David Leigh

OK, I’m back again after a trip down to Vejer de la Frontera in the south of Spain. The occasion? My brother’s wedding and the bastard asked me to be best man!

Now I’m not really one for weddings, but the whole family had a great time, with my sister and her other half coming over from Australia and various other family, friends and hangers on congregating on Vejer.

We flew down on Clickair and back on Vueling - both were great to fly on and the security that I complained about at Gatwick is done much better in both Barcelona and Jerez airports.  Now back to wark…

I meant to say something about this when I got back from London last Sunday, but didn’t get around to it for some reason. What I wanted to say is that you should really avoid flying out of the UK if you can possibly avoid it because the additional security in place makes it a nightmare.

It took me 40 minutes to clear security, giving me just 10 minutes to reach my gate before it closed. Think about this; you arrive at the airport 2 hours before your flight because that’s when check-in opens. You queue for 30 minutes to check in and the queue for security for another 40 minutes. This is absurd! Come on BAA hire some more staff, I know that it is the Government that insists on additional security but why make people’s journey’s a complete misery?

Now you may have started to realise and may have not, but I do like eating. To celebrate my birthday yesterday I took Miriam out for dinner at Sikkim, a place we tried three years ago and found the mix of cuisine which supposedly follows the route of Marco Polo to suit us perfectly.

Last night we booked, but on Friday and Saturday they have an odd system where they have two sittings, the first from 8.30 to 11 and then second from 11.15 to 1. I prefer to eat at around 10 when going out, so this didn’t really fit in with my plans for the evening, but we accepted the first sitting and arrived at about 9. (more…)

Last night I finally met Dan, one of the original members of my StomperNet SIMPLE team who also lives in Barcelona.

We should have met before, but I was hyper busy before the summer and cancelled a couple of times, so was glad to finally meet at Belly for the monthly Barcelona entrepeneur’s group networking meetup. Over a few beers we had a good chat about SEO and internet marketing, including StomperNet SIMPLE, the 30 Day Challenge and Immediate Edge. It’s always good to find someone who speaks the same language as you (I don’t mean English, I mean SEO) so I hope we can meet up a bit more often than once every 4 or 5 months.

Chicken curry anyone?

One thing I always make sure I do when I visit the UK is go out for a curry. It’s simply the best food ever invented and I could eat it at least 5 days of the week. Leftovers are always great for breakfast and the aroma of the spices cooking is unbeatable.

So yes, I did have a chicken curry on Saturday night, and yes, I did enjoy it. There are a few curry houses in Barcelona, but on the whole they’re not up to the standard of the UK - enjoyable enough though and I would recommend Cardomon in Barcelona; it’s nothing like in Britain, but the curries are good and they use plenty of chili to hot things up, one thing that is often absent in curries over here.

The most reliable option is to cook them myself, which I do often. Maybe I’ll share one of my chicken curry recipes with you sometime soon

Back from my hols on Monday night and packed again and off to the UK tomorrow until Sunday. Damn, I’ll miss the Italian Grandpix!

I got to day 3 of the 30 day challenge in August as I couldn’t get all the info, but have been at it for the last 3 days and have completed day 10 now. I’ve also joined Immediate Edge to see how it compares with StomperNet SIMPLE. Although there was some August action promised it hasn’t materialized yet, but there are a few videos to watch. I’ll catch up with that next week.

Other than that, my main business is booming at the moment, so all that hard work earlier this year has paid off. No time to put my feet up though as I’ve got a ton of stuff I want to do.

In fact I have been since early August and will finish at the beginning of September, so if you think it’s quiet around here that is the reason.

I’ve been following the 30 Day Challenge as best as I could on my PDA, but their server problems due to the massive popularity of the 30DC meant that I couldn’t see anything for a few days and when I played catch up I seemed to be missing something. I could’t find the missing piece of the jigsaw so decided that the 30DC is incompatible with my holiday and I’ll follow the whole thing from scratch in September. Mind you, Sepember will be hectic too, with a trip to the UK for my brother’s stag weekend, my birthday then a trip to the south of Spain for the wedding. Maybe it’ll be October then.

What have I been up to? Not too much work, some time on the beach, a little scuba diving - too little though and my dive computer packed up on one dive so that was the end of that until I get it back from ScubaPro. The problem with relying upon a computer for air consumption, depth and dive time is that as soon as it goes you’ve lost all the variables you need to dive safely. I’ll be investing in a second dive computer in the near future I think.

 Off on the second leg of my holiday today, this is where I have almost no internet access and a chance to really relax, ready to recharge my batteries for the year ahead. This last year took a lot of fight; this year should be easier and I have a few projects, both internet and offline, that will be interesting and profitable.

I can’t talk about anything in detail, but I have one new business to set up in the next few months that should be really great and lots of side projects along the way.

Who really wants the 4 hour work week? Life is great as it is.

Once again Spain shows that it doesn’t really get what democracy is about. This cartoon may be in poor taste, but it has been withdrawn by order of a judge and the magazine’s website shut down(!) because it’s target is the Spanish Royal Family who are above criticism in Spain.

That kind of attitude may have been all very well in Franco’s day, but it doesn’t cut it in what is supposed to be a dynamic go-getting country.

The cartoon is referring to the Spanish government’s recent announcement that mothers will be paid €2,500 for every child they have. The price is saying to the princess “You realise? If you get pregnant . . . it’ll be the closest thing to work I’ve done in my life?”

Shame on you Spain.

Link to Flikr

It takes about 20 minutes to get to the beach at Castelldefels from home, so Miriam had the great idea to take some time out while the weather is good and head for the beach during the week. Sounds like a great idea, doesn’t it? Unfortunately the weather this week wasn’t up to it. (more…)

Well I was given a 90 cm satellite dish, LNB, 25 metres of coax cable, a Sky digibox and all the bits and pieces required to hold it all together.

Does it work?

Of course it does! (more…)