Moving on

Some of you may have noticed a drop-off in the usage of this blog over recent weeks. This is because -- in preparation for a possible move to Dubai -- I have decided that keeping two journals running is frankly quite stupid. LiveJournal won the popularity contest, so I shall be discontinuing Bloodshot Friday Eyes, keeping these pages up only for completeness.

I envisage, if the move east does go ahead as planned, that traffic at my LiveJournal account - Like Zombie Ballet - http://iapetus11.livejournal.com/ - will probably drop off as well (I'll be working like a bitch for one). If it does happen, and I'm happy with that, then at least it'll only be happening on one website.

So, once again, redirect yourselves to the LiveJournal account - Like Zombie Ballet - http://iapetus11.livejournal.com/ - and leave me lots of comments so I don't feel like a complete loser.

Our man in Qatar, part 2

There has been a deathly silence regarding Qatar [entry]. I've joked with my colleagues that, with the way our company works, I should probably expect to find out the day before I fly out there. Yesterday afternoon my resource director seeks me out:

--Have you heard anything from [the director in the middle east] about going to Doha?
--No. I was under the impression that I would hear something from you.
--Oh, because the guy going from Handforth already has his contract signed.

WTF? I should probably pack a bag, because I've got the sneaking impression that this is all going to happen very last minute.

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One thing that troubles me about this is that everyone talks about it as if I'm already on the plane. I made it clear that I wasn't going to commit to anything until I was sure that the company wasn't going to try and screw me. However, I find myself being approached by strangers and asked about the move as though everything was signed and sealed.

Lets get one thing straight: If the package you offer me isn't good enough, I ain't going anywhere.

Bank holiday weekend

Went west again this weekend. Was supposed to be helping Dad and Angela move house, but didn't get all that much done because they hadn't finished decorating. Oh well, guess that means that someone else will have to do all the heavy lifting.

Dan also came back home briefly this weekend, to attend a funeral. Unfortunately the numpty got the day wrong, so they ended up missing it [entry]. He's blaming the RBL, but well, it is Daniel. Still, I'm sure the six hours he spent in the car were awesome.

Went out on the Saturday evening with Hels again. Reasonably good night, although it never really kicked off. Went into Fusion2. Got pissed off at their needless use of the smoke machine, which just destroys my contact lenses and leaves me blind for the rest of the evening.

The farce is strong in this one

My taekwondo graduation is held in the Oasis leisure centre on Saturday afternoon. It has been combined with the black belt graduation, and the place heaves with people. We queue for about an hour to get in.

I find the brown belt row with difficulty; it consists of only one person. The relief on her face as I arrive is palpable. 'Thank goodness you're here,' she says. 'I thought I was going to have go up there on my own.' The lines of the lower belts are long; the lines of the higher grades less so. It's beyond the expected level of drop-off, because our previous instructors both stole students when they left. Hence, the ranks around me are a little thin.

The special guest for the event is David Prowse, best known for his role as Darth Vader in the good Star Wars films. Accordingly, he enters to pomp and fanfare. The Darth Vader theme plays, the lights go down, and fireworks are set off. We have a man in a Darth Vader costume, and two dressed as storm troopers. They stand around looking like movie props. Mr. Prowse comes to the stage.

After finishing the speech that Master Childs has written, he makes a speech of his own. Somewhere, a siren starts going off. A woman starts talking over the public address system, her voice unable to compete with Mr. Prowse's. A little man in a high-visibility jacket starts running around the hall, panicked look on face.

The smoke from the fireworks has set off the building's fire alarm.

400 students, and maybe twice that number of instructors, family, and friends file outside. Many are heard to joke that Mr Prowse used the dark side of the force to make an early exit.

Eventually, the building is given the all clear and we are allowed to return inside and receive our belts. My brown belt now has a black stripe down the middle.

Reviews defection

I have moved reviews over to my livejournal [Like Zombie Ballet], starting with Mission:Impossible III. Makes more sense for them to be over there with the writing stuff.

'Just when I thought that I was out they pull me back in'

The Rundown/Welcome to the Jungle

Plot:

Hulk Johnson is a 'retrieval expert', who has to perform one last job before his boss will let him retire to open a restaurant. Yawn.

Finally, the Rock has come back to the Amazon basin.

Yawn.

Good things:

Stifler gets smacked around. A lot.

The Rock gets face love from an intercontinental monkey.

Bad things:

It makes a valiant effort, but there's still not quite enough Stifler-bashing.

Watching Christopher Walken sully himself.

Our man in Qatar

I have been nominated for a medium term secondment to the Middle East, specifically Qatar. We have an abundance of work in that region at the moment and our offices are just screaming out for qualified staff. Apparently, now that I have been here for three and a half years, I'm finally qualified enough[1].

Overseas opportunities were one of the reasons I took this job, and I have been bugging my bosses about it since joining, so there's no question that I'm keen to go. I am, however, aware that everything will probably fall through at the last minute. I'm not getting my hopes up. It would be cool though. They're discussing my deployment right now. I imagine I'll hear either way during the next couple of weeks.

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[1] Or it may just be that their first choice couldn't make it.

Injury redux

I phone the doctor's surgery. My x-ray results should be back by now; I'm told to phone back in a couple of days. There is a backlog. I think of my car troubles -- delays and complications and frustrations -- and wonder if my luck extends to ankles.

A dull throb develops in my left ankle, a resurgence of the old injury I cannot explain. I danced on Friday night, but I've danced for longer recently without incident. I drove for three hours on Monday morning, but I've driven for longer recently without incident. Maybe my body wants my declarations of pain to convince when next I see the doctor, and thus reminds me of previous ankle aches.

Houseshare - Tales

During EastEnders, four of my five housemates occupy the lounge. It's the most I've ever seen together at one time; I had actually convinced myself some of them had never met each other. I discover just how small our lounge is when I realise that with five inside one of us must stand at all times.

Mardy smiles; I honestly didn't think her face had the muscles necessary for it. It is lucky I am sitting down, else I might fall down.

I discover that the Hermit in the attic is actually 36 years old. No one believes him, because he looks no older than I. He says he thinks he is the oldest person on a graduate scheme ever.

The rest of the house looks unfinished. The owners are sprucing it up -- laying carpets, painting woodwork and walls, fixing things at an unprecedented rate -- readying it, we think, for a sale. My bedroom carpet is spotted and smudged with dropped plaster.

Les anniversaires

On Friday night it is a work colleague's birthday. Start in the Wheatsheaf, but it is too tropical, so after a couple of hours (which see me undefeated at pool and table football), we go down the road in search of somewhere cooler. Stay there for a couple of hours talking about moisturiser and phone condoms.

When time is called we go to Revs. Get one of those 10-shot sticks. Give half of them to birthday boy, resulting in him rapidly losing the ability to stand and becoming an affectionate drunk. The rest of us dance like fools and the birthday boy spends the rest of the night trying to kiss everyone, regardless of gender or trivial things like them actually being strangers to him.

Walking him home takes almost an hour.

#

The following morning, feeling surprisingly sober, I take the Silver (and Red) Machine west for my dad's birthday. I get to the cottage to find no one there to greet me; it turns out that my dad and step-mother are at the old house repairing the damage caused by the tennant ready for our relocation there in June. I kill a couple of hours at the cottage waiting for someone to come and pay me attention.

In the evening we go out for a meal. My brother is back, and we decide that as we are both back at the same time[1], it would be nice to treat our parents. Turns out to be more expensive than originally thought, due to the presence of auntie, uncle, and grandmother. Still, we made dad's night, so worth the expense.

Our grandmother gets falling down drunk, which is quite amusing once we ascertain she hasn't hurt herself. I've never seen her that sloshed before, and it is generally agreed that a full bottle of medium white wine is probably too much for a lady in her late seventies.

We play a lot of pool, although my wicked skills from the night before only last for the first two matches.

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[1] Because Dan is so reluctant to leave his pub for any significant length of time, it is rare that we are both home in concert.

Photographs - Evil Kevin

Following the day trip to Reading, the rest of the weekend was spent locked in a cupboard whilst my evil doppelganger rampaged in the Concrete Kingdom of Swindon.

I'm free again now, and have caught my evil counterpart and sent him back to his parallel universe. Haven't been able to discover exactly what damage he has wrought in the last 24 hours, but I'm taking the fact that I haven't been visited by the police as a positive sign.

(The other photographs can be viewed here.)

Review - Jack Reacher 9

One Shot by Lee Child

Plot:

A Gulf War vet goes postal worker and kills five people from a parking garage. The evidence he leaves behind is overwhelming, but when he is arrested he protests his innocence. He asks for Jack Reacher, but Reacher's now a drifter and they can't find him.

Good things:

Reading the bad guy instructing his minions to put the scare on Reacher, and thinking, Boy, you're about to get your ass handed you.

Well-paced, somewhat addictive prose.

After a couple of misfires mid-series Child appears to have gotten back on form.

Bad things:

Guessing what was going on fairly early on and not being far wrong. I had the what, but didn't quite have the why sorted.

Ends rather abruptly; 'Then Reacher left. The End.'

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50 book challenge 2006:

1 - 10
11 = The Dresden Files: 1. Storm Front by Jim Butcher [review]
12 = The Malazan Book of the Fallen: 4. House of Chains by Steven Erikson [review]
13 = The Darkwar: 1. Flight of the Nighthawks by Raymond E. Feist [review]
14 = Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman [review]
15 = One Shot by Lee Child

Next = The Malazan Book of the Fallen: 5. Midnight Tides by Steven Erikson

Review - Constantine

Constantine

--Dude!
--What?
--Hell sucks!
--Yes really!

Plot:

Ted Theodore Logan can, like, totally see angels and demons and stuff. He's trying to send as many of the demons back to hell as possible so that he doesn't go there himself.

Someone should tell him that all he has to do is challenge the grim reaper to a game of twister. Or battleships.

Good things:

I don't care about fan-boy outrage. I haven't read Hellblazer, so you can cry 'Canon-rape' all you want. This was good pop-corn entertainment.

Rachel Weisz.

The creepy-crawlie demon thing is quite cool.

Bad things:

Some of the supporting characters are weakly drawn, particularly the cab driver.

Increasingly Amusing Tales of Car Ownership - Chapter 8

The story so far:
Chapter 3: Only one calamity to go
Chapter 4: Only one wing mirror to go
Chapter 5: Linkage
Chapter 6: M.O.T.
Chapter 7: Flu

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Chapter 8: Pimp my Metro

I hoped, when I started calling these posts 'Increasingly Amusing Tales', that I would run out of incidents worthy of the title. I hoped that my driving life would be dull and boring from here on. No such luck.

You may recall that almost five weeks ago, I announced that the head gasket had blown in the Silver (and Red) Machine (see link to chapter 7 above). Today I finally retook possession of my Metro. In the garage's defense, it hasn't taken them five weeks to fix my car. They have taken three weeks (they actually started the work on Wednesday, 5 April 2006).

On the evening of the 5th I phoned the garage to find out if my car was ready, and was told that 'the job was more complicated than we expected'. Since then, every time I have called them, I have been told the work would take a couple more days, with no one actually saying why. Whilst I've been waiting for the return of my vehicle, we've come up with the following possible scenarios to explain the delay:

1 = Someone fucked up.
2 = Someone has taken a shine to the Silver (and Red) Machine and is reluctant to part with it.
3 = Westwood is pimping my ride.

Of the three, I think option 1. is the most likely. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that they are sticking to their original quotation. If it had merely been the case of encountering more things wrong with the car, then they would have telephoned me and quoted the price for additional work. The thinking is that someone's dropped something or broken something, and they've had to order a replacement part.

That would explain a delay, but I'm not sure it explains three weeks worth. Unless of course the replacement part was made of solid gold or something.

Option 2. doesn't sound very likely to me. Even I haven't taken that much of a shine to it (not after all these increasingly amusing tales).

Whilst option 3. would be quite amusing, it would probably be a wasted investment as the car was only worth £500 when I bought it.

Review - Anansi Boys

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

Good things: A good lighthearted read, humorous, but with touches of darkness that anyone familiar with Gaiman's other work will be familiar with.

The blending of mythology and real-life work well, for all that these are basically the same ideas that formed the basis of American Gods (Gaiman's previous novel).

Bad things: Didn't find myself enjoying this as much as I enjoyed American Gods.

The deleted scene. WTF is that about?

The character of Rosie is a bit 'Meh?'

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See also:
Sandman 4 (review of The Sandman: Season of Mists, February 2006)
Sandman 3 (review of The Sandman: Dream Country, January 2006)
My other mother (review of Coraline, December 2004)

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50 book challenge 2006:

1 - 10
11 = The Dresden Files: 1. Storm Front by Jim Butcher [review]
12 = The Malazan Book of the Fallen: 4. House of Chains by Steven Erikson [review]
13 = The Darkwar: 1. Flight of the Nighthawks by Raymond E. Feist [review]
14 = Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

Next = One Shot by Lee Child