What about doggy or reverse cow-girl?

For some reason I find this odd and a little amusing.

Manchester

The long weekend has taken it's toll and I'm now ill... But it was a lot of fun.

Took the train to London on Friday and picked up the rental car from the station. It was a rather nice little Clio, very pleasant to drive. Made it out of London and to Bracknell to pick up Ross and then we headed up to Manchester. Met Lee at the hotel and went out for "a couple of drinks". We went to several rather nice pubs and finished up at the Pure Magic Bar which was fantastic. We sat at the bar and the guys do magic tricks right in front of you, keeping you very much involved. I know it is all sleight of hand but they were really impressive. Among the most memorable tricks were the one where a card that had been signed by the three of us and shuffled back into the pack was produced folded up in the magician's mouth and one where a foam ball was placed in my hand and when my hand was opened again, there were two balls in it. An excellent place, we stayed there for a couple of hours and had lots to drink while chatting to Mark and Andy, two of the magicians. We then staggered off at about 2 am. I went back to my hotel and collapsed into bed. Apparently at about 5 am Ross wandered into Lee's bedroom and peed in his girlfriends wardrobe. Needless to say he was not very popular.

The next day I wandered around the city centre which is surprisingly nice and modern. I'd forgotten that a lot had been destroyed by the IRA bomb ten years ago. They have done a lovely job of doing it up though.




Saturday night we met up for beer and a lot was consumed. There was one very annoying woman who we shall call Jocasta due to her extreme poshness. The second thing out of her mouth was to insult everybody there and she just got worse, thinking that she knew better than everybody else there. She even started to argue about the merits and social implications of moving jobs to India, something think I may know a little about... She annoyed every single person who was there, so we tried to just ignore her as much as possible We ended up at a comedy club where we saw three very funny stand-up comedians.

Ross, Lewis and Lee:


Ross had mentioned that Manc did not have any attractive women living there, he was proven wrong on many an occasion. It may just be the English thing of the minute the weather is slightly nice, women wear the tiniest skirts and tops possible. In any case it was very pleasant.

On Sunday I drove Ross back to Bracknell and then went to Waterloo to get the train. I was starting to feel a bit feverish and ill by this point and just drifted in and out of sleep on the train. I stayed at home yesterday and feel slightly less achey today but still not perfect. Apart from that, it was a truly excellent weekend.

Music videos

There's some really great stuff here:

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/feature/36588/Staff_List_100_Awesome_Music_Videos/page_1

Oranges

This amused me

Weekend

I had a very pleasant weekend. Jan invited me to his place which is in Saint-Truiden, just north of Liege. Took the train up, it's about an hour from Brussels. They have a lovely house, new and modern with a huge garden. His brother has the house next door, his parents live up the road and his uncle across the road, it's a close family! Went for dinner with his lovely wife and son the sat in the garden drinking metaxa, smoking cigars and talking bollocks. His wife insisted on making a very nice cooked breakfast. Got back here around lunchtime and just lazed about reading, dozed off for a couple of hours.

I then watch this film which came free with Mad Movies (a French horror magazine) this month:



It has scientists who GO TOO FAR!, a badly animated mutant crocodile that kills people in fairly bloody ways, an Australian crocodile hunter and a female animal expert who wears the smallest shorts known to man. It's rubbish and one of the best films ever, very enjoyable.

Stuff

So, I'm still in Brussels at the moment. Was talking to my boss today and it seems we are getting slightly closer to sorting out my situation. We are looking at two options: the first is that I become an employee of our Mumbai office, this would involve all sorts of behind the scenes stuff as I don't want to lose my pension and stuff with the Brussels office. The second option is that I stay employed by Brussels and spend three months in India and then six weeks in Brussels/London/New York/Wherever. The second one sounds preferable to me at the moment, but hopefully the lawyers will get back to us in the next week or so.

At the moment it looks like I'll be in Brussels until the 9 July but there is still a possibility that I go to New York for a couple of weeks beforehand, we'll see. In the mean time I've booked trains, cars and hotels to go to the UK next weekend to see friends in Manchester. It's actually cheaper to rent a car than travel by train in the UK, so I'll pick up a car at Waterloo on Friday, drive to Bracknell to pick up Ross and then up to Manchester to meet Lee and a bunch of other pissheads. Back to Brussels on the Sunday.

tonight I went to a rather nice tapas bar down by the Place Flagey with Pierre. We had several glasses of wine to start with, then some rather posh but nice food and another bottle of wine. The waitresses were also rather easy on the eye and we ended up spending four hours there... I'm now back at the nice little furnished flat the bank is paying for and will get some sleep. I left Pierre at a Portuguese festival were he knew some other people. I'm sure he'll be there for several hours yet! I've got a long evening of food and drink with Jan tomorrow so I need my rest. If I can stop listening to music now of course. Listen to this, it's really rather good, especially The Saddle Song.

Perrry Bible Foundation

I love this comic

North Korea

These are fascinating photos (there's more on the second page)

Homeless

So, the flight went OK, was a bit bumpy and I only got three hours sleep. For some reason we seemed to go straight up the Pakistan boarder and over the Caspian Sea, avoiding both Pakistan and Iran, which was different from the previous flights I've taken.

Got in to Brussels yesterday, did all the bit I needed to for my US and went for chips and beer on the Place Jourdan. While we were there my boss called to say that the New York trip is off and that I will help out my old department for the month instead. Needless to say I was not overjoyed by the news. Spoke to the branch manager this morning and he now seems to think that I probably should go to New York after all. He's going to talk to the guys over there and let me know. So I have no idea where I will be for the next few weeks. The bank can never accuse me of not being flexible...

I went to my appointment with the US embassy anyway and that went really smoothly. The famous interview lasted about five minutes and was with a very cute consular official. She said that I can pick up my passport tomorrow at 12 so at least I'll be able to go the US at some point, lets see how many times my plans get changed tomorrow...

Goodbye, room 328

I've got about an hour until I need to check out, my driver will be here at 22.30 to take me to the airport. That's a little early but seeing how unpredictable the traffic can be, it's better safe than sorry. I'll be in Brussels late tomorrow morning, then I need to go to the post office to deposit the visa fee for the US embassy (they don't accept bank transfers...) and get a photo taken for my visa (it needs to be in a non-standard format...). Then I'm going for chips and beer on the Place Jourdan with Pierre and Jean-Paul.

Thursday morning at 8.30 is my appointment at the embassy, hopefully that will all go smoothly and then I'll be on my way to New York on Saturday. I have an apartment booked for me here.:-)

But first I'm looking forward to seeing my friends, even if it's only for a couple of days.

Miss USA

So, the Miss USA finals are on TV at the moment. I'd be lying if I said that they swimsuit section was not quite interesting to watch.

Except they seem to be using 'Your Beautiful' by James CBlunt as a theme tune. That song makes me want to kill. Time to turn off the TV.

Travel

So, this taxation issue is still not sorted out. The recommendation was that I'm OK for 90 days in India, any longer and it may cause tax issues (although we have no confirmation of this).

So I'm talking to my boss today and she's come up with a cunning plan to make the most out of the 90 days seeing as part of the project goes live at the start of July. Basically I'm off to New York next week and will be back in Bangalore around the 10 July when we go live. I've already changed my flight and leave Bangalore on Tuesday night. I get back into Brussels on Wednesday morning and as I have a passport issued in 2000 that is not machine readable, I need to get a visa. According to the embassy website, this should take about three days so I can be in New York some time next weekend or early the week after.

This is all rather cool in an international jet-setter way, and yes, I'm feeling a bit smug.


Jean-Paul will be in Montreal in the middle of June visiting Anne and Jalal so if I'm in New York we are going to have to get together and drink quite a lot of booze. Just had a quick look and I can get a return flight to Montreal from JFK for just over 300 USD which is nothing.

Hurrah basically!

This amused me

Quiet day and llamas

A nice quiet day today, there were no calls with New York so I left the office at six. Had a run on the treadmill and as I'm doing reasonably well on the weight front, and mainly because I felt like it, I had dinner in the hotel. Some very nice minced lamb in a spicy gravy.

Still no news on the tax situation by the way. I hope it gets sorted out soon, I've been stating in the hotel for almost two months now and it would be really nice to have a place that's a bit more 'home'.

It's a shame that it's always dark when I come back from work which makes it difficult to take photos. On one of the street corners not far from the office there is a family who have basically set up a small farm. There s a wooden roof and walls leant against a building and they have a couple of cows, several goats, some sheep and what I am fairly sure is a llama. All of this is of course just on the pavement. I must be getting used to it here as I don't find that all that odd anymore.

Oh, and the rains have not really started in Bangalore which, to be honest, is a little disappointing. I was looking forward to a deluge maybe it'll come later. According to the newspaper some parts of the coast have had forty centimeters of rain in forty-eight hours. That's just ridiculous. And fairly cool.