Ticker treat...

What with the foreign cuisine and my winning yet another mixed grill pack in the meat draw last Friday (and eating it all over the weekend in my lethargic man-flu-induced-can't-be-bothered-to-cook-a-proper-meal fashion), it's fair to say my current chances of losing any weight are nil, at very best.

To add to the temptation, I bought a load of funsize bars to reward any suitably attired tikes doing the rounds on my first halloween living here. At a little past 8:00pm, I'm pleased to report that there have been no callers yet and I may have to "dispose" of them myself. Shame. Still, better to play it safe, after all, they may go off if I leave them till Christmas when little niece and littler nephew come to stay.

I ought to get back on the running machine, but I'm still not fully recovered from my recent malaise and anyway, think of all the extra exercise I'll be getting lugging this additional weight around...

Free time...

It's that absurd time of year again when we all have to run around the house, trying to track down every last item with a time display and adjusting it by an hour. I'll guarantee that in a few weeks time I'll still find something that I've missed.

On the upside, I suppose we are gaining an extra hour this time of year, so I guess the challenge is deciding how to make use of those extra free minutes. Sleep is usually my preferred option, but this year I've chose to embellish that with random fits of coughing, sneezing and wondering whether I can shovel enough concoctions down my neck to be fit for work Monday morning...

Dzien Dobry...

Time to update the "30 Things" list again as I add Poland to the list of countries I've visited.

Business again I'm afraid, although I'm pleased to say that after a day of hanging around in airports at Humberside and Amsterdam, we arrived in Warsaw in plenty of time to venture out of the hotel for the evening.

I'm somewhat ashamed to admit that my expectations of Poland were pretty bleak, but I was pleasantly surprised at Warsaw. It is an eclectic mix of glass skyscrapers towering above the city and a beatiful "Old Town" area full of beautiful Bavarian style architecture. I'd jumped to my own conclusions as to how this contrast had come into being, but I'm led to believe that even the traditional looking buildings have been there for little more than 50 years.

The restaurant of choice for the evening was U Dekerta where the traditional looking surroundings were curiously filled by English people. I enjoyed fried mountain sheep's cheese with cranberries; veal with red caviar followed by a less traditional sounding chocolate cheesecake and ice cream for dessert. The wine was a bit excitable in price at around 20 quid for a bottle of red, but the overall cost of the meal was very reasonable adding another 30 pound or so to the bill for two of us.

A two hour taxi drive next day took us through surroundings more in line with my original expectations to the site for a day and the real purpose of our visit. After a very busy, albeit informative day, we got a lift to a local, more modest hotel and passed Europe's largest open cast mine en route. For the second evening's meal we were recommended to a local bar where, their English was approximately as fluent as my Polish (we ordered in a mixture of English, French and German!) but we enjoyed so superb home-made pizza (very traditional eh?) washed down with a few glasses of beer.

Most of yesterday was spent travelling home again, but I have to say that I much prefer being able to be back home within an hour of the plane landing in the UK.

Today? Back to my regular office for the first time in almost two weeks, but I suspect it won't be long before I'm back out on my travels again...

Show and tell...

Cherrypie's request for pictures gave me an idea, so here's the how the end of last week went

















And here's a clue as to what this week has in store...

More, More, More...

More problem solving and work done today

More roast ox for dinner this evening

More sleep required before it all starts again early tomorrow...

Off to a flying start...

After a genuinely healthy breakfast this morning, we all jumped in the minibus (classy eh?) and enjoyed a much more scenic route into work than the banks of the M180.

My project brief is separate from the rest of the team, so after arriving at the Portugal factory this morning around 8:45, we parted ways although it was a good 20 minutes before my hosts sent someone to greet me. That said, we made good progress during the morning, covering considerably much more ground than I’d expected.

After a dubious lunch consisting of some kind of soup and something else that resembled burger and mash (classy eh?) I re-joined my English colleagues for an afternoon of data-cleaning merriment.

Rounded off a busy day with pancetta and melon, fillet of roast ox with the strongest (and most delicious) garlic mayonnaise I’ve ever tasted and a crème brulee for pud – all washed down of course with a couple of glasses of local red and the obligatory 20 year old tawny.

Yes, I still have a whole heap of work and travel ahead of me, but right now, the work-life balance feels about right. Suspect it could feel different in the morning though…

If I hear the word "jolly"...

Left the office around 12:30 and arrived at the hotel a mere 10 hours 15 minutes later. The drive to the airport went without incident and the flight itself was only half an hour or so late taking off, needing a rather turbulent half an hour longer than usual to deliver us at Porto airport in torrential rain.

Personally, I really enjoy flying and still find it difficult to accept how we climb into metal boxes, hurtle off at hundreds of mile an hour and just leave the floor, while everyone sits there going about their usual business taking it all for granted. Except for one of our number who unfortunately is so traumatised by the very thought that he has to fill himself with happy pills before even considering it. Well, that's his excuse anyway.

Its soo easy to complain about hanging around waiting in airport queues waiting to be checked, searched, scanned, checked again, scanned again but personally, I would rather get on board the flight knowing such security measures are in place. If I were to complain it would be about the hundreds of morons who have apparently missed all of the notices in the news, ignored all of the signs at the entrance door, check in gate and everywhere else and decided they were special enough to ignore the rules and try to carry on an extra bag, or that pair of scissors, or that bottle of drink.

When we finally did arrive at the hotel, it seemed that they hadn’t got my reservation – despite my showing them an e-mail with the details on it. Fortunately, they had rooms available anyway.

So, we’re here and I’ve managed a couple of conciliatory Super Bock Stouts before bedtime. Let’s see what the rest of the week has in store…

Reportugal...

I've decided to invest in hotel internet access this trip (a lavish 25 euros for 24 intermittent hours) so although I'll probably have to take a few liberties with dates (i.e. cheat), I can keep the blog updated with any interesting happenings. I anticipate most of them will involve beer or food and hopefully very little about work - the reason I'm actually out here...

I know what I like...

When you have a few minutes to spare, check out the website www.likebetter.com - a kind of quiz where they show you two pictures and you simply pick your favourite. After a few answers it tells you something about yourself and I have to say I was impressed by it's accuracy when I tried it.

If you're after something vaguely similar but entirely more trivial, there's always the Who'd You Rather game on the Liquid Generation site.

Reminds me of the story about the little boy stood in the central aisle at Tesco, crying his little heart out.
A concerned shop assistant stopped, "Oh dear, what the matter?"
"I've lost my Mummy", wailed the boy
"Well, what's she like?", asked the assistant, thinking she could put out an announcement across ths store
The boy replied, "Big willies and cheap vodka"...

Superstition ain't the way...

You've got to hand it to Stevie, he certainly knows how to throw a tuneful ditty together; I just wish I could go along with the above lyric.

I've posted before about my absurd obsession with magpies (twice in fact) and how I feel duty bound to salute whenever I see them.

I'm fully aware that we have a Friday 13th day after tomorrow, but it also happens to be Mum & Dad's 44th wedding anniversary (note: 4 years before I was born, contrary to popular belief) so it's certainly brought them both their fair share of luck.

Hell, I even manage to fret about wearing the right socks (although I got it wrong yesterday, forgetting that I had taken Monday off).

Aware of my need to spend around 4000 miles in the air over the next week or so, I'm sure a bit of extra luck wouldn't go amiss, so you can imagine my reaction when I spilt a container full of salt all over the kitchen floor this evening. I immediately knelt down and picked up a pinch with my right hand and threw it over my left shoulder (cop that you little devil) then looked on in dismay when I realised I would just have to run the hoover (or more accurately, Sanyo) even further round the kitchen floor.

Question is, what do I do when I come to empty the vaccum cleaner into the bin? Does that count as spilling it again? Then,what about when I put the bin liner into the wheelie bin?

Either way, it's lucky for Tesco I suppose as I'll have to buy some more salt...

Fun in the forest...

After a less than pleasant end to my working week last week, it was good to hop in the car in the early hours of Friday morning to collect Mum and clear off down to the south coast for the weekend to visit Little Sis & family.

The primary reason was to surprise my little niece by meeting her from school on her birthday which I'm pleased to report went pretty much to plan. As a bonus, we also got to collect her little brother from nursery which was a (hopefully nice) surprise for him too.

Despite all the parties and other pre-planned activities I think the event that amused us all most was during an impromptu trip to the New Forest. They are very fortunate to live a short drive away from such a beautiful area and it proved the perfect venue for a last minute "KFC picnic" yesterday afternoon. I'll skip the various attempts required to get the moronic youth behind the counter to understand our basic order but eventually, we piled the food and drink in the back of the camper van and headed off for Lyndhurst.

Zinger Tower Burgers, Fries and Popcorn Chicken may not be traditional picnic fare, but they served their purpose of leaving us all feeling too full to walk very far although we had been looking forward to taking a wander in search of some New Forest ponies (which are seldom too far away). As luck would have it, three of them wandered right up to where we had parked the van and one of them stopped to see what we were up to.

In fact, he decided to inspect the van at such close quarters that we began to wonder whether he would actually get in! Incidentally, I say "he" as at one point he proved the matter beyond doubt.


(Apologies for picture quality - I'm still trying to work out all of the features on the new mobile)

After a brief snack on a discarded french fry, a plastic beaker, a loose curtain and my brother in-law's arm, he eventually moved far enough back for us to push our way past and close the door.

Well, there's something you don't get to see every day...

Clumsy bugger...

Something I neglected to mention in my previous post, was to confess that somewhere between clambering out of the taxi and arriving at my front door on Saturday night, I managed to drop my mobile phone. Into a puddle. Which bizarrely enough did not contain distilled water. Suffice to say it wasn't very well on Sunday morning and despite lots of dismantling and leaving out to dry, it had to go to the big Carphone Warehouse in the sky.

Regular readers may recall that it was only a few months when I bought this last phone and although I'm notoriously (and inaccurately) known for changing them every time something new comes along, I suspect that 5 months is a new personal record. It is also considerably within the minimum 18 months I'd signed up for. Rather amusingly, I'd also decided at the time that insurance was a bit of an unnecessary luxury.

For those who don't know, there is a considerable subsidy paid by the mobile networks to provide handsets at throw-away prices and it seemed I was looking at the wrong end of 300 quid for a sim-free like-for-like replacement. Alternatively, I could start up a fresh contract or buy a pay-as-you-go deal, but I would still be looking at 13 monthly payments above and beyond whatever the new unit would cost. Things weren't looking too bright.

Sometimes it's good to have mates in the know and today I was reliably informed that as long as my old sim card was in decent nick, it should work in "any old" mobile configured to the same network. Big grin on face, I fled work this evening (you have to take these chances sometimes when no-one's looking) and made a beeline for Argos, who for a much more reasonable sum (less than a third of the above), provided me with mobile phone number seven:



Although it is a lesser model, it boasts most of the same features as it's predecessor. Better still, I get to keep my previous number, free minutes/texts and the only inconvenience is having to re-enter the contact details. I also opted for insurance this time; considering it the preferable option to wearing it on a heavy chain around my neck in a heat sealed plastic bag...

It's alright for some...

I can't imagine what is must feel like to wake up on a Monday morning knowing that you don't have to go to work any more, but that is the well-earned luxury that awaits Mum tomorrow.

Having left work for the last time on Saturday afternoon, I'm pleased to report that her efforts over the last 11 years in that particular job were rightfully rewarded and her house is probably displaying more flowers than the local Interflora.

We both enjoyed one of Dave's delicious specials from the menu after which we joined a great turnout of the regulars for a few drinks and rather a few too many flavoured sambuccas.

So no prizes for guessing todays main activity for me, but I'll say that it involved not moving very far and expelling a lot of "z"s...