Category Archives: London

Crunchy Toast

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I have had a really bad habit for years, basically because I’m not a morning person at all. I tend to be a night owl just like my dad was, my system starts to wake up at 19.00 in the evening instead of 07.00 in the morning. Countless nights I ended up working on [web design/Flash] projects and not being able to stop, driven by a perfectionist nature and eager to learn the ropes whenever it was software related or web design related… Long nights of spending time on configuring a script, adjusting it so it would work and do what I wanted it to do.

Or like the other day when my ISP decided to upgrade their Linux servers and PHP over the weekend and my blog stopped working the next day. I had no front-end blog and no back-end user interface. Reading into the problem, I found an excellent article about installing MT 4.0 on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, which gave me a clue to what to look for in solving the problem. It turned out to be a security breach, one that I’ve created myself installing MT 4.0 the same way I’ve installed all the previous version. Permissions that used to be fine before were no longer working with the latest Linux version and causing problems so I had to change folders around and check permission on cgi scripts etc.

My ISP couldn’t solve my problem, because they don’t have Movable Type know-how so I was forced to solve it myself staying up half the night reading into things and running installation tests, even software upgrades. But I fixed it and I so swear by my own elimination theory based on trial and error because no matter how bad, I always seem to solve the problem: software-wise that is… I’m rather impatient and unlucky in solving problems in my personal life at times but that is just an extremely slow beta version of my elimination theory which I’m still debugging *hehe*…

So because I’m not a morning person I try to stay in bed as long as I possibly can. [I’ve exaggerated in the past but admitting that on here is still a bit embarrassing so I’d better not go into details for now, perhaps in a few years when I’m old enough to start thinking of writing an autobiography because the words ‘shame and shy’ are no longer part of my vocabulary…] And because I’m stretching out the process of getting up, to such an extend that I end up being in a rush, I have no time to eat because I literally have about ten minutes to get to work. So I skip breakfast… Yes bad… I know… Very bad indeed!

But hold your horses: I was about to say that I’ve changed my ways slightly ever since I ended up in hospital… After years of eating hardly any bread, I now have a ‘typical English way’ of celebrating my morning matters, by having two slices of the finest crunchy and crispy toast that I can manage to fix, during my morning half-awake-very-much-resting state. Since I do not like soggy or soft toast it is still quite a challenge because it takes three times three long minutes of toasting the bread and letting it cool off before it gets to the crunchy phase which basically means that these days I cannot allow myself to linger anymore, only over the weekend.

And guess what I did today… Wrong…

I got up at 07.00 *hehe*

8-)

My toast this morning. Not my toaster, I’ve got a 50’s model: muuuuuch nicer!

Thursday Thoughts

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Life is still busy but good lately and I have one of those days today where I feel I have all the energy in the world to get things done that I need to have done. My appointment with the dentist went well, although I still think it’s a bit expensive but I’m not complaining and I don’t really understand the system here; more about that in another post. It’s done and I can smile again without being aware of something that shouldn’t be there. I’ve finished the web portfolio and since I’m a terrible perfectionist I had to do things right. So what I did was: ‘De puntjes op de ‘i’ zetten‘ another Dutch saying that literally translates to ‘Put the dots on the ‘i’…‘ which means, ‘Dot the i’s and cross the t’s‘. I’m happy with the result.

:-)

Last night I went to one of the local pubs where I met up with my Irish neighbour Neil and some of his friends, a couple from Australia, another neighbour and a friend of a friend of Neil. Neil bought a house down the road and moved out of the ground floor apartment two days ago. I ran into him that day when I came back from the dentist and we ended up having coffee and a chat. He invited me to join him and his friends to see someone perform at the pub. I had no idea who it was, nor did Neil and what he told me turned out to be wrong *LOL*. There were a couple of live bands playing at the pub yesterday and the main gig was Peter Case. He seems to be famous and has worked and recorded with famous people like John Hiatt and Ry Cooder.

It was a fun night out but I was surprised that someone like Peter Case would perform at my local pub of all places. I mean there are so many other venues out there, especially in London, where he could earn way more money. I think what he did is brilliant! You see, I didn’t have to pay an entrance fee and he performed for an hour and a half, that is quite rare these days! A gig is at least £30,-… There was a bowl near the door where people could put some money in for the artist, if they enjoyed the evening. You should’ve seen how much was in there! There was a crowd and it was nice to see people of all ages and walks of life… I have respect for artists like him who perform at pubs and don’t have a celeb attitude where it’s all about the money in most cases. And because of that I bought his CD to show my appreciation.

Tonight I’m invited to Neil’s housewarming party so I’ll have another fun night out. He bought a nice little house a bit further down the road, something I can only dream of for now until I have a steady income. One day soon… I’m allowed to have dreams aren’t I? *hehe* Talking about dreams, I got a really sweet email in from one of my readers and she doesn’t realise this because she doesn’t know, but she reminded me of another dream I have *thank you for reminding me!*. I must see the Northern Lights some day and I so envy people who live up north of Norway, Sweden or Finland because they have the opportunity to see this natural phenomenon more often than I do. I could go to Scotland but chances are rare. I think once I’m out of this mess I’m gonna treat myself to go and see this wonder of nature!

© Norbert Rosing, National Geographic

I’m off now: gonna reply to some more emails, build a website for a rock climber in Scotland, leave some comments for neglected fellow bloggers and then shoot off to a party… Am I hyper? Nah…

:P