One more day left…

… of this god foresaken year.

Twenty eleven what did you bring me? A busted knee, new wrinkles, a holiday that pissed down with rain every day, a December redundancy just to make my Christmas that extra bit joyous and then to really screw me over you made me lose half of my favourite red leather gloves. And not to mention that you were so monumentally crap that even my hair started falling out too.

So, twenty twelve what will you bring me, hm, other than a Mayan prophecy of apocalyptic proportions? Here, I’ll help you:

1. Fix my knee so that I can run again
2. Get my hair to grow back
3. Give me a job I actually enjoy
4. Make Kevin a famous photographer
5. And finally, just make it chilled for us

And here’s a little tune to end this anus of a year. La la laaa.

My new haircut…

… it’s a disaster.

It’s been a couple of tight months – just bills, bills, BILLS. So, I decided if I cut here and there on my spending it should make an overall difference.  I like my usual hair salon, but thought it was time I found a slightly less expensive place. Now I’m fussy about my hair and won’t go to any old place so I googled, read reviews blah, blah, blah and found the one! It looked promising – Frederick’s on Chesterton Road. 

I called up and my first question is how much does it cost – they reply £33, so I immediately say I’d like to make an appointment with so and so. I’m happy – it’s £10 cheaper than my previous hair salon – I’ve achieved my mission to save some ££’s.

So, there I am on Saturday at 3pm, nice salon, nice people, nice hairdresser. His intentions were good, even though he cut it a bit too short for my liking and I feel like I look like a bit of a moron. NEVER MIND because as he said it was the first time he cut my hair and to be honest with him next time I go. So, I went to pay and the pretty blonde at the till said a number and my brain went into scramble mode.

Fifty three pounds. Hm? Excuse me? That’s not what the nice lady said on the phone. But you don’t want to make a scene in the middle of the hairdresser, and it’s not the guys fault his staff are incompetent. But after a few hours I started to feel angry and pissed off. I would NEVER have booked this guy if I’d known it would be that expensive. NEVER. Why didn’t the stupid ‘effin woman on the phone tell me this when I asked for him?I want to poke her eyeballs with sticks I’m so angry. Infact it made me so angry that this is the first time I talk about it.

So, I switch salons to save money, but end up paying more than my old salon. Fuckin’ annoys me.

Try something new…

… for 30 days.

We were made to watch this ‘inspirational’ youtube video at a meeting this week about trying something new for 30 days. I normally pay no attention to this kind of bullshit, but then I couldn’t help thinking of possibilities. This is all about how to better yourself I guess, and I could do with a lot of  this.

Idea #1

I work from home, and I often sit at my laptop festering until lunch time in my dressing gown *hangs head in shame*. So from Monday I started making sure I get up and shower before 9am. So far so good.

Idea #2

Take a photo every day.  It’s a new hobby since I got a new camera. But I’ve failed this one already. First photo was rubbish and then I gave up.

Idea #3

Post every day. Yes! I’ve been trying to get a Blog starting again since I left Thailand in 2006. So, counting today as Day1.

Idea #4

Hm. I need to think about this. One kind act every day and document it in my blog. There.

Onwards and forwards!

I’m especially good at…

… faux pas

My partner’s dad is staying over, and I work from home – usually sitting at the dining room table. This afternoon after lunch he fell asleep on the sofa and snored on and off for an hour. I decided to facebook that “working from home is great, except when your ‘father-in-law falls asleep on the sofa and snores’.

Anyway, then he wakes up and walks over to our study and sits at my pc where my facebook is the default page on firefox. So, I Skype my partner sitting next to him to tell him, and he replies “[16:28:18] Him: ypou know your skupe is open on that pc also”

I frantically hit ‘remove post’ a bazillion times, and this is one of those times that facebook decides to take an eternity to do anything, but by which time it’s too late anyway and my furious mouse clicking is futile. I then nonchanantly walk over, you know arms swinging around trying to exude ‘I’m not guilty’ vibes, to the study and greet them ‘so what you are you up to?’ and make up some bullshit story that I need to close down Skype as it causes delay when it’s opened on two pc’s. Oh my god – I’m seriously crap at cover up.

Friggin’ facebook compulsion. I hate you.

When people say…

… remind me.

What the hell? What am I? Some kind of alert system for you lazy arsed people? Twice now in the space of a week I asked people to do something and I get the ‘remind me’ retort. So, now I have to remember your shit as well as mine? No! Remind yourself! Outlook calender is your friend!

Friggin’ remind me. Puh.

Don’t put off today what you can’t do tomorrow…

… don’t put off tomorrow, what you can do today, don’t put off what you can do today, for tomorrow.. what THE HELL IS THAT EXPRESSION AGAIN?!

Whilst looking for something vaguely interesting to put on my ‘we need a facebook page now for every product we sell’ facebook page I was trawling through hundreds of tacky ‘inspirational pictures’ on google images I read, you know, one of those that have  a bullshit inspirational messages attached about ‘doing something new’ today.

Sooooo, I took the plunge. This is it. Carpe diem and all that. I’ve started something new. I decided to ta daaaaaaaa…   tweet.  Although, I’m not entirely convinced by this whole tweeting business  I thought if I’m going to do this it needs at least some kind of underlying theme. First thought was to mainly focus on my new fungal nail treatment – as I was told this morning by my GP it will take 9 to 12 months to cure so plenty of material there (today I filed my nail again and applied… ) AND then I had a light bulb moment and decided to mainly tweet about our lodger who is highly entertaining in a scientific experiment kind of way.

Now, we  just have to wait for her to perform so that I can tweet about it. Dum di dum…

Recurring shopaholic dreams

I have this recurring anxiety dream which is heavily based around Marks and Spencers. I’ve had it for years now. In my dream Marks and Spencers is HUGE. It spans over several buildings and floors and I have this time limit of a ridiculous 20 minutes where I have to find the lingerie department and buy underwear. It stresses me out and I seem to spend most of my dream going up and down escalators to then finally find the lingerie department and discover it’s sold out of most of the stuff I want. What does it mean????!

Meanwhile, Bob the builder surprised me today with a happy xmas email.

*raises eyebrow*

World relations

Yesterday I did my weekly catch up call with my parents who live in Lisbon and as some of you may know it’s currently the home of the EU-African summit. My dad doesn’t suffer fools so to speak so he tells me

‘you know the fort by us?’ ‘Gadaffi is staying there… in a tent’
‘he BROUGHT his own tent’
‘he also brought A THOUSAND people with him’
‘the hotels are full of those bastards’
‘yesterday, do you know how many buses were parked by the fort? Twenty… TWENTY!’
‘the guy is CRAZY’

My dad will now go on about this for the next 6 months. Doesn’t Bush also take about 1000 people around with him? Must be something about people who have delusions about themselves. Not to mention heaps of paranoia.

So far today…

I’ve got one member of staff pulling a very obvious sickie… “I have a really high temperature, but I can still do my work email from home, and oh I’m not sure I can make it to that meeting tomorrow”. Yeah that same meeting you pulled a sickie on 6 months ago. Last time I ran a fever the last thing I wanted to do was to even lift my arm, let alone think or type.

Another one who blew up a convection heater “I don’t understand how it works, it has too many dials on it”. It has a temperature dial and two wattage buttons depending on how hot you want it. I’m no einstein, so how do people like this get through life? They must narrowly escape death on a daily basis.

Dealt with a bizarro bank cashier trainee guy who insisted on staring into my eyes while counting the bank notes “twenty, forty, sixty, eighty, (looks up and stares into my eyes in hypnotic manner), one hundred, twenty, forty, sixty, eighty, (looks up and stares into my eyes in hypnotic manner), two hundred and so on. I wasn’t sure what he expected me to do “well done, you’re doing well, carry on”. Instead I just smiled at him in a bemused kind of way.

Otherwise, all I feel like doing today is sleep. All yawny and sleepy. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. I need to learn to go to bed earlier.

I survived…

… just!

It’s been just over a year since we moved from Bangkok back to the UK. Looking back Thailand seems to be something that happened to someone else, not me. There are so many things I miss about Thailand and part of me feels sad we left so quickly. I miss living in a big chaotic city! I miss my street with the stray dogs and being next door to the gym. I miss getting my little bag of chopped up pineapple for 10 baht. I miss going to the cinema in Emporium and Paragon. I miss Thai noodle dishes. I miss eating at the Loft. I miss shopping at Villa. I miss breakfast at Au Bon Pain on Sukhumvit Soi 22. I miss the skytrain. I miss fake handbags. I miss cutting my hair at Schwing with Nikki. I miss taking taxis everywhere. I miss working with the crazy Thais. I miss hearing ‘ka’ at the end of every sentence. I miss food by phone from Cabbages and Condoms. I miss Starworld and AXN. I miss having facial treatments at Qi at Jasmin City. I miss evenings sitting in Starbucks watching the world go by on Sukhumvit. I miss Fortune Town. I miss mango and sticky rice. I miss rainy season. I miss Sukhumvit Soi 23, my home. I miss blogging in Thailand. I miss the WOW US servers. I miss my little office in my flat. I miss working in my pyjamas.

Hell, what are we doing back here?!?!

It’s also exactly a year today that I started my new job in Cambridge and given two days to learn how to run a college. I think a year later, I finally know what I’m doing. Can’t believe it’s a year! It certainly hasn’t been the most ‘happenin’ of years, but the most memorable incidents include:

Telling a 15 year old boy that watching porn was not appropriate behaviour
Witnessing a bee swarm outside my office window
Visiting Korea and Taiwan for the first time in my life
Receiving saucy emails from a ‘bob the builder’
Firing the first person in my life
Discovering that I can ride a bike in stilletto heels
Getting myself a fringe and becoming my mother’s double
Being fully responsible for a 12 year old for a week and wondering how full time parents do it
Discovering that the majority of teachers are not from this world
Owning a car for the first time in 8 years
Realising a month ago that I really don’t need to take my job so so seriously

That’s about it.  Dull ville.