2009 June | The Adventures of Scribbleboy

Archive for June, 2009

Jun

Finance May, The Gripping Conclusion

By Scribbleboy 1 Comment

Categories: Life List and Money

In March I made you a promise. I’d quit the overdrafts and cut back on my bank accounts. We’re now in June and I only have two accounts and for a short time last month I was even in the black. Once these two conditions were met I said that I’d make Finance Friday a less frequent event, so here are the last two weeks of May. From now on I’ll update you on a monthly basis.

Week commencing 18th May (blogged three times)

According to my bank statements I didn’t acquire any pennies this week, nor did I spend any pounds. This is contradicted by receipts, my memory and reality. Presumably I was spending loose change found strewn across my room, more than likely the £16 I couldn’t account for the week previous and also £55 that Frosty lent me.

End of Week Total: -£2,820

Week commencing 25th May (blogged twice)

Incoming:

£80 wages (from the traffic survey I mentioned in this post)
£10 from my Gran

Total: £90

Outgoing:

£57 food
£14 drink
£36 gifts
£55 repaid to Frosty

Total: £162

End of Month Total: -£2,892

Since Finance Friday is now only a monthly ordeal I might even start redrawing the graph, for this month however you get one last photo from the phone.

This is a snap of the sticker that Gingell was giving away to anyone on Twitter who promoted her blog over the weekend. If you didn’t follow the link yesterday, there’s no harm in taking a look today, especially as there’s a new post to read. This piece of Running from Zombies merchandise now takes pride of place on my music box just above my Wu-Tang Clan sticker (yes, their new album Chamber Music is out on Tuesday, going to reign my excitement in for now because I haven’t met anyone that feels the same way. If however you are hyped check out Fat Lace Magazine, a project Reg is involved with, to preview some of the tracks).

On the topic of merchandise, I’d like some input from you dearest reader. Would you like to see some scribbleboy.co.uk freebies? If so what kind of items and where can I buy them cheap? This is unlike anything I’ve done before on this blog, the closest I ever got was offering a free drink to anyone who came up with a creative swear word that wasn’t on my list of banned words for Lent. This was won by a man who works in bar and was therefore ultimately pointless. His name is Nick, I’m going to leave you with his winning submission;

donkeyrapingassmaster possibly not something in you’re vocabulary but soon will be when you start thinking about it, plus it rolls of the tongue quite well i have found when delivered as one word…….. try it and add a quid to the jar.

Jun

Under the Influence

By Scribbleboy 2 Comments

Categories: Life, Life List, Site and Writing

Some people say I haven’t been doing anything, I say my work is everywhere.*

Since I started this website in November two things have surprised me about blogging. First, how many people read my posts. In my head scribbleboy.co.uk is a dust covered tome tucked away in some corner of the internet bookcase read by half a dozen close friends. In reality hundreds of people paw over these pages in a forlorn search for Megan Fox’s breasts. I don’t have them. Nor do I have Alesha Dixon’s legs or Abbey Clancy’s ass. I am not some kind of pervert butcher. Those who aren’t on a quest to discover the choicest celebrity cuts, or at least pause in their search, seem to enjoy what I write. Sometimes they even leave comments.

The second thing that surprises me is that people don’t just read my words but are influenced and inspired by them. Maybe Gingell said it best when she said;

Scribs was the first (and only) person I knew to maintain a blog about nothing…which went some way in to convincing me I could start this one.

Yesterday marked her 50th post on Running from Zombies, congratulations.

Another blog that I helped out with, and maybe in some ways helped to inspire, is Sound Guy Guy. It’s been a while since Guy updated properly but it sounds like his computer is now fixed, so if you’ve finally caught up with his travel diary, too bad. If however, you’ve been suffering from a dearth of Megan Fox based content, rejoice (wasn’t July’s GQ enough for you?)

Frosty, who documented our adventures through Asia last year, is back in the blogging game with Work Hard Play Hard, a blog that takes a few pointers (and plugins) from this very site. Unlike last year’s thoroughly comprehensive travel blog this one will be a selection of edited highlights and will continue to document the adventures of Frosty long after he has returned to the UK.

Here’s an awesome time-lapse video of a Malaysian sunset that Frosty filmed. There’s plenty more footage, photos and observations like this on his blog.

A blog where my touch is at its most obvious is TWKM. It’s a blog about a guy trying to improve his life by completing challenges suggested by readers, or as Stanford puts it;

It’s a blatant rip off of scribbleboy, but I don’t care because it’s a good one.

Have a read of Stanford’s challenges here and suggest one of your own. He’s already suggested one for me to complete;

I challenge you to regularly answer an ad on gumtree, craiglist or similar websites, be it serious (which can lead to expanding your skills, social circle, or jobs) or funny (asking to swap a hexopus (an octopus with six legs) for a wii remote for instance).

Post results (with anonymity kept) for all to see.

Restriction is that it shouldn’t be rude or destructive to the ad poster.

I’ll be trying to do this weekly myself, depending on how realistic it is.

I will get onto this challenge (challenge 21) soon and blog my results.

To give you a little bit of context, Stanford is one of Antonio’s friend whom I met at Annabel and John’s New Year’s Eve party (I make the briefest of references to the party here). It was one of the most civilised parties I’ve been to in a long time with dips, fireworks and champagne at midnight. An indication of how classy it was is that Stanford’s pictures are in black and white. To gain a greater understanding of who Stanford is and the mind behind TWKM I recommend reading his about page. I also recommend reading the nine blog posts he’s made in just over a week. I don’t recommend comparing his output with mine, that will just make me look bad.

The penultimate blog I’m going to take a look at is FeatherQuest. This site is written and maintained by Holly, who you might remember made me eat apples all through April. Holly’s blog is about… well, I’ll let her say it;

This blog is based on the idea that I need to shape my life a little better. I need more control other than just random drifting and I had an idea that maybe my friends could set me challenges. Things I could do to improve my life or become a better person. I also aim to do reviews and general stuff to further my writing.

I have challenged her to get some of her written work published and to share the stages of her creative process with readers. This ties in nicely with the freelancing challenge I have set myself (challenge 1e).

I’m going to wrap this up with the most literal example of me inspiring a blog post;

This is a portrait of me by Antonio of hellocatfood.com that I’ve been meaning to post for a long time. You could read his blog but I wouldn’t recommend doing it too quickly because he updates even less regularly than I do. Before I sign off a few quick shout outs to blogs that are not tainted by me but are still worth reading;

Life Through God’s Sunglasses – My former housemate Baines’ site. What with her leaving and Gingell going out so much I have been forced to strike up conversations with inanimate objects. Will be worth keeping an eye on this page for updates of Baines’ adventures in Nepal.

Wheels on Fire – Ally keeps a record of how he is ritually humiliated and beaten by his girlfriend his training, sometimes this involves Gingell. I know I plugged it before but it’s come a long way since then and you can get a better idea of his weekly routine, plus it now has pictures.

Night,

Scribs

*If I was God this is the kind of thing I would say.

Jun

Escape From Sky School

By Scribbleboy 7 Comments

Categories: Life, Life List and Money

spy_school_portrait

On Friday 22nd May I replied to a vaguely worded job description posted on reed.co.uk. It read;

DO YOU HAVE THE X – FACTOR ?

Birmingham based Advertising company looking for individuals with a great attitude to work within a lively outgoing environment.

We are looking for people with that special X – Factor that can be trained up to join our busy PR team.

Must have excellent skills in customer service, confidence in their communication levels and be willing to be trained from scratch.

Full training given with opportunities for advancement for the career minded.

Please forward your CV to us for consideration.

Ten days later they made contact. According to the man on the phone I had enough “X – Factor” to get an interview. When I returned home there was an email from Scorpia Corporation informing me that I was also being considered for their “Business Development Program”. Further details could be found on their website, ANB Promotions.

This is when I became suspicious. Scorp Corp had placed the advert on behalf of The Cobra Group, part of which was ANB Promotions LTD, the company I would be working for if my interview was successful.*

Ignore that scorpions and cobras poison their prey, ignore that ANB stands for A New Beginning and sounds like a new-age cult, just look at the website. It looks very professional, with a lot of stock photography and very little detail. If I was part of an undercover operation this is the kind of site I’d put together to try and convince the public that we were legitimate. Look at their contact page, their location pulsates, as if at any moment it will vanish, and the man in the dark glasses looks nothing if not shady.

It was at this point that I wondered if ANB Promotions was my Credit Dauphin, if like Sydney Bristow in Alias I’d be recruited for what on the surface appears to be a banking corporation but in reality turns out to be a criminal organisation. When a business says they’re “a leading below-the-line direct marketing specialist representing an array of national and international clients” you wonder what you’re going to be asked to do. As it turned out it wasn’t ripping off jumpsuits to reveal slinky cocktail dresses and abseiling in heels, although it was seven floors up from a cross-dressing strip club.

ANB Promotions is located in Chinatown in Birmingham and provides other businesses with new customers. One of their most recent clients is Sky TV. Sky currently have 9.3 million customers in the UK and are aiming for 10m in the next five years. Here are some facts that make ANB happy; Sky’s closest competition is Virgin who are losing 2,500 customers a month. Some people are just trying to save money, others are unemployed, both are watching more tv and scrutinising how much they pay for this service.

I passed the first interview.

Then I completed the evaluation day.

Then I passed the second interview.

Then I was invited back for the training week.

Then, if I passed the end of week test, I would have a job selling pay tv door-to-door. This job would be commission based, so if no one bought Sky then I wouldn’t get paid.

The training week began on Monday at 9:30am with some of the most detailed paperwork I have seen in a long time. Hair colour, eye colour, height. A five year history of all employment, unemployment and education to the exact date with no omissions or overlaps. I was also required to arrive with eight different documents, including a reference I had to source and print over the weekend.

Afterwards we went into a boardroom. We were given talks and we took tests, I dubbed this part Sky School. Most days we didn’t finish until at least nine at night.

On Wednesday I got to go out in the field with my Sky Buddy Kristel, as I had done on the evaluation day. Kristel was born in Estonia, lived in Norway and has worked with ANB Promotions for over a year now. She has an amazing sense of humour, bought me an umbrella when it rained and is very good at what she does.

Then on Thursday we did the same again, only this time with less rain, flying bugs, and unfortunately, less sales. Every day each field representative is given a walk sheet (note my correct usage of technical terms there) detailing 100 names and addresses of people who can afford Sky tv but are currently with someone else. The average success rate is seven. For the entire week.

Friday I quit.

I met some great people and I learnt a lot about sales, psychology and body language but this job was not for me. In the short term I had to jump through a lot of hoops to make money that wouldn’t have covered my transport costs. Long term this job could have been quite profitable but I’d be trapped in a tiring, repetitious, mentally draining job.

The job hunt continues on Monday.

* A subsection of The Cobra Group is Appco Direct LTD. ANB Promotions and Lifestyle Advertising are both subsections of Appco Direct. While the email suggested I’d be working for ANB it turned out I was working for Lifestyle. Both companies share the same office and do exactly the same things, only with different coloured folders. Mine was red.

Jun

Going Barfuss at Trentham Gardens

By Scribbleboy 1 Comment

Categories: Life

barfuss_1

On Tuesday I went walking barefoot and it wasn’t because they repossessed my shoes, although surely this is only a matter of time. Gingell, Baines, Lauren and I spent an afternoon at Trentham Gardens and while we were there we tried out the Trentham Estate Barfuss Park (because writing barefoot in German just gives it that exotic edge).

The idea behind the barefoot walk comes from a German priest called Sebastian Kneipp who according to Trentham Gardens was born in the 1900s (as Kneipp lived between 1821 and 1897 they presumably mean the 19th century). Kneipp apparently cured himself of TB by bathing thrice weekly in the Danube during the winter of 1849. Trentham are a little less specific, stating that “having reputedly cured himself of a serious disease he became famous and the welfare practices that he developed became equally famous throughout Germany.”

The Catholic Encyclopedia says that since Kneipp’s death, “his methods are being lost sight of, showing that it was the personality of the man rather than his system which gave him fame. He discovered nothing new, but systematized what was known before and had been allowed to lapse.”

While walking barefoot is undoubtedly good for you, Kneipp’s contribution seems sketchy at best, this however is not the point. Anyone can have a walkway but it’s only with Kneipp as a scientific fig leaf that Trentham can claim to have a unique attraction (I still argue that anywhere can be a barefoot walk depending on your mentality).

Nonetheless, it was fun; a thousand metres of pathway, a variety of surfaces and no shoes. We walked over earth, sand and stone, traversed a tree branch bridge, passed through water and waded through mud. Sliding my feet in wide cresecent shapes one in front of the other gave me a chance to feel more of the textures, Gingell referring to this as my supermodel walk, her balance still somewhat impeded by the receding, yet ever present, T-virus.

On such a warm day the water and deep mud were cooling but the most rewarding textures were some of the gravels. Sun warmed grit allowed you to really stretch your feet and gain sensation in parts of your foot that rarely touch the floor. Gingell seemed to struggle with these, which I found odd for someone whom I think of as so active and outdoorsy. Lauren theorised that my legs are so thin that the nerve endings couldn’t squeeze all the way to the bottom. This is more than likely true.

While it’s an attraction that would be easy to mock, it was enjoyable and had a certain novelty value to it. If you happen to visit Trentham Gardens there’s no harm in trying it out, it’ll certainly be safer than going barfuss in Shelton.

[This may strike you as a somewhat odd blog post and I think you'd be right. Not only is it a strange topic but it also seems closer to a journal entry than one of my more traditional challenge-focused blog posts. Hopefully I'll write some more of these, I realise quite a lot happens that slips through the blog net. In other news, while I was almost up to my knees in thick, dark, suspiciously fragrant mud I got a phone call inviting me to a job interview. That, however, is a story for another day.]

Related Posts

Barefoot Adventure Part 1: Trentham

Jun

Don’t Ever Say I Don’t Love You

By Scribbleboy 2 Comments

Categories: Life

Just because I don’t talk to you, break the promises I make and ignore you for days, don’t ever say that. Just because I cheat on you with real life doesn’t mean I don’t love you, darling blog reader.

Unlike most normal people, who use their blogs to document activity, I use mine to avoid activity or maybe to document inactivity. This week has been rather busy (by my standards anyway); I’ve been accepted for a job, rejected for a job, hooked up with some more work experience, voted, been to two interviews, walked a 1,000 metre barefoot walk (twice) and completed a nine hour evaluation day.

This weekend is going to be packed with fun activities such as photocopying photocopies, making calls to get documents scanned and trying to find people to write references for me. On Monday I and these eight documents will be commuting to Birmingham, hopefully arriving at 9:30am and taking part in a training week.

Somewhere in amongst all of this I’ll try and crank out some words, in the meantime I would recommend reading Gingell’s guest post for Zombie Command, it’s a well written piece that brings the funny.

XOXO

Scribs

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About

I'm a Stoke-on-Trent based blogger, journalist and semi-productive member of society. This blog is a record of my successes and failures as I try and complete life-improving challenges suggested to me by readers.