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So three weeks into 2012 and my new year resolutions are not doing all that well…
1) Stop biting my nails - This so far is kind of 50% successful. I HAVE stopped biting my nails, but they are still looking minging, which makes me think whether my nails are just plain ugly and it’s got nothing to do with the fact that I bite them. Well, I suppose I must give them more time. 3 weeks is nowhere near long enough and I will persevere.
I wonder, though, if I should go to one of those manicure places and get them to shape them in a way that will grow better? Or maybe they can give me advise on how to cut them or what to do with the cuticles…
2) Wearing more skirts and dresses. I am failing miserably with this one. 10% success more or less. I have worn one dress since my resolution came in place, and it’s one of my old ones.. not even a new one. And that is because I completely failed to buy any new clothes at the sale as I promised myself that I would do. I did try, though. But I would go into a shop, look around, and suddenly feel uninspired (ie, overwhelmed by my lack of interest in buying clothes + suffocated by the big mass of people in the shop). So I didn’t buy anything. I think I may give online shopping a go, although I am always concerned about the hassle of having to return items if they don’t fit, and all of that…
Thank god I didn’t give myself any more resolutions to fulfill, I think I know myself by now… 
I will try to update in a monthly basis and maybe by the summer my nails will look a bit more decent…
My nails as of 21.01.12
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The A33 is the main road from Basingstoke to Reading. We use that road quite often. To go to Reading, to take the M4 or just for pure pleasure to try the many pubs that populate that road and the surroundings.
So far we’ve tried three.
This is a really nice restaurant. On Sundays they have the typical Sunday roast and from what I remember it is quite a generous size and tasty. And on normal days they divide the restaurant into two different areas, a proper sit down area with a full restaurant menu (a tad pricey, but good quality) and a more informal order-at-the-bar area with more pub-grub food (cheaper and good too)
The actual restaurant is also very nice, nice old building with a real mill, by the river Loddon and a few open fires inside. Really nice and cosy, especially in winter.
This is a really posh restaurant. We had been in Reading one morning and on our way back to Basingstoke we decided to stop at the first pub that we found. And the Wellington Arms was the first one we came across! The first thing that struck us was the clientele… Have you watched Downton Abbey? Remember the scenes when they go hunting? Well, yes, that’s what everyone was wearing… We felt so out of place! But I must say that the place was really nice, decorated very tastefully. And the food was very good too, but it was extremely pricey. It’s the kind of place that I would be very happy to go to if I was a higher class middle age woman who lunches
This is the latest one that we’ve tried. It was good, although not as good as the other two. It had more of a “local pub” feeling, and the seating down area of the restaurant was completely empty. We were the only ones in there. Sometimes you wonder why that is… The food was okay and reasonable priced, but it still didn’t feel amazing. I suppose it would be more than good enough as your local pub, the place that you visit regularly and sometimes you decide to grab some grub. But it is not somewhere that I will especially visit to eat there again.
PS: This is my 200th post on my blog! Congratulations to myself!
It seems that I will be spending my birthday in Colombia. I will be there for a week for work at the end of February.
To be honest, I didn’t fancy going at all. We leave on a Sunday at silly o’clock, arrive in Colombia in the evening and start work on the Monday morning for the next 5 days non-stop. Then we get a few hours free of the next Saturday morning, get the flight back and arrive in London again on the Sunday in the afternoon. It’s going to be a killer…
The other negative is that the reason that I am going is because they want me to act as an interpreter. I have told them again and again that I am not comfortable doing that. Several reasons, the most important one being the fact that all the work-related vocabulary that I know I learnt in English, I do not know those words and phrases in Spanish and trying to get me to translate would be as useful as having a dictionary with you – I may get the immediate translation but it may not make much sense in the context.
In addition to all of this, our parent company has got very strict rules when it comes to travelling to certain countries. They have put Colombia under “amber category”, which means that they don’t think it’s a safe place to go to, so they have put all of these systems in place that seem a bit ridiculous to me. For example, all taxis have to be booked by the local office and we are not allowed to walk around on our own, least of all at certain times of the day.
But I’ve started to come around it. Now that the tickets are booked and I have no way of getting out of it, I am trying to see the positives.
To start, we are travelling business class and this is going to br my first time ever! (and probably the last time too, judging by the prices). The plane and the service looks awesome and I am kind of hoping that those 11 hours fly by quickly (forgive the pun). I also have a window seat in all four flights (London-Paris, Paris-Bogotá, Bogotá-Paris and Paris-London). And the on-board entertainment looks good (I’ve already checked the films, and they have “Melancholia“, which I’m looking forward to watching)
Whilst in Bogotá I know that we will be looked after by the local office, and they will probably take us to decent restaurants and all, and with it being my birthday while we are there, I am pretty sure that it will be fun.
And the third positive about the whole thing is that I will be getting two or three days off in lieu.. Not bad
I suppose I will write a bit more about the trip after it’s happened; hopefully I’ll get to take a few pictures!
