Author: Kruse

So – nearly halfway through April.  Still very little sign of ‘Spring’ – and temperatures are still lower here than in Wellington, every day.  And – the whole eating of lamb thing – going well.  Well as something so inherently ridiculous can really go, anyway.  I am starting to resent the entire Thai people for never getting into lamb.  It’s been less than two weeks, and I really miss Thai food.  And very few places near work have lamb as an option.  None of the ‘gastro-pubs’ anyway, which is probably saving me a fair bit of money.

The only other news is that we have a Katie staying with us.  So – conversations have become much more tangential, and our normal dynamic of “the last person to enter the room gets solid abuse by the other two” has changed, ever so slightly.

And now it’s time for my customary “and that’s about all I’ve been doing – working, nothing, working, nothing” line.

And with that in mind, I’ve been thinking of changing the format of this whole thing for quite some time.  I believe in my very first post – I alluded to the inevitability that this would devolve into a blow-by-blow account of my mundane life – despite best efforts to the contrary.  Well – I finally have a functioning portable personal laptop (fully nerded out with Linux) – and therefore should be able to and inclined to spend some time working online (trying to adapt to non-Windows).  Therefore, I will make an effort to write more stuff which is either “twitter-style”, ie: short sharp and potentially witty – and longer ‘essay’ pieces, most likely complaining about something.  One which has been simmering for a long long time is Snakes.  I have several things I’d like to say about Snakes.  So – I assume you are now waiting with baited breath.  Sucker.

Well, I thought I was rather clever.  I’ve got a fair bit of work coming up, so this previous weekend was probably going to be the last one I can be social for about 6 weeks.  And – I managed to swap my on-call with somebody else, and organise a fairly small gathering of people.  By coincidence, yes – it was my birthday – but I figured I wouldn’t mention it, and I could get away without people thinking it was some kind of birthday thing.  But – no, not to be.  I had forgotten several things.  Firstly – not everybody is as bad as I am about the whole birthday thing.  Several people seemed to remember off their own back… even before the second thing I’d forgotten – the hated technology.  Facebook especially – apparently may have some feature reminding people of upcoming birthdays.  And even if it doesn’t, family members will of course send publicly visible birthday wishes via Facebook and/or this here ‘web-log’.

So – after sitting at a table covered in delicious yum-cha for nearly an hour – I started feeling pretty smug.  A couple of people had said the whole happybirthday thing – but I managed to keep it quiet from everybody else.  Or so I had thought.  And then cards are pulled out.  And, it seems, the only people that weren’t actually aware were my own flatmates.  I really had thought I’d gotten away with it.  Not happy.  But – oh well…  It was a good day anyway.

(And thanks to everybody who attended, everybody who tried to attend but couldn’t, everybody from overseas who sent me messages, phone-calls, etc.  I think I have finally learnt my lesson – I can’t escape.)

Yum-cha in Chinatown – followed by a couple of quiet beers in a nearby pub.  The pub, however, was a dutch-themed pub – and therefore no beers that I was really too keen to drink.  So, champagne it was.  And, next thing we all know – it’s some ridiculous hour of the morning, and a few of us are in a taxi back to Balham – for a few more hours of drinking wine, beer, whiskey – and listening to music.  And discovering we have new neighbours upstairs.  Who probably have a very bad impression of us – after their first night being rather loud.  Not sure how many weekends of not-so-rowdy behaviour it will take for them to forgive us, and perhaps start to realise that this isn’t a particularly regular occurence – just very very bad luck on their part to move in on that particular weekend.

Anyway – that’s about all that’s happened since I’ve returned from NZ.  Have upped the squash-playing up to twice a week – but still a long long way off from giving Chook a serious challenge.  Have noticed my bank account shrinking – mostly due to the trip to NZ, and a sudden influx of bills.  That should turn around soon – as I’ve cut down my wine-drinking bill significantly.  (Well – the amount of wine has been cut severely – but the quality has probably gone up).  Anyway – looking at the costs of this trip I want to do at the end of the year, I should probably start caring about money a bit more, and trying to be ‘sensible’.  (ie: not drink champagne because I don’t feel like Amstel).

Oh – and it’s April very soon.  April’s New Month resolution – in honour of Spring (which I’ve heard should arrive soon) –  I will be eating lamb.  I’m a little worried about breakfasts – but have some ideas.

Hi all – just a token update.  Too busy travelling – and it’s a fiasco so far.  Missed flights, booked out rental cars, etc etc.

But – hoping to see as many people as possible while in New Zealand.  I’m bound to miss quite a few people – due to the shambles that it’s been so far, and my complete lack of any planning.  And hopefully I’ll be able to remember enough of the trip when it’s finished that I can write down some of the more interesting bits.

So – that’s finally over.  2009, that is.  And the whole 10 years of naming years with “Two thousand and …” – which was rather tiresome.  Now – we can get back to being lazy.  I actually read an article the other day about somebody being horrified by the possibility that people were going to continue calling 2010 “two thousand and ten”.  Horrified.  He was some official chap as well – and insisted that this was not correct – pointing out how every other year in history is pronounced, except the last ten.  Despite, of course, that technically – it’s always been wrong, and it just took the ‘noughties’ to force us back into pronouncing a 4 digit number the way it should be.  Oh – and I have heard some people all excited about the thought of what this decade is to be called.  It’s obvious.

Wow – did I just write a paragraph on THAT?  Okay – let’s get back to normal transmission.  The last couple of weeks – well… you can probably guess how this goes.  Just the same as every other time I’ve bothered to write – but multiplied by the ‘Festive Season’.  Various sessions of ‘drinks’ leading up to the end of December.  Then – the 25th.  Nicky Osborne’s birthday.  Jeebersmas.  People kept asking me if I was going home for it.  I had to point out that I didn’t even go home for MY birthday.

Anyway – on the 24th, did the fashionable thing and did some telephone/video calls with various people.  Then – went to bed in the wee hours of the 25th.  Woke up much much later.  Put on the trusty jandals, and went a-wandering.  I had been meaning to stock up on muffins and eggs the previous night – but had got waylaid.  So – had to wander around Balham, trying to find muffins and eggs.  Our local trusty 24-hour Tesco was closed.  Not cool.  BP – they sell nothing but death-deisel.  Finally found a little dairy – and had to settle for hamburger buns instead of muffins.  Worked remarkably well though.  Had two courses of eggs florentine/royale.  Did my laundry.  And felt like I’d had a good day.  But – then had to go meet Caitlin and her friends who had had a dinner party, and were now in the post-dinner phase.  Which seemed to involve plenty of booze and what-not.  Walked home at about 8am – ready for a nice Boxing Day nap.

Not to be, however, as I was awoken several hours later by flatmate Chris.  Who had promised his mother that he’d bring me along to her place, so I could be part of some kind of family thing on Boxing Day.  Which was nice, except I wasn’t really in a suitable state for such things.  But – along I went.  Snacked at some food, and had a couple of polite drinks.  I really can be quite polite when I put my mind to it.  And at about 3 or 4am, found my way to bunk beds – to complete the whole family-gathering type feel.

And then a week of work.  Well – I had actually been working throughout the above – as I was on-call for the week covering the 25th.  But for the week leading up to New Year’s – actually back in the office.  Which, of course, felt great.  And then… New Year’s Eve.  I don’t think I need to go into too much detail about that.  We prettied up our house for a party.  I went to the local bottle store, and the nice chaps carted my purchases back to our house for me on one of those cargo-trolley things.  And then we had dinner.  And then we had a party.  And then it was about 6pm the next evening – and there was myself and one girl sitting on the floor drinking, after somebody had foolishly suggested that one of us was more adept/determined at the consumption of alcohol than the other.  I honestly don’t know how it started – but it seems that we are both rather stubborn fools, with high opinions of ourselves.  And fair enough really – the evening ended with the swapping of mutual admiration – and an agreement to ‘call it a truce’ – which sounds suspiciously like a situation which could erupt again, now that I think about it.  A ‘draw’ would have been a much better term.  Oh well – too late now.  Anyway – she headed back to see if her husband had changed the locks, while I stayed up to try and sooth the razorblades in my throat with Kahlua.  I have pointed out before that if one drinks too much champagne, it feels like razorblades in one’s oesophagus.  Well – on the evening of the 01/01/10 – I was definitely experiencing this.  After two/three days of drinking nothing but Kahlua, and chomping down anti-heartburn medicine – it finally dissipated.  But for a couple of days there – wow, everything hurt.  Coughing, drinking anything, eating anything.  Luckily, I didn’t really want to do many of those things very often.

But – all in all, a fairly good ‘festive season’.  Not a ‘White Christmas’ strictly speaking – but there was a fair bit of snow just before, and just afterwards.  Including now – still snowing now.  I believe the ever lovable british media has coined the term “The Big Freeze”.  I wandered over to look at the fountains in Trafalgar Square this morning – and yeah, they’re pretty good and frozen.  And of course the media is complaining about airports being closed.  “In cities like New York & Moscow they have much more snow than this, and THEY never close their airports!”  Coming from the same people who would be up in arms if they actually did something about it… “What do you mean – you spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on snow-clearing machinery, when it might only be used once or twice a year??!!”  I think I need to stop using talkback radio as my alarmclock station.  It really doesn’t help one start the day with a smile.  If anybody knows of a radio station without any ‘Wacky Breakfast DJ Team’, or preferably any talking at all – I would be very grateful.

New Year’s Resolutions – I didn’t seem to get around to actually confirming those.  And it might be getting a little late now.  But – in the theme of album titles:

• Hold Steady’s Stay Positive – ie: try to be a little more cheerful (or at least pretend).  If one ignores all the complaining above, I’m doing really well.
• Faith No More’s Midlife Crisis – not strictly an album, but a song.  I will try to find a suitable album title – but I am going to attempt a deliberate and measured midlife crisis…
• .. maybe Kings Of Leon’s Youth & Young Manhood ? – in that trying to recapture my youth – is essentially a midlife crisis, innit?

And the New Month’s Resolution for January is Darts.  And maybe Celebrity Big Brother.  Darts – because it’s cool, and exciting – and some championship or other is on TV at the moment.  And Celebrity Big Brother (CBB) – because I need to try and immerse myself in British culture – and what is British culture if not celebrities, reality television, and generally all things ‘tabloidish’.  CBB – perfect.