Leynos no Daibouken

I now have my RYA level 2 certificate, which means I can hire out a boat. Ooh yeah. So, anyone want to get together sometime in September and hire out a Wayfarer?

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As promised, I got well hammered on Saturday at my flatmate's party. We all had a good time, though I think I scared a few people by ranting about Britain's nuclear armourment after one too many drams of Highland Park. That wasn't before I'd persuaded my flatmate to model my Bates & Co fedora and Jed phoenix self-tailoring jacket.

I also got to talk to dizziebeth properly for a bit. Although I imagine my ranting probably put me in the bad books.

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To my many responsibilities at work has now been added "web designer." So accordingly, I spent the day re-learning (again) CSS, and coming up with a design that looks pretty in Internet Exploiter and Mozilla Firefox.

The boss liked it. W00t.

On the morning of the second day of sailing lessons, we received a received little lecture on how to parse the Met Office weather forecasts. In a funky RFC kinda way, there actually exist standard definitions for words like "soon," "occasionally," and "mild." Now I should be able to garner useful information from the BBC Shipping Forecast. In theory anyway. They also explained how pressure systems work.

After that, we took the boats out and practiced coming to berth from and against the wind. Thankfully, this didn't result in any major incidents.

Following lunch, we went through sailing round a triangular course. What this entails, is sailing downwind, beating upwind (in a zigzag course), adjusting the sails to suit the direction of course, and jibing (turning across the wind while its to your back). So, pretty much everything then.

Under the supervision of the instructor, I conducted two perfect laps, so I was feeling quite ready to take on the course unassisted. Of course, the minute the instructor left the boat, I went to pieces. "Um, why is the boat moving sideways?!?" My crew shouting orders at me didn't help much either. (Shouldn't it be the other way round?) I got it eventually though, and by the time we were told to head back in, we had all sailed a few perfect laps unsupervised.

I felt a bit out of place over the weekend tho. Everyone on the course seemed to be in their mid-thirties and employed as high skill-professionals or managers. I don't like to think of my job as defining me, but in the real world, that seems to be the first thing people look at, unfortunately.

One more weekend to go. I wonder what it will bring.

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It's not every day that you get to see a window into the inner workings of fate. Everyone knows of friendships that have come about through a chance meeting dependent on a hundred or more disparate factors. By chorally, a million "could have beens" pass us by every day. You accept a lift off of a classmate. As you drive past the bus stop you would have waited at, there is standing the girl who smiled at you earlier and you smiled back at. Of course, nothing would have happened. But it's nice to dream.

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The itamae at Sushiya seems to get better at his craft every time I visit. I tasted the most divine of unagi and sea bass nigiris today. Bonsai and Izzi just can't hold a candle.

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I now have LocoRoco for the PSP.

I'm booked onto the level 2 sailing course at Port Edgar Sailing School for the two weekends beginning Saturday 29th July. This involves capsizing the boat and righting it again. Among other things. Can't wait.

I went sailing today, as part of a taster course at Port Edgar in South Queensferry. The days instructions covered setting up the dinghy, steering, tacking and sailing into the wind. I've been sailing before, with Compsoc, and before that, with the New Deal programme. Having a whole day's tuition, in a smaller group and with far more explanation of the theory helps a lot in understanding what is going on. I still haven't quite grokked how sailing into the wind actually works, but at least now I know how it's done.

The sailing was done in a Wayfarer, with two other students and an instructor. Sailing under the bridges is quite breathtaking at times. I also got to fulfill wone of my lifelong dreams of taking a close up look at Inchgarvie, when we got carried too far east by the tide. A rather gruff supervisor came along in a motor launch and towed us back, to our tutor's dismay.

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I've been very busy these past two weeks.

A good deal of that time has, as you'd imagine, been spent looking for a job. And of course, I haven't found one yet, but I didn't really expect to either. My current plan is to spend my first week of unemployment searching for temporary work. Hopefully something along the lines of the team secretary job I had before starting with the bank, but I'll most likely have to take whatever comes along.

So, what else happened?

Ho-Il has left for South Korea now. I'm sorry to see him go, and I wish him luck with the rest of his studies. He'll be back in a year to finish his degree at Edinburgh. We've had a good deal of fun playing videogames and cooking for each other. I hope I can someday cook as well as he does. I doubt I'll ever be as good at Tekken 5, but playing against him has been inspirational.

I played my first proper evening of Big Eyes Small Mouth on Wednesday. Not only did Stephen turn me into a Dryad, but he dropped me straight into a love triangle! Quite a mindfuck. We've already had the obligatory bathhouse scene, so it looks like things can only go downhill from here.

I left my job on Friday, and my colleagues gave me an envelope stuffed full of cash as a parting gift. It actually surprised me to see some of the signatures on the card, since I can never really tell what kind of effect I have on people. I can't say that I will miss the job, but I will miss many of the people I worked beside. Just about everyone there was a character (in a good way).

After work, I went to a demonstration held by the PSC outside of the Edinburgh office of the European Commission, in protest against the EU's sanctions on Palestine. For a four pm start, we got an impressive attendance, in fact, more people than were at the demonstration outside of the Disney Store. Several passers-by even joined in the protest. A representative from the Commission met with the demo's organizer, and they discussed things in a very civilized and erudite manner, before agreeing to pass on the PSC's message to his superiors.