Contracts

Every now and then I come across something which to me just seems unfair. And I've decided to complain about it here. I realise this will do no good but at least I get to vent.

It has never crossed my mind that I could/should renegotiate a contract. But apparently this is quite a normal thing for people to do. I don't understand how this is fair. Why should some members of the same team/same company have a better deal because they had the knowledge/confidence to ask? If it's something the company agrees to why wouldn't it become applicable across the whole of the relevant sector of the company? This strikes me as some kind of discrimination towards people with differing personality types. I suffer from depression and although I apparently outwardly come across as confident and sociable, I have a total inability to judge my own worth. To me I will always just feel lucky that I got offered a job, petrified for the entire notice period that I'm serving at my previous employer that I will turn up at the new job only to be told they made a mistake and the contract I signed wasn't valid or some variation thereof. The idea of challenging my offer and trying to enhance it fills me with fear that they will turn round and rescind the offer. Stranding me in the current situation I am trying to escape for another indeterminate amount of time whilst persisting with the painful process that is job hunting. The swatting up for questions you only ever need to know the answer to in an interview, trying to figure out how to get the time off to attend without eating up all the holiday you have which you rightly intended to use for an actual break which you no doubt need and the failures which make you feel like there is no hope for you.

So here I am with not as high pay as I could have garnered and a longer notice period, stricter working hours and who knows what else, than my colleagues.

It shouldn't have to be like this should it?

Marrakech

So my mother an I went to Marrakech this summer. This is a map of our walk from our accommodation. (Included so anyone staying in the similar area will give it a go instead of getting a taxi! :) )

It was quite pleasant walk and we never felt unsafe. Having said that my mother did have her purse taken from her bag but that was possibly in the souks, and mostly her fault as she had it in a backpack pocket! It probably only took 30 mins if that. 

 The main square, Jemaa el-Fnaa, is bustling and slightly intimidating, lots of people trying to get your attention to buy their goods or eat at their stall. Our first day we just chilled out and explored the pool on the complex. 

L'atelier Faim d'Epices - Website - Trip Advisor (550Dhs - £42 approx.)

 Our second day I'd booked us into a cooking class, they picked us up from a location near to out accommodation and drove us out of the city to their kitchens, it was nice to see what the general area was like and see more locals going about their day.

We enjoyed chatting to the other people on the course and getting tips from the host about purchasing Argan oil and Saffron. Then we moved onto some cooking, all the difficult parts were done by the staff so even though our dish (Tajine of Lamb with Prunes) was marked on their website as difficult, it really wasn't. It was extremely well thought out, with colour coded pots so you knew you were adding the correct thing. I can't leave a recipe alone so I was adding half of anything I didn't like the smell off ;) Whilst the tajine cooked we were shown how to make the bread which we got to do the whole process for. Once cooked we all sat to eat together with some salads (which we were shown how to prepare and given the recipes for but didn't actually do ourselves)

Saadian Tombs (10Dhs  - 80p approx.)
Quite a small place tucked away, the locals were happy to help you find your way but did try to talk you into their shops. I don't know why they think that's going to help them, maybe not everyone is a stone cold as I ;).

The Tombs were very picturesque and game me an opportunity to test out my camera, mum bough her DSLR with her but I think we agreed that mine was better suited to being a tourist, too many lense changes required to get the shots as mine had a better range of zoom available.

We then popped round the corner to
El Badi Palace (10Dhs  - 80p approx.)
On entering we got accosted by a 'tour guide' trying to persuade us to have him give us a tour, mum seemed tempted but I was already fed up of the haggling culture and decided anyone that keen was trying to rip us off, turns out he wanted to charge us 300Dhs to give us a tour and started trying to call me selfish for not taking it when my mother was interested (before she heard the price that is!), at £26 I'd suggest everyone give this man a wide birth even in a bartering culture that seem like a high starting point. He then went on to postulate that if we dared follow him around and listen in on him giving another tour then he would beat me up. There is no signage but you can probably figure out most of what's going on, and it's just interesting to look at. Over to the left there is a building with some stairs to get up for a roof view, and across the courtyard from that there is a section with some underground tunnels. Worth noting although there are signs for toilets they are still under construction ;)

We went home and had a swim then walked back into the madina for dinner. I think this meal came to around £12 for us both and the calamari was really good.

 To mark the middle of our holiday we went to the new town area to an asian restaurant, Katsura - Trip Advisor, Sushi for me, Thai for mum and nutella pancake wraps for desert (okay they look better than they tasted but it's the novelty that counts ;) ).

This is a photo from Ali Ben Youssef Madrasa (including a ticket to Museum of Marrakesh 60Dhs - 50Dhs each otherwise), was quite interesting to see the layout of all the bedrooms and the architecture was beautiful.

 Museum of Marrakesh
Not a lot to look at, especially if you don't know french but there was more lovely architecture and I enjoyed the local art work.

The Souks were bustling and if you dared look at anything then you became a target. I am possibly being a bit negative about these area as I hate being hassled, or even spoken to lol. A lot of the shops seemed to have the same items in.

 Mum and I had a bit of a go at belly dancing at Le Tanjia - Website - Trip Advisor where we also had a very nice and huge meal. We got the mixed salads and a pigeon pastry (which was v nice but very sweet and dusted in sugar) for starters. Then I had the chicken and honey tajine and mum went for meat skewer and veg tajine which was huge. Enough couscous for a family of 4. The staff were lovely and even walked me to a cash point as they didn't take card.

It seems only fair to mention Siad, who put so much effort into getting us to eat at the restaurant he was working for... or maybe he was just hoping I was easy ;).

Above is mum and I on what we thought was our last morning in Marrakech don't we look relaxed and ready to leave ;) After this very nice breakfast we went to Jardin Majorelle (the restaurant/cafe was just on the corner along from the road you go down to get to the garden.)

The Garden was very nice but the price had gone up from what it said in the guide book. Not entirely sure it warranted the price, I just hope they do something good with the money.

We then went back to the apartment and chilled for a bit before getting a taxi in good time to get to the airport... or so we thought, little did we know that we were in one of two countries that change the clocks for ramadan, so we were actually an hour later than we thought :/ In England this would have been fine as we still got to the airport 50 mins before the flight, but not in Marrakech, their check in desks close an hour before the flight. Even a woman with only hand luggage was unable to get on and she only needed to get through the departure gate as she had already been stamped at the desk and had just been filling in the obligatory 'same info you gave us on the way in' form so even the departure lounge can't be accessed with less than an hour remaining... Nothing like making sure all the tourists have time to shop hey! Once our error had been pointed out to us, I was distraught, I'd never missed a plane! Why did no one tell us about the time change! We got told to go to the desk. Off we went hoping to beg our way on... no one at the desk... back to the line, they insist someone is at the desk... definitely no one on the desk, then some other helpful mislayed passenger informs us they are referring to the swiss air desk, even thought there is an easy jet desk and we were flying with easy jet. Got told next flight was the following day... and we couldn't be booked on for another 40 mins, until our plane had actually departed, and it would be significantly cheaper if we paid in local currency cash... I have no idea how that can be the case as surely tickets cost a set price, apparently not! Fortunately we were able to stay another night in our accommodation and our host very kindly gave us the night free, so it could have been a lot worse.

All in all, a great holiday but I don't think it's the place for me. Cultural differences being too much hehe.

Dating Websites

Was looking at joining some other dating sites recently as getting a bit bored of the ones I use. The cost of them is shocking though! And worse yet, they describe themselves as free, but when you use it in free mode you are unable to send or read messages?!?!?! That is not free. http://www.mysinglefriend.com is £28 a month, £18.33 a month for 3 months or £13.17 a month for 6 months. The people who own it much be rolling in it that is a huge amount!

Oasis.com pretends to be free right up to the point you have already created an account and then hits you with a 'credit' concept where by you have 110 credits to start and it costs 100 to request to add someone as a contact (aka message them). So it's a site where you can send 1 free message. Excellent.

My mother has wanted me to write a dating site for ages now (Mostly so she can have the first pick of the bunch I suspect) Extremely tempted right now! The only decent site that is genuinely free that I've found is http://www.okcupid.com/ which is my long term favourite.

New toys

I have recently had the simultaneous erosion in functionality of both my phone and my netbook. Thus had the pleasure of buying new ones. :) 

My new netbook replacement is the transformer tf101. Which has a touch screen. Now when I try to use the old netbook to transfer over files etc I keep trying to touch the screen to do things, funny how fast you get used to a new way. 

My other new toy is the Sony Xperia U. Which came unlocked for a fab cost and has a nice light along the bottom which you can set up to illuminate different colours for different alerts. Makes me happy

2011 11 28

Decidedly still not feeling very well today... Head still feels a bit woosy and I am feeling quite hot. (Got a cold on Friday and still suffering) I would cite my short attention span but I think that is common across non cold affected days also :/ Wouldn't it be nice to just be perfect. Got some semi interesting bits of work waiting in the wings too, if I can just get some of the mundane stuff over with to get to them.


Also want to see 'Out of time' at cinema on Wed but so far not found anyone to go with me. Still got quite a bit of tidying to do before party, but rest of alcohol coming tonight.


Left the boiler on last night so I can have a shower and do washing up today. (It wakes me up in the night) Decided to go for a ear plug strategy but ended up being unable to sleep as the ear plugs were uncomfortable, would have been better off without and just turning boiler off when it woke me up!

2011 09 16

Today is all about clock watching, watching my nodding sheep agree with me and being very very bored.

2011 09 17

2011 09 18

2011 09 19

Thursday

Am now more in control of my domain name which I'm quite excited about (moved it away from a hosting company and now use an online company to do the registering but get to change the settings myself by logging on.). It does mean until I sort out a home webserver and a new webpage there will be nothing to look at on my webpage but I don't think anyone went there anyway!

Woke up with a headache this morning :( nearly took the day off work but decided it wasn't bad enough. Don't think my brain is quite working right though, it feels a bit fluffy. Mind you it's been like that for a few days now. Defiantly not performing at optimum! Haven't been being woken up by my grandparents alarm clock the past few days though so I can't blame them. Just need to make more of an effort to get to bed at a reasonable time :(. 

Weekend.

So this weekend has been fairly productive. Took my cousins Millie(12) and Keir(11) bowling with my brother Thomas for support. Think they both enjoyed it, Keir lacked the patience required to improve and did end up coming last, and we did have to put the bumpers up which was a shame. Tom won both games and Millie and I took turns being second.

After some lunch Keir was whisked away to the campsite where he is staying for the next week. I was then left with some time to move some things round my room under the title of 'tidying'. We were also without power for about an hour as a tree was knocking against the supply cables and so EDF had to shut the power off whilst they sorted out the tree, this did minimise my distractions for a while. We then had Millies friend from next door over and invited her to stay for the a Chinese take out. (Nan and Grandad had gone out to a do.) They both jumped into my car as I was going to order the Chinese so they kept me amused whilst I was waiting for the food to be cooked. Chinese wasn't as good as usual, they(The Royal Taste) seemed to have overcooked the rice. I prefer the noodles though so I wasn't affected. My aunt Penny managed to knock over her drink onto the duck though. Duck definitely being the highlight of the meal. We managed to save most of it though!

Then today I got some washing done and hung out, then went to the gym for my induction and was introduced to the powerplate, had been eyeing them up for months but hadn't got round to asking how to use them and starting at a new gym seemed like the ideal time. I then came home and showered and grabbed some lunch. Then said bye to Millie who was also off to camp.Quite jealous of them both sounds like they will be doing some great things, Keir gets to stay overnight on a boat in the Thames, and Millie gets to go on a day trip to France.Then I went to Lakeside shopping centre to spend yet more money. En-route as I sailed past the junction I should have taken it occurred to me that I normally took my sat nav with me to Lakeside. This resulted on the trip being slightly longer than intended as I ended up taking a slightly longer route there. Then in an attempt to save time(It was 3pm and stores close at 5pm!) I attempted to park close to Primark (my primary target) but instead ended up being trapped into going into a multi-story down the end I frequent least! Doh! Rushed around Primark picking up everything there was a chance might look good and got in the queue, an hour and £130 later I was moving on to Next where I got a fab dress and some much needed jeans. I must confess the jeans are a wee bit tight, but I can get into them and I can walk, what more do I need ?!?!  Had a quick look in New Look, Debenhams, JDSports (bought a gym top) and Sports Direct and my time was up! Went home and my uncle David was just back from dropping Millie off at camp so got him to look at my car which had been sounding different. Apparently I probably need a new back box, more money! Went in and tried all the clothes on and showed Penny and my Nanna Dawn. Have isolated about half the Primark goods to return so hopefully should be able to recoup £70 at least. Have added them to the pile of things I need to take back next weekend. Then set about folding things into draws. Had leftover Chinese for dinner(Healthy honest *guilty look*) then resumed my folding.

Could do with a longer weekend. Have put things in bag so I can go to gym tomorrow. Can't decide if I should go to one in London (Virgin doing a month where you can go to any of their gyms) or just stick to a local one. May as well make most of London one I guess.