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!)
Streets of London
Thursday 25 January 2007
Okay, okay, stop with the clamouring already.

Admittedly, one e-mail does not a clamour make, however, the admonition above is a method of making myself look popular. Did it work?

I went to London some time ago. It was nothing more than a shopping trip. While there, I managed to overload my poor bag (let alone my back) with more than 25kgs worth of goodies (mostly of a food nature, though I will admit to having been left in a Boots-coma for about 2hours on Saturday morning. I’m not sure what happened, but it felt good.

Saturday afternoon was spent desultorily wandering around the dregs of the January sales. I could speak to people!!! It was a novel experience. I picked up the nearest thing to me and tapped some helpful person (dressed in black, with a name badge) on the shoulder just so I could ask for “this” in size 14. No, 16. And how about a beige? Oh, no, make that a black.

It was marvellous in ways I can’t even begin to effervesce.

(there was another word, but lord knows my vocab chip is blinking again)

I did decide, however, that I have to stay in Prague for longer (!) to learn my “lesson”. The queues still upset me to the point where I only spent £20 on clothes. Yes. Pathetic isn’t it? Gone are the days when I would happily chuck one bad paycheck after another. Oh no…hang on…it just about IS my paycheck.

We save the world, yet get no recognition for it. You bastards.

After a trip home and a quick smart change (quick, into smart – follow people, follow!) I was off out again to meet M. M gave me a mission. Since I’ve already reached double O status (work on an avian influenza mission got that one sorted PDQ) the terms were easy, straightforward, and topple many an evil dictator.

If, that is, an evil dictator was, for instance, sitting in the uppermost reaches of the Vaudeville theatre, and leaned too far out of his chair to look at the performers climbed up the scaffolding on the stage, and accidentally toppled.

Thankfully, that didn’t happen, and instead Stomp was brilliant. The guy’s were droolworthy (thanks to M, who managed to find us seats that didn’t require oxygen) with their arms/shoulders (good LORD, I pine for the human anatomy) and the rhythms so, rhythmic (think these through Nomes, what have I told you?). I haven’t been involved in so much audience participation since I was last a pantomime. I think I was 6. Our Saturday night crowd refused to let the poor (exhausted and sweaty) players off the stage, we clamoured, we stomped our feet, we clapped our red-raw hands (percussion instrument of choice, for us in the gloom).

After the show was the after-party…(according to a song, which I now have earwormed into my head) which was spent at a bar/club in Convent Garden somewhere (names, places, all sketchy). After throwing M into the clutches of an 18 year old Keira Knightley look alike (“go over there!” - 10s delay - “oh my god…that was quick…what ARE the texture of her tonsils then, M?!” – I swear to god I’ve never seen anyone work so fast with such success. Even ME!!!) I then congratulated half of the party on their stunning costumes (1930’s) had my picture taken with Charlie Chaplin (birthday boy) including the typical “kiss on the cheek from a gorgeous stranger” photo (er, the gorgeous stranger being me – sheesh!) pose, did the whole “I liked that song, but not the one before that” signed communication thing with the DJ and then continued to freak out at the fact I was in a room filled with straight people.

Until two of the girls from the 1930’s party started snogging – then I felt much more at home.

Ralph Macchio (as he would be now, not as he was then) grabbed me for a spin on the floor. We spun. Then I ran off (read: scampered) to get free lollipops from the lovely lady in the girls loo and vodka from the lovely ladies at the bar.

I downed a few vodkas along to an inner chorus line of “feel the fear and do it anyway!” and “look Nomes, you’re in a city in which you don’t live, noone will know….” And “good lord, what happened to maneater Nomes?” and “I hope that when I blog this, my parents pretend not to read this one as well!”.
Hi. My name’ Naomi, and I’m terrified of guys.

I danced. We snogged. I got tonsillitis. ‘Nuff said.

M hauled me away from the Albanian (I travel to London and end up with an Albanian!?) when the lights came up (wise move, WISE move!) and we ran for the N175927. Well, a night bus anyway.

About a hundred hours later (and many thoughts along the lines of “hold it in, dear god, please hold it in” telepathically delivered to the swaying who had full stomachs of liquor) I got to the flat. And slept in – deliciously.

Yes, you CAN sleep deliciously. I did. So much so that the car alarm that went off across the road failed to alert me to the fact that my brothers bike was being stolen.

Hi. My name’s Naomi, and I’m oblivious. (Dad, you are FORBIDDEN to comment)

Following a long sojourn around a supermarket larger than a city (Sainsbury’s, how do we love thee? Let me count the ways!) I took myself via tram, ferry, hovercraft, tube, bus and bike to the airport to go back to Prague.

I thought I’d managed to avoid the check-in-blues. Ha ha ha ha! My mistake. I must’ve been in some sort of time warp or trans-european jetlag. They hit the next day. On the bus.

We LOVE tears on the bus. Welcome home.


Thanks to here. You people need to buy me a camera!

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posted by Nomes @ Thursday, January 25, 2007  
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