Panic stations!

I think flip flap is sick.
I just happened to look at it and noticed that it was not moving.
It's not dark in the office - all the lights are on.

I have given it a prod and it has started flapping again, but not at it's usual pace. Maybe I should take it to a garden centre. Wonder what they would say? :)

Well that wasn't supposed to be the post of the day. I was actually thinking about the concept of time travel after seeing this website:
http://www.timetravelfund.com/index.html

If I could travel back in time, I think that I would like to watch my parents getting married. I'd like to follow my life until this moment (well, maybe not watch me being born) I'd like to count the number of people I've ever met, maybe the times I've ever cried, and maybe I'll even discover why it is that I don't like tofu. And yeah would I pay to go back and see the reaction on my English teacher's face when she first read the almost-pornographic poem that I submitted for an assignment when I was 15!

Something to break the silence

Running in circles

Coming up tails

Heads on a silence apart

Nobody said it was easy

It's such a shame for us to part

Nobody said it was easy

No one ever said it would be this hard

Oh take me back to the start

I was just guessing

At numbers and figures

Pulling your puzzles apart

Questions of science

Science and progress

Do not speak as loud as my heart

Every so often a song touches me. They played this last year on a Children In Need video - after I saw it I phoned up and donated a very reasonable amount of money.

Such is the power of music.

Flower Power

Flip Flap has a friend!

She is a solar powered flower sitting in a cube:

http://www.takaratoys.co.jp/flowercube/lineup.html

She doesn't have a name. Personally I think she's quite dangerous as she swings from
side to side in an extremely hypnotic manner. I'm a little concerned that I will stare too long
one day, become hypnotised by accident and be utterly subject to the persuasion of colleagues.

Scarily, my whole team has one. Could this mean the end?

Rainy days and Mondays

I hate the rain. And I hate Mondays.
The only thing that I hate more than Mondays is February. Odd that, since my birthday is in February - or perhaps not so strange after all, now that I've hit the quarter century.

The rain seems to be particularly depressing in London. When it rains in the countryside it's almost therapeutic - it's part of nature, helps to keep the air fresh and the plants healthy.In London, it breaks down the transport system, turns dreary grey London into mucky dreary grey London, renders the streets unusable due to the tiny streets and massive golf umbrellas sported by the inconsiderate commuters.
On an especially bad day:-
a) On way to station, at least one car will have splashed through a puddle spraying me with muddy rainwater
b) This is usually followed by me stepping into a foot-deep puddle due to badly maintained pavements
c) trains are all delayed by 20 minutes due to flooding/leaves on the line
d) when finally manage to get on sardine tin-esque tube carriage, will find number of umbrellas dripping on me. It doesn't help that I am not particularly tall
e) On really really bad days, they will have temporary closed my destination station due to overcrowding and I will be forced to walk one stop, in the rain
f) On these days I am guaranteed to be poked in the head/eye at least once by someones oversized umbrella. For gods sake, why would people need an umbrella of that size for one person! I think we need an umbrella pool type system - if you don't have more than one umbrella sharer,you should not be allowed a large umbrella. Unless you are really fat.
g) I will walk into the office wet, muddy, cold and miserable. If I was unlucky enough to wear a skirt I will have mud spattered tights, and my newly washed hair will now be untidy and matted if I have forgotten my umbrella.

At least it's the Bank Holiday weekend coming up. I haven't decided what to do yet. I wasn't planning on going away but seeing the weather this morning -maybe I should..

Dilemma of a fieldmouse

I've been pondering the best solution to a small problem presented to me recently. To make it more objective, I have converted into a cute little story.

There are two fieldmice, a boy mouse and a girl mouse. Let's call them Timmy and Milly.
Timmy and Milly consider themselves as friends, and get on very well but they don't know each other all that well. Despite this, Milly develops strong feelings for Timmy and thinks about him constantly when they are not together. Timmy, being a typical male, is oblivious to all this.

Milly is faced with a problem. Does she admit her feelings for Timmy and potentially ruin the friendship she has with him, or does she keep them to herself? There is only the most remote possibility that they can get together.

Now being the cynic that I am, I personally believe that Milly would be extremely selfish to confess to Timmy that she likes him. Given the unlikelyhood (did I just make up that word?) of a real relationship between them, there is nothing to be achieved by it apart from Milly easing some of the tension she feels. Their friendship would become more awkward, and maybe even cease to exist.
On the other hand, what if they are the perfect match? What if, by not saying anything they drift apart for some other reason and lose that chance of real love?

If I were a guy then I might be better able to provide the answer. Is friendship or love more important to a guy? Answers on a postcard.

Circle of Life

As I opened my eyes this morning to another champagne hangover, I was hit by the sudden realisation that the circle of life (at least in my case) begins in the Light Bar, revolves around the Light Bar and most undoubtedly will one day end in the Light Bar.

Though not the scene of my fondest memories (that would be the nearby Poet), I cannot recall a single occasion where I did not stumble out of this alcohol den having entered whilst the sun had not long disappeared and left with the distant callings of the last Tube train home ringing in my ears. So cheers to Dave, my friend and colleague - and Happy Birthday once again.

Why I am not a Geek Girl

A colleague e-mailed this link yesterday and said "There is hope for you yet".
http://drue.com/writings/

The article is called How To Love A Geek Girl.

Funny but I never really considered myself a geek. It's true that I am a "programmer" (I always preferred the term "Developer" but let's not be pedantic), it's also true that I do spend a lot of time in front of a PC, whether at work or at home. Yes I have had very techie dreams about linux servers. And ok I do have an obsession with Neverwinter Nights at the moment. I don't think it's conclusive though.

Damn. I don't sound convincing even to myself.

More about Flip Flap

I've just had a little look on Tomy's Flip Flap site - how cute!!!

http://www.tomy.co.jp/flip_flap/top.html

I think I need one in every colour.

Ode to Flip Flap

I seem to spend minutes on end staring at Flip Flap, a solar powered plant that sits on my desk at work. It's very calming but after a while, it can cause strange thoughts to pop into your head.
Despite this, I love it so I wrote a little ode as a tribute.


How peaceful you are, your graceful swaying from side to side
In perfect harmony to the palpitations of my heart
Like me you are dependent on the light
To remain the gentle being you are
Dearest Flip Flap, keeper of my wistful daydreams,
Timeless constant,
I give thanks for your solidarity and simple wisdom.

NYR

Six minutes of my life just passed by. Seems more like twenty. It’s late, nearly 2am. I’ve worked more than a 50 hour week and had less than 6 hours of sleep a night this week. I don’t really want to be here, but I don’t really know where else I want to be. I feel exhausted, but at the same time, restless. What do I need to do?
My life is full of mundane things at the moment, work, planned holidays, financial matters that I need to take care of. So much clutter. So many things, belongings, responsibilities. I need to offload some of it. It’s now August. I still have time. I can make it a New Years Resolution. In fact, I will make it a New Years Resolution. I can apply minimalism to my life.
I think I now know what I need to do – and knowing that, I can finally go to bed. Oyasumi.

From below the parapet

I love the days where I have nowhere in particular to be.
Life is suddenly full of possibilities. If a stranger asked me out for a drink,
I could potentially say yes, without disappointing anyone else. I could be walking along a road and just stop - and watch the rest of the city hurrying along to
meet their weekend.
I always thought that I owed it to myself to maximise my time. I seem to make such an effort to do this that I tend to forget to enjoy the moments :)


It's been a strange couple of weeks. I feel as if I've reached the parapet and I'm peering over it at the beautiful view spread out before me. Only I'm terrified of heights and don't know which way to look. I know that if I can just let go of my fears, all my obstacles will dematerialise. But if I turn back, the road leads to certain safety. Do I walk or fly?

Fantaseas

It's my dad's birthday tomorrow.

Last night in my dream I was struggling to think of what to do for his birthday - where we could take him to celebrate. I had a sudden flash of inspiration - swimming at Fantaseas, an indoor waterpark that has waterslides, rapids and all that sort of thing. It was very close by,in Lakeside Retail Park, in between Miller Brothers and the UCI Cinema.

[In actual fact, whilst this retail park does exist, as does Miller Bros and UCI Cinema, there is nothing in-between them, and there is no waterpark anywhere near Lakeside at all. Fantaseas did used to exist, but it sat somewhere off the M25and has long since shut down]

Anyway, we ended up driving to Fantaseas and found out that it was now called Equilibrium. I got out of the car and realised that I had somehow forgotten to bring my swimming costume. Luckily for me, my brother remembered that I could buy sportswear at a massive shop called Wilkinson Sword (?!) so off we went.On the ground floor of this shop they sold an absolutely incredible range of Anime merchandise, cuddly Totoros, Gundam, trading cards, it was all there. My brother and I had a heated argument about whether the goods were cheaper in this shop than in Japan/Hong Kong and we traded nonsense prices at each other.

I didn't think any of this was at all strange but I will never know whether this shop actually sold swimwear, or indeed, if I managed to buy anything becausethe next thing I knew, I was strolling through the door of Equilibrium looking for the ticket counter. We wandered through some unusually dark corridors and passed many many doors - much like a hall of residence. There were girls strolling between the roomswith hairdryers and mobile phones, some still dressed in their pink pyjamas. I didn't think this was strange either. It's funny how the oddest things that happen in dreams just seem normal at the time.

Unfortunately I never got to do any swimming as my mobile phone alarm went off and woke me up. I also think it's unlikely that I will be going swimming tomorrow on my dad's birthday.

The Dream Queen awakes

I live on dreams.

That delicious moment when your mind begins to regain conciousness and fragments of your dream replay themselves across your closed eyelids. Your dreamstate emotions linger momentarily, frissons of fear, relief, passion, excitement.

What controls my dreams? Is it a subconscious decision the brain makes to prepare oneself for real life? Can it really just be a reflection of fears and desires as the psychologists would have us believe?

Music. I never hear music in my dreams. My dreams are like playing the piano with the una-corda pedal down - muted voices and sound effects. Sometimes I cannot even tell if the characters in my dream are really talking, or if I am just imagining what they are saying inside my head. If I could choose the soundtrack for my dreams, I expect it would be mostly classical and jazz. I'd have Nina Simone for when I'm prisoner in a triad gang war, Bach Minuet in G Minor for when I'm wandering lost in the school I went to as a child and maybe Tchaikovsky's Valse des Fleurs for those moments when I've saved the Universe from certain destruction :)

I saw Derren Brown a few months ago live at the Palace in London. I was suitably impressed with his ability to influence so many people with his subtle (almost smarmy) charm. It makes me wonder - if he can so easily influence peoples' subconciousness whilst they are aware and, you'd have thought, in full control of their rational thoughts, could he do the same for when we fall asleep? Is this what hypnosis is about? And how can you tell if you're hypnotised?

.... Now I can't help thinking about Brave New World ..