The General Conversation Area

[Kite]

I had my latest statement from the Shell Drivers Club, I was looking at how many points you needed to earn an award.

To get a £10 voucher to spend on full, you need to buy 2000 litres of fuel (or 1500 litres of V-Power stuff), at current prices that £10 voucher will cost you £2800 to get.

Worst value-for-money national loyalty scheme in the UK?

 

[Tachi]

Just returned from Banbury - Oxfordshire, i got my dates mixed up and booked to go away for a long weekend this weekend.....thinking there were more days in the month and the expo would be next weekend not this one just gone :/

Anyway the weather was great, me and the gf + my parents + my aunt and uncle + my grandparents all met in a pub just outside banbury called the pickled plough, though each round of drinks was verging on £40, many were bought and drunk and eventually after hours of catching up and laughing we were asked to leave as it was an hour past closing time!! Time flies when you are in good company i guess

Spent one of the days washing and waxing the cars and the caravan (to which my mum and dad have given to me for free - i was surprised to say the least) so in 20 odd degrees of glorious sunshine, plenty of beers to keep us going and good laughter at the state of my uncles car (hadnt cleaned it in over 10 years) the girls went out shopping and we soaked up the sun whilst we worked. Ive actually come away with sunburn! (my uncles sunburn was to another level that even redheads like me can compete with)

Great time away from life in general, very relaxing - de-stressing and nice to just have a change of scenery.

What did i miss at the expo?

 

[Zin5ki]

What did i miss at the expo?

Though I have thus far kept this a secret, I surreptitiously stole ilmaestro's drinking straws once he had finished his mixed beverage in the Fox. I used one of them to consume a quantity of ginger beer today.

 

[Tachi]

Hahaha Ninja Zin's mastery of straw thievery at work then

 

[Rui]

What did i miss at the expo?

Though I have thus far kept this a secret, I surreptitiously stole ilmaestro's drinking straws once he had finished his mixed beverage in the Fox. I used one of them to consume a quantity of ginger beer today.

His...used drinking straws?

R

 

[Mutsumi]

What did i miss at the expo?

Though I have thus far kept this a secret, I surreptitiously stole ilmaestro's drinking straws once he had finished his mixed beverage in the Fox. I used one of them to consume a quantity of ginger beer today.

His...used drinking straws?

R

Could be a new fetish. Who wants the honour of naming this newly-discovered 'used drinking straw' fetish?

 

[ayase]

His...used drinking straws?

R

Could be a new fetish. Who wants the honour of naming this newly-discovered 'used drinking straw' fetish?

Not exactly new, "used drinking straw as second-hand kiss" is a bit of an anime cliche as I recall. I further recall Rui enjoying mine and ilmaestro's flirting before... what does this latest twist mean for Rui's headcanon AUKN BL saga!?

 

[Zin5ki]

If it at all exonerates me, I ran both straws under a tap prior to use.

 

[20thCenturyBoy]

I'm getting more exposure for my graphic novel. Hooray!

I finally managed to get a review up on somewhere, over at the Comic Collective. Hopefully it can help me get the book out there a bit more. I've sent copies to quite a few people for reviews but have yet to hear back, I'm hoping it's jsut an issue of they've got a backlog and will at least look at my email eventually.

 

[ilmaestro]

What did i miss at the expo?

Though I have thus far kept this a secret, I surreptitiously stole ilmaestro's drinking straws once he had finished his mixed beverage in the Fox. I used one of them to consume a quantity of ginger beer today.

Heh, I actually didn't notice this happen.

What did i miss at the expo?

Though I have thus far kept this a secret, I surreptitiously stole ilmaestro's drinking straws once he had finished his mixed beverage in the Fox. I used one of them to consume a quantity of ginger beer today.

His...used drinking straws?

...

 

[ayase]

Having returned to the UK and the North East after various adventures and misadventures incuding (but not limited to) purchasing a foreign car from a man whose language I could barely speak, driving said car over 1500 miles, waking up at 6am to watch cows cross a bridge, hiking round the gardens of Versailles, narrowly avoiding aquaplaning into some gendarmes, spending the early hours of Wednesday morning on Calais beach, having the car's condenser die on me and finally, dropping my iPhone face down on a motorway services toilet floor (CRACK) I find myself sitting at a real computer with a reliable internet connection again.

What am I doing right now you ask? Watching Ophcrack work it's magic because I totally forgot my password.

 

[ilmaestro]

Welcome back, Sir. I hope this country is not too unforgiving on your return from exile/France.

 

[ayase]

Thank you maestro. Despite the two major "Oh f*cking f*cking F*CK" moments of the journey occuring on British soil, every single person I met on the way from Kent to Cleveland was helpful, friendly and more often than not actually happy to exchange pleasantries and even engage in conversation with me.

What happened while I was away, some sort of massive leak of mood enhancing drugs?

 

[ilmaestro]

I think everyone feels like they can let their true selves show now that Esther Rantzen has come clean about her wig usage. Either that, or something else.

 

[Zin5ki]

hiking round the gardens of Versailles

Did you find any roses?

 

[Vashdaman]

Capital punishment via hanging still goes on in Japan! I knew they still had the death penalty over there, but I didn't know they still hung people, bloody hell. Isn't a lethal injection, or even just shooting someone, a tad more civilized?

 

[st_owly (witch)]

Capital punishment via hanging still goes on in Japan! I knew they still had the death penalty over there, but I didn't know they still hung people, bloody hell. Isn't a lethal injection, or even just shooting someone, a tad more civilized?

It's nasty over there. Amnesty have loads of stuff about it, apparently people can be executed with no notice and their families aren't told until afterwards :/

 

[Tachi]

Sounds dangerously close to "shoot first and maybe bother to ask questions a few weeks later" attitude.

More work on the car this week, it's becoming a really nice learning crve to strip off parts, fix or replace them and see the car coming together sre it might not look amazing to some people but i can stand back with a wealth of knowledge i've accrued from doing it myself (well, my dad and a haynes manual help too, to be honest) and so long as i'm pleased with what i'm driving around then thats all that really matters

Hows everyone doing on here?

Whats the plan for life now you're back in england Ayase?

 

[ayase]

Whats the plan for life now you're back in england Ayase?

Sell car, profit, buy car, repeat. That's the plan anyway.

Sounds like you're becoming a bit of a dab hand at the old automobiles yourself Tach. Doing stuff yourself's definitely the way to go (cheaper and more satisfying) but gets harder the more modern cars you work on with all their overcomplicated systems. Step brother has had something go wrong with the computer in his which now has to be sent off to Peugeot to be repaired for an unknown length of time and at an unknown cost... See, what he really needs is a nice old 1971 Autobianchi A112. No road tax, easy to fix, light-weight, compact and perfect for city driving, full of character...

 

[Tachi]

I'd be lying if i denied wanting to quit my job and do the same process, the only trouble comes in that the pay wouldn't be enough to self sustain (which is abit of a problem considering me and the other half are saving for a deposit so we can get a house in january)

I completely agree with you, my brother inlaw (of sorts) had a 15 year old vectra which he kept taking to the garage and after a week of leaving the garage, something else would be broken and he would need to return it to the garage again. Rather than look online for a possibly solution he'd ignorantly just throw the car back into the garage and let them "do whatever" which i'm fairly certain the garage was replacing most of his car with old pipes that they knew would break and purposely setting themselves up for more business. Well after paying out nearly a grand over a single month he decided to give the garage the car and bought a 2006 vectra 2litre turbo on finance (considering he's meant to be saving for a house aswell... :roll: )

He's said to me on facebook rather alot that i'm spending too much time on my car and should just get rid of it, but the way i see it (which is funnily enough the same as you have said in your last post) if something goes wrong with my car then its 11 years old, its engine light may come on and i'll have to fix it... with spares and breakers yards up and down the country its not hard for me to find replacements at a cheap cost to fix it. For him to have his car fixed, should a warning light appear, he'll send it back to the same garage, connect up fault finder to ECU and then charge through the nose to have it fixed.... and probably continue to purposely bleed him for money again.

Alittle knowledge goes a long way towards keeping costs down, i'm buying a new car either later this year or next year when we have a house, mainly because we need a 5 door car and the other half also currently drives a 3 door (citreon C2) so a bigger car would serve as a family car of sorts (yep kids are on the table) I'm just alittle unsure which to go for; 2011 Ford Fiesta, Ford Mondeo Titanium or an Audi A4, Ideally i'm looking at those because i like the look of them, the mondeo and A4 both have a touch of businesslike professionalism about them. Regardless of what i choose i'm keeping the Ka on the driveway or garage so should anything go wrong with the newer cars and i cant fix it then i'll have a reliable car waiting in the wings.