Trials & tribs.- Went abroad

I don"t know but I may have mentioned in the past that I chat on Moko (a social network site) but I started speaking to a nice beautiful young lady from the Philippines last July. It was great because my friend who I"d been speaking to for over a year had just left Moko. Anyway, after a month things had developed between us. We even talked on the phone after I managed to set up a special cheap call rate on the net, and she really wanted me to go over to see her in Philippines. Well I haven"t traveled on my own to any other country before but I thought why not so I sent off for a new passport. To my surprise, This only took a few days. I had some money left from redundancy and savings so booked the flights & found a cheap hotel for 14 days. I discovered that even the cheapest hotels & rooms looked pretty good from the pictures (all had air con (which I found out was very desirable if not essential over there). Time then seemed to drag by for the next few weeks and we spoke on moko every day. The day finally came when I set off from my home at just gone 6pm. on the 29th Sept. I arrived at Birmingham airport just over 3hrs later by train,. there was even a short monorail ride to get to the actual airport from the station. Trouble was the flight wasn"t until the morning so I went out the airport and checked out a few hotels but they were too expensive. £66 to £89 per night so I found a comfy chair in the airport. Was very hard to sleep because of all the announcements so got up in the early hours by which time other people were also waiting for early flights so I found some people to talk to (I realised that it could get pretty lonely traveling such a long way). Cont later

Trials & Tribs.

I haven"t posted for a while because not much was happening and I"ve been busy with my little online buisness, mostly selling on Ebay & Amazon both for myself & other people. On ebay, I started off with records & DVD"s & some diecast model cars thatI had from childhood. With the good weather the records & DVD sales slowed to a trickle, only realy rare stuff seems to sell at any time of year. The diecast vehicle sales though have gone very well. I also picked up some (old school) video games at an offline auction & they"ve done very well.
On that same auction I picked up a 20 watt guitar amp for just £4. It just needed a new plug, cleaned it up and is now as good as new. I even plugged my keyboard through it and sounded clear and powerful, ideal for gigs with Creepy Cool (if we ever get any). I went to that same auction this week and met mad Shawn (who is an ex DJ) who seems to appear when you least expect. He was having chickens because he"d just got a box of records for £4 which turned out to be a bargain. After giving away the ones not wanted, (which I didn"t want either) he was left with a load of pretty valuable 12" singles & Lps including "Blue Monday by New order" He now wants me to sell them on Ebay (or Amazon)for him. I actualy checked the value of "Blue Monday" and its sold for about £5 on ebay to a whopping £15 on Amazon. There was also Equinox by J M Jarre which is listed for £25 on Amazon, I couldn"t even find it on Ebay. The rest were mostly DJ & re-mixes which are his speciality.

Lightning strikes

A few weeks ago after a hot period I shot this video on a phone. It looks pretty close. Click Link below to see.
YouTube - P2122964.MOV:

But not as close as this that someone shot in America.

EMBED-Lightning Strikes Twice - Watch more free videos

Trials & tribs.

Hooray! I can now get online without being cut off all the time. amazing. well done Talk Talk for taking over from Tiscali which was my old provider. As this is the first time I!ve posted this year I!ll use this opportunity to wish everyone a happy new year - if its still possible to have one in these economically strait jacketed times. A lot"s happened already this year such as the big freeze which was fun at first but annoying after a while as it was too cold & slippery to go out. Pavements turned in to lumpy sheets of ice so you couldn't walk safely without a stick. The birds (the feathered variety) didn't like it and the river forty foot froze up. There were also ice flows in the river Witham (see pictures) Was also my birthday earlier this month & even though it was snowing quite hard that day (the 8th) I went to the I.Q. and got lathered - during the day as well The landlord even bought me a pint. I went to a women friend"s 21st B/day at the I.Q. a week later and there was a fancy dress. Trouble was, I just went as myself as I only found out about the party the night before and I got chased down the stairs by the "Incredible Hulk" or maybe someone with green slime smeared all over them. Anyway, I didn't know them from Adam but Derek the landlord told them to leave me alone as he thinks people pick on me because of my handicap but I think it was just fun. Since then I haven't been out much because I caught a dreadful cough & cold - just hope its not swine flu.

Rage against the machine"s Killing in the name wins the race to No 1

After a hugely popular facebook campaign, Rage against the machine"s Killing in the name wins the much coveted Christmas UK No 1 slot. Over half a million people downloaded the song which is not available as a CD single, making it the first ever Christmas No 1 to be achieved on download only. X Factor winner Joe McElderry was only 9.000 copies behind until a download frenzy in the last few hours before the weekly deadline (12am Saturday night) put Killing in the name 50.000 copies in front.
The campaign wasn"t a stand against Joe McElderry personally but against ITV and Simon Cowel dominating the No 1 slot year after year. The band Rage against the machine has promised to donate their royalties to the UK charity "Shelter" and play a gig in the UK nest year if the campaign is successful.

Met my soul mate

I"ts been a long time since I last posted. Reason: I broke my laptop so I tried to get online with our desktop PC but failed. It just wouldn"t stay online or even connect at all. Naturally I thought my machine was at fault but I checked with the neighbours and they were having exactly the same problems. Anyway, the Internet provider"s call centre is based in India & won"t send an engineer out unless they know exactly when we"re cut off - in fact I was cut off while in the process of writing this but managed to save it. What the hell is happening? I"ve also made a very special friend from the Philippines called Pam. She is lovely but haven"t been able to send messages much because of this fault but the good news is that I just could have met my soul mate. This is like a dream come true - As the old saying goes: Dreams DO come true

Trials & tribulations - update

Wow! it"s been so long since I last posted on here. I have been busy selling on EBay which went well at first when I started in July (about the same time I wrote my last post) but has gone a bit quite of late so I"m back here.
First Creepy Cool has been going well. We actually applied for a competition ages ago called LincX Factor - nothing to do with the Simon Cowel one -. Over 80 singers & bands applied, 20 made it to the heats and guess what Creepy Cool was one of them. We didn"t know we were in until our name appeared in the Target paper. Anyway, the first of two heats was yesterday (Wed \night) which we were on. Out of 10 acts only 2 could go through so it was nothing like the real X Factor. After several evenings of intense band practise, we were as ready as we ever could be. (Brian, after a period of absence from the band came back in on bass guitar.) and got to the rugby club in the princess Anne sport complex. The sound check was starting at 6.30pm instead of 7pm the original planned time Luckily, it wasn"t too difficult to find as it was still light when we got there but Brian was nowhere to be seen - he had all our equipment in his wife"s car. His mobile was turned off so we assumed they were lost. They finally rolled in at 7pm - the original time - unpacked the car but near disaster struck, he"d forgot his bass guitar. So we went in the venue and managed to stall our sound check while Brian went all the way back to Swineshead to pick it up and got back just in time. We played one song straight after the break so we could set up the equipment. The song we played seemed to go down realy well - the audience clapped and cheered. All of the other performers sang to a backing karaoke track although the standard was pretty high. We were the only band there. In the end though, we didn"t get through. We were later told that there was only one band in each heat because of the time needed to set up. The second heat is on Fri night. All in all though it was well worth entering and the hosts treated us well - even filming the video for us which will appear on YouTube & Moko mobi soon.