The Mad Bull’s Blog, Version 3

1) I like yoghurt.
I was introduced to yoghurt by M’Buthulezi, back when we lived in Orange Grove. I think it was when she had returned from her trips to Spain and France… Of course, yoghurt has improved a lot in taste since then, though its probably almost as fattening as ice cream now…. why is it that all the good things are fattening?

2) I like Ice Cream.
Especially Haagen Dazs and Baskin Robbins, though those two types of ice cream have probably the highest fat content of all ice cream in the world! My favourite flavours are Cherry Vanilla and a couple of the fruity flavours, but I try to eat ice cream infrequently, because I don’t want to get too blobby.

3) I like pum pum.
I was introduced to it by s.m. back when I lived in Orange Grove. It was back when I was about 15. I have had a lot better pum pum since then, but I like to think that both s.m. and I would have improved with age. Thank God pum pum isn’t fattening, (it isn’t, is it?) because it really sweet fi true!

4) I like action movies.
Yeah, and aliens, or rather, sci fi . Also comedy. I don’t like shows about psychos, or about bad relationships (fuck off, Lifetime!) and horror shows don’t really thrill me, especially those about the devil. Those can scare me.

5) I like Movable Type and Wordpress.
Yeah, both of these blogging tools rock. There are things I prefer about Movable Type and there are things I prefer about Word Press still, but they both definitely rock!

6) I like Cell Phones.
I have been through several phones now, though I am nowhere near to people like the DSS Doc and Shoma who change cellies like how most people change their underwear. You know, my cellie history is probably worth a blogpost in and of itself. We shall see.

7) I usually drink one cup of coffee a day. I like ground coffee which I perk. The instant coffee is nowhere near as nice. Still, even at one cup of coffee a day, I am probably drinking too much of it, see how I just woke up in the middle of the night? I blame that on the coffee. Nevertheless, I am drinking coffee just now…

I used to be forced to go to church, every weekend without fail! This continued right up until I was eighteen. At eighteen I rebelled and stopped going. I still don’t go to church very often now. My visits nowadays are mostly for weddings, christenings and funerals.

9) I sometimes wish that I had been able to travel the world.
I feel like that especially when I come across pictures or posts by other people who have done a lot of world travel, for instance, in this post I show a couple of pictures taken by an ex-colleague of mine and his wife who was up to recently doing his South American walkabout, (here is his site, actually) and this post by Kingston Girl made me wish I had been to some of the places on the world map on her site showing the places she has visited.

10) I have done a bit of travelling myself.
Unfortunately only to the US (a reasonable number of cities, actually) and Mexico. Even within the Caribbean, I have only been to Cayman. It would be nice to see more of the Caribbean, and also South America. Europe would be nice too.

11) I am not really a hot car fanatic.
I used to lust after hot cars, then I bought a slightly souped-up Toyota Starlet and after that, a Ford Escort XR3i built for Germany. The difficulty in getting parts for these vehicles cured me of wanting to own a highly customised vehicle again. Shyte! I remember when I used to sit down for two months without a ride waiting for parts to come from Germany! Ugh…

12) Of course, if I suddenly came into millions of US dollars, my view of customised cars might change.

13) I don’t talk a lot.
I am a man of few words, normally. For instance, I don’t like repeating things. I will tell somebody about something that happened to me, and then when another person walks in and wants to hear the same story, I hate repeating it. Thats one of the things I like about blogs, actually. Write once, read many!

14) I drink liquor.
Yup. I do, probably too much too, sometimes. My favourite drink is Rum & Pepsi. I will drink many things with rum though, like Rum Punch, rum and Ting, rum and ginger, rum and water, rum and coconut water…
I have done a bit of vodka (screw drivers mostly) and whiskey (JWB, on the rocks), but rum is definitely my favourite drink overall.

15) Up until the last couple of months, I would have said that I don’t drink wine.
More recently, I have been drinking up some red wine, so thats a change.

16) I like Starbursts.
Starbursts are probably my favourite sweetie of all time. I have been buying them for years, though I have been doing it less nowadays. I like the regular starbursts, Baja California fruit chews, the Tropical Fruit Chews and the Sour Fruit Chews as well. Yay, Starbursts!

17) I like sports, though I am not a super fanatic.
I scarcely watch sports on TV. I did watch a lot of the World Cup though. Football (not American) is my favourite sport, though I like lots of other ones. I don’t play football very well though, in fact, I feel like I am better with racquet sports than with football, but there it is. In racquet type sports, I play (or rather, have plays a fair amount of) tennis, badmington, and table tennis. I also like volleyball.

18) I like jogging.
I used to jog a lot, but my knees give me too much trouble nowadays.

19) I am genetically disposed to arthritis.
This pisses me off no end, because I can’t jog as I would like to and of late, if I drink too much, my foot hurts me (gouth). This would be one of the things I would change about me, if I could. I really miss running, and liquor is hard to resist when you’re out having fun. As a matter of fact, its because of this arthritis thing that I have to worry so much about the things I spoke about in 1) and 2) above.

20) I love my wife and she loves me.
In this, I am very fortunate. Sometimes I think that there are not a lot of people in the world who can really say that. God, even though you saw fit to give me the test of arthritis and gouth and shyte like that, I not gwine to curse you because you also gave me Natty. Thanks.

21) One of the things I have done to earn money in the past is computer programming. I have written code in COBOL, RPGII, xBase, C, Visual Basic (including VBA, VB, and VB.Net), PHP, perl, Javascript, and a few other not-so-well-known languages). Of all these languages, I was most familiar with xBase, COBOL and Visual Basic. The language I have used most is still xBase (dBase III, Clipper, Foxpro). Visual Basic and/or PHP will probably overtake that though, if I have my druthers.

22) I still like to code nowadays, though I can hardly find the time. Even when I was recently hired as a Developer/DBA, I spent huge amounts of time performing in an Application Administration kind of role. Maybe I should pack up my family and move to India! I hear thats where all the programming is being done nowadays… Unfortunately, the money one earns as a programmer “not really making it” at all! (is nothing to write home about!)

23) I yearn to be a more active, sporty person. I used to ride skateboards as a teenager. Lately (ie. since Sunday, Dec. 3, 2006) I have been trying my hand again. Yeah, I know its ill-advised! I am trying to stay away from it. No drops so far… (* knocks wood, just in case… *)
Not too long ago, I was playing football again. Now my knee is pretty phucked up, thanks to that foolhardy adventure!
Actually

24) When I was younger, at different stages, I thought I wanted to fly helicopters, be a rock guitarist, be a trucker, and run a strip club. Of all of these career moves I used to want to make, the only one I still think about sometimes is running the strip club. I think that I could have a lot of fun with that!
Its not going to happen though… Natty would slit my throat!

25) I haven’t gone fishing more than three times in my entire life. On the first trip, I caught a fish the size of my palm (and I am not including the length on my fingers! I do mean my PALM!). The second time, I caught nothing at all. The third time, I went for a boatride and they happened to hook a marlin. I fought the fish and we eventually pulled it aboard (I say we, because I got LOTS of help from the boat crew!) That fisw was just a couple of inches shorter than I was! It was maybe five feet, 9 inches or so…