So claims Home Secretary Jacqui Smith:
“I regularly have people coming up to me and saying they don’t want to wait that long.”
ORLY?
Who? Sheeple? People working for the companies that would operate the system at huge public expense?
Name names or shut up about these ludicrous claims!
I didn’t get much time to do much touristy stuff, but here’s a selection of photos I took:
For the last few days, I’ve been in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia staying at Shangri-La’s Tanjung Aru Resort.
The pattern has been hot and humid mornings before wet, pre-monsoon afternoons although I’ve been in meetings or dinners every day so I have not been able to enjoy them. But today I had the chance to enjoy the facilities as the conference ended yesterday and my flight isn’t until early this evening.
Except the weather deteriorated yesterday such that there was rain all day … and today has been the same. Being British, of course, I enjoyed the pool for a couple of hours this morning before coming back to my room to shower, change and pack.
Yesterday’s dinner was attended by the local Attorney General and the Tourism Department stepped in to sponsor the event, so it was a glittering affair.
So what are my overall impressions of Malaysia? Well Malaysia Airlines’ website suggests that its airline code, MH, stands for “Malaysian Hospitality”. And for once it’s not an idle claim. The airline was superb, its staff friendly and helpful and I have found that to be the case everywhere I have been. Excellent service, always with a genuine smile and talking to some local lawyers, they confirmed that was the Malaysian way.
Simply outstanding! I will be back…
News reaches me that James Kerr (ckerr) from ezboard/Yuku/KickApps died suddenly recently.
My sincere condolences to his family.
…have let us down. Not like those humourless Filipino bastards.
Whilst Britons from the North of the country have not – as far as I am aware – complained about an Enfield and Whitehouse sketch featuring a family keeping a Northerner as a pet, the Filipinos are up in arms about a Filipina maid “inciting stereotyped racial discrimination, vulgarity and violation of the maid’s human rights”. Â And yet they don’t seem to want to stick up for the poor, enslaved Northern bloke, do they?
The thing I find most disconcerting whenever lantern-jawed, self-proclaimed “hockey mom” and Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin comes on the telly, is just how much she looks like some sort of character from a Supermarionation-stylee puppet show.
I think it’s the huge eyes and fixed ‘smile’…
As I have now moved out of the house into the London flat, I have had to move my main PC and other storage down here. Working off the laptop on the small, round dining table doesn’t really make sense, and there’s no room for a PC and two monitors on the dining table anyway.
So I decided I needed a desk.
Now given the general theme of the decor at the flat, a cheapo plywood flat-pack desk or computer table from Argos wouldn’t look right so I ventured over to John Lewis at Bluewater a couple of Saturdays ago to see what they had. As expected, the desks on offer were good quality, if a little expensive and this desk seemed to fit the bill (albeit a large bill at £195!):
They checked and said there were none in stock, but they would have one for me to collect on Tuesday (too far out to deliver, apparently). “Never mind,” I thought, “I will be passing on Wednesday, so I can collect it then”. And so it transpired: I arrived around 5.00pm and was told it was in, either at the Customer Collection Point or possibly at the Service Centre. After waiting 45 minutes, I was told they couldn’t find it so they would have to order another one in and could I collect it on Friday? No! I kicked up a fuss about having to come all the way out and back yet again, so the young assistant said he/they would deliver it to me on Friday evening at around 6.00pm.
I left the office early and was at the flat by around 5.30pm. Being really hungry, I rang them to get an up to date ETA to see if I had time to cook and eat tea first. I did: the chap I’d dealt with was off sick and hadn’t put anything like that on the system and no, they couldn’t deliver it as no-one who was insured to do so was there. I went berserk!
So we agreed that I would travel back to Bluewater (out of London on a Friday evening…), collect the desk myself and bring it back, but that they’d refund me half the price – £96 as it transpired – so that’s what I did. The helpful assistant brought the two boxes out to my car and I loaded them in – one flat and one long and thin, which I assumed must be some sort of support rails…
Back at the flat, I unpacked the large, flat box and put the frame together (complete with one knackered bolt thread…) before lifting it into place. Now all I needed was the glass … er … what glass? Yes, despite being boxed up with my name on both, box 1 of 2 was in fact half of a hat and coat stand from the same range and not the glass top and shelves for the desk!
So Saturday morning found me back on the phone to John Lewis at Bluewater. No, I couldn’t come and collect the shelves as I was in Norfolk and yes, they really would have to come and deliver them on Monday evening.
Which they did yesterday. And it is a nice desk. I’ll have to sort out a photo.
Now all I need to do is get the PC to talk to the laptop over the wireless network as it seems not to be able to do so (wired to wireless and without the router I was using back in Norfolk).
OK, maybe not tea, but coffee.
Something that I find bewildering is the need by many office workers in London – and I assume this isn’t just confined to London – to wander around before and after work clutching cardboard cups filled with expensive coffee from all those coffee shop chains.
Why?
OK, as anyone who knows me knows, I’m a bit of an addict when it comes to caffeine and I do appreciate being able to grab a cup and sit at one of their tables and watch the world go by when I have time to kill before visiting a Client. But why would I want to buy an expensive – and let’s face it, not really all that good – cup of coffee on my way to the office I work at, when I can (and do) make myself one in the office kitchen when I arrive?
Maybe I just don’t get the whole yuppie fashion thing?
And the award for Most Pointless Text Message today goes to Vodafone:
“We continually invest in our network to provide a reliable service & you’ll be pleased to know we’ve now improved coverage in an area where you use your mobile.”
Excellent! Which area is that? Given that I live in South-East London during the week, work in South London, visit clients in Central London twice a week and travel home to Norfolk each weekend, wouldn’t it have been an idea to tell me which area had been improved?
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