In a routine, robotic fashion, I get washed and dress on a daily basis. I picked up a spray and sprayed my armpits. I then went to reach for a t-shirt when I felt a squelchy notion on my armpits. Shaving Foam.

Tonight, I had a bowl of curry – I put it down, and I went from a sitting position to a half-lying down position and £6 of coins fell out of my jeans and splashes into the bowl.

I’m glad I stayed in all day, who knows what else might have happened!

I lost my PDA/phone on Friday – I only realised at the end of a furniture shopping tour of Ikea, DFS and Ilva. In that time, I laid down on countless of beds, sat in chairs and sofa, inspected shelves and book cases.

It could be anywhere. I dreaded I lost it in Ikea rather than Ilva. Ilva is a Danish furniture company new to the UK, its first store opened here in Gateshead as a direct rival to Ikea and to emphasise the point, they are located directly opposite Ikea. It certainly seem a posher shop of the two.

Trying to find a phone in a furniture shop as big as Ikea bustling full of customers is like trying to find a needle in a haystack in a F5 tornado.

Monday – the phone rang – Ilva’s cleaners had found the phone down the back of a sofa! I’m glad they were honest enough to hand it in as it is worth a bob or two.

Panasonic FZ-50 Digital Camera Prosumer

A while ago, I brought a new camera I’ve been hankering over for a good year now. With my older (and I think better) camera literally bitten the dust, I’ve an excuse to buy one without too much of a guilty conscience.

Now, thumbs down to Pixmania.com – they have a price promise and I saw one over £30 cheaper elsewhere just a day later. They haven’t bothered to credit me the difference. Secondly, while their site warns the cameras are of European specification and so it may not have English manuals but it will say on the products page when this is the case. Well, going from this info, my camera was supposed to come with printed English manual, not one in French. Finally, it comes with a EU plug, and they were suppose to send a free UK adapter with it, and they haven’t bothered with that. Communications is slow despite their 48-hr response promise. I’ve used them before and they were good but I think they got too popular or too greedy and will go elsewhere in future.

The camera itself, a Panasonic FZ-50 is a big camera but surprisingly light for its size. It is well featured, with a liquid damped manual zoom control, optical stabiliser motors, manual focus control (can be switched to auto focus on the fly), focus assist lamp, 2.5″ LCD and electric viewfinder with diopric adjustment for glasses wearers, 12x optical zoom, fast response times, hotshoe, and much more. It has a lot of features from dSLRs except the lens are fixed in this case.

Battery – li-ion custom design battery – it does last a good long time, I’ve not had to use the second battery I purchased yet!

The biggest problem with this camera is noise reduction – it is too aggressive, causing images to come out blurry at 100% size at 10 megapixels. Frankly I don’t care about how many megapixels beyond 4, but the more there are, the more noise it creates, so it’s not a good thing if your camera can do 20 megapixels anyway.

After a while of learning its behaviour, I’ve started to get some decent shots, but it does take a while! I still like the old one for superiour continuous shoot and faster startup times (Kyocera M410R). But I do like this in a lot of ways, worth it if you can afford the high price, but you do get a lot for your money. Lets hope Panasonic issue a firmware upgrade for the overly aggressive noise reduction engine!

I wonder how many more unplanned paid leave I will get before I go back to Libya to work. My dad’s 60th is coming up soon and I’ve made it clear from the outset that I need to have time off for this.

It looks as though rather than make two trips in one week, I might as well get another few more weeks off, and return in April, nearly four months after I returned to the UK for a three-week leave.

My only worry is will I remember how to work again? Will I get a culture shock that work involves not sleeping beyond 11am and haggling for some company vehicles on a daily basis?

In the huge unexpected paid time off, I decided to while away the time on properties.

To cut a long story short…

I adored a 3 storey 3-bed house by a beach, but it was a bit exepensive, and the builders could offer it to me on a 80% ownership scheme and I pay back the remaining 20% interest free within 10 years – but it’s only available through their “independent” mortgage advisors who, after a week, decided I can’t get such a mortgage. I figured the guy was clueless.

I then saw a 3 storey 4-bed house with amazing views of the northern Pennines, and yet its in a town centre location, with Matalan, Aldi, Morrisions, Focus, McDonalds and KFC a stone throw’s away, but out of view from the house. I went back a week later with me dad, left for an hour, came back again to reserve it only for someone to beat me to it. It was a lovely big house at a knockdown price.

I then checked with my own bank to see if I can get a good sized mortgage, and it seems I cant.

The problem?

My gross pay is relatively average.

However, my net pay is the same as my gross. So my net pay is the same as a UK taxpayer whose gross income is much higher, giving me a good sized mortgage if I tell them my gross “equivalent” (yes, I can more than afford even the higher mortgages even if interest rates go to 18%).

But no, they only care what your gross is, leaving me with a small mortgage which I can pay in as little as a decade rather than going for a more substantial investment.

It puzzles me as your net income dictates what you can afford.

I hate banks.

I was supposed to be on leave for three weeks. I’m at the end of my sixth week and looks set to remain on leave for my seventh week.

There has been a mix up with the visa application, where someone thought my passport was going to expire soon when it has another decade and it is only just being rectified now.

A lot of people say this is good for me – more time off. It’s more unplanned time off. I could fly to Tripoli with a day’s notice.

So I can’t make plans. Maybe I got what my blog is asking for… don’t make plans.

At least I’m on full pay and my allowed time off allowance remains unaffected.

Living such a simple life, my idle thumbs took me on a rollercoaster journey of property hunting. More on that soon.