wild wadi

we went to wild wadi today. it’s a water theme park and it was so much fun!! we went round loads of slides and flumes and there was this huge slide called the jumeirah sceirah (read “scarer”). we had to climb for ages to get to the top and it took less than 10 seconds to come down again! you come off the slide at one point and fall through the air! re-entry into the water was rather more painful for men than women, if you get my drift… according to their advertising you go up to 50 mph, which is crazy!

seriously, it was so much fun. and little harry enjoyed splashing in the pool, and almost enjoyed the swim-seat we bought him. he went with us round the lazy river and enjoyed that too. we’ve had such a great time here, and we’re not looking forward to our return to the frozen wasteland of surrey!

facebook

hi guys. seeing as i linked livejournal from facebook, i should probably link facebook from livejournal. not sure where to put this, so i’ll post it for now.

Matt Easton's Facebook profile

TURTLES!

i saw a turtle today!we went snorkeling and saw cuttlefish and angel fish and a reef shark and barracuda and a puffa fish and so many others! then we saw this turtle! it was so amazing, a beautiful animal and lovely to watch. we followed it until it dived deep at the edge of the reef and we couldn’t see it any more. i love turtles!

dubai is cool! and very hot!

hi geezas! greetings from sunny dubai! farrah and i are out here visiting my sister elle, her husband ben and their little son harry. he’s gorgeous! we’re not sick of him yet after three days ;o)

it’s a bit muggy here but very warm, and much nicer than the -2 degrees we had in england last week! enjoying having a holiday from work, it’s our first proper holiday since the honeymoon over a year ago. but then, our friend paul pointed out that last month was his first proper holiday since his honeymoon 12 years ago, so we musn’t complain!

just signed up to facebook as well, it’s really good. can’t believe they give you unlimited photo storage! no more flickr, i reckon. took me a while to remember my oxford alumni address, though. oops.

it’s really funny, i had a prophetic dream a while back. it was about sitting here in dubai typing my livejournal on elle’s computer. i was confused at the time because i hadn’t yet signed up to livejournal, but now it makes sense! not a particularly helpful prophecy, i guess, but good to know God still has an interest in me!

sleepymatt

i’m really bad at this posting malarky. ah well!

had an amazing weekend, loads of old friends over, brought back many happy memories. i don’t like having to work!!

did my first london commute on tuesday. yukky. left home at 7.30am and got back at 6.30pm. normal by many people’s standards, but i couldn’t do it for life. i’m so lucky to live five minutes from work. day went quite well as well, and this week has good because there’s not too much going on, so i can catch up on the backlog and have a bit of time to muck about.

my stomach hurts, but i think it’s pyschosomatic because i didn’t want to go to football training… i’m so lazy…

my week…

had a nice trip to glasgow this week. seemed to go quite well, and fixed all problems before i leave, so we might have some happy clients! yay! decided glasgow isn’t the nicest part of scotland by quite a way, but the hotel i stayed in was quite pleasant, and the client payed for my food and drink so i had fun…

very nice to be home though: two nights feel like a very long time. still recovering from the 5am start on wednesday and the 6 and a half hour airport/aircraft experience getting home on friday. yukky.

played djembe at reroute this morning. reroute is the worship service for the youth in our church in woking. first time i’ve played a djembe on stage, but it seemed to go well. very good to see so many kids meeting with God.

ramblings of a bemused man

ok, so maybe i don’t paste very often…

a lot has happened since the last post, about a month ago! we’ve moved into our new house, i got a raise, farrah got a bonus, we’ve painted lots of things, been to ikea twice, got a new worship pastor at church, i had my birthday, seen some old friends and some new friends, booked tickets to dubai, planned work visits to glasgow and carlisle, and some other stuff.

i think this journalling thing only really works if people read it and post comments. otherwise i feel i’m wasting time, really. i guess i need to make some online friends to make it more fun. problem with being married is that i can’t really spend many hours on the internet!

i’m really hairy today. i could take a picture to show you, but you’d all get scared.

raaagh. i’m sleepy.

posting

jo’s moaning that i don’t post enough, so here i am. i don’t know what she means, i posted less than a week ago! some of us have work to do… honest.

errr…. cheese.

incidentally, we were painting our new spare bedroom (that is, my sister and brother-in law were painting and i was supervising), and we noticed a llama on the wall. they get everywhere, you know. it’s amazing how many llamas we’ve bumped into since moving to woking. must be the beast to be around here. now that the paint has dried, the llama has faded away, sadly, but he’ll always have a place in our hearts.

in geeky news, i’ve nicked an old computer from work and i’ve put linux on it. i’ve always had a vague fascination with linux, and it seems to be good for a web server, so when we get into our new house i think i’ll set it up and put websites on it and stuff. now i have a linux machine for messing about with, a pc for playing games on, and a mac for actually using as a computer. mmm, geeky.

happy now jo? what does “exanimate” mean anyway?

tedium

so i’ve succumbed to sneaking entries into my fledgling journal at work… the problem is, you work really hard all day, then finish something big at 5.05pm. so, you look at your “to do” list and realise that starting anything else now is a complete waste of time, i mean, there’s only 25 minutes left until hometime and at least the last ten of those need to be used for glancing surreptitously at the clock and making your computer shut down really slowly, and the customers aren’t that nice anyway so why should i rush to get anything done?

so here i am with nothing much to do and a journal to pad out. it’s funny, i never really have anything to write or say, but it doesn’t really matter because nobody really reads it anyway, and it’s just a way of sorting out your brain. and my brain needs a lot of sorting out. not because it’s particularly large, it’s just a mess, like the inside of my pc.

on that note, let’s trigger a “friendly discussion” on macs and pcs. i’m at work, but i’m actually typing this on a remote desktop to my mac at home. why? mainly because i can, i guess. and it looks prettier, and i like checking up on my mac to see if it’s ok. i really want to get a mac at work, but there is absolutely no reason to, because i’d have to run windows on it and you can get a dell to do that at a hundreth of the price. poo. my reason is that it looks prettier and i could use it at home too, but my boss doesn’t really like that reason. i tried to convince him that it would be useful to have a mac in the office for testing software on different platforms, but seeing as we already know there’s absolutely no way our software would work on a mac, that didn’t wash either.

oops, got distracted—someone wanted me to do work! well, i’m now at home with my beautiful wife, so i’d better sign off.

life or death

so i’ve finally come to it, my first life or death situation. scary!

and i really don’t know how to get out of it. i don’t seem to have the skills to survive.

those pesky sandpeople. i’ve made my way into their base and they won’t let me out. when i go through the tunnel, my sandperson disguise disappears and i have to fight againts five scary sandpeople, and worse, i have to do it all in my underwear.

bummer.