Thu 28 Aug 2008
Down the park in Birmingham just before I left the UK my good friend Martin shows off his juggling skills while I try to capture a picture while shooting into the sun.
Good times 
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Archived Posts from this Category
Fri 1 Aug 2008
Here are some photos I’d like to thank him for an acceptable speech :p
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| There are a lot…. |
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Fri 1 Aug 2008
Back in May I took a trip down to the park with my nephews, Charlie and Jacob. I wanted to test out my new lens some more and I showed them how to race dandelion heads down the dirty stream.
Here are a few pics I like.
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Fri 1 Aug 2008
Barging around the Staffordshire Moorlands
Barging around the Staffordshire Moorlands
Posted by trousers under Home
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My parent canal barge is nearly finished and when I was home I finally got to take a trip on the beast.
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Wed 2 Jul 2008
I met this girl in Hong Kong a few years ago and lost her email address. She was working as a teacher in Shanghai and invited me to come live with her. Her name was Divine Maxine, or Maxine Divine.
Pity.
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Tue 29 Apr 2008
Well is it good to back? Kind of. Its nice to see my family again of course, I’ve been catching up with friends too. Last night I went out with old friends Sally, Tim and Phil and then this afternoon I went to see Chris and Kate in Wincle who now have a 6 month old son, Thomas. What a cutie!
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Sat 9 Feb 2008
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Random Posts
Fri 14 Sep 2007
What a hectic couple of days, lots to do, things to sort out, post, put up lofts, computers to fix, relatives to see… felt like it would never end. And then I go to sleep at 4am, get up at 9am, run around madly for the last few hours, make it to the Airport 3 hours before my flight, walk through customs in 5 minutes and then sit and wait for my flight. Ane wait. And wait…. still no gate assigned but it says there will be one in 25 minutes. They have been saying that for the last 2 hours.
I checked my insurance I bought this morning and it doesn’t have delay cover. Damn! Im sure there is someting about a flight being delayed by a certain time in the EU travelling outside the EU means you can et something. Maybe I should go and ask because its going to be at least 3 hours delayed. A cancellation and days delay would be good, I can get a last crack at the post office and burn some more DVDs.
My main concern now is somewhere to stay, as couchsurfing turned up nothing, I didn’t bother with Hospitality Club and all the hostels are either very expensive or full. Well, very expensive being £30 for a room, which considering I spent £50 in Dublin isn’t too bad. I need a different mindset now though, I have to cut costs as much as possible to stay on the road for as long as possible. How long I can manage this in the first world will be interesting to see, but camping, sleeping in Walmart car parks and hopefully getting some hosts will help. If Im haerroraging money I will be out of the country quick smart and GW can find some other sucker to prop up his ecomomy.
I cant believe the Euro and US cash machines in the airport have the gall to say they are commision free. The rate is shocking, 1.34 and 1.86 respectively. I will be getting $2 for my pound in the States Im sure, which is a nice 8% better rate. Its a good job too as I have things to buy. I need a laptop which will last me and let me blog, surf, organise my site (as well as a couple more) and post process all the photos Im duty bound to take. That itself is a rather scary idea, nice camera and a itchy finger means I could well be having to deal with hundreds of photos everyday. I will have to get myself organised and work out a good workflow for them otherwise I will be stuck with an impossible task.
That is a good idea for an outsourcing business that I may have to investigate, send your photos off to India and let them label them, crop, rotate, correct the colour, delete the dross and generally tart them up before mailing them back or putting them on your website. Just a place to upload the stuff I take onto my site will be another challenge I will have to overcome. Im sure the US is chock full of free wifi spots but what happens when I get further south? This is why I shouldn’t be so lazy about maintaining my contacts in Sweden where super fast internet connections for *uploading* files are mega cheap.
I will also be pricing up a couple more lens’ which are a bargain in the Stateas compared to the UK. The advantage is though that when my money runs out I will/should be so good I can come back to the UK and earn a mint as a wedding photographer. Nothing like a couple of years taking photographs of anything that moves to get you proficient with a camera. I even have my old SLR which cost me an absolute fortune in Autralia and is now essentially worthless as a backup body. I would rather that gets snatched in the ghetto than my beautiful digital body. I have to pick up a compact camera too, probably one of those groovy Pentax waterproof ones. With my phone and video camera I will be overdoing it a bit! :p
And then there is the issue of a car….
The flight was fairly uneventful, I spent half of it trying, unsuccessfully to get my GPS to reconnect but I think we were going too fast. It seemed to work fine until at least Ireland and then it lost the connection and never got it back. I hardly think its a huge problem, Im not intending to take any flights for a very long time.
So glad I hit the toilets before I got on the plane, after a 3 1/2 hour delay we enventually got under way about 5.30 and the reason was that they had been having problems with the toilets. I sat by the window, occasionally chatting to the middle aged scouse couple who say next to me (she constantly gave me gum, Im sure I brushed that morning… :p), watched Oceans 13, 90% of Shrek The third, the last bit of that ice skating comedy and wild hogs on a terrible TV in the ceiling. Not sure if I slept, it certainly didn;t feel like it. Im not sure if I should write to zoom and complain, I dont really think it was too bad, but by western standards it wasn;t good. If you’ve ever spent any time on Chinese trains your standard tend to slip a bit.
When we eventually got into Toronto 4 1/2 hours late (head wind for an extra hour) I sailed through customs and after a longer than average wait for my bag was in Canada. It was a bit damp but as I sat waiting for it I was imagining it was covered with bits of broken toilet and god knows what else.
Now I faced the dilema that I had force myself into, I had no guide book, no hostel booking, no map and had never been here before. The hotels looked pretty expensive and if I booked in would I even be able to get something cheap the next day? After 20 minutes wandering and looking for a working ATM I asked how much the Hertz rentals were. Well, no compacts but I could get a mustang for $47 a day… hmmm. Would be nice but not great for sleeping in, although would it mean I could go to a bar and pull with a cool car….? Theoretically…
I opted for a mini van, figuring I could just find somewhere quiet and stretch out. Only after I had paid did the guy tell me 90% of the company was on strike and there was a picket line for the cars. Great! but I thought it was simultaniously kinda cool, I would have to break through the rioting workers, getting hit by placards and getting spit on. Not quite as cool, I collected my keys and sat in a queue of cars waiting for the barrier to be lifted. After 20 minutes (which let me get changed in the back, get my GPS working on my phone and find a cool radio station (”the edge” is really good)) I was at the front of the line chatting to the Indian Security guard until my 5 minutes were up.
So now where? Hotel? Camping spot? Jail? I hit the gas and repeated my mantra about driving on the right choosing a random direction by following the majority of the cars. It kinda reminded me of a nighttime xbox driving game in my sleepy state, without the cops or crashes. I drove for 1/2 or so, bought some random groceries and drove a bit more to find a big car park and got my head down. You can see all this on the GPS map! Cool eh??? /zzzzzzzzz :p
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Fri 14 Sep 2007
enough…. hours…
in the ….
day….
gahhh!
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Wed 12 Sep 2007
and Im not packed, will be frantic tomorrow no doubt. My drivers licence arrived this morning so thats another piece of the puzzle. There are quite a few other things to do but nothing really major. Nothing I can’t sort out by staying awake all night on Thursday :p
Im sorting Sally out with my old computer so at least I have one regular reader, if only I can find someway to always make her homepage my blog Will go to see my 96 year old nanna for possibly the last time tomorrow, although Im secretly banking on coming back for her 100th birthday. Just as long as I get a return flight I don’t mind.
I really had better sort out a definitive list of stuff to sort out tomorrow, the packing can wait and all I really need is my camera, passport and cards. Everything else is immaterial. I just have to be careful I dont start thinking I can just start blowing my money as soon as I arrive. I need a laptop and also want a couple of lens but I will try to hold out until the el’ cheapo USA. This is all assuming they let me in, but then I can always hop back to Canada and look at my flight options. I also have to assume I will get into Canada with a one way flight, I better print some bank statements eh? One more for the never ending list!
