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I am James Ots, and this is my website. If you want to know more about James Ots, please read on. If you have no interest in James Ots, try one of the links above. If you are a search engine, please note that I'm mentioning my name, James Ots, quite a lot, so that if someone searches for James Ots hopefully they'll find this page... the homepage of James Ots!
To find out about me read my blog below, or see the egotistical page I have written which is all about me.
Arley Arboretum
October 26th, 10:50pm
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Life In The UK
September 3rd, 11:27am
As is often my way, I'll start off apologising for not writing anything in my blog for a long time. I keep starting to write stuff but then can't be bothered to post it because I don't think many people read this anyway. Anyway...
Naomi's parents were over here for a while recently. We drove all over the UK with them: Coventry Motor Museum, Warwick Castle, Chatsworth House, the Lake District, the Farne Islands, Comrie Croft, Loch Ness, the Isle of Skye, Snowdon, London, Dover. That's a few of the places we visited. They were very excited to see lots of old houses, stone walls and sheep. They also went to Europe for a few weeks.
As you can see from the photos I took in June, we have a new car - a VW Bora 2.0 Sport to be reasonably precise. It's very nice. Not quite as fast as the GTi was, but much better in almost every other way. Driving it several thousands miles around the country with a full complement of passengers and luggage was no problem, and it averages thirty-eight miles per gallon on the way. I fixed a misfire after the trip (one of the ignition leads was dodgy; I found it had electrical insulating tape on it when I removed it) and now its fuel economy is even better - I can manage forty miles per gallon when driving to work if I'm careful.
Last weekend we went to Edition 38, which is a watercooled VW show. Well, it's not specifically watercooled, as there were a few busses and beetles, but it was mainly Golfs, Lupos, Polos, Boras, and some Audis and Seats which had sneaked in too. Thousands of nice VWs, and some very nice ones. I took a lot of photos of them - I'll probably post them on flickr at some point. We were only there for a few hours on Sunday afternoon, and it rained quite a bit, but we might go for the whole weekend next year if Paul comes to visit.
Naomi has got her new job as a librarian at the school. It was a little bizarre though, as on Friday her previous, temporary contract ended, and on Monday when she went into work she didn't yet know if she had a job or not. But she had got it, so now she has to get the library in a fit state for use - and the kids return today. I think it would have made sense for the school to have given her the job at the start of the summer and had her working in the library over the summer when she would have been able to do lots of useful work, instead of putting her on reception with nothing to do. But then, I'm a Software Architect, so what do I know about running a school?
She passed her Life In The UK test yesterday, which is great, because now she can go ahead and apply for her permanent residence. And then next year she can go for her citizenship, which is another £750, and will bring the total we've spent on immigration to about £2000. That's excluding things like flights - it's just money we have to pay the government. Money grabbing expletives.
The test is a particularly daft part of the process. It used to have to be taken when applying for citizenship, but now you have to take it when applying for permanent residence, in order to prove that you have adequate knowledge of the English language. (And then next year it can be reused to prove that you have knowledge of life in the UK.) I've no idea how memorizing pages of statistics is going to help anyone be well integrated into British society. But as I said, I'm just a Software Architect. Not running the country. There are five chapters of the Life In The UK Book which you have to learn, including a lot of statistics. There are also several chapters which you don't need to read. Including the one on Law. Personally, I think it would be far more useful if immigrants had to know about the law in the UK rather than the fact that 0.5% of the population is Jewish and there are 646 MPs in parliament. And another thing (while I'm in rant mode)... You are told that you must not lose your pass certificate, otherwise you'll have to retake the test as it's impossible to replace it. However, on the certificate is mentions that an electronic copy has been sent to the Home Office, so they should know that you've passed it anyway. On second thoughts, that's not so bizarre, as the Home Office will probably store the details on a laptop and then leave it on the Tube.
So... After work yesterday we went to Star City in Birmingham to celebrate. We had Chinese food at Flame, which was surprisingly good, and then watched Get Smart, which was also surprisingly good. Not a deep movie in any way, but very funny and well made. I was impressed by the way they didn't linger on most of the comedic parts of the film - if there was a joke or some slapstick or a throwaway line they quickly moved on, without stopping to explain it or to draw it out until it's exhausted. Which meant it was far more enjoyable than I expected. Possibly the two least funny, funny parts of the film, were two of the bits I'd already seen in the trailer. Which makes a change, since often a trailer has all the funny bits of the movie, leaving the movie itself a bit of a damp squib.
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Comment posted by nic at 11:27am on September 3rd
Hi James,
Just reading your blog and it made me smile! We're just going through the same process as Naomi to get our Australian citizenship! Our test seems to be all about flowers and stones though! completely and utterly ridiculous if you ask me, especially as you can take it as many times as you like unitl you pass!!!
Nic
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Signs
June 25th, 10:08pm
On Sunday in Top Gear, Jeremy Clarkson and co. were complaining about how many road signs there are on our roads. Which reminded me of this photo I took when I was in Kenya a few years ago:
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New Toy
June 11th, 12:27am
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1450 Cafe Bar
April 9th, 10:39pm
Wednesday nights are date night for Naomi and myself. Most often we just go to the cinema (which is two-for-one on a Wednesday night), but last night we decided to eat out as well. And, for once, we ate out in Coventry instead of going to Leamington. There's a very nice looking place on Medieval Spon Street called 1450 Café Bar - which is an old (circa 1450) half timbered building. Inside there are old-looking wooden tables and heavy wooden chairs, and lots of beers from all over the world, including Tusker from Kenya. However, the food left a little to be desired. We ordered crusty bread with olive oil and balsamic vinegar as a starter, but to our amazement, the crusty bread turned out to just be sliced bread. If a restaurant can't even get their bread right, I wasn't holding out great hope for the main course. However, the fillet steak with mushrooms, tomatoes and chips was okay - the steak was medium-rare as ordered, but there was nothing special about it, certainly nothing to justify the rather high price tag. So, all in all, I wouldn't recommend it for meals, although it's probably a nice place to go for a foreign beer.
After the meal we went to the cinema and watched Vantage Point, which was a really good movie. I've got rather tired of watching action movies recently, as all too often they are just lots of special effects with minimal story, but this film kept me interested from start to finish. I won't give it a full review though, as I'm pretty bad at writing film reviews.
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Comment posted by Rach at 10:39pm on April 9th
Oh dear - if I'd have written this post, the opinions would be the complete opposite!
I've been to 1450 many times with friends and twice with work colleagues for a Christmas meal and a leaving do. I was impressed with the service there and thought the food was very good. Admittedly, I didn't order crusty bread etc - the sliced bread does sound bad, but everything I've had there has been very high quality indeed. Thought the prices were reasonable too?
On the other hand, we weren't impressed with Vantage Point at all. We, and the rest of the cinema goers that night, were laughing AT the film by about half way through. I mean, seriously, did they really think all those rewind flashback scenes were a good idea? The film was predictable, rambling and repetitive, had no sense of purpose and very little believability.
Oh well!! Everyone's different, eh?!
Comment posted by James Ots at 10:39pm on April 9th
When I say 'a really good movie', I guess I'm exaggerating slightly. I enjoyed watching it at the time, which has to count for quite a lot I think, but the more I think back over it, there more I pick faults with it. At the time though, it kept my interest and entertained me. And maybe I don't tend to be too critical of action movies, as most of them are completely unbelievable and have very little depth.
I still stand by my opinion of 1450 though. £42 for a poor starter, two average mains and a couple of drinks is way overpriced.
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This and That
March 19th, 10:11am
So I haven't blogged very often recently. Sorry. Being married and having a full time job (especially one which keeps requiring overtime) kind of takes away from blogging time. And when I've been sitting in front of a computer for eight hours already, it's nice to do something else when I get home. Like read a book, play my guitar or watch a DVD. At the moment, watching DVDs is winning out, mostly because we have another free three month trial with LOVEFiLM.
We do a fair bit of driving too. We went over to Kidderminster to pick up a cool antique the other Sunday evening, and last week we made a five and a half hour round trip to Pontefract to pick up some other antique stuff without knowing if we were going to the right place or if anyone would be at home when we got there - but it was, and they were, so we picked it up and came home and can now enjoy both our cool antiques together, and I'd say what it actually was, but I haven't decided whether I want the in-laws to know what it is before we go to Cambridge in the summer.
The driving is fun, but it's killing our car. It's done a hundred and forty thousand miles so far, and it's starting to die. The head gasket needs changing, the piston rings probably need doing, second gear is starting to get crunchy... Perhaps I should just replace the car rather than fixing it. But spending money on the car doesn't help with paying off my debts, so at the moment we're in run it into the ground mode, and hoping it keeps going despite all the warning signs. Then when all our debts are gone, we can build a house.
Speaking of houses, our landlord, despite being a very nice person, has defaulted on his mortgage and so our house is currently being managed by the receivers. The receivers say not to worry, and that we can still carry on living there as we have a tenancy agreement, but it's only a six month one, I'd like to live there a bit longer than that, and I haven't found out if we'll be allowed yet. Although perhaps there'll be the opportunity to buy the place instead? Still, I'd rather build if I get the chance.
There, I think that'll do for a while.
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What Is This Car?
March 7th, 8:53am
A week or so ago when I was driving to work I saw this car as I was waiting at the traffic lights. All the details were covered in tape, and I had no idea what kind of car it was. And then I saw it again, but this time I had my phone at the ready and took a photo of it - and then saw it again a bit later on the way to work and took a (not so good) photo of the back of it (but at least it shows the scale of it next to the Škoda).
The question is, what car is it? I'm assuming it is a new car which is being tested, since we get a lot of them around Coventry, and I haven't been able to find a picture of it on the internet yet. The badge was a large oval - not quite wide enough to be a Ford badge (and I can't see why they would be testing round here), but it could just be an oval covering up something else. The front end looks very Jaguarish - it has that hungry cat kind of look to it. The back end looks like a BMW, and the sides look a bit Lexusy. Any ideas (or links to very obvious websites which I somehow managed to miss)?
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Comment posted by James Ots at 8:53am on March 7th
Well, it appears to be an Infiniti FX50 - see http://www.autocar.co.uk/News/NewsArticle/AllCars/231643/
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