Just another dent in the damage…

So this landed in my inbox today:

This message might meet you in utmost surprise. However, it’s just my urgent need for foreign partner that made me to contact you for this transaction. I got your contact from chambers of commerce search while I was searching for a foreign partner. I assured of your capability and reliability to champion this business opportunity when I prayed about you.

I am Mr Delchan Ouedraogo,banker by profession in BURKINA FASO , WEST AFRICA. I have the opportunity to meet unclaimed funds of ($5.5 Million Dollars) This is an abandoned fund that belongs to one of our bank foreign customers who died along with his entire family through plane crash in 16 September 2007.You can see the website link below.

BBC News

Meanwhile i was very fortunate to come across the deceased file when I was arranging the old and abandoned customers files in other to sign and submit to the entire bank management an official re-documentation and to the law imposed by the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said in World Press Confrerence on Tuesday 6 december 2005 at 12:18 GMT

For more information about the prime Minister decision on dormant accounts visit: BBC News

Audit of the year against 2006.informed clearly that it was stated in our foreign banking rules and regulations which was signed lawfully that if such fund remains unclaimed till the period of 3 years started from the date when the beneficiary died, the money will be transferred into the Goverment treasury as an unclaimed fund.

Hence; I am inviting you for a business deal where this money can be shared between us in the ratio of 60/40 if you agree to my business proposal. Further details of the transfer will be forwarded to you as soon as I receive your return mail at delchan_ouedraogo@voila.fr

Unfortunately I’m unable to help Mr Ouedraogo out at the moment but if any of you want to take this opportunity, feel free. And if you actually make any money out of this lemme know, I’m up for a giggle.

This weekend we made 103 flat breads… 12 spiced loafs and a million cookies. We called it bread club:

We gobbled up all these bad boys pretty quickly:

Why did we do this? Well, it was all for this:

Good times had by all… The BBQ went down a treat (I don’t have any photos of this yet but I’ll try and get some), the bands were all awesome, costs got covered (which is always a huge relief) but I still just gotta ask: Why was this place not packed out? Where have all the UK hardcore kids gone?

The ocean fascinates me, everything about it – its beauty, its depth, its life, its centrality to our existence, its mystery, its colours, its wonders – but it wasn’t until recently I finally decided it’s about time I learnt how to scuba dive. The original plan this year was to head out to Honduras and qualify somewhere like Roatan but alas it was not to be, considering I couldn’t find flights for less than £800. PAH. So after hunting around and having a chat to a few travel ‘advisors’ I settled on the Red Sea, Sharm el Shit Sheikh to be precise.

Bracing myself for what I already envisioned as tourist hell I set sail, crew pak in hand, ready to return Ursula for battle with the almighty Triton (for those who don’t know me Ursula is the rather large sea witch from The Little Mermaid I have tattooed on my back). I’m getting carried away now right? But anyway off I went anxious, nervous, excited fully prepared to test out whether or not my ear had fully healed from that really disgusting ear infection I had on holiday when I was a kid. Right the way up until my last dive out there I was praying my eardrum wouldn’t explode leaving me with little else to do than fight off all the ‘please come into my shop – good prices’ stalkers until it was hometime.

Turns out Triton didn’t want to battle this time, or rather I took to diving say like a ‘duck to water’ and my ears didn’t complain once… Four confined water, four open water, two adventure and one fun dives later I’m a qualified Open Water diver and almost half way to my Advanced Open Water. Next stop the world eh. Well, maybe. I thought the classroom work may get a little tiresome but it didn’t, not at all. It was all so much fun, even the learning how to read a Recreational Dive Planner bit, even the standard what to look for when buying your own equipment bit, even the ‘what next – your continued education’ bit. Yes yes all of it. I love it, I loved it, every second. My instructor was incredible, I’d totally recommend anyone going to Sharm to visit the Red Sea Diving College and get kitted up. The snorkeling is wicked, but seriously the diving is insane.

On my travels through the blue I saw turtles, blue spotted rays, eagle rays, moray eels, needlefish, cornetfish, all kinds of butterfly and angelfish you could imagine, lionfish, sand eels, too many different types of coral to name, parrotfish, groupers, two-bar anemone fish, trigger fish, wrasses, giant clams, puffers, boxfish… I pretty much saw it all! No manta rays though, which was a little disappointing. Those things are massive! I didn’t get to go shark spotting either! One day though! One day! In case you’re one of these people that thinks ‘a fish’s a fish’ go take a look at some of the things I saw over at UK Divers, they’re amazing.

So now I’m home what next? Well, as soon as I receive the pictures of my underwater photography adventure I’ll be getting some images uploaded to my Flickr, including some of me with my kit on the boat. Last night I headed over to my local dive shop seeking a dive group to get involved with and keep practicing and I’ve got my boy at the travel agents on the job of getting me back over to Sharm. Maybe if this whole career in Librarianship doesn’t work out for me I could fall back on dive instruction? Hhhhmmmm we’ll see but for now onwards and downwards!