Hectic (Again)
Posted: Thu 27 October, 2016 Filed under: 2015/16, Do More, Domestic, Driving, Films, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Food, Getting Organised, London, Solo Dining 4 Comments »This last week has been (yet again) pretty hectic and chaotic.
Since Saturday’s half-marathon walk, I’ve been…
- out for an Oktoberfest meal with friends on Saturday night
- into London again on Sunday for a meal in the evening at Helene Darroze (with an added 5 miles of walking)
- then cinema on Monday evening to see “The Accountant“
- into London on Tuesday evening to see “No Man’s Land” at Wyndham’s Theatre, starring Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen
- cinema on Wednesday evening to see “Dr Strange“
Today is slightly quieter, Friday I’m in Chesham, and then for the weekend I’m up in Manchester.
I must be bloody barmy.
Final Quarter
Posted: Thu 29 September, 2016 Filed under: 2015/16, Do More, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Food, Getting Organised, London, Solo Dining, Theatre, Thoughts, Write More Leave a comment »Somehow, we’re already nearly in the final quarter of 2016. A lot has gone on this year, but yet again we’ve a dichotomy when it comes to time. The year seems to have raced past, and there’s a feeling of not having done much. But if I list all the stuff I’ve actually done already, it’s hard to believe I’ve managed to fit all of it into that seemingly-tiny timescale.
In short, it’s all very odd. I’m not complaining, but it’s still strange.
Anyway.
There’s a lot lined up for the remaining three months, but equally, there’s a bit more free time. I actually (currently) have a couple of free weekends! (And a weekend away by myself, which should be good) I’ve still got some bookings to put in for December, but they can’t happen ’til the first week of October anyway.
What I’m hoping is that in this last section, I get to do some stuff that’s been lined up for a while, if only so I can get it all out of my head. Of those bits, the largest thing is my writing projects. I’ve started them, but I want to make more progress, take some time out and braindump things a bit – that’s the main goal of the away weekend next month, almost like a writing retreat for a couple of days.
There’s also the ongoing projects and interests of this year – finishing the year’s Solo Dining project and seeing more plays. I’ve got three or four lined up already, I’m not going to book any more – well, unless something spectacular comes up!
So yeah, plenty to do, but a bit of time to myself. Seems like a plan to me.
Advertising Standards
Posted: Sat 27 August, 2016 Filed under: Advertising, Bad Ads, Customer Services, Domestic, Food, Getting Organised, Loyalty Schemes, Marketing, OpenTable, Pedantry, Solo Dining, Stupidity, Thoughts Leave a comment »With the whole “Solo Dining” project I’ve been doing this year, one of my bugbears has become OpenTable (who provide a lot of the table-reservation services for restaurants) and – more particularly – their “Dining Points” loyalty plan.
As it says on that page about Dining Points,
OpenTable UK members can earn OpenTable Dining Points when they make and honor reservations made through opentable.com, or our related mobile sites and apps.
They say the same thing on another modal window to explain Dining Points.
“Earn points every time you dine”
Except that’s not true – not true at all. I queried why I’d received zero points for several reservations over the last year, and they then started to say (and this is a direct quote from one of the responses)
points are only given to diners who start their search on our website and not the restaurants website as you know. This is because as you came from the restaurant website, you are considered a customer of the restaurant and they use our services on the back end to take your reservation for them. If we started awarding points to the customers of our clients they would feel that we are trying to steal you as a customer.
So OpenTable are, frankly, liars. They say clearly throughout the site “make a booking through OpenTable, and get points“, with no provisos, asterisks, or get-out clauses. This isn’t even me being pedantic about something – they’ve said something (repeatedly, in black-and-white!) that’s simply not true.
This would’ve been an easy fix for OpenTable, if they’d had any sense at all. If they’d said “Oh, sod, sorry, here, have the points, and we’ll make that text clearer“, we’d be done. But no, they started backtracking, patronising, and explaining why I was so wrong to believe their “Get points every time you book” spiel. No apology, no “thanks for letting us know“, nothing. All the customer-service skills of a concrete monolith.
Having hit that concrete monolith with no joy, I decided to take it further. Having checked their criteria, I raised it with the ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) and I’ve now had a confirmation from them that, having done an initial review, they’re going to investigate it further.
So, that’s going to be entertaining. I’m assuming that getting an ASA investigation done isn’t a trivial step, nor one that the ASA do for the fun of it. I’m also assuming that, because they’re investigating, the complaint has at least some merit.
As and when I hear back, I’ll write more here…
Early Justifications
Posted: Thu 25 August, 2016 Filed under: Customer Services, Day Trips, Domestic, Food, Getting Organised, Gigs, Introspective, Kindle, London, Personality, Punctuality, Reading, Solo Dining, Thoughts, Travel Leave a comment »Whenever I’m going somewhere, whether to meet friends, or just for a timed event, I tend to be pretty early. Stupidly early, in some cases – mainly because I just figure “Well, once I’m there, I can find something to do“. At worst, I have a Kindle and a phone, so I’ll always be able to do something with that time.
I don’t expect others to follow the same thing, though – that’s just a world of hurt, because then I’d still be earlier than the expected early time, and it can get stupid. (I have one friend who’s of a similar mind-set, and we ended up being – unconsciously – competitively early for a while, ’til we realised it was just getting dumb)
Sometimes, though, it turns out that there’s a good reason for being early to things. Saturday was one of those times.
I was going in to London for a concert in the evening, and then booked a lunch at Hibiscus as well. My plan was to park up at an Underground station I knew well, Tube into Central London (well, kinda – I still wanted to walk as well), go for lunch, wander around London a bit/lot, get back up to the concert venue, meet up with another friend, go to the gig, and then get back to the car and drive us both home. That plan survived until the first stage…
What I hadn’t realised was that the Northern Line (the only line from the station in question) was shut for the weekend. No trains at all. Of course, London Underground being the useless shitbricks they are, there were no signs at the entrance to the station or car-park, so I’d paid for parking (fortunately only £2 for the day), walked into the station, to be faced with “Nope, no trains”. The useless bell-end outside had no idea how I’d get back from the gig at all – well, he suggested taking no less than four buses, at midnight on Saturday-into-Sunday. So that was no use.
But, I’m well early at this point. So it’s time for a replan. Drive down to the concert venue, find somewhere close-ish to park, and juggle things from there.
And that’s what happened. Drive down (only about four miles, in fairness) and find a side-road with parking. Permits only, but only Monday-Friday. It’s a Saturday, so I’ll go for that. Check the parking meter. Nope, that Mon-Fri only too. Double-check with the online-app for paying, and nope, can’t take any money for that parking, sir.
Then start walking to find where the hell I am – I know I’m closeish, but not exactly where – turn the corner, and oh look, there’s the venue. Literally two minutes, car-to-venue. Wander past to find a bus into central London, oh look, there’s one that’ll do it, hop on, and job done.
That entire re-plan and reorganisation, and I was still at Hibiscus 45 minutes early…
So sometimes there’s a really good reason for being idiotically early to things. If I’d been cutting things fine already, that change would’ve completely chiffed me for the day, and been uber-stressful all the way. As it was, it was still an absolute doddle, and everything went well.
Indeed, it actually made life easier – because coming out of the gig, we were in the car and out of London before we’d probably have even got to the original station…
Eating Well For Less
Posted: Mon 22 August, 2016 Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Brands, Cynicism, Domestic, Finances, Food, Health, Laziness, People, Shopping, Television, Thoughts Leave a comment »Over the last few weeks, I’ve been watching the BBC’s “Eat Well For Less” series. It’s an interesting concept, helping people with their eating habits (and more accurately, their spending on food) by removing all the labelling and branding from food in people’s houses, removing all the prejudices etc. around their food spending. They replace expensive branded stuff with ‘own-brand’ or cheaper alternatives (and in some cases with more expensive, but better/healthier options) and also leaving some things alone. Additionally, they help people with recipes for their favourite meals, rather than buying pre-packaged and so on.
A lot of it is insanely annoying, but the core information is (in my opinion) worth it, for both the families on the programme, and people watching it.
But oh Dear God, those families are fucking pathetic. There’s lots of preconceptions about brands being preferred “because they wouldn’t be so popular if they weren’t the best” and so on, which drives me crackers.
The most recent one tonight, though, drove me crackers. One family member had been diagnosed as coeliac, and had spent six years eating salads he hated. Six. Fucking. Years. How does anyone end up eating stuff they don’t like for six bloody years? There’s no logic in it that I can see – unless they haven’t done any enquiries or research about what’s got gluten in and so on?
In this case they were buying loads of pre-packaged food – and I get that more, because they were so worried about cross-contaminating from their foods to his, and making him ill – but with no thoughts or understanding. I think the peak point for me was buying pre-packaged “gluten-free” rice, not understanding that all rice is gluten-free, in the name of Jesus H Pant-shitting Christ.
So yeah, it’s been an interesting series, but Holy DogEggs, some people are fucking lazy/stupid/pathetic*.
(* Delete as applicable)
Mislaid Plans
Posted: Sat 20 August, 2016 Filed under: 2015/16, Bankruptcy, BurgerCrawl, Day Trips, Do More, Domestic, Driving, Finances, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Food, London, Rebuilding, Solo Dining, Thoughts, Travel 3 Comments »Back at the start of the year, one of my stated aims was to put more money into savings. I’d finally finished my bankruptcy’s payment plan at the end of 2015, so the plan was that I’d put that straight into savings instead of into the payment plan.
That aim has kind-of worked, but not to the extent I intended to. Road to hell, Good intentions, and all that rot.
I looked back this week – coming to the last third of the year, I wanted to review where I was. I’ve certainly added to the savings, but it’s not been to the full extent that it could/should have been.
There’s some reasoning behind it, when I looked into it and thought about it. Primarily, it’s the first time in way too many years (certainly far preceding the bankruptcy) where I’ve had disposable income – and I can’t deny, I’ve been taking advantage of that this year.
It’s been one heck of a year, with a lot going on – as I’ve written about before – and some of that has been funded by the money that “should” have been getting funnelled into savings. I can’t – and won’t – deny it, I should have been a bit better, a bit smarter about it, but well, I haven’t.
I’m already making plans for 2017 to be much calmer, to not be going quite so barmy about having time, space and money. From January, that money *will* be going to rebuild savings.
2016 has been a mad old year, with lots going on. 2017 is going to be a good year, but a bit more relaxed, a bit more sensible. Not perfect – I’m never going to claim that – but I know what needs to be done, and I intend to be doing it.