For Cryin' Out Loud!

This is just a random post in case Charlie Foxtrot ever drops by.

I'd enjoy engaging in a bit more debate with you, but I'm not sure you're checking your comment moderation email address. I've left several comments on your recent posts but none of them have appeared yet...

Looking to The Future

I am feeling jaded.

Brett and I had a great two-week winter-sun break in the Canaries at the start of the month but, as soon as I was back at my desk, I was feeling like I needed another holiday.  Going through another round of business planning – even when the Board approved my draft budget, pretty much without amendment – just isn’t stimulating me this year.

For a while now, I’ve been trying to find a way of fitting more travel into my life.  The Canaries Cruise got the travel juices flowing in excess once again and just recently I came across the Never-Ending Voyage blog.  Have a look yourself; it’s the story of a couple from Manchester who saved up for a mega Round-the-World trip and enjoyed it so much they have now sold-up and set out to be permanent digital nomads.

While I’m not planning on selling all my possessions and setting off with just a rucksack on my back, I like the concept of the adult gap-year round-the-world  trip and they have a good selection of practical advice on how to make it happen.  Reading some of the comments put me on to other digital nomads with other good ideas.

I have the Kilimanjaro trek on the horizon later this year, but next year is potentially doable.  I’m scaling back my commitment to the Chorus after this season, so I’ll have more time to plan and organise.

I haven’t really talked this particular idea over with Brett yet either.  I know he is generally in favour of travel but understandably wary of some of my grand plans.  For this to work, we both have to be up for it, able to save enough to finance it and be able to take sabbaticals from work at the same time – no small obstacles to overcome...

But then if you never try, you never achieve!

Soire En Passant

Had a lovely night last night at the London Oratory School Theatre; Cygnet Players were doing Thoroughly Modern Millie.  Stuart B was the choreographer and Johnny C (his partner) was directing.  It turned out to be a bit of a Chorus night too; there were about twenty of us in the audience.

The show was excellent; fantastic costumes, great dancing and Olly and Mark A in the cast too.  Rather unusually, they did the lines of the Chinese characters in Chinese and had screens by the side of the stage with the translations.  Great comic effect as the evening wore on.

Today was a very late start; the lie-in went on rather too long, so by the time I got up it was pretty much time to leave to meet Lee S in town.  He’d offered me a spare ticket he had for a movie called Namibia.  It was a three-hour epic charting the country’s struggle for independence from South Africa.  Neither of us was familiar with the background, so while the movie wasn’t the best I’ve ever seen, it was educational.

Stopped off at PD for a few hours on the way home.

Rod’s Forty-First

Had a lovely dinner tonight at The Spread Eagle in Greenwich.  It is Rod’s forty-first birthday today so the four of us went out for dinner.  Excellent cuisine which we all agreed we should indulge in more often.

I also managed to get through the whole evening without thinking about the Velma Kelly quote from Chicago!

Before dinner I’d been at Karen L’s leaving drinks at work and got the gossip on her departure – which seemingly had nothing whatsoever to do with her going back to university!  I am consequently in a bit of a moral dilemma which I need to think on a bit more before choosing a course of action.

The Ronson Track

So Wednesday we got an email, Thursday we had the rehearsal and Friday evening forty of us were in a recording studio.  Mark Ronson had asked us (the Chorus) to do some backing vocals for the title track of his new album, ‘The Business’.

Hard work both Thursday and Friday nights, but I think in the end we gave a good performance.  Am curious to see how it sounds when it’s all properly mixed.

Everyone under the age of thirty has been agog when I’ve told them we’re working with Ronson.  I had to look him up on Wikipedia.  Am definitely no longer part of the younger generation…

Feebleness and Femtocells

Monday happened but I wasn’t much chirpier.  Chorus perked me up a bit with the good music.

Tuesday I spent the morning at a Vodafone event in the City.  It turned out to be a plug for their latest brainwave; a cheap SoHo femtocell.  It’s a good idea but not much use to us at the moment; we don’t need one anywhere in the UK and they can’t be used abroad.  The event did give me a chance to get some quality hands-on time with the latest offerings from HTC, Nokia and RIM though.  And the lunch was good.

The afternoon was largely a write-off.  I gave up trying to force myself to do useful work after a while and got Rob H to upgrade my laptop to the latest test-build of Windows 7.  The migration went smoothly enough.

The upgrade project as a whole is giving me headaches though; there are various delays creeping in so we are going to have to delay the delivery.

Tuesday evening we were meeting Mark & Chris for drinks.  They are fleetingly together and in London and we’d arranged to meet up.  We started in Rupert Street for drinks along with Ping (who is consumed by the RADA production of Company he’s involved with) and then Brett and I went on with them to Bodeans for ribs.  Strangely they were both really keen on the venue and then neither of them had any kind of pork or ribs!

Wednesday more than made up for Tuesday’s inadequacy though and I got plenty of work done; confirmed the revised schedule, alerted the business heads and the training company to the change, revised all the room bookings and got our hardware purchasing finalised.  That and dealt with a couple of legal issues and yet more software licensing renewals.  I ended up staying late.

On my way home I got a call from Anthony F; the Chorus has been asked to record a track with a well-known artist at very short notice and he wanted my help getting the word out to everyone that we needed to field a group tomorrow night and Friday afternoon.

…So, I’d woken up around 4am and not been able to get back to sleep.  Shortly after 4am I discovered that my Facebook was offline due to ‘Site Maintenance.’  By the time I got home from work around 8pm I still had no Facebook and the general irritability I’ve been feeling this week, meant I could do without having to do a single-handed awareness-raising campaign.  Luckily Brett arrived home around the same time I did and he took care of things, while I dosed ahead of my piano lesson.

It all added up to me having done no piano practice at all this week, so I went in with a certain amount of trepidation.  I did okay though.  Without having practiced at all, I was better this week than last.  I wonder how much greater my improvement would be if I did actually put in the work between lessons.

Still irritable though.

Cocktails When I Shouldn’t

Took Friday off work.  Whatever I’ve got is really sapping my energy.  Napped through half of the day.  Friday evening we had tickets for Macbeth at the Broadway Theatre.  I’d been quite looking forward to it, but it was a rather average production;  too many people reciting Shakespeare rather than acting it.

Saturday evening we had dinner with Rod and Jess and friends in Wimbledon.  An enjoyable game of Trivial Pursuit followed.

Sunday was another quiet day.  This evening we were in town at the Cellar Door at the corner of the Aldwych for Stephen B’s farewell drinks.  I discovered a cocktail called a Gingerbread Ladyboy (Cognac, White Chocolate Liqueur, Ginger Syrup and fresh cream) which was dangerously drinkable.  Came home.  Ate pizza.