Posts

Posted on

Blue Suede Shoes

The domestication of Rory continues apace. Yesterday I cleaned a pair of shoes for the first time I can remember.

I say “cleaned”, but really I won’t know the true outcome for some time. At least until the major collateral damage has been repaired, and the shoes manage to return to a more shoe-like form (if they ever do). From the state of the sink—and, let’s be honest, the floor, ceiling, bath, and some of the next room—I would guess that I got a decent amount of dirt off them. Although some of that could just be ex-shoe material. Who knows?

I performed this experiment in grownupitude on an old pair I haven’t worn in some time, with the hope that I’ll either discover the secret or give up and find something more shiny to distract me before I get as far as wrecking any of my good shoes. Wish me luck.

Posted on

Hola a todos

My first spoken words on December 31 last year were, “Quick! Does anyone speak French? I need to learn it by the end of today to succeed in my New Year’s resolution.” I made a valiant effort, even going so far as to ask for a croissant for breakfast, but ultimately failed. I ended 2007 just as sadly monolinguistic as I had started it.

This year, I’ve gone for something new. I set out to learn Spanish, and—in contrast to the rest of my life up to this point—I’ve actually made some progress. I can tell people I like the cinema, and have one brother, and would like to know how to find the pharmacy. I know the word for beer, and all the numbers up to 1000. Actually, those last two facts might be dangerous in combination.

Of course my real aim is to work into a conversation, “Sólo sé decir esa frase, y esta otra explicandolo” (“I only know that sentence and this other explaining it”).

Posted on

Back to Work

Ok, so technically I haven’t been off work, but after being away from my own office for a week and a half it still feels like I’m coming back from a holiday. Thankfully that’s the not the crushingly depressing thought it might be for people in other jobs, because I’m one of those jerks who likes his job. Annoying, isn’t it?

Things to like about being back at home base:

  • Rock Band
  • Fresh pizza for lunch
  • The smoothies we have that no other office has
  • Being able to annoy my coworkers in person, which is much harder to filter than email
  • Rain
Posted on

Landlubber

This visit to Zurich was supposed to include a day of sailing, because you can’t think of Switzerland without thinking of the great Swiss naval tradition. Sadly I indulged in somewhat more grog than would ordinarily be recommended, so I’ve decided to skip the prolonged period of bobbing up and down on a boat in favour of sitting comfortably on land.

Oddly, I’ll also be missing a sailing event tomorrow. My team in Dublin will spend the day being buffeted about on Irish Sea, while I’ll be in the arguably more glamorous but less enjoyable position of hurtling through the sky in a jet-powered metal tube.

Posted on

Slide

There’s a slide from the first floor to the ground floor café here. There are fire-poles from floor to floor. I just walked past a sand pit, and yesterday I beat my best score on a Star Trek: The Next Generation pinball machine. This place makes my office look like a bank.

Posted on

Zurich

I’m in Zurich this week from Monday to Friday. It’s my first travel since the end of May. A year ago that would have sounded like a very short time between trips, but it’s actually by far the longest single stretch I’ve been at home this year. My flight out was my eighteenth flight this year. It was nice not to have to deal with airports for a few weeks, even if it did mean failing in my half-assed attempt to travel internationally during every month of the year.

I haven’t seen a lot of Zurich, and because I’ll be working I don’t know how much I will see. The hotel is great, if you can judge a city by such things. The water in the minibar is free. What an innovation! On the other hand the rail system seems set up deliberately to confound non–German speakers, which is strange for country with four official languages. The two people I did have to ask for help at various points were able to speak English but didn’t seem entirely pleased to be asked to. Maybe my pronunciation of “Sprechen Sie Englisch?” was just wrong enough to somehow insult their mothers.

So, there you are. Airport good, trains bad, hotel good. Overall pretty neutral.

Posted on

Guitar Zero

I got a guitar for my birthday several years ago, and I think that in that time it’s served its role admirably. That role was one of sitting in the corner making me look a little cooler. Every now and then I consider that it might also excel at another role: that of producing music. I hear people sometimes use them for that.

It’s not like I’ve never tugged on those stringy bits to get some sound out of them, it’s just that said sound isn’t anything I’d call music. I’ve never got beyond that stage where each pluck of the same string produces entirely different sounds, like Itchy’s magic xylophone. At this point I’d barely even be good enough to open for Radiohead, and I say that with the honest opinion that those guys would play the sound of an alley cat fighting a mongoose as a “support act” (I’m looking at you, Asian Dub Foundation).

I’m not sure where I’m going with this (had you guessed?) but it will at least give me something to refer back to if I ever manage to produce a melody that doesn’t make children cry and scare the neighbours. Then I can point back to here and say, “Look how far I’ve come! All the way from insufferable to… sufferable!” And I will be proud.

Posted on

My Oldest Friends

I like that I can sit in a stylish modern restaurant eating clams and drinking red wine, listening to the Beatles and the Who and Jimmy Hendrix, talking about In Bruges and Juno, and laughing at jokes by Dara Ó Briain, with my parents. When I was a teenager I didn’t really realise that most of my peers weren’t actually friends with their parents, which I find sad. I’d miss it. I understand it gets better with age for many people, and the teenage years aren’t exactly ones in which you would be expected to be closest to the auld pair, so there’s that. It’s definitely a friendship worth having if you can manage it.

Also, check out Junior’s on Bath Avenue. The food is great (and unique) and the music selection is excellent.

Posted on

100 Push-Ups

Last weekend I started the 100 push-ups plan. In six weeks it’s supposed to bring you from whatever level of strength and fitness you happen to be at when you started to being able to do 100 push-ups. This seems quite suspect. The person who struggles to manage a single one on their first day is unlikely to reach the target in a month and a half, while the guy bashing out 98 of them every morning probably won’t take the full allotted time to master those final two.

Still, I cranked out a not-entirely-shameful 20 at the beginning, so the six week limit looks both achievable and mercifully distant at this point. I wavered on the last part of the day two routine of 12, 12, 10, 10, 10, though I will point out that due to technological limitations in the iPod clock application I was only taking 60 second breaks instead of the recommended 90 (check me out—I’m such a beefcake).

Expect to see a post filled to the brim with self-congratulation if I complete the full century by September 6th.

Posted on

On Matters of Interest

It’s been a long time coming, but I can now finally declare that Soylent Red is dead. It may protest otherwise, but it will be stone dead in a moment. It’s been nailed to the perch for a while, and will soon be pushing up daisies.

Fear not, however. For one thing, fear is an inappropriate response to the death of a blog. For another, I’ve started a new blog. It’s at roryparle.com, which is a domain that I’ve had lying around for a bit. It has the great advantage of running on a blogging system that was not written by me, which means I don’t have to be the poor fool who fixes things when they inevitably go wrong. Huzzah! This should mean more frequent posting because I will no longer be approaching the composition of a blog post with the trepidation ordinarily reserved for man with magnets strapped to his body walking into a knife shop.

I’ll get onto sorting out feed redirects in a moment, but if you want to be sure not to miss anything you can subscribe to the feed directly.

This site will remain up, but stagnant, for the foreseeable future.

Proudly powered by WordPress