Me n Becksie

Yup, it's true, Beckham is trying to look like me. His hair is getting close to mine and he even has crows feet around his eyes... he doesn't even shave.

Yup Beckham is the new Kee Law.

Bloody Messenger!

Useless useless Messenger... been trying to log in all night with no luck... then the one time I do log on there's only one other person online!!

Still meant I could watch England vs Azerbaijan in peace, though not the best of matches, about 50 gazillion chances, all to Michael Owen and only 2 goals to show for it, none for Michael either!

Make me a supermodel

Ho ho, I love this show.

What other show on UK TV has fit girls, naked girls in the bath , girls in lingerie and loads of bitchiness and backstabbing.

Quite a rash of these types of reality TV shows lately and they all make for absorbing viewing. Why is it that we love them so? Do we revel in seeing talented beautiful people fail and cry?

Maybe it's human nature to derive pleasure from seeing those fortunate made less fortunate.

Rip off alert! Warning to those who sell stuff online.

Interesting scam exposed on Watchdog tonight, a warning to anyone selling anything.

What happens is that someone contacts you to say that they are interested in buying your whatever and keep contacting you to ask for info. etc before agreeing to buy. i.e. sounding like someone who is a keen buyer.

What then happens is that he says is working abroad, but that a client of his in the UK owes him money for an amount greather than your asking price. He will arrange for his client to send you a cheque for the total amount and ask you to transfer the remaining balance to him.

e.g. you sell something for 100 pounds, he gets his client to send you a cheque for 300 pounds and you deduct your selling price and send 200 pounds to the buyer.

Where people got caught was that the buyer is willing to wait until the cheque has cleared into your bank account before you send the money back. Surely if the cheque has cleared into your account everything must be alright, right?

Of course not. The cheque that the buyer sent was a fraudulent cheque and they got returned to the hapless seller, but only after the money cleared and the seller sent the balance on.

Apparantly all the major bank's have some stupid thing in their terms and conditions that says that money "cleared" into your account does not mean that it is cleared for your use!

Sellers beware!

M5.... droooool

Hmmm.... reading Evo this morning (a little treat to myself seeing as I woke up at 5:30 this morning), an article on "What to buy for £20k" caught my attention. £20k is kinda affordable and the metal on show was a mix of new cars and used cars, but all very very tempting.

Of the used cars there was a Lotus Exige, BMW M5, Skyline, TVR Cerbera, Honda NXS, Maserati 3200GT, Clio 182 and the old Escort Cossie. For the new cars an MR2, the new Golf GTi, Scooby WRX and MX-5. Winner by a relatively clear margin was the BMW M5 due to being "too complete, too sensible, too fast, too brilliant to be ignored".

Scouring the Auto Trader website turfs up a 2000 BMW M5 in Carbon Black with Sat Nav, 36k miles for £21k.

Tempting....

Immigrants

Interesting documentary at the moment about immigration. Basically knocks away all the perceptions that immigrants come to nick our jobs, sponge off our benefits system and there isn't enough space for them here. Also there was a report on the BBC website about how Chinese in the UK are "among the highest-earning groups in Britain and the most likely of all groups to do well in school".

The documentary seems to be pretty biased, showing that most of the English people are disgustingly rude to these people, statements like "I want to punch them", "bloody foreigners", etc. It does highlight though that a lot of employers have to employ migrants because the locals don't want the job (in the case of factory or farm work) or that there is a skills shortage (doctors and nurses in our hospitals).

I guess I am a migrant too which is why I feel so strongly about this issue. But basically my opinion is that most of the people in the UK who are whinging about this issue are too lazy or stupid or arrogant to get jobs. They feel that they deserve to be rich just because they were born here. Well wake up!! My family has done well because they worked hard despite having to put up with racism, language and cultural barriers. What's the excuse for the unsuccesful locals? Too much beer and fighting on a Friday night?

Send the snobbby lazy chavs out of the country, not the hard working migrants.

Och aye wee laddie!

Ogh aye! Greetings from Edinburgh, Scotland! I been working up here for the last week or so, hence less time to blog away my random rambles. (yeah yeah I hear you say, any excuse!)

Edinburgh is a lovely city, really historical and quaint, doesn't really feel like a city, more like a big town. The weather is surprisingly good, definately not as cold as London right now.

Anyway, not a great deal else going on in my life at the moment. Slowly getting back into the swing of things... work, eat, sleep, work, eat, sleep. What can you do?

Well go out more on the weekend for a start! Had a really good weekend just gone. Went for some drinks on Saturday for Kiki's birthday in a cool bar in Hanover Grand. Kinda strange atmosphere because it was run by a Chinese guy, so it had dice games, but was also in Hanover, so had loads of posh rich kids! Pics due soon, just need to vet a few of them out!

So what's next on the horizon for me? Good question and I'm not really sure. I suppose I have to work to pay off debts run up during travels, but what is there to look forward to? Well some thoughts are:

- go on a drift school day (i.e. you spend the day being a hooligan in a sports car)
- go on a weekend break with Ellen's cousins
- look out for cheap tix to Hong Kong this Xmas.
- clear up the house of all my old clothes and crap built up over the years (the house is stuffed with rubbish as the moment, lucky we have a big shed!)

exciting stuff huh? Oh well...

Back to work

Back to work now for my new team, "Performance Improvement Consulting". Common question I been getting asked is "How is it getting back to work?" Well, it's nice to get back to a routine after travels, especially after Hong Kong, where we did loads of relatives-type stuff and quite a bit of hanging around.

Still it's weird how time has gone by so quickly, so that was 5 months off then was it? As age creeps up I suppose this is what happens. Doesn't feel like I actually went at all.

Anyway, quite enjoying work with this new team, it's very different to audit for sure which is a good thing. Will see how it goes over the next weeks as I have mostly been doing background reading so far and have only just started on a major project.