draliman on life

Here is my post for Cee’s Share Your World.

Would you travel into outer space?
Hell yeah. Not in one of these new so-called spaceships we have, though. They sound rather dangerous. I want to go in style, get beamed up and then go to warp speed. I’d like to visit the pleasure planet of Risa, please.

Which country/city in the world (that you have never been to) would you most like to visit and why?
Can anyone guess? I bet regular readers can. I would go to Matamata, New Zealand. Because that’s where Hobbiton is! I could visit the Hobbits! Whoo-hoo 🙂

What could you do to breathe more deeply today?
Take a deeper breath? Is this to do with being calm? If so, I’m always pretty calm 🙂

Complete this sentence:  This creamy peanut butter sandwich could really use some…
… chucking in the bin. Yuck, the very idea of peanut butter sounds wrong. It sounds like peanuts (yuck) mashed up in butter. (Full disclosure – I’ve never eaten peanut butter.) It’s not such a big thing here. I don’t think it was around at all when I was little, though you can buy it now. I think it’s an American thing.

Here is my post for Cee’s Share Your World.

If you could have an endless supply of any food, what would you get?
Pizza. Piiiiiizzzzaaaa. Pizza. With pepperoni, Chorizo, loads of cheese. I assume I get to choose an endless supply of dessert too? I made myself the pizza described above yesterday, and I also made another Victoria sponge yesterday morning and had some for dessert so I’ll choose that. This time I used blackcurrant jam and remembered to frost the top!

What is the worst thing you ate recently?
I haven’t eaten anything bad recently. I’m trying to remember the last time I ate something bad. I usually eat something I’ve made and if we go out it’s to places we usually go and I have the same things (adventurous, aren’t I?).

You are comfortable doing nothing? For long stretches of time?
Probably not. I can’t remember the last time I was doing nothing so it’s hard to tell!

List of Jobs You Think You Might Enjoy: Even if you aren’t thinking about a career change, it can be fun to think of other jobs you might enjoy.

• Fighter pilot. I feel the need… the need for speed! Now I want to watch Top Gun again.
• Rally car driver. I feel the need… you get the idea.
• Forestry Commission person. I like the idea of spending my day wandering around the woods checking on the trees and what not.
• International jet setter type person. That may not be an official job, though.

Here is my weekly post for Cee’s Share Your World.

What is your favourite part of the town/city you live in.  And what Country do you live in?
I live in Cornwall, a county in England, which is part of Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales), which is part of the United Kingdom (GB and Northern Ireland).

I live in a very small village. I don’t really know my favourite part. My little house, maybe?

Would you rather wear clown shoes every day or a clown wig every day?
No. No clown anythings for me thank you very much.

If I had to and it was every day it would have to be the hot itchy wig. How could I drive to work wearing clown shoes?

Which way does the toilet paper roll go? Over or under?
Over, of course! The majority of people are “over” people. Also, although it was never explicitly mentioned, I refer you to Seth Wheeler’s original toilet roll holder patent. “Over”, thank you very much.

Picture via cnet.com, but since it’s a patent I’m assuming it’s public domain

What do you do to make a living or during the day?  If you are retired what mostly occupies your day? Or if you are a student what are you studying?
I work in IT as a “System Architect“. I basically combine hardware, software, databases and so on to create a working system. I was doing the job for a year or so before it was made official a couple of weeks ago and I got the title 🙂

Exciting, no?

Here is my post for Cee’s Share Your World series.

Do you prefer a bath or shower?
A shower. A bath sounds great in principle and it starts out great, but after a while you either stay in too long and you end up in lukewarm water and looking like a prune or it’s too hot and you end up all sweaty. Or perhaps I’m doing it wrong.

Plus a bath uses an immense amount of heated water and I know from personal experience that switching from showers to a bath increases your water bill by an insane amount.

If you had an unlimited shopping spree at only one store, which one would you choose? Why?
An Amazon distribution warehouse sounds good. I guess that counts as a “store” as they store stuff there, but if I choose to translate “store” as shop, possibly not :-(. How about somewhere that sells really expensive cars? No?

You’ve gotta give me one of them, so I’ll take Amazon. They sell everything. I’ll stock up on the best of the best!

If you could be one age for the rest of your life, what age would that be?
Early thirties, I think. That’s pre-aches and pains, but old enough to be all sorted out and for people to take me seriously as all grown up 🙂

List at least five movies that cheer you up.
That’ll be films that make me suddenly laugh out loud or feel-good films

• Expendables 2 (great cameos, loads of people getting shot)
• Planet Terror (horde of zombies getting chopped to bits by a helicopter rotor)
• Die Hard (the ultimate Christmas film)
• From Dusk Til Dawn (because, vampires)
• Starship Troopers (kill the bugs!)
• Aliens (kill the bugs!)
• Star Wars eps 4, 5 and 6

Bonus question:  What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?
Last week at work I got a promotion! Now I’m a “Systems Architect“. I’m gonna architect the hell out’a this job. Next week I’m looking forward to sampling my new purchases. Death or glory awaits!

Here is my post for Cee’s Share Your World. This week’s questions were supplied by Emilio.

What is your earliest memory?
Memories are funny things. Sometimes I have a memory only to discover by various means that it never actually happened, or at least not the way I remember.

That said, I think my earliest memories are from around age 3/4/5. They’re from a house we moved out of when I was 5 so I know it was around then. Just vague snippets of my brother’s birthday and waiting for his name to be mentioned on the TV programme “Gus Honeybun’s Magic Birthdays” (Gus was a puppet who would do a handstand or whatever the person who wrote in asked for).

What was the last photo you took with your phone?
Upon checking it’s the picture of the cake I baked which I already posted here, so here’s the second-last picture I took (for my Instagram feed).

So… how do I get up in the cockpit then? Ladder? Anyone?

Have you ever danced in the rain?
I don’t dance. It’s better for everyone that way.

What is the longest you have gone without sleep?
While doing my PhD I pulled a few all-nighters in the lab, so I guess that would be around 30 hours or so. We had an experiment which needed constant attention and readings taken every 45 minutes or so as we gradually raised the temperature from -200C to 80C.

That’s put to shame by the 42 hours I went without food a couple of years ago. I just never got round to eating. Didn’t do me any harm!

Here is my post for Cee’s Share Your World.

What’s your most memorable (good or bad) aeroplane flight?
I was en route to Cork (Ireland) for a job interview, but Cork was too foggy to land at. We circled around for hours while my presentation kept getting pushed back. Finally we landed at Shannon where I had a pint of Guinness before taking off again and arrived in Cork around six hours late. Obviously I missed my presentation and formal interview so we went for the interview over a meal at a five star hotel instead.

Result! And I got the job 🙂

How many bones, if any, have you broken?
I’ve never “officially” broken any bones, but I’m sure I’ve broken my little toes a few times. I read somewhere once that most people break their little toes many times over their lives. That could be an old wives’ tale, mind, but that “crack!” as you drive your toe into the coffee table lends weight to the myth!

If you had your own talk show, who would your first three guests be? (guest can be dead, alive, famous or someone you just know)
That’s a tricky one, I don’t really know. I would go for three funny people though, so that there would be lots of laughs and no arguments 🙂

Make a Currently List: What are you reading, watching, listening to, eating, needing, wanting, and missing right now?
Reading: “Hotel Alpha” (Mark Watson) for the village book group and “Magic Shifts” by Ilona Andrews

Watching: Scream (the series), Jericho, How I Met Your Mother, Continuum and Archer on Netflix, Preacher on Amazon, Star Trek DS9 (again) and ER (again) on DVD

For lunch time/tea time/before bed watching I cycle through my favourites start to finish – Dr Who, Buffy, Angel, Bones, Stargate SG1, Stargate Atlantis, ER, all the Star Treks.

Listening to: All sorts! I’ve been listening to “The Pretty Reckless” a lot recently.

Eating: my cake!

I’m chickening out of “needing”, “wanting” and “missing” 🙂

Here is my post for Cee’s Share Your World.

How many languages do you you speak?
English. Some American English (courtesy of American TV). I can understand a little French from my school days and speak a tiny bit. I’m better at German but very out of practice.

What are some words that just make you smile?
Bunny. Kitten. Patches (I type it a lot as a substitute for “updates” on the computer and it always makes me think of a cute little doggy).

If you were the original architect of one existing building, which building would you select?
This one.

It’s the Longaberger building in Ohio. Apparently they make baskets. Isn’t it awful? If I designed this I’d be famous and notorious for ever!

Would you rather have telepathy or telekinesis? 
Let’s look at the pros and cons.

Telepathy pros:

• I could hear what other people are thinking 🙂

Telepathy cons:

• I could hear what other people are thinking about me 😦

Telekinesis pros

• I would never have to reach for the remote control again 🙂
• I could fling people across the room with but a thought 🙂

Telekinesis cons

• None 🙂

Telekinesis it is.

Here is my post for Cee’s Share Your World.

What is the most fun thing you did in school?
I most enjoyed school trips. There was a memorable trip to London where we visited the zoo and watched the play “Mousetrap” at the theatre, and I made new friends too. But imagine the bravery of the teachers taking a whole class of 12 year olds so far away for a whole weekend!

We also went on several trips around Cornwall and West Devon, including the highest spot in Cornwall, the amusingly named “Brown Willy” (which was recently voted among the top five rude place names in Britain!).

What is your favourite type of dog?  (can be anything from a specific breed, a stuffed animal or character in a movie)
Stuffed doggies!

The Lads.

You are invited to a party that will be attended by many fascinating people you never met.  Would you attend this party if you were to go by yourself?
Nooo, A thousand times no! And not if I wasn’t by myself either.

Complete this sentence:  Never In My Life Have I…
… chainsawed my own arm off for a drunken dare while singing the Zambian national anthem in a small mud hut in the Amazon rain forest.

Here is my post for Cee’s Share Your World.

What was one of your first moneymaking jobs (other than babysitting or newspaper delivery)?
My first moneymaking job was a summer job working for the council in their computer department. It was very much “the olden days” – mainframes and rows of big machines with tape reels spinning round. A lot of the time, I sat at the console waiting for the computer to tell me which tape it needed next, at which point I had to go and find it on the shelves and load it up.

It gave me a nice little “cache of cash” for starting university!

What is your favourite month of the year?
Most months have something going for them. The cold crispness and “winter smell” of December (plus Christmas of course!) and the warmth of July/August. Months which are not on my favourites list include

• January (back to work with a vengeance, a bit of a let down after Christmas)
• February (good job it’s short)
• March (could go either way)
• April (who knows what April will bring? A loose cannon, is April.)
• September (pretty pants)
• November (completely pointless)

Well, that’s half of them. Don’t even talk to me for half the year, apparently.

What three things in nature do you find most beautiful?
Lovely views (Tintagel, Cornwall).

Bubbling brooks (Golitha Falls, Cornwall).

Other-worldy peace and quiet (St. Nectan’s Glen, Cornwall).

List at least five of your favourite spices? (excluding salt and pepper)
Ha ha! I started Googling “difference between herbs and spices” and when I got as far as the “he” in herbs it auto-filled “difference between herpes and warts” 🙂

This is tricky – I’m more a “herb” person than “spice” person. I like all sorts of herbs – parsley, rosemary, thyme… spices not so much. Apparently chilli powder is a spice so that’s one. That’s got cumin in it, so I’ll have that one as well. I’ll also take curry powder which is “a blend of up to 20 spices” so that’s up to 22 total! What a cheat I am 🙂