Chip's Place

So, here I am, already 3 hours into my holiday (only another 1221 to go!), and I feel a bit weird.

I'm definitely pleased that the day has finally arrived (it's been hanging around for a very long time!), and I think that tonight the little knot of stress that's been wound up tight for the whole year finally got loosened a bit. I also got an entirely-unexpected present of a book of crosswords - some people know me too well!

However, I'm still not quite in the holiday frame of mind. For so long, work's just been on a constant upward spiral of things to do, and the last week has been so packed full (Christmas!) that this right now is really the first moment I've had to think properly about the next 2 months.

Walking out of work this evening was odd. In one way, it was just like normal - clock's running down towards 6, nearly everyone else has left, Mr Blokey is dusting and hoovering the phones (this not is a joke!) In another, there were strong overtones of actually leaving the company - my involvement with the Greek goddess has come to an end, and when I get back, I'll have a new job, new desk, 2 or 3 new staff members and all sorts of changes going on.

I was quite strongly reminded of school summer holidays - intellectually I know it's the last day of the year, the fact that this is going to be a summer holiday for the next 6 weeks notwithstanding! - but it feels like those last few days at school where you're not going to see most of your friends for a while, you haven't really got anything vitally important to do and the days till the start of September seem to stretch out endlessly (there's a better answer to your question, GeeDee!)

I've still got the pleasure of packing tomorrow morning.

Thanks to everyone for turning up to the party this evening. I'm sorry we had to kill the noise levels quite so sharply - unfortunate combination of circumstances. Still, I hope you all had as much fun as I did. Special mention of Happy Birthday to Tsuki.

Needless to say, updates to the blog will be erratic for the next 2 months, and probably absent altogether while I'm skiing - mountain resorts are not often known for their bandwidth and connectivity. The CNPS table will be frozen after the next update, which is in about an hour, so I hope you've recorded your 97, Lint!
2 comments

Sometimes a word has two meanings. And other times, two words have the same meaning. E.g. edible and eatable. Or flammable and inflammable. Or ineradicable and irradicable :

Irradicable - impossible to uproot or destroy; ineradicable
Ineradicable - not able to be destroyed or rooted out

I was slightly premature in writing off irradicable as a word. It actually is one, albeit rather uncommon (I'm basing that on the fact that I've never heard of it, which may be slightly arrogant, but still...)

English is a wonderfully redundant language sometimes!

One of my favourite books of all time (and no, Badfriend, you can't borrow this one, my copy's too fragile), Emergence by David Palmer has, as one of its meta-plot devices (I can't think of any other way of describing that!) that the English language is approximately 40% redundant. The author uses this to compress what would normally be a 500-page novel into around 300 pages. It's extremely cleverly-written.

In other news, I have achieved my lesser CNPS goal of getting to 143 before the end of the year, and I've finished all but one of the storyline missions for GTA San Andreas - this last I should be able to sort out easily enough before I go away.

I'm also going to an extra place on my trip now - spoke to Adrian (my friend in Singapore) at the weekend, and he's planned a trip to Kuala Lumpur for us. I think his main intention is to go shopping there, but I'm quite happy to go along for the ride!
0 comments

In a new and hopefully not precedent-setting twist to the continuing saga of my restaurant malfunctions, I set fire to my hand last night!

We went to a recently-opened curry place in town, the Ujala., which I really enjoyed. Very good meal - one of the best curries I've had in York.

One of the "selling points" (for everyone else, at least!) was that you get free sambuccas after the meal, and they do the full 3 coffee beans and setting it alight business. I'd somehow managed to end up sitting in the most confined seat, such that it involved some sort of musical chairs game to let me out, and took several minutes to reach the toilet. So I ended up getting my sambucca last.

Naturally, I wasn't particularly bothered about this, as I was just going to pass it on to someone else anyway, but as the waiter, at full arm stretch, passed it over to me, I obviously didn't quite get hold of the glass properly, and I ended up somehow pouring some of it on my hand, some on the table and fortunately narrowly avoided pouring the rest into my lap. And it was all on fire.

Now my initial reaction, I think, was "Ooh pretty." Alcohol burning always makes a pretty nearly-not-there flame - I love watching the Christmas pudding when it's alight. Next thought went something like "The table cloth's on fire - quick, put it out ... with my hand ... that's also on fire. Ow!" I then started trying to blow all the flames out like a madman, and got them all out pretty quickly - I doubt the whole thing lasted more than 3 seconds or so. Then I went to run my hand under the cold tap, which was very cold indeed!

I now have a little red patch on my finger to remind me for a few days!

Other recent events :

Received my first Christmas present, which I'll try to post a photo of later on - a book entitled The Runaway Beard, complete with said runaway beard.

Was told that in order to succeed as a manager, I needed to adopt a "more mean and moody style". Which I'm not sure what to do with at the moment.

Sloped off to play squash at 4.15 yesterday, possibly the earliest I've left work all year, even when Goran was playing his last match at Wimbledon. I beat Neil in a nice close to the year's squash, with one being a 9-0 game.

Royally pissed off everyone I've talked to for the last few days, when I explain why I'm not off for long over the Christmas period.

Got royally pis's'ed off my'self at inappropriate us'age of the Engli'sh language. Extraneou's apos'trophe's, invented word's (irradicable instead of ineradicable!), commas all over the show. Having decent grammar skills is depressing.

Possibly killed our team sea monkeys by not feeding them often enough.

Nearly achieved the year-end CNPS goal of getting 1/7th of the way through. 2 more to go...

posted by Chip : 07:14

0 comments

I make it 256 hours, as I write this, before my first flight takes off. That's a nice binary number!

So what have I not done so far?

Obtained travel insurance - I will be doing this tomorrow lunchtime.

Found the lost spare spare key (or more precisely, nagged my mum to find, since she lost it in her house!) to give to whichever of Lint and Tom/Helen I deem less reliable - the others get the normal spare key.

Sent any Christmas cards - I rarely do anyway, but the last few weeks have been way too pressured to even consider it. Thanks to everyone who's sent me one (Bertie particularly - I think I've thanked everyone else in person), but don't be expecting one in return to drop through your letterboxes! Which brings me on to ...

Collecting people's addresses for postcard deliverance. I hereby make a promise. If you send me your address via e-mail (link in the top-right corner of the page) I guarantee I will send you a postcard - this goes for random surfers as well as regular visitors. In light of my usual ability to send postcards, this guarantee is quite a valuable one! Special postcard requests will be accommodated where possible (GeeDee and Dave, I've got yours already!)

Changed any money. Another thing to do this week.

Managed to find anywhere that will sell me any summer clothing. Obviously I could have no need for summer clothing, for it is winter, and slippery outside.

Got anywhere near handing over all the myriad things I do at work to the people who're going to have to do them while I'm not there.

Lots of other things I haven't thought of - well, if I had, I might have considered doing them by now, mightn't I!?

And what have I done?

Booked all the hotels, skiing bits, etc.

Booked the flights (eventually...)

Let everyone who I'm visiting/staying with know when I'll be there.

Located my passport - it's in a very safe place, I know exactly where it is...

Ditto the flight tickets and details, Aussie Open tickets, hotel details, etc.

Got visas and vaccinations as required.

Ruled out taking driving licence - not going to need to drive anywhere.

Written up a very basic will (I need this witnessed at some point too) - approaching thirty-ness is showing its signs with this one!

Written up lists of all the little bits and pieces you don't take on holiday normally because you wouldn't normally need them - e.g. nail clippers, running gear (my Melbourne hotel is right on the edge of the Botanical Gardens, supposed to be one of the most beautiful inner-city running tracks in the world)

Camera, iPod, mobile, respective chargers, travel adapters

I now ask the Internet - what might I have forgotten?

posted by Chip : 23:24

3 comments

I was in a bit of a funny mood last night. Almost ended up in a fight with GeeDee, AFAICT because I was "smiling at him", "toying with him" and saying that while I had reasonably decent reflexes he probably could push me over if I wasn't paying attention. There was much stroking of beards going on too, and not enough people giving birth. I also managed to pay the most I've ever paid for a round of drinks - £58.30, although it wasn't my money (up from about £50 on my birthday earlier in the year).

I also ended up having a bet with Iasonas. The details of the bet are based on which of us is older on our respective qualification days, and the bits I can remember are as follows :

The person who is older on qualifying has to CORRECTION drink 4 pints of Guinness bought for him by the person who is younger.END CORRECTION

If we're both exactly the same age, we both buy each other (and drink!) 4 pints of Guinness.

If I'm younger, then Iasonas has to grow a beard.

This last condition does seem a little one-sided, but I can drive a hard bargain, and we have shaken hands on it, so we're stuck with it now.

There are some bits I'm not sure about, though, and they're all Tsuki's fault! I vaguely remember something being added about a second beard, and also some foul-sounding Baileys/whisky combo, but I'm not certain either of these were pertinent to the bet. I will happily correct the above if either of you can provide documentary proof that we agreed any other conditions.

The critical date for the results is 17/06/2005, but that's actually based on all years being the same length. Given it's likely to be tight, I think this needs to be checked closely, so we should look at exact age in days on the results day.

Only problem is, there's no date for results on the Institute website yet.

posted by Chip : 09:23

3 comments

Where to start?

GeeDee and Flic (among others, but these were the only ones I was out with) have just qualified as actuaries. Several of us ended up giving "special strokes" to GeeDee from Helen. Flic didn't get any.

I won a squash match 4 games to 2 this evening against Neil, including one game where I was 0-8 down 4 times, which I won with a score of 15-13.

I had to be nice to Flic, Pete and GeeDee for 4 whole hours. And managed reasonably well. I don't think I'll do it again though.

Badfriend came up to York for a 15-hour visit.

Two helicopters flew right overhead at lunchtime, about 100 feet up, then landed in a field nearby. I like helicopters.

I got an e-mail from Adrian in Singapore telling me the pound was in a storming position against the Singapore dollar.

I got 5 CNPS spots in an hour this lunchtime. 150 before I go away?

The one down point was Pete, who unfortunately didn't pass his exams. Keep going Pete - all the best actuaries qualify at 28.

posted by Chip : 00:40

2 comments

Today's been very fun. I've been interviewing again - which is always a lark no matter how time-pressured or desperately underprepared you are. Not enough coffee was provided, though, and given my superb skill at catching colds, I think I'll probably not be enjoying next weekend much, given the state of one of my interviewees.

Memorable moments include :

Receiving my promised pictures of Cathy Godbold as part of my interviewing pack. Luckily Nick isn't the quietest person around, so I heard him saying what he was planning to do beforehand. Bursting out laughing in the middle of the group discussion might have looked a tad unprofessional.

The black file.

"Most people would have just used paper."

"So when did you realise something was wrong and had to change?" "Well, failing my driving test 3 times was a big clue."

"Oooh...like a chipolata? Do I mean that word? No, I mean ... hanging, hitting, sweets....piñata!"

"I wouldn't say no to her..."

Whistling Bob's Teen Choir Rejects

Most unexpectedly appropriate use of sorbet and garlic mushrooms in an interview.

The electronic diary ID of one of the prospective candidates.

In other tenuously-related news, Lint and I did reasonably well at The Swan quiz this evening (much better than Iasonas, GeeDee et al), but not quite well enough to win. I'm a little bit annoyed about the palindrome question - name the 7-letter word which is the longest palindrome in the English language. His required answer was RACECAR, but I came up with ROTATOR, which is a valid English word too. There was some suggestion that ROTAVATOR would be a 9-letter one, but that doesn't appear to be in the dictionary.
3 comments