Skiiiing; a.k.a. A Week in 1984

Going to Alpe d'Huez with 7 lads was an experience even if I discount the skiing...but we'll start with that.

I'd never been skiing before, and hadn't realised one thing (which now seems painfully obvious); the only hard part is slowing down. Sure, there's a bit of technical skill in shifting your weight gracefully during a turn, or getting some good height on a jump; but the majority of my time was spent trying not to go too fast, and learning how not to die when that wasn't possible.

My development was therefore aided greatly by my willingness to fall down a lot, and my decision to treat fear as excitement ("it's all the same hormones anyway", noted a psychology researcher I met out there). Unfortunately this resulted in what I can now confirm is a cracked rib and a collection of interesting bruises. The goggle-mark sunburn and chapped lips I have no such excuses for - that was just idiocy on my part.

Skiing then, was fantastic - and I'm definitely going again, but when I do, I'll have all the proper gear. However, by gear, I don't mean a beautiful pair of skis or well-moulded ski boots. I mean clothes that were at the height of their appeal in 1984.

Because, being on a ski resort really is like living in the 80's. The only songs that were playing (at all hours of the day) from post-1987 were ones that would still probably have hit the charts if that was when they were released. 80's sunglasses and headbands were in abundance and everyone on the slopes looked on in envy when someone in neon-green salopettes (with spiked hair of a perfectly matched colour) walked by. We even had little CB radios with our own call signs (and the obvious, endless Top Gun quotes).

Now, to spend the rest of the weekend doing absolutely nothing ^^
Xx

Tenses - Help Me

I've been brushing up on my grammar recently (guys: I expect you to buy me a drink every time you successfully use that line on a girl in a bar), and I've come across a small annoyance I simply can't resolve.

Normally these things are simply a lack of understanding on my part, rather than a fundamental crack in a system - and any thoughts/comments would be appreciated:

"I will sit" - Future simple
"I am sitting" - Present simple progressive (whoops)
"I am going to Egypt in a couple of weeks" - ...?

Looks like the present, but extremely commonly used to indicate future plans. I can't even see any potentially implied clauses that would help.

So?

Accountants Can't Count

Every day, on my way into work, I see a giant poster on the tube wall advertising the Institute of Charted Accountants, which reads thus:

"Over 84% of FTSE 100 companies have an ACA on their board."

- also available on their site. Now, whilst this may well be true, it seems an odd way to phrase things. There are, by definition, one hundred FTSE100 companies. As such, it surely shouldn't be too hard to come out with an exact percentage.

I was tempted to believe that maybe this was just some clever marketer trying to make it seem like there were possible many more than just 85 FTSE100 companies with an ACA on their board. But, frankly, having seen the rest of the advert (a picture of a fairly shoddy leather chair), I don't really believe they hired a marketing consultant. I'm more inclined to believe it's just a rounding error..

Möbius Bagel

On Monday some new people moved into my office, to welcome them I went downstairs for 10 minutes, had a bit of a chat and ate some of their 'welcome' bagels. Because I'm a nice guy. However, being a nice guy will only get you so far, a real pro would have sliced and then linked the bagels to form a möbius strip.

Like this.

Even better is that this is actually practical - the increased surface area means you can fit more cream cheese onto the bagel. What a hero.

Holiday Planning

Some people book holidays well over a year in advance, and have every little detail of the holiday and every minute of their itinerary accounted for long before they set off. Those guys are no fun. Here's how I do it:

1. Find a destination
Contrary to what bad American movies tell you, turning up to an airport and trying to board the next available flight is not a good idea. Quite apart from the cost and the fact that most of the flights going anywhere nice are full, there's the sheer danger of turning up at an airport full of edgy, armed police with no plausible explanation as to what you're doing.

My particular preference at this point is to find a hotel/hostel/b&b booking site - I like Lateroom - and abuse its search engine. Lateroom, for example, insists you search for a destination, but happily throws back nearly all of its database if you plug 'hotel' into its search engine. Other sites even allow wildcards, so a simple search for '*' gets the lot.

From here, set a comfort/adventure threshold. I find randomly taking 10 places, and forcing myself to pick the best of these 10 and go there, works best for me. You may wish for the thrill of taking whatever's at the top of page 6 regardless, or the cowardly safety of giving yourself an entire three pages to pick from. One important rule here, no more than a few minutes' research on any given place is allowed.

2. Buy a phrasebook. Study it.
You'll thank me for this as we progress down the list..

3. Turn up and make friends
Seriously, you may be tempted to get guidebooks, or to search around the Internet trying to find out where the biggest museums and most tourist-friendly sights are before you leave. This is boring. If you want to know what's exciting in a new place, go and find some local people and ask them. If they don't speak English, good, you can try out your new vocab. If they do speak English, try their language first anyway; if they start responding in English then speak Welsh at them until they believe you don't know any English.

4. Explore
Walk down alleyways. Stop and see what's happening whenever large groups of people are heading in one direction; or standing around waiting; or gathered around some attraction. When on public transport, don't be afraid to get off before your stop, or continue past it, if things look like being interesting. When driving, allow yourself to get lost and see what happens.

5. Act blindly
In a restaurant? Pick something you can't pronounce or translate. See a door with no sign on it? Go through it and find out what's on the other side. A lack of understanding regarding the local culture or language is something to be treasured, there are so many things this will allow you to do that you might otherwise have avoided or been too scared to try.

Enjoy. Let me know about your adventures.
Xx

On Italy

I learned two key lessons on a recent holiday with Julie-oh to Bologna and Ravenna:

1. The fact that I'm on holiday, in the sunshine, has no bearing whatsoever on the temperature of the sea in mid-October.

2. Italians really do just sit around drinking espressos and wine all day.

I particularly liked the concept of 'cocktail buffets' that pervaded most of the cafes and bars we visited: buy a single cocktail and help yourself to the range of oft-replenished, gorgeous little savoury & sweet delights placed around. Then, get another cocktail, rinse, wash and repeat.

Although the aforementioned sun was a treat in October, I did manage to acquire a slight sunburn, about which I was inexplicably embarassed and self-conscious on my return to rainy London (I mean, really, sunburn in October? How pretentious). The looks we got from Italians as we walked down the beach were priceless (the sandals I inadvertently left there, unfortunately not).

Finally, pro-tip: plenty of food in Bologna is labelled as "..alla Bolognese" and none of it is remotely like the Bolognese sauce we get over here. In fact, most of it is *way* better :)

Ina: AssItalia

Somewhat unfortunately, I appear to have a fantastically* handsome rear end. This makes it very difficult to walk backwards for any extended period of time before I am stopped by a well meaning stranger and have to spend five minutes bashfully accepting their compliments.

Nowhere is this phenomenon more acute than in Italy. On a recent short visit to Bologna and Ravenna, the locals were particularly impressed. In particular, the Ryanair attendants were so thrilled they made me wait around for nearly an extra hour just so they could call up some more friends to stop and stare.

This started off fairly innocently; someone would walk past animatedly chattering in Italian about (I presume) my posterior. We'd go into bars and the waiters would immediately comment on this (again, I presume - my Italian is a little flaky).

However, things started to get a bit creepy when the artists and architects got involved. What started off as harmless stained glass graffiti:



Soon turned into the defacement of historic cultural buildings:



Whilst I'm naturally flattered, this is a bit worrying and I'm not sure I'll be showing my face (or rear end) in Bologna again anytime soon. It was, however, nice to win the annual 'Ass of Italy' award - a moment I'll treasure and have on my CV for many many years to come:



More Italy pics/stories later :)
Xx

--

* Understand that here I refer to both definitions of fantastic; 'great' and 'surprising'.

Go See Some Jazz

As anyone within range of my various streams of communication will know by now, this week is London Jazz Festival - and it's fantastic. Unlike a traditional jazz festival, this is spread out all over the city and instead of catering to any kind of elitist crowd is happy to move between hip-hop, classic vocal tracks, poppy piano and experimentalism; in addition of course to the more standard contemporary jazz which is played at a superb standard by a range of up-and-coming stars and established legends.

Personally, it's the former I've been a lot more excited about seeing - I know Sonny Rollins is great but I've heard so many of his albums, collaborations and live tracks already that I'm not going to get much new out of it. A 12-piece jazz/hip-hop youth collective last night, on the other hand, presented me with an entirely new sound; one that I've never come across before (presuming it even exists) and am really looking forward to hearing develop over the coming decade.

I'll post up some reviews of the more special shows I've seen shortly, but if you're near London (or prepared to travel) then there's fantastic gigs on right up until the evening of Sunday 22^nd November (when I'm hearing Marcus Miller play from Tutu - the album he wrote for/with Miles Davis). Get in touch if you want some recommendations/company.

You don't need to know a lot about jazz to come, it's not that kind of crowd - and I've rarely brought a newbie friend along that hasn't enjoyed some part of the show. Give it a try :)

Common Sense

I've not blogged much about my new job - partly because I'm fantastically busy all the time and partly because when I'm not working I'd rather not think about work; fun though it often is.

One thing that's really impressed me at Thomson Reuters is their sensible working attitude. I haven't seen much of people prioritising their tasks based on what will make them look good; endless internal meetings that have little point; and clock-watching managers that care more about the office dress code than the quality of work:



Take, for example, this line from a recent email around our flexible working policy:

"We will focus on output and on what needs to be achieved; inputs such as where work gets done, and the hours worked, are not as important."

Perfect! Although, perhaps not so applicable in all cultures, as a German colleague pointed out:

"Send such an email in the German companies I've previously worked and you're fired before you can count to 3.

Anyhow, back to work...
Xx

Grad Fair Fun

For three years now I've been heading out to the various graduate recruitment fairs in the autumn to chat to students about where they should work: specifically, at Microsoft - or this year, Thomson Reuters. It's amazing how easily my loyalty can be bought with a bunch of cash (take note people).

I love these things - it's fun chatting to some of the bright students but it's a lot more amusing to watch the dumb ones come up and make fools of themselves in front of the people who'll be recruiting them in future. Here's a few of this year's classic quotes:


"I'm at University but I don't really like it so I'm thinking of something else, can you recommend anything?"
Yes, not going to a graduate recruitment fair.

"Are you guys French?" No. "Oh so you're posh then?" ...

"I've got a lot of experience as a bakery assistant, and doing cake decorating" I don't think we're the right company for you "No no...look at my CV [two pages of catering qualifications]".

"I've got a psychology degree."


It's also amusing to see different companies' approach to recruitment. Aldi go down the subtle route, with an Audi A4 parked in the middle of the fair and "£40k starting salary" - I think it would be a bit redundant to ask what kind of hours their grads can expect. It was also fun to see Royal Mail had a large stand at the fair (and their exhibitors turned up) - and to listen to the grads ribbing them.

Finally, at the Birmingham fair I wandered over to the Aston University stand to say hi to the folks there, which ended up turning into a nice little meeting point for the various ex-grads who've managed to land themselves jobs now. I think I volunteered to have a profile of my [ahem] fantastic success in the new Undergraduate Prospectus.

Ryanair

I just got back from a long weekend in Italy (and I'll gloat about how wonderful it was in a post replete with pictures shortly), bookended by flights from The Low Fares Airline.

Somehow (and not just thanks to the Microsoft expenses account) I've always avoided Ryanair in the past. Apparently their foibles are well known but, despite recent claims that they were considering charging for toilet access or planning a super-budget model, whereby passengers stand for the journey I still didn't quite appreciate what an experience it would be.

Boarding was fun, with a priority aisle available for anyone who paid for it, or the very old & very young. I thought this a lovely idea, until it actually came to boarding and we found that the priority passengers simply got to stand around on some stairs for an extra 10 minutes whilst everyone else waited by the gate. After that it was all equality...everyone got to stand around in a stairwell. Why on earth don't they just assign seats? It can't cost any more (not even printer ink, given that everyone has to pay £5 to check in online).

Onboard there was some beautiful classical music playing as we walked on (I later found this same 18 second file plays at the start of every flight, it's not an indication of their cultural aspirations). A soothing pre-recorded Irish voice talked us through everything and we were away with no extra charges..

..but the voice continued, offering us scratchcards, hot food, cold food, perfumes, gifts - there's less advertising in American TV than on a Ryanair flight. The voice was occasionally interrupted for a J20 advert (which could naturally be bought on board). The flight attendants spent much more time trying to sell stuff than...anything really.

It's not all negative - there was a little fanfare as the plane landed which prompted cheering from the passengers, and Ryanair are now giving away a million free seats (actually they're £4.99 and don't include taxes) after their recent tiff with the BBC.

I still wouldn't recommend it though.

Xx

Music in the street

I headed out to Spitalfields Markets for Spitalfields Stew recently, a free, al-fresco jazz festival and generally fantastic idea. The sun was shining, the market was packed with people and there was a great crowd sprawled all around the stage. Also I had a picnic, I love picnics.


_{I never got a turnout this good for my jazz gigs...}

The Billy Jenkins Blues Collective were up first and I highly recommend the show if you can see them anywhere - suburban blues with a load of energy, and featuring (slightly unusually) a violinist, fantastic.

Ordesa played second - I've seen these chaps before but they were fantastic. Kenny Wheeler (nearly 80 years old, but you can't tell) on trumpet, playing with just a guitarist and saxophonist. Beautiful, simple music played perfectly.

Finally there was a 5 piece improvisation (two bass, two drums and Jan Kopinski leading on saxophone), which whilst slightly too wild and abstract for half the folks who came out for a day in the sun with some pretty music, was still a bit disappointing for me. I guess I listen to too much Ornette Coleman...


_{I'm behind his left ass-cheek}

After all this, we wandered over to Brick Lane (where all the oh-so-so-so-so trendy kids hang out) and saw Ben Walker singing his fantastic Twitter Song (and a beautiful ditty composed for Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall). Check him out sometime when you can.


_{Seriously, two hats. I'll never be that trendy.}

Good times in London abound! :)
Xx

I'm in London..

..and far too busy to post much - just thought I'd drop you guys a note so no-one thought I'd died. I'll post pictures & stories when things calm down a bit (3 months or so I'm thinking).

In the meanwhile, Manu Delago is playing in Leicester Square next weekend, I'll probably be going on the Friday if anyone's about. Respond via phone/text ideally.

Xx

I Went Diving Today And It Was Awesome

Please note the word is diving and not driving. Don't congratulate me on not hitting any cars. Don't tell me about your driving test. Don't wish me luck with mine. Practically everyone on the Internet I've told about my diving adventure has made this mistake so far.

..and back to the point.

Diving is awesome. I wouldn't have believed a short stint in an empty swimming pool could be quite so thrilling. Underwater super slo-mo Frisbee is the best (and most dramatic-looking) sport in the world. I think I've found my new hobby (although I'm off skiing next week in case that's even more fun).

It wasn't all fantastic; I failed the 'take your mask off underwater, then replace it' challenge quite spectacularly - as soon as my nose was free from the mask I decided to try and breathe through it. This is not recommended when underwater. Diving centres need much clearer signage on this matter.

Diving is awesome.

Xx

--

<sub>I have to mentally struggle to restrain myself from filling the majority of this blog with meta conversation about grammatical conventions, phrasings and related minutiae. For example, the previous sentence was ambiguous - did I mean 'grammatical phrasings'? Probably not, given the end of the clause, but that's no consolation to the intrepid reader skimming from left to right. I could have rephrased the sentence, but the flow and intended structure would have been lost.

You see how bad this is? I started this sub-paragraph to talk about capitalisation in the title of the blog post and already I'm off on a tangent. I think I need to get back into editing and copy-writing and vent some literary steam there.</sub>

Victory

I'm eating a coconut.

Many of you will have done this before. It's possible you've even opened your own. It was easy, you used the right tools, the right techniques, there's really nothing to it..

Screw you guys. I got to use an axe. I had fun.

Here's the final armoury of tools I required to get into my coconut:


_{How could I lose?}

The first step was to get the milk out. I didn't have a vice or a clamp, so I figured my legs would suffice. The fun bit was when the drill bounced off the shell and I had to activate pneumatic mode:


_{A bit closer to my testicles than the B&Q safety manual recommends}

The knife was a complete disappointment in most respects, but did serve well in lieu of a hammer when I needed something to bash the chisel with. We don't have any pics of that scary moment, so here's one of the knife disturbingly close to my fingers:



And, finally, success:



In other news my housemate has swine flu.

Xx

I Want To Learn Something In A Day

Help me.

There are 18 days left until I leave for the excitement of London life with a new job; working every day and playing every evening - I don't plan on having much spare time. Right now however, I've got literally nothing to do and, given that there's only so much time I can spend staring vacantly at Jeremy Kyle and Flash games before their appeal ever so slightly starts to dim, I'd like to learn something.

Something, anything - I don't know what. Some skill, ability or trick that I didn't have at the start of the day, but I'll have at the end. I don't want to start learning something; to learn the fundamentals of an activity - I'd like this to be a complete exercise.

There are limitations. Something which requires a group of people will be very tricky, but I'm amenable to the prospect of having to get some resources/equipment first. Obviously, things I can get quickly would be better (I don't want to wait around for Internet shopping) and cheapness would be preferred. Something which would involve me visiting a specialised location isn't ideal, but could also work.

So, ideas?

My Favourite Bridge

On the slim off-chance that any residual coolness from my university days is still lingering about the place, here's a blog post about a toll bridge in Bath. Not that toll bridges aren't immensely cool, but still making blog posts in 2009? Seriously?

On with the joy.

On a recent trip which in no way involved Bath, I happened to be in Bath for a couple of hours. Those of you who've made the thrilling journey from Bathampton to Batheaston (fabulous naming scheme by the way) will know exactly what's coming up, but let's build the suspense a bit for those who haven't yet had this life affirming experience.

I want you to imagine that you have a pressing, burning desire to get from Bathampton to Batheaston (the reverse is rarely true). You're sitting there, nearly in tears at the thought of having to take the A4 all the way to Bath proper, only to come back on yourself along the A36. "There must be another way", you cry, "I just can't bear this".

Enter the ruthless, inspired, creative genius that owns The Old Mill, together with its bridge. This man (it can only be a man) lets people drive across his private bridge for the princely sum of 60p, if it's sunny and he can be bothered turning up to work. If not, there's an 'honesty box' for you to contribute your fare, so the automated barrier of invisible karma can rise.


_{Click on the picture for an amazingly large version. Seriously.}

This bridge, this beautiful, tiny bridge, can only fit one car along its road surface. This leads to long queues in one direction, and then the other. The reason for this? Two excessively wide stretches of pavement (never used), one on either side of the bridge.

Finally, in a desperate bid to be accepted by the bigger kids over on the M6 and on the Welsh border, the masterminds behind the Bathampton toll have now got a list of charges for various types of vehicle. So, a car (crossing time, 5 seconds) will cost you 60p, but a car with trailer (crossing time, 5 seconds) will cost 90p. Dare to bring a caravan (crossing time, 5 seconds) and you'll be up to £1.20. Bring a lorry and it'll be about £100 for recovery I imagine.

If all this wasn't enough to sway you, I should point out that this bridge is really pretty. Really, very pretty. Unfortunately, in the 5 minutes of queueing to get on it, all you'll see is an Audi's exhaust pipe. In the 5 seconds of crossing it, you'll be too busy worrying about the narrowing at the other side, and the exceptionally high chance of losing some of your paintwork.

Xx

Original Documents

I'm moving to London. Exciting.

Less exciting, however, is the process of doing this. Specifically, dealing with letting agents and a new landlord. I don't mind the letting agents stealing my wallet every time I enter their premises. I don't mind that the landlord is trying to slip a clause into the contract saying everything I move into the house becomes his property. I don't mind that all amounts in the contract are actually written in an obscure currency which has a symbol nearly identical to £, but means I pay triple what I expected - this is all fairly standard fare.

What I do mind, is the constant requests for 'original documents' and 'paper proof'.

I don't have any bank statements. I don't have any bills with my address on them. I don't have any 'formal letters' (whatever they are). I use the Internet* for everything. On the off-chance someone does send me something in such an archaic format as paper, I generally throw it in the bin unread.

Whilst we're on the subject, I don't have a fax machine. I don't want to print off the attachment you've emailed me, sign it and then fax it back to you. A fax machine isn't more secure than a scanned email. A digital signature is legally binding. The 80's are dead.

Frankly, the past couple of weeks would have been a hell of a lot easier if I just forged a document every time someone asked for one. I wonder when someone's going to notice I've just Photoshopped the signature from my driving license into every document they asked me to print, sign and scan. I wonder if they do notice, if they'll question quite how ridiculously insecure an unwitnessed signature is.

Finally, I get annoyed that 'insecure' next to 'unwitnessed' looks horrible. But I still don't think we should standardise anything. Except power supply connectors.

--
_{*And I'm still cool enough to capitalise the 'I'}

New (Old) Phone

Finally, I've upgraded from my, frankly awful, Sony Ericsson w890i, which has been a thorn in my eye since I got it just over a year ago. This phone took up a to a minute to boot, the battery died quickly and, second-worst-of-all - it crashed.

A lot.

I mean, I read reviews online that said the w890i would crash, and laughed at all the idiots who couldn't use a phone properly. It wasn't until later that I discovered the little red light on the back of the phone, next to the camera, serves only one purpose. It's there to tell you your phone has crashed.

At the point when the designer is adding a 'your phone crashed' light, you've got to wonder how robust the rest of the design really is..

Worst of all, however, is the phone's complete lack of resilience to being covered in seawater and sand. A light drenching (more on that later) and the thing simply shorted out and corroded - an obvious design flaw if ever there was one.

As such, I've upgraded back to my beautiful old Nokia 6230:

Now, this phone has a screen so poor you can barely view any form of image on it. The speaker itself constantly makes that little interference noise you get when you put a ringing phone next to your speakers. It can only store 100 text messages before having a fit and making you either delete them all, or painfully remove messages one-by-one.

But. It can take a beating. I've proven this in the past by

1. Simply throwing it at a wall (the back sometimes falls off),
2. Setting it on fire (there's now a small raised area on the back cover) and
3. Putting it through the washing machine (that last one, I admit, was accidental).

I'm debating getting something a bit more modern but first, I need to know, is there anything out there which can pass the three stage test above?

Research

Lots (read: more than one) of people have been asking what I'm up to nowadays, which has led me to the conclusion that I'm neglecting my blog. The whole purpose of this exercise is to avoid frivolous conversation by publishing the answers to questions which form the bulk of small-talk; that my conversation time may be better spent. The inefficiency of giving the same facts to different people in different conversations is amazingly annoying.

So.

Having finished university (results are out on Thursday 18^th with luck), I'm now...at university. I'm working as a research student for ten weeks, working in the same area as with my final year project.

I'll hopefully be publishing a paper in AAMAS (Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems), and then presenting it in May/June 2010, in Canada. Also it pays for rent and clothes shopping over summer - but let's pretend I'm doing this for the advancement of human knowledge.

We're still finalising a topic - I'll post a dumbed down (read: jargon-free) version of whatever I do up here :)

Xx

PS: I have a small office with (inexplicably) 9 chairs, yet on the rare occasions anyone stops by for a chat, they generally stay standing. Explanations on a postcard please.