21

It's been and gone without any fanafare because that's just how i wanted it. It was my birthday on Wednesday, 2nd April. Abe went to great lenghts to make it extraspecial.... but when it came down to it, i liked it when it was all a normal day.

I took three days off work. 1st, 2nd and yesterday. I went to Abe's early Tuesday morning and she even had a cake for me. She cooked a nice meal of... I cant remember, but it was good and had Chinese sweet & sour in it. It also had some italian roll-minjeys and rice it it.

Next morning (my actual birthday) we came back to mine and i think we played some Xbox games. Most of it is a blur to me cos i had so much fun with the three days off. The bit that isnt a blur, i cant really tell you about cos it's none of ya business. But you get the idea.

Anyway, i slept overnight at Abe's on 2nd/3rd... with her parents consent, i might add becasue i missed the last train back to London and got stranded in a very remote part of nowhere. Dartford actually.

Hmm... i'm tired from all that trading i'm doing on blogshares but it's totally worth it. I have to go back to work in 6 hours and i havent had any sleep. We'll see.

BlogShare Bombing

BlogShare is only a few days old and I've already managed to find the biggest hole on in it. It was a simple oversight on Seyed's part that meant people could sell/buy negative amounts of shares.

It doesnt look like much of a problem at first, but then when you really think about it, it allowd you to buy a negative amount of shares with money you dont have. What immediately came to mind was, "Buy some negative shares in a stock that is bound to go up within minutes and have a negative portfolio... then as soon as it goes up, offload the stock thereby making money"

It worked a treat. Now somethnig else i'm worried about people exploiting is the ability to buy shares with a zero value, thereby paying nothing for it. As at now, BlogShares doesnt allow you to search and return only blogs with $0 share prices but if you look hard enough you can find a bunch.

I'm testing it now by linking to those blogs with a current value of 0. The value of an outgoing link on here right now is $17.37. But it would fall after i link to this site, that i've bought 3032 shares in (for nothing). Even if it increases the value of that blog by a penny, i should make $30. Remember... cheating isnt good.

Weekend Wipe

I've been hit with the Weekend Wipe on BlogShares. I went home from work on Friday with a total portfolio of 4500+. I was even 84th in the top 100 players list. I didnt have time to move shares around all weekened cos I've been extremely busy having fun.

I came back on monday to see a third of my worth wiped off. No wonder Abe wants to give up the whole BS thing; "I'm not getting any money out of this", she said. Didnt take her long to work that out eh?

Anyway... so "extremely busy having fun" means I woke up on saturday, saw my sister off to Ghana at Heathrow [cough cough]. Then I went off to Maureens at Ilford at around 3pm. As always she needed help with something, in this case her printer wasnt "working". Turned out the sheets werent being fed properly into the tray.

Anyway... i stayed around till around 7pm and went to Mante's in Plaistow. By then it was 9pm already and i'd decided i was gonna sleep over. That... and the fact that he'd borroed a PS2 with some fighting games on there. Virtua Fighter 4. Granted it's not MK4 but still it felt good kicking other people's asses for a change.

We played thru-out the night and started again early the next morning. We god joined by Mante's girlfriend's cousin [long eh?]... yeah SO George joined us and later Suzanne, another friend of Mante's came 'round. Apparently she doesnt like violent games but she did pack a mean punch.

I realised rather too late that i had to get home by 1045pm to catch 24 . So here I am... back at work with another week to look forward to.

UPDATE: 08.Apr.2003:

From Left: Mante, Faf, George, Suzanne

Getting a mirror-shot using the glass walls at Heathrow terminal 4

Ethilda, you're question about when i'm adding new pictures has been answered; There are new pictures in April 2003 of the General section of my Gallery

One bad thing about all this is that, my random picture generator in the sidebar is broken and i havent got round to fixing it.

Decisions, Decisions

I hate making decisions. The only time i make them is if i think someone's making the wrong ones for me. Abe and I have decided [she decided most of it] to get some of our friends together this weekendv to go round some bars in London.

She's normally great at deciding these things but this time she seems to have hit a stump. We're going out on saturday and she still has 3 possible choices. I'm more resigned to saying.. "Oh, anywhere." and "Hmm... anything" but i'm looking forward to it... whatever she comes up with.

I'm supposed to be calling up friends and asking if they can make it... i've got one person to confirm they're coming but everyone esle isnt willing to commit until they know fo' sho' where we're off to. On the other hand, Abe's got at least 5 people coming who in turn are bringing their own friends.

There's no way i'm asking my friends to bring their friends that i dont know to go meet my girlfriend's friends that i've never met. Why? Cos i know my friends and the kindda people they could bring... Abe's friends are moslty white. Mine are mostly Ghanaians who hang out mostly with other Africans. Now THAT surely is a recipe for disaster.

Another things is.. if i start telling them to bring anyone along... they might start thiking it's a party fo some sort and will start asking for drinks on me. Hmmm... nah man... I'm not that rich.

Oh.. forgot to mention that Remi is coming along... and hey Reminsky... you can bring along some friends... dont give them the idea that drinks are on you tho.

UPDATEM:

I dont mind everyone speaking Mandarin around me... actually, i'm feeling a bit oriental since Abe got me that sleeveless top with the Japanese writing on it for my birthday. Ni Hao?

An' So We Dey Meet...

Ok... take this as your notification. And make use of the "print" feature if, like me, you're shit with directions.

Double Hussein

How sure are the Americans that the statue they pulled down a coupla days ago wasnt that of a body double of Hussein?

Anyway... wasnt another statue pulled down some days before? If so why did they make so much a big deal about this one?

How many times will the Americans kill him before he dies?

The Gathering

Everything went swell. I'm not saying much but there are loadsa pictures to prove it. It was kindda funny the way everyone pulled out their cameras as soon as we got there.

Remi was there as well as Abe so i'm going to leave the commentary up to them.

Abe and I decide to use this picture (below) as a teaser. It's of Flora, Abe's friend from school who is now at Lancaster University. The hand with the band is that of Christine, also a friend of Abe's now at Queen Mary's. The Last (partial) hand is Abe's.

The bottle on the left contains Olive oil. Heh... enough crap descriptions already.... go find more picture in the gallery's Easter 2003 Gathering album.

UPDATE: 14.04.2003 -- 11:43 AM BST
Abe has some real commentary on the whole event.

It Comes Down to This

Maybe Microsoft should start marketing the Xbox as a PlayStation.

In another unrelated news... my hitcount rolled past the 200K mark without anyone noticing.

From Remi's Perspective

So you've read this entry and probably seen Abe's commentary on it. You might've seen the pictures from my cam.... I now present pictures form the Perspective of Remi's cam. As always a teaser below

From left: Ebere tucks into her meal, Daryll watches the girls talk about (among other things) The Pill, the girls Flora and Christine, and my arm sticking out from the right.

Find more pictures form Remi's perspective in the aptly named Pictures from Remi's Perspective

Where's Eme?

Anyone seen my greenish precious friend? I'll probably be on Y! Msnja tonight so if anyone knows where she is... let me know.

Likewise for anyone that's been on the "waiting list" of people wanting to talk to me... try tonight... if you get the "busy signal" keep trying. If you get the "offline" signal... still keep trying. I might be wearing the invisible cloak

Mid-Revision Party

Luckily I wasn't as bad as a fellow medic who spent some of the time puking up downstairs.

You see, I have exams fairly soon and I vowed I wouldn't 'go out' until they were over, but last night I felt that if I stayed at home I wouldn't get any work done anyway and end up sleeping.. so. In fact, I've probably done a substantial amount of work this morning as it is! (hmm)

Also, public apologies to the site owner. I phoned him when I was just about to leave the party, (I hadn't told him I'd gone.. oops!) and I wanted him to still be online when I got back, however he said he was going to bed. So in my disappointment I popped over to see a friend in Raleigh Park, but then crashed out because I was knackered. Found out later that he was still online waiting for me (at 6am!!)

To be more accurate, it was his perfect opportunity to talk to Emerald, hence the still being up, otherwise I'm sure he would have gone to bed!

You Mischievous Lil' Faf!

Something I did yesterday reminded me of my being the lil' prick i was as a kid

• Cutting thru everyone's slippers with a razor and cutting mine too so it wouldnt be too obvious it was me that did it;
• Setting fire to the toilet paper inside the house and going to bed like nothing'd happened;
• Spraying half a bottle of bodyspray into my parents pillow thinking they woulod love the scent when they came to sleep;
• Pulling a chair from under one of my mum's friends that had come to visit -- and getting some of the glass of milk she was holding inside her nose - and thinking it was funny;
• Stealing fruit from the (evil) old woman that lived down the road's yard;
• Throwing stones at turkeys (and a hen on another occasion, and a goat on yet another occasion) and "accidentally" killing them. [except the goat that got up after about an hour and bolted. Dont ask me how relieved i was!!];
• Poking a piglet with a broomstick and incensing its mother to chase me all over the place;
• Climbing onto the roof and getting stuck for hours;
• Intentionally leading a friend into a bee's nest and rustling the leaves;

Anyway... all that was yesteryear... but lastnight when i got home, before i had the chance to watch the Appendices of the extended edition of The Fellowship of the Ring DVD that I borrowed from Abe, I found this "thing" that my mum had supposedly "stolen" from work.

See my mum works as a tagger at the J. Norman warehouse somewhere near Finsbury Park and she brought one of the staple/tagger things home. She has the habit of asking me if i want any junk she finds. And has a worse habit of interupting me whiles i'm on the phone or playing a game on the xbox.

Just happens that she was trying to interrupt me when I was just trying out the copy of Quantum Redshift that I'd just acquired with the aim of selling off but just realised is too good to sell. She was saying something along the lines of;

"Hey I stole this from work, do you want it?"
So I said "Oh c'mon, leave me alone"
"I'll show you how it works". She takes a piece of paper and tags it onto a bag
"Great, I want it then" i said, just to get rid of her

That was two days ago. So when I saw this "thing" lying around when i went home lastnite, I thought i'd try it out. I took pieces of paper and tagged it to anything i could find that wasnt mine.

You know how annoying it is to get them tags off new clothes right? It's one of those things you know is always easy if you get a knife and just slice it, but you decide anyway that you're gonna pull it off. Now there are letters, envelopes, scrap pieces of paper stapled to curtains, towels, napkins... y'know house hold stuff made of cloth.

I cant wait till my mum gets back from work tonight and see the evil that she's brought home. Afterall, it's a staple/tagging cross thing and since it's had no other use... she shouldnt have brought it home.

One thing i dont understand it... why my mum keeps on saying she stole it. I think she thinks it's kindda naughty if she says she stole it. The way i think, you steal something if it's of some use to you. Or out of malice as in, you think the other person will miss it. Or if you're paid to steal it without it being of any use to you yourself.

Now tell me that Jane Norman will miss one of their staple/tagger cross things. No! And what use is that thing to anyone at home? Nada!. How much will anyone pay for one of those things? Zilch!

Apart from reminding me of how much mischief i was up to as a kid, and still capable of being up to, that thing is useless.