Glad to be Home From Austin

I returned from Austin four days ago now and I feel I've only just recovered some sense of normality. I'm really glad I did the event but it was incredibly hard work and I felt like I earned every single penny. Working 12-15 hour days in a windowless, wood-panelled room mainly by myself and only eating when someone bought me food, I was so busy that it took me hours to eat that food and I didn't stop all day. It was completely exhausting.

When I finished work I would call a taxi and hope one turned up as not one knew where the University was even after I gave them the address (in fact not one taxi driver knew the way to anywhere I ever asked him to go in 2 weeks). I would then give them directions every step of the way and fume when they asked how much change I wanted back) I would then occasionally flick through 40 channels of banality before I crashed out so I could get up at 6.30 to do it all again. Thank God the hotel served Illy coffee cos I would have gone postal otherwise.

I did get 2 days out of the 18 to explore and I can tell you that I wasn't impressed with Austin much. Like most US cities it was sprawling and I think people generally drove to the mall to do their shopping. Nearly every place sold food in some way (takeout, fast food, restaurant, 7-11) and most of the food I had was horrible. Nearly everything had fake cheese on it and lost weight when I was there as I could barely look at some of it. I was offered deep-fried ice cream one evening ("hey, it comes with cream on the side!"). Those poor people didn't have a chance - you would have to have a will of steel to live there!

It was a complete culture-shock for me actually. The ineptitude of the US team was staggering but they whooped, high-fived and congratulated themselves when they did anything remotely resembling competence. The red tape we had to navigate so that nobody got sued was jaw-dropping. The taxi driver at the airport refused to lift our suitcases because he didn't have any medical insurance and the competitors had to sign waivers for 100 things before they could do anything. It was most odd. 

We did find a few gems on the faculty though. People we hadn't even known about suddenly appeared and went over and above board to save the day. They were amazing and, whilst the rest were completely out of their depth running an international event of that size, without these gems, the event would have failed in my opinion. They were completely undervalued and underused at the university and were thrilled to get to get to use some skills for once. 

There were a few good moments though. The people were at least friendly, the weather was nice most of the time, I had a laugh buying my cowboy hat and watching people dancing to live music, the margaritas were amazing (they free-pour over there!), the Four Seasons was obviously fantastic and my bed was like a huge marshmallow with clouds for pillows, I liked seeing squirrels clambering everywhere and the buses were cheap.

I'm truly glad I had the experience, and I'd do the next one in London if asked, but I didn't really like Austin much. From being made to stand in a booth with my hands behind my head and then fingerprinted and photographed like a criminal at customs, to the ineptitude and greed of the taxi drivers, half and half, and the lardy food, I'm glad to see the back of it to be honest. I'd still like to see some more of America, but Texas wasn't for me I'm afraid - maybe I'm more European than I realised.

My home for 2 weeks

I'm back to work tomorrow and, having made some big changes to my business just before the event, I'm looking forward to seeing how that pans out. Spring also seems to have finally arrived in Blighty and next week is predicted to be fine and sunny which is something to look forward to. I'm very happy to be back to my cats, Italian coffee pot, TiVo, the cinema and my darling seaside town though.

PS: to my American blogger friends, please don't take this post as a criticism of you. I've only been to two places in the US and am just saying how I personally found the experience. We have plenty to moan about here and, if you'd love to come and visit, I would be delighted to show you around and see what you hate too! 

Weird Things About Austin So Far

Well I've been in Austin three full days and I've already noticed some really odd things about the place:

• Half and Half - it's an abomination and wrong on so many levels. I was told "we have 10 different kinds of milk" in the Wholefoods store and they still didn't know what I meant by a normal white coffee with full fat milk or just with regular full fat cream. The food in the 'health' store was not particularly healthy when you read the label, and they had help-yourself breakfast buffets that looked like seven shades of E.coli were residing on it.
• The food and people come in sizes large, massive and wow. It's nearly impossible to get a mini tub of ice cream or a pint of milk but I can buy most things in a size that is larger than my head if I so wish.

Massive Yoghurts, milks & some 'real' food

• They have super sucky toilets and no hand dryers. All the toilets in Austin are like airplane ones that suck away really fast rather than flush. Plus I've not seen one Dyson airdryer or any other hand dryer since I arrived - they're all paper towels here.
• Petrol is a third of the price it is in the UK. The equivalent of 50p a litre in fact (it's around £1.30-£1.40 in the UK). Which I guess is why people drive everywhere.
• They have little TVs in the back of taxis. They are not interesting to watch - the same as the TV in my hotel room.
• The food is pretty full-on. I already feel larded out and am craving something that isn't fried, full of sugar, covered in weird stuff, or an odd mix of lots of things I'm not used to seeing on the same plate. 
• The price you see isn't the price you pay. They have state taxes or something which means that you have no idea how much money to get out of your purse and feel that you're being conned and the cashier is just randomly deciding on a figure.
• The service is very good in restaurants - they check back on you around 600 times whilst you're eating but once you have ordered or refused dessert the bill is bought immediately even if you haven't asked for it. There are no 2-3 hour leisurely meals like on the continent here.
• They say flaaaaaarn and not flan - it's mesmerising.
• They also 'reach out' to people quite a lot here instead of just contacting them.
• The coffee is very different to European coffee... and I love my US readers so that's all I'm saying on that one.

I know it does sound like a huge complaint but I'm British and that's what we do. Austin is not a place I would want to live but I have bought a cowboy hat which I'm refusing to take off.

The competition hasn't kicked off yet but the US team we're working with are pretty incompetent and every day is a bit of a struggle. Some of the people are fantastic but others are woefully unprepared for the task at hand. This is not because they're American of course, but because they're just not very good at their jobs.

I shall of course give you more info about my stay when I get more time - I'm here for 18 days altogether and I move to the Four Seasons on Thursday (L'occitane products in the bathroom!). I miss my cats A LOT but I don't miss the crappy English weather. I half expect the UK to have blown away by the time I get back actually.

Tickedy-Boo And Nearly Off to Austin

I'm going to the 'UT and Hippies' bit

Apart from not updating my blog much lately, I actually feel right as rain again. I definitely wasn't myself for a few weeks but, now I've made those changes and let the family news sink in, I feel completely back to my old self - which is a relief.

After blurting out all my fears in my secret personal blog (the one where I say things that I might tell my best friend but sometimes even not then - the one where I just let it all out) I found myself writing at the end of the post "have a little faith in yourself". I was surprised to find myself typing that actually as I hadn't realised it was what I needed. I decided to take my own advice (cos it's always so good) and I feel fine now.

I leave for Austin next Saturday (15th ) and have a packing list as long as my arm. Apparently the weather can change on a dime and go from 40 to 70 overnight - PLUS they're having snow right now so God only knows what weather to expect. I'm taking a load of layers but you can be sure that the one thing I fail to pack will be the one thing I need of course. Which is why I'm just taking everything.

I'm there for 18 days which is the longest I've ever been away from home on a trip - I've never even been on a 2-week holiday. Luckily I'm staying at a pretty swanky hotel which takes the edge off a bit but, if I'm honest, I love going away but I love coming home even more. I'm not one of those people who doesn't unpack for ages either - the dirty washing is in the machine, everything else is put away and my suitcase is stashed within half an hour of walking in the door. The thought of leaving my crap everywhere makes me shudder actually.

Although I know I'll be working like a sod, I'll be sure to take some photos of Austin so you can see what the place is like. I hear it's a little Democratic island in a Republican sea but I don't really know what to expect. I plan on having some barbecue ribs and possibly a steak or two but other than that I have no major expectations of my trip except to make sure that the event I'm working on runs to plan. I'm sightly wary of Texas as I've never seen a gun, am pro-abortion, don't believe in God and would laugh if anyone said the word Fanny - so hopefully I'll come home without any head wounds.

You never know though, maybe I'll meet a cowboy and end up lassoing steers on a cattle-herding ranch in chaps and a white Stetson whilst spending evenings line-dancing and entering spitting competitions... Stranger things have happened.

Feeling Left of Centre

This is my first blog post of 2014. I started to write one last week but the words wouldn't come out right and I deleted it because I wasn't really sure of what I was trying to say. 

Basically, we're over three weeks into the new year and I've been feeling very left of centre. It's been a weird and unsettling few weeks and I'm not entirely sure why. 

I had some pretty shitty family news when I went up to see my folks a couple of weeks ago and that has been playing on my mind a bit. I don't want to go into it, but it's something I can't fix and, I know you should only focus on the things you can do something about, but knowing that doesn't help. My brain has been subconsciously processing the information since my visit and it's unsettled me a bit. But there are other things too.

My businesses had also been stressing me out somewhat. I do lots of different things and, whilst I could physically get everything done, my brain was tired of being pulled in different directions. I desperately need a much simpler life so I shifted the focus on to my secondary business and made it my main line of work then decided to just specialise in events for my other business as a Virtual Assistant.

It's only been a few days but I feel happy and relived to have made the decision as I'd been mulling it over for ages but had been too busy to concentrate and make a considered decision. I added another phone line yesterday so clients can call me on a separate number instead of everyone calling me on just one. So that should relieve me of the late night and weekend business calls as customers will just get my voicemail and I can call them back. That took a bit more pressure off.

I also started using a Mindful Meditation app called Headspace in December to quieten my head and to try and see my thoughts as separate from myself and not chase after every single one - to try and see them but not 'be them' as it were. This has certainly helped but has also made me far more aware of how I'm feeling as I've been noticing my emotions far more than I would have had I not been asked to look each day!

I'm definitely sticking with the mindfulness (which I'd started before I felt weird) because I know that it'll be really good for my emotional well-being in the long term, plus I really enjoy doing it and like the way it makes me feel. I even signed up for a year (10 sessions are free) as it does seem to be working and being in a position to observe my thoughts and not feel them right through me could make a huge difference to me... once (if) I master it!

So although I've taken some steps to relieve my stress, I've still been feeling very irritable, quick to anger and slightly anxious. I've been surprised and dismayed when my anger has arisen from seemingly nowhere but so far I've not been able to do anything about it. The anger thing is quite familiar to me actually as I always get angry before I feel other emotions (or afterwards - anger is usually part of the mix though). I don't like this and am trying to change it but it's at least familiar to me - anxiety is not. I am not an anxious person by nature.

I have this event in Austin in a few weeks and have been trying to clear the decks of all other work so I can focus on it 100%. It's possible that I'm feeling a bit frightened that I'm not on top of the work like I should be. I know that fear makes people angry and that's one of the last things I usually look at or acknowledge, so maybe that's it? To be honest, I'm not quite sure why I've been feeling irritable and angry. Hopefully it will go away after I clear my work and focus solely on the event though.

Through writing down my thoughts in this post, I think the anxiety has been caused by my family news and the irritability by the changes in my business and fear of what might happen due to my decision. Plus it hasn't helped that I have this huge event thrown into the mix. It's strange how we're not always very good at understanding the root of our emotions (why people see therapists I guess) and where they come from. 

For some reason, the last emotion I like to admit is fear. I wonder why that is? Maybe nobody likes to admit they're fearful about something or maybe it's just me? Perhaps I see it as vulnerability. Fear isn't something I'm used to feeling so perhaps I'm even fearful of the emotion itself? Such intense thoughts for the beginning of a weekend! Perhaps things had been swimmingly good for so long that these changes had simply unsettled me? Who knows - I can say that I feel a bit better after writing this though.

Zurich: The Food

Although the title of this post says "the food", it really should say "the chocolate" for that is what nearly all of these photos are of! Zurich was rammed with chocolate and truffles and the first photo below is actually a really swanky chocolate place at the airport of all places! No Costa coffee and WH Smith at their airport; they had diamonds and truffles instead! Feast your eyes people:

Pretzel stand 

This is where I snuggled under a blanket to enjoy a view of the river

I had a hot chocolate & a warm apple strudel. It was even a little custardy in the middle

Who doesn't love a brick of chocolate?!

This man (my unsuspecting future husband) was making chocolates in Laderach Chocolatier Suisse

A Gingerbread castle window display

Huge slabs of chocolate at the Laderach shop  

There were a lot of women in this shop...

Mmmmmmacaroons

My Unexpected Zurich Adventure

This time last week I was in Zurich. Yup, you heard right - Zurich.

It was a bizarre thing actually. My main client emailed me on Monday asking if I was available if he needed me for a day in Zurich that Wednesday or Thursday, I said yes (not thinking for a minute it would happen), then I awoke the next day to an email asking me to meet him at 7.45 the next morning at Zurich Airport. It was a bit of a surprise to put it mildly.

Of course I was happy to go - he was paying and I could easily move some bits and pieces, plus I can work anywhere after all. The only problem was that there were no overnight flights to Zurich so to get there for 7.45am the next day I would have to leave that same day. And to get the coach to the airport in order to catch the flight, I would have to leave in 4 hours time!! Mental.

Of course I made it. I even got to use my new Red Oxx Air Boss flight bag (dreadfully expensive and imported from the US because it's the best flight bag on the planet and won't get taken off you to go in the hold which had happened to me on my last 2 flights and infuriated me so much I invested in the daddy of all flight bags which comes with a lifetime guarantee... can you tell I'm enamoured with it?) which made me feel like a complete travel pro. I have to tell you that this cabin bag is incredible.

View across Lake Zurich

Anyway, I made the plane still not quite believing that I was jetting out to Switzerland just to hand over some paperwork, and sat back to enjoy the flight to a country I had never once considered visiting. 

There were Christmas trees all along the swanky Bahnhofstrasse 

It was cold in Zurich and had been snowing but luckily I had my snuggliest, warmest jumper with me, a thermal vest, bobble hat, gloves, and knee socks. I'm well known amongst my friends for always being woefully unprepared for the weather but this time I was ahead of the game and toasty. I check into the Holiday Inn and enjoyed the hotel bar and in-house comforts until bed time.

Fountain filled with fresh roses & a festive store

After rising at 5.45am to hand over paperwork to my client at the airport (this took all of 20 minutes), I discovered that he didn't need me for a day at all and that I was now free to do what I liked. My flight home wasn't until the next morning so I went back to the hotel, slept for a couple of hours then took the train into Zurich to explore. The train was a double-decker which I'd never been on before (small things) and there was a Christmas market at the station when I arrived. In fact Zurich was well prepared for Christmas and was as festive as fuck.

The Grossmunster

Zurich is another one of those quite compact and easy to find your way around cities. I'd had a brief look at travel websites on my tablet at the hotel so circled a couple of places I wanted to visit and headed off to explore. I was still quite incredulous to find myself in Switzerland to be honest so I didn't mind what I did - although I did assume it would involved chocolate at some point of course.

It turns out that Zurich is astronomically expensive so I didn't buy any souvenirs, but I did have a great time ambling up and down and round and about the little streets taking in all the Christmas window displays and beautiful architecture. Although I'm an Atheist I do like a nice church so I had four of them on my to-visit list and each was really simple but beautiful in their own way. There was organ music playing in each church which I'd never experienced before, and the music in one was so haunting that I stood transfixed for ages. 

Apart from the cost, the things I noticed most about Zurich was how clean it was, the amount of cranes on the horizon (a sign of a prosperous city) the amount of benches, lots of birds on the river, no drunks or homeless people on the streets and it was also a very white place - not multi-racial at all. There also weren't many kids or buggies around which was odd and hardly anyone was smoking either. 

The thing I loved the most though was that on the chairs outside cafes were lots of soft throws to snuggle under and even shops had sheepskin rugs strewn on the outside sills for you to sit on. It would never work here as people would steal them, but I was completely enamoured and wasted no time in getting under a lovely purple one to enjoy a hot chocolate and warm apple strudel by the river - as you see above. 

Look at all those rugs & throws!

I took a LOT of photos of chocolate and other food items so I'm going to do a separate food post as usual for you. So my virtual friends, that was my unexpected one day in Zurich - I had no idea that I would get to go to Switzerland with such short notice, but I'm really glad I got the opportunity. Now that's Wales, Italy, France AND Switzerland I visited this year - how lucky am I?!

My next overseas trip is Austin, Texas in February for two and a half weeks for an event I'm working on which I think will be incredible. I didn't leave the UK until I was nearly 30 and now I get to go off all over the place. I really do have to pinch myself sometimes.

A Farewell to Festivals

The Main Stage before the festival opened

On Wednesday I got back from the Green Man Festival I work at each August and I've firmly decided that I am never doing it again. Although it wasn't the mud-fest that was last year, I'd made my mind up before the main work actually started to be honest. I think it must be like childbirth where people forget how awful something is in order to be able to go through it again - it's noisy, dirty, I'm not fussed about music (more of a film gal), it's exhausting, I get completely 'peopled out', and the toilets are rank.

The main thing for me though was that both my businesses are much more successful now and I actually turned down more work than I made doing the event - and I wouldn't have had to work 14 hour very stressful days in order to make that money either. I can't help someone with their business at the detriment of my own so that was the nail in the coffin for me.

Patti Smith opening the festival

There was also the usual incompetence of not only our own department but most of the other ones as well as the stupidity of most of our staff. It never ceases to amaze me how they fail to understand the paperwork each year and that they only get their heads around it on the last day. Our intern said we had the most obvious and straightforward documents she'd ever seen and even she was astounded at how many mistakes and omissions they made even though they'd been briefed many times both one to one and in groups - plus most of them worked the event every year! It was like they'd never seen a bar in their lives.

I'm so tired of this shit now. 5 years and nothing ever changes. 

There was one main memory of the 11 day stay there that was simply incredible though. One evening a woman I know who works with the National Trust showed me how to listen to bats on a 'bat detector'. We stood on a stone bridge over the river Usk under a full moon and I listened in amazement to the clicking of bats as she slowly went through the different frequencies they transmit at... and then we saw an otter in the river. Apparently it's very rare to see an otter swimming in the wild here so I feel very lucky even though I didn't know it at the time.

Batwatching under a full moon by the river Usk in wales

I didn't actually have to go and work at a festival to see this as the river is always there though! The other thing I particularly like about the festival site is seeing the mist roll down over the top of the Sugarloaf mountain. It never fails to enthral me and I could sit there all day and watch it. It's beautiful. I'm not particularly at one with nature I have to say - in fact my first thought when I saw the otter was "I bet that water is freezing, poor little fella". 

So that is it for me. I'm knackered so am taking a few weeks off to chill out and get a new venture off the ground. I'd like to make a fair amount of my future income from paid downloads and affiliates so I'd like to get my new project properly up and running before my work all starts again in October. I've been given this great opportunity to take time off so I'm going to take full advantage and make a great site and product instead of trying to squeeze it in between work commitments. It looks like I have a new event co-ordination job from Oct to March as well which culminates with me going to the actual event in Austin, Texas. Pretty fucking exciting.

A giant Green Man that they burn at the end of the festival

I've also decided that I want to make some changes to the way I run my businesses because soon I'll have three of them. I live by the sea but don't take full advantage of this so I'd like to get up and go for more walks down the beach before I start work in the morning. I love it down there and I always feel so much better when I go. I often just get up, commute to my kitchen or dining room table and stare at my laptop for 10 hours which is no good. I do get a huge amount of pleasure from work but this blubber aint gunna shift itself and I get some really good ideas when I stare out to sea. A journalist friend once said that about a centimetre above the horizon is where all the ideas lived and he was correct.

So all good on all fronts really. The plastic nose strips worked on the snoring boyfriend so I can actually sleep through the night when he stays now, all my businesses are booming, I have a great flat, adorable kitties, I live in one of the best places in the UK, I have brilliant friends, my hair looks amazing, Ryan Gosling exists, and I know what I want. You can't ask for more than that. 

It's great to be back people!

Mud, Mud, And More Mud

Little tiny Van Morrison

Long time readers will know that I work for the bars department at the Green Man Festival each August. Because I'd been so busy (read crap) these last few weeks I hadn't had time to write up the event so I thought I'd do it now while I was on a roll.

It's an understatement to say that I'm not much of a festival-goer as I hate crowds, mud, and public toilets - which I stay in a little cabin called a BunKabin during my 11 day stint. This is a little diddy cabin with a coupla beds, a desk, a loo, a radiator, a sink, and a shower. It's frankly a godsend and I would refuse to go if I didn't get one! 

Last year was lovely and sunny but, as in 2010, this year was a mudbath. Oh yes, whilst the rest of the country sweltered in a mini heatwave, I was up to my arse in stinking mud. In fact I had to endure BBC articles asking "how do we sleep in this unbearable heat?" when I was being rained on. Well it was Wales after all.

Apart from the mud which smells a bit fishy after a few days (who knew?) the festival went well. My job went very smoothly as usual and the event itself was a resounding success. Van Morrison headlined this year which was actually a bit of an anti-climax. 

Sadly he just hasn't got it any more, so when you're hearing him blandly sing "The Way Young Lovers Do" from Astral weeks when you've heard him energetically belt out the original, it's a bit sad. He hasn't got the lungs capacity to give it what it needs any more so he's just singing the song rather than feeling the song if you know what I mean?

I also had a really infuriating intern who couldn't somehow understand how to do an inventory. He over-complicated everything and got completely caught up in the details which you can't really do in events - you have to pick your battles and keep any eye on the big picture otherwise you go off chasing after fluff and the whole thing goes tits-up. 

He kind of got it around halfway through but at one point I thought I might actually kill him. Luckily  my colleague who works with the staff took him off my hands most of the time. He has much better people skills than I do which means he can handle people's nonsense better than I can. Saying that, my colleague did at one point tip everything out of all the crates in to one big pile and started hurling things in to demonstrate how to do the bloody inventory.

Clouds across the arena

Wales is very lovely though and Brecon really is something. Often the clouds were tumbling over the top of the Sugarloaf Mountain and actually floating through the main arena in the morning. Wales is notoriously wet as well and it lived up to its reputation this year. Strange really as the UK isn't that big compared to other countries, but the weather really does vary from one end to the other. We get the best of it in the South East luckily.

So overall the festival was great. It's my 4th year of doing my job there so it runs pretty smoothly now. It went really quickly but I have to say that I was really happy to come home. 3 days before I was due back I walked into the catering tent and exclaimed "get me the FUCK back to Brighton". I do love this festival but I am always, always very glad to come home.