Bits & Bots...

Getting colder by the day here...not helped by the fact the heating in my apartment STILL isn't working correctly. One minute I'm BOILING and the floor is hotter than the ground by the swimming pool in Spain in summer...the next, I'm wrapped up in two duvet's trying to get to sleep - swearing & cursing instead of counting sheep. The heating control still displays ERROR, which I'm SURE has something to do with it, but the engineer - who has now been 8 times & clearly hates me - says otherwise...actually, he never says anything I understand, and is probably saying "I HATE YOU SO MUCH I'VE SET THE THING TO BOILING / FREEZING ON A CYCLE, BUT I WILL SMILE AS IF I LIKE YOU, YOU ENGLISH TWAT" - while I nod and offer him a drink in apathetic begging attempt to recover the relationship that I suspect went bad after I called him a "Fecking tosser-chimp"...

 

It's getting towards Christmas & I'm getting the usual requests to buy fake shite from the market for people I've not heard from for ages. I know my worth! I went to a 'Turning on the Christmas lights' ceremony in a large shopping centre the other day - the local Chinese looked bewildered ("What's Christmas? Can we eat it?") while the store owners were thinking "Come on, you Westerners, spend a FORTUNE on stuff that's cheaper back home!!" - there were some posh folk there, albeit with very little taste (note the pink-chrome car)...

 

Talking of pink, I treated myself to a new vacuum cleaner - I noted the one on display was pink, so INSISTED I wanted a blue one - the girl gave me a box which very clearly had a blue one on the picture, and the label on the side said 'COLOR+SKY BLU' but when I got it home and opened it up...I'd insisted she get the box from the store room, rather than one of the ones on the shelf, which clearly involved some degree of effort, so I bet she switched them, and probably spat on it, too - and her brother is the heating engineer...she will have text him - "That English bastard you told me about is here, driving me, nuts too - let's tip him over the edge until he tops himself or goes back home and doesn't come back..."

 

The 'APPLE' store is absolutely PACKED everyday, but the security guys outside make the cheeky lads that stand by the door selling fake phones & ipads stand just behind a line, where the shop's 'property' ends...they taunt the guards and stretch their hands out, but keep their feet dead on the line...

 

I went to a really 'unusual' place to eat the other day - almsot like a converted living room...the menu had been partially translated with classic lines such as "sometimes beef", "sexy beef" and "hot milk blah blah blah". The next day I was sexually excited at the prospect of eating a FREY BENTOS minced beef pie I'd brought back from the UK. I was 'frustrated' previously by realising I needed a bloody tin opener to get in the damn thing (not got one) - bit like a woman saying "you can take ALL my clothes off - slowly - but only if you can guess the right number between 1 and 100...." Anyway, that night, I remembered to buy one (a tin opener, not a co-operative woman) and in it went (the PIE, the PIE!!!)...but the shelf in the oven was set high up, for my toast in the morning (that's the only stuff I EVER cook) - so it was inevitable that the bloody pie would be too close to the heating elements, and I was on a SKYPE call to someone back in the UK - a guy I was trying to recruit for my team here - when I suddenly smelt burning... he sent me an email later saying "you disappeared off camera, I could see smoke drifting across your living room, and your voice shouting from the kitchen "F*ck, F*ck, it's on bloody fire!!!" - which it was...literally, flames from the pastry.

But there's a good end to the story - I ate the pie anyway (on the basis I'm sure I"ve eaten worse over here), and the guy said he'd accept the offer to work here - "Sounds like working with you will be a good laugh if nothing else".

Inspirational leadership, deal sealed with a pie, from 5,000 miles away! 

Genius...