hulk sulk

After the conversation with one of my recruitment consultants I made myself watch the hulk......

This is me halfway through the movie



That's a little (green) mean, it was okay but the plot holes were bigger than the biceps.....

Sadly not mad...

Well, the psychometric test came back with some revealing insights. All of which were fairly accurate but sadly contradicting the sort of jobs I'm being approached for. I think I can safely say I bored to death the chap I was talking to earlier about my results. He thought it was all fantastic - I'm sociable, a team player, a leader, consistent, creative blah blah blah...........and then we had this conversation: -

him: says you don't like confrontation.

me: that would be correct

him: oh....(tails off, this is bad...)

me: I think if a situation ends up being confrontational, then at some point it's been badly handled ..

him: oh I agree. But you don't like confrontation?

me: ?

He's going to liaise with the recruitment consultant. I on the other hand will not be busy holding my breath...

The import/ export business

Well this is nice, a brand new blog on wordpress which I've opened up after reading the pros and cons of blogger vs Wp. Apparently it's easy to import from blogger.........I'm just about to find that out.....

Take my breath away (not literally......that'd be dead bad....)

Had a day yesterday of feeling like my chest was being utterly constricted. Horrible, but hey thats asthma for ya. The payback being in the evening settling down to watch United draw 0-0 with Villareal, while drinking beer and eating pizza with my gf. Happy times.....

There are many places in the world I'd like to go visit and anywhere that is out of my comfort zone I always find beautiful. Check out below the oasis shots


These are the Ubari Lakes which are part of Erg Awbari Oasis in the Sahara. Located near Fezzan and 30kms north of Germa in Libya, these salt water lakes are a central trading point for many locals, who gather at the edges of the lake selling souvenirs and other goods.















I love the following shot; This stunning image shows three men quenching their thirst at a small waterfall in the Saharan oasis of Timia, in Niger. It’s a picture perfect portrait of everyday oasis life for local desert dwellers.

Psycho testing

or something close. For the second time in the space of a month I've had to take a psychometric test. The first one was spookily accurate if a little disarming, this second one I have grave hopes for.... sadly the recruitment consultant who set it up for me has convinced herself that this test will reveal me to be a combination of Gates and Buffett. I fear it'll just reveal me be not so much as dumb and dumber (although this I do anticipate to be a finding) but just the shy, lacking in self confidence, neurotic, shrugger of shoulders that I am........some fast talking is going to be required.....

Still, lets end the day on a positive note. My role of house husband means I cook all the evening meals except when the GF decides she really wants to bash pans. So how good does it feel when your cooking elicits murmurs of taste satisfaction and a cry of "delicious"!

Very...............

the perfect timing of a parents email...

It's not often that my Dad will send me an email that I'll put on my blog. Mostly they contain an "ism", are just purely awful or are so disgusting this blog would be rated R. But today in my email inbox was an email that I really liked as it fitted in with trying to be a more positive person. It's below, and yeah it's a little cheesy but the message is over riding: Thanks Dad. I like the bits in bold at the bottom. There lies wisdom.....

John is the kind of guy you love to hate. He is always in a good mood and always has something positive to say. When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would reply, 'If I were any better, I would be twins!'

He was a natural motivator.

If an employee was having a bad day, John was there telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation.

Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up and asked him, 'I don't get it!

You can't be a positive person all of the time. How do you do it?'

He replied, 'Each morning I wake up and say to myself, you have two choices today. You can choose to be in a good mood or ... You can choose to be in a bad mood

I choose to be in a good mood.'

Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or...I can choose to learn from it. I choose to learn from it

Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or... I can point out the positive side of life. I choose the positive side of life.

'Yeah, right, it's not that easy,' I protested.

'Yes, it is,' he said. 'Life is all about choices. When you cut away all the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to situations. You choose how people affect your mood.

You choose to be in a good mood or bad mood. The bottom line: It's your choice how you live your life.'

I reflected on what he said. Soon hereafter, I left the Tower Industry to start my own business. We lost touch, but I often thought about him when I made a choice about life instead of reacting to it.

Several years later, I heard that he was involved in a serious accident, falling some 60 feet from a communications tower.

After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, he was released from the hospital with rods placed in his back.

I saw him about six months after the accident.

When I asked him how he was, he replied, 'If I were any better, I'd be twins...Wanna see my scars?'

I declined to see his wounds, but I did ask him what had gone through his mind as the accident took place.

'The first thing that went through my mind was the well-being of my soon-to-be born daughter,' he replied. 'Then, as I lay on the ground, I remembered that I had two choices: I could choose to live or...I could choose to die. I chose to live.'

'Weren't you scared? Did you lose consciousness?' I asked

He continued, '..the paramedics were great.

They kept telling me I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the ER and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared. In their eyes, I read 'he's a dead man'. I knew I needed to take action.'

'What did you do?' I asked.

'Well, there was a big burly nurse shouting questions at me,' said John. 'She asked if I was allergic to anything 'Yes, I replied.' The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply. I took a deep breath and yelled, 'Gravity'.'

Over their laughter, I told them, 'I am choosing to live. Operate on me as if I am alive, not dead.'

He lived, thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of his amazing attitude... I learned from him that every day we have the choice to live fully.

Attitude, after all, is everything.

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.' Matthew 6:34.

After all today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.

up and down

My mood(s) at the moment are very unpredictable. I awake on Monday to a new sense of optimism and then by the weeks end when nothing job wise has progressed I feel down, useless and stuck in a rut......Not good, but as mentioned on previous posts I'm trying to bring a new sense of positivity to my life so I shall put in writing now my sense of 'I can do" and the fact that job wise something will happen for me........ and at least my situation isn't resembling the pic above.....although sometimes that's how my mood feels, all okay on the surface but it's what lurks beneath...

Jar City

I'm kinda making it my mission that the GF and I should watch way more world cinema. Top this extent we watched 'Jar City" on Sunday. A superb Icelandic murder mystery. The story although formulaic was beautifully rendered by the natural landscapes that Iceland has to offer. I really want to go; I'm utterly seduced by the bleak desolation, the grey skies, the crashing waves and the sense of infinite that these landscapes smell of. They've been here long before us and they'll still be here long after we've destroyed ourselves......