Sitting around chatting over coffee and the usual ‘lists’ topic came up. This time it was the ‘name 6 people you would invite for a dinner party’ list. Although an old list topic it was one that I had not done before. I thought for a good 5 minutes and could not think of 6 people. The only person I could think of was TPT. I was assuming that the guests must still be alive.

I will answer why TPT first, the anti nobility brigade of you should not scoff at my choice on the grounds their upbringing, education or amount of wealth , (snobbishness works both ways). I find her funny and entertaining and believe that she would be a definite asset at a dinner party. But who else could I invite?

MJ was surprised at my lack of imagination and for not including politicians or any female actress that I found attractive e.g. Salma Hayek, Kirsty Alley, Susan Sarandon, Jerry Ryan, Emman Thompson, Cote de Pablo or male actors I liked, for instance Clint Eastwood, Harrison Ford, Richard Dean Anderson, Tommy Lee Jones, Nicholas Cage, John Travolta, Sidney Poitier

Why not the above? Politicians are a species I do not like. With actors it is the characters they play I like and would want to invite, not the actors who play them. Have you listened to any interviews with famous actors? So many are wooden and cannot talk without a script in front of them. If you were to include those no longer with us then yes, I would include the likes of Hepburn, Cary Grant, Monroe, McQueen and the ilk. That fact speaks volumes to me; they had substance and a quality that appears lacking in today’s current crop of stars. Perhaps it is because fame today can be achieved quickly and can also be short lived as those that shot them to fame become bored very easily, forever looking for someone different. Today fame is about fashion, often called the ‘purple cow’.

After 15 minutes reflection my brain kicked in and suddenly I have too many. The next 5 being; Dawn French and Lenny Henry, Victoria Pendleton. As we had 3 women and 1 guy I thought I had better go with another 2 guys so I opted for Tufnell and Russell Brand although I wanted to include J Ross and Cathy Burke. Can’t I have 8? ‘NO’ I was told, choose! I will stick with my first 6 and keep Jonathan and Cathy in reserve. But then again, what about Rowan Atkinson and... must stop adding more!

It appears to be a very British dinner party I think you would agree.

When at a friends flat her sister called, she has just shut her ear in the boot of the car. They had to open the boot to get her ear unstuck. How on earth? She has small ears too. For the next few minutes we are all miming shutting the boot and moving our heads in such a way as to get your ear caught. It must have been painful, but how did she get her ear caught in the boot? Sorry Melinda, you might be in agony, but that is nothing compared to the agony of mirth we are all feeling now because we are all rolling about laughing. We must be a bunch of sadistic people, laughing at others unfortunate and very painful mishaps.

In reply to the question Melinda asked as to who is or where does the name Kaimi Achava come from.

The meaning is not 'mind blowing', devious or remotely interesting.

When starting this blog I had written down a few ideas for a name. A close friend picked up the paper and asked what it all meant. I explained what I was doing and that Kaimi was a Hawaiian name which means ‘the seeker’ and Achava was a Hebrew name meaning ‘friendship’.

Her face took on that pained expression one gets when puzzled over something one does not understand. After what seemed like decades of silence, she shook her head and looked at me as if I had just stepped off a spaceship and said ‘you know, you can be really weird at times’.

while sitting in front of the computer wondering what to do next I ..er.. googled myself, there, I have said it. Why should I be ashamed? Others may view me with as much distain and mockery that society gives other 'unfashionable' and may I add, much misunderstood groups as say, train spotters.

When i googled myslef i found i am many.

Who am I?

Shaun is a member of the Washington State Bar Association and was recently selected as a "Rising Star" by Washington Law & Politics magazine.

Colgate University (B.A., 1991); University of Washington School of Law (J.D., 2000); Law Review.

Or am I?

Age 6
Hair Black
Height 4' 4 "
Eyes Brown

Or am I a Doctor?

Regulatory and Research Manager
DCMA
300 North Washington Street
Suite 102
Alexandria, VA 22314

Or an Australian police Sergent?

Missing person Borroloola - update 1

Police are continuing the search for an eight-year-old boy who has been missing in Borroloola since 10.30am on Tuesday.

Police from the Territory Response Section have arrived in Borroloola from Darwin to assist in the search. Search-co-ordinator Sergeant Shaun said a helicopter and fixed wing plane have been used in the search which has covered approximately 50 square kilometres.

Can I choose?

My secondary school was in Reading, a town I have not revisited since I attended there. The friends I made probably scattered throughout the world, promises of keeping in touch never kept and long forgotten.

Perhaps it’s the passing of time (I am loathed to say when you get older) thoughts on my childhood and youth occur more frequent. Did Paul become a chef? Did Michael become the scientist he wanted? Did Sean manage to stay out of prison? Did Laurie Sanchez make the big time in football? With the World Wide Web we now have more tools at our disposal to find our long lost friends and answers to our questions.

Do we want know? Are we prepared to be confronted with and adult version of someone we used to consider our friend and how would we appear to them? Are we so different from those youths or has life changed us in a way we are not even aware?

A year ago I made contact through emails to a once close friend from the past. Paul Evans had become the chef he wanted and runs his own hotel in Lancashire. After the initial what happened in your life since school I received a link to his hotel web page and a ‘well it was nice catching up with you, hope all goes well for you in the future’. A crushing brush off.

It was then with a certain trepidation that I agreed to meet 2 of my former friends in my old school town of Reading. Would they recognise the once lean and fit youth who always had shoulder length hair? What would we talk about and most importantly, would they be disappointed in what they found?

The venue was a white pub on a corner directly opposite the Station. I recognised Flavio (just) who was hovering outside. His jet black curly hair was now grey, a few lines on his face but other than that was the same. We entered the pub together looking for Dave, Flavio found him first. I did not recognise him at all. This Dave was taller and larger than the Dave I remembered of old.

Hands shaken, history told yet still we talked and talked. The years that had passed since we last met did not matter. We talked about what we had done and what had happened to us as if it was the first day back at school form the holiday break. The boys in my memories became the men I saw in front of me now.

Hours later we went our separate ways on handshakes and promises of keeping in touch. Unlike the promise made all those years ago, this one will be kept.

Driving back thinking of my friends, the phrase ‘Give me the child until 7 and I will show you the man’, attributed to Ignatius Loyola came to mind. Were these men the same ‘boys’ I knew? The answer is yes, they are. Life has changed them yet their character has remained the same but without the childish traits and with a mellowness gained with age. Thinking about Paul, even though he was a very close friend he always had a tendency to single mindedness. Did not go out of his way for others why would I think he would be different with age?

You know the type -- the swaggering, cocky, macho jerk who treats women like they're replaceable, while they're waiting in line to climb into his bed. Men hate these guys, yet women love them.

Ask any single woman on the street what she's looking for in a man and she'll tell you that she wants a nice guy with a sense of humor who will treat her well. But then she'll turn around and fall all over herself trying to get to a Bad Boy who will use and abuse her.what's going on here?Granted, what women say and what they actually do are generally miles apart, but even the usual female self-deceit doesn't seem to cover this one. So let's look first at some of the traits of the typical Bad Boy and see what we can learn from him.

The typical Bad Boy:

is cocky, arrogant
always puts himself first
is inattentive to a woman's needs
does what he wants when he wants to do it, regardless of what anyone else thinks
acts like a loose cannon
struts his masculine sexuality
isn't even remotely a "nice" guy
treats women badly
often uses women for sex

All negative character traits, to say the least. Yet women flock to these creeps in droves. Why? No sane woman would openly choose to be abused, so there must be some other factors operational here. To find the answer, we must examine the positive side of the Bad Boy traits to see what women are really attracted to.

A Bad Boy exudes untamed masculinity, independence and confidence. To women, these traits -- especially confidence -- are an aphrodisiac. The problem is, in the hands of the Bad Boy, confidence becomes selfish arrogance. But women are responding to guys like this on a purely elemental, emotional level.

Just as men are turned on by a woman's femininity, so too do women respond to overt male masculinity -- and the Bad Boy has it in buckets. What's going on here is that she's having a gut reaction to his confidence and male strength, and is blind to anything else.

But after years of research, I have found the one true reason why women love the bad Boys....
Yes folks, it's the tights.

http://www.blog.co.uk/media/photo/022808_pirate_penis/2408103

taking all the comment regarding the 'new Blog Station', I have found an upgaded version to allow Bloging in bed.

The £7-per-hour jobs locals don't want

High wages have drawn scores of Eastern Europeans to at least one corner of England. But not everyone welcomes this new workforce even if unemployed locals themselves refuse to do the same jobs.
Half a dozen workers trudge behind a tractor bending down to pick and load the Giant squash. And the only person in the field who's British is the bloke driving the tractor. The rest are all from Eastern Europe.
The crew of Latvians, Lithuanians and a Pole includes a former nurse who's earning four times what she was making in the hospital back home. It's monotonous, physical work with 60-hour weeks, but no-one's complaining - or taking a tea break.

And the local unemployed signing on?

When questioned said;

"No mate I'd prefer to sign-on than do that."

"I don't want to work in like no cornfield."

"I don't want to work with a load of foreigners."

Another lad is picking up his last benefits cheque. He's just got a job after 12 months of searching. "I think because of all the foreigners" he says. "I know people don't like it, but I've never had trouble getting a job before. I've been going for jobs and they've got over 200 people applying for them."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7288430.stm

To have an affair you must have a good memory. All those lies you tell have to be memorised by heart. On the whole, men are not very good at this whereas most women tend to remember the smallest detail told to them.

In this case events caught him out. How must the wife been feeling? At first elation that her husband was alive and then despair at the reason why he was.

How must he have been feeling? Despair and guilt over how stupid he was in having an affair but relief because it saved his life.

Tricky one.

The ultimate executive scooter. Air conditioning, ample luggage space and a presidential 'Monica Lewinksy' optional extra.

I am looking for a new job. thought about joining the army.
Now which army shall i join? The Russian?

nice, er, uniforms.

Or the korean?

nice, er, leg positioning.

Decisions, decisions.

While browsing through blogs and users I came accross a user who had over 600 friends! 600! How can you you keep up with that many?

As I always tell the girls, it's not the amount that matters, it's the quality.

I was bored today, not much activity on the blog scene, Lola and I were so bored we ended up doing silly things like 'what animal are you'. So, here are 101 things, don't ask me why the extra 1, there just is. I have save a couple for friends only though.

1. Hate the way I look.
2. Get upset if someone does not like me.
3. Have a phobia about embarrassment – cannot watch a comedy if it is based on someone make an ass out of themselves.
4. My favourite film when I was 10 was the old Rogers and Hammerstein film South Pacific.
5. I thought France Nuyen in the film was so beautiful.
6. Because of that film I first came across prejudice. I did not understand it then and still do not understand, (France played an Islander who was in love with an American pilot. He died at the end and my mother said it was for the best because a mixed race marriage would not work, their children would not be accepted).
7. In cowboy and Indian films I always wanted the Indians to win. .
8. Having said that, my first on screen hero was Clint Eastwood in the Sergio films. I so wanted to be like him.
9. I lose myself in books. Plays and films (don’t talk to me when I am). I replay the stories over and over in my head, re-writing and imagining myself in those situations.
10. I think too much. I think I might be a little weird (little! You say).
11. I am very tolerant of people, their views and their way of life.
12. I don’t like to be catagotized.
13. I really enjoy smoking
14. But I’m scared it’s going to kill me
15. I don’t have much will power
16. But I am trying to give up and going through a lot of mints as a result.
17. I have had cancer.
18. I have a tattoo – when I remember I have it I am embarrassed
19. I have difficulty in saying no, tele sales and Jehovah Witnesses must have cottoned on to this judging by the amount of times they call
20. I'm learning how to say no, yeh right!
21. Not one for one night stands,
22. I get quiet around people I don’t know
23. but can be loud around those I do.
24. I like drawing but am just average.
25. I hate being average.
26. A tendency to be lazy.
27. Feel a failure.
28. I am a disappointment to my parents.
29. I always make the wrong decision.
30. Wish I had said no to my ex girlfriends tears and constant calls to get back together, we got married.
31. Married too young and for the wrong reasons. We are divorced.
32. My divorce brought shame to the family.
33. I later found out my mother was seeing my father before she became a widow.
34. I never told them I found out.
35. My mother blamed me for my dads heart attack.
36. Regret not travelling more and just enjoying life before entering the rat race.
37. Interested in other cultures.
38. Bore anyone who will listen on my stay in India.
39. Like Indian music and Bollywood films. Used to do Bollywood dancing in the night clubs there.
40. The people I was with and I were mentioned in the Mumbai Times for the wrong reasons.
41. Get excited when I hear any Indian music I know.
42. Am I boring you yet?
43. Jealous of my friend who was in India with me (work related) because she gave up her job to work in an orphanage in Mumbai..
44. Wish I had the courage and selflessness to go and do something like that.
45. Sometimes resent my family because I can’t be spontaneous because of them.
46. Then feel guilty because I love my family...
47. I like a drink but hate getting really drunk; I might behave embarrassingly and would not be able to face people again.
48. I am a major wind up merchant.
49. And can piss people off when I don’t know when to stop.
50. I forget some people don’t know my sense of humour.
51. I can and do take the piss out of myself.
52. I find it difficult to sing my own praises; tend to play my assets down.
53. I make people laugh when I am not trying.
54. I wish I was as fit as I was when I was young.
55 Afraid I am a bit of a trekkie. Love Stargate, Battleship Galactica, Lost, Numbers, the entire Trek’s Heroes and the ilk.
56 Admire people who speak many languages.
57 Believe in the idea of communism...
58 Stayed on a Kibbutz, loved the people and the commune way of life. I could definitely move there.
59 Do not understand anyone who is racially prejudiced.
60 Although I am prejudiced against violent people and bigots.
61 I believe a woman can say no at anytime and expect it to be respected (I don’t care if he has got his trousers around his ankles and is sporting an erection).
62 Guys who abuse women or children should be... cannot think any punishment that is suitable enough, at the minimum they should be sterilised.
63 I don’t care about his human rights (63).
64 I think those who kill in the name of God are hypocrites and evil, contrary to their beliefs, they will not be accepted by God.
65 I have no faith in those in government; they are cosseted from the real world yet make disastrous decisions for those that are in the real world.
66 I believe that the law does not protect the ordinary people. The law is about protecting money. Stealing money will get you a longer sentence than kicking someone to death (the Train Robbers, what, 30, 35 years?)
67 I have contradictory beliefs.
68 I was born in Yorkshire and proud of my Yorkshire heritage.
69 Disappointed my children were not born in Yorkshire, I do not think the 300 mile journey there when she was in labour was too much to ask.
70 I don’t know what being British is thus am not proud to be British (see about the contradictory views (64)).
71 I wish my father had been born 3 weeks earlier because then he would have been a New Zealand citizen. And I could move there.
72 Would like to no move to New Zealand but would miss Europe alot..
73 If I had a time machine and could go back and change anything in my past. I would go back and change every fucking thing I could (excuse the French).
74 I am unhappy with my life (I bet you would never have guessed).
75 Tendency to talk at a tangent and wander off the subject.
76 I don’t like sleeping at night. I love the quiet of night.
77 I have to stop myself thinking about death, it scares me too much.
78 I can’t bare the thought of this life being the end. Life continuing without you, eventually all those who know you go and you might as well not existed. If that’s the case why wait?
79 I believe in love, it is not just hormones, that is lust and the two are different,
80 I don’t think there is ‘that one special person’ out there for us.
81 You can love more than 1 person.
82 You can’t explain why you fall in love with someone, her laugh, her crooked smile she probably hates, it’s not because she fits the media’s standard of what constitutes beautiful.
83 I was the teenager that teenage girl’s mums wanted their daughter to bring home.
84 Did not help with girlfriends at the time.
85 When I was 17 I hitched from school after a school dance (missed the last bus) the guy who gave me a lift touched me up and tried to get me to have sex with him.
86 I am a pale reflection of my dad.
87 He can do anything he puts his mind to, and do it well.
88 I am an only child and always wanted a brother or sister.
89 We lived out in the sticks, my school was a 40 minute bus ride away so never had friends to play with
90 As a result I was socially immature.
91 When 17, the first bottle party I was invited to I took a bottle of tizer. The young sister (of the girl whose party it was), was pleased anyway, she was 11.
92 My closest friends have always been females.
93 I always go out of my way for friends.
94 I like female company
95 And believe you can love female friends without wanting to have sex with them....
96 I like curvy women. I do not see what is sexy about size zero models.
97 Am I the only guy that does not have a lesbian fantasy? They are lesbians guys, they like women not men, doh. (Takes all my time and efforts to satisfy 1 woman never mind 2!!).

The other 4 are not exciting, hust personal. When reading this back I thought, God I need therapy and should get out more. X

Parents came for dinner. Chicken in the oven, veggies in the steamer, card on the table and chocs in the fridge.
It was quiet at the table, dad still thinks at meal times we should be seen and not heard. My girls came to drop off their cards, stayed a while and left. Shortly after that mother wanted to go home, so they left.
My mother has always had a strong character, the centre of attention wherever she went, loving, generous and always right. She has always drove me mad with her endless advice, simplistic politics and endless use of the phrase ‘there is no smoke without fire’ to prove her contention that everything in the papers must be true.
Now she struggles to get dressed. Often walking around the house in tops the wrong way round, trousers inside out and odd shoes. Talks to empty chairs and a mother long gone. Once a veracious reader, her books now remain unread. She does not know it’s mother day. She will not remember that I love her; she will not feel the pride of her granddaughter’s graduation. My mother has Alzheimer’s.