Tag Archives: self obsessed

More finance shenanigans

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The trap

So…after a few days of excruciating pain and finally moving the pain to an amber alert I am able to type a little.  Fortunately, for a man bereft of interesting things to blog about, there was an interesting diversion today where I work.

A well dressed businessman, complete with briefcase tried to gain access to the building today and to say he seemed a little peturbed doesn’t do it justice.  I believe he was calling our beloved CEO some names that would make even the hardiest sailor blush.  He also claimed that he had one million…what I am not sure..other names to call out maybe.  Surely if he had one million, he would be rather happy.  I know I would.

Suffice to say that our ever astute security team decided that this was one meeting that the CEO would rather not take and proceeded to block said businessmans entrance.  They finally escort the gentleman from the premises, only for him to give them the slip and head back in via the revolving doors.  That was a mistake…our revolving doors are the ones that no matter how hard you push, they never really go any faster.  So within a split second, the faster of the guards decided to grab the door to stop its revolution, just at the point that the man was literally trapped.

It is at this point that our security team looked, it is fair to say, like the house cat that finally catches the mouse and doesn’t quite know what to do with it.  Furtive glances were exchanged in a sort of “Now what?” manner between the guards while another simply sighed and called the police.  Eventually, the police showed up and took him away.  I say that they missed a trick though, they could have released the latch that stops the doors moving fast and had a kind of abusive russian roulette.  Spinning him round at high speed must surely fall under “subduing”.

This guy clearly misunderstood the nature of our business…we are in banking, but we are not a bank…nor do we handle investments as such, so any loss he may have occurred simply cannot be attributed to us.  This is something I tried to explain to some guy calling on … what can only be described as … a tin can and string, from India, to ask me as Head of IT (I love it when they do that…regardless of how untrue it is) to answer a 5 minute survey on IT within Retail Banking.

Him:  Do you have 5 minutes for a survey on IT within Retail Banking?
Me:  No, but even if I did, we are not a Retail Bank
Him:  It onlytakes 5 minutes
Me:  It doesn’t matter, we are not a Retail Bank…as I have already said
Him:  It will probably take less than 5 minutes and is just asking questions about your business
Me:  Not if you think my business is Retail Banking it isn’t.
Him:  But surely you have 5 minutes?
Me:  OK, what is the survey about
Him: Retail Banking
Me:  And what have I said that my business is NOT about
Him:  It’s just 5 minutes though
Me:  *click*

I appreciate he probably had a script and I had deviated desperately from it, but still….PAY ATTENTION FUCKTARD…seriously!

In other news, how the hell is it possible to go to bed on a Thursday evening feeling absolutely fine and wake up ON MY DAY OFF in pain so bad I can’t move?  Is it some sort of karmic retribution for deciding to take a short notice Friday off?  If that is the case, surely it would punish me more to have me be completely recovered and healthy on Monday morning?!?  Not, still sitting in frickin’ agony on Wednesday evening.  Admittedly, my recover may have been speedier had I not decided to drink some of that fine German painkiller on Saturday night…forget the pain….and then dance around to cheesy old music all night…but still.

Well screw you karma, Zs girlfriend IP is a physiotherapist and she is helping fix me.  I have managed to progress to actually getting to sleep and staying asleep for a few hours before the pain hits again.  In your face karma….in your overly judgemental face!

Ch ch ch ch changes….

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Give up smoking!So, I sit here – 3 days into the whole not smoking thing, a week into the exercise thing and the same into the diet thing.

Jesus wept.  Pretty tough if I am honest.  I don’t know if I built up some immunity to Zyban from when I took it years ago, or if I was right and I should have taken it for 2 weeks before giving up smoking, not a week…but this is taking more force of will than I anticipated.  The diet and exercise thing is going ok, but the not smoking is almost killing me.

Then, I have my first working day without the smokes….and I think I wanted to kill the world today at some point.  I can be quite intimidating at the best of times, but with the nicotine DTs….I dread to think – Therefore I think I am over-compensating with niceness.  That said, today was pretty stressful and I had little patience to deal with incompetence….and my desperate attempts to use caffiene in place of nicotine were doomed to fail, especially as I normally go for a coffee and a smoke.

My own over reactions were tempered by me legging it out of the office before some form of career limiting explosion took place.  I of course mean my own career, not me curtailing someone elses…although that could have happened too I suppose….

I have told my kids that I have stopped though, so I don’t want to head back to England for my visit at the end of the month, only to have to tell them I failed…  So there you go, my entire motivation for getting fit and healthy…my kids.

I am sat here like a recovering heroin addict though – It is almost funny, I have this kind of nervous energy.  Oh yeah, additionally…I am determined to stop chewing my nails…..so imagine the joy I am having right now if you will….then pity me.

Or don’t…I chose this path and I intend to see it through.  I think I have only felt worse than this one time in my life, and that was when I tried to give up coffee a while back…..I am never trying that again.  Plus, with the amount I drink, I have a genuine fear of falling into an exceptionally long sleep….

I promise I am working on some decent posts, but I honestly can’t focus on them right now…  Hopefully tomorrow will make it a bit easier and I can get something sorted Smile

I would go an have a beer…..but I have stopped drinking too

Aaaaargh

Thought I would leave you with this great anti-smoking advert….

Healthy?!?

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P1030527.JPGOK, put the paramedics on alert….for soon….I shall run.

I have visions of my athletic prowess from my youth springing to the fore and running a record time around Frankfurt, passing professionals with consumate ease and mocking them mercilessly….. Visions that are definitely suggesting that I am not entirely in my right mind.  There may well be a number of small quakes measuring well into the Richter scale in Frankfurt shortly……followed by the headline “Escaped Panda found shaved and dead” in the following mornings paper.

That said, I have decided to give up smoking, go on a diet and start exercising.  Oh crap, now I have put it out there, I will have to do it for fear of humiliation.  It is a bit like not telling anyone you have your driving test, so you don’t risk the ignominy of telling everyone you failed.  What people don’t know can’t hurt you I suppose.

I am a little unprepared for it though..if there is some type of festival thing going on (there always seems to be in Frankfurt), everyone will assume I am in an Uncle Fester costume and will be waiting for Morticia or Cousin It to be following somewhere behind.

I don’t mind though, I have been moaning about my extra poundage for a looong time now and done precisely…nothing about it.

Now is the time.  Never in the field of human conflict has so much been drunk by so few and added so many pounds….. or something.

I have been to the Doctors and got myself a prescription for a miracle stop smoking drug…although apparently my health insurance won’t cover it and it will cost me €150 Eek! That said, I spend that on cigarettes every 15-20 days……

As a smoker of many years, it is difficult to analyse it, but if you have to produce the money that you will spend on cigarettes in one go..it seems impossible.  But you can produce the money every day for the month with relative ease.  I don’t fully get that, but I will try it in the next few days and see how it goes.  I have used this wonder drug before and gave up smoking for 4 and a half years, so I am pretty confident it will work again….hopefully for longer than last time too.

So there you have it, a statement of intent.  Intent to stop the procrastination and actually do something for once.  Women will want me and men will want to be me, I will be the perfect physical specimin and probably compete in the next olympic games.

Now, I am just off to MacDonalds to bulk up…that’s how you do it right?

Oops!

Feelings

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So another day, another passworded post.  I was going to remove the last one, and in fact I did for a short while.  But then I thought, screw it…noone can read it so it doesn’t matter.  Then I went through some stuff last night and lo and behold…another one pops out this morning.

Feelings are strange things aren’t they?  They totally screw with your mind and often the minds of those around you that you care about.  When it’s the latter, it is often too late when you realise what you are doing.

I have been quite selfish for some time…could be that I needed to be, but when realisation hits and things are too late to deal with, I wish I had stayed how I was…ignorant and avoiding admittance.

Now I feel zoned out and in limbo.  Nothing seems to be moving and with how tired I am at the moment, I just want to sleep.  I apologise if this is a bit of a depressing post, but as I have said before, my blog my rules.

Did you ever sit down and reflect on yourself over the last few years and actually be able to spot where things should have been done differently?  I know I have and I am left with feelings of regret and an uneasiness I am not used to.

20/20 hindsight is wonderful, but completely useless I guess.

Now I have to try and look forward and to be honest, I just don’t know if I have the energy… or desire… to bother.

All I would say is, think, think long and hard about your decisions before you make them.  They almost certainly will come back and bite you in the arse at some point, and you have to be prepared to live with them and sleep at night…something I have failed to do for the last 2 nights running.

I don’t think you can make it through life without some regrets…just try everything you can to make them small and trivial.

That’s what I will aim for from now on….if possible anyway.

D.

Scared much?

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!!So we have already established my fear of public speaking, and it got me thinking about other things and situations that keep me rooted to the spot. 

How do you define a phobia?  Wikipedia says “A phobia (from Greek: φόβος, phobos, “fear”), is an irrational, intense, persistent fear of certain situations, activities, things, or persons. The main symptom of this disorder is the excessive, unreasonable desire to avoid the feared subject.”

Now, other than public speaking, I don’t have any phobias….according to Wikipedia anyway.   Clearly, my aversion to things as large as my head that have more legs than me is completely rational.  There is nothing irrational about screeching like a 1950s woman that has just seen a mouse when one of these evil monstrosities roams the apartment..is there?

That reminds me, I need to buy a broom.  A military grade one, preferably supplied by the guy that gives Bond his gadgets…

I don’t know the official name…but I do have another irrational fear, the fear of looking like an idiot.  Quite an ironic one though, as I probably do this a lot without even realising…but that’s the key isn’t it, the not realising it.  I try to be funny but avoid being moronic, I deliberately avoid putting myself in situations where I can look foolish.  Which is funny really as a lot of my humour centers around taking the piss out of other people, therefore putting myself “in the line of fire”, so to speak.

I knew someone sometime ago that would become rooted to the spot and end up in a gibbering wreck when birds were flapping their wings anywhere near her.  Sarah used to become almost paralysed with fear whenever she was forced to look down from a height…something I very delicately and considerately dealt with by getting her to go on the biggest, baddest rollercoasters and fairground rides that I could find…oh and I made her go up to the top of the revolving telecomms tower in Berlin….See, aren’t I considerate Twisted

I personally am terrified of paralysis…a lot of people will relate to this I am sure, but the concept of being trapped inside my own body really gives me the heebies..

So what am I scared of now?  I don’t know really, my career seems to have stalled..I am 35 in a couple of days, I see my kids via webcam or talk to them by phone and I live alone.  I should probably be scared of myself if I am honest.  I seem to hurt people close to me and push them away.  I have even done this to my family over the years (albeit mainly when I was younger…some things are best left unblogged).  All I know is that I am tired.  Not tired in a “you should be worried about my state of mind” kind of way.  More tired in a self-absorbed, drained kind of way.  There feels like some sort of malais afflicting me, who knows though, this is probably normal for someone approaching 35.  Ageing has never bothered me before though, so I can’t (with any honesty) blame that.

Maybe I will look to new horizons, maybe.

Or maybe I should just buy a sports car, get liposuction and hair implants and rock it with 18 year old nymphomaniac contortionist porn star triplets…

Cheat much?

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Happy New Year!So, I promised myself to deliver a post every day this month….I seem to have achieved it with this very post.  Now, I don’t think that making a post about making posts is necessarily cheating….

It was bloody hard, totally lacking in quality and did I say hard?  I stepped over to a blog the other day that had over 50 posts a month….without guest posters.  Ok, some of them were only a couple of lines long, but still…. OVER 50 a month….

I don’t think I could come up with that amount of posts, unless I live (more than I do already) at my keyboard and post every thought I have (which isn’t many, I *am* a bloke after all).

See thats the thing, as a bloke, there are many many times where I am genuinely not thinking about anything.  That doesn’t mean anything in particular, which suggests I am thinking about unimportant things, it literally means nothing is going through my mind.

It’s an almost zen like state, and completely incomprehensible to women.

Ladies (in my limited experience) tend to be thinking about something at all times.  This view is therefore transferred to the simpler of the species (ie men), which is where it goes wrong.  The question “What are you thinking?” when responded to with “Nothing” tends to create the “So what’s wrong?” comeback.  This is presumably due to the fact that nothing must be something, which must be something we don’t want to talk to you about, therefore we are hiding something from you and there really is something big.  When you work it the other way round, it works though.  If I ask a woman “What are you thinking?”, the response “nothing” always means something…..something that they don’t want to get into right now, but will do so…..as I fall asleep.

I’m with Ed Byrne on this one, women seem to store up information throughout the day, just to use it in the designated speaking area that they see the bed to be.

Anyway, now I have alienated half of my (very limited) readers, I am off to continue my celebration of managing to post at least 1 piece of meaningless page vomit per day for an entire month.  I will probably take a 3 month haiatus to allow me to find something to write about…

Cheers

Argue much?

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Calm down, calm downIs it bad when your boss starts sending emails that end with things like “Ask them to change it, but try and be nice”?

Sure, I can argue and I can do it pretty well.  At work I can get quite aggressive, which is in direct contrast to what a soft cuddly teddy bear I am outside of work…no honestly.

But my boss has recently started adding lines much like that one to emails…and more recently in direct conversation.  I wouldn’t mind, but he regularly drags me into meetings I have neither the desire nor inclination to attend, specifically so that he can utilise me as some form of verbal weapon in the war against more work heading to our section.

Initially I thought it was as a result of my general knowledge and skills, however, I now realise it is simply because I am an opinionated and obstinate bastard.  Not that I am complaining, it is nice to have members of senior management in fear of me.

My rants are fairly well known in the office and I think that most people just humour me until I inevitably fall back from the ceiling.

The thing is, generally I am not argumentative outside of work.  I can have debates or disagreements, but rarely do I get as vein bulgingly irate as I do at work.  I am not sure why this is, maybe the fear of personal injury is somewhat enhanced outside of work.

I have a philosophy, based entirely on my opinion of myself as reasonably intelligent (read: Not stupid), which centers around the fact that I am right…until you prove me wrong.  I am willing to be proven wrong (sometimes) and in fact openly tell people that if they want to beat me in an argument they just have to be able to backup their facts.  I will then admit defeat and add the knowledge to the future argument munitions dump.

I like winning arguments.  I win a lot of arguments.  I especially like winning unwinnable arguments.  Back in my college days, we had a class entitled “Communications”.  Quite a vague name for a class, but I enjoyed it.  Basically, I discovered really early on that I could start an argument amongst the class, sit back and wait for the lesson to end.  It was here that I found my joy at going for unwinnable arguments.  I am not sure how or why, but some of the guys in the class were talking about cars, one of the guys mentioned how getting anything and driving it above 60mph was pointless due to fuel consumption.  I argued that you may use more fuel, but you get there quicker, so it all evens out.

To qualify the statement, I entered into the ridiculous.  I posited that if a car (for arguments sake) travels 100 miles at 50mph arrives in 2 hours and uses half a tank of fuel, the same car travelling at 100mph will use twice the fuel but arrive in half the time, therefore still only using half a tank of fuel.

It is quite possibly my most favourite argument as it is utter, utter bollocks.

I won, and had 25 other classmates convinced that it was true.

In the same class I argued that the British Armed Forces should pay Poll Tax (The old Council Tax) when away on Aircraft Carriers.  My statement was centered around the fact that another country stepping foot on a British Aircraft Carrier without permission could constitute an act of war.  Therefore, a British Aircraft Carrier is considered to be British soil.  The same argument works for British Embassy buildings and their grounds.  The best part about that argument (which I won btw) is that I disagree with my own argument entirely.

I do this a lot, I argued recently with a Linux fan, from a stance where I really know very little about Linux.  I got the guy so flustered that he couldn’t argue his point.

I could be a politician, but I enjoy telling the truth too much….to tell the truth

In true form, I have no idea where this is heading so let me try and drag it to a succinct and informative close

I am an obstinate bastard

Nuff said

Getting old…

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Ok…so 35 is round the corner.  i know this as I have recently referred to myself as 34 and 11 12ths.  When did this happen.  I don’t feel 35, christ I don’t feel 34.

One of the key identifiers (of which there are numerous) is that I seem to be falling apart.  I groan when I get up out of a chair and click almost as much as a…well a very clicky thing indeed.  I am also taking much much longer to recover from drinking sessions.  I am trying to convince myself that this is due to the drinking sessions lasting much longer thanks to being out in Germany, but I cannot keep fooling myself for too much longer.  Eventually I will be passing a mirror and simply laugh and point at myself in a Nelson Munce stylee.

I almost instinctively hate music that hasn’t been performed using actual instruments that require more than a skill in computer programming.  I am now officially unable to accurately guess other peoples ages and more horrifying is that when I give advice, it tends to be based on actual experience, not opinion.

Oh dear god I have the experience of age.  *sob*

I think that the worst thing is that a lot of my favourite films and TV shows are so old that I actually know people that haven’t seen them.  This has to change.  There are actually people that haven’t watched Red Dwarf, Men Behaving Badly, Drop the Dead Donkey, Father Ted and loads of the other stuff I watch.  Christ, half of them haven’t heard of the Fast Show…what is the world coming to? 

Whats worse is that I honestly feel like the shows aired a couple of years ago.  They are so familiar to me and they are still damnably funny to this day.  Red Dwarf started in 1988….20 frickin years ago. 20!!!

Thats older than some of the people I was drinking with on Saturday night.  Still, I managed to outlast most of them….admittedly I was running on fumes when I headed back up to the apartment, but still….

Fortunately I live in Germany where people stay in college until they are 84 it seems, so I have yet to suffer the ignomy of being treated by a Doctor who is younger than I am….it won’t be long now though.  As I already mentioned, my mind is going.  My body is falling apart in new and interesting ways…oh, and my mind is going.

My eldest child is almost 12 years old.  Almost a teenager….when did this happen, I don’t recall the warning letters…it most definitely did not mention this in the brochure.

I think the clue is in the terminology used to describe age:

You become 21
You turn 30
You are pushing 40
You reach 50
You make it to 60
You hit 70

After that you are on bonus time really.

Now, where did I put that Zimmer?

Damnit

 

On reflection…

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My Dome Freshly Shorn / Day 19
So the summer is kind of almost officially close to being nearby.  Or at least that’s how I view it with the ever changing Frankfurt weather.

As pointed out by a friend, one of the best things about summer is how the women over here have a penchant for the G-String and white trousers combo.  There is little better than viewing women as nature intended…well, provided the old stories are wrong and it isn’t so much Mother Nature as Father.

Which brings me onto my issue.  I am a cold weather person, if reincarnation is possible I will probably come back as a reptile.  Let’s see:

Things I am:
A plus size guy
Balding
Unfit
A human radiator (according to Sarah anyway)
Oh..and quite possibly the worlds whitest man.

Honestly, I burn at the thought of sunlight and heat makes everywhere seem like a sauna.  Honestly, temperatures got up to 31 degrees last week and all I needed was some coals in the corner of my apartment and a bucket of water.  It’s due to get hotter than that today.  If only you could lose weight through sweat…I would be a rake by now.

Being the whitest man alive, you would think that I would be out semi-naked and covered in factor 250 suncream in a vain effort to gain some kind of colour.  However, I live quite near the river Main here in Frankfurt and, being as white as I am, I tend to reflect.  Christ, if I bend forward, the glint of my balding pate could cause some poor boat captain to lose control and careen out of control.  I don’t want that on my conscience….do you?

That said, I could easily rent myself out to top sports teams….

Tennis players:  Getting fed up of being aced out all the time?
Football teams:  Heading towards a penalty shoot-out?

If you are in trouble, and noone else can help.  Maybe you can call…. Rent a Glare

I think I may have stumbled onto a winning formula there.  Think about it, I buy a shitload of Mr Sheen and polish cloths…shine ‘er up and head to the stadium.  A cunning neck movement and *bang*…the opposition is blind.  Night games wouldn’t cause any issues, those spotlights cast loads of light, and any accusations of impropriety and a search for mirrors would be in vain.  I could just don a jaunty hat and walk away to collect my €100,000 per match fee.

If only my printer wasn’t out of ink, I would already be drawing up the flyers.

“Look on the brightside….I have the head for it”

Is senility contagious?

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The Man Who Didn't Know About RunningI hope not, although recently I seem to have caught an accute case of it. I had a great idea for a blog post on Saturday, but between having the idea and screwing my ankle (AGAIN!!!), by the time I got home I had forgotten it.

This is happening with monotonous regularity at the moment too. I have recently taken to walking out of my living room (the real one, not the bar downstairs) and into the kitchen…only to instantly forget why I had done it.

And what is it with that nagging feeling you get, like you have forgotten soething or need to be somewhere….only to remember….JUST AFTER IT IS TOO BLOODY LATE!!!??!!! Damnit.

I would like to attribute this to something interesting like drug abuse or at least a frontal lobotomy. Unfortunately though, I can only really attribute it to age.

Dear Mind

I am only 34 years old, please stop screwing with me and allow me to remember my name, address and if I am hungry or not.

Please stop hiding my keys and forcing me to write shopping lists for anything more than 3 items.  Help me remember phone numbers like I used to, or at least to remember my own phone number for more than a couple of days.

When I login to my online banking to see my account, please don’t make me login a 2nd time 1 second after logging out, just to check what the balance actually was.

It would be nice if I could leave my apartment, with the keys in my hand, and not have to stare at my hand for a full minute before plucking up the courage to close the door.

2 years ago I didn’t even need a notebook in meetings, now I have to write the meeting room number and location ON my bloody notebook so I remember which room when I get there.  If you could sort that out I would be grateful.

And finally, I would like very much to … ummm … sod it … you get the point.

Kind regards in advance of your co-operation

Dave

I don’t know if I will get a reply or not, but it has to be worth a go.