Nixta Sinks

What have I been up to?

Many of you may well be internalising the very obvious question:

"Where is Nixta, and what has happened to his blog?"

Those of you that haven't, should be shot. Not at dawn. Not even, if we can possibly avoid it, shortly after making a run for it, but preferably in your sleep where you lay most comfortable and comforted, you mollycoddled mongrels!

Yeah, that's right, I know that none of you, not one, has wondered where I am. But I'll tell you anyway. I'm in London, that's where, and why? Because I need to make some money, that's why. Doing what? Who cares? Not you, but since you didn't ask, working for the same company I was working for before fixing up some software that was broken by ESRI when they released their second Service Pack. I'm very grateful to Angus McDougal for the opportunity to come over and fix up the problems. That in retrospect sounds sarcy, but it isn't - I've had a great deal of fun doing it, and of course have managed to visit my favourite sushi restaurant and to see Rufus, Rob, Lucille, Giles, Greg and Zoë and others.

I flew out at very short notice last Thursday with no hotel booked, surprised Rob at Home House, caught up with Rufus and ate revolting Japanese dried fish and smelt revolting Japanese Catfood Edamame, did some shopping, had a great christmas dinner at Rob's on Monday, did a load of work, arranged my own contract and stuff like that and will head back tomorrow afternoon to arrive home in freezing cold New York at just after 8pm local time, before whizzing home in a taxi, wrapping a couple of presents, dropping off my luggage and heading out to meet up with Dani and some friends somewhere. I don't know. Seemed to make sense at the time, but now my back is just complaining in advance.

I also have the smallest room in the hotel, which I have affectionately dubbed the Ian Schrager Suite in honour of said bastard's wanton frugality when it comes to the volume of his rooms. Shiv had a veritable suite, and I feel somewhat hard done by on account of there being no fridge in my room other than the automated mini-bar (which in theory bills you if you move anything though not, apparently, in practice) and no ironing board. Not only did Shiv have both of those, but he also had a small couch and much more cupboard space. His room didn't smell of paint either, and his entry card didn't wipe out every 36 hours. However, now that they've delivered me an ironing board and iron, it's not quite so bad, but when I come back in January I hope to have a slightly larger room (there's a hierarchy don't you know, which dictates that I should get the smallest room because I've never been there before - I know that I'm now on the shit-list, Elaine style).

The excellent photo you see above is courtesy of Greg who claims it's the favourite of all his photographs to date with his new camera (which he only got a few days ago, so that doesn't count for much). In fact, there are a disturbingly large number of photographs of yours truly with which I am not dissatisfied taken that evening, which says something, I imagine, about the photographer.