Well, it’s been a loooooong time since I posted. And quite a bit has happened, but for some reason, I’ve just not really felt like sharing, so apologies for that. Not that you probably care that much, but I guess if you have the decency to point your browser in this direction, then I should have the decency to have drunkenly written something for you to dismiss.
Which I’m now doing 
So, what’s new?
Well, CPW bought AOL, as previously mentioned, and so I’m facing redundancy. Which is actually fine. It’s time for a change. New horizons, new challenges. All good. Scary, but good. Sometimes it takes something scary to keep you on your toes. There’s good to be said for safe environments, but they can also be very bad for you. No sense in creating something too comfortable - it dulls the senses.
Since going to Burning Man, I’ve also been to Sitges and Barcelona, with the lovely Gianluca.
If you’ve not been to either Barcelona or Sitges, I can highly recommend it. Lovely places, both of them. It was a little weird wandering into a bar there on the first evening we arrived, to find a friend from London in there. Talking to two other friends from London, whom he’d never met before but had just gotten talking to. And then to be tapped on the shoulder two minutes later by someone from work. A nice few days distraction though. Aside from the sore foot, that was.
Ever since Burning Man, I’ve been suffering from Plantar Fasciitis, which has been a royal pain in the arse foot. (It’s a crippling pain that comes and goes, and when it’s there - resides in the heel or arch of the foot, rendering you pretty much immobile at times). When I went to see my doctor, he asked a few questions and then diagnosed it as a Potassium deficiency, and told me to eat more bananas and oranges. Yes, I’ve often found bananas and oranges to cure a pain in my foot that leaves me unable to walk.
Anyhow, I wasn’t really listening to the doctor at this point. Because a couple of minutes earlier, he’d told me I had cancer.
Yes, cancer.
Not brain cancer, or lung cancer, or anything too serious, thankfully, but skin cancer. Cancer none the less. Kind of a shock. Especially given how he breezed over it. And then, in later sessions, made references like “lots more lesions that need to be removed” and so on.
So, as you can imagine, when the biopsy tests from the first “lesion” he’d removed came back showing negative for cancer, I was “somewhat” relieved. And somewhat irritated, given all of his boisterous and swaggering diagnoses, not to mention his pissing contest with the other doctor who observed the surgery to remove the first “lesion”. (Yes, it was a local anaesthetic, and yes, they talked about me as if I was out for the count). Apparently my GP used to be head of surgery. Somewhere in india. I guess it must hurt, moving from being the head of surgery at some Goan backwater clinic globally reputable medical institution, to being a mere GP in a shitty london local surgery. I did get the impression - accurate or otherwise - that I was an ideal opportunity to brandish the knife, after a period of dull colds and bunions and other such ailments that are the bread and water of British General Practitioners. However, a week later, when I had the stitches removed, only to stretch later in the day and have the wound burst open again, I was already a little tired of the situation.
Learning that it was a misdiagnosis was a big relief. A HUGE relief. I just wish my doctor had been a little more - well - rehearsed in his bedside manner before giving me enough throwaway comments to leave me sleepless for a month. Bizarrely, I did find myself less distressed during this period than when my mum was treated for breast cancer a couple of years ago, so perhaps I never quite acclimatised to the idea in the first place. Who knows.
Anyhoo, moving rapidly on to happier times, last month I also went to New York for a long weekend, with Gianluca, and also with Paul.
And then, the weekend after getting back from New York, it was the London Decompression party - a “post event” Burning Man type thing. Taking place in a squat in East London, it was possibly the best night I’ve had out in a long time. Hard work, again; we set up Quixote’s Cabaret Club & Bar, and it too a fair bit of hard work to get it up and running - but well worth the effort. Once again, some more flickr photos…
So, that brings me up to more-or-less now. I’m sure there are lots of other things to share. Gadgets acquired, movies watched, blah blah blah. All in good time. Which I have probably said before, but … well … who knows - maybe I’ll get around to posting some more, sometime soon.
And in the meantime… if anyone has a job going….
