Does this place REALLY suck?

On my way home from class this afternoon, I was thinking about things and this fat man with dirty hands and a box of greasy chicken crossed my path. Unlike black cats, there's no superstition about someone like that... but there should be.

Anyway, it got me to thinking about why this country would be the destination of anyone? Has it ever really been great? Truly great?

Thinking back to Canada I might poo-poo the extremes of weather, but there's also space and cleanliness and I don't recall the high numbers of 14 year old Croydon-facelifted mothers as I see around here. I also don't recall the hideous drug problem. Maybe that's the sign of another time and Canada is just as bad now, who knows.

I do think that this country is far from being great though.

Take North America. It was mainly built post-automobile, so many roads and areas are designed to be wide and dispersed and big. The houses are big, the roads are big, the space is big.

I find sometimes the only think England has going for it is history - and is that really all that great? The Romans didn't have double glazing, indoor plumbing or electricity... why would I want to live in a Grade II listed house where I can't install any of that for fear of something.

I know I have some hard thinking ahead of me over the next few years regarding what I want to do with my life and where, but I can guarantee whatever or wherever I do it, it won't be in the US. That's the only constant right now in this world of variables.

Chat Up Line?

On my most laborious trek home this evening, there was this attractive woman/girl/whathaveyou sitting on the tube, then the bus (it was one of those multiple-transport nights).

Anyway, it got me to thinking: how on earth would you (or I) approach someone like that without looking like a psycho? If there's something that London breeds in most of us, it's fear - fear of other people, fear of being mugged, fear of being involved in a conversation that's duller than dishwater.

Maybe it's my empathy showing through, but I could tell as she was reading her book that the last thing she needed or wanted was some stumbling attempt at conversation from me. Is there anything I could have said to woo her away from those pages? Methinks not. Mealsothinks a lot of things, so I could be wrong... but I'm not a psycho.

Spreading it out a bit

Like most of my colleagues, I too am looking for alternate work. The words "rat" and "sinking ship" keep coming together in not a very nice way.

Anyway, even though I've forced my circular journalistic peg through the square hole of technical production guy lately, there was a music editor position that came up through one of the papers.

I do realise that once it hits the papers, it's as good as given to the person who really deserves it, as opposed to the lucky schmo who was there at the right time (hint, the second one's probably closer to me).

Still, with my CV top heavy with XML and PHP and all that jazz that just screams "I'm all about the content", I at least hope to get to the first interview stage.

Then I can really impress them.... enough to hire the other guy.

Getting it!

After weeks of beating my head against a wall trying to come to grips with PHP and mySQL and loads of other tedious TLAs, I can finally say "I'm not an idiot after all!"

Today I started a course - a rather expensive course - learning the intricacies of XSL templating for XML and it's a piece of piss. Sometimes you have to take the small, confidence boosting victories for what they are - confidence boosting. Now I'm getting this, I feel a renewed vigor to kick some major PHP ass.

Hope the momentum lasts!

Another crap point

In the short list of things I could desperately hold onto to prove that my move back to Blighty was justified has been the weather. Canadian summers have always been so unforgivingly dreadful - hot hot hot and humid as hell - that I could happily, and somewhat smugly sit back and think, "yes, I really did make the right decision".

It's quite easy to justify things to myself sometimes.

So, upon hearing about how mild and wonderful the Canadian summer has been this summer, my smug demeanour has fallen like a house of cards. My reasons for moving back to Blighty have just been reduced by one.

The pro and con list to my life gets more and more even every day, which is a worry.

A Bunch of Friggin' Idiots?

You'd think the cradle of the industrial revolution could get their collective heads around something as mind-blowingly difficult as remembering a four-digit number. Apparently not.

The changeover to Chip and PIN for debit cards is apparently set to cause major chaos in the UK this Christmas. In a recent report it's been claimed, "unless people were more familiar with the new chip and PIN cards there were likely to be long queues at tills in the run up to Christmas and during the January sales."

IT'S A FOUR DIGIT NUMBER PEOPLE!

This is the same system I've ALWAYS used in Canada and I've had debit account since the late 80s. France, as well, has used this system for almost a decade. How hard is it to remember four numbers? 1234? Wow that was hard.

Brain like a sieve

Why is it I can compose brilliant entries and observations while I'm walking to and from lunch but as soon as sit in front of my PC, I zone out Peter Gibbons-style. Oh well. Another intellectual post losts to the heavily eroding synapses of my mind.