| Almost a millionaire … |
[14 Jul 2009|12:58pm] |
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Originally published at UnorthodoxY. Please leave any comments there. It occurred to me today that, due to some rearrangement of my finances, I almost had enough money to make me a millionaire in Pesos. Sadly the money was still in pounds and at least half of it disappeared to clear other debts almost as soon as it arrived.
This occurred to me while I was doing some budgeting, and I was budgeting because I finally have a contract. Not only do I have a contract I’m also now, apparently, on the Manila payroll. I think I now officially work here.
Sadly this means that I’m no longer on expenses, the company still pays for my accommodation, utility bills and so on. But now food, transport and day-to-day stuff comes out my pocket. Booze always came out of my pocket (mostly) so no change there.
The bill for the first ten days of the month leads me to discover that Manila isn’t as cheap as I thought, even discounting my weekend poker and pub crawling, it still mounts up. Maybe I’m just shopping in the wrong places, or maybe it’s just living in the capital.
It doesn’t matter anyway, I have to stop thinking in pounds, I have a monthly budget in pesos which is more than enough. Still whichever way I look at it, Manila’s a cheap place to live. Not expensive, just not as cheap as I thought it would be. Maybe I should just start winning at poker.
I guess I should add a bit about how I’m doing. Work is mad, Manila is fun, and I’ve finally moved into a nice new apartment which has internet. Not very good internet, lousy for Skype, but it’s still internet.
I know that’s not a great update but now I’m more sorted I’ll try and do some more posting about life over here. I must remember to take my camera out with me and get some pictures.
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| Excuses, excuses … |
[01 Jun 2009|03:31am] |
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Originally published at UnorthodoxY. Please leave any comments there. Blimey, it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. I have the flimsiest of excuses.
For the first half of my long absence I was running around madly in Edinburgh trying to sort out the details of my impending relocation to Manila.
And Manila is where I’ve been for the second half of my absence. Everything’s going about as well as can be expected and I’m enjoying myself but I’m still settling in. Manila is one of those places where everything just takes slightly longer than you expect, so I still don’t have everything properly sorted out. Like internet access in my apartment.
Of course that’s no excuse, no ‘net access in my apartment doesn’t stop wandering to the nearest Starbucks (sadly as common here as anywhere else on earth), or just using the connection at work (until the reactive firewall decides to block the site).
My excuse could be that I’ve been too busy over here. It’s almost true, I’ve been thrown into the deep end of my new job and I find myself thrashing around trying to work out exactly what’s what while trying not to screw anything up too badly. Planning projects, inducting new employees, interviewing potential employees and – urk – talking to customers has actually kept me fairly busy.
But not so busy that I’ve stopped wasting a fair amount of time reading whatever junk websites the corporate IT department deems fit for my time (Facebook is blocked but Twitter is fine, I’m confused.)
And if I’d really been spending time settling in I’d have unpacked more than half the suitcases and boxes I’d brought over.
I had meant to head out to do something interesting this weekend so that I’d have something to write about today. I’d dug out the camera, charged the batteries, packed the guidebook and planned a bit of tourist trail.
And then it rained.
And I thought I’ll give it an hour and it’ll pass.
And then it rained harder.
And than, to hammer home the point, it rained even harder.
So I decided to skip the wandering around in the wet, and hung around watching the Discovery Channel. That would have been an excellent point to dart across to Starbucks and do write this post, but I didn’t.
I have no excuse.
The rainy season lasts for months, but hopefully I’ll be fully connected in a new apartment within weeks. Perhaps then I’ll find the correct combination of interesting content, motivation and free time to return to regular communication.
Or I’ll find a better excuse.
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| Madness |
[06 Apr 2009|02:09pm] |
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Originally published at UnorthodoxY. Please leave any comments there. And so I find myself back in Edinburgh, for six weeks or so.
My calendar is already full to bursting, with every weekend spoken for.
I’m trying to do two jobs, and attempting to schedule workmen and various deliveries around my early morning calls back to the Manila office.
Add to that the various visitors and house guests I’ll have over April and the whole thing just turns into madness.
No wonder my body has given up and decided to give in to some nasty cold bug. Also no wonder that updates to this site have been non-existent.
Still, it’s all under control, planned and organised chaos, just the way I like it. Despite work doing their best to throw a spanner in the works by sending me to China for Easter weekend (I said no).
That’s about that, I’ve no idea when I’ll find time to write any more but I’ll leave you with this final bit of housekeeping.
This website has no wish to indulge in an extended ham-slapping with any other websites so I choose not respond to his thrown gauntlet with a surcial strike.
I will respond with a blanket bombing of barbarous baconisty: The Baconcyclopedia.
Hock and Claw!
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| Eastwood City |
[18 Mar 2009|12:54pm] |
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Originally published at UnorthodoxY. Please leave any comments there. I guess I’m still pretty bad at keeping this site updated.
Quick update first, I’ve still got lots of work to do — essentially trying to juggle doing my old job while learning to do my new one. It’s a little bit mental. I did get away at the weekend, but only for work. I was at a job fair in Cebu, interviewing (and recruiting as it turns out) various candidates. Hopefully I’ll have time to do a post about that, the fair itself was fun but the biggest revelation is what this country is like outside Manila. It’s the first time I’ve noticed that I must be only an hour or so away from what is basically a tropical paradise. Anyroads, more on that in another post — there’s some new photos up on my flickr site.
Today I wanted to briefly talk about where I live: Eastwood City. Sadly there’s not that much detail on the website, so have this badly photographed city map:
Click through and pull up the large size, you should be able to read the text to see what surrounds me.
It’s a weird little place, probably no more than a few km square but crammed with offices, apartments, shops and restaurants. Outside the area everything is notably more crumbling and dingy (and smelly), but inside it’s all polished and there are private police keeping things (mostly traffic) in check. I even saw a couple of shotgun carrying guards outside McDonalds a few days ago.
I quite like living here, my apartment (in Olympic Heights on the map) is a few minutes from the office (1800 building) and no more than five minutes from anywhere in Eastwood. Everything you need is here, food, cinemas, bowling, gyms, banks, shops, laundry, even a barbers shop. There’s three separate 24hr corner shops, they don’t carry that much stuff but there is a huge supermarket another five minutes walk down the main road.
The downside is tons of junk food, McDonalds, KFC, Pizza Hut, they’re all here and most are open 24 hours. Plus plenty of local variants and various restaurants and take-aways. None of it seems that healthy. Still, I’ll just have to slowly work my way round the various places and see what’s good (feel free to pick one at random and suggest I try it).
There’s even a second McDs opening in the Eastwood Mall — just in case five minutes was too long a walk to get your Big Mac.
Hmm, this post is almost as dull as a what-I-had-for-breakfast post (Honey Crunch Corn Flakes), but hopefully the map gives some impression of what the place is like. I’ll try and get some more photos of Eastwood and stick them on Flickr.
I’ve still not ventured far outside Eastwood on foot, I’m not sure there’s that much in walking distance but I do plan go for a bit of an extended walkabout to see the lie of the land.
More posts soon, hopefully.
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| Best Laid Plans … |
[02 Mar 2009|12:28pm] |
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Originally published at UnorthodoxY. Please leave any comments there. I imagined that, living in Manila with few distractions, I’d have plenty of free time to catch up with various tasks, post multiple interesting updates and generally explore the area.
But I find myself sitting on the couch, with a beer, again. There’s no crushing boredom to inspire me to action, I have to be sensible in order to get into work at a sensible time and I’ve hurt my foot which is curtailing too much mooching around the area.
It’s completely different to my normal travelling where I feel compelled to do stuff whenever I can, since I know I’ll have plenty of time to do all that there’s no real urgency.
I don’t mind this at all, it’s quite nice, I know I’ll get round to things sooner or later and it gives me time to relax.
Which I need since each week seems to end with my employers deciding that I’ll be responsible for an extra aspect of work on the site, swelling my workload in an alarming manner from what I originally applied for only a few months ago. Interestingly they tend to drop this bombshell when we’re in the pub after work.
Sorry this is a bit of a dull update, I will have to make a special effort to go find some stuff to take photos of and write about, otherwise people will begin to suspect that I’m not really in Manila at all.
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| Manila Life |
[22 Feb 2009|11:25am] |
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Originally published at UnorthodoxY. Please leave any comments there. Well I’ve got no excuse not to update since I’ve spent the last two days mostly lazing around and doing very little.
I’m in Manila, for the next month, it’s about as hot as I remember, but I think I can comfortably live with it. I have my own apartment for the month and it’s pretty cool once the air-con has been cranked up (down?) for a while. Hit the jump for a completely uninteresting update post with some pictures.
( Read the rest of this entry » )
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| One-Stop Shop |
[29 Jan 2009|08:57pm] |
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Originally published at UnorthodoxY. Please leave any comments there. During a discussion about expanding into multiple social networks, see recent posts, a friend of mine said that this site “should be a one-stop shop for all things” to do with me. He has a point, as usual.
I think the other sites have their place, but I’m going to experiment with bringing content from other places back to here. And I’m going to try and do it without cluttering the current layout.
You may notice a little gray bar under the header, this is the first step, it shows my current Facebook status. If you can’t see the bar you’re either not on the main page or I haven’t updated my status for over a day.
In case you’re interested in how I did it, I used a modified version of the StatusPress plugin (modified to add code to check the age of the status message and remove some extra code I didn’t need).
Other things may appear or disappear as I test stuff out, let me know if you see something broken that doesn’t disappear after five minutes or so.
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| What’s that? A bandwagon? That I’m not on? |
[26 Jan 2009|09:46pm] |
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Originally published at UnorthodoxY. Please leave any comments there. I’ve been spending a fair amount of time recently thinking about communications and how to keep in touch from distant lands. There’s no shortage of possibilities, there may be far too many.
Since Twitter seems to have gone mainstream, if being mentioned by Jonathan Ross in the short time before he’s lynched by the tabloids again counts as mainstream, I thought I might jump on that particular bandwagon.
So I now have a twitter account. However I am not twittering, I have yet to tweet. I’m just not sure I ‘get it’, but it seems worth a look.
Expect some activity there at some point, mostly because I’m playing with ping.fm to try and tie things together. It looks like a pretty neat service, if I can update everything in an easy way then I’m more likely to post stuff.
This may cause some odd entries to appear in places, but that’s part of the fun.
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| The Great British Public … |
[23 Jan 2009|10:46pm] |
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Originally published at UnorthodoxY. Please leave any comments there. … are idiots.
There’s been years I’ve been disappointed by the winner of (Celebrity) Big Brother. This year is the first in time in ages that I’ve been surprised by the order that the final five leave in.
Was the rest of the country watching the same show I was? Everyone that voted for the winner should take time to experience what they’re feeling, remember it — that’s what it feels like to be wrong.
Ah well, I’ve just finished a kick-ass steak (with broccoli and blue-cheese sauce) and I’ve got a full glass of wine.
I’ll cope.
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| Location updates |
[22 Jan 2009|01:58pm] |
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Originally published at UnorthodoxY. Please leave any comments there. A few days back, amongst a typical ramble, I said
Although having separate location updates would be cool for the frequent travellers, but not everyone wants to be found …
I turns out that a service to do that already exists, complete with Web 2.0 name: Dopplr. It’s a social network thing based around travel, allowing you to track where your contacts are going so you can see if you’ll end up in the same place at any point. It’s the sort of thing that would work really well for people who travel frequently for one reason or another.
It’s pretty slick, the interface is easy to use it integrates nicely with lots of other sites. It pulled my old trips out of Google Calendar automatically and it had a bash at working out which of my Flickr photos where from which trip.
I can produce a public profile page to show where I’m going, it’s linked in the sidebar but dopplr.com/traveller/SpaceDog will get you there too. I’d prefer if there was an option to not use my real name on that page, but I could always change my profile. I’m already linking to my real Facebook profile on the sidebar so it’s pretty obvious who I am.
Dopplr also has modules you can add to your own pages, so I can embed lots of different things here, like this.
I’ve only played with it for a couple of days, but it’s got a lot of neat touches and while it’s just ‘fun’ at the moment I could see it being really useful if more people I knew used it.
Serendipitously found on Ewan Spence’s blog.
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| … is pondering status updates. |
[19 Jan 2009|02:02pm] |
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Originally published at UnorthodoxY. Please leave any comments there. I keep an eye on my friend’s Facebook status updates, it’s a little odd at times but it’s amusing in it’s own quirky little way.
The whole one-liner, no extra info, is a bit confusing sometimes “Someone is glum.” or “Someone else had a close shave.”. WTF? Stop being all mysterious and stick a ‘because’ or something on the end of that.
The coincidences are particularly perplexing, like when two people, who have nothing in common and don’t know each other, reference the same Greek myth within days.
If I’ve been off-line for a bit and I read a few days worth at once it gives a good overview of what people have been doing or where they’ve been. Although having separate location updates would be cool for the frequent travellers, but not everyone wants to be found …
All of this, and the popularity of mini-blogs like Twitter, got me wondering about the possibilities of sorting through all this information.
If you examine an anonymised feed of status updates could you extract something useful, could you guess the mood of a nation? the world? Could you examine the Blue Monday equation? (hint: it’s bullshit).
News services are already starting to monitor these things to cover breaking news, but I wonder if they can be used predictively.
Perhaps the next big thing is sifting through all the little status updates and tweets and pulling something useful out of it.
Maybe it’s already being done.
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| Mind Bites |
[08 Jan 2009|11:20pm] |
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Originally published at UnorthodoxY. Please leave any comments there. This Flickr set is a nice group of research snippets set against interesting photo backgrounds. It’s a pretty nice set to flick through both for the pictures and the information. I particularly liked:
You can also view the set via a funky (if slightly annoying) flash viewer at the creator’s website: http://www.will-lion.com/mindbites/
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| Links |
[07 Jan 2009|10:19pm] |
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Originally published at UnorthodoxY. Please leave any comments there. When I find something on the web I never know if everyone’s already seen it and I’m just late to the party. If that’s the case now I wish someone had mentioned OpenStreetMap before now.
I’m a fan of Google Maps but it does lack detailed coverage of some bits of the world, in particular Manila. I’ve discovered that some parts are quite well covered by OpenStreetMap so I can now provide a decent link to a Manila Map. I can even embed a close up of ‘Eastwood City’ the tiny development where the Manila office is:
View Larger Map
I couldn’t even find that on a printed map so I’m pretty impressed, zoom out a bit to get an idea of the scale of the place.
I’ve also put a few extra links in the sidebar, just pointers to a few blogs written by people I know and some other interesting places.
If you’re really bored you can see the full list of blogs I’m subscribed to on the Links Page this is automatically generated so you should see the results of my on-going sorting and spring cleaning.
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| More updates … |
[30 Dec 2008|02:50pm] |
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Originally published at UnorthodoxY. Please leave any comments there. Time for the final verdict on my 2008 resolution: I did it, kind of.
The short version is that I have now visited all 27 EU countries, but not really all of them in 2008. Germany and the Czech Republic only got a few hours each and in Ireland I only made it as far as standing outside Dublin airport. However I’d been to those three before and everywhere else got at a few days or so. I’m going to call that done, I’m not one for pedantry.
You might have noticed a new link on the right-hand side on the front page, the EU 2008 contains links to all the write-ups that are done and I’ll update it as I do more. It’s also got some other stuff that about my trips. The pictures tend to appear on my Flickr photostream before I get round to the write-up so keep an eye on that too.
So how was it?
Surprisingly stressful, two years would have been a far more reasonable time frame to do 27 countries and would have allowed me time to take longer trips and travel by train more. I also screwed up my early trips badly and left an odd set of countries later on, much more forward planning would have helped.
But I’m glad I did it, there are some places I’d never have discovered otherwise althought there were times when I was very glad that I was moving on after a few days.
In general there’s a whole set of cities where I now have a fair idea of my way around. Plus, if I hadn’t been doing this I’m not sure how seriously I’d have considered moving to Manila, in total I’ve spent a lot more time this year getting myself around the world than I ever have before.
I’m still stunned I’ve managed not to cock anything up and miss a flight, or lose something important, or get seriously lost, or worse. It’s a matter of time I guess.
There were a few highlights, go to:
Bruges, if you want proper European old-town style and great beer.
Barcelona, if you want somewhere to take a bunch of people safe in the knowledge that they will all find something to do.
Krakow, if you want another old city with some must-see stops just a few hours away.
Ljubjlana, if you want somewhere nice, friendly and well organised stuck in some spectacular countryside.
Luxembourg, if you just want to escape from everything for a few days on your own.
Vilnius, if you want the most un-touristed city I visited, go there before everyone else does.
and a couple of downsides, avoid:
Bratislava, unless you want somewhere grey, dull and populated by the most aggressive pickpockets I’ve met.
Bucharest, unless … actually just avoid it, it’s truly the worst city I visited. Sorry.
I’m actually fighting the temptation to just book a quick break somewhere for a weekend in January. It’s a pity the Bruges ferry has been cancelled or I could nip over to the Ice Festival, what’s worse is the replacement service in the spring doesn’t take foot passengers, boo!
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| Time for an update … |
[29 Dec 2008|12:21pm] |
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Originally published at UnorthodoxY. Please leave any comments there. First up, Merry Christmas everyone, I hope that your holidays haven’t been credit crunched too much.
Second I notice that I’ve not posted anything further about my job situation, that’s because most people who read this site regularly already know. Still, that’s no real excuse.
The Edinburgh office looks to have some sort of a future until 2010 but with reduced numbers, sadly some people have already been ‘let go’ as they say, there will be more up until June when the office reaches it’s new target.
However this no longer directly affects me because I have a new job.
View Larger Map
In Manila.
Almost exactly three months I was sitting in a bar in Malta looking out over the sea and thinking, “You know, I’ve been in Edinburgh for years, maybe it’s time for a change.” And now, in around four months time, I’ll be moving to Manila.
Funny how things work.
It’s not really sunk in yet, there’s so much stuff to sort out here before I go that I’m not sure when the reality will hit me. And once I’m there there’ll be so much to do at work that I’m not sure when I’ll finally notice that I’m living in the Philippines.
Hopefully it’ll generate some more content for this site too but first I’m going to make an effort to tie up the 2008 stuff over the next few months.
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| Joke? |
[17 Dec 2008|11:59am] |
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Originally published at UnorthodoxY. Please leave any comments there. Please, please, please, somebody tell me this is a joke:
Burger King releases new men’s body spray, Flame, with “a hint of flame-broiled meat”.
More here.
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| Menu For Hope |
[15 Dec 2008|04:19pm] |
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Originally published at UnorthodoxY. Please leave any comments there. Last January you may recall me mentioning:
That’s not all, over the weekend I won a raffle, netting me both a hamper of Mexican goodies and tasting menu for two at Le Trois Garcons. Spot on.
Well that raffle is rolling around again this year, your starting point should be this page: Menu for Hope
The idea is that (foodie) people from all over the world donate prizes and you can buy virtual raffle tickets for each prize. It’s a pretty neat idea, there’s already some cool prizes and more will be added. Last year there was also a list of the prizes which had fewest bids near the closing date so you could try and scoop up some last-minute goodies.
There you go, you’ve been warned, go forth and win stuff (while also supporting charity).
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| Interupption |
[11 Dec 2008|11:08am] |
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Originally published at UnorthodoxY. Please leave any comments there. I’m going to interupt this semi-regular lull in posting for a quick movie review.
In particular, “The Day The Earth Stood Still” the remake of the old 1950’s classic.
I was expecting a train wreck, most of the normal crowd who join me at the cinema stayed home due to the same fear. But, you know what, it’s not half bad.
Sure, the whole things a bit one-dimensional and a little shallow all round but I see what they were aiming for. It’s nice that they can do a aliens-on-earth film without going all Independance Day and it’s also nice to see an American film just develop at it’s own pace without having to resort to the Sledgehammer-Of-Plot where somebody needs to explain everything for the thickos in the audience.
I particularly liked the ending, understated, open-ended and nicely abrupt. Very much not what I expected.
Worth seeing, probably not worth going to the cinema to see but certainly a DVD rental if ever I saw one, I’m curious to see if they had other endings in mind/filmed.
Expect some posting about what’s going on with my life, travel and career after I’ve aligned a few more ducks …
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