rubber band ball

rubber band ball

You know how postmen all over London seem to drop exclusively red rubber bands in our collective path?

Well, I'm making a rubber band ball, which is remarkably therapeutic, and could be come the un-executive toy of choice.

Sorry it's such a crap picture. And it's grown since I took this.

Forget consumer power - this is google power - I'm already on the front page for sony vaio tx2 problem.

pretty in pink

pretty in pink

I. Just. Can't. Stop. Taking. Pictures. Of. Flowers. Help.

linkage:

• Throw open the books so that we can see what everyone earns .. In Norway and Finland, anyone can summon up anyone else's tax return on the internet - and other fascinating facts from Polly Tonybee on equal pay.
• Glaceau Smartwater .. Apparently, Glaceau Smartwater actually makes you more intelligent. Snake oil, anyone?
• slowlondon .. because sometimes life's too fast, and we don't stop and smell the roses/enjoy ourselves. Or whatever.
• Ten Steps to Financial Freedom .. Sound financial advice from the Motley Fool.
  
• Miron Grindea: The Don Quixote of Kensington .. A great review in the weekend Independent of the founder of ADAM literary magazine. I saw an (old) movie of him at the booklaunch, and I feel my life is poorer for not knowing him before he died.
  
• Friendster lost steam. Is MySpace just a fad? .. Fascinating essay on social technologies.

Am ah bovvered?

Am ah bovvered?

Did I mention that I went to the WeMedia conference last week? I was - I hate to say it - a Digital Assassin. Sounds kinda silly; we were brought on to overproduced music and sat one per table so that the media folk could talk to the kids. Except Salaam Pax was on my table, and they were all pretty media-savvy. It was fun, though.

This poster is in the BBC halls, to encourage people to talk about the new media challenges blah blah blah, but the typography (up close, there's like a one mil space between the Vs, rather than the three mils everywhere else) really does make it look like Am I Bowered?

Could be a whole new catchphrase.

It's such a relief to know that 63 year old Patricia Rashbrook "has a biological age of 45" and that she is slim, blonde and in perfect condition.

It's the blonde that does it.

It's only fair that I give you the Sony Vaio outcome...

So it turns out that the guy who sales thought was the technical guy is acutally the most senior customer service guy (WTF) and Tuesday he called me, and arranged collection of the not-working TX2. We talked about Sony giving me a small "gift" to apologise to me.

I was ready. "Oh, I said, that's an idea. How about a
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-N1, with a leather case and 1GB card, with a Sony 5GB Micro Vault Pro"; this is a collection of stuff retailing at just under £500. So that's £425 ex-VAT, and less say a 20% margin, a cost to Sony of maybe a little over £300.

Matt responded that the camera was fine, and after I explained there was little point in giving me gift if I then had to spend +/- £100 to use it, he thought it was "fair" and "reasonable." But the Microvault, he can't use stock consumption internally, so it wouldn't be possible. It's how their rules work. And anyway, the camera and accessories were "reasonable." I responded that I would, of course, be reasonably happy with the camera: what would make me really happy would be the Microvault. Could he go the extra mile, for £90+VAT? No, it turns out.

So, my camera arrived today, and I'm reasonably happy, which is better than I felt when I had two Sony laptops and neither of them worked. But I think I might just buy myself a Microvault.

Waddya think?

So I am top on google for weird jews with funny hats eating cheese cake - timely, given it's Shavuout (the cheesecake eating festival) in about a month.

place mat

place mat

So I met up with A last night and we went to Hummus Bros on Wardour Street and spent about four hours eating humous (they spell it wrong, I tell you), drinking sage tea (new: fab) and having a right old girlie chat.

Humous feedback:

• Nice place; cross between Pret a Manger, Wagamama, and Tel Aviv bus station
  
• Branding story is very Pret: two hapless blokes just love hummus and had to bring it to the people
  
• Humous OK, but could do with toasted pine nuts (they say they are, but they could be more) and za'atar
  
• And they serve the garlic and lemon on the side, but we never got ours, so it's a little bland. But they say lots of office staff don't want garlic at lunchtime
  
• Great aubergine with tahina
  
• Extremely atttractive Israeli-style wait staff
  
• All in all, if I worked at Picadilly Circus I'd be there like twice a week. Minimum. I mean, it was like coming home.

textiles

textiles

This was on my old phone (just upgraded) and it was a pain to get them off, so I can't remember where it was. An interiors shop, I imagine.

Pretty sure it's a William Morris print, though.

create

create

As the Kilburn-local graffiti says: create. I have just had a lovely time printing out a rather rewarding project. There's nothing like seeing the finished result, frankly.

I mentioned some fun and games I had with my Sony Vaio-ot, and for your delight and delectation I reproduce here my, er, feedback letter.

Adam Dorrell
Director
Sony Style
Belgium
Brussels

25th April 2006



Dear Adam,
Sony Vaio Service – TX2 and TR1MP
Thanks for your time on the phone last Tuesday. As promised, I am writing to clarify the situation.


1 Lifetime Vaio customer
I am a lifetime Vaio customer – I had two 505Xs, currently own a TR1MP, and have just bought a TX2 because the Sony TR1MP has “died”. I purchased a 505X in 1998, when that failed, your technical support advised me the only way to have business critical reliability was to purchase an additional machine, which I did in 1999.

If I plan to work for another thirty years, and update my laptop every two years at an approximate cost of £1,600, then the future lifetime value of my custom is £24,000. That’s before we even consider the other Sony products I buy.


2 TR1MP third failure
In December 2003 I purchased a TR1MP, which has now returned to Brussels on its third trip. When it last failed in October 2005, I paid £120 for a rental machine while it was repaired, but when it failed on 27th March, I felt purchasing a new machine made more financial sense.


3 Current TX2 situation
Your Wincor Nixdorf engineer came this morning and installed the 2100 wireless card your third line technical support installed.
The machine is now failing to start up – it’s booting and showing the Vaio BIOS screen, but then fails to start. It has started once out of six attempted startups. This happened immediately your engineer started it, but once he got it working he said it was OK.

As a matter of urgency, could you have an engineer attend tomorrow between 1630 and 1900 to fix this hardware problem?


4 TR1MP failure and return to base
I opened case reference 1982930 on 28th March with Chris (call 1), and you collected my machine on 30th March.
I have made four further calls:
• to Olivia (call 2) 29/3 at 1145, advising her of screen flickering problem to be checked
• to John (call 3) 7/4 0930, who advised me you are waiting for a powerboard and hardrive, and advised me the parts should be due in a week
• I called Veronica (call 4) on 11/4 at 1030, she advised me you were waiting for hardrive, powerboard, thermal sheets and stopper, and another part for the powerboard. I asked her to email me when the machine would be ready – she said it takes a day to email the repair centre and a day to hear back from them and another day for her to email me. I heard nothing.
• I called again (call 5) on18/4 at 1235 and spoke to Andrew. He told me you are waiting for a combo drive, and can not give me any idea of when the part will be available or when the machine will be back. I asked him to email me also.

I had no emails, but the machine was returned to me on Monday 24th April. Thank the service gods of Brussels. It is nearly a month since it originally failed on March 27th.

5 TX2 purchase
As I mentioned to you, I was not prepared to hire another machine, even though there is nine months to run on my TR1MP back to base warranty. In October, my case was escalated by Matt Trigwell, so it was only away for a week, but without this assistance, your call centre estimated up to three weeks, which would cost me approximately £300.

I elected to purchase a new machine, nine months earlier than my business plan had budgeted for. My criteria were weight and design (I am a marketing consultant, often working onsite). I was extremely wary of purchasing another Vaio, and had specced a Toshiba Portege. At the very last minute, on the advice of a technology journalist friend who felt I’d been “unlucky” with my TR1MP, I ordered the TX2XP/L on the business bundle with the case and – crucially – the next day onsite warranty.

I did the initial research on 28th and 29th March, but when I called to order the machine, you were moving warehouses, and Amie, your salesperson, could not guarantee any delivery date at all. Extremely frustrated, I made some calls, and on 29th March spoke to Joe and Chris, explaining that I was extremely keen to spend £1600 with you. As a result of the time I spent finding someone to sell me a machine, Amie called me back, I placed the order on March 29th, for delivery no later than 7th April. (Total calls: 4)

Amie emailed me on Tuesday 4th April, confirming delivery the next day. When I checked the UPS link at 1145, it said you had tried to deliver the machine but no-one was available – I had been home all morning, waiting. I called Amie, and she said she would call me back. I checked your delivery email, and you had the address as flat X, High Road. I called Amie again, and she said she had Flat X, YY High Road on her system. After a number of begging calls, I was left with no choice but to go to the UPS office in Kentish Town in the evening of 4th April. (Total calls: 5)

In order to spend money with you, I had to make over ten phone calls.

6 TX2 wireless problem
When I took the machine out of the box, the wireless was intermittent.

CALL ONE: On Thursday 6th April I called your technical support line and spoke to Kieran at 9.50 (call reference 1993865) (this was a 20 minute call). Kieran instructed me to change the UP settings to a fixed IP address. This temporarily fixed the problem, although as soon as I hung up, the wireless no longer worked at all. I asked Kieran to send an engineer, as I had paid for next day onsite warranty, and he told me it was a software problem.

CALL TWO: I called again at 2.15 and spoke to Darren. He told me it was a software problem, and he would send me an email with a link to reconnect the wireless dropping. I asked him to send an engineer, and he advised me it was a software problem and therefore, despite my warranty, they would not send an engineer.

CALL THREE: When I did not receive an email, I called again at 2.40, and spoke to Kieran again. As the problem is intermittent, he could ping the router, and told me it worked and that was all he could do.

CALL FOUR: On Friday 7th April, I called Nina in sales at 2.45, explained my predicament, and asked her to help me. She said that Matt Trigwell, their technical person would call me back immediately.

CALL FIVE: I called again at 3.05 and she sent a message that I will hear back from him immediately.

I never heard from Matthew Trigwell.

Over the weekend, my boyfriend spent some time researching the problem, and it transpires that there is a known problem with IntelPro wireless 2200, as demonstrated on the Intel website: http://support.intel.com/support/wireless/wlan/sb/cs-006205.htm

Here is the problem discussed at length in a discussion forum:
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,12904785~days=9999

Your first line technical appeared unaware of this.

I am extremely surprised that a respected company such as Sony is marketing a machine containing a component with a known and documented problem.

CONTACT SIX: On Monday 10th April, I emailed Amie asking if she could chase this for me, and also confirm when my leather case would arrive. I never received a response to this email.

CALL SEVEN: On Tuesday 11th April, I called Nina again and spoke to her at 9.38. I asked for an engineer to come between 4 and 6pm on Wednesday. She stated that I would receive a phone call from technical support in 30 minutes.

CALL EIGHT: At 10.15 Stephan Olbertz from third line technical support called me. He was most helpful, and agreed there is a known issue with the IntelPro card. After a lengthy discussion, we agreed that the only practical solution was to change the 2200 card for the 2100 (which already works in my TR1MP), as the form factor of the machine means that we couldn’t install a newer card. While Stefan was most helpful, when I asked for his telephone number, he refused to give it, and would only communicate with me via email or via calls he initiated.

CALL NINE/TEN/ELEVEN: Wincor Nixdorf, I received a message from Shegar in technical support. I called him back twice, and eventually he told me was ordering the new wireless card, as well as a system board. He couldn’t make appointments, I have to speak to someone else.

CALL TWELVE: 3.30 called Nina, left message with Chris.

CALL THIRTEEN: 3.55 I spoke to Nina, explained that I was pursuing two problem solving routes (Wincor Nixdorf/engineer, and Sony third line support) and asked:
When my leather case would arrive
For your email address
In terms of goodwill I requested the following:
• A continental European power supply
• A US power supply
• Some kind of USB/memory stick.

CALL FOURTEEN: 4.20 from Zena at Wincor Nixdorf. Because they can’t no the next business day, I am entitled to a new laptop. I explained that this is only useful if the new laptop has the 2100 wireless card in it.

CALL FIFTEEN: 4.38 I called Nina, she is chasing her technical people.

CALL SIXTEEN: 4.54 from Zena, she is waiting to hear from Sony re a new PC. At the same time she confirmed that an engineer should be with me at 3pm tomorrow.

CALL SEVENTEEN: Wednesday 12th April, 11.55, Stephan called me, he can ship the part, it will arrive tomorrow. He suggested he could talk me through replacing it, although I expressed nervousness at taking apart such a small machine with no engineering experience.

CALL EIGHTEEN: 3.30pm, I call Zena, as the engineer had not arrived. She told me that parts had not arrived from Sony. She said she would call back in 20 minutes.

CALL NINETEEN: 4.05, I called Zena again, she is logged off. I spoke to David, who cut me off.

CALLS TWENTY/TWENTY ONE: 4.10, I called again, tried to find the David. Eventually I spoke to Iftikhar who told me that UPS had lost the parts and they are unable to do the call today.

CALL TWENTY TWO: 4.10 I called Nina and asked you to call me to get a resolution to this. I was keen to resolve this, as Passover was starting that evening.

CALL TWENTY THREE: 4.30 Zena called, confirmed parts had been lost, and that I should have heard directly from Sony about this.

CALL TWENTY FOUR: 4.45 Nina called me, and told me that you would call on Tuesday, and that in the meantime you were couriering me a wireless PCMCIA card.

CALL TWENTY FIVE: 5pm, Zena called me. I explained that I was out of the office on Thursday 13th, and as it was then Easter bank holiday, we agreed an engineer would attend at 9am on Tuesday 18th April.

CALL TWENTY SIX: 5.15pm, Brooklands courier called me – they couldn’t find the address flat XX, High Road. You had recreated the original delivery problem.

CONTACT TWENTY SEVEN: 7pm, your wireless card arrived (about ten minutes before the start of Passover.)

CALL TWENTY EIGHT: Tuesday 18th, 9.54, I called Zena when the engineer didn’t arrive. She told me that Sony took the call away from them on Thursday, and Sony should have called me. I asked her to ask Sony to call me immediately and tell me what was going on.

CALL TWENTY NINE: 10am, I left a message with Chris for Nina.

CALL THIRTY: 10.30 I called Nina again.

CALL THIRTY ONE: 3.45 you called me, and we agreed that:
• An engineer would attend on Monday 24th April (on my return to London) at 9am
• You would chase up the return of the TR1MP
• We would discuss some kind of goodwill gesture/compensation once the matters were resolved (this was your suggestion, I did not request compensation).

CALLS THIRTY TWO – FOUR: I was out of the office on 19th and 20th. When I collected my messages on Friday 21st, Stephan had left me a number of messages. However, he had not wanted to give me his phone number, so I could not call him. I had intermittent access to email.

CONTACT THIRTY FIVE: Friday 21st, 2.45, I sent you an email enquiring why I hadn’t heard anything from the engineer or about my TR1MP.

CALL THIRTY SIX: I called you at 5.30pm, chasing this. You were out of the office, but you told me Kirk had been dealing with this, and I should have heard from someone. I explained that I had to go to a funeral on Monday, and asked for an engineer on Tuesday at 9am.

CALL THIRTY SEVEN: Monday 24th - you called me before 9am and confirmed the engineer would attend Tuesday.

CONTACT THIRTY EIGHT: 9.30am Zena from Wincor Nixdorf call to confirm engineer attending on Tuesday at 9am.

CONTACT THIRTY NINE: Tuesday 25th - engineer attended, changed card. Now the machine doesn’t work.


7 Summary
I have:
• Made five calls to your 0870 service centre to locate my TR1MP, at a cost of around £7.50
• Made ten phone calls to purchase a new TX2
• Made nearly forty calls to get a TX2 that works
• Made a total of nearly fifty five calls or contacts
• Waited in five times (to collect my TR1MP, to have the TX2 delivered (failed), twice for an engineer (one failed) and once for a courier (wrong address)
• Collected my new machine at your UPS depot due to your failure to record my address accurately
• Spent two to three weeks with over £3,000 of Sony Vaio products that didn’t work
• Spent approximately three days of my time chasing this up
• Luckily, have my own in-house technical support to research the problem, otherwise it may well have remained undiagnosed

You have:
• Managed to deliver something twice to the wrong address
• Consistently not returned calls
• Frustrated me beyond all possible imagined levels of frustration
• Not delivered service worthy of your premium pricing or my additional payment for next day onsite


8 Current situation
It looks like my TR1MP works (my boyfriend has spent 4 hours updating Windows and installing Office). My TX2 doesn’t work. I have not received the goodwill items (power supplies and USB key) that I have mentioned to Nina on 11th April and you on 18th April (which would have made me feel slightly more cared for as a customer).

This letter has served as a small level of frustration management for me. However, I know that if I treated my clients as you have treated my custom, I wouldn’t have a business, and I certainly wouldn’t have the level of repeat business you have had from me thus far.


9 Proposed resolution
Please could you do the following:
1. have an engineer attend tomorrow between 1630 and 1900 to fix my laptop once and for all
2. call me tomorrow before 2pm or after 4pm to discuss resolution and goodwill.

While your products are fabulous, lightweight and sexy, I remain outrageously disappointed by your service.

Kind Regards,

Craft project I must do - Flickr Toys Calendar Jewel Case Instructions.

"Liking grandchildren more than your children is the emotional equivalent of preferring dessert over main course."

Courtesy of B, via email. That B needs a blog.

Faux bombs in Shepherds Bush - but is it art?

I think I may have died and gone to hummus/humous heaven: I have just discovered the existence of Hummus Bros - Give (Chick) Peas a Chance, a fast-food place dedicated entirely to humous. In London. On Wardour Street. I have to get there as soon as possible.

India Knight in today's Sunday Times on that haircare bill. Not that I need to tell you, but Cherie's in the news again. For something that really counts.

Broadly, India is pro large hair care charges for faux first ladies, on the basis that she can't do her own hair.

Here's what I think: it may be outrageous that Sandra Howard has her sidekick's sidekick blow-dry her hair in the back of the campaign van, but let's face it, she's got that straight, English hair. I think it's ludicrous to spend £275 a day on getting your hair done (we're not talking cuts or colours here, just a plain old style), but I can see Cherie wants to look good.

I know that answer. The problem is that Cherie has wavy/curly/slightly unruly hair, and she's trying to get it back in the box. She wants to look like everyone else; coiffed, groomed... done. Cherie needs to reach curl nirvana: she needs to learn to love her curls, and try and be her, not try and be other people.

So Cherie, my advice is simply this (spot the Shaders and Toners of Tony there?): go to a curly hair salon (I recommend Devachan or Ouidad in New York - shit, for what £7,000 you could get their top stylist to come to you). Get the hair cut that your hair needs - the one that's for you, not the one that makes you look like you think you ought to. Buy some decent curly hair products (I heartily recommend Devachan's Angell), leave your hair to dry. India may say the BBC is a curl-free zone (curly hair is "distracting", apparently - read scary/independent/non-conformist) but you need to stop looking like you've got a poker up your arse. We all know you like floaty clothes - real curls and waves are only a step away.

Get with the curl programme, girlfriend, and you'll stop looking like a cardboard cut-out of a PM's wife and start looking like you. And you'll get some respect from the masses who think £7,000 is (just about) a deposit on a first home, a car, a trip of a lifetime, some school fees... something that counts.

I just discovered that there's a Moleskin blog: moleskinerie.

It's been a while...

... a lot's happened.

First, of course, it's the middle of Pesach, and I cleaned (with assistance) my whole house and changed the pots and bought crazily-hecshered food. We had two great sedorim - there's something fascinating about seeing another family's minhagim, and I hung out with family and friends and ate far too much matzah.

I'm in Cheadle - second half only - and have had a great time with my nephews (J told me today his favourite sports are prickitt and goff). They are very excited I'm here, and it's nice to feel loved and wanted, especially by cute kids. We played jenga. We played computer games. We went to shul.

But, there's still something sad about coming back here. Well, to the shul, really. In my mind Cheadle - Yeshurun - is this mythic community, the place I grew up in, that spawned a generation of incredibly talented, creative people. The crowd I grew up with are actors, film directors, musicians, DJs (as well as a fair smattering of barristers and doctors), and I remember - possibly through rose-tinted glasses - a perfect childhood, a perfect community, a perfect shul. It's like every community I get involved with in adulthood is benchmarked against my warmest memories.

But being here now, it's not the same. Most people don't keep the end of Yom Tov - shul was empty. The chazzan was amazing, but contentious (you kinda love or hate that old-fashioned operatic chazzonus). The rabbi was a little shouty (but then rabonim often are). I see my parents and their friends, doing the work in the community that they were doing twenty or thirty years ago, and I don't see the next generation stepping up, and I wonder what will happen.

Also - in a minor way - it took a little time to recover from that gastro bug. Stomach still a little sensitive, not helped by too much matzah.

But what's been in the back of my mind since a week last friday is - and this is going to sound silly, so I'm sorry - my relationship with G-d (which I am still inclined to write that way, even though it's not a piece of paper).

As I get older, I think I have more... faith/connection... whatever you call that. There seem to be reasons for things, and for the things we don't really understand, some kind of context. But - and I don't mean this selfishly - I lost a friend, Melissa, someone I'd been in my Jewish women's group with for fifteen years. Later, I might write more about her, because I'd like to write some kind of ... testament to who she was and what she did. But for now, all I can think about is how unfair it is that someone in their thirties, with a husband and small child, how unfair is it that this should happen. And I feel angry that the good people sometimes get taken, even though I know it doesn't work that way. At least, I think it doesn't work that way.

So, I've been thinking a lot about M, and the life she lead, the things she did, and what it all means. Something of a crisis of faith, almost. Coupled with my shul-dilemma (whole separate conversation), I've been working out anew what I think, what I believe, what's important.

Of course some people know this already.

Until I work it out - and let's face it, this could be a while - I guess I just have to count my blessings. I'm lucky to have wonderful people in my life (hello, D), be part of two warm communities and a lovely family, have interesting work, a self-employed lifestyle that is pretty stress-free compared to my corporate days, time to write(sometimes), a lovely garden, which makes me very happy as I look out of my office window (once I was on the phone in the summer to an investment banker in New York and he said to me "are you, like, in the park?"), and a degree of... creativity/personal wherewithall/I know not what to call it that means I can enjoy every day for what it is.

I don't mean to be boastful. Of course my life isn't perfect, but I think I don't stop often enough to notice what I've got, so I am.

Like I said, interesting times.

Fantastic collection of paschal/sederic links at Jewschool - The Web is Your Passover Oyster (metaphorically speaking) from Shamirpower.

Busy day, busy day. Boutros Boutros Ghali. Peri Peri Chicken Chicken.

I'm not going mad, but I am cleaning for Pesach.

So far today, I have:

• sold my chametz (legitimately, I might add)
  
• done my Pesach shopping in three shops in Golders Green - only thing left to get kasher-le-pesach herbal tea. I have paid stupid money for stuff with hechshers on them, but hey.
• Bought haggadot
• About to clean my car
• Bought lots of wine (for people we are going to seder at)
• stopped in Starbux, crucial pre-paschal activity, of course...

Once, my (second) cousin said to me "what do non-Jewish people do on a Sunday?" meaning that we grew up in families were Sundays were largely (but not exclusively) about stonesettings and shivas. That's the price you pay for being involved in a large, vibrant community; you know more people, more people die.

I know that I'm grown up, because today I (very, extremely, sadly) am also going to a funeral and a stonesetting.

I went a little bit quiet: knocked out with a 24-hour nasty gatro-style bug. I am 90% recovered.

more linkage...

• Microsoft Re-Designs the Ipod Packaging .. hysterical.
• Bernard Shaw's Writing Hut .. Isn't this fabulous - Bernard Shaw's writing hut at the bottom of his garden. Oh, I want one.
• A pincer movement on the papers .. Great Mike Butcher piece: Craigslist is now in 192 cities, and only charges for want ads in three of them, and only $25 , while Craigslist competitors, like the New York Times, charge $300.
• morf.gif .. Fabulous little Escher-like non-flash animation.
• 'I have to stop myself ranting' .. CHAKRABARTI, Shami, (also known as Mrs M. J. Hopper) of Liberty fame.

The Apple Boot Camp public beta (in that web2.0 way where everything is in perpetual beta) might well mean my next PC is an Mac.

Turns out I spoke too soon on the how-cool-is-this-at-Sony front.

I check the tracking first thing, and it's out for delivery today. At 10am, it says "THE RECEIVER WAS UNAVAILABLE TO SIGN ON THE 1ST DELIVERY ATTEMPT. A 2ND DELIVERY ATTEMPT WILL BE MADE."

Weird, I was here all along.

I call my friend Amy at Sony Business, and they have attempted to deliver my shiny new laptop to Flat X, My Street, Rather than Flat X, Y My Street, Kilburn, which is the address on all our correspondence.

I'm busy writing something up today, so I'm available to receive it all day, but now Amy says it'll be tomorrow, and I'm at meetings for lots of the day, or Friday, where I am...

So, I spoke to soon. Amy said, "well, we did only say 90% delivery for Friday," and I said "what about exceeding my expectations?" and I am slightly stressed, and Amy is on the phone to people at UPS to try and get them to change the system. Which is hard. But if anyone can do it she/I can. I hope.

Because when you want something, and you are an immediately-girly, as I am, you want it. Also, I need a laptop.

Will keep you informed. If you care, I realise this is not such a big deal, really.

Had a great fun chilli-laden evening last night, including getting through three bars of Montezuma's fantastic chocolate (three pepper, chilli chocolate and cinamon (white) chocolate, since you ask).

Sony Vaio Delivery

Sony Vaio Delivery

So here's the story - for those who asked on my laptop.

I am a demanding customer. I like good design. I am stuck on the PC platform until Intel and Apple really makes it happen in a way that is Micro$oft-agnostic and doesn't hassle my clients who are mostly corporate M$ shops. I have one client who has kitted all his staff out with old-style macs, but then they aren't allowed voicemail either, and no-one can read my files.

Here's a history of all the laptops I ever owned.

• In the early nineties I bought an Elonex or something like it; the screen was tiny and black and white (or green, really) and I played a lot of patience.
  
• Then I had a sony laptop, can't remember what. It was OK.
  
• Then I ran my own business, and had a beautiful Vaio 505FX with a perfect metal case. But it let me down, and when I called Sony, all they could say is, to be really reliable, you need two. So I bought another one. Sucker for a sales pitch, me.
  
• Then I got made redundant from the Industry Standard, and I didn't have a job, but they gave me my IBM Thinkpad A20p. It's a workhorse piece of kit, but served me well in my early freelance-no-job days
  
• I bought a Sony Vaio TR1MP nearly a couple of years ago. I think I've been unluckly with the number of trips it's had to the Brussels healthfarm, although everything's technically as good as new, now.

So, I was this far from ordering a Toshiba Portege, and had gone through the entire spec with the Gadget Detective (aka my friend who knows everything there is to know about technology purchasing, and then some), and he said to me "Toshiba is mediocre design, mediocre service. Sony is good design, average service, you've just been unlucky. And you really want a Vaio, don't you?"

Because Sony Vaio's are for PC people who want a Mac, but can't handle the platform inertia. Design, without the advantages.

So I called Sony Business, and they had a bundle in stock, and everything was cool, and I was about to order it, and then Amy told me that I couldn't get it for an unspecified time, as they were (a) moving warehouses, and (b) didn't know how much stock they had.

But I'd made a purchase decision. A little thing like no stock wasn't going to get in my way. And I have this great database, called the internet, where I can find out anything. But when I googled for "head of product marketing at sony vaio" in a vicious, circular way, I got myself. So I called up the guy I knew from last time, but he's been promoted, so I found the new guy (it's always a guy) and explained that I was practically a lifetime customer, had a little word with him about lifetime customer value, and he said he could sort it.

Ten minutes later, Amy calls me back, slightly bemused. "We can express ship the item to you Tuesday. You know people in high places."

Which I don't. But I know how to shmooze and do the customer-service-manouevre, and I know how to get what I want (mostly).

So, new latop allegedly winging its way to Kilburn.

I will keep you informed.

Linkage:

• I have seen the Future - and it's Goth .. Is your boss a Goth? 10 telltale signs. Archly inane article from the Guardian - is there no real news?
• Open Letter - Public Geo Data .. State collected geodata is public property.
• 'Gang leader' held in Africa after Murder of Kidnapped Jew .. Seems like antisemitism is alive and well in France.
• Car sharers to get a Lane of their Own .. Carpool lanes on British motorways, sounds sensible to me.
• Killing me softly with salad dressing choices .. I'm trying to buy a TV, but I have choice inertia. Turns out I'm not the only one...
• British Gas chaos leaves thousands without heat .. Turns out I'm not the only person who's more than unhappy with British Gas (don't even say "three star contract" to me).

Property prices - a very London-dinner-party conversation. Since the Land Registry data was opened up, there's a number of players:

• OurProperty.co.uk are interesting, good interface, but you have to signup to a free account, and there's a montly search limit.
  
• my previous favourite, nethouseprices.com have just redesigned the interface and frankly, searching is harder
  
• this week's winner is houseprices.co.uk, who not only have a lovely, minimal web2.0 look about them, but also have a googlemaps mashup so you can see prices visually. They get the prize*.

* the prize is a plate of homemade humous with za'atar. Please email me to arrange collection.

Special thanks to Justin for pointing me in the direction of this fabulous paschal linkage: it's like a manic seder. Love it.

My buddies at Ghettoplotz made Timeout. Yay.

I have been a little quiet for the following reasons:

• I am waist-deep in a great project, which is connecting all the dots of my varied interests.
  
• my laptop died. Again. Can you believe? Anyway, it's gone off to a Brussels health farm (aka Sony repair centre) and the UPS pickup bloke and I had a deja vu moment when he came to collect it. It's twoish years old, it's a laptop. These things happen. They will fix it.
  
• In the meantime, I have ordered a new laptop because (a) I need one and (b) it's my year end. I was all ready for a Toshiba Portege, and then, at the last moment, went Sony again. New Vaio winging its way to me as soon as their warehouse move is over.
  
• I efficiently transferred my cash ISA to people who had a better rate. Nearly a month ago. Turns out they send a cheque, second class, with no signed receipt or security tracking. How twentieth century. The Abbey have no idea where my money is, and some bloke (Robert) in the Chairman's office had never even met the Chairman.
  
• We had a freeholders meeting for my block, which has been re-arranged three times since Jan 4th, and two people didn't turn up, one because they "didn't know about the meeting" despite emailing confirmation of their attendance to my neighbour
  
• I have written a list for my Pesach cleaning. It is long.

There are half-a-dozen immigration officers at Kilburn Tube Station. They are wearing jaunty caps with IMMIGRATION in large friendly white letters. They appear to be stopping people but they did not stop me.

art

art

Every time I see this ad on the tube, I get confused. See, I have a friend called Dan Favin (NB, not he real name, power of google, blablahblah) and every time I see this poster I think to myself, "I didn't know Dan Favin was an American minimalist installation artist."

Must give him a call. The one I know, I mean.

NB: the real Dan Flavin.

You know it's nearly Pesach when people email you JibJab's "Matzah!".

In the olden days, it's was about the calendar, the clock changing, the post-Purim thang that meant you should start cleaning your cupboards with a vengeance. Nowadays, it's all digital.

Cute London story about a book club in a bus garage.

I might see if my boss will start one.

Just stumbled upon brief summary of the history of shuls in the Brondesbury/Kilburn/Willesden triangle.

If you were at the Brighton Festival 2006 on Saturday May 6th, you could see Chuck Palahniuk and Irvine Welsh in debate. Say.

Israeli elections today.

I don't always blog the details of my work, as lots of it is confidential/too technical for interest, but today's the Guardian Changing Media Summit, where I did the research and put together the programme. I am the Xeni Jardin of my own life. Watch this space.

The weekend - movies; Capote (fascinating, but ultimately depressing because he was so selfish), V for Vendetta (hard to believe it was based on a vision of Thatcherite fascism, but nowadays looks remarkably like New Labour), my local gastropub (North London Tavern) with some old friends - where I was delighted to see the "no smoking till after 10pm" sign, but when I queried the waitress about it, she told me the person smoking in the restaurant area was the owner, a great shabbat lunch that went on till six pm, and two sets of Sunday papers.

So I hate The Jewish Chronicle (JC as it's known) website with a passion. It's retro, not optimised for firefox, looks lousy and doesn't have any news on it, because you have to subscribe, in some remarkably 1996 way.

So you can't see the three stories I just read...

the Sunderland community, where my grandmother came from is finally dying, and they're having their last Shabbat services tomorrow morning. All that's left is a chevra kaddisha (burial society) - no more shuls, schools, ladies guilds, cheders... it's the story of regional UK Jewry, but I feel sad

the JC informs me there is antisemitism on the Guardian Comment Is Free blog.

Danny Finklestein, one of the stable of regular columnists, and also an editor of the Times, has written this week's column as an open letter to Tony Blair.

Putting aside the obvious issue that since the death of Chaim Bermant some eight years ago, that opposite-the-letters-page slot has not felt right, the JC's columnist strategy has been - largely - make sure they're famous elsewhere.

It works for some people, but I feel strangely frustrated that Danny's written a political column with no Jewish content, or context, or even sensibility. In the interests of transparency, I should state that Danny is somewhere on the friend-acquaintance spectrum, and I admire him as a writer and a wit. But this week's column? It's interesting, sure, in the Times maybe. Is it a JC column? I don't think so.

Here's what I think a JC column is about (bizarro-world stream of consciousness to follow)... anything ranging from...
- the Institute of Jewish Mother Studies at Manchester University
- Jews and the property gene (everything from why we live in cul de sacs to why we can all price property at twenty paces. We can't take it with us when the Nazis come).
- Is there really more antisemitism, or are we all Woody Allenly angsting about it?
- What do we think about outmarriage?
- Why are we obsessed with counting Jews?
- How does Anglo-Jewry function now that the strong link with Israel and zionism is problematic (less people going on year schemes/aliyah/Israel summer trips) - what is the diaspora potentially without the place we left?
- Tay sachs/genetic testing - do people take this seriously?
- The "shul with a pool" thing - with less and less people doing the religion thing, what does the culture thing mean?
- are Jews really hip? Is the Jewish hipster thing coming to the UK?
- is there a Jewish conspiracy
- can the community create an inclusive non-judgemental space for everyone who walks through the door, or will we always be judging people's hats and kippot and haircuts
- how does a community retain its independence - difference - while playing a part in the broader society
- interfaith stuff
- regional communities and how they survive as they shrink
- does the internet in some way remove the need for community?
- is there really a resurgence in Jewish learning?

... the list goes on and on. These are first thoughts, sure. But it seems to me there are people who live and breathe this stuff, and they're not all writing for the JC. Yet.

Paris is sounding scary this week. Hello N, how are you?

I had a quick coffee with a former work colleague during the week - it was really lovely to catch up, we both had reason to be in the British Library - and we hadn't seen each other for a few years.

We'd both been doing interesting stuff in the intervening time (her slightly more than me, I have to admit), but she told me something that I've not been able to stop thinking about.

I met a woman in my first job who had been promoted, and showed me the ropes for the first few days. We stayed vaguely in touch; we both worked for a variety of media companies and it's a small world blah blah blah. She was a nice person.

A few years back, maybe two, she's top brass at a media plc, and I did a piece of competitor analysis for her, it was nice to be in touch, and she told me she'd got married the previous year. I remember what she said in her email, "it was the most rewarding day of my life" and I remember feeling happy for her; not everyone finds love, especially if they work 20 hours a day, and she seemed happy and settled and I congratulated her.

So this week, my friend told me that this woman had lost her husband - I'm guessing he was in his late thirites - and I was just shocked. She didn't know any details, although my desire to know details, have an explanation, was as much for me to make sense of the world as anything else, but I've not been able to stop thinking about it.

I've not been in touch with her for a while, so I think it would be weird for me to write and say "hear your husband died" but I feel like I want to acknowledge it in some way. This morning, while I was brushing my teeth, the thought of her loss came into my mind and I was momentarily... breathless. Tearful, almost.

The world can sometimes seem terribly unfair.

Of course, it swings both ways. My former colleague also told me that my first boss, who must now be pushing fifty, and was a nice, incredibly green fingered woman, but slightly spinsterish, had met a bloke in a bar, found love and moved to Berlin.

This woman - who always had slightly unfortunate initials on internal documents, STD - I remember as being quite bitter about men, and filled her time growing spider plants in our office (the oxygen was good for us), doing charity work, renovating her house and holidaying in exotic places. Not that any of these things are bad things.

And now she's all loved up in Eur-ope (imagine Woody Allen voice, please), which can only be a good thing.

So, one good, one not so good. Do they balance each other out?

Y'know, I ordered some contact lenses on that interwebnet thing, eight months supply, and they just arrived in eight separate padded envelopes. What is this, a (shipping) job creation scheme?

I wish it to be known that the wifi at the British Library sucks.

Badly.

So a month or so ago I signed up for £35/month pass, which was expensive but good. Except that after the first logon, it never worked again, and I wasted ages getting in touch with Building Zones trying to get it fixed. I paid a squillion pence to a stupid 0870 number who were unhelpful. But s-l-o-w-l-y.

In the end, I cancelled the £35/month thing, because I was paying for something I couldn't use. But now I'm back at the library this morning, and need to sign up to something else...

So I call the British Library switchboard - carefully avoiding their 0870 ruse) and talk to a woman who says she'll look on the internet for me. To tell me what wifi providers they support. Like I didn't already look. I tell I already looked and she says she might see something I didn't see. She sees an email address. Great. And do I want to give them feedback? No, I say, I just want something that works without wasting my time.

So now, I've signed up for SkypeZones on the vague recollection that they're also in the British Library, as I can't bear doing the whole other crappy thing again.

It seems like being a consumer is really hard work, nowadays. I just want somethng to work.

I am politer in real life. Honestly.

taxi cab

taxi cab

I love the vagueness of this... in the back of a cab, but one with a mesh in case I have... a knife? A loaded pistol? Wouldn't you just put them both through the convenient hole.

Anyway, it looks urban and vague and dirty.

Image(1254)

Image(1254)

A slef-portrait, including my favourite colour (purple). Taken somewhere in EC2 on the way to the most ridiculous meeting that I will write about one day. The guy kept me waiting for 45 minutes, didn't have a meeting room so we had to lean against his desk, he said "it's like a sweat shop in here" as we walked past the dozens of "worker bees" (which did not exactly endear him to me) and it turned out they wanted me to do the impossible in an outrageously short timeframe.

Also, there office was in a scary alleyway, so you'd hate to work there.

As I left he leaned down and said to me "is there any way we could persuade you to take on this project?" And I said no. Firmly.

Image(1265)

Image(1265)

... and ain't that the half of it.

Oh, I hate it when people don't get things right.

So I'm doing a piece of research, and signing up for a bunch of websites to see how the sector works and get some data. I sign up for an information site, with the phone number 020 7000 9999 (or whatever) and it comes back and says it's not a valid phone number.

So I enter 0207 000 9999 and it accepts me. Which is wrong. All London numbers start 020 and then are some are 7XXX and some are 8XXX. They're just wrong.

Gah.

Also, of course, sometimes I make mistakes. Must be more forgiving.

I was gutted I couldn't make Saturday night's east end PunkPurim extravaganza - and here it is written up in the the Guardian - Jewish hipsters and sacred cows.

It was in my diary, and my peops were going and everything, but I had a sudden incidence of scary back pain, and I knew that standing in a heaving bar with three hundred of my closest unzerer (bad use of yiddish?) would not best please my delicate L4/L5 back issue. So I took some valium (as a muscle relaxant, you understand, which on top of the afternoon's B52s had me delirious as a bubble gum house) and ended up with something of a boudoir soiree with R and D. With chocolate.

The people I know who went have given it variously great and not-so-great reviews (but then that's the Jewish disease, to some degree) but frankly something that's (a) not in North London, (b) doesn't have a ticket price, (c) is a radical mishmash of weird stuff and (d) isn't organised by an existing Jewish body and (e) isn't obsessed with the numbers game is already making it, in my book.

So well done to Joseph (sorry I didn't reply to your email) and the crew, and I can't wait - back permitting - till the next one.

A mega cyclone batters the Australian Queensland coast and devestates 90% of the banana crop.

Is the world getting scarier? Are bananas about to get more expensive?

Also, I recently learned a great little life hack to get good tickets at the National, but I'm sworn to secrecy. Sorry.

I had some fun and games in Debenhams recently. Particuarly taken with their Black 'half moon' long sleeve jersey dress by Betty Jackson.

Talk about a mashup - Gawker Stalker. Coming soon, to a town near you...

Have you heard of the Pink Ladies? It's a women only cab service.

Dave Gorman in this morning's Guardian on Flickr.

And Dave, it's flicker, not flick-are. Just so you know.

Extremely speedy note to say I've heard the megillah (loud), I've seen three Power Rangers and a Scooby Doo (it's kinda a fancy dress festival for kids), I've plaited my niece's hair and decorated with two bobbles and five clips, I have made mishloach manot with my nephew, including his discovery of my latent ability to do bubble writing (too much graffiti on my chemistry book in the eighties, methinks), and now I'm off to work.

Manchester is so much more fabulous than I remember it - a buzz, loadsa building... being called by my car service (sister).

Saturday night's (second) party was kinda like everyone I've ever met in my life all in a house in Cricklewood. Sorry, I mean Cricklehamsptead.

People I'd not seen for years, together with those I see every week, all dancing and eating and drinking and chilling out.

A and her terrible husband P - he made me say that, it's bizarrely the only way he'll meet me for coffee, if he gets mentioned on my blog, apparrently - I hadn't seen in years, and it was lovely to catch up, talk interior decor, property prices and failed friendships. Not that we have any, you understand.

There's something very wonderful about people you've known for a long time, even if you haven't seen them in a long time. Like some friendships are .. robust. Others, I guess not.

Tonight is Purim: The Festival of Lots - a minor but fun festival.

Some random thoughts:

• It's basically a kids' festival - lots of dressing up and noise. When I knocked-on (how Manchester) at some friends yesterday afternoon, their three kids were going wild making their fancy dress costumes
  
• there are three basic mitzvot (good deeds/things you should do) - hear the megilla (the story), send mishlo'ach manot (shalach monuss in yiddish), which are small gifts of two kinds of prepared and unprepared food, and matanot l'evyonim, gifts to the poor, aka charity (there are more, and I'm sure someone will comment about Purim se-udot (festive meals) and the like, but I'm just giving you a taste)
  
• like all/most Jewish festivals, it's based on the premise "they tried to kill us (Haman), we won (Mordechai), let's eat (Hamantashen)
  
• traditional food is hamantashen, triangular shaped pastries in the shape of Haman's ears. I have not made any this year, although I used to make fabulous ones with my mum
  
• some people get a bit competitive about shalach manot - I made four small parcels in little baskets I bought in Golders Green with my sister. I'm not very good with large gifts, and I don't really like to be showy
  
• When I lived in Singapore, which has a large secular Israeli community who all seem to do something secret for the government they can't tell you, they all came out on Purim, Simchat Torah and Chanukah - they're kinda like the secular high holidays because they're fun (rather than Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Pesach, which are harder work and less fun)
  

Walking through Islington last night, we were stopped by a tramp who said "sorry to bother you, can I make you a sculpture?"

Only in a folksy-artsy place, right?

What a weekend. Met many cool newmedia-ish and comix-style people, went to a houseparty that had an Israeli security guard and a chill-out room with Howard Jacobson hiding in the corner (OK, not hiding), a brief book-launch (stylish and vegetarian, quite a combination), a house-viewing (not my own, I offer this service, with valuation, for house-hunting friends, and it turned out I knew the next-door neighbours, so I did a possible-neighbour-shidduch), 3X starbuxim (though strictly camomile tea, I need to go easy on the coffee - it's the third space that does it for me, I realise, not the sugar hit).

Now, off to Manchester - work and Purim. Some combination.

Recent theatre:

• Resurrection Blues - the Robert Altman production of Arnold Wesker's Arthur Miller's last play, at the Old Vic - basically, a Jewish guy not getting the whole Jesus thing, but Robert Altman's vision was a little disappointing, and the Ikea-stylee set a little amdram, frankly.


• The Complicite production of Measure for Measure at the National, which was visually appealing, and truly brought the play to life. Kinda reminded me of a production of Merry Wives that I saw in Stratford when I was at school/college (can't remember) with my family, which was in 1950s dress, and I still remember. When someone brings Shakespeare to life, it's truly amazing.

There is something ironic yet fitting about me being the number one google search for ghastly upvc glazing - remember?

Linky-linky love...

• Double tragedy of Stockwell shooting .. Panorama on Wednesday night on Jean Charles de Menezes and Operation Kratos. Fascinating insight into how our goverment decides things, and interesting parallels with how Israel deals with suicide bombers.
• I was sacked for being gay, banker tells tribunal .. Homophobia in the city to the tune of £5m - one to watch.
• Britain turns off - and logs on .. Do you spend 164 minutes a day online? That's the UK average, apparently. Who do you think they were interviewing?
• NHS chief quits amid worsening cash crisis An £800m NHS deficit? That's so much money, I can't actually understand how much it is.

Hey, someone (minor character) in Desperate Housewives just said they were interruptable, they were just updating their blog (at work).

Is it me, or is Bad Lads Army in desperate need of an apostrophe?

Hope it's not overly Lynne Truss to point this out, but sometimes, you know, it just...

My brain is just one big link farm. Here ya go...

• Stalkr is go... on Flickr .. Suspect this guy had a few friendly words from Yahoo; now rebranded as friendfinder. I kinda liked Stalkr.
• Blogs to Riches - The Haves and Have-Nots of the Blogging Boom .. Interesting piece about who's cool and who's not in the A-list blogosphere.
• Bloggers in Amsterdam: DISCLOSURE .. Apparently, blogads.com took a bunch of (largely US) bloggers to Amsterdam for the weekend for no reason. How nice.
• Suppliers, Gourmet Heritage Potatoes, Northumberland, UK .. The wonder of the internet means you can buy heritage (ie obscure types that hardly grown any more) potatoes.
• British Jews 350 .. This year is the 350th anniversary of vibrant Jewish life in the UK. Although what no-one's saying is that the sefardim (eastern/spanish/portugese) Jews got here first, and the ashkenazi (polish/lithuanian/russion etc) majority didn't arrive till the 1880.
• 50 things for winter 2006 .. Fifty things we should all do this winter.

Camden Council doorstep recycling now collect cardboard and plastic bottles. Yay. From next wednesday. It's taken me two years to get the Monday morning recycling into my head, but it's a small price to pay for saving the planet.

So I'm going out of town on a business trip, just booked the ticket on thetrainline, which I've used for years, despite its usability flaws.

And, get this? I book my ticket, check all the boxes, put in my credit card... and then, after the transaction has been sucessful, it informs me that I have paid (past tense) a £1.50 credit card fee.

So I go on saynoto0870, because I don't want to spend another £1.50 finding out why, but the 0207 landline number is just an answerphone, so because I'm a sucker I call the 0870 number, and spend six minutes (60p? the tarrif is well hidden on the telewest phone site) to find out that I can write and complain. No one can tell me why they've started doing this or why they didn't inform me. Then a supervisor in India gets on the line and says it is on the website, and I say it isn't, or if it is, it's really small, and then I think, bugger this, and hangup.

So now I'm £2.10 down and pissed off. Transparent, opensource, they're not.

And the trains don't even run on time.

I't such a gorgeous day - the sky is a perfect cloudy bright blue, almost better than the Windows 95 wallpaper. Almost.

Can you believe that 34SP.com has fallen over again? So much for their powerful dedicated servers. Bugger.

And if you mailed me, it might take a while to get back to you.

no5 floor

no5 florr

Did I mention that I went to lunch at No5 (Cavendish Square, behind John Lewis) recently, and was seated on a table between Simon le Bon and his wife(let?) and Nicola Horlick and a rather attractive man.

They, of course, recognised neither me nor my lunch companion, glamourous as we were.

So the first water meters are to be forced on households due to a water scarcity status ruling.

About time. I've had a water meter for coming up to a year, and not only does it make me consider my usage, but my bills have gone down.

And there's a bunch of other water-saving things you can do.

Can you believe this? Half my mail is hosted at 34sp, where I pay serious money for the professional service with a phone number and everything. I moved all my mail there from my buddies colo, because they were just a colo, and couldn't do the kind of support I wanted.

But now, 34sp seem very down - everyone I know with blogs hosted by them is down, their phone didn't answer, and now it says their mailbox is full.

I have pinged them, and they have 100% packet loss.

I dunno. You pay for service, and then this.

Did you hear the Jewish Book Week slot on this morning's Today programme? Fabulous, ironic, entertaining. Although, I should tell Shalom that he's clearly not been to London for a while, because only goth teenagers hangout in Camden (although his Hampstead crepe reference was pretty accurate).

You can here it again here.

In other, relevant, news, I think you can still book for tomorrow's Jewish Book Week session on Dangerous Writing with Shalom Auslander and Naomi Alderman.

Talk about a mashup - it's only US data, but you can effectively get a map showing local blobs for people on the National Sex Offender Registry.

Scary stuff. Privacy, data errors, anyone?

At last. Malcolm Gladwell has a blog.

Wow. Ken Livingstone has been suspended in the "nazi-jibe" scandal.

"The panel rejected Mr Livingstone's argument that there was a difference between the damage he might have caused to his own reputation and the effect of his actions on his office."

Maybe he'll be a little more humble, now. And thoughtful towards the Jewish community. Seems to me, he feels like there are more Muslims, so he better keep on their side.

I wonder if he's going on holiday? It would be kinda awkward to hang out it London, and run into your constituents when you're on your suspension. I must try and get down to that cafe in Willesden he frequents next week. Maybe I can talk some (more) sense into him.

Interesting piece from the Economist, a couple of weeks back on tThe blog in the corporate machine (it's free to read, unlike most of their content - presume they judged the audience on this one.)

I still don't totally get blogs as a corporate PR tool - should companies blog? Sure, if they've got something to say and the right conversational tone. But I'm not sure this article gets it: "social media" is in quotes, and they think a mailing list is part of the social media revolution.

Definitely one for the so-what prize - Bed Books. Right, yeah. Of course.

Did you see Question Time last night? I was very interested to hear Theresa Villiers on the rise of antisemitism - I always feel strangely moved when I hear non-Jews (I presume she isn't Jewish, just had a very Jewish constituency in Barnet) speaking on our behalf. Interesting to note the lukewarm audience response she got for her statment (check the comments online above).

Obviously, with all the Irving news over in Austria, Deborah Lipstadt has a lot to say.

Image014

Image014

This is DJ sasha, not me.

Image(1141)

Image(1141)

It just looks interesting. Right?

So there've been three calls today on my landline, and when I got there, they hung up. So this time, I did 1471, which I don't really bother with most of the time, as life's too short to know all the information out there, so you have to make editorial decisions.

Imagine my surprise when the number, when googled, turns up Joy House London - Prayer for Brent.

I'm thinking, that I'm not going to call them back.

But I'm also thinking, what did they call for?

Do they have good news?

More importantly, where did they get my number?

I've just caught a glimpse of Tyra Schwarz (variously Tyra Juliette Schwarz) on American Idol.

A glimpse, is all, so I can't comment on her singing, and I don't - technically - believe in all the celebrity/reality dufus TV stuff. But what I want to say is, that she is so Standard Jewish Girl Look Number 4. She looks like a hundred people I know; attractive in an unusual way, dark hair, chutzpah, certain shape nose and eyes.

Like, once I had a flatmate who said whenever she went to a party and looked round, everyone looked like Anne Frank (pale skin, dark hair, earnest eyes, larger than desired behind (little known fact about AF, I tell you). SJGL No3. Or, the year it was the Monica Lewinsky thing, on Yom Kippur I looked along the row I was sitting on in West Hampstead's finest shul, and it was full of chubby-but-attractive girls with dark hair, wearing a lot of black, and with that dirty-wide-eyes innocence. You know what I mean. SJGL No2.

You may ask about me: I'm SJGL No5 - kinda a little bit Jennifer Beale in Dirty Dancing, a little bit Tracey Anne Oberman. Broadly, cleavage and blondish curly/frizzy hair. I know I'm SJGL No5, because about once every six weeks someone comes up to me, starts a very ernest and intimate conversation, and then it transpires they think I'm someone else. Much as I think I'm an individual.

On an entirely not related note, apparently Monica Lewinsky is doing a masters in London. I know this because she had a press conference, like all masters students. I don't know where, because I have written this sentence the the power of my memory, rather than the power of google. Rare, I know.

Yep, I'm back. Just got busy. Lots to do, lots to do. Sorry. Or soz, as I would say, apparently if I was seventeen. Like I'd also use the word boyf, and not ironically. Thank god I'm older and wise.

Today is Tubishvat, New Year for the Trees. No, really. THere's a lot to celebrate when you're Jewish, although the main thing about today is (a) going to a Tubishvat seder (last night, I didn't, long weekend), and (b) eating four kinds of fruit? Seven kinds? It's been a while, as I've just demonstrated.

Nowadays, it's kinda been hijacked, in a good way, by the environmental/green lobby, and it's all about the universe and the planet and not driving a car and using low-energy lightbulbs. All these things are, of course, traditional Jewish values.

Here's a random photo of the Romanian chief rabbi at their Tubishvat Seder. Nice, because I am about one eighth Romanian, although I take it very seriously and regularly make mamaliga

Tonight, of course, I will be eating Moroccan dried fruit salad in honour of this auspicious day. And because there's some in the fridge.

Eleventh commandment?

Eleventh commandment?

B, my in-house photographer, spotted this outside a church in Washington, on our recent US trip.

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That's apart from the mobile phone stalkage. Such is modernity.

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This was the back of someone's jacket sitting in a coffee shop. Like you'd really want to walk round with "vision enabler" emblazoned on your back. What am I, the messiah?

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As if we all knew the way out.

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Bloke in the cuppatea place in Swiss Cottage tube station.

Guess where I'm going for Shabbes?

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Followus Map

I have crossed followus.com's digital hand with virtual cash (even sucumbing to their special offer), and now I know I'm in Kilburn.

It's amazing what technology can do. Privacy, now that's another matter.

I can't believe that Smash Hits is closing. Truly a part of my teenage years, my best-friend-at-school A based her entire writing style on the Smash Hits cynicism. Guess they can't compete with MySpace. The world's-a-changing.

I'm posting this again because it got lost in the melee, and I kinda liked it (in response to ridiculous meme, that I don't generally do, honest, about jobs I've had).

Jobs I've had: writing a (bad) VBA front-end for a large series/family of linked spreadsheets that ran a huge media company. I was regarded by the board as some kind of wunderkind - 'that girl who could deliver geekery, speak tech, communicate like a regular person and understand the business.' I was regarded by my coworkers as 'that spreadsheet nazi, who demanded 100% compliance with her lousy front-end'. Not to be confused with front-bottom. In the end, I was replaced by an ERP. More expensive, and, I heard only last week, still doesn't work as well.

For want of a better phrase, let's just say I don't have a good sense of direction.

Examples: once, I went to visit a friend who lived(s) in Wimbledon. It was hard enough getting there, reading the AtoZ while juggling the gear stick. After a lovely Sunday afternoon, I came out of her house, turned left, and was halfway to Portsmouth before I realised I wasn't going back to Central London. Another time, having been up to Watford for something, I found myself getting on the M1 northbound, and was six junctions before I realised I was going in the wrong direction. I always print out a map before I go anywhere. And I check it, often. I'm the tourist-alike you see in like Islington.

My biggest crapness is on the underground. Most/many people seem to have an innate sense, after years of commuting, of which end of the train to get onto to minimise walking at the other end. I never get it right. Even though I've lived in Kilburn for more than ten years, and commuted for six or seven of them.

I kid myself that I like getting off at the far end as it's good to keep mobile, keep walking, all good for the heart, but the truth is, I just get it wrong. So the train comes in, and I'm sure that this right/left end of the platform will bring me out by the stairs at the Kilburn, but then when we get to Finchley Road (same directional layout) it's immediately clear that I'm wrong. Again.

But. Oh. My. God. I've worked it out.

I had a revelation yesterday. Kilburn is at the back of the train. As long as I know my back from my front, I can always get it right. I checked it. Twice. It works. Kilburn - back of the train.

To you, this is a small thing. To me, mindblowing.

Some might say I should get out more. I do, but often at the wrong end of the train.

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A rather nice house in South Square - if I was a sucessful commercial QC, this would probably be my home. And my wife would be all into cats, and would be wetting herself at the cuteness of this pic.

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Went to dinner at R&J's last week, and R made the most fabulous poached pears - which we polished off pretty quick. They had a chilli thang going on. We were impressed, especially for a weeknight.