More pottery painting with the family which has become an annual event.  This year we had a T-Rex statue, a kitten mug and a “Tigger” side plate by our three kids; a funky cup and saucer by my good lady wife; and #2 in what I am now calling my Superhero Series: Superman.  Last year I made a pretty good Batman side plate and this year I remembered the mistakes I had made, took my time (nearly 3 hours) and decided that when it looked good enough that was the time to stop and not do the black border which all agreed would have ruined it.  I’m a bit annoyed that some of the glaze has created white spots and rough patches (mainly on the bottom) but otherwise am jolly pleased with the results.  Why did it take so long?  I wanted a really vivid, vibrant colour to the whole thing which meant doing 3-4 coats of each colour.  I drew the outline in pen, freehand mind, no tracing!  Next I did the blue first, then the yellow between blue coats and finished with the red.  The glazing, firing etc. was handled by the people at the site.

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My first Mac was a MacBook Black, so I felt it fitting that I adapted the image that is everywhere on the web right now and made it glow slightly just like the back on my MacBook did. RIP Steve and thanks for giving me the tools to work, rest and play in techie style.

Woke this morning to the news that Steve Jobs had passed away during the night. Felt numb as if I’d been told an old friend had died. Despite having an iPod since the iPod Video came out in 2004/5/6, I’ve only really been a full-on Apple fanboy since I got my first Mac, a MacBook Black, off of eBay in 2008. I’ve since found with the iPhone and iPad, and to a lesser extent with my MacBook Pro, that Apple kit is a ubiquitous part of my life. I guess that Steve’s passing has saddened me because he’s given me so much. What other CEO and mega-rich businessman could prompt such a worldwide reaction of grief. God bless you, Steve, and rest in peace.

Most people who know me, know that when I’m not sparring (kumite) that I say I hate sparring. When asked why my main reasons are because I’m not good at it and I don’t like getting hit – a lag-over from childhood bullying coupled with a couple of shiners picked up from an overzealous instructor when I was a student thrown in for good measure. Anyway, the marble of this post is that last night’s Senior class was all kumite and, despite some knocks, I really enjoyed myself. I’m improving and storing combinations that seem to work for me in my repertoire so much so that I scored some points. My mentor & Sensei gave some key points which spoke volumes to me persinally in order to up my game so we’ll see what happens. Amusingly, I have had a GKR Essex Dragons t-shirt for some time with “Train Hard, Fight Easy” on the front. Maybe I should wear it more often….?

I woke up this morning tired but relatively fresh and came to the sudden, saddening realisation that I had woken up hacked off and feeling low. Maybe I was looking forward to yesterday’s events too much or something, but I was left with a mild sour taste. Three people’s attitudes or comments towards me rankled and one persons reaction left me mildly shocked & stunned – certainly enough to comment twice about it to my wife. Now I just want to go to bed and sleep until the weekend. And it’s Monday morning. sigh

This is, frankly, ridiculous. I checked my blog this morning and realised that my last actual post was in January 2010, so I haven’t written anything for 18 months now. That is an unacceptably long amount of time. I even said to myself 18 months before that that I should start a journal and what happens? I just don’t bloody bother!

*sigh* So here’s what you missed….

Work

The last journal entry I wrote was in September 2009. At that time I was just about to embark on a new phase of my career as a contractor at Commerzbank looking after data compliance and audit globally. This was to be a temporary posting until they looked to make me permanent after 6 months.

As it turned out at didn’t actually happen. Instead I was poached by BNP Paribas for the same global facing contract role but on more money (yay!) although it adds 30 minutes each way to my previous City commute as they are based in the West End (boo!). I’m now on the IPUG Executive as the Chair of the Data Compliance and Audit Special Interest Group (SIG) and have also given addresses to COSSIOM, the French market data consortium, on data compliance & audits. I’ll certainly be at BNPP until at least April 2012 as the project I am mainly working on will last up to 3 years.

All in all my career has found a new lease of life, I’ve managed to carve a niche out for myself in the industry and I’m happier professionally.

Karate

My karate has also taken off in leaps and bounds. I’m over half-way to black belt and qualified as a karate instructor (Sensei) in January after a 3 month course. Shortly after qualifying I also took over as the Branch Instructor of Sandon dojo in Chelmsford. I took over the class with 12 students on the roll, we’ve had a bunch of new students through recruitment drives & word of mouth and now have just over 30 on the roll with 24-28 students attending every week for the past month which is quite impressive. They are a great bunch and it is a pleasure and a privilege to be their sensei.

On a side note, training an average of three times a week and eating salad for lunch, I’ve lost several stone and gone from a 40″ waist and a 44″ chest to a 36″-37″ waist and 42″ chest. I got some t-shirts on Father’s Day and they were Mediums. I’ve only just put the XL ones in the eBay bag and bought some Large ones so maybe I’m still slimming down. I’m certainly physically fitter and feel much healthier than I have for years. My wife says I look hot too as my stomach is flat. Fantastic!

Geekiness

My digital life has totally changed.

I have pretty much completely moved away from using my Windows based PC across to my MacBook Pro (which I upgraded to at the start of the year from my first Mac, a MacBook Black). The only time I boot up the PC personally is when I want to game on there or the rare occasions I need to do something on there which I cannot do on my MBP for whatever reason. Then at Christmas this year my wife gave me a lovely, lovely iPad. This little device goes pretty much everywhere with me and has supplanted both the MBP and the iPhone for the majority of my digital experience. I use the MBP for big or lengthy tasks and the iPhone for mobile quick and dirty stuff; mostly relegating it to it’s core mobile phone and iPod function which is no bad thing. But the middle ground is firmly taken up by the iPad and quite comfortably too. In fact, I’m writing this post on the Blogsy app and can touch type quite well with the on-screen keyboard.

Gaming

My gaming life has also pretty much completely changed. My primary platform is definitely now iOS and even then I now favour the iPad over the iPhone – I’m currently addicted to Tower Madness HD. Leave my sheep alone, you aliens! I still play on my PC and the Wii, but the iPad is the main place. I’ve also tried playing on the PS3 and even bought Batman: Arkham Asylum for £7 to see if I could switch to consoles with a title I enjoyed on PC and figured a 3rd person game rather than an FPS might be easier to get to grips with. Apart from getting headaches dealing with gaming on a big screen, it is going rather well (weirdly I don’t get headaches with the Wii – hmmm). With Steam now releasing more games for Mac maybe I will switch across from PC there too but I doubt it. Certainly for now I want to get Bioshock Infinity on PC rather than any other platform, so watch this space!

Life

As for life in general, all is great: my wife and I are even more in love, which I didn’t think was possible; the kids are happy and all doing stormingly well at their respective schools, one of which I’m Vice-Chair of governors at; I’ve become an Uncle after my brother and his wife had a daughter; and my friends are all sound and hale and living their lives happily with people that they love.

Now. Let’s see if I can keep this blog up to date. Again.

The whole family went pottery painting today.  My wife and I chose to paint plates.  She did a lovely display of high heels on a side plate and I did the Batman symbol (what else!?).  I decided that when we do this again that I would do more in a series, maybe the entire Justice Leagues (my era, not whatever they have at the time).

It’s been a while since I posted a proper blog entry but for those of you who are reading this and are not already aware, I was made redundant from my post at Credit Suisse the day before my brothers wedding in December (gosh, I feel I can finally mention where I have been for the past 11 years. How refreshing!) and the gardening period finished on March 9th which meant I was now no longer being paid whilst I continued to apply for every job I was remotely qualified for. So, today I did something that I haven’t done since the summer I failed my A levels in 1992 – I signed on.

It was without a doubt the most soul destroying experience I have ever had. It never felt like this the first time around, but then again I wasn’t supporting a wife and 3 kids in 1992. I felt every single piece of motivational spirit being sucked out of me by Doug, my employment advisor, as he explained that I should have come in sooner and my chances of getting a back dated claim were minimal (Well, I haven’t seen one approved in 20 years…. and that I had to come in every two weeks armed with details of every job I have looked at and applied for to get my money and, more importantly, get my mortgage insurance paying out.

Doug is a middle aged man with very large HotFuzz style aviator glasses as his normal spectacles; bouffant grey hair complete with side parting; a charcoal grey suit coupled with a black shirt which someone has obviously told him would be slimming (it isn’t) all topped off with the annoying habit of saying Yep every single time I open my mouth to speak without giving a crap what I am actually trying to say. This is called Waiting to Speak and is the antithesis of Listening and very frustrating for a guy who is trying to get actual information as to how he can get out of the deep hole he has found himself in. It took all my strength not to shout in his face that I wasn’t some Channel 4 documentary benefit scrounger and that I didn’t want to be there anymore than he did, but I just sat there and took it because what else could I do? Do I really blame him? I guess not. After all, would I be any less jaded if I had been doing the job as long as him and dealing with the people that he has to – good, bad and indifferent?

So I stood up at the end of the interview and walked past the hoodies waiting to get their money – money I’d been providing not long beforehand – and walked outside. I had a list of errands I wanted to run in town but my brain wouldn’t work. I couldn’t think what I needed to do and Jo was too busy with the kids to pick me up so I went into autopilot and walked the 20 minutes or so home in a funk, trying to find a positive thought somewhere in my head.

I’m fine now, of course, and I gather that many feel like this but why? Why do we feel so awful? Surely there is a better way? I certainly want a job even more than I did before as I want to spend as little time as possible in that place.
Every cloud, eh?

I received an e-mail from Kev today asking if I had set-up an online pharmacy.

Yes. Had me confused for a moment there too.

Turns out someone has purchased a domain called ginger-ninja.net which is obviously almost identical to my own domain gingerninja.net. Not only that, but this individual is also using the site to sell medical items of a somewhat dubious nature. I’ll give you a taster:

Buy Cheap Viagra, Discount Viagra, Kamagra jelly, Kamagra, Apcalis and many more erectile dysfunction treatment solutions by Ginger Ninja!

Does that really sound like something I would do?

You’d think that after 21 years as my best mate, Kev would have known better than to ask. But, I said to myself, maybe Kev had only my best interests at heart? Afterall, a hacker can still get in and takeover a website if the admin has been rather silly with their security procedures. Maybe Kev was simply ensuring that it wasn’t my site and to ensure that I didn’t have a major problem. It doesn’t hurt to ask afterall and he’d me doing me a favour if that is the case.

And then it hit me. There is also always the possibility that Kev was looking for some assistance with his upcoming wedding and was hoping I could supply him with something to keep his ….morale… up on his wedding night? I’m not sure but I really do wonder if supplying little blue pills is above and beyond the call of duty for a Best Man.

No, not me. Had one of those commute’s this morning where everything worked against me. Not only did I oversleep due to not feeling well (I’ve caught Jo’s cold) but when I got to the station I couldn’t catch the train I wanted as it was running late and I would miss my connection. So I ended up waiting on the platform for an extra fifteen minutes for the direct service and faced the thick end of being nearly an hour late for work.
When I arrived at Stratford, it had become even hotter outside which is great if you are spending the afternoon in the garden but not if you have to wait on the platform for the DLR for another seven minutes. All was well and good at this point as I continued to watch Clerks on my Video iPod, which I had ripped from my DVD copy last night, until we reached a station around All Saints where we just sat there. Apparently the train in front had broken down and we were going to be stuck there for some time.
At this point we get to the subject of this little blog entry. A mouth-breathing young man with a shaved head dressed in a trackie top, jeans and sandals got on and sat next to me. This wasn’t a problem except he reeked of weed and I don’t mean a little. He could have felled cattle with his stench. It certainly made me retch when he first sat down. He’d clearly been enjoying his morning with Mary Jane as he started grinning around the carriage like a buffoon, giggling at the adverts on the walls. Again, more amusing than anything, as I continued to watch Clerks (which he noticed as he peered over my shoulder).
Then he coughed.
Without covering his mouth.
A small wad of phlegm flew out of his mouth and landed on my hand.
I duly pulled a face that looked like I had sucked the world’s largest lemon and glared at him as I looked for somewhere to wipe it off. He just looked at me without apologising, mouth open and eyes vacant.
That was enough for me at this point and I duly got up and moved to the doors to get some fresh air and remove myself from the target zone of his projectile coughing. He then proceeded to yell at the Passenger Agent to get a move on despite the announcement that the train in front had broken down and we would be another ten minues or so, before checking that his lump of weed resin was still in his pocket and returning to his grinning and giggling.
I ignored him and returned to Clerks from the safety of the door well, but not before surreptitiously taking his photo……
 

I’ve had a couple of messages over the past week from old friends from my Haven & Pontin’s days where I’ve been referred to as Johno. The following keeps popping up in my head…….

Me: Johno? Johno… Now, that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time… A long time.
Junior: I think my uncle knows him. He said he was dead.
Me: Oh, he’s not dead… Not yet anyway.
Junior: You know him?
Me: Of course I know him….He’s me!
*pauses*
Me: I haven’t gone by the name of Johno since before you were born.
*looks away reflecting on the past…at Camber and Littlesea*
Me: I have something here for you. Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough, but your uncle wouldn’t allow it. He feared you might follow old Johno on some damn fool idealistic summer season show like your father did. It’s your father’s jacket. This is the weapon of a BlueCoat. Not as clumsy or as random as a Red Coat, but an elegant weapon for a more civilized age. For over a thousand generations, the BlueCoats were the guardians of fun and laughter in the Old Holiday Camps. Before the dark times. Before Ibiza.

But I am an old man and my powers are weak….