almost witty

- I was walking through Llandudno town centre at lunchtime munching on a pastie, when a seagull literally lands on my shoulder, grabs my pastie from OUT OF MY HAND and flies off with it for a second before dropping it again. Man, those seagulls are the devils’ work.

- Before that, when reversing out of the car park, I thought I’d scraped a 4×4. Stopped, looked at it, got as far as writing a note then I thought to wipe off the marks, then the 4×4 looked fine so I drove off. Come back to my desk to find a company-wide email looking for the evil swine with my car numberplate. Still, at least I thought I was doing the right thing…

- I’d invited my ex-bosses and ex-workcolleagues onto a professional social networking site, mainly to see what they were up to and see whether they actually remembered me or not. One of my line managers graciously declined my invitation, but it’s amazing just how annoyed I am to be dismissed like that. Never mind the fact that said person was one of the key people to make me redundant to begin with, so I don’t know why I’d expect any different.

On the plus side, I got my surprise two-year anniversary present from Miss R last night, and suffice to say that you’d better be watching the (virtual) skies at some point this year! (And before you ask, I whisked her away to Barcelona last week as my surprise anniversary present. Must find the time to blog about that funny disaster!)

Long time readers of this blog (what, you’re still here ?!) may remember my eternal fascination with snow, and my eternal lament that it never seems to snow where *I* am.

Thus yet again, despite the fact that the rest of the country has been sent into panic mode and transport chaos, my little patch of North Wales has only received a very light dusting of less than one inch, at least according to my car. It’s not even enough to make a snowball, let alone a snowman or go sleighing. But this is enough to have closed some primary schools in the area, and to have earnt a blog post from Rhys.

The annoying thing is that around this time last year, there was a huge blanket of snow in the area - enough for the kids to go sleighing. Where was I? In South Wales, which was snow-free. And now that I’ve moved to where the snow is, Cardiff is covered in snow and up here, we’re not. Although when I was sent to Aberdeen a couple of weeks ago, it had just recovered from a small dusting of snow - which made for some most excellent pictures from the air. Shame they’re currently trapped on my phone.

The thing is, I love the snow because it makes everything look clean and pristine. Which is rather redundant in North Wales, because everything is clean and pristine anyway. So I’d much rather be in London when it’s snowing, just so I can see it clean for once. Ah well, maybe next time. Got any pics of London in the snow?

While I’m wishing on the snow gods, I’d like to drive in the snow - just once. So I can understand why everyone’s so scared of driving in it.

PS: Apologies for repeating the headline multiple times. It’s just too good a headline to waste!

You will be delighted that after five-some years of sponging off UK taxpayers’ money in one form or another, I will be in the future earning my crust by selling my soul, sweat and time to a major consultancy just round the corner as a Project Manager type dude. International travel included.

Now I can afford to buy a Playstation 3. But alas, no more throwing pillows at the TV at the insanity of the Jeremy Kyle Show, or staring in horror at the woman who advertises InjuryLawyers4U.

I could have gone to the gym I s’pose

Draw up any list of alleged Hollywood heart-throbs, and I honestly can’t see why anyone would fancy most of them. Tom Cruise? Too chiselled. Brad Pitt? Too blonde. Richard Gere? HE’S GOT GREY HAIR AND NO CHARM!

However, one exception is George Clooney. Not only does he seem to be a genuinely charming nice gentlemen (but then I’ve never met him - and maybe he just has an exceptionally good PR agency working for him) willing to stick up for the “common man”, but he looks genuinely good AND relaxed in a suit. Especially with an open-collared shirt.

When I don a suit, however, I tend to feel like I look like a squashed gorilla into a suit. It doesn’t help, of course, that I’ve made some suit-buying choices over the years which I thought were a good idea, but exposed to the raw summer sunshine was a terrible idea. My old-time-school friends have now taken to calling me Mr. Del Monte and asking whether my summer beige linen jacket will ever see the light of day again.

However, I seem to have turned a corner. I was on the hunt for a good interview shirt the other day, and actually decided to get my neck measured instead of hazarding a guess. The resulting shirt gave me the right open-collar look that, to my mind, aped George Clooney. This I exclaimed to Miss R who, to her credit, did not immediately disavail me of the notion.

Unfortunately, I now have a second round. Which means I need to find another shirt - or at least, catch lightning in the same bottle twice. This, I fear, might be easier.

(and yes, an entire blog post about buying a shirt. I apologise.)

Having spent the last three months on enforced leisure time (which isn’t quite as fun as it sounds), I’ve decided that I need to wire up my brain to a big huge electrical generator and kick some smarts into it. And since playing Rocket Mania ad-infinitum isn’t going to do it, I might just enrol at a part-time masters course at university, so I can at least equip myself with new new-media skillz in the meantime.

But as usual, I just can’t decide - and it seems to have come down to two choices:

The MA in Creative Technology which sounds vaguely interesting in a creative endeavour, but the course description is remarkably lacking in specifics, and I’m not sure whether it would better equip me for a job afterwards. The course seems to aim to:

“explore the dissolving boundaries between industry, design, visual arts, and computer and communication technologies”

The alternative is an MSc in Web Computing which is much more technical in nature - with computing, Java and database lessons, which should lead to better job prospects. But then I’m worried about ending up as a pure technical person when my strength (as I see it) is that I can do a bit of everything. I can develop, I can write, I can project-manage etc. - but enhancing my developer skills at the expense of the others may not be a brilliant idea. Plus, it has to be said, I could probably just set up a web 2.0-y project and swallow a few O’Reilly books to get me going.

It doesn’t help that at this point, my career goals are somewhat fluid - I’d ideally want to work within new media content, but jobs like that are few and vanishing these days. Oh I could get a journalism qualification, but the salaries within that field are ludicrously low. Plus the terror of the blank page doesn’t help, nor that i’d be competing with my Eeyore-esque persona against a bunch of doey foolishly-optimistic graduates.