Just Passing Through...

Phew. That was a busy few days. Watched the USA v. Italy game in a quiet pub off 8th, strange company, first time in my life I've had to explain the Offside Rule. Great match, piss poor ref, I wonder if there's ever going to be a world cup where the refs are consistent?

Apart from the poor refs, I'm inclined to think that so far this is one of the best World Cups I can remember watching. Great football, lots of interest, and so far, no "other" stories to mar a good event. Long may it continue.

In other news; hoped on a 747 last night bound for London. Didn't sleep as much or well as I would have liked. I've got rather used to the 9 hours from Seattle, and a 7 hour "hop" from New York just wasn't long enough. Especially as we left at 6pm local time. Landed here at 6am, and have breakfasted, showered and had clothes pressed in the arrivals lounge, before getting all hot and sweaty again, in the queue to go back airside. Still, it's better than it could be. This is the joy you experience as a frequent flyer.

I'm now in the business lounge waiting to head over to Copenhagen on the last leg of this insane marathon. Home tomorrow morning about 11am, with M following me on Thursday morning. Her project rolled out on Sunday morning and goes live when the bank starts work today. Several of the IT managers said that part of the success was down to her amazing organisational powers. Cool.

Anyway, Copenhagen, then Lund, then a night in Malmo and a contract to deliver to the waiting hands of my senior management team. I've some meetings today, one with my prospective new regional line manager fresh over from San Diego, then meetings with the regional MDs of Taiwan, Korea and probably Japan, finally dinner with the UK MD and bed.

I am so looking forward to getting home and relaxing for a few days.

I also have a month off travelling, which I aim to be filled with healthy eating, low fat (no more fully loaded potatoe skins!) and very little booze. I can certainly feel the effects of this last trip in my waistband, which is annoying because I was almost down a trouser size a few months ago.

Wot I've Been Reading...

J-Pod: Douglas Copeland
Hmmm... I suppose it is fair to say that I am a part of Generation X. I certainly know the Microserfs culture inside out. However, there was something about this which didn't 100% work for me. It has some terrific bits, some cracking dialogue, but there was something in here which didn't quite hang together. A 6/10 I think, he could have pulled it off better.

The Family Trade; The Clan Corporate: Charles Stross
Great fun, easy reads but a tad uneven. Of the two, The Family Trade hangs together better, I got annoyed with The Clan Corporate where there is an obvious plot device employed in the third act to get the protagonist into position for the set up for the 4th book. It could have been handled much better. Still, I did enjoy the reads, excellent plane fodder. 8/10, 6.5/10.

Currently working through, A Tale of Blood Etched In Hard Black Pencil - the latest Brookmyre. I found it really hard to get into this one, but now I've cracked the first half, it is getting easier. Part of the problem is that a chunk of the book is set in a primary school in Scotland at some undisclosed period in the 70s and is written in a Scots dialect. Once I'd cracked that it was much easier.

The Past is a Foreign Country

I'm reading the latest Brookmyre which was causing me a few problems as I had to try and translate the Scots english he has written the chunks in the 1970s in. However, some of the setting felt pretty familiar and it has come as no suprise to find out that he's 3 days older than me. However, I was concerned that his writing was out.

I've noticed a trend, mostly in TV writing for writers to use their experience of the past as a basis for their characters. The most egregious example of this I noticd in Grey's Anatomy a while ago. The lead character Meredith Grey is seeking housemates and dismisses some of the nursing staff as too young by asking them about music. When they don't know some of the bands she lists, she tells them they can't live in her house.

The problem. They were 80s bands, as her character is circa 25, these bands were popular around the time she was born. Obviously the writer wasn't thinking about the age of the character, just the age they were at at some generic point in the past.

I've had a couple of incidents recently which have come as a nasty surprise. I have a default setting that the 80s were "recent history", however, dinner in Seattle with our engineering team came as a nasty surprise when it turned out that at least one of the people there was born about the time I did my A levels. It certainly makes it difficult for me to get inside the "head" of a person in their 20s when I think about their influences growing up. Especially given that around the time they were doing their A levels and the like, I had a mortgage and an ex-wife.

Having discussed this with my mother, I can't see things improving. She defaults to her 20s too, only that was in the 50s.

I had an idea for a novel set in a Polytechnic making the transition to University in the early 90s. The problem is, the more I think about it, even with the framing device I was toying with, the past is just plain strange, especially the recent past.