What a fucking wierd place I am in .. I tell you this when I get back I am gonna have my first NSFW entry. Anyway moved out of my hotel this morning andam now in a hostel ... is quite cool .. loads of youth .. I say youth like I am old but there is a woman here with her 2 kids ... which makes me feel better about my age.. any way I should be getting pissed but instead I am doing the culture thing .. 3 muesems in one day .. though to be fair .. the things ddon't have enough in them .. I spent an entire day in the british science museam and still didn't see everything .. bloody natural histry museam in NYC I got fatting lost in .. here I got only about 2 hours in each one.
Value for money you ****s!!!! god I hope some one from the vienna counsil is reading my blog. In any case tomorrow I will be exploring the Danube and beyond. It would be fair to say you can expect more bitching soon .. if not .. back in a few days with big entry on vienna and art and general sh*t.

ps. Andy you still haven't commented you big american W*nker

So .. I am here .. the conferance is finally over .. time for fun in the sun ... or maybe not. It hasd been raining like hell since yesterday ... is this god's way of telling me off for not really caring about my conferance?

ps. Dam european key boards with thier y and z reversed and stupid positing of the @ sign .. fatting hard to get used to.

As I am finally able to do some reading for myself, I am currently reading some quinton crisp.. and it has made me happy .. so I though I would share ..
Quiton responds to the question "so is it possible to be fulfilled in marriage?"

If your style is to be self sacrificing, and if you feel you have an infinate capacity for sacrifising yourself, then yoou may think: will I go to India to feed the starving, or the Criemea to bind up the wounds of the injured - or will i just get married?

I cann#t say I really like what is said ... but now I guess I understand how certain people make better husbands.

Another that made me smile ..amber .. you may like this one

Fashion is instead of style. When you don#t know who you are then you consult the papers.

sigh... if only I could come up with thinks like this, best I got is the "liver and spinach" quote.

So I am now in austria enjoying the hospitality of the techno folk at IWCE. My poster went down alright yesterday .. I had a few people interested and and a good chat with a guy called zlatan .. he is bosnian I belive and working on the same stuff me and tufik are. His stuff is a sort of half way point between our work so it was kinda encooraging to see someone else in my field.

I am not really going to post much about vienna atm as I will have a good long post when I get back but I just wanted to let you all know that I will ber returning to my usual chilled out self.

A quick couple of "shout outs" though .. Amber ..welcome back to the land of the living .. I know u will have done well... and jen .. welcome back to leeds my love .. debauchery shall soon ensue.

So andy in my office wants to make comments on this here blog despite my previous hatred of the idea I will be trialing it for a limited time.. right you lot .. let us see what you can do.

Now most of you will be thinking "dam this boy is really depressed these days.",the answer is not far from the truth .. I am not having a great time with my phd but I have come to expect nothing less from this sh*t but never the less I want to tell you all I am not really unhappy with life .. just a little stressed and ,at the moment, this blog is my one way to tell the world my pet hates which makes me feel a little better about life.

So my new one is excuses... If you don't want to do something, don't come up with some crap excuse ..just don't do it. Tonight was supposed to be my poker night ( it has been cancelled due to a mirriad of excuses and cancellations) and we had at some point asked a young lady to be our dealer. Now I never expected anyone to allow them selves to be put in that position with out monetary recompence. It is objectification to some extent so would have laughed it off if she had said no, but instead she says yes.. so naturally I have to tell her not to do it .. for both her sake ..and well mine .. I don't like the way guys are in copetition when girls are around. So I am a gentelman, I take her out for ice-cream and in my own charming way tell her not to come.. then she revels to me she never planned on coming in the first place, she was going to txt on the day with some excuse. This did annoy me. It made me make time,expand effort and go out of my way to tell her.

To reuse a statement from the regan administration .. next time "Just say NO!"

Some of you will remember my little rant here about free vs fair trade. Well today I have been reading about Anita Roddick and The body shop and though I quite like her take on trade instead of aid, there are a couple of things about the whole thing that just don't sit right with me. Some of you will be saying it is cos she sold out to L'Oréal which personally I think is fair enuff ..she has made a shit load of maney doing it, which I cann't begrudge. She was after all a business woman. Some might say it is cos the woman stole her whole consept from a small store in the Bay area... but no she took it further then they did and bought them out fair and square.

I think it is that bullshit middle class syndrom of trying to justify themselves in what they percive as bad. I think if from day one this woman had got up and said "yes this is organic .. yes it is fair trade ..yes it is not tested on animals but I am in the business of making money.. and by god I am going to do it." instead of this stupid hippy bullshit where she pretends to care about the state of the world. You look at her blog and she seems more like a political editorial correspondant then a entrepreneur.

I donno if there is a right or wrong way .. I can see this has worked for her. I guess I would like to see a third world figure head who is a major player instead of mass murdering fuck heads or athletes. Africa needs a hero ..someone who can can come to play with the rest of the world instead of just in africa.

I am a fairly affectionate person .. people I care about I tend to be okay with touching. Hugs are good for people you know well ... cheek kisses for familiar but friendly people of the opposite sex. But for the love of god when did we become people that kiss on the lips with friends.

A couple of my friends have now started to do this, but they are not friends I would classify with major intimacy... they are passing acquitances. It seems like as we go along our actions become more intimate to show meaningless throw away encounters .. it is quite disturbing.