Author: Richard

Happiness

| Richard

A beautiful, sunny day today! I left Manchester this morning and drove through the Peak District to do a presentation at an immensely impressive off-site fabrication park near to Worksop. Due to the amount of traffic, my speed was forced lower which meant I could actually sight-see as I was driving along and made my journey so much more enjoyable.

The middle of the afternoon found me heading back down to London and I chose my preferred route, via the A1 and M11. What this meant was that I ended up driving back down the route I used to travel twice a week when I was living in Cleethorpes and hence was very familiar. As it was still hot and sunny and with the music playing loudly, my mood was its usual positive one, genuinely happy. I did find myself reminiscing about the times I’d done this same journey as I passed Grantham, my former turn-off onto the A46.

I thought about the good times I’d had as a result of those journeys and how ignorance had been bliss; ignorance of my being conned, betrayed, deceived and then blatantly lied to before I left forever. And then I was reminded about how much I’m enjoying life these days without all of that baggage and how I’m at peace with what happened. I’ve already forgiven but not forgotten. It appears that what doesn’t kill you does indeed make you stronger: in my case it taught me that I could still be generous whilst suffering fools and con-artists graciously and to value family and friends more. And it meant that I could have true happiness without hassle and heartache. And that’s got to be good.

It's better to have loved and lost than to live with a psycho for the rest of your life
This was on my Facebook Newsfeed recently!

So I’m back in London tonight but heading back up to Manchester in the morning, this time by train so I can have a leisurely breakfast and a snooze in First Class. Work hard, play hard, love lots and live life to the full: looking forward to seeing more stunning European Cities (like Vienna, again in June) and then my Big Trip in the summer.

Quick Update

| Richard

A busy couple of weeks! The last fixture of Norwich City’s Premier League season saw a lot of good-hearted banter with the Aston Villa fans on a warm and sunny Sunday afternoon.

The Saturday had seen tapas and shopping in Norwich with Jack before going ti watch Dark Shadows that evening. It didn’t quite live up to the hype but I enjoyed it anyway.

Lots of business development since then with lunches and dinners to attend so it was nice to be able to fit in dinner at Gaucho with Amy even it was a tad expensive.

In other work news, apart from work and meetings coming up in Manchester, I will also be lecturing in Vienna next month again – I’m hoping to be able to take GT over there for at least part of the time as well as our planned Venice trip as a prequel to her birthday in November.

Vegetable Soup

| Richard

Here’s a quickie recipe for some halfway decent vegetable soup; cheap as chips as well!

Soup and some of my wine lake...

You’ll need one butternut squash, one large carrot, one red onion, a tin of chopped tomatoes, garlic, a dash of sugar and then two Knorr veg stock pots in a litre of boiling water. Fry the onions and garlic in some olive oil, add the other dry ingredients (peeled and chopped) and coat. Add the stock and simmer covered for 15 minutes. Add the tomatoes and sugar, cover and simmer for another 15 mins then blitz with a wand thing or in a blender. Add frozen sweetcorn and heat through. Serve with wine and enjoy!

Bank Holiday Weekend

| Richard

Well that was a busy one!

After a somewhat heavy session on Friday night at Abacus with colleagues – damn you Happy Hour! – Saturday found me packing for the weekend and heading over to GT for Saturday, including seeing “The Avengers”/”Avengers Assemble” (which I can recommend as a good, fun film) and a nice meal out afterwards.

Sunday morning and GT was running a half-marathon so I left at a reasonable time and headed off to Manchester with a stay at the comfortable Radisson Edwardian and an evening out at the Comedy Store‘s “King Gong” stand-up show with some very good (and some really awful) stand-up comics.

Monday was a day shopping at various stores in Manchester including a 20+ minute wait at Starbuck’s in the Arndale Centre for a coffee. I was somewhat disturbed though by this that I saw whilst walking through Top Shop:

I'm sorry? "Formal"? Jogger?

Then another night at the Radisson Edwardian that ended with me watching Homeland’s disappointing end (well, for the first series anyway): why do the US networks insist on keeping these series running on and on rather than actually developing a story with a start, a middle and an end? I won’t now bother with the second series.

Tuesday saw me mainly sitting in traffic jams on my way to Birmingham for a meeting and then back down to London. Somehow, despite excellent driving conditions, people had variously managed a series of crashes on the M6 and one on the A406 North Circular that closed it leading to really long tailbacks. How do people manage to crash in such excellent conditions?

Unofficial Sarcasm Provider to the London Olympics

| Richard

I’ve pointed out previously that the last place anyone living in London should want to be in August 2012 will be London whilst the London Olympics is on as it’ll be chaos.

This week, there’s been news about locations for missile batteries in the East End as well. Presumably there to protect the £24bn “investment” that it has grown to (up from the £2bn that Tony BLiar’s Government promised us it would cost when we bid for the Games).

Having decided to spend a whole shedload of our cash, LOCOG have also sought to “monetise” the Games as best they can – no doubt on advice from their Strategic Consulting Provider- and may have taken (or possibly, ignored…) advice from their official market research services provider to the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games as to which companies to approach to get an Official Doodah Provider to the London 2012 Olympic Games moniker:

“The Nielsen Company will assist us in the decision making process by testing our ideas in the market place. One of our challenges – and opportunities – is connecting with young people. Nielsen will help us do this and will, I’m sure, prove to be a huge asset to our marketing push.”

Said Lord Coe. In excellent marketing-speak.

Part of this connection with young people, presumably, is telling them they can’t upload photos onto Facebook or Twitter or whatever from the event if they’re lucky enough to have bought tickets for a quick slot to see a heat of an event before being told to bugger off for the next spectator to take their place:

“Sir Keith Mills, deputy chairman of organisers Locog, said said organisers wanted to make sure that media rights which have been paid for are protected.”

The same goes for the 70,000 (presumably young) people who will be acting as “Games Makers”.

And I suppose that this connection with young people will be to “inspire a generation” – how much did that cost? – perhaps by steering them towards some of the other companies who’ve chipped in (despite growing concern as to their products) to be Worldwide Partner (Coca-Cola), Official Lager Supplier (Heineken, with “exclusive pouring rights”), Official Restaurant of the London 2012 Olympic Games, Official Treat Provider (Cadbury/Trebor) and of course choose from any selection from drugs company and Official Laboratory Services Provider to London 2012 (GlaxoSmithKline). What could possibly go wrong?

Some smokes, some beers...

 

Still, it’s just business…

iPhone Date and Time Failing to Update?

| Richard

One of the good things about my two iPhones – three if you count the work one – has been the way the time gets updated whenever I turn them on in a new country I visit.  Indeed, when I was in Vienna last week, I was saying just that to a colleague.

And then I got back to the UK and they wouldn’t change back to UK. They were both set to automatically adjust the time zone and the Apple Support pages were suggesting contacting my cellular comms. provider, 3, in case of issues. I tried lots of things, turning them off, going back to “Airplane Mode”, turning off WiFi, etc., before I stumbled across the fix:

From Settings, choose Location Services, then scroll down until you see System Services:

Then you may well see that Setting Time Zone is off, for some reason: in mine, I had turned it off to keep the battery life up, yet it still changed when I was in Vienna; just not changed back.

 

Goodnight Vienna

| Richard

Well that was a busy week! The Friday before last, I was heading back in the rain from a meeting with a Client when my phone rang and a colleague asked if I’d be available to go to Vienna for a day the following week to do some training for another Client.  The answer, as always, was yes. When I got back to the office, it all started going pear-shaped…

It transpired it was two days’ training: join mid-morning with a German lawyer’s last session and then repeat on the Friday before an evening flight home; my colleague would be staying at the comfy Hotel de France. But there were problems: firstly, I couldn’t guarantee arriving on time if I travelled on Thursday morning, so I had to make arrangements to fly out on the Wednesday evening (which meant cancelling another meeting) and I couldn’t fly back on the Friday because all the flights back were fully booked, so I now needed to stay another night and fly home on Saturday which meant cancelling all my plans up in Norfolk.

By Tuesday, more changes were afoot: half the delegates were calling in sick, so the venue (which had been a lovely hotel in central Vienna) had been cancelled and we would be doing it at the Client’s offices 15km outside the city. This meant cancelling the hotels I had managed to find and instead I was put up in what was thankfully a four star guest house 5km from the offices, the Landhaus Tschipan. They had also asked us to condense two days’ of training into one, the Thursday and I still couldn’t get a flight back!

Wednesday was horribly wet in London but landing in Vienna that evening, I was greeted by a lovely warm evening and I went for some beers with the German lawyer to run through the slides and edit them down.

Thursday went very well indeed and when we had finished we realised all the HR staff had gone home and there was no-one to take us back or even arrange a taxi … so we walked the 5km back in full suits and carrying laptops in high 20s temperatures! We then changed and grabbed a taxi into central Vienna to meet up with my other two colleagues for beers and a meal before heading back.  Vienna is a beautiful city by night!

Friday morning I checked out of the Tschipan and headed to my hotel for Friday: the five star Steigenberger Hotel Herrenhof in the historic part of Vienna. A bit more work until lunchtime and then I headed out for a sightseeing wander around the shopping areas and the Naschtmarkt: some 10km in the sun and high 20s temperatures: no wonder I got sunburnt!

Back to the hotel to change before I met up with my colleagues at the University of Vienna where they’d been delivering a course for the post-graduate MSc Law course. Lovely ribs and beers before heading off to St Stephen’s Square for more café culture and beer and a wander down to the Danube itself. I finally stumbled into bed at 2.30am!

A light breakfast – or two – before heading back to the airport for a flight home … to the same cold and wet London I’d left behind. Ah well!

 

Kawasaki Day at the Ace Cafe

| Richard

Today was Kawasaki Day at the Ace Cafe London. It was also the Virgin London Marathon and where I live the roads close at 8.00am. Despite GT taking part in the marathon – she managed a 4:00:44 finish time! – I headed off before the road closures to the Ace Cafe for Kawasaki Day, celebrating 40 years.

Of course, 11 and 23 mile markers en route were too good to pass unnoticed so I hoisted celebratory wheelies as I drove through!

Getting to the Ace at 8.00am I grabbed a cuppa and breakfast and then decided to have the ZRX dyno’d again now I’ve put some miles on it and the results were very impressive: 163.2bhp and 98ft/lb which even beat some poor bloke with a shiny ZZR1400 and Akra pipes!

Here are some photos too:

H2 750 Zephyr Chat H1 500 7cyl KH606! Zephyr ZRXs Z900s H1 Tank Z1000 Tank ZRX Tank ZX-10R Collage Yes... Blue Rex