Paper blog

Today was my last regularly scheduled shift at the coffee shop (I'm doing one more next friday to cover someone) and so during my lunch I thought I would write out some thoughts while they were still fresh. Then I decided that since I have a shiny, new, high-resolution camera, I would just post pictures of the pages rather than type it all out. Besides, I prefer writing with a pen to writing with a keyboard. You will, quite obviously, have to click on the images to get the bigger, readable version, and then you might even have to click on it again because most browsers scale the image down to fit it within the frame. I would apologize for my handwriting, but then it is what it is.

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I should also mention that I had a good chat after hOME tonight with Naomi about service and servile attitudes vis a vis British culture...interesting food for thought...

Well that's it for now, but maybe I'll post a follow up soon. Tomorrow is a day for rest, then on Tuesday I'm heading to Brighton to visit my friend Julia who is quite the impressive graphic design artist (check out some of those pictures on her site!) I'll keep you all informed and let you know when i have a new job :P

Much love,
Chris

Tales of Scaffolding

Well it's a good thing I got up at 7:30 this morning because the roofers who were supposed to show up at 8 NEVER ACTUALLY CAME. Grrrrr...who knows how long this stuff is gonna stay here! If it's anything like the scaffolding outside the building, I'll be moving out before it does!

On a more positive note, the digital camera that I got for christmas (which was shipped to me with a manufacturer's defect) was returned in working condition today. Huzzah! So, at the very least I can share pictures of the scaffolding in my room!

Now, I know most of you haven't seen inside my room, and it was kind of hard to get an all-encompassing angle, but I tried my best:

This is the view from beneath...let me reiterate that all of this is INSIDE my room.

This is view I currently have from the head of my bed staring at the foot. That wooden railing? Usually there. The metal beams jutting out? Not so much...

This is a shot from my steps, looking up to the foot of my bed.

Finally, this is from in between the beams (the flash is reflecting off the metal) looking at the support all the way downstairs.

Well I hope you all find this somewhat entertaining, cuz I sure don't :P

Rude awakening

So I woke up this morning, went to the loo, put on the kettle and poured a bowl of cereal as I usually do. Heading back to my room, I ran into a guy I didn't recognize who asked if I was in room 2. I said yes, and he asked if I minded if he did electrics work in my room and I said no, that's fine (thinking it would be one electrician with his tools or something). So I ate my breakfast in the lounge and went back to my room to discover four surly blokes setting up scaffolding! (My room is a loft and the ceiling is high so it's the only way to reach the top).

Now normally, this would be fine, had I been given any sort of notice whatsoever! Usually when someone is coming in to do something like this there's a note in the kitchen a few days before saying 'so-and-so will be in on this date between these times to do this thing' - and that's fine, but that definitely didn't happen with this one. So I scrambled around, still wearing my bathrobe, trying to get together everything I needed for a shower and then for work later that day. And anyone who knows me well will know that for the first hour or so after I wake up, I'm not really with it, so this was not a pleasant experience.

I apologized to the guys who were doing the work for not being more prepared, and then told them that no one had warned me that this would be happening. I asked them who asked them to come in today and who I should talk to about this (turns out it's 'Glen Miller' from the property trust...'Glen Miller,' my new arch-nemesis) and then went for a shower.

So, just now actually, in the middle of this post, the guy asked me to come have a look, and apparenly the scaffolding is going to stay there until tomorrow morning when they come to replace my skylight - at 8am. Again, more information that would have been helpful to have before!

So while I was in the shower, I got to thinking about why this little event bothered me so much, and I came up with two reasons:

1.) I'm a rather territorial animal, perhaps more than other folks, and I don't like strangers in my 'space' without my invitation.
2.) This one is a bit more difficult to explain, but I guess I feel that for much of my life I've been pushed-over/walked-on. However, I'm tired of other people thinking that their goals/aims are more important than my own. That said, I am a firm beliver in the 'servant-attitude' - in fact, I think the main reason that our Western society has gone to shit is because people have become too independent, and too self-focused and have stopped helping one another out. I suppose it was perfectly within my rights to refuse the guy entry to my room, but it wasn't their fault that no one had told me, and it would have made their job that much more frustrating since they'd have to come back the next day. So, on the one hand, I don't want to give in to this culture of 'me first, I'm the most important,' and yet on the other, it REALLY pisses me off when people don't consider me as a person. I'm not sure what the solution/balance is to this....

Anyhow, I'm off to work now. What a great start to the day :P

Found some temp work today

VERY temp work, actually. I was leaving Mice's after printing out my CV/resume to take to the temp agency and as I was leaving, a guy asked if I'd like to participate in a study they were doing inside. He said it would take 15 minutes and pay £10. That is FOUR times my current rate of pay, so I agreed. It turns out it was this was a marketing thing for Orange phones. When I found this out, my morality alarm went off a little bit, as I don't particularly fancy helping a big corporation make more money, but I thought 10 quid for very little work was worth it, and it gave me a chance to let them know what I thought. Plus the Australian girl who was in charge was really nice (read: cute). I'm still curious whether asking my age and place of employment at the end was part of the survey or just her own curiosity, but I'll give her the benefit of the doubt.

So they sat me in front of this crazy monitor thing which tracked my eye movements and then she showed me this website and asked me to have a look around. When I was finished, she showed me the video of where my eyes went and asked a few questions.
"Can you tell me what the site was for?"
"Yeah, you sign up and get e-mails and a chance to win a PSP."
"Does this interest you?"
"Not in the least."
"Why not?"
"Cuz I hate getting e-mails and I know that there's no chance I'm going to win it."
"Do you think we're going to give your e-mail address to other companies."
"Probably."
"But you didn't even follow this link (referring to the disclaimer about signing up)."
"That's because everyone has one and it's full of legal crap that I can't understand or don't care about. Plus I know the odds of winning are so low that I'm never going to win. Why would I sign up?"

After that she was like "Well, pretend you DO want to sign up..." and I had to fill in boxes and go through several methods of which was better (dragging things over, ticking boxes, highlighting selections, etc.) and that was it.

I told her flat out near the beginning that I hate e-mails from companies and that I dislike advertising in general. Now, I'm sure I'm not gonna turn the world around or anything, but at least I got to give them my opinion. And I got 10 quid for it too. However, now thanks to me they'll probably just come up with a sneakier way of advertising to folks like myself in the future. Ahhh, cynicism and idealism really are two sides of the same coin.

Election round-up.

Well it's a Conservative minority. Can't say it's the result I was looking for, but there you have it. Obviously in my ideal world it would be an NDP majority, but that's not going to happen any time soon. That said, they did gain 12 or 13 seats since the last election, which I'm quite pleased with.

I'd like to see some election reforms involving a more propotional representation. I'm not entirely sure how this would work, but it just seems unfair as it stands. For example, the Bloc Quebecois won 51 seats (all in Quebec, they don't have candidates anywhere else) but only got 10.5% of the popular vote. The NDP only got 29 seats, but 17.5% of the vote. As well, although the Green Party didn't have any members elected, they still managed 5% of the vote. Surely that should stand for something.

One comforting thought came as I was watching some coverage via the CPAC live stream late last night (or early this morning depending how you look at it) when a caller phoned in and pointed out that the Conservatives are going to have to tread lightly if they want to retain power. Getting the budget passed is almost always the first confidence vote, and if they can't do that then there's going to be another election. Now, I doubt this will happen, but it will mean that they won't be as radical as they would have been with a majority government.

I'll be interested to see whether Harper really follows through on his promise to cut the GST. I don't like paying taxes any more than the next guy but I'm also afraid that getting rid of it would really hurt our social programs. That said, this was a big promise he made during his campaign, and if he doesn't follow through it will reflect poorly on his character.

I watched Paul Martin's concession speech as I ate my breakfast this morning and saw that he will be stepping down as party leader. I think this is a good move for the liberals. What they need now is a new Pierre Trudeau to take the reigns of the party and steer it back into a majority government. Now, like I said, obviously I'd prefer an NDP majority, but I know that's unlikely in the near future. At least the Liberals are further left than the Conservatives and with a majority they could actually make stuff happen.

Well, that's all the insight I have for now. Join us next week when our guest will be...oh...wait, this isn't actually my own talkshow, is it?

Canadian Election

shit.

I thought old people were supposed to vote Conservative? Well, this dude is 104 and he's voting NDP! awwww yeah.

From the Man himself...

So I have been rekindling my love affair with Kevin Smith as of late. I had been following the video diaries on the Clerks 2 website, but last week I watched the first flick again with a couple of my mates from work (we have very clerk-ish jobs).

Tonight I watched the "An Evening With Kevin Smith" DVDs recorded from his Q&A sessions across the states a few years back. The man is a genius, not the least of which due to the comments made in this video (30 seconds, divx 5, 3mb)

Toothpaste for Dinner

lol, Matty just introduced me to www.toothpastefordinner.com - it's hilarious!

I can relate to many of them but I like this one:



Go explore for yourself!

Dinner with Hermione.

I went for a curry after work with Rich and Matt. We were having a good time but there was a table of many teenage girls across from us who were rather noisy in what was already a confined space. We still had a good chat though, and joked about how we were old men wanting our peace and quiet. As they got up to leave, I noticed that one of them was none other than Miss Granger herself. Neat.

---

after telling britton on MSN:
britton ... says:
did you yell out "I loved you in narnia!!"

We're screwed.

We might as well surrender to the US now and avoid all those civilian casualties.

Blah.

At this very moment I am rather frustrated with my life. I think I might go for a walk to figure out why exactly. I think this walk might well culminate in the purchase of a bottle of Bailey's.

More Malta

Well, Rich did what I was intending to do. Click here to see more pictures from Malta. My camera is on the fritz so all the photos were taken expertly by Rich himself.

Regarding Malta, I should add that while it was a neat place to explore, I'm in no rush to return. While we were there Rich commented that it all looked quite run down, and I replied that on a scale of first, second and third world, Malta was kind of a 1.5

Everything was this yellowish-brown colour and it all seemed to be cracked and slowly crumbling. I don't know, maybe it's different in the summer or maybe I'm just spoiled having grown up with access to the vast Canadian wilderness. At any rate, it was a good trip and an eye opener. I always love learning how people live in other parts of the world. And I must admit that the temples absolutely blew me away. They were unfathomable...as we were walking through them I was trying to use my imagination as to what the people must have been like who built them but I couldn't do it. I realized I have absolutely NO context for what life must have been like 5000 years ago. The idea that people even existed back then, it does my head in. Here's some more pictures of the temples (click em for the bigger version):

Proof.

Quick note

We are in Malta.
Our hotel is filled with pensioners.
Weather has been slightly rainy but mostly sunny.
Cold at nights.
Today we saw where Paul (supposedly) stayed on the island.
We hired a car and it's true what they say about driving/ers in Malta.
It's nice to see somewhere new again.

The Great Escapism

Well, I'm off to Malta for a few days. I'll be back in the UK on Saturday the 7th. Maybe I'll update in between from there, who knows.

Happy New Year

It occured to me last night as I stuck my head out my window to watch fireworks and listened to the drunken group of Russians partying in the room next to me that New Year's is one of the few celebrations which unites all of humanity. Ok, granted that groups like the Chinese & others have their own systems and what not, but they still have to do business with the rest of the world. And fair enough, different time zones mean it doesn't happen all at once, but like, it's crazy to think that there's this one day where people all across the planet celebrate the same thing - our continued existence - regardless of politics or religions or ideologies or anything else. We need more of that I think...I guess that's the positive effects of globalization...let's find some more occassions to bring human beings together in joy and celebration....

But in the mean time, happy new year one and all!