All Change, Please?

It's happened.

The other team at work now has a researcher for my channels.

I'm totally not amused.

I basically found out by accident at a meeting last week, which suddenly featured someone else taking over responsibilities I used to have. The head of the department actually had the nerve to deny that they're doing anything! Anyway, most of my day-to-day business has suddenly vanished. My boss still has his head deep in the sand and keeps telling me that there is plenty of work to go around & there is no reason to be worried.

Yeah, right.

I've also had my PDP last week (you know, that once-a-year talk you have with your boss that should result in a pay rise & possibly a promotion). Everybody's really happy with my work, I've improved loads since my last review 6 months ago BUT I'm not good enough to warrant a 4 (marks go from 1, which most likely result in you immediately getting fired, to 5, which is godlike) although apparently I'm "just between a 3 and a 4". I'm not getting a pay rise coz "they don't do that" and definitely no promotion as I'm still not "quite there", whilst there wasn't a proper explanation what's still missing.

I'm so not impressed.

Both factors have prompted me to update my CV (making it sound a bit more shiny than it is, hey, we're selling the goods here). I haven't send it out yet, but am contemplating getting a nice email ready later tonight. I've now reached the point where I'm thinking about updating my German CV & getting it out there as well.

I'm so sick of the whole situation.

If it was just the job I could probably man up & deal with it. But there's also the living situation to consider which honestly is starting to grate. I'm sick of living in shitty flats, sharing with other people and paying extortionate amounts of money for something that's about to fall down on me.

Problem is, it's not that easy to go back to Germany. Jobs in my field are hard to come by as there's less TV stations around and I'm not particularly keen to change or, god beware, work in an agency. I'm very tempted to just drop everything & just go live with my parents for a while, but at this point I'm not quite desperate enough (and my brother's recently taken up residence there while he's building his house, it could get rather crowded).

I'm currently planning as far ahead as Burning Man end of August. The flight's booked from Heathrow & I'd rather have a job to go back to this time.

So for the moment I'm staying on this bloody island, continue hunting for a space worth living in & a job that is worth all the effort I put into it.

Party, Stealth, Relax

I've been busy. Sorry. In the past 3 weeks I've

* partied with friends & lost sleep at an afterparty * tried to be stealthy on SouthBank & failed * didn't do yoga for a full week & felt guilty * went to Germany * slept for 10+ hours each night for a long weekend * ate home-cooked food I didn't have to cook myself * bathed in hot springs & relaxed on warm sand * spent hours reading on the balcony & finished 2 books * went shopping for summer dresses (more to come) * went back to yoga & enjoyed it muchly *

The Easter Weekend was busy, the long weekend of the Royal Wedding was insanely relaxing. I didn't even realize I was so sleep-deprived & stressed until I stopped being sleep-deprived & stressed. Going back to Germany always chills me out of London rushing around mode.

I've finally gathered enough strength & momentum to have a serious look at my living situation. This has so far resulted in quite a bit of frustration, as London has gotten more expensive than I'd thought. I'm not giving up yet, though. I might have to revisit areas, maybe change plans, but it's gonna happen this year.

On body-related news, I'm currently a bit behind in my yoga practice but should be back in the heat & humidity tomorrow evening (after a shopping trip, ahem). I'm reading Eat To Live which basically advocates a mainly vegan diet, it's very well researched & I'm planning to give it a try. I haven't quite figured out how to tackle it yet, it's quite strict on the no salt & no sugar thing, but it allows huge amounts of veg, beans & other tasty stuff so should be do-able. In a way it's very similar to 4-hour Body/4-hour Diet, only that this approach allows meat & a cheat day, which Eat To Live doesn't, really. Colleagues keep pointing out that I'm eating pretty healthy (there's also been suggestions that I supply lunch for the department), which might be true compared to what they eat, but I still consume huge amounts of sweets & chocolate.

So for the time being & until I've finished reading the book I'm aiming at eating more salads, veg, beans & tofu/seitan/tempeh and less carbs/sugar.

I want to be in shape in time for Burning Man - I'm planning on wearing loads of cute outfits which just won't fit at the moment (there's this tiny skirt I've bought years ago which I'd really, really want to introduce to the desert).

* engage Life-Changing-Mode*

Yoga, Penguins & The Discovery Of Clown Core

I've finished my 30 day Bikram yoga trial with 20 out of 30 sessions. Pretty awesome, huh? The sessions this week all went really well, no dizziness, no nausea. I seem to be working my muscles more, though, which resulted in some achiness but felt fine & relaxed after class. If it wasn't for my feet deciding to go into total icicle mode one night I wouldn't even have to report trouble sleeping.

I've bought a 10 classes in 6 weeks pass now. I'll be more busy/not available due to Easter & the Royal Wedding/Early May bank holiday weekend so the plan still is to go as often as possible but probably won't manage quite as amazing a ratio in the coming weeks.

Work's busy, there's currently loads of stuff going on behind the scenes which is causing huge amounts of trouble/unrest in my team. Shit is starting to hit the fan now, I'm not affected myself (yet) but in the long run I foresee a restructure. If all goes well I'll come out of this unscathed, but one never knows.

Never a dull moment, eh?

Babs & I went to the movies on Wednesday. The original idea was to watch Hop (the movie with teh bunneh) but Vue had spontaneously decided to not have the 7.50pm screening. Thank you very much. We settled for Limitless instead, which was alright & a nice light entertainment for a weekday night. Interestingly, the futuristic brain-function enhancing drug NZT and it's effects reminded me a lot of those of amphetamines, although it's less invasive & it made users smarter instead of, erm, not really that much more intelligent. Had a few internal giggles but didn't elaborate.

We now have confirmation that it's only going to be Frani & I on the Burning Man extravaganza. It makes things slightly more expensive (smaller RVs don't cost proportionally less money & we're splitting fuel costs by 2 instead of 4), slightly more stressful (I have to drive an RV. They're massive. I'm scared) but also a bit more relaxed for me (I only have responsibility for the welfare & good conduct of one BM virgin). We also are officially sponsored by the lovely Wulfie to join the Lost Penguin camp!!!! Very excited about this, the penguins are awesome & the location of the camp is conveniently central. I've booked a non-stop flight London to Vegas. Now we have to sort out motels/hotels & campgrounds and start saving to actually pay for all of this.

Yesterday I attended my first party for this year. Elysian Project was very enjoyable, DJ Fiend delivered a banging set & I got introduced to the questionable joys of clown core (brought to you by Ed Cox). Bounced, chatted to new people & old friends and spent a lovely Saturday in Seven Sisters.

Tomorrow, if I'm not too knackered, I'll head into town to support Ben who's running his very first marathon (the crazy bastard). He's raised much more money than he'd planned to & now all he has to do is cross the finish line & make us proud :)

Next week's outlook: sushi (Monday), yoga (Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday, it's going to be hard), Planet Angel (Friday), afterparty (Saturday), an undisclosed event featuring Babs & I being secret agents at South Bank (Sunday) and quite possibly sudden death on Easter Monday.

Go me!

We'll Be Right Back

This week just flew past. Last week was pretty busy as well. That's my excuse, what's yours?

I'm still going to Bikram Yoga, managed 3 times this week (so far, I'm planning on going tomorrow) & went 4 times last week. I still have incredibly good sessions & sessions where I struggle to stay in the room/not faint. Yesterday's class was one of the latter - I've never felt so dizzy before, I actually had to lie down for the tree pose as I kept seeing stars & couldn't keep my balance. Really hope that was just a one-off, I have to admit that I had a very junk-foodie lunch (potato wedges & chocolate) which might've triggered the bad performance. Had a rather bad night's sleep last night as well, just couldn't fall asleep & then had *very* strange dreams. I'd slept rather well after Thursday's class, apparently yesterday's session unearthed something hidden inside my body or something.

I didn't go to yoga today, I was too upset after last night & I'm quite achey today. Instead I went to Ealing for a quick shop which transformed into a big shop on Oxford Street. Weird how those things go. Bought blue linen trousers & black ballerina flats (I've got a million pairs of them, none of them comfy, so I'm hoping this pair's going to be different). I got a bit overexcited after fitting into size 14 trousers again (I seem to have lost another kilo) at M&S so tried on a cool pair at Esprit which really didn't fit. I probably should go back to a proper vegan & healthy diet to support my exercise endeavors...

So what else did I get up to in the past 14 days??? Good question. I'm wondering myself. I spent last weekend at a (free) NLP basic training course. It wasn't a complete waste of time, but didn't really help too much with my goal setting & personal development. I'd expected to get a bit more than warped psychology, youtube clips & a sales pitch. I seems to have worked on some people, coz quite a few of the other attendants signed up for practitioner's courses (for a bargain £4000 a pop). What I did get out of it was that I'm stronger than I give myself credit for & my goals are perfectly alright.

On Tuesday Frani came over for our first Burning Man planning session. Things are coming together nicely, albeit alternative plans to the ones we originally had. Charlie & Jo have hit unexpected money issues & it might only be Frani & I going. Subsequently I've reserved a smaller RV (just in case) & we're currently operating under the assumption that it's just the two of us. I've booked my flights an hour ago, non-stop to Vegas which is incredibly expensive but the arrival/departure times are awesome & I'm won't be wasting hours in some random airport along the way. We'll be staying at a motel for the first 2 nights (near the Strip, NOT somewhere out in the sticks) & I'm going to book myself a room at one of the big casinos for the last night to totally posh it up. The rest of the trip we'll be in the RV.

I'm really excited about the trip, I've got a much better feeling about the whole thing than last time but that's probably because I'm in charge of everything. There's still a million things that can go wrong & I might end up doing the whole trip on my own but I WILL go.

I've also met up with one of Frani's friends to discuss a possible flat-sharing opportunity. I've sort of set myself the goal to get my living arrangements sorted out before Burning Man, I definitely can't spent another winter in my current flat without succumbing to total depression. Plans currently are on the very hazy side & there won't be any sudden movements before May, but I'm on it.

As for near-future plans, there might be a picnic tomorrow (it's actually sunny & warmish on the island). There'll most likely be more yoga, my 30 day trial ends on Tuesday & I'm planning on getting a 10 class in 45 days pass. Elysian Project is next Friday, then it's Easter & Planet Angel. And I'm going home for a few days end of April to escape the Royal Wedding madness that'll sure as hell wash over the capital.

I sometimes wonder if other people's life's are as mental...

Sweat, Baby, Sweat

So I've signed up to Bikram yoga last week Monday & subsequently transformed into a yoga hermit. Sorry for that. Yoga has more or less taken over my life, well, the few bits that were filled with work & socialising. I can only go to class at 8.15pm on weekdays, which means I come home from work, bimble around for an hour or so & leave the house again at 7.20pm. I then come back around 10.15pm & collapse into bed. It's slightly better on weekends coz there is no work, but I'm still pretty much in a daze after class.

I've been to class 5 times last week & I'm probably going to go to class 5 times again this week (if I make the session this afternoon & tomorrow evening). My body alternates between being stiff & achy to actually feeling quite nice & supple on a daily basis. I've had some really good yoga sessions & some quite bad ones, where every move is a struggle & I'm absolutely shattered afterwards. The only thing that seems to be rather constant, unfortunately, is that I don't sleep very well after yoga, no matter if I've done it in the afternoon or in the evening. This is pretty annoying, as you're supposed to sleep better afterwards. I do seem to have lost a kilo since last week without actually being on a diet, which kinda makes up for the sleep problems.

Apart from torturing my body & mind, I've had Frani come over dinner & a major catch-up, I've met up with Cherelle for gaming & chatter, been to a wine-tasting session with work and to the movies with Babs.

Due to my evenings being busy all the time, I haven't watched a lot of TV (good) and struggle a bit with cooking healthy foods (bad). I've lost interest in food a bit, I'm totally uninspired when it comes to cooking (all I want is something to eat, which means I stuff my face with bad things occasionally). Maybe I should just start the detox now instead of in May, at least then I'd have a fixed schedule of meals & drinks & don't have to think about it at all.

They say you start to see results of bikram yoga practice after about 13 classes, which means I'm almost there & should hopefully see improvements in body & mind soon...

Namaste!

It's been a week since I got back from my India adventure & I'm happy to say that I still feel fairly relaxed. It was a good trip, not an amazing trip, a great introduction to India but by no means the full India experience. Kinda "India from behind the air-conditioned glass", which was fine & what I had expected. But I probably need to go back there & immerse myself a bit more - I'm actually thinking of going to Goa next year...

So yeah, I've been back for a week now. Touched down in Heathrow last Saturday afternoon, came back to the same cold flat & miserable flatmates that I'd left behind (no, I didn't expect them to magically change while I was away) but with a new energy & will to get going & change things. I did some laundry, tried to fix the Sky dish that some bastard had vandalized again (just one more thing that makes me not like this place) & went to bed rather early at 7pm.

Actually managed to sleep for a good 14 hours that night, which as awesome. Woke up sometime after 9am, set off some more laundry & headed to the shops. Found out that Sainsbury's in Chiswick only opens at 11am on Sundays (how am I to know, I'm never there that early) & it was only quarter to when I got there, so I took this as an excuse to hit Starbucks for a Chai Latte. Well, if you ever want to get put off of having children, got to the Chiswick Starbucks on a Sunday morning... it was teeming with pregnant ladies & small children. Still managed to find a quiet spot to drink my tea & then did a humongous amount of shopping.

I also decorated my room a bit more on that day with 2 pictures of Hindu gods I'd brought back from India (Ganesh & Lakshmi) & put some mirrors on my wardrobe (which keep falling down, but never mind).

Going back to work wasn't as bad as I'd feared, although I was greeted with "I'm so glad you're back!" & an inbox of 700 messages. I'm trying to employ a less hectic working style, basically organizing my To Do list some more & systematically working through it. Unfortunately my manager is really good at "finding" stuff in his To Do list for me that he'd totally forgotten about & which has now become quite urgent. Oh, and there obviously always are the requests from our Finance guys, which seem to work 24/7 & are prone to send time-critical queries either at 8am in the morning or late on a Friday afternoon. Nevertheless, I DO like my job :)

I didn't make it to the pancake day extravaganza at Charlie's house due to my dentist appointment overrunning by an hour (not my fault, they were running late). Check-up went fine, but there's 2 fillings that are starting to look a bit dodgy & need replacement at some point this year. I'm quite happy to have found a dentist that seems to be good & knows what he's doing (& also does late appointments on weekdays).

Wednesday was the Day Of The Bearded One, aka Beardyman. I'd had the tickets for this gig for ages, it was originally supposed to happen last year November but got postponed, which meant that John was now unable to attend as he's fucked off to the USA for a 2 week roadtrip (I'm imagining some kind of geek Fear & Loathing style adventure). I managed to get Dan as a replacement, which in the end was really fun. We might've got a bit drunk, there was a lot of shimmying & a few hugs. All in all, a very good evening. Oh, and Beardyman was bloody amazing, needless to say that, really, he always is.

Yesterday evening Frani stopped by for a major catching up session, I cooked us some tasty Indian food, we talked for hours & almost didn't get around to looking at my holiday snaps! She might know someone who's looking for a flatmate, whom I hopefully will meet next week. Her flatshare is also on it's way to relocating, but they're already 3 people & might not want an extra person. Boo.

Oh, and now that I'm back from India we've started to rev up the planning for the other big holiday I'm taking this year. The ticket is bought, the RV is booked, there are vague plans in place what to do with the rest of the 2 1/2 weeks I've got off... BURNING MAN, here we come!!!! Frani will be joining our little party as well, which is awesome. Unlike last time, I've got a really good feeling for this trip. Bring it on!

Today will be mostly spent waiting for the Sky engineer to rock up ("sometime between 2 and 5"), then possibly a trip to the health food shop (need vegan cheeze) & maybe to the sports shop to buy one or two shorts for yoga. I'm planning on doing a 30 day Bikram Yoga challenge, at the moment this is still failing because I don't have appropriate clothes (need tight shorts or something, it's 40 degrees in that room). I'd thought of starting tomorrow, but I'm now heading over to Seven Sisters to keep Fliss company, which might delay the whole thing a little. But I'll definitely start this month, can't go to the 6pm class anyway because the 30 day pass doesn't apply to that, which means I should have enough time to sign-up & go to the 8pm class sometime next week. But first I would need something to wear, right?

I'm seriously hoping that this year will be the year that I'm happy with myself & my life. I hereby promise to do everything I can to make this happen!

Tell No One

Last night Babs & I went to Secret Cinema's latest event. It clashed quite spectacularly with Planet Angel's Valentine's Ball, which was unfortunate, but I'd bought the ticket back in November for their December event which didn't happen & it got transferred to the next event which took place yesterday.

As always, we didn't have a clue what they would be showing, the only thing we could be certain about what that it would've been incorporated into an impressive show. The dress code was late 40's, which I totally didn't do as I've got no 40's style clothes & couldn't really be bothered to get just for this one evening. So I rocked up in a nice skirt, jumper & boots, which was fine as the place actually was a bit chilly.

We were told to gather at Wapping station at 6.30pm, where we got collected by the Secret Cinema actors who staged a protest, drawing us in & urging us to follow them. So we paraded down Wapping's streets, shouting out our slogans & trying to no get run over by taxis & busses. Our little procession ended at the Tobacco Dock, where we joined the impressive queue. Waiting wasn't all that bad, though, in true Secret Cinema style actors entertained us throughout our wait. Apparently we were queuing up to audition as dancers! Once inside, we started exploring the venue. We seemed to have been transported to 1940's Covent Garden which also doubled as a theatre, complete with make-up rooms, dressing rooms & ballet rehearsal spaces. Downstairs was more market like, with flowers stalls & food vendors, a bar or two & shops. Everything very much hinted towards theatre & ballet, with red ballet shoes featuring rather prominently. Babs had a cupcake while I got a bag of white chocolate popcorn (absolutely yummy!), we watched performers & engaged in conversations with the actors.

It all culminated in a giant dance performance, which ended in a girl almost jumping off a balcony (erm, an actor, obviously) & then got ushered into the cinemas on the upper floor. By that time we kinda were sure that they would be showing "The Red Shoes", which got confirmed after the obligatory short films & Windows advertisements (Secret Cinema's sponsor) had ended. I can't say that I was particularly excited by the choice of movie, maybe they were trying to surf the wave of Black Swan. The Red Shoes felt quite slow & dated (no wonder, it's from 1948), I probably didn't fully appreciate the nostalgia & it being a controversial movie back then. The venue being rather chilly & the chairs pretty uncomfortable didn't help, so we ended up leaving before the end of the film to make sure we catch the last train back into civilization (i.e. to Canada Water & then to Green Park).

All in all it was a very enjoyable experience, having white chocolate popcorn for dinner was rather nice & Secret Cinema's ability to create a wonderful event around a not so interesting movie is impressive. It did feel a bit mass-produced, though, their events keep getting bigger & bigger while being quite expensive (£27.50) - they must make a killing from it & the underground feel some of the earlier events still had is completely gone now. I'll still go again because it's amazing & a good night out, but I also feel the time has come to hunt for the next big thing.