A big week.

It was my lovely baby daughter's first birthday on Monday, a year ago she was handed to me by a nurse 00:33 after a really difficult birth. Eyes closed and crying. I can't remember which one of us that was, could have been all three of us I suppose. A year later she is an inquisitive child full of laughter and with a marvellous generosity of spirit. As she was born in England at 00:33 and we are in Canada where 00:33 GMT is 19:33 EST, and is the product of not only my demonstrably superior sperm, but also my beautiful Canadian wife's DNA and gestative care, she got two birthday parties. One on Sunday with her cousins where her emergence into the cold dry post-natal world was toasted at 7:30pm and another the following day.

She took her first few unaided steps today. So not only has she had a lot of loot from friends and relatives as birthday presents, she has also learned to walk. A big week indeed.

In other less important news, the United States of America have, for the first time in 8 years, elected a president who is not an asshole. Barack Obama, has, throughout his election campaign, acted as a statesman, a gentleman and an inspirational man of great vision. I truly hope he lives up to the great expectations that the whole world has for him. Lewis Hamilton has also won the F1 drivers championship, so perhaps the white liberal middle class pricks at the BBC can stop blaming absolutely everything bad that happens in the world on white on black racism. The BBC do not recognise races other than white and black, where white just includes Caucasians and Sir Trevor MacDonald, while black includes North Africans, sub-Saharan Africans (all tribes), Asians (oriental and from the Indian subcontinent), native Americans, Eskimos, non-Jewish Semites, indigenous Australasians, people from every island in the Pacific, Atlantic, Southern, Arctic and Indian Oceans and visitors from other galaxies.

Airport Security

I was just checking in online for an Air Canada flight to Toronto and I think their taking the security questions a bit far.

It's the third question that concerns me. "Do you have anything in your hand baggage which is sharp or pointed or any item that could be adapted to cause an injury to another person?" I was thinking about taking a magazine on board, but as Jason Bourne used one as a cosh in The Bourne Supremacy and even an amateur could give you a vicious paper cut with one, I now doubt whether any reading material is allowed on-board.

My SLR is also a no-no as it has a long strap and could be employed as a very expensive, single use mace. More or less anything can used to cause an injury by a malevolent person. Perhaps I should turn up chattel free and naked, as clothes could in theory be used to smother the unwitting fellow traveller.

Or maybe the governments and the dicks that works for them are just taking themselves and their own cleverness a little too seriously.

Don't forget to vote America!

Except all you people in the Jesusland states in the middle, you don't go worryin' yer purdy little heads about it!

Food

Laura and the baby are in Canada at the moment, the washing machine needed a few days relaxation. I am just cooking myself a roast pork joint (with lovely crisp crackling), roast potatoes, runner beans and brussels sprouts which I shall wash down with a little Sauv blanc. While unpacking the shopping earlier I came across this:

I bought it for Laura, but she won't eat it. Probably for the best. I don't want her getting a taste for Authentic Jamaican Cock Flavour Soup.

Last assignment in Amsterdam.....

Due to a merger at work, there is a lot of re-organisation and unfortunately, it looks like I have spent my last trip in Amsterdam for the foreseeable future. I love this city and would love to live in it.

Arriving on Wednesday night, the hotel welcomed me, as always with a little present. No-one has ever used this word combination to me before.

"Your present is cheese" seems also to some up what I believe were the unspoken words of the important person in my command chain who made the decision that I should look after some big budget stuff in London, rather than the small budget stuff Amsterdam where I am generally far more content. Laura wants to give him a kick in the Edams.

On Thursday night I had a few drinks with some colleagues in Amstelveen, a few more at De Bekeerde Suster in the old centre of town and a few more at Bourbon Street with some of the hotel staff after they finished work. These are places I will miss, as I will Castell, which you must visit if ever you are in the city. I've eaten here a dozen or so times this year. Their prime rib is superb and the meat falls from the bones on their ribs by giving it a hard stare. The last time I went their my palate had an orgasm.

Whilst on a postprandial stroll through the market in Amstelveen on Friday I noticed this:

I've used a Dremel before but never an ass blow case electric grinder.

After boarding the Fokker 50 at Amsterdam Schiphol to fly home to London City on Friday it all went wrong. London City was closed and all of the passengers from the 16:10 flight to City were herded on to the 18:15 to Heathrow. KLM staff in Amsterdam very kindly lied about our luggage coming on the flight with us and KLM staff in London lied about it being delivered to our home addresses on Saturday.

'The Flying Dutchman' was until recently the name of the KLM frequent flyer programme. As anyone acquainted with the legend knows, the Flying Dutchman is a ship doomed to sail the oceans for eternity. Much it would seem, like my luggage.

Stating the obvious

Back in January I wrote an article on the Eskimo and the BBC website has finally caught up with me and done the same. Apparently, the Eskimo have 37 words for snow. Unsurprising when you think about how much of it they have and the preeminence of this substance in their lives. Less known is that they have no word for beer, for which we, in England are blessed with thousands of words. No wonder then that while they invented ice fishing, we invented the worldwide web that has enabled us to order a curry online and a couple of bottles of Kingfisher to wash it down.

Attention Deficit Disorder

I have just started watching Pink The Series it is the first 'TV' series I have seen that was written from the outset for web broadcast. I get it via the Vuze network in HD but it's also available via YouTube. The production quality is superb, the acting, great, in a film noir comic style. It's about a female yogic gym addicted assassin in her late thirties or early forties who has agreed to do a series of government hits in return for being released from prison, which she wants to do so she can find a nice man to have a baby with as she's worried about her biological clock ticking. Each webisode segues between a scene in the present where our heroine Natalie Cross is either topping someone or being disappointed about the dearth of worthwhile boyfriend material and a flashback to her childhood with daddy teaching her to shoot, track, knife fight. For reasons I don't truly understand she reminds me of my friend Amanda.

The downside to this series and the reason that I probably won't continue to watch it is that each episode is about three minutes long once the initial commercial, credits and title sequence have been subtracted. So a series each episode of which is the same duration as a standard commercial break. A new episode is released once per week. On this basis it would take about three months to air an episode of Dexter and over twenty seven years to see the whole of the Sopranos. Life is just too short. I think I'll have a beer with Amanda instead, once down the pub, she always stays for more than three minutes and is, in general, much less likely to kill anyone.

Sarah Palin, 'doencha' just love her?

Err...... no! What a terribly cynical ploy by the GOP to capture the popular vote of the idiocracy which is the United States. As if being a Republican isn't bad enough on its own, she is a young earth creationist and an anti-abortion zealot who hadn't left North America until her VP candidacy appeared. If McCain gets in and dies of old age, this vacuous bint could be leader of the free world. But it's OK for the Jesus crowd because she knows where Russia is located and can kill and cook a moose. Really! If that's all that's required they should install Crodocile Dundee in the Whitehouse immediately!

You just don't see this in the UK....

I snapped this window display in a shop in Amstelveen last week. You just would not get this in the UK. You will note the two little boys are having a laugh, drinking what looks to be whisky and smoking a big fat cigar. This sort of thing makes me really angry, it is not the smoking drinking thing, which is fine, it's that French and obviously gay moustache the kid has drawn on his upper lip. Next thing you know Charles Aznavour will be touring schools and singing Village people numbers. This sort of thing must be stamped out, we should not be encouraging our children to be French, it's just not natural.

A big thank you must go to my pal Joe. It was Joe who introduced me to the phenomenal Hopes and Fears album by Keane ; The Killers' Hot Fuss ; the TV series Flight of the Conchords, The Riches and most recently the excellent Breaking Bad.

I am missing Evelyn and Laura. Laura will look about the same when I see her next, Evelyn has grown substantially and just had her first spoon or two of non-boob food and I am missing out on all this.

The Scottish Parliament (the one in Westminster)

I read an article from the taxpayers alliance today, it summed up my thoughts on this government. The Labour Party's Scottish Presbyterian Leadership has decided that they haven't had any positive press recently and are going for the eco-idiot demographic with proposals to ban supermarket plastic bags that people use as bin liners. Leadership or incentives to switch to biodegradable bags has not occurred to them. They can make some new laws and any chance to make some new laws and look strong and clever, must never be missed.

They sense the opportunity for more legislation and another way to make England more closely aligned to the moral values of tax funded champagne glitterati of New Labour.

The machinations of thought are already conjuring dreams of a Plastic Bag Tzar, a raft of news plastic bag laws that will put a halt to the evil supermarkets giving away free plastic bags that end up in land fill and force people to buy plastic bin liners that will end up in land fill.

As if there isn't anything more pressing going on in a country where no-one can afford a home, where immigration is running at +500,000 per annum, where the hospitals can't cope and the schools pump out illiterate children with qualifications that mean nothing because every year the exams are made easier to keep the statistics sweet.


They truly are vacuous parasites, spending their time and my money dreaming up new ways to piss me off.

No starter for me thank you.

I found this on the menu at the Corner Thai a hop, skip and a jump from Leidseplein. I think the translator must have opened his Thai-English dictionary at the section marked Synonyms.

Missing Laura and Evelyn. When Evelyn was just born she would curl up into a little ball on my chest and fall asleep. She's growing so quickly that I foolishly worry she'll be too big to do that when I see her next and I'll have missed out on all that early dadhood. We should all be back together in 3 weeks or so.

I have to change the photos of them I keep in my wallet, copies of their passport shots, they both look like they were taken at a police line up.

This is not a Drill

I have just finished reading "This Is Not a Drill" the funny and occasionally moving sequel to Paul Carter's "Don't Tell Mum I Work On The Rigs, She Thinks I'm a Piano Player in a Whorehouse" and thought I'd share a couple of quotes from it with you.......

'.....he's so scary. Apart from being a big man, Miguel has a face that looks like it's been set on fire a couple of times and put out with a cricket bat.'

'.....there are two things every man should hear in his lifetime: "I'm pregnant" and "We have the building surrounded".'

The Netherlands, is funky!

See what you can buy on the streets here....

..... and what you can't.

Well that's fine for the adults but a young enquiring mind needs to be introduced to the big wide world slowly and what better way than through play? With the toy below you can introduce your kids to the fun and excitement of drink driving without having to worry about the hassle of car theft and getting the family motor trashed.

Amsterdam, is not only a wild stag night party town full of Eastern European prostitutes and coffee shops that don't sell coffee, it's also an enigmatic city of great depth and charm. But enough of that.........

I think this one means "No buskers!"

"Man, don't piss on the arch?" My Latin is very rusty!

I actually like this city a lot and so to this end I shall try to write another entry this week covering the following topics:

• 101 ways to carry the kids on a bicycle
• How not to get run over by a tram
• Canals, 18th century architecture and subsidence
  
  

I'm in Amsterdam on an assignment for my company, Laura and our wonderful daughter Evelyn are in Toronto. I'm looking forward to us all being in the same place again. I checked my e-mail before I trudged down to my hotel breakfast and there was an e-mail from Laura that made my chest swell and my heart race.

It's St.Valentines Day and I love my wife.

Well England were 10 points up at half time 16/6. But the team left their interest in the game back in the changing room when they went out onto the field for the second half 19/26. Bummer!

I recently bought a Logik IR100 internet radio for the kitchen. I love it. When you turn it on, it downloads a station list from http://www.reciva.com/ which you can browse by genre or location. Currently there are 9,854 radio stations and 21,242 on demand streams such as those available from the BBC Radio 4 Listen Again service. Once you have registered your radio on the website you can store your podcasts on the website and save your favorite stations and streams on the site and the next time you turn on the radio they are there for you in a convenient easy to access menu option. I managed to get my nearly new one on e-bay for only £20 more than I could have paid for an absolutely new one from PC World or Dixons as the price in the shops seems to jump around a lot. Buying from e-bay did mean that I was able to use up the last of my Paypal balance earned from selling a few bit and bobs. I don’t regard a positive Paypal balance as cash because actually retrieving it from those money grabbing swine is expensive and awkward.

In truth, you don’t need the radio to get all the benefits of the web page and if like me, your PC is hooked up to your Hi-Fi, it’s fantastic. Having the IR100 just means I don’t have to force my listening choices on everyone else in house when I’m in the kitchen or turn my Hi-Fi up to wall demolishing volume levels when I’m cooking. This morning I was listening to Fuego FM, a Latin hits station based in the US and Alaireweb in Colombia. As all the stations are vetted by Reciva then added to an easy to search and browse website all that music becomes accessible. There are stations from 269 countries and I can browse those from Costa Rica as easily as I can those from the UK.

On an only vaguely related note, my internet service seemed to deteriorate and then stop completely only coming back after I rebooted my router. When I first got the IR100 it could only play a station for a couple of minutes before rebuffering the station. A bit of rooting around revealed that my Thomson Speedtouch 780 router is particularly sensitive to poor line quality and by disabling the linksense functionality in the router command line interface I might be able to improve matters. I tried it and now the radio reception is fantastic and uninterrupted and my internet access is solid and does not break down over time. Marvelous!

My prediction for this afternoon’s 6 Nations Rugby game between England and Wales is that England will win by 10 points.

Laura and Evelyn are in Canada, I miss them both terribly.

Yesterday, at work, during a banal conversation about the impending re-organisation, a colleague astounded the assembled members of the team by announcing that he probably held The Land Speed Wank Record as he had tossed himself off on the Tokyo bullet train at 300km/h (about 180mph). It was competition between the itinerant consultants at the financial services company he was working at. He had been hoping for the World Speed Wank Record, having had one in Business Class on a Boeing 747, but failed miserably as someone else at the firm had had a supersonic wank at Mach 2.02 on Concorde (about 2,140 km/h or 1,330 mph). As Concorde is no longer flying this record will probably stand for quite a while, unless a space shuttle crewman can knock one out on re-entry of course, but this would likely remain a classified wank.

Ikkiertok is the Inuktitut or Eskimo language word for 'feels cold' and before anyone gets on their high horse about 'Eskimo' being a bad word and the correct word being Inuit, note that Eskimo is a Cree word and used by many Inuit interchangeably, secondly I am not known for my political correctness. But I digress. It is commonly acknowledged that the tribes moved across the land bridge from Asia to the Americas over what is now the Bering Straight some 20,000 years ago.

The origins of man are believed by most to have been in what we now call Africa, homo sapiens appeared about 250,000 years ago and modern man arrived only about 50,000 years ago when he first started comparing gadgets with his mates and complaining about how oppressively hot it was. Unsurprisingly, this is about the same time the first of our predecessors left Africa to colonise the rest of the world.

During the migration of man people spread across Europe, Asia, Australasia and, about 20,000 years ago, began the push across Siberia to the Americas, some settling in Greenland, Alaska and Northern Canada on their way to more southerly climes. What seems more amazing than the inexorable spread of man, is the fact that at no point during the long march across the Arctic did anyone say "What the fuck are we doing here? Let's go back to Africa!"

....... and the weather, I have said it once and I'll say it again, Canada has got too much of it. Coming back here in January is a good reminder of why I want to live somewhere else. It's -8C today falling to -12C tonight and there is a bit of a wind, which means that if you include the wind chill factor it feels fucking cold. I walked to the subway today with my father in-law Dave, I'm not used to the temperature here after 5 minutes my neat and tidy conveniently recessed ears turned blue, after 10 minutes they cracked and fell off. It was so cold my cheeks stung and my teeth hurt. Dave loaned me some ear muffs which I used to clamp the little icey discs of flesh to the sides of my head until they glued themselves back on. I really can't imagine what it must be like to live in a 'cold' part of this country, in Winnipeg this weekend it will get to -34C.

For people such as myself this is all far too cold, although I imagine that the residents of Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories are reading about the weather here today and are buying their flights and packing their swimming trunks for some beach time on the shores of lake Ontario. The mean average annual temperature in Yellowknife is -5.4C, tonight there it will fall to -39C after a comparatively baking hot -24C earlier today.

The coldest temperature ever recorded and confirmed in Canada was at Snag in the Yukon, a ghost town now (for obvious reasons), but back in 1947 a thriving metropolis of about 10 natives and fur traders and a dozen or so military staff trying to hold open the little airport on the Northwest Staging route when on February 3rd the temperature dropped to -63C (-81.4F). For the record, the coldest temperature reliably recorded on earth was -89.2C (-128.6F) on July 21st 1983 in the Antarctic by the Russian Vostok scientific research station.

Fortunately, global warming seems likely to make Canada an archipelagic tropical paradise, the tundra will melt, Mounties will politely police the happy populace from airboats and better still, rising sea levels will submerge large parts of Quebec.

RANT MODE ON>
We are in Canada for the week, well I am in Canada for the week, Laura and Evelyn will be here for perhaps two months. With everything that has gone on we weren't paying attention while Laura's fiance visa ran out and even though we are married, the retards that work in and manage the Home Office said she had to go back to Canada and re-apply for a spousal visa that they actually have no choice but to grant as it would contravene European law to refuse it. Sorry, but it's this sort of thing that really gets me down about the United States of Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and that other place that no-one in the Scottish run UK government seems to give a shit about. Until the general public noticed what they were doing, the Labour party had a more or less open door policy to immigration from poor countries so they can grow their voter base in England. They covered what they were doing with crap about immigration being great for the economy stating how much tax the immigrant population had contributed without mentioning the cost of social security payments, healthcare costs, council/government/court translation fees, prison costs, available accomodation and housing stock depletion (with the consequent increase in house prices and non-availability of social housing) and the cultural destruction caused by large scale settlement of people that would prefer on the whole to change England rather than fit in with the indigenous population.


Don't get me wrong, this isn't a race thing, I feel the same way about a large number of the British ex-pats in Spain, but at least most of them are paying their own way.


If you can't positively contribute, (which means you give more than you cost) to the country you move to then stay home. Of course if you can, then go live wherever you want or move in next door, it's fine by me!


I have always worked, haven't claimed any benefits in 22 years, pay over
£40,000 per year in direct taxation (for which I get more or less nothing in return) and to keep my English speaking, fullied supported by me, wife in the country it has cost me:

Douglas Adams observed in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy that, "Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job." The same could I think be said for most all politicians and the bureaucratic lickspittles of the Civil Service that serve no-one other than themselves. I have come to realise over the years that the working for the government is: the lazy man's alternative to a real job; like sitting on a cart laughing while someone else pushes you uphill; the governments mendacious way of reducing unemployment statistics or a combination of all three. It is not important which party gets in, once they have been in power for a while their tongues are so deep in the sphincters of the people that buy their favours they can no longer see or hear the people that they are supposed to serve. When will they realise that they should answer to the tax payers that work so that the politicians can sit on their arses thinking up more ways to asset strip the middle classes.

RANT MODE OFF>

On a different note I read a hilarious book on the flight over: the autobiographical Don't tell mum I work on the rigs she thinks I'm a piano player in a whorehouse by Paul Carter, buy it, read it and lend it to your friends, I'll be buying the sequel for my flight back.

After my reference to George W McMonkeyboy in my previous post I was quite surprised to stumble upon the intriguing BushorChimp website, circumstantial yet compelling evidence for the theory that although humans and chimpanzees share 98% of their DNA, with Republicans it is closer to 99%. Furthermore, a little googling revealed that he has been nicknamed Smirky McChimp on both sides of the US political divide.

Americans, don't you love'm!

Apologies to my good US buddies Tim, Karyn, Karen and others whom I really do love for the embedded sarcasm in the title. Further apologies to all my friends from non-US North, South and Central American countries that get upset when the word American is used interchangeably with the phrase United States citizen



Electroshock stun gun manufacturers Taser have just released a new product to pimp up their personal protection line, the new leopard print TASER® C2, the very latest in high fashion ghetto weaponry.






And that's not all, so as you don't get bored on the bus waiting for someone to attempt mugging you, you can buy a specially designed case for it, the TASER® MPH Holster, with a built in MP3 player. I shit you not.



It's only a 1GB MP3 player though, so you had better not be too fussy over who you shoot with it or you might run out of rap before you zap.








My good friend John went back to Reggio Emilia for Xmas where he keeps his wife and kids. It is this hallowed region of Northern Italy that we have to thank for Parmigiano-Reggiano and prosciutto di Parma. When John wants some parmesan cheese he goes to the dairy that make it and tells them how much to cut from a wheel. When I want some I go to my bank manager. John pays about €12.5 (£9.36) per Kg, here in the UK it costs between €35 and €60 (£25-£45) per Kg. He brought back a 1.2Kg chunk for me. I was so grateful when he pulled my cheese out in the pub (fnar fnar) that I forgot myself and bought him a pint.









Now we live in a very nice part of town, next to a less nice part of town. I'm a big guy so I don't get bothered much, but it makes a man a little nervous walking around with that much cheese. Maybe I should get one of those Taser C2s, you can stop a big mouse with one of those babies!






And another thing, I'd like Hilary Clinton to be the next President of the United States, she is an intelligent, compassionate and thoughtful woman and would I think, do the best job repairing the financial, social and reputational damage inflicted on the country and the rest of the world by George W Mc Monkeyboy. I would also like to hear lurid details of new oval office sex scandals and as a Clinton, I reckon she is the best candidate for this as well.



Crocs Update: Don't bother with the mammoths! As they don't have a strap at the back your heels come out at every step and you feel like a hairy transvestite harlot wearing them. Not for me matey oh no!

Well 2007, a year that could in many ways be likened to ducking for toffee apples in a barrel of vinegar, is finally over. Settling down again in the UK has been financially ruinous, my job has had more downs than ups and Laura hasn't been well a lot of the time. On the plus side: we had a healthy baby despite all attempts by the NHS to ruin it by prescribing Laura 1/5 of the medication needed for her hypothyroid condition and repeatedly losing her test results; we got married; things are much better at work, although that may all change in the next month or so as changes emanating from the take-over of my employer become apparent; my bonus in February should clear my UK debts.

2008 will be interesting, if all goes to plan:

• We'll spend a month in Amsterdam while I attend to some issues in the office there.
• Evelyn will get chatty and take her first faltering steps.
• The current government will give up, call an election and lose mightily.
• England will get independence from Scotland.

I truly despair of this country, additionally, I saw this sign on a shelf at Boots the chemist last week:

Sorry, but I don't think that anyone unable to work out what half of £1 is should be allowed out alone and certainly not allowed out to spend money, I have kitchen utensils that could work this out.

I have decided that I like Crocs. A lot. I bought a pair of black Jekyll Crocs in a Spanish supermarket last year figuring that I needed some as it was so hot and they were only about €7 which seems about the price that they should be. I now wear them in the house as slippers, out the house, to go to the pub and much to the consternation of Laura with socks if it is cold. I ordered a pair of genuine Crocs Caymans today and am waiting for a pair of Mammoth Crocs to arrive in the post so that I can do without the socks and dissing from my better half. My bank balance is a depressing shade of deep scarlet, but my Paypal balance is OK due to my offing some unwanted stuff shortly before Xmas, from which my feet will soon be reaping benefits. Laura hasn't missed out, I bought her some black and white Sassaris and some ruby Alices. There is an old army saying apparently, that goes "spend as much as you can on your boots and your bed, because when you're not in one, you're in the other". Buy some, your feet will love you and they don't actually cost that much, especially if you get a snide pair.