waiting for foot to heal

london saturday 2017 13.9C sunny 5.16pm

a very nice day today. and i have to go to the library today. so i managed to hobble to the bus stop and fortunately the library is quite near the bus stop at the other end. and i managed to do what i want to do at the library. though i forgot to look at the shelves for another bill bryson book. i have finished his ‘down under’, about australia. and it is such a funny book, i thought i could do with some more to cheer me up. but i forgot. so that is that.

i have other books to read, but they are rather grim… esp one about the borgias.

it was still a bit of a struggle to go there, i cannot walk far distances. that means tomorrow i would have to cancel my desire to go to the battersea power station, where a pizza restaurant is giving away free sour dough pizzas . it is a new branch of mother. a chain of pizza restaurants from america. pity that because sourdough pizza is quite nice. i wonder if my foot will be well healed enough for me to go there tomorrow. it is quite a long walk from the nearest bus stop into the area. so it is a forlorn hope.i am thinking they will have to bring the buses closer to the centre of the complex if they want more traffic of people to go there after it is all built. 

added 9.25pm 9.8C dry but must have rained earlier as the ground is wet. simon tells me he has moved the kitchen clock forward allready. i was tempted to do it too, but it would mean getting the tv programs all mixed up. usually people move their clock 1 hr ahead just before they go to bed. no one i think ever stays up till 1am to move it. 

1st day of spring

london 1.13pm 10C cloudy wednesday 2017

Digital StillCamera

Digital StillCamera

or so i would like to think. though i would say the spring equinox 21st would be the natural day when spring starts. but hey, if it brings spring earlier, why not take today as it. haha. its quite cloudy and do not feel spring like, even though it is rather warm. but more of the daffodils are out and nodding their heads in agreement (it seems).

read recently that people who handle the package chicken sold in supermarkets should wash their hands when they get home, because it seems not only is the chicken inside contaminated, the outside of the wrapping is also contaminated. what a state we have come to, hasn’t it? does that mean i have to wash my reuseable shopping bag too? and someone did say what about the cashier who takes the chicken package and swipe it … do they have to clean their hands afterwards, otherwise they will spread the germs to all the shopping of all their customers.

well, now u can understand why i always wash my hands as soon as i get into the house. though i do it before i read of this contaminated packaging. it is just that every surface u touch when u are out and about is really very dirty. its been touched by countless others and you dont know where their hands have been or what they have touched. 

 i suppose if u really are that worried about contamination, you should wash your clothes everytime u wear it outside. it is taken to extreme i should think.

i should separate the outdoor clothes from those that i wear indoors. (no sooner said then done now…haha.) but they are all in the same cupboard. 

perhaps it is not necessary at all, seeing our immune system has protected us very well. if it has not, there would be an epidemic of deaths and sickness from this long ago. 

i am at the library and saw a book, ss-gb prominently displayed with a tag (as shown on tv) and put on the recommended shelf, so i decided to borrow it , but the machine says i cannot and to ask at the desk.

but i had a previous experience some time ago, where i did take another book with a similar advise from the macchine to take to the desk and was told by the librarian on duty that day that it has been pre booked , and so i was not allowed to borrow it. in the past, the librarian have always let me borrow it first.

after that episode, i stopped taking  these books to the desk.

well today i see the same book on the returned shelf. but after what happened the last time, i decided to just ask the man at the desk what their policy was. i said last time i took a book to the desk the librarian did not allow me to borrow it because it has been prebooked.

he said if i find the book in the ordinary shelves i can borrow it even if it has been prebooked. but not if it is on the  just- returned shelves. so that clarifies things. well, i did not tell him that book is sitting there right now. i will let him find out for himself.

i know  that sounds rather selfish of me.hehe.  but i think if that is their policy than they want to find it for themselves and dont want our help.

i suppose u could say it is only fair that someone who has booked and paid for it, should get priority… i guess u may be right. haha. i am in two minds about reading that book, the ss-gb. it is being shown on tv now, and people have complained they cannot hear the actors. i never can hear the actors  anyway, so i rely on the subtitles. but it sounds like a grim story… or rather i think i might prefer to read the book, rather than see it enacted on tv. the style of the author is more important i think than the story itself. 

added. 5.26pm today my direct debit have taken out £145.50 for the tv license, and just now i read online that they are increasing it to £147 from 1 april. not much of an increase £1.50,though the new article was saying it like it is a huge increase.  and will be increasing with inflation for 5yrs.

 it has remained steady at £145.50 a year since 2010. some people object to paying it as they say they dont watch it. i watch it, and i like it for its no advertising. and it has programs that i like to see. its about £12 a month. i wish it is less biased and keep neutral…or at least present a balanced presentation. for eg during the referendum to leave the EU, it was very biased for remain. in the past it has been famous for being even handed. it might serve its remit to give balanced views from now on. but i guess it was so convinced that voting for brexit is suicide, it feels compelled to sway the voters.

of course it receives money from the EU, so it is not exactly a disinterested body. nothing like receiving money to make u side with the person giving it to you and even more when the money will dry up if we brexit. 

 

mixed up monday with sunday

london 3.07pm 13.5C sunday 2016 sunny

this morning i went to the newsagents and was surprised to see a lot of mail on sunday newspapers, when it was monday. i was wondering how come there were so many of yesterday’s sunday papers and wondering if they had some problems with the delivery of today’s paper,  when a lady pushing a pram with a child on it came up and took a paper from the pile and i said to her , it is sunday’s paper, i wonder why there is no monday’s paper. and she said well mondays paper will come when it is monday won’t it? and then it occurred to me that today is a sunday not a monday. she realised my mistake too and said laughingly it is one of those days.

i made the mistake because i have a wall calendar which i have to strike off with each passing day, and this morning i did not see saturday was not struck off , so i struck off sunday and pencilled in monday instead. well, i am thinking now a walled calendar linked to the internet of things would be very useful now. it would automatically change the date at midnight.

i have never come to this tesco store on the weekends, so am really surprised that they order so many of the daily mail on sunday papers. so many that they pile it up at the base of the news shelves. it costs £1.50, more than the usual daily weekdays ones, yet it must be very popular. i wonder why, because the mail on sunday is not really very good. lots of adverts. in fact the whole second half of it is adverts.

( so many that i would just turn the pages rapidly  when i get to that section… and this east european guy sitting next to me in the library , who was sleeping complained loudly in his language which i did not understand but guessed he was complaining about the noise i make… he was using his hands to show turning the pages and grumbling in his language about it.)

sigh, i get a bit irritated when someone complains about the noise of turning pages but i guess i too get irritated if i hear it from someone else so i guess it would provoke complaints from those who are not so tolerant as me. haha.

it is one of those things that being in a public place u have to tolerate. that is the price u pay for reading the papers in a library (or in the case of that east european for sleeping in the library) instead of in the privacy of your own home and having your own paper which no one else has touched. if you are bothered with it , u should buy your own paper, or in the case of that sleeping foreigner to go home and sleep, so that is why i try to tolerate all these irritations from other people. i just console myself by saying quietly, hell is other people haha and move off to find another empty seat far from him.

 it does irritate me when there are all these people sleeping in the library but there again, one must accept them and try not to let it bother u too much. at least this guy is not snoring, as some of them do, and so loudly too. 

the saturday daily mail paper is more full of news, and have a good tv guide, what’s more, something i appreciate very much and in my opinion it has the best tv guide ever… ah well, i shall never know why people buy some papers on some days more than others.

what is new today  the library i go to, to read the sunday papers have got rid of the sunday telegraph and stock the mail on sunday instead. they still keep the sunday times. that is interesting because in normal days  they get the weekend and saturday mail papers but not the mail on sundays. 

i went into the kitchen just now and to my surprise i saw another frying pan being soaked in the sink. so i came back to the living room and ask simon has he bought another frying pan. i could not stop laughing about it. the chap has been trying to get the perfect frying pan.he wants one that keeps its non stick properties. but they all lose it. i dont have problems with it, so it must be him. and he uses hell of a lot of oil too… but it still sticks, so it just have got to be him.

i would have liked him to buy some sauce pans that will work with our induction stove, but he said they are expensive, and yet buying all these frying pans, this is the third one … he could easily have spent enough money to have bought those steel saucepans.

now i wish i had not bought the ikea knapsack, which i got with the £5 voucher they gave me. it cost £7, so i had to fork out £2 of my own money. at that time i saw a set of steel saucepans also on sale in ikea , of the right sizes too, selling for £6. now i wish i got them instead.

i have stopped using the ikea knapsack too, as it is too big for me and am using a old bag that was the cover for a sleeping bag but just the right size. 

a rare sight, a real student in the library

london 11.47am 10.6C cloud/bright wednesday 2016

i have read of libraries closing, with the guardian asking people to write in and tell them what their local library means to them.

the common view that libraries are full of old men, tramps and migrants is quite true . i have come to this library near me for ages and it is so. today i was lookng at this old chap sitting next to me, sleeping… and wondering how come he can get away with it without the librarian coming round  to wake him and it make me think that i know that librarians are forced to do so by the rules, to make sure no one died in the library.

i was thinking maybe they should not be blamed if someone did die in the library. it is a easy death if u can just fall asleep and die. there are worst ways to die.

anyway i was looking around me and saw a student, a young chinese looking guy sitting opposite me. he has his school books spread out and there was no laptop. just charging his smart phone. i was so surprised because this is the first time i seen a student here.

what is the world coming to. haha. imagine! a student in a library.!!!!!

added. what next? someone borrowing a book from the library perhaps? it maybe just me,  but it is rare for me to  see anyone borrowing books in this library.

dont tell me what to do, said this old person

london 11.44am 12.7C cloudy saturday 2016

i was surprised when the library person came to me and ask me if i am on the wifi. i said yes, and it turned out that a old couple , man and woman, was unable to log onto the library wifi.

i went over to them, as i was curious why they could not. their laptop says the connection was weak. they were using firefox. so i said switch to internet explorer or chrome, instead of these uncommon browsers. he said he liked firefox so dont tell him what to do. well, when i heard that, i simply made a ‘huh huh’ and moved away. if u are going to expect me to help u dont start off by saying dont tell me what to do. if u know so much u wont have this problem. i find that is the trouble with old people.  they dont want to be told, and yet, they get into problems with the internet. and should welcome people who will tell them. my way of dealing with old people who tell me not to tell them what to do, is to drop them, and let them squeak in their own juices. 

so i went back to my laptop, and continued to read the papers.

later i saw them leaving, so it looked like they were unable to get online even using internet explorer, or whatever it is called now. haha. its quite possible they are using the old internet explorer which is being replaced by what is it?, the name escapes me  for the moment.

but there is a way of doing it to get online that is not intuitive and what u would expect. haha. but i am not going to help them. hehe.

 

 

i read that the young dont seem to like vintage furniture anymore, the prices of those are coming down. maybe it is nothing more than the prices correcting themselves as they rise and rise. there must come a point when people just dont think it is value for money and the prices fall. so i think that time has come, and it is not anything to do with vintage furniture going out of fashion with the younger generation.

london 8.36pm sunday 2015

 furniture is something that we can take or leave. unlike houses, that is why house prices keep going up and up and dont seem to have a ceiling. the only way house prices fall is if the  whole city falls out of favour, like detroit.

people start to leave in droves and that is when prices will plummet. can u see a time when it happens to london? i don’t. i think prices will rise, eating out in restaurants, entertainment, bars and clubs, be prepared to see their prices rise. but at the same time, i think we will find businesses springing up to cater to the low end of the market.

£ shops, pop ups eating places, macdonalds/kfc, burgerkings. just to mention the most obvious.

home cooking will remain the most affordable way to live. no matter how much price rises, i think it is still possible to find bargains in raw ingredients, vegetables, some meats(pork) will be affordable.

i think that is the future. even now i can see places that are historically low priced countries, like malaysia, thailand, etc are rising in price. they are not as cheap as they used to be. price rises are inevitable.

i think places like london are just foretelling how the rest of the world  will be in future. but dont despair; even here in london, some things are cheaper than others.

it is possible to live quite cheaply here in london. i am doing it. and i think that will be the strategy of many astute people in london in future. there will be a subculture of low cost living in london that is hiding underneath the very expensive official image of london that is presented to the tourist , the rich, and the tax man.

already the internet is making it possible to run your own business using your  home as the base , cab driving, sharing services, catering in the home and holding home dinners, i can see a time when u can run a business entirely based on the internet and from no official premises,getting your customers all within that media.

hmm,  i wonder how i got to get to talking of the economy in london in future;  from just ordinary musings about what i read.

i was enjoying myself today by going to the library which opens on sunday and reading the sunday papers. very relaxing, and then i caught the bus 23 just as it came to the bus stop, and it took me to picadilly circus, via oxford st,( that part of it between bond street tube and oxford st tube is really jammed with shoppers. )just so i can go to chinatown to buy darksoya sauce.

i wonder when did i last buy it?, i think about 2 months ago. i got a finance app ( called finance41)in my chrome book, but ever since it start asking me to pay a subscription, it has been limiting my access to it. it is a very good program though, very easy to use and to understand. but i only use it to record how much veg , meat, etc i buy a month. haha.

last month, i spent £105.06, of which £67 was council tax. and £15 was for 20kg of rice. so that balance of  £23 for food etc.

there was a time when it was a feat to spend £1 a day on food, and i am spending less than that a day. i am amazed really at that month, which goes to show that £1 a day on food is attainable but i am not sure it is sustainable. i cannot access the other months to see how often i reach that target(that is where the website restricts me)  but as i said,  it is really very cheap to live in london. i think it is rare that i exceed £50 a month on food etc.

ideally i should just open up a spreadsheet and put all my purchases on it, that way i dont have to rely on any third party. but i dont know how to make a spreadsheet. haha. there are gaps in my knowledge and this is one of them, making a spreadsheet presentation.

in fact, a lot of office stuff i dont know how to do. windows office is a mystery to me. and now forever will remain a mystery as i am with chrome now and windows is not accessible to me. maybe google doc has a similar thing, but i dont know where it is. ah well, just as well, because just my wanting  to know what i spend on  is not very important. i just make sure my outgoings never exceeds my income, and that is that… budgetting make easy. haha.

it would be nice to know the percentage of things that i spend on, and how often, but that is only for curiosity’s sake. i mean it is nice to know how often i buy soya sauce, but it is so far in between, that it is not expensive.

i think that is the secret of living within your means. dont splash things about and use things excessively. washing liquid and laundry washing is a case in point. i have seen people (I am looking at simon now haha) being heavy handed when it comes to using the soap. he used to go through a fairy liquid bottle very quickly… so much so that i think even he realises it is too expensive to continue. he has stopped buying them and let me buy my 33p tesco basic washingupliquid, and £1.50 basic tesco laundry liquid. haha. and even then i dilute them.

you see fairy liquid advertising how they are like 50% more strong than other brands and so u can do 50% more washes, and more plates … but they know that people will just splash it on even if it is more concentrated and use up as much. their bottles dont have a stop that delivers a fixed amount at any one time. that is why  a plunger on the bottle would be a good addition. but u never see any of these bottles sold with a plunger.

wifi in the library

london 5.37pm sunny 19.4C saturday 2015

as you know the library wifi wont allow me to log on. or rather chrome wont allow me to log on. and today chrome gave me this message when i again tried to log on.

Server has a weak ephemeral Diffie-Hellman public key

ERR_SSL_WEAK_SERVER_EPHEMERAL_DH_KEY

Hide details

This error can occur when connecting to a secure (HTTPS) server. It means that the server is trying to set up a secure connection but, due to a disastrous misconfiguration, the connection wouldn’t be secure at all!

In this case the server needs to be fixed. Google Chrome won’t use insecure connections in order to protect your privacy.

what a cute name diffie-hellman. haha. anyway i wrote to the westminster library email including this explanation  and got a reply saying they will let their engineers know of it.

earlier when i wrote to them about it, they said they are aware of it and their engineers are working on it. i hope it will get it solved. it has been an awful long time that it has been unable to work for my chrome, so i think the library engineers were flummoxed by it. so hope this get them a kick in their backsides to find out the bottleneck that caused my chrome not to connect to them. 

changing habits

london 7.38pm 12.9C, thursday 2015

i thought it will be difficult to change my habit of taking the bus everyday to the library. but i find it is not that difficult. i used to walk to the library, until i got my free bus pass, and so began to take the bus instead. but now i have reverted to that and find it was a nice habit, that walk to the library. it is enjoyable to walk, i get to see new things and observe more variety of people than just those who take the bus. of course for the two days i have been doing it it has been dry. i wonder if i will feel the same way about it when it is cold and wet. haha. i sent an email to the library informing them of the wifi situation. and got a reply today from them. they are looking into it, are aware of it, and can only ask that i use windows for now. well, my chrome dont have windows, and today in the library, a woman also could not use it, and she was using firefox. but the librarian switched her to safari, (she was using an apple laptop and seem to have all these other browsers installed) and it worked with safari.

ah well, i used the library computers when i want to get online, and i use their chrome installed in it, and it works so maybe it only do not work with chrome in private laptops.

i use the library computer to put in the daily mail unique numbers.

interestingly, my chrome wont allow me to log into the mymail website even when i am at home using my own broadband. i wonder why. it worked on my previous chrome browser, but since i had this new one installed, it seem to have blocked that mymail website, and only that one so far. well, that is the mystery of the internet for you. fortunately it is not crucial.

you could say that will teach me to use chrome, haha. if i had windows this would not be a problem. i guess u could say that, but for a lot of other reasons, i am still glad i got chrome.

the papers were saying they got a survey from agatha christie readers asking them what is the most popular story they like, and it seems ‘than there were none’ came first. it was originally titled ’10 little niggers’, but u can bet that must have raised a ruckus, and was soon got rid of.

it so happened after i read the article in the papers, the library return section got the paperback with that title so i borrowed it. rather good, as i have not read the book.

i have seen a film version of it on tv. quite a old film.it was in black and white so i know the plot. but it will be interesting to read her version. 

the book  was first published in 1939, and the characters seem to like calling everything ‘queer’, haha. 

today, i decided to walk to the library instead of taking the bus

london 3.59pm cloudy with sunnybits, 17.5C tuesday 2015

following that article i read in the papers finding that walking for 20mins a day can lead to good health, i decided to walk to the library from now on and resist the temptation to take the bus. it’s a pleasant day, not raining, when i set out, so it was a nice walk.

just as i got out of the block of my flat, i saw my neighbour who lives across the hallway on the same floor as me, (there are only two flats on each floor) and he was pushing a double decker pram, his baby girl on the lower deck, and her older brother on the top deck.

i asked him where he is going and he said, spelling the words, the zoo. he said the boy does not know it, but that is where he is taking them. not sure why he does not want the boy to know. the kid is at the talkative stage and very independant. 

i said with surprise, its in regent park, isn’t it? you are not walking there are you? he said he walks everywhere, because it is his only chance to keep the boy quiet and not have him wander off, as he has to ride on the pram.

our path soon diverged, so i branched off. i did not have time to ask him where the au pair was. or have they decided to release her and take turns, mostly him, to look after both, now that the little girl is older.

at the library, i got to read not only today’s newspapers, but also yesterday’s, because even though the library was closed for the public holiday, they still get the papers delivered. it even got the sunday times, the only paper they order on sunday. this library closes on sunday but still order the sunday times.

there is something about yesterday’s news. somehow it is not so interesting as today’s news. i daresay it is psychological, but nothing i think is as stale as yesterday’s news. haha.

i noticed the library wifi has the same problem with connection as saturday. my chrome wont allow me to connect with it. saying it is unsafe, something about their license has expired 3days ago.

i went to the desk and told him about it, and he was puzzled why. we found a lady sitting nearby and asked her, and she said she could not get online either. the librarian did not know why. 

but later, a  chap came ,sitting next to me, i found after peeking at his screen that he was online. so i asked him how he did it, and found out he could not get online using chrome but could do so with microsoft windows. 

i walked back, it rained whilst i was inside the library because i can see the roads were wet, but i missed it, so the walk was a pleasant one. you would think it would be cold, 17C after all, but it was not. really very pleasant even though the sun was not shining, the clouds were blocking it, but it was still quite bright.  i think because there was no wind. 

i went into the underground carpark underneath the sainsburys to emerge inside the store right next to the toilets so an easy route to the toilets. i found this route when it rained one time, and to escape it i ran into this underground cave like area to find that it is a great shortcut into the sainsburys above. that time there was no one at the gates, but this time there was a man,at the in gate. ( i wonder if they charge to park there, or is the charge offset by a sainsbury receipt. but he let me walk through, just greeting me. i greeted him back. 

i had all the shopping i need, so dont need to do any so did not bother to browse the shelves further into the sainsburys after my toilet but headed straight out and walked the rest of the way home.

there was a summary of august weather in the papers, and it seems it was a wet august and less sunny too. and it was making fun of the met office prediction that this summer will be hotter and drier than most, when it looks like this august may be the wettest for cornwall. the el nino effect it seems.

from personal experience i dont really notice that it was raining so much , not consciously, it might well have rained a lot but if i am not caught up in it at that moment, i wont notice it. and if i am indoors it is a strange thing, but unless i look out of the window i am not aware of it raining. i cannot hear it , the rain here is very quiet, unlike in malaysia where it does make a lot of noise, thunder and lightning and noisy roof, and noisy gush of water from the guttering.

to me it was a nice august , not too hot and no hay fever, because the rain washed out a lot of pollen from the air. 

reminder by my library to renew a book

london monday 2015

i have been with my library for ages but today first time i received a email reminder from them. i think it is marvelous of them to send an email on the day a book expires, saying ‘dont pay a fine, renew book and give me a phone number and a link as well as tell me which book is due.

i recall the librarian asking me to fill up a form when my library card will not allow me to borrow a book; can’t remember the exact date but it was late last year i think.  my library card was up for its renewal, it does that every 3 yrs or so i think; and i entered my email address.

i keep tabs of the renewal dates of course, marking my daily calendar which i hang on my kitchen wall to remind me to renew. so i am seldom caught out. even then, i was caught out once, so this service is rather welcomed.

nowadays with online renewal, to be caught out with an overdue book is rare and so it should be, as it is not the business of a library to gain at the expense of its users like this. 

the book that was due  is ‘delhi’ by sam miller.

i like that book very much, he walked in delhi and wrote about what he saw and his thoughts. it has copyright 2009. it is a book to savour and read slowly.