AndyBlog

Stormy Tuesday

In homage of the great blues song, sort of. Please click on the “black” picture to see the full movie.

We had a humdinger of a storm last night, and great fun it was. I regret that I failed to capture the best of it, but this tiny video might give you a little taster.

It's been hot here, jolly hot. Very close and oppressive. I have found it very hard to get any work done at all. So, it was with a considerable degree of relief that we realised there was to be a thunderstorm.

I just stood at the window and marvelled at the majesty of it all - nature in full cry, demanding attention. I was happy to oblige, just sorry that I didn't get my recording gear out sooner.

Today has been much nicer weather for working. Pleasantly cool, but still warm, if you know what I mean. I know that I could never live and work in warm climates. They're great for holidays, but not so good for working.

I have been amazed by how warm Cambridge actually gets. It has been positively Mediterranean these last few days. How anyone passes a fancy degree in this weather I'll never know.

So, as a result of Fiona working these last three days, and me nearly working, we have done no real holiday things, except from a couple of meals out and a visit to the pictures last night.

We saw The League Of Gentlemen's Apocalypse at the crummy VUE cinema in Cambridge's Grafton Centre. (It's like the Metro Centre, only pants) The movie was nothing special. I'd have been happier seeing three episodes back to back on a big screen, I think. Feel free to argue. No, really.

Orange have kindly agreed to send out my new phone to this holiday address. I do hope they find me OK...

(Yes, Robin, that's right......Treo650  £49.99)

Excitement.

Cambridge: Arrival

And so...  I find myself in cambridge.

(Pictured here is Rutland Water - a stop-off on the way. Loads of insects, pretty views, warm sun.)

We're here because Fiona has work here for three days, and we have a chance to have a cheap break away.

For me, it is a chance to catch up on my college work before next Tuesday's deadline, whilst enjoying the novelty of new surroundings and, hopefully, a less active phone.

When Fiona is done, we will have a couple of days 'real' holiday to enjoy before coming home.

So, for both of us, it is a bit of a Busman's Holiday - based on the principle that a change is, indeed, as good, or potentially better, than a rest.

Certainly, more will be achieved.

To this end, we have rented a flat in the centre of Cambridge, which should enable us to spread out and relax more than a hotel room would.

We are assured it has broadband internet, so I will be in touch with you people via email as normal.

Now, as I sit here in this charming Mexican restaurant, the aroma of the fresh Tostadas and salsa is overcoming me. I must eat.

It's.......

Well, it's......

Yeah, it's nice to be away. Feels like a long time since the wedding in January.
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Posted with mo:Blog and my Treo600

Canny Fun

Looks innocent, doesn't it? Just a lovely can of coke that has been fully enjoyed. A so called “empty” can.

And yet, as we all know - many of us to our cost, it is not empty at all. There is, after we drink all we can of the coke, a small hate of Coke still in the can. It exists in the murky world of the “aluminium void”, and its sole purpose is to sticky us, or our property - or both. Usually both.

Allow me to explain, with the aid of a further picture, and some carefully drawn diagrams. Really quite beautifully drawn diagrams, etched with a gossamer stylus onto the wings of angels.

The letter A points to the area of the Aluminium Void.

The Aluminium Void offers an area of several millimetres, where coke is blocked from exiting the can in the normal way. The angle required to liberate the coke from the Aluminium Void is quite impractical - especially whilst driving - and woe betide the individual who believes that he or she has been successful in liberating ALL the remaining coke. You are wrong. You are ALWAYS wrong.

Here, in cross section we see the hate of coke, trapped in the Aluminium Void.

The solution is obvious. Move the egress portal nearer, and almost flush with the outside of the can.

I do hope that the canned mineral water manufacturers of the world are listing to this earnest plea. I, for one, have been so annoyed, having thought I had emptied my coke can completely, only to have that inevitable dribble run over my car seat, or my hand - or both. Usually both.

Surely someone can fix this?  Or is it just me who has noticed this problem?

Am I losing my mind?

Yes, it happened. For the first time.

I totally totally totally forgot something that I should have easily  remembered.

I am still in shock. I guess I feel a bit like people feel after being the victim of a stage hypnotist like Derren Brown.

I dropped Fiona off tonight and, as far as my mind tells me, I had to await her call, upon which I would drive out to Newcastle and fetch her back home. All pretty standard stuff, you might think.

The scary thing is that when her call came, she was expecting me to be there already. In reality, she had asked me to be there for 11pm - and even to set off from home at 10.30pm.

I have exactly no memory of this being said at all. Usually, when told, I have a guilty feeling of half-memory which tells me that I forgot it. As it is - NOTHING.

I don't like this feeling that I cannot trust my own memory.

Man, that's frightening.

Heater Bypass

I drive an old banger. Most of you will be familiar with me arriving in a beat-up Granada - usually with something or other wrong with it. Often something serious.

Firstly, I should say that I am completely comfortable with this. I like driving an old car, it liberates me in so many ways. My car repayments do not dominate my life, the inevitable scratches do not stress me and if the worst comes to the worst, I just get another one.

OK, justification complete.

The current serious ailment with my current Granada is that the heater matrix is broken. This means that a shower of water sprays over my legs as I drive - or it did. My garage man told me that to fix it would be 300 pounds or more, and that in such an old car, the change in water pressure might compromise the head gasket. I don't really understand in the proper sense - but I see that this would be yet more expense.

I'm a little annoyed with this blog entry, because I set out to say something very simple, and seem to have been caught up in the preamble.

So, to cut a long story short, he has bypassed my heater matrix. This means that I have no heater in the car, but as compensation, my legs are no covered by a fine mist of engine water either. It feels like a fair trade-off to me - or it will until a cold night comes along.

At present, my heat setting is set like this:

When it gets cold, I reckon I will move this dial to the warm position, thus:

My question is simply this: Why will I do this, even though I know for sure that no heat will arrive as a result?

It's quite natural...

...on the hottest night of the year, to have to go and play a gig.

So, lots of equipment to manhandle - lots of hot sweaty bodies and the usual liberal quantities of drink.

I think I will take my fan with me tonight....

An Indian Footnote

Whilst I completely standby my earlier comments about UK call centres being sited in India, a few extra thoughts have now emerged - and I thought I would share them with you.

The first is simply that I have now had my first successful call with an Indian call centre. Why was it good?

• The line was clear
• There was no delay
• The lady seemed to understand what i was talking about throughout the call
• She was helpful, and had a sense of humour
• She understood her own level of functionality well, and did everything she could to help, but knew her limitations as well.
• Her accent was not so strong that I couldn't understand her.
• I felt as if I had been genuinely helped

I was  pretty surprised that all of this was true, and I wonder if she was really in Manchester after all - except that there was no trace of any regional accent at all. Nevertheless, it made me realise that these Indian call centres can get there if they try very hard indeed.

They need to achieve the following:

There must be a clear telephone line with little or no delay. It really doesn't matter who is on the other end if we struggle all the time to hear what the other is saying. So, they need to shell out for more expensive phone lines in many cases.

Language - The accent has to be clear enough not to put Joe Public into “struggle” mode, Indian vowels are very different to English vowels, so this is no easy task. I would certainly struggle to speak an Indian language like Hindi, so it's understandable that they would struggle to speak my language.

That point about understanding her own level of functionality is a crucial one. In some cases, escalating the issue dealt with means referring to a UK call centre, and so the Indian person feels that they have “failed” if they do this. The result is that they become, in some cases, too keen to keep control of the call, leading to the customer feeling like they are not being listened to. We already feel like call centres are brick walls, designed to prevent contact with the company, rather than to further it - let's not make the problem worse.

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Two final thoughts:

I've always hated call centres - many people do. This move to India has had just one good side-effect. Now, when I get through to a person from the UK, I feel a kind of joy and gratefullness that was never present before.

Someone was eagerly joining in with me on this topic and started to say, “Yes and they even use them in English call centres as well - it's a bloody disgrace.”

Ouch. That's not what I mean at all.  Indian people in this country who work in call centres are, on the whole, extremely good, in my experience. It may be for precisely this reason that India was selected in the first place. Not only that, but many have broader accents than I have - and I'm talking Glaswegian, Geordie, Brummy etc.  This is not a racist issue, it's about Language, Clear Communication, Local Knowledge, Job Knowledge and Line Quality.

Michael Jackson Is Guilty, IMHO...

I have actually made myself late for an important appointment in order to make this posting.

I feel sick and frustrated that jurors in the Michael Jackson trial have chosen to find him not guilty of his various sex crimes. It seems rather vile to me that one man with fame and influence at his fingertips can avoid justice in a way that most people cannot. We saw it in the OJ Simpson trial, and we have seen it here.

The jurors said that they wanted “more convincing evidence” in order to find him guilty, because the defence had brought a witness to counter every prosecution witness. All I'd say on that, is that no matter how many people are still alive, a murderer is still guilty of murder. In the same way, no matter how many kids have not been abused by Jackson, those who were, were.

I'm not sure how good the evidence has to be in a trial like this - I'm not sure how good it /can/ be. It's always going to come down to one little person accusing a big person of doing horrible things with them. The defence in this trial, and I've watched just about everything that happened in the SKY recreations, at no point accused Gavin of lying - or, indeed, any of the other male witnesses who claim abuse.

All they did was to throw mud at other people around these boys. It was a spectacular display of misdirection.

Ultimately, it does not matter to me that Janet Arviso has lied in court, or made bogus claims. She needs to account for herself to the relevant authorities for those crimes. It doesn't matter that Gavin's father demanded money form celebrities. Infact, all those other things that the defence brought up simply do not matter one iota.

All that matters is that on a few occasions - many of which Gavin himself has understandably  shrouded with vagueness in his own mind - Michael Jackson compelled this boy of thirteen years to engage in sexual activity against his will. For me, the case opens and closes right there, and the failure of the jury to fully take this on board saddens me in the extreme.

If you accept that Jackson's target sexual group is young boys up to thirteen years old, in a heterosexual pedophile the same target group would be young girls up to thirteen. I think this makes it clearer for most people to understand. Suppose I was to get friendly with a family with a ten year old girl and invite them to my massive holiday home. As that girl's parent, would you feel OK about it if I suggested she sleep alone with me every single night?

I suspect not. I actually think that those of you with kids reading this reacted with extreme horror to the notion. I don't blame you. And yet, this is precisely what Jackson has admitted to, and was one of the factors that was not up for debate in this court case.

Even the lack of Jubilation on Michael Jackson's face seem to back up the truth. I mean - how would you react if you knew you were guilty and yet got off? Like any cheat, the sense of elation is muted. He didn't even crack a smile.

What happens now is very important indeed.

Even Jackson's closest friends are saying that he needs to use this as a wake-up call and change his life around - primarily by downscaling his involvement with children - especially in his bedroom. I do hope that his friends are vigilant, and that we see no more sleep-overs.

The media even asked some fans questions like this:  “Do you believe Michael is innocent?”  Answer:  “Yes, definitely.”  “OK, would you let your son sleep over at Neverland?” Answer: “No way.”

That speaks volumes.

Somewhere in my heart, I have an awful feeling that Jackson will now think that he is untouchable, and can do as he pleases. I hope and pray that this is not the case.

I'd like to see him put all this behind him now. I'd like to see him get some help and put his life back on track. His music is what makes him great, and therein lies his potential return to favour. I admire his achievements in music - I deplore what he thinks is OK in his bedroom, and I am so sad for the many families he has exploited and brought pain and suffering to.

For the man who has a depiction of the last supper above his bed - with himself as Jesus, I hope and pray he will remember that he is just Michael Jackson, a pretty good singer and songwriter with a lot to recover from.

As a trainee counsellor myself, I wish his therapist well.

Just not enough...

...hours in the day.

The days flash by so quickly. Mostly because I spend time both blogging, replying to blogs and reading blogs, drinking coffee, dealing with phone calls, making phone calls, eating and watching TV, as well as attempting to do the work detailed below.

Looking at today as an example, I have needs and wants, thus:

Needs:

1. Do the rest of the video editing for Jason
2. Start work on the PPS web site
3. Do some college work ready for tomorrow.
4. Design some cover artwork for LR
5. Finish mixing and composing two long poetry/music pieces for LB
6. Mix three short songs for LB
7. Practice piano ready for the gigs this weekend
8. Tidy the hall
9. Decide what to have for dinner tonight, and make it
10. Copy 25 Cheese DVDs for Jason's Client
11. Post some letters

Wants:

1. To bugger off to somewhere peaceful for quite a long while.
2. To work on my jazz album
3. To learn how to use “Sibelius” better so I can score my music properly
4. To design more groupwork activities for church
5. To eat a heck of a lot of high-fat food.

Together At Last

I guess this posting comes under the heading “Don't knock it until you've tried it”.

Quite by chance, I had some lemon curd on my toast one day. It was on about half of the slice of toast, and so I needed a further preserve to complete the covering and render the toast edible.

I found some low-sugar raspberry jam, and - entirely by accident - spread it /over/ the lemon curd. It was a moment of thoughtlessness, but it gave birth to a great taste. If you like both these things on their own - why not try them together one time? I can highly recommend the experience, even though the look of the toast with both on is, perhaps, less than ideal.

Feedback, please...