Day Eighteen :: Preparation
This morning at around 8am I decided that I could put off the inevitable no longer and caught a bus into town to buy a new laptop. I went directly to the Mac store on Regent Street, only to discover that they don’t open their doors until 10am.
So I went to Muji to buy a couple of new pens, only to discover that they don’t open their doors until 10am.
I shook my head at this point, quite vigorously, and cursed their damned indolence.
Then I remembered that I’d received a text message recently telling me it was time to give blood again and the donor centre I go to in London was just round the corner in Margaret Street, so I thought I’d do that too. But of course you can’t give blood on an empty stomach, or else you fall in front of a truck and die, so I went to Ponti’s and ate the above breakfast.
Please note the lack of toast on my plate and milk in my gravy coffee. That’s willpower right there. (Still a little too much meat on my plate to be totally self-satisfied but … one step at a time.)
Then I was ready to give blood. Here I am in the act…
I love giving blood.
I like to imagine the journey my blood goes on after it’s sucked from my body. Where does it end up? Does it stay in the body of the recipient? Or is it in turn passed on to someone else? Or maybe it’s spilled in a grisly bar fight. Or guzzled down by sexy vampires. I guess I’ll never know, but I wish it well.
My dad had lots of blood transfusions when I was young, on account of him being a proper weakling with a bad heart, so I grew up knowing that blood donors save lives. I still didn’t start giving regularly till I was in my 40s though. But now, whenever I get drained, I feel a lovely warm, slightly anaemic glow. Plus, afterwards, you can get drunk on one glass of wine.
Although I didn’t do that today because I had other things to do.
Here are the things I did:
1) I went back to Muji and bought two splendid pens and one splendid notebook.
2) I went back to the Apple Store and bought one splendid 13″ MacBook Pro with Retina display and one back-up drive with a terabyte of storage space.
3) I came back to Peckham and picked up a form to register with a local doctor because I have a couple of things I need to get checked out before I go off again.
4) I made an appointment at the dentist for similar reasons. And a clean.
5) And perhaps most exciting of all, I stocked up on fennel tea…
I’ve developed a real fondness for fennel tea. It’s just so cleansing.
So, after a day of focused preparation, I am now ready to start earning some money online. My first avenue of endeavour will be teaching with iTalki.
Speaking of which, I wondered if anyone would really believe that the video I posted here yesterday, full of tics, twitches and coarse language, was my actual video for iTalki, and yes, some did. Which I enjoyed, impishly. It wasn’t, of course. But this is…
What do you think? Too jokey? Too pink? Too twatty? Anything I should definitely take out? I think it’s OK. On the whole. And tomorrow I’m going to set myself up as an iTalki teacher and … well, fingers crossed. Hopefully it’ll go well because I’ve just spent all the money I have in the world.
Good for me!
And if you don’t give blood, please consider it…
Until tomorrow.
Filed under: REAL LIFE, TRAINING Tagged: Apple, blood, consumerism, fennel tea, iTalki, London, Muji, Ponti's, preparation
