Hokie Cokie

Dinner last night was a Thai fusion type dish, delicious. So was the service. I went to a bar/restaurant I hadn't been to in a while and I recognised the bar manager/waitress from about 3 or 4 years ago. Shoulder length hair, fine, straight, healthy figure (not skinny, not fat) emphasised by her white lycra T and fitted black trousers and such a sexy, sexy smile. We locked eyes and I could feel her stare intensely. Nothing ever happened 4 years ago partly because I'd heard she was mad as an axe and her ex boyfriends were no strangers to the nuances of the legal system. She looked every bit as good as I remember, she noticed I noticed her and we kept locking eyes right until I left. I have to go to a birthday party tonight, but not there. Pity.

I am what I eat

As part of my quest to eat better and lose flab some purchases have been made. Gillian wanted me to examine my tongue, fingernails, skin and stools. Nails and skin seem ok. Skipped the tongue and went straight for the stools. I suffer from what she has very scientifically called "damp". I could explain via a picture but that would probably have the same effect on you as Stanley Baxter had on me when he boked on my first day of school. I still have the scars. So, thanks to Stanley I've spared you settling instead for a description. Too much acid creating food. Solution = wild blue green algae, psyllium husks and a change of diet. The list of suitable foods seems fine and I hope somewhere she's got a chapter on recipes, partly because there's the added complication of food combining, apparently. I can't eat fruit with a steak. I can't eat carbohydrates and veg. Or is it proteins with veg. Bollocks. To stop me from poisoning myself or turning my arse into a high pressure gas powered muck spreader I've been trying to simplify things by making notes.

Will the aduki beans for the weight loss conflict with the basmati rice and sweet potatoes for the damp? Will the pumpkin seeds ream my ring if I don't chew them 50 times each? And should I get a set of scales to tell me if I'm losing weight or just wear old "thin"clothes and hang around with fat friends?

comfortable shoes?

Sometimes I think too much. Not very often granted, in fact seldom would be a good word. But when I do my mind wanders off to things there's never an answer to which makes it all the more of a waste of brain power (that's probably an oxymoron in my case). Anyway, the last weighty issue I have pondered was concerning Mini-me. Not the Austin Powers one, my own fruit of the loin. Will she grow up to wear comfortable shoes so to speak. It's not a worry if she does. In fact it might relieve some worries, no teenage pregnancies or wondering what wee bag of spots and hormones is trying to get into her knickers 15 years from now. Of course on the other hand I don't get the pleasure of making same bag of spots and hormones sweat by having the "You're not going to do anything to make me or my little princess unhappy, are you?" conversation. "Daddy wouldn't like that. Do we understand each other?" Cue teenage sweat and exploding pimples. It's just that I think my family's already oversubscribed. We've used up our quota on both sides and she has more "aunts" than any girl should ever need. And, now seeing her grow up I'd love to be around if she did decide to have a child herself, liver permitting.

Time to park the brain in neutral again. Where was I? Ah, breasts....

Talk Talk - I'm not a virgin any more

I signed up an order for Talk Talk today, the package where you get free anytime calls, free 8MB ADSL broadband and free international calls all for the princely sum of £20.99 a month. Without boring you with the sums it'll save me at least £200 a year and change my Lada connection into a Lamborghini. I've never really been happy with my current ISP Tiscali anyway, useless telephone support, the service is always running perfectly according to their website (my arse), DNS problems continually, it took weeks to get my ADSL moved when I moved house etc. etc. but before them I was a net virgin and they had me tied in for another year when they graciously upped me to 512 for no charge. That's up now. Oh, and I hate their website. It's full of little pictures of, (usually) women gasping with what I suppose I'm to believe is a mixture of awe and excitement. I'd prefer to think they've gone giddy through exasperation after spending too long talking to Prakash in Mumbai who's spent 15 minutes confirming their address before eventually telling them it's probably their fault.
The owner of Talk Talk, Charles Dunstone, reckons he'll lose £50 million this year on that deal and I want to make sure I do my part to help. I'm just that sort of guy.

While you're here perhaps you can think of a better reason to explain this woman's expression.

Making a movie or vlog for Blogger

At the time of posting I've got a short example of a movie in my embedded Windows Media Player on the right hand sidebar (though this may not be the case by the time you read this). It's actually quite easy to do (otherwise I wouldn't have been able to do it). So what do you need? Either a digital stills camera with a movie mode or a digital video camera, a web hosting service and some software-in my case Windows Movie maker 2.1 (which is free) and probably already on your XP pc. For my example I used the movie mode in my stills camera which, even though it's low resolution 360x240 pixels will come out fine. You don't want or need a higher resolution anyway as the resulting file has to be as small as possible so that visitors to your page don't wait long for your blog page or movie to download.

First step. After downloading the movie from your camera to your p.c. open Windows Movie Maker (Start/All Programs/Accessories)and "import video". This will work if your movie has the suffix .avi or .mpeg or .wmv. If your movie is in .mov file format (which is Quicktime and not supported) all is not lost as you can use software to convert it to a file format supported by Windows Movie Maker like .avi using one of these trials Mov Converter, Convert Movie, or the free MPeg4CamToAvi. Having converted the imported video ( if necessary) drag the video to the time line to begin editing. Effects, titles and cutting can all be done here. Excellent instructions on the editing here from Microsoft Movie Maker's website. When you're happy with the result save the output to your p.c. as a .wmv or .avi selecting 512 DSL (or lower) output quality to compress the file size. And that's all there is to it. Your movie is now ready to upload to your hosting service and play in the embedded Media Player.

sticks and stones

It's been over 6 years since I was here. I remember walking up a hill in sweltering heat, cutting down through a forest where there was barely a path, eventually coming to a house overlooking a 170 degree view of a flat,warm sea. In front of the house the hill sloped away steeply down to the sea and left and right and centre were the huts built mostly from driftwood and panelling perched precariously on rocks that were each the size of these small houses, blown out and deposited, in geological terms just yesterday, from a now extinct volcano. The place was Ko Tao, barely touched by tourism, a genuine oasis in the Gulf Of Thailand protected by virtue of being 30 miles from the next nearest island. Electricity was in short supply and lighting came from a tiny petrol lawnmower engine which flickered the 40 watt bulbs until eventually running dry and leaving the hillside in perfect darkness except for the moon and stars. No tv. An honesty bar up at the house (where the only fridge was) and food growing all around (the owner's husband caught daily what you wanted for dinner). I'm sure times have moved on for it (I hear it now has 24hr seven eleven stores) and that it's less of a secret nowadays but I'm glad I sampled it's uncomplicated serenity before it's inevitably lost to development and "progress".I must think I'm working too hard!

little people

Yesterday I took mini-me to a National Trust property with roaming grounds, gardens full of flowers and trees from around the world. It's a little too early for most of the flowers but not too early to be looking for fairies. Look, there's one behind that tree! Aw, you missed it.

moving swiftly on.......

Having posted a blog on MSN Spaces since it's inception I've decided this might be a better home for it. MSN doesn't like my browser of choice (Firefox) and has all those damn integrated features being added on that require IE's Active X controls, I don't know where it' going to end up but adding some sort of integration with their Xbox 360 doesn't bode well.

What should you expect to see here? Swearing mostly. Complaining. Tales of drunkenness and inappropriate behaviour (definitely not p.c.). So if that's your thing, welcome. If not, fuck off over to the next blog.

Thanks

pure

Pure Monty
4 carrots (washed & topped)
1 large banana
100ml (4oz) pure orange (not sweetened or strained)
1/4 peeled cucumber
1 thin slice fresh ginger
1/2 cup of ice

Blend until smooth - enough for 2 glasses

You see, I went to a restaurant today with a client, ordered my pint of diet Croke only to be be smiled at (by a very healthy looking waitress - the sort that would smell nice after sex) and told that "it's only healthy food that we serve here". I was about to make a tit of myself by clarifying that I had in fact asked for "diet" when I came to my senses, all of a sudden realising that she didn't have that relaxed aura of inner and outer well-being from consuming large amounts of caffeine, E-numbers and preservatives. I had a lovely organic steak sandwich on home made ciabatta with a Mediterranean herb leaf salad washed down with the only carbonated drink they served, a home-made lemonade made with real lemons (gasp) and the milk from 1000 free range albino hummingbirds or something like that. Well. I felt sooo good this afternoon I thought to myself "That's it, my body is a temple. No more shall poison pass my lips (unless the poison bottle is labelled Merlot or Bisongrass or comes from a packet saying Marlboro)." And that's why you're going to try my health drink recipe.

For the record I'm about 13 stone (14 lbs in a stone) and should be 11 or so. There's no other way to deal with this, it just has to be head on which means I'm going all the way.

And so it came to pass that he picked up and started to read Gillian McKeith's "You are what you eat". (For the U.S. or Canadian reader she's like a Scottish Nanny McPhee with the goodness sucked out, has no neck and legs that are frankly too long for someone that small, or is it her torso that's suspiciously short?)

Wish me luck. Now, remember you have to make something up about me. O.K. You don't have to. But do try the drink.

legs

I'd like to re-assure regular readers that I haven't died, just needed to put the pedal down a bit on the work front. I think I have just succeeded in doing enough to avoid getting into real trouble, my boss returns from holiday tomorrow so time will tell.

The London break was about a day too long but here is a quick synopsis of what I did.

Friday, travel time door to door 5hrs 50 mins. Planes, trains and auto mobiles and lots of walking involved. Exactly as predicted!
Quick shower then out to the Funki Munki where I stood at the bar with 2 mates and drank double Bisongrass and soda for 5 hours. Oh, some drugs might have been involved. And the petite barmaid was forced to come round the bar (she was even shorter this side) and drink shots with us between rounds - 'cos obviously double Bisongrass all night makes you a bit of a lightweight).
Saturday, woke up with very sore, cut knee. No memory of how this happened or how I got home. Must have tried (unsuccessfully) to walk though. Met up with others for a meal at 7.30 after having some mid afternoon Guinness. Ate badly cooked fancy food (quail and wood pigeon followed by lavender brulee) and drank Merlot and Guinness, separate glasses of course. Went to a house party (more drugs might have been involved) getting a taxi home at 7am and falling out with the host's only invited work colleague (he fucking deserved it, the boring bull-shiting, tight-arse excuse for a man that he was). Recruited a South African girl to hit him on my behalf. She hit him much harder and more often than I had anticipated.
Sunday, breakfast at 1pm, afternoon Guinness and orientation (2 days late) followed by drinking and eating in Covent Garden and China Town like the self respecting tourist I am.
Monday, homeward bound. More planes, trains and auto mobiles.

Oh, yes..... legs. Now that I've written this I won't be able to look at that air hostess's legs when I call up my page. Shite! I was enjoying them.