Language barrier

Quality quote from my cousin Jennifer whilst discussing lessons at school....

"English is the worst, especially French".....

not entirely sure what she meant

Am I sitting comfortably?

Tina is out for her work Christmas (yes I know it's January) party tonight, on some boat somewhere on the Thames (maybe she told me more details, I can't have thought it important....oooh, hang on, I've just remembered it is on the Embankment, does that help?)

All this means is that I am left at home, and, if we had one, holding the baby. Tina has tried to get me holding babies before (she seems to try it with every new baby we see). Here is a couple of photographs, do you think I look comfortable in either of them (I'm not so sure), but at least the kids aren't crying





ooh, I'm wearing the same top now as in the second picture, I must like it or something

Four countries, three days

OK, just a quick note to flesh out my trip to Hungary last week.

The first thing to say is that we were supposed to be there all week. However, due to the software not being ready on Monday, we were basically on standby ready to go anytime, which, it turns out, meant I was picked up at the ludicrous time 3:30 on Wednesday morning. The start of a long day. When we got to Heathrow, I was suprised to actually find everything shut, check-in desks, shops etc. I guess I've never flown that early before, and I won't again if I can help it.

One additional thing to note is, because we were flying short notice, it meant we were were actually flying Austrian Airlines, via Vienna, adding about an hour and half to the journey.....great. The flights passed with little incident (except the photograph two posts below), and we then proceeded straight to the customer.

NOW, our understanding was that we were just installing our software, but it seems that they had decided that we should also install all the other software required for ours to run (which they had neglected to tell us, or if they had, hadn't been filtered down properly). Allied to this that they threw six people from various backgrounds, roles and English speaking ability into a small room with us, meant it was quite tricky to get things done. I think I'm using "us" in the loosest possible terms here, as basically I did nothing but get food and drink for Prabir for two days, as he was the one doing all the work. I did some stuff for a few hours on Friday, but kinda felt a bit useless for long periods.

The days were long (working until 8 on Wednesday and Thursday), starting at 8 too, which meant waking up at 6:30 (which in my book is almost as bad as 3:30). We had dinner out only once (if you don't count the KFC that Prabir forced us into on Friday), but we got ripped off in a taxi. Now the clock was set correctly when we got in, but I think he diverted our attention (you know, look at this building, it's so great) and then did something to the counter, as a three pound journey cost 15 quid!!!! And it took us a bit of time to work out, as there are 350 Forint to the pound so decimal places get confusing.

The food we had was pretty good I thought, although I didn't see any Goulash on sale, I did have Goose liver, it was weird.

We were actually finished early, which meant we could come home earlier, and, again being short notice, meant we flew home on Friday with Czech Airlines, via Prague.

I didn't tell Tina I was coming home as I thought I would surprise her, and thought it would nice as when I spoke to her from the airport in Prague she sounded all sad. Imagine my surprise though, when I got home and found the house empty, and all my best laid plans were out the window. My initial thoughts were that something bad had happened, but luckily the real explanation was that she had actually just gone to see an old school friend who she hadn't seen for a few years. Didn't find that out until 1am though.

QWERTZ?

For some reason, the keyboards in Hungary, along with having a whole raft of extra letters and symbols, had the Y and Z keys swapped around. This was pretty confusing and led to lots of misplaced Zs (it's surprising how often you use the Y), and I don't really know the reason behind it, as all the other letters were in the same place.......

If you saw this....

would you be scared?

Luckily we were on the runway at the time

The frying game

Tina cooked some 'real' chips for dinner the other day, and, unlike the last time we used the deep fat fryer, I wasn't particularly ill afterwards. I think this probably had something to do with the fact she had spent about three days cleaning the thing, so there wouldn't have been any residue germs milling around.

Not Bond fans?

Weird thing happened at the cinema yesterday. We went to see Casino Royale, finally, with Tina particularly liking the tuxedo wearing and swimming scenes.

There was a couple of women in the front row (well front of the second set of chairs), who were there, happily munching their popcorn and sipping their drinks before the film came on, until the page that announces the film came up, you know the one, the British Board of Film something or another classifies this film etc. Anyway, I can only assume they weren't there to see Casino Royale, as they promptly got up and walked out of the door, never to return. Now I know that the screen entrances in Watford don't have the film they are showing above them, but the tickets do, or at least they used to, and at the very least the person who takes the tickets tells you which screen to go to. I was wondering which screen sounds like one? ten maybe?

I found it funny anyway.

All change

I'm not in Hungary (yet) as everything has gone tits up at work and the software isn't ready to install, maybe I'll go tomorrow, I reckon Tuesday at the earliest.

Wendy isn't here (yet). Tina hasn't really been able to talk to her much as she has been busy this week, but maybe we'll hear more in the next few days.

And Friday was the last (for a while) after 8 and a half years, couldn't believe it was that long.

What's that coming over the hill?

Is it a picture, is it a picture?????



seems the connection was to blame, new 4Mb broadband modem has fixed the problem

This is a Michael Schumacher car in the middle of Hng Kong airport by the way.

Oot and Aboot in Canadia (part III)

There are some pictures to go with this post, but seeing as my upload facility doesn't work here, and I'm off to Hungary for a week, and then I'll probably be busy, you'll have to make do with using your imagination. To be honest, so will I, because I am about to post about my trip to 'The Ex', which happened in September (I know, I'm not exactly Mr Current Affairs, which is probably why I'm not in the media industry right now).

Anyway, back to the subject matter, which is as previously mentioned, 'The Ex'. This is actually short for the Canadian National Exhibition, kind of a local slang if you will. So anyway, we (that being Chris and myself) went there on a weekend, probably after having a big session the night before, I don't really remember, but you can pretty much assume that was the case, on a day that was so hot, and humid, and foggy/smoggy, that it was pretty awful to walk around in, and visibility was poor. Not poor enough that we couldn't see the exhibits, but pretty poor that we couldn't see back into town when we were about a 20 minute sweaty walk away.

We had no real plans so we just wandered around, saw the human cannonball bloke, who was a bit mental if you ask me, and it really came as no surprise when he announced his father also did the same job. Next up were the flying canucks, a bunch of ski-ing trampoline artist types, very bouncy and smiley, mildly entertaining.

Thinking about the whole thing, it was like a very big fairground most of it, with probably over a hundred game stands, you know, coconut shy and darts and hook things and ball throwing and all that jazz. I couldn't actually be bothered to go on any of those.

One place we did spend some quality time was, surprisingly, the Rogers Sportszone. It wasn't that exciting, but you could have a brief go at some of the sporting stands which, of course, you know we did. Lacrosse I was awful at, same with hockey, not sure those kind of stick sports are really my thing. There was also a football (that's soccer to any Canadians) stand, on which I was pretty disappointed to only hit two targets out of four. We had a go on the driving range, but having never really held a golf club, neither of us was much cop.

The baseball automatic pitcher was also pretty tricky. I missed the first ball, edged the second one to slip (er, am I mixing my sports), but the third one went flying straight and true, go Chris!!!! Unfortunately, the other Chris failed miserably and missed the ball all three times, he's not really that sporty. We did also have a go at pitching, but, to be honest, we were awful. My attempts were recorded so slow that small children were getting faster pitches than me, and Chris's attempts were so off target, they were being recorded by my speed gun in the next lane....oh well.

One of the selling points of the ex is that it has a casino open (pretty much all the time I think), whereas in Toronto (and I don't know if this is true everywhere in Canada, there is certainly at least one in Niagara) there isn't one. this means that all the gambling addicts can come out to play legally for three weeks of the year, and people have remarked that they know people who have been every day. We would have liked to have gone on that one day, but, true to form, Chris (the other one) forgot his passport so they wouldnt let us in. Probably just as well as we would have lost all our money I guess, not being hardened gamblers, I don't think that one game of hold-em at the beer fest counted.

Other points of note at this place were the dog show, which we avoided like the plague, and the cat show, which I wanted to see with morbid curiosity, man there are some ugly cats in the world that somehow people think are pretty. There was an indoor market with items from all over the world. You know what was the only stuff I found from England, some crap stand selling crap ornaments, you know, the kind you might find in a pound shop or something and give to a relative at Christmas that you don't really like. It made me wonder whether all the stands were just selling crap from their individual countries. We didn't buy anything. There were some plants, a farmyard, erm, oh yeah, we had a few games on the playstations (you know, Ice hockey or something), some guy was balancing rocks and some other stuff that didn't appeal (exhibitions of Russian dancing or Irish dancing or Spanish dancing, but definitely dancing).

Anyway, it killed a few hours, got us out of the apartment, and obviously made such an imprssion I can still blog about it months later.

So what does Goulash taste like?

Seems I'm off to Hungary with work next Sunday, could be interesting (although I'll have to get out of the habit of calling it Hungaria). Hope they speak enough English too, my Hungarian might not be up to scratch.

Not sure about the company I'll be keeping, but it's only a week. Wendy is coming to stay with us for a bit too so at least Tina won't be alone.

Weather forecast reckons it will be around 2 degrees and raining (sleeting I guess), great, although it is getting colder here too I read somewhere.

Mmmm, fragrant

I accidentally used Tina's deodorant instead of mine the other day, I wonder if anybody noticed I smelled a bit girlier than usual.

And now....

it appears I've fucked up my blog account or something, as when I attempt to update my template it makes a big mess, maybe it's linked with the connection and picture problem, who knows

edit: seeing as I can change it quite happily on my PC at work, it is definitely related to the picture problem

With regards....

to my pictures ending up like this: -



I know it isn't the PC (tried on both the main computer and the laptop), it isn't the browser (IE and firefox), it isn't the picture (same picture works for other people) and it isn't the website (cannot upload to any other websites).

In order to rule out it being the connection, we are upgrading to a 4M Modem on the 13th. After that I am out of ideas.

Songs of Love

It appears, since this season only, that I am sat behind Father Jack at Spurs. Every time we have an attack, he seems to shout out some incomprehensible word in a gruff tone, you know, eeurghggghgh, or something. Maybe I should have got him some throat sweets for Christmas. (note I don't think he looks like him, well maybe a little)

So, who wants to know.....

what I got for Christmas then?

Well even if you don't, I'm going to tell you (although if you really don't you have probably stopped reading by now).

As you'd expect from a 29 year old, I got (amongst other things) the following presents: -

CDs - Now Dance 2007, XFM This is Music, and Jamiroquai (the last one from Julie and Peter, after Christmas had been and gone, and they were 'sunning' themselves in Vegas)
DVD - Family Guy season 5 (so that means I have seasons 1,2,3 and 5, must get 4 sometime)
A Toronto Blue Jays T-shirt not very secretly smuggled back from Canada by Amelia
Football Manager 2007 (for the PC, that makes about 8 copies of that game I own)
Canis Canem Edit for the Playstation 2 (it's about schoolyard bullies for the uninitiated)
some chocolate and marzipan, mmmmmm, in fact Susie has got me lots and lots of white chocolate, it might take me a while to get through it all (not that I'm complaining)

and finally, just what you would expect, Singstar and Singstar Rocks for the Playstation 2 (from Tina, I would have thought I didn't need any encouragement to sing). Went down a storm on Christmas day, had a sore throat on boxing day though.

Just a side note, Tina was slaughtered on Christmas day, every time I saw her she had an empty glass and a new botle of Champagne to be opened, we got through 13 bottles, I dread to think ho many she drank on her own.

Oh, and the boys won the Christmas Quiz tournament, 2-1, winning Articulate and Trivial Pursuit, but losing Taboo....woo!!!