The Bear Minimum

It’s not all that long, but it’s not all that soon, either.

It has gotten to that time of the year where the holidays are well past, and you start to look forward to your vacation in the Summer. I think, dear reader, that being cooped up most of the day in a dim office can have that sort of effect on one’s psyche, where they spend their free time dreaming of warm days and fields to walk in and beaches to lay on. Then of course, once you get there, you remember why you don’t like flies and the smell of cow dung, and that sand inevitably gets everywhere. But that’s all part of the charm, isn’t it?

This year my wife and I want to have planned our vacation well in advance, and we want to try things we’ve not tried before. She suggested we go windsurfing, which sounded like a lot of fun, but not to be outdone, I suggested zorbing, which sounds like even more fun, though perhaps dizziness will be a slight issue. You do roll down a hill in a giant ball, after all. Much like those little hamster balls.

We then thought about toning it down somewhat, so she suggested wildlife watching, which would be very nice in the Summer, and I suggested Gorge Walking, which seems like an amazing activity to me. I love the variety of locales here in our fair Britain, and I am looking forward to stepping out this Summer and seeing some places I’ve never seen before, and doing some activities I’ve absolutely never done before!

I do hope that you too, dear reader, take the opportunity to do something out of the ordinary, positively extraordinary, this Summer like my wife and I are!

Well, I didn’t really, but that particular line from that particular song seemed apt considering my topic today.

Yes, it has happened. The earth has moved a 8 centimetres off it’s previous axis due to massive earthquake in Chile last week. It’s a very strange thing to contemplate, but those in the know over at NASA have calculated and said that yes indeed, that massive quake has altered how the earth sits on it’s axis ever so slightly, which has shortened the day by a tiny 1.26 microseconds.

There are some more obvious affects to the earth after this devastating quake, including the island of Santa Maria, just off the Chilean cost, having risen approximately 2 meters out of the ocean! I do find all of this fascinating on an intellectual level, however I’m also very, very aware of how those in Chile will be feeling right now. It feels like only a short while ago the world was rallying to aid Haiti, and now Chile is facing similarly grim times ahead. I do hope people are still in a giving mood, as both of these nations will not be able to recover quickly - or at all - without the aid of the rest of the world.

It does seem to me that the world is facing more and more extreme weather and geological events in these modern times. Oh I’ve no doubt that events with tremendous and terrible repercussions occurred in the past - the eruptions which buried Pompei and the palace at Knossos come to mind - but we seem to be getting these devastating seismic events more frequently in the past decade or so.

Perhaps, dear reader, I’m just getting old, and ruminating on such tragedies a little more. I do love this big blue world of ours, and hope she continues to safely ensconce all her children for yet a few more millennia.

It has been a very long hiatus, has it not?

Ah, what, you may ask, have I been doing in all this time!? In the past three and thirty weeks of drought that I have put you through? Well, it has been a trying time, in all honesty, but one that I am most happy to be past.

My most recent months have been filled with caring for a very sick ageing relative. An old great-aunt that I spent time with when I was growing up. She had a small property by the seaside, a perfect getaway for the intrepid youth looking to fill his Summer vacation with all sorts of activities, from hunting crabs and the like in rock pools to discovering badger dens in the nearby forest, it was a wondrous place! It’s a place that I love to share with my wife, we found time to walk in the snow-laden forest most days we were staying at my aunts cottage.

We were staying with her because, alas, age had taken it’s toll, and this favoured great-aunt had taken very, very ill. In her frailty she had been struck with pneumonia, and I and my wife have spent the better part of the Winter caring for her, and getting her well and truly healthy again. I am very happy to report that my great-aunt is well recovered, and fiercely putting her house to rights after the two of us ‘youngins’ had disordered her neat little cottage. We hadn’t actually made a mess in there, we’d just moved certain things to make it easier for us to stay there and trying to help her when she recovers. She’s an amazing cook and had a stock of huge pickling and jam jars in a top cupboard, and we moved all these sorts of things that we know she uses regularly uses to lower cupboards. She’s all mock irritated with us over it. It’s a fun game.

Oh yes they will. ‘They’ are my extended family, my aunt and uncle, to be specific. They will be arriving - or supposedly they will be - in the next few hours. These people don’t believe in punctuality, so I don’t know exactly when they will be arriving. They are even bringing with them a two-and-a-half year old that I don’t know, who is the child of the daughter of their long time friend. They are minding the child for the next two weeks. I am really not looking forward to having my home invaded, but it can’t be helped.

Unfortunately for me, they have something that I needed, something I had left at my mother’s house when I visited there last week. Instead of simply posting it to me, my aunt informed me that she would deliver it to my house, as they would be in my city this weekend anyway, to pick up said tyke.

Now, I do care for my family, but I feel extraordinarily awkward around them. They and I are on such different wave-lengths as to render conversation pointless to one or the other of us. If I talk to my aunt, she will happily natter on about things that interest her with nary a pause for breath. This can go on for quite a long time. She is one of those people who miraculously fills vast amounts of her time with seemingly useless tasks. She was once four hours late to my house because she was ‘laminating Yu Gi Oh’ cards for her nephew. The boy was under five, so had a record for destroying these cards, but liked them nonetheless. So my aunt, being the person she is, put me out, wasted hours of my time, so the boy could have the cards, and not be able to destroy them.

She is a very well meaning person, and if you told her that her chronic lateness was actually a form of arrogance, she would not believe you, and wouldn’t understand you should you care to explain the matter to her. My uncle, on the other hand, is almost mute. The man barely talks, ever, and should you try to engage him in conversation, you will, dear reader, be waiting a while.

He often takes so long to form a reply that my aunt, who more than makes up for his lack of verbosity, will answer for him. It makes for a stunningly awkward conversation. So here I sit, knowing that supposedly any minute she could call and tell me that she is on her way, but also knowing that, knowing her, she could be hours away. I heave a sigh now, dear reader, for the frustration I feel when dealing with these people. They are good people, but as I said, we are in very different mental landscapes, and I don’t care to try to adjust to fit into theirs, and I don’t believe they could understand mine.

For now I must be off, dear reader, in order to prepare my mind for the ensuing ordeal.

I had one of the unwanted calls last night. You know the ones, they come right as you sit down to partake of a nice supper. Yes, I had one of those last night.

I picked up the phone, and it was of course my telecoms company. Why did you choose to call now, Mr Phone Company Representative? Why would you be so inconsiderate as to call right at dinner time?

I had nary a chance to edge into the conversation, the young man on the other end of the line was off and running on his spiel. It was painfully obvious from the start that the young man was given the same speech to say to everyone, as there was far too much information packed into one-and-a-half minutes (the fellow spoke very quickly) and the greater portion of it bore no relevance to me whatsoever.

He was offering a deal if I purchased a set of telephones, or a set of cordless phones, which miraculously lead into yet more monologue, now on ‘great new rates’ on call logging services, whatever the point of that would be. By the time the young fellow launched into an offer of Panasonic KX phones I had really had enough. I had to stop him right there, partly due to the fact that I had little idea of what he was talking about, but more importantly, I detest such intrusions, especially at dinner time!

I told him that I understood he was doing his job, so asked if I could address his manager with my issues. He put a rather pompous woman on the phone, who had surprisingly bad phone etiquette, which made my complaining all the easier. I told her that the practice of calling people as they sit down to a well earned meal is heartily insensitive and rude, and that if they were going to call their customers in such a fashion, they should at the very least tailor the speech to the customer in question.

The rude lady did not take all that well to my complaint, but made a valiant effort to hide that fact. Were I not who I am, she most likely would have succeeded, but there is no fooling a scholar of the human condition! It took quite some time after that phone call for my appetite to return, but once it did, I thoroughly enjoyed my well prepared dinner.

I had the good fortune today to spend some time at my local library, and was pleasantly surprised by my fellow man whilst I was there! You see, my bookshelves have been becoming more over-packed than usual, so today I took myself off to my local carpenter to have two new bookshelves made. The gentleman in question is familiar with myself and my needs, so in short order he was setting off towards my home with all the necessary materials to create yet another in-set bookshelf in my ever expanding study.

As I was off work today, this left me with some free time, for though I am quite fond of my bookshelves, I am not fond of the eruption of noise that precedes ones creation. So I took myself off to my local library to while away some time. I found a thoroughly engrossing book, and sat down at one of the tables to look it over more closely. I also happened to have picked up a number of other volumes, on all sorts of subjects.

As I sat there, in the peaceful quietude that only a library can offer, the very next chair to mine was taken by a rather large, hirsute, heavyset fellow. Please keep in mind, dear reader, that many of the tables in the immediate area were indeed free, but low and behold, this fellow had made the decision to sit right next to me. I sat there, continuing to peruse my book, when he said to me, in a surprisingly polite manner, that he didn’t mean to intrude, but would I mind letting him look over one of the books in my stack. The fellows odour was intruding far more than this simple request, so I politely granted him the book, saying I thought it looked good, but I was more than occupied with the one I was reading.

One couldn’t help but notice the rather unusual assortment of books the fellow had accumulated in front of him. There were a few texts regarding early steam engines, as well as some concerning militaria, and then there was also a large book on kittens, and two books on knitting. He caught me looking at the books before him, and smiled, saying ‘Me Misses likes to knit’. I thought it rather charming that the fellow liked cats, and in spite of his rather pungent scent, I came to like the fellow sitting beside me silently reading. Well, almost silently, as he did have the heavy breathing of a hippopotamus not long finished a foot-race. Once again, dear reader, I am reminded of the old adage, ‘You can’t judge a book by it’s cover‘.

I feel the need today to espouse on something that has made me feel ‘those years’. Bear with me, if you will, whilst I take you on a journey through my eyes, where you come face to face with the grim spectre of… technology.

You see, I have had the same television for longer than I care to remember. It has gotten very old, and very shabby. It actually had a wooden case, not a faux wood façade, no, this TV was actually a huge wooden box. A couple of days ago, one of the internal components must have stopped working, for everything on the screen turned green. I promptly called a repairman, who was very un-prompt in arriving at the time he gave me, and then took one look at my television and guffawed in quite an undignified manner.

The rude repairman informed me that my television was so old, that neither would he be able to repair it, as the parts were no longer manufactured, and neither would it be worth repairing should I happen to find the necessary parts. He told me I had best go and buy a new television, or at the very least, one made in the past two decades. He then threw all these words at me, of which I understood perhaps a quarter. LCD television, I got that one, then he said something about Eurovox which I know nothing about. I am not even sure what it is… I do know Google, though, so let me check that… Ah hah! Eurovox is a set top box for digital television. He also mentioned Dreambox, which I am guessing is the same thing… let me check that… Yes, Dreambox is much the same.

When looking around for all that information I saw the word ’satellite’ mentioned, and that is rather intimidating. I don’t know how I would go with one of those, I think I would need help with a satellite dish and all its accoutrements, but I am sure there are plenty of professionals out there who could set the whole thing up for me. I miss my old television. After a little more digging around, I have found that there are free to air digital channels, and ones that I need to pay for. Some of those pay television channels are rather enticing, I must say. I have always enjoyed programmes from the Discovery Channel, as well as travel shows. That one with Michael Palin is always good, too. I like his sense of humour, as well as how up close and personal the shows seem. Where I am located, and were I to get a new television that actually worked, I could get some of these pay-tv digital channels, apparently from either Sky - which seems to be a fairly well known pay-tv company, in spite of my complete lack of knowledge regarding it, and Virgin Media - which is one that I have actually hear of.

Goodness me, this all seems a bit much. I need to rest now, dear reader, and ponder my options.

Today I am going to write of Mr Michael Jackson, and the media frenzy that has occurred since his passing. It is sad to me, that there has been such a staunch out-poring of love and respect for Michael, now that he isn’t here to witness it. One hopes that those who believe he is nonetheless able to see what effect his passing has had on the world, are right.

There have been two autopsies so far, but still Joe Jackson is unsatisfied and has requested a third. With no evidence to substantiate his claim, he has nonetheless been going from one media group to another, claiming that Michael was deliberately poisoned. My personal interpretation of Joe’s behaviour is that he is just trying to remain in the spot-light for as long as he can, shamelessly promoting his new record label. Multiple times in the past week, when Joe was asked about his son, he has not said much on Michael, no, instead he has turned the talk to his ‘great news’, which is of course that he has a new record label. I think, dear readers, that this man is most assuredly a schmuck!

Along with that particular issue, there has also been a great deal of media coverage on Jackson’s will, as he has made his mother executor of his estate and the legal guardian of this three children. Joe Jackson, thankfully, has been entirely omitted from the will. As has Jackson’s ex-wife, Debbie Rowe, who has declared that she will be filing for custody of the two children she bore Jackson. Of course, there is also the ongoing saga that is the memorial service, and all the media rigmarole that has surrounded it. Thankfully all seemed to go off without too much trouble.

My personal favourite from the rumour mill has to be the ’sighting’ of Jackson’s ghost at the Neverland Ranch, on an interview with Larry King on CNN, along with the barrage of fake celebrity death reports that this event has, for one reason or another, sparked. As for the ghost, it seems pretty clear to me that it is a shadow of a person on a balcony on the floor above that caused that ‘apparition’ to be seen, and the rumours of celebrity deaths just seems odd.

Let me suggest that you take up your tea cup (or whiskey flask, if such is your wont), put your feet up (if room allows), and relax - while I take you upon a little sojourn which shall serve as a humble introduction to myself and my blog.

This blog, my canvas, is a place for me to reflect upon the various preoccupations that bless (and plague) my waking life - from my work (as a therapist), and my hobbies (too numerous to bracket), to the charming (yet vexing) personalities and events that fill up my life. It may become a tad random at times, dear reader, but it’s my hope that you can keep up with the meanderings of my mind, and the ramblings of my writing, and garner yet some small parcel from the foibles of my convoluted life.

Expect to hear from me on the state of the government, the economy, and on commerce! Expect me to ramble (perhaps incessantly) on popular culture, television, and film! Do not be shocked, dear reader, should I delve into the murky (or at least, nerdy) waters of gaming - and, indeed, the industry thereof. Be not too taken aback, either, should I pontificate on the vexations of both family and clients. On all of these topics (and more) I shall no doubt write with some passion, as I struggle to make sense of the whirling colours of my (often quite mad) little world. I pray you enjoy the trip!

For now, I’m afraid, I must head back out into the trenches of this charming maelstrom I call life. I have a meeting with a roguish old client of mine. A kindly fellow. Kindly, yes, but also quite mad, I’m sorry to say. He was once wholly convinced that a skunk was caught in the ceiling of our practice. I assured him that it was not our routine to use odorous woodland creatures in such an uncivilized fashion, but he would not be told. Stubborn fellow. Used to sell flowers.

Ahem.

As you ponder that particular nugget of wisdom, dear reader, I must (for the nonce) bid you good day. I’m sad to leave you so soon, but rest assured - I will be back before too long!

Living in Egypt and in particular Soma Bay, is becoming very popular. Thanks to a recent government strategy everyone wants to see property for sale in Egypt. It has taken residents like those in Soma Bay a long time to put pressure on the powers that be to encourage property buyers to the home of pyramids. Everyone seems to enjoy a holiday staying in one of the many Egypt hotels rather than buying a place.

Soma Bay is a popular tourist destination full of Egypt hotels and markets. While looking for property for sale in Egypt people can take a camel ride and visit fantastic monuments. Nomads are not allowed in Egypt hotels even the cheaper ones are very fussy and only give rooms to more reliable citizens. There are no pyramids in Soma Bay but property tax is still quite high which stops people looking for property for sale in Egypt, especially around the red sea. Egypt hotels are usually very large but basic, cleanliness is of the essence.

There has been a sharp rise in tourism which has been welcomed by Egypt hotels and more regular visitors are thinking about property for sale in Egypt. Soma Bay will benefit from this boom as will the date industry, camel ride owners and of course Egypt hotels.