The Adventure Continues...

Rants, raves and random observations from an itinerant epidemiologist.

  
100 in 1000
  1. Spend a week up a mountain learning to ski
  2. Visit Karoline's place in Moravia
  3. Hold a conversation in Czech (only)
  4. Drink 500ml of each of the following beers:
    1. Pilsner
    2. Staroprammen
    3. Budvar
    4. Velke Popovice
    5. U Fleku
    6. Gambrinus
    7. Krusovice
  5. Respond to at least one GOARN request (WHO and MSF are also acceptable)
  6. Travel across the Atlantic
  7. Return to South America
  8. Read a book to, or with, an impressionably aged child
  9. Participate in one NanoWriMo Challenge and come within at least 10,000 words of the goal length
  10. Have my nose pierced
  11. Have my next tattoo drawn
  12. Purchase the perfect jeans (x 2 pairs)
  13. Attend a spin class 3 times a week for 8 consecutive weeks
  14. Bake Viv's cheesecake
  15. Make David's casserole
  16. Make David's Chicken Cashew-nut Stirfry
  17. Invite 4 people who don't know one another too well to dinner
  18. Ride from Vienna to Venice on a motorbike (pillion acceptable, those less desirable)
  19. Attend a book group for at least two books
  20. Go on a choir weekend (learn and perform difficult piece in two/three days)
  21. Visit Madame Tussaud's (in London)
  22. Take an architecture appreciation course
  23. Join an all-girl group and sing a solo
  24. Publish in a scientific journal (top two authors)
  25. Cook a duck or other 'waterfowl'.
  26. Locate the Al-Timimi's from Doha Veterinary Practise
  27. Have a pedicure
  28. Maintain a Brazilian (ouch) for three months.
  29. Find a trustworthy Czech hairdresser
  30. Treat my inner-6-year-old twice a week (at least)
  31. Do the liver-cleansing diet properly (12 weeks)
  32. Don't eat out for one month
  33. Find a flat and flatmate
  34. Purchase one Joseph sweater
  35. Purchase one of the following pairs of designer shoes (they MUST also be COMFORTABLE, and be able to be worn with 4 different outfits and 2 types of occasion): Jimmy Choos, Manolo Blahniks, Christian Louboutin (Ebay or 2nd hand are acceptable)
  36. Send 5 books to the booksphere and track them.
  37. Go hanggliding
  38. Read 10 'classic' books (from 1001 Books to Read before you Die)
    1. Moll Flanders
    2. Everything is illuminated
    3. Madam Bovary
    4. Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintainance
    5. Catch-22
    6. Odysseus
    7. On the Road
  1. Run (non-stop!) for 5kms outside (preferably in a street race thingy)
  2. Send Christmas Cards on time
  3. Make a collage/mural out of street lights on my wall
  4. Buy a bed, build it, and sleep soundly in it
  5. Go to Africa
  6. Host an 'event' (classified as and when)
  7. Organise a 30th Birthday Party
  8. Wear a costume
  9. Sing on stage
  10. Buy a painting that evokes memories of Prague (cannot involve queues!)
  11. Learn a god-damned card game that stays in my memory (other than fish/snap)
  12. See sunrise. Be sober. Have woken for it. Excludes months Nov-Mar
  13. Take a walk and flip coins at each intersection
  14. Win something
  15. Draft a will
  16. Take a roadtrip
  17. Go to Italy already
  18. Sea Kayak around Abel Tasman Park (NZ)
  19. Get plants
  20. Take a train to another Eastern European Destination (accession countries are acceptable) alone preferably.
  21. Get UK to give me a provisional motorcyclists license and simultaneously get a 'card' license.
  22. Go SCUBA diving again - at least two dives lasting 30mins each.
  23. Go to a dentist. *sigh*
  24. Do a Czech Wine Trail. And live to tell the tale
  25. Make an 'outbreak emergency kit'.
  26. Go to bed prior to 11pm every night (inc weekends) for four consecutive weeks.
  27. Marvel over lack of tiredness
  28. Dine at a Gordon Ramsey restaurant (or Nobu)- preferably for free.
  29. Bet on the nags
  30. Do something for charity (applying and getting a 'red card' will count)
  31. Walk along the Champs Elysee
  32. Do 100 sit ups in a row
  33. Do 50 pressups (arms in tight)
  34. Make branston pickle (or nearest substitute)
  35. Cook something 'new' and 'adventurous' at least once a month
  36. Find a mentor
  37. Be a mentor
  38. Learn what mentoring is all about
  39. Meet an online person in real life
  40. Resist the flirt. Once. Just one night. It's okay if people don't immediately succumb to my natural charm. Really it is.
  41. Spend time at a spa (spa towns in the CR don't count)
  42. Send a care package to someone
  43. Get a Tata Bojs CD
  44. Take a French/German/Dutch course and SPEAK THE DAMNED LANGUAGE WHEN I HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY EVEN THOUGH IT MAKES ME SOUND LIKE AN IDIOT!
  45. Order new contact lenses.
  46. Make a list of things I take with me when I pack for different occasions
  47. Eat lobster. Prepared by someone else.
  48. Back up the blog
  49. Put everything onto an external hard drive
  50. Find a DDR mat and console and 'dance, I say dance!'�
  51. Go to the beach and lie on the warm sand. For an hour. (with sunscreen on, natch)
  52. Take and complete a course in either: Tango, Salsa or Flamenco
  53. Join the Municipal Library of Prague
  54. Move to another country
  55. Go to a live concert of a band I actually like
  56. Pay off debts (student loan excl.)
  57. Send thank you cards for every gift I receive (other than the gift of happiness, blah blah blah).
  58. Get an agent (literary or theatre)
  59. Go to a sports bar without cringing, by personal choice
  60. Ride a rollercoaster
  61. Hold a snake
  62. Spend a day wandering around a museum (not art gallery!)
This one's for Matt
Monday, 31 October 2005
And you can’t get a bigger shout out than that! J

There is possibly nothing more impressive than a good workman.

I am referring, of course (what were YOU thinking?), to the crew of such that have been working on the street outside my bedroom window for the last three weeks. I haven’t yet shown you a photo of the streets in the old town, but they’re essentially made out of mismatched bricks that are held in place with sand. Crews of men have managed to prise bricks from a channel in the middle of the road, do something beneath the road and are now in the process of replacing the bricks. IN EXACTLY THE RIGHT PLACES!!!

Absolutely incredible.

There is a downside (you knew it was coming): I think the bricks are all held in place with pressure. Consequently, as the ‘street’ paving bricks have been removed, the ‘footpath’ paving bricks are loosening and coming out too. Thus explaining the sick sense of absolute certainty in my stomach, that each excursion in high-heels will end with my leg on the x-ray table at the nemocnice (neh-mots-neets-eh = hospital).
I’m also amazed by these gentlemen’s capacity for multitasking. Despite only working in cohorts of 3, they manage to throw bricks into the metal skip (repeatedly, one must assume they recycle, otherwise the street would shrink), hit the ground with a heavy thing and chisel an obelisk. Okay, so the last might not be EXACTLY what they’re up to, but that’s what it sounds like. And they manage to do this all simultaneously. Which makes for a fantastically percussive (and persuasive) alarm clock, especially when this particular rhapsody occurs an hour before my more melodic alarm clock is set to rouse me.
I’m not sure I’m ever going to be invited to Jan and Ron’s place again after Thursday night. They have an astonishing DVD collection, including karaoke DVD’s. The neighbours must have been appalled at the voices of 8 queen’s and 2 princesses voices (w?)ringing out “I wanna dance with somebody!”, and other great Whitney classics.
The taxi company that answers when you call 257 257 257, (I can’t remember the name of the company!) tells you the make and the colour of the car that will pick you up – apparently for safety as well as accounting purposes. This is all very well if you can distinguish between European cars but after two bottles of Moravian red, a green Skoda Alicante and a Black Mercedes 200s are easily confused. That was my excuse anyway.
The dance floors are interesting places in Prague. Not upon which BE, but to WATCH. There’s a great deal of variety in dancing ‘styles’ (if one can afford such magnanimity of expression), yet it’s clear that everyone is ‘wanting to dance with somebody’ (indeed). Consequently, I spent a large portion of Friday evening watching with amusement and pity, while English stag-party-attendees attempted to pick up scowling, pointily-dancing women who were so absorbed in something else that their arrhythmic flailing limbs threatened the lad’s beer. So caught up was I, in this perpetuation of dashed hop(e)s, that I forgot to dance. I even forgot to drink. I KNOW!!?
After my stuff (my shoes…my beautiful boots…*lament*) was stored in Vlad and Marta’s garage, I had the pleasure of meeting my boss’s two eldest sons, drinking vodka (neat, ouch!) and having dinner with them all. The two boys understand my position as the ‘slow’ one in the family, taking pains to point out my stop on the metro (as I was so engrossed in the opposite wall that I’d neglected to notice). They’re lovely…and assure me that we’ll hang out. They’ve both confessed to enjoying cooking, have recently installed an oven in their flat (therefore it’s all a bit of a novelty) so they’re kindmeaning phrase will no doubt be hideously (for them) prophetic. I’m not sure they realise this yet…
Once I returned to town, and Marketa to the flat (she teaches at crazy hours), we went down to Erra to see the costumes worn by the boys and girls there. Everyone was in fine fetters (what exactly DOES that mean? Someone please research and report back…) so we stayed there until it closed, then moved around the corner to “Friends”, a gay dance bar. No pointy-dancing scowling women here, and most people were already coupled up, so the oppressive scent of desperation was thankfully absent as well! I met a few native-English speakers who’ve been living here for some time – who have promised to look after me with regards to ANYTHING (including, most importantly, books and DVD’s). Surprise of the night? An incredibly delicate tongue piercing, invisible to the eye, in Tomáš’s tongue. *mwah*
posted by Nomes @ Monday, October 31, 2005  
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