PageListTemplatesYou are on the archive wiki. The new wiki is here. IWillNotEatGreenEggsAndHamGreen Tea is my friend. I frequently forget how much of a friend it is - especially of late since the brand I've got at home, Jackson's, is just NASTY despite the swish packaging and apparent royal approval. However, the Clipper Green Tea I bought for the office is much better. It's still bitter swill, but it's not quite as eye-wateringly noxious and the honey helps a lot. What with my caffeine sensitivity green tea provides just enough 'zing' for me to feel human again without wanting to chew corners off my desk. It is good medicine for too many nights of rolling sleep debt. (I indebted myself on Saturday, and I still haven't paid it off, and probably won't till the long weekend.) Large birthday lunched for co-workers are not my friend though. I now feel a little over-full and my body just wants more sleep. I'm trying to work out how my stomach will handle more tea now… Hmm, I wonder what will happen if I mix peppermint tea with green tea. Enquiring minds are too replete to bother finding out. Someone fetch the wa'fer-thin mints! Comment: Green tea + mint (by MyrdemInggala on 2005-08-24 18:02:02)Green tea with mint is very nice. It's quite a popular mixture - you can get at least two brands of teabags here. KeepPushingOnTonight is going to be interesting from a sort of passive psycho-social perspective. We’ve got a hoard of people coming round tonight to look at my room. Potential future housemates, well, for my housemates. My replacement. I get to show these people round, and then hand them over to my housemates for the ‘debriefing’ where they in a high pressure situation get to try and show the best and most agreeable aspects of their personalities. It’s an unpleasant and tricky situation to be in, and as I’ve mentioned, much akin to a job interview, except you’ve got even less idea what they’re looking for. It will not be helped by the fact that you know your time is limited and the competition has just rung the doorbell. I’m not too concerned since I’m certain they’ll find someone agreeable. I gave in to only one person regarding seeing the house over the weekend, and he turned out to be a rather nice Saffa guy. Seemed like the sort who was laid-back, cheerful and mature enough to get on well with Phillip and Julie, so unless they have another favourite I’ll put in a good word from him. I’ve only just managed to get a date for my return flight. After a bit of humming and hawing from Nationwide who didn’t recognise the fare option I’m travelling under, they decided to just book me on the last seat of the flight departing on the 17th of September anyway. So at least that’s settled now! There’s a world of other things that need organisation. Including the fact that I haven’t rewritten my CV yet. Sigh. Guess I need to quit blogging and get on with it! KeepinItRealHah, this morning Grant accused me of being a sell-out since I mentioned wearing New Rocks, on the assumption that I'd bought these to replace my docs. They are infact more than 6 months old and I recall blogging about how upon purchase, the buggers counted as the most expensive shoes I've ever bought - and they still do! Ah, at least these days I see the humorous side of your ability to leap to ludicrous conclusions, Grant. You see yesterday, and perhaps the day before was a day of small triumphs. On Wednesday I gave into tempatation and bought myself a really cheap little, solid-state MP3? player. I like on-line shopping. It should arrive in the next few days. I'm still waiting for my new USB pen-drive which should have arrived yesterday, but post for this office is terrible and there's a small part of me that's concerned it will never arrive. :-( I also put my room up for offer on the Gumtree and another site and the response has been pretty good, so I've got a number of people lined up to view it on Tuesday. I've come to the realisation that I've pretty much filled every ounce of spare time I have between now and me leaving - so guys, if you're in London, my farewell drinks are at an undecided location on the evening of Thursday the 1st. Also at lunch time I went shoe shopping (Yes, mum, more shopping) for a new pair of docs or some other shoes. After much trawling of Camden, I even tried on the Docs at the market stall, but I've been told they're fakes, although for the life of me I cannot spot the difference (same colours, same stitching, sizing is identical, even the leather seems the same) I moved finally onto the 'official' docs store. The lads there had much (all of it impolite and vehement) to say about the fake doc stall, although they were addresing it all at some American girl, fortunately and not me. The brown docs they're making at the moment are much lighter affairs than my old ones, they come with yellow and brown laces and the eye-lets are a shade of tan! It's very wrong. Also, strangely I still take a size 5 in Docs. The size 6 swims on me, but then I guess they're supposedly unisex and their size 6 is probably a men's size 6. Fortunately there was a modicrum of salvation, there was one last pair of darker brown 8-holes in my size. However, they too have brown eyelets (still wrong!) and brown laces, so I was undecided. The girl there took my indecision to be more a price issue and I did explain that I had a limited budget for shoes and while I wanted boots and I'm a fan of docs, my mind wasn't made up. The shoes were £80 (double the price of the identical knock-offs) and so when she asked me how much I'd been looking to pay, I offered £50. Well, heh, since they were the last in that size of an obsolete range they gave them to me for that! I am most chuffed - even if I'm probably still going to have to give them a few coats of black poilsh to get them a more respectable shade of dark brown. Oh, and my personal fashion prediction of the month is exactly what I've discussed above. Mark my words, Docs come back in fashion - we've seen the All Stars cross trainers (gotta get me a pair of those too) back in fashion. Docs will follow! Comment: fakes (by ToothpasteDealer? on 2005-08-19 18:21:49)I read that often the fakes are from an illicit (SP?) production line in the same factory, and are often totally identical. so it's possible to get stuff like calvin klien briefs for about £1 instead of their normal price, which is like £15 more. Comment: re: fakes (by ElfBoy? on 2005-08-22 10:52:45)£15 for a pair of underpants! If this is gender equality someone else can have it! :) Comment: hello, goodbye (by BlueHands on 2005-08-23 14:43:14)just tell me where and I'll do my damnest to be at the farewell. try posting to me at okcupid - look at that more regularly though. TheDecliningStateOfTheNationFeh. It's just my luck. No, really it is. My bag was stolen on Thursday night. I was at a bar having catch-up drinks with Alex, and we were seated in a cozy section of the lounge area. There was never a point where we were both away from our table but apparently at some point some dodgey guy came and sat on a chair next to me (they were very wide chairs) and when he got up it must have been with my bag. So, I've lost: My bag, my phone, my wallet (with all relevant contents i.e. cards and £40 in cash and my SA drivers licence), my keys, my oyster card (again), my umbrella, my sunglasses, my mini Leatherman, my favourite jacket which had my favourite brooch attached to it, my book (Ian Banks - Whit, which I was really enjoying), all my lip balms and glosses, my 64mb USB flash-drive and, worst of all, my MP3? player I was given for christmas! Insurance? What's that? Also the police here absolutely don't give a fig for 'petty' crime at the moment, to the point that the police station nearby is closed most days since the entire force are out standing like bored idiots in tubes stations fondling their assault rifles. While there was a CCTV camera pointed at our section, I doubt anyone's going to ask to see the tape. Sigh. At least the English can, occasionally, get some things right so having reported things stolen on Thursday night and Friday morning I had already recieved a new Oyster card and ATM debit card by the Saturday morning. I've also replaced my wallet and sunglasses and have ordered a new Leatherman Micra off e-bay for a grand £10 - we'll just have to see if it's as genuine as advertised. The MP3? players my biggest decision, since considering my luck, I'll just buy a new one only to have it stolen the first time I take it out my bag in Joburg. I do miss it though. :-( If there have ever been signs in my life that it's time to leave a place it's now. I'm at the end of my patience, and now I'm out of pocket and have my nose out of joint. I'm not liking the "police / nanny state" attitude that's starting to manifest here. Before my misadventure on Thursday night I'd spent about three in the back of a cab trying to fetch Mike's passport from his house and then take it to Heathrow in the hopes of persuading someone sympathetic at Lufthansa to ferry it to Frankfurt since "Mike had left his Russian visa in his other passport!" Ron, the cabbie, was as I hear most cabbies are, a very interesting person to talk to. Along with the fact that he's done judo on and off for 6 years, so we had the MA thing in common, it was very enlightening to hear his views on the changing fortunes of the average Briton. Apparently the immigrant problem has become so bad that he reckons that they're on the brink of a civil war. Over-statement perhaps, but he's implied that there's a rift in the society of the United Kingdom that the terrorism attacks are just going to widen. He says 'armed gangs of asian youths' (a term frequently found in the average copy of your local paper) really do roam the streets with impunity and the police won't touch them, but they'll give the white kids no end of trouble if they follow suite let alone try to defend themselves. He believes all this to the point that he's emmigrating with his family to New Zealand in the next couple of years. While I'll take it all with a pinch of salt, despite the fact that Ron seemed a pretty 'together' sort. However it doesn't take much to see that the Uk is facing some sort of crisis in the near future, and I'm very, very glad that I can call myself a South African and flee back to a nation that I like to believe is past this point and in the entirely labourious process of putting itself back together again. Amazing that I meant this to be a short post, more with the point that, if you've got my UK mobile number, discard it and email me for the new one (if you haven't already heard from me). However, rambling comes easily to me so, with that, I shall bugger off to Jitsu. Comment: That sucks... (by OOPMan on 2005-08-09 12:41:55)Sorry to hear about your shitty happening Loth. Figging bloody police. What do they expect they're gonna do with them rifles, though? Plug any "Terrorists" that run up waving packs of nitro shouting: I am a Terrorist. Kill me Now. Anyway, hope things get better Comment: rifles (by d@vid on 2005-08-09 13:14:07)no, they plug non-terrorists {confused} Comment: non-terrorists (by InfernalRabbi? on 2005-08-09 17:19:24)they seem to aim at any one suspicious. the guy they shot did run from them, because his visa had expired two years ago and he had forged a new one. Comment: That's what you GET (by SynKronos? on 2005-08-09 23:11:53)I bet he'll never forge another visa now, will he? Lesson learnt, I'd say. Your tax dollars in action. Pounds, whatever Comment: living in fear (by BlueHands on 2005-08-10 09:46:44)actaully I think people with expired visas now live more in fear than home-grown wannabe terrorists. well that was the joke on sunday cos one of the girls there had to sort out her visa before it expires within the next month. and Robs I'll email you. RoundNumbersI have two small anniversaries to announce. Not that I'm certain of their exact dates, but I relate the beginning of these things to my 16th birthday, so seeing as we're 10 years on from that I reckon they're about due. The first is that my beloved Docs are now approaching 10 years old. When I bought them it was the tail end of the 'docs' fashion, and what I'd actually wanted was un-branded (read knock-off) flat, brown boots. However, since the fashion was waning, there was no more money in the knock-offs so no-one was selling them. The only brown, flat boots I could find on the market were the genuine article, and imported from the UK, nogal. I capitulated and went 50/50 with my parents to buy the shoes for what constituted a small fortune back in 1995, R350.00. (In fact I think it's only in the last three years that I've bought a pair of shoes that's cost more...) However they were worth every penny, and have been my most faithful pair of shoes. It was therefore with a level of deep sorrow that I noticed the other day that I've managed to wear much of the lighter stitching away with time. They're staying together through sheer force of habit, and the leather beneath is looking thinned to the point that I don't know that they can even be stitched back together. Not to mention that the soles are so worn that I'm in danger of breaking through to the air pockets any day now. Guess I'll have to go price new Docs sometime this week. Good thing I'm less than a mile from the shop… Sad thing that I'll have to suffer breaking a new pair in. Ah, well, I'll just have to hope they last me another 10 years. It was also with a little sadness that I realised that I've missed the year I've been waiting for at ICON. You know how on the forms you had to fill in how many years you'd been role-playing for? Well, I've been looking forward with relish to the year that I could fill in those precious double digits, “10”. I know it doesn't make any real difference, and I think I've done the least role-playing this year since I started. However, there's a bit of pride that comes with knowing you're suck by something for a decade. Especially since I have a habit of starting 'hobbies' and never going anywhere with them. I guess when I started, role-playing was then, what Jitsu is for me now: something I'd always wanted to do, but had never been able to get started, but when I did it felt like I'd found home. Guess now I have 32 to look forward to, since then I'll have been role-playing for half my life. Go me! Comment: docs (by InfernalRabbi? on 2005-08-03 14:38:36)i just bought a pair of 10 hole docs for £85. they were on special in a shop near the camden market. they don't seem do to bad too run in. Comment: cake! (by BlueHands on 2005-08-04 13:52:23)shouldn't there be a cake for celebrating anniversaries? and I've been meaning to email you (like you asked me to on KoL? mail) BUT I've been busy with arb stuff and keep forgetting. Comment: A decade!? (by ElfBoy? on 2005-08-04 15:56:19)I'm lucky if my shoes last me two years. Mine also wear through on the left big toe (although my current ones have a steal toecap so hopefully this will no longer be an issue) and where the toes bend (I must bounce when I walk or something). Admittedly none of them have been Docs(tm). Comment: Cats (by SynKronos? on 2005-08-05 09:37:09)My cats have been going for 8 years now. Granted, I don't wear them all that often, but I am hard on shoes. My average shoe lifespan is one year, although that is for my IS sneakers. They are dead at the end, cos I wear them well nigh every day. Comment: Not so lucky... (by OOPMan on 2005-08-05 12:15:13)Had less luck with my last pair of shoes. Lasted about 2 or 3 years worth of hard labour (Ie, at least a km of working a day, with more sometimes :-) New pair cost me R350, but they fit my feet like gloves... Comment: mmm, docs (by FirstFallen? on 2005-08-05 13:13:22)yeh, mine lasted 10 years too. they were reallly expensive when i got them in 1994 (a whole R400!!). i need some new ones, but there are none to be found in SA. :-( Comment: major (by ToothpasteDealer? on 2005-08-05 18:34:13)I have some dodgy white sneakers for 10 years and they're still alive, no sign of dying. they're some brand or other called 'major'. goedkoop is duurkoop? no!
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