It might not be in the holiday spirit, but we want to know anyway: What's the best present you received this year?
My 9 year old niece gave me a present this year - and made me promise not to open it. All I knew was it was something she'd bought from the local school fair.
In the meantime, we'd forgotten to buy crackers for our Christmas meal (just the two of us) and were wishing we hadn't.
When we opened the present, it was a Christmas decoration to put on our tree and one solitary cracker. So that was the best thing I received this year.
See you in 2010!
White lights or colored lights? Blinking or non-blinking? Bonus points if you show us a photo of the lights you used to decorate for the holidays.
I'd just settle for ones that work. I've actually settled for ones that don't though.
What's your favorite holiday memory?
As in the Christmas holidays? For me, three years ago when I finally took the decision not to spend another Christmas with my parents. I chose because they look after two of my nieces - the two born to my crazy oldest sister who I don't wish to ever see again. It's the one day a year we're guaranteed to see her otherwise. Neither of my other sisters goes now for the same reason. It's also lovely to be freed of sitting around doing bugger all after the delightful frenzy of opening presents - often descending into watching the Eastenders schmaltzy Christmas special, not even playing board games. Literally doing nothing but break for huge amounts of food during the day.
Now we measure our christmases not by much - by eating, opening presents, and watching things on TV (including Dr Who!) but we do so on our own terms. Eating filet mignon this year with what's to be a lovely gravy and lots of other things. Enjoying eachother's company and not feeling forced to spend a day doing bugger all on someone else's terms whilst with someone we've got no interest in seeing being there.
My mum takes it surprisingly well. And I do go down very often throughout the year other than this.
Favourite holiday-holiday memory...: Probably anything concerning Cape Town. Walking on 'our' beach (possibly the night the sea was all churned up and stormy and when the baby seal found itself parked on the shore (it lived)). or climbing Table Mountain. or walking around Cape Point (not the time we were harassed by baboons!).
Say what you like, but I'm not picking the canal boat holiday with my mother in law.
Some more pics as promised. They were all taken with my phone as my basic requirement for a phone is that it should be a movie-quality camera first, scanner, laser gun, computer and possibly coffee maker second and a phone third or even 93rd, but obviously quality of these pics is sometimes low given the low tech threshold of Terrans.
1. A beach at Cape Point Nature reserve
2. The airport at Palaborwa. Yup. That is the WHOLE airport. It reminded me of the airport in Gaborone (Botswana) 20 years ago (or even Tirana in Albania a few years ago) except it was bigger, cleaner and way more functional. The plane was tiny, only two seats on one side and one seat on the other side of the isle and the passengers had to be spaced out evenly in it to balance it. Total capacity was 32 people including pilots and crew.
3. A giraffe
4. A not so clear pic of a wildeebeest running
1. Buffalo
2. Zebra
3. Frog. Only little but surprisingly loud. It made more noise than the Hippos.
4. Old male Elephant with Musk, waving it's ears at us in a rather pissed off fashion. Luckily the guide was a cool guy and didn't get freaked and stayed there with the car so we could get nice pics. Redhead Girl spotted it and we would have missed it if it wasn't for her. It's amazing how a 5 ton animal can basically hide behind the equivalent of a shrub at 20 metres. See later pics for proof...
1. Elephant hiding behind the equivalent of a bush lamp-post
2. And now you see him...
3. If you look carefully you should see the "tear" that shows he's in musk making him irritable, and testosterone fuelled, meaning, more likely to make him want to stomp dumb tourists bugging him, but he liked us I guess.
4. Inside the plane, pic taken by me holding my arm out. The other side of the isle was a single seat.
So that should complete the pics of animals section for ya.
The trip was basically all good and I even got to see and talk with my father again after 7 years. He's still physically fit and doing well, except I think he thinks in his 60s he should be "old" so has slowed down a bit, which is not all bad since he really needed to get better emotionally speaking. He seems calmer anyway and he's finally retired, which is good.
Hopefully he will think up of a nice hobby that doesn't involve shooting people or hunting criminals. He wrote an article for Magnum (an outdoor/hunting/wildlife magazine) and they liked it, so he might do more of that which I think would be nice for him as he certainly has a lot of funny, crazy, stories to tell and it saves me having to do it at some point.
Dad in the left one and Mom on the right one.
The only hitch was that on the way back the flight was cancelled which was badly unannounced so we wasted hours at the airport before finding out and had to come back the next day to fly home a day late in an almost empty 747 which meant we could stretch out taking up five seats to sleep a bit. Redhead Girl didn't bother, but I did as I never get to sleep on planes due to my height mostly.
Also I renewed my membership to the Mile High Club as Redhead Girl insisted she wanted to join this exclusive club... That's why I love her, she's just comic-book cool.
Yeah, I know. You were all waiting with baited breath for my return. The 1 comment I'll get from samjohn999 trying to sell me some real estate in Cambodia or take part in the very safe and secure online spreadbetting that has recently made many millionaires will be all the proof I need.
Yes. I do thank God for my adamantium self-esteem daily. So there.
ANYWAY...Lots happened over the last two months, which is why the long absence from my blog. But I make it up by reporting much funny things and some amazing pictures from my recent trip to see my family in Africa.
So...I am now able to tell you dear readers that I now NO LONGER WORK! That is, I am now no longer employed by anyone to do anything for them that I don't want to do. I will be writing books, finally getting my hypnosis work that I have been doing for 4 years more mainstream and training in and occassionally teaching (when my friend Uldis is not doing it) the System, that awesome, awesome, cool amazing "martial art" (but really oh sooo much more than just that) I have been doing for a while now.
Some of you that care can go see more on that at WWW.WAYOFSYSTEMA.COM where you will find a rather simple site (which badly needs a revamp but I have no time or skills to do it and am hoping one of the other Systema guys will improve it sometime before 2012....)
So yeah!! I am no longer a slave of the system. For a little while anyway. I have a little money saved up for a year at least so the plan is to make enough money to survive (or even you know, buy a few islands, I don't mind being stupidly, obscenely rich, it's ok with me...) doing only what I want to do out of my own wish to do it, as opposed to having to in order to do luxurious things like have running water and food to eat in a nice apartment.
Those of you now turning green with envy please note that you are as much in a position to be doing what I am doing (sweet, sweet nothing) as I am or was. If you REALLY want to do so, I cannot suggest strongly enough that you read Vadim Zeland's book Transurfing Reality (There are three books but the first two are really enough and the last two are only available in Russian for now). More than anything it has certainly helped to shape my view of reality in a way that is really malleable by me, the operator of it. Sounds too Matrix-ish for you? Too bad. That's how it works and you should watch more SF movies anyway, it's good for you!
I also moved home and thus pay a cheaper rent, though that at the moment is REALLY cheap as I have stopped paying it altogether since more than 2 months after we moved in I STILL have boiler and electrical problems of a pretty serious nature (not to mention several other issues not as serious but certainly not fun to deal with). Let's see how long it takes the Estate agents to wake up now. In the meantime I am going about fixing these things myself now and I will simply not pay rent until I have it ALL sorted and then I will deduct all the costs as well as my time for sorting it all out and only THEN start paying rent again.
Every possible reasonable option has honestly been tried before this and at the end of it I have just lost patience with the utter fucking scandalous incompetence, stupidity and fucktard, brain-damaged-like inability to get any kind of half-decent service done in apparently the whole of greater London from people who take chunks of money from you for supposedly providing such non-existent service.
I would list the incredibly long amount of retarded things I have been subjected to but I'll stick to a few highlights for your amusement:
- The leaky tap in the kitchen was supposedly visited by a plumber. It still leaks exactly the same as before so I asked if the next time the plumber can maybe also hold it and speak some comforting words to it as apparently just visiting it doesn't do the trick.
- Today the guy who supposedly sorted out the washing machine (but I haven't tried it yet so I seriously doubt he actually did anything successful on that appliance) suggested that the way to rectify the problem of the fridge door not staying closed was to "not put any bottles in the bottle holding part of the door". Actually since it's snowing in London I suppose really I should just throw all the stuff in the fridge on the balcony and hope for the best. Maybe even hope it snows enough to make an ice-box which will take us through the short summer like trappers of old in the Canadian wilderness. I somehow resisted the urge to ice-pick the "handy-man" and hang him from a hook off the balcony in case meat runs low in the harsh winter months.
- The boiler "knocking noise" and intermittent hot-cold water when showering is not due to any problem with our boiler. It's from another flat. Hyperdimensional physics must clearly be involved, but I guess it's a "need to know" thing because when I asked how in the name of anyone sane could an electrical problem in ANOTHER flat be affecting MY hot water supply I was not given an answer. Just repeated the same drivel above. I invited the estate agency's maintenance guy to come up here and see for himself. To be precise I told him to bring a towel because I would have pleasure in having him take a shower here to experience for himself the situation. I don't care if it sounded gay to him. At this point buggery is after all only about the 7th lowest item on the list of things I'd like to do to the whole of the "management" of the Estate agency and their employees responsible for them not fixing these issues over a period of 2-3 months.
So yeah...rent's gonna be real cheap around here for a while. I may have to live like a fur trapper of the 19th century but then again the Estate agency offices are literally just outside the apartment complex I live in, so if I ever run out of fresh meat I will just go ice-pick one of the proto-humans they employ and hang his/her carcass from my balcony for preservation purposes and good meat curing. They certainly don't seem to serve any other function so I assume they are a meat giving animal. Sort of like cows but stupider and less useful. And more full of shit which probably means they play havoc with the ozone layer.
In the meantime enjoy a picture of the view I have from my new office space I created inside the flat. That mild reflection is me and I am glad to say I actually have my PJ bottoms on...bonus!
After the hectic end of my work and move, Redhead Girl and I went on holiday for three weeks to South Africa, (Johannesburgh) though she also visited her oldest friend who now lives in Maputo and we also went to Cape Town and a resort bordering the Kruger National Park for a few days so we were actually in planes a whole bunch of times while there.
The trip was great and I also got to train with Vadim Dobrin who is a gentleman as well as being a deadly and funny guy. He was so cool he basically organised one class on a Saturday just for me with two of his top students (who are both younger, nicer people and better than me at Systema, but I feel I make up for it by being far more ornery, vicious and unpleasant than them in general life [which gives me immense satisfaction]* and knowing things about women and sex they will only discover if they become at least as debauched as I am and work hard at it for the next 50 years or so)**
Here's a few pics for you (and more later, including some of an Elephant in musk at about 15 metres from us):
They are (from left to right):
1. Redhead Girl silhoutted on Camps Bay beach
2. Me and my little brother after I just baptised him (with some sea-water, hence the crosses) "Aldo Libero" the first in my own sect of free people. Yes, I plan to have a religion named after me one day, it's all part of my plan to take over the world for my Martian brethren. This was at Yzerfontein where I have a couple of plots, one of which is now for sale for about R1,100,000.00 (roughly about £90,000) which considering it's about 200 metres from the Ocean and has guaranteed views and given the general prices in the area is actually a decent price, so if any of you want it, let me know. Broker fees would be on top of this.
3. Redhead girl looking sexy at Boulders, the Penguin colony, which she loved and where she took hundreds of pictures of the ridiculous and yet very cool penguins.
4. Redhead girl and me at Boulders again (Simon's Town).
Here is a couple more for you:
1. A Penguin suntanning. if you look you can see he has his eyes closed and little short feet propped up
2. Boulders beach. Exclusively for the use of Penguins so their small colony can be safe from human interference
3. Redhead girl at the Dias cross at Cape Point
4. My view for a lot of the time we were at the game resort
But since I know you're all waiting for the animal pics, here they are:
1. Ostriches at cape point. the males are black with white feathers and the females brown
2. Hippos at the golfing resort (I have never played golf, but the animals all over the range are cool)
3. Crock near the pond in the middle of the golf course. I had to get a little closer than you see Redhead Girl in the last pic as all these pics were taken with my camera phone, but he was sleeping so no problem really
4. Redhead Girl takin pic of the giant lizard
This post is becoming mammoth, so more pics of animals (including the Elephant one) in the next post after I eat dinner!
* Hey I get my pleasure where I can, don't judge.
** I'm not that old, it's just that there's lots of catching up to do for them in this area really. Way more than is healthy anyway.
What are you hoping to find under the tree this year?
A hunky man. This will only work if I don't get my way to get a real one that drops needles on him.
[Overheard]
- Hey! Lets make everything really messy!
Engage: Freakish Supersonic Mum Hearing
Activate: Fun Spoiling App
- NO!
- What? We didn't!
- Do not make everything messy please.
- Why?
- Because... just play nicely with your toys. Don't be little savages.
[Pause]
- Yeh Wilfie. Don't be such a sandwich.
Sitting on the sofa in the corner of a wonderfully chaotic 4th birthday party yesterday, my eyes scanned the room for my 5-minutely head count of children belonging to me.
One... hmm, where's the other one?
And bugger, the front door is open.
"Mr Splog! MR SPLOG??!"
Mr Splog can't hear me across the noise of 20 children on a chupa-chup treasure hunt.
"MR SPLOGGGGG!!!!??"
Nope. Can't hear me.
I spotted the teenage daughter of a friend.
"TARA?"
I waved my arms frantically, really quite worried about the open front door by this stage.
"TARA?? CAN YOU SEE WILFIE ANYWHERE?" I bellow across the room from my spot on the sofa.
Tara looks perplexed.
"WILFIE???" I squark, miming that I can't see him anywhere. "WILFIE?? CAN YOU SEE HIM??"
Tara points at me.
"NO, WILFIE! I CAN'T SEE HIM!"
Tara points at me again.
And I realise that the reason I can't see Wilfie is because he is lying on my lap, breastfeeding.
And of course, on some level I knew that because that was the reason I was sitting bellowing across the room, pinned to the sofa, instead of getting up to look for him.
What's your guilty television pleasure?
My television is innocent until proven otherwise.
I just wrote a paragraph about how rubbish I am at blogging, but it was so rubbish that I deleted it.
You'll thank me when you're older.
