never could get the hang of thursdays
… I update twitter, apparently. My bosses for three levels are out of office today, leaving me most senior in the room with 4 others. Yikes. And what do I do? I… slack off. And answer support emails, so I don’t have to write test cases. Woo procastination. Productive procrastination at that.
I bought a new coat! Having lost my earlier one, stupidly. I even followed all most of the guidelines I set out before.
She walks in to the bar, and instantly my eye is drawn to her. The red overcoat certainly grabs attention, as many heads in the room flick momentarily towards the door. I let my gaze linger, drinking in her figure and her grace.
Ordering, she looks around the room while waiting for her drink, casually searching the room. Our eyes lock across the room, and I smile.
She smiles back, dips her eyes for a moment, but then looks back up, eyes connected once again. Damn, that’s a yes if there ever was one. I let my eyes wander up and down a little.
Redoubling my smile, I lift my drink in salute. The barman delivers hers just in time, and she raises hers too, still smiling. I gesture, fingers asking her to come hither, seeking to take this game of the eyes to the next step, the logical conclusion.
She laughs, silent at this distance, washed out by the music and the conversations closer to me. Shaking her head, she lifts her hand, wiggles the fingers and points, to the third on the left, where the shine of a ring is visible across the distance. She turns away, closing off the game. Tease.
I sigh, turning my attention back to my friends’ conversations. Such is life.
(links to trailers/more info where available/relevant)
If there’s one sign of summer that I can’t go past, it’s the Boxing Day and New Year’s Test matches, when Australia trots out another round of punishment and humiliation, back to back, to some team chosen for the ritual sacrifice. I can just imagine all the other test playing nations gathering in a secret location to draw straws for who will go to Australia this year to get their ass handed to them on a platter.
Can you imagine these poor souls who have to travel to Australia – a long enough journey for practically anyone but Australians – to get here in the middle of our beautiful summer, and be forced to stand in a field, in the sun, for 6 hours and more, for 5 days on end. It’s at that time of the year most spend with our nearest and dearest, and get exactly no work done, but these men are out on a trip of embarrassment. These are world-class sportsmen, guys who have worked hard to get where they are, and the Aussies? Don’t give a damn.
I would say that it makes for a fine sporting spectacle, but seeing Australia win over and over again isn’t a fine spectacle; it’s a predictable and regular occurence in which one side dominates the other so comprehensively as to leave you dispirited at the very thought of even watching. It’s not like they’re even sporting about it – when they win, oh, how they let the opposition know. And if – if! – they should happen to be in the lesser position, they will be as sporting about it as an 8 year old (c.f. Andrew Symonds).
In the end though, I live in constant hope that someone will defeat the Aussies in their premier games, and make it an emphatic win. And it is after all the sound, the feel, the very definition of summer as far as I’m concerned =)
You know you’ve been away from the net when… there are 450 unread items waiting for you in your RSS reader, and about 40 emails, when on average you’d get maybe 4 or 5 a day.
Also when you haven’t blogged but for sporadic intervals.
2008 then! There’s nothing like looking at the year and thinking “oh crap, not another one. I was quite happy with the last one!” My memory now clearly stretches back 15, maybe 16 years, and that scares me. When you can say “when I grew up,” and there are actual differences with kids growing up now? Yerks.
If I knew what 2007 had had in store for me, I’m not sure I would have taken it. There were moments when I would have asked for a refund. And the one resolution I did make, to watch all the Bond movies in 2007 (007? geddit? geddit? Ah, never mind.) failed spectacularly – I only managed 10 out of the 21 – so I find myself looking at 2008 and thinking, I can’t even think of a stupid resolution to make this year, let alone a serious one.
At the start of 2002, I’d set a list out for myself of things to do/get, without a timeline for achieving these targets. They weren’t necessarily ambitious ones, but they were enough to keep me moving. 2007 crossed off one of the major items – living out of the country – and so now I find myself looking at the rest of the list, somewhat mystified as to whether I want to start achieving the rest. The remainder of the list was made as a i-know-i-need-it-eventually, and so it tends to be bigger indicators of responsibility and the “grown-up” world that are left, such as owning significant assets, investing and the rest of the frippery that goes along with life in the long term. Which I find myself far from ready for, and advancing towards rapidly.
Thus: a resolution for 2008 is to avoid such things until the last possible moment. Approve?
Why is it that I’m not at all fussed this year with the new year? 2007 was a good year, and 2008 should be a good one too, but… ah well. I’m just enjoying this holiday.
Mmm summer.
There’s something ethereal about a low, thick fog that somehow leaves the night sky mostly clear. The halos of the street lamps contrasted with the bright moon overhead as the chill really set in.
It was the shortest day of the year, and I was walking over the Thames, thinking of how I was doing much the same thing 6 months ago on the longest day of the year, too. The contrast was a sharp one – London then seemed almost green, a neo-bohemian city which could cater to any need.
Now however, people were marching across London bridge, near identically wrapped in long dark coats, scarves and hats, hands firmly in pockets or in gloves. The trees had long since dropped their leaves, and the only green to be seen was ground-hugging. In the morning it would be coated in a layer of frost.
Behind, the lights of the city lit up parts of the fog, signalling key districts still lively as the office towers emptied. Cars rushed past nearby, leaving swirls in the fog from their wake. The idea of a white Chirstmas, of a cold end to the year, was suddenly less strange.
All those Hollywood stereotypes made sense, as the long darkness of the night and the chill wind makes you want to do nothing other than staying inside, warm and in the company of others, or perhaps just that one special other.
I’d have second thoughts about leaving here, but ultimately, the rational part of my mind spoke up again, reminding me that I had a choice, one that others who have lived here a lifetime take at the drop of a hat.
But, for a moment longer, the idea lingered, tempting.
If there’s one thing I can affirm as the scourge of my daily working experience, it is emails.
And within the world of email, it’s the reply to all button. Do not use the reply to all button in anger.
>.>
I live! Just.
Stuff has been happening, but nothing blog-worthy (or blog-able), and no ponderous thoughts have been appearing either, which leads to a general twiddling of thumbs.
So what does one do when one has nothing to discuss? One… talks about the weather. And can I just say once more, it is bloody freezing up in this joint. When the footpath is covered in a thin layer of frost-ice in the morning, and your breath mists instantly even during midday, it’s cold. When you’re walking to work at dawn and the sun sets shortly after lunch, you know it’s not exactly cheer-inducing.
The only consolation is that at least the sun can be seen – it’s not a constant grey sky with drizzling rain, as promised by the usual pattern. That is a double-edged sword though, as clear sky means colder, and with the sun holding little warmth, it’s no wonder people retreat inside at the earliest moment. I’m not sure what it means to feel warm just naturally, anymore…
Holidays coming up! woohooo~!
(Ed: backdated for lack of internet access)
Perhaps the best demonstration that England was the place where the train was invented, pioneered, is the sheer number of lines and stations that criss cross the capital – the Underground aside, there is at least 10 ‘main line’ stations just within the Underground’s ‘Zone 1’, nominally the centre of the city.
How is this proof? Only early on would the unplanned, disconnected system have been sensible – the better for the many nascent companies to compete; allowing our customers to change to a competitor simply a way of throwing money away. The evolution of thought is reflected in the ‘grand central’ stations of the colonies – Sydney Central, Melbourne’s Spencer St Southern Cross, Delhi Central, New York’s Grand Central – single stations marshalling points for the assorted destinations serviced.
As my train, the 8:03 to Glasgow, pulls out of Euston station, the history long forgotten under the Virgin Trains brand, I notice something strange about the countryside. That light dusting of white isn’t morning frost – not when it’s on the roofs of houses and cars, on the rocks by the rails. It’s an early snow of the season, as if the whole land had been sprinkled with icing.
Suddenly, the name ‘icing’ makes that much more sense.
The early light makes the rushing landscape look like a faded image, a photograph left on the shelf for too long. The quaint literary images that once sounded like a dream-world throw themselves onto the landscape. Examination from a distance and at speed is impossible, but it makes an impression no less, contrasting sharply with my nominal home country and its more untamed landscape.
The race north keeps the sun low in the sky, the angle of the light never peaking higer than mid-morning of summer, subjectively only a few short months earlier.
A pause, a conversation with chance-met strangers. A philosopher and an idealist; another a fellow Australian, the election called; I hide my pleasure for the sake of
Birmingham, one of the landmark cities. Now the landscape is damp; whatever early morning snow has fallen here has since melted, the transient white coating replaced by the sheen of water. The accents are thicker up here, a lilting rythmn entering the voices. There’s a canal by the side of the train line, a second mode of transportation, now largely disused in favour of the more efficient overland routes.
The grey blanket of clouds lays thick over the landscape, filtering the light. A moment of despair for this summer child, for it is rare enough to see blue sky in this country, let alone absorb some sunlight.
The journey continues, through former industrial heartlands.