14th July 2000...

It's Friday afternoon and I didn't go to work today.  Our friendly neighbor upstairs had another of his near all night parties and I didn't get to sleep till around 5am.  Louise was hammering on his door at 1am trying to get him to turn his music down.  Our other neighbor appeared at her door wide awake as well.  She thought they were the only ones annoyed by the constant noise upstairs.  He did turn the music off... until 1.30am when his brother and friends turned up and it all started again.  He assures us that in 10 days he is leaving the country for good so we will have no more problems.  Louise told him we would have a party to celebrate!  If he doesn't leave and the problems continue, we will be hiring a lawyer and taking civil action against him.  We have recently found out that he has been an ongoing problem for all of the other residents who have ever stayed here over the last four years.  Despite last night, I enjoyed sleeping in until 11.30am... and it's only the third day off I've had since February, so I quite enjoyed it.

Life for us has been somewhat dull since the last update.  I am still working in Third Level Support at the London Fire Fire Brigade (Now LFEPA) and Louise is still a Financial Analyst for the Competency Center at GlaxoWellcome.  She is the only analyst in her department now and seems to be enjoying what she is doing.  She has been there long enough now to be at the point where you start to make friends again which makes work so much more enjoyable.

I seem to be reading a lot more this year than I ever have in my life.  I'm currently reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (nothing about motorcycle maintenance).  I think you'd like this book Harley, after some of our deep discussions on 'what is really level' as we bolted stainless conduits to the walls at Kiwi Dairy Company...

Summer came and went one weekend recently.  Two days of beautiful blue sky and wonderful warmth.  It hasn't been seen since.  In fact if I look out of the window now, I could be fooled into thinking winter is approaching.

Since we've done nothing really exciting in the last couple of months I thought I'd just fill you in on our plans for the end of the year and put in a little picture show... they will say more than my words can.

Christmas Plans... This Christmas, we plan to escape the winter cold for a month by flying in to Kuala Lumpur to visit Jane and Rob and perhaps traveling to Krabi and Phuket with them.  After that we plan to fly to India on a trip that will hopefully be guided by Harleys sister Nicole.  The trip follows the red line on the map for 15 days.  It will have a maximum of twelve people although, Harley tells me it often doesn't get up to that many. I'm not sure that I am going to be quite prepared for the culture shock of India.  When we were in Singapore we visited a small section of the city called Little India.  I found that a bit of an experience so perhaps it was a good warm up!  If you were dropped there blind, you would have had no idea you were in Singapore.  There was the Singapore that I think the government wants the you to see (dull and boring in my opinion) and then there was the rest of Singapore where life really happens.  We ate lunch there in a local eating place.  When we walked in, I don't know whether it was me feeling a bit uncomfortable or whether eyes really were watching us.  Two white people appearing amongst the local Indian community doing what they do daily.  It completely grossed me out watching everyone scrunch their food up in their left hands before stuffing it in their mouths... but then I had to accept that is their culture.  It probably looked strange me picking at my food with a fork (I wasn't entirely sure what I was eating!!) 31 July 2001 Well, only half of the above ever happened.  We made Malaysia, Thailand and Cambodia... never saw India... but that's another story for later.  Some old pictures instead... Rich & Weez