Dear Shelter,

I’ve lived on this street for nearly 2 years and there is one spot at the very top, right at the mouth of the high street, that you’ll find a regular spot for homeless people.

It’s the back patio of an abandoned office block, a space off the main street. The bannisters provide a frame to prop up bags, cardboard boxes - anything - to make a make shift tent. The floor looks unforgiving. There’s an alarm that constantly beeps the whole day, distant and inside the building.

Last year there was an old bearded guy ‘living’ there and, for a while, he could be seen roughing it in the summer. Nobody really cared. I certainly didn’t. I walked past him thinking he was probably there for his own reasons. The weather was warm… he didn’t look like he wanted to go anywhere.

The seasons changed and he disappeared… I didn’t bother to wonder where he went, although I did notice he was gone.

The season changed again and for that summer we didn’t have a homeless person. Maybe the odd drunk person who couldn’t find their way home the night before, but nobody permanent.

Around 6 weeks ago, the same spot was occupied permanently again; he’d covered himself with cardboard boxes and, to my surprised, I realised it was actually a different person - a much younger man.

I was shocked - I’d literally caught a glimpse of his young face as part of his flimsy tent bent under the strain… it hurt me that it was someone who looked like he should be enjoying the prime of his life but was roughing it on a windy, ice-cold street. He didn’t look all that used to being on the street.

But, like many people, I was passing him on my way to somewhere else and wouldn’t stop. Why didn’t I did approach him? I was afraid that he may attack me - that he might be mad or that he may be foreign and wouldn’t understand me. I was afraid he may be a drunkard and try to hurt me - without meaning to.

But this evening as I was walking home, late after work, I saw him… he was moving his things around and a part of me was relieved; I’d feared he had died in this freezing cold - the morbid thought had started to dawn on me a few days before Christmas as the freezing conditions began to settle in on the city. There was no movement for all those times I passed him in the mornings and afternoons.

Another part of me felt so sad. I don’t like seeing him there… and I found myself asking the question “if I knew how he ended up there, would I still feel sorry for him?”

The answer didn’t matter. I hated seeing him there… I hated walking past him all the time and doing nothing. My conscience had caught up with me. I decided I would try to help him. And this is why I’ve written all of this to you.

How DO you help homeless people? Do you go to the streets and find those who need you? Do you expect people to know to turn to you when they’re in his position?

How can you help the person I have described above? I want to know that he’s out of this horrid, terrible cold and soon.

Please let me know what I can do - who can go to his aid and get him off the street right now.

I don’t believe in charity - I don’t think that giving someone something fixes anything. I’m a firm believer in setting down foundations, in setting someone on the right direction to a better future. If I can take him somewhere he will be warm, fed, cared for - someplace he can start to rebuild his life… then I’ll feel like I’ve done the right thing.

I look forward to your reply.

Regards,
Chorna

NOTE: This is a personal blog, not a tech blog. Don’t hold it against me!

It’s been six days now, that I’ve tried to function digitally using only web-based applications. My experiment to Cloud Compute is, so far, going well - if you like that sort of thing.

“What sort of thing?”

• If you like waiting for your web-browser to, well, browse and find you the website/service you’re looking for
• If you like having to remember that closing down one window actually means you’ve just closed down EVERYTHING you were working on because your browser works on tabs - even the keyboard shortcuts are hellishly prone to accidentally closing a window you didn’t mean to (darn efficiency!)
• If you like having to constantly remember passwords and user names
• If you like being limited to an almost universal layout of webpages - all scroll down and your window has to be 800 pixels wide or otherwise you’ll have to start scrolling sideways as well (I have a small 12″ Macbook)
• If you like having to wait a few moments while the service saves/loads/does something else

Don’t worry - I hear ya. I hear all you Internet Lovers.

• A website loading is probably much faster than your machine loading a code-heavy software application on its own hard drive (especially if you have any machine older than 3 years - admitted. But what if you have a slow Internet connect?)
• The whole tabs thing can be remedied by opening separate windows (but then, that sort of belittles the whole Tabbed Browsing movement, hmm?)
• You can have your browser remember your login details (but I get very safety conscious about all that…)
• If your screen is too small… get a bigger screen! (or maybe site designers could think better about accessibility in design?)
• And loading times vary depending on the service - and most machines, as with a previous point, are just as slow, if not slower. In short - stop complaining! It’s all incredible stuff!!

So here comes the real biggy: what happens if the web-hosted service goes down?

For one thing, you lose access to all that work and for another you have no idea if you can retrieve it. When you’ve invested so much faith in a company that provides a service and, for some reason goes down or into administration, unless you know where they are and have access to their hardware, you’re probably not going to see your work ever again. At least with your own machine you can take it into the local IT place, have someone look it over and perhaps retrieve the information again.

Also, what if you don’t have an Internet connection? That wouldn’t be an issue if your work was saved somewhere locally.

But then there’s the other side of the argument - the ‘Shit Happens’ argument; People lose work on their machines all the time - what if it couldn’t be retrieved even with a hardware tweaking? What if the only way you could have retrieved your work was if you’d kept a copy of it on a web-based service? Either way, digital information is just as vulnerable as a piece of paper is to a careless open flame.

Ultimately, my main concern is document retrievability - so it’s a choice between leaving things on my home computer (or other mobile device) or having it online where it’s potentially accessible from any place that has a working Internet connection and the firewalls don’t prevent me from gaining access to the service.

As for security, well…

Here’s where it gets personal: a lot of people have raised their eyebrows when I told them what I was attempting to do. Most of them think I’m an idiot - primarily because THEY would never DREAM of putting up their entire life on the Internet where some anonymous dude can exploit that information and use it against them.

First off, almost all of these individuals have a Facebook, Twitter, Flickr or (even!) MySpace profile, so their warnings are a little flaccid to say the least and, secondly, their assumptions are a little naive and goes a long way to explain the kinds of fears people have about the Internet.

Personally I think fearing the Internet is a bit like fearing your mobile phone. Just because you can’t explain exactly how it works, doesn’t mean it’s dangerous (socially).

The Internet is essentially a platform for people to recreate, to remould their public appearance. Whilst some are extremely adept at doing this with their dress code, their accents, their material possessions,  others are far more adept  doing this digitally: they are the ones who create posed pictures of themselves; they’ll willingly put up a list of their favourite music, tv shows and/or movies; they’ll a blog about their daily, weekly or monthly musings. Everything there is just as constructed as the gelled hairdo of a young man walking down the street, just as poised as a woman who carefully walks her dog down the street in her nicest winter coat.

It’s all for show - digital or not.

Besides, if all someone did was post up their life on the Internet… they wouldn’t really have much to say after a while. You have to live in order to talk about it with any kind of authority.

Anyway… lecture over… back to Cloud Computing.

It’s kinda wearing on me. I’ve made a few annoying mistakes but, like most things, I’ll probably learn and just alter my browsing habits. I’m still sort of enjoying it - I like that everything is controlled by my ability to type URLs into my browser. Reminds me more and more of those faux computing days - the days when Penney would type a gazillion digits into her Computer Book in order to bring up one piece of information

She was my inspiration, you know. She’s the reason I have a laptop. (if you still don’t know what I’m talking about, watch this and check out the little girl with the book.)

More to come, next time.

Thank you, Verity, for letting me use this image. :)

This time last year I was taking my first steps in World of Warcraft. And that pretty much sums up the rest of my year.

Just joking!

I experienced quite a bit of change in 2008. From changes at work to changes in my wardrobe. Here’s a list, though, of some of the stuff I could remember:

Gaming highlights:

Elements of Azeroth

World of Warcraft:

• Started playing in January 2008
• Guild created in January 2008
• Brother starts playing
• All my friends start playing!
• Guild LAN party in May 2008 - was awesome!! We must do this again : D
• The guild website is launched
• The guild forum is launched
• Azurelle reaches Level 70 in August, lol
• Meeting up with Guild Member Mornn and his two sons. : )

Animal Crossing:

• Animal Crossing: City Folk is announced. Finally
• Animal Crossing: Let’s Go To The City is released. Finally
• ACUKE.com is relaunched as a social network. : )
• Lots of events including Midwinters’ Night, Jingle’s visit and Countdown to 2009!

General:

• Rediscovering my Nintendo DS. When my life took over my free time (strange concept, that!), I was thrilled to bits when I picked up my Nintendo DS and could still enjoy it. : )
• I’d always wondered if there was a virtual fish tank game out there (don’t ask) - I found it in 2008. It sucks, but at least now I know!!

Everything else:

Insight into self:

• Discovering that my gaming personality means I can spend more time with those I love the most.
• Discovering my passion for learning is still very much alive and realising what I want to do with this in the future
• After years of searching for a Karate dojo as good as the one I practiced in for almost 10 years, I gave up and started taking Kung Fu lessons in late 2008. It’s going to be difficult to progress but I love the challenge in martial arts. Kung Fu and Karate are as similar as Horse Racing is to Show Jumping. I’m a complete novice and loving it. : )

Relationships:

• My relationship with my parents resembles much more the relationship I had with them in the past. More and more each day I am soooo thankful that I can talk to my parents and be treated as an equal - as their child and yet as an intellectual equal. My parents are wonderful - they question me, listen to me and love me. I couldn’t ask for better parents
• I’m so happy that my relationship with my brother has grown even stronger in 2008 because of (wait for it…) WoW; we’ve had more to talk about, more reason to talk to each other to begin with even though we were fairly close, anyhow. We laugh, we play… I feel closer to him these days even though physically we’re quite far apart
• I’ve made better friends out of older acquaintances and I’ve experienced proof of genuine camaraderie among women. : ) You know who you are, ladies!
• My ex-housemate and Aidan’s ex-housemate get hitched…
• Their beautiful baby boy Michael is born!

Little Michael with his daddy.

Other stuff:

• Hmmm… I suppose I did have some pretty huge moments in 2008 when I made a couple of pretty awesome networking contacts - Roland will know what I mean!
• Going to see The Nutcracker performed by the English National Ballet - thanks David!
• Oh, a highlight of 2008 was when I went back home to see my family and Raj and I played with our old Lego set. : D COOLNESS!

Lego!

• Realising I have time to think during my day. I know, sounds inconsequential but the second I realised I had *time* to think and to do things I might enjoy, my days suddenly seemed much happier. : )
• Discovering that I needed a 5pm song. I haven’t found it yet… am still looking
• I learnt how to cook my own version of Chili Con Carne in 2008. It rocks!
• Getting a new digital camera for Christmas - it rooooooocks!!

Some Memorable Movies of 2008 (in no particular order):

• Iron Man
• The Incredible Hulk
• Good Luck Chuck
• Forgetting Sarah Marshal
• Tropic Thunder
• The Forbidden Kingdom
• James Bond: Quantum of Solace
• Kung Fu Panda
• Batman: Dark Knight

Two Worst Movies of 2008:

• Don’t Mess With The Zohan
• The Mummy III: Tomb Of The Dragon Emporer

Movies I Wished They’d Made in 2008:

• Fear Effect
• Another Spider-Man Movie

Best Fast Food of 2008:

• Burger King! I’ve rediscovered it!

Christmas Dinner 2008

Most Eaten Food Item(s) of 2008:

• Prawns
• Cheese
• Lasagne

Best Book of 2008:

• Sadly, I hadn’t read any! Can you believe it?? I got close to finishing another Jim Butcher (Dresden Files) book, though and I also have 100 Classic Books for the Nintendo DS. That’s really terrible!

Funniest Moment(s) of 2008:

• WoW related, lol - Samo, Azumae & the Rabbit
• WoW related, lol - Many a Boss & Loui conversation
• Many moments with my brother
• Many moments with Aidan
• Many moments with Tanbir
• Conversing with my mum over the phone
• That time when mum and dad came to visit and it started raining… hehehe…

Scariest Moment(s) of 2008:

• All work related!

Saddest Moment(s) of 2008:

• When my nanni died

Favourite Quote(s) of 2008:

• “We can ritualise it, decorate it, purchase it all we want… but it only veils the fact we’re f*cking lucky to even be here and are conscious to experience it.”
• “YO MOMMA”
• “I’M BATMAN”
• “Noooooooo - I can’t demorage anymore!”
• “Don’t call your baby Cheese!!!”
• “Then my mom got a job!”
• “We’ll call her Frogelina”

Wow. Quite a list, huh? Seeing how you made it this far, I suppose I should finish off with my ‘New Year Resolutions’.

They’re not going to be resolutions so much as aspirations. So, taking all of the above into consideration, my goals for 2009:

• Continue practicing Kung Fu
• Find a more favourable balance between computer games and life - I’m kinda looking forward to achieving a routine that lets me do exactly what I want, when I want
• Read more books!
• Ding Azurelle to 80 at some point
• Eat better food
• Find my 5pm song (and possibly blog about it)
• Take lots of photos
• Work on my life goal to use my passion for learning in a more prosperous manner ; )

Not to forget my experiment as well…

Take it easy, all. See you later!

THE AIM: By using web-based applications only (Cloud Computing), I want to be able to turn on my computer and only need to have ONE application on my desktop - my web browser. I will see how achievable this is for one month.

DAY ONE:

Happy New Year!

Since my last post, where I audited the services I was already aware of and for what purpose, I’ve tried to use my iGoogle page so that it would act as a centralise place for all of these web-based services.

I was disappointed, though, when I couldn’t seem to get it to display Meebo, the service I am using as a web-based Instant Messenger, in a screen friendly space. I did manage to find a way around any other issues with keeping track of other frequented websites, though, by signing up to available RSS feeds on each site and have those show up in my Google Reader.

Even with these RSS feeds going into one place, I found I couldn’t really work through just one screen open, so set my Firefox to open up several seperate tabs at the same time when I open it up.

These included (in that order):

Meebo
iGoogle
Google Mail
Google Reader
ACUKE - my gaming forum
Flickr
Facebook

However, I quickly got rid of iGoogle as I prefer to read my email without having to look at the stripped version of Gmail that iGoogle presents me with. The same applied to Google Reader.

Now it’s:

Meebo
Google Mail
Google Reader
ACUKE
Flickr
Facebook

The RSS feed didn’t seem to work so well for Flickr and I ended up manually checking that anyway.

As for ACUKE, the gaming forum, the RSS feed was working fantastically and, even though I didn’t really need to open the page, I preferred it there almost for familiarity and for something a little bit more colourful to look at other than the minimalist approach of Google.

Then there’s Facebook.

I don’t know what to do with Facebook. I already have emails going to my email account whenever anything happens within my network of acquaintances there. Virtually all of it I delete after reading. The Christmas holidays probably weren’t a good indicator of how busy it can get but even then I was just ignoring those emails unless I saw something different like… an upload or something.

I’ve not yet subscribed to any of the available RSS feeds there, so perhaps I will give that a shot and see how that affects my inbox (turning off my email notifications, of course!). Oh wait, I just realised… there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to get RSS feeds for Facebook. Well, then. I’m taking Facebook off my daily list (as I get email notifications anyway and most of my friends are on the gaming forum anyhow!).

Now it’s:

Meebo
Google Mail
Google Reader
ACUKE
Flickr

Getting there! I suppose this secondary aim to be able to view everyone on one page is a bit of a side track (more about widgets than Cloud Computing) but still, it’s an interesting after-effect!

I’ve already forgotten what it’s like to click on the Mail for Mac icon…!

So I spent today trying to do an audit of the services I use online.

They used to be known as Web 2.0 applications back in the day [find archive] and now I’m re-referring to them for my 31 day Cloud Computing experiment.

I have found the following services - and you will spot a pattern fairly quickly:

• Home page: iGoogle
• Email: Gmail
• RSS Reader: Google Reader
• Calendar: Google Calendar
• Documents: Google Documents
• Alerts: Google Alerts
• Bookmarks: Google Bookmarks
• Photo Storage: Flickr
• Video Entertainment: BBC iPlayer / Vemeo / YouTube / Crunchyroll
• Music: Last.fm
• Instant Messaging: Meebo
• Social ‘Networking’: Facebook

That essentially leaves the following yet to be discovered:

• Online gaming (via a browser - have been recommended Gaia)
• Online reading (have been recommended Google Books)
• Online VOIP (GTalk allows people to carry out video/audio conversations. Wonder how transferable it is across other platforms?)
• Online photo editing suit (I wonder what Picassa is up to these days?)

Oh, and whilst I’m on the subject, I found this half finished post in my Google Documents. Enjoy!

… I was sat at home and being more productive than ever, getting personal tasks out of the way. My friend and I were chatting about how to make use of the fact I don’t have much Internet access from work and how it’s affected my productivity.

One thing I noticed was that it wasn’t so much the physical lack of access that bothered me, but moreso the psychological security factor that came from my knowing I could have access to whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted it. My friend said the Internet was distracting. I defended my status: “I don’t…. I’m writing my thoughts down now actually, in Google Documents… perhaps a post for the future. I love to multi-task. Email, check news, write articles etc etc… research, order things. All that between my day job would be great!”

I saw a documentary a while ago about Japanese culture and how it promotes microcosms. Inner spaces rather than outer. I found this absolutely fascinating and it spoke to me in many ways.

The success of the Walkman was an example used in the documentary and it spoke of how, despite people being sat shoulder to shoulder with one another, they had their own inner space, their own mind space, as it were, to retreat to, thanks to the music that they only heard through their earphones.

In many ways, the desktop, which is usually only viewed by one person at a time, is a physical personal space, and what the screen gives you access to is the creation of your own microcosm or information space.

I often work through one browser with several tabs open. I have my chat client open that allows me to have communicative interaction with local and remote friends. Most importantly, however, I have access to spaces that allow me to store information which I can then access whenever I want.

This sense of having my own world in front of me is something I have become very adapted to and to have that taken away from me when I am at work is a little… boring, frankly.

I don’t think it is that I can’t focus on one task for a long time. It’s simply that I have a very active mind and I prefer to jump between tasks than arduously work on keeping focus on just the one. Multi-tasking is also a far more productive way for me to work, one that allows me to juggle tasks whilst I wait for others to finish. Conversely - I can and do read books for hours on end upon occasion.

That was written in December 2007! See you guys later!

How it all began. - 27th December 2008.

I am not entirely sure how… but Julie has managed to make me feel obliged to do something I was going to do anyway.

We were talking about New Years Resolutions and my friend - who happens to be a (very good) teacher - asked me to explain what I meant when I told her that my resolution was to figure out and make the most of cloud computing.

[13:17] Julie: wassat then?

I find myself uhming and ahing for about 2 seconds and then I came out with this:

Ok, so…… basic concept: do you know of Zip Cars?

[13:18] Julie: I know about the ones where you rent it for like an hour or a day or whatever

Yeah, exactly.

[13:18] Julie: so how’s it work with computers?…

Well it’s not the physical computer so much as the processing power, the resources, the memory… So, say for example, your webmail: you have an email account but the information you’re accessing is on a server that is CONSTANTLY in use by countless others. Rather than sitting idle, waiting for you to come back, the ‘computer’ is always being used by someone.

[13:19] Julie: oh, ok - is this like where you let NASA use your computer when you’re asleep?…

Exactly! Again - move away from thinking about a physical computer and think more about where all that information is stored. Think about netbooks and Macbook Airs - where the hardware is very simple but you’re accessing all that information via an Internet connection; instead of buying a word processing package to do all that work on your physical machine, you just access an application online - for example Google Docs. It’s all done (and stored) online.

[13:20] Julie: i geddit

There was a pause.

[13:21] Julie: I like it - keep a diary and then write a book about it!!
[13:21] Julie: it’d be cool

Heh!

[13:21] Julie: or at least a feature
[13:22] Julie: write it for an IT supplement as a weekly column

Heh…

[13:22] Julie: it’d be well cool
[13:24] Julie: WRITE IT!!!!!!

I - uhm…!

[13:24] Julie: okay, going now
[13:24] Julie: talk soon
[13:24] Meebo Message: Julie is offline

My fingers hover over the keyboard for a bit.

I start wondering whether I can negotiate myself out of this whole writing thing, whether I could let her down gently despite her faith in me.

Of course, then I realise it’s probably a good thing - and why not? My experience could provide some useful insight into how to use the Internet more efficiently. I’m not an academic but I’m not stupid on the matter (I use the Internet every day for crying out loud!). It would give me something to do in my spare time - I’d been meaning to write more - and besides - my blog has been rather boring lately.

Yeah… Why the hell not?!

But I don’t think I’ll be writing this for an entire year. Let’s not get too far ahead of oneself. Perhaps I’ll start off gently - say write a journal for a month. That bloke with the burgers did it - I can, too!

Yes. I’m going to write a journal on my experience of surviving on the Internet as a part of the Cloud Computing movement. Starting January 1st 2009.

P.S. Mustn’t forget to ask Julie what her resolution is. Will suggest getting a netbook.

The dude leaves a comment on my blog after we jam.

LOL thanks to Michy for the co-op play. And thanks even more for coming back and leaving a comment on my blog! (see pic above!)

The picture above represents two things I am super excited about. Firstly, that Michy left a comment on my blog (woohoo!!) and secondly: gmail now has themes. Mucho coolness.

I was really excited when I saw this - and also slightly perterbed when I noticed that someone at work had exactly the same theme as their gmail theme. I quickly changed mine although I will probably keep changing it (because I can).

If you don’t have gmail… you’re missing out. if you do… I like you. Very much.

I’m off to find someone else to rock with. Take it easy!

Edit: I found someone else: a shout-out to Dyed Black, and Byed Black (2) lol

I had a really wicked 1.5 hours of Guitar Hero co-op wi-fi’ing… the ‘band’ I was matched up with was called Shallow Poison and they were cool.

The player was awesome, playing on Expert most of the time (some songs s/he reverted to Hard mode when things got too difficult) and that’s very respectable! What’s better is that Shallow Poison seemed to have the same choice in music as me.

One thing I really enjoyed about tonight’s jam was coming across a few old songs I loved when I was a teenager and hadn’t heard since - Love Spreads by Stone Roses, for example is one of them and marks such a cool moment in my life. For this song, I was the lead guitar and Shallow Poison was bass. Kick ass.

I hope I bump into Shallow Poison again some time.

* * *

In other musings, I’ve been developing a really great rapport lately with a couple of guys I met online. I know, I know - sounds cheesy that I only actually know them via email and/or telephone conversations but whilst our relationship may be completely professional and built on mutual reliance on each other doing our jobs properly (oh, boy, what a topic that is…), over time we’ve become, I feel, something that might actually be a friendship.

I look forward to moments when, after a flurry of tense emails about work, we get to share some banter, just releasing the tension in our ‘voices’. If anything, it’s good that it’s reciprocated. So… this is my shoutout to T and P. And G - if she’s reading.

My friends… hmmm… well, I damn well hope so. It’s rare you get to meet people who are genuinely just cool. And I’m glad to have met them.

Anyway… I guess I just wanted to say I feel happy knowing I can still bump into, meet and get to know nice people in general. Especially since I’m ill (again!) and I just need something cheerful to think about.

Take it easy, you lot. Catch you next time.

This is probably one of my most favourite blog posts, ever.

I remember writing it and just thinking how cheesy it would sound when readying it. I’d had such a wonderful time visiting my family that winter… I’m really glad I documented it in my blog.

Anyway… I go back to read this one from time and time and every time I feel exactly the same: I love my brother very much and the excitement I feel at being able to see him again, laugh with him again and inevitably get annoyed by him again returns in a split second.

At the time of writing this, I’m expecting to see him tomorrow (Sunday), so that we can jam on Guitar Hero 4 on the Wii. I bought it home on Friday morning, dragging the box down the straight street that conveniently connects my home to the shopping centre. I’d pre-ordered and put a deposit down on the game about a week earlier so the guys in the store knew exactly why i’d come in when they spotted me approaching the store.

I like it when you can enter a store and you feel like you’re being a friend to them. That big excited grin on my face probably helped, too…!

Anyway, I’m standing there, in the queue, waiting for my large Guitar Hero box. Everyone in the crowd is staring first at it - a massive box that comes up to my waist - then little old me and I realise: I have to at least make it out of the mall without tripping, dropping the box and/or otherwise having to stop to readjust the weight of the thing if I’m to hold on to my pride… which is going to be difficult when I can’t even wrap my arms around the breadth of it.

I make it around the corner where I am pretty convinced no one in the store can see me, and I put it down, feeling a twang of pain in my back. Oh, dear. I’m going to have to make it the rest of the 15 minute walk back and I’ve only walked 25 metres already. Hahaha…

Anyway, I make it back. :: smirks ::

* * *

A two weeks later and tonight I finally hooked my Nintendo Wii up to our wireless Internet connection and hooked up with a few random people online to play Guitar Hero.

That Sunday I mentioned, Raj did make it up - but the evening I was writing the blog post above, Tanbir, my cousin, made it up. You can see the photos - if you’re a ‘friend’ or ‘family’, on my Flickr account.

Wifi Guitar Hero: it’s such a great experience - IF you managed to get hooked up with a decent player on the other side. I found I was put up with quite a few Brits and the only way I presumed that was by the number of Union Jack’s on the drum sets, guitars… tattoos…!!

I love it… can’t wait to find some actual friends who have the game and are willing to hook up with us. A lot of good fun!

I actually saw my family again on Friday and have tried to relax this weekend. I think I managed it and, certainly, I’ve had some time to jump on to World of Warcraft  and say hello (and play!! Amazing!!).

I think the days when I have time to jump onto a machine and just play a game for at least 2-3 hours… those are the days I know I genuinely relaxed.

Anyway… enough of that. Until next time. Take it easy!! [wave]

I’m listening to Silverchair and I’m chilling at home. I’ve had days off from work but that was only because I was ill or had just experienced a death in the family. Hardly relaxing days off.

So here I am, at home, now listening to Bob Segar and Old Time Rock & Roll (which I guess sums me up in so many ways).

So where to begin? Well… update from last post, perhaps?

Mum and family are doing well. Life goes on although certain people will be missed.

I actually had a dream recently of Tiddles, our old cat. She seemed happy and I was happy when I woke up, having petted her in my dreams. Was curious to find out she made an appearance in her dreams as well. I guess Tid was checking in on us. Miss you….!!

Anyway…

I haven’t spoken to a lot of my friends recently, although I was happy to get to webcam with a friend of mine in Europe. Oh, man… where would I be if I couldn’t see my friends via webcam? I can very well imagine… but I feel so much closer to my friends as I can hear their voice and see them - for free.

Likewise I spoke with my brother and dad today via Skype - which was nice - and I do so prefer hearing my family altogether. Feels more like home.

Oh yes - Guitar Hero. Yes, it comes out tomorrow and, despite how it looks, I did not schedule my day off from work so that I could be first in line to buy the game, lol. It was just extremely lucky on my part that this was the case but I really am not that game-insane. I do love games, don’t get me wrong, but nothing can make me want to get out of bed unless it’s something I really have to. Like go to the bathroom. Or work.

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King came out today and I heard in great detail how cool it it from my brother as I walked home - how he got the last copy in the store, how he was a Death Knight called Gunda (villian in Bengali) and how he’d get me that expansion pack since I bought him the first two. I’m super excited and have been thinking about what I’m going to call my Death Knight… how she’s going to fit into the story with my current characters (Azurelle and Amythia) and how I’m going to find time to play!

I was really pleased, actually, recently someone told me that reading my blog was interesting!! I have a fan!!

Aidan: I had fans
Me: What happened to them?
Aidan: It’s winter and I didn’t need the cold air anymore

In other news:

Archer is doing well. He can Hi-5 now and shake his tail at you when you tell him to ^_^ And he’s winning lots of cash in the agility contests. Turns out beagles are quite fast runners. One day, he’s going to be a real dog.

Anyway guys. I’m off. Take it easy.