The staggering

This weekend I was on Bongo's stag weekend 'the staggering' in blackpool. Here's the photo of the T-shirt I have to prove it.

Here's Kieron, Dave and Owain Doug (oops) and a girl with bunny ears. We theorised that girls grow these if they go to too many slaggy nighclubs so they can hear better over the loud music.

No booze was consumed at all. Oh, ok maybe a bit.

Who's that weird short guy in background?

The hotel bar and Dave's tongue.

Saturday morning. Andrew and Chris sporting the requisite T-shirts.

Bongo considering jumping?

This was our curry house for Saturday evening. Around about an hour before the Police and (presumably) someone from the Council closed them down. That was reasuring seeing as we had finished our meal by that point.

Erm, a nightclub. Its not a very good photo because the UV lights were making Bongo glow but the statue in the back corner might hint at what sort of club it was.

This was my only photo from in the club (on account of it being sagely suggested to me that the management might not take so kindly to me taking photos of erm, some stuff). Well, except for this one. 'Strictley no touching.'

I told the bathroom attendant (where I took this) that they'd spelt it wrongly. He said they spelt it like that in Blackpool. I think I told him he was an idiot.

(And big kudos to Dave for sorting it all out).

Idiot builders

My flat development is presently getting an upgrade care of the management company. General repairs and repainting of external walls and windows etc. Anyhow the idiot builders doing the upgrade left signs like this on most of the front entrances recently:


Now, I have seen a lot of dumb signs but this has to be the most dumb sign of all time.

'Can all residents leave there doors and windows open on Monday.'

Yeah sure, I'll leave all my windows and doors open for a bunch of builders while I am at work. Having a giant advert to all and sundry that my doors and windows are going to be open all day really makes me want to join in even more.

It gets dumber (setting aside the 'there' and 'their' troubles they were clearly having). The photo above isn't of my entrance door because it fell off. Why? Because they stuck it on freshly painted and rather unadhesive door stain. I mean honestly.

Literature II

My train commuting lifestyle at the moment means that I am ploughing through literature at a rate of around about one book a fortnight. Here is some of the stuff that I have read recently and some thoughts about it without giving away too much about plot details:

Merde actually by Stephen Clarke. This is a book for the guys I think but that’s not to say that the girls won’t like it too. It’s a delightfully randy (without being literary porn) and a highly entertaining little jaunt around France. I thought it was great because the lead character ended up doing what I was screaming in my mind for him to do around a chapter later. This is my favourite recent read by quite a long way, not least because I could totally relate to the lead character. (You also might like to think of reading the prequel, A year in the merde before this though but as I read Merde actually without realising there was a prequel until after I had finished it I wouldn't say it was a definate prerequisite).

A short history of tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka is not about tractors and isn’t set in the Ukraine. It’s a good book but unlike Merde actually I totally failed to relate to any of the characters making it slightly lacklustre, at least for me.

Past mortem by Ben Elton delivered the usual Ben Elton style fairly obvious plot developments but this time coupled with stomach wrenchingly gory scenes. I don’t recommend reading this on a fast train as the combination of blood, guts and gore and the slightly bumpy non-stop section between Hayes and Slough made me feel a little queasy at times. It was still a good read mind.

And yes ok, so I read the Da Vinci code. Yes it’s a bit trashy and the plot developments are pretty obvious and designed to make you feel smarter than the supposed experts that the book is about (sometimes they are way dumb though). But you need to read it before going to see the film and the conspiracy theories are quite engaging.

Blink by Malcom Gladwell isn’t a novel and it’s not a self help book. It’s about ‘thin-slicing,’ using your instincts as opposed to your ‘brain’ to work stuff out. A book about one of my favourite things, teaching you stuff you already know but didn’t realise you did.

I am presently reading Long way down by Nick Hornby which is shaping up to be an engagingly structured piece, albeit a little morbid.

Reblog

Right, it looks like after a little two week hiatus that the blog is back up and running again. So, why the break I have been asked.

Well, when I started this blog I made a commitment to myself to produce five posts a week. The reasons for this were two-fold. Firstly it was so that every weekday morning you visit the site and there would be new content. Secondly it was so I had a schedule to stick to so I would actually make consistent posts. This commitment I made to myself has resulted in posts of varying quality because of my self imposed rules. Rules that, for the most part, I have stuck to except when on holiday or disconnected.

A consequence of this was that every morning or evening I had stick something up. Now I like doing the blog but my self imposed rules were becoming difficult for me to manage. Up until around about March I operated the blog with a ‘buffer’ of around about five generic posts that I constructed in my spare moments. This was generally fairly non-time constrained stuff unrelated to me and gave you such highlights as LED throwies and the thing about how crazy those Japanese people are.

However, with new job, new flat, new lifestyle and generally being busier and having more on my plate these buffer posts started to dissolve and I used them up and ended up blogging on the fly. Occasionally this meant I was coming home from work on the train and thinking ‘omg I have to do a blog post now too in addition to… etc.’ which was really turning it a bit sour for me and hence the break.

But, that’s not to say that I don’t still like doing the blog. I am just amending the terms on which I do it.

I started thinking about how I can change stuff to suit me and experimented a bit with Nick102 but decided not to pursue that because, well, I didn’t like it really, it didn’t feel right. So after that bit of messing around I thought I would kill the blog all together but I can’t do that either. I couldn’t get through a day without thinking ‘hey that would be good in a blog post’ before realising that I wasn’t doing it any more.

Anyway the up-shot of all this is that I am re-opening the blog. Its up and running again but here’s the clinch. I am no longer making any commitment to five days a week posting. I don’t have the time to be consistent like that anymore. So some times you will get lots of posts, sometimes none, you’ll have to live with that, its all dependent on mood and time now.

Hiatus

I’ve been doing this blog thing for the past nine months or so with five posts a week pretty much consistently the entire time except when I have been on holiday or moved home.

Since I started it I have moved jobs, moved flats, changed a lot of other little things, made new friends and (nearly) learnt how to use public transport.

However I haven’t had a break from the blog in spite of all these other changes. So I am taking a break from doing it for a little while. I don’t know if this is the closing stages of the blog or just a brief break from it. I need to see how I feel about not doing it.

Boycott

Here are the things I want to know nothing about for the next month or so. I refuse to enter into any conversation about these things unless it is one that involves how mind numbingly dull and pointless they are:

Big Brother
The World Cup

Right I am off on holiday now so the next post will probably be the middle of next week.

Even more firefoxy

Look, portable firefox. You can install it on a USB flash drive and run it from any machine. Also you can install it on work computers where the .exe function has been disabled by the IT dictators (or at least I could).

I can now browse the web using firefox at work, following some tweaking of the proxy settings, which is way better than the clunky old version of IE I was forced to use up until I found this.

10 reasons why its great to be Nick

He lives in a really great town in south east England
He works in London (which is way cool)
He has a great flat (notwithstanding a few little issues)
He can eat whatever he likes and stays stick thin regardless
He knows that he is a bit of nerd and is cool with that
He knows that a genuine smile can devastate anyone (and needs to learn to use this tool more often)
He earns way more money than he thinks he deserves
He knows that everyone else is the most important thing in the whole world (but sometimes forgets this)
He thinks he has terrible taste in music but doesn’t care
He has loads of really great friends who read his blog (if you are reading this you are one of them)

Phone dump III

Like phone dump and phone dump II, more photos captured on my cameraphone over the last few months or so with some commentary.

Ooo, look, a portable bus stop. That’s got to come in handy right?

Nice extension. This has an enforcement notice attached to it. I mean, seriously who thought this was a good idea?

Ealing Broadway station late at night. Quite arty I thought (probably wrongly).

This is my new yellow t-shirt. Girls stare at my chest when I wear this which is funny.

This is one of my shots of the fire on Ealing Broadway that I thought I deleted by accident. I might as well have deleted it as it has all the drama of an episode of As Time Goes By.

These are my new little JBL Creature speakers. This is the right one.

This is the left one.

And this is the big-ass daddy sub-woofer. These are very good little speakers if you want a recommendation. They do not go super loud (but when do you want your pc to go super loud?) but are really high quality.

This is the Southall Gurdwara, the largest Gurdwara outside of India.

It is very impressive and very smart (although a little chavy with the gold lettering and those railings).

It is the Seek place of worship. I think this place is great, not least for its provision of wholesome, free, hot food to anyone. Yes, anyone, you don’t have to be a Seek (not like some homeless soup kitchen, its a social focus). And they give this with the only proviso that you respect their customs within its walls.

Camping

So I am going camping in Newquay next weekend. I haven’t been camping since circa 1994 and am a little unsure how I have ended up going camping again now. I am hoping that it has improved since I last went and am approaching it with as open a mind as I can possibly muster. Here is a list of questions I have about camping in the 21st century:

Where do I plug in my mobile phone charger?
Where do I plug in my internet cable?
Or is it all wifi enabled?
Where is the fridge kept?
How does the shower function work?
Where do I hang up my clothes?
Can you plug the kettle in the same place you plug the phone charger?
Do I not need to worry about the kettle because they bring coffee to you like in London?

I have a sneaking suspicion that the answer to all these questions is ‘no.’

New offices

In one months time I move offices. Up until now I have worked in a shabby 1960s relic which is wholly unfit for modern purposes. The building is ear marked for demolition at the end of this year so it (quite reasonably) has not been maintained recently. The result is a building with spalling concrete, failing lifts, boarded up broken windows, shabby carpets and a general demeanour of a building on its way out. The movers have been slowly emptying the place of furniture for the past month or so already.

The new building I am moving into is a very smart, high-tech, ultra-modern edifice replete with white stone internal corridors, brushed steel surrounds, dramatic expanses of glazing and cooling wall colours which change depending on whereabouts you are in the building. All of this is completely new, I slash we will be the first occupants of our area in this building. There are also a range of working arrangement options featuring quiet rooms, informal working spaces and lounge sitting areas complete with plasma screen TVs hung on the wall. And you don’t just go to the toilet here. You have a high-tech lavatorial experience.

So I am pretty excited about working somewhere which is really quite so blatantly cool.

However there is a drawback.

I don’t get my own desk. In fact nobody gets a desk. I get a wheelie cart and cupboard to keep my stuff in but my desk is whatever workstation I choose or can find in the morning. I am honestly not sure how this is going to work and am a little apprehensive about it. Time shall tell I guess.

Flow

Engaging little flash game. I keep burning my dinner because of this.

Urban village

So today I visited Grand Union Village. A sustainable urban village built at a high density along the waterfront to the canal. It features eco-homes, home-zone layouts, car sharing scheme, on site community facilities and all the other environmentally friendly inclusive buzz words you care to think of. I even got the reflective snappy arm bands to prove it (to promote safe walking and cycling).


It was pretty smart though, just a shame it's on the edge of Hayes, the most horrible place in the world.

Update:

So apparently the above photo is far too camp (thanks Mark). And given that I didn't exactly capture the fun snappyness of the arm bands and also caught some of my laundry in the photo here is a better one:

Induction

So today I was in day one of three of my corporate induction. Yes, that’s right, three days. Three days of ‘essential’ information three months into my commencement of employment.

Anyhow, it was more than a little dull so I kept myself entertained with a little bit of impromptu creativity. Here are some of my finer works.

Pie chart of Nick also featuring the time/dismay curve and the time/attention curve:


Introducing the Anthropomorphic-robo-enviro-crime-bot which features a rear mounted gatling gun, missle launcher and pooper scooper (inspired by one of the presentations on ‘enviro-crime’ whatever that may be):

Cyberman shopping list (will probably make more sense if you saw Dr Who this weekend):


Laxative
Self actualisation classes
Battlestar Galactica DVD box set
Slippers
Inflatable ‘water wings’ arm bands
Metal polisher and scouring pads
Moisturiser
Haribo Tang-tastics
Double glazing
Metropolis DVD
Leg warmers
Traditional hand crafted jewellery

On location

So last week I finally got access to the pool cars at work so on Friday I took one out for a spin. Having now been signed up for the scheme I find out that there are actually a selection of electric and regular vehicles available, not just electric cars like I previously thought.

Of the vehicles available to me are a 2005 Renault Clio, a 2004 Renault Clio and a 2005 Toyota Yaris in addition to the electric cars. Rather than mess around in some glorified milk-float I booked myself in for a session on the 2004 Clio (because it was available) and headed out into the world, having some fun trying out a new car.

To tease you a bit here is a picture of its tyre. Not too sure how I managed to both take and store this picture on my cameraphone without realising:

And here is a picture of the car in full glory:

And here is a picture of me (looking a little sunburnt, its tough having a job where you get to go hang out in the sun in shorts and a t-shirt) with the car:

For information the last two pictures were taken here:

This is a small flat development on the edge of the Haymills Estate, a 1920s and 30s housing area of a mixture of Arts and Crafts and Art Deco housing and flats just off the North Circular. It’s a pretty cool place as opposed to much of the rest of the areas I work in which can be anything from a bit scruffy to steaming turd holes. It is the second nicest place I get to go whilst at work.

This is the nicest:


This is Haven Green, just off The Broadway (and the car was stopped at traffic lights when I took this, says he to the ever growing 'don't drive and take pictures' lobby).

It’s a large, beautifully maintained green with mature trees and attractive buildings surrounding it. I get to walk across it every morning and always think something along the lines of ditching work for half an hour and going and getting a coffee and reading my book on the green, but never do. Its great, there’s loads of stuff going on around it but the central sections are sufficiently secluded to be peaceful but also open enough to be able to keep an eye on what is going on with the rest of the world. I sometimes come here at lunch.

Anyhow, the 2004 Clio performed pretty well. It was great catching the train to work, driving around using a new (to me) car I don’t have to pay for, then going down to the pub after work and having a few drinks before catching the train home. I think I will have to try out the other Clio and the Yaris at some point. I might even go so far as to have a go in one of those electric thingies.

Internet dependency

So are you addicted to the internet? (Via).

Q. How often do you block out disturbing thoughts about your life with soothing thoughts of the internet?

A. Erm, sorry? What?

Q. How often do you fear that life without the internet would be boring, empty, and joyless?

A. All the time! What would I do at work?

My score was 34 by the way.

Lightningfield

I stumbled across Lightningfield about a month ago and it almost instantly made it to the links section on the blog and my own RSS feed (and that does not happen very often at all). If you haven’t explored its basically a photo blog of varying images caught by the author. Not very interesting you may think.

However the quality and composition of the photos is absolutely staggering. Perhaps some or all of them are photoshopped but that doesn’t really matter. The shots capture the moment so well and are so well constructed it rarely fails to have an impact. The photos generally aren’t of anything in particular, just regular everyday stuff which is what makes it all the more engaging. Have a look, and I would say take some time to actually look, don’t just scroll through.

Flying for flyings sake

So Bng’s getting married soon. And of course there is the obligatory stag do, ‘the staggering’ as I have termed it, that happens a few weekends beforehand. The staggering is being held in somewhere called Blackpool. This apparently is a fair trek from my south eastern-centric domain along the London-Maidenhead parallax as it appears that this Blackpool is located on the north west coast above somewhere called Wales.

I am not relishing the idea of driving up to Blackpool especially seeing as I recon it will take about 4-5 hours I estimate given that I will be going up on a Friday and having to battle through the M42 round Birmingham and returning on Sunday, after invariable excesses, driving is probably going to be about the last thing I am going to want to do. So I thinks to myself, what are my alternatives.

Fly was my first thought. Blackpool apparently has an airport (not sure quite why mind). I am about a 30 minute train journey from Heathrow so if flights run from there to Blackpool that would be spot on. Sadly, Heathrow is far too important to fly to anywhere as yocal as Blackpool. Oh well, but I can fly from Stanstead. However despite being touted as ‘London’ Stanstead it is actually more like Chelmsford airport being stuck in the middle of Essex so thats hardly convinient. In any case it only has two flights a day, one way early in the morning (0700ish) and the other way late at night (2200ish) in both directions which doesn’t fit with my schedule.

So I thought about the train instead. As I have to go through London and invariably being there already (at work) can shave 30 minutes off my journey time. However querying the fares reveals its going to cost between £65 and £345 return (ok so that last one is a first class open return) which is totally beyond the pail given that its like £20 to fly from Stanstead.

So I started playing about with flights again. I could fly from London Gatwick to Dublin, connect at Dublin to a flight to Blackpool. Cost £33 there, £23 back (+taxes) for both flights. The connection times stack up too (just barely). This is ridiculous. I could fly to Blackpool, via Dublin for less than the cost of the train. It’s faster too, although this does not factor in check-in time and getting from Maidenhead to Gatwick. Even so this is somewhat crazy. I am almost tempted to do it just because the whole thing is so delightfully daft.

Can you imagine; ‘so Nick what did do you at the weekend?’ Well I flew out to Dublin and then got on another plane and flew back to the UK into Blackpool. It looks like I might also be able to do this via Amsterdam too.

Ok, so in fairness when you add airport taxes, travel costs to and from the airport and factor in check in time and actually getting to the airport it is more expensive and takes longer but even so I think this a somewhat damning expose on the state of the country’s rail network.

Or I could just charter a turbo-prop aircraft from Biggin Hill to Blackpool for the sum of circa two grand.

Back in the real world, it looks like I am driving then.

Erm, guys, erm...

Erm, does anyone else think that there is something a little bit wrong about this? (Via) (in case you were wondering). I would love to see the sales pitch for this one.

Chavshire

I have a theory. It’s a theory about chavs. I think they come from or are attracted to Heathrow Airport. Here, look at my technical diagram (click to enlarge):


See, draw a circle round Heathrow Airport and you hit almost all the chav hot spots in one go. There’s Slough, Windsor, Hanwell, Feltham, Isleworth, Hounslow, Hayes, West Drayton and of course, Staines. All meccas of chav with their large Council estates, second hand BMW garages, street traders selling knock-off rolexes and branches of JJB sports and Matalan aplenty. Chavshire.

I wonder what it is about Heathrow Airport that draws the chavs to this region. Perhaps its so they can be in close proximity to the airport to be able to go away for weekends in Benidorm, or perhaps it’s the pretty colours of the aeroplanes that they can marvel at from their elevated flats in tower blocks, or maybe they like the aircraft noise to drown out the sound of their own children whinging about the playstation.

Now you will see that immediately around Chavshire are a selection of nice places without too many chavs infesting them. Places like Richmond, Kingston, Esher, Kensington, Chelsea, Ascot, Harrow and oh, look at that, Maidenhead. However there are a few holes around the edges, principally at Ruislip, Greenford and Bracknell which are all pretty chavy.

So I conclude they must be escaping to the rest of the country along these routes. Again I have drawn a diagram to illustrate my point:


So in order to keep them in Chavshire what we need to do is put in some anti-chav measures at these weak points. We need to open up some National Trust parks, build some libraries and education centres and install some branches of John Lewis and Waitrose around the perimeter. Chav-repellents.

Then we open up a few new branches of Chicagos (the chav church) around Heathrow Airport and they will all go there to flee from their fear of the chav-repellents around the borders and they will stay there and we will have them nicely parcelled away and contained in Chavshire. I think it sounds like an excellent plan, perhaps I will start a petition.

Casual Friday Thursday

For the past four years nearly I have gone to work wearing a suit, shirt, tie and smart shoes, without exception. My previous employer was fairly strict on looking smart and presenting a professional image to members of the public which I must say I do agree with.

However, my new employer has a different approach. Seemingly being that if you turn up to work that is a good thing. If you are reasonably competent and are smartly presented for members of the public they seem to be way happy. So last Friday, having no meetings or any chance of contact with members of the public (no meetings or site visits), I rolled into work wearing jeans, a T-shirt and my favourite new hoody. And nobody at work blinked an eye-lid.

I thought that I would feel odd and unprofessional in this attire but not actually seeing anyone I had to impress face-to-face totally discounted this and my initial weirdness of being at work in ‘comfy’ clothes rapidly dissolved in, well, a matter of seconds as I answered the phone and issued the same high quality planning advice that I always do (he says modestly).

I would like to say that my own personal attention to detail means that I won’t be turning up in casuals too often but I have to say being at work in comfortable clothes and being with people I don’t need to impress (aside from ‘the management’) makes me want to reconsider this.

As a result, today, with accurate forecasts of the hottest day of the year so far and knowing I had to do a number of (unaccompanied) site visits on foot I rolled into work wearing my skinny yellow T-shirt and blue shorts which caused a bit of a stir. So perhaps there are limits to what I can wear at work. Virtually nothing and in bright colours perhaps being one of those limits.

However, casual day does seem to offer a solution to the dry cleaning conundrum.

This is not a good situation

I got home this evening to find a hand delivered letter pushed under my front door, not with regular mail, marked ‘Important Notice.’ It was direct from my landlord and to paraphrase stated the following:

‘… Long story short, the management company have gone bust. Your rent payments are not coming to me as they should and your deposit is at risk. Please do not pay this months rent to them. If you have set up a bank transfer or have written cheques I suggest you cancel them… We can work out further arrangements to protect you and myself from further losses at this time over the next week or so.’

Now I am not about to take some supposedly important letter at face value so checked my contract and the names on the contract and this letter tally. Additionally a visit to the management company’s offices on the High Street reveal that they are abandoned with only a few tables and chairs left and a pile of post in the doorway with a helpful sign from the folks next door posted on the door saying you can ask them about the company’s demise (although they were closed when I visited). The situation therefore appears to stack up as per the letter.

I have cancelled my rental payment and sent a brief and noncommittal email to my landlord to confirm receipt of his letter and that I have cancelled rental payments through the management company. However, what has happened to my deposit? I paid out in the excess of a grand on that and I am not about to let that just slide.

I got home at about six and have only just stopped shaking probably thanks in no small part to a very large glass of wine.

Fish bowl of stupidity

So I see that that chuffing idiot David Blane is doing something pointless again. Namely sitting in a fish bowl for a week, or something like that. I am sure in the USA this entirely redundant exercise will be met with awe and wonder. Personally I felt the situation when he was in London in 2003 in that glass box thingy was much better. Especially when people starting throwing hamburgers and bacon sandwiches at him. That little spectacle also contributed to him being voted as 2003s biggest looser.

Anyhow, I digress, so what is the point of this fish bowl he’s sitting in? He gets air (unfortunately) and food through a tube and the water is kept at a nice warm temperature so what is the challenge or spectacle of this? He’s basically just sitting in a bath for a week. As far as I can see the biggest challenge is going to be where to take a crap.

So here is a list of things that I think would make this a more interesting challenge:

Add some of that chemical to the water that turns purple when you pee
Put a jellyfish in the tank
Add a giant tea bag and some milk
Empty the tank of water, put it in the middle of the pacific ocean, leave
Get everyone in the whole world to just totally ignore him

The London effect

Working in London I come across a lot of people trying to get money out of me. This ranges from beggars sitting outside shop windows with cardboard box cut out signs displaying ‘homeless, hungry, please help,’ people asking for a quid to get the bus home (you should have thought about the return fare when you went out) to people from a variety of charities asking for a donation to people invasively trying to sell mobile phones, sandwiches, the big issue, stolen season tickets and tattoos (yeah, because I am likely to want to stop and get an impromptu tattoo from some guy on the street).

I have to put up with this crap on a daily basis and have found the best way to deal with this is to totally ignore all these people. No eye contact. No conversation. No acknowledgement that they even exist. Walk straight past. This may sound a little harsh but bear in mind that multiple combinations of these can try to get me from around two to twelve times a day and they rarely take no for an answer and follow you down the street which is pretty rude and so I have managed to justify being rude back. Pre-emptive rudeness if you like.

However, I need to remember that I am not always in London.

This weekend I went shopping at the Oracle Centre in Reading (which for those of you that aren’t up on southern England geography isn’t in London). It was very busy, the ring road was jammed with queuing cars trying to get into car parks. The car parks had queues to find spaces and queues to just get out. I managed to sneak into a less busy car park that my brother showed me a while ago without encountering too much traffic but even so it was a fair hassle.

I found one of the few remaining parking spaces on the top floor of the multi-storey and having parked the car proceeded to get my ‘display in window’ ticket.

At the ticket meter was a young girl. As I went for the ticket machine she asked me ‘please can you spare some change I have come out without any?’ I was in London mode with all the traffic and people and hassle so I totally ignored her. I don’t just mean I looked at her and didn’t respond or said sorry I haven’t got any change (although this would have been a little weak seeing as I had a hand full of change for feeding into the meter). The request for money triggered an instinct reaction to disregard that person entirely. I looked through her and carried on as if she wasn’t even there. Literally, it was as if that what she said failed to register as any kind of input or stimulus. I stuck my change in the meter (although now feeling her eyes on my back) got my ticket and started to walk away.

I walked past the girl. She was standing in exactly the same position she was in when I had walked ‘through’ her. Two other people had started to queue at the ticket machine whilst I was getting mine but she wasn’t accosting them for change. She was stony quiet and rigid in the same position I had more than ignored her in, staring at me and looking more than a little jilted.

Of course it took my brain a few more steps to put all this together and by then I had walked past the girl. She was genuinely short of change, she had, like me, fought past the ring road, found a parking space, gone to the meter to pay for her ticket and realised she had no change. Rather than go through the busy ring road and parking ticket hassle she had tried to fall upon a stranger for some gentle assistance…. me. And I acted like she didn’t exist. It wasn’t so much as I was just rude, that would imply that I acknowledged she was there at all. I disregarded her entirely. And from the expression on her face as I left the ticket machine I think really messed with her day.

I know I can be abrupt at many times but having to battle past people trying to force money out of me on a near daily basis has clearly added an extra layer of generic cynicism. Three months ago I may well have said no to this girl’s request for money but I probably would have tempered that with a bit of sympathy and common courtesy.

So, sorry to girl at ticket machine near the Oracle Centre, Reading at circa 2pm on Saturday, I thought I was in London and I do feel pretty awful about it.

The view from space

Google maps orbital photography is pretty cool. Especially when you find images of pac-man on the ground, or perhaps a giant I-pod, a sinister looking face embedded in rock stratta, rude words, peoples names (seriously, check out the scale of this one) and even UFOs.

Chernobyl

On 26 April 1986 Reactor 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded scattering radioactive material across a wide area. This is a dramatic photo essay of the effects of this disaster twenty years on. Caution, this is not comfortable viewing (sound required).

Commuting arrangements

When I moved jobs I resigned myself to having to take public transport to work. Something that, at the time, I wasn’t entirely happy about. However, since then and my initial parking issues at work I have managed to wrangle me a car parking pass so I can park at work.

This has put my initial plan of catching the train into work into a bit of a tailspin. Predominantly I have been catching the train into work and had bought a monthly railcard which has since expired. For the last week and a bit I have been alternating between driving in and catching the train on a day return ticket and having now done both from my new address am in a total quandary as to which is the preferable mode of transportation.

Here are the pros and cons for each:

Driving

Journey time: 45 minutes to 1 hour 45 minutes
Reliability (traffic): Low
Cost: Circa £7 return (fuel only)
Advantages: Can use car for site visits, don’t have to sit next to fat people

Train

Journey time: 50 minutes
Reliability (trains running on time): High
Cost: £9 (monthly season ticket), £12 (day return)
Advantages: Can enjoy leisure time (which with a good book I actually quite enjoy), simplicity, can go down pub after work and have a few beers, easy to stop off at shops in Ealing and pick up groceries, no concerns about traffic

On balance I would say that they weigh up in favour of the train which is nice and easy but more expensive. However having the usefulness of the car at work is a real bonus and makes site visits much faster so I have to spend much less (albeit paid) time there.

The crux of it comes down to time and cost. The price of a day return is pretty awful at £12 so I can rarely justify commuting in on this one off arrangement very often. The £9 monthly season ticket is just about acceptable (and decreases the longer the period of time I subscribe to) but I am not about to pay for a season ticket and drive at the same time as the combined cost of about £16 makes it ridiculous to do this and in effect pay twice. Whilst the car can be faster than the train it can also be much, much longer with traffic. Conversely, whilst some trains invariably run late for the most part they are near to time. In any case, with the frequency of services, if one is late you can just catch the next (or earlier) one.

Anyhow, my present thinking is that I will catch the train in on a monthly season ticket and for gaps at either end I will drive and catch up on (hopefully most) site visits. I don’t know if this is the best solution but hopefully if I ever get access to work’s electric pool car it may solve itself.

Elevated section

This is the elevated section of the M4 between the M25 and the Chiswick turn off with the North Circular. As you can see it is quite high up.


For background information this stretch of road was designed and built in the 1960s with a design speed of 33mph. The speed limit is an unenforced and frequently flouted (including by me) 40mph with a high accident rate.

The route is populated by numerous massive advert hoardings as you can see in my pictures below (sorry for the wonkiness of them, I was trying to drive at the same time).






I don’t think these pictures adequately illustrate the scale of these hoardings but by way of comparison, look again. Compare it to the size of the nearby 10 to 15 storey buildings. Yes 10-15 stories; they are of a similar height.

Now I am led to believe (but am not going to say it out-right because that may considered slanderous) that these hoardings are predominantly unauthorised. Even if they are not they are pretty awful. They can be removed either through direct action by the Council (LB Hounslow) or prosecution or, if authorised, through the issue of a discontinuance notice.

These beauties really do need some attention in my humble (yet chartered) opinion.

(There is more to this story but I can't put details of that on the internet because it really could be massively slanderous).

Hows your arse?

A delightfully chauvinistic and low-brow post to mark this shot of some random girls arse crack that I captured over the weekend which I thought I would share. It was funny at the time but sticking it on the internet makes it even funnier.


So girls, have you got a good arse? Perhaps you could put it to good use? Feedback welcome (!).

More motoring offences

So amidst my speeding infractions, from 1st March to 19th April my car has been untaxed. I have therefore been operating an illegal vehicle for this time and I only noticed by chance that it was majorly out of date when at some petrol station in Gunnersbury. So this has included driving to work from Amersham and parking on street in Ealing, travelling to my parents house several times, going to Bicester, Windsor, Slough and many other places and included picking my parents up from the airport.

I hadn’t taxed my car because, well, I forgot basically as the papers got filed away in (the ironically titled) ‘Nick’s box of important documents’ while I was packing stuff up at Amersham and were deposited in a cupboard in my new place whilst many more (supposedly) pressing issues were resolved.

So I have had to go through the irritating process of sorting out a retrospective tax disc which apparently involves me writing a grovelling letter to the DVLA requesting that they be nice to me and me offering to pay my ‘tax arrears.’ I have had to make three visits to the post office and endure their predictably poor and antiquated systems and being told because its retrospective I needed something called a log book which was a bugger to find in the aforementioned ‘Nick’s box of important documents’ (and turns out to be neither bookish in nature nor a log of anything, multicoloured confusing form perhaps describing its function better). I finally managed to get my tax disc today to get me road legal again but still have to write my grovelling letter to the DVLA to clear my name.

However, that I haven’t gotten enforced for all of this makes me wonder quite how much I could have got away with and whether I should bother with a grovelling letter to the DVLA at all.

Experience of dealing with people who I have been enforcing planning stuff against generally have some excuse (occasionally quite comical and often pretty weak) as to why they flouted planning regulations and for the majority of the time they abjectly fail to appreciate that they have done anything wrong because they had some ‘really good reason’ to justify it.

Well, not me in this case. I didn’t pay my car tax which was very naughty and I have no excuse other than being busy and forgetting about it which is a crap excuse. So there. It would be nice if I could sort it out more easily though and not have to jump through multiple procedural hoops to sort it out. Especially as I would imagine that a retrospective tax disc is not an uncommon phenomenon. Oh, and yeah, I could have done without disapproving looks from jobsworth post office workers too.

Interim co-team leader

Well, my previous concerns have come to fruition. I have recently been asked to act as ‘interim’ team leader to half a team at work (four people) amidst various reorganisational bits and pieces. Now the clever bit about tagging the words ‘interim co-’ to this means that I don’t actually have team leader authority, nor do I have team leader pay, nor do I have team leader job title but get all the grief for it and I still have to carry a fair proportion of my regular work load on top of ‘interim co-’ team leading. However this is clearly a good addition to my cv (when suitably pimped of course) and puts me on the front line for actual advancement to team leader status (setting aside that I remain unconvinced that this a career direction I wish to pursue at the moment).

Overall I am not sure if I am pleased about this or not. Sure the bossing folks about and throwing my weight around is no doubt going to be a bit of fun for a while but not having ever really done that kind of thing before am not sure how long the appeal of that will last.

Is it just me or…

Are seats on trains about 10% too small to comfortably sit on.
Do big fatties choose to sit next to me on the train because I am not a big fatty.
Do cold, wet shower curtains have special adhesive properties that attract them to skin like magnets to iron.
Is it bizarre that nobody has yet created envelopes that taste nice to lick the adhesive on.

Stuff II

So about six months ago I compiled a list of stuff that I wanted. Here it is again but this time with an update as to how things have moved on (struck out if I got it and commentary in italics):

Flashy digital camera - Got one incorporated as part of my new(ish) mobile phone
Jazzy mobile phone - Erm, see above (?)
Touch screen multi device remote control- Well it’s not touch screen but I got a multi device remote control for Christmas
Big TFT monitor - Check
Car (some sort of coupe) - Scratch this one, I don’t use my car enough any more to justify this
Another pair of white trainers (cos the ones I’ve got are getting a bit mucky) - I can’t find a pair I like so I gave the old ones a wash
Big double bed - Yes still waiting on this one
Sofa (one of the ones that goes round corners) - Not only have I not achieved this one, I actually threw the sofa I did have in the dump
PDA - Not interested in this any more
Laptop - Yup, still want one of these
PSP - Or some other portable media player still needed
X-Box 360 - Lost interest in this
Wireless micro surround sound system - Yeah that would be good
Watch - Forgot about this one
New suit - Yes, er, see the dry cleaning conundrum
Set of good non-stick pans - Well I bought another one recently so now I have two non-stick pans, that’s a set right?
Suede leather bean bag - Not allowed to get this now
Poncy imported beers - Check (of course)

Now my post six months ago was supported with a link to some sage advice from Cat and Girl which, in summary, said stuff can’t buy you happiness (but managed to do so in a way that implied capitalism was fundamentally flawed as a consequence but I am not going into that).

This is, to an extent true, although I have been pretty happy with the purchases I did make. However changing jobs, moving flats and just doing something entirely new and different to what I was doing when I wrote stuff has had a much bigger effect.

Grand designs

So pretty much all the time I have been running this blog I have had some longer-term objectives. Namely find a new job, sort out new job, move jobs, find a new home, move home, change commuting arrangements, etc. However, now I have come to a point where things are starting to settle down into a fairly consistent rhythm and I have no longer term grand designs for the time being.

At the moment my most pressing objectives are how to best manage my work/life time balance, working out what sort of portable media player I want (and then invariably attempting to rationalise the most expensive one) and finding time to get me a new sofa. There is also settling into the new work routine and other work related stuff which I might say something about but don’t want to put anything on the internet that could land me in hot water.

None of these objectives are particularly lofty or wide ranging and all are pretty self explanatory. So this leaves me wondering what the next longer-term challenge is so that I have something to aspire to rather than just existing.

Thus far I have three things which I have been mulling over and thinking about:

1. Buy a house slash flat.
2. Upgrade and rework the blog.
3. Take up some form of life beneficial hobby such as learning how to draw technical plans.

Maybe I will do all of them, maybe none of them, I am still musing about them all. I might do a blog post about all of these individually in more depth at some point if I get anywhere with them.

Micro-traffic

Ever wondered why traffic seems to stop for no apparent reason on a busy motorway and then start off again with no explanation as to what the problem was in the first place.

Have a look at the surprisingly engaging micro-simulation of road traffic.

Repetition

(Almost) every morning I board the 08:15 train from Maidenhead to London Paddington. As a consequence my morning routine has to be pretty ordered and I end up leaving my flat at almost exactly the same time every day in order to complete my eight minute walk (front door to platform edge) to the station.

On my walk every morning I pass walking in the opposite direction people who (I presume) have just left trains arriving at Maidenhead. Of course they, like me, are locked into a routine by train timetables so we pass each other at almost exactly the same point every day. These people are (and generally in this order):

Tall guy with skinny jeans and light jacket.
School kid with broken leg (presuming this will not be a permanent feature) and his two friends.
School kid with no friends.
Chubby girl with dark jacket.
Older guy with blue-grey jacket who looks a bit like a flasher.
Two black guys sitting at Shoppenhangers Road bus stop.

I recognise them and they, I would imagine, recognise me. Its hard not to even after just a few weeks of doing this as it happens at the same time and place every day and we all always wear almost exactly the same thing.

Sometimes I think that perhaps I should start saying ‘hi’ or giving an acknowledging nod to these people (obviously not to the school kids who I try to knock over). Crazier ideas include doing something bizarre one day to keep them on their toes. I can’t help but think that this little routine crossover we have is something that could capitalise on and make life more interesting. Just not sure how to go about it.

LED throwies

LED throwies (via) are LEDs in various colours with integral power supply and magnetic properties thought up by the Graffiti Research Lab. This means you can throw them onto ferrous surfaces in large numbers to create a pretty fun effect like in this video.


I am not too sure whether I really like these or really don’t. On the one hand they do create a quite cool effect and the (relatively) high cost for any meaningful numbers of them I would imagine would prevent them from becoming to be too profuse. On the other hand I don’t agree with the principle of sticking them on other peoples property without their consent, they’re not going to look so cool in daylight and their power source is not going to last for long leaving irritating bits of plastic lying around.

The dry cleaning conundrum

Both of my two suits are in urgent need of a good dry cleaning. However, I presently have virtually no way to actually get this done due to the constraints of wearing them at work and having no access to a dry cleaners when I am not at work as they are all closed (and with Sainsbury’s having been demolished and being re-built in the town centre there aren’t even any supermarket annexe dry-cleaners open later).

To put you in the picture, at the moment I have two suits and six shirts. Three shirts match one suit and three shirts match the other. So it is fairly impracticable to go for an entire week wearing just one suit or the other. Meaning I need to deposit one suit with the dry cleaners mid-week and collect at the weekend (or vice versa).

However, I leave for work at around 8am and am generally not home until around 6pm. So I cannot drop off or pick up suits from dry cleaners in Maidenhead as there are none which are open when I am there during the week. Equally I can’t take a suit with me on the way to work as carrying it on the train would be a nightmare in the morning due to the crowded train and logistics of getting it there and back without it getting damaged or majorly creased.

So far I have four possible solutions, none of which I like.

First one is to leave work extra early one day mid-week so I can be back to Maidenhead before 5pm and get a suit to the dry-cleaners and then pick it up on Saturday (or vice versa). I don’t like this though as it means I would have to leave work extra early mid-week when I like to stay later so I can build up my flexi-time and leave extra early on a Friday and have some residual time left over in case of a ‘I’m hungover so I am going in late this morning’ situation.

A variation on this is to do the going home extra early mid-week thing but take both suits at the same time and then go into work in casuals for the rest of the week (because I don’t actually possess any clothing that could be considered ‘smart casual’). I am allowed to do this but it is seriously frowned upon to be in casuals and see members of the public which is an almost daily occurrence and not being able to do so can seriously impinge on my work schedule (no site visits). This has a slight advantage though as it would be a less frequent occurrence than the above option as I could do both suits in one go and thus have to do it half as often.

The third is to take a day or two off work and take both suits to be dry cleaned at the same time. I really don’t like this idea as it means taking time off work to do dry cleaning which is a ridiculous reason to use up work leave.

Or I could just buy another suit (expensive and time consuming) and thus have the flexibility to drop one of the then three off and leave it at the dry cleaners weekend to weekend.

I haven’t decided which one is the best yet. Any other suggestions are welcomed.

Time

Time is one thing I am very short of at the moment. Not in a bad way, its nice being busy and having things to do and people to do it with. But also it would be nice to have chance to take a step back and have a breather, even just a little one.

I have absolutely no idea how people who are busier than me operate. My busyness is caught up with work, commuting, general life admin (shopping, paying bills, etc.) and that is about it. Everything else is being busy having a good time. I don’t have any kids, a second job or any other such commitments to worry about. I sometimes wonder how these people cope. I don’t think I would make a very good single working parent for this reason alone (ignoring other obvious issues).

And being busy is also the reason why this blog post is constructed somewhat hurriedly at work before I am busy going out and having a good time.

Oh so you blog do you

As I have said before, the folks I work with don’t know about the blog. I haven’t been intentionally not telling them about it, it just hasn’t come up.

Thus far, I think most people have found out about the blog through linky referrals from other web pages, such as Bng’s blog or via an email. Comparably few have actually been told about it face to face. Those who have been told have generally responded with an ‘oh, what’s that all about then? Isn’t that kinda weird?’

Both of these questions could most easily be resolved by reading it in the first place, rather than me telling you all about it face to face, but you can't say that to someone. I have rapidly learned that interpersonal conversation and the blog have a large crossover and I often repeat what I have posted to the blog because people haven’t read it or vice versa.

But sending people an email with a link in it always strikes me as a little self-promotional and disassociated. I mean people might not be interested, or care, or may still not grasp what’s going on. So I have left it at as a none-issue.

So for the folks at work I am not going to tell you about the blog but will respond if you ask, but why would anyone ask?

207

So yesterday I got on a bus. This is a picture of it (and also of my finger over the lens).


This is the first time I have been on a bus (except once when I was drunk and my better judgement failed me and once in Portugal when I didn’t have a choice) since I moved out of Sheffield and I don’t recall getting on a bus in the final year there (but probably did) and you know it wasn’t half as bad as I thought it would be.

There was the guy who sat next to me who smelled of cigars and kebabs (so a bit like a Saturday night come Sunday morning) and this giant fat guy who really got in the way which wasn’t so great but other than that it was ok. The bus steaming past queuing traffic in the bus lane was kinda handy. Of course it overtook us back when the bus stopped.

It was also a really jazzy high-tech bendy bus and there is none of this pay the driver on entry nonsense. It just stops opens a bank of four doors (I think, but looks like three in the picture) and tilts to the left so it is even with the kerb and folks get on and off (although the lack of paying the driver apparently leads it to be known as a free bus which is a, well, rather massive design flaw).

It was kinda fun, mostly because it was a new experience really rather than being particularly pleasant. My employer has access to a small fleet of electric cars which I am signing up for so hopefully soon I will be able to use those instead of having to use public transport when out and about.

Literature

Some literature I have read over the past few months that I thought was pretty good:

Curious incident of the dog in the night time (find a long journey and read it all in one go, made me want to laugh and cry at the same time).

How to be good (cynically reassuring in a positive way).

High society (a bit trashy and obvious but thoroughly readable).

God’s debris (mildly thought provoking and free, the ending gave me one of those shivers down the back of your spine, first and only time that has happended from reading a pdf document).

What I found a bit too heavy:

The light of other days (the text is too small and the content too clever for my relatively low-brow tastes).

Currently reading:

Life of pi (slow starter and nearly gave up on it but it suddenly gets really good at page 97).

Does anyone have any recomendtaions as I probably will haved finished Life of Pi by the end of the week Tuesday what with my current high-literature-consumption train riding lifestyle.

Phone dump II

Now I have the interface between my phone and pc working again and home internet getting connected I can add some imagery to the recently rather stark appearance of the blog. So, like phone dump, a bunch of stuff I captured on my phone camera over the past month or so with some commentary as appropriate.

My points for speeding endorsed on my license. I thought I would actually get ‘points.’ You know like stars or dots or blips or something. But no, apparently fixed penalty 03 covers it. They could have stamped it straight.


My new flat the day before I moved in. The lamp shades (really the ones that came with the flat were pretty awful) and hoody unceremoniously deposited near the wall were my first mark on the place. It looks a bit different now.


Moving day. This is Graham having a break in the car park to my old place.


This is Gunnersbury, just off the north circular. Guess what is proposed to go here... A replacement telephone booth. Not very exciting but I was all over the enthusiastic about doing the planning of somewhere new at the time.


My old freezer compartment. The nuances of this was formerly going to form a post in its own right before I realised that the contents of my freezer were probably not going to be particularly interesting and thus that blog post idea was ditched (and yes that is two different flavours of ice cream, phish food and Dublin mudslide if you are interested, both very good).


The hoody crew: Me looking like a wonky eyed idiot and Elia looking a little better in a pub in Maidenhead. Kieron was there too but he had gone off to hide in the disabled toilet at the time.


And stuff that didn’t make it: Two photos I had of a massive fire near work that closed down the entirety of The Broadway for a full afternoon. I deleted them accidentally much to my own irritation. They were like the most interesting shots I had. There was like fire and smoke and fire engines and ambulances and stuff and all sorts.

I often wish I took more photos of stuff, especially when people are around. What with digital photography being so easy and disposable, occasionally interesting and with my mobile phone camera being pretty good considering its dinky size and really quite secondary function as a camera.

Its all coming up Nick

Its nice when stuff goes your way, even if it takes a little time and effort. I am presently reaping the rewards of putting a little time and effort into a number of things over the course of the last few weeks and months and feeling rather pleased with myself as a consequence.

1. My internet connection is now working at home. No more sneaky blog posting needs to be done over lunch at work and at least I can access what I want with a degree of speed, unlike the limited and clunky connection from work where they don’t let you look at the really good porn. Also I might now be able to get some bit-torrents running so I can catch the new episodes of Battlestar Gallactica that I missed what with not having sky any more. And I can get some music running from Pandora as my stereo and cds are still mothballed at my parents. And just generally being reconnected is nice. Oh, and I got a new free wireless router out of it for bt’s general incompetence (and worked out why my RSS feed wasn't working but is now).

2. Work is improving. I am settling in much better now and feeling a little more content about the place. The new people who have started since me seem nice and we get along fairly well I think. I also got my first full months pay packet recently which reminded why I took the job in the first place. I don’t know if I have said this before but it’s not all about the money however having good financial security and being able to make relatively indulgent purchases without bothering too much about the cost is comforting.

3. My new flat is pretty great, although with some flaws, I have few complaints. The shower is pretty powerful and kicks out loads of hot water which I like. Being up on the second floor is also brilliant, I really like being elevated above the surrounding world and had actually forgotten quite how much having been marooned on the ground floor at my old place for several years. My new balcony means I can totally take advantage of my elevated position, summer should be great here. Aside from the occasional roar of an intercity 125 the place is also pleasantly free of outside sound.

4. I like Maidenhead. I have lived in cities, towns and villages but never anywhere like Maidenhead which is small enough not to be overly congested and too noisy and busy but large enough to have a decent amount of amenities and facilities which I think strikes a pretty good balance. Being way close to the town centre is also a plus.

I put above average amounts of effort into sorting all these things out and now that it is all working out (almost) like it was supposed to I am feeling quite pleased about things in general.

The great milk crisis

The coffee shop I purchase my morning coffee from in the morning has recently put up a sign that reads as follows:

Due to the increase in the price of milk for the fifth time in a row we are sorry to announce that as of Monday 27th March the price of our milky drinks will be going up.

The already extortionate price of a large coffee (which isn’t exactly that large) is £1.50 and has increased to £1.75.

Now I don’t mind the occasional price rise but what is this ‘fifth increase’ in the price of milk? The milk I have been buying has risen by perhaps 3 pence per pint in the last four years. Beyond that I don’t even recall. So I have come to the conclusion that they have just made this up in order to hike up the price of a coffee.

These five pseudo milk price increases must be pretty massive in order to justify tacking on the price of almost an entire pint of milk on top the existing price. I am certainly not receiving an extra pint of milk in my coffee.

I am pretty unimpressed with these fake increases in the price of milk that is being loaded onto my already extortionate coffee price. So on that basis I am taking my business elsewhere. Hello Starbucks.

Leisure time II

Ok, so I am having new ideas about leisure time. What would be great is to have something like the new I-pod but with a bigger screen and BBC breakfast (or something else like that) to start doing podcasts that I could download and then watch on the train. Reading is ok and I am certainly steaming through my current book but it is a little too involved for the morning. Something more passive like breakfast tv would suit perfectly.

Unfortunately, I think I am a little ahead of the times at the moment with Apple’s I-pod being the only video supporting portable media player with a reasonably large hard disk and the screen still being a little on the small side, BBC breakfast not doing podcasts and all the other ones that update on a daily basis predominantly being audio only, and, of course, my home internet connection actually working.

Still, I think it’s a nice idea and its not like I am relying on technology that isn’t already on the market or doesn’t exist yet. And I am hardly coming up with anything that other people haven’t thought of already. It’s just a question of waiting for everyone else to sort it out.

Customer service

Me: So my broadband isn’t working, still, and your engineers haven’t called me like they said they would.
Operator: I am sorry to hear that, let me just access your records.
Me: Ok.
Operator: I am just going to transfer you to another department.
Me: Why?
Operator: You need to speak to this other department. Do you mind holding while I put you through?
Me: Fine.
*hold*
Next operator: Let me just put you on hold while I speak to the engineers on your behalf.
Me: Sigh, ok.
*hold*
Next operator: I am going to transfer you through to the next department, can you hold please?
Me: Yeah, whatever.
*hold*
Next, next operator: Let me just put you on hold while I obtain your details.
Me: Sure.
*hold*
Next, next operator: I have accessed your records, an engineer will call you in the next two days.
Me: That’s what I was told two days ago, why are you telling me the same thing now?
Next, next operator: Well the engineers have to test the line and arrange for somebody to call you to come out and assess what the problem is and somebody will call you to arrange an appointment in the next two days.
Me: Yes, yes, next two days, that’s what I was told two days ago. Why are you still telling me the same thing?
Next, next operator: Well the engineers have to test the line and arrange for somebody to call you to come out and assess what the problem is and somebody will call you to arrange an appointment in the next two days.
Me: You just repeated the same thing you said before, you haven’t answered my question. Why was I told the same thing two days ago?
Next, next operator: Well the engineers have to test the line and arrange…
*hangs up*
Total call time: 25 minutes.