The F-Words

Fitness Fanatic

I think I may just be turning into one.....

Memo from Nat’s body to Nat’s brain:

“I’ve been putting up with a lot of uphill lately... mainly because you seem to always be charging up one, power walking your way to a new and improved Nat (Version 3.0). You’re not happy unless we’re out pounding pavements, public footpaths, woodland trails and muddy mires.


Yes, I know that 15 km hike (10 miles in old money) was worth it last weekend, if only for the photo ops at the end......

Blenheim Palace - read more here

The Grand Bridge

And I’ve resigned myself to thrice weekly physical assaults in the shape of those Aikido sessions and that boxercise class with Drill Sergeant #1.


But what on earth possessed you to sign up for a Boot Camp with aforementioned Drill Sergeant #1 ... early on the Sunday morning after the Saturday night the clocks spring forward and we lost an all too precious hour of sleep? Running around a cold misty field, leopard crawling under army camo, turning over massive truck tyres and just generally enduring pain and torture for several hours is not nearly as much fun as it sounds.


I am lodging an official complaint and staging a protest. Expect that excruciating pain in our legs, shoulders and butt to continue for several more days yet....”


Fat

I’m carrying a lot less of it around on my person lately... a consequence of the fitness fanatic lark (see details above) and just not stuffing my face with chocs and cakes and pies consuming as many calories as I used to do. I’m 22 pounds (10 kg)  lighter and feeling fabulous! My clothes are all too baggy but I won’t be buying new ones until I’ve shed about another 20 pounds and hit my target weight.

Feeling

Full of the joys of Spring! This is a beautiful time of the year in the UK... crisp blue skies, bulbs flowering everywhere, long evenings that will grow longer every day until June. The weather the past few days has been gorgeous... sunny and freakishly hot. Of course the newspaper headline writers just love a heat wave....

“Britain basks in balmy weather!”.

“Hotter than Barcelona!”

“Hotter than the The Bahamas!”

“Hotter than the centre of the sun!”

OK, maybe that last one is too extreme, even for the tabloids. They do quickly follow it up with a bit of scare mongering....

“We’re all going to die! Heat wave causes killer water shortage!”

Feline Friends

Apart from those ‘orrible nighbours’ cats with the overactive digestive systems, I am quite partial to cats. I come across many on my daily walks and they are always fairly friendly. Lately it’s been getting a bit out of hand ... like this one who kept following me around, meowing and preening for attention.

Poser!

I was beginning to wonder if I have some sort of animal magnetism for the little creatures or if I should reconsider my choice of perfume (maybe there’s a reason why Eau de le Tom Chat was going cheap). My wise friend soon put my fears to rest though...

“Cats are all in heat this time of year!”

... and she should know (she’s a vet specialising in feline disorders). So lock up your cats unless you want Pussy Galore (with apologies to 007).



Flying Fears

This time next week, I should be waking up and saying...

“Good morning, Vietnam!”

But I have an awful lot of flying to do before then.... and when I say “awful” I do mean dreadful. I fear flying more than I fear things that flap and buzz and crawl. I am going to have to pack some strong pharmaceutical aids to cope with the 12-hour haul from London to Kuala Lampur, followed by the hop to Hanoi, then two more internal flights in Vietnam, plus one to Cambodia before the reverse trip home via KL.



Freaking Out

I’m doing a lot of this lately. Apart from the flying fears, flapping about what to pack for Vietnam, and whether I have enough flippin' bug spray... I first have to wrap things up at work. No mean task and one that has me frazzled!

A major deadline last week, another this week... is it any wonder I am having restless nights with recurring dreams? Such as....I’m at the airport and my flight is being called but I am still trying to finish up something on my laptop... suddenly I realise that I haven’t packed anything (not a thing!) for the trip...!

I haven’t even told Annoying Demanding Client yet that “Girlfriend... I’m outta here for two weeks! Tell someone else who may care....”

She'll no doubt be reassured though, when I email her that "So-and-so-who-drew-the-short-straw will be riding herd on your projects in my absence."

 Fabulous Followers

I have been an appalling blogger the past couple of months... but hang in there, fantastically fabulous, faithful followers! I hope to return from SE Asia with a multitude of fascinating (and perhaps funny tales of my travels), and the odd 'foto' or two.

Bye for now....



Nat x

Thank You Mom!

As a little girl, the thing I probably hated most in the world.... was getting sand between my toes.

To keep me from whingeing on the beach, my mom would carry me all the way from the grass to the water's edge to paddle and then back again.

"Look! Yucky sand between my toes!" circa 1977

Thank you mom for all the little things you have done for me....

Happy Mother's Day!

I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside

A sunny Spring weekend with friends who live in Eastbourne on the south coast...

Eastbourne Pier (built 1866-1872)

I changed the first two to black and white as it seems to work better somehow...

Chalk cliffs at Birling Gap

Birling Gap beach

Hope you all had great weekends!

BullSh*t Bingo

Way back in the days when I had loads and loads to say for myself... you know, before the Great Loss of Nat’s Blogging Mojo of 2012... I wrote about how when I first came to live in the UK, I had to learn to communicate with the locals over here. You’d be forgiven for thinking that would be an easy task - we all speak the Queen’s English, right? Wrong! Regional accents, different slang words and inflections in totally different places only served to confound me almost daily.

But eventually I figured it all out.... I got it sorted! I stopped calling traffic lights "robots", mobiles "cell phones", and restricted use of the word "pants" to talking about my unmentionables (my undergarments) and never in the singular (as in "I wore a jean pant", a phrase quite commonly spoken in the beautiful southern African accent).

I soon learnt that a geyser is a natural fountain that throws up jets of hot water and steam. It’s also the British equivalent of the American slang word "dude"... a bloke who's a bit hard and thinks he's the “dogs' bollocks”. It is certainly not the hot water tank in your house. I now know that someone is not insulting me when they tell me that something I own or have done is “the dogs' bollocks!”. Not so if they tell me I am talking bollocks.

I answer the greeting "Allright?" with "Allright?" and I feel no urge to contradict anyone ending every sentence with "...know what I mean?" since this does not in fact require any formal response, such as "Yes, I do know what you mean" or "No, I am not quite sure what you mean....please elaborate." Ditto, the terms "right?" and "innit?!" do not phase me in the slightest, as they require no further action on my part.

Having overcome that first language barrier, I was then faced with the even bigger task of getting to grips with the frankly quite ridiculous language flying around the corporate world. Now, I am not a business person. In fact, an ex-boss once told me that I completely lacked any sense of business acumen (note, I said ex-boss). I did not take this as an insult....after all, I spent nine years of my life studying medical science, with the express purpose of avoiding spending my working life conversing with a bunch of suits in their uniquely irritating BS (Bull Shit aka Business Speak), 24/7.



With all due respect to those who are actually in the business world, and who like to be pro-active...those who thrive on brainstorming, on getting their ducks in a row and then touching base to get a heads-up on whether they’re singing from the same hymn sheet, before going forward and pushing the envelope out...at the end of the day, BS is not rocket science (even if it does involve some blue sky thinking).

Nonetheless, I do still like to think outside the box....and some long, hard days at work, I just have to find humour in things that are obviously not intended to be funny in the slightest. Very Important and Serious Stuff, don’tchaknow?

Exhibit A
This gem in an email from Annoying Demanding Client #1 today:

Here are the very important and serious data that I requested. There are some outstanding queries that will need addressing, and I am riding herd on those.

Riding herd?

What on earth? Has Annoying Demanding Client #1 branched out into cattle farming? Does she don a power dressing suit and cowboy boots and go round up a few long horns before hitting the office in the mornings?

According to the Fount of All Knowledge (Google), to ride herd on something means to keep watch or control over it. Nothing whatsoever to do with cowboys.

Pity. But that’s a good enough excuse to post some cowboy-related eye candy.....

This gentleman first put in an appearance back here

My goal for next week....to incorporate that golden nugget into an email back to Annoying Demanding Client #1, or even better, casually drop it into the conversation in a teleconference without rolling off my chair in hysterics.

A massive challenge... but rest assured, I’ll be riding herd on that and definitely giving it 110%!