old friends

a guy that used to live on the same block as me and who i used to play football on the street with, when i was kid, died suddenly last friday. not too sure of the reasons but it looks like he just died in his sleep from a heart related issue. i hadn't seen him for about 10 years but i bump into his brother occasionally, who also played football with us, because he works for london trandsport and is sometimes at the station i take in the morning. sad news.

also on the subject of childhood friends, tonight i am meeting up with 3 guys that i used to go to school with. 1 of them is a really nice guy and i have got a lot of time for him, but the other 2 are just assholes. all they talk about is money, and yet they are tighter than fish's arse. they are also just chancers who have landed fat contracts and have sat on them for years, hoping not to be discovered. dull, boring people with nothing to say whose only status is the money they earn and not the substance of their character.

i have met plenty of their type in my travels around banks. bitter, institutionalised IT workers threatened by anything new and whose sole purpose is self promotion to anyone that will listen whilst also patronising and putting down anyone perceived as a threat, in the hope of gaining a reputation as someone who is not expendable if a reorganisation came to pass.

am a little surprised they haven't been completely found out yet and been let go. one of them has been a bit. he was a contractor earning £120,000 a year and his bank told him they would end his contract and take him on a permie earning £45,000 a year. that still good money, but a 75k pay cut is tough to take. he took their offer in a tacit acknowledgement that he is actually a chancer and was overpaid beyond his ability and he would be unable to compete with anyone even remotely good in the open market.

i hadn't heard from one of them for about 3 years and in his first email to me yesterday the first thing he wrote me was "hey, how are you doing?, are you out of work?". what a lovely way to start an email. i replied i was well and employed. i should have replied, "i am doing good, how are you?, still cheating on your wife?", "its a shame she found out 6 months after the wedding, hope the divorce hasn't cleaned you out". prick.

anyways i have an evening of bullshit to look forward to tonight, and will invariably be asked if i can get hold of the latest version of visual studio or sql server or oracle or whatever. download it off the web yourself you idiots. trial versions are free.

today i have mostly been listening to editors - papillon. this is a live performance from the tv show, later with jools holland. its wicked. the new album is good as well. it grows on you slowly. also you can't see it in this clip but the audience on the jools holland show always consists of desperately un-cool people nodding their heads out of time to whichever band is playing. all friends of friends of bbc lovies i suspect. shoot me if i ever go to a taping of that show. its a great show, but the audience always consists of wankers. i bet the journalists from the NME are there as well as people who work on Radio 1. zane lowe, jo whiley, chris moyles, etc. wankers, like i said.

have a splendid day. its not raining today in london town, so thats always good.