fudge it

thanks for the memory

over the last few days i've been raiding brother #1's memory card for music, photos, roms and so on. he's been quite generous actually. and just as i was leaving HQ:

him: here, i've bought you some memory.
me: really?

and he hands me this:



1.2 megabytes. oh the possibilities.

bushra | permalink | |

can't sleep. and the fridge is making darth vader noises.

bushra | permalink | |

like you've never been gone, innit.

niece #3's 5th birthday was celebrated today, and not when it actually fell in the middle of the week. sister #4 was determined to recreate the banners, balloons and streamers chaos from the last birthday party she organised. when things came to a bit of a standstill i decided to stick the kettle on for some tea.

sister #4: guess what? i found the 12 foot banner!
me: really.
her: yeah! so you know the little ones you put up for me this morning? we can move those somewhere else and put this on instead.
me: let me get a chair.
sister #4: and if you keep shouting 'stickytape!' like this morning i'll punch you.
me: whatever.
the dad: are you using sellotape?
her: yeah.
him: pass it over when you're done, i need it to hold the case for the blood pressure machine together.
her: sure!
him: and when you're done with that bushra i wouldn't mind some tea either.

so i finish putting up the banner, and get back to the tea.

sister #5: make me a cuppa coffee?
me: i need to give this to the dad first. (in the living room) here.
the dad: thank you, but you've forgotten-
me: a saucer. i know.
him: and where did sister #4 go with the sellotape? i need that sellotape!
me: i'm going to have to put you on hold for a minute.
him: ok.
me: (kitchen) right! one coffee for you. (living room) here's the saucer. now then. sellotape. i need you to get up for a minute.
the mother: why?
me: sellotape.
the dad: but sister #4 took it upstairs!
me: i know she did. (i shift the sofa away from the wall, reach down the back as far as possible. result.) here you go. sellotape.
the dad: but i want that other sellotape.
me: ...

hey, where did the cup of tea go?

bushra | permalink | |

so, an update on this stylus business. o2 sell 3 for a tenner. nice. and then i threw one out of the window upstairs by mistake, it landed on the living room roof. time to call brother #4.

him: i'll do it for 3 quid.
me: fine, now get out there.
him: ok, i need to open this window, and then this window, and - (something cracks) - ah.
me: uh oh.
him: ok. three quid before the stylus.
me: wow. it's cold in here. all these open windows...
him: all right all right! how'm i going to get in? clear that bed for landing!
me: done.

at which point brother #4 jumps off the window ledge and lands head first on the bed.

him: three quid please. though feel free to chuck a couple of extra in.
me: yeah right.
him: seriously, i'm gonna be joining the union soon.
me: get out of town!

bushra | permalink | |

having time off makes your brain shrink. but if that means being able to match sister #5's fifty mile an hour rants about how life is unfair then i won't argue. at least i can out-whatever teenagers now.

so anyway. i managed to lose the second stylus for the phone. i'm telling you, they keep falling out. the guy at the phone shop is insisting his 'contact' sells 5 for a hundred quid. uh, whatever. i'll just do what his colleague had obviously done and not bother to point out he had toothpaste all over his chin on my way out.

wow. the house is quiet. the parents are watching sky tv, niece #4 is having a nap and sister in law #1 is ironing. i'm going to stick to my plan and do nothing.

bushra | permalink | |

'Whatever dubious subcontinental wunderkind Kaavya Viswanathan did write, didn’t write, had ghost-written, cribbed, subconsciously borrowed, telepathically stole, or else was brainwashed into doing by a bunch of Pakistanis hell-bent on subverting India’s credibility in the burgeoning Southeast Asian chick-lit genre, at least one thing is clear: shit like this is the reason brown kids should stick to quantitative math and organic chemistry. Ms. Viswanathan, after all, had all the hallmarks of future i-banker or doctor.'

bushra | permalink | |

of course you're just jealous.

i turn my back for a few seconds and brother #3 starts checking out the new phone/pocket pc, so i spent a couple of minutes talking about how it has word, excel and all that.

him: is it by nokia?
me: no, it's by a company called HTC. they only sell it to networks, so o2 call it the X-D-A, orange call it the S-P-V, and t-mobile call it the M-D-A.
him: hmm. i'd call it the S-H-I-T.

bushra | permalink | |

sister #5 has been loopy for an hour or so over her new phone, she'd left the box lying around.

me: are you going to pick up that box?
her: ha?
me: the box. pick it up.
her: ...
me: pick up the box.
her: do you know what i did? i was eating and meant to put the fork in my mouth and poked my face with it instead.
me: ...

told you things would get more lively round here.

bushra | permalink | |

seriously. busy again. can't be helped, can it? oh wait. i suppose i could tell you how i'm trying to get a million things done because i'm heading back down to birmingham for a week, right? which means interaction with crazy siblings making me reach for the xda and blog them there and then. sure that's the plan, but i'm not a big fan of plans.

i picked up one of these pink motorola slvr's for sister #5 yesterday. yes. i know. i'm the best. make that 'da best', innit.

news on the killing ground: the family supermarket at the end of the road are not happy, after planning permission to turn the supermarket car park into houses was refused. especially as residents protested - well, where else will they park their cars? and now barriers have appeared to stop all cars using it. people are annoyed they can't park there anymore but at the same time they're glad joyriders can't dump cars and set them on fire there either. plus with the weather slowly improving the kids are playing football there instead. so it's a bit of good and bad, which kind of sums up bradford really. this news brought to you by the smells of the kitchen at the end of the road cooking brown rice, a few houses in the middle frying pakoras and a house at the other end using more than enough zoflora to disinfect it's floors. thank you and goodnight.

bushra | permalink | |

hello.

bushra | permalink | |

busy. tired. tired. busy.

the nieces have arrived for two weeks, and i can't understand why they seem a bit of a handful nowadays compared to back when i lived in birmingham, where we ran riot in the supermarket every minute of every day.

i was half-reading something in the paper about how people can be natural born slaves, and i switched off after the first line. but then i thought about it late last night after i had taken sister #1 to the doctor. and then ferried the nieces from sister #1's to mine for an hour, then moving them on to sister #2's for dinner, went back home to er, bake some cakes, and then collected the nieces and returned them to sister #1's. oh and then the 11.30pm visit to tesco to pick up baby food for brother in law #2, who has managed to smash one of his front teeth and dislocate the other in a football collision (do you think that's mad? how about his brothers dropping him off at casualty before going back to their game? is that mad enough for yer?)

so yeah, i thought about it more. maybe some people just like to make themselves useful. then again maybe not:

'Natural slaves may be extremely creative and intelligent. But they simply have a defect that prevents them recognising the way to live a good life.'

ssh. don't let the in-laws hear about bushra's defect. news spreads across bradford like wildfire. on a lighter note:

the authority part 2: this stupid computer!
office person C: what?
him: it's gone into hibernate!
her: ...
him: it's spring you stupid thing!

bushra | permalink | |

at sister #1's this afternoon. feeling a bit silly after spending an afternoon at BRI, and having people point out 'right-there-in-front-of-you' signs for the pharmacy three times. catching up with S and N:

N: those cillit bang ads are funny! 'hi! i'm barry scott!'
me: barry scott isn't real.
N: yes he is! 'bang! and the dirt is gone!'
me: i'm telling you, barry scott isn't a real person! it's just an actor!
N: blah blah blah! i can't hear you!
me: he's not real! i can prove it too!
N: no no no!
me: so this is how it must be when you realise santa isn't real, eh?

bushra | permalink | |

i was at day two of my 'breakthrough to peak performance' course today, it was called 'empowering your beliefs'. before it began i was in a corridor trying to get brother #4 to explain how i could load sonic and knuckles 3 onto the mega drive emulator on the phone, so yeah i'd say an important call. when a woman walked up to me all excited and just interrupted:

her: are you here on that course?
me: er, yeah.
her: is that guy giving it? the one in the black suit?
me: who? oh, look, there he is!

apparently she thought he was an actor on emmerdale. but he wasn't.

anyway, i won't go into too much detail, but the highlight was 'break the board', where the coach holds up a solid piece of wood and you have to strike it with the palm of your hand. and yes, i managed to break it in half on the first go. woot!

(oh, and while everyone was saying their thank yous and goodbyes to the coach, i nicked another piece so i could do it again!)

bushra | permalink | |

"Yes, there's a nasty bug going around."

bushra | permalink | |

you should see my desk. there's my pc, where i promise i am working (but in the absence of a lunch break outside here i am), my phone/pocket pc is getting sync'd and recharged, my work phone, my mp3 player, oh and my regular phone. about the regular phone. i just bumped up the memory on this thing so i can get the sega mega drive emulator and therefore play sega mega drive games on there, but it's not as easy as i thought. anyone got any picodrive roms lying around? and any ideas how to load them from messaging onto the memory card for the nokia 3230? didn't think so.

is it me or are batteries on phones running out quicker these days?

bushra | permalink | |

i'm baaaaack.

not 100% but not less than, ooh, 75% either. what have i missed?

i made a whole bunch of scoubidous last week (bradfordians: why do you call them scoubidous? why not just call them scoubies? me: because i just can't!) so expect pictures on flickr soon. if anyone wants one, and i'm telling you, this new bunch are really good even if i do say so myself, let me know.

i need to go out and get some card this afternoon, i'm helping niece #2 and i expect nephew #1 (the boy is a walking child psychology textbook) to make easter hats/bonnets whatever.

bushra | permalink | |