GenesisDreams

All The Leaves Are Brown

General And the sky is grey… I am experiencing my first real Autumn! The leaves are actually falling off the trees! The weather is noticeably changing! It’s a strange experience for an Australian (particularly for a Queenslander). I lived in a land full of evergreen trees, where the climate is generally always hot, and the daylight hours stay fairly consistent year round. Here there is a dramatic difference between the summer that was, and the winter that is coming. It’s called autumn and I love it! The streets are paved with a brown carpet of leaves. It’s dark when we go out of night now. Plus it is getting very very cold! I dislike the temperature change, but the rest is absolutely gorgeous. It’s funny the differences you notice, and the ones you don’t.

Behind Again

Fun - Travel Ok obviously well I didn't write anything more in the morning. I am behind again. It's been a busy last week or so. Sometimes you just need to prioritise. Having now related my Irish Experience to all my friends multiple times, I don't really feel like writing about it all again here. Just quickly though, despite Australia losing the game, I have a fantastic time. I got very little sleep and drank an ungodly amount. I consumed more Guinness that weekend than the rest of my life combined, and it is true what they say, it does taste better in Ireland. We went out, saw live bands playing Midnight Oil covers, went to may different bars and clubs. Got dragged along with a couple of different hen night groups. All round it was a fantastic couple of days.

Green And Gold And Guinness

Friends - Fun - Games - Travel - University Ireland - 77 Australia - 41 We didn't even put up a good fight. I am back in the Nottingham now. Will write more in the morning.

International Rules Football

Fun - Games - Travel I am going to Ireland this weekend! I am going to Dublin to be more specific to see the Aussies play the Irish in a game of International Rules Football, which is a sort of mix between Australian Rules Football and Gaelic Football. Though of course that's really just the excuse to go, the main reason is of course the drinking and partying. Dublin is renowned as a party capital and we are certainly going to make the most of it. This is definitely a boys only weekend (or long weekend really, we don't fly back until late Monday night) and I am sure we'll get up to all sorts of trouble. I'm going with my cousin and a lot of his friends, and there will be a good mix of Australians and Irish in the group, with a few English stuck in the middle. Whatever the result of the match we are bound to have a fantastic time and I really can't wait. I've never been to Ireland before and I am looking forward to adding that to my list of places visited as well. I'll tell everyone all about it when I get back. Or maybe not, because as the saying goes, what happens on tour, stays on tour ^_^

Homelands

Friends - Music - Personal I am current listening to the DJ Tiesto set from Homelands 2002 and it's fantastic, but that's not the reason for this entry. It's almost 5am, and I am not asleep. I have full day at Uni tomorrow, or rather today, it's my only really full day all week, yet I am not asleep. Instead I am talking to Jimmy, back in Australia. I haven't talked to him in months! It feels like forever. I don't want to go to sleep, because I am enjoying catching up so much. I also want to break my nocturnal cycle, go a full night without sleep, so I will feel so tired the following night I go to be early, and thus wake up early... but that's a different story. Jimmy is telling me about his girlfriend. I’ve never met her; at least I thought I’d never met her. Somehow though she knew me. Jimmy showed her my picture and she recognised me. Apparently I am the only redheaded guy who lived in Sandgate (I find that hard to believe) but anyway she remembers me coming into the Chinese shop where she worked and buying some food. She even remembered me being with my grandfather. The thing is, I remember that event, I remember getting the Chinese with Pa that time and I remember noticing that the girl who served us was really cute. So we had met, we just didn’t realise it. Anyway good on you Jimmy, I am really happy for your. We talked about other stuff too, about what I’ve been up to, and about our futures. It made me realise how much I missed talked to my friends back home. I’m sure I’ve said similar things before, but I have such good friends back in Australia, and it’s always great when I get a chance to talk to then. My friends over here are great too, but we just don’t have the same kind of history together. At the same time as I am talking to Jimmy on IRC, I am trading emails with Fragma while he is still at work. Now I really need to catch up with Fragma properly. I have so much to talk to him about email just can’t cope with it. Maybe I am just in this mood because I am listening to trance at 5am in the morning . I can’t get no sleep.

Ocean Of Dancing Bodies

Fun - Music We went to Ocean, one of the best clubs in Nottingham, last night. It was rammed, packed full of students, getting blathered and dancing the night away. The club scene here in Nottingham is very different to that back home. They don't play real dance music here, or at least not at the majority of the clubs. Instead they play "cheese", 80's pop songs, Bryan Adam's, the Baywatch TV Theme, crap. Last night they only played two decent tracks, Underworld - Born Slippy and Zombie Nation - Kernkraft 400. Thankfully they were played back to back, so we all raced onto the dance floor and got in a good period of proper dancing. The cheese came back afterwards though. I liked clubbing back in Australia. We didn't go nearly as much as I would have liked, but when we did I had a lot of fun. Clubbing here is more about drinking and pulling than enjoying the music and dancing. Not that I don't like drinking and pulling, it's just that I can do that at a bar if I want to (see Tantra on Tuesdays). I go clubbing to dance. I like dancing to good music. People dance at Nottingham clubs, but they dance to crap, they will cheer when Guns N' Roses' Sweet Child Of Mine comes on. Everyone has fun, which is good, but I can't wait till I go back up to Liverpool to go out clubbing, maybe go out to Southport with Graeme and Ben, or down to London and do the Ministry of Sound thing with Anna and Sarah. I need good music. I need a good dance scene. I simply need to dance!

Tony At Tantra On Tuesday

Friends - Fun - Music - Television For the last four weeks running (I can't believe I've been back in Nottingham for four weeks!) I have been going down to this cocktail bar in town called Tantra on Tuesdays to listening to some great live music and drink half-price cocktails. It's sort of become a weekly routine and I really enjoy it. The music is provided by this really hip guy, who plays acoustic guitar and sings songs everyone knows the words to. Iris, With or Without You, Wonderwall, etc. etc. etc. It's open till 2am and as the end of the night nears, and we get progressively drunk off the cheap cocktails we tend to all start clapping and signing along. We have also taken to smoking cigars. All the boys in the house are really into The Sopranos. I just finished watched the end of season five myself. Graeme in particular likes to think of himself as Tony Soprano. So we sit around, talking, with this huge haze of cigar smoke billowing around above us. I don't usually smoke, I hate the taste in my mouth the following morning, yet last night I had three big meaty cigars and now my whole body reeks of the smoke. I also had a big deep conversation with Nikkie last night too. I am close to both of the girls, but the boys and I travelled with each other for a month straight, so there is a bond there on a completely different level to the girls. However last night Nikkie and I had a really good talk (a drunken chat as it was) and I think we became a lot closer. After getting a taxi back from Tantra we ended up sitting up another two hours after everyone had gone to bed talking some more as well. I've been so lucky making such good friends.

Layer Cake

Movies Walked down to the Savoy cinema (five minutes down the road) tonight with the gang to watch the new Brit gangster flick Layer Cake. It's directed by the guy who produced both Lock Stock and Snatch. It's an interesting film. It lacks the style of the earlier flims, but is slick none the less. It's about drugs, and crime, and life and love and death. All good things for a movie to be about. It also has some great music. I am currently listening to Ordinary World by Duran Duran. Check it out if it is showing near you!

Education, Apparently.

Japan - University I have finalised my timetable for the semester, and it is woeful. I have ten contact hours a week, which is a fraction of what I did back home, and I have two full days off as well! It's crazy, I have more free time now that I know what to do with. If I was here to learn I would be annoyed, however I am here to have a good time, with learning as a secondary objective, so I don't really mind. I am sure I have ranted about this before, but looking at my final timetable it is all the more obvious. I am studying five subjects this semester, four that I need to do to finish my course, and one because I just wanted to do it. The funny this in that my "extra" subject gives me more contact hours (and will involve more work) than any of my other subjects. Oh well. The subjects I need to do include The Internetworked Organisation, Financial Management, Computer Security and Digital Business Communication. They are all pretty standard, easy subjects. I am using my free elective to do a subject in the Japanese language. This subject is actually a lot more hardcore than I expected. I am really enjoying it though, and am learning a lot. Overall this will be a fairly easy final semester of University. It’s about time too!

House Party

Friends - Fun - Personal I just got back from a house party at the girl's place down the road. I am drunk, very tired, and still have fresher's flu. What a great life this is. Listening to Gotta knock a little harder off the Cowboy Beboy - Knockin' on Heaven's Door soundtrack.