2012 So far

My blog posts have been few and far between this year.

This has been deliberate. A girlfriend moving out of my flat all of a sudden, 2 ski trips, my work contract ending and joining match.com all conspired to make me either too talkative or not too talkative for various reasons.

So what should I rant about first? Well it would be rather low of me to rant about the first item, and she's not worth ranting about.

Ski trips are far more interesting anyway, so let's talk about those.

The first one was in January, and was an epic skater group trip to La Tania. It was awesome, except for the accommodation which was very badly organised by a friend who seemed to want to profit from doing so. That was the impression we all got even if it wasn't his intention. It's a real shame because I'd considered him a good friend until that point. So 2 good connections broken... but new connections made in the form of new friends so not all lost. 5 days of skiing and 3 days of snowboarding, all brilliant!

The second trip was last week, and was excellent. It was my third trip to Italy without injury, and my second to Sauze d'Oulx in Italy. Not much to say really... snow getting thin, sun shining all week, lovely weather, lovely company and I hope to see my friends soon for a reunion drinks night or meal.

My work contract ended too, and I did have a permanent job lined up which I started, and quit after a week. Why would I quit? Well, I was hired to a fairly senior position by an online gaming company, but when I started the job the following issues made me not want to work there:
1. The manager who hired me quit suddenly the Friday before I started.
2. The working hours were 9am to 6pm, already long enough but made worse by:
3. "You should arrive early, probably 8.45. You may take a break of up to 15 minutes at 11am and 4pm but if you do, you must deduct that time from your 1 hour lunch break which you may take between midday and 3pm" Let's just say I haven't been treated like this since I was about 13.
4. I went to the toilet and went around the corner for a coffee, and when I got back I was asked where I'd been.
I can't work in those conditions, so I quit.

What this meant is that for a month of lovely sunshine I had lots of free time to walk around London getting addicted to Instagram, before being hired by a previous employer just as this horrible weather started!

And what do I have to say about match.com?
Well not much really. I think it's rubbish. It would probably be good if I was a 6 foot tall caucasian male but I'm not, which immediately excludes me from requirements of the losers on the website. Most of the descriptions go something like this:
"I am happy going out and love travelling but equally happy staying at home and cosying up on the sofa. I'm easy going but I want a confident man. He must be tall. And white. Don't contact me if you only have a picture of your naked torso. If I don't contact you back, sorry but I'm not interested."
Anyway you get the idea. All the women on match.com seem to be after James Bond, not realising that James Bond isn't on match.com. And it's the same with all the other dating websites. Everyone who winks at me is either fat, ugly, old or a combination of the three, or they have put up some old photos that look cute, but they don't look like that anymore. Do I think it's good value for money? No, absolutely not. In fact it's a complete waste and I wouldn't encourage anyone to use it. Same goes for matchaffinity, the sister website that's supposed to match your personalities. It seems my personality matches well with fat old people, despite the fact that my interests are all extreme sports and fun things that fat old people have never imagined doing.

So I've met one interesting lady from the site but I suspect she's not so interested in me. Maybe I rant too much :)

I'll rant about my trip to Paris in my next post, and more about Burritos!