Exodus to London

Migrating birds are pretty smart and their annual migration is a beautiful natural phenomenon. Every single bird take flight twice a year, at exactly the same time, taking exactly the same route; North to South, then South to North. Paradoxically, people are the same as birds. When they flock, they flock all together, all at the same time.

I have been wanting, needing, to take a journey west which would put an end to an end. The last few weeks have been maniac, but tonight is the first night I would come close to booking that hotel and those trains.

Tonight, on Lastminute.com I found the best deal. £229/night for a 5 star hotel with a view to the bay. But, on the hotel’s website, I saw the same room on offer at £159 (though subject to availability) with breakfast, spa, cocktail, strawberry & chocolate thrown in. The cheapest way actually the trains, £47 return. Right, great, I will ring the hotel first thing in morning to confirm availability before booking the train tickets.

So, as I sit here sipping chamomile tea, I log in my email account and I see a blonde nomadic bird heading my way! It’s Allison, who lives in Morocco and she’s making her annual migration to UK to see her family in Cambridge. She wants to make a stop pit in Twickenham, on the same weekend that I had planned my trip west!

Bummer, I've already postponed my trip west 3 weeks ago when four olive birds, from Spain, announced that they are coming to London this weekend. Luckily, they’ve managed to book accommodation somewhere in Westminster, but I’m obliged to take them out for the day. It will be brunch in Chinatown! No surprise as to what’s on the menu, yes; you’ve guessed it, Dim bloody Sum! I’ve planned an itinerary which will include food, culture, glitz and more food. The last stop off would be Fortnum & Maison to have the quintessential English tea and cucumber sandwiches or cream scones at 5. Hopefully, being Spaniards, time will run loose, and we will miss tea altogether.

Alex and his fiancé are also threatening to come before Christmas (to see London’s Xmas lights). You know, I ought to build another shed in the garden, run electrical wire down and install a portable toilet with a neon sign that says…this way -> Leave a note that say, pick up the keys from my neighbours at number 26 and you will find the Wii, Sky TV, the complete Full Monty collection and a bottle of Chardonnay in the TV cabinet.

Jesus Christ! Much as I love having visitors, why it is that they all choose to come at the same time? It is if an angle came in their dreams and told them, that they have to go to London on that weekend!

So Lookatchooing will have to wait, sorry!

I wonder if anyone would put their business on hold for me? Funny, just 2 weeks ago, I classified myself as a mug. A mug, just like Ricky from East Enders.

Arhhhh!  just as I'm ending this post, I notice a missed called from Dean. He's wants to meet up on Saturday night! Great, so my Saturday agenda is as follows: Billingates Fish Market at 6am, Chinatown at 11.30am, Piccadilly till 6pm, Greenwich at 8pm. Bloody hell! Oh, did I mention breaksfast with Chris in Battersea at 9.30am on Sunday?  Get me out of here!!!!!!!

Outrageously Overcharged

In July 2007 the Office of Fair Trading brought a case representing 1.2 million people against seven banks and one building society to reclaim unauthorised overdraft fees, totalling £2bn, paid since 2001.

Today the Supreme Court ruled in favour of the Bankers Association, stating that “the OFT could not challenge overdraft charges because it does not have the power to decide whether unauthorised charges are fair”

This is a landmark victory for the high street banks.

Yesterday I received my monthly statement from Abbey National and saw that I had been charged 115.09€ for unauthorised overdrafts in five separate transactions. There were two £30 charges for transactions in supermarkets. One other transaction involved a payment to Boots chemist for a tooth brush which cost £3.59, but I was charged £17.85 by Abbey. In disbelieve, I telephoned the bank immediately and queried the charges. I was advised that is normal banking procedures. This was the conversation that followed:

“In which case, I would like to request that card payments will be automatically declined should there be insufficient funds in my account”

“This is not possible. The card payment system is such that when a payment is made, the system cannot know if you have insufficient fund in your account” the operator replied

“I’m sorry, but that’s not possible. In France and Spain, a card payment is automatically declined should there be insufficient funds, regardless of amount. Surely the UK has a similar system?”

“Sorry Ms Luu, but the card system in the UK cannot do that. However, since you are a new customer and as a good will gesture, we will refund £45.00 for this time”

I said thank you, then hung up

This is complete bullshit! If Spain or administratively chaotic France can have the system, then why can’t the UK? This is purely a is complot by UK’s bankers to earn more in obscure charges.

Now I understand why there are queues of upto 30 people waiting at ATM machines on high streets during busy times! They are avoiding shocking overdraft charges!

I hate to say this, but I agree with the Supreme Court’s decision. Clearly this was defeat foretold. Shoot the damn OFT lawyers who said that they would win. How could they think, for one second, that they or any consumer protection body had the power to dictate what financial institutions charges?

According to OFT reports, "even though 1.2 million claims the overdraft charges, there is a further 8 million people who have paid the charges and not claimed".

It’s nauseating to think that the tax payers have stumped up billions to keep the bankers’ jobs and not to mention pay their bonuses. It’s a real kick in the teeth.

Today’s judgement shouldn’t be taken as a financial hiccup. If a quarter of all account holders have been charged at least once every year for unauthorised overdrafts, then it’s not a matter for OFT. It should become a political issue. Central Office should implement a standardise rule, cap charges or introduce a card payment system similar to that of the continent. Though, today was a victory for the Banker’s Association, tomorrow will be victory for the people.

.

Virtual Lives- Unshakeable Past

Apparently I have 16 followers and I’m following 11 people/groups/organisations on Twitter. I didn’t even realise I had a Twitter account. But apparently I do.

So, who are the people following me? Friends, organisations I had contact with in the past, an admirer and my ex lawyer who I had deemed incompetent. Seeing my ex-lawyer on Twitter makes me guilty of all the horrible truths I had said. Perhaps I will write him an email to say………..err….not sure what……… but something nice! After all, his heart was in the right place; however he was totally shite as a lawyer. Second thought, perhaps, I shouldn’t write anything.

What’s apparent is that before the internet, it was too easy to severe contact. If you changed your phone number or address, unless there were mutual friends, there were no other contactable means. Thank god, as there are some people I’d rather not see or hear from. On the other hand, there are people who I wished I’d kept in contact with. I had emigrated abroad and moved homes 4 times in the past 11 years. My one and only black address book was lost during one of the moves. This was before emails were common so the contacts were lost forever.

However, cyber social networking has its drawbacks too. Cutting links is damn difficult these days. I had a close friend who went to extremes. Disillusioned and totally disappointed with the people in his life, he set sail and travelled the seven seas. He severed all contacts with family and friends. No one heard from him. He’d disappeared completely, until he was recently spotted browsing in a nautical fair. Does one really have to go to that extreme just to cut off?

As my friend, Sharon had put it: “In this life there are fuckers and takers”. These people tend to amass a great deal of ‘friends’ in all the network accounts possible: My Space, Twitter, Face book, MSN, SKYPE, Yahoo etc. Fortunately, I can’t think of anyone I know who could be labelled as a fucker. But, takers, yes, definitely quite a few. There’s a Spanish proverb which aptly sums it up: “Les das un dedo, tomaran el brazo!” (You give a finger, they will take the arm).

I had a friend who’s a taker (note the past tense). His woos and woes and his misfortunes got a lot of sympathy from women. He’d collected many of them from work, pubs, travels, friendship sites, dating sites and even sordid sexual sites. In his Face book account, women accounted for 89% of his friends. That’s a lot by any standard. When he was homeless, a female friend put him up in her home for three months. Shamelessly, after he had moved out, he said that he had blocked her on MSN because she just goes on and on. Ungrateful parasite.

Amassing friends from all walks of life in all sorts of places has its advantages. When the takers need something, they will call upon their ‘friends’. Like, when they decide to take a mini trip to another city, they will call upon friends who live in that particular city just to ensure they get a free meal, free drinks or even a free bed. Perhaps, if they play their cards right, they will get all three! They of course, offer nothing, but their charm.

On the other spectrum, a woman who has an overwhelming percentage of male friends on her Face book, may not necessarily take material things, but perhaps emotional. It may be, perhaps she just needs a man to fix the blocked sink or install an electrical apparatus or perhaps she’s insecure of herself and needs admiration from the opposite sex. Who knows?

Some people take offence to blocking or deleting friends from their internet accounts. I used to be like that. I never realised that you could block someone on MSN until last year! It was a prompt I’d never had a need for or even noticed. But now, I have absolutely no qualms in blocking & deleting these takers from my accounts. Not seeing their name every time I log on is actually quite NICE! However, since these takers are shameless and will one day contact you again! No doubt they will have allowed sufficient time to elapse so that the dust has settled and that your anger or disappointment will have turned into sorrow and forgiveness. They prey upon your innate goodness and will work on you until you’re ready to give again. Well, takers…advance warning…...don’t you dare call upon my inbox ever again

Air Lifted

The last of the boxes have been collected and will be delivered to my clients across Europe within the next 2 days. All the shipments were air shipped to ensure hasty delivery. All that remains on my desk is the pile of 18 digit tracking barcodes as receipts of shipments. I have informed all the clients that their shipment have been picked up, provided them with the tracking number and a direct DHL website link. That’s the last I expect to hear from them for the next three months. Should the shipments be delayed, damaged or worse scenario, go missing…..I don’t really want to know! They have the tracking number, it will be up to them to chase DHL in their respective country. Many of them haven’t paid me yet, but frankly, I don’t give a damn. I’m 99.9% confident that they will sell everything by the 24th December, so if they wish me to supply again, they’ll pay.

I want to scream a great whopping YIPPPPPPEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Today has been the first day I feel a sigh of relief in months. My shoulders freed of the cast iron weight it  burdened. To celebrate, I had a luxurious bubble bath at lunch time! A birthday present which had been sitting on the bathroom shelf collecting dust. The few grams of dirt that I had picked up in the last few days is all washed away. I feel fabulous, I feel 2 stones lighter. I bounced down Staines road to collect Maxine from school. The gusty wind lifted me into the air with every step I took.

Comparably, this is how someone, with a 9-5 Mon-Fri job, would feel on Friday afternoons. That’s every week! Wow, lucky bastards. Yes, but I have nothing to do for the next two and half months. Well, nothing stressful, just niceties like taking photos of the new collection, research about new trends, look online for decent lightings for the exhibition stand and if I’m feeling creative; bang out a few new designs. I may even give Clemente, my Filipino supplier, a call to see how his stomach surgery went and discuss the possibilities a distributorship for 2011. Oh, most importantly, there’s Christmas to plan! Tree, deco, presents, games, table settings and colour scheme. I think traditional  red and white with an abundance of holly would be fitting. A goose has been fluttering around in my mind since September. Lobster or king prawns for starters served with a tepid....errr not sure what...sauce, but will definitely include chives.Yummy!

Sublime Languages

Recent bombardments of words in varying forms of sarcasm, recitals, quotes, stanzas, assonances and verses, have worn me out.

It seems that those around me are either editing, copying writing, romanticising with verses, speaking in secret codes more surreal than that of Dan Brown’s De Vinci or they are simply squirting out ill-witted jibbery. Stop! Basta!

Example 1: Love Poem

Noon and the life of the deeply cool shadow
Whose day opens and folds the leaves of dark oak-wood swathes
Where I put us
Where I place us between the sun
By a certain kiss upon your boughs, the place where water meets and is sweeter than the drop of your kiss
between the soft noise of your sleep and of my dreams
It is sweet love tenderly embraced.
Some hath desired the sea
her vision of unlimited brine
The wind
The rising and stopping and throwing and colliding of each wave which is pursued in turn by the storm
grey and foamless
The tides and the groan where the front of the enormous was smoothly rushed forward toward your beauty and the oblivion of your inevitable surety
The line or insanity of the calmness where the lap of the thing upon which the hurricane dances and which is by us observed, is blown and stiffens as rigour
and perhaps in mortis.

Err….you’re suppose to woe the object of your love. Talk of tempest and death doesn’t mark a good beginning. Try again!

Example 2: A Twitter Message

“I love the photo of you in the green jumper smoking the cigarette looking thoughtful (slightly darkened room) most of all - your intelligence and reflectiveness apparent - and - somehow - it seems intimate, as if i've inadvertently strayed into your private domain whilst wondering around”

What green jumper? What the fuck are you talking about ?

Example 3: Facebook

I’d posted a comment in reponse to a gay friend’s photo post.

Ingo in the glades of southern Thailand

Jorge:

"Pues por todo un poco, desde luego la cara lo muestra bien claro... y el entorno es increíble.   Qué envidia me das en esa foto leche!!!!"

Van:

"No estoy mirando el entorno! Solamente la criatura!!!!"

Ingo:

"Jajajajaja, pues esto me viene muy bien, animos, jajajajaja es un rió en la jungla en el interior del sur de tailandia" 

Jorge:

"Algún día, si Dios quiere, lo veré...jajaja. Por cierto, a la criatura (como dice tu amiga)   también la veré algún día,  al menos eso espero. :)"

You idiot! You’re gay! And God wants it that way!

Example 4: An Old Friend

"I left the SAS to become a paediatric surgeon. I spent several years saving the lives of orphaned Romanian children. As part of my doctorate I discovered a natural substance which when combined with specialist techniques helped to relieve lower back problems in women and improve their skin tone. I sold this company to a multinational to found a charity devoted to helping Eastern European and Thai women at my very large house. I split my time between this and training to be an art therapist for bald eagles with low self-esteem. Recently I went to Alaska to learn how to breast feed baby seals in the ancient Inuit tradition."

Cutting sarcasm. Ouch that hurts!

Example 5: A Secret Admirer (response to my Candy blog)

“What is blog for? Self-confessionals? Vanity sites? Attention-seeking? 15 minutes of fame? A plea for recognition?”

Twat! You claim to be a Shakespearan actor! Do you read English?

It appears that everyone is communicating on different wave lengths, babbling about blurred subjects, as if the words had been dispersed whilst riding a merry-go-round in fairy land.

It’s hard enough trying to follow the day’s update from an excited eight year old daughter when she exits school. The tales are incoherent; subjects, time, persons and events diffused into a labyrinth of disconnecting sentences. Only an attentive ear and constant who? What? When? Why? can the mystery be resolved.

As much as I enjoy deciphering the language of children, when grown ups do this, it’s extremely baffling. Understanding the courtship rituals of the Great Crested Warbler would be a stroll in comparison.

All I can say is: Come haste with flowers and take me far from this madding crowd!

(Well, if you can’t beat them, join them!)

What About the Cows?

As Britain prepares to build ten new nuclear power stations “to combat the climate change and to ensure energy security for Britain in the decades ahead” I quote Ed Milliband, energy and climate secretary.

As the Copenhagen Climate Talks nears, all 197 members who had signed the Kyoto Agreement 1997, promised to reduce CO2 emission, one of the major contributing factors to global warming. Britain, of course, by announcing its plans for 10 new nuclear stations, will not doubt boast that it has and will do its part to reduce CO2 emission. Should Britain be an example for other state members? Is nuclear power the answer to resolving global warming problems?

Suddenly, cows came to my mind.

It was Antoine, a consultant for multinational food production companies, who had pointed out to me the roles of cows in global warming. Even though, I consider myself as a ‘Green Pioneer’ through interest and studies, discovering that the cow methane emission was a greater contributor to global warming than all the world's CO2 emitting industries combined,  left me flabbergasted. It was this talk with Antoine which affirmed that a mushroom farm was absolutely necessary.

What’s bizarre is that as I surfed through the Guardian’s website and typed in key words on search: Nuclear power, Copenhagen, Green gases…..the word cow or methane was never mentioned in any of the articles. When I  typed in Cow, methane, only two mediocre articles came up ‘Tesco Monitors Burping Cows to Measure Methane Emissions' 7/09/2009 and the other ‘Poo Power to the People’ 28/05/2009.

I wondered why this vital fact has never been mentioned in mainstream media.

On an alternative ‘green’ website, I found the following article:-

The whole world is obssessed with CO2.

The focus solely on CO2 is fuelled in part by misconceptions. It’s true that human activity produces vastly more CO2 than all other greenhouse gases put together. However, this does not mean it is responsible for most of the earth’s warming. Many other greenhouse gases trap heat far more powerfully than CO2, some of them tens of thousands of times more powerfully. When taking into account various gases’ global warming potential—defined as the amount of actual warming a gas will produce over the next one hundred years—it turns out that gases other than CO2 make up most of the global warming problem.

By far the most important non-CO2 greenhouse gas is methane, and the number one source of methane worldwide is animal agriculture.

Methane is responsible for nearly as much global warming as all other non-CO2 greenhouse gases put together. Methane is 21 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than CO2. While atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have risen by about 31% since pre-industrial times, methane concentrations have more than doubled. Whereas human sources of CO2 amount to just 3% of natural emissions, human sources produce one and a half times as much methane as all natural sources. In fact, the effect of our methane emissions may be compounded as methane-induced warming in turn stimulates microbial decay of organic matter in wetlands—the primary natural source of methane.

With methane emissions causing nearly half of the planet’s human-induced warming, methane reduction must be a priority. Methane is produced by a number of sources, including coal mining and landfills—but the number one source worldwide is animal agriculture. Animal agriculture produces more than 100 million tons of methane a year. And this source is on the rise: global meat consumption has increased fivefold in the past fifty years, and shows little sign of abating. About 85% of this methane is produced in the digestive processes of livestock, and while a single cow releases a relatively small amount of methane, the collective effect on the environment of the hundreds of millions of livestock animals worldwide is enormous. An additional 15% of animal agricultural methane emissions are released from the massive “lagoons” used to store untreated farm animal waste, and already a target of environmentalists’ for their role as the number one source of water pollution in the U.S.

The conclusion is simple: arguably the best way to reduce global warming in our lifetimes is to reduce or eliminate our consumption of animal products. Simply by going vegetarian (or, strictly speaking, vegan), , , we can eliminate one of the major sources of emissions of methane, the greenhouse gas responsible for almost half of the global warming impacting the planet today

The solution is quite obvious no? Reduce CO2 emissions by all means, but consider if there are better alternatives first. The final paragraph of the 'green wesbite' suggests that we should opt for vegetarianism or veganism. Hmmmmm....I don't think so. The right option would be to reduce consumption of animal products by offering suitable, tasty alternatives.  Plant protein foods  such as seitan & soya have never really made it onto the mass supermarket shelves. Sea weeds, seeds, legumes and even mushrooms are feasible options. Why not invest more money into developing viable alternatives?

Yet as we speak, India and China growing wealth craves for more meat. As we speak, the polar bear population dwindles as ice caps, their habitat, melt away. The race for time is on, well it has been on since Kyoto 1997, but until the central issues of animal agricultures and its alternatives are even mentioned, I fear that it's a race without a finishing line.

Poppies in July

Little poppies, little hell flames,
Do you do no harm?

You flicker. I cannot touch you.
I put my hands among the flames. Nothing burns

And it exhausts me to watch you
Flickering like that, wrinkly and clear red, like the skin of a mouth.

A mouth just bloodied.
Little bloody skirts!

There are fumes I cannot touch.
Where are your opiates, your nauseous capsules?

If I could bleed, or sleep! -
If my mouth could marry a hurt like that!

Or your liquors seep to me, in this glass capsule,
Dulling and stilling.

But colorless. Colorless.

Sam I Am

Saved from the filth and flea infested streets of Sadadell

My mother killed on the side tracks of the road

Our saviour took us to a place of higher planes

Tinky, my deranged sister, and I were taken to a home of an unsuspecting owner

She became our beloved guardian and friend

We lived in a Barcelona high rise, with a flea not in sight

For three long years we had watched the world go by from the faceless facade

Not once did we feel the rain nor the earth beneath our paws

My guardian fed me well and flourished me with much love

Yet my feline soul felt betrayed

My greatest triumph was a blue bottle, caught and devoured. Yuk!

But what choice did we have? Imprisoned within the four walls, flies were welcomed distraction and provided some abstraction

Off we went on a long journey by road and crossed the British Channel

To Twickenham we came, paradise of which, a cat like me, from the streets of Sabadell, can only dream

Trees to climb, fences to mount, window ledges to launch from, sheds to conceal my ambushes. What a warrior I am.

My prey has increased considerably in size; those flies which were once my day’s work have all but disappeared from sight

My new playmates, Moggy and Hamish, are full of fun until they steal my meal

I don’t care for there’s plenty for all

During the darkness of the night, foxes come and forage

They’re scared off me and so it’s okay

What more could a cat like me ask for?

Now I dream of a two legged plump wood pigeon

Now Sam, I, truly, Am