Tuesday, September 19, 2006

I've seen Little Miss Sunshine, the film. It's a good film, a sad story wrapped up into what it looks like a comedy, so in the end you keep laughing, but underneath, there's a drama happening in front of your eyes. Recommended!

Not much happening otherwise. I'm gambling at the moment on the stock market, buying gambling shares and hoping that the US won't introduce legislation this week to prohibit online gambling payments by credit cards. To win you have to take chances. To lose ... the same.

I'm waiting for my new PC to be delivered. It took 3 weeks already. Funny ... I sent them an angry email, telling them I don't think they can deliver in the timeframe they mentioned ... 12-15 working days. And asking them to tell me when they would deliver, otherwise I cancel my order and shop somewhere else. I get an email saying that the timeframe is given just for guidance. And cancelling would incur a 30 pounds admin fee. But what do you know ... 2 hours later, my PC is market as "Built" in their system. Surprise surprise! Needless to say it's in that state for 3 days now. I was hoping for somewhat quicker resolution. I start thinking that they just marked it in the system without actually building it.
Customer service is disastrous in this country.

I have to look for a warm destination for christmas ... so far Morroco and Tenerife on my list. Canary Islands might also be interesting. I'm not so keen about Egypt. It's not necessarily the history of bombs, but also I know they have tighter security there. If you want to travel around the country you usually travel with police tailing you. Not fun. And I'm no 007 - I sadly admit it.

Thursday, September 07, 2006

I'm a bit lazy to update this blog, I must say. That's one of my problems in general, an enthusiastic start withers as the routine settles in. So what happened lately?
I've been with Chris to the Reading Festival ... the Reading Festival is one of the biggest music festival in the UK. I didn't know about it, I only knew about Glastonbury. But hey, I never pretend to be anything but an ignorant when it comes to music. I stopped following the music scene for a long time. Now I feed with nibbles provided by friends, lately Maryam who gracefully lent me some music. Thank you!

Reading festival was a 3 day monster festival. And it looked like a monster, sheltering probably around 20-30 thousand people each day. Many many tents and a lot (and I do mean a lot) of rubbish. Everywhere, the litter bins were full, so people were throwing all the rubbish on the floor. I saw teenagers, rockers, dressed in dirty clothes, poor students, booze, guitars and crowds crowds crowds. Reminds me of the festivals in Romania. Just this one was better organised.

In the end we saw Placebo, Slayer and Pearl Jam, the most notable ones and some other little bands that I can't remember now. We went there for Pearl Jam in fact, as Chris waited for 15 years to see them live. Well, I remembered them from the 90s when they were on MTVs with hits like Alive, Jeremy and stuff like that. They were good. Now they're no longer on MTV, no longer commercial, they went underground, but let me tell you, they have a lot of fans.
Eddie Vedder, the lead vocalist, is a very kind person. He's not full of shit like most stars, he's very considerate to the fans, very friendly and you can tell he's a decent person. Judging by the lyrics of his songs and by his autobiography as sketched by others ... he had one helluva childhood. But hey, he seems to have conquered his demons.
Anyway, a good experience the Reading Festival, but I learnt I'm no longer so patient and accepting with crowds, rubbish and student lifestyle as I was when I was a student. Well, even when I was a student there was only for so long I could stand the Sighisoara festival for instance (Sighisoara - a medieval festival, combined with rock, booze and all the shit that spells disaster for a medieval town).

Life has been quiet otherwise. I've been to some films ... now trying to remember them I realise I can't. For me films are really what they were supposed to be ... entertainment. Meaning that for an hour or two, you're just entertained, transported into a different world. And that's it. An hour or two. Then you come back to reality and you soon forget about it. The intrinsic value was that of entertainment for the duration of the film. No point in hanging on to it and remember it and talk about it for ages. That's why I'm not good at remembering films. For me it's entertainment "now and here".

The latest toy is the stock market, I've invested some money and in a month and a half so far I've made about 1500 pounds. Not that bad actually. Of course today everything was down and I'm losing money, but it will recover. It's not an investment for faint hearted.

What else ... I was looking at flights to and fro Romania. Only one company, Wizzair is introducing so far flights. And only one from London to Bucuresti Baneasa. So it's totally useless for me. Some other flights to Arad and Targu Mures, but not from London. From Barcelona and Milan. Nothing to Cluj.