The Adventures of Lakshmi: The speed of sound

Time flies when you're having fun. Or really, time just flies no matter what you're doing it seems. Almost the end of May meaning almost half way through this year already.

Strangely increasing workloads mean that I don't seem to get nearly as much time as I'd like for keeping this blog updated. Still, am doing better than Aimee whose once-inspiring example of bloggery has now fallen far short of the ideal.

First off, I must take back anything I said about the Finnish embassy - clearly the service you get there, like so many things in life, is completely dictated by the mood of the woman behind the counter. My second attempt went smoothly, with no signs of suspicion and my visa ready in three working days. So all systems are go for the Finland/Russia jamboree. Now all I need is some money and some clothes that fit.

After a full week of work (mostly consisting of many pointless graphs and charts that I put together and we then didn't use in the Dell quarterly review) and a Chinatown themed dinner experience with Mr Kenny, I settled into having no plans for the weekend, after Jamila deserted me and went to some sort of drumming event instead (yes, drumming - don't ask, I don't know).

Watched Spiderman 3 on Saturday afternoon - a lot more of the same sort of thing as Spidermen 1 & 2 but enjoyable nonetheless. I could criticise the length of the movie and how it possibly loses focus along the way by having too many villains on the go, but overall, I was most amused by how Peter Parker embracing his dark side mostly consisted of him wearing his hair badly and disco dancing goofily down the street. Still, fun to watch if you take it for what it is i.e. the third part of a successful franchise and thus under no obligation to be original. Pirates 3 and Ocean's 13 come out soon too but looks like my upcoming travels will get in the way of timely movie watching over the next few weeks.

Saturday night I finally finished the present I was working on for Baby Samantha - I have hesitated to mention it before because a) I didn't want her parents to know I was working on it and I flatter myself that they might read this blog sometime and b) it didn't look like I was going to finish it before Samantha went off to college so I didn't want to draw attention to my own inadequacies. However, now that it's done and I am all set to entrust it to the mails I can at least mention it in passing. That said, I have been known to send Christina her Christmas present in October of the following year, so maybe I shouldn't speak too soon.

Visited Shafina on Sunday and she is looking well and truly pregnant by now. Baby #2 is due in about September and at the rate little Yousuf is growing I'm concerned that the next time I look over at her, she'll have two teenage children who will roll their eyes at me and look bored at everything.

Can everyone please stop having babies?

Random boxes all over the office at the moment as we prepare for yet another desk swapping experiment. I'll miss the initial madness of unpacking and settling as I'll be in Dubai next week but that also means by the time I get back, my desk won't be where I left it. I can almost smell the confusion this will cause. In the meantime, have emptied the drawers of my desk and found that they contained: