... Exploring The Vurtlands

Gym Etiquette

2012-02-06T19:14:00.001Z

This has probably been done to death in several places but here's my take on it.

You go to the gym, I go to the gym. We have to co-exist. It doesn't mean you have to adhere to a giant rule book full of confusing or ridiculous rules, but you could show some consideration. Here are 10 "dos" and "donts" for you to look into.

"Dos"

Do put the weights back when you're finished. It doesn't matter if they're 5kg or 50kg pieces. This is the equivalent of your wife having to clean up after you. I don't want to see how weak or strong you are. I just want to go to the weight tree and get the weights I want without having to go to ten different places to retrieve them from after you've finished your workout.
Do wipe down your surfaces or use a towel when you've finished. Your girlfriend, or that hot girl in the Pilates class may enjoy getting a whiff or splash of your sweat, but I certainly don't. Most gyms provide a spray and paper towel arrangement to wipe down. Please feel free to use it.
Do be aware of the space you're taking up. If I'm on the squat rack then don't construe it as an invitation to come within 10cm of me and start hurling weights around. You're probably putting me off my lift because I'm thinking you're going to lose control of what you're doing and chuck your weight into me. Or even worse, I'm going to push a little too hard, lose control of my weights, and thwack you somewhere sensitive with them. Let's all maintain a healthy distance when we're lifting.
Do feel free to ask if you can jump in when I'm in between a set. I don't mind you doing this, and it's better than you giving me a death stare because I'm using the kit you want.
Do feel free to ask me to give you a spot. Helping people out is cool with me, and the worst I can do is say no. I'm not the type who'll try and correct your technique because I firmly believe what works for me may not work for you. But I am 100% sure that you dropping the 20kg plate on your head will not work for either one of us.

"Donts"

Please don't talk about shit you wouldn't talk about in front of your boss at the office gym. I don't want to know if you're sleeping with the girl in accounts, or that you've had erectile dysfunction, or that you're a bit of a homophobe. If it won't fly in the office, then chances are it won't fly in the office gym.
Don't stand around chatting about how much you used to lift. Nobody gives a shit. If you're standing around chatting in a gym then you're developing relationships, not muscles.
Don't worry about pushing yourself and looking stupid. If you've put too much weight on then there's nothing wrong with taking it off when you realise it's not achievable. Also refer previous point on "do ask for a spot".
Don't pose. It makes you look like a twat. That shit is for the mirror at home.
And finally, please use roll on deodorant. If there's one thing you follow from this list, then this would be it. There is nothing worse than finishing a workout, going into the changing rooms while breathing heavily after a long run or a strenuous session and having some gelled pillock spraying half a can of lynx down your throat. Those adverts are full of lies. Angels will not fight over you, women will not flock to you in twos, you will not develop some magical magnetic force that makes them uncontrollably attracted to your person. All Lynx in the industrial quantities you're spraying onto your body will succeed in doing, is make you reek of desperation like only an underage school disco can, and potentially succeed in giving me some sort of propellant poisoning.

That's it.

Spends

2012-01-23T21:14:00.000Z

Since life got back in the black I seem to have the urge to buy something because I'm rolling in it.

Last month I spent £492.87 on things I want. Not things I need, but things I want. I'm fairly sure this is a case of spending money just because you have it. Bizarre.

Here's the breakdown.

A few rounds and lunch with a mate in the pub £26.30

New batteries for my bike's rear light £2.28

New tyres and a quick release collar for my bicycle £55.97

A book on cycle routes in London £6.92

A present for my best friend Ashley Moore and some bike cleaning stuff £27.50

New running shoes and £10 spending money £100

A hose for the garden so I may wash my bikes £19.99

2 new cycling jerseys and a pair of cycling gloves £58.48

Dinner out with Emo Girlfriend at GBK £13.30

Some down cleaner and reproofer £8.15

Takeaway on a night after a very long change £20.30

A pair of bib tights, liner shorts, bottle cage, bottle and a pair of socks £48.44

Anniversary diner at thePrincess Vic with Emo Girlfriend £76.89

A night out for my cousin's birthday in Soho £28.35

There you have it.

Fucking ridiculous. How did I do that?

Indecision Is The Devil

2012-01-17T20:49:00.000Z

Today I made a big mistake.

This week is the first week I start to layer my exercise. I started cycling regularly to work everyday. Regularly means 4 times a week. The layering would have seen me cycle to work and running 5k three times a week. There are plans to layer an additional workout once this week is over.

Today I made a mistake with the plan. It was purely due to indecision and it ruined my workout.

The first was not setting a regular mealtime for lunch.

I snacked throughout the day which threw my body off. So instead of feeding and taking care of hunger, I kept postponing it by snacking on a few handfuls of nuts each time. The second error was eating a few chocolates in the middle. These things are terrible if you've not eaten properly and are preparing to do some exercise. You say alright, I've not eaten lunch, I'll power through by eating some high calorie chocolate for the energy. It'll keep me going until I finish the run, and I can have a proper meal at the end.

Not so.

I bottomed out at around the 2.5km mark. Very badly. Dizziness, stumbling, faint head, the works. I kept going until the 3km mark and decided it wasn't worth it. It was probably for the best.

The third error was an even more basic one. It was to not have a planned time for exercise. I reckon one of two slots work best. Either directly before lunch, or before dinner, but only after lunch has settled. It takes my body approximately 90 minutes to process a tuna baguette made using wholemeal flour. That gives me a rough idea as to how long I need to wait before exercising.

Lessons learned are:

- Eat your meals at a decent time. I reckon from now on, whatever happens, I will head off to have my meals at 1130.
- If I don't eat, then I exercise.
- If I do eat, then I go to the gym by 1300 if possible. If not, then I go to the gym or go running as soon as time permits. Either once work is over, or as soon as I can get away with it.

That is all. Hopefully tomorrow's training will have a better outcome.

Television Is Evil

2012-01-12T22:06:00.002Z

Imagine something capable of occupying your attention for hours at a time. Something that you perceive to be obtainable at little to no cost. Something that may even be considered entertainment. Sounds good doesn't it?

Not when it's the evil bastard that is TELEVISION!

I've got several reasons for feeling this way. It starts with the quality of what is on these days. You switch the telly on, have a look at the guide, and every other show on is something to do with reality TV. Some fucker is getting married and fucking it up royally. Some woman is pushing a bastard child out of her cavernous vagina. Some twat at customs lied about his passport and has some heroin up his backside. It's all about some twat, and I fear their twattiness is entering my being by some sort of televisual radiation.

Reality TV is the equivalent of Tesco Self Service Checkouts. Cheap to make, almost always high return on investment, and easy to administer. It is an insult to your intelligence. With Tesco checkouts someone is saying "here is a shitty job that nobody wanted to do. We want you to do it, and not only that, we want you to feel grateful about it while we pocket the profit by not paying someone to do this shitty job! Make sure you don't nick any carrots while you're at it". With reality TV, someone is saying something similar. If the cunts who made it did deign to talk to you then I think this would be their message.

"Here is some shit that we didn't put too much effort, or thought into making. Not only are you going to watch it, you're also going to think it's awesome and not the slightest insult to your intelligence. Oh, and tell your friends you cunts."

Why don't they just slap our brains upside the head?

The worst thing about reality TV is certainly the people who watch it. If they're clever then you wonder why they waste their time watching it. Watching someone stupid is like meeting someone who voted for the BNP. An idiot who is easily led. Perhaps it's why these shows are littered with advertisements for payday loans or for finance companies who will consolidate the misery of your miserable fucking life into one easy monthly repayment of £999.99 for 50,000 years, or until you kill yourself, whichever comes first! However, don't worry about the fact that you only make £300 a month. It's not like you're as bad as that idiot who tried to get his fiancee to marry him at an amusement park on a rollercoaster, or you're a teenage mother with the IQ of a gnat with it's head sliced off. Oh no, you're clever! It's not as if you could be doing anything better with your time is it?

You've by now probably established that reality TV is my least favourite genre of programming.

Ultimately there's not much I can do about reality television apart from not watch it. I was brought up in a household where you were made to constantly feel guilty if you weren't exercising or studying. TV was beheld by my parents to be a luxury, and rightly so. It's like someone telling you it's ok to switch off your brain. It's ok to not want to do something productive. Fuck that shit. From now on, I will not watch any more reality television.

NYE 2011

2011-12-31T19:45:00.001Z

Each year I cook Emo Girlfriend a gourmet dinner on New Year's Eve. Some things will need to change next year.

- No more steak dinners. It is now boring.
- Something with some excitement needs to be planned. Not dinner, not going out to a nightclub, or a bar, or something involving mass amounts of alcohol consumption. Perhaps a holiday of sorts may be better?
- Or something a lot more chilled out could be planned. Perhaps something chilled out. Maybe a massage at home during the day and some champagne later on could be looked at?
- Maybe we can exchange presents on NYE?
- Fireworks?
- A night away somewhere in the UK?

Who knows. Let's see if I can work something out. Anyway, this has been an interesting year. Let's see what next year will be like.

Oh, and my resolution for next year is to adhere to my 2 beers on a weekday limit (go home after the 2nd beer if I'm out) and 5 beers on a weekend limit. I may tack a couple of things onto it. They'd probably have to do with being a bit more active I reckon!

Get A Hold Of Yourself

2011-12-27T23:45:00.000Z

You cannot keep looking at bikes on the internet.

I know you want the Canyon, but the standover height is not looking great, and you're not going to know what it's really like until you ride it.

You can't get the On-One, because the prices are not that great compared to the Canyon. The geometry is better, but the price means you'll keep feeling the Canyon was a better deal. It won't be a good deal unless you can get an SLX/XT drivetrain, with DT Swiss forks and Formula RX brakes for under £1100. £1300 for X9, Rebas and Elixir CR brakes doesn't feel like a good deal for the money.

You're not going to buy the Whyte. Frankly, it's a rip off.

You're not going to buy a temporary replacement frame. The overhead and work associated with the replacement is not worth it.

So, there's nothing you can do until you get your passport through. That's not until sometime in January by the looks of it.

Also, you need to set aside £500 to go to Sri Lanka in March. Grandparents, they'll get your mind off this rubbish.

2nd Hand Is Not For Me

2011-12-24T23:02:00.000Z

After wrestling with the idea of buying a bike second hand I've finally give up on it.

The reason?

This.

This bike can be had brand new for £1699. It's just gone for £1019 on eBay. The owner claimed it had done under 60 miles, came with a set of Roval wheels, which he then withdrew from the sale at the 11th hour and seems a bit of a dunderhead when it comes to selling.

You can look at it two ways.

The first is you're geting a nearly new bike (according to a buyer who's not had much feedback, and has also swapped the sale details around) at around 60% of cost. However, consider that 20% of this cost would have been VAT. Therefore, the real cost of this bike new, is £1417. With cars, you're supposed to lose the VAT the instant you drive them off the forecourt. You've now paid 72% of the cost of the bike. Not a bad deal still.

Here's the second way.

Consider you could've gotten a Ride2Work voucher (horrible name, I know) which would have let you pay for £1000 of this via salary sacrifice. This means the price of the bike new, is now around £1200 if you're a higher rate taxpayer. Maybe even less.

You have now paid pretty much full price for a bike that is 2nd hand, from someone you don't know, and you also have no warranty on it.

Idiot.

I see a lot of people whingeing about "Rip-off Britain", but if you're not prepared to do your research then you deserve to be ripped off you idiots.

Have a merry fucking Christmas. I'm buying from the Germans.

5 Things I Learnt At The Weekend

2011-12-19T22:01:00.000Z

1. Weeknight drinking is no longer for me.

There was a time when I could go on the lam on a Monday night, stagger home at 6, have half an hour's nap, and get to work for 8. Those days are long gone as I found out this Thursday night.

Drinking on a weeknight now yields a mentally sluggish Friday morning, a Friday afternoon spent wishing I was in bed (lunch is a brief respite) and a Friday evening spent ruefully fishing out receipts for expensive rounds in overpriced London bars. A strict two beer limit will be imposed on weeknights from now on.

2. Gigs in large venues involving DJs are shit.

I got off the sofa and went to watch 2ManyDJs play at Brixton Academy on Saturday night with Emo Girlfriend. I was indifferent to the music they played at best. The good things about a DJ gig at a large venue can be replicated with 95% success in your living room if you have a decent sound system. As a bonus, you can subtract 100% of the annoyances! It was good to not blow it off like we've done with some gigs in the past, but I am not going to see a DJ set at somewhere like the Academy again. Unless it's in a large group which could be fun.

3. Recliner sofas are incredible.

We have one.

It is amazing.

I do not want to ever leave it once I sit down.

4. I need to buy a bike soon.

Looking at bikes on the internet is taking over my life. I cannot make up my mind between:

- Second hand vs brand new
- Full suspension vs hardtail
- Steel vs alloy vs carbon
- All mountain vs XC

I think XC will be better for going riding with Emo Girlfriend as she's getting an XC bike as well, but a trail/all mountain bike will be better for general mucking about in the hills and trail centres. I also need to sell my old bike and get some monies for it. Unfortunately I've left it too long. December and January are not good times to sell a bike. It's best that I wait till spring to sell it.

5. I need to do some more revision.

Not studying with any real focus is close to useless. It makes me feel like I lack purpose. Time to get the books out again!

Drunken Stupidity

2011-12-17T11:40:00.004Z

I went out on Thursday night for a works Christmas do.

My enforced period of sobriety is now over and I am back to bitterly regretting the things that occurred when I was drunk. Of what I can remember are the following:

- Buying a fairly expensive round of drinks
- Possibly having a pull on a cigarette. Though I cannot remember if I imagined this or not.
- Staying out way longer than I should have on a school night.
- Stiffing someone for the taxi on the way back.

From now on, I will never drink more than 2 beers when I am out on a weeknight.

The Amazonian Curse

2011-12-07T21:04:00.001Z

I celebrated my birthday recently. In a stroke of what I thought to be genius, I asked my cousin for Amazon vouchers when faced with the question of what I wanted for my birthday. My reasoning was

- Amazon have loads of stuff
- I want lots of odd things
- I want things at the best possible price
- Ergo, Amazon is the perfect place to get them

Simple reasoning which I thought would let me get a pretty sweet present, but it has not turned out to be so simple. I forgot, as usual, to account for the human variable.

Yes, Amazon has tons of stuff. However, things have changed a lot since I last used it with any degree of frequency.

Amazon now sell things that are NOT books on Amazon. Amazon now sell things on Amazon that are not sold by Amazon. You think this is confusing for you? Now try thinking how confusing this is for me! Does it mean that Super Saver Delivery is still free? Is that trial of Amazon Prime promising next business day delivery worth it? In most cases the answer is not worth working out if you're like me, and have bought several different things from several different sellers.

Amazon is now no longer one of the cheapest places to acquire something. In fact, you maybe better off buying it on the high street. If you want to buy clothes and are a bit of an awkward size like me, then you're better off paying a few quid extra and trying them on in a shop before buying.

So the Amazon idea has not worked out as well as it should have. I am now off to find some books on Amazon, sold by Amazon at a decent price!

A Man Needs A Hobby

2011-11-29T21:32:00.001Z

A few weeks ago, Emo Girlfriend and I went climbing. The kind with ropes, special shoes, chalk and handholds and fancy walls. It was fun. She thinks we can make this a hobby of ours.

It was fun, but I have several hobbies already. Too many to focus on with any real conviction, so the time has come to make a cull.

But first, I feel like listing a few that have been and gone.

Comic books. I used to love doodling and too much spare time, combined with ill-advised priorities meant I spent a lot of money on comics and started thinking about becoming some sort of artist. I got some drawing card, an inkwell and a quill pen. It was fun, but sitting inside, making copies of poses from artist's dummies was too "indoorsy" for me.

Gardening. Fun, I was good at it, it had the involvement factor and measurable rewards. Unfortunately, it was too sedate for me. I did learn some valuable lessons from it.

Overclocking. Probably one of the geekiest things to do. Trying to make a processor do what it does faster. Stupid, costly, and ultimately, pointless unless you're a lab technician at a processor manufacturer.

These days, time is limited, money almost more so and a hobby with no goal, pointless.

I'm not someone who's content with doing something for the sake of it. I need a goal. So I've now decided I can have a total of four activities I can involve myself in. So two hobbies and two "passions", three hobbies and one "passion", any permutation of the four. Hobbies, you're allowed to duck in and out of, passions, not so.

I reckon that means it's down to:

- Tennis
- Cycling
- Photography
- ?

It's time to work out a schedule using which I can indulge in these things in an optimal fashion.

She Spend My Money

2011-11-06T20:17:00.001Z

I will stop at nothing in my quest to get Emo Girlfriend mountain biking with me.

This means that some money I'd earmarked for a shiny new iPad 2 later next year will now be spent on a mountain bike for her. She'll put in a majority of the money and I'll be making up the difference.

I wonder how this will pan out. I am currently entertaining heady visions of us attaining podium finishes in the mixed pairs in XC races!

If all goes well, then she will own one of these fairly soon:

I cannot wait!

Choices

2011-10-30T21:58:00.001Z

I am currently in the market for a new bike.

The choices are starting to get me down. They are:

Cheap, high spec long travel, 2nd hand hardtail. Something like this.
Expensive, fast, low maintenance, lightweight, new cross country bike. Like this.
Good value full suspension cross country bike. Still expensive, like this.
Or a good value all mountain bike that will give me some room to grow into more daring rides. Like this.

The mind is beginning to boggle.

The long travel, 2nd hand hardtail was meant to be something my girlfriend and I could both use. Height wise it would suit both of us. And the more relaxed geometry should mean she's more comfortable on the bike. Unfortunately, 2nd hand sellers are somewhat deluded by the value of their bikes, so this is not looking likely. At the same time, a steel frame is not the one of choice. I don't trust them to not corrode, and they're heavier. A better deal may be had around January if I can bear to wait long enough.

Option 2 is interesting. The bike in question is low maintenance due to having hub gears and is lightweight. Geometry is very racy, so the girlfriend may not be so comfortable on it, but it will be superb to trounce people on the uphills. If I didn't get it now, I'd definitely get one once I get a few more XC races under my belt.

I am liking option 3. Canyon do great bikes at great prices. The downside is buying a bike I've never been on due to them only selling mail order. I'm at a height where I'm between small and medium frame sizes. Though small should be fine, medium could be ok, and possibly quicker than a small. I'd be happier if I could ride the bike before committing to buy. I am fairly certain that I'd have bought this bike by now if I'd visited their shop. Perhaps the girlfriend will get a romantic weekend away for two in Koblenz!

4 is the joker in the pack. It will be the heaviest and the most "poorly" specced bike of the lot (if you can spec a bike poorly after spending nearly £2000 on it!). However, if I come into possession of an adequate amount of testicular fortitude, then this could also be the more fun option. I think 4 is a bike that would be nice to have, but not the most focussed on what I want to do.

Now, I reckon 2 and 3 will be the options that encourage me to do the most riding, while 1 and 4 will be the most fun. Right now, I want to get fit, get faster at general XC and trail centre riding and enter some races in the new year and set some decent times, so 1 and 2 seem to be the best bets.

2 is the best value, so I will plump for that. It may have to be in the new year once the bank balance has seen some beefing up. I can't wait to go to Koblenz!

P.S: This post was written to help me make my mind up about which bike I wanted. The problem is wanting too many at the same time!

Falling

2011-10-25T21:00:00.000+01:00

Recently I decided to start riding clipped in.

It's great. You feel like you're part of the bike. The uphills aren't as daunting as they once were and I definitely feel quicker.

The only downside is remembering to clip out.

I've had a couple of falls on the road bike so far. The first time was on the first night I rode clipped. The second time was tonight.

I turned left onto a road. A slower cyclist was in front of me. She'd stopped because a car was parking in front of her. She looked over her shoulder hesitating. I could see her thinking I was about to overtake her so I told her to go ahead while I slowed down. At that moment, a van pulled up alongside me. I was now boxed in between the slow cyclist, and the van on my right. The choice was to keep going and run into her or dismount. I didn't account for being clipped in when I opted for the latter. Cue a slightly heavy fall.

Ironically, you automatically unclip when you fall. So, with Scott at my feet, fallen on his side, I sat on the kerb nursing my frustration. A kindly pedestrian who'd seen the whole thing came up to me and asked if I was alright. I told her I was fine, but I was still in a bit of a tizzy.

I got up and carried on. A little blood had started to seep through my compression tights.

Blood and sweat, but no tears. This is my bike ride. I will not give it up.

I'm unclipping in a fucking hurry the next time some silly bitch can't make her mind up when she's in front of my wheels though!

Buy Or Upgrade?

2011-10-24T23:16:00.000+01:00

Following on from here I am now faced with the conundrum of buying, or upgrading my bike.

It's come to light that the frame is intended for someone about a foot taller than me. I do not want to smack my bollocks into the top tube on a rapid dismount, and the frame is pretty hefty as well.

After 7 years I reckon I deserve it, but it would hurt to get rid of the old boy.

At the same time, whatever it gets upgraded to needs to be worth the pain.

I'm hoping to write about this at length. Hopefully it will clear up my indecision. I cannot decide between a long travel hardtail that can do anything, or a light XC whippet. I reckon I will purchase a full suspension bike at some point. I'm just not sure when there'll be time for it.

Anyway, once the purchase is complete then more serious riding will commence!

My First XC Race!

2011-10-23T14:26:00.001+01:00

Last week I competed in my first XC race.

The course was Ashton Gate in Bristol. A nice 9.1km XC loop. My teammate and I competed in the 4 hour pairs category. I looked at the winning times for last year. The fastest lap was 23:50 and was set by the winner. I thought 30 minutes per lap was a decent time to aim for, and we hoped to complete 8 laps in total.

We managed 5.

Pathetic.

True, we were out of shape, it was our first race, my first time riding clipped in. The excuses available for our poor post are legion, but ultimately, it's because we don't ride enough. I enjoyed the race. It was a great course, organisation was good and a brilliant day out, but I did not enjoy the result.

I've spent a lot of money on cycling kit this year and I don't want to be an "all the gear no idea" type.

Therefore, I vow to be back next year with an improved performance.

What Price Falafels?

2011-09-28T22:39:00.004+01:00

I made a resolution at the beginning of 2010 to stop buying supermarket meat. It has outlasted the other resolution I made in tandem with it, which was to always have an ironed shirt ready the day before I had to wear it to work.

I like buying meat from my local butcher. The quality of meat is much better than what I can get in a supermarket, I get advice on how to cook it and I cannot notice an additional financial penalty (except when I feel like eating fillet steak).

Emo Girlfriend and I also switched our grocery shopping from Ocado to Tesco a few months ago. So far, I have not regretted it. We do not buy fresh fruit and vegetables from them, but we do buy all other groceries from them. So far, this too has worked out quite well, and the saving over Ocado has been well worth it. Tesco are definitely cheaper and the loyalty scheme does keep you going back.

We have begun to purchase our fresh fruit and veg from local shops instead. I'm quite excited about this. The quality varies, but when it is better it is much better than what you can get in a supermarket, and when it is not, it is not noticeably worse.

It feels good to be able to support businesses local to the community. I'd recommend it to anyone else. As many local shops are of Middle Eastern origin it lets us try some interesting foods we'd not have tried normally. For example, falafels used to be a treat we'd buy now and then from the supermarkets. They cost 81p per 100g from Tesco, and this is the cheapest you can get them from a high street supermarket. From our local Iranian shop, 400g of frozen falafels cost £2.19. So just under 55p per 100g. This now means falafels can now be a regular meal. Hooray!

Local Holidays

2011-09-25T22:01:00.002+01:00

This year, Emo Girlfriend and I went to the Peak District on holiday. Not a bad deal. £300 to stay in a self catering cottage in Buxton. The money we spend stays local, we get to see some of the most amazing scenery in the country and also have a go at some of the best non-trail centre mountain biking on offer.

Or so I thought.

The cottage had storage heating. Now, for some reason, I found storage heating quite hard to fathom. There was no dishwasher, so it seemed like we were constantly washing up and there was no power shower. Not terrible things, but if we had to pick a self catered cottage again, then these would be things we'd keep in mind.

It was nice to be away from the city though. Time seems to pass slower when you have no reception on your phone, internet or masses of tourists around. You have time to enjoy a cup of tea and read the newspaper end to end. Something I have not been able to do in a single day since starting full time work. The mountain biking looked good, but Emo Girlfriend's rental bike didn't inspire confidence, meaning there were some anger filled moments where she chucked her shitty Shimano Alivio geared book down the trail.

I don't understand why the British seem obsessed with going abroad on holiday. I've noticed that everyone I speak to who's going on holiday within the UK always qualifies it with an "it's only" statement. For example, observe this conversation:

Me: Where are you going on holiday?

British Person: It's only down to Bournemouth for a sailing holiday and a stay in a luxury 6 star hotel.

While someone going to some shitty resort in Jamaica on a cattle class flight will say "Oooh! We're going to Jamaica mon!"

Fuck that shit.

There are some amazing places in the UK. I am not ashamed of visiting those places. You save money, you can travel in relative comfort compared to ShittyJet or CryingAir, the locals speak the language and you have a decent idea of what you'll get.

Next up, a weekend epic ride in Scotland!

Credit Avoidance

2011-09-25T21:31:00.003+01:00

So, recently I've found out that I've been riding a bike that's for someone a foot taller than me.

This means I've now got to deal with the question every biker has to deal with when faced with an upgrade choice.

Components or whole bike?

I decided on components. This means a new frame and new forks at a minimum. There'll be minor expenses (in comparison to the three figure sums for the frame and forks) in the upgrade as well. So all said, I'm looking at about £800 to update Claude, my trusty mountain bike of over 7 years. Together, we've tamed Dartmoor, parts of the Quantocks, the Timberland trail and some of the Peak District to name a few places. It's amazing how biking makes me feel alive. There's something about wrestling a 12kg piece of aluminium travelling at 30mph feeling like you're about to come off at any moment that makes you feel like a man.

The problem is, I've not got the money to do it.

In the past I'd have smacked it on the credit card and dealt with it another day. However, today is different. I've decided there will be no more expenses on the credit card, unless it's food, or essential travel.

It doesn't mean that I won't look and drool at the bikes I want.

House Moving

2011-09-22T23:04:00.001+01:00

I have moved house 6 times in 3 years in London.

I hope this time will be the last time I will have to move for the next 3 years.

Let's see how this pans out.

The Riots

2011-08-29T10:01:00.002+01:00

Like a lot of people, I was pretty shocked by the riots. Not the first time I've been witness to riots, but one of the few times I've seen them since living in England. There are the ones that occur invariably after the Notting Hill Carnival every year. They're wearisome and feel inevitable. I'd be tempted to theorise that it is inevitable. A group of minorities congregate in a small area. Some heavy handed policing, or a single unsavoury incident transpires. The next thing you know, riot.

I'd be wrong doing that though. I'd be no better than the fear mongering columnists in the right wing papers, or stupid broadcasters advocating capital punishment if I were to do that.

The truth is, nobody knows what caused the riots, and nobody knows what needs to be done to make sure they don't happen again.

It's impossible to figure out what caused the riots. Perhaps it was random opportunism, perhaps it was organised gang crime, perhaps it was a critical mass of disenfranchised youth in the same place at the same time. Who knows.

I'm pretty sure this country is letting down it's young people. I don't know why. Sri Lanka, where I lived in did not have a great government. It had much less facilities than what people have here. Yet, people there do not riot and loot for luxury items. What is it that makes these people think they should be entitled to designer goods and high ticket electronics at no cost to them? Why do they not value free education up to A/Level and the availability of higher education to all?

I'm fairly certain it is because they do not know the value of what they have. I'd be tempted to argue that it is due to a generation of people who have grown up not knowing the correlation between work and achievement. We are surrounded in the UK by a culture that peddles the result, but not the method. Buy an iPad and you'll instantly become creative. Spray some Lynx for ready-made sex appeal. Screw learning your art, or exercising to be fit and healthy and attractive in turn, just focus on the result which is yours for the bargain price of £559.99!

Adults grow up afraid of kids, and rightly so. The kids roam the streets like dogs in packs. They spout filth, spit, fight, drink and smoke, behaving like arseholes because there's nobody to tell them otherwise. Am I the only person who sees something wrong with this? Kids with a lack of purpose and nothing to do are guaranteed to cause trouble. How many sportsmen state that they'd probably be in jail, or dead if not for their sport? How many artists? Or even some scientists?

These kids and these people need a sense of purpose. Things like capital punishment, eviction and harsher sentences only treat the symptoms. We are not treating the disease. The next time these riots happen, they will be worse and it maybe too late.

London Riots

2011-08-09T20:15:00.007+01:00

It seems there's a lot of rumours about riots in Acton today.

I went out on my bicycle to have a look. While Acton is slightly quieter than usual - Westfield especially - there seems to be nothing to worry about.

A couple of rubbish pictures to prove it:

Please don't be alarmed. I'm not one of those hipster, Web 3.0 cunts you'll see interviewed on telly taking arty shots of riots, or civil disturbances saying "they want to be involved" and appending "literally" to every word, applicable or not. I just want to see things for myself and not cower in my flat, afraid of my own city. I've seen first hand in Sri Lanka what happens when curfews are enforced. It creates an atmosphere of fear which helps the miscreants more that us.

Nothing notable occurred on my journey apart from a Jamaican man shouting "nice bike!" at me while I waited at the traffic lights. I also saw a motorbike in a rust coloured body kit. Did a double take at that one.

Mountain Bike Woes

2011-08-03T21:40:00.003+01:00

I've finally bought a stand to do my bike servicing. It's a great buy. On average, a trip to the local bike shop to fix a small problem will cost £15 each time. The stand cost £101, and should pay for itself within a year.

However, your appetite to tinker with the bike increases. You now have the tools to do it. Consequently, you spend more time tinkering. My mountain bike's brake issues cost me a whole weekend last week. The brakes weren't fixed at the end of the weekend, but I knew a lot more about how to fix it.

I've got some special screwdrivers which are required to fix the brakes, but I've not got the time. I'm beginning to despair that I'll never get the brakes sorted. Hopefully the Gods will add 10 extra hours onto tomorrow so I may get it sorted.

Moving House

2011-07-22T22:45:00.002+01:00

It is time for what feels like the annual house move. I've moved house several times since I started living in London. It's annoying every time.

I've done it enough times to now know that I need to have a plan when I move. It makes things easier at the end and it will help set up things sooner. I am really looking forward to living with Emo Girlfriend in our own space. However, before I can design and plan what I want things to look like I will need to plan how to to leave this place.

I will account for the largest things first. The futon and the bookshelf. They will require a van.

Then the bikes. They're easily moved. I can ride them to our new flat which is quite close to where we live.

My Linux servers, printer and monitor are next. Followed by the receiver, speakers and Xbox 360, switches, routers and firewall. I reckon a quick car trip will sort this out.

The kitchen things are next. We have the following:

- several sets of saucepans, frying pans and a wok

- kettle

- coffee machine

- toaster

- sandwich/waffle maker

- assorted crockery

- cutlery

It would be nice to have a van to move these things.

While I type I have to keep inserting things I've not accounted for. Just like when you pack things up.

Kitchen things, like coffee, spices etc will probably take up two boxes.

All my books should be next. I need to box them up. I reckon about 5 medium sized boxes should do it. They'll take my CDs as well.

Another 5 boxes for assorted electronic cables and small devices.

2 more boxes for toiletries and other assorted toilet stuff.

I think we can safely move onto the clothes now. This is something Emo Girlfriend and I fight over. I have set myself a target of reducing the clothes I've got by 50%. So this will be an eBay/charity shop job. I reckon about 4 of these will house my clothes once the cull has taken place.

I think that's it really. Will it all fit in a van? Who knows.

Fix Or Upgrade?

2011-07-10T21:57:00.002+01:00

I have a bit of a conundrum.

I want to be able to have confidence in the bike I use for mountain biking. I can either upgrade my crapped on mountain bike or I can buy a new bike. The latter is the easy way out. Let's see what the cost of upgrading my old bike would be.

1. New wheels - £129.95

I'm tending towards these at the moment. The sealed wheel bearings are the clincher. Plus, they come highly recommended by my bike mechanic.

2. New disc rotors - £17.96 x 2 = £35.92

Naturally, with new wheels come new rotors as the genius who last serviced my wheel fucked up the front discs and abuse has fucked up the rear. I could treat myself to some nice XT rotors, so I'm looking at these.

3. New chainset - £130.00

May as well treat the bike to a new chainset seeing as the old one is now 7 years old. XT again! 165mm crankset is the closest it gets to optimum for a shortarse like me. May need to check that they won't need any adjustments to fit the rotors I'm planning on using.

4. New brakes - £149.95

Pistons on both brakes are fucked too, so I'll need to change those out. I've chosen Shimano SLX for them. Seems it maybe easier to change the entire brake than fuck about with checking out if levers will go with the calipers. Replacing the calipers should sort the issue. If I need to cut costs then I can replace both the front and rears with Shimano Deore's for £53.98.

5. New pedals - £23.98

Because I'm worth it. New cranks, so new pedals would be nice too.

There'll be a bit of additional costs with things like mineral oils for the brake calipers. Perhaps mounting brackets will be required amongst other things all of which will add to the final bill. So far, I make it £469.80. Let's add on a bit of money to replace the tyres and new tubes and it will easily top £500.

Perhaps a new bike is a better option?

Stupidity

2011-07-10T08:05:00.002+01:00

If I've ever had a time when I meant well and ended up fucking it grandly up then it was yesterday.

A bit of backstory now. I got a mountain bike as an insurance replacement for a Trek 4500 that was stolen off me. It's a Claud Butler Cape Wrath 2004 model I think. The memory is not so clear on it. I used it a fair bit for mountain biking when I lived somewhere with decent trails, but when I left for London I left it in the care of my brother.

For 3 years.

My brother is not the biggest bike enthusiast in the world. He's an avid rider but he's not the type to heed every click and whirr that comes out of a bike. He'll happily keep pedalling and ignore it. He's also a bit of a beast fitness wise so he rides hard.

He's ridden the crap out of the bike.

I picked it up from him when I moved somewhere in London with enough space to store my bikes and I had a look at it last week before I went mountain biking yesterday. There is catalogue of things wrong with it.

1. Cassette and chain are fucked after being ridden for so long and if I'm right, probably no lubrication.

2. Front and rear deraileurs both need adjustment and indexing.

3. Cone and cup in the rear wheel's freehub are pitted. Ball bearings are pitted too.

4. Brake rotors have what looks like residual oil on them.

5. Brake pads are worn down to about 0.1mm.

Now the problems start.

I started with fixing 1. Chain and cassette replacement is not a big deal if you have the right tools. I put an HG80 (ar) Shimano XT cassette on the wheel and got an HG 73 chain to go with it. Rode it up the hill and the chain snaps. Turns out that in my hurry to fit the chain I've not put the guide pin fully through the chain. Idiot that I am. I even looked at the chain in the car on the way to the track and thought "must put that chain link through" and then promptly forgot all about it.

Consequence: A chain that's been bodged together and is about 2-3 links too short.

I had a go at fixing 2. Deraileur adjustment is fairly straight forward. You screw/unscrew the limit screws while checking the alignment of the gears and you should get them sorted. However, something odd is fucked up on the bike. I cannot fathom what it is, but whatever it is is has rendered the front deraileur adjustment unoperable.

Consequence: Shitloads of high and low front gears.

Tried to fix 3 which was a massive fucking carry on. The wheel bearings and the cups were pitted on the rear. This means one thing - replacement freehub. I'd resigned myself to getting new wheels by this point, but decided to grease and repack the bearings so at least I'd leave them in a better state than they were in originally. End result? Grease everywhere and two days wasted because I didn't realise I'd compressed the cones of the wheel bearings too far. This meant I wasted two precious evenings not realising that all I had to do was loosen the axles and the wheels would turn normally.

Consequence: An inefficient rear wheel with unequal wheel bearings and an axle which I don't think is aligned as best as it could be. Still, this is the least of my worries now.

4 is not too much of a problem. Some sandpaper on the rotors usually do the trick, but this is 3 years of residue we're talking about so this didn't totally do the trick. I tried to remove the rotors and found the front rotors wouldn't come off. Some idiot has stuck a star screwdriver into the bolts meant for the allen keys. This means I cannot, if I choose to, replace the front rotor. The front rotor is not too bad, but as I favoured the rear brakes - and so did my brother - the rears have more residue stuck on them than the front.

Consequence: Rotor contamination which will render my pads useless quicker than they should.

5 is something that takes about 10 minutes to fix from removing the packaging on the pads to inserting them and realigning the calipers on the brakes. However, my brother has ridden with the pads worn down to 0.1mm for so long that the pistons have warped/adjusted to them. New pads come with a lot more material, about 2mm so I couldn't fit the wheels into the rotor. I messed around with separating the pads with a flathead screwdriver for about half an hour and had some limited success with this. However, the rear wheel would not spin at all. A very strong man tried forcing the pedals several times and we had a little more success. Eventually, another rider showed me that releasing a screw on the caliper and slowly pumping the brake would bleed the oil in the disks and give me some more play on the rears. Wheel turning issue is now alleviated to some degree.

Consequence: A shitload of resistance on boat front and rear wheels. Climbing anything with a gentle gradient results in me wheezing like a pensioner and my heart pounding like a hamster on cocaine.

Anyway, it's taught me some valuable lessons on bike maintenance for which I am grateful. However, I now think of the work that my mountain bike needs and I reckon it will be more of a saving on my time, money and sanity to buy a new one. I need to do a cost comparison in another post, but it's now time to clean it from yesterday's ride.

The ride at the end of all this palaver was completely worth it though. I need to go out riding more. The adrenaline on the downhill runs are incredible. I need to work up some more balls to ride the curves with less braking and to trust myself to use my body to guide the bike round the curves instead of trying to turn the bike into the curves.

My A400 Skins

2011-07-01T22:34:00.003+01:00

So, a while ago (about 7 months ago to be a little bit more accurate) I ordered some Skins for running. A top and a shorts-ey type thing. My girlfriend bought me some full length A400 cold wear skins. I was originally a bit skeptical about them but I got tired of not running/cycling outdoors in the winter because of the weather.

What can I say? They're pretty sweet. I don't have the buff, hollywood physique required to wear them without a cover-up top on but for keeping the cold out, they cannot be beaten. They're great in the summer and in the winter for warmth. They don't take up as much space in the bag when you have to carry them around, they don't get smelly and can be worn for over a week at a pinch without washing if you're so inclined. I wash mine after a week's worth of wear.

The biggest plus for me after the keeping you warm thing is how small they fold away to. I take a rather large bag to work if I'm cycling to work. It is already stuffed full with my work clothes, notepad, books and laptop and having exercise clothes that fold away to a couple of small squares helps hugely with the space problem. They're light as well.

The product literature says that they help with muscle recovery by using compression. I was skeptical about this at first as well, but they do have an effect on how the muscles seem to be held. They also help you not accidentally flash anyone. They also have a placebo effect of sorts. You flip to beastmode once you put them on. It's as if the athlete mindset is enabled once you don them. Let's face it, part of the reason they encourage you to exercise is because there's no hiding from your fat bits in form fitting clothing. So you'd better get running if you want to get rid of them.

Anyway, Skins, they're great. Buy some if you want to exercise in the cold.

Documentation Headaches

2011-06-16T23:34:00.005+01:00

I've got to create some documentation for work. This is the final part of my current assignment at the client and it's proving to be very difficult.

The client network looks like this:

Obviously platform names have been changed to ensure the client's anonymity.

I'm trying to write this up in the hope that describing the problems will lead to something coherent and help me put my test report together.

The first of my problems is that testing was done in a modular manner. For example, if a switch had 5 line cards, 10 uplinks and 2 PSUs then we'd test each of them singly and record the results. We'd then look at the switch as a component in the network and see how it affected network convergence if the switch failed as opposed to a module. The problem with this approach is designers base their designs on a top down approach which focuses on features. Test approaches are more bottom up. So you can test using a modular approach but putting it in context of the design is a difficult thing. So the most difficult issue when writing a report is the context in which you describe your test reports. Do you say failing a link/line card/chassis will give you convergence of this many milliseconds or do you say failing a link/line card/chassis will mean that X high availability feature that the network was designed for will give you a failover time of this many milliseconds? I'm preferring the former because that represents the accuracy of the approach the most, but doing it that way will sacrifice the coherence of the report. Also, I'm not a network designer so some aspects of the design and its behaviour under a failover condition is not currently within my comprehension. I've learn a lot about it along the way, but I focused on test execution during the project, not test analysis so I don't feel best placed to comment.

The next problem is the complexity of the project. Measuring failover times when you have multiple network platforms which need to interact with each other becomes complicated. Failover depends on what you're trying to do. For example, failover scenario X may give failover time Y when traffic is between platform A and B, but traffic between platform A and C may well give you a different set of failover times. How do you record this in a test report? Can you just utter the "It Depends" mantra and walk away from it or do you try describing it in detail and go crazy?

Before both these are dealt with you have the issue of trying to make sense of results obtained by three sets of engineers during testing. Each of them has slightly different methods of recording their failover results. For example, take the sample platform below:

Engineer 1 may reckon that he will test a member link failure in a port-channel by engineering traffic to traverse the port-channel and then measure failover by individually failing the links. Engineer 2 may assume that traffic will never traverse a port-channel between a switch unless a previous failure has occurred and therefore, this would be a failure scenario only seen when a compound failure has occurred and is therefore, invalid. We usually assume that compound failure scenario tests are out of scope during testing else we'd be using test time scales of years instead of months because it's impossible to test all the different failure permutations. I reckon this one is a judgement call. Perhaps you can keep all sets of test, but as the author of the report you have to deem some results as valid and some as invalid according to your result criteria and get on with it.

Once you've dealt with these you've got to decide how you're going to put your results forward to the reader. I mentioned this earlier as well. Do you go with an "X feature failed over in Y milliseconds maximum" and run the risk that it may failover slower for another traffic flow? You could add caveats that this only works for traffic tested between Platform A and Platform B, but that seems a bit of a cop out. If you were knowledgeable enough then you'd know that it would take longer/shorter depending on where it was going to but you can only hazard a guess at these things and not comprehensively state them as results. Of course, if you had time to test the platform comprehensively between all platforms then you could state this authoritatively, but the timescales do not permit it. In this case, I believe the best thing to do would be to describe what was actually performed and not try and guess your way out.

You then have the problem of the types of traffic used. Some platforms carry both unicast and multicast traffic, both types under which they need to be tested. Do you then split your test findings into unicast and multicast and have a whole set of duplicate module results or do you stick to setting them out in the "module tested gave failover in X milliseconds for unicast traffic and Y milliseconds for multicast traffic". I think splitting them up over different types of traffic would be better. It makes results more readable. So at least this is one good thing that's come out of this blog post.

I'm currently stuck on the "Findings" section of my report. This section tries to present the readings obtained during testing in a readable and easily understandable manner. A table would be the best way to do it, but this would just be an edited representation of the test results. I want the report to be something that someone can pick up, skip to the results section and go "alright, if I have to do action X so I can do my proposed network change then I can expect a maximum outage of Y milliseconds". Would a table give me that? I think it would. It would also mean not having to write out several sentences going "feature X means a failure of Y would give a failover time of Z".

That's pretty much the conclusion I wanted to arrive at. Awesome. I reckon I will go to bed now.

Also, I'm butchering OmniGraffle for my horrendous diagrams. I'm impressed with it, but I'm not sure if it's a decent enough substitute for Visio yet. Definitely not as clunky as Visio to be sure. I'm in the process of turning my Mac into my main work machine and so far it's holding up to the task. However, this is a blog post for another day.

9 Days Left

2011-06-14T22:24:00.002+01:00

I wrote this blog post a few weeks ago after finishing my CCNP. A few weeks on it seems things are somewhat on track. The only thing that isn't is the photography. It's not as if I've not used my camera at all, but I could have used it more. Let's hope that changes.

Work has been ramping up and has left me with less time for training and other pursuits than before. I need to figure out a way to address this. One on hand you can say "there are only so many hours in the day" and work 9-5 and fall behind work. After all, if you're staying on later and later at work it means there aren't enough people to do your work. On the other, you can try and knuckle down and finish off everything. The problem with that is work always expands to fill the amount of time available.

Some days you feel you just can't win.

Training Log - Week 1 Prep Phase

2011-06-01T09:55:00.005+01:00

Day 1

6.5km bike - 20:18:1

1 Hour gym (includes 1km run at 5:14)

6.5km bike 21:0:0

2 hours with some padding.

Day 2

20km bike in 2 x 10km splits

Split 1 - 16:59:10 (Wattbike level 5, average speed 35.4kmph)

Split 2 - 17:00:10 (Wattbike level 3, average speed 33.4kmph)

1 hour total when padded for breaks and stretching. However, target for 1:30 total was not hit today. I need to make this up somehow.

Day 3

6.5km bike x 2

Weights session

1:30 hours total

Day 4

6.5km bike x 2

1 hour weights

Day 5

6.5km bike x 2
Needed some rest today.

Day 6
2x10km bike ride

So, a bit heavy on the bike ride side of things but some decent sessions with weights there. The problem is work has now begun to ramp up. I did a few sessions on the bike last week and even a brick (run 2km and cycle 20km) on Saturday, but I've undone all that by smoking a load of cigarettes and eating a kilo of meat during my barbecue!

The volume of training that's required is quite sobering. It needs a real effort to be co-ordinated enough to do all of it. I'd usually exercise during my lunch hour but I find myself putting exercise off because of work. I'm not sure if I should suck it up, go to the gym during my lunch hour and come back to work, or if I should put off going to the gym for later. I really need to sort this out soon. The lack of exercise will kill me if things keep going the way they do. I also need to record the dates against these workouts so I can keep track of how frequent my exercise level is.

Training Week 1 - Prep Phase

2011-05-30T22:41:00.002+01:00

So the first phase of training starts tomorrow. I'm aiming to do 3 phases of training with a 13km bike ride split in the morning and the evening and an hour of working out in the middle of the day. I'll try and incorporate some running in the middle and some light weight training.

The bike ride should take approximately 33 minutes in total. With an hour of gym work that still leaves me 28 minutes of workout to make up for. I wonder how I can get that down. Perhaps I can do a primer swim tomorrow as well to make up for it?

Anyway, I'm aiming for tomorrow's split to look like this:

6.5km bike ride

3km run

Approximately 45 minute workout focusing on upper body

6.5km bike ride

30 minute swim

It is looking a bit fierce at the moment!

And Training Starts

2011-05-30T00:22:00.003+01:00

So I've broken down how long I can train in a year (around 450 hours a year, with 10.5 hours max training per week) and it seems to be the perfect amount of time to train for a decent spot in a sprint triathlon. I'll start by setting a background on what I want to achieve.

A top 10% place in a sprint triathlon requires you to be able to do the following:

750m swim - 15 minutes

5km run - 25 minutes

20km bike - 38 minutes

These are the targets. I can definitely hit one of them, but I need to find out what I can achieve on the others.

The first thing to do is establish my individual baselines on each, and figure out what needs to improve. I've got some idea what they are with running and I've done the cycle today and I know what my baseline for that is. It's not impressive, but it's a start.

So currently I am at:

20km bike - 49:55 minutes (this is including traffic light waiting times, getting lost en route time etc)

5km - I've not run 5km in over a month, but I know the last time I ran 5km with no training tool 28 minutes. I need to get back to a 25 minute time. I've set a target of 6 weeks, starting next week to get to that target.

750m swim - I am going to the swimming pool tomorrow to see if I can swim this in 3 splits.

I reckon swimming will be my first major limiter. I've swum competition before, but it's only been 100m distances. I've also swum open water before, but mostly recreationally and that was over 10 years ago, so I don't think it really counts.

The workouts require 7.5 hours of training for the first week in the phase (the Prep phase). I'll need to put this down here as well so I can keep track of it. I need to do:

2 hours

1:30 hours

1:15 hours

1 hour

45 minutes

Rest Day

So, that's the training log for this week starting Tuesday. I'm sorting out my baselines for the run and swim and I'll start putting what needs to be done on paper into practice. The two hours of training on the first day of each week is going to be an effort!

Time For A Break

2011-05-24T21:30:00.003+01:00

Over the last few months I've been revising for some professional exams. Like most people, I'm not someone who's very good at revising over a long period. I like exams, but the prep for them is not my strong point. I have learnt a few strategies and I need to keep them in mind for the next time.

The certification I finished was my CCNP. I did the BCMSN Switching exam from the old track, the ROUTE and TSHOOT exams from the new track. I even got my "Congratulations!" message from Cisco saying my certificate is in the mail. Go me.

Certification has been an interesting journey. The exams seem well structured and they seem to have been designed with a view to encouraging people passing them to attempt the CCIE track. I'll need to look into that soon.

I usually revise using a combination of video and text aids. The video aids help when you've just come back from a long day of work and don't want to read a dry textbook and the textbook is helpful when you want a reference while labbing things up (I used Dynamips/GNS3 for this), to read when you're on public transport and when you just can't go to sleep. What also helped was testing myself using the CCNP ROUTE Lab Manual to perform the configuration suggested in it. This really helped with muscle memory for the exam and to learn and understand the theory.

I also watched Kevin Wallace's Psychology of Certification series on Youtube. The man makes some great points about how to set objective, measurable goals during revision. This certainly helped me understand how prepared I was during revision and how far ahead/behind schedule I was during revision.

On the days before the tests I made sure I got a decent amount of sleep and had a quick look through the quick reference to brush up on anything I wasn't too sure about. There's not a great deal of value added by the quick reference guides, but they help if you're one of those people who feels they need to do something, anything at all but nothing.

Contrary to what most people will tell you, Cisco exams are not difficult. There is nothing incredibly conceptually difficult about these exams. The issue is ensuring your preparation is thorough. In addition to that, you also have their incredibly buggy simulation engines. I've seen bugs in every single Cisco exam. They've cost me a pass twice, and almost cost me a pass once. Unfortunately, there is no indication that they'll be resolving this soon. My advice to anyone doing the exam simulations is to not assume they're expecting you to be fiendishly clever. If it's not doing what you expect it to do then configure it up as best as you can and move on.

I did pretty well on the last exam I did. In fact, full marks on the TSHOOT exam. It was a bit of an embarrassment because it was so easy, but it felt like payback for what I suffered at the hands of the buggy ROUTE exam. The ROUTE exam contained a bug which nearly meant I didn't complete the exam because the configuration did not work as expected. Cisco admit to there being a bug on their Learning Network site, but it is appalling that they don't withdraw the simulation in question or make the knowledge public. This is another reason that makes me think they don't take their examination/certification track as seriously as they should.

Anyway, the certification pursuit is over now. I can get back to doing some things I enjoy.

Before I began revising I was hell bent on training to do an Ironman. Not a sprint triathlon, not a half Ironman, but a full one. I wouldn't just do it, I'd do it and get a decent time on it. I was gifted a manual on triathlon training by my amazing girlfriend who has been delightfully supportive through the tiresome certification process. The plan was we'd train together and perhaps do a couple of sprint triathlons together. This was both to get fit and to bring us closer by sharing an activity. This is now back on.

Unfortunately I've let myself go somewhat during revision. Months of eating junk and poor exercise mean I cannot run my normal training distances at a sustained pace over the time required. I used to be able to knock out a quick sub 25 minute 5km run. I am now struggling to reach the end of a 3km run at a pace of 11kph. So the first thing to do is to build my speed and distance back up. Not something you look forward to doing.

There are some side projects that I was working on prior to falling off the wagon. The first one is a geeky venture, the second is a more classically manly pursuit and the third is a creative pursuit.

Pursuit 1 - Learn How To Drive My Fedora Core Machine

I have an old leftover desktop that I use to run Linux on. The goal with this machine is to use it as a media server, file server, syslog server and network monitoring server. To do this I need to get my Linux competence from part time hacker to something higher. It's also something that'll give me an edge at work because a lot of things we use at work have Linux as their base.

Pursuit 2 - Learn How To Service My Bikes

I have two bikes I love dearly. A front suspension mountain bike Claud (a 2007 Claud Butler Cape Wrath) and my sexy road bike Scott (a 2010 Scott Speedster S20). I use Scott to get to work when I'm not being a lazy fat bastard and Claud when I go mountain biking (which hasn't happened in over 3 years). A few weeks ago I serviced Claud and Scott at our local branch of Evans cycles and was astounded. They managed to break more things than they fixed on Scott (fucked up cabling, the resulting replacement cable also managed to mess up the gear indexing) and wanted to charge me (reasonably so) to replace some components (chain, cassette, tubes and cables) on Claud. I did a quick lookup on the things they wanted to do on the bike and concluded that I should be able to do the repairs myself and learn something in the process. So I now need to order a cassette and chain for Claud so he can roam free again. I also need to learn how to replace pretty much every single component on a bike or fix it so I don't need to hand it in to some 18 year old working in a bike shop for ganja money.

Pursuit 3 - Take Some Arty Photos

I used to be fairly handy with a camera and used to do a lot of work with one not so long ago. My SLR and (expensively acquired) lenses sit in their cases doing nothing these days which is an absolute disgrace. I need to take it out more and do some snapping. I've got a few ideas for a project and I need to see them live. The girlfriend has also begun to hint that we need some photos for the lounge and I do not want to display someone else's work in my living room. Hence, this is also a driver for this pursuit.

Pursuit 1 has commenced. I am watching a video series on Linux as we speak. Pursuit 2 is going to commence tomorrow. I'm going to start cycling into work again from tomorrow with a view to cycling in every day for a month. That's my short term target. I also have a 50+ mile bike ride on Saturday. Not a smart move because pushing yourself too hard when you start is a typical rookie error. However, I'm hoping that by taking my camera with me on the ride I'll be able to sort out Pursuit 3 a little bit. Hanging around people who do a lot of riding could potentially help me on Pursuit 2 as well. How's that for integrating your pursuits?

There are a lot of other things too. I have not read a book for fun for a few months now as well. Hopefully this is something I need to do. It's been too long since I read for fun. It's also amazing how life seems to have expanded since I finished my certification. Possibly a testament of how I can get tunnel vision when trying to achieve something. Perhaps that's not a bad thing?

Anyway, a final paragraph on certification. I find the hullaballoo people make about certification preposterous. Like I said before, it's not conceptually difficult. However, I seem to have bought into their philosophy of how difficult it is and am disappointed at myself for having taken so long to gain my certification. Sure, certain circumstances did not help, but I have held myself back by telling myself that I couldn't or didn't want to do it. It's almost like the Paul Merton article I read recently which mentioned the class divide. It only exists if you allow yourself to believe it does. It is something entirely in your head. I have overcome it now and I am damned if I go back to that mindset. The one good thing about the certification is I feel better positioned to hypothesise about things at work and have some belief in what I say.

Anyway, in reviewing this blog post I've realised that years of reading dry, technical manuals have rid me of the ability to write a passionate, funny and rambling post. Could be worse I reckon. Laters!

This Week's Totally Unrealistic To-do List

2011-04-28T23:57:00.003+01:00

Ebay PS3 controller and shoes
Order TSHOOT Foundation Learning Guide textbook
Book TSHOOT exam for 23rd May
Make a plan of action for TSHOOT exam
Deploy wireless AP on home network
Finish leftover routing notes
Start reading up on iPhone app development
Check out HP Openflow for deployment somewhere
Read IPv6 RFC
Read BGPv4 FRC

That's it for now.

Edit - Friday 13.05.2011

1 - 4 Done

6 - Done

10's been done about halfway, but that doesn't count. Let's see how this weekend sorts this out.

I also need to add a few more items to the list.

11. Order cassette, chain and lube for the bike (quite looking forward to pushing them onto my bike!).

12. Finish chapter 7 and 8 of TSHOOT Foundation Learning Guide

13. Take passport photo!

Goals

2011-04-28T19:17:00.002+01:00

So now my penultimate CCNP exam is out of the way I'm left to ponder what's next.

Obviously finishing my CCNP is the first thing on my list. This has got to be done. I cannot stand not having it.

But what next? The CCIP is the step that most people are advised to take next at my place at work. However, I'm not sure how studying MPLS and BGP will help. I hardly ever come across MPLS in the enterprise. BGP is interesting, but in all the time I've worked where I am - in a large enterprise network - I've only ever seen BGP in use on one switch block. An essential switch block, but only one switch block nonetheless.

Security would be an interesting area. Firewalls are an area that cause issues during my work. Issues that I know very little about as I do not have much experience using a firewall. Some ASA or FWSM training would come in very handy with my work.

Wireless is the other area I am interested in. While it's an area that I may not get the chance to get involved in on a day to day basis, it is a technology that fascinates me. I believe things like tablets and smartphones will drive wireless usage very aggressively in the next few years. It wouldn't be a bad qualification to gain in anticipation of how the industry will move.

The other option is to step away from Cisco and gain certification from a different vendor. I do not like my skills as an engineer being solely dependent on the fortunes of one vendor. Unfortunately, the only routing and switching gear I have come across in my travels has been provided by Cisco. This means certification using a routing and/or switching product from a different vendor is out. There are non routing/switching products like F5s, Checkpoints etc. However, these are products that may not be under administrative control of the networking team.

Ultimately, any certification gained is only useful if you're working with the technology in your environment. If you're not then it's useless because you'll forget whatever it is you learned double quick. I think I'll have a reccie around my next assignment before deciding which non-Cisco vendor to certify in. Before that it's time to start planning how this TSHOOT exam is going to be assaulted.

Cisco Exams And Mismatched Expectations

2011-04-25T01:27:00.003+01:00

I've done another Cisco exam today and I am not amused.

These are things I need to do on a regular basis. I've passed a few and failed a few. I can live with the ones that I've failed with because I've not been prepared, but the ones I've failed due to errors in the testing software are fast becoming unacceptable.

When I first heard of people complaining about crashed sims I dismissed it. I thought sims would be built on whatever engine Cisco used for their Packet Tracer software. Packet Tracer is somewhat limited in what it can do, but it does seem to behave in a stable manner under its limitations. Therefore, under my limited understanding I believed Cisco wouldn't let us sit an exam using unstable software.

Two exams later I have changed my mind. I don't want to to violate any NDAs, but suffice it to say that a legitimate command caused my sim to crash the first time around. This also resulted in the test stalling and not allowing me to progress further with questions. This meant I lost about 15-20 minutes waiting for the exam to be restarted, meaning I couldn't finish the test. Result? Failure. Conversations with Cisco yielded nothing. I took the exam a week later and passed it.

The next time I had a problem with the simulator was due to the simulator having incorrect info and also due to it not behaving as expected. I spent a frustrated 40 minutes trying to resolve the error before moving on. It resulted in not being able to complete all the questions on the test, one of which was a highly weighted question. I passed, but I came away with a sense of frustration. This was an exam I'd spend months preparing for. I completely cut out my social life and exercise for months in order to prepare for it. I wanted to be able to hit the "End Exam" button on it knowing I'd passed and not think it'd be touch and go. Understandably I was frustrated at this being taken away from me.

If you're interested, then Cisco acknowledge that this is a problem on their Learning Network website here. If you follow the conversation on the site, you'll see that Cisco acknowledge this is an issue and that you're issued full marks if your configuration commands are entered correctly. They also go on to state -rather hilariously- that the issue is due to the dynamism of the sim and is to ensure that people trying to memorise commands in order to pass the sim would not be able to do so. They've shot themselves in the foot with this statement because someone who'd memorised the commands would be more likely to move on sooner to the next question than someone who had an understanding of the situation. I lingered on the question for far too long which resulted in me definitely getting another simulation wrong due to running out of time. Time I'd wasted trying to work with their broken simulation engine. Also, Cisco exams are not conceptually difficult. Stringing together enough time to revise for them and time management during the exam is the hard part.

Cisco need to sort their act out with these exams. Engineers rely on Cisco gear because they're certified to handle the kit and they feel comfortable with it. Engineers are also likely to have families and long working hours. These make it so that any commitment to study towards certification is not one to be taken lightly. We would not tolerate the usage of kit that didn't work as expected in a production environment at work. Why on earth should we be made to work with simulations that are known to not work as expected? Add to this the "tiredness" of the examination platform and all these issues become even more frustrating. Questions are not fully visible in the exam window and require continuous up/down scrolling. We need to use laminated worksheets and rubbish markers instead of pen and paper. Just fixing these would improve the examination process markedly. But finally, why has this sim not been withdrawn due to the issues mentioned? If the company does not take our commitment to certification seriously enough to revise their exams then I would be inclined to not take their certifications and equipment seriously.

I am pretty annoyed at this. I'm due to sit the TSHOOT exam in May which I believe has more reliance on the simulation engine than the ROUTE exam. I was looking forward to this exam prior to sitting the ROUTE exam because it seemed like they had the right idea, but now I'm not so sure. I'll find out in May, but I'm not going to be rushing to do another Cisco exam once that one's over.

CCNP Revision - The Home Stretch

2011-04-17T12:32:00.002+01:00

Nearly there on the second pass of revision.

I'd like to document my revision process.

I watch the CBT Nuggets
Do some practice questions using the CCNP textbook and some test engines
Read the relevant chapters in the Official Certification Guide and Foundation Learning textbooks
Do the exercises for the relevant section in the Route Lab Manual
Do another pass of the questions in the testing engine. I mark the ones I've gotten wrong and look them up in the textbooks again.
By now I'm done.

I want to get the test engine questions for IPv6 and the reading for the sections out of the way today at a minimum. If time permits then I'd like to move on to my weakest subject. Tunnelling.

BGP Commands

2011-04-17T09:37:00.002+01:00

There are three BGP commands that I cannot keep straight in my head so I'm hoping putting them on here will help me straighten them out. The commands are:

show ip bgp

show ip bgp summary

show ip bgp neighbors

The first seems to behave almost like the equivalent of the show ip topolgy command in OSPF and EIGRP along with some additional information about the process.

The second shows you the neighbouring BGP routers along with some memory information for BGP.

The third shows detailed neighbour information.

This is what I believe it does. I've got a topology running in Dynamips and I'll be able to confirm it in a little time.

Well, turns out I was completely wrong.

show ip bgp shows you a table of BGP routes learned I reckon. It doesn't show you anything if you're not exchanging any routes. Also contains Path Selection Attributes for routes learned.

show ip bgp summary shows you a summary of the routers neighbourships have been formed with and how many prefixes have been exchanged. It also uncludes BGP memory utilisation information, router ID and a message on the state of the BGP connection if prefixes are not being exchanged.

show ip bgp combined with a network address can show you where a BGP route is learned from, whom it is advertised to and how it was learned.

show ip bgp neighbors seems the one that's used for deeper level troubleshooting. I doubt I'll use this in a CCNP exam.

Good stuff.

Here is some sample output for later reference:

R4#sh ip bgp

BGP table version is 29, local router ID is 172.16.12.1

Status codes: s suppressed, d damped, h history, * valid, > best, i - internal

Origin codes: i - IGP, e - EGP, ? - incomplete

Network Next Hop Metric LocPrf Weight Path

*> 10.1.1.0/24 192.168.14.1 10 0 65001 i

* 192.168.34.1 1000 0 65001 i

* 10.2.2.0/24 192.168.34.1 1000 0 65001 i

*> 192.168.14.1 10 0 65001 i

*> 10.3.3.0/24 192.168.14.1 10 0 65001 i

* 192.168.34.1 1000 0 65001 i

* 10.20.0.0/22 192.168.34.1 1000 0 65001 i

*> 192.168.14.1 10 0 65001 i

s> 172.16.0.0/22 0.0.0.0 0 32768 i

*> 172.16.0.0/19 0.0.0.0 32768 i

s> 172.16.4.0/22 0.0.0.0 0 32768 i

s> 172.16.8.0/22 0.0.0.0 0 32768 i

s> 172.16.12.0/22 0.0.0.0 0 32768 i

R4#

R4#sh ip bgp summary

BGP router identifier 172.16.12.1, local AS number 65002

BGP table version is 29, main routing table version 29

9 network entries using 873 bytes of memory

13 path entries using 468 bytes of memory

6 BGP path attribute entries using 360 bytes of memory

1 BGP AS-PATH entries using 24 bytes of memory

0 BGP route-map cache entries using 0 bytes of memory

0 BGP filter-list cache entries using 0 bytes of memory

BGP using 1725 total bytes of memory

BGP activity 13/4 prefixes, 25/12 paths, scan interval 60 secs

Neighbor V AS MsgRcvd MsgSent TblVer InQ OutQ Up/Down State/PfxRcd

192.168.14.1 4 65001 148 145 29 0 0 01:12:18 4

192.168.34.1 4 65001 137 131 29 0 0 01:51:25 4

R4#

R4#sh ip bgp neighbors 192.168.14.1

BGP neighbor is 192.168.14.1, remote AS 65001, external link

BGP version 4, remote router ID 10.1.1.1

BGP state = Established, up for 01:15:12

Last read 00:00:11, hold time is 180, keepalive interval is 60 seconds

Neighbor capabilities:

Route refresh: advertised and received(old & new)

Address family IPv4 Unicast: advertised and received

Message statistics:

InQ depth is 0

OutQ depth is 0

Sent Rcvd

Opens: 3 3

Notifications: 0 0

Updates: 21 24

Keepalives: 123 123

Route Refresh: 1 1

Total: 148 151

Default minimum time between advertisement runs is 30 seconds

For address family: IPv4 Unicast

BGP table version 29, neighbor version 29

Index 1, Offset 0, Mask 0x2

Inbound soft reconfiguration allowed

Sent Rcvd

Prefix activity: ---- ----

Prefixes Current: 1 4 (Consumes 144 bytes)

Prefixes Total: 11 18

Implicit Withdraw: 0 12

Explicit Withdraw: 10 2

Used as bestpath: n/a 4

Used as multipath: n/a 0

Outbound Inbound

Local Policy Denied Prefixes: -------- -------

Suppressed duplicate: 0 8

Bestpath from this peer: 7 n/a

Suppressed due to dampening: 4 n/a

Total: 11 8

Number of NLRIs in the update sent: max 4, min 0

Connections established 3; dropped 2

Last reset 01:15:54, due to Peer closed the session

Connection state is ESTAB, I/O status: 1, unread input bytes: 0

Local host: 192.168.14.2, Local port: 179

Foreign host: 192.168.14.1, Foreign port: 11008

Enqueued packets for retransmit: 0, input: 0 mis-ordered: 0 (0 bytes)

Event Timers (current time is 0xAB3BC0):

Timer Starts Wakeups Next

Retrans 88 0 0x0

TimeWait 0 0 0x0

AckHold 90 84 0x0

SendWnd 0 0 0x0

KeepAlive 0 0 0x0

GiveUp 0 0 0x0

PmtuAger 0 0 0x0

DeadWait 0 0 0x0

iss: 4141551432 snduna: 4141553487 sndnxt: 4141553487 sndwnd: 15828

irs: 42368342 rcvnxt: 42370674 rcvwnd: 15527 delrcvwnd: 857

SRTT: 300 ms, RTTO: 303 ms, RTV: 3 ms, KRTT: 0 ms

minRTT: 4 ms, maxRTT: 300 ms, ACK hold: 200 ms

Flags: passive open, nagle, gen tcbs

Datagrams (max data segment is 1460 bytes):

Rcvd: 101 (out of order: 0), with data: 90, total data bytes: 2331

Sent: 173 (retransmit: 0, fastretransmit: 0), with data: 87, total data bytes: 2054

R4#sh ip bgp 10.20.0.0 0.0.0.0 longer-prefixes

BGP table version is 29, local router ID is 172.16.12.1

Status codes: s suppressed, d damped, h history, * valid, > best, i - internal

Origin codes: i - IGP, e - EGP, ? - incomplete

Network Next Hop Metric LocPrf Weight Path

*> 10.1.1.0/24 192.168.14.1 10 0 65001 i

* 192.168.34.1 1000 0 65001 i

* 10.2.2.0/24 192.168.34.1 1000 0 65001 i

*> 192.168.14.1 10 0 65001 i

*> 10.3.3.0/24 192.168.14.1 10 0 65001 i

* 192.168.34.1 1000 0 65001 i

* 10.20.0.0/22 192.168.34.1 1000 0 65001 i

*> 192.168.14.1 10 0 65001 i

s> 172.16.0.0/22 0.0.0.0 0 32768 i

*> 172.16.0.0/19 0.0.0.0 32768 i

s> 172.16.4.0/22 0.0.0.0 0 32768 i

s> 172.16.8.0/22 0.0.0.0 0 32768 i

s> 172.16.12.0/22 0.0.0.0 0 32768 i

R4#

More Fun With Packet Generators

2011-03-23T14:20:00.002Z

I blogged about my fun with our packet generators here. Anyway, I've finally figured out the issue.

The Ixia does not like having packet streams altered on the fly. So now, anytime before I need to make changes to the packet stream I have to delete and recreate the stream. Every time. It also doesn't hurt to make them drop off and rejoin the IGMP group again.

The easiest way to verify it's working is to look at the receiver access switch (we are all corporate network guys after all) and make sure the (S,G) entry matches the sender addresses. Job done.

Work needs to be done on the Ixia. We're running a version of software over 2 iterations from what is the latest version. However, I'm loath to believe a vendor when they say upgrading will fix an issue. There's also the small possibility that my test results will be invalidated (strictly speaking, this is just a packet generator after all).

Onwards and upwards right?

Networking: Things You Should Know

2011-03-01T19:53:00.002Z

EDIT: The following post is mostly bollocks (not the how to remember classful addressing bit, but the interpretation of the show ip route command is). The truth is, when a network is not explicitly said to be variably subnetted then what you're shown is the major network address and the prefix mask notation for the subnets it does know. So if it says * 100.100.100.1/32 is subnetted, 2 subnets, then that means there are two /32s known for that. The made up bit I put up should probably not appear.

Classful Addressing and Making Sense of It

I am going to attempt to interpret a classful network statement and the output of a show ip route that is relevant to it.

When taking a Cisco exam there are times when you need to know something that you will almost never have to use outside of a networking environment (unless you work in a legacy environment). This is one of them.

For example, say you have a question on EIGRP which has a couple of configuration commands like

ip default-network 128.0.0.0
ip default-network 129.0.0.0

And you get asked to interpret a show ip route command which looks like

*128.0.0.0/32 is subnetted, 2 subnets
O 128.1.0.0/24 [110/500] via Fa0/0
O 128.2.0.0/24 [110/600] via Fa0/0
*129.0.0.0/16 is subnetted, 2 subnets
O 129.0.1.0/24 [110/500] via Fa0/1
O 129.0.2.0/24 [110/500] via Fa0/1

NB: Metrics are fictitious so may well be impossible, admin distances are not.

Now, take a look at this. Does it seem like there are routes to both networks? To me, at a cursory glance it would seem like there are, just because of the 128.0.0.0/32 is subnetted, 2 subnets statements. However, it's not so simple and represents a gaping gap in my knowledge.

The network statement in the config is for a class B route 128.0.0.0. This is in full network/mask notation written as 128.0.0.0/16. The network actually present here is a /32, thus meaning there is no route available to the network specified in the ip default-network command.

The classful network addresses are according to Wikipedia:

Class A: Start 0.0.0.0 End 127.255.255.255
Class B: Start 128.0.0.0 End 191.255.255.255
Class C: Start 192.0.0.0 End 223.255.255.255
Class D: Start 224.0.0.0 End 239.255.255.255

A way to remember this is remembering that the 127.x.x.x network is the address for a host's loopback or home address and is the address is uses to put bits out on the wire for itself. Remembering that a class A is from 0.0.0.0 to 127.255.255.255 is easy. Basically everything from the beginning (0.0.0.0) to the end of home.

Remember class B's by knowing that the 192.168.x.x is the reserved range of class C addresses for private use. This is an address we see fairly frequently and know is not one available for use on the public internet. So 128.0.0.0 to 191.255.255.255 is the class B range. So from the end of home to the beginning of the leftmost quartet of the reserved class C address range. A bit more confusing, but memorable nevertheless.

Remembering the last one - class C - is a bit more difficult but still doable. It is from 192.0.0.0 to 239.255.255.255. Try 192.0.0.0 is the leftmost quartet address of the reserved class C block, 224.0.0.1 is the beginning of the multicast block so everything in-between (192.0.0.0 - 223.255.255.255) is the class C block.

Class D is the multicast block. 224.0.0.0 - 239.255.255.255. We don't give a shit about the Class E's anyway, but they're everything else, 240.0.0.0 - 255.255.255.255.

Basically, all the classful address ranges have a tie in with well known addresses and I can use that tie-in to remember them. I know you can use bollocks like the leading bits being 0, 10, 110, 1110 and 1111 to remember them, but right know putting numbers to them seems easier.

Making The Jump

2011-02-27T12:16:00.004Z

I require a new laptop seeing as how my current one has literally split. So, as usual, research commenced. I narrowed my options down to a Sony Vaio, a Dell, an HP and surprise, a Macbook Pro.

I've been a Windows and Linux user for several years now. I run Fedora at home and Windows XP at work and on my laptop. There's also an XP partition on my home PC which is running Fedora Core 14 at the moment. The home PC gets used as a media box and seeing as it's the most powerful machine I've got it's also used for any photo editing that requires something more powerful than Picasa. It works, but not very well.

I'm a bit of a minimalist. If I need something to perform a particular function then I'll settle for what can adequately serve my needs with the least amount of financial expenditure in the least amount of time. For example, if I need to listen to music on the go I'd rather put a few mp3s and podcasts on my phone than go out and buy a shiny new iPod. So for 7 years I put up with a PC built in 2004 that isn't HD capable, struggles at batch processing photos in Photoshop CS2 and even at running multiple applications. It didn't matter because my days of aspiring to be a pro photographer were over and I didn't play enough games to warrant getting a dedicated gaming machine. Life went on as it does.

Somehow for some bizarre reason, I now find myself using my camera more than ever. I want to be able to edit a photo and not have to wait for a minute each time while CS2 performs a Gaussian Blur or Despeckle on an image. I want to be able to sit down at a PC, open up a couple of video tutorials on how to achieve an effect while having Photoshop open, edit the image while chatting to someone on Skype, be able to send them the image and get an opinion and maybe even have a webchat session or a routing simulator on a VM over a VPN session running. All this has to be performed somewhere comfortable and in a cramped London flat having a study dedicated to a PC and a desk is a luxury, and my craptop cannot handle it so it is time for my PC to be relegated to just being a machine that plays the odd DVD or TV series or even worse, something that supports my hard drives.

So, after evaluating my options I find myself plumping for a 15 inch Macbook Pro.

Sony's are out. I've used Vaios before at work, they're too buggy on XP. Weird cursor jumps, overheating keyboard rests and horrid trackpads. No amount of "Blue Ray Support! Wheee!" will convince me to buy one of these.

HP's are out. I've used their Elitebooks, and while their new Envy series laptops are supposed to be pretty nifty they still come with a horrible amount of bloatware that I cannot be fucked to remove.

Dells are out too. I've had Dells before and while the customisation and cheapness factor is cool you still have to put up with the shittiness of their build quality and the bugginess of XP. Notwithstanding the poor tech support if you ever require it.

And that leaves the Mac.

One of the reasons I want one is to test if they really do "Just Work". With Windows when a certain thing doesn't work as expected there's a temptation to go, "well, that's MS for you" and just out up with it. With the Macs it seems like someone will have to fix it. They also seem to be built with the user in mind and they seem pretty high end and I want me some of that. I am too old to be cobbling together a bunch of dirty hacks to get my machines working the way they do. I am not a student anymore and I actually have other things I'd rather be doing than getting a machine to work.

The real challenges will come when trying to use them in a work environment and work related environment like studying for certifications. The only way to get Visio working on a Mac seems to be to run something like Bootcamp to have dual OS support or run Parallels or VMWare Fusion for Visio support. Things like GNS3 which I rely on heavily to study for certification seems to be most reliable in a Windows/Linux environment, though seeing as OSX is a Debian port it shouldn't be beyond my ability to get it up and running. The thought of running VMWare doesn't bother me, but dual OSes does. I do not want to restart my PC just to look at a document someone sent me and then there's the whole "how do I access my Mac partition from my Windows partition" problem.

So, I will be getting myself a Macbook Pro. It will have to run VMWare Fusion and GNS3 and Visio within the VMs. Who knows, it may even come in handy studying for that VCP qualification I've always wanted.

Time to get back to work now. It's been fun.

Training Log

2011-02-17T23:08:00.003Z

Dates: 15.02.11 - 20.02.11

15.02.11: Rowing 5000m 22:58@Level 8

16.02.11: X trainer 1.10km 20:00@Level 13

16.02.11: Watt bike 10000m 17:00@Level 5

17.02.11: Rest

18.02.11: Rest

19.02.11: Rest

20.02.11: Rest

Pathetic!

Peaking

2011-02-17T23:02:00.002Z

I've been reading a book on how to train for triathlons by a coach who's trained several champion triathletes. He has a view that in any sport an athlete only begins to peak at the sport after 10 years of training.

This is an intriguing viewpoint and my experience certainly does back this up. Around the 5 year mark was when I got a bit fed up of the routine with tennis and around the time that I was frustrated with the lack of results. I scaled back the activity, but going to university and playing there resulted in some pretty decent results. This was roughly around the 10 year mark.

I am now around 3 years into running semi seriously. It's odd how I could probably post better personal best times when I was younger, but was probably technically less accomplished. These days I feel like I can run a 5k in under 25 minutes and be in good shape at the end of it with a minimum risk of injury. I'm still searching for a good 22 minute time though.

The book also emphasises how to train in order to achieve a peak. There are complicated volume vs intensity graphs, tapering periods for training and graphs on how to rest before a peak. I'm sure there is a science behind it, but I need to start recording my results.

I wonder if this is applicable to my work life.

2011-02-12T16:17:00.000Z

As I write this I am tapping away on a Macbook Pro. The interface is brilliant. The keyboard is remarkably tactile and I even had a go on editing a couple of images in CS5 to check out how it performed. Quite well is the answer.

However, with no comparison to make to an equivalently specced MS laptop running a similar suite of apps renders this experiment somewhat invalid. Yes, it is well constructed, there are no annoying perceived wait times like with XP OS wise, the device is exceptionally well put together, but is it really worth the hefty price tag? Who knows.

I know you can get something similar for perhaps half the price. But then again, is this a valid comparison? Firstly, you have the whole user experience thing. How do you weight for that? Plus if you ever want to sell your device on for the latest offering from Apple, the Macbook Pro will probably offer some resale value.

Things that need answering are:

What is the upgrade path with this device? If I wanted additional RAM how easy would it be to take it apart and put some more in?
How much do productivity applications and office applications cost on this? At glance I reckon I'd need CS5, maybe a document creator and a spreadsheet editor as well.
How well will it integrate with my existing devices? I don't use an iPhone or any other Apple products. I'm more of convergence person so any audio I use is on my phone as opposed to a dedicated music player.
The keyboard is not what I'm used to. For example, there is no delete key, an obvious page up/page down key,home, end key or a break key which would be essential for using this device with any networking kit. Perhaps this isn't a dealbreaker, but if I were in a data centre with just this thing and had to perform a password recovery then I wouldn't want to be in a position where I'd have to google "Mac keyboard break key" or something like that.

Anyway, there's no doubting that this is a piece of kit that stands out not just due to its design but also for the whole user experience. No wonder the creatives or wannabe creatives pick this gadget. It cries out to be used.

For the time being I don't think I'll be one of those twats sitting in a coffeeshop that proudly advertises its ethically sourced beans smugly writing in their moleskin notebook while blogging on their shiny Apple logo-ed device. I sure will be a bit jealous of someone who does possess the kit though!

Change Control

2011-02-09T02:14:00.003Z

I have to do a change tonight.

It should be nothing major. It involves a full set of failure and failover tests on the transit switchblock for the entire building whose networks we're delivering. I need to do the change out of hours (between 0500-0800) so I'll be heading in shortly.

With changes it's always good to be prepared.

I'll go in and follow a few steps.

Check my TACACS+ authentication is in place by getting into config mode on a production switch. Any place which has its shit together will not grant all and sundry config access. You'll have to put in a request for it so people know it's there. It's good to ensure you've got it without having to wait until your change window begins and go "fuck! I have no config access!"
Let operations know I'm going to start downing things so ignore any monitoring to do with the switches/links in question. It's always nice to make sure the on call support engineer isn't woken up by some panicked Operations person. It's even nicer to not be woken up at two because the guy doing his change hasn't bothered letting Operations know so you've been called out for nothing.
Review your change. I'll look over my complete test set (which I scripted earlier today), make sure all the primary/secondary switches are kosher.
On your marks, get set, ready, start your pings! With failover testing the ideal would be to have a packet generator hooked up to the access layers on either side of the platform(s) you're testing so you can get a failover figure in ms,us,ns (name the resolution level of your choice if you can generate the traffic!). Failing this just source a ping to loopbacks on platforms on each end. Why loopbacks you say? Because physical interfaces have a tendency to go down. I learned this the hard way when a test set returned some bizarre results. I eventually worked out that the massive failover time I was seeing was because a chassis reload on the tested platform meant the connected physical interface on the other end would also go down, and more importantly, stay down until the reloaded chassis came back online. Anyway, in an ideal world we'd all have Spirents or Ixias hooked up end to end, but you can learn a lot from a repeated ping with a timeout of 1 second. This is a resolution time adequate for 90% of the apps I've seen at Enterprise level anyway.
Once the change is finished let Operations, Change Management and any other interested/relevant parties know before closing your change. If anything's not gone to plan then let your line manager/team members know before you leave as well.

And that's it. Wish me luck!

Side Projects

2011-02-07T21:17:00.005Z

I've started a new set on my flickr feed called textures. It's something that I'm hoping will get me using my macro lens a bit more.

Macros are fascinating. Take this picture for example.

It's not a great picture, but I find myself interested by it. The cracks in the rubber are brought out by the lens and combined with the dark grime makes it look like an alien landscape to me. The green cast on the image also makes it look a bit eerie, thus maximising the alien look to it.

Give me some time. I'll get better at this.

Sunday Dinner

2011-02-06T20:32:00.004Z

On Sundays I try and make a traditional Sunday Roast.

It's always meat. Today was a slow cooked shoulder of lamb. Lovely meat, the seasoning was a little unremarkable, but I cannot fault the texture of the meat. Add a beer, some stir fried peppers and this is an excellent meal. Why stir fried peppers? Well, if it were left up to me it would just be meat and beer, but I have curbed the philistine in me.

All in all, something that will feed 4-6 people for just over £17. I wholly recommend it!

Saddling Up

2011-02-04T21:30:00.003Z

Today's Metro carries a story about an MP who claimed £4.80 as expenses as bike fuel for cycling to work to his constituency. My first reaction upon seeing this was "what on earth is bike fuel?". Did this man have a bike with a failback petrol/diesel engine? Anyway, the article went on to clarify that MPs are allowed to claim an allowance for maintenance to their bicycles and for the extra food they will have to eat due to the additional exercise.

It must be quite the lark working for the government.

I cycle to work for two reasons. To stay fit and for the comfort it brings to me mentally in knowing I can get on the bike, pedal to work, and get there under my own power without having to rely on unpunctual public transport, or even work transport. Every time I take the shuttle to work results in a whingeing tweet about how the shuttle is late. To be fair to work, you can't complain about a free service.

However, this guy is taking the piss.

Fair enough, he has a legal right to claim for this. But does this mean he should? I cycle to work most days. Yes, it does mean I eat more, yes, it does mean my bicycle incurs maintenance, but if I can afford to do it on my salary then an MP should be able to do this on his salary. Also, if taxpayer money covers the cost of his extra Mars bar after the pathetic 3km he puts in on his bike, then will he also pass on the saving on his life insurance policy to us due to his cycling?

Why do these people get into these jobs? I got into my job to do something I enjoy and to make money to afford me to live a comfortable life. People getting into government jobs probably do so because they think they can make a difference to the country. The chances are they qualified in something else and were perhaps even successful in these lines of work before going into politics. The salary afforded to them (circa £65000) is not a pittance. It is something that would allow one to live in relative comfort even in an expensive city like London. If these people are getting into politics then perhaps they have made the wrong choice.

Back your constituents and work for them, or admit being an MP is an inconvenience and do not stand for re-election.

Cycling To Work

2011-01-31T20:37:00.000Z

A week ago I finally did something I'd been wanting to do for a while. Cycle to work every day for a week.

It's not much, it works out to 50 miles a week, but you can't beat it for travelling in London during rush hour. Admittedly the cold, idiot London drivers who think nothing of cutting you off to get a single car length ahead and the transition from A roads to the bit of the motorway are not enjoyable, but those are not the things you're thinking of when you're bombing down a length of downhill or trying to max the bike out on a flat stretch!

My bike is a Scott S20. I got it using the "Ride to Work" scheme. A misnomer if I ever heard one because I do not know anyone else whose used it to get a bike and then ridden it to work.

I use the bike for a few reasons. Firstly, to save money. Using the bus and/or train could easily cost between £75 and a £120. There is a hidden cost to using the bike which manifest themselves in servicing costs, the purchase of some Skins to keep me warm, a bicycle pump and some servicing kit. There's also the potential of a puncture while in the wrong place which I found out to my annoyance a couple of weeks ago. It still saves money after factoring these costs in.

The next reason is for the health benefit. It goes without saying that cycling a 50 miles a week is not going to do you any harm.

The third reason is to save time. Honestly, getting into a bus or a tube is no guarantee that you'll get to where you want to go in time. On a bike you can always get to where you want to go as long as you know where you're going. Filtering through traffic, navigating a shortcut inaccessible to motor traffic all these ensure you can always forge a path to where you want to go.

Yes, there are drawbacks. Traffic is difficult to navigate and I've had a few near misses and it's hard to force yourself to chuck your Skins on and cycle in when it's -6C. However, the sense of accomplishment after a week of cycling in makes it completely worth those cold mornings with teary eyes!

Yesterday

2011-01-23T22:30:00.003Z

So, all those things that needed to get done yesterday got done.

Managed to get to Waterloo and bash out a quick gym session. It was made even better seeing a large gay man in a red underarmour onesie with a pretty impressive package strutting about. Emo Girlfriend and I managed to catch a session at the Bloomberg ICA for their latest exhibit.

That section of London is pretty cool. I left it planning on coming back soon. Probably with my camera this time. I got a few ideas for some photo projects and I'm pretty excited about it.

Some of the ideas were:

1. Dead famous - Photos of statues erected to people who're now irrelevant to our lives.

2. Tube stop entrances - I always liked the way the old fashioned tube entrances look like entrances to underground tunnels. Trafalgar square has loads of them and I want to get as many as I can to make a collage of sorts out of them.

3. Litter - It's mental how much litter is dropped in London. I saw a girl drink a Pepsi, walk out of the tube and put it down on a bench in the station. What makes that acceptable behaviour? Anyway, litter has a forlorn look to it which in a collection would look quite interesting (at least to me).

Got to go torment Emo Girlfriend now. Laters.

Things I Have To Do Today

2011-01-22T13:55:00.002Z

1. Run

2. Go to the butchers

3. Puncture repair kit

4. Repair bicycle

5. Bicycle brake adjustment

6. Go to dinner in North London

When the fuck am I going to find the time for all that?

West To East

2011-01-09T22:28:00.002Z

Living in London is full of surprises. I'm willing to bet that less people in London drive as a percentage of total population as a city than the national average due to public transport being good. In all honesty, you don't need a car here and with parking costs being the highest in the country and with the most expensive postcodes to insure it's not surprising.

Unfortunately, being a Tubeslave means you can easily forget how close to you things are. In the first few months I lived here I used to work in the City. I would come in from East London to London Bridge, catch the overland to Waterloo East and then take the Waterloo and City Line to Bank to go to work. This took over an hour to do most days, and the Waterloo and City Line being packed to the rafters meant I'd have to wait for several trains to leave before getting close enough to the front to catch one. This was not a joyous experience. Being squashed into a fat man's armpit at 8.00 am while your freshly dry cleaned suit creases into hundreds of squares while Gods know however many people adapt you as a convenient handhold is not a thought you enjoy having either. So imagine how stupid I felt when someone at work informed me that Bank was a 15 minute walk away from London Bridge? I'd been doing this hellish commute for months! It however did explain why people at work thought I had an easy commute though! It's strange how the existence of the tube means you blind yourself to other modes of transport.

Since then, I've made sure I do as much as possible of my travelling overland. It's nice to know the city you live in. It's also quite cool to be able to give people real directions (I used to give them bogus directions. It's a hoot!). Anyway, all of this leads to a sense of demystification of the City I live in. Now when people ask me to meet them somewhere I've never been to in London before it doesn't lead to me breaking out in a cold sweat when they tell me there's no tube station nearby, or *gasp*, it's in Greater London! It means not being afraid to go for a quick run knowing only roughly in which direction my target is and the impromptu bike ride across the city if I feel like seeing somewhere new.

And yes, this is because I went on an awesome 20 mile bike ride today. Perhaps a trip to Camden on Scott is in the offing in the summer?

Meowingtons!

2011-01-07T22:24:00.003Z

This is Meowingtons, but he also answers to Josh.

He is very naughty. Also, being constantly terrorised by me means he is full of beans. He's a lot of fun, but his enthusiasm is not always welcome. For example, when he meows your bedroom door down at five in the morning so you'll let him in to be petted is not something to look forward to.

The good thing about Meowingtons is he is not a greedy cat. He does not eat my food (though he will drink from glasses that are left unattended), he doesn't try and scam me like the two rancid cats who belonged to my mangy, old, pathetic flatmate at my former flat.

Meowingtons is a pedigree cat (don't worry, he doesn't belong to me, he belongs to the lovely lady the flat belongs to, but he does live with me though). I used to laugh at people who bought pedigree cats, but there seems to be something to it. For example, this breed of cat is supposed to be quite sociable and prefer narrow spaces to crawl into, they're also very inquisitive and active which he is right down to a "T". My former flatmate had two cats from Gods know where. They were unclean, ill tempered, fearful and greedy. Not much different to my flatmate then.

I must go now. Meowingtons has got that glint in his eye again!

New Blog Layout

2011-01-03T13:52:00.002Z

I've made a few changes to the blog layout. Some messing about with separator colours, added my flickr and Twitter feeds as widgets, tag cloud and a list of things I'm looking forward to each month.

It's been fun. Now time to do some revision for that exam and take some more photos!

Reviews

2011-01-03T13:28:00.000Z

I'm trying to do a few reviews to force myself to keep the writing habit going.

Reviewing is the simplest way to do it, so from now on if I go to a new gig, a hotel, restaurant or maybe even buy something as mundane as a draught excluder then I'll add a Reviews label on it so I can go back and check it.

Who knows? Perhaps it will help some poor soul on the internet!

Death

2010-12-31T12:21:00.002Z

Today I need to visit one of my uncles. He is in hospital and in the ITU. I am worried he is going to die.

He is a tough man. One of those old school Sri Lankans who came to this country and forged a life for themselves. If he dies he will leave behind a wife and two teenage children.

I hope today will not be the day this happens to him and I am dreading going to see him.

Christmas Menu

2010-12-04T20:59:00.003Z

And now it is time for the new tradition in my family. The Dhana Christmas!

I'm trying to brainstorm some ideas for the menu. It goes without saying that the main course is a lovely organic turkey from the local butcher. 6kg of turkey. This is supposed to feed 6-8 people but will most likely only spread to about 4 thanks to the gluttons that are my brother and I.

I'm using this recipe. The same one I used last year. In practice the cooking time takes longer than most people advise but my trusty meat thermometer sorts that out. Plays havoc with serving times though.

The Starter

The Veg

The traditional ones really. Brussel sprouts, roast potatoes, parsnips, carrots. Nothing too difficult.

Side Dish

Pigs in blankets. Bacon and sausages from the local butcher. They're brilliant.

The Pudding

Emo Girlfriend has volunteered to make something courtesy of Nigella. It looks decadent and my arteries are already screaming at the thought of it. The recipe is here.

It's all fairly simple to make, but cooking for 8 people (2 vegetarians and 6 meat eaters) is not an easy task. Assisting me will be my brother (The Brawn, probably will assist with everything), Emo Girlfriend (The Artist, in charge of the dessert, the roast veg) and me (The Idiot Who Wants To Have Dinner For Eight People In A One Bedroom Flat).

Things to do:

1. Add on the sausages and bacon to the butchers order.
2. Sort out the veg from the local greengrocers.
3. Source the spices from somewhere decent.
4. Source the cheese from a cheesemonger locally. If not, get it ordered online.
5. Cook the food.

Last year was a lot of effort, but it was worth it to have everyone in the same place. I hope this year will be the same. Let's see how it turns out!

Birthday!

2010-11-25T22:23:00.002Z

Tomorrow is my birthday!

Well, technically, in the country I was born it is my birthday already.

Hopefully this one will be a goodie.

Meet The Parents!

2010-10-20T23:52:00.002+01:00

On Saturday The Girlfriend will have to meet the parents.

I'm not sure how it's going to be received. My parents know I'm seeing someone at the moment, but I'm not sure if they understand what it's like. Before The Girlfriend they met The Wife. The Wife and I are no longer together. Luckily, it was more or less a clean break and we didn't do that thing that most people do where they keep fucking each other up while trying to get their headspace sorted out.

Contrary to what most of my friends believe, I am a bit worried about introducing her to them. Part of me has no idea what the shelf life of this relationship is even if it has any at all. Either way, I know that I enjoy being with her and I don't want it to end. I'm not sure how much more than that I can give her than that. I respect her, and things with her are good and I know she loves me more than I can reasonably expect someone to love me. The other part of me, the cynical one, the one that questions peoples' motives for donating to charity, or for staying on late at work when they really don't need to feels like this relationship is disposable like every other one in this world is. That part of me doesn't want to put my parents through having to meet another woman I have no guarantee of spending the rest of my life with and feels it should spare them that.

However, that part of me is not winning this one, and I am not that kind of person. They will meet her, but I guess they don't have to like her. And I won't blame them if they're wary of her.

Mmmm... Angsty!

2010-09-27T22:21:00.003+01:00

Tomorrow Emo Girlfriend and I will be seeing Placebo at Brixton.

I'm not sure what to wear yet (priorities eh?), but I'm fairly sure it is going to be awesome!

P.S: Drag Behind is what I want to listen to. I was the one getting A's on my Algebra tests at school though.

P.P.S: I probably will cry if they play Post Blue.

P.P.P.S: And dance my ass off if they play Nancy Boy!

Nowplaying

2010-09-26T14:01:00.001+01:00

Currently have this song on repeat. I think it's beautiful.:

Bestival 2010

2010-09-25T20:45:00.007+01:00

Bestival was a bit of a washout this year act wise but it was brilliant to be there with Emo Girlfriend.

We had to leave pretty early in the morning and a little tiff prior to leaving didn't help things. Anyway, we got up, packed up and we were off.

We got there, had another tiff while putting the tent up, made up and then wandered off for some fun.

This is us having fun!

Saw a few acts, Unicorn Kid was pretty sweet. A bit surreal listening to dance music during the day.

We then watched Simian and Dizzee. Simian were awesome, but some weird Scottish girl kept talking to me throughout the set. I think she'd taken a pill. Dizzee, unfortunately, was really shit. This was the fourth time I'd seen him and frankly, his new rearrangement of vocals in some odd jazz style is not really doing it for me. I expected to see a high energy set. What did transpire was something that nearly put me to sleep.

The next day was the fancy dress day. This year's theme was Fantasy so I went as vigilante superhero Rorschach from Watchmen and Emo Girlfriend went as a slutty showgirl in a corset and stockings. I love this woman.

I got a little tipsy and we wound up heading back round 0100. I then woke up around 0200 and wanted to go back out and party. Next year I will ration my alcohol intake.

The last day was pretty chilled out. We ate, drank lots of chai and cider. I also found a kiddies bike which I rode up and down the hills causing a little bit of carnage.

It got taken away from my by Emo Girlfriend as I was getting too much attention from the ladies with it. No worries. We then went to see some music, saw some bloke running a food stand take some Ketamine, got bored by the Prodigy, tried to see another band only to find out it was a set being hosted by them and then left. Bestival was alright, but I don't think it's much fun unless you're in a larger group if there aren't any acts you really want to see.

10 Questions On Bestival 2010

2010-09-18T20:41:00.005+01:00

Here's a quick interview with someone who went to Bestival this year.

1. Hello, and how are you today?

Immersed in a book.

2. What were your feelings about Bestival prior to attending it.

I was a bit concerned that it would be too drug-fuelled. A bit too dance-ey and I might not like it and also that there maybe too much walking. The weather was also a factor.

3. Wow, what a worry-wart you are. How old are you again?

27.

4. Man, that is old. I'd reckon you should have been more concerned about being the oldest person there Grandma. Would you agree?

Well, you were going and you're older so I wasn't too worried.

5. But I am a youthful, handsome man. You're an old biddy from London. Anyway, what did you enjoy about Bestival?

I liked all the different areas. Chai was a pre-dominant feature. I liked dressing up and I think Arcadia was my favourite stage.

6. Good Gods, you sound like some prissy, Guardian reading, post-feminist, middle-class tosser. Was it hard to adapt to the refugee-camp like atmosphere of this festival?

No. I am a seasoned festival goer.

7. Fair enough. You're a goer alright. Guess you've been to Glaston a few times then?

Yes.

8. What a wanker you are. Glaston is shite. What would you say about the music at Bestival?

Overall, not great.

9. Fair point. And the prices?

Booze was quite expensive but easy to smuggle in. Food wasn't that expensive. It was average for a festival. And good quality (food that is, not the prices).

10. You're a tosser. Would you go again?

Yes.

And there you have it folks. Another successful convert to the the UK's over priced, over rated, excessively indulgent festival scene.

P.S: I think she's kinda hot. Reckon I should try and get off with her?

Bestival 2010

2010-09-06T22:21:00.000+01:00

I will be there in a few days time.

The good thing about Bestival is you do not hear people wanking off about how it's a life changing experience and it's "like sooo amazing yeah?". It's fancy dress and not giving a fuck. It's decent music and awesome dance tents. It's fun that you don't have to be ashamed of.

It's also good not to have some spoilt brat in front of you who keeps going on about how "Glasto (or Glasters if they're really wanky. Why call it Glasto or Glasters? It's Glastonbury! Would it kill you to utter three more syllables?) has sold out man (it has though, ticket prices have gone up yet again this year), it's not what it used to be, blah blah blah" or tries to make out they're so cool because they're going to see someone you've never heard of (I heard of them before you were inching along in Pater's pants son).

I like Bestival because I had a brilliant time there last year with some good friends. I'm sad that I'm not going there with some of them again, but I'm with someone I love and care about and am going to shag rotten in my tent.

Also, this may be the last chance to see Besto before it like, totally sells out man. You get me?

Ahahaha!

Body Image Issues

2010-09-02T21:49:00.000+01:00

For my sins in univeristy I work as a network engineer. I love the work, I love the team I work in and despite moaning to people about constantly having to do exams I also enjoy being in a field of work where I'll constantly be learning.

However, lately, things in the office have taken a sinister turn.

I work in a 6 man team. Out of the 6 of us 5 do regular exercise. One has openly admitted that it is due to increased pressure from the media for men to look like male models. So now, at lunchtime instead of heading off for the second cooked meal of the day after that big fry up they now head to the gym, drink protein shakes and talk about the spot reduction myth (alright, I made that last one up, but it's fun telling them about it and watching them go a bit nuts).

When did this happen? Back home kids were good at sport, or they were good at studying. Occasionally they may have been good at both. If you were good at sport then you tended to look a bit athletic, if you weren't then you were a bit of a chubber and your mates would give you a bit of grief about it and we'd all laugh good naturedly. Here, people have patronising conversations about BMIs, obesity and how you need to watch your calorific intake.

Flipping through the channels right now the commercials and the TV programs all seem to be of the opinion that men all possess rippling six packs, artfully tousled hair that never lengthens and clothes that are made by a personal tailor. The magazine on my shelf tells me that if I follow workout X then I can halve my time in the gym and have a beach body in 6 weeks. There is also a picture of a man who does action movies for a living who tells me that it isn't easy being in shape.

Being in shape is not something easy to do. It's simple, but not easy. Let me tell you how it used to work:

You finish work at 1800, you get to the gym by 1900, finish and get home by 2100 if you're lucky. This is London after all. So once you've had dinner, it's time to go to bed. On top of that you need to make sure your shirt is ironed and ready for work tomorrow. So you wake up at 0600 because part of exercise is having a good diet and the next day requires you to make brekkie before catching the 0728 to Twickenham. Working out at this rate with a rest day in between would mean you'd get that six pack, killer arms and Spartan legs in about 6 months give or take. Remember, during this time you're not allowed any empty carbs (goodbye beer! Goodbye popcorn!), no junk food (that means Mars bars, KFC etc). Still simple you say.

Not really.

No beer in a country where liquor is almost punctuation for day to day activity means you will be the Gollum of your social group. A weird creature who subsists on boiled chicken and rice and has to be shrouded in dark garments and hidden away come bedtime and whispers eerily about how you cannot afford to eat junk calories because you're cutting up while trying to desperately wipe away the crusted whey protein powder around your mouth. You'll get that beach body in half a year, but will have no friends to show it off to. Women will fear your bizarre pheromones because your sweat has become all funky because of the 2:1 ratio of protein you need to imbibe. In short, you've got the body, but no mates to go out with in order to try and get ladyfolk to touch it.

So now you have a beach body, but nobody to go to the beach with.

Why am I trying to achieve this ridiculous ideal again?

A Crap Day For Sport

2010-07-23T22:28:00.000+01:00

Until I was sixteen I wanted to be a pro tennis player.

Honestly.

Then I played a few people who were in a different league to me and I faced up to reality. I still love tennis. It makes me feel awesome when I play it. An idea of a good weekend for me would be a 6 hour hit punctuated by an hour of shooting the breeze with a mate and then getting back on court to finish hitting. It would have been sacrilege to suggest it when I was playing seriously, but these days I may even go for a few beers afterwards. I don't know what it is about aimlessly twatting a ball about for a few hours that gives me so much enjoyment, but it does.

So today when I turned up to play tennis at an overpriced tennis court with my hitting buddy - a hit I'd been looking forward to all week - I was not impressed at finding out that the "sports centre " we were at didn't sell tennis balls.

Incredible.

So I trek to Clapham from Waterloo and look in four different "sports shops" for tennis balls. Again, incredibly, none of them stocked tennis balls. So, in London, you can buy any amount of shoes and clothes that were never intended for sport but actual sports equipment, even stuff as rudimentary as tennis balls cannot be obtained. Brilliant.

And then the English wonder why nobody wins bloody Wimbledon anymore.

Festivalling

2010-07-02T23:52:00.000+01:00

Recently I finally managed to get to Glastonbury. Those of you who also know me on Facebook can view the mini photo story of my trip there. It took one blown head gasket and was via a funeral. Eventually I got there, pitched up my ten quid tent, got some liquor out and headed into the thick of it.

Almost everyone I know who has been to Glastonbury wanks themself silly over it. I've heard things said to the tune of the following:

- Oh! It's a magical place!
- It's the best festival ever! No other festival compares!
- It will overwhelm you.

The second and third points I do not agree with. It's not the best festival ever. I reckon Bestival has the rights to being the best festival I've ever been to. There are others abroad, like Melt!, Roskilde, Coachella and Benicassim which are huge. They also usually boast better weather, perhaps better acts depending on your taste and are cheaper. Bestival which is fairly boutique is good because it doesn't feel like you're an animal penned in somewhere. Yes, Glastonbury is huge, but it also feels like there are way more people there than there are things to do. Also, it has the most expensive pints on tap which is not cool. It seems more like a moneymaking mission than a labour of love like Bestival seems. This brings me neatly to the overwhelmingness of it. Yes, it is basically a 24 hour party and there are a lot of people there. Places like Arcadia with all the pyrotechnics are really cool and I had a load of fun there. Watching the sun come up at the stone circle was pretty special too and perhaps it would be "magical" if I was 13 and a virgin, but I'm not, and it isn't. It does have a cool vibe at dawn though.

Festivals for me prior to getting a girlfriend were about two things, music and sex. Both equally as important. Unfortunately Mos Def was the only person I really wanted to see and he cancelled his act because his grandmother died. Perhaps I should have gone to see Muse as they're another band people wank off over but I'm tired of stadium rock guitar bands these days. Give me something with lots of dirty bass that makes girls want to shake their moneymakers on your rubber hose. Having a girlfriend neatly puts paid to that. Weirdly, the talent at Glastonbury was much poorer than what was on offer at Bestival. Something else to consider. Perhaps the high ticket prices have driven the students away?

I did have a great time and met some cool people there whom I'll try and stay in touch with, but greatest festival ever? No, I don't think it was even the greatest festival I went to in June.

Weak, Weakm Strong, Strong, Strong, Weak

2010-04-23T21:30:00.000+01:00

Lately I've been thinking about relationships a lot. Not surprising seeing as I'm currently in one. In particular I've been trying to figure out if relationships have character. I'm not referring to how people respond when you ask them what they think about a couple, but what the two people in the thick of it feel about them.

I'm not sure if you can tell the character of a relationship when you're in it. When it ends maybe you can reflect on it and identify a mood, or a feeling you identify with it but while you're in it it seems like you're too busy feeling things instead of trying to identify what it's doing to you.

I used to think being alone forever would be the scariest thing that could happen to me. I now know that I won't be alone forever if I choose not to be, but being alone didn't scare me anymore which was one of the reasons I decided it was time to be in a relationship again. However, the reason I wanted to start a relationship were all wrong. I was a tough guy who didn't need anyone. I was self sufficient, had a good circle of friends, a busy social life and I was feeling very good about who I was. But being with someone else changes a lot of these things.

I've found myself slipping into a few old habits in this relationship. Ones that need to change. I'm not that tough guy who has to make everyone aware that he doesn't need them anymore. I need to realise it's ok to need someone else's help and it's not something that makes you weak, and in fact, it's stupid not to want their help.

But how do you reach out to someone? I always figured it was easier not to let people in because that way they couldn't hurt you. This man is an island, I believed that. But you can't believe that and be with someone. Or at least I can't. I've done that in the past and all it made me do was resent the other person for not being strong.

Sometimes you have to let someone else be strong so you can be weak. But what if they've not got the character to do it?

I hate questions I don't have the answers to.

Catharsis

2010-03-22T22:40:00.001Z

I feel like this one's been brewing for nearly a couple of years but the time feels right to get it out of the way.

I was in love once. I met someone in a fucked up way, we got together and went out for a while and things were good. At the beginning it always seemed like something temporary. Somewhere in the back of your mind you always know that the chances your first girlfriend and you will be together forever are minimal. I was also a penniless international student who thought he'd be going home to Sri Lanka to become rich and famous after getting his degree in that blinkered, unfocussed way only a deluded student can. So it never seemed like it had real permanence. But I loved her, and she loved me so when she suggested we should get married so we could stay together here I took the chance.

It was odd. Marriage to a lot of people is a big event. Some spend their whole lives looking forward to it but for me it was a non-issue. I never thought about it. My life had a template. Go to university, get a good job and make a lot of money was all that was on the agenda. No marriage, no romance, a lot of sex, yes, but love? No. I'd seen too many people get hurt and spent too long infatuated with silly girls who didn't know what they wanted to trust it. If I had any marital notions then they fitted in with the template. It'd probably be an arranged marriage to some girl from back home. Then I met her and things changed.

Looking back on it, I can honestly say I believed we'd be together forever. Temperamentally we were very alike, we loved each other fiercely, we fought each other all the time because we'd never back down from an argument and we fucked a lot. We were just kids I guess.

Then we grew up a little bit more. We moved in together because she didn't have anyone to live with apart from me and I didn't want to live with any of my friends. We never thought the decision through. We thought we'd just plow through any of our problems somehow. I've lost count of the times we fought and broke up and made up afterwards. It was always me walking out on her, pushing her away so she'd go away. Eventually one of us would come back to the other, we'd fuck, and things would be smoothed over for the time being.

Then we stopped fucking and things started to go wrong even though I didn't realise it then. We got married somewhere along all of this, university finished for me and I started working. She was away a lot because she was stationed in another part of the country for teaching. Then she finished university and had to continue working there. I realise now that we coasted for all that time. Her work put immense pressure on her. Pressure I couldn't understand, and I think part of me was irrationally jealous of her because she had a good job that constantly challenged her and made her money. Mine was mind numbing and boring. I remember her venting about work to me one day and wishing she'd shut up because it made what I was doing seem so small and insignificant and pointless, and it was.

Things had gotten horrible by now. I knew she was ashamed of me because the work I did was so shit. I was actively looking for more work, but you can only get so many rejection letters from graduate schemes and keep going, knowing that your passport, or a coloured stamp on it is the only thing preventing someone from employing you. That and a seemingly arbitrary list of criteria you had to match up to. I tried so hard to find a good job during all that time. I wrote personal letters, I called companies up to find out how I could get a foot in the door, I did all the things that the underdog in a movie did to get in. Like loiter around the company you want to work for so you could impress someone and get a job using a chance meeting, but none of these materialised.

And then I got a chance to move to London.

When I told her about it her response was to say it would make our relationship difficult with both of us living away. I hoped she'd want to come with me. I should have known there was no chance of us ever salvaging us from that conversation. If that didn't tell me, then her conversation with me about wanting to travel for a year without me should have told me that. She'd just gotten back from 4 months travelling for her elective and brought it up. I told her I'd love to go with her, but she didn't want me there. She felt trapped. It's obvious now.

But it's one thing to FEEL trapped, and another thing to BE trapped.

I couldn't leave her. And this is what I hate myself for. I'd think about it night after night. I wanted to leave, I wanted to see what it would be like to fuck someone else after nearly 5 years of being with the same person. I wanted to be with someone who'd support me in what I wanted to be. Someone whom I didn't have to create an enormous amount of emotional turmoil in just so I could reassure myself that they really did love me. By now, the only way I could prove to myself that she loved me was to fight with her, hurt her, see her cry at the horrible things I'd say to her and feel relief because it meant she still cared. I made abortive attempts to patch things up. I remember the terrible Valentine's Day we spent together shortly before we broke up. We went out to dinner and I remember looking at the present she gave me and thinking "you really have no idea who I am do you" and pretending I liked it. We fought that night and I finally slept on the floor because I couldn't bear the thought of having to share a bed with her. Sometimes when she touched me I'd feel my skin crawl. Not because I detested her, but because I detested the cowardice in me. I couldn't leave her, not least of all because I'd invested so much emotion in that relationship. I'd defied my parents to marry her and she never understood what a big step that was for someone in my position. I couldn't leave her because we had to stay together for a little more time until I could get my residence sorted out. I loved her, but it was a broken, horrible, ugly way to love someone and after we fought for the last time we finally fucked each other after nearly a year. The fucking wasn't sad or bad. It was good, but it was like fucking someone you were using. Except you know exactly what to do to them and for them.

After she left I spent an entire week being an emotional wreck. I went to work and had to listen to people's stupid problems while it felt like this carefully constructed world I'd put together around me was falling apart. I'd keep it together at work and then run home feeling so sad that it left me hurting physically. If it wasn't for running, tennis and the gym then there's a good chance I'd have fallen apart in that month after our break up. Then I fucked someone else and I got over it.

But they never really go away do they? You realise that you don't stop loving that person. The cliches are true. They are a part of your life and you're not the first person who's lost someone they love but I'm glad I was strong enough to let my life go on and be able to move upwards. The break up made me face up to some nasty things about myself. I faced up to how I'd let my ambitions stagnate, how damaged I was, and the part of me that made me want to make others suffer.

I sorted out my life career wise by finding employment doing something that truly did challenge me and it changed my life. Not overnight, but gradually. People told me I seemed more confident, happier, not a different person, but the person I was before I became unhappy. The same, but different, in a good way.

I remember hearing from her that she was seeing someone else. I can honestly say it didn't bother me. Women can move on to someone else when they choose to. Men move on to someone else when they have to. We move on when we want to. Note that moving on is different to moving onto someone else. We can both do that with equal aplomb, it just depends on how low our standards will sink.

It's amazing how love can be a horrible thing. I spent years in that relationship feeling useless, ugly and unloved. Work changed the former, the latter was something that didn't matter anymore because I was trying to love myself and the thing in the middle, well, that change was what affected me most. I still remember the day I remember realising I wasn't ugly. It was when I came off the escalator at St.Pauls tube station. A pretty girl looked me up and down, shamelessly and then made full on eye contact. I remember being confused initially and thinking she must be looking at someone else and then realisation dawning on me that it was actually me she was looking at and the confusion turned to exhilaration. That was a good day at work.

I've not seen her since the day we broke up. We've exchanged text messages and e-mails but I've not seen her once. There've been a few girlfriends since her in various degrees of seriousness, but nothing approaching what we had together. I'd like to think we could be friends one day, or at least know she looks back on us and doesn't regret what happened.

If I could change one thing about being with her then it'd be to not marry her. Sure marriage is a social contract and young, urban, liberated 20 somethings shouldn't give a shit about some bizarre, outdated ritual which only serves the purpose of generating a license fee and additional paperwork, but it's a powerful one.

One you want to share with someone you think you'll be with forever.

But there are no guarantees and it's time to let all this go and start something anew with someone I love. Maybe this time it will last forever, maybe it won't, but I know at least it will not turn into something ugly.

Growing Up

2010-02-22T21:01:00.000Z

Maturity is a bizarre thing.

It's letting go of the past and learning to trust someone.

It's realising that you will never know someone completely, but you're willing to try and get to know the facets of themselves they show to you.

It's knowing your insecurities are YOUR problems and you've got no right to take them out on someone else.

It's giving yourself a chance to be happy.

That Sinking Feeling

2010-02-22T20:56:00.000Z

Have you ever had a part of you that was dead suddenly reawaken itself within you and make you hate yourself for it? What triggers it can be anything. Someone looking at you a certain way, saying a certain thing, being in a certain place?

It happens to me sometimes. And it happened last night. The anger, the shame, it rages within you and it won't go away until you've hit something, or someone, or shoved it down your throat with a stiff drink.

I probably just need a good shagging.

Googly Eyed

2010-02-10T23:19:00.000Z

I'm sitting at the foot of my bed writing this unbeknownst to her.

I cannot believe it's real. Being with someone shouldn't be this easy, but somehow it is. I've just reached a hand out to scratch her to make sure this isn't a cruel dream from which I will awake in an instant. But no, she is here, she is real, and she makes me unbelievevably happy.

The first time you're with someone it's a bit raw. You know the way you feel about them and it's powerful, unrestrained, yet a bit terse. Then you grow older, you break some hearts, mistreat some poor wretched souls along the way and forget all about the way you first felt when you were with someone until you meet someone else.

This time it's powerful, but not raw, unrestrained, but not uncontrolled. It just feels right.

She's laughing at me and I join in. I don't know what we're laughing at, but it's time for me to go and enjoy tonight.

Take It From The Top

2010-02-06T17:35:00.000Z

So another relationship begins, and I'm going round and round on the spirals it brings. They're all up now but soon the inevitable downward ones will come. For now I'm being pragmatic and getting it while it's going like Fletch told me to do. A man like me is not in a position to refuse a good, hard shagging.

What can I tell you about her?

She's wonderful. When I'm with her I feel like me; me, but new and improved. I look at her and I see guileless, gold-flecked, grey-blue eyes that are kind and caring, a beautiful face and a body I cannot see myself getting tired of. When I talk to her, I speak to an intelligent person who's had enough things happen in her life to know what the important things are but with enough humour to know you can laugh at them when you look back on them.

I've been with enough people to know there are no guarantees in a relationship. It's not uncommon to be with someone one day, wake up the next and find out that the universe realigned itself while you were sleeping and you've just woken up next to a stranger. A stranger you've known for years, months, or weeks, but still a stranger. Just like how you can walk into a crowded room and feel utterly and unbelievably alone, you can also be with someone you've known for a hefty chunk of your life and feel like they never understood you. There maybe no guarantees, but if you're unlucky enough to have failed in a relationship you have to keep believing you're someone who deserves happiness because good things happen, even if you're a fuck-up who may feel they've not deserved it.

I don't know where this is going. All I know is when I'm with her I feel like I belong to someone but I'm still free. I want to remember everything that's happening when I'm with her. Every look, every hair ruffling, every touch, every kiss, everything. I want to remember it because even if this ends up breaking me it will be what letting someone else into my life worth it the next time.

Anyway, I'm now off to the gym to get stronger so I can fuck my girlfriend harder tonight. Toodle-loo!

Reading

2010-01-09T13:21:00.000Z

I've just finished reading this article in the Guardian.

I wonder what life would be like if I didn't read a lot. These days my reading is confined to the train and the bedroom, but in what now feels like a life gone by it was a constant part of my life.

Both my parents worked. Living in a third world country meant they didn't have to go through the rigmarole of organising a child minder or a silly playgroup for me when I was home for the holidays and left me on my own to do what I liked. In a library. This was before I started playing sport properly. So imagine what it was like when you're a 6 year old kid left alone in a library until your parents can come get you. You can read any book you want, any magazine you want, watch any movie you want or listen to anything you want in one of the best libraries in the country. It was incredible. Living here I can understand what people's concerns may have been. You see the threats, not the positives. Instead of seeing an immmense opportunity for stimulating a child's mind you see danger. There was always stranger danger, the chance that I would wander off and try and find my way home, starve (which did happen quite often because Mum was never much good at sorting out the food for me when she packed me off!) or just get bored. I'm happy that I can look back on it and think it benefited me more than it hurt me.

Getting back to the original point, I think it would be difficult to be with someone who didn't enjoy reading. Literature and to some extent, cinema and theatre drive my emotional articularity a great deal. It is easier to explain an emotion or a situation to them when you have a film or a book to use as a point of reference. It also provides you with the vocabulary to do it.

But if you're in a successful relationship wouldn't you rather feel things than talk about feelings all the time?

I'd rather be fucking than talking to be honest.

Taking The Plunge

2010-01-05T20:07:00.000Z

So, it's finally come to this.

I'm trying online dating. At this site. It was a bit of a daunting step to take, but thankfully, having a friend to do the difficult bit (pimping me out) made things a lot easier. It's still tough to know what to write about yourself, but I gave it a shot. If you're really interested in what it looks like then here you go.

So I set things up, messaged a few people and was pleasantly surprised to find that some people actually replied, and bizarrely, some people even added me to their "favourites". There was one weird 40 year old woman who looked like she could've been one of the witches in Macbeth who added me. That was definitely a letdown. Another girl whom I looked at and passed up thinking she was out of my league added me as a "favourite" as well. However, can you see a pattern developing here?

It's obvious isn't it? Looks are still key. Sure, if you have a witty, erudite profile then it may pique someone's interest, but what would someone who did know the meaning of "erudite" be doing on a dating website? More importantly, why would she want to go out with me when there are 6 foot plus blokes who are yacht designers and heal paralysed Ethiopians in their spare time about? A quick perusal of a few profiles indicates that everyone there is full of contradictions and are quite similar. They like going out, but also like staying in. They like the cinema, they like gigs, they like music, they like good food, the usual things really. Does anyone stand out? No, not really. Well, not many anyway. Am I just being bitter? Yes, a little bit. Why? Because just like in real life, online dating comes with no guarantees. A girl can message you, talk to you, even get to the point where she agrees to go out with you and still flake out. Likewise, you can meet someone and not feel any spark despite them being a nice person.

It's odd how people also seem to think that just because this is an online thing it gives them carte blanche to treat finding a potential partner as an activity akin to making a shopping list. Meet Claire from London, Other area, Weybridge and Surrey. Claire wants to meet a man who is at least 6 feet but can't be too tall because he can't look like a daddy long legs when she's on his arm (or should that be the other way round?). He needs to have a great job with brilliant prospects, have a great body but he also needs to be on call whenever Claire needs to have a boo-boo kissed or to fish a spider out of the bath at 2 in the afternoon because they make her oh so frightened. Oh, and he needs to treat her now and then and be an intellectual with excellent sartorial sense. Obviously Claire has no fucking idea what she wants, or she knows what she wants and is definitely going to try her level best to get it, or ruin some poor bastard's life trying.

Now meet Johnny, London, City of. Johnny works in Finance or something equally wanky. Enjoys watching sport in his spare time (rugby mostly old chap) and walking Pater's Border Collie, Rex. Johnny is such a scamp because, get this, he ran across the quad naked when we were Sixth Formers at St. Barnabus (patron saint of wankers) Academy for young wankers! But don't let that fool you. He's a deep chap is our Johnny. He's "travelled" and his "travels" once took him to Gaza (it's so terrible the war there isn't it?). He now wants to settle down with someone as painfully middle or aspiring middle class as him.

Johnny and Claire sound like a perfect match. They will definitely be one of the success stories of this site.

Now, where is my place here? A precious little snowflake who's just looking to meet someone intelligent, interesting and somewhat attractive? Someone who hates running, but does it because you have to keep fit to play tennis, and not play tennis to keep fit. Someone whose deepest thought happened while tripping on something highly illegal, or while reading a Richard Yates book. Someone who just wants to find someone who's as scared as he is about all these things but is doing it in the hope that it'll be worth it in the end? Can someone find "Someone" doing something like this, or should I leave it to chance? Either way, I hope I find her soon.

We've both got a lifetime to grow old together, but it won't start until you pick the fucking phone up and call bitch.

Money Money Money

2010-01-01T21:16:00.000Z

The New Year's started. Yes, I've made a few resolutions and like last year's ones I intend to keep the ones I can keep. My resolutions aren't specified line items like give up smoking, make x amount of money in this year (though I did make one last year to get in shape) but more in the vein of a general approach, like I will become a better person overall or a better engineer, or become more creative. I'd say they're more guidelines than resolutions.

This year I'm mixing a few line items in with the general guideline.

The main guideline for this year is to become more solvent financially. Growing up I had a weird relationship with money. My family was fairly well off so I never had to worry about not having enough money. That all changed as soon as I came to England. This country was the start of several firsts for me (like anytime anyone moves to a new land). I got my first job, my first experience of having to support myself, generally, my first experience of being an adult and being in charge of my life. My relationship with money took on a new bent. Instead of always having enough to do what I wanted I barely had enough to do what I needed. I remember weeks where I had to live off value chicken soup, baked beans and toast. Walking or cycling to work instead of taking the bus, working two jobs so I could afford rent and university fees and even dabbling in a few illegal activities to support myself and I was constantly in the depths of my overdraft. My relationship with money remained almost unchanged though. I still didn't have to think about it because I didn't have any.

I then left university, began working full time and things changed.

I now had money and it was an exhilarating experience. Suddenly my overdraft was extinguished. I could even afford to save some cash and it took over me. I was working all sorts of hours chasing it. If there ever was any overtime going the managers at work could count on me to do it. I despised the work I was doing but it wasn't going to be forever but overtime hours were always easy to do so I took them. It was a chance to make some money in order to save for the future when I could take some time off to look for work.

Eventually I did find the job I wanted. I moved to London with a few thousand pounds in savings and went on a stupid spending spree. The energy of the city, the thrill of meeting new people daily, doing work I enjoy and being able to reward myself for it caused me to act very irresponsibly with the money I had. Soon I'd spent all my savings and was staring at the bottom of my overdraft once again, finding myself wishing desperately for tomorrow to be payday and dreading logging into my internet banking account. My relationship with money had changed yet again. Now there wasn't ever enough of it. I'd certainly spent irresponsibly and on impulse and made rash decisions without considering the fiscal consequences, a good example of which was moving into a flat that I could ill afford to live in in February last year.

This new year sees me in decent financial condition and I do hope it presages a more sensible me. Of course money is still a vulgar concern, but I cannot pretend it is a vulgarity that does not affect my mindset any longer. So to counter this I've begun to record and account for my expenses with a fixed amount allocated for the essentials and possibly the indulgences. The guidelines are simple. All necessary expenses will need to allocated before any indulgences. For example, any money I need to allocate for necessities like rent, utilities and food will remain in my account while the remainder will get transferred into a different account. I've identified the total cost of the essentials and made an allowance of 10% of the total as my margin for error.

This is still not enough. Even with this kind of planning there's always the chance that there will be some unexpected expense (like road tax, or car insurance renewal, or a big date even!) that can come along at an unexpected time. To offset this I've set myself a long term goal of saving 10% of my income by the end of this year. So I'll transfer 10% of my take home pay into an ISA to cover this.

There will also be a series of short term goals. The first is to sort out a regular day for food shopping. This may seem a bizarre thing to start with, but the logic behind it is simple. I've worked out that I spend close to £120 a month due to poor planning with food. I don't eat ready meals or any ready cooked food (I haven't for the past two months, but I must admit that occasionally an offer for Doctor Oetker frozen pizza does tempt me!) and cook all my food from scratch, but I do plan my lunches badly and am caught out by hunger pangs at the worst possible time. By setting a weekly or fortnightly day for food shopping I can ensure that I will have enough food to hand to cook for the week and not have to do any unplanned spending. I'm going food shopping tomorrow, on a Saturday to stock up for the fortnight, but seeing as I cannot depend on myself to go out of the house to do food shopping on a weekend it seems that Monday night will be the day of the week allocated to food shopping. Anyway, in short, the goal of my first week is to not spend any money on food that's not been planned for. It doesn't mean I'm going to starve though. My work lunches will all be meals from a Jamie Oliver cookbook and have enough calories to get me through the day and factor in my arbitrary fruit and veg allowance.

So what does this mean? I need to plan breakfast, lunch and dinner for a week starting right now, but that'll be covered in a different post.

The second short term goal, is to have a shirt ironed and ready for work before I go to bed each night. This too, on the surface of things may look like a boring resolution, but the thinking behind it is simple. I was in boarding school for a period of my life and am accustomed to having well ironed shirts before going into work. There's also a method to ironing shirts that I follow which was taught to me by a tailor a long time ago and it means I'm pretty anal when it comes to ironing shirts. It's a simple method, but not easy and it means I can spend a long time ironing a single shirt. This in turn, means oversleeping by ten minutes each day could potentially mean being late for the train. So, to compensate for this I'd skip breakfast, meaning having to spend money on breakfast at work. Doing my ironing in advance means I can be punctual for work and have enough time to eat in the morning thus avoiding the vicious circle caused by poor ironing preparation (I cannot believe I just used "ironing preparation" and "vicious circle" in the same sentence) .

I'l also set a third short term goal just because I like doing things in threes. From now on, I will buy all my meat and poultry from a local butchers. Apart from cured meats which I'll probably buy from the little Italian shop next door to the butchers. This will be done weekly or fortnightly and will have to be done on a weekend because I don't get back from work early enough to visit the butcher.

2010 is looking like the year where things are about long term results. It doesn't make for interesting reading, but it's time to be an adult now and I've put it off for long enough. There are fun things I'm planning on doing too (like Bestival!), but you can only live without thinking of the consequences for so long. There's also the enormous matter of my career ambitions, but I need to be realistic, and again, I think if I control the things I can, then I will eventually be in a position to control the things I can't (can't control right now at least).

Let's see if my resolve will hold up. I'm backing myself to win this one. 2010 is going to be interesting!

Past Midnight

2009-12-29T00:47:00.001Z

This is the first time I've had more than a day off work since January. I was recovering from an injury then so it wasn't a holiday really. More like a convalescence.

So far, I've revised a bit, done some odd cooking, vegged out in front of the TV. But, right now I'm doing what feels almost perfect to have someone to share with.

I'm sitting in a dimly illuminated room listening to Bon Iver.

I don't know who she is, but it'd be nice to have her around.

Saturday Night At The Movies

2009-12-29T00:46:00.000Z

It's Saturday night and my flatmates are getting all glammed out before hitting the town.

Am I jealous?

Definitely.

I'll try and break down my going out rituals. It starts with a long shower. I'll use a shower gel that'll complement whatever scent I'll wear out. Usually it's either Issey Miyake or Hugo. That reminds me, I've run out of Issey shower gel (Aqua Douche? Hey Bobby, what is the French for douchebag?) and need to get some more at some point. Once this is done, I'll pick up my outfit. If it's a shirt then I'll iron it before the show, if not, then it'll just get picked and worn. Then the hair. This is my least and most favourite part. Long hair is a mixed blessing. I like having it, but I dislike having to style it. So I spend about 20 minutes deciding what I want it to look like but I know as soon as I step out of the door the wind is going to wreak havoc with it. But whatever, I'll take care of that later, all that matters is being able to step out of the door feeling good about the way I'm looking. So once the hair's sorted I'll put some of the chosen scent on and head out.

There's also the pre pub ritual. The Withdrawal of the Monies.

When I was a student I could take out £20 from the hole and head to the bar feeling like a lord. That £20 would buy me a couple of rounds, entry into the club, a few rounds there and maybe even some food on the way back. These days, if I'm feeling flush I'll hit the £100 button on the cashpoint, casually put the money into my wallet, and cross my fingers hoping I wont have to visit the cashpoint a second time in the night. If payday is but a distant memory then the cashpoint will reluctantly spit out £50 and I'll hope someone else will get a few rounds in tonight. Sometimes those are the best nights of them all. However, I do miss those days when I was a student where £50 was an unthinkable amount of money to take out. A possibly life changing amount even.

Tonight, I've got an offer to go out. There's £40 in my wallet due to The Great Cash Experiment and I am itching to go out. The plan is to wait till my flatmates go out and then stick on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a movie I've been wanting to watch for a while.

Am I going to keep my resolve, or am I going to crack and head out?

Enough

2009-12-29T00:41:00.000Z

Growing up we go through phases. Phases usually start in the teenage years. There's the surly teenager phase where your parents aren't cool and can never understand you. There's usually a girl or boy who would understand you completely if only they could be bothered to and a girl or boy who thinks the same of you. Then you grow up, laugh at these things and then go through these things again, except you've probably made a little more progress this time. This time you realise your parents probably did understand you enough to understand they'd never understand what you went through, your girlfriend understands you, but maybe not as much as you think you understand her. If you're lucky (or unlucky for that matter) you'll understand that understanding someone is over-rated and love really is all you need.

The problem is you have to find someone who feels the same way. Spend time with your best friend. Does he understand what you're going through when things are going bad? No, he doesn't. But you can't expect him to. All that matters is that he's there to listen. You need this understanding with someone you love. Else you're going to spend your life tip-toeing around the things you think you don't understand.

It's weird really. I spent a lot of time apologising for whom I was. At school I was a chap in a minority who was constantly envious of how some of my friends were getting laid, cheating on their girlfriends and wasting their lives while secretly detesting them for how naturally it seemed to come to them and how much fun they seemed to be having. Eventually I found a few people do some of these things in varying degrees with and then I came to terms with myself a little bit more. I went to university, I messed around, I met someone and I thought loving her was all I needed. I tried to understand her because it seemed like it was so important to her but I never could. We broke up when it became clear that we would never understand each other. I remember how I had to pretend to hate people of certain persuasions, preferences and lifestyles with her. A size 10 model comes on screen. I hate her honey. Little Britain comes on screen? I love it honey, it's so witty, it's not the comic equivalent of lowest common denominator wankmags at all. Am I swearing too much honey? I'm so terribly sorry. Yes it is rather crass isn't it? This and more. I didn't hate her for it, but I do feel disappointed at myself for allowing myself to be that person. For not being secure enough to be whom I was and whom I still am.

Things are different now.

I love women. I love the things I love and I like the things I like. I'm not going to lie or apologise for this.

And yeah, this all basically got written because I think I should be allowed to fuck whomever and whatever I want to fuck. How is it going to pan out? I don't know. I'll put it down somewhere when I find out.

I just hope I find someone to love along the way. Or at least someone I love fucking.

The Dating Game

2009-12-29T00:40:00.000Z

The most difficult thing about dating is the picking the venue.

Obviously in this day and age it's not enough to just suggest somewhere to go for a drink. That means you have to be a sparkling conversationist and also ensure your date is someone you've got enough in common with them to also have a physical connection. It also has to be somewhere that's convenient for both of you to get to, it can't be something that takes place on a Friday or Saturday night because averse to evidence, we're all hip people who have busy social lives and have an unlimited amount of money to spend in these trendy places week after week. So basically you need to go somewhere interesting, quirky, unpretentious, with good transport links that doesn't place too much of the conversational burden on you. Easy right?

So where is the place of the woman in this?

I'll tell you where. Doing sweet fuck all, that's where.

I have been on a few dates, but I've never had a time where a woman has actually tried to choose the venue. It's shit. I've been on dates where the chat's been flowing, a good time has been had by all and the tables are just a little too long for me to reach out and touch the woman I'm with. Physical intimacy is vital to make a connection with someone. A woman will tell you she wants a man who has a sense of humour, but there's no point making someone laugh all night long and not being able to give them a cheeky thigh squeeze is there? I hate doing the end of date kiss because it means I've not had a chance to do it over most of the date because she's not been in physical proximity to plant a good one on her. The good night kiss is overly romanticised and isn't something that's convenient when you're bidding farewell to your lady because she has to catch the Central Line amidst hundreds of other people.

I'm not bad at choosing venues I like, but it's difficult to accommodate all the variables. Perhaps the answer is to pick one venue that's good and just take all your dates to it, but that would become boring wouldn't it? Think of all those places that have been left unexplored? Wouldn't it be a shame to keep taking someone to the same place all the time? It's a big city and it'd get boring. Or maybe it's more important to get them hooked first and then take them to all the different places to show them how you like doing all these different things?

Well, I've not found a venue like that where it's easy to be physically intimate with someone, have a conversation that doesn't involve having to shout over the rubbish DJ, has something that'll entertain both of us and also be economical. If I find one then I'll let you know. Right now, I wish women would take some responsibility for choosing a venue because it's not fair to be judged on where you take your date after she's not even made the slightest effort at choosing it.

Actually, fuck it. I'm just going to sit right next to her halfway through the date and do a palm reading. It can't hurt can it?

What I Got

2009-12-20T23:40:00.000Z

We live in a world today that promotes the ideal. Everywhere we look, the media and society tell us we need to be this tall, this thin, this buff. You must be this fit to ride, this edgy to get a record deal, this fucked up to be cool. At the same time we're sanitised. Wash your hands after you piss, make sure the water's at least at 84 degrees when you wash your utensils, wash your hands after each time you handle the meat. We've lost the ability to cope when things go to shit and whenever there's a mess we run around trying to blame everyone else but ourselves. There's an MRSA outbreak in the hospital? Blame the NHS. The bankers have fucked the economy? Blame the bankers. There's a street where there's people who've not worked in three generations? Blame the nanny state. It's not the patients' fault for being dirty fuckers who come in after not following the instructions on their antibiotics and create super resistant strains of germs. It's not the fault of the aspiring middle classes who borrowed unrealistic amounts of money to fund overpriced properties which they couldn't pay for. It's not the peoples' fault for molly coddling the lazy cunts when they first got out of work. It's always someone else. Somewhere along the way we've deluded ourselves into thinking we're perfect and because we're perfect we've started to unrealistically expect perfection from others.

We go to the movies, we watch TV. There are vampires thousands of years old who would sacrifice their immortality so they could be with one person.But back in the real world, a woman wants a man who has a stable job who's good with the kids. A man wants a woman who can earn a wage that's high enough for them to be able to afford a decent mortgage, but the movies we watch and the books we read tell us we can expect a woman who will stay with you through thick and thin, crippling accidents, terminal illnesses all of these should be expected, and no, you're not allowed to resent them, but maybe even expected to love them for it. Not despite it, but for it.

So where does this leave us?

People get married later. They want to travel first, they want to experience Life, they want to meet someone - and I've heard this said by an overly romantic idiot several times - they want to meet someone they cannot live without, not someone they can live with. They say it with a smug look on their face as if a snooted hairlight at 6000K is supposed to fall on their wavy tresses courtesy of L'Oreal as soon as they've finished uttering that phrase. At the same time, they want to earn 50,000 with OTE, 30 days holiday a year and be able to afford a detached 4 bed house in rural Surrey with a man who understands their biological clock is ticking and it really wouldn't do to turn up to the parent teachers' meeting with little Portia and have her look like she's with her grandparents would it? And the men. Oh the men. They want a woman who understands that boys will be boys, won't mind if they watch a little bit of porn when they're in the bedroom (it's proper nawty innit boys?) and it's alright for the missus to have a cheeky frig while thinking of Johnny Depp as long as she stays a size 8-10 and lets them have a free pass to go to Table Angels every now and then with the lads.

How do we rationalise these expectations? We want to be middle class, we want love that cleaves the heavens in order to find us, but we also want to make sure that it kills 99.9% of the germs commonly found on household surfaces. We want our perfect love, but it has to also include supermarket convenience.

The aftermath doesn't make for pretty reading.

You marry young in the hope your love will last forever and you think about fucking that girl you met in the Paul Smith shop. Tell your friends you love him because he's the smartest person you know but resent him for not making it oh so inconvenient for you to split your time between shifts. Suddenly think what it could be like if you didn't have to say "sorry, I have a boyfriend" to the drunken, leering, high street designer brand wearing fuck who went to a private school who tried to chat you up the other night in the bar because you feel trapped and let it make you think he was an erudite, stylish, "cheeky chappie" (Oh Gods deliver me from women who want a cheeky chappie. Why not aim for the heroin addict and not the wanker who takes a couple of lines every now and then more to show everyone at the party that he can score blow and not because of how it feels? Surely, it's logical by extension?).

We have too much choice. Men switch the screen on or open a newspaper and you've got Brazilians, Japanese, half-Brazilian half- Japanese (Brazanese?) women you can take your pick from. Women have their Johnny Depps, Zac Efrons and Robbie Williams' they want to talk to, mother or bed. It's all so confusing isn't it? Our parents made a good fist of their lives in an era with less choice than us, but we're so worried about not being able to taste the 600 different flavours of ice cream in the shop that we're blind to the fact that one day we'll need to stop and choose a favourite.

Settle for love. Don't think about the mortgage and if Portia will go to a school with the Doctor Einstein curriculum. You have a job you've always wanted? Then take her with you and don't let her say no. Don't think about how there's going to be an ocean of fanny there you've never fucked before and she's going to cramp your style while she waits for someone to hire her as a TV researcher. Do the things you want without constantly worrying that you could be missing out or they could be done better. This is your life. You're living it right now. Learn to fucking deal with it.

Christmas Dinner

2009-12-19T09:29:00.000Z

I've only not celebrated Christmas since I came to England once. It was in my first year of moving here. And yes, I was single. I was single last Christmas as well but that was immensely fun too. I'm still wondering where my Mrs Santa outfit went.

This year I'm cooking Christmas dinner for eight people. Almost all of whom are Sri Lankans. It was a terrible fucker to get numbers sorted out and people are still hemming and hawing about who is going to show up on the day. So, to cover my greedy ass, and the walking stomach that is my brother, I have gone ahead and ordered a 6kg turkey for us.

Now on the face of it, 6kg does not seem like a lot. However, factor in the starters and the desserts and it seems like it will be enough. For me at least. I'm a bit worried about cooking the turkey. It's the biggest one I've ever tried to roast and will be a four hour labour of love. I still need to buy a roasting tray, a baster and perhaps a decent carving knife and fork.

The menu is:

Roasted aubergine and Feta cheese for starters

Turkey with stuffing and gravy for the mains accompanied by bacon, sausages, roast potatoes, Brussell sprouts, cauliflower cheese. I'm also thinking about cooking a joint of ham as well as insurance.

For dessert we are having my award winning banoffee pie with cream and also lemon cupcakes from my hummingbird bakery cookbook.

It's not going to be cheap, but I'm starting a tradition here. This is going to become an annual event. Right now the invitation's only to family and a single friend but perhaps it will become larger in the future once I have a better kitchen? One thing's for sure, I'm definitely looking forward to two things. The champagne breakfast on Christmas eve with the pannatone and seeing my beautiful brother. It's been too long.

I'm On A Boat

2009-12-15T18:56:00.000Z

I spent last weekend on a boat with Fletcher.

Fletcher is a hardened Northern type. Straight talking, hard drinking and definitely no-nonsense. I remember thinking to myself that he'd lost the plot a little bit when he said he was about to move onto a narrowboat for six months and give up his rather tasty flat in Southeast London. However, two nights on board the boat (The Myra - D) and all of that changed.

There is something about choosing a life of relatively lowered comfort that beckons to a certain type of man. Fletcher is perhaps one of those men. I'd love to do what he's doing, but I doubt I'm organisationally capable. Also, I enjoy my morning showers a little too much.

It's interesting how several things in the boat had a symbiotic relationship. To live on the boat you need water, electricity and heat in addition to food. As far as I could tell, the heat was generated by a wood and coal burning furnace type heater, the electricity was generated by the engine which also in turn piped the hot and cold water to the fittings. He needs to refuel and refill the water at the water points along the way as he can only stay moored in each spot for two weeks at a time after which he cannot return for a year. This is a bit reminiscent of tramps in Orwell's Down and out in Paris and London where a tramp cannot return to a spike within two weeks of visiting it on pain of imprisonment.

We drank and talked of manly things, like sex, women and drinking. Well, he talked of manly things and I vomited up a huge serving of angst mainly related to women. Many cups of liquor were consumed, he fed me a rather delicious beef stroganoff and some exceptionally good beer and rum. The next day a few others and I helped him find a new mooring point as he was on the verge of overstaying at his current location.

I would like to put down a few observations of a weekend spent aboard a boat (I nicked this line from Orwell by the way, so I know it's good). The life one lives on it is not as hard as people or even oneself would lead one to believe. Surely it requires a lot of advance planning and preparation in order to make it enjoyable, but the satisfaction gained from coming in to the gentle roaring of a fire after the cold night is a feeling that is very satisfactory. Very much more than that of coming into a flat where the central heating has just come on. I felt as if I was on an extended camping trip, except in much more spacious quarters, a lot more warmth and infinitely better meals.

Thank you for having me on the boat Fletcher. The next time I will be faster on the locks and bring some liquor with me for the journey.

Last Night

2009-12-12T12:32:00.005Z

The Company took us out for our Christmas party last night.The place we went to was rather nice. It was a black tie do with entertainment, free bar, dinner. The works basically.

The fact of the matter is I went out so I could meet some new people. I spoke to a few people, kissed a man, a woman, tried to initiate a dance-off (nobody accepted), got a few jibes about my clothing (they were jealous I bet!), normal fare for the night.

I'd like to set some observations down about last night (you can tell I've just finished a George Orwell book can't you?). The general feel of a night out with work is an agreeable one. The people I work with are fun to be with. The only complaint I could have about them is an unreasonable one. It is that I wish there were more of them who were female. The other is more complimentary than anything else. They are so easy and fun to be with that it is easy to forget that there are other people out there (preferably female!) that I could be trying to get to know while enjoying myself. I did give it a go and the results were intriguing.

People seem to be on their guard more when they're at a work do. I've heard it said by several women that they moved to London thinking moving to a larger city would also mean a larger pool of people available to them to date. This is true, but I find it can only be true if you're someone who is open to the possibility of meeting new people. If you're someone who finds yourself going out constantly and complaining you don't meet enough people then note down how many people you've initiated a conversation with each night. If it's less than five per night then you're not doing it right. I spoke to quite a few people last night but the general feeling I got from them was that they were either on their guard, or a little bit worried about being isolated from their table/workmates. No bother, most people would be a bit put out trying to hold a conversation with a man with painted nails in Sri Lankan national dress. I mean, what can you say to a man wearing what looks like a dress? Perhaps that is the problem here. People are nervous about what they do not know. Consequently they end up settling for the things they know instead of pushing the boat out and trying to see what else is out there.

Can you blame them for it? Perhaps not. People do need to be safe. But do you not feel the world shrinking? Do you not want to know how the other half lives? I do.

Charity Shop Visits

2009-11-23T15:11:00.000Z

Like some people I find it hard to give some things away. Unfortunately a combination of a lack of wardrobe space and aging clothes have forced me to do the undignified trek to the charity shop with a black bag full of clothes I no longer want or haven't worn for over a year.

Given that I usually dress like a homeless skateboarder when I am not at work I would not be surprised if someone tried to give me their spare change on the way there.

Wish me luck for the trip! Oh, and I hate it when they rummage through the stuff you're dumping on them. Gift horse. Mouth. Better not to look at some things.

Working Hard

2009-11-22T23:23:00.000Z

I have a week off work starting today.

I've not taken a proper holiday since early 2008. The truth is, I don't even know what a holiday is supposed to be anymore. Is it something that involves going abroad? I went to Sri Lanka a while ago, that didn't seem like a holiday. Is it something that involves a different language, foreign money and shopping for things? That seems to be what most people's definition of a holiday is. Oh, and Experiences. Like safely managed cliff diving, or feeding a tame tiger and having your picture taken with it.

Sometimes it does feel like I'm going to burn out if I'm not careful. Is time off the answer? But what am I going to do with it? So far all I've got planned is revision, getting into the gym, playing tennis, running and some long cycle rides.

It would be nice to get away from all of this. That's the other reason people go on holiday. What is All Of This? Is it the work? I doubt it. I like the work. Is it the flat I live in? Not really, my flatmates aren't exactly Patch Adams on a bad day but they're a hell of a lot better than what my old living situation was so I don't think that's what I want to get away from.

I think I don't feel like I've earned the right to have a holiday yet.

I need to achieve something. I need to make something of my life.

I need that next exam pass.

Encounters

2009-11-17T20:55:00.000Z

Starting back up with the chat when you've been getting some for a while is like riding a very large bike.

I like talking to people. I like meeting new people, making new friends, seeing what makes other people, you name it. I am also extremely shy. People who know me will dispute this to some extent. A lot of my friends are shy too. It's not by accident. I stick to shy people. The only difference is I've recognised my shyness and once you realise that strangers aren't going to bite your head off then talking to them gets easier.

I spoke to a pretty, pierced, tattooed redhead today on the train. The dream combination for me. I love piercings, I love tattoos and I love redheads. She had a gorgeous pair of tattoos on her feet. One was of a skull that symbolises the Mexican Day of the Dead. It looked like this:

I think it is beautiful. The way the colours of the tattoo interacted with the colour of her skin was breathtaking. On her other foot she had a tattoo symbolising the skull in life. She told me her tattoo artist had designed it for her after the first one. We talked a bit about tattoos, piercings and what they meant to us and then she had to leave.

I feel glad for having spoken to her.

Oh, I'm also off to meet a pretty girl for a drink in a few minutes. Wish me luck!

You Can't Plan A Life

2009-11-16T23:58:00.001Z

Soon I will be older.

This has been a difficult month for me. Financially, emotionally and work wise. The hours are starting to take their toll and I'm definitely looking forward to next week so I can get some rest and do nothing for a while. Financially is the most annoying bit. I spent a bit of money at the beginning of the month after payday figuring I was in a good place and that I could afford it, but I'd not reckoned with the fist in the arsehole of my wallet which is the Pimpmobile.

I call it the Pimpmobile in irony. It doesn't help me make money off hookers, it pimps me out like a hooker so I can make money to fix it.

So the MOT is due and it needs over £200 spent on it to repair it, plus the fee for the MOT, plus the VAT on top of that. I'm going to see if good old cash discount still works in London but I'm not holding my breath. There'll be insurance to pay on it soon enough. Can't wait for that. Oh, and then there's road tax as well at the end of the year.

This does mean a new budgetary model. Any lump expenses like car insurance, road tax, MOT, tennis club membership will have to be fitted in and saved for accordingly. So this means I will have to pay in a certain amount into a savings account each month to account for this starting next month.

Fuck it, may as well start this month.

So It's Over

2009-11-15T22:21:00.001Z

It sucks because I really liked her, but part of me is relieved and part of me is almost exhilarated.

Relief is because I knew it wouldn't work long term. I like her, I think maybe given time, or if I'd met her at a different time in my life we would have a future together, but it isn't right now. It was better for us to break up now than to carry on and break up later when we'd have been more involved. Of course these are just the lies we tell ourselves when we can't be bothered to put the effort into relationships we're in, or have something in our lives that we feel are more important than a relationship with someone.I really feel my work is the most important thing in my life right now (obviously apart from the general health and well being of my immediate family). I'm not going to apologise for it. I don't give a shit that it's not something noble like saving lives or volunteering for homeless, blind children in Africa who have to ride 20 miles a day on a rusty bike to get water from a sewage pipe. It's important because it's going to be what gives me a shot at having a successful career and hopefully one day, enough money to allow me to live a life of relative luxury and be able to help my family financially. It's work I think I will be good at and it's work I enjoy.So relative to the break up, logically, I have made the right choice. I'm not going to start insisting on starting at 9 and finishing at 5, because a girl whom I like would like me to be punctual to attend a social event together. If you want me to stay an hour or two extra to make sure something gets done then I am your man. I am not going to jeopardise my career because of this girl whose affections are fickle like they are with all people. Why exchange the certainty of a long and fulfilling career for the uncertainty of a relationship with a woman you may or may not fall in love with? Even if you do fall in love there's no certainty you're going to stay in love.This is logical. It is rational. It brooks no argument.

Some people find it hard to understand. I tried explaining to her that I believed my career came first because it would be the bedrock. A reliable bedrock on which I can build all those nebulous things people believe will make them happy like having a family, falling in love and building their "dream home". If I'd pinned my happiness to falling in love and having a family at the expense of having a good career then where would I be if my relationship or my family fell apart? In some mediocre job with no prospect of advancement? No thank you.

Every decade of a man's life is a struggle to conquer something. In my teens to my early twenties I was coming to terms with sex and relationships. I've still not won that battle. In my twenties I am now in a struggle to further a fledgeling career. Sure we all see the 40 year old boss cheekily leave at 12 on Friday to "work from home", but did we see him working till midnight when he was a struggling 25 year old and unpaid for it? What you put down for yourself when you're younger blazes the path for your future. This is where I am now. I need to lay down the markers so the path in the future will be clear. I shouldn't be allowing people with their woolly visions of love conquering all and children being the panacea for everything that we've failed to achieve in our own lives distract me.

This is what I'd count as the second adult relationship I've been in. While I am sad that it's one that had to come to an end it's good to know I'm not a child or a lovestruck teenager anymore. I'd like to think I handled the breakup like an adult and I've learnt some lessons for the future. So to paraphrase Julia Roberts in that movie about getting married "we did have those two really hot weeks" but I regret nothing. Y'hear me? I regret nothing!

You Can Never Go Back

2009-11-01T19:47:00.000Z

I went back to Bristol to see some friends and also to catch a gig with them. I'm back now and I am knackered. I should be revising but I need to spit some stuff out quickly before I forget.

Good things about the trip

The gig was brilliant. It was pretty funny meeting Charlie at it. I now know she has a boyfriend!
Meeting G-Bone, Roland and the Hawkman.
The Rap Battle!
Finally getting mutilated!
Impulse buying a ridiculously overpriced new cardigan.

Not so good things about the trip

The living arrangement the guys now have. I don't think it's a positive atmosphere for any of them. They all want different things and communication seems to have broken down. I walked into a filthy kitchen, a living room in complete disarray and a house full of good intentions and no action.
Problems on the wimmin' front and having to do damage control while not being able to do any face to face damage control. It's difficult to deal with an emotional person going through an enormously complicated situation when you're not physically there.
Having to listen to stupid fucking stoners expound their theories on anything and everything. That shit makes you stupid. Plus if you're poor then buying weed with whatever little money you have is not clever.
Impulse buying a ridiculously overpriced cardigan, but fuck it. I'm worth it.
Being given the eye by nubile young students. I'm not an egotistic bastard, but I definitely saw a few ladies cast appraising glances my way. Nice to know I've still got it!

Anyway, I am not going to return for next year's Hallowe'en if they're still living in the same place with the same people. I don't like walking into a house where everyone's got some sort of beef with each other and wont talk about it. Also, organisation for the party was shite. It's a wonder things came together like they did. I don't know if it's fair to hold everyone to the standards I'm expecting of them, but I'd rather make a judgement now so I wont feel like I've wasted time if/when I next visit. It was good seeing the guys there, but it would be better if they could just fucking visit me. I'd definitely plan things better!

Over Before We've Had A Chance

2009-10-21T23:12:00.000+01:00

So Lucy and I have been going out for a few weeks now.

It's difficult going out with someone you like and being a bit more mature. When I was younger all that mattered to me was finding someone attractive whom I had something in common with and being able to trust that things would be alright in the end. Several first dates that have not led to second dates and a few abortive attempts at a relationship later I'm now starting to question if that is enough.

I'd still like to believe that if you like someone then you'd make it work somehow but life doesn't seem that clear cut anymore. She asked me the other day which one I'd choose if I were offered the choice between a decent career and a successful home life or a brilliant career and a non-existent home life.

I picked the second one.

It's easy really. I want to be able to be the best at something. Something quantifiable. Something that has a measure of how good you are whether it means having a higher salary than the next person, being able to solve more complex questions or having more knowledge in a certain area than the rest. I think I have the opportunity at The Company and the aptitude to get to that level. However, I am starting to question my level of commitment to this career. I want this and I know I can do this really well, but I need to accept that a balance between this and the rest is probably not attainable at the moment.

I reckon it's time to suck it up for a year and find out what happens. Even if it doesn't go to plan I'll still be the best looking network engineer out there!

And I'm Back In The Room

2009-09-27T22:04:00.003+01:00

Bizarre, it seems she really is ill.

We're now supposed to go see General Fiasco on Thursday. I've gotten tickets. So now what?

I'm not going to lie. I've got a good feeling about this, but so far it's been all talk. A lot of talk, all of it good, but still, talk will only go so far.

So why do I have a good feeling about this? I've not even seen this girl in a romantic situation yet, but I've already told a friend that I'm "kinda seeing someone" when it came up in the conversation.

Are you allowed to say that about someone whom you've not actually "seen" yet? In retrospect I think you're not. But I live in hope.

Alright, need to get to Amazingstoke for a ridiculously early time tomorrow so I'm off to bed. Sweet dreams!

Tempting Fate

2009-09-27T17:35:00.000+01:00

Well, seems like I've been over-eager. Lucy can't make it because she's ill.

I'm not sure what's going on. She seemed quite keen on our date and was fine with bringing it forward. In fact, she was the one who called it a date first!

I try not to over analyse these things, but either she arranged this date with the intention of never going on it with me in the first place. This doesn't explain the lengthy, PG-13 rated text conversations we've had over the past couple of weeks. It also does not explain why she said she said she'd be free and said she was definitely ok with it being brought forward. Well, either that, or she's really ill. What does it mean when someone says they'll need to take a rain check on something? Are they postponing? Should I have played it cool and said no worries, hit me back when you've got something decent planned for me? It did cross my mind, but I went for the funny guy option and said it's cool, I've got a replacement for you and left it at that. She then follows up asking if I've really got a replacement and we've had a bit of banter back and forth and I'm waiting for her to reply about how ill she thinks she is.

The problem I've now got is whether I should go ahead and make dinner and not wait for her to reply, or wait until she replies on the off chance that I can convince her to still come out. I'm fairly good at persuading people.

Fuck it, I'm too hungry to wait. Chances are she will now reply saying, actually, she's feeling better now and would like to go out.

It's rather bizarre. She cancelled about 2.5 hours before we were supposed to go out. This could either mean she waited as long as possible to see if she'd feel better, or she's really inconsiderate. She seems like a nice girl and not the type that plays games, but hell, you never know with women.

Alright, I'm going to eat a cupcake and have a cup of tea. Things always feel better after a cup of tea and a cupcake.

Butterflies

2009-09-27T14:12:00.000+01:00

I'm seeing Lucy for dinner tonight.

We've exchanged a few texts. She seems an interesting girl. A little bit nice and a little bit naughty. I think she's interested in the merchandise. Me being the merchandise (sale price may vary).

I'm not sure what's going on though. I don't really know what I'm looking for. Is it a relationship? Something casual? A last of the summer days fling? A mate for the winter? Is is seasonal? I really don't know. All I do know is it would be foolish to not pursue whatever it is that she'll have to offer.

I know, it seems like I'm talking this up before we've even been on a date first, but projection is what I'm all about. There's no fun in going on a date, even a first one without being emotionally invested in it just a little bit, else I'd just be another one of those emotionally stunted men that women allegedly complain about. Incidentally, I'm yet to meet one of those women. I reckon it's some sort conspiracy between psychologists, the media and therapists that men are emotionally stunted. In my experience, when it comes to being emotionally unavailable or unaware women are as bad as men.

The weird thing is, years ago, everytime I was supposed to go on a date I'd get the butterflies in my stomach. This time I'm not feeling too nervous. Is it a sign of maturity? Or is it just a sign that I'm comfortable with whom I am now to be able to not worry about what other people think of me? Or it could be that not drinking for two whole weeks has altered my brain chemistry to an extent that I no longer feel any anxiety?

Wait. I'm now having anxiety about not having any anxiety. Wait, what?

Tonight should be fun anyway!

Mildly Annoyed

2009-09-27T02:17:00.000+01:00

I have a weird habit where I will never stop a song that I like when it is playing. This causes me to have to run for the train in the morning when I could have walked (Thank you 8 minute remix of La Roux's Quicksand Scream), makes me late for appointments and is now stopping me from going to sleep.

It is now quarter past two on a Saturday.

I'll go to sleep after one song. Or should I eat a cupcake first?

Also, I keep referring to cupcakes as muffins. This must stop. I'm nervous about this evening.

The Month Begins

2009-09-26T11:10:00.000+01:00

After Bestival I told myself I was going to be teetotal for a month to see how it affected me. So far it's been quite the eye opener. I went for a works do the other day (FREE BAR!) and stuck to juice and Coca Cola all night. Conversationally I found myself sharper (big surprise), not as inhibited as I thought I would be and a lot more sensible about what time I got home.

The problem is I have a date tomorrow night.

A date with a girl. Yes, a real, live girl that I didn't pay for (not that I've ever paid a girl to date me. That's called having a Sri Lankan girlfriend).

It's in a French restaurant.

French restaurants mean wine.

So here comes the dilemma. Do I tell her I'm not going to be drinking because I want a month of being teetotal and risk looking like some weird guy, or do I abandon my principles and go ahead with the drinking? I went teetotal because I felt the drinking was getting out of control, there must be a middle ground, but am I ready to try and find it yet?

I'm one of those people who sets themselves a target of sorts. Occasionally when I do fall off the wagon I'm very good at justifying why. So far I've gone thirteen days with no liquor. Tomorrow will be the midpoint of my target. Perhaps I can allow myself a breather?

I guess I'll have to wait and see. But I am actually enjoying being teetotal.

Coming Down

2009-09-15T11:13:00.012+01:00

So it's the day after Bestival and I'm trying to rehash all the things I've learnt from my time there. Initially I went there to see if I could catch every single act I'd made a list of but decided to just kick it and go with the flow and it was fun. Well, as long as you don't look at the list afterwards and think to yourself "crap, I missed that!".

The crowd there was great. Everyone was pretty friendly, the girls, well, the girls were definitely something else and the music was brilliant.

I've got to keep some things in mind for when I do this the next time. I was definitely going through some cabin fever towards the end of the second day. Seven of us went. A couple, two blokes who were desperately trying to get laid, a girl who's a little bit away with the fairies, a very poorly socially calibrated person and one very lost guy. Guess which one I was.

I'll start with the not so great things and try and work everything else in.

. Not getting to plan the trip.

Most people turned up for the trip hoping they could throw money at the problems and they would go away. This wont happen. Next time I'm going to take enough canned food to last us the week, water, beer and other liquor.

. Not realising how important it is to choose the right people to go with.

It's not fun hanging around 6 different people with completely varying agendas. It's not nice having to try and plan what we're doing with some grumpy bastard bringing everyone else down. Having a lovey-dovey couple around is not much fun either. It's nauseating. Two frustrated oversexed, stoners running around squirting girls with my water gun and not really doing anything once they get a reaction was sad to watch. I'd like to go with people who're more about the music to start with and looked at anything else as a plus instead.

. Drugs

Don't take them. We got offered a lot. They're just not worth the hassle the day after or having to explain away to the bouncer. Liquor is probably all you need to get you through it.

.Money

Have a budget and don't take all of it out with you. It's quite easy to get caught up in the whole atmosphere and wind up buying loads of liquor you don't really need, you're probably going to get high on the atmosphere if the music's right anyway. I spunked half my budget on the very first day, mostly on liquor and then only had £9 to last me through the whole day. Don't rely on your friends to get their rounds in because they're probably off their faces and will lose track of whose round it is, especially in a large group. Next time I'll decline on rounds and just get drinks when I want or give someone money for a drink just for myself when they go get their round in. Ditto on food rounds. That bacon roll only costs £3.50 but it certainly does all add up, so be considerate when you ask people to get you stuff.

. Not realising getting lost at festivals is actually quite fun.

People seem to have this paranoia about getting lost. I had some of the best times at Bestival with absolutely no idea I was on the first night. It was pretty fun seeing Bat For Lashes sat with a sweet girl I met who was also lost looking for her friends. We did have a good time dancing to the Bees Knees, but I wish I knew why she lied to me about wanting to meet me to go out with me sometime. Either that or I've taken her number down wrong. I did leave her a voicemail but I doubt anything will come of it. I voluntarily got lost on the final day but they found me. Curses.

. Friends.

Make some. Who knows, it may lead to better things. Talk to as many people as you want or as many people as you can. Some good times I had were randomly meeting my dentist, twice! Meeting Jenny and Jenny who lived in London and were dressed as space flight attendants or Star Trek characters. Gods know what. Sylvia who gave me some energy pills in exchange for a story. I feel bad about not going to see her in the Vitamin water tent the next day. The two girls who sniped at me and then didn't want to fight me because my gun was bigger. The girl whose sister was a DJ for Skibunny and let me have some of her drink to wash the energy pill down. The girls who tried to nick my wig at the Rockaoke tent were some of the highlights. I am a social animal and it's good to be able to talk to people with no hangups.

. Fancy Dress

Wear it. I put a fair amount of prep into mine and it was so much fun! People come up to you to get their picture taken. Try on your costume and don't mind if you shoot them in the face with your water gun. You can swap costumes with everyone else who's willing, pose for weird pictures and enact bizarre tableaux. It's brilliant. Prepare for it as far in advance as possible. If I'd had the time I'd have given mine a test run to see what it was like.

. The Music

It's good to have a list of bands or artist you want to see so you can have someone to see if you're stuck for something to do. Just don't expect to see every single one of them on the day. It was definitely more fun to see someone like Casiokids in a tiny tent with 100 other people than trying to see Fleet Foxes with 1000s of people on the main stage. Unless there's someone I'd really like to watch I'd be happier wandering around the smaller stages. For example, Man Like Me were simply incredible to watch with all the peeps I was there with and even the Rockaoke tent was great fun. I'm definitely having a pop the next time I go to Bestival. Possibly No More Tears?

.Keep your campsite clean and take your own tent

If you're like me and a bit anal about littering then make sure the people you go with don't take the piss with the campsite. Keep the campsite clean you dirty fuckers. It's not fun having to crawl around picking up used tissues, crumpled plastic bottles, bits of fancy dress and other assorted shit. Don't share a tent with someone whom you've not shared with before unless you know they're pretty clean. My tentmate was a messy fucker who chucked his shit all about his tent. Also, it means the option to invite someone back to your tent is lost to you. Not that I went looking for action, but it would've been good to know the option was available. Apart from this, it means that when you're back from the end of the night and your tentmate's come back before you then you'll have to clean their shit up before you can go to bed. Not fun when you're drunk. The only plus to this is not having to carry your own tent. I took turns carrying it with him so that advantage isn't a great one.

. Take as many pictures as you can

No explanation required really.

.Don't be lazy

If you're here to have a lie-in when the music is still going on then you're wasting money. You can sleep later. Take some pro plus or get a coffee. Ditto on calling "not it" on beer, food and other beverage runs. This is essentially a camping trip and people should take it in turns to do the essential duties. I hate asking people for favours when they're things I could easily do myself and I hate doing them for people who don't want to do it just because they're feeling too lazy.

I reckon the number of people we went with was too many and was the wrong mix. Four would have been optimal. I don't know which of my four friends I'd take, but you'd definitely need to get the male to female ratio balanced and have some people who're decently socially calibrated. Also, no couples in the ratio.

All in all, I had a great time, but I am definitely planning the next festival trip! I reckon if I budget it right I can do three in the UK and one abroad next year. I've also come to some interesting realisations about some of the people I spend a lot of my time with. It's disappointing when you realise you actually don't like spending time with some people and when you see what people turn into. Is there any such thing as a pure relationship on a platonic or non-platonic level? Is it all just one big compromise? Do you really need your friends to understand you on the same level both intellectually and emotionally to be able to comprehend them? Do they know you feel this way about them? Do some people really lack so much social perception to realise that there are some things which are not good moves, or am I suddenly maturing after over a year of living like a child?

I imagine Moses felt a bit like this when he came back down from the mountain. I feel like I've been wandering in a desert all this time, and while I'm still no closer to knowing what the answers are, I can definitely eliminate some erroneous results from what I thought the answer to the equation was. It's also heartening to understand that I'm not as socially dependent as I thought I was and there are times I prefer to be in my own company. It's good because I know I wont settle for something that's not good enough.

While I've been wittering away the time has also been doing that annoying thing where it passes really quickly. Festivalling is over, it's time to sort out that month of being teetotal and get through a couple of exams post-haste!

T - Less Than 24 Hours

2009-09-10T21:09:00.001+01:00

It's nearly here!

Good things

All of my costume turning up on time
Weather forecast! It's going to be sunny all weekend baby!

Bad things

My face paint which I so carefully selected not turning up despite being the first order despatched :(
Cuntish friends not getting with the plan to catch the first train out of Clapham. I've just spoken to Zach and he says the queues are through the roof.

I wish people would realise that having fun is serious business. I DO NOT, REPEAT, DO NOT want a repeat of Get Loaded.

If I do not make it back from all this fun then please split all my possessions equally amongst my family. Yes, this is my Last Will And Testament!

Now, let the brownie making commence once Stickman gets here.

T - 48 Hours

2009-09-08T22:23:00.002+01:00

Bestival!

It's nearly here. I cannot prevent a smile crossing my face while I type this. I don't know why, but I think it's going to be great! The post office strike may mean I don't get my costume in time which is going to be a major bummer, but here's hoping!

The theme this year is Outer Space. I was going to go AS Outer Space (just paint my face black and paint a silver star on it) but I am now going as a *drumroll* Outer Space Cadet!

I've spent a wee bit on the costume. Nothing I can't reuse so that's all good there. Let's hope it gets here on flipping time.

Now, what liquor should I take with me to the festival? 60:40 mix of Vodka Redbull you say? Why, that was exactly what I was thinking!

Sobering

2009-09-07T20:18:00.002+01:00

On Monday morning while lying awake in bed at a ridiculous hour in the morning I realised something.

The last year and a half have been amongst some of the most fun years I've had. They've also been the most out of control I've ever been since I was 18. More so than then, because I've now got the ~~money~~ debt to be able to afford added debauchery.

As a result, I've done loads of stupid things in the name of having fun and gotten myself into a near crippling amount of debt. I'm trying to rein myself in, but unless I do something quick it will be too late.

My Mum used to tell me that I was one of those people who didn't want to feel left out. Someone who'd go along with a joke, or do something ill-advised just to be in with the crowd. Essentially what she said in Tamil translates into something like "you want to be the entertainer, but you're actually just the entertainment". It wasn't malicious, it was just the way she saw it and like all mothers, she was right. The last time this happened I sorted my act out and things were fine. This time she's not been around to see what my life is like so it's taken me longer to figure this out.

I'm an enabler. You want to go out at stupid o' clock on Monday night? I'm there. You've ordered 10 shots of tequila for complete unknowns on a Tuesday night but aren't ready for the bill? No problem, here's my card! You want to go to an overpriced restaurant neither of us can afford? Of course I'll join you, heck, I'll even get the first course!

Sunday started with me stating I wasn't going to drink because I needed to save money. One milkshake, 10 pints of beer and ninety quid later I drunkenly wander in with only a bunch of credit card receipts from overpriced restaurants and bars in my pocket and the remainder of a 20 pack of cigarettes. Usually I'd brush it off and say "hey, you only get one life to live, no regrets right?" but this time it was too much. My overdraft has taken almost all it can afford and I'm throwing more shit at it. I took stock of my bank account and I have never been in this much debt in my entire life. At the same time, I've never earned this much money in my life so I'm obviously living like an idiot.

I don't regret many things, but I certainly do regret all of yesterday. It's time to change this stupid life I'm living and it starts now.