Tough life day 5

Tough life day 5
Originally uploaded by sillewellyn.

Friday day

Really getting into the pool, beach scene now. I have my favourite chair, got the dance of the umbrella down so I can arrange to be in the shade all day. I am even on short sentence terms with the couple next to be on the chairs. Even got all resort-y and ordered a large bottle of water on ice delivered to my chair. It occurs to me that the biggest expense I will have occrued here is my water bill which will be massive. Anyway back to the lounger. Today I finished book three; magazine seven and even knocked off a few podcasts. Then in an act of desparation, I broke out the baby sweater I am trying to finish for a friend who had a baby in March. If I don't finish it soon the sweater will fit her teddy bear but not her. I could not get the curve right on the collar so I just kept ripping back then finally (EUREKA) it hit me how to do it and then it was smooth sailing until I ran out of yarn (drats!) back to books and magazines and laps in the pool.

Still no blackberry connection, in fact it now says "SOS" where the bars should be. I think that means that I will be able to make an emergency call not that I am in an emergency- will need to breakdown on hook up to internet at some point. but still operating under the it will go on without me assumption, as much as I hope it won't. Why is that?


Friday night

Still managed to have not burned myself to a crisp by the end of day 5. You really have to work to keep this level of pallor! Big Friday night here in the resort, I enjoyed the sea front again and had a glass of wine with dinner. I really never, never want to see another buffet when I'm done here.

Thursday afternoon

Met an American couple and their young son today. They are living in Cairo and come down to Sharm on weekend to get out of the city. It was nice chatting with them both and watching their 4-year old son splash around. I realised that other than waiters and the concierge I hadn't had a long conversation since lunch on Tuesday, oddly for someone as chatty as I am I really didn't miss the conversation. I suppose I might be finally relaxing. Now the days are going by too fast; when, on Monday, I was feeling a bit trapped. Like most things, getting to the halfway part takes some time and then it zips by on the downside.

Tough life day 4

Tough life day 4
Originally uploaded by sillewellyn.

Wednesday night

OK, I am officially tired of eating alone. The maitre d' lady now says, "Only one?" in a perky voice now. Yes, I answer, no luck yet finding a dinner partner. After my fifth meal eating alone--I mercifully had lunch with two Mancunians yesterday--I have discovered all sorts of interesting things. I think it would be worse to be eating in one of those painful couples who don't seem to have anything to say to each other. It just looks so bleak. Eating by yourself can be kind of fun. A) you get to eat what ever you want, b) you always get the smarmiest waiters and c) you can read a book and it's not rude.

So I'm over the eating alone thing but I may not be able to take another buffet. I am starting to appreciate that the tactic for a buffet is to avoid all meat and go for salads as they don't really go stiff on you as they sit out. Soups are also good. Fruit salad is another winner. Let me tell you in Egypt the coffee is good so I recommend that.

Tonight after dinner I went for a walk to the beach — well really the ocean front. It's not so much a beach as a rocky outcropping. Still very hot, had a nice little sit down on a racking chair perched above the sea. A bit like sitting in a hairdryer, very dry hot wind rushing around you but with the sounds of the waves lapping at the shore. Didn't smell like the sea, no screaming seagulls, no strange sea life on the shore. Sort of like a big pool really. I think I may need to arrange for a snorkel to get up closer to the actual water.

Ack, no connectivity on the blackberry do I worry or not? I decide that the world will go on without me.

Tough life day 3

tough life day 3
Originally uploaded by sillewellyn.

Tuesday afternoon

OK spent the full day out today from about 11 - 5 by the pool. I was so covered up in sunscreen that I barely knocked the blue off my pale legs. Good thing. My face is getting a nice glow. Its hotter than hell out there, if you are in the sun. I can't decide if its this hot in Florida. I'm not really the resort type and never went to one in Florida so I'm comparing apples to oranges. It certainly drier here than Florida, I keep thinking of Yost saying that in Tampa, "It's Africa hot" this year. So now technically I am in Africa so I should be able to tell. I'm told the weather forecast for tomorrow every night- for the last 3 nights it's been listed as high of 39C and low of 29C with the ocean temp of 28.2C on Tuesday and 28.5C on Wednesday (suspiciously accurate those sea measurements). Now if I could just get to the internet I could tell you what that was in F - which is the only way I really know how to compare.

Checked my blackberry today and had a few text messages with friends around the world. Had felt slightly guilty that I hadn't checked before but there is no reception in my room, only by the pool. Strange. I tell everyone I will check back in on Thursday.

Day Two: the good life?

Monday day

Today I walk around the resort. Get my bearings and check out multiple pools. Lots of helpful folks giving you towels and saying "my pleasure." Sort of worried about how I am going to spend six days in this place without going mad. Guess I'm glad I brought all these books and magazines.

Travels with other people

Stream of consciusness Blogging while on holiday

Sunday
Funny thing about airports is that I usually encounter them as a professional. By that I mean, I am in a business suit and getting ready to go somewhere for work. When I travel for holidays, it always feels weird -- especially after the last five years in which I have done some serious planing about. So today I am headed to Egypt for a package holiday. This means that I am at the airport on a Sunday afternoon, getting onto a flight from Gatwick South Terminal; seems to be package tour hell. I am surrounded by families in all states of happiness and misery. Children crying, laughing, screaming, squatting by huge piles of luggage concentrating on a video game, staring blankly into space while the MP3 pounds in their ears. How you parents do this is beyond me as cute as children are they grow up into surely teens who seem like they are walking around with a huge cloud hanging over their head. I'll have to ask Mum and Dada if we three were like that, if so let me just thank them now because I would have been tempted to abandon myself (if I had behaved that way. Luckily I don's remember it.)

So we finally get called to the plane. I am flying with a company called Viking Air; never heard of it. I won't bore you with the check in details, but lets just say it wasn't BA standards — and they aren't that high. It involved several desks, more money and three attempts. I felt annoyed and I hope those behind me where going to be patient. The family in front of me had about 15 members, I cannot imagine travelling like that.

Anyway, once on the plane we take off and it turns out it's a Canadian flagged plane so all announcements must be in English and French; which was kind of annoying the fact that we are headed to Egypt from London meant Arabic might have been a better second language choice.

The other interesting thing about flying a charter flight is the passenger participation. First one baby starts to cry and everyone cranes their necks to see, then after about five minutes baby 1 starts to calm down and baby 2 starts up and soon they are duelling wails going on with full other-passenger harumphing as back up. We finally start taxiing, passengers then burst out with an excited clap — "yay! We are underway!" When we take off there is a large exhalation of collected breath; then as we bank there is a "whooo" noise from most passengers. All I can think is that this is going to be a long long flight if there's going to be a passenger soundtrack. Basically it settles down for the 4 hour flight; except for the mandatory applause when the pilot sets the plane down with a "Welcome to Africa" notification' which causes a ripple of consternation through the e passengers — "I thought we were going to Egypt."

I get to the Sharm el-Sheikh airport at about 10:30, I'm not leaving the resort so I don't need a visa. I just need to pick up my bag fill out a landing form, fill out another form in case we all come down with swine flu. Then try and find my ride.

Finding my ride is a bit trickier than I had expected. Eventually a man tells me to go to the white Range Rover. I have flashes of white slavery and then look around me. If you were going to recruit for a brothel you wouldn't pick me out; you would pick out one of the 20 year olds who are all wearing next to nothing. So I climb in the White Range Rover and set off.

It strikes me as I am driven through the blasting hot night that many of the places I've been in the past couple of years were all designed by the same folks. They all have HUGE roads — well over the required capacity. They tend to be divided highways (dual carriage ways for my Brit readers) with U-turns only available every so often. Barely any sidewalks (pavements) and no shade if you were so foolish as to walk. So clearly all these places were planned by traffic engineers who created them so that folks could drive. I was weirdly reminded of the roman roads in Britain which are dead straight. I have seen the following roads similar - Abu Dhabi and Dubai (dead straight massive and completely full); Bucharest and Tripoli (not as well maintained and clearly designed by the same guys who did Moscow, Warsaw and parts of the Czech Republic). For comparison I've also driven or been driven in Florida, California, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, London, Edinburgh, Cardiff, York, Bristol, the Yorkshire Dales, Devon, Cornwall, Penzance and other bits of the South west of England. Lots of different roads. The little ones are best.

Summertime and the living is easy

Its July 16; 14 days past the longest day of the year here in sunny England. It is almost exactly halfway through the year of 2009. I thought it would be a good time to start back to posting on my blog. Sounds like I had planned this when actually, its the first day of my summer holiday, so I have the time!

What a year it has been. I'm still finding it hard to believe that I had my gallbladder out in March, my parents came to help me recover through Easter and now its already July. If I didn't have the scars to prove that I had someone digging around in my gut, I wouldn't believe it.

Workwise it has been a tough year, economies tanking, clients not wanting to pay or taking long to pay, there just not being a lot of work to go around. Here in the UK, the design field has been hit really hard in this downturn. We have been luckier than most but its grim out there. I remember in Atlanta in 1991 the rumour was that 50% of architects were out of work at at the height of that recession. Here the statistics are equally grim - with massive increases of 861% for architects signing up as unemployed! Probably doesn't help that last year may have been the most frenzied year I had ever seen in the fight for urban designers and architects. Planning also continues to be slow and the Landscape Institute (body for LAs here in UK) is having to reorganise itself.

Outside the industry things are pretty tough. Unemployment in UK is reaching above 2.5 million. I hear from friends in the States that things are also down there - I think we are all just worrying about another shoe dropping or are we headed up, out the other side?

You gotta love cricket

CIMG1112
Originally uploaded by sillewellyn.

Sunny Green, Cava, old, new, traditional, contemporary...beautiful

Nice Day for it

Picked up a sweater I put down in disgust about eight months ago. Its called "where's the opaque?" from Sally Melville's book The Knitting Experience: The Knit Stitch. This is a total beginners pattern which is why I'm disgusted. I started it at the beach last May with Jen and LLG. Its actually for LLG and she and Jen are meeting up in Washington DC this may instead of the beach - credit crunch stay-vacation at a friends house. I'm too cheap to fly over.

Anyway, LLG's sweater will not be finished because I cannot get the arms right they are too short and flare our to quickly from the wrist. they look silly, so I'll rip them out and start again on both sleeves. Its a good day for it because its supposed to rain.

May Bank Holiday

Now I'm just reveling in the heat and hot water. New boiler means FLAGRANT hot water abuse and the heat all the way up - sure its a nice day and you don't need heat - but I have heat and therefore I will abuse it.

Yay!

Sunday

OK two days into my attitude adjustment and this morning I was only partially adjusted. but it looks like a beautiful day and its before 10 am and I've almost finsihed with teh laundry at the laundry in the village so things are starting to look up. After two weeks with out heat or hot water; the new boiler is great. lovely heat no weird kettling noises and all the hot water U can make. starting to feel less crabby.

Had a visitor this week, Dr. Hand. She was in town to attend a hand surgeon's meeting. I think she enjoyed her London stay, especiallyas she got to visit the Royal College of Surgeons Museum. Oddly I had been there last year when another friend visited - she was not a surgeon just some one who liked odd Museums. There are lots of those in London.

Anyway, Dr. Hand rolled out this morning around 9:30 and Ben and Michelle should arrive this afternoon. Ben is celebrating his 50th Birthday with a surprise visit to Oxford, where his Dad did a sabbatical in the 1970s. Apparently May Day (his birthday) is celebrated quite lavishly in Oxford. So after five days in Oxfordshire, they are headed to Hampstead for a day before their return flight to ATL.

In other news I now have Skype - so all readers should get skype and lets get in touch.

bad bad bad week

I think i might just be permanently crabby these days. perhaps its to be expected but i am dis-satisfied with everything. work is dragging - Terrible economy is not helping; my boiler has failed and has just been replaced; obvisouly there's the surgery to recover from. crabby crabby crabby.

Will spend the next three days over the May Bank holiday weekend working on an attitude adjustment.

day two back at work

The problem with going back to work after surgery is the fact that you are used to sleeping (a lot) and its frowned upon at your desk. Its especially bad when you are the boss. Getting caught drooling on myself at my desk is not good for my reputation as a hard driving bad-a**. Consequently for this first week back I am taking off by 4pm to get home for a nap. So far, two days down and I left at 3 and 4, wanna bet I dont get out before 6 on Thursday - maybe I'll just go in late...

Rambling

Before I had a portion of my intestinal system removed, three weeks ago, I said I would be blogging in receovery because I would have time on my hands. Two weeks morphed into three weeks, may parents came to visit and as fate would haven;t I didn't write one blog entry, even I am getting bored now with reading about how rubbish I am for not posting - so NO MORE. I wont mention it again. I'll just write when I feel like it.

So parents came three days after my gall bladder was removed. A very fun time was had by all and if the nifty device I bought to down load pictures off my camera had worked I would be illustrating this post - but no I am technologically challenged again.

However, I did get some great help from the 'rents while they were in situ chez Sian. French doors got draught excluded, bathroom fans got reconnected, my new printer was installed and many a gin and tonic was quaffed. In fact, I now find that I have NO MORE GIN. Dad left after a week and Mom stayed on for another week plus; that last night she was here we were reduced to vodka tonics due to lack of gin. Sad but true; I forgot how much I liked vodka tonics.

We also got to do some serious tourist stuff (in between my naps! seriously who knew that surgery knocked you on your a** so badly) we walked through Regents Park up to view the city from Primrose Hill; went to the V+A to see silver and fashion; checked out the new Henry the VIII installation at the Tower of London; walked through Hampstead Heath to Parliament Hill (again for the view); ate and drank at the Holly Bush pub (another view); bought expensive chocolate and drank flights of wine at Fortnum + Mason. Really enjoyed that last week off.

Speaking of Fortnum and Mason - my peeps in Atlanta sent me a lovely basket of F+M goodies. Really great get well gift - lovely cheeses, pork pies, beer, wine, mustard and more. We ate from that for more than a few meals - thanks, Atlanta friends!

Loo of the Year

How can you top this? This is a sign in the park across the street from Lord's Cricket Ground at the south end of St. Johns Wood. ONly in London would they have a Loo of the Year competition. Cannot tell what year by the way.

Very delayed

well I think I should just assume that I am not going to post in the winter. That way once spring comes along I can post and feel good and not shamed into the posting world.

This winter was weird, I think (despite my endless complaining) I got used to the dark dank days of winter in the UK. I did have a good trip to SF in February and of course it was sunny and lovely as was the trip to Florida in January. After writing all that I realised that I can't really complain as I spent at least three weeks AWAY from London and the winter weather.

Meanwhile I had some odder issues, which have now been diagnosed as gall stones. After some exciting moments involving the Accident and Emergency room at the Royal Free, I find I need to have the gall bladder removed. All of which means that I will have loads of time over the next couple of weeks to post and catch up with everyone.

So sorry for the long delay and I hope to be a posting fiend in recovery.

alternative transport

Lots of glorious pictures on London in the snow but I liked this one from a real cyclist. and not just because he was blogging about our Waterloo Competition entry. Lots of friends here in London cycle as their primary mode of transportation. Its truly amazing to watch them suit up and go out on cold, rainy, and/or dark mornings or evenings and race through the traffic. I'm slightly scared to cross the roads and thy bravely wizz on. Oh well at least this one bike was still for the day.

sian

Epiphany in Tarpon Springs

Yesterday, Mum and I went to see the Epiphany Celebration at Tarpon Springs in Pinellas County, FL. It was a beautiful day and a relatively small crowd at 15,000. After the parade we snaked around to the far side of the bayou and wormed our way up into the crowd so that even I could see and take photos.

This photo is the moment when one of the divers retrieves the cross from the water were the priest has tossed it. You can read all about the celebration in the attached link. It was a great day for it, much better than the cold day it could have been. As you can see it was a gloriously sunny day.

Is it just me or are there a lot of guns here?

The Epiphany Celebration starts with a parade from the church to the bayou. The parade was bit bit haphazard; at one point we heard a guy on the phone to the color guard asking them, "why didn't you wait? You left the rest of the parade behind!"

The thing that I noticed was that every police, sheriff and all other security people were armed to the teeth. Only took two years in London for me to think its odd for parade marshals to be packing serious heat.

My Tampa Home

This is the Tampa house where I lived in high school. On New Year's Eve, My friend Nancy Yost (MFNY) and I drove by the house. As we were taking the picture a car drove into the driveway, we were busted. We staopped and chatted with the lady who bought the house from my parents in 2000. Pretty funny, because my old neighbors sold their house to their son, who now lives their and HE drove up while we were chatting. Apparently most people never move far from home.

The house looks much more bland since my family moved out!

Christmas in Florida

Christmas Day was unusually warm, in fact I thought I was going to die! I have become one of those people who can barely stand it when it goes above 75 F. However by the second week I was back to old Florida form, barely flinching when it got to 75 and trooping right through 80. Goodness knows what will happen when I visit in the summer in the future.

Anyway, visiting with the family was grand, Mum and Dad and sister Ceri were all in fine form. Had other visits with friends and lots of lounging around on the back deck. Even had a kayak trip - will figure out where those pictures are and get them posted. In the meantime I have added pictures from the Eastern European tour below.

Happy New Year to one and all, best of wishes for this coming year.