Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

It has bee ages since I have done a sliding puzzle, but thanks to the days when I was forced to use Windows Vista, which included a little puzzle on the sidebar, I was able to re-arrange Henry VIII’s face.

As my friends and I get increasingly old, it’s nice to remember that some people are still young guns with hopes and dreams. Mini-Gijsbert, better known as Samantha, is one such person.

It turns out that it is really difficult to buy a present for a one year old. Even soft toys are often come with a two plus years age rating. As one of my other friends pointed out, I should probably have just got a present for Gijsbert and Weili. Like a large bottle of gin for example.

I have some nice photos. However, I am not posting them because I do not know what percentage of the people who read this blog are pedophiles. So instead, here is a picture of the birthday cake.

It is made by Maxi’s Chinese restaurant. Apparently they are a good place to get a cake made as they only require 24 hours notice.

Earlier this month I competed in the Leeds City Toastmasters 2015 humorous speech contest. Even though it was only club level I was quite nervous. Perhaps because it was at club level, which is not a level I want to go out at. Mostly though because I has not competed in a speech contest in 18 months due to my year as Area Governor.

Lukcily I managed to take victory with my speech “Hell in High Heels”. I will be posting the video after the whole contest is over.

Many of you will know the feeling. You arrive in the office blearily eyed on a morning and collapse into your chair. But something is wrong. Someone has messed with your chair. The chair you spent ages getting just right. Who would do this? WHO?!?

The anxiety builds inside of you, you just want to rip out their organs then force feed them to them while their family watch on. And the injustice, the sheer injustice of it, is that if you were actually to do this, even after they had deliberately messed with your chair, you would be the criminal in the eyes of the law!

Oh, just me then?

On a serious note though, who are these people that mess with your chair settings?

I have a new theory. After discretely marking each chair in my office I noticed that when I got in after the weekend, different chairs were in different places. Perhaps it is an innocent explanation and the cleaners just move them all to one side, vacuum, and then try and put them back as best they can.

I didn’t actually do that, but I do leave my hoodie on the back of my chair and noticed it had moved a desk down when I got in. It seems quite diligent for the typical standard of office cleaning to actually move the chairs, but it is the simplest explanation.

This supplants my previous theory that it was someone who used my chair while talking to someone else and were annoyed by the settings so changed it, even though they were only using it for two minutes and had no right to mess with it. You would have to be a complete dick to do that but then we know people are when they can get away with things as the state of any office toilet often attests to (again, who walks away without flushing? What kind of traumatising childhood did you have to allow your conscious to do that?).

I think the next step is to deploy a discrete survillence camera, or perhaps buy some camoflague gear from an ex-army supplies store and stake it out.

Those of you who did computing with me at Leeds will no doubt remember Jack Kelly, also known as Aussie Jack. He spent August doing a world tour to catch up with friends and dropped my Leeds for some food or conversation.

Having had my wallet battered by a week of Finland we ended up having lunch at the Cuthbert Brodrick. A place where you can buy a meal cheaper than you can buy a pint in Helsinki. We ended up having lunch at Wetherspoon’s again the next day – this time at the train station – to meet up with Sarann and Chris. Some might worry this would give off the impression that we’re just alcohols that spend all our time at ‘Spoons. However, Jack was here for a year, so probably had us down that way anyway.

In the evening we held a small gathering. I managed to cook a reasonable amount of food (as opposed to way, way too much) and a good time was had by all. I even went out of my way to not be a grumpy bastard and joined in the card game, Love Letters, which turned out to be a lot of fun.

This time last year I was running eight community groups. Anxiety Leeds, Leeds Tornadoes, Leeds City Toastmasters, White Rose Speakers, Humanist Action Group, Sunday Assembly Leeds, West Yorkshire Humanists and Leeds Skeptics.

I have been gradually cutting that down over the past year. I moved on to being a Toastmasters area governor (so looking after five clubs rather than two) and that too has now come to an end. Leeds Skeptics is now in the capable hands of Trevor and I’ve moved to Leeds Samurai, so I can train without the organisational hassle.

All in all then I am a now mere civilian in four of those groups and can attend as and when I have time.

I’ve cut down on my personal commitments too. Last year I was having regular lessons for guitar, singing and Finnish. Now I am down to Finnish and piano.

It’s an interesting experiment, not cramming far too much into my life and hoping it all gets through the doorway. So far, it’s working out okay. It’s still a lot of groups, and I won’t say I have much unscheduled time, but I am now finding more time to revise, and even a bit of timing to garden (luckily this only requires limited attention when all you have is a balcony). Besides which wedding planning quickly turns into a full time job…

One Wednesday I had a hospital appointment, and was given a prescription request form that I was told to hand in at my local GPs (Colton Mill). Which I did. They said it would be ready by Friday.

That’s an annoying long time, but given that last time I had a prescription it took them nearly a month to fill it I thought I would give them to the following Tuesday until I went to collect it.

On Tuesday I went there at 4:30pm to find the place with the shutter down and no sign of life.

On Wednesday I phoned them. No answer. I phoned their partner surgery The Grange who assured me that they were open and they would investigate, asking me to phone back later. I phoned Colton Mill again. Still no answer. I phoned The Grange again. They said there was nothing on my record but when I was able to give them the name of the consultant and hospital department I had been at, said they would ring through to try and get a new copy of the form.

On Thursday I phoned Colton Mill at 9am. they answered, telling me they had no idea about the form I had handed in, but said The Grange had added a note to my file with the treatment request. she said they needed 48 hours for a prescription request so I should phone back tomorrow. I tried to press them on the 48 hours but they shrugged off all responsibility.

Not daring to trust it to a phone conversation on the Friday, I decided I would go down there and I could just stand at reception and moan until they got a doctor to sign it for me. So I raced over on my lunch hour, foregoing my usual sandwich. However, when I got there I was told that the prescription had been electronically sent to Boots, without having asking me, and as such they couldn’t give it to me.

Finally, when I managed to get to Boots on the Saturday they did indeed have it. 10 days after I was prescribed it. It does technically beat last time though.

Before you get married, you have to give notice. This means going down to your local registry office (as it has to be your local) and saying you want to marry. They then put a notice up for 28 days to allow people to object. How people object I don’t know, because I have never checked their notice board to see if anyone is trying to marry twice, but apparently they can.

Currently, it costs £35 each. However, as UK marriages are strictly limited to no more and no less than two people, why it costs £35 each rather than £70 per couple is unclear.

When we went down they checked our ID. We took passports and driving licences, which is all we needed both being EU citizens – no other documents or passport photos or anything were required.

After checking the ID we were then separated to ensure neither of us were being forced to marry. This is fine except she never actually asked either of us if we were being forced to go through with the marriage. Neither of us are, but it seems the whole point should be to ask us. Instead we just had to confirm each other’s full names, date of birth, address and occupation.

Just your average dinner of roast pork, Yorkshires, ratatouille, refried beans, new potatoes, mashed potatoes, three types of vegetables, Asian inspired coleslaw, seafood platter, cheese and tomato tart, salad and five different types of bread.

The real achievement was that we managed to eat almost all of it. Or at least will have by the time this is published…

For anyone attending my talk at Atheist Society tonight, here is the suggested reading list I will later be promising to post on my blog:

• Michael Shermer – The Believing Brain
• Duncan J. Watts – Everything Is Obvious
• Daniel Kahneman – Thinking, Fast and Slow
• Noreena Hurtz – Eyes Wide Open
• Nate Silver – The Signal and The Noise