Hey there...it's been a while.
I was just updating my old band website and remembered about this blog. I read through some of my old posts and also Mr Behi's. I love the comments people left - even when they were being nasty! So I thought I'd log in and write a new blog.
It's the beginning of the new year and all is very busy again. I got back from Sweden today. I was over there completing a crash test (the same one I mentioned in a post from last year). It went really well and it looks like we are on track to deliver the product we have been developing. I was staying in Gothenburg and crikey was it cold... -9 degrees centigrade, I tell you walking about my ears began to freeze.....brrrr.

If anyone reads this from Gothenburg I'm going to be in your local paper tomorrow! We did a bit of sightseeing this afternoon and whilst in a shopping centre (mall) these people approached me and asked me what the best thing about Gothenburg was, I said 'That you can pay taxi's by credit card' which frankly is a pretty poor answer considering I'd just been looking around the harbour and at the opera house! But what the hey! SO they took my picture and said it'll go in tomorrows paper!
Last weekend me and Rachel went to Bristol to see my best mate Ben. He got engaged and invited loads of people down for a meal and a night out - it was excellent, I really love Bristol. Bought myself these ace sheepskin gloves (which are probably very unfashionable - but I like them) they are super warm.
Decided to restart up the www.mrben.com band. WE hired a new guitar player a few weeks ago and started rehearsing, it's all going really well, playing some great new tunes...more Killers, Zutons, Kooks etc.... check out the site soon.
I'm on my own at the moment as Rach has gone to see her friend who's not too well...all personal stuff...so I have Ugly Betty and Big brother for company (both are pretty much rubbish).
I've been thinking a lot just lately about politics. In the UK we have a labour government (supposedly socialist and left wing) headed up by Tony Blair. In Coventry over the past couple of years we have lost the Peugeot assembly plant (4000 ish jobs) and the Jaguar Browns Lane assembly plant (1000 ish jobs). That's a lot of jobs...and the government basically did nothing to intervene, to be honest even the unions were pretty poor in there responses. It seems bizarre to me that this could happen with a supposedly overtly socialist government.
Then I started thinking about my situation. I am basically on the cusp of the higher tax bracket for the UK, if I get paid overtime or a small pay rise I'm going to be paying 40% tax on my earnings. I have a pretty massive mortgage (for a pretty basic British house - OK I realise this is better than 90% of the worlds population) which has just gone up by half a percent and will almost definitely increase again this year. I'm paying 90p+ for a litre of petrol (about 70% tax), my wife is a student and has to borrow money to pay for her education. Should I be looking to get involved with the right? I mean things couldn't get much worse for me could they?

• I can't earn any more as I'll have it all taken off me in tax
• I can't afford a bigger house or a new car even though I'm degree educated in a science with 7 years professional experience
  
• All of my friends and the dads have lost there jobs
• My prime minister isn't interested in my nations opinion on the war in Iraq
• I'm afraid to go on aeroplanes/trains and buses in case some one blows me up because my socialist prime minister helped invade there country.
• People think I'm as obnoxious as an average American

I think maybe I need to 'opt out', maybe become a nomad and hitch hike my way across the US....actually not the USA (just got Lou Reed running round my head)...maybe Russia - that seems like a sorted out democratic non-corrupt place to be.....hmmmm....

I'm going to write a top five list that always cheers me up. OK what'll it be...? How about top five women.

OK - just to set the story straight, obviously my Wife Rachel is number 1 - but no one will no her so I'll just put famous people in...

1. Meg Ryan - Incredible - When Harry Met Sally
2. Julia Roberts - Have never gotten over that foot being the same length as your forearm in Pretty Woman
3. Audrey Hepburn - ridiculously beautiful
   
4. Juliet (from dogtanian and the three muskerhounds - massive crush aged 8 - never forgotten).
5. Jennifer Aniston - like her more now she's been dumped a few times - used to think she was a bit snooty...

Crikey that was a terrible blog....

Hello, and apologies for the lack of blog activity over the past few weeks.
This is going to be ashort one I think...
The past few weeks have been a bit of a blur for me, work has been non stop, I've been working over pretty much every day as we have a massive deadline coming up in a few weeks time.
I've had some fantastic weekends though. I went to Bournemouth at the weekend to see my youngest brother who is at University there. It was great fun as my other brother and his girlfriend went aswell so there the three brothers and their girlfriends/wife! My yougest brother, Bob is studying script writing, he wants to be the next Ricky Gervais. The weekend before Rachel and I took our son to London to the Science museum - which was probably more for me than them!

Read a lot of stuff about Iran in the UK news this month, testing times ahead...I hope it all ends well, but with Mr Bush you never know. What non of us want is another conflict. I realise that with censorship and monitoring it is difficult for you to transcribe any opinion but I wish you and your nation well Mr Behi. Reading your blog it is clear to me your are very a proud Iranian and your messages remind us that Iran is a great nation of people. Sometimes I think the western world overlook the eastern nations and forget that your people are the not so different to us, the same worries and concerns and the same ultimate hopes for peace.

Wishing you the best.
Steve

Well I hope your OK Mr Behi - haven't heard from you for a while.

So it's Friday night and I'm at home. Rachel has gone out with her work friends for a meal and drinks as one of them has to leave work as she has just found out she has a brain tumour. Rachel is really worried about her.

So me and J (my step son) are chilling out with a Dominoes (Aye Carumba Fajita no less) pizza and Batman Begins on Sky Movies. To be honest I'm not really watching as:
A. I'm writing this.
B. It looks pretty average - I'm sure J will assure me otherwise but then we watched the Fantastic Four a couple of weeks ago and other than Jessica Alba is was pretty much less than Fantastic.

So work has sucked this week. One of my team has taken a couple of weeks off, he has to go see his family in Venezuala. One family member is very unwell and he thinks this may be his last chance to see them. He seemed pretty worried about it.
It couldn't have come at a worse time for the rest of the team - we are absolutely over loaded with work at the moment and if I'm honest I'm struggling to cope.
The problem I'm having is we are pushing the limits of the technology we have. We are being asked to make predictions to very close limits and we don't really have the capability to make them. Engineering is not an exact science. It relies heavily on assumptions and generalizations which are either untrue or have a huge amount of variation.
It's also pretty complicated. I was in a meeting today and I'm sure the rest of the people hadn't got a clue what I was on about. It's a very male dominated environment and there are a lot of ego's - so you tend to find rather than saying, 'I haven't got a clue what you're on about, could you please exlain it to me' people just nod and change the subject to something they understand, usually so setting themselves up so they can spiel off a few anecdotes in front of some managers.
I'm feeling pretty cynical today - can you tell?


I was talking to my brother about all of this sort of stuff a couple of weeks ago. He's a really intelligent person. I was trying to explain how I feel at the moment. When I was younger I really thought that I was going to make a difference to something and as I get older I realise I'm falling into the rat race.
Is that a bad thing? Only if I carry on taking all this crap at work and have a heart attack before I'm thirty.

Hey, did you know that this site is recommended in the 'blogs of note' thing on the front of www.blogger.com ! That's pretty cool really as I thought I was probably just talking a loads of rubbish. Must be Mr Behi's doing! Good effort though.

I love all the comments - they're really brillinat so thanks everyone.

I'm going to sign off with another top five because everyone seems to love them! Opinions opinions opinions....


Top five cars:

1. Delorean DMC12
2. Lamborghin Miura
3. Jaguar E-Type
4. Mini (original one not the new BMW one)
5. Ferrari 250 GT California

I know the Delorean was essentially a crap car but I can't stop loving it. My first exposure wat Back to the future, but I love the whole John Delorean story. FOr those who don't know about it, he was basically areal high flyer at GM in the 70's and tried to go solo with the DMC12. The plan was flawed as he wanted to make the car rear engined. Anyone who knows about the Porsche 911 will explain how Porsche have spent 40 years trying getting the chassis to handle the poor weight balance of sticking the engine in the boot. He ripped off the British government who subsidised the factory in Northern Ireland, it all went belly up and then to top it off he was caught doing some dodgy deals, I think to do with drugs. They should make a film of it.
Of the other choices, the Miura is just the best looking car ever made. Th E-Type and Mini hark back to the glory days of British engineering and the Ferrari is in Ferris Buellers Day Off and from age 9 to around age 25 I basically wanted to be Ferris Bueller. Unfortunately I ended up being Cameron. Watch the film.

If you're not interested in cars sorry for boring the pants off of you.

Steve

The weekend is coming to its end and I'm gearing up for another hectic week at work.
Today we saw a great rainbow - I haven't seen a rainbow for a long time. This one was crystal clear and you could see both ends of it. It was incredible.

I've just finished watching McLibel, which is a documentary film about two protestors who took on McDonald's after they (McD's) issued a writ against them regarding the content of a flyer they were distributing. It was a really good film and shows how that people can take on the big multi-nationals, but it takes some doing.
Check out: www.mcspotlight.org

I had a listen to your Podcast Mr Behi, it's cool to hear your voice and a some Iranian music. Great news on winning the iPod - is it the big one? I have a 4Gb mini (which I've yet to fill up).
What is interesting about your new year and the your cleanup is that we also cleanup in spring time (it's known as spring cleaning), there must some cultural tie in from
our ancestors?!? Also I was going to comment that our new year (31 Dec - 1 Jan) also coincides with the earth completing an orbit of the sun - but some other smart arse has put it on the comments! I guess that new year could start and finish any day of the year really - what dictates you start/end point? Do you use a different calendar system?
I did some spring cleaning yesterday. Trying to sort out the garden, painting fences and stuff like that.
This morning I got up at 5am and watched the Australian Grand Prix. It was a great race. I was a little bit disappointed in Jenson Button (who is the top British driver at the moment), he qualified his car in pole position (1st) but was fairly unimpressive in the race. He would have finished sixth but his engine blew up spectacularly on the last corner before the finish line.


Today was the 152nd boat race. This is a 8 man rowing boat race which takes place on the river Thames in London between teams from Oxford and Cambridge University. The course is around four miles long and they normally row it in about 16 minutes which is pretty incredible. Today it took a lot longer as the river was very rough and choppy. The Cambridge team were favorites and were deemed to be a smoother team, the Oxford team were classed as more powerful. In the end the Oxford won by a decent margin, perhaps helped by the choppy conditions.

Anyway I'm going to sign off with my top five films (as the top five tunes got me loads of good comments and I'm getting sick of the crap comments which just link to peoples porn finder sites...)


1. The Usual Suspects
2. The Shawsank Redemption
3. Goodfellas
4. Back to the Future
5. Star Wars

Nothing too high brow in there eh?!? I really wanted to put Sleepless in Seattle and It's a wonderful life, but I'm in a macho mood tonight!

Well it's officially the springtime. On Saturday night the clocks moved forward one hour and by Monday morning this had barely registered in my body clock...Monday was a struggle. I can cope with a eight hours of jet lag no problem, but shift the clocks forward one hour and I'm yawning all week.
Although one week of spring lag is worth it for the extra day light and the chorus of the birds in the morning. A friend at work commented how it was strange that the birds knew to get up one hour earlier as well! I then explained that they didn't wear wrist watches and had probably been getting up when we'd all been sleeping for the last few months (since they returned from migration)!
I've just returned from the supermarket, on return from work I realized we were completely out of food and the cat was miaowing at it's empty bowl and beginning to chew on the grass outside. It got me wondering how the basics differ in Iran?
I spent £105 on food and supplies and I think that will last the three of around two weeks (we'll have to buy fresh stuff in that time aswell).
Here's a basic run down of costs:


- Two litres (4 pints in the UK!) = £1.10.
- Six apples is £1
- A loaf of bread is 75p
- A chicken is £2.99

The biggest rip off is theses fancy light bulbs we have in the kitchen £2 each!!!
Normal abouts are abou 20p.
I then got some petrol it's about 91p a litre, to fill up my car cost me £42! That about get me abot 350 miles of driving.
I'm guessing that's probably more expensive than Iran but then wages in the UK are probably higher to compensate? Engineers in the UK typically earn from £25000 to £40000 a year.

So that's some hum drum stuff for you.

Work has been as intense as ever this week. I'm doing some testing to back up my analysis work this week. We are running a test to validate a side airbag we are using. They are pretty tricky to get right as we use a fairly simple model which assumes uniform pressure within the bag. The reallity is the flow is more complex. Particulary with regard to the venting the bag has. The bag has vents to allow the pressure to be tuned over the duration of an impact. The test we are going to do will hopefully give some data to try and correlate the bag to, therefore making sure our model is as predictive as we can be.

We have a big report out next week as well which I have to prepare results from my team for. It's one of the last reports before we begin to get tools made to build the car, so we need to get everything right. So the pressure is right on.

Anyway enough for today, I can smell dinner is nearly ready and I'm absolutely famished!

Steve

So, I made it to Wednesday and much like the rest of the UK I'm counting the hours till the weekend.
This time of year England is grey. I catch a glimpse of the sun in the morning rush to work, sit in the office shrouded from the elements until half past five and then reenter the urban grey of the Midlands.

Last weekend was great. On Friday I played a gig with the new band I'm in (www.forevermoore.co.uk), only our fifth show and it went superbly. Saturday was recovery day and then Saturday night was my best friends sisters home coming party. She spent last year traveling, India, far east and Australia. She was looking great, although seemed daunted coming back to 'the real world'.
Sunday was the opening race of the Formula 1 season (I'm a big fan...). The race and especially the new qualifying didn't disappoint. Very much looking forward to the next race in Malaysia.

This weekend will be a family one for me. This will involve lazy Friday with takeaway, board games, a film and probably a bottle of wine! Saturday we'll try and find a day out, I'll be on google pretty sharpish after this blog. Sunday we'll invite some of our relatives over for a traditional Sunday roast dinner.
I love Sundays with the family.

My Nan (Grandmother) is amazing. She is 78 and so full of life. She's also hilarious, sometimes intentionally, usually accidentally. My favorite
Nan quote is her description of an animal, after watching a wild life program mid week she tried to describe, "You know they had those sea creatures on it, the ones with the eight testicles'. Brilliant.
She makes me laugh so much.

I think sometimes when I talk to my Nan and her friends (usually boyfriends - my grandad died over ten years ago) I get an insight to how little we appreciate the life we have here in the UK. She was in the land army during the second world war. My grandad was an artillery man but was captured pretty much straight away so was prisoner of war for about five years. The uncertainty they went through during those years (with regard to freedom, peace, life and death) must be very similar to the feelings you have in the middle east. With 60 years of peace time behind us we have become complacent. We take our freedom and liberties for granted. That's really what I was getting at in my last blog. This fascination with more trivial issues is from our stability with our national politics. It isn't that we are not political at all and people do care. It's just that the issues are not close to us. Like they were for our grandparents and they are for the people in the middle east.

Anyway to leave you on a more trivial note. I noticed on your blog site some of your favorite albums, here are my top five tunes:


1. A day in the life - The Beatles (Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band)
2. God only knows - The Beach Boys (Pet Sounds)
3. America - Simon & Garfunkel (Bookends)
4. So what - Miles Davis (Kind of Blue)
5. Life on Mars - David Bowie (Hunky Dory)

Fairly typical Anglo-American stuff eh?!?

Nearly in there were: superstition - Stevie Wonder, I want you back - Jackson 5, Under the bridge - Red Hot Chilli peppers, I could go on all day...think I'll go and pop a CD on...


Take care,
Steve

Wow.

I just read some of your blog's on your main page, it brings into context to me the difference in our lives. In the UK the trivial is the norm. We are more concerned day to day with celebrity and scandal than politics and ethics.

At work we have a site shop in the canteen on the newspaper rack outside I took note of some of the stories..

Broadly speaking we have three groups of paper, tabloids, broadsheets and what I term as inbetweenies (these papers pose a broadsheet style journalism but are really tabloids and in my opinion are the worst papers - at least you know that the tabloids are utter rubbish).

Today's UK tabloids headlined with a 22 year old girl who had been caught on a speed camera applying make-up, she was fined £200 but they couldn't ban her as in between this offence and now she had already been banned for drink driving!
One of the broadsheets headlined a story about Bush. His advisors (who were integral in the advice re Iraq invasion) have spokenpubliclyy that the decision to invade (ahem, sorry I mean liberate...) was a mistake, and why is Bush not listening to them now?
In all honesty Ididn'tt look at the inbetweenies but they probably had some scare story about how the UK housing market was about to collapse or we are all going to die of Bird Flu next week or how we shouldn't speak to anyone in case something horrific happens. I tell you I hate those papers, the whole of middle England (demographically) are reading them and becoming more and more afraid of the world.


Conversation at work was the usual mixture of triviality. 'Did you see 'The Apprentice' (TV show where people compete for £100,00 job with self made millionaire Sir Alan Sugar) last night?....I can't believe he didn't fire the nutcase...', 'Almost the weekend, are you out on the beers?'.
It struck me that I really am submerged in a capitalist environment, I'm trying to scrape 50 cents out of a $50,000 car to help increase company profits to greater than $X.XX billion.

I was late this morning. Ten minutes late leaving home equals about half an hour late to work, the traffic gets really heavy. When I arrived I remembered I had a meeting straight away and had to prepare some ppt's (Microsoft - you can't escape them).
Later we had a good look over a competitor vehicle and got dewey eyed over the front cross brace (how sad?!?).
I then stayed over and worked my usual couple of hours of overtime (for which I won't be paid because times are hard - we only made $X.XX billion last year you see - and if I don't do the time my chances of getting promoted and being able to afford the car I'm working on will be eternalldiminisheded).

Anyway gonna sign off now and watch channel 4 news - they are live in Isfahan, Iran! Reporting on the hot issues you know all too well.Signing off...Steve

PS A bit of a jumbly rant today.Sorryry.