Jakarta

Once again I find myself with lots to catch up on. Started the year with good intentions, and here I am nearing the end of January and almost three weeks since my last post already.

I'm in Jakarta at the moment, on the first work trip of 2017, here until Friday when we will be off to Sumatra for a few days before heading to Kalimantan for most of next week and the usual Friday night flight home. Much has happened work-wise in the last few weeks, and on a personal level most importantly a promotion to the board, sooner than expected (although strictly speaking it isn't effective until next Wednesday).

Home has been busy too. Nicky is beginning the games room project in earnest whilst I am away. Red walls are being painted firstly in white, and then another colour still to be chosen (but something a little more muted than the bright red), the inherited pool may well have already been taken away as I type (hopefully we will be able to visit a games room company to order a new one the day after I get back from Indonesia), the carpet company is coming round on Friday to measure up, Josh has designed some shelves to fit into the alcove above the piano (estimated storage for more than 500 paperbacks) and will get on with building them soon, and generally it is all very exciting.

And that is just the games room. We have signed on the line for the en suite bathroom with Ream. On the day of my return from Indonesia we will be going to see them to look at tiles and make some decisions. Not sure if we are supposed to have made some final decisions about showers/baths and so on before then?! Also we should be getting a visit from a surveyor sometime soon to make sure that the finer points of the design are all going to work. Slight nervousness that at some point during survey and/or fitting we are going to discover just how useless our plumbing really is and costs are going to escalate somewhat, but we will have to wait and see ...

Then there is the lounge shelving project. Closing in on final design with our carpenter. Think we are just needing to clarify a few points about shelves vs drawers vs cupboards for keeping the sky box and blue-ray in plus a few points about shelf spacing and power, and then we are all set to go, so hopefully that will be happening quite soon.

Sky Q is up and running in the lounge, and seems to be working in Jake's room, but signal not strong enough to work in our room. Awaiting contact from their tech team to sort out a resolution, possibly involving some hard-wiring somewhere in the house. Installation was a couple of weeks ago now so may need to chase them up quite soon. Also need to make sure we stop paying BT any money as we don't need them any more. In the meantime we have had a new Sky (Q - can't get anything else these days in turns out) set up in the lodge as no way we were going to get the one contract to work in both buildings any more.

Jake is getting some new shelves for his room. The trainer collection is at such a stage that it needs to be put on display rather than being kept in a pile of boxes. I understand that the boxes will need to stay (and the collector in me appreciates the need!) and so this will require a bit of a wardrobe sort out, but there are some new shelves available from Ikea which will do just the job. Nicky is going to organise a home delivery. I would sneak in a couple of extra Billys for my study at the same time, but I think that I will have to save that for another day, once I've figured out where I stand once some books have been transferred to a new home in the games room.

Wow - seems like we have quite a lot of home projects going on at the moment!

In amongst all of that Jake is embarking on a university plan to explore US university options which is all rather exciting. We took him to an event at the Fulbright Commission in London last week which was all about studying in America and the application process, which was a useful thing to go to. Also Jake sat his first SATs in Canterbury on Saturday. He did Maths I and Maths II, and seemed to find them OK (which was massively impressive as it sounded as though very little, if any, of the Maths II stuff has been covered in school yet). We will have to see how he got on when the results come out in late Feb. If he wants to continue down this path, he will have to sit the general SAT, and maybe another subject one. Plus he can sit the tests again if he wants to improve his scores.

We are off to Boston at half term so that we can go to a couple of college open days over there (not to mention enjoying a few touristy things whilst we are there - taking in a Bruins game, a trip to Legal Sea Food, and so on). It will be interesting to see what they are like, and more importantly, what Jake makes of them, and whether this turns out to be the first of a series of similar visits.

I had a trip down to Winchester last weekend to see Mum. The excuse for the visit was to assist with getting the DVD player working, plus a couple of other things, but mostly it was nice to have a visit, and we had a leisurely lunch catching up and chatting at Cote Brasserie in town. I came away with more than I took, stealing a couple of books from Mum's collection, and borrowing a couple more!

Then on Friday before coming to Indonesia Nicky and I managed to have an evening out together. We headed straight back out once I'd got home from work and had a quick dinner of tapas at the bar in Bluey (with a glass of Estrella!) and then along to the Gallery seating at the cinema (coffee and a tray of snacks each plus a sofa to share) to watch La La Land. Our considered opinion was that it was a good film, enjoyable with good songs, but not entirely sure why it is sweeping the board with all of the awards.

There, that seems like a reasonable update for the time being!

Muddy

Taking the dogs out for a walk in the woods today was a pretty muddy business.

Still, they'd been cleaned up enough to be allowed onto the sofa a little later in the day.

35 books

Last year, by my own standards, was a slow one for reading. Having set myself the challenge six years ago of reading 50 books a year I came in way short at 35. Still, there were some good highlights along the way. In roughly chronological order:

1. The Steep Approach to Garbadale by Iain Banks. Always good. Bound to read some more by him in 2017.
2. End of Watch by Stephen King. Bye bye Bill Hodges. Having been reading about you for the last two years, I just couldn't believe what got you in the end. Heartbreaking.
3. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Now I know what all the fuss has been about.
4. Half the World and Half a War by Joe Abercrombie, finishing the trilogy. Enjoyed it so much I bought a signed hardback of the last instalment and may have to collect signed copies of the other two.
5. Enduring Love by Ian McEwan. Another author about whom I am glad there is a fair amount of back catalogue still to work through.
6. More Letters of Note compiled by Shaun Usher. Still a genius idea and beautifully done. Sentimentally special as well. Bring on volume three.
7. Any Human Heart by William Boyd (and then The Dream Lover short story collection later in the year). A fantastic journey through the 20th century and a top recommendation from Ian.
8. A Morbid Taste for Bones by Ellis Peters. Can a book you've not read before be quite so familiar? Fully intend to read the whole series. Makes me think of Dad.
9. Started Early, Took my Dog by Kate Atkinson. Borrowed from Bec and devoured on a trip to KL. Last book featuring Jackson Brodie. Finished it and immediately started reading the first one, Case Histories! Thanks for the recommendation.
10. Kill Your Friends by John Niven. Awful, just awful, but a guilty pleasure.

A post for another day on what I am looking forward in particular to reading in 2017 ...

Shelves

Rough quote in from NJ for some shelves for the lounge.

We will be following up with an alternative supplier for the time being!

Table

Jake and I watched the final match in the 20th round of Premier League fixtures this evening. It was between Spurs and Chelsea at White Hart Lane. Chelsea were going for a record-breaking 14th consecutive win in the league.

Spurs won 2-0, thanks to two headers from Dele Alli.

Chelsea stay top, but Spurs are up to third.

One thing that this has spurred us on to do is complete our first sporting challenge of 2017. We'd meant to do this after 19 games had been completed (which I think was on New Year's Day) but didn't get round to it, as that would have been the half way point of the season, but never mind. Our challenge is to predict the final Premier League table at the end of the season.

Points will be awarded in May as follows: 5 points for a correct prediction, 3 points for any team that finishes within one place of a prediction, 2 points for any team within two places of a prediction, and one point for any team within three.

Predictions are as follows:

Place	Jake	Dad
1	Chelsea	Chelsea
2	Man City	Spurs
3	Liverpool	Arsenal
4	Arsenal	Man Utd
5	Spurs	Man City
6	Man Utd	Liverpool
7	Everton	Southampton
8	Southampton	Bournemouth
9	West Brom	Everton
10	Stoke City	West Brom
11	Leicester	West Ham
12	Bournemouth	Leicester
13	West Ham	Stoke City
14	Watford	Burnley
15	Burnley	Watford
16	Middlesborough	Middlesborough
17	Crystal Palace	Sunderland
18	Swansea	Crystal Palace
19	Sunderland	Hull City
20	Hull City	Swansea

Back

6am alarm was a bit of a shock this morning, but unlike recent years, getting back to work was a perfectly OK experience. Hopefully January won't be its usual stressful self (no trips to Brighton, even if there's one to Indonesia)!

New telly

As it is back to work and school tomorrow, and (other than Jake having a trip to Westfield and London a few days ago) post Christmas sale shopping has rather passed us by, Jake and I went out to Currys PC World this afternoon and got a new TV for the lounge. It is a 55" Sony, and seems to be pretty all-singing all-dancing. It is all set up already, and awaiting the arrival of Sky Q, which will be in a couple of weeks.

As I thought would have been the case, I had blogged about the monumental occasion of getting the previous TV (see post here), and it turned out to be just over 7 years ago, so in this world of rapid technological change, it didn't do too badly. Also entertaining to notice that I was commenting then that I had taken the unusual step of moving away from Sony!