Arrivals, Frustrations with Banking, and the pains of travel..

I'm back in Seattle but to be honest I'm shattered. Found out after I'd landed that there's been yet another problem with some banking back home and people haven't taken money out of my account when they promised they would, and the money is still laying about in there. Obviously it would be worse if I didnt have the money and it bounced.. but it's frustrating because I HAVE the money!

Ah well. This time I have mixed feeling about being back. This place feels like home now, because of proximity to friends, things to do, working ethics and having a handle on my own time. But there's so much missing, and I'm feeling woefully temporary about the whole thing. I've ditched my anchors in the Uk with regards to posessions (aside from my car which im seriously contemplating selling), so I'm feeling slightly wierd, mainly because over here, in Washington, it's very much "home" but I cant settle. I want to be able to get my apartment organised, get car sorted, and start accumulating posessions and be able to say "right im off home" at the end of a day.. rather than knowing im actually heading back to a hotel, and I have to keep an eye on the calendar so I dont end up being here illegally and thus get deported.

What annoys me seriously is this is all my employers fault. But I do actually enjoy my job so much right now I havent been able to bring myself to really seriously put my foot down and do something about it. I seem to have a lot of support for relocation but nobody seems to actually want to do something about it.

I have four weeks here this time, then im back in the UK again. When that happens I will have to take stock and see what I really want to do with my life because it's all rather limbo like at the moment. Not sure I like it.

In short, everything is a bit "waaaaah". All very uncertain, very temporary.

At least im not *actually* miserable though! Just a bit odd!

Tick tock...

Time is ticking away, just about ready to head off to Seattle again now. Looking forward to seeing my friends over there again, and getting on with more productive work. Company politics is getting in the way of the full relocation decision, but I've been promised that they'll get worked out.. Fingers crossed.

So tired, including the USA I'll have done 3 countries this week, day in Belgium on Monday, UK as well and then USA on Friday.

I will miss bits of the UK I've been rediscovering, but I'm really starting to ask myself what im aiming for the states for, and starting to think more than anything, it's a fresh start. New everything. Wonder if that means I'm just running away from stuff here?

Hmm.. all a bit deep for a Wednesday night. I'll miss the countryside i think. With how nice the weather has been I'll miss the pleasant buckinghamshire and northamptonshire greenery, especially little sleepy places like Weston Underwood and Olney. I guess the upshot is I replace that with mountains, lakes and forests. More importantly though it's a career step, and a big one.

Mussolini in a pram...

According to some random personality test I'm a "free-wheeling director"...
conjurs up images of Hitler juggling on a unicycle if you ask me. Still if he couldnt paint trees then cant imagine he'd have been much good.. oh and my personality looks like this colour swatch...

Free-Wheeling Director

No Freedom from Tuesday!

This week my employer has decided to use me as some kind of technology whore. Selling my wares and pimping myself out to various customers across the land.. and what an annoying land it is.

I was supposed to see a large hardware manufacturer based in Bracknell.. no names named but from a reliability experience of their hardware I dont think the letter in the middle of their name is askew through choice.. sign probably collapsed and they kept it.

You'd think driving from Milton Keynes to Bracknell would be a fairly straightforward exercise, no meetings until 11:00am, large 3 lane motorways with an absence of roadworks between me and Bracknell and only seventy something miles.. figured about an hour or so to get there. Unfortunately I think the fact that I missed most problems on Tuesday that the world saved them all up for Wednesday and Thursday. About 10 minutes into my journey I joined the M1 (after cheating and sneaking into Newport Pagnell services because the barriers were down), 5 minutes later, right in front of me a large articulated 16 wheel monster jack knifes at about 80mph, crushing anothe car as it flipped around and causing all manner of carnage.. I was too far back to be caught up in it, but close enough to see it happen.. and it was NASTY. All three lanes blocked by this truck, with it's cab completely caved in. Couldnt actually see the car at all under the truck, but they closed the other side of the motorway to land one of the air ambulances so it must have been very serious. So after everybody was removed safely I found myself still sitting in traffic. Casually wandered up to one of the police officers at the scene to make enquiries and was told "at least a couple more hours". It was 3.

I spent three hours waiting for them to move that vehicle and reopen the road.. at which point I was too late for my meeting so that got cancelled.. decided to head straight back home. Turned around at the next junction and got stuck in the huge line of traffic of mindles idiots gawking at the wreckage still left on the other side.

So that was Wednesday, yesterday I had to drive aaaaaallll the way up to Liverpool, well actually Wilmslow but there's only about 15 miles in it at that point. Terribly terribly posh part of the country, and I thought "the north" was all depressing and poor... well, actually there were a large number of disused collapsing mill like structures and factory buildings, which if they were down south would have been turned into phenomenally expensive apartment buildings with names like "something place", "something mill" or even "the old something". Getting back still took me almost 4 hours, even though I managed almost 100 at some points on the M1 once the traffic had got moving..

So finally got back at about 9, signed into my MSN and chatted to missed ones in Seattle (dont worry im back on Friday!), and then went out to search for food.. shortly after leaving the house exhaust falls off friends car and has to be tied up using a belt, then limping home at 10mph. I was so hungry!!

Well. Two days of hell to make up for a relatively event free Tuesday. I say relatively.. the heating broke, the gas man didnt come out until 6pm, and I lost a load of email when outlook crashed half way through a file copy. Oh and my mobile died briefly and had to be refreshed, and my ipod decided to forget it's entire contents.

So.. pretty normal week so far.

Saturday I have to go to London, but that'll be a random photography session and touristy thing. Sunday I'm colleague sitting as my new "m' colleague 2.0" lands from Florida onto our miserable little island. Likely he'll be a bag of nerves and need a stiff drink as he has flying issues. Monday I'll be in Brussels.. most people know my thoughts on Belgium.

In the words of Silent Bob... gnurrrhhhewwww
(you know the noise I mean!)

The Tyranny of Wombles

This wont make any sense to anybody overseas, but I had to explain this to a friend this morning and realised how stupid it sounded, so I've decided to ridicule myself yet further by blogging it.. all part of my ongoing mission towards self destruction!

When I was little (about 9ish I think) I was affraid of the Wombles. A Children's tv program that features small furry mammals. According to the shows theme tune lived overground, underground "wombling free", somewhere in the general vicinity of Wimbledon Common in London. Having seen the show, and having visited Wimbledon common a number of times and comparing the height of them compared to park benches I'd figured out they were about one and a half to two feet high. I'd also figured out they must somehow be related to badgers (cant remember how I got there). One bit always concerned me.. you never saw any, there was no wildlife program about wombles.. no David Attenburgh squatting next to a womble hole waiting for Uncle Bulgaria to come wombling out looking for scraps.. or dead wombles at the side of the road after being swatted by a large truck. From this I concluded that wombles were in fact, the masters of stealth, and indestructable.

Then the whole scandal kicked off in later years about parts of a super gun being found at dover for shipping to one "S Hussain, Iraq". Of course the government detained all the bits, and the makers were sought for stern questioning. Personally I think they missed out the Wombles, and that they're actually the arms merchants behind terrorist organisations and Sadam's regime of doom.. "making good use of the things that they find..." the song goes.. bloody arms to Iraq that's what it was... deep beneath wimbledon common biological weapons of terrifying magnitude are being crafted.. and they go and make a childrens tv program about them!!

Womble "Stepney" puts the finishing touches on a new anti-personnel mine layer

When I was little I was scared of wombles... the world should be too!

BA049 here I come!

Good news is my relocation plan has finally been approved.. but now arguments are ensuing over who pays for it. It costs about $20k to move me from the UK to the USA, various things have to be covered around Visa legal processes and moving things about, taxes and what not, so somebody has to stump up from their budgets.. Assuming somebody does in the near future then I have a strong feeling this blog is going to turn into a "what it's really like to move from the UK to the USA" style diary.. no doubt there'll be a mire of buerocracy for me to froth over and whinge about... there's bound to be something terribly wrong with the whole process!

It's a good job too because worryingly this time back I've found nothing appealing about the UK whatsoever. Small country villages have done nothing for me.. Englands gently rolling pastoral landscapes are a damp squib to the senses after the glorious vista's of Washingtons snow capped mountains, deep pine forests and sparkling lakes. Even the rain is all wrong. So far since I've been back I've had to endure completely useless customer service (queue of at least 40 people at the cinema on Tuesday, being served by ONE small confused looking girl), on the whole the weather has been dreadful, and the office I've had to work in has been shockingly loud and disruptive.

So, on the 28th of April I get to return to the USA, at least that's when the flight is being arranged for! I could be there for two weeks.. or that could be it.. who knows!?

Cruel Britannia

I'm back. Touched down in cruel britannia this afternoon at noon... only to discover the place is still as broken and miserable as it was when I left. Starbucks coffee in heathrow doesnt deserve to wear the logo!!

Now it's 9:10pm and I'm avoiding lag! Getting quite hungry though.

Not posting more. Miserable.

Want my mountains and lakes.

Sulk.

Everything is bigger in Texas..

Or so the saying goes. Sadly brains arent, mostly the things that were bigger than everywhere else narrowed down to a short few things; Hair, Freeways and waistlines. I've had to spend three days this week in Houston, Texas doing a video shoot for Microsoft. Yes at least within the Microsoft community I'm going to be famous. the video shoot was awful, they scrimped on the budget a bit so that we had one take and one take only, they were nervous at my absence of script or preparation. Simple reason being that I dont work well with that kind of stuff, if I cant wing it and adlib I obviously dont know my subject matter very well and I get all nervous and choke! Problem with only one take is that you do still stumble and you do always need to ask them to roll again. Luckily the film crew and camera teams were nice, and they agreed to do a bit of editing before it gets to post-production. So myself and the other guy in the video got to just pause after mistakes and start again.

Being in Houston for work sucks, I really do hate the place, but I've not actually seen much of it.. and luckily it was only two days. Also, Wednesday, the day of actually getting there was a total nightmarish series of disasters. Started off in the morning with my conference bridge yet again not working, followed by me gashing my finger open on the edge of the desk so I was leaking blood everywhere, got to Seattle airport eventually, late, so couldnt change to a better seat. There was a problem with the billing for my hire car so I had to phone my bank making me even later.. flight was overbooked so got moved to an even worse seat than I started with, jammed between a big sweaty fat bloke who for some reason smelled of cabbage, and on the other side of me a short guy who snored and was *almost* drooling on my shoulder. For four hours.

On arriving in Houston first of all I have the humidity to deal with in a badly air-conditioned airport. Not to mention being gawked out by mad texans. Baggage was last off the plane, but at least it turned up.. if that'd been a tuesday my luggage would have gone to Minsk, or somewhere equally remote and obscure. Got to a taxi, gave directions to the roache motel the company had booked me into, and at this point the taxi driver begins mumbling loudly (I know that sounds odd but thats what he was doing. I dont think he could be bothered to move his lips much but he had the volume okay) at me for directions and more address details, to which my reply was "you're the bloody taxi driver, surely you know where hotels are... it's where people go from airports!". So he gets lost, and im being driven passed damaged cars, strip clubs and places claiming "adult entertainment" or "girlz girlz girlz". Now i know for a fact that the company isnt insane enough to start booking it's employees into hotels that bad.. or at least I thought so. Sure enough wedged between a strip joint called Centerfolds, a massage place called Dreams and opposite "Eat at Joe's" (which can only be described as 'rustic') there was the Comfort Suites. Claiming to be near the Galleria anyway.. the Galleria was actually 2 miles away, and last time I checked unless you're talking about states and general greater distances 2 miles wasnt really near anything!

Then I stubbed my toe on a desk, which made me quickly grab the wall, gashing my finger back open again.

Houston too hot, the experience of getting there was awful, most of the experience of being there was awful as well. Although I did have a nice dinner with colleagues at an italian restaurant which was very nice.

Coming back was incredibly surreal. Was in the line to board between a particularly attractive tanned blonde girl with a backpack containing swimming gear, which was huge.. she looked like she was struggling and I was raised properly to be the decent gentlemanly type so I helped her get the baggage up into the overhead locker. Getting off the plane helped her down with it and we chatted on the way out back to the terminal once we'd landed in Seattle. Turned out by utter utter fluke that she works at an art gallery I was supposed to be going to a party at later that evening, she knew some of my friends here and wasnt sure if she was going or not. Tiny tiny world! That evening was pretty good fun, catching up with people.. one of my friends is back in town just for a few days for a wedding before she starts travelling again so was good to see her!

This weekend I'm having a complete non-work session, I've vowed not to open my email, I've been to see V For Vendetta (very good!), and now i'm popping over to bainbridge island to sit on the beach with a cup of coffee and glare moodily at the lake for a bit.. contemplating the human wreckage which is my life so far, and thinking about some very big decisions I have to make over the coming few weeks about career, location and general well being!

End of rant.

Oh here's a sign from Houston.. see, Leeland is a place. Better not be in Houston though im not that much of a masochist!

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