Well the day started early, I had to pack, pick up my camera and be at the airport by midday. I’m damn glad that I have a habit of leaving slightly too much time, as it took me a nerve wracking half an hour to find my passport.
Other than that the morning went suspiciously smoothly. I met up with the guys at the airport at exactly 12, they in turn had left at exactly 8, got to Matt’s at exactly 9, and arrived at airport parking at exactly 11. All according to plan. It seemed to be too good to be true. Turned out that it was. The flight was delayed. Not by long I’ll admit but it was still a mar on our perfect record of time keeping.
Greig also got searched going through the metal detector at departures, something that would become a theme of the holiday. We all got searched by customs coming into Budapest, but then a group of four likely looking lads have got to expect that!
We had to wait about half an hour for the minibus to take us to the hotel but that all went smoothly.
After plonking our stuff in the rooms and possibly checking out how many of the TV channels were in English, the matter of food quickly became an urgent one.
The receptionist at the desk provided us with a map and the advice that the nearest metro station was a 15-20 minute walk and we could get into the centre of town from there.
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This is a lesson I’ve learnt, unfortunately too late, when getting foreign currency. We were advised to get our Hungarian Forints from the post office because they don’t charge commission. It seems however that instead of commission they give you really crap exchange rates. For example, we got a rate of roughly 330 Forints to the pound.
I looked up the exchange rate this morning and it’s hovering around the 370 mark. I got £175 worth of Forints (for myself and Andy) and with the difference in rates, from ideal to what we got (if that makes sense) I paid an equivalent commission of about £15.
Admitedly I don’t know what kind of commission other places charge but I’m sure that there are places that charge less than that.

Oh well nevermind.
Live and learn and all that. Hopefully £75 will be enough for the week, otherwise I’ll have to start using cards and cash machines and the like. Although that didn’t actually cause any problems in France, I don’t know if it’s a good idea in eastern europe.

Well, last night I tried out the pickup the I (with the help of the workshop guru at work) fitted to my guitar yesterday. Damn it sounds good, with one quick swipe of the credit card I’ve upgraded my quite nice guitar to a quite nice electro-acoustic guitar.
Admittedly the sound isn’t astonishing but seeing as the pickup was only £40 and I’m no virtuoso it doesn’t bother me.
If I was that bothered about the sound quality then I would have spent more than £200 on my guitar in the first place! 🙂

This is the general format of online shopping.
Yes, friends, once again my knowledge of my credit card number has led me into more impulse buying of the online kind. Only this time it was roughly four-hundred pounds worth of music gear.
To break it down: A digital 8-track portable studio, a combined midi synth and sampler (although I have it on good authority that the sampler is too slow for live use), and an under-saddle pickup for my guitar (this means it will be converted to an electro-acoustic).

This is quite obviously a very silly thing to do seeing as I’ve yet to pay for my holiday (or at least the cheque hasn’t been paid in) and I think I have to tax my car this month too (still have to check that).

So next month, honestly I’ll not spend ANY money that I don’t have to.

Honest!

I am now once more a legal driver, and this evening I’ll be picking up my car to prove to point!

Life is good!

Well I went to the breakin’ convention yesterday. It’s on for three days you see, but we couldn’t really go for more than one.
Which is a good thing seeing as I spent about £30 on that one day and I’m feeling quite skint as it is (The university breakdance society paid for the entrance and the workshop too!).
So, I had a really good time. We started the day with a workshop. I chose to do a poppin’ workshop as opposed to the other option which was ‘rubic cube’ or general breakin’.
I’m glad I chose to do this as I’ve never done any poppin’ work and I’ve been to two general breakin’ workshops and I’m at the stage where I really need to practice practice practice before I even think about moving on.
The workshop was good fun and I’ve got a lot of stuff to try and practice (on top of what I’ve already got) which is good. After a break for some dodgy chicken burger lunch and a bit of a wander round Angel (the part of London that the convetion was in) the main show started.
This was several hours of dancing on a stage in the Sadler’s Wells theater. Some of it was a bit weird, but there was deffiantely a lot of very entertaining and inspiring dancing going on – not just breakin’ but all quite a few different styles.
Got back at about one o’clock in the morning which made it a very long day seeing as I left at ten in the morning.
Still I’m hoping that I’ll be able to go along next year with the society again. Many of the people I went with this time were talking about going for all three days… Personally I don’t know if I’d be up for that much but still… we’ll see 🙂

I went swimming yesterday for the first time in about eight years. I was a bit worried. Would it be like riding a bike? There was a possibility that I’d just sink because why isn’t the phrase ‘Just like swimming’?

Cutting through the water with ease, one of the lifeguards calls me over and asks if I’ve had lessons, I reply that I haven’t and in fact this is my first time swimming in many years. His exclamation of surprise is almost as gratifying as his insistance that I’m a natural and should train with the goal of getting on the local swim team.

… I imagined as I walked to the leisure complex.
Unfortunately the reality was huffing and puffing, stuggling along, occational fear of drowning and realizing that I was one of the slowest swimmers in the ‘slow lane’.
Good exercise though, I’m going to try and make it a weekly thing. Hopefully after a while I’ll even be able to do an entire length of front crawl!

It’ll all be a lot easier once I get some goggles, I reason to myself, then I’ll be able to go into ‘speedy position’. Head down, body straight, it’ll make the whole thing easier because holding my head up so high was obviously the main reason I was finding things so hard….

obviously

Well, if you remember, earlier this year was the first time that I decided to do something about valentines day. Could be argued that it was the first year I had an opportunity to do anything about it, i.e. a subitable woman that I know well enough to randomly give gifts to without worrying about accusation of stalking or being weird or what have you.
Anyway back to the point.
The promise of the date never actually materialised, even after she left the company (was a thing for some reason, very complicated so I won’t try to expalin) which was a bit of a disapointment. Overly protective brother was a possible cause of this, or at least some kind of excuse. Personally I don’t know what to think about that so I won’t.

After I got back from skiing it seemed that she was ignoring me completely. I came up with the rather dubious idea of calling every day and telling her about my day via voicemail. Until she either told me to bugger off or responded.

Tonight was the first night, and she texted me right back.
Sorry she just missed the call, and she’s coming back to the company to work, next week….

Well this is a very interesting turn of events. I’m still doing to try and call tomorrow and I have a sneaky suspicion that she’ll ‘miss’ that call too, but we’ll see.
Next week is going to be VERY interesting.

I will certainly keep you informed.

A few days ago I gave into retail therapy, online. The problem with this method of retail therapy is that you have to wait for the delivery. The delivery was prompt yesterday but no one was in, the delivery office is closed today being a bank holiday. This means I have to wait until tomorrow to get my spangly and exiting new 1gig flash mp3 player.

I’ll go into more detail on its features when I get it.