When I first meet someone…
I sometimes find myself having a conversation with someone, but while they’re talking, I drift away from the conversation -but only if its safe to do so. You can always tell when the time is right to start drifting, you know yourself.
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?
That’s it! I am Boycotting SONY…
Right, I am going to have an unmerciful rant now…
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.
Willie’s Chocolate bars are really…
I wrote a blog before about Willie Harcourt-Cooze and I slated him. Well I kinda take that back now… because I went to Selfridges one day a few months ago and I saw his chocolate bar for sale.
I proceeded to purchase it for a whopping…
When I got into the bus, I felt the urge. I took it out of my bag and had a little look at what all the fuss was about.
Nice packaging.
Nice logo.
Nice little note underneath the seal, telling me to ‘tuck in’…
Two slabs of chocolate wrapped in gold…
I put it back in my bag.
It was far too fancy to eat on the bus.
Eating a bar of this caliber required a bit of fuss. I needed a cup of tea and a comfortable seat. I needed to put my feet up. I needed a few cushions. I needed a punkah wallah. I needed… well, i just needed to get off the smelly bus so I could really savour these glorious looking chocolate slabs of delight that lay seductively before me…
When I got home and made myself comfortable, I tucked in to what is now, most definitely my favourite chocolate on the planet.
The texture is like, sort of harder than fudge but the same kind of soft quality to it, your teeth sink into it. It’s not like all those plasticky type dark chocolates on the market that make that cheap ’snap’ noise when you crack a piece off…
The taste is so rich and tangy. It boasts of subtle tropical fruit tones, and it delivers them with every bite. The after taste has a zing too and you just have to wait before taking the next bite because the experience continues on in your mouth after…
It was so good, I had to buy two more today!
I ran 10 miles today…
Woke up at the absolute crack a dawn today to do a 10 mile run.
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…
Chocolate Tasting…
So I was telling you last week that I bought these three Chocolate Bars…
I couldn’t wait to get home and tear the covers off em and ram em down my throat.
I restrained myself though, as these are sophisticated creatures of delight. I knew I had to play it cool with these…
I really had a bit of a pain in my head trying to decide which one to eat first. I pondered over them and fondled each of them one by one. I read their wrappers and took in what they had to say about how they were made, what they were made of and where in the world their innermost beans came from.
I decided by eliminating one from the list. I decided to leave the Mora Mora Bar ’til last, for two reasons;
- It was the most expensive – It cost a whopping £3.21
- It says this on the wrapper:
“Worlds best Chocolate Winner – Silver Award 2007″.
I thought it must be pretty good tasting stuff and best kept for last. I placed it carefully back in the fridge.
So it was a toss up between the other two.
Seeds of Change just seemed to beckon me with it’s pieces of figs, so I went for it.
My God.
My God is all I say.
This is one flippin’ mouthwatering piece of chocolate.
Look at the bits of fig in it:
The whole thing was just perfect. The texture was divine and I didn’t want the consumption of it to end. I wanted more when I had finished, so I moved onto my second conquest.
The Chokolit Dark Orange – Biting Back Bar with the pic of the cute chimp on it. He kinda looks sad… hmmmm… anyway…
This chocolate was just beautiful.
It had the perfect consistency. I’m no professional taster; I can’t go on about the fruit tones and the flowery essence and all that waffle. I’m just a simpleton who knows what I like in a bar of chocolate. I know I like this one. The texture is perfect. It’s got a hint of orange, you’d be a pure eejit to miss that cuz it says it on the wrapper too. It was just another magical experience.
The Mora Mora Bar was consumed on the next evening.
It was a momentous build up…
What an anti-climax.
This was really disappointing.
A glorified Bourneville.
It was hard and plastic-y tasting like Bourneville too.
I wouldn’t recommend it at all.
What a rip off too…
Fingerprints…
I often try to guess which way the world is going to turn out…
Like I was thinking today that in order to combat fraud we will have to start getting rid of all these codes and numbers and passwords; they’re too hackable. And all these credit cards and things are too stealable.
So I was thinking that everything will be replaced with fingertip identity patterns.
Like maybe we will just have to swipe our fingerprints at the ATM and purchase things by swiping our fingertips into a special fingerprint reader machine in the shops.
There will be no need for purses or money…
Maybe our personal computers will be fitted with chips that read our fingerprints too and allow us to log in that way.
Maybe we will be fitted with an internal chip which will slot in just behind our index fingertip. This chip will carry our hard drives and of all the information will be stored in there.
So laptops and things like that will be just a shell… this will inevitably lead to a new kind of crime… it will lead to fingertip robbery.
This is how far I got in my daydream tangent, then the boss walked past and asked me if i was alright!
Shopping trolleys…
I like reading other people’s blogs as much as I like writing them. When I was blog surfing the other day I saw the ultimate shopping trolley:
The blog writer was living in Spain and he was writing in praise of his shopping trolley. This all happened a week before Joe’s birthday so I thought that it would be great to get him one for our grocery shopping trips. They’re really handy like…
Yeah, shopping trolleys are so under-rated.
I couldn’t find the spanish shopping trolley anywhere anyway, which was disappointing as I really wanted that particular one – I mean, I really wanted to buy it for Joe. I even contacted the blog writer but he chose not to reply to my query.
After hours and hours of googling, I decided to settle for this one:
I bought it online and it arrived on Joe’s Birthday…
…And oh my God! It is a HUGE thing, I’d be able to jump into it myself! It comes up to my waist and I’d be half scandalised going grocery shopping with that thing!
It’s proper old lady style.
I brought it to the supermarket today to give it a test drive.
I think I must be London’s youngest old age pensioner…!
It serves me right for getting him something that I wanted for myself…
Create your own bubble…
To survive happily in London you have to create your own bubble and then maintain it so no one can penetrate it.
When you’re in your own bubble, no one can annoy you or stress you out. Ipods, Blackberries and Electronic Devices such as these are great for building up bubble walls. Closing your eyes in public also thickens the walls of your bubble, but only do this whilst sitting on the tube or bus. Bubbles tend to get burst if you try this whilst in the pub or walking down the street because you attract unnecessary attention to yourself or you may have an accident.
Bubbles are designed to float, they should be light and airy and full of dreamy thoughts and fluffy feelings…
Yes…
In November 1966, John Lennon went to the Indica gallery in London, where Yoko Ono was preparing her conceptual art exhibition.
He was impressed by her Hammer & Nail piece:
He was also intrigued by her Ceiling Painting:
This required the observer to climb up the ladder, pick up the dangling magnifying glass, which was needed in order to read the micro print on the framed piece of paper affixed to the ceiling.
There was only one word on the piece and that was “YES”.
I like that.
I find pieces like that very uplifting in a world where there are a lot of “NO”s.
Word on the street has it that, that is how they met.
My world is so very full of “NO”s at the moment, is it because I am on the wrong road? Or must I just battle through the “NO”s to get the the “YES”s?
I wish I knew that in advance and then I could decide which road to take.
But that’s life…
John was my favourite Beatle. George was my next favourite. Paul is my least favourite. He’s a pain.
There you have it…
Bad Luck & Allah…
Once my driving instructor told me that she was teaching this very holy Muslim girl how to drive. When it came to do her test, she got the day off work and went to the test centre only to be told that her test was cancelled. She was completely unphased by it.
The Driving Instructor said “Jeez that’s an awful pain it was cancelled isn’t it?” and she said “Nah, It’s what Allah wanted”…
That story always stuck with me for some reason…
It’s quite a calm way to think… Like anytime anything went wrong or didn’t go ‘my way’, I could just say “Allah wants it that way…”
Well I hope Allah wants what I want… Ay there’s the rub, methinks…
Hmmmm….
