Surprise!

I admit that I have been a little slow posting over the last couple of weeks, but I have a really good excuse. In addition to getting four of my designs into production and the usual running about that happens around Christmas, I have found myself a new job.

It seemed like a good time to look. Heather had quit her job at the charity shop (only just in time to salvage her sanity) and I was wrapping up my current projects and getting ready to start on a new one. I hate to leave in the middle of a project, so if I hadn't looked now, I would basically be committing to another couple of years in the Midlands.

So at the end of January, we will be moving to......


.....London!

I got a job as a senior design engineer with a company in London. I will be designing home audio equipment~stuff like amplfiers, receivers, dvd players, and speakers. Basically, toys for big boys; it should be a lot of fun.

It kind of ruins the Christmas break because now we will be desperately trying to find a place to live in London instead of kicking back, reading books and eating too much. The job does provide a really good raise, but not really enough to cover the huge jump in rent, so Heather will be a bit under pressure to find a job too.

Looking forward to many great adventures in the new year. I hope you all have a wonderful, happy, beautiful Christmas.

JE

A Message from Heather

Heather recently sent out an email update. I am reposting it here in case you were missed out in the mailing list...

Well my friends, it's been over a year since we left all of you. I can still see your smiling faces. Smiling no doubt, because you were getting rid of us. Alas, here I am annoying you electronically. But what are you going to do? Delete me? Well, I suppose you could do that, but we all know you won't because let's face it~you're curious. You want to know what we've been doing and where we've been doing it. And what have we been doing since last I wrote? We had just come back from Prague if memory serves...(I can just see you hovering over the delete key now) . That was April. May brought a visit from my delightful nephew of 23? (who is closer to little brother than nephew). We explored England a little (Stonehenge and all that) and then sent him off to Scotland while John and I celebrated our anniversary in Italy. We went to Cinque Terre (five villages along the coast) and worshipped the sun, hiked, and ate and ate and ate. Upon returning, we settled in for a night of television and were surprised to see, well, me! The BBC film crew had been filming in the SLC library the previous year and the result was a documentary called "The boy with the incredible brain." I was caught at the level 4 reference desk rifling through papers looking very important. Late July found us in Paris and in September we traveled to Istanbul. Gag. It's beginning to sound like one of those obnoxious Christmas letters that you receive this time of year. Sorry about that. Of course you don't want me blathering on about all of the exciting adventures~you'd much rather hear about all of the miserable mundane things that piss me off. Yes? The British seem to enjoy it anyway. So let's get on with the moan, shall we?

I quit my rubbish job after nine months. I find I can do almost anything for six months without wanting to slit my wrists and take everyone else with me. I surpassed that threshold by three months, which meant that John also wanted to take my life. Was the job really that terrible you may ask. Well, yes actually. I mean the job I was hired to do (treasure-hunter of sorts) wasn't that bad. The job it turned into, carer/support worker/tea lady/social worker/babysitter/special ed teacher/nurse maid was a bit much. Surrounded by volunteers and trainees from the local job center (all on the dole and none really with half a brain among them) was 'doing my head in' as they say. It was like being in a Philip K. Dick novel. Isn't there one where the mentally ill run a planet or moon or something like that? I seem to have the misconception that volunteers are supposed to help out and actually do something. When trying to give them something to do I was met with comments like:

"I'm no good at me alphabet." (when asked to put fiction books in alphabetical order~which in itself was a chore because fiction verses non-fiction is mind boggling to them)

or

"I can't 'cause a me asthma." (when asked to dust)

And when, after months, I finally began to decipher what they were saying (for example they use 'me' for 'my' and 'am' for 'are') I decided it was time to leave before I too started saying things like:

"Am they going?" or just "Am ya?"
or "Them's good." or alternately "Them're good."
or "Y'am alright?" (which means "How are you?") or
"Y'am's good." (That would be "You are good." I think.)

Now I just have to deal with the regular English hassles~say the NHS for example? In theory it's great. Healthcare for the people, socialized medicine~couldn't be more for it~except it's rubbish.

John and Heather's adventures with the NHS:

The Dentist

A young couple walks into a bar~sorry wrong joke~John and I walk into the dentist's office, are handed forms to fill out and sent to our seats. I am called into the dentist's chair before I can finish (now this is service I think). The dentist yanks the form out of my hand, says it doesn't matter and throws it aside. Then he lays the chair down in record time, has me open my mouth, I think he looks in, and then the chair shoots up and I am spat out again into the waiting room while John has his 30 seconds. Hello? Preventative healthcare anyone? We are told we have good oral hygiene and are out the door. No cleaning, no consultation. I don't even think we got a free toothbrush.

My experience with a GP (general practitioner) has not been brilliant either. I went in week after week about an ear infection and nothing was done and I was unable to hear for a month or so. Lucky me also had the pleasure of the sexual health clinic. I went in ready for my yearly check-up and exam only to find that they don't do annual exams here. They just give out birth control like it's candy (and it may well be). Every three years you can have a pap smear if you really want one. This wasn't horrible news, I mean women don't particularly enjoy the yearly exam, but it's nice to know everything's in good working order and healthy, you know? Or is that just me? Anyway, I told the nurse what kind of pill I had been taking and can I please just stay on the same one, and a strange look came over her face. She'd never heard of such a pill. Scared yet? Apparently no such pill exists in England. So then she pulls out this birth control medication manual or something from 1996! Just a reminder folks, it is now 2005. I think ortho-tricyclen lo came out around 2000, but before that there was the basic thing. Never heard of the patch either by the way. Surprise. Well, in the end, I was given some form of blue pill. I'm hoping it is birth control and not candy, but if I come back and all of my teeth have fallen out, I've gone deaf, and I'm pregnant, you won't have to ask.

If you want to look at pictures of our adventures, John's set up a lovely website:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/johncelliot/


And, if you want to get a somewhat regular taste of what's
going on, log on to John's weekly blog:

http://www.johncelliot.plus.com/wmc.html

I myself have no such blog and prefer to
gripe about life
in very sporadic long emails.

I will leave you all with a poem written for me by a
volunteer at the shop upon my leaving.  Enjoy.



Bloody Cookley

This bloody town is a bloody cuss,
No bloody trains no bloody bus
And no one cares for bloody us
In bloody Cookley

All bloody clouds and bloody rains
No bloody curbs no bloody drains
The council's got no bloody brains
In bloody Cookley

No bloody sport no bloody games
And no bloody fun the bloody dames
Won't even give their bloody names
In bloody Cookley

And everything's so bloody dear
One pound fifty bloody beer
And is it good no bloody fear
In bloody Cookley

The dances here they make me smile
The bloody music's bloody vile
It only cramps your bloody style
In bloody Cookley

Best bloody place is bloody bed
With a blanket on your bloody head
You might as well be bloody dead
In bloody Cookley

A Buddhist, a Muslim, and a Christian walk out of a Tsunami...

A couple of days ago, there was a really good documentary on TV about last December's Tsunami that hit SE Asia. It was the first time that I had seen a lot of the footage that they had compiled from people's home videos of the disaster. At times it was too graphic to watch, when they were showing all of the bodies in the aftermath. It was unedited and brutally honest, the kind of thing that you wouldn't really see on US television.

One of the interesting parts of the documentary was when they were interviewing survivors of different religions. They talked to a Buddhist, a Muslim, and a Christian (Catholic). The Buddhist felt that he must have committed some really bad Karma to be punished by having his whole family taken away. The Muslim felt like it was all in God's hands (he lost eight family members). He said God gives and God takes away, it is up to us to take care of the ones we have while we have them. The Christian said that it was God's judgment on the evil world. He likened it to the flood in the bible. He said that Noah was not the only good man in the world, just the one that God chose to spare, but many other good people would have died in the great flood, just as many good people died in the Tsunami. Interestingly, the church that the Christian attended was left untouched by the Tsunami, while areas all around it were destroyed.

I was trying to decide which person I agree with most. I think I can rule the Buddhist out because I believe that God forgives and forgets our wrong doings if we confess them to him. But what if I had lost my whole family in the Tsunami? Would I say that it was because of God's judgment, or would I say that God just does these things (or allows them to happen) and we don't know why? It all boils down to the often debated topic of how can a good God allow horrible things to happen, or even worse cause horrible things to happen.

How do we know if a terrible disaster is God's judgment or just another occurrence in our darkened world? It is a part of God's nature that I don't like to think about. The bible is filled with examples of God's judgment: the flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, the plagues in Egypt, the Israelites conquering the promised land. I trust that God is good and that his judgments are just, but I don't always understand...

The Legend

Most of you won't really care about this...

I got to do the monitor mix for a Blues Brothers tribute band using the above console (a Midas Legend 3000). I have never had so many knobs at my disposal before. Definitely a power trip....

JE