Found from [info]gohanvsdomon   
09:47am 22/04/2005
  I have just found something better than One-legged dancing stage dude. Here comes top-speed juggling danging stage dude

Warning: Do not actually go to the CJ site from work... The link should just download the video straight but just in case, don't risk it		  
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China Trip (part 1)   
06:59am 15/04/2005
  China

It's not like I really needed a heading on this one as I haven't done anything else noteworthy to post but still...

China was incredible. I ran out of good adjectives to use on the third day (I used up all the bad ones whilst on the plane...) so i'm resorting to a dictionary and thesaurus for the rest of my journal...

Anyway, we got there after the flight (which was, technically my first holiday involving a plane trip) and were booked into a 4-star hotel. This was our first pleasant surprise as we were pretty much expecting to be in hostels or crap hotels given that we paid just over £500 for the two weeks. As it turned out the trip was heavily subsidised by the Chinese government (our side of the bargain being to spend lots of money and tell you lot how good China is)

We were given the final itinerary after a short wash and brush-up and stared in horror as we realised we'd be on the go for the next 10 days without stopping. I think [info]shadowstone nearly had a fit. The days were pretty much "Get up at 7am, leave at 8am after breakfast. Sightseeing in the morning, 12 course banquet lunch at an expensive restaurant, sightseeing in the afternoon then another 12 course banquet dinner in the evening then back to the hotel" By the time we actually got back to the hotel, we were far too tired to do anything other than write up the day, have a shower and go to bed... Warning, big images ahead. Cut for your browsing pleasure

( Chinese girls are nice )

Oh indeed they are... As most of you are aware of my particular liking for long, straight, black hair you can imagine which paradise I was in... Anyway, that photo was taken just after a rather long walk from the Shaolin Temple back to the Kung Fu school that everyone else was training at (we'd decided to laugh it off and take a long wander round Shaolin and the Pagoda forest. We'd done the training the day before and managed to pick the wrong thing again... Ended up doing Chi Kung and the instructor couldn't really understand why there were young people there as it was an old persons exercise)

We spent most of the time at Shaolin trying to spot the bits that the TV series Kung Fu had used for filming (but it wasn't easy as most of it was being rebuilt so the views had changed, plus we couldn't go inside a lot of the buildings)

( Bonsai... )

On the last day, after wandering through Forbidden City, we came across a park just across the road with a beautiful bonsai display. I decided there and then that that was what we were doing so I marched off with everyone else in tow wondering where I was going. Turned out to cost 2 yuan to get in (that's about 10p) so we paid up and wandered round a very beautiful park area then walked up to the top of a hill to a pagoda to find the most extraordinary view of the Forbidden City you can imagine. The entire place was laid out in front of us with the red tiled roofs scattered everywhere.

( The home of Yang-style Taiji )

This was the reason I came to China. The birthplace of Yang-Style Taiji. It was a simple and small house where Chen style was practised. Yang Luchan was the house's servant and used to watch the students practise from a vantage point up on a wall. From there he could see everything that happened and he slowly learned the form. After a while he was taken on as a student and then formed Yang-style afterwards. A wonderfully evocative place.

I'll post more once i've got my journal into the computer. I'll post a day at a time with shrunken pictures		  
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Car and stuff...   
11:51am 25/03/2005
 
mood: annoyed
Well, my car is off to the scrapheap today. Some guy is coming to pick it up for free (which was the best deal we could get for it...) The garage stuffed a new cambelt on it, charged me £100 for the privilege, and their official verdict was "well, it'll drive, but not for much longer" and it did indeed sound horrendous when I started it up. Props to [info]shadowstone for actually driving it back from the garage as he's had more experience driving clapped out cars than me...

In other news, for those of you that aren't signed up to our [info]harveyroad community, we're off to China tomorrow morning. [info]theinterwebguy is house sitting and [info]dungeoneer will be around for most of the time too. Local friends are still welcome to stop by and abuse the amenities as usual :-)

Enjoy the two weeks without us because when we get back we will be boring you all silly with more holiday photos than are technically legal (horse tranquilizers will be provided for those that can't deal with it) and all three of us will be posting the longest LJ posts known to mankind as we're all taking notebooks and recording our every thought and deed <evil laugh>		  
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From the "We're all going to die" department comes...   
11:47am 18/03/2005
  A man-made black hole.

Good idea or not? You decide.		  
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AAAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!   
10:59am 17/03/2005
  The car packed up halfway down the A14 AGAIN last night. This time it looks a little more serious as the breakdown dude (who was very cool, despite his views on the war in Iraq) reckons my cambelt has gone. Apparently if the engine shut off fast enough, it'll be £100 to fix. If not, we're looking at scrapping the car as the engine will be fucked.

Either way, I will not be driving the little red Corsa again. If it can be fixed cheaply, it's getting sold (anyone here want a K-reg Corsa? Only 40,000 miles on the clock? £400 ono)

I didn't get home till 1:30 last night. Admittedly the idea of going up to my Dad's place in Nottingham after Tai Chi (I left at about 3:30pm yesterday) and coming back down was a bit ambitious (2 and 1/2 hours each way for those that don't know), i'm still pissed the car broke down for the second time in as many months. God am I glad I took out the breakdown cover last September when my insurance was due...

Amusingly though, it decided to break down right outside Bar Hill. The first breakdown guy couldn't tow me home so he took me to Bar Hill Tescos and dropped me off there after arranging for another guy to come and get me. As some of you know, Daz and Chrissy live just up the road from there so I gave them a ring and they came to keep me company until the second truck turned up (which didn't take long).

Annoyingly i'm minutes from finishing the last tape of Prisoner of Azkaban. They've just gone back in time to fix everything and there can't be more than about 10 minutes left to listen to... Guess that'll have to wait for a bit...		  
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It's mah Birthday!   
09:54pm 08/03/2005
  Woo! It's my birthday! Just got back from Fai's in town where I had a vast quantity of really nice food and 2 glasses of my favourite beer, Tsing Tao. There were 8 of us there and [info]shadowstone will be posting photos of the event later on.

In other news, the cold has almost run it's course so by tomorrow i'm hoping to be back on form.		  
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Feel Like Shite...   
11:58pm 02/03/2005
  Well, i've managed to catch [info]wizlow's cold as has the rest of the house, which was fairly likely anyway. So I really do feel like shite. Not only that I HAVE to work tomorrow. No getting away from it, no backing out now, it's gotta be done. Bugger.

Hopefully I can get away with dossing for most of the time (like I usually do). For those that don't know, I work from home so the usual excuse of "I'm ill so I can't come into work" doesn't work for me because i'm already at work... :( Ah well, a few hours of WoW should put me right :)

/me wanders off to climb into a slightly chilly bed and sleep for as many hours as he can.

Nighty night LJ. Have fun.		  
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Bloody car!!!   
10:41pm 25/02/2005
  Well, it's time for me to get a new car... My brakes packed up on the A14 heading to Cambridge and by the sounds of it it's about time I got a new car... Any suggestions are more than welcome (well, sensible one's anyway)

Other than that, i'm sat at James' house borrowing his laptop to type this up so i'd better turn round and carry on conversing with people. Be back Sunday hopefully.

Oh and many thanks to [info]shadowstone for lending me his car for the weekend :))) You Rule!		  
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More meme-age   
03:22pm 23/02/2005
 
mood: amused
This one curtesy of [info]wolf_shadow. Blame her for it.
( Have you ever... )		  
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Still OW!!   
10:26am 22/02/2005
  Well, it's Tuesday morning and my back is still screwed. Oh well, guess i'll have to lie down in front of the xbox and play Sphinx for the rest of the day. Damn :)

It'd better be fixed by the weekend or i'll have to laugh off going to Daz and Chrissy's which will be a shame as I haven't seen them in ages.		  
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Sheep-mode activated   
01:39am 22/02/2005
  Oi, [info]shadowstone, back right off there. I'm talking about meme-sheep not the white and fluffy variety...

Anyway, apparently there's a meme going round about 10 things i've done that you haven't, so here we go.

10 Things That I've Done That You Lot Haven't.

1. Jumped out of a perfectly good aeroplane at 10,000 feet armed only with a couple of bits of string and a large rectangle of cloth.

2. Slept with the ex-wife of a professional hitman. That one's going to last me a while I think...

3. Attended the funerals of both your parents.

4. Spent over £1000 on Magic cards. Thank you [info]dark_ixion I didn't want to have to use this one but you made me. Owned 2 houses. At the same time. With no mortgage on either one.

5. Went through 3 years of University without getting laid once. Thank you [info]cathedrow for defeating that one. Ok, how about helped build a telescope observatory.

6. Had a doctor look down your throat and call in another doctor with the words "Have you ever seen anything like that before?" and the other doctor replies with "nope". Ok, maybe [info]shadowstone can beat me on that one but i'm fast running out of ideas here...

7. Spent 6 months of your life at work doing nothing but browsing the web, admitting as much to your boss and not get fired on the spot.

8. Played the original text adventure (Colossal Cave) on a computer nobody's ever heard of (a Gemini Galaxy and you have no idea how long it took me to find that. Oh, I had the green screen version with very little else. The keyboard was made of rolled steel and could be used as a handy bludgeon. P.S. We still have this machine at Dad's old works. I might get them to dig it out for me sometime...)

9. Had your counsellor die before finishing a course. (it wasn't during a session, but he copped it from cancer after going into hospital for 3 weeks)

10. Flown a plane. Dammit, though that was a cert. Thanks to [info]cathedrow Ok then, hacked a TiVo to put 1/4 of a terabyte of hard drive space in it. The only other person I know who did that doesn't have an LJ so that's safe :)

Meh, nothing too interesting. Might get beaten to the punch on a few of them too. Whatever, it's just LJ...		  
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OW!!   
03:09pm 21/02/2005
  My back has just crapped out on me for the second time in my life. I'm not planning on moving any time soon and i'll be going to bed very soon. Bloody annoying as i'm supposed to have Tai Chi tonight. Not in this state though as I can barely stand for more than 5 seconds... Interestingly it's not as bad as last time. Now, does this mean that my back is stronger and so didn't crap out as bad as last time, or just that it didn't break as badly this time...

Anyway, OW!!		  
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The End Of An Era   
12:22am 11/02/2005
  Well, I have quit playing Eve. My two characters are no longer accessible to me so I can start getting on with my life. To that end i'm putting a long term to-do list up here.


  • Start the Maya Project up again

  • Tidy Bedroom

  • Clean House (top to bottom)

  • Play xbox a bit (now that i've got some spare time)

  • Start sorting the garden out

  • Continue sorting Dad's estate out

  • Play board and card games with real people in real life

  • Practice Tai Chi more

  • Sort the sofa out

  • Write a Chi Kung timer for my mobile phone

  • Really Clean House (top to bottom)

  • Find (more?) women

  • Sort out that floorboard at the top of the stairs

  • Fix both toilets (yet again)

  • Sort out the porch area

  • Find time to visit Daz and Chrissy

  • Sort travel insurance

  • Get the server into the garage and up and working

  • oh yeah, and work



and the most important one:


  • Never ever ever ever play another MMORPG again



Also, i'd love to hear what you think I should do with my life (now that I have one) in as much gory detail as possible		  
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Updates on other things   
01:07pm 24/01/2005
 
mood: tired
music: DI Chillout
Life, offline

Going pretty much as expected. Dealing with Dad's estate is going to take a very long time, but it is progressing.

The Chinese course started again, and we're now learning a few new words. The first lesson was pretty much revision from before Christmas but the second lesson was much more productive, with us learning how to say "can" as in "I can speak Chinese" instead of just "I speak Chinese". We also watched a video which was about life in China and showed a bunch of old people doing Tai Chi in a temple square. It also showed them doing the sword form, which the rest of the group (mostly Jehova's Witnesses) weren't best pleased about when Dean and myself pointed at it and said "look, we're not loons, they really do do a sword form".

Went to Oriental City with a bunch of people and [info]shadowstone's parents yesterday. That was pretty cool, came back with a few bottles of Sake and some Chinese noodles which should keep me going for a few weeks :)

Ruth has just stopped by to organise a few things for the China trip, which is handy as we can finally speak to her and sort a few things out face to face.

Life, online

I've opened a new account on Eve specifically for hauling and combat. My main character is now a career-miner and I decided that it was about time I got into combat a bit more, especially with all the wars that the corp seem to be getting involved in.		  
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Why do I bother?   
05:23pm 19/01/2005
 
mood: discontent
Wow, two posts by me in a day. That's gotta be a record. Hell, two posts by me in a week is rare enough. Anyway, I just got back from town to discover the morons at the bank hadn't told me the right things. The executor's bank account isn't going to get Dad's money in it until i've been granted probate. When I opened the account, they gave me to understand that I would be able to use the money from Dad's account to pay for the funeral expenses etc.. Now it seems that that's not going to happen till I get this probate thing done and I have no idea when that's going to be.

It's certainly not going to be until next month at the earliest as everyone seems to be either a) on holiday or b) busy. Not a lot I can do about it except rant on here. So I shall.

I'm also going to change all the last few posts from friends only to public as a friend of my Dad's may stop by my journal. Feel free to leave a comment if you do :)		  
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Make a subject up yourselves cos I can't be bothered.   
09:54am 19/01/2005
 
mood: awake (and it's far too early
Well, i've just spoken to Dad's financial adviser's secretary. What a waste of time that was. Her recommendation was "leave it to the solicitor". Apparently I can get involved but I suspect that they'd much rather I just stayed out of it. They're also "busy with tax returns" and won't be able to even answer my solicitors letter until the beginning of February. Bah. Plus, i've still got this cheque sitting here staring at me and I still have no idea what to do with it... Do I pay it in to his account and risk the wrath of the taxman or do I phone the solicitor and get charged another £160 for asking a question or do I ignore it and let the money vanish.

I've also been told that the money from his pensions will probably just vanish into the ether. When I heard that I decided what i'm going to do with my life. I'm going to start a pension company that thrives by letting people draw their pension for about a year and then hires a hitman to go and kill them. The money i'd make from keeping their hard-earned cash would far outweigh the cost of a regular hitman. I could even keep one as a permanent employee on the staff. Anyone else wanna join in on my latest madcap scheme? (I'm looking at you [info]dungeoneer and you [info]shadowstone)		  
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Life and the complexity thereof...   
10:47pm 10/01/2005
 
mood: tired
Life gets more complicated by the second. I got IM'ed by [info]cathedrow today to ask whether I was going to the pub tonight. I'd forgotten that, because the Chinese course has moved from Saturday morning to Friday night, i've had to move my Friday night Tai Chi to Monday night. Thursday night is (currently) Kung Fu night and Wednesday night is now D&D; night. This pretty much leaves Tuesday night as my only free night. The weekends don't count as they're kept free for the usual influx of random people (and the odd trip elsewhere)

Speaking of trips elsewhere [info]shadowstone, [info]wizlow and myself are back up to Nottingham to collect some more of Dad's paperwork and other things. Thanks guys, you've made an annoying and depressing job that much easier.

Tai Chi is going really well. Went to my first Monday class and it was really good. Nice bunch of people and we did some work on posture testing which was very helpful. I think i'll make this change permanent.		  
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... and back again.   
11:18am 30/12/2004
 
mood: drained
Well, who couldn't predict that title?

Life

Got back from Dad's yesterday evening. Too knackered to do much more than chat to Martin and watch [info]wizlow learning how to play Pirates of the Spanish Main

The funeral went well and the wake afterwards was an interesting affair. Saw a lot of people I vaguely recognised and even more that I didn't. What was worse was that a lot of the people I didn't recognise recognised me. This made the day a rather tiring round of talking to people and desperately trying to remember where i'd seen them before. Met a teacher from one of my old schools and didn't know it, I think he was a bit put out that I didn't remember him.

Need to get my sleeping patterns back to normal again. Haven't been getting a lot of sleep lately and it's beginning to annoy me.

I'll post more later, when i've thought about it more...		  
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There...   
10:30am 27/12/2004
  Life

Well, i'm off back up to Nottingham for the funeral on Wednesday. [info]shadowstone and [info]wizlow will be joining me tomorrow so [info]dungeoneer will have the house to himself.		  
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... the continuing saga   
03:50pm 24/12/2004
 
mood: okay
Life

Well, i've reinstalled myself at HarveyRoad so i'm feeling better than I was at my Dad's place. I discovered on Monday that I was talking to myself far more than usual and I decided that I need people around to keep me sane. I couldn't live in a house on my own so I guess it's good that i'm home now :)

The 5 days went ok, bit of a blur really though. Arranging a funeral isn't actually too much work (especially when there's people around to do the hard things like phone around 80-odd people and tell them the bad news) but it's emotionally draining.

I've got an incredible amount of stuff to sort through over the coming months. Getting on to Dad's bank and sorting out an executors account is the first thing that needs doing. Then I need to talk to a solicitor about being granted probate. From there on in it's just phoning and writing letters to a lot of people. Oh, and inheritance tax. Which fuckwit thought that one up? You can't get the inheritance until you've paid the tax and you can't pay the tax out of the inheritance. Basically you've got to take a loan or mortgage out just to pay it so it's just a money-making scheme for banks and loan people. Bastards. The lot of them.

Thanks to all the people who expressed sympathies and other thoughts, it's very much appreciated.

Xmas

Meh. After what happened, Dean and Inge are staying around over the holiday instead of doing their usual trip to Wales so it's going to be pretty odd having them around. Nice, but odd. We're tidying the house at the moment. Well, Steve is doing a lot of the work and we're just moving stuff around and hoovering lots. It's gonna look spiffy once we're done though. Daz and Chrissy are popping by on Xmas day and staying for the night. Hopefully we might see Jacki too which would be nice.

New Year

We're doing our usual games day on new year's eve culminating in fireworks and drunken debauchery at 00:00. Got a few people turning up for it so it should be a good one this year. Got some impressive-looking fireworks (all labelled as low-noise as we don't want to piss anyone off (and i'm not a fan of loud noises)) so that should be fun too.		  
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