Tag Archives: alvin tofler

Saturday 10th November 2018 – THE BIG PROBLEM …

… with going to bed early is that there is quite often a tendency to awake early too. Early is one thing, but 04:48 is a bit ridiculous.

And even worse, I didn’t go back to sleep either I just lay there and vegetated until the alarm went off.

An early breakfast meant that I had plenty of time left. So I finished off the entry for the third day of my High Arctic voyage and put it on line where you can see it in all of its glory, with a couple of dozen of the … gulp … 127 photos that I took that day.

Once that was done I had a shower and then headed off for the shops.

LIDL came up with nothing at all special, and NOZ wasn’t much better. Leclerc didn’t come up with much either. All in all, it was a very light shopping bill today. And that includes the gram flour from the Biocoop.

But I nearly spent a lot more than that.

Having a look around in the Second-Hand Shop they had a beautiful Ibanez 5-string bass guitar and I had a good play around on it for about 15 minutes. Then I had to tear myself away before I spent a lot of money.

But the printer!

According to the Leclerc website, they have an Epson printer on special offer – €15:00 cheaper than the equivalent on Amazon.

I like Epsons, for the simple reasons that firstly the ink is cheap and secondly the colour cartridges are separate so you don’t need to replace the whole lot when just one colour runs out.

The advert said that the printers were available on order from the shop so off I went. And the usual inept Je m’enfoutiste who couldn’t be bothered to look for it on the on-line catalogue went off to chat to a colleague, and came back to tell me that “they’ve all gone”.

Back here, I had a look on-line, and there were plenty left. So I ordered one on-line instead and it will be in the drive-in in a couple of days.

But I’m getting sick and tired of this modern trend of je m’enfoutisme where shopkeepers and shop assistants are kicking people out of their shops because it’s too much like hard work to try to sell them something.

And anyone who has read Alvin Tofler’s The Third Wave will recall that he foretold all of this nearly 40 years ago.

People argue long and hard in favour of “shop local” instead of shopping on-line, but at least the computer and the warehouse robots are keen and eager to fulfil your demand.

While I was finishing off my lunch this afternoon there was a ring on the doorbell. Liz and Terry turned up to say hello, have a coffee and to give me some shopping that they had brought back from the UK for me. Stuff for Christmas such as mince pies, mincemeat and Christmas pudding, seeing as the English Shop in Everburg let me down.

We had a good walk around the headland and the walls in the wind and rain, followed by a coffee in the cafe in the old town.

Later on, I started to work on the web pages for Day Three but ended up by falling asleep on my comfortable chair.

On awakening, I noticed that US Granville’s 2nd XI was playing against LC Bretteville Sur Odon, and kick-off was in 40 minutes time.

football stade louis dior us granville lc bretteville sur odon manche normandy franceNot wishing to hang around, I sailed off at a rapid rate of knots and was actually there 10 minutes before kick-off. I didn’t know that I could move so fast these days.

US Granville took the lead after just one and a half minutes. From their first attack they won a corner. The LC Bretteville Sur Odon keeper punched it out and a Granville player picked up the loose ball and drove it back into the crowded penalty area where it shot through a ruck of players straight into the net without touching anyone.

They had the ball in the net after 13 minutes too, but it was ruled out for a push on a defender.

LC Bretteville Sur Odon woke up after about 35 minutes and began to get on top. They almost equalised but a shot was kicked off the line by a defender.

The second half carried on with LC Bretteville Sur Odon clearly on top but a few unsavoury incidents which ended up with an LC Bretteville Sur Odon in the dressing room disrupted the game.

Three substitutes all at the same time refreshed the Granville team and, against the run of play, scored a dramatic second goal. A breakaway through the centre saw the ball blocked on the line not once but twice, but the third attempt on goal found the back of the net.

So a rather fortunate 2-0 win for Granville.

drawbridge pont levis old town walled city granville manche normandy franceBy now the rain had stopped so I had a good walk back home.

I’d taken the Nikon 1 with me and so I decided that I would have some fun with it in the dark.

As you know, I’ve not been able to get it to work as well as I would have liked in poor lighting, and the drawbridge into the old walled town here gave me ideas.

drawbridge pont levis old town walled city granville manche normandy franceI took several photos of the pont lévis, using different shutter, aperture and ISO settings, to correspond and compare with the earlier one which was taken on fully automatic settings.

Most of them were filed under CS, but this one turned out quite well.

1/13 shutter speed, f3.75 and ISO6400, and darkened slightly.

drawbridge pont levis old town walled city granville manche normandy franceBack home, while I was working on the photos, I noticed a couple of people nicely framed in the archway of the drawbridge.

I cropped out that part of the image and blew it up a little to see what it would give me, and it’s produced a nice effect.

However, it’s ended up being rather pixelated and that’s a disappointment. I don’t seem to be able to produce the quality for which I am looking.

Back home, I made myself a plate of mushrooms in tomato sauce with pasta for tea.

I’m ready now for an early night, especially having done 147% of my daily total, and I hope that I’ll be able finally to have a good sleep.

I need it.

Saturday 1st September 2018 – IT WAS HARD THIS MORNING …

… to haul myself out of the stinking pit. But then, what do you expect at 04:00 in the morning? at least I beat the morning chorus of the air-conditioning and the fridge compressor.

But having made my butties and packed my bags last night, a quick wash and a few other things and I was ready for the road.

I hadn’t gone more than 100 yards when I was totally drenched in one of these sudden storms for which Montreal is famous. But it went just as quickly as it came so it wasn’t too much of a problem.

And it’s a good job that I was early at the bus stop. The advertised time of departure is 04:54 but at 04:54 we were already half-way down the Boulevard Rene-Levèsque, doubtless to the annoyance of a few people, I should imagine.

The airport was the usual Dorval chaos. As Alvin Tofler predicted 40 years ago in his classic book “The Third Wave”, it’s all self-check-in stuff now. The passengers don’t have a clue half the time as to what they might be doing, and it’s all very well for the staff to tirer la tronchewhen the labels are stuck on the suitcases incorrectly or something like that, but what do they expect?

While “security” might ordinarily have been somewhat painless, I was still marked out for more personal attention – probably because they found the tube of Aloe Vera, for which I had paid a small fortune yesterday, in my backpack. They even closely examined the peak of my cap.

As I have said before … “and you’ll say again” – ed … I’d much rather take my chances with the freedom fighters than the airport “security” personnel.

They had a call for hand luggage to go into the hold, and just for a change I sent mine down, having removed the laptop and the book. I remember that I was rather overwhelmed with stuff on the journey over, and it’s only a couple of hours on the plane (said he, having forgotten about the two-hour time difference).

airbus A320-200 air canada august aout 2018Today’s aeroplane is an Airbus A320-200, and it’s been a while since I’ve had a flight in one of those.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to see its serial number so I can’t tell you anything about it.

But what I can tell you is that, much to my surprise, there wasn’t a meal offered on the flight – and it was over 4.5 hours too. That was bizarre.

Plenty of coffee though, so I fuelled up on a couple of occasions. And being stuck in the middle of a row (no aisle seats available yet again) I had to disturb this rather nice Oriental girl sitting next to me.

hotel renaissance edmonton airport canada august aout 2018But as for the hotel itself, I’ve never ever seen anything like it. It even puts the one in Tunisia to shame.

The staff are overwhelmingly polite to the point of being obsequious and I found that very disagreeable.

But there’s absolutely everything that you could want here, even down to an electric iron and a shoe polishing kit.

edmonton airport canada august aout 2018I’m right at the top, on the 8th floor to be precise.

And on the side that has a beautiful view right over the terminal building and the runway too. I could sit and watch the planes come in to land all day, but I have plenty of thigs to do;

Like reorganise my luggage.

subway sandwich bar near edmonton airport canada august aout 2018But first things first.

With there being no food on the aeroplane I need to organise some lunch, and one of the advantages of having a good internet connection is that these days one can call up a map of the area to see what’s about.

And just about one kilometre away across the car park is a Subway sandwich bar.

These days they offer falafel so I braved the biting wind and went over there for a falafel and salad butty. And it was hard work trying to persuade the rather elderly “sandwich artiste” to make me what I wanted instead of what she wanted to sell me.

But when I finally received it, it was very nice. And with it being this week’s special offer too, it was very realistically-priced.

electric block heater socket canada august aout 2018The walk back through the car park was very interesting indeed, and for a whole variety of reasons too.

Do you remember all those years ago when we first started to come regularly to Canada and we saw these electric plugs dangling out of the engine compartments?

We decided that they were engine block heaters and, sure enough, here on the car park at Edmonton Airport are the sockets in which to plug them in winter.

nissan quest edmonton airport canada august aout 2018No what about this car?

This is one that I’ve never seen before, and yet it looks kind of familiar, doesn’t it?

It’s actually a third-generation Nissan Quest, made between 2004 and 2009 and in my opinion it bears more than just a passing resemblance to the Dodge Grand Caravans that we used to have in the good old days before Strider, doesn’t it?

genesis edmonton canada september septembre 2018And here’s something else that we Europeans won’t ever have seen.

It’s a Genesis, and in case you are wondering what that might be, it’s really a Hyundai but quite a luxury one.

With the Hyundai name being usually associated with more plebeian vehicles, it was felt that offering a luxury car under that name was not such a good idea – hence the branding exercise.

luggage edmonton airport canada september septembre 2018I went for a walk around the terminal building.

I was intrigued by the fact that, for the domestic flights at any rate, the baggage carousels decanted themselves right into the middle of the Arrivals terminal.

That’s not such a good security idea in my opinion – anyone could grab your suitcase and walk off with it without any check whatsoever.

Another good advantage of having a decent internet connection is that you can watch the football. In the Welsh Premier League today, the televised match was Cefn Druid v Llandudno and I managed to catch the second half.

Llandudno had most of the play but weren’t as well-organised as the Druids, and the 2-1 scoreline in favour of the latter was about right.

But judging by the style and quality of the play, it’s clear to see why these two clubs are at the wrong end of the table.

I had a shower and a wash of the clothes that I had been wearing, and then I had to go to a meeting to discuss our future.

There were 170 of us in this little room all told, including The Vanilla Queen – a nice young girl whom I had noticed on the aeroplane coming up here. The presenter of this meeting gave us all some very bad news.

Not the news that I was hoping to hear, I have to say, but it can’t be helped. No-one can legislate for the weather at all and you get what you are given and like it.

As a result, all of our plans have now changed and I am really disappointed. And what didn’t help was missing my aim and biting a huge chunk out of my lower lip. It’s swollen up like nobody’s business right now.

But there’s always a bright side to everything. I had a long chat with she named The Vanilla Queen. She’s a hairdresser, so it seems, and lives on Baffin Island. And she’ll be on my aeroplane with me (and about 50 other people) at … gulp … 06:00 tomorrow morning.

And so yet another early start. I’m going to bed.:!!

Tuesday 15th September 2009 – IF YOU COMPARE THIS PIC …

attic wall plasterboard les guis virlet puy de dome france… to the pic of yesterday you will notice a change. In fact I’ve started to add the plasterboard to the walls.

First thing in the morning I finished off the battens and then set up a workstation outside with everything I need to measure and cut the plasterboard. I’ve been cutting it into manageable sizes and so although it looks like a patchwork quilt I can’t see any other way of getting it into the attic by way of the ladder that I’m using.

plasterboard attic wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceTerry recommended glueing the plasterboard to the battens but it was a hell of a job getting the polystyrene to stick. It wasn’t possible to put the pressure on at the right places and it kept on springing off. I held it on with some speed clamps but that didn’t work and so I tacked them on with nails – and then I thought “badger this for a game of soldiers. If I’m using nails I may as well nail the boards to the battens and forget about the glue”.

It’s not very pretty but I’m going to have to use filler anyway in the joints so mixing more filler to fill the nail heads is neither here nor there. It’s still going to be quicker than waiting for the glue to dry on each individual panel.

Claude poked his head in and had a look – and he’s quite impressed. The last time he was here we hadn’t finished the roof tiling. That was a month ago and doesn’t that seem like a long time ago? We had sun in those days – not like today. I had to put a jumper on as the temperature has now plummeted. In a valiant attempt not to light the heating, I now have a fleece jacket on as well. The first frost of the autumn can’t be far away.

In other news, at the Anglo-French group yesterday I was working with Antoine Ged. He’s the former postmaster (now retired) and his English is surprisingly good. He lent me a book to read – entitled Managing in Turbulent Times. This is another one of the Alvin Tofler – The Third Wave kind of books that were written 30 years ago forecasting how the world would look at the turn of the 21st Century. And while many predictions were totally wide of the mark, many others were surprisingly, if not astonishingly accurate.

In one chapter on the subversion of democracies, Drucker (the author of “Turbulent Times”) writes
“such a process (of subverting democracy) is doubly important …in which small, single-minded, often paranoid groups have attained a power out of all proportion to their actual size”
Now I bet you any money that many people are waiting for me to make a nasty and cheap crack about an organisation that many of us know and love. But not a bit of it. May I draw your attention to the key word in the quote from Drucker – a word that has as its middle two letters “NG” and not “MP” and so it can’t possibly apply.

But of course the Open University Students’ Association Executive Committee does in fact speak with a single mind (except when the OUSA President crawls out of her sick bed at the Annual Conference to oppose a motion in respect of which the rest of the Executive Committee is speaking in favour – but more of this anon) but that single (“do you mean “simple?” – ed) mind does not belong to any of the elected members of the committee.

No more graphic example of this that the one that was reported to me by one of my moles on various committees – taking a well-earned break from all kinds of activities at the last Annual Conference – who happened to be present when the much-maligned Turdi de Hatred very generously invited the members of the retiring Executive Committee to dinner at the University canteen.
The waitress approached the table at which Turdi and the members of the committee were sitting and asked
“is madam ready to order?”
“I’ll have the steak!” announced Turdi
“And the vegetables?”
“They’ll have the steak too!”