Faux Pas King

I went to my car in the car park this morning... and it had been vandalised! But by some kind of surrealist!

They put a sticker on the windscreen... on the INSIDE!

And, goodness knows how or why, but they'd installed a baby-seat!


Shortly after that, I realised they'd also somehow moved the car a couple of spaces to the right and repainted it a very similar colour...


Ah....

Tat

I've just found out a friend of mine has Chinese symbols tattooed on her lower back - I tried to guess what they might mean and came up with:

- "No entry"

- "Gullible tourist"

- "Sweet & Sour Pork"

- "If found, please return to..."

- "How's my walking? Call 0800 000 000"

- "If you can read this, one of us is upside down"

- "I went to Beijing & all I got was this lousy tattoo"


There are lots of awesome (geeky) tattoos on this site.

I don't think I've ever seen a brown person with a proper tattoo... maybe I should get one?

Sign o' the Times

Yesterday a stranger came up to me and told me I was a Prince* lookalike.

* presumably the singer, as opposed to a member of the Royal family...

Bookface

I've just discovered that there are now 1500 members of the Amateur Transplants Appreciation Society on Facebook!

Watch this space, there will be more Facebook news very soon...

Le Weekend

"I know it's been a while since I have talked to you..."
- Oh God, Jamie Cullum*


I've had a heavy week - I've been back at work on the shop floor after two weeks of relaxing study leave and I'm knackered. Maybe it's being exposed to anaesthetic vapours again after several weeks away...

In any case, I've made up for it by having a truly efficient weekend:


FRIDAY:
When I got home after work, I was gonna start writing my Monday morning presentation then go to a party. But I was really tired and ended up in bed asleep by 10pm.

(Turns out if I'd gone to the party I would have caught up with five friends I haven't seen for over 4 years. Bugger.)


SATURDAY:
Before starting on the presentation, I had a bit of a play on the new computer. Magically, it suddenly became evening; I escorted a friend across town to her mate's birthday drinks in a pub. Scarily, the birthday boy was more like me than I am... We got on brilliantly, could predict what the other would say & do and ended up getting very confused. (I didn't get any presents though)

Afterwards I wandered back across town. I got impressively sodden by the rain considering that it was only drizzling (OK, I did get a little lost... I reckon London changes shape after a few drinks. I'm sure I crossed more than one river...)

And on the tube home, there was a signal problem & we were stuck underground not moving for over half an hour. In desperation, one bloke went round the carriage collecting empty bottles & then peed in them, much to the embarrassment of his poor girlfriend. Thank goodness we weren't in there longer or he'd probably have killed someone & eaten them.

I eventually turned up to my friend's house party at half one in the morning. Immediately I was ushered upstairs to where several people were tending to the hostess who had suffered a minor head injury. Soon as I arrived, everyone who had been looking after her vanished. It was just like being at work, the anaesthetist arriving in A&E... (sigh)

I spent my time at the party trying to work out why some people were wearing togas & others looked like they'd been in a big fight. My friend has complex fancy dress rules...


SUNDAY:
I beat my hangover into submission with steak. (It's the only thing it would listen to.)

Back home, I finally opened up Powerpoint...

...then of course I spent the afternoon watching Sesame Street songs on YouTube (eg James Blunt singing "My Triangle" & R.E.M. doing "Furry Happy Monsters" (genuinely cringeworthy); but you have got to watch Stevie Wonder's version of Superstition on Sesame Street... it's excellent!)

It was getting dark when I eventually started writing the presentation.
I did the title page.
I found a few funny pictures to put in it.

And then I went to church. Obvously.

My old uni were having their Easter concert and a few of my old friends were going. So while the fresh faces were performing their little hearts out, we veterans were sitting at the back thinking - ooh, it were better in our day...
The second half finished with music from Last Night of the Proms. And like the Last Night, there were drunks at the back singing along very loudly.
(I apologise to any blog-readers who were in that audience.)
Having said that, eight of us outsang an entire choir. Bring it on.

Which takes us to now, late Sunday night.
I have finally got round to posting on my blog. I will post again soon.

But first, I've just got to write this presentation...

-S-



* "Oh God" is the name of a great Jamie Cullum song.
Admittedly, Oh God, Jamie Cullum is also some peoples' reaction...

mmm... Grapes

So I wanted to write something hilarious today about the lectures I've been to on my revision course & about taking the Tube every day and being a student again... but I'm too drunk. Sorry.
Normal service will resume soon.
-S-

The Blind Assassin

I've played a few games of poker recently. And I've been doing bloody well.

That's because I have a special gift that none of the other guys I'm playing against have.

I'm rubbish.

If you'll pardon the card-game-related pun, I'm crap.

I genuinely do not know what I'm doing. I have almost no clue what's going on. Obviously I have some idea - I know a pair is good; and three of the same is better. But now we're pretty much at the limit of my knowledge already.

Therefore I'm not encumbered* by being able to calculate that the cards that I've been dealt give me, say, a 17% chance of making a straight or that I have odds of 1-in-however many of making a full house.

I'm having a GREAT time!

I've played half a dozen games against people who would call themselves "Poker Players". (Think about it - you can probably play football... but you're unlikely to call yourself a "Footballer" unless you're of a certain standard)

But every single time, I've wiped nearly all of them out.

They've even nicknamed me "The Assassin". And they're properly scared.

And so they should be. An analogy is how you would feel if you handed a monkey a loaded gun. The monkey doesn't know what it's doing, but it could still quite easily kill you.

I think part of the problem is that I'm not really in it for the cards. I like to sit there piling my chips up neatly according to colour in nice piles or 8 or 10.

Maybe I have an element of autism.

The pressure can get quite heavy. These guys take their poker very seriously. They are really good. They tend to find it off-putting, waiting for me to do something with my cards when I'm giggling like a small child distracted by playing with the stacks & stacks of chips in front of me. One guy keeps losing to me solely because he's really stressed about losing to me again.

I'm not quite sure how I do so well. My naivety of what's good & what's bad certainly help me along no end. But there must be a massive element of luck. There just has to be. I could do with channelling that luck elsewhere in my life...

I've been up against some very good players. They can be seriously intimidating & there are times when I really don't want to play 'cos of the glares I'm getting. It can all get so much that sometimes I just play whatever my cards are just to get the other guy off my case. But then I go & win & he gets more wound up.

I usually play with a friend of mine who is properly poker-mad - I'm convinced he will give his first-born a name like Jack or Ace. He gets a little upset when I knock him out (usually by accident) - and then later on in the game, if I play a hand at random, and the other players are saying something like "interesting, good call" or whatever, he's jumping up and down going "No! No! He doesn't know what he's doing!".

But it's a good thing we don't play for money. I never win. Last week there were 33 of us playing; it ended up with just me versus one other guy on the top table head to head, hundreds of chips piled up in front of each of us. I tried to build a small fortress. Four hands later, all the chips were in front of him. Ho hum.


Funny thing is though when I played at New Year against some school friends - who are as bad as I am - I lost every time, very very quickly. Ironic

Or perhaps not. Maybe we're all monkeys with guns...


*If you're wondering where you've heard the word "encumber" before, it's in the lyrics to "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother".

You're welcome.