30.06.06
Where is, erm, Matt?
This guy totally puts me to shame:
www.wherethehellismatt.com
Make sure you watch the video on his homepage. (Also available here)
I think I’ve got some catching up to do…
2 football matches, 4 dates…
My housemate had a bit of a result last weekend. He met a Mexican girl who seemed pretty keen on meeting up with him. She suggested that they watched the Mexico v Argentina game together. Not a bad offer. I think most blokes would be happy to have a date with a foreign girl watching the world cup, but he then remembered he’d offered to “look after” a friend’s very attractive Swedish friend who was in Madrid. She suggested watching the Germany v Sweden game together. Still doable… watch the Mexico game, make excuses and then go see the Sweden game.
It gets better though. A German girl he met recently called and suggested that he watch the Sweden v Germany game with her. So it was decision time: The Mexican, German or Swede? Easy right? Not when an Argentinian girl who you’ve been seeing in the past turns up in Madrid and wants to watch the Argentina v Mexico game.
That was his dilemma for the weekend. A position I think a lot of blokes would be envious of. I’ll just finish by saying only Argentina made it through to the next round.
28.06.06
Cabo de Palos
The weekend didn’t turn out quite as expected. We turned up at the dive center early to find it closed. 45 minutes later, we got a call from a friend of Philippe/Ana saying where the hell are you. It turns out that we were supposed to go round to the back of the center. They leave the front closed as there is no one to man the shop…
So for a good start we missed the first dive. As a form of compensation, the dive center offered us a special trip with two bottles to get a double dive in. Philippe and I snapped up the opportunity, taking Espe with us. Ana, sensibly, chose to go on the originally planned second dive so she could be with Natxo (who is friend and a very experienced diver). Unfortunately for us it wasn’t until we were loading the boat up that we found out that we were going out on our own with no guide and an uneven number to buddy with. Alarm bells were ringing, and I was annoyed that the dive center were even letting 3 people out with less than 30 dives between them, but… we still went anyway. This is one of my main flaws. Indecisiveness. I should have said no there and then. It would have meant no dives at all on the Saturday and left us on a low, but when safety is concerned that should not matter.
So, off we went. Espe, thought her tank was strapped on ok, but wanted a second opinion. I requested she asked someone with more experience as I was having trouble with faulty regulators and blown O rings. Someone changed Espe tank strap to how it “should be”. Out on the boat, Espe was not convinced how it had been changed and asked the “dive master” on the boat. He had no clue and spent 10 minutes faffing about with it. Eventually into the water the tank slipped loose. Thankfully another boat had turned up and someone jumped in to help. Espe by this point was quite exhausted and very annoyed.
We started the dive anyway. Now as the most experienced of the three I should have been glued to Espe, I should have kept a good eye on Philippe and I should have navigated / led the dive. Instead, I was not close enough to Espe and Philippe ended up leading. Philippe got a bit stressed when he started running low on air. Signaling that we go to the surface I suggested that we worked our way round to the buoy line, but Philippe’s air was a bit too low for that (besides, although I thought I knew where the buoy line was, I couldn’t be sure). At this point Espe started ascending, but without emptying her BCD of air she did her best impression of a submarine launched cruise missile. Well to be fair, she fought to try and come down, but with the air in the jacket expanding she could do little but slow the ascent and I was too far away to do anything about it.
Sunday was more successful, but not without problems. Espe had trouble breathing close to the start of the first dive, which in hindsight we can only put down to hyperventilation. All the same she kept her head, checking her pressure gauge then switching to her spare reg. Still struggling, she requested my spare. Natxo (who was leading this dive) took over, having seen what was happening, and surfaced with Espe.
The last dive, as Philippe points out was a lot more relaxed. Without having to worry so much for our buddies we were both able to concentrate more on our technique and see what was going on. I had more opportunity to take some pics as well. I’m getting a few good results, but I really think I need a strobe as the built in flash just isn’t up to the job.
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So, all in all, not the greatest of diving weekend, but we all learnt a hell of a lot from it. The Islas Hormigas have a nice collection of dive sites, so I’m sure we will return. Away from the diving it was so refreshing just to be out of Madrid and as a bonus, on Saturday night Espe and I went on a two hour sail boat cruise at sunset.
22.06.06
Vamos a bucear
It’s all a bit exciting really. We haven’t been diving since last September and thanks to the persistence of Philippe we’re off to the Islas Hormigas this weekend. Allegedly one of the best dive sites in mainland Spain so it should be good.
Espe, Ana, Philippe and I will be heading down to the Med’ tomorrow evening. It will be Espe’s and Ana’s first dives after completing their open water course last year.
As I said, all very exciting stuff.
21.06.06
Gareth’s Gone…
Gareth has left us once again, after 5 erm… typically Gareth type days. I think I escaped lightly but top marks to Philippe who kept up and managed to go to work everyday. So what happened? Well, if you’ve been reading, you’ll see that we had a steak last Wednesday. Thursday we went down to Kitty of Shays to watch the England v Trinidad game. A much more entertaining game than England’s first, and quite tense until (the aptly named) Crouch finally put one away. There were a fair few of us there, including a couple of random English lads we got talking to and three Bristolian girls who Gareth met on the plane. I’ll leave you to read Philippe’s comments about them…
Starting at 6pm, the England victory and the afore mentioned random chap buying a round of whiskey shots ensured that the night ended up quite messy. We moved onto the bar where Ana works after Kitty’s where Ana supplied us with some great tapas, chocolate and of course several more cañas.
A tough day in the office followed on Friday. Thankfully James offered to covered my dreaded LCT shift leaving me to take it nice and easy. Philippe nursed his head by configuring his web sites to be updatable via his mobile while I read up about the Indian Caste system and continued to work on the Rickshaw Run website. That’s the joy of working in support. Some days everything happens and you don’t stop for a minute. Other days you have next to no work.
A siesta in the afternoon saw me in a better state and ready to go an meet up with the others for the customary curry in the Taj. We had a good turn out with 12 people turning up to see Gareth.
I found myself discussing our round the world route with him and ended up being given a very thorough run down of what to see in Australia and when. He even drew me a fantastic map (on the back of the menu) as a reference. This left Espe and I even more excited about the trip… Time to buy those tickets.
Saturday was a bit of a write off. I was very tired and for some reason my head hurt somewhat. We cleaned up the flat and watched a bit of TV. I ended up watching a program about the 9/11 terrorist attacks arguing that everything that happened was carried out by the American government. It seems a bit too much to be believable, but I must say it was very, very convincing. Take a look for yourself if you’ve got the bandwidth and an hour to spare:
Loose Change 9-11 : Alex Jones Conspiracy
The football theme, understandably, continued. We had Brazil v Australia on Sunday. Most of us siding with Australia due to Gareth’s current residence and the fact that the final score line didn’t reflect how well the Aussies played.
Monday saw a group of us meet up in Chill bill for Gareth’s last night and the Spain v Tunisia game. A great result for Spain at 3-1, but it was very tense as Tunisia scored first and it took a very long time for Spain to equalise.
With Espe happy with Monday’s result, it was down to Jon and I to fight it out on Tuesday in the England v Sweden game. As it happens a good game to watch and a nice final result for both teams. 2 - 2. We both go through, and we (England) don’t have to play the Germans… yet.
Anyway, that’s about the end of this big post, representative of rather a big weekend. Check out the photos on Philippe’s site!
16.06.06
Something exploded and system shut down
I feel the need to share this. Day to day I take cases for customers who have problems with their computer servers. It can be quite monotonous with little reward, but every so often we get cases that can only make you smile.
Yesterday I took a case which had a summary of “something exploded and system shut down. but when powered back up worked ok”.
I arranged to have an engineer go to site to inspect the system and this morning I saw the following in his site report:
“On powering down and removing the lid I found the server was covered in dust and fluff etc (incl dead spider and web !!)
15.06.06
The Mahou Meister Returns
Gareth arrived back in Madrid last night. Gareth is a Welsh chap who we worked with before he left for Australia back in December. He’s back in Europe for a couple of weddings and is paying his work colleagues and friends a visit this weekend.
A group of us last night went out for a wonderful steak in Cebon, a restaurant that Philippe & Jon have raved on about for ages that until last night I’d yet to sample the goodness. The place certainly lived up to its reputation producing large succulent steaks that we were able to cook to our taste on the hot plate provided. This was followed up by a few beers in Chill Bill.
A nice gentle introduction to what will undoubtedly be a heavy weekend as Gareth is capable of putting away far too many Mahous. Tonight we’re off to watch the England game, followed by the standard curry at the Taj tomorrow. In fact the weekend has already been planned out by Philippe. See his blog for details, although those of you that don’t know Gareth will miss the humor.
14.06.06
Jornada Intensiva
I’m somewhat pleased. A mail has just gone round the office stating the following:
“Me gustaría recordaros que la jornada intensiva comenzará el 1 de julio y finalizará el 31 de agosto.”
Ok, so you don’t read Spanish, but it is good news. Basically we will be working “intensive hours” for the whole of July and August. Intensive hours means getting into the office by 8 and having no lunch break, but the bonus is we only work a seven hour day and get to leave the office at three!
Not sure my boss in the UK is going to like that too much.
