Gift wrapping for obsessive-compulsive

Just few easy steps to help you wrapping your Christmas presents.

Step 1. Friends

This step is not necessary as many people prefer to buy presents for themselves. However the surprise effect during the unwrapping procedure is usually ruined this way (unless you suffer from a severe memory loss).

Step 2. Buying presents

Usually obsessive-compulsive person will plan buying present months in advance. However usually the search for the perfect present takes much longer than planned and as a result the last gifts are bought the day before Christmas.

Step 3. Gift wrapping

There are generally three ways you can approach gift wrapping:

1. Use gift wrapping service
2. Use gift bags
3. Wrap the presents yourself

Typical obsessive compulsive will immediately reject the first two solutions. A stranger cannot be trusted to wrap presents up to a obsessively high standards. And a bag is only a half a solution – the gift is wrapped, but peeking is still possible, and the unwrapping procedure is much so much less satisfying this way.

To wrap the presents yourself you will need:

Wrapping paper (depending on the number of the presents you might want to introduce several different patterns)

Gift ribbons (the colours of the ribbon must match the paper e.g. red paper and gold ribbon, or blue paper and silver ribbon, wrapping papers with patterns (e.g. happy snowmen) usually look better without a ribbon)

Gift bows (make sure the colour of the bows matches exactly the colour of the ribbon (buying pre-packed sets is advised) – otherwise the Christmas might be ruined!)

Gift tags (making sure that the tags match the paper and ribbon colour set)

Pair of scissors (depending on your cutting skills, paper knife and a ruler might be a better choice if you don’t want to leave uneven edges)

Sellotape (avoid leaving fingerprints on the sellotape by using a dispenser)

The wrapping techinique is usually a personal choice, however examples of a bad technique are presented below:

After spending few hours wrapping your presents, unwrapping them and them wrapping again – you may be sure that your presents are wrapped up to the highest standards.

Merry Christmas!

Jamaica, Jamaica… sweet memories

After my yesterdays rant I’ve decided to dig out the old posts that I’ve meant to post ages ago but never got around to do it. So here it is. This one was written on a plane back from Jamaica (hadn’t got internet to post it right away, and then just forgotten about it).

 

It’s took me few days to get used to Jamaica, to Jamaican people and their ways. I don’t know when it happened that I’ve actually started enjoying my stay there – but it did. The first two or three days I was seriously thinking about re-booking my flight and coming back to UK earlier. I’d probably do that if it was just one flight, but I was connecting on Antigua, so it was more complicated.

The first time I’ve started enjoying my stay here was probably Monday – I’ve stayed for quite a long time in Kingston, so when I  went back to Papine it was already dark. In the darkness the village looked completely different – things that annoyed me before – crowds and noise – suddenly started making more sense – the dirt and poverty weren’t so obvious anymore – and more importantly - the village was alive. People dancing and singing on the streets, Rastafarians’ rallies around bonfires, etc. The atmosphere of the place was difficult to describe.

The next day I went to the downtown market and Port Royal – for the whole day I was only using local transport – haggling for prices of the tickets – waiting until the bus gets so full that you can’t cram any more people inside. I’ve travelled quite a lot this day – and overall it cost me less than £4. First I went to the downtown market – the place where most of local buses depart from. I’ve decided to leave the sightseeing for later and got a bus to Port Royal straight away. I’s approximately 30-40 min trip – bus goes through the downtown, Kingston's harbour, Norman Manley International Airport and then finally Port Royal. The port used to be an island, but now it’s connected to the mainland by a thin strip of land, barely wider than the road. The island used to be a British fortress – protecting the entrance to Kingston’s harbour. Most of the old British installations were however destroyed in the XVIII cent. by the earthquake that sank half of the island. Few years later fire destroyed the rest of the island – it has never recovered after that and consequently changed from a most important trading port in Jamaica to the quiet fishermen’s village it is now. Ocean currents have changed the shape of the island moving the shoreline. The only surviving fort – Fort Charles – lies now in the middle of the land – nowhere near the shore it was supposed to protect. The earthquake rendered the fort useless, moving it’s powerful batteries below the sea level. The most interesting point in the fort is the Giddy House, old armoury (or ammunition storage) that was tilted during the earthquake. Most of the people entering there lose their balance and feel “giddy” – I must admit that the feeling is really weird. 

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The next day I had to get up quite early, as I planned to finally got to Port Antonio and the Blue Lagoon. Quite unfortunately there was no road taxi going down to Papine for a long time – I had to walk all the way to the Red Light (30 min walk). When I finally got to Papine it was 8am. Then it took me another hour to get to Half-way Tree, where I was catching a bus to Port Antonio. The traffic jams in Kingston are just horrendous and you always have to include the time you wait for the bus to get full. So when we finally departed it was already around half nine.  The bus trip to Port Antonio took about two and a half hours and then another 30 min to the Blue Lagoon. As I was already used to bendy and horribly dangerous Jamaican mountain roads, the trip wasn’t really that exciting. So I was glad when we’ve finally got there. But only just to meet another disappointment. The restaurant overlooking the lagoon was destroyed in the hurricane – and the whole area was closed. The only way to see the lagoon was to take a boat trip with local fishermen, which i decided to skip. So I’ve only took a few pictures from behind the trees and took another bus towards the Long Bay. This time I wasn’t disappointed. The beach was beautiful and almost completely deserted. The sea was really rough, so I was somewhat surprised that there was no one surfing. But I suppose,it must be much more busy on weekends. For me it was perfect.

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We’ve spend there most of the day – and then took a long ride back… On the way I’ve took some pictures of Kingston by night. That was the first day that I was actually really sad to have to leave Jamaica the next day.

Hope I will come back here some other time.

Antitrust bullsh*t – why is EU hating Microsoft so much

Every now and then EU keeps charging Microsoft with outrageous fines for “being uncompetitive”. My question is, why are you still using Microsoft products then – no one forces you – there is lots of competition there available, Linux, Apple, BSD… Oh sorry, I forgot, they’re all crap. And Windows is the only one that’s usable. Suppose it’s Microsoft fault then, for providing too good products. Introduce more bugs, make installation process unusable (like in Linux) and start completely ignoring customers’ feedback (like Apple) and then maybe EU will fuck off. Sometimes I wonder why Microsoft doesn’t merge with some large hardware distributor (like Dell) and only sell their operating system with their systems. This way they would be able to bundle all the software they want and charge triple prices, like Apple does already. I haven’t heard about EU suing Apple

So the newest EU resolution is, that Windows 7 should ship without Internet Explorer. Bravo, fuckwits – that’s a really smart move – a new operating system shipping without an internet browser – why don’t you also ban colour screens (for being insensitive toward colour blind people), Microsoft calculator (can’t understand why the producers of calculators aren’t protesting about it now), Word Pad (again – manufacturers of pen and paper may complain), Media Centre (we have TVs already, some people even have DVD and Blu-Ray players – but don’t tell that to people in Brussels, they may think it’s uncompetitive towards VCRs), the list may be as long as you like it to be. Why don’t we just strip Windows out of everything, so when your new PC ships, you’re be welcomed by a black screen with a blinking cursor (oh wait, why would we need Windows then – we already have DOS!).

I want my operating system to come with all the essential software, like media player, word processor, file explorer  and INTERNET BOWSER! And I don’t really need EU officials telling me that I should use Firefox. I’ve been using Opera & IE duo for a long time now and I’m happy with it. And personally I think that Firefox is crap, it’s slow and it doesn’t really have anything that would compel me to use it – all it’s features and add-ons are just a rip off from Opera, IE and recently Safari and Chrome. 

So when I get my hands on the official release of Windows 7 (currently using RC – which still comes with IE) my first thing will be to download IE8 – for two reasons:

1. Just to show those fuckwits in Brussels

2. To feed 8 starving kids (http://www.browserforthebetter.com/#getie8:6KzzC411fvl)

FUCK YOU EU ASSHOLES!!!!

PS, Regretting now that I haven’t voted for UKIP or BNP!

Sunday, bloody Sunday…

My plans for today have changed – instead of Port Antonio I’ve decided to go to Kingston. Got a call from my bank today at four o’clock in the morning – they didn’t seem to like my recent withdrawal and have blocked my account. After a lengthy phone call (£2/min in roaming) I’ve managed to sort it out but still I want to go online and check if everything is alright before I make any more spending. As the whole region I live in is currently deprived of internet (there is only one provider and it’s currently carrying out some maintenance works) I’ve decided to go to the capital to find some internet cafe and see few of the tourist attractions on the way. What I haven’t considered was a fact that it’s a Sunday today. I was totally surprised to find the whole city to be completely dead. There was absolutely nothing open except few fast food places and restaurants. There wasn’t even that many people around, the ones I’ve seen were dressed in their best clothes followed by a faint scent of naphthalene, going from or to the Church.  Obviously I haven’t found any place to use the internet (I start doubting they even have it on this island) – but at least I had a chance to see some nicer and more civilised parts of Kingston’s uptown.

The New Kingston is a heart of the Uptown – it’s very similar to any other City – lots of banks and posh hotels, few shopping centres, restaurants and clubs, with all the best ones along the main street – Knutsford Boulevard. Along the same street lies also the Emancipation Park – memorial to the end of slavery. At its entrance there is a fountain with two naked statues. What is missing is a sign - “We’re destroying men’s self confidence since 2002” (if you don’t know what I’m talking about look carefully at the guy’s statue).

Other important point is the Devon House – beautiful XIX cent. building, built by the first Jamaican black millionaire. Local rumour sais that nearby street – Lady Mulgrave Rd. was build on Lady Mulsgrave, the then governors wife request, so she could get to the governor’s residence - King’s House - without seeing the house owned by a rich black Jamaican.

Further alongside the same road lie the King’s house and Jamaica House, Governor’s and Prime Minister’s residences. Before I’ve managed to see the second one, the weather has suddenly changed and it started raining quite heavily. So I’ve took a taxi and came back to my little mountain refuge. On the way I’ve learn about Rasta movement from my Rastafarian driver.

Tomorrow I’ll continue my quest in search of the internet and probably go to see some of the nicer parts of Kingston’s downtown. I’m still slightly wary about going in there, in spite of my mainly positive experiences with Jamaicans so far. Jamaican people are so much different from Europeans that I haven’t really make up my mind about them. They’re all very friendly and helpful, they always seem to have load of free time to talk to you or to show you around. On the other hand their laid back attitude can be very annoying at times. For example, there isn’t any kind of schedule for busses or road taxis, they don’t even have a specified routes, if you ask a driver to take you somewhere near his usual course, they won’t see a problem in that. I’ve tried to ask people few times when is the next bus/road taxi coming, they seriously had no idea what did I expect from them; it’ll come when it does.

Most of the people here are really poor, so they try to earn on tourists as much as it is possible. Wherever you are, in a remote mountain village or in the City, tourists are a  constant target for beggars, self appointed guides, souvenirs dealers and pushy taxi drivers. People will follow you around offering their services, passing by cab drivers will sound their horns to attract attention. If you ask for a price of anything the first number you hear is always at least one third higher than the regular one. It doesn’t really seem to come with a intention to cheat or trick you, though. They’re always happy to haggle. It’s just the way things seem to work in here. I have a vague feeling that my tomorrow trip to the downtown may be an interesting one…

Slumdog millionaire

I’m sitting at the moment on my balcony in some desolate place in Jamaican Blue Mountains. After tropical paradise of Antigua I decided to see something different and went to Jamaica. I started to regret that decision even before boarding a plane. My luggage was searched at the airport, however much less thoroughly than the other passengers – possibly because I was the only white person boarding this plane. In Jamaica I was pleasantly surprised with Kingston Airport – it’s one of the cleanest and nicest airports I’ve seen so far. I’ve encountered first trouble during the immigration check. “So, you were born in Austria, live in UK, have Polish citizenship and fly here from Antigua? Can you please sit there, sir, there will be an officer with you in a minute.” It was much less serious than it looked – I just had to answer few question about my reasons for visiting Jamaica and pay 20US$ visa fee. I left the airport expecting my guesthouse to send a cab for me like they were supposed to do. They didn’t, so I was forced to use the ridiculously overpriced airport cab. After a short discussion I’ve managed to haggle the price down from initial 93 to 60US$. I’m sure it’s still a rip off, but at least I haven’t been robbed and dumped somewhere in the sewers on the way. Short trip trough Kingston slightly freaked me out. The Uptown is a reasonably nice place, but horses won’t drag me to the Downtown. Most of the Kingston is a slam, seriously, I haven’t ever seen anything like that. Ruins, dirt and stray dogs everywhere. It’s supposed to be reasonably safe for tourists, except for few really rough areas – but somehow I don’t really trust that.

Place I’m staying in is located high in the mountains – about 40 minutes by car from Kingston. The distance isn’t really that great, you can see Kingston Harbour from here – but it’s difficult to get here. Roads are really bad – it’s basically just a collection of potholes with some asphalt in between. Additionally no one seem to have heard of hard shoulder in here, so our trip war rather exciting. When we have finally arrived, I’ve found out that my room is literally hanging over the Mount Edge (as the name of the guest house suggests). I’ve found a small lizard and a large cicada in my room (at least I hope that it was a cicada, they look kind of similar to cockroaches), but the view from my balcony is almost worth it.

The place is very small and completely isolated, there’s only one more person except me staying in here at the moment – constantly stoned German  medicine student. The nearest village is Papine – small place on the outskirts of Kingston. It takes about 25 minutes drive in a cab to get there. Taxis are the only mean of transport in the mountains. They take as many people on the way as possible, so by the end it’s getting pretty crammed in there. But thanks to that, they’re pretty cheap (150J$ – around £1.50 – for 30 minutes ride). The cars are usually incredibly old and tattered – forget about luxuries like seat belts or wing mirrors – which is slightly scary – as it doesn’t seem anyone heard about highway code here. People here are really nice and talkative, I’ve spend my short, bumpy trip to Papine listening to a life story of one of the other passengers. He spoke with a very strong Jamaican accent, so I could understand only every third word or so, but I kept nodding politely wondering if he’s going to leave anytime soon. I’m pretty sure that something fell out our car on the way – but after a short stop, when driver had examined his car from the outside – we’ve resumed our trip with maybe more squeaks and screeches than before. Our destination, Papine is a small place with few shops, vegetable market and one bank. The biggest problem I had there was getting some money. There are four cash machines, two of them only taking cards from local banks and one broken. I’ve managed to find the fourth one by pure accident, when I’ve already given up looking. This one took my card without complaining and for a moment I could feel almost like a millionaire with 30 000$ in my pocket (Jamaican dollars of course – roughly worth £270).

 

After short meal and some essential shopping I’ve decided that I had enough of excitement and called it a day. On my way back I’ve bought some freshly roasted coffee straight from the plantation (Blue Mountain coffee is considered the best in the world). Tomorrow, I’m planning to see some more touristy places; Port Antonio, Blue Lagoon and Long Bay.

Sun, sea and unlimited alcohol

I’m starting to reconsider decision on not continuing my career in academia after (if) I finish my PhD. There are some advantages in staying at the university after all. Conferences in exotic places are definitely one of them. Caribbean, sun, sea and unlimited free alcohol, all paid from university founds.

This year Zing Organometallic conference is hosted on Antigua, small Caribbean island, which as few people underlined has 365 beaches, one for every day of the year. Resort where the conference takes place is all inclusive (free booze!) with nice private beach and free water sports. Conveniently enough flights to Antigua from Manchester are only on Fridays, so we had a whole week for ourselves. Additionally during the three days of the conference we had a huge, six hours break in the middle, between morning and the evening talk sessions. We couldn’t really complain that there’s not enough of free time.

Surprisingly (at least for me – as I usually consider lectures as waste of time) most of the sessions were really good. The few that weren’t that painful really as the conference centre had wireless, so lots of people were browsing internet or checking email. There were few interesting individuals (or freaks, like my boss called them) at the conference that probably deserve a short mention. The first one is little hunched ancient Romanian lady. She was late for the first session in spite of being already in the Resort at least since the morning. She came in the middle  of the first talk stinking like a tobacco factory and fell asleep snoring loudly almost immediately. She didn’t bother coming to any other of the sessions except the one she was talking at. We’ve seen her occasionally in the  Resort, usually during meals, when she was stuffing leftovers into her handbag. She didn’t really speak to anyone (except the other Romanian person that came with her) and we’ve found out why during her talk. Her English was poor at best. She read her introduction from a piece of paper and then proceeded to reading contents for her slides from the screen. She had numerous slides, consisting mainly of text in quite a small font. If chairman wouldn’t make her finish when she was running out of time, her talk would probably took an hour or longer. Obviously she wasn’t really happy with that and she spend the next talk talking in loud indignant Romanian to her companion.

The other probably person worth mentioning is a mysterious Russian looking guy with a questionable sense of fashion. According to the abstract booklet he was supposed to present a poster, however I haven’t seen him doing that. He seem to take the casual elegant dress code too literately. For the whole time of the conference he was wearing a polo shirt (same one everyday) with a dash of elegance in a form of purple tie. We’ve tried to spot him at the beach, to see if he’s also wearing a tie, but we haven’t seen him there.

Another person that will remain in our memories for long wasn’t really related to the conference. He just happened to stay in the same resort. We didn’t got his name, but knowing that he’s Canadian and that he’s rude – we called him Terrence. We met him on the beach, he just came to our parasol, pushed our sun beds away and pushed his one into the shade. At first we didn’t really know what he wanted and if he’s being serious. But he pointed to us that we weren’t using them at the time and he wanted some shade. Why did he wanted to lye in between five stranger will remain mystery, especially that there was lots of shade from the palm trees around and another empty parasol just next to us.

 

He went to sleep after some extensive verbal abuse from my boss (never seen him being so rude). He left after a while, obviously not appreciating noise we were making. Not that we were much more noisy than usual, but me made a point in playing bit-bat almost above his head.

If you happen to know Terrence – please contact me immediately – as we’d love to know who he is.

There will be blood… well… paint.

I realise that I haven’t written anything in a while – it’s  a result of my borderline laziness and lack of time. At the moment I’m waiting for the electrochemists to finally show at work (it’s 9.58am) so I decided that instead of doing something useful in the lab, I’ll update this blog.

For those who wait for another instalment of the Little Asia series, I must disappoint you. This one is about me I’m afraid. So you’re excused from reading it, as it’s not going to be as wit and sarcastic as usual – I can’t really be mocking myself, can I :D.

So, this weekend I went paintballing with guys from Weight Lifting and Thai Boxing clubs. This was my first time, so I actually was quite excited (no one could probably tell, as I had to get up at 7am, on Saturday), but I was.

So when we finally got there, surprisingly on time despite some organisation issues (read - total lack of organisation) we’ve discovered to be the oldest people there, most of the others were kids and some teenagers (that didn’t really stop them from beating in the rankings). We were divided into teams, our orange team consisted of Weight Lifters and some teenagers, our opponents, white team were Thai boxers and some random guys. Equipped with our armour and helmets and shiny new paintball guns we’ve rushed towards our first battlefield, just to discovered that’s it’s full of mud, water and even some remains of snow and ice. Thrilling :S

First game  was ‘capture the flag’. The flag was hung on a bridge in the middle of the grounds. Basically it was a suicidal mission – there’s no way that someone could get the flag not getting shot. One guy tried – got hit probably by 50 paintballs and the flag was dropped into the mud – no one else was trying to get even close to it. Besides capturing the flag wasn’t the end of the game, you still had to bring it to the middle of the enemy territory (by the way – as we used Union Jack for the flag – I’m pretty sure there is a law against dropping it into the mud). Our team lost miserably anyway. Quite soon we’ve discovered that guys we have in our team quite like to hide behind the nearest cover and stay there for the rest of the game. So there was only few guys that actually went forward trying to do something (or to get shot, like me most of the times). White team on the other hand seem to have worked together quite well – so most of the times they had no problem kicking our asses. There were 6 games overall – two capture the flag, one defend the fort, one defend the general (one guy was chosen to be general), one invasion (invade the village, capture and defend as many huts as you can)  and one elimination (kill everyone who’s not on your team). Can’t say that I enjoyed the first three. But later I stopped really caring about mud and getting soaked – and started having more fun. The elimination was the best one – there was only seven of us against sixteen (the random guys took a break) so we were allowed to re-spawn after being shot for the first two minutes of the game. So basically, what we did was run forward and shoot everything until you get shot and then run back and start over. I got shot so many times in my head that I couldn’t see anything anymore – my goggles were covered in orange paint and my attempts to wipe it just made it worse. One of the marshals told me to use some snow to wipe them clean and finally helped.

I’m generally not an ‘outdoor’ guy – so wallowing in the mud didn’t really get me so thrilled. Especially that as I discovered being big and clumsy isn’t really an advantage while paintballing. There was always some spare part of me visible from behind of the cover just waiting to be shot. But still I must say I did enjoy it. It’s so easy to go trigger happy and shoot everything you see. The only problem is most of the time you don’t really who are you shooting at. I was shot few times by members of my team when they couldn’t see the orange tag on my arm. And I’m pretty sure I’ve shot a marshal few times. So if you planning to take revenge on someone at paintball, forget it. Everyone looks almost the same wearing black overalls and helmet, covered in mud and orange paint. If you however looking for some fun shooting others and getting shot and you enjoy being soaked and bruised than paintball it just for you.

For those who wait, the next episode of award winning series; “Little Asia and the Crystal Palace” is coming soon…