Paris goes to jail

Is it just me who thinks that Paris Hilton going to jail is one of the funniest things to happen this year. I really think they should make a fly on the wall documentary about. Like The Simple Life on acid.

Polish

See, its not just me that thinks Polish people are rude.

Holiday photos (finally)

Right, photos of our trip to the Pacific coast are now on Flickr. These are mainly the choice cut and around half of the ones we actually took. In the process of labeling them...

Meanwhile you can now also see our weekend camping in the New Forest.

New job (again)

Now clearly my last post was far more important however I have a new job. Start it on the last day of this month. Woop. I would tell you who it was with and where but I don't want it to be google-able. However suffice to say it is closer to home in fluffy Berkshire, I get to drive to work and it pays more money.

No more shitty present employer or commuting into the skanky hole where my present employer is based on slow and horrendously expensive trains in cattle truck conditions.

Oh, and also I promise our holiday photos, all 900 hundred of them, will be on Claire's Flickr soon and selected highlights will be here.

Act of ultimate hardness

New Die Hard trailer. Yeah.

Jet fog

I got up this morning at about 8am in San Francisco. Had coffee and breakfast and then walked to the San Francisco cable car museum which we looked around until around 11:30am. Then we picked our bags up from our hotel and went via taxi and train to San Francisco airport and boarded the 4:30pm flight to Heathrow. I had dinner and a glass of wine and watched a few movies and was about to go to sleep when they switched the lights on in the plane and gave me breakfast.

The plane arrived, supposedly, at 10:30am. We then caught the train back to my flat and dosed for a while. Claire is still asleep.

Meanwhile, the weather in the UK is better than the weather we left in California, the clocks have supposedly changed, my clock on California time tells me it is 6:20am, my mobile phone (which I left off and in the UK) tells me it is 8:05am, my computer tells me it is 2:20pm, my bedside alarm says it is 12:40pm and my video clock says it is 1:20pm. My brain says it is night time, the rest of my body says it is day time and at the moment I am totally befuddled as to what is going on.

Anyhow, my present confusion as to what time it is and what I am supposed to be doing aside, I/we had an excellent holiday which included traversing gorges, catching ferries and having 'eat as much as you like' sushi for $20 (£10) in Vancouver, skiing and apres ski in Whistler and cycling across the Golden Gate Bridge and visiting Alcatraz in San Francisco.

No doubt more details and maybe some pictures to follow. In the meantime I am going to go work out whether to have lunch or breakfast or sleep or something else in between.

My first skiing accident

So last night I had my final ski lesson before we go away on holiday which happens to include a long weekend skiing in Whistler.

During this (otherwise pretty good) ski lesson, I happened to take a tumble and jabbed my thumb in the process. Don't ask me quite how, I don't exactly know. Anyhow, for the lesson, I ignored and really didn't notice it. It was only when it got in that I noticed it was a bit swollen. Nothing major.

Anyhow, Claire packed it in ice, bandaged me up so it didn't swell and I went to bed.

The following morning it looked the same as the previous night. Still a bit sore so I (we) bandaged it up again and I went to work. It was only by lunch time when it had started to swell that things started to become an issue. It started to throb, and kept on swelling. Following intervention by the first aid lady my workmates basically instructed me to go to hospital to get it checked out. So I went, relunctantly, becuase I still have loads to do before my last day tomorrow.

Anyhow, trying to work out the most rapid way of sorting this out I went to the NHS 'drop in' centre in Wembley, just 30 minutes down the road from work. This was a little hard to find but find it I did. Ten minutes later I was in with the GP. He was instantly concerned and said I had to have X-ray. However, there were no X-ray facilities on-site and I had to go to Northwick Park Hospital.

Ok, now this was a mission. With mobile assistance from Claire (and no help from the drop in centre staff) and a few wrong turns and one dodgy bus journey later I was at Northwick Park Hospital. And omg, what a class 1 shit hole it was. Spalling concrete, wailing mothers, large expanses of worn lino flooring and the smell of a badly run tower block.

So I find the X-ray department in this turd hole filled with hoardes of people who looked liked they'd been queueing there for days. Anyway, after queueing for five minutes I get to the front of the queue and the work shy wench on the reception takes a brief look at my referal card and, in summary, told me she had never heard of the place I had been referred from and in any case it wasn't valid as the GP hadn't signed it. 'You have to go to a&e here first' (great! a&e in this shit hole). Meanwhile my thumb is throbbing more. It is now three hours since I left work.

At this point I was a bit fed up with proceedings so decided to ditch the whole lot and start again at a half way decent hospital. So it was back on the bus, then tube, then another bus. Picked up my car from Claire's and went to Hillingdon Hospital, which I arrived at at 4, where I was X-rayed and diagnosed quickly. Thankfuly only a severe bruise, no break or fracture. Finally out at 5:30. If only I had just gone with my gut intinct and by-passed the London hospitals in the first instance.

Colds, skis and travels

I notice I haven’t done a post in a little while. Erm, so here is one.

At the moment I am busting with excitement as in just a little over a week we will be in Vancouver. However, to temper my enthusiasm I am presently suffering from a bizarre cold which has been afflicting me for the past few weeks. It started with a sore throat, moved on to block my ears and now appears to be on my nose with a case of the sniffles. Its odd though because I generally don’t get colds like this. Personally I blame having to board a skanky and overcrowded train every day and work in unreasonably air conditioned office and enjoy the delights of dozen times recycled air.

Anyhow, last weekend we had a short break in Cornwall (photos on Claire’s flickr) which was very pleasant and relaxing. We can recommend the Port Gaverne Hotel (or, well the self catering cottages annexed to it to be precise) very highly.

Highlights include missing the last ferry from Padstow to Rock and them kindly laying on a special service just for us and our ‘gentle walk’ along the coastal path between Port Isaac and Port Quin turning into a near marathon due to the massive descents and climbs along the coastal path which clings tightly to the seriously undulating cliff face and extreme weather conditions in the form of a proper North Atlantic wind. However a (rather late) lunch of ham, egg and mash for me (because they had run out of chips) and freshly caught fish pie (obviously the fish being the caught bit) for Claire ameliorated the mild exhaustion.

In other news I can now ski, albeit only in a straight line as I have ‘issues’ with corners. I have one more lesson to do before I end up going down a mountain proper so hopefully can get this resolved by then otherwise I am going to have to hope for one very straight mountain in Whistler.

That’s about it I think.

Skiing

I am learning to ski. Starting next Monday at Bracknell dry ski slope. It would have been nice to learn on snow in the Milton Keynes XScape however that is over an hour away whereas Bracknell dry ski slope is fifteen minutes down the road from my flat (and cheaper I might add).

This is prompted by our trip to Vancouver and San Francisco next month where we are going up to stay in Whistler over the weekend and going skiing (or snowboarding if your name is Claire).

I am not sure at the moment whether to be excited about scooting down a mountain or terrified of falling off a mountain.

Nauru

I stumbled across The Republic of Nauru a few days ago. The fourth smallest country in the world and comprised of one, almost wholly strip-mined, tiny Pacific island and populated by 13,000 obese, yet incredibly poor, people. I thought it was an elaborate but fictional Wikipedia article to start off with but it turns out it is a real place. The history of the place sounds like the plot of a bad movie. Bizarre. The Lonely Planet (bearing in mind this is a pro-travel website) synopsis is brilliant.

Blue Men

On Friday I went to see the Blue Man Group in action with a bunch of Claire's girlie friends and their other halves (and Claire too). I had no idea what to expect as I couldn't find much detail on what these 'Blue Men' actually did.

However, I am pleased to say that the aforementioned 'Blue Men' were very entertaining and well worth going to see.

I would tell you what it was all about however that would spoil it if you haven't seen them (but I will say about the bit where one of Claire's friend's boyfriends was plucked out of the audience, stuck in a boiler suit, turned upside down, hurled aginat a wall and turned into a work of art which was particulary amusing).

What made the whole thing work was that you didn't know what they were going to do next. Go see.

How much First Great Western Rail suck II

So, if you didn't guess from this post, I think First Great Western Rail are a bunch of fucking idiots.

To this end I sent them a letter telling them quite what I thought of them. And guess what happended. The other day, I received a letter from them.

Guess what it was? A response to my complaint? Haha, yes that would be rather good wouldn't it.

No, I get junk mail... marketing info. 'Would you like to have a weekend away in Oxford for the paltry price of 84766746767676780903670984 bejillion pounds?'

Well no actualy, I spend enough time on your shitty trains during the week, the last thing I want to do is dignify you with my presence at the weekend.

Tossers. Seriously, are they running a train company or a steaming juggernaut of badly planned and late running shitty PR?

Skipping the Country II

They always say the beauty is in the detail however when it comes to working out moving abroad, the detail is not at all beautiful and is actually verging on the mildly overwhelming.

Getting to Australia and finding somewhere to live is the easy bit. I could do that in a weekend. The hard bit is finding a job out there and getting a visa to be there and having a job in the first place to support myself. At the moment I have three options…

The first option would be the best but is rather plagued by ‘technical details’ imposed by the Australian High Commission. This is the basic semi-permanent independent work visa which has no majorly restrictive conditions and allows you to stay and work in Australia for up to four years. However, to qualify for this you have to reach a certain number of points; specifically 120. I have 105. Their requirements are very high and short of being an experienced Doctor, or having a large amount of cash to invest in the Country (which I don’t) you don’t get to qualify.

The second option is the most preferable however involves a lot more ‘up front’ work and effort. This option involves me getting a job in Australia, whilst still in the UK, and securing a visa on the basis of that. Due to a shortage of planners in Australia, as in the UK, I am told that with my experience there is a reasonable chance of this. However, securing an actual job first appears to be an uphill battle. For a start I am not in Australia and am therefore unlikely to be the prime target of any Australian firms recruitment campaigns. Added to this I have no Australian planning experience (obviously) and at present, little more than a fleeting knowledge of the Australian planning system. This is a difficult route to proceed along.

The final option is, as I like to call it, ‘the seat of your pants option.’ This involves travelling on a working holiday visa. This allows me to stay and work in Australia for a period of one year subject to some rather irritating conditions. The first is that I cannot work for any Australian employer for more than three months (or maybe six months… I am still confused by conflicting advice on this). This therefore puts me in the ‘temp’ planner working bracket and means that, in essence, I will have to go out speculatively and find a temp job there, hopefully as a planner. There are some opportunities to get a temp job before I go but judging by the temping market this will be literally only weeks in advance, if that.

This option has the advantage of being able to extend the ‘working holiday’ visa by a further year, but in order to qualify I would have to do three months of my first year doing ‘regional work,’ ie. sheep shearing or fruit picking etc. in order to qualify. And to be blunt, I am somewhat unconvinced that I want to do that and how that would actually look on my CV. The difficulty is that this visa wasn’t really designed for me; I am looking at picking up my career and planting it again in a different country for a little while, not go on holiday.

At present I have not picked a route, however I have made at least one contact that I think can address some of these issues. I am not expecting this to be any easy journey by any stretch of the imagination however, fingers crossed something will work itself out, this is all early stages after all.

Then again, I could just try and find myself a nice Australian girl to marry, not too sure what Claire might say about that mind.

Skipping the country

So Bng is/was thinking about Japan. I am also thinking about moving to a different country for a while. Australia to be precise. I am still investigating jobs, visas and accommodation however I can’t find any decent reason not to go. The draft plan at the moment is to move out to Australia at some point between the end of the UK summer and Christmas so we get two summers. Thinking Sydney/Melbourne area or maybe Brisbane for the weather, try to get me a job before we go and get a working visa otherwise we will (hopefully) find temp planner jobs out there on a working holiday visa. This may then be followed by a similar arrangement in New Zealand (where, fyi, they are lot more amenable to letting you stay permanently than Australia). This is, of course, early stages so ‘the plan’ may be subject to variation/amendment.

To say I am amazingly excited about this is an understatement. My Mum however, not so much.

New year

Well, I don’t know about anybody else but the past few new years I have had have always been a little bit disappointing and a non-event. Usually festivities have involved a house party of some description and much booze and the final midnight countdown and post midnight celebrations have always been a little, well, vanilla. Don’t get me wrong mind, for those of you that have been there, it has been good catching up with people and seeing friends etc. but the big event was never as ‘big’ as I was generally hoping for.

So, this new year I we did something a bit different. But I will come to that shortly…

My brother was moving house on new years eve, from Reading to St Albans. And I was helping out. Everything was proceeding fine before our merry jaunt down the M4 ground to a very sudden and complete halt. At which point our little convoy of a van and two cars finds out via the radio that the motorway has been shut, with us on it, due to a large accident and according to the radio; ‘nothing moving very soon’ which left everyone a little despondent to say the least.

This was made doubly irritating by us being at the very back of the queue, literally there were four cars behind us and then the motorway was closed and nothing further was coming. If we had been moments later onto the motorway we would have missed the whole thing. So we sit, and wait, and wait. Meanwhile Nick sees new years eve turning into an evening on the M4.

However, a police car turned up and sat at the back of traffic. Initialy I thought this was to ensure no law breaking jaunts by rogue elements taking a backwards trip along the hard shoulder (or the whole motorway to be honest because nothing was coming). However as it transpired after a short wait the police car got cars to do a U-turn and escorted us back the wrong way up the (non-functioning) motorway and off the wrong way off the entry ramp at Slough Central. And of course, as we were at the back of the queue, we were first off and sneaked past all the traffic queuing off the motorway onto local roads. So pleased with that and thank you to Thames Valley Police.

Anyway, moving of brother was sorted, albeit a little later than planned and involving a collision of van with car, oops, nothing too serious mind.

So back to Maidenhead in time to meet Claire where we were staging our evening in, avoiding chaos in town and on transport, with a nice meal and cocktails.

At midnight a bottle of champagne was popped from the balcony to the tune of multiple fireworks going off across the town which we had a fantastic view of.

And, do you know what, going back to the reason I started this post, it was one of the best new years I can remember, at least since that year with the three zeros.

Here’s hoping everyone else had a good new year too and wishing you the best for the year to come, it, for me at least should be an interesting one… (maybe more details on that as events transpire).