Category Archives: Personal

Personal

Booze inventory

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Having avoided my liquor cabinet for some time, on account of it being in a very mouldy vault, I forced myself to go through it this morning and made some rather excellent discoveries. Or rather, rediscoveries as I must have bought most of this stuff over the course of my last 7 years in London.

Salvaged from the mould:

5x bottles of nice champagne
5x assorted whites
6x assorted reds
2x brandy liquers
3x assorted whiskeys, including a nice single malt
1x sambuca
1x tequila
2x vermouth
1/2 a bottle of rum (why has the rum gone?)
5x assorted spirits, including the excellent Vana Tallin purchase on our Estonian voyage in 2004.

In fact, all that seems to have gone off was a bottle of sherry, a half bottle of port and a bottle of pre-mixed Sangria I bought on holiday in Madrid in 2001 and was probably never going to drink anyway.

An excellent haul, and once we’re done refitting the kitchen (a fun January, post-engagement, post-Christmas treat), we’ll have a party and see if we can get some cocktails mixed up.

As an extra bonus, the Transformers (Robots in Disguise, not electrical apparatus) I’d stored in inadequately sealed containers, seem to have survived their ordeal relatively unscathed. Woohoo!

Personal, Update

…we’re engaged!

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Is the excited email/phone call we’ve been making (on my part, in a haphazard and therefore probably ineffectual manner) as we share the good news of our betrothal. Am happy beyond sense, and will probably stop grinning at some point, but I wouldn’t bet on it happening soon.

Everyone’s been asking how it happened. Here’s the story:

In the lead-up to our second anniversary, having long decided that Amanda was the girl for me, I went ring shopping. When my spirit was crushed by my own utter cluelessness, the crowds and then the price-tags on New Bond Street, I asked Sarah to help me shop and, with her help, the following Saturday I managed to track down the appropriate token (the ‘rock’, as it were, is yet to be purchased and I knew in advance that Amanda wanted to be involved).

On the evening of our anniversary, I asked Amanda to get home early as she could and to dress up warm. We dashed out and I got us a cab to an undisclosed location. (Well, obviously I disclosed it to the cabbie or it would have been an expensive and frustrating taxi ride!)… which was Primrose Hill, the location of our first ever date. We strolled up the hill, shivering with cold and delight at the amazing view of the city the summit affords, thankful for clear skies and dry weather.

“I think my feet are getting a little wet,” I said, romantically, knowing that at some point I would be dropping to one knee. Amanda threw some appropriately dismissive insult in my direction but nonetheless we moved to the tarmac-clad viewing point. There, after some further moments admiring the view, each others’ eyes (awww…) and fumbling in my pocket for the Georg Jensen ring case, I reminisced about the fact that two years previously I’d lacked the courage to ask her for a kiss, but this time I had a more important question…

And the rest, as they say, is history. Oh, she said yes, obviously (after a pause for shock – I’ve finally managed to catch the girl who identifies her birthday present by the folds in the wrapping paper by surprise!). I’m looking forward to keep trying to surprise her for the rest of our lives together.

For the curious; I didn’t ask her family for permission — I’d thought to but had guessed (correctly) that Amanda would want to be the one to relay the news.

Personal

Fitness fan

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…I’m not. I enjoy sport, but not generally exercise per se… but the recent membership of a new, non-council (and therefore slightly posh, nice and warm) gym has opened me up to the possibility that I enjoy swimming for the first time since I was a kid excited about going to Lake Club in KL (where there were also Water Slides, to be fair!).

So this was how I came to be swimming lengths and lengths of the gym the morning after Amanda’s birthday, and live to tell the tale. It’s true – the first two weeks ARE the hardest, then things start to feel more natural… let’s see if I can sustain this.

Personal

Post-birthday haze

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Amanda’s birthday was huge fun. Bloomsbury Bowl is THE place to be. In addition to the bowling, karaoke and Big Buck Hunter game on tap, by the end of the evening we’d found innovative ways of deriving entertainment from balloons and a simple barrier (oh look, I’m walking down the steps… now I’m catching a lift… watch out, it’s a SHARK!)…

Wonderful fun, and Amanda liked all her gifts, so life is good. If slightly post-birthday hazy. And it wasn’t even my birthday!

Personal

Satnavalorious

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Both for providing directions, and relieving me and Amanda of stress as I continue driving practice this week. Of course, Amanda doesn’t think its as wonderful as I do (had to change the voice from Jean Luc to some Irish bloke to appease her), but I’ll work to wear her down.

It’s nice being on vacation…

Personal

Birthday

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It was fantastic. Still in moderate disbelief that Damian flew from New York for the celebrations — and successfully managed to keep it a secret, which is not a skill you’d expect him to have.

I’ve a large pile of DVDs, graphic novels, sci-fi tomes, even Orson Scott Card’s ‘How to write Sci-Fi & Fantasy” to get through in the next few weeks, thanks to the generosity and insight of friends and family, so between that and the work towards my British driving license imagine I will be reasonably absent. Still, I’ll look for gaps where I can write and hope to entertain y’all soon…

Personal

Dreaming of Derek

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So I’ve woken up ridiculously early today (how silly; it’s my birthday, not Christmas, and I have a full day at work ahead… but still…)

I had a fun dream. One of those slightly odd ones in that its difficult to work out what inspired it. Elements of it make sense, others less so.

A few friends and I had decided on a media stunt. It was to be magnificent — even the people working with us were to think we were seriously undertaking a business endeavour, but the whole thing was going to to be, essentially, a clever joke. So we created a street fashion label – ‘Structive Destructivo’, designed some clothes, set up a press conference and then drove the model (me! – well, I said it was a dream) down there in complete secrecy so we would have maximum impact walking through the door. The last time I was on a catwalk in real life, I was 10 years old and someone at my primary school had asked me to do it as I was the only kid they knew who owned a blazer (in Malaysia!)… but I was reasonably swaggering and confident in this dream press conference (which was hosted in something that bore a staggering resemblence to a school hall, albeit one on a beach in Miami somewhere…), spun up the length of the hall, turned, and as I sat down I stylishly spun the orange baseball cap I was wearing around so it was on backwards. And then it didn’t fit. A strange level of detail for a dream, you might think? It gets weirder…

“Structive destructivo is not just about streetwear,” my voice says. “It is about a philosophy of life. It’s about not having to answer to the man. It’s about living real. It is about being able to kick the shit out of something if you need to — not someone, dude, that’s just wrong. It’s about being free to do what you need to do to make the world a better place!” Cheers greet my dream self, improbable as that may seem after a contrived and non-sensical intro. Then the first question:

“What wine would go with structive destructivo?” says a reporter I recognise as a housemate from secondary school I didn’t really get on with. I hear myself launch into a description of an Italian red wine I’m pretty sure doesn’t exist, from a part of Italy which may or may not…

…and then I woke up, vaguely proud at having had such a vivid dream that seemed so original, and great, and as I failed to go back to sleep, I realised that if I’d shot a ‘blue steel’ across the auditorium, I’d have been dreaming an alternate version of Zoolander…

Notes to self: the hybrid worlds of Zoolander, Eli Stone, Saturday Morning Kitchen and my youth is a very weird place indeed. And all the clothes are orange.

Personal, Technology

GPhone

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They launched the T-Mobile G1 today (they being T-Mobile, Google, HTC and everyone else, but also the T-Mobile team across the office from me).

It looks pretty awesome, the screen is really responsive, the long touch thing is cool, the UI is lovely, the browser is nice, the screen is pretty.. it’s generally cool. Register your interest here.

I want:
– one handed texting
– pre-emptive dialling
– video messaging

…and I think it needs Exchange support (much as I think Google Apps is awesome — and yes, they’re a client too) for those business users. But maybe someone can write an ‘app’ for the phone to provide this functionality…