Tagged!!!!
OK. I never thought this would happen. But thanks to dumbass Soray, my blog has hit the lowest of its low. Apparently I HAVE to do this on curse of my descendants being sterile. I'm doing this ONLY for the good of mankind and the propagation of my race and kind. Its with this noble intention in mind that I embark on answering the following insightful questions.
THREE NAMES YOU GO BY:
- George - My Christian name which resonates strength, courage and valour
- Pawan - My pet name which I reserve only for close family
- GOA - God of Azad or Gaand of Azad...Its a matter of perspective ;)
THREE SCREEN NAMES YOU HAVE HAD:
I've never been adventurous as far as screen names go and all I've ever had is georgeprak
THREE PHYSICAL THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF:
Three? Only three? The list is endless...I'm sooooo vain aren't I?
THREE PHYSICAL THINGS YOU DON'T LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF:
- My ability to gain weight by having too much air and water
- Mild acne which refuses to stop no matter how old I get ( curses on all dermatologists who led me to believe that I'd stop erupting pimples when I turn 21)
- My flat feet. Other wise I'd be running the Olympics.
THREE PARTS OF YOUR HERITAGE:
An amalgamation of India, UAE and UK.
THREE THINGS THAT SCARE YOU:
I have a fear of failure, fear of losing loved ones, fear of fracturing my feet (yet again)
THREE OF YOUR EVERYDAY ESSENTIALS:
- My watch ( I feel so insecure without my watch. I'm a compulsive time looker)
- My mobile ( I'd turn around after driving 50 miles, if I've left my mobile at home)
- A snuggle with my honey bunny ( I love you baby)
THREE THINGS YOU ARE WEARING RIGHT NOW:
- A shirt
- A pair of socks
- My famous pair of boxers with hearts painted all over them ( Emperor's New Clothes costume)
THREE THINGS YOU WANT IN A RELATIONSHIP:
- Lots of laughter ( she should laugh even if I'm not funny...I mean...Not an insane laugh that only mad people do when nothing was said... But she shouldn't hurt my fragile feelings ;)
- I like a woman who I can take care of...Not too strong headed and overly independent and I-can-live-perfectly-fine-without-u types...But someone who needs me and who I need.
- My own space when I need it.
TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE (in no particular order):
- I've jumped out of a third floor window.
- I've jumped out of a moving car doing 40mph.
- I've jumped off the top of a water tower.
Now you know why I have a fear of fracturing my feet.
THREE PHYSICAL THINGS ABOUT THE OPPOSITE SEX THAT APPEAL TO YOU:
Blind me with your smile, dazzle me with your rack, and shake your ass baby!!!
THREE THINGS YOU WANT TO DO REALLY BADLY RIGHT NOW:
- Eat my dad's biryani
- Play squash ( Ani's getting better...We actually had a 8-8 game the other day)
- Go out on the piss ( its been a long time...actually it hasn't...we went last week and I'm ashamed to admit that I got pissed after a shot of whiskey and a pint of Old Speckled Hen...how sad is that?)
THREE CAREERS YOU'RE CONSIDERING:
- IT security Specialist ( snigger...snigger...I'm struggling to setup a secure mail server and I want to bust hackers...dream on George)
- Investment banker ( that's actually even more funny, coz the last time I looked at my finance books were over a year ago and I can't remember the difference between stocks and bonds now)
- Rubber Plantation owner ( ahhhh...that's the life... generations of mallu christians in my family have been doing this...go to the estate once in a week...yell at the manager...come home and go to the club every night and play cards and laze around as the money gets raked in)
THREE PLACES YOU WANT TO GO ON VACATION:
- Mauritius ( I'm sorry Kevin but I'm fascinated by the concept of getting from one end of the island to the other in 20 minutes)
- Machu Picchu ( Can't help loving the Incas after watching the Road to El Dorado)
- Singapore ( I'm coming Toki...I'm coming)
THREE KIDS NAMES YOU LIKE:
- Adrian
- Aphrodite
- Anastasia
Notice all the names start with 'A'. I always thought that kids in class in the beginning of the roll had it easy.
THREE THINGS YOU WANT TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE:
- Jump out of a plane ( with a parachute ofcourse)
- Jump of the top of the world's tallest building at the time ( with a parachute ofcourse)
- Jump of the top of a mountain ( paragliding ofcourse)
I'm not going to be stupid and break my leg this time!!!
THREE PEOPLE WHO HAVE TO TAKE THIS QUIZ NOW:
Well, I guess
Steve,
Iyer,
Rick and
Abishek its your turn now. I don't know five people who haven't taken this already so four will do.
Murphy's Law
In my line of work, you tend to become an avid believer of Murphy's Law, "If anything can go wrong, it will". You'd think that after so many scrapes with Murphy's Law, that I'd have got a wee bit wiser. However, what never ceases to baffle me, is the consistent appearance of flaws in prototypes ONLY when you're giving a presentation to someone. Why? Why? What kind of sick-semi-conductor-silicon-based-God would allow this to happen? What other explanation can you give for a system which works splendidly and like a dream all the time you put it through various extreme test conditions but fails to even perform its basic function when its put in front of a potential buyer? All we can do is shrug and say "That's Murphy's Law for you".
I just managed to get a prototype over to one of our Dutch clients in Netherlands and lo and behold, a perfectly working system (that's why I sent it...it was the best unit we had) goes to Amsterdam and conks out there for no apparent reason. A Dutch SIM card that was working perfectly fine here in the UK refuses to work in Amsterdam where it was initially purchased. A system that I tracked throughout its journey on the back of a TNT truck suddenly stopped giving out its location as soon as it crossed the English Channel. How bizarre! It was in this mood that I googled for Murphy's Law and I found a few appropriate laws :
If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong
If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which something can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way, unprepared for, will promptly develop. Corollary: It will be impossible to fix the fifth fault, without breaking the fix on one or more of the others.
The Murphy Philosophy: Smile . . . Tomorrow will be worse.
Quantization Revision of Murphy's Laws: Everything goes wrong all at once.
Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence.
Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool discovers something which either abolishes the system or expands it beyond recognition.
Technology is dominated by those who manage what they do not understand.
Always draw your curves, then plot your reading.
The primary function of the design engineer is to make things difficult for the fabricator and impossible for the serviceman.
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
Stumble Upon!
For those of you who have Mozilla Firefox and have still not stumbled upon this great new extension called...wait for it... Stumble Upon...you're really missing out on ages of fun to keep you occupied while getting bored senseless at work.
I've been surfing the net today using it and I've discovered a whole lot of cool sites. For the drinkers out there, check out the
Modern Drunkard Magazine. If you're like me and love popping bubble wrap, then
this site is just for you. However, if you're more in touch with your sadistic side, try
whacking the penguin. If you like stimulating your brain cells while you're bored with useless but quite fascinating stuff then why not find out
how stuff works? I spent quite a lot of time reading about the story behind the Siths from Star Wars. For the artsy fartsy stuff check out
Mr. PicassoHead. If you have a dark secret that you're dying to share, then
PostSecret is for you.
I'm just having loads of fun with this. Finally. Something to beat boredom.
Proof that all girls are evil
Goodness Gracious me, Great Balls of Fire!!!
Word of advice to my fellow mates who dable in the world of culinary delight. Never EVER go to the toilet for a piss after just chopping up green chillies. Rest assured you will spend the rest of the day in the toilet with parts of your genitalia in the sink under cold water.
My Crappy House
We've been flat hunting for the past month with no luck. It always boils down to the amount we have to pay in rent. If its cheaper than what we are paying now, the place is worse than where we are right now. If its more expensive, the place is usually smaller than where we are now. We've seen a few flats which were on the upper side of our budget. We aren't prepared to go a single pence over 550 quid a month. Though the houses in that price were quite posh and modern, it had that IKEA feel to it. There's nothing wrong with IKEA but when every bit of furniture in a house is from IKEA, it looks...For lack of a better descriptive word...Cheap. There's also the issue of space.
The house we live in now has two good sized bedrooms where you can fit double beds. We also have a massive loft( not that we use it, but its good to dump all your suitcases...And trust me... We have a lot of big ass suitcases). But the entry to the loft is via the second bedroom and it doesn't have one of those stow away ladders that you pull down. Instead, we have this huge eye sore. A massive aluminum ladder which doesn't even go all the way to the loft. We've got to push ourselves up to get into the ladder. Talk about Health and Safety regulations. I think our landlord has flaunted most of the rules in the book. Then there's the huge electronically controlled boiler protruding out of the wall and precariously hanging over the head of the bed. I'm not surprised that we've never managed to get a housemate to rent that room. Who'd want to sleep under a bloody boiler? Then there's the cupboards. I'm quite sure that I could take them to an antique dealer and flog them for a tidy sum. They are that old. And flimsy. They've actually got little labels on each shelf marked "Top hats", "Handkerchiefs", "Shirts" etc. What the...? When did they stop wearing top hats?
The dining table is surrounded by mismatched chairs. The living room has mismatched couches. The kitchen used to be a "chemistry lab" which got converted to a kitchen. There are remains of some chemical explosions on the ceiling. The garden...Let's not even begin to talk about the garden. We've rarely gone out into that dump. Once we noticed some potatoes growing there. The ivy on the walls have overgrown and are crawling all over the place with wanton disregard of beauty.
Its just sooooo 1950s. You know, the post war architecture when money was in short supply. The house has been in my landlord's family for ages and he just hasn't bothered modernizing it. For him, any rent is a bonus. The British are obsessed by two things, the weather and their housing market. And, they're dragging me into their mire. I watch all these DIY shows. People buy run down crappy places and invest a few grand and completely turn the house upside down and give it a proper make over and then flog it for a hefty profit. If only, I can buy this house. I'd really do it over. Its got so much of space and potential. I'd rip out all the carpeting and sand those lovely old floor boards down. I'd get rid of all the furniture and get in a few nice trendy sofas and tables. I'd knock down those horrid fireplaces. I'd gut the entire bathroom. I'd knock down the wall of my second room and build a stair case to go to the loft. This would make the house a three bedroomed house. I'd get rid of that damn boiler and install it in the store room. I'd get in some swanky kitchen units( I love electric hobs) and flushed cooking range surfaces. I hate lighting up the gas stove. I always singe my fingers. I'd dig up all that horrid concrete in the garden, put a layer of new soil and lay out a new relaxing beautiful garden.
I'd like to do a lot of things. But it ain't my house and I ain't got the dough. So I've just resorted to dreaming about it.
Squash with Ani
I'm normally not good at sports, primarily coz I'm a lazy bastard. I can't stand running around a field chasing a ball. Well, its not so much as the ball, but its the running. But I'm good with my hands. As twisted as that sounds (no wise cracks Fowler!!), I'm referring to wrist sports. Like table tennis and squash. Tennis doesn't count. Firstly coz you don't use much of your wrist in tennis, its more of the elbow and shoulder. And secondly, its got a lot of running around to do. Table tennis is fun but not much of an exercise. Squash on the other hand is extremely intensive and gets your heart beating as fast as Herby when he went to Monte Carlo. I picked up squash last year while playing against old Frosty. Now Frosty is just pure power. He used to smash that ball so hard, that I was quite afraid to even be anywhere within that ball's flight path. However, after many matches of 9-0, 9-1, 9-0 etc ( I was the 0&1), and a lot of trips to squash.org, I managed to hone my skills and finally started winning against old Frosty, much to his chagrin. He just couldn't accept it that I kept beating him. He still won't accept it and keeps demanding rematches. Anyway, after Frosty left, there was no one left to play squash with me. At least, no one in my limited friend circle in Lancaster.
Enter Ani. Desperation led me to introduce Ani to the game. Lot of persuasion on her part was involved too. That first "class" was horrible. How can she not hit the ball. Its there in her hands. All she has to do is throw the ball up slightly and hit it. She tried and tried. And tried again. No contact. Finally after many attempts she managed to atleast hit the ball. But it never managed to get to the other wall. The classes progressed in a similar vein with Ani not having enough strength to return a gentle lob from me. I love her, so I was patient and understanding. I lectured her on techniques and shots and positions and grips and movement etc. She never listened. Everything I told her went through one ear and out of the other. And that's when I introduced my new teaching technique called the Darwin method. I realized that there was no way she would listen to my advice unless she was forced into correcting her shot due to necessity. A sort of squash evolution, you could say. If she couldn't hit a ball with her backhand, I'd keep hitting it there in the same place, at the same pace, until she returned the ball properly. Didn't matter how long it took. I'd keep at it. Once she managed to perfect a shot, I'd move on to the next shot. If I wanted her to learn to move on the court, I'd keep alternating drop shots and deep shots. With this innovative new technique being applied, Ani has rapidly progressed. I'm amazed at how much she has picked up in just two weeks. Though we haven't started playing proper full games with points yet, yesterday she made me run around quite a lot so as to keep the ball in play. I'm sure she can start playing a proper game in another week or so. And after another week, she'd be able to kick Frosty's arse.;) Just kidding Frosty. You're the star.
Fowler has disappeared to Croatia. What on earth for? I mean, dig your heels in and work you lazy twat. What's all this holiday shenanigans? Lucky chap. Working for a travel agency probably entitles you to go to different countries for "work". How is that work anyway? All you do is chat to people all day long looking at pretty pictures from exotic locations. Surely that's enjoyable? Plus don't all these travel agents have really hot women working there too. What are you complaining about?!
Most popular link
It amazes me that the most popular reason that people come to our blog is to check out the recipe for Peanut Butter Chicken. I get at least 10 hits every day with people coming from search engines looking for Peanut Butter Chicken. Sambar and curd rice are a close second.
I'm hurt and insulted.
Fine! Eat your chicken and don't read my blog. Who cares. I'm ranting most of the time. Sniff. Sniff.
But it is pretty good. Its a miracle what a table spoon of peanut butter can do to your chicken curry.
05/05/05
There's been quite a fuss over 05/05/05 though I really can't see why. The number of emails I've got regarding how spectacular this number is was quite surprising. We had 04/04/04 last year. We will have 06/06/06 next year and 07/07/07 the year after that. I'd be more worried about 06/06/06 if I were you. Quite a few people think that it would be the end of the world...The arrival of the anti-Christ 666.
05/05/05 was more important as it was Election day here in the UK. Its quite bizarre but the first time that I've voted in my life for a general election is in a country that I'm not even a citizen. I was never able to vote in India as I'm registered in the voting list in Trivandrum and I've never been in Trivandrum on election day.
The Labour party under Tony Blair has won a historic third term in government but at a drastically smaller majority than last time. It has been done before by Margaret Thatcher but she belonged to the Tories (Conservatives). If you look at the
map provided by BBC showing the results distributed geographically, it looks like there's a heck a lot of blue everywhere. How on earth did the Labour Party win when there's so much blue everywhere. Its possibly got to do with the population density of London and the turnout there. Unfortunately the seat from the constituency of Lancaster & Wyre went to the damn Conservatives.
Its funny how different election issues affect different people. No one looks at all the issues and judges a party accordingly. People are inherently selfish and want the government to bend over backwards for what they want. Take myself for example. The main reason why I voted Labour was that they were more relaxed towards immigration rules and permitted foreigners to work here in the UK. However, the Conservatives have been catering to the other side by advocating tighter immigration controls and more border police and quotas on work permits. Screw them. Vote Labour. Secondly, both Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats would have introduced policies that would have led to me paying a higher Council tax. Ani and I are a dual income family and so we would have been jacked more under their new rules. Screw them. Vote Labour. Thirdly, I think Michael Howard is an ass. He has that
look, if you know what I mean. He doesn't seem like a nice guy. Bloody Polish immigrant. ;) He constantly patronizes people and talks really slowly like as though he is trying to communicate to a non-English speaking person. Screw him. Vote Labour.
The only reason my aunt wanted to vote Conservative was because she felt that the National Health Service (NHS) under Labour put too much pressure on doctors. Guess what? She's a doctor. She doesn't care that the NHS under Labour has made huge improvements for patients. All she worries about is how much her malpractice insurance would go up if Labour continued. Well I'm sorry aunty. Cough it up. A colleague of mine wanted Labour out due to the ban on hunting that was recently imposed. It goes on and on.
We are all so inward looking and keep bitching about the government not doing enough for us. Give those guys a break. Its not easy to cater to the individual whims and fancies of millions of people. After all, the Labour party has a socialist background. The greater good for the many and not for the few. More people have to get out and vote. We can't be armchair critics and moan about the government for every little thing and then not bother to go out there and vote. In this day and age, when postal voting is an option, there is no excuse for not voting. What is the use of a democracy when only barely 50% of the people vote. Who will listen to the other 50%? No one. Unless you get off your lazy arse and DO something about it.
International Diesel Thief
Everyone left early again today from work leaving me to man the phone in the Tech. Department. I hate manning the phone. You have to pick up the phone and put on a posh phone voice and sound like a secretary. Which I suppose I am. A glorified secretary. Well that whining thread is for another day.
I was sitting at my desk, reading a hilarious forward that Ani sent me about Qantas pilots when there was a series of sharp raps on the office door. Not bothering to go and open the door, I just hollered and told whoever it was to come in. I just assumed it was the post or some delivery boy. Here I was splitting my sides laughing when a shadow loomed over me and looked over my shoulder. Son of a b%$*h. Kind of getting close, for a delivery boy. I turned around, in a mood to give the snooping git a good bollocking, and was confronted by a towering bobby. The first thing that flashed through my mind was how uncool he looked. The cops here are really into their high visibility gear. They wear bright yellow fluorescent jackets and they drive bright yellow painted Land Rovers. I'm quite surprised that they didn't produce bright yellow fluorescent handcuffs. Wondering what was going on, I asked him how I could help him. He asked me if the company owned a white Volkswagen van and quoted the license plate number. I confirmed it. Then he enquired if we filled diesel yesterday. I confirmed that too as I was there with my colleague. He then asked if I knew it was a criminal offence not to pay for diesel after filling up at a filling station. Like an idiot, I said "Obviously". Then he said that we were caught on CCTV camera driving away from the station without paying £73. What? No way. I payed myself. We used the fuel card. And £73??? The van can't hold so much of fuel. He kept on putting pressure saying that the fuel station were willing not to press charges as long as we paid up. Right. Bollocks. This needed sorting. So I called my colleague and went down to the fuel station and showed our bleeding receipt. The stupid bimbo there looked baffled that we could produce a receipt worth only £34 when we were obviously caught on camera. She looked at the time stamp of the stolen fuel and its was at 17:55. And she was looking at the video footage for 4:55 pm. That was her proof. Bloody half illiterate people they employ here in Blackpool. I told her that 17:55 is actually 5:55 pm and not 4:55 pm. She fast forwarded the tape and lo and behold there was another white van...but a Transit van not our VW. What a waste of time.
Exciting though. George Prakash. International Diesel Thief. Working for a company that makes diesel theft prevention systems. How ironic is that?
Sick of invites!
Don't you find email invites really annoying?I mean, how lazy can you be if you couldn't be bothered to manually type out your buddies' birthdays or addresses. One person finds some new idiotic site and then spams his entire address book with requests to 'add yourself to their address book' or to ' help them keep their address book uptodate' or ' help them remember your birthday'. Isn't that bizarre? If they didn't have my correct address already, how did their email find me? If they didn't have my correct address, then I would never have been bothered by their stupid invite. So if they already have my correct address, why do they want me to re-enter my address. Enter it yourself you lazy sod.
I once fell for one of these invites from sms.ac.uk. Here was a so called opportunity to be able to send free texts. Wow. Excellent. Free SMS. So like a tit I entered my phone number in the vain hope of getting free texts. What ends up happening is that I used two or three free texts every day but ended up getting around six or seven texts from sms.ac.uk with jokes and news etc. Granted, the jokes were funny and the news was interesting. But at the end of the month, when my bill came, I found out that the wankers charged me 35p for each text I got and my bleeding text bill came up to around 65 pounds. F*%@IN' HELL. It was such a nightmare trying to unsubscribe and finally I had to change my SIM card.
Never again. I don't care if you want to wish me happy birthday. Put a reminder on your damn phone. That's what the organizer is there for.
Its a Terrible World out there for a FTB
Ani and I have come to a point in life where we've become fed up of living in a crappy little house that normally only students would consider. Though we've got other financial obligations like paying back my student loan, there are two big reasons for walking down the scary path of a First Time Buyer(FTB). The first is that we're just plain embarrassed to invite anyone over. The second is that we feel that we're throwing away money on rent and lining the landlord's wallet. Though the average FTB in this country is around 30+ years old, the earlier you climb onto the property ladder, the easier it is in the long run.
The first step was to find out how much the house we live in would cost if the landlord sold it and it turns out that our place is worth £115,000. I was shocked that it was on the upper end of the "No Stamp duty" cut off mark of £120,000. That's just plain outrageous. I went on to a couple of mortgage online calculators and based on our joint income we can only borrow around £112,000. They've got some bizarre rule that if you borrow on the basis of joint incomes, the total amount you can borrow has a smaller multiplication factor than if you borrow on the basis of a single income. How does that make sense? And even that amount we can borrow has a higher monthly mortgage repayment than what we are paying in rent. So that would mean an end to any dream of having a holiday or building some sort of savings. What would happen if one of us lost our job or had to take time off for some reason. We'd be screwed. The myriad types of mortgages available( variable rate, discoutned variable rate, fixed rate, capped rate, tracker rate, cashback, flexible, etc) also is so confusing and its difficult to make a choice without the constant fear of losing money. Then you have the other parasites that leech off the system like the solicitors, surveyors etc who charge ridiculous fees for each house that you are interested in. So the question is, should I lower my expectations and desires to live in a decent house? Should I resign to the fact that until our current salaries get doubled, we have to resort to living in a crappy house?
So the other option is to continue renting but rent a nicer place. So we looked around in the ads and arranged to view two houses yesterday. The first one was located outside Lancaster in Forton. It was located in a tiny small little picturesque village with views of the country. However, as soon as I entered that cottage, I felt like I stepped into a hobbit's house. The roof was so low that if I stood on my toes, I'd hit the ceiling. The bathroom just had a shower and the toilet was in a separate room. The so called study was a glorified cupboard space. The garden outside the house didn't belong to it, but belonged to another neighboring house. Its garden was somewhere down the road. Bizarre. The owner tried to sweet talk us into it, but we politely told him that we'd think about it and call him back. Phew. Though it was cheaper than our current place, No Way. The next apartment that we viewed was in the other extreme of the spectrum. City centre, posh building with video intercom, fancy lobby, the works. The flat itself was really awesome with a massive living room with wooden floors, bathrooms with heated floors, two nice bedrooms and everything was so chic and cool. We instantly fell in love with it and was quite happy with the higher rent.This was a place that we'd be proud to call our own. But then the landlord started listing the hidden costs such as maintenance, parking space etc and that completely put us off. £800 for parking for a year? Is he havin' a laugh?
I've booked a few more viewings this week. But I still have this voice in the back of my head telling me not to throw away money on rent. The thing is, we don't know how much longer we will be here in Lancaster. I may work for my company till the end of next year. Is it worth buying a house for that short period of time? Or should we get a foot on the first rung of the property ladder and hold on for dear life?
Bank holiday weekend
We had a pretty good weekend at Steve Frost's place. Hillary has given his place "the female touch" with pretty little things hanging on the walls and flowers and plants all over the place. Luckily for him, she actually enjoys cleaning up the place, so everything was in its proper place. Unlike Anita who refuses to pick up after me so that I "learn my lesson". I'm hoping I can manipulate Ani into cleaning up after me forever without complaining.
This weekend was a miracle. I actually didn't get drunk after hanging out with Steve. He normally drinks really fast. I sometimes wonder if he actually drinks his lager or if he throws it down his neck. Normally he finishes his pint really fast and wants to order another one. However I'd still be barely half way down my pint. He'll keep putting pressure on me to finish my pint that I go through the whole night tossing back drinks at break neck speed. This would eventually get me rat arsed way too early. The last time we went to Lincoln, we were tossing back whiskey and beer alternately. That was a sure recipe to get shit faced. We then tottered to a Chinese buffet for dinner. No sooner had I wolfed down most of my ding ding wings and beef in black bean sauce and peppered spare ribs, I rushed to the toilet to throw up. I spent the whole night puking and refilling my tummy with food.
This weekend, Steve cooked for us. I mean, he actually cooked. He made a Lamb Rogan Josh. And he actually garnished the plates with little coriander leaves and crushed nuts which gave it the professional look. He didn't allow us to come into the kitchen to see what he was doing. Not that I tried too hard, I'm a lazy git. We had a quite a few drinks, but at a steady leisurely pace and thoroughly enjoyed the evening.
We were driving back the next day and Ani and I were so engrossed in our conversation as well as singing along to the radio everytime they played Tony Christie's "This is the Way To Amarillo", that we completely missed our exit on motorway. It was only after 19 further exits that we realized that we had completely overshot our turn off. We then had to cut across from Scotch Corner through the winding roads in the Yorkshire Dales to hit the M6 at around Penrith, 5 bloody junctions NORTH of Lancaster. But no complaints. The journey was breathtakingly beautiful. I've been in England for 2 years now and the countryside still holds me spellbound. Everything looks so tidy and well kept. The lush green rolling fields with sheep and lambs dotting the fields like fresh snow. I'm yet to see the wild side of England. Wherever I've gone, everything seems to have that human touch to it and looks like its cared for. No matter where you go, you'll have little paths to walk, public dustbins, signs telling you where you are and anything else that tourists need. As long as we're in England, Ani and I have decided to go to every corner of the UK and turn every rock and explore its beauties completely before starting to travel to Europe.
