Periods

Periods hurt I hate them. And I also hate all boys who don't have periods. Except A who made me a bath and a hot water bottle.

Life, the universe and everything

I have this silly belief where I think the things that happen to me matter and are part of some great plan or lesson. Whereas it's just really random stuff that happens to me...randomly.

After about twenty years in education I can't understand why some one didn't tell me that...there I go again thinking it's all about me...

Am I an alcoholic??? No wait don't answer that...

So last night we had a talk thingy in London. I invited my friend and after introduced her to my Phd people. Conversation got to drinking...

K: Le drinks a lot.
Lu: Yes she certainly does.
Le: No I don't.
Lu: Doesn't the fact that you've just poured half of K's glass of wine into yours say anything???
Le: Ohhh...(hanging my head in shame)

Long Silence

After a very long silence, largely related to the fact I forgot my password and login details, I thought I would start up again.

I have done lots of things in the last six months. Most of them were dull. The more interesting things were going to India after eleven years. Well actually I've done one interesting thing. I went to a conference in Italy...but I'm not sure that's very interesting.

This weekend we went and stayed at A's business partner B's girlfriend's parents' house....got it? It was an old Victorian house with mad deco. I liked it. Highlights were playing frisbee with ten people with ten frisbees. On Mon and A and I went and flew my kite in Richmond park. I have had it for five years but have never got off the ground. We got it up!

This morning I have just seen a man calmly cycling down the street on a Unicycle in Chiswick.

Aren't you glad I'm back so you can hear the mundane details of my life?

Bonfire night

Last Sat I forced Alex to go to the Battersea fireworks with me. We got there a little early so ducked into the chaviast pub in the world for a quick drink to keep the cold out. The pub was quite an interesting experience...like something from Shameless. Some random guy was coming around trying to sell deodrant...

Any way the fireworks were lots of fun with plenty of cheesy songs providing the sound track. My favourite was spaceman...

OK of course we have a few pics from my camera phone.

Daylight saving hours

I'm a little tired and grumpy today.

My stupid phone alarm went off at 6.45 this morning. It was so dark, I was so tired. My radio alarm followed a few minutes later. (I need two, I'm that rubbish at getting up) I grit my teeth lean over put the bedside light on, lie listening to the radio. I'm a geek it's on radio 4. I'm willing myself to wake up.

Brain is starting to function. Why are they talking about farming? Fffff it's actually 5.45 I haven't reset any of my clocks.

I guess this wouldn't be so bad except it's Wednesday, the clocks went back on Sunday. In my defence I was at A's the last two nights. Not in my defence my phone alarm went off twice at stupid o'clock at his yesterday morning.

Mint-Vybe FM 99.5 still locked on

I feel that I should just say that other than the first night the mixing on this station is good and music selection excellent. And I'm slightly addicted to it. I'm keeping away from the texting though.

Mint-Vybe 99.5 FM keep it locked...

I really struggle to find any decent music to listen to on the radio on my drive in and out of Uni in the rush hour. I always forget to bring CDs into the car and anything I do have in there I have listened to, to death. Radio 1 on Fri evenings is fine but the rest of the time I can hardly bare to listen to most of the stuff. Chris Moyles and Johnny Vaughan being two people I particularly hate.

I normally have Radio 4 on in the mornings and often on the way home I find myself listening to the Archers, being too lazy to change the station. I realised on Tues night I had a fairly good idea of what was happening in the plotline and I decided this was a very bad thing. So I started fiddling about with my buttons ;) and found this station...Mint-Vybe 99.5 FM.

I had a very entertaining journey home. I really liked the music they were playing: dirty funky house. Unfortunately the mixing was a bit rough.

About 2/3rd the way through a song the DJ started mixing in the next one.

Dhunk chuck dhunk chuck dhunk chuck...part of the new song coming through....oh no it's gone...
Let's have another go dhunk dhunk, chunk chunk, dhunk dhunk, chunk chunk...no too fast...the song's gone again...
Ok another go dhunk chuck dhunk chuck dhunk chuck...
No again dhunk dhunk, chunk chunk, dhunk dhunk, chunk chunk and so on for four or five go s.
Ok let's just fade the previous one out and fade the new one in.

It felt like hanging out in some one's bedroom as they learnt to mix. And to add to hilarity they were shout outs in the middle of the songs while he was trying to mix. There is a telephone number which you can text/call into to get your shout outs

I decided to give them another go on Weds night and I was really impressed by the huge improvement as Faithless’ Salve Mea mixed seamlessly into Insomonia. Then DJ gives a shout out to Sister Bliss who’s "mixing it in", and I realise he’s just playing a Faithless CD.

Having said all that, I was listening on the way in this morning and the mixing was far better. I enjoyed the music all the way in. I think they mix for ridiculously long sets, maybe that's why the quality has deteriorated by 6pm. It seems they may be legit as they had an ad break. Though it was for some club nights in Watford…hmm. And only one in two hours.

Having googled them I have found them on myspace. Any way I would recommend it for the entertainment value and I think there may even be some talented DJs in there somewhere.

Prowlers, neighbours and flatmates

We have a prowler.

The woman next door saw him at 6 am on Monday morning peering into C's bedroom dressed in black with a black hat. But she didn't think to call the police, caretaker, or us...

However, I went around to ask her what she had seen and what had happened and I had the first conversation I have ever had with her. She's been living next door to me for three years.

C was a bit panicked about the whole thing I had to go out and get Al to come and stay to reassure her. And she then slept on N's floor her room is on the other side of the flat!

I called the police to report it and ask for some advice on Tues. They still haven't called me back.

I went over to visit S on Tues in her new flat with G. It's a gorgeous, part of a converted schoolhouse. It has an integrated open plan kitchen/lounge and two bedrooms with high vaulted ceilings and beams. It's all decorated in suitable minimalist style with muted tones. It would make any yuppie proud. They cooked me a yummy spag bol.

Very Large Eggs

S bought a pack of Sainsburys' Very Large Eggs (free range). Every one in a pack of six was a double yoker.

I bought another pack of six, two of which were double yokers. I had to throw the rest of the pack away as they were passed their date. I was concerned that the hens producing the Very Large Eggs were being injected with something to produce double yokers.

Me and A bought another pack of Very Large Eggs this weekend. It's like when you see a car crash and you have to look. The eggs were obviously genetically modified but...
This pack didn't have any double yokes. Phew. Some of the yokes were a funny shape...

THE wedding

Last weekend was spent attending THE wedding. Al and me left London at 2pm feeling slightly smug having decided we were going to get up to Holme upon Spalding before any one else and make use of the hot tubs for a few leisurely hours.

We didn't know about the lane widening works on the M1 and it took 5 solid hours to drive up. Much spent in stop start traffic. Alex really needs to learn to drive. I was knackered by the time we got up and a few minutes behind us arrived the other London lot who had quite sensibly caught the train and left at 4pm.

Having arrived discussion ensued about food. Al's mates do not eat. Unlike me who has earned herself the Ibiza name of Marvin Starvin. (The world's about to end...when are we going to eat, being the two most frequent things I say to Alex)

Anyway decision reached was microwave spaghetti hoops. After 5 hours of driving this wasn't going to do for me. Ahhh there's a Chinese down the road. Why we thought this was a good idea I have no clue. As we walked in I started to worry and the fact I could only force five forks in my mouth says volumes! Everything was the same colour.(brown) Everything tasted of sackfuls of salt and there were large bits of yellow fat. I wouldn't recommend Hungs in Holme Upon Spalding. I said this to Rick. But he insisted and not only appeared to enjoy his but saved some from breakfast.

A nice dip in the hot tub with large glass of cava however really picked up the evening. Ahhhhh...
There were even little holders for glasses on the sides.

Next morning Al had to contend with a lodge of three women getting ready for the wedding. He quite sensibly realised that his role should be to cook us all bacon butties as we wandered around aimlessly plucking eyebrows, painting toenails etc... The taxi arrived a whole five mins early and I had to just throw everything into my bag randomly. Unfortunately it was belting down with rain and wind whipping us around. We stopped at a beautiful pub Ye Olde Red Lion for a quick drink and then went up to the church.

It was a lovely ceremony. A good length and a beautiful old church. After THE wedding there were attempts to take pictures, throw confetti and blow bubbles outside the church as the wind whipped us around. The church was on a steep hill surrounded by a completely flat landscape and this meant I'm sure this was the windiest point for miles. Then we piled into to Rick's car to get to the reception at Emma's(bride) parents' house. They had a huge Marque in the garden. A cute little band playing and we had Pimms and nattered as people got called out in groups for pictures. Dinner was lush! Toasts touching and the best man's speech ravaging absolutely hilarious though. The disco was very good. Fireworks amazing. But slowly it all descended into a drunken mess! Back to the lodges and more drunkeness. Hot tubs and large amounts of alcohol are a very dangerous combination. I had several bruises the next day.

Sunday was a very civilsed BBQ back at the Marque. Al and me finally at 10pm decided to head back to the lodges. Thinking we'd enjoy the hot tubs one last time. Unfortunately we couldn't get them hot. The others returned at 1am. But we had long zonked out.

Woke up late. Rushed around packing. Jo cooked breakie! Which was much needed. Discovery that bikini top had blocked next door's hot tub filter and it had turned brown.

Long journey home. Another 5 hours. Was so tired I kept walking into things. Two early nights and just about back to normal.

If you got this far well done! Sorry for such a long post...

They're getting longer...

Some pics as a prize..



Guess who?!





People in the lodge, minus Alex behind camera.



There are no good pic of Alex and me in the entire world. This is the best we did.





Pretty flowers I started to take pics of and every one copied! ;)

SW4

Last weekend was dominated by the Metro weekender. We went to the dance day on Sat; not the scary rock day. It was a cool day except for the end when we got rained on. Having been to Homelands two years ago, I would definitely rate that above this though. The day was cool just a little short. Hence we ``had" to go on the Afterparty!

I think I am a reasonably accepting and open person but when we went to Ibiza by the end of the holiday there was one particular guy I HATED! Typically story about him. We go out for dinner/tapas. There is deep fried squid.

Me: Yum yum I want to get that.
C (which stands for c&nt): No you can't get that I don't like it.
Me: Oh. Hmm. I'll order it for myself and pay for it separately.
C (which stands for c&nt): No. Are you stupid. Tapas is about sharing we all have to eat the same food.

I'm getting the look of a pitbull in my eyes and am about to deck him. Alex intervenes and we order it. But this is typical of him. Any way you may have heard that story I bring it up quite a lot because I hate him so much.

Anyway we knew C(which stands for c&nt) was likely to be at SW4 but hadn't contacted him because he is, well a c&nt. Of course we ran into him. Bri is like oh he's the guy you hate. I feeling guilty that I'm turning the hold world against him say"no no he's OK we just sort of clashed a bit." Anyway trying to be polite. Go for a bit of a boogie. C(which stands for c&nt) comes over to Bri and feels him up! Like blantly! (C is gay). At this point he realises that now Bri hates him as well as me and he leaves. There was a bit of an atmosphere.

Now the funniest thing about SW4 for me was later when C walked passed and pretended not to see us, Bri stood off to the side, hide amongst the crowd and raised his eyebrows. I realise it doesn't sound so funny now. But me and Al agree it was a class moment!

The afterparty was excellent. Unfortunately Al and Bri had bought some dodgy cigarettes from some random woman in Clapham and Al had a bit of a headache. But we sat ourselves upstairs in the ``Gods" and listened to Armin pump out some banging toones, with suitable amounts of strobe and laser lighting. At 4 am after 14 hours of clubbing we crept home to bed.

This weekend we're off to THE wedding for Al's mates. (The ones for whom we went to the Sten Hag tour in Ibiza) We have a lodge booked with hot tubs! The only down point is C will be there. But I will act like an adult and ignore him. Hmm.

Annoying People

I really hate when some one starts annoying you and then everything they say annoys you. And you realise you are being a bit unreasonable. But GOD they're annoying and you have to keep running it through your head....they're not saying anything that bad. But you really want to tell them to get a life.

Acton

Alex pretends to live in Chiswick. He really lives in Acton but his postcode is Chiswick. I actually much prefer Acton to Chiswick.

I feel very safe walking around there unlike Shepherd's Bush down the road. There are lots of immigrants around there too, particularly Polish people. I like this. It's more interesting. People are a lot more friendly and laid back. People obviously feel at home. A week ago you could see Portuguese flags hanging out the windows. Surely there are not many places in London where they could do this.

When I was a kid a particularly fun weekend involved going to Southall and getting Indian shopping (vegetables, meat, spices). My mum would then cook delicious Indian food for the week. In mango season we would buy mangoes flown in from India/Pakistan. Due to my superior mango tastes I wouldn't touch mangoes in the supermarkets...they are kack. Waitrose do now stock Alphonso mangoes...I'll have those...
So I was very excited to find you can buy good, flown in Mangoes in Acton.

These mangoes can be bought in Egyptian shops. You can also buy lots of other exciting things. Such as a tub (3/4 size of a pint glass) of olives, pickled chillies, lemons and garlic for £1.25. Dolmades, elephants beans etc... I also bought my brother a Hookah for his birthday. We spent a large part of Friday night in a fairly inebriated state trying to figure out how it worked with my cousin, Sujoy, who was visiting from India and his wife, Utsha. We finally got the apple tabacco going. Very smooth. Even for me a non-smoker. My grandfather used to smoke one and my mum used to make up the little packs of charcoal and tobacco that he used.

Other cool things about Acton.

1. Lots of restaurants which look like they will be good and cheaper than Richmond. (Wouldn't take much Richmond is mega over-priced in my opinion) Lebanese, Korean, Mexican, Jamaican and Spanish.

2. The Morrisions sells salt fish patties and lamb patties.

3. We went to the Acton carnival last year. There was lots of food (we had jerk chicken and rice), Capeiora displays, Samba displays...generally nice atmosphere.

4. Crazy people. It makes life more interesting. We went and lay in the park on Sunday and there was a man walking around with a guitar playing it and singing. (I think he was playing and singing we were too far away to hear and I didn’t like to get too close. It looked like he was though.)

5. Alex saw some one getting arrested for smoking pot in the park. I’m not too sure if this goes under cool things about Acton.

To summarise, Acton is an interesting and cool place. Though the road works on the main street are a bit stressful at the moment.

Update...

OK this is going to be a very dull entry but I feel it important to update you all correctly with my last two months events.

Went to Barcelona for pinkthulu's 30th. It was lots of fun. We were very European and slipped into the late eating, drinking and staying out late clubbing culture very well. We saw lost of Gaudi things e.g. Sagrada Familia, chilled out in the park etc, etc... The most "interesting" things were walking through the very very seedy red light district and Alex being propositioned by a prostitute with me about a foot away from him. The atmosphere was buzzy, people very friendly, young and hip and generally it is a beautiful fun city and I would definately recommend it.

Went to Ibiza with Alex's mates for a Sten Hag do. Did Space opening party, DC10 opening party Pacha for Subliminal and Defected opening parties. Lay in the sun got a nice tan. Alex burnt his chest... Fun, fun fun!

At DC10 the girls wore some awful bridemaids dresses and Em (Sten) wore a wedding dress. Alex also choose to dress up though no one made him. (Em made the girls dress up). We looked like fools!

Last trip was to Madrid where I attend a conference (APMOD 2006) and presented some work. No one laughed at me. I didn't fall over, or stutter, or run out of the room screaming. This I classify as a sucess. We also had a very lavish conference dinner with four courses and a different wine with each course. Yum, yum...

Hmmm

My supervisor is moving back to Canada...I'm not sure how to feel about this.

Negative Space

This afternoon/evening me and Alex are off to the Tate Modern which is open till 10pm on Sat nights. We went a few months back and had a very pleasent night out. Walked along the Southbank...looked at the pretty lights. Wondered around some galleries had a drink in the bar at the top where you could see all of London. ( Well not all of London but quite a lot of it.)

We had previously had an amusing conversation about Negative Space which Alex explained to me is when you draw the space around an object rather than the object.

Me...so you draw the object and colour in on the outside of the lines rather than the inside...

Alex...No it's when you consider all the space rather than the object itself...

Me...so you draw the object and colour in on the outside of the lines rather than the inside...

I'm looking forward to taking the piss out of Alex again tonight...may be I'll learn something too...

Tales from the Tea Room

It all began last year with a series of irate emails about the tearoom and
the disappearing teaspoons... here we have a sample email...


"Well, where do we go from here then? As you know, the tea spoons
have been relentlessly disappearing. I've put two new teaspoons in
the tea room this week and they too have disappeared. I've now
come to the point where I refuse to put any new spoons in there.
I can only suggest that everyone keeps their own personal
teaspoon and hangs onto it for dear life, so that no-one else can
nick it. Pathetic isn't it.

I can only assume that someone (in the department?) thinks they
are having a huge joke at everyone's expense. Please join with me
as I extend my sincere sympathy to this sad person."

Then we got a reply from a very daring department member, who
obviously does not realise that the art of happiness is keeping
secretaries happy...


"Well we clearly need a new procedure here. Can I suggest a
teaspoon working group to come forward with recommendations
to the School's away days in July (I suggest a 2 hour slot on the
agenda)?

Or course staff are reminded that they must not take action against
any alleged teaspoon stealers; the apporopriate course of action is to
refer them to the Head of Department who will invite them to return
the teaspoons; if they still claim they haven't got them, then we
must refer them to the University's Cutlery Committee who will,
with appropriate legal advice and representation from the university
solicitor and visitor, decide if there is a prima facie case to be
answered. This Committee is meeting more regularly in response
to the growing need across all departments (although in Social
Science the problem is slightly different, being forks - indeed it is
a national problem according to the Times Higher). Pending
their deliberations, salaries will be withheld."

Names of emailers, blogger and institution witheld for security purposes...

Teaspoons

We do important work here... The teaspoon saga has been going for some time. Email from department secretary...

"Here we go again:

May I remind everyone who uses the tea room that it is YOUR responsibility to wash up your own mug. You do NOT leave it lying around for someone else to wash up. If you have a guest, then you're responsible for washing up his/her mug as well. I know this will come as an alien concept to some of you, but you could also consider putting any plate, bowl, you use away in the cupboard.

And whilst I'm on the subject, please bring back the tea spoons!!! NOW!

That's it."

Signed Dept Sec. (Identity hidden for security purposes...my security)

Muppets

Despite working in finance, I've always leaned slightly to the free love-left. All people are equal, just circumstance and luck that influence what we do with and get from life...

I've been running BASIC stats seminars for first year and foundation year students.

Errmm there are some really stupid people out there.