domdavis.com

One for Goron and all my other curry guzzling friends, turns out that eating it could help as we pass [dis]gracefully in to our dotage. Guess we really should sort out another session in the Mehek

Thanks to Cataclismical for finding that

So, not to be disheartened by my first response from match.com I set about doing a search for women who lived in Colchester and who were likely to be real (I know, call me picky). There are some… interesting… ladies out there and I think I may need to spend an evening filtering the more unsuitable ones from my searches however I did find one potential match and fired off what was supposed to be a casual, witty, quick missive [but that actually took me about 90 minutes to write and probably sounds forced and stilted]. Here’s hoping she writes back

I’ve got a work experience kid with me this week. I don’t normally take them (my line of work means there is very little someone who doesn’t understand programming can do) but I know the family and the kid asked so I figured why not. I’ve got him sitting with my testing team for two days where he will actually be able to do something useful (I don’t believe in giving them ‘make work’) but yesterday he was just shadowing me and [hopefully] learning a little about what we do.

From his point of view I think he was bored out of his tiny (but then who wouldn’t be) but more startling was the amount of work I actually got done. We have chat programs at work that I use to socialise quite a bit, and I have my laptop on a non work network accessing the internet which means I can browse the net and sort out my personal email with impunity. Of course, these are not tasks you want people to think make up a large portion of your working day so we sat down and I managed to complete all bar 2 of my outstanding non techy tasks (and they were only unfinished due to people not getting back to me).

Given the amount of work we have on I could do with a few more days like that so, boring as it may be, he may be shadowing me again this week

So literally hours after I put my profile on match.com I get a wink (basically someone saying they are interested). Initial reaction was ‘woo!’. Their picture was really nice (I mean really nice) and they seemed, superficially, to like the same things I did. So I sat down and started trying to write an email to them… and started thinking about it. They’d told me very little concrete about themselves and their list of likes was just a little too comprehensive (owns dogs but likes cats? Likes fishing and soccer? Ok, could be real, but alarm bells are ringing here). There were also odd grammatical errors that just wouldn’t be made by a native English speaker. Call me paranoid here but I just didn’t feel easy about it. Then I checked my profile and saw that its been views a grand total of zero times (check out Mr Popular ). On the off chance it’s real I’ve winked back but I think I’ll save the emailing to people who are more likely to turn out to be real and not wanting to con me out of cash.

If I understand it rightly (and you have to realise that I am very new to all of this) my profile is now live on match.com and visible to people doing searches. I have been told by a variety of sources that my pictures look OK, but they’re a bit staged so I’ll need to get someone else to take some slightly less posed ones. Anyway, we can work on that over the next few weeks, the important bit is that something is out there. I shall keep you all updated on how it goes (or doesn’t as the case may be).

For the first time since moving into this place I finally got a lie in. Didn’t actually get to bed until midnight due to the shopping trip but then slept the sleep of the dead until 9:45. Unfortunately I needed to be up and out for 10:00 so its lucky I decided to see what time time was (my exact thought was: ‘I’ll look at the clock and if its before 8 I’ll stay in bed) otherwise I would have been late. Question is: do I go for an early night tonight or do I crash the 21st birthday party that is going to kick off downstairs

After last nights shopping session in Bluewater (bedding, duvet, bits and bobs for the house - and why does everyone keep asking? Is is really that interesting?) I was taken to Asda to purchase many booze for my house (its amazing how much not drinking seems to cost you in alcohol). Anyway, there is now enough beer, whiskey, vodka, Bacardi and Baileys to get a whole army of cute girls drunk (or more likely to get my brothers pissed when they come to visit). I’ve also got rather a lot of bottles of non alcoholic pretend wine and pretend fizzy wine so I can make believe that I am a big boy too.

Been a busy week with lots of after school activities so I was rather looking forward to an early night on Wednesday (my one free night). The plan was to get home, empty my bin (exciting life I know), mooch about for an hour or two and go to sleep. The fact I couldn’t stay awake on the train on the way home tells you how tired I was.

The plan was instantly defeated on my arrival home when my next door neighbour popped out for a chat. 5 hours, 8 beers (or in my case 2 litres of squash) later and it was well past my bedtime. Still, a fun night was had and he’s going to take me out to a few pubs and bars in Colchester so hopefully I should meet a few more people in the area.

No matter. Last night was a light night at school (photo shoot for the graduate recruitment brochure) but I figured I’d be home in time to grab 7 hours of sleep at worse. On the way home I get a call from my neighbour asking if I wouldn’t mind helping him move his old sofa to make way for the new one. Thinking it would take 5 minutes I agreed so at 9pm I got home, grabbed a drink and was having a 5 minute sit down before shifting furniture. Our neighbour from downstairs then popped up to say hi and any hopes of getting in to bed on time were dashed. 5 hours later, god knows how many beers, juice and squash later and I’m finally moving furniture and thinking ‘I need to be up in just over 4 hours time!’.

Shopping tonight, but when I get home I’m going to sleep the sleep of the dead

It would appear that everyone is going green and putting the following on the bottom of their emails:

To those people I say the following: I have considered the environment and found it wanting. 200 copies of your email have been sent to the printer as punishment for inflicting this footer on me.