It appears to be a popular pass-time to wander the streets of Kyiv, beer in hand, and admire the giant Soviet-era statues. Which suits me just fine.

Just look at those Russian abs. They knew how to make you, umm, feel impressed upon.

I really am trying to write more often; it’s just that I keep getting distracted by going out and doing things….

Last weekend I got back from a week of learning to snowboard in Les Arcs 1800, in the French Alps. Really good fun, although pretty painful - the first few days were just warm enough for everything to go slushy during the day, and then freeze solid at night. It snowed heavily on the Wednesday and then stayed between -5°C and -18°C for the rest of the week - but by that time the damage was done, and I had to pull out of our final day’s expedition to La Plagne since I was in agony every time I sat down…

Everyone there (and people like Hickman who went elsewhere) can only talk about one thing - the growing problem of a lack of snow in Europe. It’s getting pretty noticeable, and there were grand plans in Les Arcs to vastly expand their artificial snow making capacity (including building a big reservoir) - it’s ironic, of course, how much power gets consumed trying to paper over the effects of climate change.

Apart from that, the resort was great, especially the Double Mountain burgers in the Tex Mex place we (eventually) found - I might have had them two or three times during the week. The instructors were cool too - François and especially Hervey, who pranced around on his board looking like a ballerina, distinguishable from kilometres away as he leaned back and forth with his arms outstretched (”I go to the pylon, I go to the chalet. I go to the pylon…”). Both were on that verge of making things look exasperatingly easy, but I was getting there by the end of the week and it was fun, even if I did suck a bit!

I haven’t got any photos of the group of us snowboarding, since I didn’t really fancy taking an SLR on the slopes - but Paul Stark had his camera, so you can see his photos instead. I especially like the group photo - now all we need is an album, and that can be the cover!

Last weekend a group of us went to Bruges. We took the EuroStar on the Friday after work, having a picnic on the way, and stayed at a hotel within a few minutes walk of the centre. The weekend mainly involved drinking, eating and being tourists - a brewery visit, climbing the Belfort, visiting the chocolate museum, going on a boat around the canals - and of course, me taking lots of photos.

(And please join in with Mr T’s call for a caption competition!)

It’s front page news every day now, and it’s really starting to piss me off. The H5N1 strain of avain flu has now been found in Europe - big fucking deal. It was devastating poultry farms in Thailand when I was there back in January 2004 - almost two years ago - and poultry farmers were dying every day. But only poultry farmers. Everyone else just got on with it.

Think about this - it will eventually jump the species barrier, but where is that more likely to happen - here, where poultry farming is highly industrialised, or where people and animals share houses and streets with one another? And so if it’s going to jump the species barrier somewhere in South East Asia, what does it matter if migratory birds have flu in Greece? If there’s going to be a pandemic, then it’ll start somewhere, and arrive at Heathrow a day or two later. The newspapers seem to be making it out that we’re be doomed once it reaches our shores, and only when it reaches our shores, which is utter nonsense.

Moreover, why is this suddenly such a big deal? Has it escaped everyone’s notice that it’s been going on for years now? Has it become something montrously different now that some birds are dying - (gasp) in Europe?

Generally, we’re all pretty pathetic. Under-educated, over-sensitive, easily agitated, lacking in common sense and needing to brush up a bit on our sense of fatalism.

I bought some climbing boots and a chalkbag yesterday, seeing as the whole climbing thing is becoming quite a routine, and I really, really need them for bouldering in Sherfield. But the thing that grabbed my attention was when I came to pay for it all - I got to use my chip-and-PIN on my credit card for the first time! Finally, I feel like we’re heading in the right direction, after spending years and years transferring billions of pounds around the country using the most ludicrously pathetic security system I’ve ever come across. Still, maybe some technologists should realise that despite signatures being sooo technically poor, for the most part, they still work. Most security systems don’t actually need to be perfect to be functional.

Still, in Britain we’re over a decade behind France when it comes to using PINs at points of sale, and when I was travelling around Australia and New Zealand I was grateful that many British tourists ahead of me had got all the checkout assistants well trained - as soon as they recognised a card from a British bank, they used the fall-back signature verification. Interestingly, PINs work fine in cashpoints, but even though I knew them for my cards, their point-of-sale network obviously wasn’t connected up to our PIN verification network (or however it all really works), since I had to sign for everything. Maybe next time it’ll all be joined up better.

I have a plan. Well, I have lots of plans, and most of them never seem to work out. Well, some of them do work out, but I’m pretty sure that’s because those ones are carefully chosen, so that I know they’re going to happen anyway. That way I can congratulate myself that they were Planned, and they Happened because I Planned them. Read the rest of this entry »