Public Transport Part 2

Right.. the thing we need to get clear here is that everyone else is annoying and stupid. And that means you... that means everyone else but ME has the brain the size of a pea, and exists purely to cause endless annoyance, frustration and pain in my everyday life.

Now... How often have we thought the above... probably every time we end up behind dawdling people in a shopping centre, or when people step off an escalator then don't move away to prevent a backlog.. or when people stand at the end of aisles in the supermarket, with their trolleys having a chat to a fellow shopper they have bumped into. But.. i think this sort of behaviour is more prevalent on Public Transport.

I'm continuing my theme as this morning I had a complete nightmare of a journey from Soton To Winchester. I got on the X-Country service and sat in the quiet carriage to get a few minutes of peace... or so i thought.... A bloke sat down on the opposite side of the aisle from me... considering that there were empty rows ahead and behind him, this was as good as him sitting next to me (see previous post). He then got out a bag of crisps.. and SAT THERE RUSTLING AND CRUNCHING ALL THE WAY TO WINCHESTER!!!!

1) WHO EATS CRISPS FOR BREAKFAST?!?!?!?!?!

2) This is the quiet carriage... BE QUIET!!!

But... that was not all.. at the same time a group of teenage girls got on.. and to my surprise they were not loud.. but they faffed... they faffed and faffed and kept standing up and moving seats.. It seems that they were trying to find seats that weren't reserved. They got on at Soton and sat in a 4 that was reserved from B'mouth to Reading.. then free after that. Well.. considering no one was sat there at Soton.. a good 45 minutes from the station the seats were reserved from, it was a good bet that no one would come looking for them.. but no.. the girls wandered u[p and down the carriage looking for unreserved seats 'just in case' and ended up spread across the whole place... at one point I almost stood up and said 'FOR GOODNESS SAKE JUST SIT DOWN AND STOP WITH ALL THE FAFFAGE!!!!'

but I didn't.. instead I smiled politely and suggested to the one nearest me that it would be safe for them to sit together since no one had claimed those seats at B'mouth.. they all went back to the original seats and all were happy.

It was then time for me to get off the train... not before i 'accidentally' jogged the loud Crisp eater with my bag, thus making him almost drop them...

Public Transport

Taking a short break from the sleep / dreams posts I wanted to share my thoughts on Public Transport... or more specifically, etiquette to be observed while using said transport.

Now, as I don't drive, I use the bus and train a lot, and you get to see all sorts. Since moving jobs o Hursley I now have to deal with packed trains, rather than the ones to Pompey where you could pretty much always get a six seater to yourself.

So.. lets start with packed trains... there was a famous Ben Elton sketch in the 80's about getting on a train and spending the whole time walking through the carriages going 'double seat, double seat, gotta get a double seat' and this remains true to this day. Given the option of sitting on your own, or next to strangers, most people will keep going until they find an empty 2 seater. Which is fine. But.. when there is an empty 2 seater nearby, but still someone decides to sit next to you THAT is annoying and should be a big no no. You shoudl fill up all empty doubles first BEFORE sitting next to someone! It's happened to me 3 times in the past week.. perfectly good empty 2-seater within view.. but someone has insisted on sitting down next to me at Soton, then tutted when I asked them to move at Winchester so i could get out. I dunno.. but i just think it's POLITE to use up all the empty rows before doubling up.

I get this on the bus sometimes too.. more often than not it's someone elderly who grabs the first seat they come to (so i'll let them off), but when it's one of the 'Mouth Breathers' who then insists on spreading themslelves so I get squashed... not so happy!

I also, for the first time yesterday saw someone on the train wearing a surgical mask. Assume it's some protection against swine flu.

Now.. Swine flu, Bird flu, Cow Flu, Hippo Flu, or whatever type is en vogue... why bother wearing a mask? You don't see people wearing masks everyday to protect them from common old boring standard flu, which kills far more people a year than these trendy new varieties. this woman just looked a bit stupid.

AND people were walking past her and coughing deliberately!

Anyway... only 4 more days until my Summer Houseparty.. going to be great fun! Will have to blog about it when I get back!

Dreams Part 2.

Right... to pick up where I left off... Last night was another non sleep / odd dream night. In this one.. I was some kind of spy (yep.. i think i watch too much US Drama) and I was sent to infiltrate and befriend an enemy combatant before betraying him. So.. I got on this bus sat next to the guy, had a long chat.. went back to his house - which happened to be one of my old houses - brilliant! I thought! I know exactly where we are. Anyway.. we chatted and he said he liked me enough to be his 'right hand man' and then sent his men inside. So.. with that part of the mission over i remember worrying about how to signal for the SpecOps guys to wade in and take out his men. I decided it was dangerous and was about to flee.. as i thought he'd found me out.. then all his guys were marched out of the house at gunpoint by my team.. they threw me a shotgun.. and it turned into an FPS until his men were down and I had handcuffed him.

Of course, this dream has nothing to do with the fact that the current 2 TV shows i am watching are 'Burn Notice' (about a spy) and 'The Unit' (About a Black Ops Team)

Of course not.

Now, do i write a screenplay about dream number 3 in my last post at somepoint? I think Dunc was on to something.

Dreams and Sleep

I've been having trouble sleeping these past few weeks.. dunno why really. Doesn't matter how early / late / tired I am, it seems to take ages for me to drop off to sleep. So.. i seem to only get about 4 hours of decent sleep a night... so.. not firing on all cylinders at present!

A curious side effect though has been that i've had very bizarre dreams almost every night... 3 nights ago I dreamt that I was a US Marshall who conducted business in a very Jack Bauer-esque manner.. i remember screaming 'US Marshalls, down on the ground' then hauling this guy up to his feet, kicking him down 4 flights of stairs then locking him up... shouting at the doctors trying to help him, telling them that 'I am the one with the badge, you do what I tell you!'

Then.. two nights ago I had a dream in which I was in my Grandparents old house, and that they were there too even thought they both died years ago. Feeling (even in my dream state) that this was wrong, I asked them why they were there.. since they were dead. They responded that as this was only a dream they were perfectly entitled to be there and i should worry more about other less trivial matters! It's funny.. how when my grandparents appear my dreams.. i have this slight troubled feeling that it isn't right.. but never before acted on it in a dream.

Last night was the weirdest of them all. I was in a big house.. and there was a flood in the bathroom.. it was so flooded infact that there was enough water to swim in.. all the while, various friends were walking in looking troubled telling me that there was someone else in the house, but they couldn't see them. I remember ignoring my friends, but after the 4th time of being told that there was someone here, but we can't see them i went downstairs to investigate there I met another friend who told me that they had to leave, as there were too many people in the house who couldn't be seen and it was wrong. So i decided to go to the shop next door. There I found the entire place was crawling with ghosts.. all pale and blue and shimmering and all dressed in old clothing. I walked straight through one and apologised for being rude.. but everywhere I went they tried to talk to me. I found this 'ghost gun' on the floor, and picked it up and shot one of the ghosts.. at which point it became human (it seemed logical in my dream that if you 'kill' a ghost it becomes alive!)

At this point we were told to run, as the police wanted to know why there was suddenly one more person alive than there should be.. and while we ran.. we were told that we should turn ourselves in to the police as we had committed an 'anti crime'

Than i woke up...

How odd!

First in Ages

Not blogged for a while now.. and spurred on by me re-acquiring madeofjam.com (thanks to James for registering it for me) and rob madeofjam com coming back into usage again as one of my email addresses i thought it worth a quick post. Oh.. and this blog now sits at blog.madeofjam.com.

So.. a lot has been going on since my last post.. I've been on Holiday - Canal boating on the K&A this time - and am also looking forward to a job move within IBM.

I've been working for IBM in Portsmouth for 8.5 years now and things were getting quite bad really. Began to hate coming into work and have, on many occasion got ot the point of almost resigning. So.. i'm moving next week to IBM Hursley to take up a new role managing a group of techies on another account. Hopefully will provide an interesting challenge for a while!

Had a really good weekend as well.. managed a nice bottle of reliable, everyday Champagne, had a nice dinner on Saturday and rounded the evening off with some Baileys.. lovely!

That's all for now.. just wanted to show that i'm still alive. Will post some more about holidays later I think.