On my regular tour of the internet the other day and I stumbled across, still not quite sure how, the recruitment page for the European Space Agency (ESA). They had a position which was of interest to me…..

“Head of Astronaut Division”

The job spec, which you can read for yourself here, wanted someone with quite specific skills and experience.

After almost no consideration I decided that I was the best man for the job and sent in my application………

Dear sir,

I am writing to apply for the position of ‘Head of Astronaut Division’ at the European Space Agency (ESA).

I have read through your list of qualifications and despite not fulfilling each to the nth degree, I think you`ll find what I have to offer both inspiring and not a little frightening.

The job specification states that the suitable applicant should have ‘experience of being an astronaut and familiarity with space vehicles’. I am the first to admit that I don’t quite fulfil all these requirements, however when I was younger I was able to draw a canny resemblance to the TARDIS from Doctor Who using just my Etch a Sketch. More recently I have acquired a 3D television. I`m not sure if you have had the privilege of using such a device, but I can assure you that while I was watching an episode of Battlestar Galactica in 3D mode the experience made it feel like I was totally in outer space.

I also own a plethora of space based science fiction television programs and movies on DVD. I am a particular fan of the show with the cyborg girl who, if you`ll pardon the expression, looks rockin’ in that tight fitting spandex suit.

As regards the other qualifications. I`m pleased to inform you that I do indeed have a degree in a science related discipline, I let myself down though with your desire for a candidate who also possesses a law degree or law related experience. I do hope though you will take into account my extensive experience with the law gained while battling with USA immigration officials over their reluctance to renew my working visa some years ago. If this experience is considered not enough in-depth, I could call upon my former colleague Ed, who had rather more experience than myself in this situation. Ed became rather too familiar at one stage with US immigration officials, once nearly being given the full rubber glove treatment.

I feel though that the ‘disorientation training’ would not be required if I was successful in my application seeing as I spent most of my student life training for such circumstances. Evidence of said training can be obtained from any number of closed circuit television cameras located in most bars and clubs around the United Kingdom and indeed most of Europe.

Whilst not explicitly stated on the post requirements, I feel it fitting to inform you that I used to be a mean shot down the local laser quest and paintball center. A quality which may well come in handy should any hostile alien life forms be encountered.

Given my experiences shown above I think you`ll agree that my application offers a unique blend of insight, brevity and enthusiasm that while perhaps not ticking all the boxes will certainly provide you with food for thought.

I eagerly look forward to your response.

Yours faithfully

‘Amazing’ Atkins

I think I`ll do alright.

Very recently I celebrated my first anniversary of living in Belgium. Well, celebrated might not be the right word. I became vaguely aware of the special date while complaining to a colleague about the terrible summer weather we are having at present and comparing it to the blazing temperatures we enjoyed this time last year …… wow really ….. this time last year.

That was about as far as the celebrating went.

Actually, thats not the whole truth.

Because I marked the occasion (without actually realising it) by buying myself a TV.

Yes, I have been living here for over a year without a TV, something which seems to confuse most people. I never really needed one you see, but one day I just woke up and decided I needed one - I`m changeable like that, which is one of the reasons why I`m so fascinating.

So I bought the biggest and best TV I could find. A 46inch 3D LED TV from Samsung.

And I have to say I am very impressed.

It even has a real time 2D to 3D engine built in to convert regular 2D input from DVDs and TV signals into 3D output.

Although I suspect that my TV is a step up from 3D - I think mine is 4D!

Because the other day when I was watching a programme and water appeared to shoot out from the screen - I actually felt it fall on my head.

Amazing.

Then it happened again.

and again.

Even when there was no water on the TV screen.

Uh oh.

Yes indeed - during the heaviest rain storm of the year so far my roof developed a leak.

The real problem was communicating this to my landlord, over the phone, who only speaks French.

Sadly, as yet some of my French pronunciatoin is not quite on the nail.

Instead of saying “J`ai un fuit du toit” - “I`ve got a leaking roof", I said “J`ai un fruit du toit” - which sounds very similar, unfortunately though this means “I have fruit hanging from my roof".

The silence on the phone was deafening.

This guy must have thought I had bananas growing through the ceiling.

But anyway he said he would come around and fix it.

It`ll be interesting to see if he brings spare roof tiles or some ice cream to make a banana split.

I love red wine. I have something close to 100 bottles in my wine racks downstairs. I like wines of all kinds; I love wines from the Rhone region such as Gigondas, Chateauneuf du pape, St Joseph, Hermitage as they are made mostly from Syrah or Grenache grapes. I`m also happy with a bottle from any of the Bordeaux regions which are made up of a blend of 1 or more of the 6 ‘Bordeaux ‘ grapes (Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Petit Verdot, Malbec and Carménère) …. although I`d never ever drink a bottle of pure Merlot. I love Italian wine whether it be a Sangiovese based Chianti or the amazing Amarone. And of course there is nothing like a good rich Californian Zinfandel.

I love pretty much everything.

Apart from ANY white wine.

Quite frankly I just don’t see the point. You might as well be drinking grape juice.

Which leaves me with something of a problem when the weather is as hot as its been over the past month or so. A nice cool glass of wine, on the balcony overlooking the pond would be amazing. But red wine is supposed to be ‘warm’.

Or so I thought until last Friday.

In my usual wine store chatting with the local wine supplier. I told him my problem. He thought about it for a moment then asked me a question:

“What are the 3 grapes used in Champagne?”

I replied immediately: “Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier and Chardonnay". - I took a moment to mentally congratulate myself.

“And what temperature do you serve Champagne?”

“Chilled!” I beamed, delighted.

……………

Then it hit me.

Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier although black skinned are used in Champagne because they have a white juice, but when using them to make wine the tannins turn the juice into a red wine.

The wine supplier continued. “So why don’t you chill a bottle of Pinot Noir and see how that tastes".

After thinking about it and still being slightly reluctant I`ve decided to give it a try.

All I need now is a cheap bottle of Pinot Noir.

Of course I don’t buy cheap wine.

Luckily however, my dad does.

And he left a bottle of Pinot Noir here last time.

So its going straight into my fridge.

Then down the drain if it turns out as badly as I suspect it might.

Slowly I`ll start catching up on things I`ve done over the past few months … promise.

Last weekend was the annual Les feux de St Jean here in Mons. I had no idea what it was all about, even when I arrived, just some guy from work told me that there would be ‘a parade in town on Saturday to burn Joan of Arc’, yes indeed that is exactly what he told me. I was a little sceptical, but thought as it was going to be a nice day I`m go along to the town centre anyway/

Starting out with a couple of beers in the Grand Place we headed for a nice meal in the always excellent la table du boucher.

Then the festivities began. After some research I discovered that les feux de st jean (The fires of St Jean) is a Catalan festival which kind of made sense from the giant tent things:

Then people came around selling torches that were giant candles.

By this point there must have been well over a thousand perhaps several thousand people in the town centre all walking down the main street with their burning torches. It was like a ancient witch hunt, particularly after the torches had burned for long enough for them to resemble burning crosses.

Finally after walking a good mile or so we ended up at the end of the parade where there was a giant bonfire which people were encouraged to throw their torches into.

It was a full party atmosphere with beer tents all around and the place was still bustling with people getting on to midnight when we had to leave as getting a taxi in Mons is nearly impossible late at night.

On the way home I thought about how a parade like that with thousands of people holding burning torches in a confined space and people dressed as giant tents in the middle of it all after everyone had had a good dozen strong beers would never ever be allowed in America. You`d have to use flashlight torches, or have 2 or 3 people with regular sized candles at the front of the parade just as a symbolic gesture. As for the giant bonfire, you would not be allowed 500 feet from it.

I doubt you`d even be allowed it in the UK.

Perhaps only in Belgium.

Sunday was much quieter - I cant really remember what I did, I have a vague memory of watching a horror film involving 11 Germans and 11 Englishmen, but that was HORRIBLE and surely on a terrible nightmare.

Surely!

Its been a while.

To be fair though I have been pretty busy this last couple of months. I`ve been playing tug of war at work - unfortunately I have been used as the rope. I was in Florida for a couple of weeks, I`ve been attacked by a snake etc etc etc.

I hope to catch up on these posts at some point in the future.

But for today I`m going to describe how I almost became a member of NATO Special Forces, by accident.

A couple of weeks ago posters started appearing at work that said something along the lines of “Special Forces Briefings’ and the dates they were being held on. So I thought I`d go along and see what they were all about. Unable to make the first 2 I was determined to get along to the final briefing on the Friday afternoon.

I too my colleague Graeme along, and we were the only 2 that showed up.

Standing outside the room where the briefing was going to be held we started joking around. Graeme said something like ‘wouldn’t it be hilarious if this turned out to be a Special Forces Recruitment meeting instead?’.

We both laughed.

And then stopped laughing when I read the schedule for the briefing room on the door:

Friday 14th May 2010, 11:00am - 13:00pm Special Forces Recruitment.

My jaw fell open just as a huge fella with a pixelated face turned the corner and made straight for us.

Being a coward, I made up some excuse that I just remembered I had something to do, but that I was definitely interested and asked the guy to email me with details. I hoped he wouldn’t. But then just a few days later I received this email in my inbox…

If you would like, I have briefings on xxxxx this week at BLDG 30 in
the auditorium at 1700 on Tuesday and Wednesday. If you cannot attend
those briefings, its ok, just give me your name, rank, GT score and we
will get you the information you need to go to class if you qualify.
Also, where do you work, I can come by and see you this week at your
location, office or whatever and we can talk face to face. Let me know.

SFC xxxx
Special Forces Recruiting

If you think there is anyway at all I`m giving this guy my office details, you`ve another thing coming.

Thats all I need - to join the SAS by accident, but then ‘Accidental Hero’, does have something of a ring to it.

The other day while sitting at my desk wondering where the next cup of coffee was coming from, a colleague walked into my office. Graeme, a contractor from Newcastle, he looked happier than normal. This was probably because he was about to take a week off from work, away from the cold and grey of Belgium and away to the cold and grey of York ….. maybe he was happy for another reason. Anyway, whatever that might be he told me a story about the guy he shares an office with, just down the corridor from me. His office mate is a German Warrant Officer, Dieter; a really good guy and my latest in the long line of gym partners.

Graeme continued to tell me about the time Dieter came to visit him in his house in York. Dieter, on his way driving up to have a week in Scotland decided to drop in on Graeme more or less unannounced. This of course was not a problem, the only issue arose when Graeme asked if Dieter wanted to sample a few English ales.

Dieter obviously was delighted.

So Was Graeme.

He went to his beer stash and pulled out the first bottle that came to hand, opened it and passed it over to Dieter.

Only after Dieter had taken his first sip and said how much he enjoyed it did Graeme realise that he had given the German Warrant Officer a bottle of “Spitfire”.

Oh dear.

I`m told that Dieter either didn’t care, or just didn’t realise, because he finished off the bottle and asked for another, different kind.

Graeme went off again to his stash.

Then returned and passed Dieter a opened bottle of “Lancaster Bomber”.

Again the significance seemed be to be lost.

I`m personally not taking any chances. So I`m off to drink the last remains of my own beer collection just in case Dieter turns up here and finds my bottle of “Bombardier".

Fridays are always good - even when they are bad. Fridays at work are even more special. We get to finish at 15:30 instead of 17:30 and that gives me a chance to get to the gym and back home to change before heading to the pub to catch up with friends and colleagues.

The conversations are always interesting.

For most people.

The problem, for some people, is that the conversation often turns to work, or better still, some geeky conversation about science or technology.

I love it.

Most people do, but its not to the taste of everyone..

For instance, when I showed up on Friday wearing this t-shirt:

I was mocked by some, and admired by others. The t-shirt itself shows the chemical symbol for caffeine. I only know this because it said so on the packet. Personally I have my doubts, because I don’t believe in the periodic table - the only element I believe in … is the element of Surprise.

So I was quite surprised when Gordon challenged me to a Math(s) problem. Taking a beer mat he wrote an equation which I have reproduced below using my very own child like hieroglyphs.

I was very confused. Despite the obvious fact that the sin of any number must be between 0 and 1 it just didn’t make any sense.

Gordon must have seen that I was about to have an aneurysm so he showed me the answer, which only made my impending mental meltdown more melty.

Here is the actual beer mat used last Friday night:

Yes – indeed – Six = 6.

Allegedly a university Math(s) professor wrote this on a blackboard when Gordon was doing his Masters degree some years ago.

No-one got it back then either.

Which made me feel happier.

And my brain started to solidify again.

My office at work is very male dominated. In fact, thinking about it I don’t know of any women in my section, or any other section in the department.This has quite a few benefits , certainly for some members of the team who have dubious personal hygiene standards.  To beperfectly honest, non of us really even like it when the cleaning lady comes around each morning; I`m sure the feeling is mutual.  The cleaner comes in, does a bit of dusting – often she doesn’t even bother trying to wipe my own desk, then chases the rest of the guys around with the hoover. Most people here always seem very confused with the hoover. I personally don’t own one and I`m sure I`m not alone.

I quite enjoyed this whole dynamic. Everyone knew where they stood. That all changed when I came back from California at the start of this month.
We had a new recruit, a female  no less, sitting in our office.

Enter Sergeant Mo.

Things didn’t start terribly well. The first thing she did was to take down our office Christmas tree. To be fair, it probably was about time
to do so, but I quite liked it, it gave the room a feature.The next day things didn’t really improve much either. I came back into the office after a meeting and just started to get on with my work. A good 10 minutes must have passed before I caught the glare coming in my direction from Mo sitting beside me.

“You havn’t eve noticed have you?” she snapped.

Normally in such circumstances I panic, thinking what it must be, change of hair colour, nailed coloured, new handbag, new teeth … I don’t know.

“er …. What …. I give up” was all I managed.

“Look around you!!! I`ve tidied up!”

Blimey. She was right. The whole office was actually clean and clear of the clutter which dominated the landscape previously. She had done
an amazing job. I had not noticed in the slightest.

I didn’t like it.

So I`ve started  to try and fill the office again with reams of paper and used coffee mugs, just to give that homely feeling once again. Because I see what Mo did as a declaration of war.

Bring it on!

As I`e said before the office where I sit and work each day is situated in the middle of all the NATO NMR (National Military Representatives) offices. Specifically I`m in between Denmark and Romania, but the most direct route to my office is to walk past Spain, France, Slovenia, Luxembourg and Belgium. Its very common to see military personnel from all nations going in and out of each of these offices. Perhaps I`d already had too much coffee, or simply not woken up enough yet, but the other day walking past the Belgian NMR I`m absolutely convinced that I saw Jean-Claude Van Damme.

Lets face it - thats pretty much all you`d need.An

I took at quite detour past the US NMR the other day to see if Rambo had come along for a visit.

There is a saying where I work, ‘the only way to be fired from here is to actually kill someone’, usually followed by much laughter. A few months ago this statement was a bit like Narnia to me, something I`ve never had to think about, but the way things are currently going on my project its become a bit more like Afghanistan - its somewhere I might actually have to go one day.

Yes things have been extremely hectic pretty much since I got back from California in December. It hasn’t stopped me having a top Christmas, New Year and birthday in the mean time however, even if some people thought it would be funny to ask if they could bring their ’snow leopard’ to my New Years party.

Confused … me too, let me explain a bit.

A couple of weeks before New Year I had an email from one of my guests who would be attending the big bash. It was all fairly normal stuff, should we bring bedding? is there a space to park? Where do you actually live? etc etc

Then the very last line in the email:

‘P.S. One last question: is it okay if my snow leopard Milou joins us? He’s only small.’

Of course this was enough for me to choke on the coffee I was drinking at the time. I mean seriously??? Why do people put a P.S in an email? Is it so hard to use the arrow keys to go back up a few lines and add a bit more text? Pet hate of mine obviously.

Then it really dawned on me ….. a snow leopard!

A little confused, I searched for images of a snow leopard in google … and this friendly character showed up:

Then I did a quick read up of snow leopards in wikipedia ….. then sent the following email back….

‘On to your pet wild cat? Can I just ask how big exactly this thing is? Do you have any pictures? I`m just a little concerned because I looked at the wikipedia page for a snow leopard and here are a few select phrases:

‘Snow leopards are carnivores and actively hunt their prey.’
‘They are capable of killing animals three times their size ‘
‘direct conflict with humans’
‘Snow leopards prefer to ambush prey from above and can leap as far as 14 meters’

Its difficult to express all the emotions I`m feeling with words alone, so I`ll leave it with this ….. Are you actually serious?’

The answer I received was only 2 lines … mercifully one of those was not a P.S.

‘You didn’t answer the question about bedding’
and
‘Milou is certainly a carnivore and can be quite aggressive (he has a difficult relationship with ‘boyfriend’)’

Then silence.

Until they arrived for the party.

Along with Milou…. who was every bit as terrifying as I feared:

Dont let the smile fool you - he is a born killer.

Every single Christmas starts the same way for me..

…. with a Hangover.

Every year on Christmas Eve my parents go to the midnight Church service, while I go next door ….. to the pub ….. just like Jesus would have wanted. The main problem here is that I only come back home once a year and so have a lot of catching up to do with the locals …. which just leads to much drinking and hence the Christmas day hangover. I never mean to do it, it just sort of happens.

This year will be different.

Because I`ve spent the whole of Christmas eve lying in bed ill.

Being bi-directionally ill to be exact.

The only thing I`ve dared to eat today was a bowl of chicken and vegetable soup, mainly because it looks exactly the same when it comes back out.

I`m starting to feel a little better now though and hope to have made a full recovery in time for tomorrow morning which means I can look forward to the same argument I have every year with my mum, when she tries to put brussels sprouts - or as I call them The Devils hemorrhoids on my plate hidden inside the mash.

But at least this year wont start with a hangover …..

… probably.

Happy Christmas!!!

Before I get going I need to make a note to remind myself to always remember to get changed out of my gym kit before walking home here in Belgium. The other day I finished my (amazing) workout, shouted abuse at some of the weeds in the gym, donned my long overcoat and started to walk home. The thing is the weather has started to turn pretty nasty here in Belgium and there was a strong wind outside. Basically this resulted in me walking home wearing shorts and a long overcoat, which, unfortunately for me resulted in me looking like either a flasher or a transvestite, much to the amusement of pretty much everyone who drove past me on the, thankfully, short walk home.

The next day I made sure to change into my work clothes before stepping outdoors.

Other things I`ve been up to, besides travelling back to Aberdeen to give another lecture at the university there, and spending 2 weeks in California, I`ve been immersing myself more and more into the Belgian culture. Of course by Belgian culture I mean drinking beer. The Belgians, as I have said before, take their beer extremely seriously. There are something like 850 ‘normal’ beers here, and each and every one comes with its own branded glass. Serving someone a beer in the wrong glass is almost unforgivable, which is why I`ve made the most of my local supermarket selling those glasses this past week, by buying up something close to 15 different kinds of beer glass. No doubt someone will still turn up wanting a beer for which I don’t have the correct glass, in which case they`ll just have to drink it from the bottle. The thing is that on my last trip to the shop to buy glasses I noticed they had a beer which I`d not had before. Gordon’s finest Platinum. I`m told that the Belgians have a special category for only a select few of their beers, and this particular type was classified as a ‘Super Beer’. Wow. Coming from the Belgians that must be something special. So now I have a bottle of it sitting in my collection, ready for Christmas.

I`ll let you know how it is then.

But as its 12% alc vol there is a good chance I won`t remember.

Before I start let me just tell you this short true story of something that happened at work yesterday. A few of us are organising a return trip to Champagne next week so we can stock up on bubbly for new year. The task of phoning up the champagne house fell to a choice between myself and my Polish colleague as we are the only 2 of us in the group who speak French. The conversation between Lucas and myself went thus:

me - “I`ll phone up, its not difficult to ask if they are open new Wednesday and what the opening hours are, I`ll deal with this”

Lucas - already dialing the number “No no I will do, I speak much superior French to you".

The call starts

Lucas - “Bonjour, bonjour …… do you speak English?”

Awesome.

Anyway today with what I was really going to talk about. I work in an office totally surrounded by all the separate NMRs (National Military Representatives) for every nation in NATO. In fact my office is situated right in between Denmark and Romania ….. making me ….. Poland? Anyway, the point is that I meet people from dozens of different nations every day. A couple of weeks ago I was chatting to the NMR rep from Slovenia, a country, that prior to this meeting had caused me to conjure up mental images of Borat. To cut a long story short I ended up agreeing to go to her house to fix her computer which would not connect to the internet.

I thought it would take 5 minutes.

It actually took nearly 3 hours.

But a few days after that the lady showed up in my office with a gift for me, which turned out to be a very nice Slovenian home made cake:

It was delicious. She also handed me, as well as the cake, a holiday brochure for Slovenia.

I flipped open the brochure at some random page and I have to say that I fully intend to go to Slovenia at the next available opportunity:

Naked women covered in mud - thats a sentence which is sure to get my blog blocked by some ISPs.

Anyhow, I was showing this to my boss who has worked for NATO for the past 20 years and never visited Slovenia.

He flies there this Sunday for a week long ‘meeting’.

I cannot wait for my turn!

Its been a busy couple of weeks …. when is it not?

Two weeks ago I went around to a colleagesu house whom I had purchased off 44 bottles of red wine whilst drunk the week previous. Still, it turned out ok. The unit price worked out at just under 4 euros per bottle, and I`m told that the same wine would cost 10 euros per bottle in the shops. This of course could all be lies.

The weekend before last saw me go on yet another work organised tour, this time to the champagne region of France. First stopping in riennes for a tour of the cellars of
G H Mumm .

We then headed over to the burial place of Dom Perignon

and a tour through the champagne vine yards.

The final point of call was at a family run champagne company, where, after seeing them open a bottleo f champagne using a sword I ended up buying 8 bottles, admittiedly after drinking about 2 of them in their tasting room.

Which turns out was not enough.

Because I`m going back there a week on Wednesday just so I can buy some more.

Its officially winter. I know this because yesterday I had to work out how to switch on the furnace to heat the castle. When I was in Belgium last December I remember the temperature got down as low as -11C at one point, I`ve been told by my colleagues that the weather here is much worse and I can expect at least -15C this coming winter. Considering that just over a week ago I was sitting outside in the city centre drinking beer in just a t-shirt, things have turned pretty nasty, pretty quickly.

Tonight already they are predicting the temperature will get down to -1C.

And its only the middle of October.

Its a good thing I`m going to be keeping myself busy then over the coming weeks. Last week I was in Luxembourg for a tour of Vianden castle,

Beufort castle.

and Bourscheid castle .

This coming weekend I`m off for a day trip around France’s champagne country, starting with a tasting in Reims, heading through the wine fields of Hauttvillers, the birthplace and burial of Dom Perignon, then on for another tasting in the family cellars of Vadin-Plateau.

A couple of weeks after that I`ll be in Italy for 2 weekends followed by a trip to Aberdeen, then back over to California for 2 weeks before heading back to Italy.

So hopefully I wont have to too many pairs of extra gloves for Belgium after all.

One of the great things of working in an organisation made up of over 30 nationalities is you get to meet some interesting people.

Today, for instance, one of my Polish colleagues marched into the office looking a little startled.

“My wife has just fainted on the street in Brussels. I must go to her”

Obviously.

Being the caring sort my Canadian colleague asked:

“Why did she faint? Are you not feeding her enough”

My Polish colleague looked thoughtful for a moment before replying with:

“You think I should leave her with the key to fridge?”

I`m still not sure if he was serious or not?

It is true though that working with such a mix of people lets you see the best and worst qualities in each nationality. A group of us were discussing the other day over lunch what would be the best and worst place to work in the world.

The worst we could manage was a place where:

The cooks are English.
The police are German.
The comedians are Danish.
People have the humility of the French.
People are as flexible as the Americans.
Everyone works as hard as the Greeks.
and everything is organised by the Italians.

Then we realised that this pretty much sums up where we work. At least in my office anyhow.

No updates this past weekend, thats because on Friday I went to the 40th annual SHAPE Oktoberfest. I `ll be posting something about that in the week, but just to give you an idea of how that went consider this:

I remember walking home through the forest.

There is no forest.

Anyhow, on to strings.

The other day at work I had to do some programing in C++ … eeeeek. I`ve not programmed in C++ for …. for ….. too long. It was pretty simple stuff that I had to do, just converting a BString to a CString. Surely there was a method built into the CString class to do such a thing … surely …..

So I googled for C String. Click on the link or do it yourself.

Its not exactly what I was looking for.

In case you are in any doubt check out this link - BUT NOT AT WORK.

So there you are.

Something to add to the shopping list for Christmas.

Perhaps I should program in C++ more often.

Last week I started my French language lessons …. what other kind of French lessons would I be taking? Most of my work is done in English so its not necessary for my job to be able to speak fluent French, its just that you do tend to stick out like a sore thumb if you dont.

Its true that here in Belgium they have 2 languages. Flemish, mostly in the West of the country, and French.

Or at least a form of French.

Having studied GCSE French until the age of 16 I already had a pretty good grounding in the language. I can hold basic conversations, order what I want in restaurants and generally get by pretty well.

Or so I thought.

The other day I was buying something in a shop. When all my items had been put through the scanner I asked how much I owed…

The response was just one word:

Nonante

Huh?

I dont mean to blow my own trumpet, but I`m pretty hot on French numbers and I had absolutely no idea what this girl was talking about.

After a few puzzled looks and a few more ‘Qua’s I asked the girl to write it down.

She wrote down ‘90′

Ah!! I said triumphantly, you mean quatre-vin-dix!

Smugly I paid up and walked on my way.

Until I got home and found out that there are quite a few words in Belgian French that are different from regular French. Mostly the numbers 60 through to 100, but other verbs too, such as eating and the names of the main meals of the day.

I was speaking to a Belgian about this the other day and asked how they cope with this when they are speaking to someone from France.

The answer was good.

“thats easy ….. we dont speak to the French”

A motto my mother would be very pleased to hear.

Today I feel pretty good.

Which is not what I was expecting at about 11pm last night after I had been given a drink by every member country in NATO.

Yesterday was SHAPE Fest 2009. Basically just a big party held at NATO HQ every year where all the NATO member nations put on a show and each have a stall to provide food and drinks from their home country. Very cosmopolitan.

And also extremely dangerous if you feel its your duty to try something from each and every one of them.

Starting off with the sangria probably wasn’t the wisest of choices. Then heading straight over to the Danish tent where I was told it was rude to only have one drink, instead I should have one for each leg to prevent me walking around in circles.

It all seemed to make sense at the time.

Passing through Poland, Belgium, Italy, Czech Republic, Germany, USA, Slovakia, Slovenia and others I ended up at Hungarian tent.

Just to give you an idea of how far off the ball I was at this point, I walked away from the Hungarian tent having bought 2 bottles of Hungarian wine.

Hungarian wine?????

But that was not the strangest ting that happened yesterday.

In the middle of all the festivities was a car. It was in pretty bad condition and I did think initially that it was a car that had been bombed in somewhere like Afghanistan and had been brought as an example of the dangers people who work for NATO face while on active duty.

I was wrong.

It turns out the car was there to be smashed up by children.

Yep - for 1 euro you could have your very own child be given access to a pickaxe and let rip on, what was at the start of the day, a brand new car.

hhhhhmmmm - I`m not really sure if that was a good idea.

Lets hope the parents dont have tools available in their garages at home.

Yesterday I went to the annual Lille Flea marketwhich is claimed to be the largest Flea market in the world and has been held every year since medieval times.

To be honest when I woke up I wasn’t in the mood to go anywhere. The day before I went out with a few of the boys to try a few more Belgian beers. I already knew that the Belgian took their beer drinking seriously, but a couple of things happened which caused me to raise my eyebrows.

Firstly I ordered a bottle of Chimay Blanc. The waiter brought it over and poured the bottle into a Jupiler glass. I thought nothing of it. The Belgians I was drinking with nearly caused a riot.

It turns out that serving a beer with the wrong glass in Belgium is very very much frowned upon and you are supposed to send the beer back and ask for a new one.

Then the waiter brought over the correct glass.

Once again the Belgians sent back my beer. This time because the lettering on the glass was not put down on the table facing me, which is also totally unacceptable here in Belgium.

Anyway, after a few cups of tea to recover from Friday night we set off to Lille.

They say that there are over 200km of market stalls in Lille and over 1 million people visit over the 2 days.

Having been there I wouldn’t doubt it.

I have to say though that Lille itself was a wonderful place and being no more than 50km of where I am living I can see myself going back there fairly regularly.

I even managed to pick up a few bargains. Having learned my lesson the day before about serving beer in the correct glass I felt obliged to buy some glasses.

Twenty one of them to be exact.

oh and something to put in them.

like fifteen bottles of wine.

Its a good thing that there no less than 3 gyms for me to use on site at work, because for the past 4 weeks I`ve been eating the finest foods and drinking the best beers in the world.

More or less constantly.

Even at work where they have 3 full time bars and even the canteen bas beer on tap.

I`ve been back to my favourite restaurant in Belgium 4 times already. table du boucher is a place I visited when I was here for the interview, but this time around I was enjoying the food having not just arrived from California and spent the whole day in exams and interviews.

The food was better than I remembered.

Firstly the duck

Then a couple of days later one of their steaks.

The beer here in Belgium could quite easily double up as rocket fuel, and no meal in Belgium would be complete without trying a few bottles.

Even it seems for breakfast.

I was chatting to a Belgian at work the other day and we were discussing beer and how poor it is over in America. He was telling me that on a recent trip to New York he told a barman over there that the beer was terrible and that the Belgians wouldn’t even drink this for breakfast.

I thought he was joking.

Until I turned up on Sunday morning, at 9:30am at Brussels Midi train station and went to the nearest cafe to ask for a coffee.

Every single person in there, and there were quite a few, were all drinking Grimbergen Blonde. This stuff is over 11 percent!!! Outside they even had an advert which was a picture of a bottle of Grimbergen next to a croissant.

Only in Belgium.

Anyhow, after the food I still managed a good few ales then home to the castle to enjoy some fresh Belgian chocolates.

So all in all, things are going pretty well here in Mons. I should be back later this week to tell you tales of my crazy pet ducks which I seem to have inherited.

But for now, just sit back and enjoy the view of my new home town:

Well, where do I start?

OK so my first impressions of my new job were not the greatest. I landed in Brussels on 3rd August carrying just a 20kg suitcase with me. The wind was blowing and the rain was lashing, I had no idea where I was going, just stranded on my own in the middle of a military base. Then I wa handed my room key - 106R. I found out shortly after that R stood for ‘right’, because there was also a 106L. Yes indeed I`d gone from living in a 2 million dollar beach house in California to share a bedroom within the space of 1 week.

Joy.

The night didn’t get any better either. I was woken up at 3am by the sound of a military helicpter landing outside my window. I decided that if WW3 had started I may as well carry on getting some sleep and assess the situation in the morning.

The job has, so far, turned out pretty well. I found out that there were 42 applicants for my job alone.

I`ve not really had time to bask in the glory though as I`ve been very busy doing a few things. Mainly, finding a place to live and decorating it.

The find a place to live part went extraordinarily well. I found a castle to rent just 5 minutes walk from work and moved in on 11th August.

Then on the Friday I went to the local furniture store and spent something close to 6000 euros on 2 new sofas, 2 coffee tables, TV table, fridge, washing machine, shelving, clothes dryer, washing dryer, wardrobes etc etc.

Tomorrow I`m off to buy a 40″ LED TV, surround sound speakers and blue-ray player.

I still dont have a bed. Perhaps I should re-assess my priorities.

Its a very good job I dont have to pay VAT / sales tax any longer.

Now I even have an internet connection in the castle so I`ll be posting much more regularly over the coming days and weeks.

And I have many things to tell.

Like how in November I`ll be working from Italy.

and also how there is a chance in the medium term that Ill get to visit much more interesting places:

like Afghanistan.

Once again I`m off to start a new job in another country.

I`m making a habit of this.

I fly to Belgium in just over 6 hours and should arrive at my ‘hotel’ a little after 10pm UK time ready to start my new job tomorrow morning.

Its unlikely I`ll be near an internet connection for the coming weeks so posts might be a bit slow, but we`ll see. I might be pleasantly surprised and find there is a private internet connection where I`m staying.

But as I`ve already been told that I have to share a bathroom and change rooms every couple of days I think that highly unlikely.

Who am I kidding? I`ll be lucky to get a bed.

Having spent the last 3 and a half months off work I`ve watched quite a number of films. Some good, some terrible. In an effort to convince myself that I was using my time constructively rather than just wasting my life away eating doritos here are my top 10 horror films, in no particular order

The Ring
The Grudge
The Exorcist
The Descent
Last House on the Left
The Terminator
The exorcism of Emily Rose
Event Horizon
The Hills Have Eyes
The Hole

Honourable mentions go out to The 6th Sense, Severance, Final Destination, Rosemary’s Baby, The Omen and An American Werewolf in London.

So there you are. I`m sure most of you will disagree with most things I`ve said, but its my blog, my list … deal with it.

On Tuesday I arrived back in England signaling the end to my stint in California which started in May 2007. Its been a lot of fun.

Already now I feel a stragner in my own home country. It turns out that shoes bought in California do not cope well with walking in rainy England and after spending half an hour walking around ASDA shopping I know I am capable of mass murder.

Its not all been bad though. On Thursday I went around to my best mate’s house just to catch up and have a few beers. It was good.

After an hour or so Chris got a call from Pykey. A friend who we both went to school with and who I had not seen for close to 10 years. Imagine all the stories we`d have to tell each other.

I was quite excited.

Then the big moment. Pykey walked into Chris’s bedroom with his hair down to his hips looking fairly like Rubeus Hagrid from Harry Potter.

Then the first words he’d said to me for nearly a decade.

‘Hey guys I`ve just been mauled by a dog’

huh?

He looked alright……. I mean, he didn’t look like he’d been mauled by a dog.

‘What?’ I amanged? ‘where? what dog’?

‘Just outside the house, its a golden labrador.’

I paused for a moment to make sure he was being serious.

He was.

I couldn’t hold it any longer.

I spent the next 10 minutes rolling around on the floor throwing out huge belly laughs while Chris helped Pykey clean up his ‘wounds’. I dont think Pykey was too impressed, even Chris told me I was being ‘insensitive’.

A Labrador? really?

Then Pykey decided he wanted to head over to hospital. Chris said that he would drive him there but that he’d have to get a taxi back home as we wouldn’t be waiting. I just said that he should tell the doctors that it was a werewolf or a tiger which got him otherwise they might not take his injuries seriously - a bit like myself.

Pykey agreed, but had no money for a taxi, Chris agreed to lend him a tenner so we stopped at an ATM on the way over to the hospital, Chris jumping out the car, getting cash then pulling up at the hospital stopping the car in just enough time for Pykey to get out and for me to jump into the front seat.

We drove away at speed.

Taking with us the tenner that we forgot to give to Pykey.

We of coure only realised this when we got back home and got a call from Mr Pyke himself who did not sound too pleased.

He was even less pleased when we told him that we couldn’t go back to the hospital to give him the cash….

…. because we`d already drunk all the beer he’d brought along with him and left at Chris’s house.

So there you are. If you are reading this Pkyey thanks for the beer. I look forward to seeing you again in another 10 years.

Walking past a set of shops earlier I came across a salon with this sign on their front door:

Just how hard must a massage be for it to turn your teeth white?

Thats got to be one hell of a massage.

I`ve spent more or less every minute of my spare time in the last few months either reading text book after text book on subjects I claimed to be an expert on during my recent run of interviews and masking it up big time at the gym, ripping it up, showing all the weeds of southern California how its supposed to be done, generally just being amazing.

Oh and I`ve also been putting on a little weight.

About 25 lbs in 8 weeks.

Panic not, despite putting on the lbs I`ve even managed to reduce my body fat level even further. I`m now currently at just under 5%.

I have however been overindulging in the local vitamin shops.

You see over here in California more or less everyone goes to the gym to bulk up, hardly surprising considering this is the home of Hollywood and one whole length of the state is a set of beaches normally only found in the Mediterranean.

So the gyms here tend to be a bit on the good side. Pretty much the opposite to those found in Paris which tend to be on the crap side.

Either way, you work with what you`ve got and I have been taking full advantage of not having to go to work each day and spending as much time as possible in The local gym.

And getting through 5 tubs of Muscle Milk in 6 weeks.

I`m going to try and have a few tubs of it shipped out to Belgium for when I`m over there considering the only source of protein I`ll get over there are rats and eggs.

The problem is though that this muscle milk is so effective that I`m starting to think it might actually contain steroids.

Lets put it this way. When I go to the gym for a chest session now I`m warming up with the weights that 5 weeks ago were my “max” weight.

And my previous maximum weight was at least twice what 99 percent of what anyone else in the gym would lift.

So if my shipment from California to Belgium gets stopped by customs then I know for certain why.

Now I`m off down the gym to mash it up.

After I`ve had a shot of Muscle Milk of course.

Not being able to drive means I do a lot of walking. I walk pretty much everywhere. When I`m in europe this is generally not a problem. Its pretty easy to get one one place to another using just your legs, and even if its a long distance its not hard to find a bus or train to get you where you need to be.

America is another story altogether.

If you dont drive its because you are either too poor to own a car or you have lost your car after losing a bet in Vegas.

Put simply, not much thought goes into people who may be using their feet as a mode of transport, particularly here in California.

For instance I was walking along a ’sidewalk’ the other day and was a good 2 miles down the road when I was greeted with this:

Yep, the sidewalk just stopped and I was a good mile from where I needed to be - and no there was no sidewalk at all on the other side of the road.

Such things are not uncommon though so in the past 2 years I`ve learned that you have to take short cuts to be able to get where you need to go by foot. Often this means walking through fields, marshes and all other kinds of uneven terrain. This does not really bother me.

Or I should say that it never used to bother me.

Wondering back from the pub the other night, a bit wobbly I had to take a short cut through some overgrown wasteland to get back to the apartment.

The next morning I was wondering back over the same route and saw a sign:

I couldn’t quite make out what it said so decided to get a bit closer:

SNAKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I ran so fast all the snakes would have seen was a Marc shaped blur.

I think next time I`ll just walk down the middle of the road to get home. Its likely to be just as scary.

Yesterday I went off to the San Diego Scottish Highland Games

Yes, that is exactly what i was thinking on the way there.

I wasn’t exactly dead keen on going. Having lived here for 2 and a half years now I know what the locals are like when it comes to anything European, particularly anything British.

Even just in the bars in downtown if I start talking to people the moment they realise I`m from the UK they say something stupid and stereotypical along the lines of:

“oh hey, yeah, I`m English ……… my grandfather once visited Cardiff …….. did you know him?”

my answer is always the same.

“Yes ….. yes I did know him”

So the San Diego Highland games was most likely going to be a melting pot of these idiots and I`d be walking straight into the middle of it.

The first thing on show was the “Highland Games Athletics” - the usual thing, caber tossing etc etc. Things did start to improve though when I found out there was a food hall - which sold “meat pies, haggis, fish and chips and sausage rolls. I was quite excited.

So after ordering my 2 sausage rolls and a load of haggis I started to do a bit more investigating. I was stopped every few feet by huge Americans wearing full Scottish regalia asking me “what the hell is that you`re eating?”

Then joy of joys. The beer tent.

I was very excited - They were sure to have some Scottish beers.

Perhaps they`d have some 80 shilling? Maybe some of the black isle brewery range……

maybe, just maybe they’d have some of my favourite- Deuchars IPA.

They would surely have to have the staple of most Scotsmen’s diets - Tennents.

No.

It turns out they had Newcastle Brown Ale, Guinness and wait for it……

Heineken

Not a single Scottish beer to be seen.

There was however 1 local brew called something like “the Bagpiper”

Cautious I walked to the bar and asked what the mystery beer was like.

The barmaid looked confused

“Its made like a Scottish beer”

Hhhhhmmm

“OK, but what does that mean? Is it dark, light, and IPA, a bitter a lager ….??”

“You`ll have to try it - as I said ts brewed like a Scottish beer”

So there you have it. If you`re in Scotland it doesn’t matter what you order from the bar because they all taste exactly the same as one another, just stand tall in any bar in Scotland and exclaim that you want a Scottish beer and it doesn’t matter which one.

Because they are all exactly the same.

When I am in the gym, I am a god.

People there look up to me with a combination of awe envy and lust

Not necessarily in that order.

Just as an example, I was down in my new gym a couple of days ago, ripping it up and generally just being amazing. I was scheduled to do one of my legendary cardio workouts and had decided to give a new bit of kit a try. The gym here has a few things called tread climbers, similar to a tread mil apart from with these you have two belts, one for each foot, that move at slightly different speeds and at slightly different angles to each other to simulate walking up a hill.

This would be the first time I`d been on one of tese things.

So I cranked it up to maximum power and went for the full hour.

I was disappointed to find that the “maximum” level was actually not that taxing. I only managed to burn just under 900 calories in the hour, compared to the usual 1000 - 1050 I get through with in the same time on the cross trainer.

Even so I must have made a good impression.

The moment I stopped some girl walked up to me and said:

“wow - you the man!!!”

Awe envy and lust.

I was my usual humble self.

“That was nothing!!!”

The gym however might also perhaps be my achilles heel. People who are hell bent on preventing my imminent move from California to Belgium are now resorting to even dirtier tricks than before.

For instance this is an email I received just a couple of days ago from someone I worked with in Edinburgh a few years back.

To keep his identity a secret I shall just call him by his real name - Henry Coles.

You have checked that they have gyms in Belgium haven’t you? I’m sure I read somewhere that they don’t, except for ones with little cissy weights.

I think Henry is suffering from envy.

It will surprise none of you to know that I have researched the gym facilities in Belgium fully and would not be moving there is the kit was not up to scratch.

Even if it wasn’t there are gyms in nearby France.

I could always commute…..

probably.

For months now I`ve had to sit back and listen to people, mostly Ed, go on and on about how moving to Belgium is going to be a disaster and I should definitely rethink my decision.

After the recent email activity I had started to think he was right.

So last Sunday afternoon whilst nursing my hangover earned by my efforts at the previous day’s beer festival I sat in front of my laptop and was skipping through pictures that I had taken on my previous visits to Mons, Belgium.

Looking for something ….. anything I could use to show that Belgium is more than its reputation would make you believe.

Most pictures were of beer bottles, which did not go down too well considering how I was feeling at the time.

But then I hit the jackpot.

A photo of a poster that was on the outside wall of a bar in the city centre.

Oh yeah!!!!!

So it turns out that Belgium has more to offer that just chips, mayo, beer and chocolate.

I think thats one more in the back of the net for Belgium.

I`m just about recovered from my beer festival experience of last Saturday.

Just about.

My earlier predictions about wanting to taste all 60 of the beers was perhaps a little too ambitious.

Because there were only 50.

And they had run out of 1 of them before I even got there.

And also because most of hte beers could double up as rocket fuel. Seriously, one of them was 15% alc vol. FIFTEEN percent!!!! Called Mead-Lange if you fancy reading its review on Beer Advocate.

It was not all on its own however with most beers there being in the region of 7 - 10%.

I was facing an uphill battle from the start.

But I tried

and tried

and failed.

Miserably.

After only 15 beers.

In my defense though the tasters were all between a third and a half pint each, plus I did target only the strongest beers there.

It was a good job I left it when I did though. At least I think it was because I cant really remember getting home. I have a bad memory of ordering pizza somewhere nearby and then going for a swim in the apartment complex hot tub but being unable to find the button to switch on the jets.

Still one good thing came of it. I didn’t feel like drinking at the party the day after. Which is good, because pretty much everyone there hadn’t had a drink for at least 20 years.

I might have stood out a little bit if I`d gone walking straight in waving a bottle of Don Perrion.

Oh this weekend is going to be so much fun.

A soon as I`m done giving todays lesson I`m off down the gym. I`ll be there mashing it up big time telling all the weeds that they’re weak and worthless and generally just being amazing.

I might even have a go on one of their new machines, the tread climber.

The fun continues on Saturday when I`m off to the 12th annual real ale festival in Carlsbad. They have 60 beers on tap and I fully intend to try each and every one of them.

Its been ages since I was at a beer festival. I think the last one was in Edinburgh a few years back when the guy selling me the beer accidentally handed me 20 pounds too much in change, and the guy I was there with(Carbon Footprint Sandy) was about to point out the error to the barman.

Until I kicked Sandy in the leg.

So generally I have a lot of fun at such events.

But this time its going to be just that little bit extra special.

Because the day after I`m going to a party.

Not just any old party.

Its a 20th Anniversary party.

Not a wedding anniversary party.

not an anniversary party for being at the same job for 20 years.

The hosts at the party have been sober for 20 years.

So they’re are having a 20 year sober anniversary party.

TWENTY YEARS.

Even the thought of it makes me want to run to the pub.

Yes indeed, this Sunday I`m going to party where most of the guests are part of the local ‘alcoholics anonymous’ group. They have all ‘been on the ‘programme’ for years.

I`m going to have so much fun.

Not only will I be hungover from the day previous and perhaps still slightly smelling of beer.

I`ll be taking a great big bottle of champagne along too.

To help them all celebrate

I thought after the events of my last post things would settle down and people (Ed) would leave it at that.

I thought he had had his fun.

I was wrong.

Instead of letting me get on with my move from California to Belgium and accepting my decision he goes and sends me an email.

With one line in it:

This:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Pke1mQmjwg

That might have tipped the scales. I must admit after watching that I am starting to doubt my own decision.

I`m interested to see what he’ll come up with next.

My decision to leave behind the warmth of Southern California and move to Belgium has raised eyebrews from good number of people. Not least from some of my former colleagues are going to be staying behind here in California, for the time being at least.

Many such people are now resorting to dirty tricks in order to try and make me change my mind about the whole thing.

Yesterday, for instance, I was chatting away to Ed on MSN.

The converstation was going along fairly well, but without much direction. The usual Saturday morning ramble after a Friday night out.

Then Ed came up with this.

“Hey, try typing this into google”

“most boring city in europe”

Please feel free to try for yourself,

or just click here.

Oh joy.

Still, I`ll have plenty of time left over to spend counting my money

Yesterday I went back to Fullerton to have my final session at Meridian sports club; the gym I`ve been a member of for the previous 2 years.

Is it really that long?

Yep, for over 2 years I`ve been showing the weeds of southern California how to mash it up big time, how to get in the gym and show everyone how its done.

Its been good.

So yesterday after completing my most awesome of chest workouts I headed on over to Brians bar for a few cheeky beers.

I took half of the people in the gym with me.

Its always quite odd to see people from the gym outside of that environment. A bit like meeting people from work on a night out.

It was great fun though. Plus it gave me another chance to chat to Victor. Victor was the first person to talk to me in Meridian when I first joined, and I have to say I didn’t think much of him on that first meeting. The first thing he told me was that I was lifting the weights all wrong. Well actually, he told me that I was wasting energy from picking up the dumbbells I was about to use and carrying them over to the bench - wasting energy he said. I should move the bench to right in front of the dumbbells, let the tools do the dirty work for me.

I ignored him.

After all, who on earth was this guy to tell me how to lift weights?

Then when he left I gave it a go.

I`ve been taking his advice ever since.

And for good reason. It turns out that Victor was was in the Russian Olympic ski team from 1962 - 1970.

After that they made him the coach of the whole national team.

So last night was my last chance to squeeze a few last drops of wisdom from the man himself.

He was not about to disappoint.

After first telling me that at home he drinks a cocktail of wine and PURE ALCOHOL. - which he buys from the chemist, he leaned over to me and said:

“I`ll tell you something, the best drink in the whole world that we used to drink in Russia”

I was all ears.

“A pint of beer, with a little bit of vodka, mixed in with 2 eggs".

I just about stopped my own gag reflex.

But then the best bit.

He leaned a bit closer.

“It makes you go like a bunny rabbit in bed".

Wow.

Victor certainly seems to know his stuff.

And having casually disregarded his advice on a previous occasion and regretted it. I doubt I`ll be doing the same this time around.

If there are no posts for the next few days you should know why.

I`m just back from watching Terminator Salvation. It was amazing.

The Terminator, the first one, is my favourite film of all time. The 2nd was good, but the third (which I try and forget about) was the most disappointing film I`ve ever seen. Notice even that this latest Terminator film refused to call itself Terminator 4 - trying to make people forget T3 happened at all.

I`d heard good things about Salvation, and had tried to avoid internet spoilers so I could go and watch this one without knowing much about what was to happen.

I`m glad I did.

For someone going to watch the film with no background knowledge of the Terminator franchise then you`ll have no problems. The film is good to watch for Terminator newbies and hardcore fans alike.

For those hardcore fans such as myself there are awesome back references to the first 2 movies, and thankfully just one to the ‘other’. My favourites include (some very very mild spoilers follow)

The opening scene where John Connor is chased by and T600 torso in reference back to the first film when Sarah was also being chased and managed to trap the cyborg in a hydraulic press.

John Connor saying Arnie’s most famous line - “I`ll be back” - in reference back to the first film again which is the first time Arnie said that line.

Playing the T2 soundtrack by Guns and Roses on the stereo.

‘Tech Com’ used to describe John’s military squad.

Pretty much everything from the final fight scene.

I`ll leave it there.

I`m even thinking of going back this afternoon to watch it all again.

At least now they`ve managed to set the record straight.

And now there are 2 Terminator sequels which can be enjoyed, if not quite as much as the original….

…. which in my mind is still a cinematic masterpiece.

Its been 4 days and I`m only just up to the task of looking back through the photos I took at Lobsterfest.

I nearly disgraced myself. Walking through the main gate just as the dinner had started loaded up with 2 bottles of wine I`d bought on the road trip in Cayucos I began to focus on the job at hand. Trying to eat as much lobster in the following 3 hours as possible.

I`d done some background research into this one and found that a lobster dinner at a restaurant would set you back 39.95 dollars plus tax and tip - or in my case, just tax. The ticket had set me back 75 dollars so I had to eat 2 of the marine lobster monsters to make a deal of it.

I managed with ease.

Well, ease probably is not the right word. I certainly got my money’s worth - getting through a full 5 lobster

and corn

and bread

oh, and the small matter of 3 tri-tip steak.

I decided to walk the 5 mile journey back home to try and aid digestion - plus I think if I`d gotten into a taxi I would have been sick immediately.

I was so full I didnt each a thing on Saturday and barely managed my evening meal on Sunday.

I had a great time though. Thing is that some people there took it very seriously indeed.

The girl next to me took her own thermos flask full of garlic butter - and very own lobster crushing tools. Which is a good thing, because the one they gave me to use broke when I tried to open one of the lobster claws - snapped in half. Tough to crack some of those crustaceans.

I`m not going to be outdone though.

Next year I`m going dressed as Dr Zoidberg

I`m just about recovering from the 5 whole marine lobster and 3 steaks I ate at Lobsterfest 2009 on Friday. I`ll be talking more about that in a couple of days when I can actually contemplate the thoughts of looking at pictures of lobster again.

Today’s lesson is more important.

Remember a few weeks ago when I was up in Cayucos at the beach house and stumbled across Mr Blue Shark on the beach just 100 foot from the entrance to where I was staying?

I have to admit I was a bit shocked to find Fergal (Sharky) sat there, but thought it was just a one off. Just a bit of excitement in an otherwise quiet small beach town in mid California.

I was wrong.

I`ve spend the best part of the previous 2 weeks in the same beach house and dead sharks are not the only things to have been washed up on my door step.

Day 1 - I spotted 2 dead seals.

Day 2 - A dead sea lion

Day 3 - No less than 7 dead birds along the sea front.

What was going to be on day 4?

A human body?

Yes

A human body washed up just a mile down the shore of the beach house in central Cayucos. I was chatting to one of the locals in a coffee house and they seemed non impressed by it all.

“ah, thats the third we`ve had in the past year”

Blimey!

So there you go. Small quiet beach town? In my mind it started to seem more like the beach town from the film ‘The Lost Boys’.

Next time I go I`m stocking up on garlic and holy water.

One thing is for certain though,

I wont be going in that water.

I find myself sitting in a bar in Visalia called Brewbakers. I`m happy. This place is an old brewery converted into a bar where they only serve the beer they make here on the premises. They also sell great muffins.

They also have a free wifi connection.

The past 2 weeks have been awesome. We left San Diego and headed north up to Santa Barbara for a night, did one of the local wine tours then headed up to the beach house in Cayucos again for a week taking in the local sights, such as Hearst castle and sampling the local seafood.

The last 2 nights have been here in Visalia staying in Ben Maddox house, the place I stayed at for a night in November 2007.

Later we`re heading back to the beach house until Friday.

Then its back to Fullerton.

For Lobsterfest

Currently 4400 lbs of lobster are being flown over from Boston to LA ready for the ‘all you can eat lobster’ party.

So as of tonight I`m not eating a single thing.

The tickets cost 75 dollars each.

I intend to get my money’s worth.

I`ve just gotten back to my hotel room in Santa Barbara after going on Captain Jack’s Santa Barbara wine tour where I visited 4 wineries and sampled 26 different wines in 6 hours.

Now I`m going out to the Santa Barbara brewery.

For the next week or so posts will be slow for 1 of 2 reasons:

1 - I`ll be drunk
2 - I`m off to Cayucos again to the beach house for 8 days.

Most likely though is option 1.

Being stuck in Belgium last weekend, with the rain lashing, the wind howling, being unable to eat or drink due to the fast I was undertaking prior to my medical exam, its fair to say there was not much to do.

I watched a lot of crap TV.

Most of it BBC news feeds telling me it would be a terrible idea to return to California and face the swine flu.

They did find 2 minutes however, to stop their frenzied panic and talk about something else.

The sale of a rare blue diamond. At six million quid a go its unlikely that even with my new job I could afford such a thing. It was however rather interesting and crossed my mind when I arrived at Brussels airport.

Passing through security I spied a jewellery counter and thought I`d go over and see if they had any of these said blue diamonds - yes I know unlikely, but you`ve got to pass the time somehow.

As I got closer, it became obvious that this was in fact not a jewellery counter at all:

Yes indeed, only in Belgium would they raise up chocolate to such a level that it needs to be incased in glass displays.

As I`ve said before, the Belgians take their chocolate very seriously indeed.

I`d tell you how they tasted but this this little fella:

Would have cost me 40 euros alone.

Might as well go out and buy a blue diamond instead.

I got back to Carlsbad, California last night at around 11pm local time having been awake for getting close to 31 hours and completing my third 5 day round trip to Belgium and back within the last 7 weeks.

I`m not doing it again.

The reason for this latest round in insanity was to undergo a medical exam at my new employer’s facility, which is one of the 2 remaining conditions of my job offer becoming formal (the other being transfer of my security clearance).

Having arrived on Saturday morning, slept most of Saturday afternoon and evening, and generally just mooching around on the Sunday I arrived for the medical on Monday morning ready and prepared to receive several large blasts of electric current and starving hungry having been told to fast the previous day as I would be expected to give blood samples. Imagine being stuck in Belgium and not being able to eat the chocolates or drink the beer ….. its a form of torture I can assure you.

The medical started with an eye exam…

this did not go well.

They give the same exam to everyone and so I ended up sitting an eye exam intended for fighter pilots.

Needless to say, I failed.

Fortunately things improved. The general check up went fine and I was told to head on over to ‘the lab’.

Have you ever tried to give a urine sample when you`ve not been allowed to drink anything for the best part of a day? Its not easy I can tell you. I stood there in the toilets for 25 minutes with all the taps going, thinking of waterfalls jumping up and down just hoping for enough to at least fill the pot to half way.

In the end I gave up, and heated up some apple juice in the microwave and gave them that instead.

On to the blood sample. I was taken into a room by myself and the lady who would be taking the samples. I started up conversation. It went something along the lines of:

me - “yeah, not really bothered about blood, I donate between 3 and 4 pints of blood per year when I`m back in the UK”

her - “I cant give blood", long pause and she looked me square in the eye, ” I dont have veins".

There was a deafening silence and no way to describe my fear. I half expected fangs to grow from her gums and to make straight for my neck. Fortunately for me she continued….

“well I have them, but they’re really small”

The rest of the test was done in absolute silence.

Next up they took an x-ray of my chest. I was impressed. I even asked for a copy so I could wallpaper my bedroom with copies of it.

Finally was the ECG - Electrocardiography. A way of recording of the electrical activity of the heart over time via skin electrodes. Firstly they had to shave my chest slightly because the readout was giving no signal thanks to my hairiness, but after that I gave a mighty fine example of how a human male’ heart should behave.

It turns out that I have a standing heart rate of about 60 which is what they would expect to see in a professional athlete.

And that was that. I was back in Mons stuffing myself stupid and downing beer after beer in the warm sunshine making up for not eating or drinking anything the day before.

Now I just have to sit back here in California, avoid contracting Swine flu, and wait until Saturday….

…when I travel to Santa Barbara for a guided wine tour….

Last Saturday I woke up at 6am and very nearly switched off the alarm clock, flipped the pillow to the cold side, rolled over and went back to sleep.

I am very glad I didn’t.

I had plans to go up North to Cayucos and stay at the beach house for a few days. The trouble is I couldn’t be bothered with the 6 hour journey, not with all the travel I`ve done recently.

Plus my mental image of the ‘beach house’ was a shack in the middle of nowhere a good few miles away from any sand or ocean.

I was wrong.

2

The beach shack turned out to be full size 3 bedroom house which costs somewhere between 2 and 3 million dollars.

And for 4 days it was all mine —- ALL MINE!!!!!!!

I mostly spent the days walking on the beach or to either of the 2 nearby towns, Cayucos which was about a half hour walk along the beach and had some awesome seafood ……. and a saloon:

The other nearby town, Morro Bay was a good hour in the opposite direction, but once there was well worth the walk,

and once again had great seafood, but no saloon, although much wine tasting was available. I cannot remmeber walking home.

Which could have been rather dangerous. Take a look at what I happened to stumble across on my travels - just 100 feet from the beach house where I was staying.

A six foot long Blue Shark. Which, according to wikipedia:

…. is one of 20 species of shark to pose a threat to humans

Still, I put ole Mr Sharky to good use:

Nothing better than a bondfire on the beach at night time with a grilled apple and shark fin on the side.

To top it all, the views of the night sky were out of this world.

literally.

On my recent trips to Belgium my schedule was a bit of a mixed bag. There was of course the crazy stressful travel to get there in the first place, then the morning on the Monday and Tuesday were taken up with either exams or interviews. That meant I had nothing to do for most of each day other than to sample the delights of Belgium.

Which of course means sitting around drinking beer.

The thing is that every bar I went into in Mons all had about 30 different beers - of which I had heard of almost none, so I randomly selected my beer of choice by running my finger down the list and picking whichever one my finger rested on.

This had varying degrees of success.

For instance, Hoegaarden rose.

Which at a mere 6.5% is generally considered in Belgium to be childrens booze.

I was given several strange looks.

So I decided to up the stakes and move on to….

BUSH

Which I found quite tart and sour. However I no longer got looks of passers by that made me think they thought I was a big sissy. Now I felt like a man.

Until I finished my second one, stood up and then fell over.

I inspected the bottle.

Indeed - I was happily sitting there drinking several bottles of the strongest beer in Belgium.

Then I got a phonecall saying I`d passed the exam and had to go back the next morning for the interview.

Feeling very spaced out I stumbled back to my hotel and tried to compose myself, but instead just passed out on my bed.

So that just goes to show you….

too much bush can be bad for you

I`m just about over the shock of being offered the job in Mons, Belgium. Keeping in mind that for 2 separate weekends I have to fly from LA to europe, get a connecting flight to Brussels then get a train to Mons, find my hotel, get a few hours sleep, get to the office to take 2 separate 2 hour technical written exams, go home, wait for the results, go back the next day for interviews in front of 5 or 6 people, then fly back to LA.

Add to that the fact I was up against people who already worked there, you can perhaps begin to understand why I was so surprised / excited.

So I think its time to show you some of the places I shall be frequenting when I move.

Firstly, my new favourite restaurant in the world …. La table du boucher.

A place that looks just like a butchers shop, from the internal furnishings, to the uniform of the waiters. Plus of course they only serve meat ….. and some fish.

I went there both evenings I was there.

Both nights I started with the smoked salmon

Then on to the meat courses which are all cooked on hot coals:

I was originally planning on having the duck, because to be honest, I`m not really a big steak person, but after 5 minutes of persuasion from the butcher dressed waiter I gave in and ordered the steak.

I was not disappointed:

This thing was cooked to perfection in nothing but butter. You could have cut it with a soldering iron.

I passed out with jet lag shortly after that, but returned the day after determined to have the duck:

Which was every bit as good as it looks.

I did consider having a dessert, but decided not to bother in the end. After all, surely all their desserts would be made of meat.

A quick but important update.

Here are a few pictures of Mons, the city where I`ve been having interviews for the past few weeks and causing me to massively increase my carbon footprint:

Its a nice city as I`m sure you`ll agree.

Which is good.

Because I`m moving there permanently.

I GOT THE JOB!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Last night I got back from my latest 4 day round trip from Fullerton to Brussels. The route was more or less exactly the same as the one I did 3 weeks ago, albeit this time I was on a BA 747-400 rather than a CARGO plane, but it was just as tiring.

This time it took just under 5 hours to get back from LA airport to Fullerton because LAX security decided to x-ray the suitcases of every single person in the arrivals lounge - and 3 jumbos landed within 15 minutes of one another.

This soured my already extraordinarily grumpy mood.

It turned out that the past 2 interviews I had attended in Brussels had both been a complete total and utter waste of 10 days of my life.

Things had gone pretty well until I arrived for the interview on Monday morning. It was the same as last time. A written exam had to be passed in order to come back the day later and have the interview with 5 members of the board.

Waiting for the exam to start I see the guy who wrote the previous exam I took and also interviewed me turn up and sit next to me. I assumed he was there to moderate the exam.

I was wrong. It turns out that he was taking the exam himself.

Already I smelled a rat. I took solace after the grueling 2 hour written exam and went off around Mons sampling the local beer, convinced that I had failed and there was no point in keeping a clear head for the next day.

I was wrong again.

I got a phone call at 17:15 asking me to go back at 9am the next day for the interview.

I did.

And more or less immediately wished I had not.

The entire interview was full of questions like ‘what software do we write here?’, ‘what tools do we use here?’, and ‘what processes do we use here?’

They ask the same questions of each candidate ‘to be fair’.

Are they kidding?

So the guy who interviewd me last time is going to be asked these same questions?

Sounds extremely fair to me.

It also turns out I didn’t get the other job I applied for 3 weeks ago. They gave that one to someone who had been working with them for the past 13 years as a contractor.

So basically I`ve flown 24 thousand miles and spent 10 days out of my life for absolutely nothing.

Before I left on Saturday I had already sent in applications for 3 other positions in the same company.

I cant wait to reply to them if they ask me to come along for another interview.

It will be a very short email.

Just 2 words in fact.

One of those words will be ‘Off’.

Yesterday I told you all about my experience with Mr Chips and his interesting ideas on life, the universe and everything.

This was the source of much interest in the office here yesterday, so much so that we asked Ed to contact this guy again and get a bit more dteail on this massive government led conspiracy. Ed fired off an email to Mr Chips and half expected a response to come back saying somehting along the lines of “oh you fell for that one did ya - it was only a joke you know.

But that is not what happened. Instead Ed got hte following in reply from the great man himself:

Hey whats up Bud, it’s called the veri chip u can look it up on you tube. Prince Charles and his sons were among the first to recieve the implant.
We all need to hook up before you take off.

So there you have it - proof if proof were needed.

I have to admit though I still have my doubts, but hopefully this coming Friday he will be with us on our night out on the beers.

I intend to dress up in a full cyberman outfit and claim I was a recipient of the Mark I chip.

In my time here in the US over the past 2 years I`ve met some intersting, if strange people.

There was of course crazy Buffalo Bill, then the Red hair man, various people who thought I was Australian and many others.

Last weekend saw another worthy addition to my list of crazy, we will call him Mr Chips.

To be fair I didn’t actually meet this guy, it was my colleague Ed, but I`m assured that what I`m about to tell you is the absolute truth.

Ed was, this last weekend, having dinner with friends. There were a couple who he had never met before. One guy in particular, Mr Chips was a teacher and for the most part seemed to be a fairly intelligent, articulate and interesting person.

Until he started to talk to Ed about the great Chips conspiracy.

Ed was a little suspicious of this guy when he stated that 911 was a US government conspiracy, and there was absokluty no way it could have been anything else.

OK, we`ll let that one go.

Then the big one.

“You know about the microchips since 1975 dont you?”

Ed was confused.

“Everyone born in the Western world since 1975 had a microchip inserted in them at birth”

The guy was serious.

Allegedly, all midwives are trained to insert microchips into all newly born babies for “tracking purposed", but they`ll never admit to it - NEVER.

The thing is - microchips capable of such trickery made in 1975 must have been the size of a bus.

To be fair though he might have a point. you know how the only people ever to be abducted by aliens are rednecks born in a barn with no midwife in attendance to do the chipping. Obviously the US government is setup to deal with such people when they become aware of their existence and send in the aliens to do the chipping procedure.

Of course we all know where the aliens do their probing

We are - as I type this - trying to arrange a meeting with Mr Chips so I can ask about his other philosophies on life.

Its sure to be an entertaining evening.

A couple of posts ago I mentioned that I was nearly mauled by a trainee drug detecting dog at LA airport. Last weekend I cracked open one of the boxes of confectionary that had the puppy all excited and I thought I would share the experience with you all …. kind of.

Belgium is known for chips with mayonnaise, beer, goats, Jean Claude Van-Damme, chocolates and little else.

Turns out that this is pretty much all you need, particularly when the beer is as strong as 13% and the chocolates are this good and colourful:

Just for the record, the pink and green one was made entirely of marzipan, of which I`m not particularly fond, but I ate it anyway and found it pretty good.

The others were great too - all of them!

So its a good job I`m going back to Belgium in a couple of weeks so I can stock myself up again.

And then look forward to getting attacked by the sniffer dog on my way home .

I`m getting quite used to this staying in Belgium chateuxs. There was the
Pietersheim where I stayed last December and my latest trip to the land of chips and goats where I stayed in the Hotel Saint Jean near Mons.

A very nice place it was too:

So I`ll have to get started and book my next chateaux for my next trip over to Belgium on 28th March. Wherever it is it certainly has some competition to live up to.

Also in the news this week my parents have arrived over from England to come and visit me. They flew in to Vegas, are currently in Vegas and will come over to see me for a few days later this week and then go back to Vegas, but they are definitely coming here to see me

I got back to my apartment in California yesterday evening after a crazy 5 days. Saturday saw me take a taxi from my apartment to Fullerton station, a train from Fullerton to Los Angeles, a bus from LA to LAX airport to catch a flight to Amsterdam, change terminals, get a flight to Brussels, a train to Mons and then a taxi to my hotel.

I did all this because on 12th February this year I was told that on 31st March I would be made redundant.

So I pressed the panic button, lit all the fuses and sat back to watch the fireworks.

Some went off with a bang whilst others fizzled away into nothingness.

More or less immediately I had an interview for a contract job in the Hague, Netherlands and was offered a very lucrative position for 5 months more or less immediately.

Then my current manager came back to me and said they want to extend me here in California until the end of June.

Then the reason why I had to travel to Belgium and back within the space of 4 days.

I got a voicemail asking me to attend an interview in a place called Mons. I had to do a technical test on the Monday and if I passed (50% threshold) I would be asked to attend an interview the next day.

So come Monday morning I`d been travelling for 30 hours and had 4 hours sleep - perfect time to undertake the 2 hour written technical exam. This turned out to be a big mixed bag of questions. Firstly on .NET, then on DOS commands, then database normalisation, theoretical OO principals, writing in-depth SQL statements and a few other things.

5 of us went in for the exam.

only 3 of us passed.

So I went out around Mons to drink copious amounts of beer to celebrate. Wonderful preparation for the interview the next day in front of the 5 man technical board.

I`ve still not heard how the interview went, so I`m assuming it went badly.

So yesterday I flew back to LA with a backpack full of Belgium chocolate. This confused the trainee Labrador sniffer puppy who was on guard sniffing everyone who got off my plane - after all we had just arrived from Amsterdam. The puppy just could not help himself with the scent of the chocolate and leapt all over me. I freaked out of course thinking someone had stuffed their contraband in my bag during flight and was about to be arrested for carrying drugs, but to my surprise the handing officer apologised and I went on my way - with an increased heart rate.

And now I`m back here at work, fresh as a daisy I`m sure you`ll understand.

First email I get this morning is from the HR person at the company where I went for the interview.

Not good news.

They want me to go back to the same place on 30th March….

….. for another interview for a much more senior position.

I`m not sure I can even be bothered with the way I feel today.

Did I mention that they sent me over to Amsterdam, an 11 hour flight, on a cargo plane???? I wasn’t expecting first class, but a CARGO PLANE???

Talk about penny pinching.

So I might actually go for the next interview, if only to see how they plan on sending me there next….

…. Fedex perhaps?

What are you up to this weekend?

Going to the match? Shopping? Relaxing in the garden or going out down the pub on a sunny Sunday afternoon?

I wont be doing any of the above.

This Saturday I catch a flight from Los Angeles and fly to Amsterdam. I then catch a flight to Brussels. I`ll be there from Sunday evening until Wednesday morning.

Then I fly back to Los Angles and arrive back in time for work on Thursday morning.

Oh joy.

I just cannot tell you how much I`m looking forward to it all.

Why am I doing this you are probably not going to ask ……

I`ll let you know next Friday.

Only the super geeks of this world would organise the worlds biggest Doctor Who convention to fall on Valentine’s weekend.

Natuarlly, I was in attendance.

Yes indeed, weekend just gone saw me at Gallifrey:20 to Life at the Marriott hotel Los Angeles.

I have been to Dr Who exhibtions before now, many of them in fact, but this was my first time at a major convention. I had been looking forward to this for 2 years. I had tickets already purchased for the event back in 2008, but I was sent to work in Paris at the last minute and could not go. This time around there was no stopping me. The guest list and schedule was just too good.

I arrived at 6pm on the Friday just in the nick of time for the opening ceremony:
when the main guests are introduced to the crowd. The pick of the bunch this year being Phil Collinson

Dr Who producer 2005 - 2008, Nicola Bryant

who played Perry in the 1980s and Colin Baker -

6th Doctor (1984 - 86).

After the opening ceremony was the ‘fires of Pompeii toga party.

Which was pretty well attended and most people got into the spirit of things, even people who really shouldn’t have.

Some guys had even arranged an ‘after party, party’ with a free bar in one of the function suites. The place full of semi drunk, semi clad Whovians.

Saturday was when the real convention began. I started off my taking a trip to the dealers room, which was very well stocked full of merchandise. I had no intention of buying anything, I just wanted to see how much things that I own myself would sell for if I decided to ever cash in on my Dr Who treasure chest. For the record, I would do quite nicely.

Then off to the main convention hall for a Q&A session with the show’s writers. Amongst them was Robert Shearman, who wrote ‘Dalek’ in the 2005 series and Paul Cornell who wrote ‘Fathers Day’ from 2005 and Human Nature from 2007. It was a great experience too, getting some real behind the scenes views on how a Who story comes together from start to end, plus some pretty funny stories too.

Next up was the Q&A with Nicola Bryant (Perry). Nicola joined Doctor Who back in 1984 and attracted a lot of media attention for wearing skimpy outfits in most of her scenes - actually her first ever scene was her swimming wearing a skimpy bikini. I was really looking forward to this one, but I have to say I was very disappointed. Nicola seemed to be about the only person there to have a bit of ‘attitude’ telling the audience not to take photos of her during the session because it would distract her. Quite honestly she didn’t have too much interesting to say to lose track of in the first place. Then the final 10 minutes of the chat was her showing us all a video she recently created about the ‘making of The 2 Docotrs’ a dreadful story from back in 1985. She was offering to sell people copies of the DVD at the convention. Was this really someone who wanted to come to the convention or simply the act of a semi-celebrity trying to cash in on the success of the new series?

My mood lifted considerably after that because next up was Phil Collinson - new series producer 2005 - 2008. Fantastic, simply fantastic.

After dinner and a few beers in the bar with Phil Collinson and a couple of the writers I returned to the main hall for the costume competition.

Some people take this VERY seriously:

Then was the first American performance of Moths ate my DOctor Who scarf. A friend of mine saw the show at the Edinburgh Fringe a few years ago and raved about it. Its a stand up comics look back on his life growing up with Doctor Who. Very funny and well worth seeing. There are some clips on youtube.

My biggest gripe of the night though was the delay. It was already running behind schedule after the contestants of the costume competition had appeared on stage, so instead of announcing the winners and going straight into the Moth show the organsiers decided they would indulge themselves by showing a series of home made movies. Hillarious though they may have been to the people who made them and in the privacy of their own homes, they meant little or nothing to most of the 1000 plus people in the room. Seriously it was cringe worthy and like making 1000 strangers sit through slides of your recent family holiday.

People who organise the event should feel rightfully proud of what they managed to bring together and acheive, but remember that people pay the membership fee to see the guests, not so that you can buy yourself a captive audience.

Where was I….. oh yeah, the Valentine’s night dance.

This was pretty good actually. They had a good DJ who even played of my favourite comedy songs of all time.

Cabbaged though I was I did still noticed when a Dalek crept up behind me on the dance floor and threated to exterminate me. Naturally I screamed a big girly scream and ran away.

The morning after, feeling a little delicate, I went to a few more events. The Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant Q&A, naturally Nicola asked us not to take pictures, A talk about the Doctor Who audio adventures with Big Finish and several more.

Then it was time for home.

And time to show the world photos of me wearing a purple toga

A strange title for an entry perhaps, but let me explain….

For nearly 2 years I have resisted the urge / encouragement / requests from others for me to purchase a US mobile phone.

A couple of weeks ago I cracked. Having been given a rather splendid and very ‘blingy’ new phone for Christmas I went out and purchased myself a US SIM card. So out went the old UK number I`ve had for nearly a decade now and I joined the US telecoms world.

I knew it would be a bad idea.

Last Saturday I was woken up by a call from a guy in Lathrop, a city 360 miles away, asking if I still had the British bulldog for sale.

Huh?

‘Sorry, you`ve got the wrong number’

and hung up.

Back to sleep.

For 10 minutes until someone else phoned up asking the same thing.

Something was wrong.

‘Why do you think I`ve got a bulldog for sale?’

‘Your advert in the local newspaper’

Oh dear.

It turns out some pillock is trying to sell his bulldog in the local paper and put down the wrong phone number in the advert.

Quite how he manged to get the number so badly wrong is something of a mystery. The local area code for Lathrop is 209, my new number starts with 714. Not exactly similar.

So far I`ve had 17 calls about this bulldog. I`m fairly sure the guy who actually does have the bulldog has had exactly none and is wondering why the locals of Lathrop are so cold hearted when it comes to animals.

I looked into it and a good size bulldog can fetch (no pun intended) up to 700 dollars. Sadly though there are no British bulldog owners in the complex where I live.

There are a good few poodles though.

Could I pass off a shaved poodle for a bulldog?

I`m off to buy a pair of hair clippers to find out….

Last weekend back home in blighty looked something like this:

While over here in the OC I decided to have a BBQ.

It was a great time to have it too because there was some kind of game going on over here last weekend that got all the locals into a flap.

It certainly had all my neighbours going nuts. The balloons outside did confuse me for a while. ‘SUPER BOWL XLIII’ - what did that mean - some very very very extra large bowl???

I had no idea.

But one thing is for sure, I wish it happened every weekend, all the shops were completely empty, not a soul in any of the supermarkets. Which is great as I had my pick of the food, and Albertsons had lobster tails on sale for 5 bucks each, which went nicely along with my burgers and carne asada.

Very nice they were too.

I suggest next weekend all you over there in the UK do the same

Today I turn 30 years of age.

I thought I would accept and embrace the experience with dignity and happiness.

It turns out not. Yesterday as the seconds ticked down I was gripped with an almost deragned panic that my youth was about to be over, as the precious seconds ticked ticked ticked away.

I had to get out.

So I went down the gym, already in a bad mood.

Not good for the January Sales crowd that still linger, having decided to ignore my advice on joining a gym at the start of the new year.

I jumped on the cross trainer, eager to prove a point to myself, ready to mash it up big time, ride the burn, rip it up and show every one how its done.

Things were going well. I started the final 5 mins of my session well on course for a new personal best with my headphones on and the music rocking.

The main problem though is that after such a long time on the cross trainer I am absolutely exhausted and also incredibly angry. Its not a good idea to even look at me in such a situation, let alone try and talk to me.

Which is exactly what one of the newbies tried.

I could tell he was a newbie right away. There were at least 4 cross trainers free in the gym, but this guy chose the one right next to me.

I disliked him immediately.

I entered the final minute of the workout. Increasing the tempo to make sure I hit my target. Sweat poured, teeth grinded, legs pumped and blood boiled. I looked beautiful.

Then out the corner of my eye newbie is waving at me

I ignore him.

He then starts waving the TV remote control in my face.

I take off my headphones..

newbie: - ‘do you mind if I change the TV channel?’
me - ‘WHAT???? ( I hadn’t even noticed there was a TV) - I dont give a rats ass!!!!!’

then the bit that sent me into a rage:

newbie: ‘Australian huh?’

My rage levels, already on red alert from exhaustion and a lack of oxygen boiled over and went into overdrive. I half lunged half fell off the cross trainer and made a grab for the idiot newbie.

I was honestly ready to kill him.

My outstretched arms JUST missed him as he turned and jumped off the machine, still blissfully unaware of how close he was to death.

I hated him so much I had to wake up early this morning to fit in a bit more hate time, because there are not enough hours in the day.

So perhaps now that I`ve hit THE BIG Three (uh) oh I`ll begin to mellow a bit more.

But if I were you I wouldn’t bank on it and if you see me in the gym ripping it up big time I`d keep well clear

and most certainly dont wave any TV remote controls in my face…

but never ever ever call me Australian.

Tomorrow is the end of the world as I know it.

I turn 30.

Yes, this is the last post I will be making in my twenties.

Which means the real reason for me moving to California has become clear. If I had stayed in the UK then I would have (at current time of writing) just over 8 hours remaining before I hit the big THREE OH.

On the other hand, if I had decided to accept the job I was offered in Australia rather than the one I opted for in California, I would have turned thirty yesterday.

So by moving to California I have extended my life.

How long can I keep old age at bay?

I`m gong to get on monster.com and see if I can get me a job in Samoa.

That’ll keep me in the twenties for another three hours at least.

Yesterday morning, as suspected, my shipment from the UK arrived here in the US.

It was all very exciting. The thing is that as the packers arrived back in my flat in Edinburgh in October last year I hadn’t really given much thought about what I wanted to have shipped over here. I kind of ended up just walking about the place pointing at things more or less at random which the team them took and wrapped up and put away in cardboard boxes.

I liked it. It gave me a sense of power. I caught my inner monologue shouting ‘yes!!!!! I control packing monkey!!!!!’

Simple things please me it seems.

So I started unpacking the boxes yesterday with the same feeling of opening gifts at Christmas, although technically it was all my stuff in the first place.

There was quite a bit of stuff I had forgotten that I`d packed. My favourite ‘Incredibles’ mug, my dalek alarm clock, K9 cookie jar etc etc. The main thing I was waiting for though was my mood lighting, lava lamp and Clavinova (electric piano).

So imagine how excited I was to plug each of them into the mains…..

and find out that none of them worked.

Gutted.

Insufficient power!!!! - again.

The piano didn’t work at all. The mood lighting only works with red colours and the lava lamp is so dim that it never gets hot enough to melt the wax!!!!

GGGRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!

So I`m off today to buy a few power converters. I`m sure nothing can go wrong.

I didn’t go and buy them yesterday because I was up in Snow Summit skiing.

A great time it was too. Although we needed quite a vehicle to get 3 loads of ski equipment up the mountain in icy conditions.

The Hummer just about made it.

:)

One of the terms and conditions in my contract is that the company will ’ship out up to 230kg’ of my personal belongings to my permanent residence while living outside of the UK. There are some conditions, for example they will not ship out a car etc etc, but there is no deadline in the contract for when the shipment needs to take place.

So last October, some 18 months after leaving the UK for the OC I decided to take up the offer and had a few things collected from my place in Edinburgh.

A bean bag.
Computer monitor.
A chair
a piano

just a few bits and bobs.

The delivery team arrived, packaged everything up and took it all away ready to be shipped out to my address in California.

Then I get back to work in Paris and get a frantic phone call from my manager. Without going into too much detail and to cut a fairly long story short, my company has decided that they wont pay to have my items shipped out for me as its too far into the contract and if I wanted them so badly out in California I should have had them shipped some time ago.

I pointed out that there was no time limit on the contract, that other staff had things shipped out just weeks before me and that I had acted well above board with the entire process, going through HR and following instructions to the letter.

I was told they would not pay the 5000 pounds shipping fee, case closed.

Eventually after 2 weeks passed I was told that the company would agree to keep my items in storage for me while I was abroad. They seemed to think that I should be grateful for this too.

I left it at that. Pick and choose your battles I always say. I had bigger fish to fry.

Fast forward to yesterday afternoon. Sat at my desk here at work and I get a phone call that went smoething like this:

me - ‘Good afternoon, Edinburgh festival Grinch here’
caller - ‘ Hello Mr Grinch, just letting you know that your air shipment from the UK has arrived in Corona California and wanted to know which date you want the package to be delivered to your address in Fullerton’
me - ‘Whoooooooaaaaaaaaaa????’
caller - long pause.

So something has been shipped over from the UK for me. I`ve heard nothing from my company, so god knows whats coming over.

Its going to be fun finding out though.

The container arrives tomorrow morning.

Wednesday saw me arrive back in the OC for the first time since I left back on 2nd October last year.

Already I`m starting to get annoyed.

Which is a shame really because things started off pretty well. Sat in Heathrow terminal 5 I found a bar that served Deuchars IPA which is one of my favourite beers and impossible to find in southern Califonrnia, so I filled myself up with a few pints and jumped onto my plane headed for Los Angeles. I was in no rush to get on the plane. I had already booked my seats the day before using the BA website and I knew I already had the seats next to the emergency exit, not that I`m paranoid, its just that those seats always give you extra leg room.

I sat down and got myself ready for the 11 hour flight.

Then the baby next to me started crying.

and crying

and carried on crying.

The urge to kill started to rise.

Then the hostess came along and asked if I wouldn’t mind giving up my seat so that a family that had been separated could all sit together. I was offered a regular seat a few rows back.

I refused.

So she upgraded me to Premium Economy.

Nice.

So 11 comfortable hours later I arrived back in my cobweb covered apartment and to the joys of the local beers.

Bud Light - I found a few cans left over in the fridge and opened one. Three months away in Europe enjoying some of the best beer in the world and here I was back on the fizzy piss. Honestly, if you`ve never had bud light, its worth your while trying it, it`ll make Fosters taste like premium Belgium beer.

The urge to kill grew stronger.

So to calm down this weekend I went off to the beach. It was 28C, clear sky and lovely.

Not bad for January huh?

Then I got a cab - taxi - back to the apartment and I was chatting to the driver, who was not the sharpest tool in the box. The ‘conversation’ went like this:

him - ‘not seen you in a while’
me - ‘nope, I`ve been in Europe the past 3 months.’
him - ‘well you missed all the cold weather here’
me - ‘well it got down to about minus 9 Celsius back home’
him - ‘wow, I guess that must be below freezing point huh?’
me - ‘…………………………’

Urge to kill rising!!!

Its that time of year again when all the fat losers head on down to my gym in a pathetic and pointless dream of becoming more like myself.

Every single year its the same.

Fortunately for me though I fly back to Southern California tomorrow morning where people dont tend to go for the January sales down at their local gym - they head to their nearest plastic surgeon instead.

I prefer that, it keeps the gym clear of losers and out of my way.

This morning for instance I was down the gym ripping it up, massive style, showing everyone how it was done, beating up new members, telling them they are wasting their time and money - just my usual routine. In the 2 hours I was there they had 12 new people being shown around the gym. I would bet my bottom dollar that come March only 1 or 2 will be still actively using the gym.

All 12 will still be paying though.

Every year the same - people sign up for the 6 month contract and after 3 weeks they never see the gym again.

So this year if you`re really thinking of joining the gym just to fulfil some new years resolution, please dont bother. It`ll end up costing you an arm and a leg, you wont last the distance.

But more importantly, you`ll be getting in my way!

Picking up from my post of Last Friday and my chaotic adventure of trying to get from Glons in Belgium, to Liege then on to Paris, collect my things from my apartment, get a train to Paris CDG airport and then catch a flight to Liverpool.

Things were going badly, but after I arrived in Paris just after 4 and did not need to be on a train until about 7:30; plenty of time to get back to my place, pack up the last of my things, grab a bite to eat, call a cab and get my train to the airport. Loads of time, stress time was over, it was time for Christmas and relaxing.

That was the plan.

So imagine my surprise when I opened the front door to my apartment in Paris and found the lights already switched on, a few pairs of women’s boots in the hallway, an angry Australian guy and my suitcase waiting at the door.

Happy I was not.

It seems as though the people I book my apartments through either double booked my apartment with someone else for the last day, or expected me to be out by 7am on the last day. Considering I`d been in the apartment for about 3 months you’d like to think someone might have mentioned something about it before.

Instead of waiting for me to get back to pack up my things the apartment company had sent some cleaners around to pack up my things into my suitcase ready for me to collect. The problem with that, apart from the small fact of having complete strangers go through all my stuff, is that they were not to know what in the apartment was mine, and what was not. Furthermore the angry Australian seemed reluctant to allow me anywhere into the apartment beyond the front hall, so this meant I had to repack my suitcase with things I had brought back from Belgium right in front of him in the hallway, while all the time swearing and cursing the apartment renting company.

I couldn’t even go in for a sit down and to order a cab, so after I hastily re-arranged my backpack and suitcase I took off on the 2 mile - yes - 2 MILE walk to the train station. Calling a cab on the streets in Paris on a Friday night is not an option. Fortunately I was so angry with the rental company that it gave me the energy to lug my suitcase over the cobbled streets of Paris and to ‘The Great Canadian’ pub just before the train station. I stopped for a pint and a burger and to regroup and compose myself, and also to change my shirt which was soaking with sweat, but had already started to freeze due to the low temperatures outside.

Slightly happier after being fed and beered I headed off to get my train, and for the first time that day things were going well. The speedy train to the airport arrived within 30 seconds on being on the platform, the train was not over-crowded and we pulled away in to the Paris underground.

and stopped.

and stayed stopped.

and waited and waited.

With no announcements.

For half an hour.

Then eventually we moved into the busiest station in Paris, Gare du Nord, where the train stopped and picked up passengers that would normally have occupied 4 trains. Sardines in a can - more like particles in a black hole. Of course I was the most popular guy there with my large backpack and suitcase which was too big to get into the overhead compartments.

I held it together just about long enough to get to the airport without killing anyone, and checked into my flight on time.

Then I went through security, and had to have my bags inspected. It turns out that in my flap back in the apartment I had forgotten some of the things I had in the backpack that could not go through security, like liquids etc etc. So some things I had bought for Christmas for people back in the UK had to be left behind at Paris airport.

Not a good day.

But I got back to Liverpool on time and met my parents who brought me back home to enjoy Christmas.

Which I did spectacularly.

And had a great New Year too.

Happy New Year!!!!

Shortly it will be 2 years since I left Edinburgh and moved to Southern California. There have been ups and downs, particularly this second year which has been a roller-coaster from start to end. Generally though I`ve enjoyed my time in the OC and the various places I`ve been to see and experience. I hope next year will continue in much the same way, although I`d like the opportunity to see more of the US, particularly a trip to New York and Yellowstone still appeal strongly.

Things have been tough though. The trouble is that over the last 2 years I`ve had quite literally dozens of people come visit me either in the US or in Paris, and before I go on let me just say that I`ve enjoyed every single one of the visits no end. The thing is that when people come to visit its a holiday for them, its just normal time for me, which means I have to get up to go to work each morning while they enjoy their holiday. People generally leave after the visit with a one sided view of how things are if you move abroad from the UK. They remember the sunshine, the hot tub, the balcony, the great places to eat drink and go to hang out …. then they think they should do the same.

There’s only one problem with that theory. Moving abroad is really not that easy. Coming over for a visit is one thing. Sticking it out is a whole other kettle of fish.

Just for example, a few things that I had to figure out.

Where am I going to live?
How do I pay bills in another country?
Is there an internet connection that will work?
Do I know anyone out there?
How will I feel not being able to phone home when I want due to time zone differences?
What laws will be different out there which might be perfectly reasonable to me, but unacceptable to the local culture?

Things were relatively easy for me as my company figured out most of this for me in advance, but if I was doing it all alone…..

….. and in a country where there might be a language barrier too…..

…. all I can think about is that I wouldn’t go rushing into things without thinking them through long and hard first.

Not today, obviously, that was last week, but before I continue with the story on how I was evicted, and as its still the festive period I thought I`d give an account on how I spent Christmas day.

As a quick side note I was pleasantly surprised when I caught up with a mate of mine yesterday who I had not seen in about a year when he greeted me with a full on ‘Happy Christmas’. At last someone else that recognises that Christmas goes on until at least the end of the year rather than being all over after the big day itself.

Anyway, back to that big day. This year followed the same pattern as pretty every Christmas. I started the day with a hangover after drinking heavily the previous evening down at The Tap with mates. I always get picked up by my parents who attend the midnight church service at the local church just down the road. I consider the Tap to be a church too ….. of sorts.

Hangovers on Christmas day though dont last long as the first drink of the day is with breakfast. A bottle of champagne is opened and started was we munch down the traditional smoked salmon and scrambled eggs on toast. This year I was the breakfast chef.

Luckily each year my mum cooks the turkey and ices the cake on Christmas Eve to take some of the stress away from the day to follow.

The icing of the cake is always awesome. She always does it after a good couple of whiskies and the icing looks just like a scene from the north pole….. its not meant too, it just always turns out that way.

The rest of the champagne is quaffed wile each opening one gift from under the tree. My parents went first:

I was rather more impressed with that Santa brought for me this year:

To prevent the booze wearing off my dad and I head on down to the local pub, just a couple of hundred meters away at very most. Some years you cant even get in, last year the place was empty. This year was somewhere in the middle

We stay for a couple then head back for the big Christmas meal which has been prepared by mum, mainly because if it was left to my dad we would end up eating turkey flavour crisps, and if it was me we`d have low fat turkey and a glass of mulled protein powder shake to wash it down with. Thank the lord for mum and her cooking:

A starter of assorted seafood

Before the main meal itself:

I dont have any pictures of the pudding because it was trifle and had about 2 bottles of rum in it and I kind of zoned out for a bit, but came around for long enough to realise that it was present opening time. A few years ago we all decided that Christmas was a bit of a damp squid after dinner and all the gifts had already been opened, so its been a tradition of late to leave the rest of the gifts unopened until after dinner to leave us something to look forward to.

The main thing my dad and I bought for my mum was a table tennis table. She has been after one for years and used to play all the time at work - well not all the time, but most of it.

I decided not to play, as I had both my hands reserved for drinking purposes.

My mum and I got my dad an iTouch, which, according to my mum is ‘much better than one of those Blueberries’ I think she might be right there.

After all the eating and drinking, mostly drinking my brain automatically shifted back into gym mode, not having been to one in over 24 hours was starting to make me have funny twitches.

So I prescribed exercise for my mother. A whole bunch of sit ups, oblique crunches and other abb exercises. I think she enjoyed it:

To end a day full of excess drinking what could be better than trying to start a bonfire? Nothing could go wrong, and for once when I say that I was right. We sat out on the cold Christmas night with the patio heater on full blast and roasted some horse chestnuts on top of the roaring chimenea.

And had a few more drinks.

Of course.

What did you expect.

Its Christmas.

And it still is – and if you disagree then you are just wrong…..

…. or just slightly less of a child than I still am

Posts here have been a bit on the infrequent side of late, as you may or may not have noticed. This is due to a big list of reasons, most of which none of you would be interested in hearing. Mainly due to me having friends come visit me in Paris, being off work ill and having bad news given to me day after day.

And I was sent to work in Belgium last week with just 1 days notice.

Very nice it was too. I stayed in a place about 20 miles away from Liege in Pietersheim chateaux in the middle of nowhere.

I travelled across from Paris to Liege on the Monday morning, taking just over 2 hours on the ultra high speed trains, that were not only on time, and very comfortable, but also very affordable and with a well stocked bar. The woman serving at the bar even gave me the happy hour prices even though it was not happy hour for a good few hours. I think that she liked me - she also thought I was German despite the fact I spoke French and she could not speak English or French. Oh well, whatever works.

Anyway, work that week was good. The food in Belgium seemed mostly to be chips that had been already fried, but were given a second trip to the bottom of the deep fat fryer when you ordered a portion of them, served with a large dollop of mayonnaise on top.

The beer though was outstanding. Most people from the UK think of Belgium beer and will imagine Leffe or Hoegaarden. In Belgium these 2 are the Carling and Tennants of the UK. Common as much and generally avoided in favour of ‘real beer’ which, according to the Belgium is served in the most ridiculous glasses imaginable, always in half pints, mainly because the glasses would be too expensive otherwise and because most of the beer is at least 8 percent.

I found that out the hard way.

Twice.

So after 4 days of drinking rocket fuel from exotic flower vases and eating double fried chips it was time to leave.

And that was Friday:

Firstly my taxi arrived at the chateaux an hour early. Not being in any mood to much about I sent it away and ordered another for the correct time. I jumped in and we headed right for a 5km traffic jam. Not exactly the thing you need when you have a train to catch. The ride ended up costing 100 euros for a 20 mile journey. Nice.

Next up was the train to Paris which nice. Things were going well, I had a nice beer on the train, I had 4 hours to get back to my apartment, pack up a few remaining things, grab a quick bite to eat in a local cafe and grab a cab to Paris CDG airport and on to Liverpool for Christmas.

Life was good again.

That was until I got back to my apartment in Paris and found the lights on……

….. and a whole new family moved in, with all my stuff sitting at the front door and an angry Australian man asking what the hell I was doing in HIS apartment.

It turns out I had been evicted…..

(to be continued)

Posts have been, shall we say, a little on the light side this month. To be fair this has not really been my fault. Hopefully I`ll get more of a chance over the next few days to do some retro posting about the craziness of the past little while and how I ended up working in Belgium last week at 10 minutes notice.

Maybe.

But not today, because today is Christmas day and all I want to do is sit infront of the fire, watch Christmas TV and drink some fancy French wine.

I suggest you do the same.

Happy Christmas.

Not me of course, I`m still the most perfectly sculpted human being any of you are likely to ever come across… (I`m still as humble as ever)

I am instead referring to the eating variety.

About 5 years ago I went, each Sunday, to The Kings Wark in Leith, Edinburgh. I never even bothered looking at the menu. I knew what I wanted and I always ordered the same thing. A pint of Deuchars to go along side my portion of moules mariniere.

It was gorgeous and the perfect way to end the weekend in style.

I did this for nearly a year and I remember clearly the day my mussel infatuation ended.

Well, strictly speaking I remember the day after, and so do probably most of my colleagues at the time, because on that day I filled up all the toilets in the gents with semi digested mussels, and both of the sinks too.

I was bi-directionally sick for 2 days constantly.

I was so ill that my boss, who was notorious for his scepticism over staff illness ordered me to go home. I spent the next 2 days in bed.

The mussels had me well and truly beaten.

That was the last time I ordered mussels in a restaurant.

Until yesterday, when I plucked up enough courage to order moules mariniere once again.

They arrived perfectly cooked, wonderfully presented, and best of all, they were free,

The sad thing is…. I couldn’t enjoy them. My experience with mussels back in 2004 was so traumatising that I now know that it has put me off them for life.

Which made me think, what if I get food poisoning off my next favourite food, and the one after, and then the one after that? When I`m 80 will I only ever be able to eat carrots?

One thing is for certain. I`ll certainly not be getting any food poisoning off mussels again.

They are off my menu.

Forever….
as well as brussels sprouts at Christmas - you hear me mother????

Back in February I made a post about becoming a bit more french. This did not last long. Shortly after the post I returned to California and easily slipped back into my American slippers and carried on munching on jelly sandwiches and donuts.

This time things have become serious.

I`ve been in Paris now since 2nd October and aside from my 2 week stint in the UK at the end of October and start of November I`ll be here pretty much uninterrupted until the end of the year.

And boy is it beginning to show.

2 days ago I was doing my weekly shop in Monoprix and found that when I got to the checkout that I`d already eaten a full size French loaf while walking around the shop. I had to give over the empty paper bag to the checkout girl so she could charge me. I`d eaten THE WHOLE THING while waking about picking up other items.

It turns out this is VERY French.

Not only that but yesterday I took a full 15 minutes choosing a bottle of wine at the newsagents, reading all the labels. I audibly scoffed when I accidentally wondered into the token Australian wine section and picked up a Shiraz by mistake.

On average I`m getting through 3 blocks of cheese per week, just as snack food.

I even started swearing in French under my breath on the train when it was announced over the PA that there would be delays on the journey.

More worryingly I`m even drinking wine at lunch time at work.

I`m interested to see what I do next.

Perhaps I`ll just munch on a caisson and try to invade Spain.

(oh, and btw - the wine that I took ages deciding over, turned out to be rubbish)

I`m now back in Paris after 2 weeks in the UK visiting Merseyside, Wales, Edinburgh and Aberdeen.

And a great 2 weeks it was too.

I flew back to Paris on Sunday evening and moved my things into the apartment that I`ll be staying at for only 1 week. Its an amazing place though, one that I specifically requested to stay at, primarily for the view from the balcony:

I am very very pleased with it, actually, thats not quite true, there is a small problem with the apartment, I mean a very small problem. It seems as though the person who decorated it forgot to put in a toilet - until the very last moment.

Yep, this must be the worlds smallest toilet. I can barely sit down in there when the door is closed…

and there is not much air, which is a real problem for me this weekend…..

I plan on going for a curry on Friday night …….

I`ll have to be sure not to commit and accidental suicide on Saturday morning.

OK here it is. I`m a fan of Doctor Who. A big fan. A VERY big fan. Always have been, always will be. I first started watching it when I was 18 months old back in 1980 when Tom Baker was still in charge of the Tardis. Like a real fan I have pretty much all of the merchandise going you could possibly imagine. All the cookie jars, remote control K9s. a replica sonic screw driver (the old one) cast in solid bronze. a quarter scale police box, the list is pretty much endless.

Only just a few moments ago did I finish booking my tickets for the next Gallifrey one convention in LA next February.

So imagine my excitement when I find out that they`ve re-opened the Doctor Who exhibition that is just a few miles up the road from my parents house where I was staying last week.

Very excited indeed. So last Monday I went off and spent the day at Spaceport.

I have been to a good number of Doctor Who exhibitions in the past, some good, some average, and I have to say I was pretty impressed with what this had to offer.

Firstly its not just a Doctor Who exhibition. As the name suggests, and as their website says:

Spaceport is a visitor attraction which takes you on an inspirational journey through space, as you walk through several themed galleries, which all feature a large variety of interactive hands-on exhibits and audio visual experiences.

But to be honest most people ignored most of the other attractions, including the pretty good planetarium show and head straight upstairs to the show piece.

So here are some of the pieces on show:
The Tardis

He’s seen better days ….. K9 too

The gas masks used in The Empy Child and The Doctor Dances.

The Ood

The new Sontaran (they had the old costume there too).

The Cybermen.

And of course, the Daleks.

Its a great display of stuff, pretty much all from the new series, but it does not shy away from the old series and points out that the Daleks first appeared on TV back in 1963 and the cybermen were just a couple of years after. There is also an old Sontaran costume on display next to the new version and an old Cyber helmet from 1967. Although if you are looking for a real mixture of classic series and new series you should look no further than the exhibition in Blackpool.

All in all though, Spaceport was a great experience, the whole thing was 9 quid per person and I would go back tomorrow - particularly if my dad paid for me to get in again

Just when things had calmed down and I thought I had my life under control again Wednesday happened.

Until then my plan for the rest of the year had been simple. A week in Merseyside, a week in Edinburgh then back to Paris until the end of the year with a trip to Bruges and Amsterdam thrown in for good measure. Flights booked, accommodation paid for, everything done, all I needed to do was relax and enjoy my time off.

Then while walking around Chester my phone rings.Its my boss in Paris.

James: “Hey Marc, are you drinking?”
Me: “No mate, just walking about town”
James: “Well, you`ll want to start drinking soon, I`ve got some bad news for you”
Me: “Go on then…..”
James: “A**** have pulled the plug on funding and are asking everyone in Paris to return to California immediately”

Cue my hissy fit and much stamping of feet, moaning and complaining and generally setting me in a bad mood all day.

My strop lasted all day. I even carried my mood with me into the pub when I started chatting to the people on the table next to me. I explained the whole ting and the guy looked at me, put down his pint and said:

“So let me get this straight, you`re moaning because you have to leave here and go back to work in Southern California until the end of the year instead of going to Paris?”

Someone walked into the saloon where I was drinking at the time and the icy wind hit me full in the face.

Then reality hit me. Was I really complaining about having to go back to the OC for the winter? Jeez, things could be a lot worse, at least I still had a job.

I wonder what I`ll complain about next. Perhaps I`ll complain that my diamond slippers at too tight.

Anyway, its all irrelevant now. Later on in the pub I got a call from my boss saying things had gone back to Plan A and I was in Paris for the rest of the year after all.

Life in the fast lane…… rock ‘n’ roll.

At the start of this week my plans for the remainder of this year were simple. Leave Paris for Liverpool this Saturday. Stay with my parents for a week, then head up to Edinburgh and Aberdeen for another week and then head back over to Paris for the night before Flying back to California ………. breath ………. stay in California for 3 weeks then fly back to Paris for the rest of the year.

See … simple.

Now my company wants to change all that.

They want me to come back to Paris after my trip to the UK, and stay in Paris until the end of the year, without returning to California.

Surely thats less complicated huh? Well I thought so too until I started trying to change my flights. I phoned DELTA airlines to push back my return flight from 10th November until 4th January, expecting to have to pay a nominal fee.

Instead they quoted me a phenomenal fee.

1600 dollars to move a flight back a couple of months.

Convinced there must be better options I start looking at other airlines to book a brand new single trip flight.

British Airways - 849 pounds.
Virgin Atlantic - 849 pounds
New Zealand airlines - 860 pounds
DELTA - 2000 dollars

I checked them all. Every single carrier cost well over 800 pounds for a single trip from London to LAX on 4th January 2009.

Then, more or less by accident I tried the same flight, but with a return flight on 28th January.

The results were surprising. Remember are prices for exactly the same outbound flight as above, but with a return flight booked for some random day in the future:

British Airways - 430 pounds.
Virgin Atlantic - 397 pounds
New Zealand airlines - 430 pounds

Seriously. Try it yourself if you dont believe me. None of this makes any sense. This of course means I`ll be buying a round trip ticket and I have absolutely no intention whatsoever of using the return leg.

So if any of you fancy a flight from LAX to London at some point in January just let me know, I`ve a free ticket.

Well more precisely I have a ticket that cost me minus 400 pounds.

Last weekend my parents flew over to Paris from Liverpool’s John Lennon airport. Getting the pair of them over to the French capital was something of a miracle. My dad has a fear of flying and suffers from claustrophobia, so getting on a small plane is just about the worst thing he could do. My mother has no such problems, but has an inherent dislike of the French bordering on the extreme.

So to exorcise my mum’s French daemons I spent the whole weekend taking them around all of Paris’ major sightseeing attractions:

First up was a climb to the top of Notre Dame and an up close view of the gargoyles

Next up was the Louvre, which too it seems has gargoyles:

Then the day after, after some much needed recovery in the Parisian bars was the big one, the Eiffel Tower itself:

Where you can get a pretty darn good view of the whole of Paris:

Which just left the trip to the top of the Arc de Triomphe:

So after walking up more than a thousand steps all weekend I`m refusing to climb up any more this coming one when my best mate arrives in town with his girlfriend Sandra…

which is why I`m taking them underground to the Catacombs

Last night I left the pub after a feeeeew ales and set off back to my apartment. Along the way a nice young French lady stopped me in the street and asked, in French of course, if she might buy some cigarettes from me.

I replied in fluent french of course.

Fluent french that is after a few beers.

So intead of saying ‘Je suis désolé je ne suis pas un fumeur’ - I am sorry I am not a smoker, I got my tenses a little muddled and came out with the classic line:

‘Je suis désolé je ne suis pas fumé’ - which literally means, ‘I am sorry, I am not smoked’.

I felt I deserved the applause I received from her and her friends.

I suggest you all try and get that sentence in as often as possible into every day conversation.

On the upside I am delighted with my apartment in Paris. Its less than 5 mins walk to the Seine and a view of Notre Dame and only 10 minutes walk to the entrance of the Louvre.

The place itself is also very nice indeed.

My Front door:

The upstairs living room:

Dining room and spiral staircase to ‘the cave’

The Bat-hroom

I`m quite sure the place is haunted too. I keep hearing footsteps in the night going up and down the staircase. Well its either ghosts or French locals just waiting to hear what pearly words of wisdom I`ll come out with next.

In a little more than 24 hours I`ll be on my way over to LA international airport and boarding an Air France Flight direct to Paris Charles de Galle.

I`m going to be out of California for nearly 6 weeks, which reminds me I should really try and empty out my fridge….

As always when in Paris I`m staying at one of the apartments offered by the nice folk at Parisian Flat.

This time, and at my own request, I`m staying in a duplex apartment built in 1595 for Henry IV called Rue Dauphine.

And I`m taking my Batman t-shirt with me.

Because the lower floor of the apartment is a vaulted cellar with stone walls.

Just like a cave.

All I need now is a cape……

In a little more than 48 hours I`ll start my trip back to Europe. It`ll be my first trip back to the continent since my emergency last minute departure back on 29th April when I was not even sure if could even get back in to the USA. This time I`ll be out in Paris for 3 weeks, back in the UK for a couple and then returning back to California …… where I`ll stay until Thanksgiving then head back to Paris for the rest of the year.

So not much time left here in the USA this year then.

So I have been making the most of it.

What could be more American than a good ole BBQ in the sun?

So I`ve had 3 in the past 3 days.

Saturday saw me go to Lucille’s bbq Which was very nice, and not too pricey either.

Sunday was the big one we had waited for, for some time. The BBQ around at Fred’s place. Fred is a colleague without whom we would not be back over here in the USA, such a massive help he was in getting our visa situation resolved.

Although I think he only had us around to show off his new back yard.

Fred certainly knows how to throw a BBQ.

Then to complete the BBQ hat-trick (btw, no-one in the US knows what a hat-trick is) Monday night was the old tried and tested BBQ at Brains bar.

The local bar puts on a bbq every Monday night during the NFL season, and we make a habit of being there every single time picking up our 2 dollar steak tip sandwiches, 1 dollar hot dogs and 2 dollar beers.

So now I`m done with BBQs, which is a good thing because as of Thursday its frogs legs and snails all the way.

BBQd of course.

At last I have some closure on the farcical treatment my hair received back in March this year.

Some of you will remember my ‘hair shocker’ treatment when I went into a hair stylist and asked for my ‘tips to be done blonde’. A long story short is that because the people working there did not understand English I ended up looking like Stripe from Gremlins.

Now I know why.

It turns out that the people who own the butchers shop – I mean hair stylist are from Vietnam.

Tips means Black in Vietnamese.

So I went in asking for my hair to be black and blonde, which to be fair is exactly what I got.

I still think I`ll try somewhere else next time though.

I`ve made it back from my 4th trip to Vegas in the past 14 or so months.

We headed out on our drive across the Mojave desert on Sunday and returned on Wednesday afternoon, amazingly still with some cash left in the bank, unlike the last trip I took to the Disneyland for Adults.

This was a Vegas trip entirely different (well almost) to the 3 that had gone before. Not least by the fact that I wont have to live off my toe nails until my next pay day. This trip was actually me tackling a list of things I wanted to do in Vegas, but never got around to in previous trips because of spending the entire time drunk or passed out.

With a strict budget in mind I booked myself into a Tower room at the Excalibur hotel and casino, the one that looks like a castle:

Great value for money it was too. Nice big room, King bed, 42 inch plasma tele, big shower and not a bad view:

all for 51 dollars a night. That also included 25 dollars in vouchers for restaurants in the hotel and 2 free spa passes.

Sunday was spent wondering the strip and finding lots of cool free stuff to do; like a trip up to ‘The Mix’ nightclub at the top of Mandalay Bay. 60 odd stories up gives you an awesome view of the Vegas strip. Cant remember too much more after that which means I must have drunk too much.

Monday however was a fun packed day. Up, showered and breakfasted I set off to the Tropicana casino and inparticular towards the Titanic exhibition http://www.tropicanalv.com/ent_titanic.asp.

A great experience it was too. Over 4000 artifacts raised from the wreck itself including what was left of the …… whatever the boat equivalent of a steering wheel is that was used to (try) and get the ship out of the way of that pesky iceberg.

I have to say I was disappointed to find out that the ‘Big Piece’ (13 tone part of the Titanic bow raised in 1998) was not on show, but they had a re-creation of the grand staircase and a mock up of the Titanic’s decks with the air con simulating the temperature the air would have been on 14th April 1912 when it hit the iceberg.

After all that I took at trip to the Munich Hofbrauhaus – German beer hall where everything starts to get a bit hazy. My last memory there is been determined to sample every single one of their beers:

Not sure how that one went, but judging by the fact that I only have sporadic memories of being in http://www.mirage.com/nightlife/jet.aspx Jet nightclub at the Mirage, voted best nightclub in Vegas 2008, then its fair to say things went rather well, and thinking about it, that this trip was not a million miles away from the others after all.

By Tuesday I need to just chill out and relax, so a day by the pool was in order, and with the spare cash I had left over I booked out a cabana.

Just 75 dollars for the whole day got you your own personal cabana bith room enough to easily occupy 5, with a 42 inch plasma tele, a sofa, an electric roof fan, free towels and pool rafts, and a fridge stocked with water and fruit juice which they replenished throughout the day.

Not a bad way to spend a sunny Tuesday afternoon.

The evening saw me venture into old town Vegas, Freemont street is pretty much how you think the place would have looked back in the day. Everywhere there are signs for 8 dollar prime rib, 2 dollar beers and promises of ‘eating free’ – as long as you are gambling that is. I was not interested in any of the above, but I was interested in the light show. Its shown on a giant canopay 90 feet high and 1400 long housing 12 million LEDs. There is a ‘show’ every hour on the hour that lasts for about 10 minutes. I took a video here:

But to be honest it doesn’t do it justice. You just have to experience it for yourself.

So that was it really, A few beers later on the Tuesday night, a spot of gambling and up we were for our return trip across the Mojave desert on Wednesday morning.

I wonder what trip 5 will be like…..

Well it seems that my new visa works. I did a quick pop over to Tijuana, Mexico a few days back and managed to cross back into the US without the immigration giving me any more hassle than telling me that I looked like Billy Idol. I didn’t even have to give my fingerprints.

Sweet.

Good thing that the visa works too. One of my colleagues, Mat has been stranded in Paris since our visa fiasco kicked off way back at the start of April. Unluckily for him his old B1 visa has the now famous “CANCELLED WITHOUT PREJUDICE” stamp all over it so he could not travel back with me and Dave on 29th April. So he has been sat there in Paris ever since.

And so has his apartment in California.

You see Mat thought, like the rest of us, that the visa extension was a formality, and had no idea of the craziness which was to follow; hence he travelled to London with clothes enough only for a few days.

Now he’s been there for 6 months.

The company has graciously given him 100 pounds to spend on new clothes. I guess he must have had to pay for the other shoe himself.

Happily for Mat though his visa fiasco should soon too be over and he will be returning to Orange County and back to his apartment.

Which has not been cleaned for 6 months….

…. nor has it had the fridge cleaned out for 6 months.

…… and I`m fairly sure the air con has not been on for the whole summer.

I don’t really fancy being around when he opens the front door for the first time.

I`m fairly sure there`ll be some pythons in the trees, and a tiger sat on the sofa watching tele smoking a pipe.

I don’t even want to think what’ll happen when he opens the fridge.

I suspect that the milk may start talking to him.

I bet the blue brae wont be doing too well either…. especially considering that it started out in life as a cheddar.

At very long last my visa nightmare which started on 8th April this year is finally over.

A few days ago my passport arrived back from the US State Department where it had been waiting to be processed for the past 11 weeks. All was well, I thought, but of course there was one final moment of agony when I did open the passport.

There was a visa in there …. but it had the words “CANCELED WITHOUT PREJUDICE” stamped all over it in huge letters.

Oh god no.

Fortunately before the heart attack kicked in I flipped to he back of the passport and there it was; my lovely shiny new NATO5 diplomatic visa.

So its official, I am now a diplomat. Of course I tired out my new found powers immediately, but sadly it turns out that being a diplomat does not get you served first at the bar, nor does it get you a free lap dance at the local strip club.

Its hardly worth having really. All its good for it seems is being able to live in the US permanently….

… oh, and allows me to apply for a green card, which is the next step……

I`m just about recovering from the past week. For the past 2 weeks my best mate Chris and his girlfriend have been over visiting from the UK and our feet have barely touched the ground — literally.

The first Thursday saw me take in my first ever Major League Soccer match. The Los Angeles derby between Chivas USA and The LA Galaxy featuring a certain David Beckham at the LA Home Depot stadium:

I`ll spare you the details on that, other than to say that the game finished 2-2 and that I`m fairly sure even I could get a game for either side. Yes - they were both THAT good.

The next day, or Friday as its sometimes called, saw me fly over to Vegas from San Diego to catch up with the guys who had left the day earlier to take in a tour of the Grand Canyon. Friday was good, we checked into our King suite at the MGM Grand and then headed down to the Grand Buffet - 30 bucks all you can eat, every type of food known to man kind - and a few things unknown as well.

Saturday was spent wandering the strip waiting for the evening and our night time helicopter tour of the strip. The good thing is that you can help yourself to champagne while you wait for the helicopter to get ready. Between the 4 of us we got through 3 bottles of champagne in 15 minutes. Not bad.

Then the tour.

For 80 dollars each including tax yoou could not ask for more. The views were amazing and I`d strongly recommend it for anyone going to Vegas.

I cant remember much after the helicopter tour, apart from a vague poorly lit memory of Chris and I smoking cigars and trying to do a monopoly board pub crawl along the Vegas Strip.

Sunday started with the hangover from hell. Fortunately Vegas is prepared for such things and has the perfect hangover cure: The Oxygen bar

After breathing scented oxygen and being massaged for half an hour we were ready to go…… to The Stratosphere and a ride on the Big Shot. I have never been so scared in my life. This is a roller coaster that shoots you right up in the air which is already on top of the tallest building in Western America.

They actually have 3 rides on top of the Stratosphere. The Big Shot, Insanity, and quite possibly the only ride in the world which I was too scared to even consider attempting, X-Scream.

This is a roller coaster that literally drops you off the side of the top of the building with nothing to hold you in apart from a bar over your waist. I was a little slow off the mark taking the picture, but this is the ride as viewed from the observation deck below a couple of seconds after the ride had been pulled back up a few feet to take them back.

After a couple of days ‘relaxing’ (read drinking) back in Fullerton we were all ready to go again. This time back for my 3rd attempt at 6 Flags Magic Mountain in a year. This time there was unfinished business. The past 2 occasions I`d been there had been advertising boards everywhere promoting their latest ride which would open this summer: X2.

This ride is called a 4th dimension ride and puts you under 4gs of pressure and throws you down angles of just under 90 degrees.

And this is what is looked like from my perspective. Just for the record the muffled screams you can hear throughout are coming from yours truly, and they sound that way because I was physically unable of making any other noise.

Enjoy my torture:

Now I`m back here in Fullerton, just wondering what I`ll do next…..

A few months ago I celebrated my first year of being in California and put together a video of all the most memorable things that have happened in that time. Just today I uploaded the video to youtube for you all to see:

Enjoy:

Youtube video here

I`ll have to start work on year 2 pretty soon.

So I survived my first Earthquake.

In case you have not heard, Southern California was rocked by and earthquake last Tuesday.

A reasonable sized one too it was measuring 5.4 on the richter scale, having been down graded from the original report of 5.8.

Although most media reports that the earthquake happened in down town Los Angles, the epicenter was actually about 7 miles east of where I work which is about 30 miles south east of LA.

The experience itself was quite odd. I was sat at my desk when it all started, around 11:45am,. First is just felt as though a big lorry was going past the building, but then the movement got bigger and bigger. After a few seconds the whole building was moving from side to side by a good foot or 2 and this lasted for about 10 seconds.

I really didn’t have a clue what to do either. I couldn’t remember whether to keep indoors or get outdoors, follow the example of my colleague next to me who just grabbed onto the desk and looked terrified, or just stand on my chair and pretend it was a roller coaster.

The ground continued to ‘wobble’ for about a minute after the main shock, like being on a boat. Very odd feeling indeed.

I did think that my apartment would be in a mess, but I escaped unsacthed save for a few things being thrown on the floor, kitchen cabinets being flung open and having all my pictures and mirrors hanging from funny angles:

I was listening to the radio the day after and it seems as though that the earthquake we had on Tuesday released about 1/1000th of the energy that is needed to relieve pressure on the fault lines running through California. They say its 99 percent certain that the ‘big one’ will strike at some time in the next 30 years.

I`ll make sure I know what to do when that one strikes.

Yesterday was the day I should have left the USA. I flew back to the US 3 months ago and that is as long as they gave me on my I94 when I went through customs. My final day to leave the country was 28th April 2008. I still don’t have a new visa.

The only reason I`m still here is that we filed for an extension to my current I94 which is still pending. The rules state that as long as your case is being reviewed then you are good to stay. The thing is that they could easily reject my application to extend my stay at any moment and kick me out the country within hours.

All this time I`m waiting on my new visa.

Things could get interesting. Perhaps I`ll be woken in the night by FBI agents bursting into my apartment and forcing me into an orange jump suit and packing me off to Guantanamo.

Blog updates might have to be on hold if that happens.

In other news yesterday I went to test ride my new bike, the Giant FCR 3.

I wanted to put the model through its paces before I parted with any cash. Yesterday I tried it out for speed and stopping ability.

So I turned up at the track at the shop where I was going to buy the bike, threw the beast into top gear and pedaled like a mentalist getting to a speed up to about 35 mph.

Time to test the brakes, about 15 feet from the shop wall.

It turns out that the brakes are awesome and the bike stopped almost immediately.

I did not.

I went flying over the top of the handlebars somersaulted and landed head long into the bricked up wall.

The bike was a mess too. Chain off gears mashed bars bent out of shape.

Good job no-one was there to see it.

I think next time I`ll squeeze the brakes a bit more gently rather than just grabbing them full power.

Probably .

For a country that is still harping on about Janet Jackson’s ‘wardrobe malfunction’ back in 2004 there are an awful lot of strip clubs here in California.

I have made it my personal mission to frequent each and every one of them and rate them accordingly and if last Saturday night is anything to go by, then there will have to be an awful shocker coming up to take the prize of ‘worst strip club’ in California and quite possibly the world too.

I`m talking about ‘California girls’

To be fair, I had been warned about this particular strip club before, and in particular about one of the dancers there – ‘Devon’.

Yes – she was pretty much the size of Devon.

I turned up, sat down and she was there on stage flapping about the place. I didn’t see any dollar bills on stage waiting for her to collect at the end of the show, but that did not deter Devon – oh no, she went off in search of her pay check.

No sooner had I sat down but she came up beside me and asked – ‘So did you like my show’

Panic

‘er, er, no, I mean, well, I don’t know, I`ve only just arrived’

Her smile turned to a frown, yet she said nothing.

Just stood there not moving.

She was ignoring me, ignoring her.

She wanted money.

Eventaully I caved and handed over a dollar, more in hope that if I did that she would not go up on stage again.

This wish of mine lasted the time it took me to finish my bottle of Corona.

Then she was up again, and so was I, right out the door and off to the safety of downtown Fullerton.

Next weekend we`ll hopefully pick a better place.

The bar has been set very low indeed.

I spent the recent 4th July, Independence Day / Good riddance day, down in San Diego.

Once again the morons were out in force. After initially asking me for the millionth time if I come from Australia (allegedly because I say the word ‘mate’ quite often), they then ask me if we celebrate Independence Day in the UK.

I normally just respond with the usual – yeah, but we call it good riddance day in the UK, which prompts a mixture of emotions from people. Some laugh, some cry, some look confused, and one guy looked like he was literally covered in bees.

This year however I continued my story.

“You know we`ve only lent this country back to you, don’t you? I mean, one day the mighty British Empire will rise again and claim back what is rightfully ours”

This last bit usually resulted in confusion and panic.

The thing is, I`m fairly certain it wouldn’t be too hard to claim back the US anyway. I`ve seen the state of most of the so called ‘US armed forces’ and quite frankly I think even your average UK citizen is fitter.

I think all we`d need to do to claim back this land is stand on the beeches here in California and throw donuts and muffins into the ocean. I`m fairly certain all the army boys would throw themselves in afterwards leaving the country unguarded and ripe for the picking.

I think I might try that next week.

I`ve not written in a good while. A couple of bad things have happened recently and I`ve not really felt like writing.

But I`m now back in the room.

And been fairly busy too.

Last weekend saw me take in my third trip to Disneyland with in the space of 12 months, and I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed myself too. With temperatures getting up to 106F on Saturday we left it until mid afternoon before taking the short taxi ride over to Anaheim and to the Disneyland Magic Kingdom.

The strategy seemed to work well. Going later in the day meant most of the kids had already left and the temperatures had started to drop to a comfortable 90F.

The longest we had to queue for any ride was 15 minutes which meant we were able to do all the rides at least 2 or 3 times each.

Top.

We stayed until midnight when the rides close and then headed back over to Fullerton.

Supporting the Germans:

We have a sweepstake running here in the office for the European Championships going on right now. From the random draw I managed to pick out the mighty Germany. I feel so dirty cheering them on, but everyone has a price, and in my case the price is 80 bucks.

Assuming we cruise past Turkey in the semi final I shall be spending Sunday as an Englishman supporting Germany in an American bar drinking Canadian beer.

Hopefully.

That’s if I survive Saturday night that is. I just got an email from a friend of mine. The first line of the email was this:

Hey mates! Let’s play with some liquid nitrogen this weekend. We can make some awesome ice cream and do a little other experimenting. Meanwhile, see if you can find a Nalgene bottle somewhere. They can supposedly take a lot of pressure.

Oh dear, I`ll be sure to post early next week to prove I`m still alive.

Last Friday night was pretty special. Off around Sunset Boulevard in downtown Hollywood in a limo stocked full of booze on a stag night with some top class mates, all of course wearing our drinking jackets which were bought from charity stores for less than 20 dollars.

Things don’t get much better.

Of course what happens on stag nights is forever a closely guarded secret so I`m unable to give a full report of the evenings events. But I am able to tell you some of the lessons we learned

- Being in a limo with 4 bottles of spirits and 100 bottles of beer for 9 hours means things are going to get messy.

- Not all limos have blackened out windows.

- Spearmint Rhino can be a very expensive place to be.

- Pinching a girls a*se is much less socially acceptable in Hollywood than it is in the UK.

- Bouncers over here do not have a sense of humor.

- Not all strip clubs are as liberal as Spearmint Rhino.

I`ll leave it up to you to think about how each and every one of these lessons was learned.

Tonight is gonna be a hell of a night.

Tonight is the stag night / bachelor party for one of my colleagues. Obviously with our current visa situation being the way it is, desperate times call for desperate measures, and within minutes of our visa ’situation’ beginning this guy had proposed to his American girlfriend.

Am I being cynical?

Regardless, tonight our plan is to leave work early, then go to Hooters again (yes, that Hooters) for some ‘food’, then at 7pm our carriage will arrive. We have booked out a stretched limo for 8 hours to take us from Hooters up to Spearmint Rhino and then onto some clubs down Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood.

The theme for the evening is drinking jackets. All 8 of us attending this evening have spent the week searching all the thrift stores in Orange county looking for tweed drinking jackets for as little cost as possible.

I won that one, picking up not one, but two classic looking drinking jackets for 14 dollars.

Are you really supposed to haggle at a charity store?

Anyway, cameras are banned for this evening, but there should be a group photo in front of the limo which may or may not be posted later this weekend.

Saturday I took myself off to get an eye exam, my first ever eye exam outside the UK. Everything started off normal, shining lights in my eyes, blowing gas in my eyes, pretty much what you`d expect.

The only difference was this time the eye exam seemed to be exactly that. Back in the UK normally you just look the board, tell the person giving the test what letters you can see, they give you a prescription and you go and get a new pair of glasses.

Not in America.

This person giving the eye exam gave me exactly that - an eye EXAM.

Firstly she seemed disgusted that I didn’t know exactly what prescription my glasses had and then she spent the whole eye test giving it:

“right … ready….. ok, really go for it this time ….. SEE IT!!!!!!!”

as if - oh yeah, I`ve not been able to see properly for nearly 30 years, but oh my god your`re right, its just because I`ve NOT BEEN TRYING HARD ENOUGH!!!!

She did this every time she put a different lens in the glasses I was using to try and read the letters off the wall.

For gods sake, you can either see something or you cant.

And invariably in this case, I couldn’t. She even refused to make the letters bigger. At one stage the ‘exam’ went like this:

her - “right now come on - SEE IT SEE IT”

me - “I cant - I CCAANNTT, make the letters bigger and I might stand a flamin’ chance of reading them".

Thats where the exam ended.

I got a pretty good deal after that though. Normally my glasses, back in the UK, cost around 400 pounds, around 800 dollars. Although on Saturday I managed to bag myself a pair of Ray Bans for 290 bucks. Sweet.

Although I`ll probably have to prove I can read a newspaper at 100 yards before the crazy eye exam woman will let me take them out the shop.

As the forecasters predicted the weekend was a scorcher with temperatures reaching 38C for most of Saturday and Sunday. There is not too much you can do when it gets that hot over here in Southern California other than go to the beach, which is exactly where I spent most of yesterday, Huntington beach actually.

It was, of course, marvelous.

It gave me the opportunity, not that I need one, to put on my skimpy red Speedos and pretend to be part of Baywatch. It was going all so well until I ran into the water and got flattened by a giant wave.

But until that happened I looked amazing

Since I came back to Southern California a couple of weeks ago the weather here has been, well, British. While back at home in Blighty the weather has been, well, Californian. Now the tide seems to have turned. This weekend the forecasters are predicting record temperatures, with the weather here today currently at 37C and set to get even higher over the weekend.

Hopefully there`ll be no fires like last year, but I`m getting my running shoes ready just in case.

On another note my visa situation looks like it on the up. Having lost all confidence in my so called lawyer I have been researching visas myself and found just the perfect fit.

I am going to apply for the P1 visa. The visa is suitable for:

Internationally recognized athletes or athletic teams entering the U.S. to participate in an event of international standing

Entertainers and entertainment companies recognized internationally as outstanding to tour the U.S. or participate in events

and the entry which makes me eligible:

Distinguished circus artists who wish to work in the U.S.

I`ll just do some cartwheels on the way through immigration.

Its a bullet proof plan.

Absolutely nothing can go wrong……

….again.

Seeing as now my visa has expired and I am still in the USA, I am currently unable to to leave the so called ‘land of the free’ unless I want to pack up all my things and never return.

So I`m trapped here, unable to leave the country.

This being the case I`ve thrown myself into Southern California culture more than ever, and southern California culture is, lets face it, Mexico.

When I left my last job one of the gifts I was given was a California guide book. The book, which was last seen at a restaurant just off the Pacific coast in San Fransisco, listed at the front 32 things you should try and do while in California. Most of which by now I have completed and one stage or another over the past year. One surprisingly simple thing left on the list as to eat ‘real Mexican food’. Fortunately for me, earlier this week the place where I work had a Mexican salsa competition where staff brought in their own salsa and were a competition held for the best salsa and also the hottest salsa.

There were about 10 entrants in all, number 9 and number 10 going head to head for the hottest salsa prize. Each had a health warning printed on A4 right next to the sauce and sample chips.

I kind of pride myself on being able to eat some pretty mean curry, but this stuff had me beaten hands down.

I, stupidly now I know, and not one to do things by half, took a big scoop of number 9 followed by a big old bite of number 10 one right after the other.

Then the screaming began.

I downed a whole pint of water in a second or two, which did practically nothing to help.

I could barely talk for half an hour and my eyes watered all afternoon.

Still, its another tick in the box.

At what cost though? I`ve been having problems since then, so much so that I still have a whole roll of toilet roll in the fridge

Just in case.

A couple of hours after my last post I had packed up my things and vacated my Parisian apartment. My destination was Paris Charles de Gaulle airport to get a flight to London and then catch a flight to LA.

I still had no idea if I would be allowed in through immigration with my visa, which was due to expire the day after I landed, added to that Ed had gone through a week before me and had been told that anyone from my company going through on a B1 visa was playing a risky game.

Going through on a visa that was about to expire though meant that in many ways I was playing a much riskier game wouldn’t you say?

So, at Heathrow airport I thought I had pretty much nothing left to lose. So I treated myself, on company expense, to a ‘last supper’ - at the Gordon Ramsey restaurant in Terminal 5.

I ordered the champagne breakfast.

Nothing to lose you see.

Then I got on the airplane ready to take off, until the captain comes over the intercom and says that we have a minor delay because ‘part of the plane’s roof needs to be replaced’

WTF?????

The short delay turns into 3 hours. Three hours of sitting on a plane before an 11 hour flight when you are stressed up to the eyeballs anyway is no fun I can tell you.

Fast forward 15 hours, and a particularly dodgy takeoff I arrive in LAX and am absolutely bricking it going up to immigration.

The moment I had dreaded for the past 3 weeks arrives.

I’m called forward to the immigration officer…… who looks like a pit bull munching on a mouth of wasps.

He looks at me and grimaces.

“WELCOME TO AMERICA!!! How long do you want to stay for????”

Huh?????

That’s not what I thought would happen. I was wearing my trainers and all ready to make a break for it across the border. Also I had the details of all my colleagues flying in after me, who I was prepared to offer in exchange for my freedom.

It turns out there was no need. The immigration guy didn’t even ask me what company I worked for.

My other colleagues got through fine too, although we saved the big HIGH 5s until we got well out of sight of the immigration officials.

So now I’m back in my place in Southern California.

And for the first time in 3 weeks I’m not stressed out.

Just exhausted with jet lag.

I`ll take that any day.

Right, I have no time to write. An hour or so ago I was given the all clear to fly to the US tomorrow by my company. We still dont know if we will be allowed in the US or be sent straight back to the UK. So today I flew back from Edinburgh to Paris, in 5 hours I fly to London and then on to LA. Now I`m off to pack.

Who knows what will happen to me over the next day or so.

But one thing is for sure…..

…. it`ll be great for you guys reading about it

On Tuesday I tried to escape the general misery and pain that my life has become over the last few weeks and took myself off to watch the mighty Liverpool take on Chelsea in the semi finals of the Champions League.

I turned up at The Great Canadian and ordered myself a pint of TGC. In front of me there was another guy in a Liverpool shirt sitting at the bar. Amongst friends, it seemed.

Without going into too much detail, last year Liverpool was bought out by 2 Americans who have since gone back on some of the key promises they made before buying the club. This has made them particularly unpopular with the vast majority of reds fans. One of the owners, Tom Hicks, has not been seen at Anfield this year, but chose the game on Tuesday to make his return. About 5 minutes before kick off Sky TV show the man himself sitting in the Directors box.

The next 15 seconds went like this:

me - “There he is, the to**er".
Guy in front of me - turns around and in a strong American accent “What did you call him?”
me - “a to**er".
Guy - smiles and turns around.
me - “You`re not from Texas are you?”
Guy - “oh yeah".
me - “Oh right, you dont know that guy do you?”
Guy - smile - “Yeah, I`m best friends with his son”

DOH!!!!!

Things could have gone badly after that, but actually we spent the whole match chatting away to each other. He was quite a nice guy and I managed to get some dirt out about what has been going on behind the scenes at Anfield.

Then Liverpool go and score a last minute own goal to gift the tie to Chelsea.

and so the misery and pain in my life plummets to new depths.

Oh joy.

The visa saga continues.

Last Thursday I set off to Paris from Edinburgh. The last thing I did before getting on the plane was phone Ed who was on his way to Heathrow airport to get a flight to LAX, but he had found out only minutes previously that his visa had a rather large “CANCELLED WITHOUT PREJUDICE” stamp right across it. Ed was going to try and break through the immigration barrier with the visa waiver.

Later that night I got the following email in my inbox. Take it away Ed:

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: edward ****
Date: 17 Apr 2008 21:08
Subject: report of what happened to Ed at immigration.
To:
Hello All,

I’ve just got back to my flat, spent 6 hours at immigration. They were not happy.

I managed to get 3 months on the visa waiver, after which I can only return on a proper work visa.

With regard to the ‘Cancelled Without Prejudice’ stamp, this is not a problem, it just signals the end of the visa, we (Mat and I) do NOT have to tick the ‘have you ever had a visa cancelled’ box. A cancelled visa is when it is cancelled because you broke the rules of the visa or committed a crime etc etc.

However, the reason why they were so reluctant to let me in is because their systems show that I have been REFUSED a B1 visa.

I explained that we had been told that our applications had not been refused but suspended. They confirmed that the application was put into a state of REFUSED several days after my interview, and said that when they brought up my account on the system there was a big ‘VISA REFUSED’ banner and that our applications had gone all the way up to the Chief NIV (Non-immigrant Visa) Officer who had refused them. They also read out some of the comments attached to the application, to para-phrase they read ‘********** is abusing the B1 visas in order to find a cheap alternative to allow their employees to stay longer than 90 days at a time’ and other comments about the lawyers.

This refusal means that I (and possibly the other guys) have to tick the ‘I have been refused a Visa’ box. This means that I cannot use the visa waiver programme for work again. I asked about vacations and they said that I can use the visa waiver to come in for vacations but I still have to tick the box and will probably have to answer a few extra questions. The main problem is that, say, if I need to pop over to California for a meeting, I can no longer do that without having to get a visa first. Ironically it turns out I could have done all of this work for this duration of time on visa waivers.

I met with the senior immigration officers and they said that any immigration lawyer knows that there is a very high chance that you would be refused a second B1 visa, and that a refusal will have a permanent and detrimental effect on you personally for visiting the states. They did not believe that I had legal representation that had allowed me to process a second B1 visa and I had to show them papers to prove it. They even brought in more officers to show them the papers!

******* -> Can we start looking at any possibilities of removing this ‘refused visa’ mark from mine, and anyone elses, personal records. A letter to the embassy or something I have no idea..

So after a lot of questioning, a phone call they made to **** ******** (whom I believe really saved my bacon, up until that point I thought I was heading home) they deliberated for an hour with some other senior people and agreed to let me in, however, they said..

********IMPORTANT********

They will NOT allow anyone else from ********* in on a B1 who has been REFUSED a visa, and that I need to filter that down. Everyone entering must have a valid work visa.

*************************

I said to one of the officers that most of the guys did not have the cancelled stamp like I did, he said that it did not matter, you either are allowed a B1 or you’re not. I asked: so if they turn up will they be sent home. He said there is a very good possibility of that. Bottom line, I really recommend you all contact the embassy before coming out to the states, denied entry is even worse than refused visa.

I’ve tried to write down everything before I forget it, am pretty jet-lagged so will sign off (hope everything made sense), telecon tomorrow?

Edward

So there you are. Its a fine old mess we are all in.

Our lawyers have now been fired for giving us dud information and we are starting to look at alternatives. The best one being the H1B lottery which would give us a 45 percent chance of getting a visa.

Until then I`ll continue to eat cheese and drink wine over here in Paris - and on St George’s day of all days too.

Still no updates for a week. Things have been changing pretty much on a day by day basis.

The bottom line though is that I`m now working in Paris and been advised to stay here working until things settle down.

Last week I was convinced I was going to have an aneurysm. The desperate situation I found myself in when I wrote my last post descended further into chaos in the passing days. We officially had a notice from the US embassy saying our visas application had been ’suspended’, then we got a letter telling us that it had been rejected.

We were then told that we could still travel back to the US on our old, still valid, visas, work in the US and stay there until things got resolved.

Then our passports came back to us. All my colleagues signed into MSN giving updates as the passports slowly but surely turned up.

Chris, Dave then Dan.

All good. No new visa, but old visa still there.

Then the bombshell.

Mat comes online.

His old visa has the words “CANCELLED WITHOUT PREJUDICE” stamped right across his old visa.

Oh god no.

What was going to be on mine?

The whole process was inconsistent at best, a shambles at worst. Eight of us went for the visa. Dave got his new visa, 5 of us got our old visa back, but no new visa, and then Mat turns up with his old visa cancelled.

Ed was in a bad way too. He was due to fly out to the US on Friday morning, but by the close of play on Thursday he still did not have his passport, and more importantly he did not know the state of his current visa.

He was bricking it.

So when I phoned him on Friday morning from Edinburgh airport, the conversation went something like this:

“Hey Ed, you get your passport mate?”
“Yeah I did and its got f******* “CANCELLED WITHOUT PREJUDICE’ all over it!”

uh oh.

“So what you gonna do mate”
“I`m heading to Heathrow mate and going to try and get back to the US with my cancelled visa”

Oh dear.

and what happened to Ed next at US imigration in Los Angeles airport, everyone , is an absolutely amazing story…………..

I`ve not written for a while, because quite frankly I`ve not had the heart to do it.

This time last week everything was amazing. I`d travelled back from LA with my colleagues and my plan on beating jet lag by staying up the whole night the day before my flight and then sleeping all the way home was working like a charm.

Me and Mat then checked into our fancy Mayfair hotel, looking they way you should do after travelling for 20 hours on a flight with a free bar. We are then told that we had both been given free complementary upgrades to King size suites. This really fancy hotel, full of posh rich people, then there is me and Mat giving it “YYYYEEEEAAAHH!!!!!” and giving each other high fives all the way to the elevator. We looked so out of place it was hilarious.

Unpacking, showering and a bit of food later, together with using up our complementary free drink vouchers at the bar we turned in for the night to be prepared for the real business the day after, our US visa interview at the US embassy.

On the way to the appointment on the Monday morning we realised how much of an exclusive area we were really staying in. The hotel was just a minutes walk from Gordon Ramsay at Claridges and just down the road from Bentley and Porsche dealerships. Nice.

The visa interview itself went well. All 6 of us were approved for another year in the US and we left to head off to celebrate in Covent garden spending most of the evening running up a massive bar bill at Belgose.

Then the next day I checked out of my hotel (without paying) jumped on a train at Kings Cross station and headed up to Edinburgh for a few days to wait for my passport to be delivered to me with my shiny new visa.

Then 2 hours into the journey I got a phone call from Ed and the nightmare began.

“We`ve all been rejected mate”

What??

“The US embassy has rejected all our visas. They say the company is taking advantage of the visa process and they rejected our applications”

Oh dear god no.

At that point I totally lost it. A train carriage that had previously been bustling with atmosphere and conversation was rendered silent with by violent and expletive outbursts over the phone to my manger. I cannot remember exactly what it is I said, but the phrases “useless inept incompetent lawyers", “get them on the case NOW” and “I dont care what time it is in Texas, just wake the ******* up!!!!” were all certainly used.

The thing is you see. If you have ever been rejected for a US visa. thats it, you have to declare that on your visa waiver every time you enter the US for future visits, for the rest of your life. The visa form questions are like this:

Are you Osama Bin Laden?
Are you going to overthrow the government?
Have you ever been refused a US visa?

If you answer yes to any of the above then you can p*ss off!

Great.

Then some slightly better news.

Our visa applications had been ’suspended’, not ‘rejected’, which is much better, but still not great seeing as my current visa expires on 30th April. Furthermore, I was supposed to be working in Paris from this week onwards until 2nd May, but I cant go anywhere just now because the US embassy still has my passport.

I feel I`ve been here before.

The lawyers are being useless and have not managed to get any information from the embassy about what is going on or why our passports have not yet been returned to us, so I`m here in Edinburgh doing nothing, sitting by the phone waiting to hear something, anything.

The latest plan we have is to travel back to the US as soon as I get my passport back while my visa is still valid. You can enter the US as long as your visa is valid on the day of entry and stay for up to 6 months, but you cannot leave the country in that time.

I`ll be trapped in the land of the free, oh the irony.

While I`m there our crack team (ha) of lawyers will continue “working our case", whatever that means.

So there you are, its a right old fine mess we are all in here.

Things are about as bad as they could possibly get,

and for once on this blog, it seems as though there may not be a happy ending…..

Its now almost 12 months since I had to fill out hundreds of forms to achieve my security clearance and US visa. Now I`m doing the whole thing over again. The visa forms that is, my clearance is good for another 9 years.

The biggest problem is that my lo-lights have still not grown out of my hair which means the passport photo I have had to give them shows my hair in this kind of dual tone tiger style finish. Which looks amazing, but might be difficult to explain to US immigration officials at the embassy in London this coming Monday.

We`ll see.

So after our visa interview, and assuming everything goes well, me and the boys are off for a night out in London and then back to our Mayfair hotel for the night. The day after I`m back up to Edinburgh for to “work from home for the week” (drink in the pub), waiting for my passport to be returned to me after which time I`ll fly out to work in Paris for a few weeks before coming back to Southern California.

Its not a bad life you know

It seem as though my previous prediction that I am becoming more American is more true than I expected.

Each and every journey we now take in the car we have to listen to at least 10 minutes of honkytonk music - by choice. Its actually rather good. I`m particularly fond the stuff with banjos.

Things took a turn for the worse this weekend though.

We went shopping for cowboy boots and hats at Bootbarn. I`m particularly fond of the python skin western boots.

Plus I`m gonna get me a ten gallon hat.

And I`ll even tuck my jeans into the boots as well.

We are all thinking of wearing out cowboy gear for when we are going for our visa appointments in London net Monday.

I`m sure they`ll see the funny side.

Notorious for a great sense of humour at the US embassy.

Nothing can go wrong.

Nothing.

You`d have thought that Easter would be a public holiday over here in the US. Most TV stations blurt out religious programmes night and day, all week long.

But no, today and last Friday I am stuck here at work.

Although I`m not doing much. We`ve had network problems all day today which means all I`ve been able to do it just sit here on project GP (Getting paid).

So I think we might split early today and head off to the bar and get drunk.

In the name of Jesus of course

Most nights during the week and most afternoons at the weekends I spend relaxing in my apartment hot tub. Its not bad really. Sitting there under the clear night sky with the sound of the Disneyland fireworks going off just a couple of miles down the road. Things could be a lot worse.

But my happy place last week turned into something terrible, it became the Pool of Death.

It started when my Scottish colleague Dave and I decided to meet up there for a beer and a chat just to round off the day. I showed up first and noticed that the water was a bit on the murky side. No matter, I`m sure its all fine. So I turned on the jets and jumped in.

Nice.

Then a little while after Dave turns up and we start chatting away and start to work on the beers.

All is going well.

Then Dave’s face turned all worried and sour. He starts splashing water up to his nose and sniffing.

“Something smells funny here”

more sniffing.

“This water smells like rotted flesh”

more sniffs.

Then in a voice you would expect from Fraser from Dad’s Army he said:

“Thats the smell of DEATH".

HOLY SH********T!!!!.

I dont think I`ve ever looked so scared. I swear if this had been a scene from a Hollywood movie then a skeleton’s hand would have risen up from the water and pulled me under.

I was not taking any chances.

I leapt out of the tub like a scalded cat.

Later, our investigations found no sign of a dead animal in the water, so we just left it at that and went back to our apartments.

I`m told by another colleague of mine though that he was speaking to the pool cleaner the very next day and mentioned that he was heading down to the hot tub, to which the cleaner replied:

“Oh god, no, dont go in there. We`ve just had to fill it up with cholorene to clean it out. I wouldn’t go in there if I were you”

I think I might find something else to do of an evening for the next week or month, year decade etc etc etc

Its my own fault really.

I should never have had it done at a place where the employees dont speak English.

All I wanted to have done were the tips of my hair, not all over, just some, in a combination of caramel and light blonde to complement my natural hair colour.

I knew things were wrong right from the off, the moment she came at me with a paint brush doused in brown goo.

But by the time I realised what was going on it was too late:

I forgot about it and totally freaked myself out the morning after when I saw myself in the mirror.

I hope it grows out in time for my visa interview in London on 7th April. I need to have a new photo taken for it before then too

Next time I`ll go somewhere they speak English.

Earlier today my last and final student loan repayment came out of my bank account.

My loan from 4 years studying for my undergraduate degree has for the last 5 years been taking 93 pounds per month out of my bank account.

But no more.

The final link connecting me to my student days is gone

So I`m going to Six Flags again on Saturday to celebrate with my new found wealth!

:)

For my birthday Fi bought me, amongst other things a Gorillapod.

Its a tripod for use on cameras but it has bendy legs so you can make it level on any surface or attach it to a tree, or railing or child’s bike … anyway….

Its also really useful to use to take pictures with a long exposure at low light conditions since you just put the camera down on the gorillapod and its perfectly still, unlike if you were to hold it in your hand. We even used it last weekend as a kind of handle to film ourselves going down the slopes on my last ski trip - more on that in a few days.

So here are a few pictures I took with the gorillapod during my last trip to Paris:

Before you ask, no I`m not getting commission, but perhaps I should be…

I`ve been back in SoCal now for a week and its been fun. I`ve already been skiing again last Monday, I dont think I was supposed to be at work, and I`ve arranged to go skiing again next weekend already.

I`ve deliberately been waiting a while before I posted anything about my last weekend in Paris.

For legal reasons.

It all started on the Wednesday afternoon when I got a phone call from a friend of mine who I used to work with about 10 years ago. We`ve always kept in touch and meet up once every couple of years or so. Kev, as he is known, is known for his legendary rash decisions. So it was not much of a surprise that he told me he was planning on coming to visit me in Paris…

the next day.

on his motorbike.

from Liverpool.

for one night only.

And turn up he did - with another of my ex-colleagues, Chris. They turned up on a motorcycle at about 9pm on the Thursday in what looked like a scene straight out of dumb and dumber. The 2 of them had driven through freezing fog all the way from Calais at 100mph and both were frozen solid to the bike. I could just about make out Chris’s words to me through his frozen jaw:

“I cant tell you how happy I am to be here".

Indeed.

After that he slid off hte back of hte bike and onto his back with his legs still locked in the sitting position. He stayed there for about a minute.

The rest of the night went well, showed them around Paris, had some food, a good chat and a few beers. Then the morning came it was time for them to head off back to Blighty. All that way for just one night. Cheers guys, that was good.

But there is more and my story gets better:

Later that day saw the arrival of 2 other friends from the UK, Col, who I worked with about 4 or 5 years ago and someone who I have remained good friends with since, and Chris, my best friend who I have known since I was 4, a top top man and the best friend anyone could wish for.

Heavy drinkers the pair of ‘em.

So it was not much of a surprise that we had our first beer at 2pm on the Saturday and had our last at around 5am on the Sunday with many in-between separated by only the odd jagerbomb. The only soft drink to pass my lips in that time was toothpaste.

As always I dont remember too much of the evenings events and am entirely reliant on my camera. But what my camera showed on the Sunday afternoon was not fun:

It seems that I made my way home on a child’s bike.

The only vague and poorly lit memory I have of this is that there was a squeaky horn on the handlebar which my knee connected with every time I peddled. The faster I got the more squeaks came from thr horn. Not the greatest get away vehicle I dont think.

Which is why I wanted to make sure I was in a different continent before I posted about my last few nights in Paris.

I owe my colleague David Laurie of Dumfries an apology.

Before I left for Paris back in January I lent my Nintendo Wii to Dave so he could get some well needed practice on the bowling game so he stood at least a slim chance of beating me some day.

I came back to California on Saturday loaded with a couple of new games that I`ve been itching to try out for the last 4 weeks.

But Dave has gone on holiday, with his last reported location being somewhere in the middle of the Utah desert.

He still had my Wii in his flat rather than giving it to someone to pass on to me.

Or so it seemed.

On Sunday, Monday and Tuesday morning I cursed, swore and called Dave every name under the sun. I even tried summoning up a plague of locusts to descend on him in the middle of the Utah desert.

But now those locusts are needed for someone else.

Daniel Watford.

On Tuesday morning I was chatting to Dan about how I couldn’t believe that Dave would go away and not give my Wii to someone else to give back to me. Pretty much the same things I`ve been saying since Sunday morning.

Then Dan just comes out with - oh yeah - you can come and get your Wii from me later. Dave left it with me and its been on my dinner table for a week.

What?

You!!!! ………..

So anyway. I now have my Wii back and if those locusts have not attacked Mr Laurie yet then I`ll be sure to get him a drink when he gets back.

Dan on the other hand is set for a nasty surprise.

It seems as though I am scheduled to baby sit for Dan next week while he and his wife go off to a Foo Fighters concert. Well I hope Dan wont mind me taking Alyssa to the gym with me and then on down to Brians Bar and Billiards.

I`m sure they put a high chair in the bar for her, no worries

In the past year or so I have posted pictures of my residence in California and my residence in Edinburgh. Quite a few people have asked to see where I live whilst in Paris. So here you are, these are some pictures of the apartment where I stayed on my latest trip to Paris:

My Kitchen

My living room:

A bedroom:

And finally the outside of the building:

What else did you expect?

On Tuesday I had to move out of my apartment and into a hotel for the final few days of my latest trip out here in Paris.

For the past 4 weeks I have meticulously been saving all of my receipts for every single item I have bought. Restaurant bills, train tickets, supermarket bills, taxi receipts and absolutely everything else so that when I get back to California I can add up all the money that I owed back from my company.

I had hundreds of them, all wrapped up in a clear plastic bag.

I reckon I had about 6 - 7 thousand euros worth of receipts, so not surprisingly I kept them in pride of place on my apartment table, right where I could see them, and that is exactly where I put them when I turned up at my hotel on Tuesday. Right in the middle of my desk next to my phone.

They were not there when I got back from work on Wednesday.

No.

It turns out that the maid assumed that they were just rubbish (to be fair she was kind of right) and threw them out.

So now I have to explain around 6000 euros worth of expenses without having any receipts.

This could be tricky.

Although I have now explained all this to my manager and this is what he came back with:

“Those for which you have no record you should enter what you believe was the cost”

Wow … I think he may regret that Off to a 3 star Michelin restaurant tonight me thinks………

No, not me. Thats obviously not the case.

When I`m here in Paris I have to share a rather small office with sometimes up to 7 other people. All either from the UK, USA or Canada. The French folk get given their own much larger offices which they need to store their stashes of cheese and wine.

During one of the more quiet points last week the English speaking office occupants decided that we needed an office pet.

So we have decided to get a pet frog for here in the english office in the French capital.

All we need now is a name for froggie. Personally I think we should call him Jean-Pierre, but some people think that might be pushing it. So we thought we`d ask you out there…

what should our office frog be called?

Suggestions in the comments section please.

For the long term readers of the mighty 1point21gigawatts.net you will remember that last year I forgot mine and Fi’s anniversary. I vowed not to do that again.

So here is part of the email I sent to Fi last Thursday morning:

“Just into work now. Got a few things to do before I get back on project GP, have a great day”

and this is the response I got back:

“And happy anniversary to you too!”

DDDDOOOOOOOHHHHHHH!!!!!

Fortunately I went back to Edinburgh the very next day and was able to make up for it. Well, at least that was the plan. I arrived in Edinburgh at 17:20 and went straight to the gym, and then on to the pub, then I went home to Fi.

Not a good move I can tell you.

Fortunately for me though there is a graveyard just down the road from my flat, and as fortune would have it there had been a funeral that very day for a guy who seems to have been pretty popular which supplied me with a great selection of flowers to take back home.

Job done - what a save!

So I`m told that today is Valentine’s day.

I wonder if the graveyard does deliveries.

To combat my recent spiral into becoming American I have decided to do a U-turn and become French, a move which is sure to delight my mother.

All weekend I have been smug, arrogant and smarmy whilst munching on nothing but garlic, onions and snails.

I`ve even bought the clothe:

I`m even thinking of going on strike over the price of cheese - do I even need a reason to go on strike now I`m French?

Dont think so.

I knew this would happen. Bit by bit I`ve started to become an American.

It was bound to happen I guess. Living in SoCal working with Californians every day, living in an American apartment, shopping in American stores - I mean shops and eating in American restaurants.

I`ve even started enjoying (some) American tele.

Shocker.

I`ve started saying words like ‘whatever’ when people say something that I disagree with and worst of all I even started to detect the start of an American accent. The other day I pronounced the word ‘address’ the way you would expect to hear it in a Hollywood film.

So I need to do something drastic, something that will send out a powerful message that I`m not going to stand for it.

and I know exactly what…..

…. but I`ll do that later. Its dinner time so I`m off for my peanut butter and jello sandwich:)

One of my favourite films of all time is Withnail and I and I`ve always wanted to try the Withnail and I drinking game.

The whole idea is that you match the main character ‘Withnail’ drink for drink for the entire film - no easy feet I can assure you, but yesterday I had my best chance yet to complete the game since I was on an 11 hour flight, had access to a free bar .and the inflight entertainment had Withnail as one of their films.

Sweeet

So I stocked up with the required amounts of booze and matched the great man drink for drink.

• Mouthful of red wine
• “Lighter fluid” (eg overproof rum)
• Double gin
• Finger of cider (with ice)
• Finger of cider (with ice)
• Finger of cider (with ice)
• Glass of sherry
• Two big chugs of sherry
• Mouthful of sherry
• Sip of sherry
• Double whisky
• Mouthful of whisky
• Mouthful of whisky
• Mouthful of whisky
• Mouthful of whisky
• Splash of whisky
• Single Teachers
• Double Teachers
• Double Teachers
• Single Teachers
• Sip of sherry
• Three fingers of ale
• Sip of red wine
• Gulp of sherry
• Small glass of red wine
• Sip of red wine
• Half glass of red wine
• Sip of something white (gin & bitter lemon?)
• Sip of red wine
• Sip of red wine
• Gulp of red wine
• Gulp of red wine
• Finger of red wine
• Finger of red wine
• Gulp of red wine ("‘53 Margeaux")
• Gulp of red wine ("‘53 Margeaux")
• Gulp of red wine ("‘53 Margeaux")
• Gulp of red wine ("‘53 Margeaux")

I`ll leave it up to you to decide when I knew I was way out of my depth.

:)

Right now I`m sitting in LAX airport drinking a pint of Sam Adams waiting to get on my plane back to Heathrow and then on to Paris.

The very fact that I`m drinking at all after the amount I managed to put away on Friday night is something of a miracle.

Yesterday at the gym my 1000 calorie cross trainer burnout took me a full minute longer than it normally does and for that the blame goes squarely, once again on Friday night.

Dont get me wrong - it was a wicked evening. Started out at Brea Diamonds Billiard Club, then on to TGI Fridays. We had a table booked for 19 of us to celebrate my birthday with the table booked under my real name and title of “Baron Atkins’. I even got a free ice-cream, for it being my birthday, not for being a baron:

Then we moved on to Commonwealth bar in Fullerton:

Then I woke up at 1pm on Saturday….

…and leaped out of bed and broke into a chorus of morning has broken!

Or something like that.

I do remember bits and pieces. I remember some local taking offence at my singing the lyrics “There’s 2 dollars to a pound” to the tune of ‘he’s got the whole world in his hands’, but I`m sure I settled the disagreement eloquently….

I think.

Anyway, I`m off to Paris for 3 weeks so I`ll be able to drink some real beer for a change.

Maybe I`ll even get to another Michelin star restaurant - maybe even a 2 star —-or 3!!!

Oh dear.

Last night we got back from our long weekend skiing trip to Mammoth Mountain in Northern California.

All 9 of us got back unscathed, which quite frankly is a miracle because at least 1 of us really should have broken a bone.

The first close call went to Ed. This was his first time skiing on snow so after a few successful runs down the green slopes Dave decided Ed was ready to try out a blue run.

But the blue we went down ended up being a Black Diamond run – otherwise known as a ‘sh*t your pants run’. Remember at this time the only ski positions that Ed knew were French Fries (go fast) and The Pizza (go slow), so the last I saw of Ed was him thundering down near vertical slopes in the pizza position screaming ‘PPIIIIZZZZZZZZAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!”.

Things got worse after that, but this time it was me taking centre stage.

Somehow I ended up on my own on a run that was closed to the public. I should have known better really. I had to climb under a load of ropes to get onto the run in the first place, so the signs were there from the start.

There were 2 official looking guys waving me over at the top of the run. The conversation went something like this:

Ski instructor – “hey mate, what you doing here?”
Me – “er – I`m a bit lost, I`m just trying to get down this blue run”
Ski instructor – “Oh right – well firstly this is not a blue run, it’s a black diamond and secondly this run is closed for the race team”.

I heard what they were saying, but it just didn’t sink in. Although it explained why the run was totally empty, had racing flags on it and was dam near vertical and covered in rocks and trees – one of which I very nearly hit.

I`m not sure what time my lap got, but I needed a strong scotch right after I finished.

So all in all it was an amazing weekend, without injury but certainly not without incident.

The perfect way to end my 29th year since its my birthday today.

Tomorrow I head off on my first ski holiday of the year. A group of us have booked out an 11 person villa on the slopes of Mammoth Mountain, which looks to be amazing.

I have my ski equipment packed and ready, and the best part is that I get to take my telescope somewhere that has no light pollution and is at a high altitude and cold so the air turbulence will be minimal giving awesome seeing conditions.

Add to that I`ve bought myself a hip flask and a good bottle of sherry to enjoy on the mountain to give me a nice false sense of warmth.

What can possibly go wrong?

I`ll tell you.

I found out on Monday that my company medical cover has been switched to a different company. I found out because my new contract and membership card arrived in the post.

This is what is says:

Policy number: XXXXXXX XXXXXX
In-patient plan: Premier Core Plan
Out patient plan: Silver out-patient plan.
Coverage: Worldwide (Excluding USA & Canada)

What?

I`m covered everywhere in the world apart from North America, which unfortunately for me is the continent where I live.

OMG!

Oh well – at least I`m not doing anything dangerous over the next couple of days.

I`m sure everything will be fine.

Absolutely nothing can go wrong!

I`d only been back in my flat in the OC for about 15 minutes last Saturday when I turned on my laptop, signed into MSN and got a message from Ed.

“Welcome back mate – can I come around?”

Ed had been back in California for a week at this point, and I had heard from several people that he was starting to go nuts with boredom. His original plan was that he would go out partying throughout New Year and the days after with the other guys in our complex, but things did not turn out that way. Dan had his wife and child with him, Mat had his family over, Rave was spending most of his time with his girlfriend, and the rest of us were still in the UK.

Things did not get any better for Ed since the New Year’s party the attended shut all the bars by 10:45pm.

That is pretty much the worst thing that could have happened to Ed. Its fair to say he likes a drink.

So it was no surprise to me that Ed was loitering around on MSN waiting for someone to talk to. Sadly for him though, I was about to fall asleep and so Ed had to wait on his own a bit longer.

So next day 8am I sign into MSN again. Once again

“I hope you are decent – I`m coming round in 10”

And so he did, and we talk about what we`ve been up to over the last few weeks. Its clear Ed has had plenty of time on his hands, but he is adamant that he “has not been bored”

I beg to differ with him.

Later that day we went around to Ed’s place and I go to go get some ice from his freezer.

And there is plenty of ice to choose from:

“Jeeeeeezzz mate, how bored have you been”

“I`VE NOT BEEN BORED!!!”

“Really?”

Ed had spent the week after New Year sculpting a vodka flume in his freezer out of ice. Basically the idea is that you pour in room temperature vodka and it flows down the ice flume and you collect the chilled vodka at the bottom.

It works surprisingly well actually. He tried it with orange juice but that just froze half way down the flume, which had the added benefit of flavoring the vodka that went down after it.

Ed says he is a creative genius, I say he is a bored mentalist with a blow torch and too much tupperware

I`ll let you make up your own mind.

Yesterday I flew back to Southern California, and it was a long long long day.

It did not start very well since I had to wake up at 4am to get my first flight from Edinburgh to London Heathrow, which in itself if a pretty bad experience, but considering that I`d only got to bed at about 1am things were particularly bad. I could not touch a fork full of the breakfast they served on the plane.

Then I have the pleasure of waiting around Heathrow Terminal 1 for 4 hours, actually make that 5 because my flight to LA was delayed. Nice.

Then all I have to do it sit on the plane.

For over 11 hours.

Fortunately one of my colleagues turned out to be on the same plane as me so I at least had a good chat for a few hours before touching down in LA, going through visa and immigration control (always a joy) and then waiting for my baggage.

and waiting

and more waiting

Turns out some pillock didn’t close their bag properly and all their clothes had escaped their home and mangled up the baggage handling machine. So we had to wait for a good 45 minutes while engineers pulled out the remains of underpants and socks.

Then off back to my flat in Fullerton with a quick stop off at Albertsons to get some supplies.

Back in the flat at last.

Then I remembered that I had a friends brother staying in my place over Christmas and I see that they had left me a gift:

A nice bottle of beer - exactly what I need, cheers guys.

I`ll just put that in the fridge along with the rest of my shopping:

Oh, perhaps there is no room in my fridge for food anymore since it contains 50 large bottles of beer.

Who needs milk anyway?

Obviously they were having fun because not only was the place spotless, but they even had left chocolates on my pillows

Which were very nice for breakfast this morning.

Thanks guys, that was hilarious, and the perfect end to a bad day.

My main Christmas gift from Fi this year was a ‘mystery tour’ somewhere in Scotland. I knew nothing about where it was going to be or anything else about what was going on.

Today it was time to set off, so I set my Garmin sat nav to the postcode where we were heading to and off we went.

3 and a half hour later we arrived……

….right back at our flat in Edinburgh.

That was not our intended destination. With about 15 miles of the journey left to go the roads we had to take to get where we were going were all windy B roads, and were all covered in about a foot of snow and ice.

We had pretty much no control over our Ford Escort, which to be fair is not really build for such conditions, but towards the end we had no control over steering or the speed we were travelling, so we decided to call it a day and head back to Edinburgh.

It turns out that our intended destination was actually Culcreuch Castle where we would have stayed in Baron’s Suite, which would have been amazing.

And it still will be, in April, when we have re-scheduled our trip for when the weather should be better.

Either that or I`m hiring a bulldozer.

Its that time of year again when the weak and worthless weeds amongst you decide to join a gym and begin your futile attempt to get fit and amazing and be more like me.

Dont waste your money.

You`ll notice that I did not say not to waste your time, thats because you wont ever go. If you do decide to join a gym you`ll sign up to a six month contract, go 4 times a week for the first week, 3 times the week after, twice the week after that perhaps once the following week.

Then silence.

January in the gym is a total nightmare. Every year its the same. The weeds all come running into their new playground having no idea what they are doing. At best they just get in my way, at worst they cripple themselves financially and physically. After a few weeks they find that they dont have a body like Arnie and give up.

But still have to pay 50 quid for another 5 months.

So this year do yourselves a favour and just dont bother. Spend that 50 quid a month on something else - a few more beers or bags of chips per week.

If you really are going to make a difference to your health or physique it has to be life style choice and you have to be in it for the long term, a bit like buying a puppy for Christmas.

I did not get a puppy for Christmas, I got a Nintendo Wii, which is the main reason why its been so quiet around here at 1point21gigawatts towers.

So anyway, instead of making getting fit your new years resolution why not try some other ridiculous ideas like pointlessly trying to increase your carbon footprint etc

But whatever you do, keep out of my gyms.

Happy New Year

Run away from armed security guards in the middle of a bomb scare.

Thats what happened yesterday at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport.

But I`ll get to that in a minute.

Now I`m back in my flat in Edinburgh having travelled back from Paris yesterday. I never thought I`d say this, but it nice being back somewhere warm. Compared to Paris, Edinburgh is practically tropical.

So yesterday I get to Paris CDG terminal 1 and head for check in desk 5, home to the mighty flybe from whom I had purchased a single ticket to Edinburgh for 80 euros. Well, not really, that was the quote I got from their website. Yeah right, 88 euros if you dont include the tax, airport duty, checking bags and even the cost of a seat on the flight. Yes, with flybe its extra if you want a seat on the flight you have just booked. Next time I`m sitting on the wing. After all the ‘extras’ the ticket cost 143 euros.

I bet that in an emergency you`d have to cough up for a life jacket and that if oxygen masks dropped from the overhead panels there would be a meter counting up next to them.

So I wait in line for 20 minutes and get to the front of the queue. Then they close the check in desks….

All of them.

Apparently there is a bomb in the airport and the terminal has to be evacuated.

Soon there are armed security guards pushing everyone in the terminal towards the exits. Eventually we were all moved into a corner of the airport terminal and told to wait until further notice.

But this wa not good enough for one woman.

She decided to make a break for it.

And legged i past the men holding machine guns.

And she did not stop until she was wrestled to the ground in tears.

Her daughters, who she was apparently travelling with burst into tears at the sight of their mum being carried away at gun point. Not surprising really.

The thing is, I have no idea where she was planning on going, or doing. All the check in gates were closed so she could not go anywhere and all security staff had been moved out so she could not have gone through to the departure gate anyway.

I guess these are questions she`ll be asking herself in a Paris prison cell this morning.

The funny part is that less than 3 minutes after the escape attempt the bomb scare was over and all the check in desks opened up again.

Which I found very very funny.

Her daughters did not

Last night I did something that I`ve wanted to do for years, eat in a restaurant with a Michelin star.

Michelin stars, as most of you already know are the gold standard of cuisine.

In the Michelin guide for Great Britain and Ireland 2007 there are 122 restaurants with 1, 2 or 3 stars. Most are in London and only 3 restaurants in the entire list have the maximum of 3 stars, one of those is run by Gordon Ramsey.

Restaurants with Michelin stars are much more common over here in France. The French guide 2007 lists 527 eateries with stars. Many of which are in Paris. So the other day at work we all decided to try one of them out. So we got a list of the restaurants with 1 star and picked one at random.

That turned out to be Restaurant Jean.

After waiting for years to get to one of these places I was not disappointed.

The starter was good.

The main was awesome

And dessert was top.

Add on to that the snacks they brought us in between courses, the selection of chocolates, nuts, biscuits and marshmallows we were served during coffee and not forgetting the bottle of des hauts des chassis crozes hermitage, which is as about as good a wine as I`ve ever had, it was a pretty special evening.

Plus the service was first class too, not anywhere near as fussy and snotty as I`d thought it might be.

I just wish they had not brought out a bottle of cognac for us at the end of the evening.

That might explain why I`m not exactly at 100 percent today.

Or maybe its because of the beers we had afterwards.

Must have had a bad pint.

Anyway, now I`ve been to one I`m up for trying another. So when I`m back at Christmas I`m going to try and get a place at one of only 3 restaurants in Edinburgh to have a star, The Kitchin, Number One at the Balmoral or Martin Wishart.

Although I think I might wait until my parents come to visit before I go.

Last weekend saw more sightseeing around Paris. This time around my companion was Fi, who had come over to visit for the weekend to take in the sights of Paris.

The weekend had a touch of deja vous because the places we went to were pretty much the same as those I went to the previous weekend, but at least this time the weather was a bit more kind.

Instead of heading around la Louvre we chose to go to Notre-Dame Cathedral

Sadly we could not climb to the top because the Frenchies were all protesting outside about the price of cheese - or something like that, so the police were not allowing anyone inside..

The evening saw us climb the Arc De Triomphe just as the sun was setting, which was pretty cool.

Fi had to head off pretty early on Sunday morning which left me plenty of time to pursue my new found hobbies.

You would be amazed at how bored you get in hotels. So far I`ve stolen 56 mini bars of soap, 23 tea bags, 13 AA batteries from my TV remote control and 3 light bulbs.

But getting free stuff from the hotel is not my favourite hobby.

Yesterday afternoon I walked along the hotel corridors taking off the “do not disturb” signs from people’s rooms and replacing them with “please tidy my room” signs and then waiting outside to hear the screams.

Its an amazing hobby.

I suggest you try it

Some wise ass asked me the other day, sarcastically of course, if i had managed to find a gym yet in Paris.The answer is obviously yes. In fact I found a gym within a couple of hours of landing here in Paris even though I had been awake for nearly 36 hours at the time.

Some things just cannot wait.

Anyway, it turns out that there is also a gym in my hotel. Its a bit small, but its good enough for a few weeks for most things.

But not when I`m going to do a serious, go rip it up, show the weeds how its done massive chest session.

No, for that I need big weights in a big gym.

So yesterday I went to the gym I found on the day I landed.

And I wont be going back.

I walk in and get charged the discount rate of 15 euros for entry - almost as much as my entire monthly membership for Meridian back in California.

After that I walk around for a bit and look for the free weights. There are none. Shocker.

Quite a lot of men here too.

They have a couple of Smith machines, the closest I`m going to get free weights around here.

But they are both surrounded by lots of men.

So I start to use the machines there, which is something I never normally do at the gym, but there seems little other option. But even using the machines there were people just stand there waiting, staring at you, wanting you to finish.

All of them men, wearing very tight skimpy clothes.

So after about 12 sets on the so called machine bench press and the excuse for peck deck I head off to the abs area.

Walking past a couple mens locker rooms.

Hang on,

something aint right here.

Have you guessed yet?

Yep, this was a gym for the dark side.

Not only had I been duped into going to a gym with hardly any equipment, that is too hot without any eye candy, and had a very specific clientele, but I had paid 15 euros for the privilege.

That is why the gym I went to last night is the worst gym in the world.

Ever.

Today it took me an hour an a half to get to work rather than the usual 50 minutes.

Since I arrived in Paris 2 weeks ago I`ve had to deal with riots, bombs going off just down the road from my hotel and now strikes. I have no idea what had brought about this latest rail strike, I assume its because the drivers want more free cheese with their breakfast, or maybe they just fancied the day off to go shopping, or maybe its just because the wind was blowing at just the wrong speed. Who knows, they seem to go on strike for any reason over here.

Apparently this is only a “mini strike", the real strike will start next Thursday.

That`ll be fun.

At least the canteen here at work always has a good supply of beer and wine available at lunch time. Perhaps I`ll just set up camp there drinking my own body weight in French red wine and try to keep myself alive until the trains start running again.

Perhaps.

When I was last back in Edinburgh earlier this year I was walking up the Royal Mile, just randomly wondering about. I came across one of the many ghost tour guides that you tend to get there, of which I have done many and would recommend to anyone who either lives in or goes to visit Edinburgh, particularly the Mercat Vaults tour. Anyway, I start talking to this girl who is trying to convince me to do her tour. The conversation went something like:

me - “no thanks, I`m on my way somewhere and I`ve already done most of the ghost tours already”

guide - “oh, which ones have you done".

me - “most I think, the underground vaults where you go under the south bridge, the Greyfriars bobby tour in the graveyard and another one where you go into vaults that were only discovered in the 60s and you get a glass of whisky at the end. I didn’t like that one, thought it was the worst one I`ve done”

guide - “Thats my tour”

DOH!

That was indeed a foot in mouth moment, and I found out this morning that there is an annual award for such events. The Plain English Campaign | Foot in Mouth, which every year delivers its award for the worst - or best - foot in mouth comment. The award this year goes to the former England manager - Steve McClaren who came out with this gem during a radio interview:

He (Wayne Rooney) is inexperienced, but he’s experienced in terms of what he’s been through

Sharp that, real sharp.

Although I think mine was better.

This morning I put my mother back on a train to Paris Charles de Gaulle airport after she came over for the weekend to visit.

It was her first time in France and considering that she has always refused to even consider coming over to France the weekend was a pretty big deal for her.

So I`m glad that it went really well and we had a lot of fun taking in all the sights.

Saturday saw us walk around La Louvre and we saw a picture with loads of people around it. I think it is kinda famous:

I reckon I could have done that.

Anyway, there were other things there that must have been famous too because they had loads of people around them, but I had no idea what they were.

So after all that we went forth to take on the Eiffel Tower.

Sadly, because there were severe winds and rain that day the third floor of the tower was closed, and to be fair that was good decision because on the second floor alone the weather was terrible. The wind even managed to tear off the rain coat my mum was wearing.

Sunday’s weather was no better, but we still marched on up Les Champs-Elysees and to the Arc de Triomphe:

Which you can climb the top to which is something I`ve not done before. You get a pretty good view too:

So that was it. Some food and a beer in the Frog and Rosbif and that was the weekend.

I will be returning to the Eiffel Tower next Saturday. The wind may have stopped me last time, but mark my words. I will have the British flag flying from the top of that tower if its the last thing I do

And it might well be..

After just 1 weekend in Paris I`m starting to turn into Alan Partridge.

I`m writing this entry from the office cafe in Paris because I`ve not been allowed into the main building by the company security guards. It turns out that my security clearance forms which show that I`m allowed to work on my project have not been sent through by the DVA to the offices here in Paris despite the fact that they were told 4 weeks ago the dates that I`d be here. All they need to do is fax through a couple of pieces of paper and thats all. It seems as though that is too much to ask. So this morning, despite the fact that I`ve been working here in Paris since last Wednesday without problems, I`ll just have to wait in the cafe.

So given the conversations here this morning its likely that I`ll just be sent home, which will give me an opportunity to do some sightseeing, after all, I did precious little of that over the weekend.

Paris had severe winds and rain all weekend so much so that I did not stray far from my hotel room.

I swear that at one point I was so bored that I actually considered dressing up like a zombie using my shower curtain and some tungsten nails just like Mr Partridge himself.

But that would just have been a regular Saturday night for me

Aha!!!!

UPDATE
Its 13:30 here and I`ve now been told I wont be able to get in before lunch time tomorrow so I should go home. Right - off sightseeing me thinks…….

By Wednesday it was time to leave San Francisco and head east towards Sequoia National park. It was a long drive so instead of heading straight to the park we stayed the night in a place called Visalia and at a B&B there called Ben Maddox house.

Ben Maddox was a great place to stay, a great big old house all dressed up for Christmas and run by an Irish lady called Lucy. When we arrived after our 5 and a half hour drive we were welcomed with a glass of port and a cheese board. There was even a bottle of wine in our room which even had its own Jacuzzi bath.

Lucy made us a reservation at one of the local restaurants for dinner and even gave us a lift there in the company car. The day after I ate more food for breakfast than I think I managed for the rest of the holiday put together with home made French toast, muffins and a full Irish breakfast with proper British sausages – something that you cant buy in America for love nor money – I`ve tried both.

So leaving Ben Maddox behind we moved 30 miles north and entered Sequoia national park – home to the worlds largest trees.

Although we did not see any bears they were definitely around – there seemed to be signs every hundred feet reminding people to not approach the bears – something you`d expect most people to know already.

So after doing a walk around the Giant Forest we went off in search of General Sherman - The worlds largest tree with a height of 250 feet and a circumference at the base of 103 feet.

Sadly we didn’t have time to head further north to Kings Canyon because we had run out of days for the road trip so we spent Thanksgiving night in Bakersfield before heading back home to the OC.

So there you go, 8 days 1250 miles, 5 hotels, 10 different cities and thousands of pounds down – and it was worth every penny …. I think……. And the latest trip was over. Already though we are planning the next one in February, I think I may have to sell a kidney.

That’s not all that happened on the holiday though there were one or two near death experiences…..

Well, I`ve arrived in Paris, at last – at its freezing cold.

I set off from LA on Monday afternoon and headed for Heathrow where I caught my connection Paris and then a taxi to my hotel. I eventually got in late afternoon on Thursday and I`m at work today. As you can imagine I`m feeling bright eyed and bushy tailed and raring to go

I nearly missed my connection to Paris though, because I only had 45 minutes to get from Terminal 1 to Terminal 4 thanks to our original landing at Heathrow being aborted at the last moment. Just coming into land, I could see the runway just below us and just as the engines were about to drop to land us on the tarmak the captain floored it and we went shooting back into the air.

Apparently some plane ahead of us had not left the runway in time so we had to circle around and come in again.

But I made it to my connection with some time to spare.

So my hotel is alright, but their gym is not up to much which meant I went in search of a bigger one late last night – while nearly asleep. It seems as though gyms are less plentiful in Paris than they are in California. I`ll have to carry on the pursuit tonight.

Gyms then may not have, but decent beer they do. Seems I`ve left Bud Lite behind … until January that is.

On Monday we set off further north leaving Big Sur and its crazy hosts behind.

First stop was Santa Cruz. To be honest there was not much there, but we stopped anyway and walked up to the Boardwalk which is where some of the film “Lost Boys” was filmed. The roller coaster is still there:

It was a bit of a dodgy town too. I saw several pairs of shoes hanging from telephone wires around the city. Not wanting to give up my own footwear too easily we carried on up to San Francisco and our room at The Diva hotel.

The first thing to do was to get on a boat trip to go around Alcatraz island

This I think was the highlight of the holiday. You could pretty much roam free around the island by yourself, but we chose to do a free guided tour from one of the Alcatraz rangers, which I would definitely recommend because he takes you to parts of the island which are normally off limits to the public.

After that is over you can go into the main prison and take an audio tour. Yo uhave your own pair of headphones and audio guide so you can wander around at your own speed listening to a running commentary as you go.

This was called Broadway and was the main part of the prison. The cells were incredibly small just 5 feet by 7 feet and not much privacy:

Although you could not get into any of the regular cells, further down the line were the solitary confinement cells which you could walk into and take a look.

We spent pretty much all day at Alcatraz before getting a boat back and heading down to Pier 39 which is full of bars, restaurants and ……. Sea Lions:

Apparently they all just went to this Pier after the last big earthquake ….. and never left.

There was loads more to do in San Francisco too, we went to the China Town which was awesome and really wish we had longer there, but after 2 days it was time to head off to Sequoia National Park…..

Although you may have to wait a bit for that because I head off to Paris in a couple of hours from now and it may be a while before I can get my French Internet connection working. No double the French Internet is on strike.

Leaving the Apple Farm behind we headed on up the US Highway 101 - The Pacific Cost Highway in search of Big Sur.

The drive was cool, 1 of the 34 things ‘you have to do’ in California according to my Rough Guide of California. Its not hard to see why

We drove 150 miles up the coast towards Hearst Castle. This place used to be home to one of richest people who ever lived, William Hearst. The tour we did, did not actually take us into his own personal living area, but we got to see the 3 guest houses he build for visitors. He is the swimming pool for the smallest guest house:

The place was totally amazing. Everything you saw was worth a fortune. Just to give you an idea, you were not allowed to touch ANYTHING, but they had no problem with us all walking on the floor around the larger swimming pool, despite the fact that it was made of 22 carat gold!

After that we continued up the coast on to Big Sur. Another one of the things on my 34 things you have to do in California.

We were staying in a log cabin:

With its very own fire pit

The night turned a bit off later on though. We had left the fire to burn out and were watching a film on my laptop lying on the bed in the cabin when we got a knock on the door.

It turned out to be the owner of the cabin park.

She was drunk.

Very drunk.

She came walking into our cabin and started chatting. Then she jumped onto the bed with Fi and I.

I jumped off.

And just about managed to get rid of her politely.

She saw us the next day, but didn’t come out to say hello.

Strange that.

Just now I`m sitting in motel room in Bakersfield drinking a cold beer in touching distance of the end of my road trip with Fi.

Earlier today we arrived here from Sequoia national park where we spent the day driving around looking at the largest trees in the world.

Its been a hectic, exhausting, expensive but utterly amazing week. By the end of tomorrow we`ll have driven over 1000 miles and taken in some amazing sights. Its been top, so top in fact that its going to take me a few blog entries to get it all in…..

So here goes part 1 - Friday 16th - Sunday 18th…

We loaded up the car we had hired for the week:

and set off in search of the Apple farm in San Louis Obispo. The hotel was amazing:

The place looked more like Santa’s grotto than a hotel. I`m not complaining they made their own wine and cider which you could get free on tap from their reception 24 hours a day.

Not bad huh?

They also gave away their fresh baked cookies which made it extra hard on Saturday morning to head off on our Grape Vine wine tour of California wine country. This tour took us to 4 different wineries across California wine country and let us sample about 25 different wines.

The views from the places we visited were pretty amazing too…

Normally I dont drink white wine because, basically, I dont see the point. You dont get white wine in Church now do you? God doesn’t drink white wine. so why should I? Anyway, all the wines I tried were pretty top and I was cabbaged by mid afternoon. Luckily we got back to the apple farm in time for their afternoon wine and cider tasting so I did not have to sober up.

Add to that the fact that later on we found Central Coast Brewing just down the road from the Apple farm that did its own beer tasting sessions for just a few dollars.

It was a cool place. They had a bar right next to where the beer was being brewed. You can even rent one of their vats to make your own beer.

The following day meant we had to move on further up the coast to Hearst Castle and Big Sur, which meant driving up the Pacific Coast Highway…………

Well today Fi and I start the Real road trip after my warm up road trip back in August.

First we are heading off to San Louis Obispo to stay for 2 nights including a winary tour which takes you to all the places you see in the film Sideways.

Then we head on up to Big Sur, then on to San Francisco and Alcatraz for 2 nights before heading on to Visalia and finally spending the last night in a log cabin in Sequoia national park.

Then I come back and head out to Paris.

Its a hard life.

I`ve managed to get around my differences with the French hotel owners and now have a place booked for my up and coming stay in Paris.

The Holiday Inn Republique looks to be ok. Its a 4 star hotel more or less right in the middle of Paris.

I`ve been told some horror stories this week from my colleagues in France that beer costs at least 8 euros a pint - thats 6 pounds!!! Shocker.

Luckily for me a bottle of Champagne costs 10 euros.

Guess what I`ll be drinking for a month, and what most of my friends will be getting for Christmas

It seems as though my trip to France may not pass without problems.

Already we are not seeing eye to eye, and I dont even arrive in the French capital (where the mighty England rugby team beat the Frenchies in the world cup just a few weeks ago) for another 3 weeks.

My first problem is with the hotel I tried to book my accommodation with today.

The ‘conversation’ went something like this:

me - bonjour, je resterai à Paris pendant 3 semaines en décembre. Vous avez une chambre?

Frenchie - (sigh) oui nous avons une chambre. Nous sommes un hôtel

Tres bien

Be like that.

They`ll be laughing on the other side of their face when I`ve got the union flag flying from the top of their Eiffel tower.

Just you wait.

So yesterday was Halloween and I spent most of the night waiting at my front door with a bucket load of fish heads ready to throw at any kid who dared come anywhere near Castle Grinch.

Luckily for them, nobody turned up, probably because most of my neighbors who were a bit more into the Halloween thing than myself had already filled up the kids candy boxes to the brim:

Actually - I did consider buying some sweets for the trick or treaters on my way back from the gym last night. Obviously living in this nice warm weather right next to Disneyland is making me too soft.

So I`ve decided to move to Paris.

I leave on 26th November.

I`ll be spending a month there before coming back to California. Hopefully by spending a miserable month with the French in a cold wet city will turn me back into my mean self.

Then I`ll be happy again.

Halloween is much bigger over here in the US than it is back home. Pretty much every house, bar and office is decked out in all kinds of Halloween costumes and decorations.

Seems like a pretty good excuse for a few ales.

Last weekend I had a mate from back home staying with me and it would have been rude not to take him to a Halloween party - California style.

Once again I had to rely on my camera to provide my memories of what went on. Although I do remember walking home, but the presence of leaves and bushes on my clothes the morning after suggests that I took a “detour".

It seems as though the fires of Southern California are now under control. The winds have dropped, the temperature is now around 30C and there are going to be no more evacuations.

But the air is still thick with smoke. Lots of people are even walking around wearing gas masks. Perhaps this is a step too far, but the air is pretty smokey.

There is one good thing to come from the smoke however. Today saw the start of the Perigee full moon when the moon is at its closest approach to the earth. Normally you`d not be able to see the moon clearly through a telescope because of the brightness, but the smoke darkened the skies just enough to make viewing possible.

I even managed my first ever Astronomical photograph:

Not great, but could have been worse.

…. there’s an emergency going on.

For the past 2 days the air around where I live has smelled as though a giant bonfire had been going on just down the road.

Thats because there has been:

It turns out that most of the towns surrounding Fullerton are all on fire - and they are coming this way. According to fox news:

Los Angeles – Wildfires blown by fierce desert winds Monday reduced scores of Southern California homes to ashes, forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee and laid a hellish, spidery pattern of luminous orange over the drought-stricken region.
At least one person was killed in the fires, and dozens were injured. Nearly 130 homes had burned in one mountain town alone, and thousands of other buildings were threatened by more than a dozen blazes covering at least 310 square miles.

It must be bad because penny pinching Governor Schwarzenegger has declared the region to be in a state of emergency.

I would feel slightly better, but tomorrow is forecast to be 38 degrees Celsius and the building where I work in nothing more than reinforced cardboard.

I would suggest that we go to Red Alert - but as you all know - that would mean changing the bulb.

Yesterday I watched the mighty mighty England cruelly beaten by the lucky South Africans in the rugby world cup final in France.

A whole gang of us were watching the match in The Olde Ship in Santa Ana.

For some reason Setanta Sports - who were broadcasting the game demanded that every pub charge a 20 dollar admission fee for anyone wanting to watch the match. Luckily for us the landlady at the Ship realised how unfair this was and gave everyone there a free pint of beer and put out an enormous buffet for all to enjoy during the match.

It was a pretty good atmosphere - it was mostly people supporting England although there were a few South African supporters too. Although they were kept to one side of the bar away from everyone else - I think that is called Apartheid.

The pub was all dressed up in its Halloween gear too:

In fact most places are dressed up for Halloween here - Albertsons have nothing on their shelves these days apart from Pumpkins.

Any kids come knocking around here looking for treats - they`ll get a shock of their lives.

Its taken until today for me to really get a grip on what happened last Saturday.

Sure, I did a quick update the other day, but even as I was typing that I still had huge gaps in my memory of what exactly happened.

I think I know now.

Oh dear.

Put it this way, the rugby kicked off at 9pm in Paris which is noon here in California. We got to the bar for 11am and started drinking straight after. The drinking continued until about 6pm.

Then I passed out on my bed until 9am the next day.

Still not completely sure how I got home.

But hey - I cant be expected to remember everything.

But one thing I do remember for sure is that the Barman in Brannigans bar in Fullerton was the best barman in the world. This guy was buying us drinks, we were buying him drinks, he was even on the shots of sambuca with us. This is actually quite ironic really considering that I personally was the worst barman in the world ever.

I was a barman in The Tickled Trout in Preston for a wonderful 2 days.

The main problem - apart from the fact that I would rather have been in Iraq than behind the bar in that place was that I could not read the prices for any of the drinks on the till. This meant that people got charged whatever button I randomly pressed after they had ordered their round.

I remember my last customer well.

This guy came to the bar and ordered a large glass of white wine, which I then poured carefully into a brandy glass, hovered my finger over the till for a few moments before stabbing some random button. It came to 4 quid.

“WHAT!!!!! I ordered the same drink from one of your colleagues half an hour ago and he only charged me 2 pounds”

“Wow” - I was genuinely impressed with myself. “Well its me you`ve got now and the prices have just gone up mate!!!!”

I never pressed the buttons on that till or any other again

Yesterday the mighty mighty England took on the French in Paris and won.

I know because I was watching the game live from The Harp Inn in Costa Mesa, which it seems is the only place in Southern California which was showing the rugby world cup. Needless to say the place was rammed full of ex pats - including myself and some friends.

Most people in there were either English or French - or people who claimed to be English or French, but were really Americans who claimed to be from Europe because their family came from there several hundred years ago. Seems no-one in California wants to be American.

You cant blame them.

Some interesting folks in there too.

I met one guy from Yorkshire who had a beard the size of a rhododendron bush who kept buying us all beer.

Then there was one guy from Liverpool who had been living in California for the last 15 years. He only got his green card last year so he had been illegal for 14 of them. He said he managed to get his green card by marrying a local girl, living with her for 3 years and then divorcing her once the card came through.

Nice

So we`ll be back there next week for the final. Who knows what characters will show up?

I thought I was hallucinating today at the gym. 40 minutes into my hour long cross training I saw a mate of mine from work walking towards me. He is not a member of the gym, nor is he ever likely to be.

I must have gone nuts trying to break my cross training record.

So I ignored him and figured that my brain would sort itself out shortly and he would disappear.

He didn’t. Not only that he told me that he had come to “rescue me” from the gym and take me to the Orange County Auto Show.

And go we did, and it was top!

They had all kinds of cars there from the usual super cars

Like Lamborghinis, Porsches, Ferraris and Maseratis. But there were some other really cool concept cars too.

The one below was made entirely out of Aluminium:

One of the most bizarre was this little fella which the creators (some independent company) claim can do 200 miles on just 2 gallons of petrol.

But my favourite has to be this Jeep Hurricane:

This thing has 2 Hummer engines each giving 750 horse power, but even more impressive is that the wheels all move independently so it can turn on its axis and even move sideways.

Like a crab.

I think I might give the gym a rest for a little while.

Someone in there is after me.

I don’t know the name of the person in question, just that us regular gym members refer to her as Kronenberg because she looks 16 from behind and 64 from the front.

Anyway Kronenberg was on the cross trainer yesterday and I managed a sneak peak at how many calories she had burned up so far during her workout.

It was around 970.

That cant be right!! I – the mighty gym master only burn up around 1000 on my cross trainer sessions. Kronenberg was nearing my personal target and did not look like she was about to give up.

I was not going to be bested by a girl.

So I ran past her cross trainer and pulled the plug out of the wall with my foot.

And then legged it.

So basically I won – she did not beat me and if she tries it again I`ll do the same in the blink of an eye.

And just so you know – I`d do the same to YOU!

Without going into any kind of detail things have been a bit manic this week at work. We have a big deadline coming up soon and there was something this week that we NEEDED to finish - in fact the word going around was that if we did not get this particular bit of work done by Sunday then a few heads would roll.

No pressure there then.

So rather than going in to work over this weekend Ed and I were at the office until 10pm last night. Job done.

The tricky bit was actually getting out of the office. Being “foreign nationals” we are not supposed to be in the building after 8pm or at weekends without special written permission - and even with that we need to be supervised by a US member of staff.

It seems foreign nationals are a bit like Gremlins - perfectly fine during the day and we are fine to be left alone to get on with our work, but come 8 o’clock we turn into terrorists and are more likely to blow things up or disclose industry secrets.

I wonder how much the manager who came up with that policy must have been paid.

Anyway, after we persuaded the security guards not to shoot us and that we were not terrorists it was too late to get to anywhere decent for something to eat so we just went straight to the local bar and had beer for dinner.

Someone even bought me a drink - half a pint of Guinness on top of half a pint of pear cider - they call it snake bite over here. It was quite sweet.

So I called that dessert.

Been a bit quiet here for the last week or so - thats because I`ve had my parents here who have taken a week out of their trip to Vegas to come visit me in the OC. Its been good.

Another reason why I`ve not updated much is because I`ve at last got myself a new telescope:

Which is something I`ve wanted for years. Not only that, but now I live in the OC every night will be a star gazing night….right?

Turns out not - since I`ve been in California it has not rained once - that is until I got this telescope. Now look what has happened:

No kidding - the weather channel here said there was a “60 percent chance of precipitation” - I think that means rain. And it did - serious thunderstorms last night and all this morning meant no star gazing for me.

Oh well - at least the rest of the week here looks better:

How is it where you are?

When I moved to California I was told that I would come across a fair few folk who are … shall we say ….. a bit on the slower side.

To be fair most people I`ve met here are well informed and well educated people.

Not everyone though.

A few days ago in the gym, yes where else would I be, some dude walks up to me in the locker room and says:

“wow, is your natural hair colour red?”

What?

My hair colour is SO not red.

“Er — no, this is my natural hair colour”

“Oh right” – he carried on – looking very confused. “Where are you from?”

“Just by Liverpool originally”

Looking more confused now.

“Australia?”

Gggggggrrrrrrrrrrrr.

“No England!!!!”

“Wow, does everyone in England have red hair?”

To be fair I`d had a good day so instead of beating him to a pulp I just walked off remarking that not everyone in England has red hair, some people have blue or green.

Although red hair man was practically a genius compared to the barman who asked to see my credit card as proof of ID because he did not trust my UK passport –