Proud Sponsor of Camden Council

Well, I decided to pay my ticket, because I didn't want to risk to pay 100 quid. I probably should have complained though. I am really annoyed by this. So have a look around, there must be some park bench named after me...

Paying is very convenient www.camden.gov.uk/pay (new bookmark :p) Really nice page., a bit like amazon.
"Which payment would you like to make?"
Fuck, I don't want to pay anything, I didn't do anything wrong.
But obviously this option wasn't displayed.
You even have a shopping basket. I couldn't believe it. Ok, you can pay your council tax and stuff like this as well, but it felt wrong for paying a parking ticket. Do you want your ticket wrapped in gift wrap paper? That's 2 quid extra...

Watch out...

Camden parking attendants might fine you if they don't like the colour of your scooter! At least, I don't know why I got fined today. I arrived too late today to get a parking space in front of UCL, so I had to park in Malet Street. There is a parking bay for motorbikes, which was nearly full already, but I found a small space at the end and I squeezed in there. I exactly fit in there. When Ettore said: "Hey, we can move this scooter here and then you can fit in here.", I replied: "Nah, that's fine. They won't fine me. It's alright. It perfectly fits." Ok, the next time I say something like this, please slap me in the face.

I left office at 11pm and I was very happy to get the gap between two raining phases. When I locked my bike at home, I found the notice. "We had reasonable cause to believe that the following parking contravention had occured: we don't like your face, the weather is horrible today and we are a bunch of grumpy man who like to fine people to annoy them!"
Ok, it didn't say that, but it should have. It said: "Not parked correctly within the markings of the bay or space."

I have 28 days to pay 100 pounds. 100 quid !!! I can't believe it. But then my heart made a little jump: there is a discount. You pay only 50 quid, if you pay within 14 days. Hooray. Thank you, Camden. Service charge not included I guess...

I love deadlines...

... I like the whooshing sound as they fly by (Douglas Adams).
Haven't written anything lately. Two reasons. First, nothing really stupid happened to me, second I am very busy writing up my thesis at the moment. Deadline is the 29th, so I hope, that I don't hear the whooshing sound :-)

I am really thinking of de-restricting my scooter. I was overtaken by a bike, and I mean bike not motorbike. Ok, we were going downhill, I was already going 60 km/h and he was a really sporty guy (wearing lycras :o) , however, it really hurt. What made me feel a little bit better was that I overtook a Porsche Carrera two days later. Ok, it was in a long queue going 10 km/h but it's the overtaking event that counts, isn't it?

Band practice tomorrow, I really enjoy playing in a band again. I don't think we'll ever make money out of it, but it is great fun. We agreed to practice three songs currently:
Knocking on heaven's door by Guns N Roses
Better do better by Hard-fi
Song 2 by Blur
Guns N Roses' "Appetite for destruction" was the very first music album I ever owned and Song 2 really reminds me of the time when I was 16 and started to go clubbing. Music always reminds my of the time and place where I heard it first. I should have "Soundtrack of my life" :-)

Ok, back to work now, I can already hear the whooshing...

number-plate-man retired

Finally, my scooter is fixed, yeah! I don't have to wear my number plate on the back anymore.

Ok, I have to start at the beginning. In the night 15th/16th July some wankers tried to steal my scooter. They dragged it about hundred meters away and tried to open the lock and the steering lock with a huge iron bar. Although they didn't manage to break the lock, they caused a lot of damage to the scooter like twisting the handle bar, breaking the seat lock and the most annoying part: they ripped off the number plate including the attachment for it.

I called the police and they recorded the attempted theft. The next day I called the insurance to report the incident and they sent me the claim form and asked me to do an estimate at a garage.
The garage faxed the estimate and I sent back the claim form on the 21th. First class to speed up the process!

So far so good. Took several phone calls the week after until they finally processed the form and the cost estimate from the garage. Another week later they asked me to bring the scooter to the garage again so that an engineer can have a look at it. This was the 1st of August when I remember it correctly and another 5 quid for me taking the tube to uni and back...

The most annoying part was to get the insurance to fax the repair authorisation to the garage. In the week starting from the 7th I called the insurance several times a day, everytime talking to someone else and telling him all the details. The music in the waiting loop is really crap. And then you have dialogues like:

me: "I brought the scooter to the garage last week and your engineer had a look at it."
she: "Alright, give me a sec."
5 min later...
she:"Was it an attempted theft or was the bike actually stolen?"
me: "-_-"

And all the time I was driving around with my number plate sticked to my back. People sometimes started conversation at a traffic light like:
"Dude, you have a number plate on your back!"
"Really? I didn't know. Thanks!"

Finally, the insurance faxed the authorisation and the garage could order the bits and pieces. The appointment was scheduled for today.

Of course the police stopped me yesterday (!!), even using the siren. They asked me why I was wearing the number plate on my back and checked my driving license, road tax and insurance. Clearly, they hadn't seen someone like me before. One of them made a call starting: "I have a stupid question, I have someone with a number plate on his back here...". Apparently it was kind of alright, since it was clearly visible. However, they didnt fine me and just asked me to get it fixed asap. I told them that I ll bring it to the gargae tomorrow anyway. Don't think they believed me ;-)

Anyway, after a lot of weird looks, random conversation at traffic lights, one guy taking a picture of me and be stopped by the police, number-plate-man officially retired :-)

una vacanza italiana

This week, Andy, Selma and I visited Ettore and Elisa in Italy for a few days.

My journey started on Monday morning at 2am after 2 hours of sleep. I had to go to Stansted using three different busses including some time in Kentish Town. I really hate to hang around anywhere with luggage in the middle of the night. I met Beppe in the bus to Liverpool Street and we arrived way too early, so that we had to wait for about an hour for the Stansted bus.

We arrived at about 5am at Stansted. Never saw the airport so crowded at this time. With the new security measures, the hand luggage was reduced to a transparent bag with wallet and passport in it. Looked really stupid. No liquids were allowed and you had to take your shoes off at the security check. Must be great to work at the security check these days with people taking off their smelly shoes.

With three hours delay (because our plane spent the night at Luton) we left Stansted. Although we had the theory that airlines distribute small children all over the plane to annoy everybody equally, our flight was pretty quite. After two hours we arrived in Bologna Forli. A really tiny airport compared to Stansted, 4 planes a day, but I like that.

Luckily, with Beppe we had an Italian speaker and he managed to get us to the train station and into the train to Ancona. The train was really packed, because one of the most important Italian holiday called Ferragosto was one the 15th. We had a chat with an Italian/Canadian woman who told us things about the cities we were passing. The train track is built along the coast, very nice.
At some stop, people came in and left again after one minute. Then our "guide" discovered that they took her wallet. So she had to leave the train to talk to the police. Not a nice expierence :-(

Elisa and Ettore picked us up from Ancona and one hour later we arrived in Tolentino where we met Ettore's parents and grandparents. In the afternoon we had a nice walk through the city. Parts of it reminded me of an old Counterstrike map called "cs_italy". I know, I know, that's geeky, but look for yourself :D
In the evening we had our first tasty Italian dinner followed by home made cake to celebrate Andy's birthday. Actually, there was always cake, but at this time I didn't know that :D

The next day, we got up early to get to the beach in time. Since it was Ferragosto we expected it to be crowded. The place was called Portonovo, really nice beach, but have a look at the pictures. Of course, coming straight from the office, I got a really nice sunburn ;-)

To cool down, we spent the evening in the mountains with food, wine and live music. Yes, great place Tolentino, beach and mountains very close. Very convenient.

Wednesday, we visited Ettore's other grandparents in the mountains in a place called Croce (hope that's right, Ettore) They showed us a parts of the village and also how they make their own wine. Of course we were invited for cookies and wine :-)
We spent the rest of the day driving around in the mountains and relaxing at a lake.

In the evening we had yet another dinner and and amazing chocolate cake. Don't know what the technique is called to compress chocolate so efficiently, but I was suprised that there weren't any satellite cookies in its orbit...

Thursday was already the last day and we planned to take the train around 4pm. So we had some time to do a bit of shopping to bring some Italian food and wine back to England. After some time in a supermarket we visited a winery. Although with our 4 bottles of wine we probably haven't been the biggest customers, they invited us to have a look around. So we got a free tour and saw how the first grapes were picked and processed and also the huge barrels in the basement.
Afterwards it was already time to say goodbye. We took the train back to Forli and from their with one hour delay the plane to London Stansted. Of course, upon arrival in London it was raining :-(

I really enjoyed my time in Italy. Great fun and tasty Italian food (A LOT ;-) Having a grandma that used to run a bakery is really dangerous. Especially, when she's producing the same amount of cakes after retirement. But now that I am back, I miss cakes after lunch and dinner...

Thanks Ettore, Elisa and Ettore's (grand)-parents for these lovely days. I felt very welcome. The only thing that has to get better next time is my Italian :-)