Playing with Google:

The best advice in these circumstances is…

• always “when in doubt, throw it out”.
• to remain flexible and relaxed, knowing that things usually will work out.
• just to use your own initiative.
• to ‘follow the money’.
• not to take part in the decision or vote on the proposals.

My advice would be…

• to always follow your dreams no matter what.
• to never give up on yourself and always believe.
• to go for the “kind bud”.
• to take baby steps, keep your antennas up, and pay attention because a lot of times, people just tell you what they want you to know.
• for the first semester, to study as much as possible for the exams from the old problems set and the old tests.
• to plan on glitches, and not to get hyper when they occur.
• to just focus on completing one and work on timing later.
• to stay close to the Lord.
• to check out at LEAST 3 schools and rank them so that you have some choices to fall back on.
• “in giving a speech, memorize the ideas you have come up with rather than the words you have brought together.”
• to completely let it go and let him be in charge of this one.

I have previously blogged about my desire to become a driver of little white beeping trucks. Well, I’m afraid I’m a fickle soul and have a new ambition. You see, on the way to Leicester on Saturday I spotted the übertruck. It’s still white, and it still has lights on, and I daresay it probably beeps, but it appears that this one runs on the road or rails…

How cool is that? It’s very cool, I tell you.

The fairest way to share a taxi fare with multiple destinations* is:

As a people leave a taxi which set out carrying a total of b people, they should take the current meter reading, m and each pay an amount equal to m/b.

Discuss.

(*assuming a mostly linear route, so that the taxi is not going out of its way for the multiple drop-offs)

Oh no! The official Channel 4 Big Brother website has now overtaken me for first place when searching google for shahbaz chaudhry. However, I do now have top spot for nikki big brother anorexic figs.

A great weekend.

Leicester Pride on Saturday, then a trip to London (oooh!) on Sunday. We took advantage of the £12 return tickets you can have if you:

a) Book fifteen years in advance

and

b) Travel at horrible antisocial hours

So… we caught the 9:25am rail-replacement bus to Leicester which had a wide-angle video camera on the front and a TV screen in the ceiling so you could watch the road in front - fun! Then the train to London St. Pancreas*.

The train was interesting - rather short-staffed, so the guard was also the ticket collector and the buffet-car server. We were hoping she hadn’t also popped into the cab to press ‘go’ before she started her rounds and had to rush back to press ’stop’ before we ploughed into the buffers at the end of the station.

Next, the underground to Brixton where we visited an empty shelfa bookcrossing zone for Sarah to drop a couple of books off. Then a walk for a mile up Brixton hill. It’s not steep, but you notice it after a mile. We didn’t get stabbed, raped, mugged OR murdered - it was terribly disappointing. Where were the gunfights and drug-dealing gangs we were promised by the media?

Then a quick pair ofcups of tea at the Talls’ house. Then off to Clapham Common for a pick-a-nick. Fran brought her little kite to play with which paled in comparison to a man’s big inflatable aerofoil style one with thick lines and girdleharness. However, Fran’s kite spend much more time in the air, and caused more joy for more people, so enjoyment per pence was probably way above that of girdle-boy and his fancy thing.

After the picnic, a quick whizz up the tube to the Black Friar pub to meet some imaginary friends. The pub was lovely - all done out in marble and mosaic and wood carvings and brass signs. No photos seem to do it justice. What’s more, they had Addlestone’s Cider on tap - something I’ve not seen since my student days. Yum!

Then a quick whizz again in the tube and onto a big fast train at 22:30, and a bus and home by 1am. Phew.

(*yes, I know)

Well, after 19 months in our house, I finally met the neighbours. Well, one of them anyway. He, a 20-something lad, came round to say “Hi - I’m from next door. Erm… Mister, erm… can we have our ball back, please?”

I nearly told him I’d pop it if it came over again.

A quick trip to Leicester Pride today - I’ve only been to Manchester (1998) and Birmingham (2002, 2003) Pride parades before so wasn’t sure what to expect from a smaller city. It turned out good - much less formal with a small parade and a free party in one corner of Victoria Park.

Click for the full gallery

Unfortunately, I didn’t get the camera in place in time to get a photo of the Lord Mayor of Leicester, cigarette hanging out of his mouth, in front of the leather um… novelties stall.

My incoming noise filter doesn’t work. I believe that most people can filter the sounds they want to hear from the sounds they don’t want to hear.

I don’t know if it’s working in audio, or my penchant for languages, but when there are three different conversations going on in the room, my brain tries to listen and parse all of them simultaneously. It is so tiring. That’s mostly why I hate busy pubs, and will always where possible go for a single-conversation meeting in a small quiet pub.

Anyone know if it’s something I can learn? Does everyone suffer with it, and I’m just being mardy? Argh! Overstimulation! Make it stop!

After posting the 64 Chinese characters I’d learned on Tuesday evening, I was asked “I’m impressed - but how many of the 64 stayed learned???”

Well, I tried writing them all this morning from my worksheets and the answer is… 57 characters, two half-characters and a duh.

The four characters I didn’t remember were:

错 cùo - bad, used in 不错 not bad!
谁 shéi - who?
做 zùo - do, make
板 bǎn, part of 老板 lǎo bǎn - boss.

The two half-characters were:

师 shī. I remembered the left half, but not the right. I also didn’t remember that I had a memory aid for this - it’s part of 老师 lǎo shī - teacher - and I had an image of a teacher dancing with a mortar board (look at the right half - it almost works) with a knife in his hand (because the left half is the symbol for a knife).

说 shūo - speak, say. Another one I had a memory aid for, but forgot. The left part (which I got) is the radical for speaking. My memory aid sees the right half as a TV set on legs with an old-fashioned two-part antenna. Unfortunately, it doesn’t help if I don’t remember I have the memory aid!

The duh is:

老 lǎo - part of 老板 lǎo bǎn - boss and 老师 lǎo shī teacher. It’s a duh because I actually wrote the whole character, but at half its proper width and then couldn’t remember the right half of it. That’s mostly because there isn’t a right half!

Happy Hippy Sunshine Day!

click for full size

A spectacular show this morning, well worth getting up at 3:30 for!