I spent the most recent weekend galavanting around our good country’s capital - London. Driving up on the Friday afternoon, and public-transporting around the centre, gave insight into a few failings of the transport system established in London.
Myself and the University chaps were out for a few drinks tonight - fairly harmless stuff, having a few pints, enjoying a bit of light banter; nothing untoward. All of a sudden a woman approaches us with a plastic-coin-collection thing, you know - where you slot the money in the top. I’d seen her come into the bar and observed how out of place she looked - far too old to be in the heaving student bar as she stood rather uncomfortably in the corner without a drink. We were first on her collection round - presumably after she’d picked up enough courage. She had a moderately convincing lanyard-attached charity ID badge - unfortunately the logo on the ID didn’t look a thing like her chosen charity (we’d had a flyer through the door from Great Ormond Street Hospital only a few days before). She proceeded to recieve two prompt “No” responses from us (presumably to be three, had Ian not re-invented the Universe en-route to the bar) and continued on around the bar - I saw at least half a dozen people slot their pound coins into her cursed collection pot.
Taking advantage of a charity which supports children with lukeamia to get a few extra pounds is one of the most sickening things I’ve ever witnessed. Absolutely horrendous - I can’t even begin to imagine how these people being to think about sleeping at night. I don’t really want to swear on here, in case my Mum ever finds it - but if I were to swear, this is the post in which it would be. Sickening.
Planet Europe has gone live! Admitedly it didn’t take too much work, but a little concentration.
Planet Europe uses the excellent Planet Feed Reader to collect, consolidate and re-publish the hottest Europe/EU news from across The Internet - providing an all-in-one, easy to read and subscribable European news source.
I picked up my shiny new iMac a few weeks ago, and have only just plucked up the courage to indulge in the iTunes Store.
What a pleasant experience, filled out all my details, clicked a button and a few seconds later I’m listening to my cracking new purchase - and only 79p for it.
Jose Gonzalez - Hand on Your Heart, if you must know. I’m a touch miffed that I only get a 128kbps AAC file though, would much rather something with VBR, but I’m guessing the copy protection might get in the way of that.
Matt and I have just finished publishing the first episode of our new Podcast - Let’s Talk Europe. We’re pretty excited about it all at the moment, despite being half a week late with the first episode going “on air”. In summary, it’s news, discussion, opinion, fact and humour based on the EU’s happenings over the last week - a European Hot Potato Observer, if you will.
If you’ve any interest in Europe and the EU, or think you might be able to develop an interest in it (we did) then I’d urge you to check it out. There’s a pretty basic, but functional site for the ‘cast over at letstalkeurope.eu and we should be appearing in the iTunes Store fairly soon.
Enjoy!
I’ve returned home after my year of working in Brussels, followed by a 2 month travelling stint drinking away as much of Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Australia that I possibly could.
Moved into a new flat, where Matt was waiting for me with open arms to show me to the room I volunteered for. Unfortunately it’s rather a lot smaller than I had remembered, but within the few days I have been here the walls have been repainted, shelves have gone up as well as other small tidbits of DIY which are still waiting to be fully completed. The NTL man came this morning and gave us the gift of broadband which makes things a lot better.
Picked up a new iMac today - the excessively large 24″ model. It’s…huge, really. Not sure quite what one does with all the screen space, but I’m sure I’ll find something.
This week I’m working back in one of the UK offices - Basingstoke. Whilst I’m working here I’m living (sort of) with Joe (thanks!) in Portsmouth, so I have a 100 mile round trip commute every day.
Driving up this morning I began to notice how littered our central reservations are (the bit between the two sides of the motorway). There are England car flags everywhere - proving they will actually fly off the car infront and potentially crack your windscreen. Great.
I am no longer a Belgian - I have officially de-registered myself from this good, fine country and will be leaving it permamently on Sunday afternoon.
I’ve enjoyed my year here, but there’s always got to be something or someone to put a dampner on proceedings. If you ever live in the centre of Brussels and need to de-register as a citizen, you’ll need to go to the commune building (which you should already be familar with) and queue in sections 12-15 for approximately an hour, in the sweltering heat, with little aircon and with hundreds of other people.
You’ll then get to the front of the queue, just one person away from being seen and being de-registered (a two minute process at most) when a huge fat woman will lumber up from behind you somewhere, and just stand in front of you. She won’t say anything along the lines of “Hi, sorry, it’s really difficult for me to stand up for long periods of time - I have been waiting on those seats, is it okay if I squeeze in here?” - to which I would have happily obliged. No. She will just push her fat old way in to your queue. When asked, in French, what she thinks she’s doing - you’ll get only attitude. When done the same again in English, you’ll get attitude (in French) for not speaking French.
And of course, there’s nothing you can do that will make a difference - you can’t exactly start a fight with her, it’s a little uncivilised. You can’t give her any more verbal as she’s a woman of the people, she’ll just turn around and start going on at you with associated head and hand movements which are really hard to portray over text. You can, however, get the small victory of not moving at all so she physically has to squeeze yourself between you and the person in front. You can then proceed to breathe very heavily over her shoulder, and spontaneously develop a rather nasty cough. In addition, you can speak in English to some other people around you (who also speak English) and sort of point & look at her, and laugh along together and generally speak really quickly so she starts to feel uncomfortable…hopefully.
As many people well know, outsourcing work to consulting companies, outside contracters and cheap labour countries is becoming more and more popular. We’ve all dealt with support and helpdesk agents in India & China, as well as having cold calls from them.
Got home today to see this monster sitting outside my apartment block:
I live in a pretty quiet, peaceful residential area - in the city, but not anywhere risque. I can only assume it has something to do with the protest I just wrote about. Guess it’s hiding in a central location in case any trouble breaks out…