And it was a real miserable day outside, so they had the door closed to keep us warm…

The door flapped open momentarily and I caught wind of a snippet of someone’s conversation outside:

“He puked his guts up in the ditch on the way home” is what I heard.

Ah it’s good to be home in Ireland…

There was I, all alone on the top deck of a double decker bus, on new years eve afternoon. I sat in the very front seat when all of a sudden a friendly girl, just a few years older than me, with an accent hard to define, sat in the other front seat opposite me.

She smiled at me as she took her seat and I half smiled back. When she settled into her seat, she kinda leaned over and said “this is beautiful isn’t it?” she could hardly contain her excitement… It kinda took me by surprise.

I looked out and saw grey buildings towering over me, traffic everywhere, people zig-zaging on the pavement. I tried to see the beauty, I replied “its a nice view from up here”, she agreed and her whole persona was poised for a fully fledged conversation. It was at that point, I reached in to my bag and pulled out my Ipod…

I could feel her watching me and I continued to plug my ears despite this innate feeling that it was the most ignorant, ugly thing any human could do in a moment like that.

With my ipod clogging up my ears, I couldn’t shake off this feeling of self disgust, so i put my ipod away and angled for a chin wag.

By that time she had a magazine open on her lap; I noticed it was called “voyage”.

I broke the ice and we had a loose, on & off chat for the duration of the journey across London. She was so excited to be here and had only just arrived from Paris. I told her that I too felt like that when I first came here, but now I’m sort of like a horse with blinders;

She said she feels that way about Paris. We agreed that things always look better when you’re just passing through… and I said “Yep, a rolling stone gathers no moss…”

I then thought to myself how cool it would be to be a rolling stone again, a wanderer, just roaming around from place to place and settling for a while, then moving off when the time felt right.

Imagine if we just followed our every whim and we never settled down… Like if I just went home now, packed my bags and walked out on all that’s familiar and just headed off, just headed off and just went where ever the wind blew me…

Anyway, she got off the bus when we got down south of the river and I said, “Happy new year to you”. She said it to me too. I said I hope its a good one and I really did mean it. She told me that it has already got off to a great start as she has just received the best news ever. She was beaming. I said I hope some of that energy passes over onto me, she raised her two hands over me in jest and said, “I’ll give you some of that energy now!”…

We both laughed and that was the end of our encounter.

I am kind of excited about 2010 now and waiting for my good news…

The Short-Eared Owl…

I heard a male AND a female.  The female kinda sounded like a scratchy ol’ fox.

Click here to hear what the male sounded like…

And here is what the female sounds like.

I have been reading all about Owls today and fantasising about living in the country again….

Some people like to talk and talkers will always find listeners. More often than not, I prefer to listen than to talk, yera, I wouldn’t be much of a talker really…

Some random people talking... or are they?

When I meet someone for the first time, or the first few times, I like when they talk because it allows me to ‘take them in’.  I’d say they think I am listening to them and sometimes I am, but sometimes I am not! …and they are fooled, because I go through the appropriate motions; I am still nodding and responding and laughing and smiling in all the right places.

Things get a little difficult when I meet a like minded creature and when I do, I start talking – only because I feel as though there would be silence if I didn’t, so I am somewhat forced into the talking role, which feels uncomfortable at first but once I get into it, I’m capable of a bit of waffling. I will talk about anything when I am in those situations.  Anything to fill that gap.

Today I was in a three way conversation. They are the best for this kind of thing because you can easily slip out of the conversation to have a little ’sniff around’.  Dogs have been doing this ever since they were dogs and they do it much more openly; there are no social graces with dogs and that’s why I love them.  When a dog encounters another dog, they have a good ol’ sniff.

Having a good ol' sniff...

They fill up their senses and gather all the information they need.  They then make a judgement based on this and don’t have any qualms about it; they will either hump the other dog or lay into him

I make those judgements too, but in more subtle ways.  I have to do it the human way,  I wait until the person is in full flow and then I look at their eyes and how their face moves as they talk, their hair, their clothes, their shoes, their hands…the list is endless but I make a judgement as snappy as a dog.

Anyway, this particular conversation I was having today was with a tall skinny man and a swarthy twenty something girl. The girl was rabbiting on and I took to studying the tall skinny man, keeping the twenty year old girl for another time. The tall skinny man will probably be in my life for a while, in fact both of them will be if things go according to how I think they’ll go, but you can never tell – I could be knocked down by a bus tomorrow, but anyway, this man, he had an unusual shaped head.  It was attached to his neck where you wouldn’t imagine it to be attached. Who ever made him, must have been distracted just as they were positioning his head onto his neck.  While he was talking to me, I was imagining how I would re-position his head given the chance…  Isn’t that awful?

My head is bursting, my veins are pulsating and my brain is pounding away like a caged bull inside my skull.

I don’t care if nobody reads this but I am going to put it out there anyway for the following reasons:

1. It will make me feel good to bitch about SONY.

2. I hope people will read this and think twice about buying SONY laptops, especially the following models: VGN-AR1xx, VGN-AR2xx, VGN-AR3xx, VGN-FZ1xx, VGN-FZ2xx, VGN-FZ3xx, VGN-FZ4xx, VGC-LT1xx, VGC-LT2xx because they have been manufactured with faulty NVIDIA Graphics chips!!!

In December 2007 I purchased a Sony Vaio laptop from Micro Anvika. I spent £1300 on the floggin’ thing. It was my pride and joy and I used to skip home every night to use it.

13 months later the graphics went bananas and it never worked again…

Click here for blog on symptoms…

That’s £1300 for a laptop that only worked for 13 months.

I rang Micro Anvika (the shop where I purchased this piece of Junk) and was told that because it was out with my 1 year store warranty, they couldn’t do anything for me; “I’m very sorry” – eh, no you’re not, you don’t give a damn so shut up.

I did a little bit of research online (with my new cheap laptop that I had to buy) and found that a lot of people were complaining about the same problem, so much so, that Sony themselves were forced to release a statement about it on 08/03/09.

The Statement can be read here:

http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/news-item.pl?mdl=VGNFZ190N&news_id=349

In a nutshell, they were acknowledging the fault with the NVIDIA Graphics card and were offering to repair faulty laptops.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, I decided to contact Consumer Direct and ask them what rights I have as a consumer in this situation.

http://www.consumerdirect.gov.uk/

They told me that I should write a letter to Micro Anvika and quote The Sale of Goods Act 1979 as amended.

According to this Act, it states that goods should be of satisfactory quality and free from minor defects, have good appearance and finish and are durable, safe and fit for all the purposes for which such goods are commonly supplied.

My laptop had a fault and was definitely not durable.

I came off the phone feeling like I would like to take this further.

I sent the letter to them by registered delivery. That cost me £5, they should receive it today.

This morning I decided to phone Sony to see where I stand with them.

I called 0905 031 0006 which cost 35p a minute. I got talking to a nice chap. I explained the situation and without delay he assigned a case number to me and told me that DHL will pick up my laptop tomorrow for repair.

It all felt too good to be true.

It was.

An hour later, I had a phone call from someone who was very, very difficult to understand .  I had to embarrass myself and her by constantly having to ask her to repeat herself and on some occasions to spell words so I could get the information I needed.  It was near impossible to decipher what she was saying.  It was almost comedy, if I felt like laughing, but I was so far from laughing about this.  I was frothing at the mouth with bubbling anger…she proceeded to tell me she was from SONY and would like to ‘discuss fees with me’.

This pushed me to the edge of the cliff that overlooks raving madness…

Just an hour earlier the other fella acknowledged the fault and told me it was a problem with the NVIDIA chip and knew all about it. Now this girl was saying that I had to pay.

I went into rant mode with her and relayed the conversation I had earlier with the fella. She said “Ooh I don’t know why he would say those things”… She said she would check with the technician to see if there is a known fault of this nature. She said she would call me back but “couldn’t guarantee it would be today”. She said that line so many times I thought I was going to have a breakdown.

In hindsight, I should have asked to talk to her supervisor although I imagine he would probably be programmed to speak complete gibberish…

Moments later, I got a blank email from Sony quoting a different case number to the one that the original guy gave me; so are they going to pick up my laptop tomorrow or not!?!? I don’t know as they don’t have the courtesy to call me back today.

I have two case numbers now; one says I have to pay, the other says I don’t. One says I am having my laptop picked up tomorrow, the other says I am not.

This is it.

Me against SONY.

I suppose this is why we as dissatisfied consumers don’t like to go down this road. It’s a pain in the brain and their ’system’ is designed to make you go baloobas so you’ll give up trying.

You phone one number and talk to a moron, they give you another number, which costs 35p/min and after a half an hour wait, you get talking to someone you can’t understand…. You call the shop, they blame the Manufacturer, you call the Manufacturer, they blame the shop… round and round you go until you give up in the end and then they win.  They take your thousand pounds with their greedy mits and laugh all the way to the bank.

Dirty animals.

Thieves and robbers and bullies.

It’s disgusting…  I hate the way our world is going.

Evil… pure evil.

As we were horsing the pints into us, we started to become aware of an ol’ fella walking around the bar; observing him was better than watching any TV programme.  He was interesting because he was in his own world – a world where it seemed no one else existed… and he was up to something.

He had a kind of a 70’s bouffant hairstyle and wore a battered black tracksuit jacket over an old fashioned pair of trousers.

We watched him go up to the counter and order a pint of Smithwicks but then cancelled the order upon counting his coins – He was obviously a few coins short of the price of a pint; literally and metaphorically.

He proceeded to circle the bar for the next ten minutes, looking at the ground.  He must have been looking for coins, we thought…

We planted two euro coins under the hat stand and sat back in our seats waiting for him to come around again.  It was all very exciting.

He came around the corner a couple of minutes later and shuffled past the coat stand and then stopped.  His beady eyes spotted the euros and we watched him bend down to pick them up.

With his pockets jangling, he took the quickest route to the bar and got himself a pint of Smithwicks.  He seemed satisfied…  for a while.

When he got halfway down his pint, he started acting a little strange; talking to himself at first and then graduating to some knuckle chewing.  He then put his hand around his mouth as if to silence himself, but it was as if his hand belonged to someone else.  I think he had some foes in his head who were giving him a serious talking to.

The more he drank, the more he seemed to wrestle with himself and I came away realising that life is exactly as it should be and I felt somewhat guilty for interfering with his fate…

He was down there for a while cuz he needed to do a bit of rummaging.

He had a classic case of builders bum. 

In all seriousness, isn’t it great that we have introduced the wearing of clothing as an enforsed law?

Imagine how horrific everyday activities would be, if we didn’t wear clothes;
simple things like running down the stairs or being in a crowded train or eating your sandwiches…

Doesn’t bear thinking about…

I like to go for my long distant runs as soon as I hop out of bed (after a decent stretch).  If I hang around any longer, then I run the risk of getting hungry and I’ve never been able to handle being hungry; I always get really shaky and weak. 

I’ve become kinda neurotic with the eating and running thing actually…  It’s just that I am very prone to getting stitches so I have to wait about 4 to 5 hours after eating, otherwise I am crippled.   The less food I have in my belly, the more enjoyable the run…  But, this means that at the beginning of a run, I am borderline hungry.  It’s a thin line.

Running first thing in the morning is perfect cuz I have nothing in my belly and the run always feels more comfortable.  I swear, when I get going I feel like a panther or something!  I am now doing longer runs in the build up to the marathon, so lately, my stomach starts rumbling mid way through and this has been making me feel a bit nervous.  Well, I have recently discovered the solution to this neurosis…  and it comes in the form of these energy gel packs…

They’re just the job.  You eat them while you’re running.  They keep the edge off the hunger and they’re light enough on my stomach that I don’t get a stitch.  The whole thing could be psychological, but I know I’m alright if I have my little gel pack with me. 

The run was good today but not great.  In the first half an hour, I got a few stones in my shoe.  I was too stubborn to stop and take them out.  There were about four small ones in my left shoe all rolling about and then embedding themselves in various locations on my foot before moving off again.  They niggled at me for most of the run.

Anyway, me and the stones did the run in 1 hour and 35 mins. 

That wasn’t too bad.  If I keep up that pace then maybe I can run the marathon in 4 hours.  That goal is beginning to surface now despite promising myself I wouldn’t set a time goal for the marathon.  I told myself I would be happy just to run the 26.2 miles. 

I don’t want to go over the 4 hours though. 

I will be happy running it in 4 hours or under…

Now look at the first twelve months in the life of this building.

What a difference a year makes…

(I won’t bore you with the other 361 photos!)

London’s skyline is ever changing…

They’re the ‘half measure’ trolley’s.  Well those are the ones that our shopping trolley fits under.  It stores it out of the way so you don’ t have to be carrying it around while you are shopping.  Not many people know of this.  People watched me store it under there too and you could see that they were well impressed with my finding such a storage space for it.

I went over to the stack of trolley’s anyway, I had a pound coin in my hand. 

There was a man putting his back and he was kinda loitering there for longer than it takes. 

He turned to me in a gentlemanly manner and said something along the lines of “Here you go…  here is a trolley for you”  I was feeling a bit dozy and said ”Oh right, so how does this work, I give you the pound and you give me the trolley” and he said “you can give it to me for 50 pence if you like as it’s second hand” I laughed then and he smiled at me, I felt a connection with the man, as he too was Irish. 

I looked at him as he walked away across the zebra crossing and out of my life.  

I just kind of studied him for a split second, the way you do when you have an interaction with someone for the first time, you kinda take them in, don’t ya?  You kinda make a judgement about them based on the way the hold themselves in their skin, their clothes, their walk and their shoes…  you can tell a whole lot by someone’s choice of shoes. 

I snapped out of that anyway and got on with my grocery shopping.  I bought this lot with my money:

What you don’t see clearly in the above picture is my little chocolate collection for the week:

I have turned into a terrible chocolate snob altogether.  I spent £9.00 on the chocolate bars in the photograph above.  I never tasted any of them before and wanted to try them out.

I finished my shopping anyway and paid for what i bought.

When i tried to return the trolley to the stack I discovered that the pound coin was jammed in there and it wouldn’t let me take it out.  I swear to God, i was cursing that man.  What a sneak…

When I looked back in hindsight, I remembered that he was attempting to take his coin out of the slot before i came along.  Way down deep inside the bowels of my psyche, there was a part of me that twigged it too, but I never kind of allowed that feeling to surface.  I guess it was an instinct. 

He had a sneaky way about him too and he palmed it off on me, that gammy trolley.  He ripped me off… So out of principal, I decided to queue up at Customer Services to get my pound back.  I was waiting in line for about twenty minutes.  For all of those twenty minutes I was seething.  I was thinking evil thoughts about that man and was also thinking how strange it was that i walked into that situation all knowing.  There was a part of me that knew exactly what was happening… and that intrigued me. 

There was a Greek lady with a moustache in the queue in front of me. 

She turned around and we had a brief two way conversation about city life and she said she has been living next door to the same neighbours for twenty five years and she doesn’t know them and in Greece it isn’t like that.  The conversation then went into a one-way conversation and I just kept saying “yeah… yeah…. yeah….” but couldn’t tell you what she was saying, she was kinda hard to understand anyway. 

I wasn’t in the mood for chit chat.  I just wanted my pound back…