UK Letter Home April 2003

Welcome to the April edition of UK Bound

We haven't done any travelling this month, but did go on a walking tour - the plan was to go from Glasgow Green in the center of town, to Bothwell Castle. We started at noon, and kept walking for about three hours. When we were almost there, it started to rain, so we jumped on a bus and went home to continue it on another day. We then looked at the map, and we were only about a third of the way. For some reason, the map was poorly drawn and we were no where we thought we were. So, next Saturday we continued where we left off, and traveled for another couple of hours. Unfortunately, we didn't have the map, so we knew we were close, but without the map, we had to abandon our quest for the castle. After we got home, again the map was incorrect, and we were pretty much lost and off the trail. So, after about 6 hours we were still hours away from our destination. We have now decided that we are just going to take the bus directly to the castle. It will be easier on everyone. Part of the problem is that we have to go through this farmers field, and it had being raining, so we don't want to get stuck or take half of the field when we get back on bus.

There has been quite a few UK exports to the NA airwaves, like Changing Rooms, the Weakest Link and the oldie Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. But, have you seen Ali G in the USiii? If you have, do you understand it? No, really? It was like when I first watched Seinfeld - I totally didn't understand it, and thought it was a waste of time. Then once you get into it, it is a very funny show. If you don't understand Ali G, let me know, and I will give you a little explanation, but I think it's better to watch it first without knowing what it's all about. 'Nuf said, word, cause I ain't got da time, u no!! The best interview I think he did was with Buzz Lightyear. Still thinking about that weeks later.

We have been doing a little reno's, and are trying to find a plumber and an electrician to redo our bathroom. We are going away in a couple of weeks on holiday so we are hoping to get it done then. We have finally painted our master room, so that looks a lot warmer rather than the bland white. Always a project on the go. A little paint here, a little putty there. It's all coming together.

As for the work situation, Kim was working part time at the Glasgow Council for the Voluntary Sector, but has now found full time work at a plumbing supply company. As for my job, well, officially it is going great, wonderful, couldn't be better. But unofficially my job is moving to India in a cost cutting measure that has had several other groups move East. It is quite interesting - there are currently 3 people in my team, but we are getting 5 people to replace us. I have no idea where I will be in a couple of months. Hopefully in a better team and less work, and less stress. Last week the lottery was up to 10 million (pounds). We both bought a couple of tickets, and guess what? Well, we didn't win the 10 million. It would have been nice. We actually didn't even win the 1 million prize. Actually, we didn't win anything. Big surprise there - what? Were you expecting that we had won something? Ya, me too. So, I guess I am going to have to leave it all up to Eleanor to make me rich, cause the job and my lotto luck sure isn't doing it.

We are still looking for cars. We found a beautiful pair of red Barvarian 840 and 850's. I'm thinking that if we didn't have the bike, and if gas wasn't so expensive, you'd see the rest of the pictures from the sunroof of one of those babies. We're thinking that we'll probably have to settle with a Mazda 323, or something similar. If we knew our future, and if we were going to stay here for another 5 years, then an expensive car wouldn't be a bad bet, however, we are still not 100% sure where we will be in a year's time.

I have added a bunch more pictures to the website of around town (check out the Local page), Oxford is totally uploaded, and there are also new pictures of Sterling from our little trip in March.

A couple of people have asked me some advice about digital cameras. Here's a quick tour. I have a Cannon Color Pix 2.0, which has a LCD panel on the back, so instead of looking through a viewfinder, I just look at the little tv screen on the back. This is nice as I can hold the camera above my head, and actually still see what I am taking a picture of. Makes it real easy for looking over fences. As well, it has a 3x optical zoom, and a 2x digital zoom. Digital zooms don't do anyone any good. All it does is takes the regular picture and expand it. You can do this when you get the picture back onto your computer. Get the best optical zoom that you can (within reason). This is worth the extra coin. There are a lot of different memory types such as compact flash, smart memory, and Sony's stick memory etc. Sony's memory seems to be the most expensive. The compact flash memory is quite common, and if you are on holiday, you can go into a lot of photography places and buy another memory card to hold you over. What I have found is that when I bought my 64meg memory in July, I could now buy 256meg for about the same price. That's really annoying, but nice at the same time. We are on holiday next week, so I will be retiring my 64meg card for a 256meg card. My camera will now have more memory than my computer. When I bought my camera, it came with a free 8meg card. I haven't even unwrapped it. Anybody want it? The nice thing about having the viewfinder on the back, is you can delete pictures while you are on holiday. So, if that sunset isn't just perfect, delete it which will save memory. Also, since the 256meg cards are a lot cheaper, get one of those as you probably won't have to buy another one. My camera is pocket size, which is very nice. I don't have the bulk of my old SLA, but some times I do miss having all the manual settings to play with. Kim likes this one a lot better, as it's just point and shoot, oops, delete, shoot. Since you can view the pictures either on the viewfinder or on your computer, you only have to get the pictures printed that you want to. Most photo studio's will take memory cards, or you can even save more money by printing them on your home computer (although they aren't nearly as good on my printer as at Boots. And, lastly, my camera can film 20 second movies (which I just have to figure out how to upload onto the net). So, expect to see movies of the moggies and wayne soon.

I guess that's pretty much it for this issue. Hope this finds you well.