NFL International

Well for the 2nd time in its history a regular season NFL game has come to London as part of its International series.

The weather is dry Its dark outside and even a bit chilly but the action is hot

Its halftime here in London and the Saints are up on the Chargers.

Plenty action to come in the second half.

30 and Counting

Well Im glad to report that I havent lost teeth or hair just yet and Im slowly getting used to being in my 30's and not in my 20's anymore.

One thing I have noticed is that the rate of alcohol clearance takes a bit longer as my head is still a bit fuzzy and I havent had a drink since late Saturday night/early Sunday morning. I must admid that I was lead astray after my party and taken to another pub or two and so didnt get in till 0230. Im sure that I will recover in time.

As a further note I am now a Laird thanks to the folks at work as they bought me a piece of land in Scotland.

Getting a bit older

Well it appears that Im getting close to moving into the 4th decade of my life. Im sure that its nothing to worry about althoughh I have been warned to expect just some of the following:

Hair loss from my head (up to a third)
Gain of nose hair
Tooth Loss
Spots
An extra ear
and possibly a cane in about 10 years or so but thats the next decade

Having had a quick look about Ive seen a few people a bit older than me and it appears ythat they all had reasonable hair levels, and didnt require a cane so I think that I might be OK for now.

F22 Raptor

Managed to see some of this display from 7 miles away whilest at work on Monday. Quite inpressive looking plane from that distance especially the "hovering" that it appeared to do. Have also managed to catch glimse of the Vulcan, Eurofighter, B1-B and the Red Arrows this week.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7510364.stm

Sat Navs

Well I finally bit the bullet a couple of weeks ago and bought myself a Sat Nav. Now I know that they arent hugely cheap just yet and that money doesnt grow on trees and all that but hey Id managed to hold off for quite some time, after all its been on my wish list since October time, well atleast one of the models had. I must confess that I quite fancied the Garmin Nuvi 610T but the price drops actually brought the Nuvi 760 into play. I know there is quite a difference between the two but I did like the option of full Europe mapping in addition to the bluetooth phoning and FM transmission to the radio (therefore almost wirefree). Anyway Ive been using it for a week now and I have just got back from a trip to Manchester and I got there and got back in one piece and I didnt get lost (although I did over rule the Sat Nav once, well I thought my way would be better).





Anyway if you faancy a SAt Nav Id give it a try the instructions are quite good, the traffic system seems to work most of the time (although I did sit in a 20 minute tailback and all the emachine told me there was a 1 minute delay about 10 minutes after I got into the traffic, but hey some things do have bugs) the other delays it warned me about were gone by the time I got to them but I had been prepared.

Championship Title 2

OK its been a while and I know that Ive not uploaded the holiday snaps either but Ive not been blogging for a while. I will try and get thenm up at some point although I dont think that it will be too soon as Im not in much this week.

Anyway just returned from the football tonight and like my favourite club Rangers we have taken another trophy to put in the cabinet by winning the Woking Indoor Winter Championship by 3 points.

At the start of the day it looked doubtful as we relying on other results to go our way and for us to win tonight too. The other results went our way with the 3rd placed team beating the 1st placed team then we beat the 2nd bottom placed team to finish top although we went 2-1 down at one point so it looked doubtful at half time. However in the 2nd half we rallied and won through.

It now means I have something else to dust.

Holiday Sun

Ive just returned from holiday in the sun. Whilst the UK was being battered by high winds and rain I was sat next to the pool enjoying the sun on a week long holiday in Tunisia (North Africa). The first few days weer a bit cooler at about 16C (61F) with a nice sea breeze however we headed down the country on the Wednesday on a coach trip to the Amphitheatre at SFax (where they filmed Gladiator), the Troglodyte houses near Hammett where they filmed Star Wars (IV and II/III), the Sahara near Tozer, the Atlas mountains where the highest waterfall in Tunisia is (all 8m of it) and also where 3 Kings was filmed. Yes it was a whistle stop tour of Southern Tunisia and film sets.

We spent the first day of the coach trip visiting SFax, the hotel where Star Wars was filmed (very much a disappointment to all Star Wars Fans I'm afraid, not really worth the visit), a family home to see how real Troglodyte homes are lived in. We then went to the Sahara to watch the sunset from the top of Camels (one humped in Africa). The second day saw a 0430 start (yes I did say 0430 (that's +1 not GMT either)) so that we could watch the sunrise over the salt lakes (although the sun beat us up as although we watch it rise it wasn't over the salt lake). At about 8am we jumped into a land cruiser and headed into the Atlas Mountains where we went to oasis' and to see the largest waterfall in Tunisia. Temperatures this day apparently reached 38C (101F) not nice on a coach bu at least it was air conditioned.

Our last couple of days were spent lazing in the mid 20's by the pool again and spending a morning at the local market where we could get almost whatever we wanted, from live animals, vegetable, to sweets, sun glasses to clothing, belts and dinner services. All the brands were fake but exceedingly cheap (belts I believe were only about 10DT (£5 or 10$US) for "Levis" Camel skin belts).

Photos to follow

Scientific Advert

Well I never

How to drive on operation

Got this by Email the other day. Amazing how quickly they get out of the way of the Hummer, suggest you dont try it at home though.

New Thoughts

Ive now been at my current place of work for 6.5 years and I recently went for a promotion. Sadly I didnt get the job becasue of what appears to have been lack of experience however I have to ask the question if I dont have the experience (therefore qualification) why did they interview me for the job. Personally I think that I could do the job fairly successfully regardless of the fact that I dont have the in job experience. However Im not going to dwell on the fact that I didnt get the job but instead Im going to get a feedback session with the interview panel so that I can work out where I went wrong and improve for further interviews be it here or around Manchester.

On a better note I managed to start building a Memorial Garden at the scout center that I help out at so if anyone has suggestions of some nice (nativish (to the UK)) plants that are bright during different parts of the year then let me know. Area pictured below

Temours

Apparently there was an earthquake in the Uk last night. Yes I knew about it at 1am this morning but the only tremours I felt was the vibrate on my mobile as the text came in from my girlfriend who was workning nights at Manchester Royal (a bit closer to Lincon than me) and I guess a cat screaching a few minutes before (although that may have been by chance) anyway all is well in my house so Ill just get on with life as normal

6 Nations 08 Wk 3

Well week 3 of the six nations is nearly upon us and after a week off I hope that the Scots can put some points on the board this weekend to lift themselves up the table a bit.

This weekend is going to be fairly quiet, Im at home and have very littele planned except a little shopping to get soe things for my trip to Tunisia and watching the rugby over a couple of beers. Its half term, so I dont have any Scouts so tonights plan is to watch teh Wild game that I recorded from Wednesday when they played the Blackhawks (I watched the first period last night and left the Wild trailing 0-1), its been so long since I watched the wild in action properly although I have watched the highlights on the computer off their website.

So all I have to say is Come on Scotland and Lets Go Wild.

6 Nations - 0 for 2

Well the second game has just past from a Scotish point of view in the 6-nations championship and despite a few drinks this afternoon Scotland are still sitting bottom of the table after their second game. LAst Sunday saw an terrible defeat to the French and today despite a better performance the Scots lost 30-15 to the Welsh. Only an improved performance in 2 weeks time will see us defeat the English to restore some hope.

Its Christmas Time

Well another year seems to have passed and my posts on this a few and getting scarcer I think. Once again Im relaxing for a couple of weeks at my parents house to celebrate the festivities. Yesterday the evening was spent at my sisters where she prepare dinner for 11 people and boy was I full after it all, I even believe that there was plenty of dad's deboned turkey left so guess that Turkey will continue to be on the menu for a few days. She definitely did herself proud, the meal was as follows:

Starter:
Smoked Mackerel Pate (made by Graeme)
Carrot and Coriander Soup (made by my mum)

Main:
Roast Deboned Turkey stuffed with Carrot, Leak, bacon and chicken
Roast Parsnips and Carrots
Roast and Mash Tatties
Bacon wrapped sausages
2x Stuffings

Desert:
Dumpling (made by Grahams mum)
Cheesecake

followed by Coffee and the offer of more food declined by all.

After dinner we all opened presents (continued from our morning opening before we got there) in all I received the following:

Money (my usual supply)
2008 calendar
socks
Torch
Vouchers
3 books
backpack
T-shirts

All in all so far its been a good week, my girlfriend is joining me in Scotland for New Year and arrives on Saturday to meet my family.

Changing seasons

The weather here is slowly starting to look a bit more Christmasy and a bit white. OK as ever there hasnt been any snow here yert but a hard frost this morning has left the cars frozen and also the grass a bit white. Bring on the snow

My 5-a-side football team aslo won the Championship this week and so have been promoted a division

Been a Whle

Once again it seems to have been a while since Ive posyted on my own Blog. Ive not been hiding totally as Ive been Ghost writing on another blog, yes it is completely possible to do that. In fact I actually post first hand to at least two other blogs in adition to this one.

My other blogs:

1) surreyb.blogspot.com which is my Jamboree units blog, its getting 20+ hits a day and has been for most of the year.
2) Im the ghost writer on jungle-diary.blogspot.com after all I dont think that a cuddly lion can write a blog or use the internet

Anyway the past few months have been quite mixed. work life is still rather crap to be honest with the place dealing with two outbreaks and being wrongly accused of one of them. Socially things are quite good, especially with Andrea who Im seeing every couple of weekends on average at the momnet although over the next couple of month that will be slightly less due to Xmas and work etc but she is coming to visit the family over the New Year period.

Scouts is going quite well my section is up to 20 or so who are all turning up on a weekly basis and all seem to be enjoying themselves with everything that they do and are all very keen. Ive also kept my involvment with the county both at Bentley Copse camp site and with the International team.

The family are mostly well with my sister planning her wedding for next October so everything seems to be going OK for that.

Jambo over

Well Ive now been back from one of the biggest events that I have ever attended in my life and am still trying to recover. After 2 years of preparation the two week long Jamboree has now come to an end and Im slowly trying to catch up on sleep. The two weeks were absolutely fantastic on the whole despite a few problems along the way.

I hope that they few pictures below give an idea of the fun and size of the past few weeks. there was about 40,000 people there (most of whom were the 14-18yr old participants) from all over the world parting and having a great time.


Personally I had the time of my life and was quite sorry to have to come home on Wednesday. Hopefully however I have some more projects that I am ready to do that will keep me busy over the next few years creating even more challenges for Scouting.

Waiting at Check-in before heading to the site

Sub-camp Mascot (Rory)

The Gateway

Our Gateway

Will I go?

Ive found out this weekend that my pace at the WSJ is in doubt as my CRB for is yet to coem back. nobody is allowed on site without it and as mine hasnt come back there is a chance thhat I may not get to go.

I however will do my best to ensure that I still get to go otherwise the past 16 months will have been wasted.

News Update

The past day has been quite hectic here in the UK. London came close to seeing 2 terror bombs go off in the centre of the City. Today this has been followed up by a attack on Glasgow's International Airport. None of the family have been in either area that I know of, and therefore are all safe and well.

Busy life

Well once again it has been a while since I last added a post to this. Why? Im not quite sure Ive been fairly busy with things. The Jamboree is still taking over much of my life and there is now less than a month until I go and there is still quite a bit to do before we all depart.

Life here as I say has been fairly busy, work is ticking over as normal with some late finishes and some slightly quieter days like today. Socially Im up to the same old stuff, Scouting takes up a huge part of my life at the moment mainly with the Jamboree but also with my Scout section. Last weekend we spent a rather wet weekend camping at one of the local campsites a great weekend was had by all. Our catering team did a fantastic job topped up with cups of tea and juice whilest feeding 110 people for evening meal on the Saturday.

Romance is manageing to creap in to the fray as well which is quite nice although Andrea live 200 miles away so we tend to chat over the phone or computer rather than seeing each other but things are quite good and Im off up to Manchester to see her for a few days so that will be quite good, then Ill see her at the Jamboree for 2 weeks also as she is one of the other Jamboree Leaders too.

As for the flat Ive now been in there for 4 months and not too much has changed, the DVD players speakers are still lying on the floor waiting to go on the wall, boxes still need to be sorted and emptied. However give it another couple of months and with the Jamboree out of the way Ill be able to ouch up the paint in the bathroom (which I have done) and start doing those DIY jobs that I keep meaning to do.