The online home of Guy Laister, containing news of past, current and future activities as well as photo’s of trips far and wide. I was born in South Africa with the benefit of Her Majesty’s passport, and I am currently living in Surrey with my wife. I am a civil/environmental engineer and a founding director of an engineering consultancy in London.
It is a Laister/Kitching family affair this year, as Sue and Barry fly out to the UK on Wednesday night/Thursday morning. Murray and JC will join us on Christmas day at Ewell Castle for a proper (cold) Christmas celebration.
Thanks to the Maxwell clan for pre-Christmas Christmas lunch on the 5th - another great night at James/Lukasz’.
Merry Christmas to everyone.
Always useful/good to hear positive stories and short-cuts to deal with life’s admin pile. For those of you who deal with BT in the UK, you will know the hassle involved. I recently had issues with my BT line package, and charges erroneously being added to my account. Again, those of you who deal with BT will know that they are not shy when they charge your account! No need to phone BT any more, rather use their ‘Live chat’ function. All you need to do is long onto the BT website and wait for an operator to text (took me 9 minutes, and a 9 minutes much better served than holding a phone to my ear). I had my problem sorted in 3 replies and about 5 minutes. Add no charge for the ‘phone call’. Very efficient service, and far better than calling them.
Farewell to The Dodger, as he has set flight to the land Down Under. This weekend was dominated by farewells, firstly on Friday night at The Goat in Clapham with the whole crew, followed by a cheeky fines meeting at Wimbledon Hockey Club - great bunch of blokes in the 4’s and 5’s, and it was an honour to be invited out of semi-retirement to chair the fines. There are photo’s from Friday night on Roger’s camera, so I will post them when Dodge has a chance to email.
By the way, I have turned comments off as it was a breeding ground for spam, and one of the reasons I stopped writing posts was because I spent most of my time sifting through comments to weed out spam. I know there must be a wordpress solution so when I find it I will open the platform for public abuse again.
2009 has been a quiet year, with only a few small trips. The social year has been defined by triathlon a Roger and I spent 2009 effectively goading each other into longer distances, harder races and just generally a level of training my body has never seen before. Competitive? Who us? Unfortunately we have established that we are WOEFULLY short of talent so the times haven’t got much faster! The training has however meant, that races have become more enjoyable. Although not the last race on the 2009 calender, the highlight was no doubt the Ironman 70.3 in Switzerland where we tackled a 1.9km swim in Lake Zurich, a 90km bike ride through the Swiss Alps, and a 21.1km run alongside the lake. It was nearly the end of me but epic at the same time. With the right opportunity I would do more 70.3 events, but Switzerland taught me that a full Ironman is beyond my capabilities.
Photo’s from Ironman 70.3 have been uploaded to my Flickr account
I’ve uploaded more from other events, including the Reading Half marathon (my first), Burnham Beeches Half marathon and the Hever Castle triathlon as well.
So, over a year has passed, and its about time that the site was resurrected. The previous post serves as a fitting launch pad, as clearly I was wrong, and the recession has been deep, which has meant a tiring year running a small construction-industry related business. The good news is that we are thus far been left unscathed by the banking crisis, and with a recent serious up-turn in workload thee is bright light at the end of the tunnel. The national election next year will have a major bearing on prosperity in 2010 so we are not getting ahead of ourselves yet.
I’m with Peter Jones on this one - the world has been talked into thinking there is a credit crunch. Is it too much to ask that we have a single day without financial news, maybe tomorrow. All of a sudden everyone in the world is an expert in finance. Just like 5 years ago everyone became an expert in property - haha. Surprise, surprise the buy-to-let market fell apart, who would have thought? And after years of record profits and bonuses in the City, the bottom has fallen out of the market. Just like the dot-com boom.
I have already started speculating what the next ‘big thing’ will be only to bring the market to it’s knees again in 2015.
Not me, but Liam Neeson….. I know we are uber slow on the movie circuit but we got round to watching ‘Taken‘ last night - too cool for school. Not a movie for those of you who like to analyse, assess acting performances, judge the artistic merit, etc, but if you are like me and simply want to be entertained go watch this movie.
And it’s nearly time for Bond! Saw the trailer last night, can’t wait.
BTW, what’s the deal with High School Muscial 3? I haven’t seen either of the previous 2 and didn’t know they were a big hit, but London was kicking off of on Tuesday night for the premier. Time to get out more perhaps.
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Most of you will have seen either or both Green and Black Mamba, series’ of short satirical sketches based on South African history and politics. Back Mamba is now currently running at the Wimbledon Theatre (The Studio). We caught the opening night performance, and at £12 it is well worth a look. Ben Voss’s impersonation of the health minister being interviewed by Derick Twats on Carte Blacnche is very good. Check out the Wimbledon Theatre website.
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LONG long overdue. So overdue. I wrote this soon after the wedding and then forgot to upload it. Rather late than never they say……….. Read the rest of this entry »
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