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| Thursday, January 14th, 2010 | | 1:57 pm |
Just found out how much I'm being paid for recent work, tis 5 times what I was expecting! Woot! | | Monday, January 4th, 2010 | | 11:33 pm |
nice calming bowl of brandy laced porridge, swesome new invention of mine. | | Thursday, December 24th, 2009 | | 2:56 pm |
In idylic monastory, roaring log fire, surrounded by family, a little snow outside. I completed a 30 hour journey yesterday, with no stress despite everything going wrong. My coach meant to take me from brussels to London no longer existed me and Half_of_monty were in a cold cement room in Brussels at 6 am, with no clue how to go on, so I went to the poor lone man in charge who looked like he was about to cry and said could I change my ticket to go on the paris coach that was about to leave. He said if i would do that he would give me a great big kiss and I would be his favoruite person in the world. So I hopped on the other coach, arrived in Paris went to counter with a list of all towns wihtin two hours drive of my grandfathers house, they wrote down step by step instructions for the metro, got to station, bought ticket. Train delayed 3 hours but step father came to pick me up even though meant icy road night driving. In fact everyone in my family is being calm and ingenious in overcoming stopped eurolines, stopped roads etc. Mum and step dad reversed up slip road to escape queues and went to portsmouth instead, and had also been travling 2 days. Our guests are being lame and wimping out of coming, but thats no bad thing. If they don't like us enough to make the effort then we don't want them. Trouble is we've already brought their clothes, presents and laptops in parent's car so i don't know what they'll do for Christmas. One slightly bizzare thing, I've just heard my cousin was plannign to ask me for an egg before she got pregnant (you can't use your own for IVF after age 35) my mother said of course if asked I'd be happy to give one, which is probably true, it still seems a tiny bit weird though. We are eating lots I've just dined off cold ham and madeira, and tonight its the smoked trout, oysters, crab and prawns. Tomorrow its the foi gras and goose (other courses undecided). Let us drink and be merry for tomorrow we don't. | | Friday, December 18th, 2009 | | 10:36 pm |
last day i'm very tired imagine your stuck in a place with nothing to do but unlimmited internet. It sounds cool. Now imagine your hit by lots of depressing news, and lots of people in suits are stuck in a place like a very big airport. Everyone eats massive of tasteles overpriced pap. Sleeps on sofas and wanders around like extras on night of living dead, in suits. We're going to get a message at 11pm apparenlty. Negotiators in closed rooms. I'm not allowed in. no agreement in sight. Waste of two weeks. chuh. | | Thursday, December 17th, 2009 | | 2:01 pm |
not allowed in sesions, no clue whats going on....getting a little tired of whole thing. So while I'm here - how difficult is it to write a script? Why haven't they made the teeny film Much ado about nothing? That I would like to see. | | Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 | | 4:31 pm |
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/dec/16/copenhagen-climate-change-protests-liveOk, I'm in favour of protesting about climate change, I even tried to join the march the other day. But if you have a building with lots of heads of state in it, you need fairly good security. If you plan to run into a ring of policemen and try and break into a building with restricted access I don't think you can really complain if you get hurt. I also think the first video here was a bit staged, I think they were trying to get a show of police brutality, and I don't blame the policement, whats he supposed to do? Say ' oh ok, I'm not going to stop you breaking in you might get hurt' you could argue that they shouldn't be hitting heads, but if your a policemen with a press of bodies attacking you its quite hard to hit back in carefully chosen safe places. And yes its a shame the access of NGOs has to be restricteed, but its not an attempt to stifle civil voices, I suspect its half health and safety and half security, theres a lot fo very angry vocal people here and over a hundred heads of state and it would not be appropriate to allow chanting, marching, heckling in the final stages of speech making. This does not encourage sensible agreemetns it makes people think that this is a silly trivial thing something for hippies and wierdos to row about. NGOs have not been banned completely, and they've tried to allow representatives of most groups in. e.g. 2 from Oxford uni, 1 from the GEF etc. the organisers have apologised and taken blame for allowing to many tickets being given out. Enough were here to organise a big chant and march through the centre that could be overheard in the negotaiting halls, and then organise a mass walk out of NGOs. Queery: wasn't that rather self -defeating, 'we're so cross about not being allowed in we're leaving?' In ohter news, we've been sitting for this meeting to start for 3.5 hours, rumour is that it can't start until a behind scenes meeting is finished, i imagine soothing ruffled brows. As far as i can work out, a text was worked on, but has not been read back, and stamped and denmark insistied that the heads of state speeches go ahead whiel the text was being approved in a side meeting (that I'm in now) because there is so many to get through and we're so behind. Maldives agreed but china and India thoguht this was a breech of protocol and questioned the transparency and motives, as the final section of negotiations is only supposed to happen when heads of state have a final text before them to argue the points of. So whats prob happenign now is the text is being circulated, and heads and negotiators are reading it. If its close enough to what was argued about then they can go ahead and stamp out final details in this meeting, if things have been surriptiously altered then they can't. Other conspiracy theoeries is that this is a delaying tactic by china in order to get people more desperate and demand more on the final day. But every delay makes it less likely that an agreement is sealed. Its a great shame, and you find it difficult to be sympathetic when you find the levels of pettiness and bickering and pedantry holding up every technical negotiation. Will post more later. | | Tuesday, December 15th, 2009 | | 4:18 pm |
| | Monday, December 14th, 2009 | | 9:23 pm |
I have two awesome ideas for gay t-shirts. One is not my idea, its one I saw and wished I'd got. 'Yes we are , no you can't watch' and my own, as cunning argument for the religious right. 'Thou shalt not lie with a man as thy would a woman' - 'ok then'! | | 8:42 pm |
Good things: paper in, I might be due to get some money. Bad things: lots of african countires walked out of session today rather then be rail roaded. Not a bad thing they walked out, bad thing they were trying to rail road them. | | Thursday, December 10th, 2009 | | 10:19 am |
I have severe 'old lady crush' on a women i saw a video of CCS last year. And I can't find it anywhwere, anyone know of a video of cool old women in suit clicking a button marked policy and making smoke go back inot chimmneys? Other news - I'm bloody knackered and its only the 4th day, but golly isn't interesting and depressing. Update: if we agree on what it is on the table expect warming of 3.5-4.2% we are all so severely buggered. And poor Obama, he might mean well but unless senate accept, he can't enforce anythign. He can't enforce anythign then US - well its in deep poo, and so are all of we. | | Sunday, December 6th, 2009 | | 10:01 pm |
Got on coach, very tired from getting work in last night. Ate smoked salmon sandwich, slept slept crossed channel ate smoked salmon sandwich slept. Slept slept ate ham sandwich slept slept slept 2 hours amsterdam cool snazzy bar, had bloody mary and sleepy pills to ensure good nights sleep. slept slept slept work up 7am handburg, changed coaches finished sandwiches and ate mince pies and tangerines. slept. got into copenhagen. went to awesome magic land, and roller coasters. registered at copenhagen conference, came home to flat. deciding whether or not to shower before sleepign.. can try and stay awake a few more mins. | | Sunday, November 8th, 2009 | | 12:26 am |
i wasted 17 quid on dyes. After three washes I realised that the dress in question is acetate and therfore has no hope of being dyed. There go my plans for creating a perfect black cocktail dress from old purple ballgown. Humph there go my good intentions of 'make do and mend' | | Thursday, October 1st, 2009 | | 3:03 pm |
House is emptied! Keys handed over. my worldly possesions are lyign on teh lawn outside being picked over by cleaning ladies and guards. Thats the worldy possessions i'm throwing away, old blankets and clothes and half used bottles of lotion etc. The rest is lying next to the throw out stuff, seperated by a skipping rope. I really really hope people are nice and don't take the stuff I've already sold. My flight is Saturday. I have to work on friday but thats ok. I wish I could work better now. I'm very very tired. no sleep for two nights. and unaccostomed physical exercise. what are these things that ache? oh yes muscles. I remember them. | | Monday, September 28th, 2009 | | 2:45 pm |
Ok! so if I do NANO this year I'm tempted to get rid of the original story, ripping yarn set around ex-pirate island, where all the pirates, beggars, whores and thieves have now turned respectable and wear starched linen and caps, because I realised I have a happy setting and zero plot. I'm instead going to have a stab at mills and boon, which I'm told is much more difficult then it sounds. If i do choose this route would anyone be willign to write the sex scenes for me? I believe in out-sourcing. I wont include other's scenes in the word count, but it can't be mills and boon without sex and I'm far to British to write them myself. My mother wrote some romances and I always knew when she was writing a sex scene as she had her eyes wrinkled shut, face turned from screen, two finger typing wiht a look of utter embarresment and revulsion on her face. | | 2:35 pm |
I'm not ready to leave. Its all so wierd. I'm a wierd wired mix of stuff. And its all just too much. Except when I don't think about it. And I'm very very good at not thinking about things to much. | | Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009 | | 8:32 am |
Ok, theres this job I want to apply for. And it says its good if you have soem experience with web design, wikis and online debates. How do I set up a website and what the heck is a wiki? | | Thursday, September 10th, 2009 | | 2:34 pm |
I have writers block! I have to write a two page report on my time in Namibia or I don't get my final months payment. But its worse then the wretched 'Wot I did on my hollydays' from when I was 6. How are you meant to describe the dampness fo moss and the little twig houses for your flower fairy dolls and playing highway men on the swingset entering into a perfect new world, and listening to teh parents conversation picking up the little nuances that meant there was goign to be another row and all teh children huddled in an attic pretending to play listening to their mothers snarl and hiss like aged cats. So you write "i went to my grandfathers. i played with my cusons. it was hot. we went swiming. we went home. the end" Its none of the teachers business. Alright i suppose teh ODI have some right to know what they were spending their money on. THe real difficluty is i'm not sure if i have achieved much. I did try, I spent ages making up those lessons on excel and power point. None of them even bothered to try them. And it was a really fun lesson making animated valentines cards! | | Friday, September 4th, 2009 | | 1:01 pm |
musings on population
I've been having rather morbid musings on population at the moment. The other day I was discussing Malthus, who as any fule know was the bloke who said that when population expands at a greater rate than food production population will then decline due to people dying of malnutrition. Thats the basic idea and then it was sort of expanded to say and overpopulation can lead to death from increased disease and poverty from living in overcrowded conditions. And then it became you get population expansion and there will be a RECKONING. Like Spanish flu or a war that kills us all. And a lot of people (or at least several important, educated, government people here) see HIV or Climate Change as that. They say they are good things because they will decrease the surplus population. I would like to mildly point out at this point that the only reason overpopulation is a bad thing is because it leads to hunger, disease and premature death. So having hunger, disease and prmature death as a solution isn't really winning situation. Anyway, me and this visitor were discussing the population trends and how we were going to reach 9 billion by 2050 and I gave the example of China in the 1960s which experienced localised 'classic malthus' where population combined with one years famine led to the deaths of at least 60million (in reality prob much higher). Then this maths teacher whose here doing her VSO chirped in rather piously and said 'I thought people were dying in China because they were murdering the girl babies'. And I explained no that was a consequence of the mortality, the one child policy was to try and ensure that population growth rate declined so the people who did live had a better chance of surviving, and at first at least it was voluntary, you recieved a loan which you didn't have to pay back if you only had one child, but people kept having a second child and refusing to pay back, and you couldn't force them as they had no money. So then the authorities of the areas were told 'make sure they tow the line, do whatever you have to' and so you get the forced abortions, sterilisations and people abonding or murdering the female infants because if your only allowed one then its much better to have a boy. At which point the maths teacher looked like she was about to burst into tears so I stopped this recap of my asia-pacific in post-war period module. But the question which we began to discuss after she had gone was is it likely that any individual country will adopt a deliberate population policy in the near future, or would such a thing not be possible these days? It only worked in China cos they had a powerful non-elected govt. and you could argue it was only nesecarry because they didn't organise a large scale import of food in times of famine. Attempts in India have so far been given short shrift. | | Thursday, September 3rd, 2009 | | 10:54 am |
| Greed: | Very Low
| | | Gluttony: | Medium
| | | Wrath: | Low
| | | Sloth: | High
| | | Envy: | Very Low
| | | Lust: | Medium
| | | Pride: | Very Low
| |
Take the Seven Deadly Sins Quiz | | Sunday, August 23rd, 2009 | | 10:55 pm |
I've just had row with Catherine, and shes leaving tomorrow. I should feel bad, but i'm just so bloody relieved. Its been brewing for a while, numerous little things. Lots of anti-Islam hints, (shes an atheist who thinks that people need religion to make them do good, obviously not including the intellectual enlightened like her, just the dreary masses who need masses as a kind of carrot and stick) but mainly an ego that bordered on the level of pschycatric concern. It got to the stage where I was fairly convinced she wasn't just exagereating she was down right lying. She was obsessed with boys being in love with her, every tiny reaction was interpreted as thier obsession. And then on Friday she was telling a long anecdote about one boy's obsession, in the story he gave her a 6 foot wooden sculpture of the virgin mary. Which changed half way through the story from neon blue to neon pink. This for me was the conclusive proof she was a) making it up and then b) really believing her lies. So at dinner we were talking about religion and social ties, and she said the bible said nothing on the oppression of woman so I gave teh example of corionthians which said women should not be priests and not teach and keep their hair covered. And she said she'd read the whole bible and I said she hadn't otherwise she'd know the corinthians and she said she'd read te whole of teh bible and koran. And I said she was lying, she said she would not sit at a table with someone who called her a liar, and stormed off to bed. I went to Masoma's to calm down who told me Catherine had actually mentioned to her she hadn't read the bible. I came home, with the intention of making peace but what actually came out of my mouth was 'honey I don't think we should carry on living together' she said she'd already made plans to move out tomorrow. All in all by far the most dramatic evening I've ever spent in Windhoek and highly unpleasant. Trouble is I'm not sorry, I do think shes a pathological liar, as well as being an unpleasant actually fairly racist person (again lots of little hints adding up). I do want her out as shes poisonign my last few weeks here. What I'm worried about is once teh adrenineline wears off i'm going to be stuck with a ghastly feeling of bile which results from rows. Oh well, chin up, nice to know Matthias and Masoma support me (they've said I can come and stay with them just for goodness sake don't send her). |
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