GenesisDreams

Raining In Prague

Travel It's raining in Prague. I've been here two days and I love this city. I think perhaps it's even more beautiful in the rain. I'm sitting on a little downtown bohemian (literally) Internet cafe, listening to funky jazz music and trying to recall everything I've done over these last two weeks. It's hard. I've done so much. It's expensive here to use the Internet, so I wont talk much. I just wanted to let everyone know I'm still alive, and that I'm well and everything is going fine. It's around 50p for a pint of beer here, so things really couldn't be much better. Talk to everyone later.

Bleep

Travel As requested by LittleWing, here are my thoughts on Paris. I didn't really like it at all actually. We spent three days there and those were the worst (and most expensive) parts of the trip so far. We stayed in the Woodstock Hostel, which is on the right bank near the Arc de Triomphe. It's in a pretty good location, so we walked to most things, only getting the metro a couple of times. Overall we did all the big things, spent a day seeing the big tourist attractions. Spent a day off the beaten track seeing the less touristy things, and spent every night out drinking at some place or other. Overall I thought it was hideously overpriced (€7 for a beer in some places!) and not that exciting. I expected the cost, I didn't expect the lack of fun or wonder at the sites and sounds. The other guys have a worse opinion of it than I do. They've taken to referring to it as "Bleep" instead of mentioning Paris. I had fun there, but it just didn't compare to Amsterdam or Berlin. I think we spent enough time there to see everything we needed to see, but I'm glad we didn't spend any more time there.

Paris-Amsterdam-Berlin

Travel I am alive and I am in Berlin. I travelled to Paris Wednesday last week, to Amsterdam Friday afternoon, and then to Berlin yesterday night. I have so much to tell, but so little time to tell it. I fear that this trip I will make hardly any entries to Genesisdreams. I am just too busy, there is too much to do, I am having too much fun. That really shouldn't be something to complain about though ^-^

Eurostar

Travel I'm leaving on a jet plane! Ok well I'm not, instead I'm getting the Eurostar from London to Paris. Under the English channel I go, where I'll stop, nobody knows! Ok well I do, at Paris Nord train station. Bruce arrived last night, we are setting out this afternoon, and meeting Graeme and Ben tonight in Paris. We don't have a place to stay yet, we're not going to let that stop us! I will continue to report from the road as the trip progresses.

A Revolution Around The Sun

Metaposts Exactly one year ago today GenesisDreams went live. I made my first post, and the rest is history. Today also marks the end of my first semester on exchange at Nottingham University. We have to be out of our rooms by 10am. I'm going travelling for most of the summer. So I thought to celebrate this anniversary I would look back over the past year and use my GenesisDreams entries as focal points around which I'll summarise the events in my life. So here it is, the world according to my blog. June 12, 2003 Motivations - "this blog will become one of the most important links I will have to all the family and friends I will leave". La raison d'être of GenesisDreams. I think it was served it's purpose well. Tomorrow's just an excuse away... - Posting well past midnight, that would become the norm. Tech Stuff - The start of comments! How I love comments. Listening to Radiohead's Hail to the Thief June 13, 2003 And then there were five. - Wulfen joins the Japan Trip adventure! What a great addition he made... Cabbage! June 14, 2003 Toot! Toot! - Two weeks before we depart we organise our JR Rail Passes. They certainly came in handy. June 15, 2003 Art of Noise - Listening to The Seduction of Claude Debussy by Art of Noise. I still love that album. June 17, 2003 Lantastic - Work, friends, university, travel. I haven't Lanned in ages. June 21, 2003 Wasted Day - I spent the whole day reading a book, and now I can't for the life of me remember which book. June 27, 2003 One sleep to go! - The day before I left for Japan, the day I finished my last exam for the semester, the beginning of my first fantastic adventure. July 04, 2003 Big in Japan! - First post from another country! Japan blew my mind, and still does, I want to go back. July 08, 2003 Tired in Japan. - The plan to visit the Studio Ghibli Museum and Studio Gainax! Only one of those worked out, but it was fun all the same. July 15, 2003 Missing?? - The first of many outages for GenesisDreams. I'm not exactly sure what caused this one. July 16, 2003 Got Item!! - Able to post again, it's the Gion Festival! Kyoto is perhaps my favourite Japanese city. July 21, 2003 Back in Tokyo - My last post from Japan, I had hoped to write more while I was over there, but we were just so busy I didn't get the chance. I've also still not finished my "Japan Trip" webpage. July 29, 2003 Home at last - Back in Australia, where I didn't want to be. I already missed Japan by this point, and was heading towards some serious post-trip blues. July 31, 2003 Australia is boring - The start of my six month sojourn back "home". I love my family and friends, and I miss them terribly, but Australia really is boring. August 03, 2003 Moving, just keep moving... - Driving with Fragma, those were great times. Just hanging with Fragma and the guys was great. It's probably one of the things I miss the most. August 04, 2003 Thirty days - The outline of the Japan trip. Where we went and when. We saw so much in so little time, but there is still so much more to be seen, and I also don't think you can truly experience the place without living there. I want to live there. August 05, 2003 A 65-litre life - My backpack, containing all that I own. It's here with me now in the UK, and it's served me well over this past year. August 12, 2003 With or without you... - One of my biggest entries, describing one of the most event filled couple of days that happened last year. Fragma broke up with Lisa, we all got together and drank, and hung out, and messed around. I came to realise just how much I valued my friends and got a hint then how much I would miss then now. This was also pretty much the beginning of the Fragma/Littlewing relationship. August 14, 2003 We're all going to die! - An asteroid is going to his the earth in 800 years time. Better watch out! ... Ok I got this far, but now I've got to go. Always leaving things to the last minute I am. I'll be updating Genesisdreams a lot less frequently over the next couple of months. I'll do my best to get to net access while I'm on the road, but it might be quite a while between updates. When I return I'll fill everyone in on what I've been up too. Written while listening to Halycon & On & On by Oribtal. If there ever was a song to accompany a "clip show" of my life, I would want it to be this one.

So, So You Think You Can Tell

Friends - Fun - University A lot has been happening these last two weeks. I've finished my exams. I had four over the space of three days, three of those over the space of thirty-two hours, but I survived. I didn't do much study, I only need to pass, but I think I went well overall. Results come out on June 11th, so I'll report on my success (or failure) then. My exam preparation went a big askew for a little while there. Wednesday night (this is Wednesday last week), two hours after just finishing an exam, and having two exams the next day, I went and picked up my friend Morgs from the bus station. He had flown into London that afternoon from Budapest. We got a taxi back to Newark, then went down to the hall bar and proceeded to drink our way to closing time. It was great to see Morgs again. He is the first person from back home that I've seen since coming over here. He's been backpacking around South East Asia and Eastern Europe since graduating from UQ at the end of last year (he did Engineering with me). We swapped stories, talked about old times back home, what everyone was up to, and generally just had a really great reunion. Morgs had basically run out of money from all his travelling and now needed to find a job over the summer before heading off travelling again. He was going to stay in London while looking, but I said he could stay here with me for as long as he wanted. I managed to convince one of the cleaners to keep one of the unused rooms (some people have already moved out here) unlocked, so Morgs has a bed to sleep in, and I also got a spare catering card for him, so he gets free food too! ^_^ After we were kicked out of the bar we gathered some of the others and went back to my room for some more drinking. These rooms get cramped with that many people in them. In the end I kicked everyone out around two-ish because I really needed to do some study and then get some sleep before my 9am exam in the morning. Morgs and Bruce hit it off really well, and I could head both of them continue drinking in Bruce's room for the next couple of hours after that while I was trying to study. So Thursday came and went, I was hung over, tried, and woefully under prepared, but I think I did alright of my two exams that day. That signalled the end of exams for me! So of course we had to celebrate! Thursday night we went out to the Pitcher and Piano in the Lace Market, which is a bar housed in a converted gothic church. I didn't have my camera on me, but here is an image of it that I found on the net. The place was fantastic, it by far has the best atmosphere of any bar I've been to in my life. At night, with the lights on, coming through the stained glass windows, I was bathing in brilliance. The music was also really good too; this guy was spinning some very laid back mellow beats which suited my mood perfectly. He was so good that at the end of the night (when we were eventually kicked out because they were closing) I had to go up to him, shake his hand, and tell him what a great set I thought he had done. Morgs, Bruce and I were sharing pitchers of larger; Adam was drinking his cider, while the girls (Nikkie, Viki, and her sister Catherine) were drinking wine. We wandered through town a little bit afterwards before finally getting a taxi back home. Friday I showed Morgs around the place, we went to the co-op, the pub, the library, and back again. Morgs spent the afternoon writing up his CV and applying for different jobs. I slept. That night we stayed in, drank in the bar, and played poker. We have progressed on from five card draw to Texas Holdem. £5 buy-in, no limit, play on until one person is left with all the money. It's an exciting way to play. Either you walk away losing £5, or winning £30. After getting kicked out of the bar we went to the games room and continued playing there. I drank too much so I lost my money fairly quickly. Morgs cleaned up, and we were accused of being convict Aussies and organising it so he could come in and con everyone out of their case. Saturday was Summer Party. The biggest party of the year, 9000 people, held on the downs in the middle of main campus. We started drinking around midday, the gates not actually opening until 2pm. There was a main stage, a dance tent and an R&B tent. There were also these bouncy castle things, with gladiator, bouncy boxing, and bouncy bungee jumping. I fought against Morgs, got a got couple of knocks but gave my own back pretty well. Drinks were cheap, the weather was great, and the music was good. The dance tent played the best music I've heard since coming over here. No cheesy crap there, just solid beats and a great atmosphere. Everyone was there, and though we got separated at different times during the night we always found each other again. The only crap thing was the closing time. On the tickets it say "2pm till late", but late I had assumed at least 2-3am. No "late" meant 11pm. There was almost a riot when they stopped playing the music. A couple of guys half pulled down the big R&B tent. It was actually pretty hairy for a bit, with people pushing and shoving everywhere. I escorted the girls home (we had to walk from main campus back to Jubilee) and we finished up the night sitting in my room, with pizza we ordered in, drinking Morgs' Hungarian wine (out of a plastic bottle) and lots of beer. Sunday everyone took it easy. Sunday night we played some more poker, drank some more beer, but went to bed fairly early. On Monday Morgs got stuck back into applying for jobs, while I caught up on all the stuff I had neglected during the exam period (unfortunately that doesn't include writing in this blog). Monday night everyone went to the Works nightclub. It was Foam Party night, where they had supposedly the "biggest foam machine in the UK" pump foam out onto people on the main dance floor. We got there late so missed most of the foam, but there were a lot of people walking around in very wet cloths (the smart girls didn't wear white tops; the ones they didn't think ahead regretted it). With £1 vodka redbulls we proceeded to get very drunk, and because we were already wet, lots of half finished drinks were thrown. In the end we were just going up to the bar, asking for two pints of water, getting them, turning around and then throwing them all over someone. It was really crazy and I was expected to get thrown out any minute, but in the end the bar closed and the music stopped and we had to leave anyway. When we got back to Newark though it was raining, and Graeme got pushed into the moat. Bruce soon followed, with Ben, Viki, Zoe, and Cristina all going in as well. I took off my shoes and gave my phone and wallet to Simon because I was sure the guys would push me in too, but somehow I avoided it. The guys who went in smelt like crap, being covering in layers of duck shit. Zoe, who originally had a white miniskirt on, had a brown one when she finally pulled herself out of the moat. It's been pretty uneventful since then. I've been into town with Morgs, and (finally) visited Nottingham Castle, and a bunch of old pubs. We've played more poker, drank lots more, and generally had a good time. I'm going up north with Morgs for the weekend, and then I'll come back down for me last week here at Newark next week while Morgs will continue north up to Scotland. Summer is almost here and I'm itching to get away. Did you exchange, a walk on part in the war, with a lead role in a cage? Everyone should know what I'm listening to. It's my cousin's favourite song, and her husband can play a great rendition on his guitar. Of course you shouldn't know because of that, you should know because of the lyrics.