gpd + cbm

When living in California you tend to forget about the most basic of living requirements. Washing up and laundry dried in about 7 minutes (great if you ignore the canyon-like fissures that were your knuckles after a few months), light and sun almost came through the walls and there were normally about 4 open WiFi networks within range. In Manchester it seems that achieving all three is more tricky. Catherine and I spent a year living in a flat in a particularly leafy part of already leafy Didsbury. The converted nursing home had tall ceilings and windows but had obviously been shoehorned into a former janitor closet and as such was a compromise of space over light. Despite being North-facing, the flat got amazing morning sun (on those rare occasions when 400 feet of solid cloud were not in the way) and warmed up like a little beauty. All great and good - but I haven't mentioned yet that the total floor space was about 40 square metres - which means little until I say that the bedroom had about 8 inches on either side of a 4 foot 6 inch bed. So we had to move and move we did - all of 100 yards across the road to a flat about twice the size. Yay! Buy hold on a cotton picking minute. Have a guess how long it takes Tiscali Internet Service Provider to move our account these few steps? 2 hours? 24? 5 working days? No - try over 3 weeks!

In theory at least, assuming exam disasters, I am through the first stage of the MBA. It has been quite a roller coaster ride so far and last September seems so long ago that it appears that my life is now being measured in dog years. Although 'Not Rocket Science', the course is rather intense to say the least, with endless group work, lectures, fancy jargon and almost entirely meaningless two-by-two matrices. Sleep has mostly become a memory, weekends generally merged into weekdays, the pile of textbooks and reading stands as tall as a small pony, my eyelids now have lines where no lines existed before. Despite, or possibly because of, all this hard work, it has been a fantastic experience so far. Here is a list of things that spring to mind that happened in the last 10 months:

• Outdoor team building and adventure weekend at Brathay
• Accounting, Economics, Corporate Finance
• Soft Management Skills and Personality Colour / DISC Profiles
• Community Project helping market Wythenshawe Hall
• Business Research Methods, Managing International Business Systems
• Marketing with Stephan Henneberg
• Management Information Systems, Operations Management
• Strategy with Gary Davies
• People Management and Organisations (PMO) with Richard Phillips
• The Minto Pyramid - presented by Barbara herself!
• MBAT - MBA Sporting weekend in Paris
• Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) Project that went on forever
• Project working on mobile marketing in pubs
• Venture Capital Investment Competition (VCIC) Finals in North Carolina
• Meeting loads of other MBA students from around the world
• Presentations from CEOs and Execs of blue chip companies

Catherine and I hoped on a fast ferry from Holyhead to Dun Laoghaire for a few days break in County Wexford, Ireland last week. Her parents built a house near the beach in the late 70s in a remote area of Wexford up the coast from Kilmore Quay. The region is charmingly known as "Bastardstown". The place holds many years of childhood memories for Catherine but she hadn't been back in about 10 years. Despite some new houses blocking the view, the area still seemed quite remote and you normally had the beach to yourself. The weather wasn't conducive to lounging on the sand; instead we went to a couple of local attractions. Original 1975 maps and tourist guides of the area were produced and we were assured that little had changed apart from the addition of the N11, which had been carefully added in biro to the map. Sure enough Hook head, described by Catherine's dad with the immortal words "It's just a headland", still sported "The World's Oldest Lighthouse" and a miniature version of Tintern Abbey; unimaginatively called "Tintern Abbey". Johnstone Castle was convincingly castle-like and views from the lake and Rapunzel towers were pleasant enough.

The trip included many classic childhood adventures. A neighbouring kitten dropped by and insisted on attention, at one point I was witnessed running the kitten around the garden using a long piece of grass as a pseudo-leash|lead. The cattle grid did not disappoint either and soon enough was complete with a plump hedgehog that needed rescuing with an impromptu ramp. I was given a lesson in hurling by Catherine's dad and our regression to childhood was completed by indulging in kite flying, collecting attractive stones from the beach and being coerced into household chores like cleaning out the guttering and trimming the hedges.

Some photos of the trip are available in the gallery.

Catherine and I lived in California for a little over 4 years. In that time I can probably remember nearly all the individual days that it rained. For example, I remember that it rained on Halloween night 2003. It also rained once in April forcing us to have lunch indoors. It rained one weekend and I took photographs out of the window. Apart from that it was basically either sunny or slightly overcast with a haze. When we left I had forgotten what damp was, clouds were a slightly strange sight, wearing anything other than a T-shirt was for wimps and the worst thing you could say would be that you were a little too hot.

Returning to England, and Manchester in particular, was always going to be a shock. It turns out that Manchester flourished as a cotton town precisely because it was damp; its climate suited the mills. Arriving in April we were treated to glorious sunny days and long evening with new growth of trees and birds singing everywhere. We even had a nest of baby birds near our window; how bad could it be? How wrong could I be. After about two week of this the weather must have noticed that we were back and identified our rain deficit. Like a soggy tax collector it decided we must pay and pay we did. The period from May until now has seen more rain than ever before - or at least since records began in the mid-1700s. It will come as no surprise that it is raining now and that if I were to drive somewhere I would need headlines because the cloud is so dark - yes it is 2pm.

I have finally managed to conquer the 8 Gigabytes of photos from India and have annotated the albums to give some potted story of our travels. I'll not mention more here but encourage any interested parties to view the India gallery.

Life continues, this time in Manchester. More to follow...

Well here one is in India. We are into our second week now and have done a speed tour of Rajasthan (Filthystan) and are now heading South towards the Jungle. Everything has been a little hectic to say the least over the last few months but we managed to escape from Los Angeles having sold all our stuff and shipped the rest. After a quick dash to Manchester to find a flat that wasn't above a launderette and covered in light layer of filth (vomitarium) we randomly flew into Dehli with no particular plan whatsoever. A quick visit to the Government travel advisor suggested that the most sensible plan would be to go 'super posh' and hire a car-and-driver. This we did and we have now be luxuriating in a range hotels from the spectacular, clean and totaly empty (except us) Havelli - to some slightly less exotic ageing hotels. Still - when you look out the window and see a large expanse of filth-infested trash coverered in an extra layer of filth with a dead dog on the top you can't really complain too much.

India is certainly a land of extremes - from the rancidity of the open sewers often spring fantastic palaces and forts clearly once (or still) decorated in sumptuous marble and gems. Ridiculously ornate stonework has been everywhere so far and yet as soon as you exit the gate you are met by hordes of touts, 'guides', beggers, and people selling random crap. Anywhere where 'supertourists' (rich, old, Western, people) have been you will be asked for money or just about anything -- photos of them, empty bottles of water, spare shampoo (rub hair), pens (writing motion on hand), money (rubbing of fingers and thumb), money for watching shoes, money for going to the toilet, money for carrying bags, money for not carrying bags, money for entering the museum, money for bringing a camera into a museum, money for crossing a border, etc... etc... etc... Neyhi Dandayvaad (phoenetic spelling of No thank you in Hindi).

With 6 hours to go before Christmas Day 2006 begins in Pacific time I might just be able to sneak under the wire with some warm winter wishes before blogcrastination gets the better of me. Of course having been in LA for almost 4 years now it would be imprudent of me to mention the C-word so I hope you all have a very Happy Winter Solstice.

I realize that there is a tendency at this time of year for people to spontaneously produce a 17 page dissertation of family news and trivia that normally revolves around how gloriously young Timmy did in the 15 meter wibbly trouser race at Piffington Junior School Non-Competitive Community Day. Therefore here is a bullet point overview of keywords:

lovely weather, 195 lbs, gym, weights, running, thinner, engaged, bling, hawaii, Manchester, Christmas, job done.

My mum and aunt finished their spectacular train journey in LA last Friday. Starting in Denver they took in mountain scenery all the way to San Francisco before travelling down the coast. Expecting 3 days of glorious sunshine and progeny/relation-guided tours what they got was 2 inches of rain and a sick person. Everything started ok with a 'lovely walk' by the Venice Canals and beach in the sun. The GPS even turned up a nice track by Ballona Lagoon to complete the circle.

My guts decided to take a starring role in the weekend about 30 minutes before boarding the high speed catamaran to Santa Cruz Island. An island that it turns out is inhabited solely by conservationists and is 28 miles, or a $6,000 helicopter ride from the nearest hospital. This we are helpfully told by the friendly guide after disembarkation and continued to ring in my ears during the hours that I spend curled up on the grass between dashes to the pit toilet.

Before you begin filling in your sympathy vouchers you should know that I did get to see a school of dolphins feeding and playing around the boat on the way out and three grey whales at close quarters on the way back - well worth the price of admission.

Ajay pointed out that as President of SoPS I could officially take a guilt free holiday this President's Day Monday. Unfortunately, it was my turn to give lab meeting on Tuesday morning so the end of last week was a little frantic. Amy, Greg and I drove up with Riley and arrived at about 2:30am Saturday in an chalet complete with portraits. On arrival Riley immediately ran to the TV and waited expectantly until it was turned on. He clearly enjoys TV and unlike most dogs actually watches things on the screen move around and gets very excited when animals appear. After a slightly lazy start we hit the slopes with fresh powder and more snow falling. Powder, although much more tiring, is great on a snowboard and you really feel like you are floating along. Steep runs are also less intimidating without the scraping sound of the ice and I was much more comfortable on the harder black runs. The double black diamonds at Mammoth (ratings are relative to the rest of the mountain) are still far too steep for my liking and quite frankly give me the heebie-jeebies.