Lost

A little anecdote for you:

On Tuesday night, when I was visiting my old mum in hospital, I managed to get a little lost. Well... not lost exactly. Look - it all happened like this:

Southmead Hospital is one of those big sprawling campuses of about 50 separate buildings, some of which are interconnected by covered walkways. It's all very confusing and it's not helped by the current wave of building work and 'improvements' that are currently under way, which means that following signs for the Urology department can leave you standing in front of a fenced off road wondering where the hell to go next!

Anyway - having made the requisite visit and been kicked out by the nurses at the end of visiting hours (and starving, by the way - I'd gone straight from work), I retraced my steps back to my car. Or that's what I thought until I found myself standing by a 3 storey white building that I didn't remember from my walk in or, indeed any of my previous visits.

Convinced that I'd taken a wrong turn, I looked around, unsuccessfully, for one of those handy maps with the big 'you are here' arrows on them. Finally, in desperation I stopped a passing workman and asked him where I was. He told me.

"That's where I thought I was," I said, "but I didn't pass this building on the way in."

"That," he told me, "is because we only put it up this evening."

Holy crap! They erected an entire building in an hour and a half. Okay, it was only a prefab building, but it was 3 storeys! That's a lot of effort to go to for the express purpose of confusing me. I'm hardly the sharpest knife in the block; they could have just put up a hand written cardboard sign saying 'You are not here' to achieve the same affect - but no! They built an entire temporary, 3 storey radiology building. That demonstrates a very special sort of vindictiveness!

And that is the story of how I nearly got lost in the hospital. I hope you enjoyed it.

(On a side note, mum is now out of hospital and is convalescing in bed at home!)

Avatar

So this weekend, we donned our 3D glasses (which, as you can see from the photo, made me look like a bearded Roy Orbison) and headed out to the cinema to see Dances with Wol... no... Last of the Samu... no, that's not right either. Avatar. That's it, Avatar! You can tell the difference because the Native Americ… er… Samuar… um… alien dudes are BLUE!

Man, was that a pretty movie! The 3D started off as a bit of a distraction but I soon got used to it, although I did duck once near the end when some shrapnel flew out at me, but covered it up by pretending I was shifting in my seat.

So yeah. It was a good movie. Nothing very original in it - the plot, as I may have intimated above, has been done any number of times before. The floating mountains can be found all over anime and in fantasy literature; and the crazy crazy alien animals and bizzare fauna can be seen in all sorts of fantasy art; and the spaceships were mostly nicked from Aliens.

But it was very nicely made, decently scripted and performed and the CGI was good enough that after a while I forgot it was CGI. And the inevitable great big battle scene at the end was very, very well orchestrated - it's not often you see a great big battle scene that doesn't waste any shots on frivolous killings. It goes on for just as long as it needs to and then it finishes. Hoorah.

So if you haven't already, go and see it!

If you have a problem and no-one else can help...

...maybe you can hire THE A TEAM!



This looks like it's gonna be pretty crazy stuff - check out the parachuting tank bit! Murdoch seems spot on from is one tiny line of dialogue.

Snow Day

I had an unexpected day off work today.

One of the guys in the office had been getting all worried about the snowy Doomsday that was supposed to occur today. Naturally, I scoffed at him and insisted that it would be fine.

I got snowed in.

I did get some nice photos, though.

2010

Hmm. It looks like I didn't post anything at all in 2009. I should probably try harder.