The car is in for its WOF, so I ended up needing to take three different buses. It was relatively painless, but a lot slower to get to work than I'm used to, and you can't read if you're having to hop on and off buses all the time. I hope that the car is ready in time for my trip up to Foxton this afternoon.
***
I have done my part in the DVD-watching stakes - I watched all the rest of Haibane Renmei last night. I quite liked it; not everything was nicely tied up, but nothing felt contradictory, and there was enough information there that you could construct your own satisfying explanations. I could tell you all about the series, or I could point you at the official website instead. (Or a site that isn't just in flash, even.)
Of course, that means I'm woefully behind on the "constructing an interesting game for Saturday" stakes, but I've got all of tonight and Friday to worry about that. :-)
***
Teriaki chicken, cream cheese and cranberries sushi is a little odd. Not bad, but odd. :-)
People liked the beer batter I made - I cooked a bunch of things coated in it, in a somewhat tempura style. The beef schnitzel and terakihi was quite nice, but the surprise tasty treat was the thinly-sliced carrots. It's a bit too work-intensive to do in the pan very often (and the splatter is a bit messy), but it was a nice experiment to make.
Speaking of experiments, next up is a chicken casserole using the leftover ale in the pot, I think - thanks to my sister Ellen for making the suggestion! :)
***
I got to talk to my sister Ellen on my birthday - she sounded a bit tired, and it wasn't a great connection, but it was very cool to talk to her. It reminded me of wandering around Oxford with her whooping like a gibbon; I actually remember her saying (about a particularly magnificent example) that, "It was a surfer gibbon giving big ups to a lady surfer gibbon."
I think I'll miss Erik a lot when he goes overseas.
I remember Ellen's revelation about the "heaps" in British English - namely, that she used the word "heaps" where the people around her used "loads", and they only noticed because their assumptions were subverted. Don't give in, Ellen - give 'em heaps!
(However, you should also send me the package of stuff that I left with you, darn it - so hurry up and read The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency! Other people in my flat want to read it!)
I hope that she manages to get home at some point once she finishes her Masters; ideally, by getting a lecturing job in Wellington (though the Auckland gig would be okay too).
***
Norman very thoughtfully gave me a piece of petrified wood for my birthday, to remind me that I'm not all that old.
***
This morning, I hauled a bunch of stuff out from under my bed - it means that my room is more messy, but I've actually found my shoe polish. I remember Giffy commenting about how much my brother and I clean our shoes; I'm not sure if that's so, but it has been bothering me that my black shoes have been scuffed since my trip away. Now, they're a nice shiny black - no more worries about the leather being damaged by water. Maybe I'll remember to rub in beeswax tonight.
Cleaning your shoes is satisfying - the goal is fairly clear, the amount of effort is not substantial, and the change is visible, immediate, and lasts for a while. Plus, clean shoes!
Next step - clean room. :)
So, today is my actual birthday. I am now 31, or will be by the end of today. I seem to remember a story which involves me being delivered by a man in a bow tie and gumboots, but my recollections of the event are hazy at best.
***
A fair number of people turned up for the party, and everyone seemed to have someone to chat to, so that was all good. In fact, there was some actual mingling between different groups, which was something of a shock - I mean, I half-expected the three factions I invited to be pretty immiscible. I'd point to alcohol as an effective social emulsifier, but I don't think that accurately reflects what I saw. Maybe Wellington is small enough that it's inevitiable that people will find some connection. Or maybe I just happen to know cool, sociable people. ;)
(Yes, I think I just compared parties to mayonnaise. Maybe I still need more sleep. :)
I was a bit worried about my purchases, since I made the terrible mistake of going shopping while hungry. Luckily, Margie was there to restrain my worst excesses, and we grabbed a bite to eat in Moore Wilsons Fresh. Even so, we still have an entire huge box of corn chips, a box of toffee milks that wasn't even opened at the party (though my flatmates have done their best to make inroads into it since), and six or seven litres of fruit juice. My fridge, which was pressed into service as a drinks repository and frozen pie holder, is still about half-full. I guess that just means we won't have to shop for those things for a while.
Speaking of things I won't need for a while - I got a half-keg of beer for the party. (Monteith's Golden Ale, to be precise.) While we didn't manage to get through all 30 litres, people did make a valiant effort - particularly since it seemed to be more than half head when it emerged from the tap. Next time, should there be one, I will provide an icy trough (which apparently helps) and a large jug (which would definitely have helped had I thought clearly and grabbed one earlier in the evening). We still have half a soup pot of beer on the stovetop; I intended to make a beef stew with it, but haven't managed to yet.
(If you're thinking, "Hey, Svend doesn't drink beer!", you're right; it just seemed appropriate to have a wee keg if we were going to have part of the party in the garage. :)
And - the cleanup went very smoothly, with the bulk of it being done in the morning before the others were awake. Big shout-outs to Sok for mopping the kitchen floor, BTW. And we're still pretty tidy! :)
***
Went to "The Princess Diaries 2" with Jenni, Giffy, Puggle, Sass and Bean. I liked it, but would agree that it wasn't a "good" movie - I could see why "tweens" would love it. That may be part of why I liked it, in fact: it was such a good exemplar of what it was trying to be.
Opinion among the group was mixed, as you can read about in other's blogs.
***
There are two problems with handing a lot of cash to Giffy, and telling her, "Buy me cool cheap anime that you think I'll like!" Okay, three if you count not having the money any more. :) The first is that you've suddenly got a whole lot more stuff to watch - in my case, just after polishing off the first two seasons of Due South so that I could lend them to Jenni - when you should be doing other things, like preparing for the game you've said you'll run on the weekend. The second is that your flatmates want you to watch said anime now, so they can watch it either with or after you. This is while still wanting you to prepare the weekend game for them. (Except for you, Sok - you only want the anime. :)
You might say, "But can't you just let them watch the anime first?" But that would be a very dangerous precedent to set, so I want to stave off that possibility for as long as possible. Luckily for me, Sims 2 has just come out, so some of the pressure is off.
***
I'll be going to my parent's house for dinner. My mother mocked me for suggesting that Louise get me Josie and the Pussycats on DVD. Well, all right, not "mocked", per se - more "made incredulous spluttering noises". Luckily, I'm completely undeterred - I see no problem in liking both Josie and the Pussycats and Fight Club, or The Princess Diaries, Perdido Street Station and Simpson & Roud's Dictionary of English Folklore.
Besides, I figured it's a DVD that Louise would like too, so she'd understand that I'd like it. ;)
Anyway - being 31 isn't too bad. There are a bunch of things I expected I'd have done by this stage which haven't happened; but on the other hand, I seem to be mostly liked by people who know me, so I'd say I'm not doing too badly. :)
My 31st is looming ominously in my future, the outlines of the preparation I have yet to do looming like an oncoming iceburg.
(Do snowmen live in an iceburgh?)
I've started to make a stab at tidying the kitchen, reorganizing my stuff and putting some of it away. I'll probably be shifting a couple of boxes, either to the garage or (ahem) "offsite storage". It may depend on how much room Ellen has left in the caravan. ;)
I feel I should say here - there is no longer a theme for the party. I need to mail a reminder out today, I guess. Yet another gleam in the iceburg's towering walls.
***
Went for a road trip with Margie and Ming on the weekend. It was nice, and they both have excellent taste in music. Or rather - when faced with the selection I made available to them on my mp3 player, they were able to find music they liked. What surprised me most was the distinct 80s bias they showed; of course, there may be a subtle bias in the underlying set of music that was available.
(Despite the title of today's post, I don't actually have any Vanilla Ice - I just didn't want to be quoting Celine Dion, which is the obvious choice when iceburg metaphors loom. :)
We travelled out to Kapiti, and visited a number of shops - if I'm not careful, I'm going to run out of room in my "liquor cabinet" before too long. Luckily, Sok is very good about helping me keep my wine collection under control. :) I got an enormous bag of fizzy lollies for the party, among other things. We popped into Matt & Debbie's pirate party, then dashed back to Wellington to cook a couple of nice lemon and garlic roast chickens.
There were eight people in all for dinner - the flat, Ming, Naomi, Ruth and Bean. Naomi bought pumkin soup as an entree, and discovered she likes sherry; Ruth bought apple pie, and discovered something interesting about one of her workmates. :)
***
It's a lot easier to be happy about work when it's not a lovely sunny day outside. I'm glad for the pleasant weather, though, since I know plenty of lovely teachers in desperate need of some relaxing time in the sun. :)
So I've done a page of things that I could think of that people could give me. Appropriately enough, given the title, High Society is one of the DVDs I'm suggesting. Note that I'm not actually expecting presents, and certainly not of the DVD level of expense, from people who're coming to the shindig I'm having next Saturday; this is for people who've asked for it, and maybe my family.
There - list complete. Yes, once I have collected all these items, I will never wish to acquire any others. :)
***
This Sunday is International Talk Like A Pirate day. Arr! I'll point to the love song/sea shanty transformation web-comic, which I've referred to on other occasions.
***
I have Bejewelled on my Palm - it was nagware, and once it told me I had played it more than 270 times, I broke down and paid for it. Seeing as it's basically the only computer game I get time to play nowdays, it seems only fair to reward the writers; unfortunately, it's wiped out my high scores. Ah well, a chance to build them up again. ;)
I always feel that I'm underutilizing my Palm, but I really don't have time to write the kind of software I'd like to use on it. :( Maybe I'll take a sabbatical at the end of Kong. Good grief, only a few weeks into work after a month away, and I'm already thinking about my next break. :)
There are times when it's inconvenient to have an unusual first name. For example, when trying to place a phone order to a noisy restaurant to a person who has English as a second language - it results in conversations like the following:
"Your name please sir?"
"Svend."
"Steb?"
"Svend. S-V-E-N-D."
"S-B-E-M-D."
...
When I eventually got my meal, I had apparently transformed into SVEZON, MechaDefender of Humanity!!! (I may have extrapolated the "MechaDefender" part.) This would be more amusing if I didn't have a bit of upset tummy today; I'm not sure that it's the food to blame, but I didn't really have anything else to eat yesterday outside of a couple of Oreos and a Werther's butter toffee. I guess I should dump the leftovers that I have sitting in the fridge, even though it outrages my "don't waste food" sense. On the upside, a nice cup of tea seems to have settled my stomach.
Getting back to names, my workmates have two or three nickname-like things for me. One is "Svenzor", to go with "Benzor", "Miltron", "Kathtron", and other leet-isms. Another is "Sven-d", which is a joke that is a bit geekier - it's referring to things like httpd, imapd, crond and sshd. (These are the names of the daemons that manage that process; for example, crond looks after cron jobs. That's right, I'm the daemon that looks after the "Sven" processes at Weta. :)
I've also been called "Mr Sv" (pronounced "svuh"), which eerily mirrors the name given to me by the Singstar Posse, "Jazzmaster_Sv".
Oosh. Okay, it seems that the cup of tea didn't help as much as I thought. Darn it, now I definitely have to dump the leftovers. :(
***
Finished the first season of Due South yesterday, having started earlier this week. I have had them on DVD for a while, but I hadn't gotten around to watching them until Jenni asked to borrow them. I'd watched a bunch of episodes on video a few years ago, but there were two or three on the DVD that I don't think I've ever seen before. I really like the series - the way that the two detectives that act as Fraser & Vecchio's foils (Gardino & Huey) are still given moments to show that they're good people at heart, for example. And little things, like calling the evil dog catcher "Benedict Arnold", and having Vecchio not react while Fraser does a little double-take. Oh, and "Mrs McGuffin". Heh.
I have (but have not yet watched) the second season; I'll have to buy the third season at some point. :)
***
Yes, I'm aware I haven't done the present list. Maybe tonight.
I was thinking who the patron saint of Database Administrators might be. I mean, I know that St Isadore of Seville has been proposed as the patron saint of the Internet (though I don't think that he's been officially confirmed in that role), but that's a bit broader than what I was thinking. There are a group of three saints that are associated with libraries, librarians and archives - St Lawrence, St Jerome and St Catherine of Alexandria. It's a hard call - St Lawrence is also the patron of cooks, owing to his method of matyrdom, and St Jerome is the one who was meant to have removed the thorn from the lion's foot, but St Catherine of Alexandria has the advantage of being apocryphal. :)
(This is why I don't think I could maintain a regular blog, BTW - I spent a good half-hour looking for information one way or the other about whether St Isadore of Seville was an official patron saint yet. :)
***
My plans to arrive at 8am and leave at 4pm continue to be stymied - which isn't so bad as it might be, since I hardly ever get to use the word 'stymie'. Little things like meetings that people schedule and expect me to attend at 5pm mean that my plans for 40-hour weeks are as ephemeral as ever. I did manage to do only 45 hours or so last week, so I am making some progress.
Arriving at 8am is working fairly well. While there is still some traffic at that time of the morning, it is considerably lighter than half an hour later, and there still tends to be plenty of parking around work. However, I do feel a bit weird, hauling such a large car back and forth with only me in it. Maybe I should look into how much a scooter would cost - parking would certainly become a lot more straightforward. (A quick question to those in my office reveals that they're 3k new, two and a half k fairly newish.)
***
Birthday, birthday, birthday. I'm having something on the Saturday after next at the flat - if you know me, you'll probably know where I live, or be able to find out fairly easily. Jenni thought it would be a good idea if I had a Wiki page of presents for those who felt inclined to gift at me, a la Jenni's page of presents. I may get to that tonight or tomorrow.
Gotta go do some actual work.
As the title implies, I'm back home, safe and sound. The trip back was uneventful, though I was a little stressed when Qantas decided, on the Auckland to Wellington leg of my trip, that my hand luggage was too heavy, and I had to check it in; and then that I had to pay $50 in overweight charges, since that pushed me well over my luggage limit. Luckily, that's exactly the amount of money that I had in my wallet at the time... which is either dead lucky or eerily coincidental, depending on how tired I am. :)
Oh, and that flight had the added bonus of sticking me next to a guy who overflowed into my seat, forcing me to lean into the aisle, and twist whenever someone went past. This wasn't his fault, exactly, though he seemed to be taking up slightly more room than he actually needed; but deciding to let his leg jiggle, jostling mine, that I do hold against him. Not that I did anything; no, instead I thought, "Just one more hour until I'm home," and ignored it.
But perhaps I should start where I last left off.
***
Flying back to London from Copenhagen was fine - I had managed to get down to 64 kroner, was looking around trying to decide what to do with it... and then right in front of me was a pack of mini toblerones, discounted to 64 DKK. It was like fate reaching out and pointing me in the direction of chocolate...
Of course, I'd already bought a fair selection of Danish chocolates, mostly from Anthon Berg. And a bottle of Gammel Dansk - on frosty mornings, my Danish relatives sometimes start the day with a couple of shots of this (one for each leg). And a bottle of Linie Aquavit, which is the version they send around the world and across the equator twice in sherry casks, which must be one of the more involved ways of flavouring a spirit. Oh, and a bottle of dodgy looking Danish sherry, which turns out to have been made in Jerez de la Fontera in Spain, and bottled in Denmark - and is actually pretty good.
Met up with David, my ex-workmate, and his partner Alexandra in London; we had lunch, and they showed me a number of excellent places to spend the last of my money on buying things like the Dreamlands book for Call of Cthulhu and a copy of Munchkin. Oh, and my very own copy of Firefly on DVD.
Went back to Oxford, and gave Ellen the present I'd carefully carried over from Denmark. She was delighted, and decided that she'd pin them up in her room as a sort of frieze. Slept in Oxford, and sorted out my luggage; I tried to take a load of books to the post-office that I had seen down the road, but my plan was frustrated by the fact that this branch office had closed on the 26th of August; so Ellen has been left in charge of the books that I could not pack, and will be sending them on after me shortly.
***
This brings up two things that I wanted to talk about. Firstly, I want to take time to acknowledge how great a help Ellen was in my holiday. Not only did she provide long-term storage of my stuff, she found me a £2 umbrella, and a plastic soap container, and helped me work out the best way to Hay-on-Wye. It was fun to meet her friends and see where she worked, and it was really cool to have someone who knew Oxford show me around. So - yay for Ellen! :)
Secondly, I sent three packages of books home from Hay-on-Wye. The first I organised through the shop I bought it from - this arrived a few days after I sent it, despite having used surface-mail. The other two were boxes bought at the post office, and sent through the standard mail; those two have not arrived yet, though it's been at least a couple of weeks. Given that there has just been a big scandle about the British postal system's inadequacies and occasional lack of service, I really hope that my mail gets through.
***
In another act of sisterly charity, Ellen pointed out that my main bag was way too heavy, so I redistributed the weight, moving all the books out of it. This helped considerably, and probably contributed to the reason I wasn't charged for excess baggage, even though it was about 24 kg. She then saw me off, and I was off to lunch with the lovely Sandra - she previously worked at Weta, and she and her husband Pete have gone back to Rngland for a change of pace. Unfotunately, there were no luggage lockers in the nearest Underground station, so I ended up lugging my luggage around and getting awfully sweaty just before my big flight.. It was really good to see her again, though, and totally worthwhile.
Then, back onto the Piccadily Line for Heathrow! I bought a bottle of Pims on the way out, but nothing much on my way in - I was kinda remembering that NZ customs is pretty restrictive, and indeed, you're only allowed one bottle of spirits or liquers, though they don't charge you if the duty is under $50.
Flying back was fine, though I only got a snatch of sleep here and there, and then I was picked up at the airport by Louise and Mum; and Giffy was there when we got home. I had a quick nap, came back to the parents for dinner, and was then the designated driver for Erik and Giffy at a party out in scenic Stokes Valley. (Congratulations to Sok, for reasons she is well aware of.) Slept until 2pm, got up and went to The Village, and had Father's Day dinner at the parents.
***
I've got work tomorrow, so I've got to get to bed and get to sleep. I'll have to tidy my room pretty thoroughly, since I need my checkbook to pay my ACC levy by the 10th, among other things. And I've got to investigate my credit cards, since they don't seem to be working at the moment. I don't know whether I'll end up keeping this blog up-to-datish; I guess this may be my last entry. If so - thank you for reading this, and goodnight.
This is the end of my last day in Copenhagen, and nearly the end of my trip. I had a nice dinner out with Helen tonight - pasta with pesto and chicken for me, thai beef salad for her. I spent most of the day in museums, which would explain the marble foot-rot that I'm currently experiencing. :)
Just got myself a cup of tea. Much better.
I like buying the books that museums print about themselves - they make me feel less bad about not being able to see everything. :) I bought a couple of the Danish National museum books, as well as possibly the cutest bit of royalty memorabilia ever: a paper doll made of the current danish queen when she was about five or six. I saw a copy last time I was in Denmark, and thought it was very cool, but impossible to transport back to NZ to give to Ellen. But transporting it to England, that should be easy. So Ellen gets another travel present.
***
Not speaking the language of the country I'm in makes me feel really dumb. I mean, quite apart from the fact that I look the wrong way on the road, and don't think about bicycles, not being able to understand spoken numbers means that I've got to reveal I'm an English-speaker while I'm shopping. I find myself trying to get by without speaking at all, not because I don't think that they'll understand me, but because it seems rude to expect them to deal with English in their own country.
However, from speaking to various Europeans that I met in Britain, it seems like English tends to be the lingua fraca when travelling, so if I'm to be a monoglot, it's nice to know I chose the right language to be ignorant from. Then again - the title is a quote from the Mutton Birds' The Queen's English, and... well, yeah.
***
A couple of postcards to write, and then off to Stansted. W00+!!1!