to go through a series of border huts, filling in a form in each. Our bags even got scanned by an x-ray machine whilst locals casually strolled across the border with their donkeys and oxen watching us curiously.

To be continued...

Because a picture speaks a thousand words

Enjoy the 67 or so that have now popped up on my picture site http://doobrie.co.uk from my trip to Vietnam, Cambodia and Bangkok.

A write up will follow "soon"...

Almost back!

But not quite!

Ready to head off, yet again

Thanks to those who offered words of advice. Things on the romantic side have picked up again and everything is hunky-dory once more. In fact I feel that we are closer than we were before, which is good. It does mean that we'll probably be missing each other a lot more over the next two weeks though.

I've spent the past few days sorting out stuff for the holiday. The itinerary is basically flying out to Saigon (aka Ho Chi Ming City) via Bangkok, then west and north a bit across to Cambodia. A bit of beach time then off to it's capital Phnom Penh, up North to Angkor (a place I've always wanted to see!) and then a quick flight back to Bangkok for the last two days chilling out with a Singha or Chang beer watching the world go by on the Khaosan road.

I'm pretty much all packed barring toiletry stuff that I pack in at the last minute.

My laptop, camera (with nice new circular polarising filter), MP3 player, PSP with brain training game to make it through the long flights are sorted.

Passport, Vietnamese Visa, anti-malarial tablets, passport photos for Cambodian visa (for which we apply when we cross borders), anti-insect spray (one for clothes, one for skin), sun cream (factor 20 this time so that I might actually not come back looking whiter than when I went out as happened in Namibia with factor 30!), cap (essential for my follicly challenged head) and most other sundries are all there now.

I hope to actually write something up about my travels this time around as the Namibia write up was rather fore-shortened.

So, it's adieu for a short while I guess...

The Food Of Love?

We decided to meet up at lunch time and talk through things. There were too many unknowns and we were going in circles. Emotionally we decided that we ought to finish it and break up.

Half way out of the door, with tears in our eyes, we talked a bit more...

Breaking up didn't feel right for either of us. We hugged and made up, worked out a plan to improve things and both left feeling a lot happier.

Fingers crossed that love will out...

Happier Times

A select few pictures of my trip to New York last December can now be found here, if anyone's interested.

The picture to the right was taken with a zoom lens from the top of the Empire State Building.

Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel

Is a feature film being made at a pub at the end of my road. They've converted the outside of the pub to look post-apocalyptic and I currently get to walk through the set on the way to and from my house!