almost over

as i suspected, the film, hunger, was difficult viewing. good but a bit harsh. the lead actor does what christian bale did in the machinist and clearly goes on a starvation diet because he is skin and bones at the end of the film. if you have the means i recommend you watch it but not its not for the squeemish.

gym opened on wedensday and i went yesterday and today and its closed over the weekend and monday next week so after a couple of days good training its interrupted again. too many bank holidays. i wouldnt feel like that if i was working but seeing as i am not, these bank holidays are screwing up my routine.

on the subject of work i got a call from an agent saying that a company wanted to give me a technical interview. i didnt even know who they were and when i got sent the details i knew i didnt want to work for them. they weren't an investment bank, they weren't a hedge fund and they weren't interesting. its got to be one of those 3 for me to consider it. i nearly called the agent back and told him i would give it a pass but i thought i would be good practice for the new year and any other interviews i get.

it turned out to be one of those interviews where they asked very specific questions about their own network. i gave up even humouring them with even pretending to think of a logical answer after the first couple of questions and just said i dont know. i really meant i dont care, but was being polite.

this relates to an issue we had. say you need to access and esx server, how would you do it?.
connect to the vc and manage it through that
the vc is down and doesnt work, what else could you use?
vi client to the esx host.
no, that doesnt work either, what else
telnet to the esx server
no that is not working either.
ilo to the console of the server.
the ilo doesnt work either, what else
errr, i dont know, stick a keyboard and mouse on the physical machine.
you dont have access the physical server.
oh fuck it i dont give a shit. i dont even want this fucking job. i was just curious about the level of questions you would ask me. the level is cuntish. i actually said i dont know then. i meant i dont care.

he asked me a few questions after this about other various issues they had had, that were very specific. utterly pointless. you should try and find the level of knowledge on a subject someone has, not if they have happened to have previously come across the same specific problems you have had. you have a lot to learn about interviewing. they wont call me back. they are bigger fucking idiots than i already think they are if they do. i wont go in the event they do.

come the new year i will put myself out there and see what comes back. we shall see what comes up. stuff related to buying my flat has been quiet because its a short week because of bank holidays. am sure things will kick off again in from tuesday.

have already started to think about my trip to the states next year. i think i might pass on new york and just stay on the west coast for a 10 days. also someone i used to work with years ago has just moved to portland oregon and i saw him last week and said i should visit portland if i was on the west coast. am considering it and i could drive up from san francisco where i will be visiting my other friend anyway. its just an idea at the moment. i currently have no idea what i will be doing or where i will be working next year, but its good to have a plan on the back burner.

today i have mostly been listening to yeah yeah yeahs - y control. wicked tune.

trust fund kids

bored to tears over these last few days. my gym is closed so i cant work out and my bank is closed so i cant sort out stuff for the place i am trying to buy, and i dont want to walk around with half a million people in the west end looking to buy shit i dont need just because its 20% off on sale. people go crazy in the sales. i bet they dont end up wearing half the stuff they buy.

downloaded a few films to keep me occupied. i watched america psycho which is good, all the presidents men with robert redford and dustin hoffman, which is in my list of favourite films of all time, the breakfast club, do the right thing and the usual suspects which is very good. i have a few films still left to watch. i think i will watch this next. it looks like it will be tough viewing, but also very good.



went round to see arsenal (my team) v chelsea at my friends place this evening, and the arsenal won 3-1, which makes a change against chelsea. it did mean i had to listen to whining and self pity from someone who takes 4 holidays a year (south africa, india, costa rica etc), works part time and has inherited hundreds of thousands of pounds in the few years i have known them, and that doesnt include the million plus they will get from daddy. stop whining. stop measuring your life by the amount of bathrooms you have in your house or how often you change your car and stop being so shallow. i didnt say it because its rude to criticise someone whilst watching their subscription based sports channel.

i had lunch a few weeks ago with another friend of mine who is also a trust fund kid and who was coming out with the same shit and wondering why he wasnt earning more and getting credit at his job. that day i told him tactfully and i reminded him that he had turned down a job offer from goldman sachs paying double what he was now earning, because he had said at the time that he didnt want to work that hard and he liked taking lots of days off and not staying late at work. at the time he also said he liked being able to come into work at 9.30 on days after he had been out clubbing the night before. i dont think he liked me reminding him about stuff he had said. i told him at the time he was crazy for turning them down and that he would regret it and that it was worth taking the job for the things he could learn and advance his career with and it would be worth doing even if it meant a pay cut, let alone the 100% pay rise they were offering. he is regretting it 3 years later. havent heard from him since i saw him that day. oh well.

am just getting annoyed with these trust fund kids whining about shit. people who didnt have to work in supermarkets whilst at school and university to make enough money to get by. people who got hundreds of thousands of pounds given to them, instead of actually working and saving up for years. people who got their jobs from contacts their parents have, and not on merit after competing against a field of talented candidates.

stop fucking whining you ungrateful shits. we are all very lucky having not being born in a huge swathe of the planet consisting of most of africa, latin america or asia, otherwise we would be living in abject poverty without access to clean drinking water and not having a bmw or not working for goldman sachs would be the least of our worries. even amongst those that have been born in western europe, north america and australia you are lucky because you have been given millions of pounds so enough complaining please. 6 billion people on the planet. 5.9 billion people worse off than you and you still fucking complain and feel sorry for yourself.

its rich wankers like this that ruined williamsburg that i mentioned in my last post.

another friend emailed me and asked what my plans were for new years eve. i told him i didnt have any but would go out if everyone else was going, although i didnt want to queue up anywhere or get ripped off and pay to just enter a bar that is free to go to the other 364 days of the year. i probably wont end up going out anywhere. i saw that camp freddy are playing a new years eve show at the roxy in LA. how cool would it be to go to that. if i was a millionaire trust fund kid i would definitely go to it, and i would have no excuse to complain about anything because i would have had the best night ever. unfortunately i am not a millionaire trust fund kid. will probably watch my film about hunger strikes instead.

if you dont know, camp freddy is a group consisting of dave navarro (janes addiction), matt sorum(g'n'r, the cult, velvet revolver) and a bunch of other people from other big bands, who play shows in LA sometimes. this is a clip of them with the lead singer or linkin park, and slash and duff from g'n'r.



anyways, that not what i have mostly been listening to today. i have mostly been listeing to plan b - prayin. good tune.

williamsburg R.I.P

more running around talking to mortgage people and shit like that and have started getting my deposit for the flat all assembled in one account ready to pull the trigger as soon as i get the go ahead. my money was spread across various accounts and stuff so its going to take a few days for it all to converge in one place, especially since its christmas and there are bank holidays which means everything is taking a bit longer. hopefully we will get there soon. i dont want to be running around come the new year when i start to look for a new contract. it must be very stressful dealing with all this shit when you have to go to work during the day. thankfully i have the time to deal with all of it at the moment.

had another call about a job going at another bank. i told them i would do it so we shall see what happens. i dont expect to hear anything back from them or the hedge fund before that, till january. you very rarely get called in for interviews in the last weeks of december because there is no one around in these places to do the actual interviewing. we shall see what 2011 comes up with. would be ideal if i closed on the flat and got a new job all at the same time in the last week of january. that would be a touch.

it was the shortest day of the year yesterday. it kind of crept on me. usually its something i watch from weeks away constant telling myself that once i get past that day, it means that we are slowly coming out of the darkness and into the light. this time i barely noticed that it had come and gone. not being at work has chilled me out, and dealing with all this other stuff with the flat has kept me occupied. wont really notice the days getting longer till the end of january, but its just nice to know that it is actually happening even though we cant notice it.

today i have mostly been listening to the stone roses - breaking into heaven. these fellas were talented and cool and if you want to hear an awesome guitar performance just forward to 5 mins and enjoy.



and now something not so cool. when i go to new york i like to go to williamsburg. it was a part of brooklyn, new york that was not touched by tourism too much and it just seemed like a nice place to hang out in with some nice shops and nice restaurants and bars. i first went there around 6 years ago with a friend of a friend who was a local and lived there. he was a photographer and wasnt rich and i also noticed there were lots of polish immigrants and also lots of artists and students. in the summer they used to close down bedford avenue and had williamsburg walks and people would just sit out on the streets, kids would play in the fire hydrants and there was music and market stalls. it had a really community feel to it like you were in a small town. also lots of bands started coming out of that part of brooklyn like MGMT, vampire weekend, yeasayer and a few others.

anyways, the last few times i have gone i have noticed lots of new developments and also lots more tourists. it seems to have lost a little something of what made it cool and it loses a little bit more every year i have been back. my favourite little thai restaurant has been turned into a trendy bistro and a few other places have disspeared as well. the little shops used to have some nice stuff but now those same little shops have some pretty expensive designer clothes in them clearly not targeted at the kind of people who used to live in williamsburg but the new folks that have moved there recently into their million dollar apartments. hey i am not against gentrification and if anything, you could say that if a tourist like me started going there 6 years ago, then that was the beginning of the end, and its going to be downhill after that.

anyways, i was surfing the web the other day and i came across this clip. basically this means that williamsburg is dead when a celebrity nobody like this moves their with her rockstar boyfriend (alex turner, arctic monkeys) it means its over. williamsburg wasnt about millionaire 20 somethings and fashion models with tv shows. it was cool because they weren't there. fuck off to your lofts in tribeca or move to a place in the hills above hollywood and leave something for us normal people. these cunts ruin everything.

cunt off!

there was a girl in the bar the other night who had lots of tattoos on her arms and hands and neck. she was covered in them and to be honest they didn't look like they had been done very well. the lines weren't sharp and the colours were a bit washed out. anyways on the top of her fingers just below the knuckles she had the word 'cunt' written on one hand and 'off!' written on the other. that way you could hold your hands together as 2 fists and it would spell cunt off!. how charming. clearly someone who really doesn't give a shit what their mum thinks.

what would possess someone to get that permantly tattoo'd on their hands?. someone must have really pissed them off badly and regularly, a bit like whats been happening to me over the last few days.

my bank is taking an age to sort out my mortgage. i have been in there a couple of times almost begging to fill in a form but they keep telling me to come back later or speak to someone else. they are also the same people that when not cancelling my credit card at random moments recently mistakenly put credit on one of my credit cards that i didnt owe money, when the payment should have gone onto the card i did use and owe money on. it was clearly their mistake, but after seeing them they acknowledged it but still told me it was my problem and that i would have to pay the outstanding balance they they mistakenly didnt pay and that i would have to then get a refund from them on the other card that they mistakenly credited. your fuck up, my problem. you people can cunt off!.

i then had a problem with my travel card that is called oyster. they wouldnt replace it at the station when i went to see them and told me i needed to bring proof of address. i went home, got a bank statement with my address on it, and they told me they couldnt give me a new one until i gave them a receipt from when i last topped up my travel card with credit. i went home again and found a receipt and went back to the station. they looked at it and said it didnt have enough information on and that i should just call up there helpline. ah, ok, thanks for making me visit you 3 times for no fucking reasons. you can cunt off! as well.

today i have mostly been listening to the arcade fire - rebellion. its from their very good album funeral. i nearly posted up the new coldplay christmas single as they are playing it on the radio as i type this post, but then i remembered its a big stinking pile of cliched shit. its anti music. its the kind of shit that is playing in department stores whilst people shop for beige curtains. its music with no other purpose aside from collecting money and royalties for a millionaire pop group at a time of year when people are shopping. its like the coldplay christmas sale. its not bit torrent and illegal downloads killing music. its shit like this taking up precious air time on radio shows when they could be playing good music from interesting bands whose sole purpose for making music is not to buy a 3rd house in the south of france or a bigger boat.

enjoy a bit of the arcade fire. merry christmas.

tree of life

a quiet week and am still not bored of not working. 2 whole weeks i haven't worked for now and it still feels good. got a couple of calls over the last couple of days about a couple of roles that are looking for people. one the roles is really good and its a hedge fund and it sounds like it might be really good. its project work which is what i want to do. we shall see how it goes.

went out on thurday night with a bunch of friends in shoreditch and had a really good night out. had to leave at just after midnight as i wanted to catch my last train home. as i was walking through the station i saw my last train was already at the platform and so i started sprinting to make it. i ran up some stairs and missed a step, started stumbling and thought i was about to regain my balance when my ruksack slipped off my shoulder and i stepped on it and i went flying face first on to the walkway over the platform. it was a brilliant comedy moment. anyways, i ended up missing the train and having to get another train which only got me halfway home and then it was time for the night bus.

went out again last night and had something to eat in farringdon and then went on to a few bars in farringdon and shoreditch. all good fun.

snow came down with a vengance today and we got about 5 inches this morning and afternoon, so no gym for me today. i am not even sure if the buses are running but i doubt it. cycling is out the question. i have slick tyres on my bike with no tread on them at all that are good for gripping on smooth dry tarmac. wet roads can be a bit a problem and 5 inches of snow is a no go.


above is a view of the yard from my kitchen.

anyways, i will try and get to the gym tomorrow. nothing else planned. will need to chase up about my mortgage on monday. it would be nice to get all the stuff done with the new flat before i start having to concentrate on getting a new contract in the new year.

they just released the trailer for a new film from one of my favourite film makers, terence malick. thin red line and the new world are two of my favourite films. this is his new film which comes out in may. it looks epic.

town

this week is flying by quick. calls to estate agents and with solicitors as they try and get the mortgage and legal documents sorted out. i reckon it will be mid january by the time i get any keys and i might post some pics of the new place then, if its all gone through and the deal has not been scuppered. hopefully it all comes through ok. its a good thing i am not at work full time as i really wouldn't like the hassle of doing all this and working at the same time. its been good timing.

buying a place is the biggest purchase anyone makes in their life. it got me thinking about a couple of things. first was that some of my savings were from when i was working at a supermarket while i was still at school. forget about contracts in investment banks, some of the money was from stacking toilet roll and bottled water in a supermarket on my saturdays.
it also made me realise how expensive it is and how on earth people with normal jobs working in shops or offices or teachers or nurses are supposed to afford to buy places like mine. its nice but its not a palace. the last 6 months i spent working in a bank were the most lucrative i have ever had, and had it not been for that i am not sure i would be able to buy this place. it all does seem unfair and you do wonder about the implications for society and urbanisation of populations.

anyways, the week is going by quick. have been going to the gym regularly and i am feeling the difference. am lifting more and am stronger than i have been over the last few months. have been cycling most of the time though i dont like the type of traffic that you get on a weekday in london. everyone is really aggressive compared to weekends and people just seem to turn into cunts.

am out tomorrow night in shoreditch with a few friends. i also downloaded a few films and i watched one of them last night. the town, with ben affleck. to be honest i am not a fan of his and haven't watched many of his films but it was very very good indeed. if you have the means, money or an internet connection, i recommend it.

a few hundred

my plan for my first week off was to go to the gym a lot and to do a bit of studying and basically just chill for a while. i ended up going to the gym the same as i usually do and did no extra sessions and i have done no studying at all.

i did however, rather spontaneously purchase a flat, (apartment). i shall not say exactly how much it was but it was quite a lot of money, ie a few hundred grand. i went to see a place on saturday and didn't think it was that great expecially seeing as they were asking a ridiculous some of money for it. i thought i would browse the web and see if there was anything better and i saw a really nice place. i viewed it a couple of time, made a couple of offers and my second offer got accepted this morning. am just sorting out all the solicitors and mortgage and all that shit now.

if my contract had got renewed at the bank i am pretty sure i would never have come across it and wouldn't have had the time to do the viewings. its weird how shit you weren't planning just comes out of the blue. anyways, as i am not working and i dont know when and where i will be working in the new year, i have decided to rent it out initially with the view of maybe moving in later in the year if i am in a nice fat contract. i can make some money off it in the meantime because i was able to put down a fat deposit and my mortgage ain't that big by london standards.
any rent i get from it will cover the mortgage and also give me a nice sum every month.

thats it really. i also saw my friend who is in the army and got back from afghanistan about a month ago. he was based with british troops all over the place and was working on some engineering and logistics projects. sounds like he got close to some action but fortunately no one in his regiment got wounded or killed.

nothing else going on really. am enjoying waking up at 9am every morning instead of 7.20am. i like being able to stay up late and watch a film on tv if i want to. little things like that are nice. i thought i would get bored and be itching to get back to working after a few days but i am not in the slightest. i could quite happily do another few weeks of this.

today i have mostly been listening to editors - in this light and on this evening. i wasn't that taken with this album first time i heard it but when i was on holiday and driving around california a few months back i found myself listening to it all the time.

finished

i finished up at my work on friday. didn't do any work but i hadn't done any for the last couple of weeks since i finished my project, so i was hardly going to get stuff to do on my last day. said goodbye to a few people. my boss called me up and wished me luck and asked me to give him my details in case they get something come up in the new year once their budgets have been approved.

actually chancer who had been told he was staying got told that he might actually not be staying because of the budget not being approved when they thought it would be, and so they were letting all the contractors know so instead of giving them a suprise in the new year. chancer was not very happy. his cash cow of a job, which involved going to breakfast for an hour in the morning, going the gym for an hour and a half at lunch time and then spending the rest of the afternoon chatting to random people in the office as well as billing 2 days on a saturday for a doing work that shouldn't take more than 2 hours, is in jeapordy. hope all that ass kissing comes in handy because you will struggle to get that much money based on your skills. harsh but true.

had a quiet weekend. weather was filthy yesterday. it had snowed during the week, but yesterday it was a couple of degrees above freezing and so all the snow turned into a dirty grey slush and it was raining yesterday as well, so it was horrible. went to the gym today and will be going during the week as well. it was a lovely crisp cold and bright day and all the slush has disappeared so it was lovely weather to cycle in.

have also downloaded some films that i wanted to see, and that will be keep me occupied as well over the next few weeks. gym, films, reading, cycling. i ain't gonna want to go back to work in the new year. actually the other good thing about the gym is that some new girl has joined is she is fantastically good looking. she must be a model. there is no way she isn't. she looks a bit like the girl that does paints the forged paintings and who was hanging around with pierce brosnan in the film the thomas crown affair. i believe the technical description is that she is hotter than a firecracker on the 4th of july.

today i have mostly been listening to the subways - rock and roll queen.

beginning of the end

the start of my final week at work. have done nothing and have been given nothing to do. i doubt i will get anything to do and its just a question of winding the clock down at the end of the game and waiting for the final whistle, to use a sporting metaphor.

it was freezing cold this weekend but managed to get out on my bike and to the gym. cycling there in these conditions is always difficult because you can't get any heat into your legs or your body and its hard to get yourself warmed up. things are much better on the way home after a work out because you are buzzing and warmed up, and it means you cant feel the cold as much, but its still hard work. no chance of setting a quick time in conditions like this. forecast is for snow tonight so tomorrow will be interesting.

called up today about that exchange course i wanted to go on. they are going to call me back if anyone drops out and there is a place available. was a little surprised when the guy said that it looked like all the places were taken up. would have thought people would not want to go on a long training course in december when work is so easy at this time of year and you do hardly anything. anyways, we shall see if they call me back. no bother either way.

was also looking around for somewhere to do my sql exam which i am going to start studying for. on the exam portal it shows what exams you have booked with them and whether you passed or failed. i have failed 10 times on various exams. wow, i had no idea it was that many. i really am quite shit. i have passed 22 times though, so thats not so bad.

football has been cancelled this week because we cant get the numbers. will go training instead, but would have prefered to have played. i suspect we might not play too many more times this year as i think a few of the guys might be going home to ireland to visit folks and stuff.

had a call about a contract and i feigned enthusiasm on the phone. i really dont want to work for a couple of weeks but there is a part of me that is reluctant to turn stuff down. one doesn't want to get too presumptous in thinking that i could get any other contract easily at any time and end up turning down lots of stuff only to find nothing come up in the new year. will see how it goes. i could do with the interview practice.

thats all folks. today i have mostly been listening to adele - rolling in the deep. am not a fan but this is her new single and its good.

freezing

chancer was very quiet and a bit off with both me and the guy who has been there about 4 years and worked with me on my project for the last 5 months. there was a definitely a tension in the air. it might have been because the guy i used work with made it plainly obvious that he was not happy because depsite chancer and him being given some work to do this week, chancer did none of it and left it all up to the other guy to do it all.

he was not happy about it at all and understandably so. i just kept out of it mostly, and although i didn't shit stir i did tell him what i thought about the chancer. also because we had hardly any work to do over the last week, we did discover why the project that the chancer is working on is taking so long. its because they are working at snails pace and they are exiting their datacenter at the rate of around 15 servers a month. to put that in perspective, we exited our datancenter at the rate of around 30-40 servers a week. that will take a while when you are dealing with hundred of servers and it took us around 5 months. at this rate it will take the chancer just under 4 years to finish off his datancenter exit.

anyways we think the chancer might be in a bit of a predicament. it looks like the bank has a policy where if a contractor has been there for 2 years, they tend to be asked to go permanent or leave. this afternoon all the long term contractors were being called into meetings with the bosses and we suspect they were being offered permie positions. the day of reckoning is coming for the chancer. he will have to either go permie and take a very large pay cut (around 40 grand), or if he has balls, he will walk and see if he can get another lucrative contract elsewhere.

the problem is that we are all overpaid for what we do. i know i am and can acknowledge it but unfortunately the chancer actually thinks he is worth it. i can tell you for free he ain't. he has no recent exams, no big projects or experience or exposure, and on top of that, he is lazy. you have to be either clever or hardworking. he is neither.

i think it would be hubris if he tried to get out there on the market and competing with other guys for contracts, because he ain't that good and will never get the money he has become used to. shit, i am miles better than him, and i ain't that good. i have met lots of people far better than me. lots and lots. i have also met a few people on my travels that are shit, and he is one them.

its one of the advantages of being a contractor that moves around a lot. you get a sense of perspective of the level of the talent and people out there and it makes you aware of your own shortcomings or weaknesses. you are putting yourself out there and putting yourself under scrutiny when you get grilled at interviews and if your ego can handle it, its good to be judged by other people even if its negative.

by far one of the most positive things that has happened to me was being rejected by goldman sachs after 3 long rounds of interviews culminating in a 3 hour final interview with 5 department managers and techies. they didn't end up offering me the job but they gave me good feedback and i used it to work on the things i needed to improve. ever since then i have never found myself phased or worried in an interview after having the experience of a grilling by the brains at goldmans.
chancer wouldn't have got through the first round let alone to the final 3 candidates at the 3rd interview.

anyways, its my last week at the bank next week. a few other contractors from my project are leaving as well in the next couple of weeks as well. we shall what the future has in store for us. they were all good people and i enjoyed working with them. they will end up getting something good somewhere hopefully.

gym and cycling this weekend is the plan. its freezing cold in london town and barely above 0C during the day. i played football in it last night. will be out on my bike in it tomorrow. feel cold just thinking about it.

today i have mostly been listening to the smiths - please let me get what i want. 2 minutes of genius.

chancer

so we were sitting around our desks this morning talking about shit, when gym junkie said that students were protesting about having their fees tripled from 3 grand a year to 9 grand a year.

thinking he was sympathetic to the injustice of it, i said yes, it was completely wrong and a shameful thing for the government to do. to my surprise gym junkie said he thought no one should be entitled to a free education and that they should pay more.

when i pointed out that he (and i) had paid no fees for university education and it was paid by other peoples taxes, he said he dossed around at uni and didn't do any work and used this as an example of students not taking studying seriously and that they are lazy and they should pay if all they are going to uni for is to have a good time.

i pointed out that some people went to university to learn something and get qualifications in the hope of landing a good and interesting job, but he dismissed it as nonsense, and said someone had to pay for it and the people that benefit from it should. i said he and i had benefited from university education so we should pay instead of making graduates in entry level jobs pay extra tax to pay down nearly 30 grand in loans.

he turned it round and then said a completely false statement saying that it was my view that i didn't want to pay any tax at all, let alone any more tax than i do already. i pointed out that what he said was the complete opposite of my view and i had never said i didn't want to pay more tax, and in fact if anyone should pay more tax it should be people like us who earn 6 figure salaries and who had other people pay for our education.

he then retorted that the country couldn't afford it and that "people like you", ie me, talk about making cuts in other services but then could never come up with anything to cut. i told him that we should cut defence spending and disband the independent nuclear deterrent, because there is no chance of having an independent nuclear conflict. that saves around 3billion a year which could be put into education. gym junkie then said, yes, i bet you would like to cut the security services as well that prevent bombings on the tube. god knows where that came from, but actually yes, i would i told him. that annoyed him even more.

i turned to one of the other guys that sits with us and said i didn't realise i was sitting with right wing of the conservative party, and 2 of us laughed. gym junkie didn't.

what a little fucker. we knew he was a chancer regards to his profession, but i didn't realise he was a complete chancer in life.

the subject then changed to football and the weather. i told him it was cold outside and i would have to wear tracksuit bottoms and a hat and gloves to play in on thursday night. he said that was for wimps and had no fitness and if i ran around i would get warmed up and he never wore any of that shit when he played because he was always so hot from running for an hour. i asked him if he played football. he said he hadn't played for about a year because he was injured. oh, ok then, thats you talking shit again you fucking chancer.

today i have mostly been listening to rage against the machine - testify.

derezzed

the start of another week at work and instead of having nothing to do i am being given shitty work to do. i think its just a question of people wanting to seem busy and creating pointless tasks that need to be done. i am almost expecting to be asked to count paperclips at some point, as they have asked me to do an audit of the new datacenter tomorrow. i knew all my microsoft, citrix and vmware certifications would handy one day, not!. how dull.

weekend was quiet. didn't go to the gym on saturday and watched arsenal v tottenham at my friends place. needn't have bothered as we got beat by the scum(tottenham) 3-2 after going into a 2-0 lead at halftime.

went to the gym on sunday instead and cycled even though the skies were heavy and grey and it looked like it could rain. a little drizzle for a few minutes but i didn't get soaked. had an extra hard session to make up for not going the day before and it felt really good.well, when i say good, it felt pretty bad at the time. took it as far as i thought i could safely take it, before i felt i could really pass out and i didn't want to embarress myself like that in the gym. my legs were shot to pieces cycling home. that was the most difficult 22 minute ride home i have ever had. it was slower than normal, even though it felt like i was trying twice as hard.

only 9 more days at work after today to get through and then i am free. weather is supposed to be really cold later this week and i look forward to not walking to the station on cold, wet and windy mornings for a few weeks. it was a real struggle getting out of bed this morning when my alarm went off. i could have quite happily had another couple of hours more sleep.

will have to get a few films lined up to watch in case i start to get really bored at home in december, but i will have the gym and will book an exam so its my fault if i do get bored because i have plently to be getting on with. still not booked my course. i have to leave it till a week before its due to start and then ring up about a late booking. will give them a call next week as it starts on december 6th. hope i can get a place. no bother if i don't.

not heard back from a couple of places that called me up last week, and i haven't applied to anyone else either.bring on january.

today i have mostly been listening to daft punmk - derezzed. this sounds and looks very cool.

bigger than us

i did absolutely nothing at work all week. am just biding my time for the next 2 weeks and then its all over and i just need to rest through december before seeing what comes up in january. hopefully something good.

had football last night, which was good. am going to go training this weekend, but have nothing else specific planned. nothing else. really.

today i have mostly been listening to white lies - bigger than us. wicked tune.

numb

another weekend over and this not going to work for 2 days thing feels pretty good. i wonder what a few weeks not going to work might feel like?. pretty good i imagine. i will find out soon. 3 weeks in fact.

weekend has been good. training, cycling, haircut, laundry, tv. that about sums it up. today was the first day where i didn't feel deficient in my training and am in good shape again. i could have trained a bit longer and harder today but i wanted to get home in time for the last F1 grand prix of the season on tv. when i am off work in december and going to do monster sessions.

the start of another week at work tomorrow. it will be dull. the end of the year is always a bit of a slow time in investment banks. change freeze and heightened awareness in december and nothing gets done. there would be a bit of a rush to get stuff done in november but seeing as my project finished on schedule last week, we don't have anything to do in the 2 weeks of contingency that we had. some us work on shit that gets delivered on time.

gym junkie asked me if i was going to go away on holiday somewhere in december. i said it could be a possibility but i would rather spend the money and time on an exchange 2010 course if i can get a late booking somewhere. he looked at me like i had gone mental in the head. some people just don't get it .

today i have mostly been listening to linkin park -numb

long weeks

heard from a couple of project managers i have worked with at the bank and they are leaving in december as well. both of them we good and one was particularly good and i was a little surprised she was not being renewed. i know that our project is finishing this week, but i would have thought they could have utilised her somewhere else and its a shame to see good people leave, that didn't want to, which is unlike me. i am not that good and did want to leave. :-) .

one of the guys in another department decided to get another contract before waiting to find out if he would get renewed. he leaves in a few weeks. his project was also coming towards the end and so he figured there would be a high chance of him not being renewed so he put the word out and got a contract at place where he worked before. today he came over to my desk and he asked gym junkie, who he hates with a passion after being blamed for something by him, that wasn't his fault, whether he had been renewed. gym junkie replied he had at which point he got a look of such sneering contempt that i almost laughed out loud.

that will take gym junkie up to the 2 year mark on his contract here. his project is still plodding on at snails pace. the money is good but in the medium to long term its career suicide for a contractor. there are some contractors that stay in places for years and year and do interesting work and rise up the ladder, but to do what we do for years and years is madness. one day they might let him go and he will be screwed. no exams, no experience, no exposure to anything new. better you than i sir.

i got a couple of calls recently about a couple of jobs that were going. both sound like that might be interesting. have been good and not been flooding out job applications. i really do need to take some time off and relax for a while. am looking forward to it. come the new year i will be rested, examed up, and available to start immediately and we shall see what we can get. missed out on some good roles in january of this year, so hopefully the same interest is there next january.

am also looking forward at not waking up at 5.15am on a saturday. last week was the first saturday in a long time that i hadn't worked, but i still woke up at just after 5 as my body clock has got used to it. hopefully a few more weekends of lie ins and i will get it out of my system. am also looking forward to not spending my sunday evenings ironing shirts. some people come to work dressed a bit shabbily. i just cant roll like that.
am still looking at courses on a late booking and will also do an exam. i dont mind studying a few hours in a day if i haven't spent most of the day at work.

weather is cold and dark and damp. i had football last night and it was good despite the gale force winds and showers. quiet weekend ahead, and then only 3 more weeks of work left. they are going to be long. am in that state of just thinking of the next thing that might come up and not focused on where i am. its not a problem because i have finished my project and have almost nothing to do. we shall see what happens.

today i have mostly been listening to stone temple pilots - vasoline.

on to the next one

just had a meeting with the guy that runs the department and its official that i won't be getting renewed. my project has ended so i was expecting it and it would have actually turned into a problem if they had renewed me, as i would have been locked into 4 weeks notice and i would never have escaped.

time to move on again. i doubt i would have learned much if i had stayed, as i haven't learned that much in my 6 months here. the ESX project was a good refresher of things time for a new office and new people and to see what we can learn. its been ok here though. some nice people but also a couple of pricks, but thats everywhere. it means that i have another investment bank on my cv as i continue my tour of financial institutions in the city of london.

who knows where i will end up at next. most probably another investment bank. ideally i would like a little hedge find in mayfair looking after everything, but those jobs are rare. will settle for a desk in a glass building surrounded by suits talking about their german cars, swiss watches, caribean holidays and golf handicaps. oh well. i will stick to my bicycle, casio watches, driving around LA and five a side football on a thursday night. am still keeping it real.

today i have mostly been listening to to be posted tonight.

crystal castles

a whole weekend without work and it looks like there will be no more weekends for me to do. my project will end this week and my contract ends on december 3rd. very unlikely they will need me to stay and extend my contract and one or two contractors have already left after not being renewed. i heard there are 14 contractors all coming to the end of the contracts on december 17th and by the look of it, i think a lot of them will not be needed and extended. i suspect there will be a huge exodus.

it was dry and cold this weekend and i cycled to the gym on saturday and sunday. hat and gloves were required for the first time this winter but it was good conditions for cycling. clear and bright and no wind. every time i get out i can feel myself getting stronger and i am almost back. in a week or two i will be in good shape.

was thinking i might have the whole of december off and whilst part of me thinks i will get bored out of my skull, i also think it might be good to go training every other day and also i want to do the SQL 2008 exam. i also have a few books that i want to read which i just dont get the time to do during a normal week. have also looked into going on a course for exchange or sql in december and you can get a really good deal if you book late.i think i will have some options if i get some time on my hands

applied for a role at another investment bank today. dont know why. am already wondering what might happen if i get it and would be gutted to miss out on some time off.

anyway, today i have mostly been listening to crystal castles feat robert smith - not in love. lovely stuff.

punching in a dream

jesus, its like i am sabotaging myself. i applied for a couple of contracts, even though i shudder at the thought of actually getting something because i need a break from work to get myself motivated and refreshed again.

in other news, gym junkie sent an email insinuating that a guy in another team who was helping him, had done something wrong with a software update. only thing is was that gym junkie was the one that had given the other guy the software and instructions and he was only following what he had been told to do by gym junkie. the other guy also was only doing it as a favour on saturday because no one else was available and is not even in the same team.

he came over to our desks very angry at being stitched up and was looking for gym junkie and to quote what he said, "its a god thing XXXX isn't here because he would be going out that fucking window right now". luckily gym junkie is not in today and has decided to work from home with the excuse of there being a tube strike today, but i checked and most of his line is running, so he is working from home because he is a lazy fat ass.

gym junkie will learn the hard way that its not a good idea to stitch up people you work with like that, especially if it was actually a fuck up you did and are trying to blame it on someone else. the guy he tried to blame it on is a nice guy and good at what he does and has just resigned anyway as he is moving onto another contract, but its a small world and you never know when you might run into him again. if one day his boss asks him about a cv that has landed on his desk from gym-junkie, you can count on it that he will not be receiving a glowing endorsement.

speaking of gyms i went last night and am finally feeling like i am coming back to what i was. i am not working this weekend for the first time in a month so can have a double session of cycling and training.

today i have mostly been listening to the naked and famous -punching in a dream. speaking of dreams i saw the film inception last night. what a good film.

yamaha

have got one of those splitting headaches that looks like it will last all week. it started on saturday morning when i was going to work and i still have it on monday. feel really really tired as well and thankfully i am not working next weekend.


gym junkie who is actually fat (because he goes to the gym 5 times a week and then eats 10 slices of cheese for lunch), got a little fresh today. i was browsing for some scooters and was looking at a nice little bike by yamaha, which i think looks cool. he piped up though and said it looked lame and awful and was a girls bike and inferred i would look silly on it. i said i disagreed and thought it was cool. maybe i should have said i wouldn't take style tips from an overwight 5 foot bald midget who drives a convertible bmw z4 which are driven either by girls or if they are driven by men, its the type who rest their sunglasses on the head and wear a bluetooth headset in one ear and wear t-shirts and jeans that are size smaller than they should be in the belief that tight clothing makes you look like you have a bulging torso, though they seem to forget about the bulging belly. i believe the technical term for one of these kind of people is cunt.


anyways, i am still looking around for a scooter. my only relucatance is that i worry that it will make me lazy and instead of cycling to the gym when the weather is nice i will end up taking the scooter, which defeats the puropse of exercising. i don't want to turn into a fat gym junkie because we know what the technical term for one of those is.


anyways its shaping up to be a slow week at work. my datacenter exit project that i had been working on till now is complete and i haven't been given any work to do, which is good because this headache is killing me.


there has been a bit of tension in the department of late anyways. there are 4 of us and me and one other guy work on one datacenter move and gym junkie and another guy work on sorting out another datancenter. we have finished whilst there stuff is still dragging on. the guy that works with me said jokingly it would take years to finish at the rate they were going. gym junkie shot back that they did twice as much work as we did. actually they do less than half which is why their project is still ongoing and we have finished exiting a much larger datacenter than their in less time. its simple maths fellas.


they also got annoyed when the guy that works with me said he wasn't going to stay behind on friday evening do them a favour with regards to some new SAN storage on one their servers. the guy wanted to leave on time and was asking one of us to stay behind late and finish something with one of his servers. er...no mate. finish your own work off. cheeky fucker.


that aside its a quiet week, hopefully.

tedium

the weeks are flying by or maybe thats just as it seems as its very hard to distinguish each day from the next when you work every weekend. it is all just one big blur of tedium. i am working this saturday again, and as its coming to the end of my project i am getting just shit to do. stuff that nobody else wanted to do and got delayed to the point where it cant be delayed any longer, and so its gets thrown into my lap. no bother, as i am definitely not working the weekend after.

i also need to get in touch with my agency and find out when exactly my last day is going to be. i suspect its beginning/mid december, and so i could end up having a couple of weeks off at the end of this year. am thinking of what i could do in that time off. i really would like to get out of london even if its only for a day or two. come the new year, i will be back to applying for contracts again and having to deal with thick agents like the one i have been talking to this week. he called me up about a job at a swiss bank and said he was going to mail me the details. i recieved nothing. i called him back and he said he forgot and was going mail them to me. i recieved nothing. i haven't called him back. if he is too dumb to use email he is unlikely to be able to get me a new contract.

besides, i had an interview with a couple of people at that particular swiss bank, about 3 years ago, and they came across as amongst the most arrogant assholes i have ever been interviewed by. i have had my fair share of asshole interviewers like the hedge fund who wanted to call me in for a 4th round interview because they still weren't sure after 3 interviews, or the idiot that interviewed me in depth about restoring AD with the express puporse of asking me obscure questions that he had clearly googled the answers for in preperation in a bid to make himself look good. mate, if AD restores are common place at your firm maybe you should be a bit more careful.

there was the guy at the oil trading firm who spoke for 30 minutes about his own background and how he had been in HR at goldman sachs for 9 years. i thought i was the one getting interviewed mate and i dont know what relevance his past had to do with my ability to support their network and servers, and there was the amusing episode whilst at a second interview at microsoft when i used the phrase 'google it', and i may just as well have said said cunt, whilst doing a bit shit on the desk and then punching the interviewer in the face, given the offence they appeared to take at my saying of that particular phrase.

i have to put up with all manner of idiots when i am finding a new contract. to be fair these people are the exception and i have met some good people at interviews as well. its just a bit of a tiring process but its part of the game we have to play. am going to need some r&r before i embark on it again.

today i have mostly been listening to paul van dyk - let go. they were playing at the gym the other evening. they usually play lots of pop/dance music and most of it is shit. this is not bad though.

only

worked on saturday and was home by 9pm which is actually quite early compared to recent saturdays. it had been grim walking to the station at 6am in the dark and cold and in heavy rain. was feeling very annoyed about having to work but then i walked past a mcdonalds and they were already open at 6 and were serving people. at least i get compensated very well for what i do, so its a bit shit if i moan about it, as other people have it way worse than i do.

sunday was the only day of the weekend and it was taken up with gym and laundry and getting stuff done. i thought my fitness was ok when i got back from the states after having not trained in nearly 2 weeks, but since then because of work or shitty weather, i have only been to the gym once a week and now i really am weaker than i was a few weeks ago. it was a struggle on saturday and even when i was cycling back home i had no legs and no power in them.

i was hoping to be not working this saturday and was looking forward to 2 whole days off, but i just got told i was needed and i do have to work on saturday after all. just need to keep thinking about them benjamins.

quiet week ahead but thats no change. applied for a few more contracts elsewhere but nothing heard back from them. no bother. the thought of walking into another contract as soon as this one comes to an end is not the appealing at the moment. i need some time to rest a bit.

today i have mostly been listening to nine inch nails - only.

bricks and mortar

very very tired and constant headaches. the weather has gotten cold. thankfully its not raining and its bright but the forecast for this weekend is showery. i am also working this saturday but there is a small chance that i might be done in less than 10 hours which will make a change.

no football this week as we couldn't get enough players together and i had to work late last night anyways. i have only been back from my holiday for 3 and a half weeks but it feels a lot longer than that. its not a distant memory but its hard to believe i was laying on beach in southern california 3 and a half weeks ago.

trains have been screwed all week, and i am working tomorrow and they are always screwed on a weekend when a lot of the system is shutdown for maintenance, so its another fun journey into work at 6am in the morning.

nothing else happening. just work and home. nothing else. no gym, no football no friends, no exams, no cycling, no nothing.

today i have mostly been listening to editors - bricks and mortar. i was listening to this in my mustang driving around LA not so long ago.

broken

i said i would be happy if i managed to get out of work by 10pm on saturday. i ended up getting out at 10.30pm so i will still happy but also very very tired. i was sleepy on the train at 6.30am going into work and i was sleepy on the train at 11pm on my way home. inbetween it was a long and painful day of moving servers between datacenters.

some idiot had presented about 1TB of SAN storage to a server, but it had been presented in 22, 50GB LUNS that were spanned into a single volume at the OS level. exactly what the justification behind that is anyones guess. anyways, it all got fucked up when we moved it to the new storage at the new datacenter. it was a key development server of the equity trading team, who have a reputation for being a bunch of cowboys and this server proved it categorically.

no bother though as it was a 16hour work day for me which means i can charge them for 2 days when i bill them. those equity trading boys made me some money on saturday.

yesterday was cold but bright and i cycled to the gym. the good news is that i am not quite as weak as i was a couple of weeks ago. i can feel myself coming back. i also had football on thursday night and although i was knackered after 15 mins it felt good to be playing again after a long time.

went to see the film the social network on friday night. it was surprisingly good. soundtrack is by trent reznor and its really rather good.

had a splendid day in london town today. on my way to work this morning there were problems on my train line so i had to take 3 trains and had a 25 minute walk to get to work. i was nearly an hour late. at lunchtime i went to meet a friend of mine for lunch, and its usually a 12 minute walk to the station across a footbridge over the river. the footbridge was closed and i had to walk down to the next bridge. it took me 25 minutes. then on my way home my train was screwed again. 3 trains and one and half hours later i got home. it usually takes 45 minutes. basically london is broken. none of it works. its shit.

today i have mostly been listening to sound of guns - elementary of youth. new fresh music.

football tonight

am going to be working the next 3 weekends in a row. no bother. as they say, its all about the benjamins and i will be handsomely compensated. i get the feeling this saturday is going to be a very long one. if i get out by 10pm i will be more than happy. please don't make me take the night bus home.

it does mean that my gym routine will be disrupted but its disrupted already by the weather and i figure its just for a few weeks and then my project is over and i suspect i will have plenty of time to get my conditioning back when i am inbetween contracts. it is quite hard starting all over again and putting all that work in to get back to your previous fitness level, but we have done it before and will can do it again.

on the subject of contracts i applied for another role at a smaller japanese investment bank. sounds like there can't be many techies there and they want someone with a broad range of skills. vmware, exchange, AD, SQL. they even want someone who can administer Clariion SANs. i have done a bit of that but not too much. that will be the only reason they won't ask me in for an interview, but i can't imagine there are too many SAN/Windows/VMware/Exchange/SQL guys out there and i am proficient in 4 out of 5 and have had exposure to Clariions as well.

lets hope they don't turn out to be idiots like that place i saw about 3 months ago that wanted someone who was an expert in Windows/Solaris/Market Data and Sybase. it sounds like they were randomly picking technology out of a hat. i saw that they still haven't filled that role and are still advertising it. idiots.

.....football tonight!!!. we haven't played in at least 2 months and i am gasping to play. i think everyone is. how awesome would it be to play football everyday. imagine getting to play in big stadiums on perfect pitches and getting paid a hundred grand a week. all you shithead proffesionals that end up drink driving, speeding and bar fighting whining about how tough you have it. you don't know when you got it good.

today i have mostly been listening to placebo - allergic. lovely stuff.

2 weddings and a bike ride

i went to 2 wedding parties over the weekend. one was at a very expensive and exclusive private members club in london and the other was at a golf course to the north of london. both were good. i don't mind dusting off my posh clobber and getting dressed up occasionally for a nice do.

i also cycled to the gym on saturday and it was the first time i had been on a bike in almost a month. my legs have felt soft and i knew in the weeks before that i had lost a lot of conditioning, but i didn't realise how much. i really didn't have much power at all, and it took me 20 mins to cycle to the gym (average time when i am not pushing is 18 minutes), and i was sweating like crazy even to do that, and my legs felt shot. there was nothing left in them. conditions were not ideal and there was a slight breeze but that was a woeful time.

thankfully we have the prospect of football for the first time in a couple of months, coming up this thursday night, and that will help to get me back to where i was in the summer.

am working this weekend. i think its going to be a long saturday. i can feel it already. i think i will be lucky to get out around before 9pm. just keep thinking of the money. am toying with the idea of buying a scooter. i hate relying on buses and trains all the time because they will let you down regularly.i mentioned before that my work is full of people with their bmw and audi status symbols. i was toying with the idea of getting one of these.

quiet week ahead i hope.

today i have mostly been listening to maximo park - questing not coasting. enjoy.

2 whole days off

got a call last night about a job at another bank, but i declined to be put forward for it. the guy must have been pretty desperate to ring me at 9pm, but it was a permanent role and not a contract and it paid a lot less. yes, you get holiday and sick pay and shit like that when you are permie, but i don't take that much holiday, and i haven't taken a sick day in 3 years, so its not worth taking less money for those benefits. i want to see if i can land another contract before i consider going permie.

also worked out that i think my contract ends at the beginning of december and not the beginning of january. no bother, it doesn't change my plans. i did apply for a couple of other contracts yesterday and we will see what happens with that. even if i don't land anything it will mean i am off work for the last 3 weeks of december when the weather is usually terrible and so it will be relief not to be commuting and getting up early on dark, cold and wet winter mornings.

work has been ok this week. am not working this weekend which is a relief. have said i will do the next 2 weekends after. don't really feel like it, but sometimes you have to do stuff you don't want to and i was keen to get leave this job after 2 weeks of being here, and in hindsight i am glad i didn't/was unable to. sometimes its better if we don't get what we went when we think we want it. i did an interesting ESX project a couple of months ago and even though it back to the shitty work now, it was good experience while it lasted .....and i have earned some decent cash out of this contract. more than i have ever got anywhere before. don't want to be a michael owen or joe cole and just chase as much money at the detriment of my careers, but it has served a purpose over the last few months and its been lucrative.

anyways looking forward to a full 2 day weekend. am going out to a friends engagment party on saturday night which should be good. the weather forecast is supposed to be good as well, but we all know that the forecast dont count for shit.

today i have mostly been listening to klaxons in new york. posted this for no other reason apart from the fact that i was standing about 10 feet to the right of the person who filmed this. my holiday feels like a long time ago already.

midnight run

saturday evening and its coming upto 7pm and i have been here since 7am. i think i have a cold coming on and its raining outside despite what the idiot weather forecasters were saying about how it was going to be dry all day. their satelite simulations don't count for shit and i have no umbrella and i have a 15 minute walk to the tube station because my regular line is closed. what joy. just need to keep thinking of the money.

...and now my messaging software has crashed and i cant communicate with the other guys in the other teams on this problem we have. mindalign. who the fuck uses mindalign as a messaging platform?. its shit. what exactly is wrong with office communication server. the mindalign service has come back but i can't log into it now because it must have its own directory for user authentication that is not related to any of the 6 (yes 6) domain passwords i have i can't cant remember it. our 6 passwords all have varying expiration and renewal settings so at any one time you are carrying a ton of passwords in your head. i have had nearly 30 different passwords in the 5 months i have been here.

we used to joke about shit like this at my previous jobs whenever we saw it. its called security through obscurity. make something so obscure and complex that even people who have access to the system cant actually access the system. i think i will do what the rest of the guys in the team do and start writing them all down to keep track of them. ha, so much for your security bitches!.

christ i hope i get out of this office soon. it was dark when i left my house this morning. its dark now again. am not in the mood for a midnight run to catch my last train. not tonight.

walk the fleet road

bumped into a guy that used to work at the games company i worked at in my last contract. i asked him how it was going and he said it was shit and looking to get out. it kind of surprised me because he had been there about 4 years and appeared to be content. clearly not. i asked about my old boss and he is is still there even though he had told me he was not happy and was looking to move as well. clearly things have not reached that tipping point where you actually move as opposed to just talking about moving on.

have been back to work this week and its all come flooding back. i had forgotten that the network was designed by a monkey and i have been refamiliarising myself with the madness this week. i might have only been away for 9 days but it felt like i was on a different planet in a different time. back to london 2010 and the nonsensical network i work in. am glad i got frustrated with some of my work because it means i have not reached that point where i think its normal to have a domain end with the suffix -net.com. its like they couldn't decided whether to use net or com so they used both. they also have a domain called qadev. well what is it?...qa or dev?. can't decide so lets just call it both those things. am waiting to discover the proddev network at some point.....and by the way the qadev network is actually a QA domain only and has nothing to do with the development domain, apart from having the word dev in its name. thats all clear then.

got a mail from an agency looking to recruit citrix consultants for a project in the US. i haven't had too much exposure to citrix on my travels, though i am certified in it after i did a course on it about 3 years ago. have barely touched it since. will reply and see what they say. it would be great to work out in the states for a few months. don't want to end up in hicksville but anywhere in california would be good. anyways, like i said, i am shit at citrix so its not really going to happen on this one.

went to the gym last night for the first time in 2 weeks. my clothers are feeling a little looser and i have clearly shrunk down a bit. training was hard last night and i was careful not to injure myself or pull a muscle. i have lost resistance and its at these times you end up doing yourself a mischief. decided to end my work out when it felt like i was just about to be sick.

the guy who i sit next to at work goes to the gym at lunch time 3 or 4 times a week, and then comes back to his desk and eats a whole packet of cheese. 10 thick slices for lunch after training. i ain't looked it up but i am pretty sure it would be healthier if he ate a big mac meal or a pizza rather than a whole packet of just cheese. either way, whats the point of training if you do that.

my friend who i travelled across the states used to do something similar. gym 6 times a week, and then would order a mountain of not very healthy food whenever we stopped for something to eat. do these poeple know it negates their work out?. shit you might as well have a can of larger and light up a red top marlboro while you are on the treadmill.

today i have mostly been listening to editors - walk the fleet road. i thought i would be listening to lots of janes addiction and g'n'r whilst driving around california but i actually ended up listening to a lot of very english bands like editors and the smiths and interpol (who are half english). this is my favourite song from editors last album.

....and while i was away i also read hopes and prospects by Noam Chomsky. someone telling it like it is and calling it out when they see blatant hypocricy, even when its obama, let alone bush and reagan and all their cronies. essential reading for anyone interested in foreign affairs and the reasons behind why things are the way they are. its profound and at a level you never see discussed on the 24 hour news channels and any current affairs programs who appear to be either appealing to the lowest common denominator, plain ignorant, patronising or not wanting to tell us the facts so that we can make up our own minds.

NYLASF

flew back into a grey and dark london on monday afternoon after 9 days of sunshine, beaches, sports, music and good food in new york and california. am back to work and you can't imagine how shit it feels. found out that i have to work this weekend as well, but its no bother. its all money and its looking increasingly likely that we are coming to the end of our contracts and as the projects get delivered i don't think quite a few of us will be here in the new year. it comforting knowing that the end is near.

anyways, my holiday was very good but it always is. i flew to new york straight after work on friday evening and had 3 days in the city and it was lovely sunny weather. i headed out to williamsburg on the saturday with a friend of mine, and i went to coney island on sunday.



on moday night i went to see klaxons play at the bowery ballroom which is a lovely little venue to see band and the klaxons had the place rocking.



i also saw the actor joaquin phoenix in the bar before the show started which was quite cool.

on tuesday i flew out to LA and went to see Kele/does it offend you yeah/innerpartysystem play at the music box in hollywood, which is another really good small venue. anyways i landed in LA at around 5pm, picked up my car, a mustang convertible and then drive to my hotel in hollywood.
unfortunately it was right in the midst of the LA rush hour, which is when the usually heavy traffic is even heavier. the guy at the front desk of the hotel told me that because of renovations they would offer to put me up in another hotel for free and refund me my money, if i went for it. i think they had a limited number of rooms and were making the offer to some guests. i told him i would do it if i could leave my car parked in his parking lot while i went to the show and would then come back and would be happy to go to another hotel. he agreed he was fine with that, so i ended up getting free parking in hollywood and a free night in another hotel.

i went to get a couple of slices of pizza so missed most of innerpartysystem play, but what i did see of them was very good. does it offend you yeah, then played and whilst the place was jumping, they were a bit of a one trick pony and all their songs sounded the same. kele then came on and he was good, although despite the music box being a small venue it was not full as i had seen it before when saw the gaslight anthem there last year.




it was a good night out though. the next day, wednesday, i drove to san francisco and stayed with a friend of mine and went into the city. all things taken into account i think san francisco must be the nicest city in america to live in.

on the friday i drove back to LA as i was going to see LA Galaxy v NY RedBulls play.



NY won 2-0 and it was a decent game. it ain't champions league standard but it is what it is. the next day i went to Oxnard which is about 60 miles north of LA and visited the Mullin automotive museum which has some of the most beautiful cars ever made.







its a great place to visit. its also about a 15 minute drive to the beach and so i spent the rest of the afternoon reading my Naom Chomsky book whilst laying out in the sun. i then drove back to LA and went for a stroll in west hollywood doing some sightseeing. there isn't any old historical landmarks of the conventional kind but for us music fans there are some legendary venues where bands like gun's 'n' roses and janes addiction started out in and i just wanted to go see them, so i went to the troubadour, whisky, the roxy and the viper room (which is only famous because river phoenix OD'd on the pavement outside).





the next day sunday, was my last day as i had to catch my plane back home in the evening. i went on got some lunch at an argentinian restaurant on melrose called la la's, which was very good indeed. if you find yourself in the LA, and are wondering where is a good place to eat, then you can't go wrong at la la's. i then did a bit of shopping drove around a bit and went up to mullholland drive which has some great views of LA and then went to the airport.


at the airport i saw the songwriter from depeche mode, martin gore and he was on my plane back to london. i really like depeche mode and martin is a legend. i was keeping it rock'n'roll right to the end of my holiday.
that was it. i managed to cram in lots of things in a very short space of time. i wish i had a couple more days out there, but i guess no one wants to come back from holiday to work.