GenesisDreams

Another Long Week

Friends - Fun - Personal - University - Work Well it’s Friday again, and I’m on the train down to Nottingham. I have some time now to myself, to think, to reflect, and to write an entry for my blog! This week was very intensive. I did an all-nighter Sunday night, and another Tuesday night. I racked up more than 80 working hours this last week, so effectively did two weeks work in one. This whole last month I’ve been averaging 60 hours a week. It’s pay day today though, and I’ve got a rather large pay packet coming to me, so I’m happy. ^_^ The drinks are definitely on me tonight!! I’ve been doing some really excellent work recently, and because of it I’ve got another promotion. I’m now the design authority for the Enterprise Project Management system I am producing, which means a lot more authority and responsibility. Hopefully another pay rise too; I’m talking to the boss about that next week. So we are now examining the next phase of functionality. I’m writing documentation and getting everything ready for security auditing. We have to comply with BS779 because of the restricted and secret information that is being held on the system. We are entering an exciting stage of the project and I’m really looking forward to getting onto the next lot of functionality. But enough about work. According to Nikkie I am now officially the best boyfriend in the world. Because I’ve been so busy this last week I haven’t been able to call her as much as I would like. She has been really busy too, doing her neurology placement in a hospital in Boston. She’s been feeling a little sad that we have both been too busy to keep in better contract, so to cheer her up I got a dozen red roses delivered to the ward she was working on in the hospital . She said she got such a shock when they arrived, and has had a massive grin on her face ever since. I’ve had a massive grin of my face all day too knowing about the surprise she would get. I can’t wait to get to Nottingham and see her. In other news I talked to mum and Fragma last night for about an hour each. It’s the first time I talked to either of them on the phone since I got back from Australia! I know! How bad of a son/friend am I!! Mum had a lot of news to tell, and we chatted for ages. She told me that she had received a thing from the University of Queensland saying that I had been admitted to the Dean’s Honour Roll for my Bachelor of Business Management, which I thought was a scream. I hardly use my Engineering degree, let alone my Business one. I guess it’s good to put on my CV, but I still think of it as a bit of a joke considering the amount of work I put into it. Mum said she lost the lapel pin that came with it, but I told her not to worry. I’m never going to wear it. After speaking to mum I called Fragma at work. He works harder than I do the crazy man! Nikkie reckons it is all his fault that I am working this hard. She says he is a bad influence on me :). We chatted about all my friends back home, what they are up to, what new things that have been happening. We also chatted the normal bollocks that we do. It was great to talk to him again. I’ve got to stop being so slack and call my friends back home more. I think I’ve only called Ads and Wulfen once or twice each, and Fragma only a few more times than that. I left some really great friends behind in Aus and I really need to start making more of an effort to keep in touch. With that thought in mind I’m going to finish this blog entry here and spend my remaining battery power writing emails all of those friends of mine who have been slipping away recently. Expect an email soon guys!

Whatever You Do, Whatever You Say, Yeah I Know It’s Alright.

Fun - Work It’s Midday on Sunday and I am on the train back up to Liverpool. I just said goodbye to Nikkie, gave her a great big hug, jumped on the train just as it was about to pull away, sat down and booted up my laptop. I’ve got to go into the office this afternoon to do some out of production maintenance work on the system. Geoff just called and one of the nodes on our SQL cluster has failed, so it might be a long night to get things back up and running properly again. The big advantage of having a high available infrastructure, with a backend SQL cluster is that you can afford to have and entire node fail and the system can keep on running. So I’m sitting here thinking to myself, I have a very fucking cool life. I’m hacking together solutions for a living. I feel sort of akin to Randy Waterhouse in Cryptonomicon minus the WWII intrigue and global politics. I’m not jetting around the world setting up a data haven like he is, but when I step back and think about it, what I’m doing is pretty damn awesome. I’ve spent the last week putting the finishing touches on a system that has been rolled out on a UK Ministry of Defence contract. It’s my system, running on Geoff’s infrastructure. It is dual redundant, highly available and scalable. It is totally secure, isolated from the outside world and is designed to meet JSP 480, which is the UK’s standard for networks that are going to contain restricted and secret documents. It’s an amazing piece of work and I’m really lucky to have had a chance to work on it. I work hard on that during the week, and then I jet on down to hang out with my tall, blonde half-Dutch goddess for the weekend. I’ve got my trusty laptop at my side, akin to a pistol on my hip or a sword on my back. We’re going 3G now, so with the VPN software we are using I can jump on our secure network from anywhere and do some work. I’m a wandering samurai, a roaming hacker, a specialist doing an important job. And you know what; they actually pay me stupid amounts of money to do it as well!!! Ok that may all be a really idealistic look at what I do, and totally glosses over the mundane, boring work that needs to be done to get everything working, but sitting here reviewing the last, hectic seven weeks I think it’s about time to get idealistic. I’ve done a really great job, and it’s moments like this which make it all worth it, which make you wake up and realise how bloody good you have it, how lucky you are to be living in such an exciting world. Not only living in that world, but playing a really cool part in it as well! Now that I’ve had time to reflect on it all I really can’t believe how lucky I am.

I’m free to be whatever I, whatever I choose, and I’ll sing the blues if I want. I’m free to say whatever I, whatever I like, if it’s wrong or right, it’s alright. Free, to be whatever you, whatever you say, if it comes my way it’s alright.

Written while listening to Whatever by Oasis.

Shopping and Reunions

Friends - Fun So Saturday Nikkie took me shopping in Nottingham. I really needed some new winter clothes. Since I hadn’t bought anything new for myself in ages I decided to spurge and spend a hell of a lot of money. I figure that I’m working full time now and I’m earning good money, so I shouldn’t look like a shabby student anymore. It is about time to scrub up and care about what I look like a little more. So Nikkie took think as a sign to go to all the posh shops! I bought jumpers from FCUK and shirts from Ted Baker. I’m generally clueless about labels and which some things are better than others, however after trying on some of the stuff in Ted Baker I understood why it was so expensive. This was really, really good quality stuff. I promptly spent £95 there without even thinking about it. So anyway I bought a whole new posh wardrobe and now fit the image of a well paid professional. I feel a whole lot better about myself too, I didn’t realise that good clothes made this much difference. Saturday night the old Church Avenue gang got back together for the first time since April. Bruce, Ben, Graeme, Nikkie, Viki and I all met up at the Pitcher and Piano and promptly slipped right back into where we left off 4 months ago. Everyone had stories to tell and we had a great time catching up. As I was now a big successful working man it fell to me to buy a bottle of champagne for us to celebrate our reunion with. We all got drunk and happy and I was struck with how much I had missed all of them. I’m heading back down to Notts next Friday, so we’ll all go out together again, and it will be just like old times.

Counting Down!

Friends - Fun - Travel Well I’m on the train down to Nottingham… again! Lately it seems like the only time I get to write entries is when I’m on the train. Train travel provides you with a kind of peaceful solitude that allows one time for reflection and contemplation. I’ve got a lot to reflect upon, and so much more to come that I need to contemplate. Three more sleeps to go before I am on my way home. It’s so exciting. I really can’t wait. I’ve finished work for the week. Got all my tasks done, and now I’m free! I’m going down to Nottingham to meet up with Nikkie, go out on the town, convince her to leave some shoes and handbags behind, and then we are going to pack up her car and drive up to Liverpool tomorrow. Things have gone so fast recently. Everything has come at once, and now I am rushed to finalise everything before I go away. I went to my cousins last night, had a few drinks and a nice dinner and talked about how jammy I am. I was also laden down with presents to bring back with me. Between all of Nikkie’s stuff and my cousin’s presents I barely have any room for anything of my own. I want to have lots of left over space too, because I plan on brining as much stuff as possible back over with me. I am coming home this trip, but I don’t know whether it is my home anymore. There is so little of me left there now, and there will be even less soon. I’ve started accumulating stuff, but it’s not in Brisbane, it’s in my flat in Liverpool. I’ve got furniture, plate sets and towel sets and bed linen. I’ve started painting the place, making it exactly how I (or rather we, as Nikkie has a big say in it) want it. It’s starting to feel like my very own place now; I’ve put my touch onto it. I’m becoming an adult, all grown up and responsible. I own bed linen! I mean come on! I’m earning a living, going on a business trip, organising my finances. It’s scary and yet exciting at the same time. Anyway enough rambling. This will probably be the last entry I post before I am over in Aus! Man I need to start getting organised. I haven’t even thought about packing yet!

Early Morning

Friends - Fun - Work So I’ve been slack again at writing entries. Nikkie wrote a thesis guest entry last time. She is such a sweetie. I’m writing this on the train back up from Nottingham to Liverpool, early Monday morning. It’s been a full on last two weeks. Nikkie finished her exams last week, went to Amsterdam with Jade, and then stayed with me last weekend and all last week. At lot has happened, but I’ll just go over it briefly, because I’ve been awake since 5am, and I want to catch a quick nap on the train before I have to go to work. Last Saturday Nikkie, Graeme and I went to help out a Netball tournament that Lisa from work organised to support Breast Cancer research. We had to time matches, ring bells and announce things over the PA system. No very exciting, but it gave us all a lot of time to chat and catch up. Saturday night Ben came down and we all went into town. I had only been out in Liverpool once before with Ads, and that was a random Tuesday night, and Nikkie had never been, so we both looked forward to a big party night. This was Ben and Graeme’s territory, so we let them lead us from bar to bar, club to club, and we got progressively drunker as the night wore on. It was a fantastic night out, the music was great, the atmosphere was pumping, we all had a great time. We ended up getting the night bus back to my place, well it didn’t quite stop at my door, which meant that we needed to walk home a little way. Somewhere along the way we “lost” Ben. We were going to go looking for him, but instead just fell asleep. All of a sudden it was 10am the next morning and he still wasn’t there. Nikkie, crazy girl, put her on running gear and set out to look for him, fearing that he was in a gutter somewhere. She only got halfway down the street before discovering him, curled up asleep in the back of his car. We then went to back to bed and slept into 3pm. The rest of the week went really fast. Work was busy, really busy, and I often has to stay late. Nikkie was absolutely fantastic and cleaned my flat and sorted out all of my stuff, and make my place civilised. It wasn’t that I was particularly disorganised, I just hadn’t had the time to sort everything out. I’m really lucky to have found her, she is wonderful. Thursday night I played a 4 hour club game a cricket. Paul my boss was in Bulgaria, so he asked me to fill in his place. I haven’t played cricket since highschool, and my eye wasn’t in at all, but I played pretty well and had a great time. I didn’t have proper whites though, and so played in shorts. My knees were shredded by the end because I was making diving saves, and my legs killed me the next day from all the running around I did. Nikkie over the course of the week, while I was at work, did lots of physio work, lots of pottering, lots of walking on the beach, and spent lots of time watching the fourth season of 24! Over the course of the week she watched the first 20 episodes, catching up with me, and then together we watch the final four. WOW! What a fantastic series, it was absolutely awesome! Saturday we drove back down to Nottingham. Nikkie’s parents came up on Sunday, we all went out for lunch, and now, come Monday morning, I’m on the train, heading back to Liverpool, ready to start another week. I’m going to sleep now.

These little piggies went to Amsterdam

Friends - Fun - Guest Entry - Personal - Travel - University This is Nikkie. Michael asked me to do a guest entry so here goes... The physiotherapy course is so hectic that this is the first time in a year that we have been privileged enough to have been given a week off while all the other students are busy celebrating the arrival of an 18 week summer holiday. I grabbed the opportunity to whisk Jade, my best friend and housemate, off to Amsterdam for a wild night out to celebrate her 21st birthday. Before our adventure could commence, we had to endure painstaking revision and an exam which took place on the Wednesday morning (1st June) at 8.45am. Jade and I were both very nervous for the practical exam as you never have enough time to think and appear a fool if you don’t have the answers at the drop of a hat. The exam consists of a case scenario, 15 minutes thinking time and then joining the examiners to discuss all the relevant anatomy and clinical reasoning to arrive at an appropriate diagnosis. Next, you discuss a management plan and have to demonstrate 2 treatment techniques on a model. Finally, after what seems like forever, you document everything done with the patient, including treatment dosage, gained consent, safety tests, advice given and when you would next like to see them. Jade and I were given the same scenario of a patient with tension headaches so we came out of the exam intrigued as to what treatment we had each given. Luckily, we both appeared to administer the same treatment for similar reasons, so with that out of the way we left to get ready for our trip! I drove, for the first time, up to Liverpool. We arrived, after a relatively stress free journey to the city but as we approached Michael’s flat, things became slightly more traumatic. At this point it is fairly relevant to mention that Michael has lived in Liverpool for 5 weeks but still appears to walk around with his eyes closed, hence the reason he (and Graeme) will be blamed for getting us lost! We ended up travelling around a roundabout 5 times until they could meet us there and take us the right way! So, we eventually arrived at the flat, piled our belongings up the 3 flights of stairs and headed out for some lunch in a typical English café. The boys left shortly to return to work and us girls took the opportunity for some light shopping before our lift to the airport. Jade and I are both fanatical about fashion and the idea of retro and vintage clothing delights us! As a result, spotting 4 charity shops to rummage through determined the activities of the following few hours. At around 5pm, the boys had finished work for the day and we hopped in the car, laden with plastic bags full of vintage 1940’s purses, tops, scarves and the odd few bits including a wooden elephant names Widnes! So much for the light shopping trip! Graeme and Michael dropped Jade and I off at Liverpool’s John Lennon airport and I managed to shop as soon as we got there, buying a fantastic golden yellow leather handbag. We boarded the plane at 7pm and by 11pm were sat in a bar in Amsterdam. An exam at 8.45am in a British university, and barring in Amsterdam by 11pm - I love Europe! Staying in a cheap hostel in the red light district ensured we were surrounded by lots of young people. We quickly re-applied some lip-gloss and changed our shoes to heels and headed out. Passing the local chippy, we were unable to resist the classic Dutch chips and mayo. I got back into the swing of the language and was soon chatting to the chip-shop man only having slight difficulty understanding the Amsterdam dialect, which is very different to that I am used to. Once our appetites had been satisfied, we followed the crowds past some very sexy and virtually naked women in doorways to a bar for a beer. Soon after our arrival we began chatting to the barman who, much to our disgust, told us we were not in a ‘green’ café, although smoking in there was permitted. We rushed off to find somewhere selling pre-rolled joints, as neither of us were in any fit state to start rolling ourselves. On the recommendation of the guy behind the counter, whom I now realise we should never have trusted, we bought 4 joints for the equivalent of about £10. Back in the previous bar we lit up and began to chat to a bunch of Aussie men. It amazed me how many Australians there were in Amsterdam, most travelling Europe after uni. Mindless chit chat revealed that these particular guys were all living in London as teachers although one had flown in from Sydney that afternoon. They were a laugh and bought us a couple of drinks so we decided to stick with them for a while. By about 1am, we had broken off and un-surprisingly only two guys remained. We visited a few more bars, smoked and drunk a bit more while playing cards in a chilled bar. The lads knew where our hostel was, as they were in the same one, so we began our walk home. We were halfway there when Jade was cornered by one of the lads and had to apologise that he must have got the wrong idea from her. Realising that he was not going to get anywhere with her that night, he swiftly left. The other guy, however, was more persistent and we had to team up to get rid of him, which we eventually did by hiding in our dorm! Although I had shared a dorm with mates on camping trips ( I was in the scouts) and on school trips, nothing quite prepared me for this. It was a dorm of 20 beds and great fun. We sat up a while chatting crap due to our stoned and drunken state when we over heard a couple arguing over a guy having been in a peep show instead of meeting up with his girl! I’m sure this would have still amused me sober but we were both having serious difficulty in resisting laughter and continued to listen to the bickering trying to work out whether the guy’s story was genuine or he had in-fact been in a sex show as his lady was stating! By about 3am we got ready for bed and fell into light, interrupted sleep. We awoke at 8am with the sun streaming into the room and the dorm already half empty. After showering and attempting to make ourselves look remotely human we wandered downstairs for a full English breakfast, and a mug of incredibly strong tea. Our persistent friend from the previous night pulled up a chair questioning us about where and when we were leaving Amsterdam. Making quick excuses and ensuring we were sufficiently dosed up with caffeine we walked in the direction of the main shopping street – Kalver straat. I had been to Amsterdam previously with relatives living nearby so was slightly more orientated than the average tourist and we found Kalver straat fairly quickly. We shopped, had some lunch in the Vroom and Dressmann restaurant, a definite must for a cheap detoxifying meal, and shopped some more. After a few more trips to the cash-point and laden with bags, we returned to the red light district for some major vintage shopping. I got a pair of ankle height grey slouch boots which I had been on the hunt for ages. All in all, we spent over £200 of our student overdrafts on clothes and accessories, all very worthwhile! After all, you spend what money you actually have, and then the bank decides to give you more! No, I don’t always have such a lax attitude to money but do find it very hard to resist a bargain! By 5pm we were exhausted and grabbed our bags from the station lockers and returned to Schipol airport for a ‘maccy D’s’ (Mcdonalds) and to catch our flight home. We landed back in Liverpool at 10pm and were greeted by the boys who drove us back to Michael’s flat. Shattered from our adventure we went to bed and slept soundly. The following morning, Michael strolled into work at 10am and Jade left to rush back to Manchester to grab fresh clothes for a night out with some old friends in Newcastle! I, on the other hand, pottered around the flat with my eyes half closed all day trying to recover from abusing my body so much. The next few days have consisted of more pottering and trying to get Michael’s hole of a flat slightly more liveable! I have cleaned, washed, tidied and sorted but this is the first and last time I will do, so he will have to become domesticated from now on! We did a very ‘grown-up’ shop of cleaning products yesterday evening which Michael clearly needed some guidance on - he was shocked to discover that bathroom and kitchen cleaner were different! My work here is definitely challenging! On Saturday night we visited Liverpool’s night life which I definitely felt was something else! I felt like I was in Ibiza, obviously without the gorgeous weather, it was very surreal. We sat in a square outside surrounded by bars and a very concentrated amount of gorgeous people. The women were all slim, verging on the border of too slim, had all been bronzed, either by a bottle or some hard work on a sun bed, and were made up with very expensive looking clothing. Graeme, Ben and Michael, un-surprisingly, were in awe of them all, [Editor’s Note: I was more in awe of my fantastic girlfriend of course!- Wigs], as was I, but my eye was placed more on enjoying the surrounding fashion statements. I must state though, the women were some of the best I have ever seen, obviously not including celebs, models etc, only with the downside of the Liverpudlian accent! The men were incredibly well groomed and also in expensive clothing. The music was brilliant, Michael said that it was much like the dance music ‘back home’. Being out with the lads I had to keep up with the pace of drinking which, with a reputation of a lightweight I did quite well, going drink for drink with them. Overall, Liverpool was a great night out, expensive but great. Our trek home left much to be desired. We caught the night bus home after waiting for a taxi for over an hr. On the walk home from the bus stop we got separated losing Ben, our other scouser housemate who had come home for the summer, and fell asleep with him not having returned to the flat. We woke with a startle the next morning realising Ben was still not home. I dressed hurriedly, on a bad hangover, to jog around and try and find him. Michael eventually got him on his mobile at the same time as I came across him asleep in the back of his car! Safe, but still very very pissed he came up to the flat to sleep off the alcohol. I went for a 20minute run along the beach and came back when Michael and I decided to return to bed till 3pm. Another crazy but fantastic night out. To think that a year ago, I was still in Newark Hall, had only known Michael 6 months, was a fresher and living a very dependant life shows how much things can change. Life is fantastic but it has been hard to get to this point; I considered dropping the physiotherapy course during the harder times, Michael moved 3 hrs away from Nottingham just when we finally got together, I moved house and Graeme’s changed university course. The summer is only a month away, I have one more outpatients placement to get through and then I will be back in Liverpool living and working here for 6 weeks. Third year will be here sooner than later and then I’ll be a qualified physiotherapist and will have to become even slightly responsible! On second thoughts, I’ll delay that as long as I can, go travelling, live a little before pinning myself to a 9-5 job. The end of university is so close, yet so far. I’m only two thirds through it and things have changed so much since arriving in September as a fresher. Change is good. Hard but good.

Glorious Saturday Afternoon

Friends - Fun - Personal - Quotes It's amazing to think how much has happened this last year. Exactly one year and one day ago today was the Summer Party 2004 to mark the end of the University year and the official start to student summer (you can read all about what we got up to this time last year in this entry). Well now is Summer Party 2005, and the lot of us, older and wiser, went down early with a disposal BBQ, lots of meat and beer, and camped out on the downs in the glorious sun, and sat off listening to music and having a great time. Karl Kennedy from Neighbours was the "special mystery guest" and he was there with his band playing covers of oasis songs. It was a glorious afternoon. We didn't stay for the whole night (having learnt what a disappointment that was last year), but instead lazed around in the sun having a great time. It's still light out now as I am writing this, and it's wonderfully warm. So we were talking about how much we had all changed since last year and everyone (excluding me the old, responsible, working man) was amazed to think that this time next year they would be finished uni. The topic jumped back and forward between the past and the future. Where everyone thought they would be heading after Uni, where was the best place we travelled to last summer, what was everyone’s plans for this summer, when did we all meet each other originally. Maybe because I am such and old man, and am still looking at it from a semi-outsider perspective, but it was startling to me how much everyone had changed and grown up in the last year. We were playing spot the first years, and I couldn't fathom that everyone with me was a first year just a year ago. They seemed so different. We all grown and change constantly through life, but I think that one of the most pivotal periods is your life is that first year after highschool, when you leave the security of school and enter the real world. I feel lucky to have been privileged enough to be a part of that year for all of my friends here. They are such fantastic people, fantastic friends, and I've really missed them all these past couple of months when we've been apart. I've been lucky like that all through life now that I think about it. Other that a few rare instances I've always had fantastic friends who I get on well with and trust and respect. They have provided support, comfort, jokes and fun. I can just sit and hang out with them all day doing nothing much at all, I can travel to exotic places with them, I can rant and vent to them when I'm stressed, I can rant and rave to them when I'm in love. My friends have been there for me, with me, though so much. I miss you guys, wherever you are in the world. Friends in the US I've never met personally but whom I've told everything to. Friends back in Aus that I left behind. Friends here in my new home, who I don't get to see enough of. Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend. - Albert Camus Thanks again for The Fall Al. It really meant a lot to me. Written while lying on Nikkie's bed, while she studies for her final physio exam, listening to her sing along to U2's greatest hits. Nikkie is my closest confidant, a fantastic, thoughtful, caring, and wonderful friend. I love her more than the world. I am the luckiest.

Partyhouse - Reunited

Friends - Fun - Personal The partyhouse crew were fully reunited last night in what must be the first time in almost 4 months. We've all gone separately ways recently. Nikkie has moved out and is not living on the other side of Nottingham. Graeme is changing courses and having taken the rest of this term off, is living up in Liverpool. I've started full time work, so I'm up in Liverpool, and that just left Viki, Bruce and Ben in this big old house. There had been exams for the last couple of weeks and everyone was really stressed, but now they are all done (except for poor Nikkie who has one more next week). With the newfound freedom from stress we all converged again on the partyhouse to do what the party house crew are famous for, partying! ^_^ So Graeme and I left work early Friday afternoon and started the drive down to Nottingham. It was a sunny and hot 21 degrees (which is really good for England springtime) and we cruised down the motorway listening to radio one and chatting about how much we missed all being together. Graeme had previous been to the butcher, so we had 12 hamburgers, 12 sausages and 12 lamb kebabs. Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm. After arriving into Nottingham we went to pick up some beer, and then the six of us sat off in the sun in the backyard, drinking and catching up. I took responsibility for cooking the food on the BBQ, having as my mates claim, an innate skill due to my Aussie heritage. Anyway along with all the copious amounts of meat I also cooked some of my patented beer onions, which went down a treat. Viki put her computer speakers out the window and we have some great summer trance pumping out over the garden. We all sat around, eating our food, drinking our beer and wine, and having a great time. It stayed light till almost 10pm, and when it eventually got dark we scavenged all the wood and cardboard we could find and made a fire in the middle of the backyard. We talked and drank and played with the fire and talked some more. Some people smoked a little too. I love these guys; they are a fantastic group of friends. The conversation never lagged, the jokes always kept coming, the funny stories were never lacking. We talked about the coming summer, and the previous one. We talked about plans, and goals and dreams. We gossiped of course, and talked about sex and guys and girls. Everyone got very drunk. I can’t remember the last time I was that drunk, and I can’t remember ever seeing Nikkie that drunk before either. She is a very cute drunk ^_^ At about 4am the sun was starting to come up again and the birds were chirping. We all took that as the signal to go to bed. I fell asleep with the with windows open, the cool morning breeze wafting into the room, and the beautiful girl that I love in my arms. I’ve never been happier. I get by with a little help from my friends, I get high with a little help from my friends, Going to try with a little help from my friends. Written while listening to The Beatles - With a Little Help From My Friends.

European Champions!

Fun - Games Last night Liverpool FC won the Champions League in an amazing comeback after being 3-0 down at half time. The atmosphere was incredible and everyone was on the end of their seats when after 90 minutes of normal time, and 30 minutes of extra time, Liverpool were level with AC Milan at 3 all. It came down to penalties and Liverpool's keeper did a fantastic job, saving a number of goals and leading the team through to victory! Wow and this town certainly knows how to party. Anyway, I now have internet and a phone line at my flat, and I'm writing this with a slight headache, 10 minutes before I have to head off to work, so I had better go and get ready! Take care everyone!

Another Week

Friends - Fun So it's Sunday night. I'm leaving to go back up to Liverpool tomorrow. It's been a great weekend. Star wars was great. Fantastic. Nikkie and I had the job of trying to secure 12 seats of the birthday party of 6 year olds that were due to show up. We managed nine, which I thought was pretty bloody good considering the cinema was absolutely packed and we are to fight hordes of people off. Anyway it's late and so I am not going to write much more. I've got another long week of work ahead of me. This is my life now, and I'm enjoying every second of it. Written while listening to all of Muse's Showbiz album, blaring out of Nikkie's PC.

May The Force Be With You

Friends - Fun - Movies - Work I came down to Nottingham from Liverpool last night. This last week of work has been exhausting. I've been running around doing so much stuff. It's really exciting, there has been so much going on and I've been in the tick of it. I've really enjoyed working hard again, I don't even think twice about working through lunch or late I'm that involved and interested in making sure everything comes out as it should. So I had a very fun reunion with Nikkie last night, then a nice long sleep in. I really needed it. Now we are both getting ready to drive down to Milton Keynes to visit my cousin. It's her little boy Jacob's birthday today and we are all going to see the new Star Wars movie. Then we are staying the night at my cousin's place with some other of their friends before coming back down to Notts. It's going to be a busy weekend, and I've got another hectic week of work after it, but you know what, this is what I want to be doing, and I couldn't be happier! Take care everyone!

Productive Weekends

Fun - Work Nikkie and I are sat at our respective laptops, at the kitchen table of her house, being productive and doing work. She is writing her interprofessional learning essay and I am helping put together one of her management essays. I didn't realise until now how much is involoved in physiotherapy apart from leraning the anatomy and treatment techniquies. I can't help her with all of that, but at least with her professional practice stuff I can help by providing her with mainstream management theory that complements her phsyio management theory. We've had a very productive weekend actually. I'm surprised at how much work we have actually gotten done. Friday night we went to bed early. ^_^ Saturday morning we got up late. ^_^ ^_^ Satuday we caught up with our friends at our old house, and did a little bit of work in the afternoon. Saturday night we went out for dinner and drinks, and today we have been into town, gone shopping, and are back early enough to get lots more work done. If we get enough done now we can probably go to bed early again tonight ^_^ ^_^ ^_^

Time On Trains

Friends - Fun - Personal - Work I am on the train yet again. I think this past month I’ve clocked up at least 30 hours travel time on trains. Another month of this and I’ll be pushing for a company car! This month I pushed for a new laptop, which is why I am now able to write blog entries while on the train! For some reason I failed to mention that when explaining why I needed one ^_^ I just left Liverpool and am currently heading down to Nottingham. The trip takes two and a half hours, so I’ll get down to Nottingham just as Nikkie finishes work. I haven’t seen Nikkie since I saw here off at Liverpool station last Sunday. I miss her really badly. Of course I’ve talked to her every night, and sent countless text messages, but it’s just not the same. I need to be around her, to touch her, to hug her, to smell her. I feel so alive when I’m with her, when she is there the world just seems that much brighter. It’s been hard this last week without her. I can’t wait until the train pulls into Nottingham. Nikkie is coming to pick me up, and I know that as soon as I step off the train and see her everything is going to be alright. She will fall into my arms, and I’ll hold her tightly, and all my worries will disappear. I’m getting broadband and a phone line installed at my flat next week. The plan I’m getting includes unlimited weekend and evening calls, so I can chat to Nikkie after work for as long as I want. I’m also going to get a webcam set up so that I can see her during the week. Hopefully these things will help keep the loneliness at bay when she is not around. So I have the entire weekend with Nikkie, which is fantastic, but not only that, I’ve organised to do a site visit in Wolverhampton on Monday, which means I can stay in Nottingham Sunday night, do the site visit Monday, return to Nottingham Monday night, then head back up to Liverpool Tuesday morning. Then that leaves only three nights before the next Friday when I get to see her again! It is only a two and a half hours to Nottingham, so if I’m having a particular hard week and I always head down after work, spend the night with her, then head back up early the following morning. It is going to be hard being apart from her most of the week, but, and I’m going to say it here because frankly I don’t care who knows, I’m completely, utterly, and madly in love with this girl, and so I know it will all work out in the end. Anyway, so I feel very professional sitting here in my business clothes, typing away on my laptop. It’s a far cry from the sloppy university student I was just a couple of months ago. At first I didn’t really think I would like this job, but over the last couple of weeks I’ve taken on so much responsibility and done such a variety of things that I now think I am really going to enjoy it. I’m scheduling jobs, managing projects, doing technical work, getting training, going to meetings, doing designs, making decisions. It’s all interesting work, some of it is really cool and exciting, in particular the military contract we are bidding for, which hopefully will get signed off early next week. I know I am going to learn a lot here, and I’m getting paid really well for it too! So you can’t argue with that! I am often asked why my long-term plans are, whether I am just doing this temporarily, or whether I am here for good. My answer to that question has changed dramatically over the last six months. I’ve got a great job, nice flat, good friends and a fantastic girlfriend. I get to party in London, one of the most lively and exciting cities in the world, at least once a month. I get to pop over to an entirely different country for a dirty weekend. I have my some of my family, my cousins, very close by, whom I know I can always rely on. Ok the weather here is crap, but you can’t have everything! I have talked to the rest of my family about this; I’ve talked to my close friends about it too. I don’t intend on moving back to Australia in the near future. To be even more specific, I want to live and work here for at least five years. Long enough to have saved up a very respectable amount (in pounds too!), but even more importantly, long enough for me to get my permanent residency and citizenship. I’ve lived in the U.K. for almost a year and a half now, and I know that I want to always be able to return if I desire. The hassles I’ve had to go through with getting working permits and visas is just too much, I want to be naturalised, have dual citizenship, British and Australian. That doesn’t mean I won’t ever come back home to the land down under, just that I want to be able to make either place my home. So I think I’ve written enough for one afternoon. I’ll post this tonight when I get to Nikkie’s. Sorry if I rambled a bit, I get quite reflective whenever I spend long periods of time on trains. I wrote this while listening to DJ Doboy Trancquility 17. It’s the only MP3 I have on my phone at the moment other than Pimsler Japanese lessons and I haven’t gotten around to downloading any songs onto my new laptop yet.

Working Hard For The Money

Friends - Fun - Travel - Work So as seems usual of late I have left it a good couple of weeks before writing a proper entry. Well I've been working hard, so nah nah nah! ^_^ On Tuesday last week I came up to Liverpool to do some work. I sat in on a very interesting meeting, learnt heaps of stuff, and in that one morning knew that I would enjoy my time at this job. Wednesday I took the day out to go shopping with Graeme, we were buying furniture for my new flat. Thursday John and I were off to London. We were doing some thermal imaging work for the Kings College Hospital, which would take all of Thursday and Friday. We stayed in a hotel just down from the hospital and went out for drinks and dinner on the company's expense account after a hard days work. The thermal camera was really cool; check out my self-portrait in the previous post. Friday night we helped pack up the house of one of the guys who is moving up to Liverpool for this big contract we are getting. Geoff is going to be the new IT Director, and after loading all his stuff into the van we went out for a few pints to recover. Saturday involved driving back up to Liverpool from London and unpacking the truck. Thankfully I convinced John that we should swing by Nottingham on the way up, so we did and picked up Nikkie and a bunch of my stuff. I hadn't seen Nikkie since the previous Monday, so it was very difficult to sit in the truck and keep my hands off her ^_^ So we helped move Geoff in on Saturday. He is living in the most fantastic place on the water here in Liverpool. His flat is on the top floor of the mansion that the captain of the Titanic once lived in. So very cool. My flat pales in comparison, but Nikkie thought it was great all the same, and we moved all my stuff in that day too. Saturday night we spent at my cousin’s catching up, drinking beer and wine and playing pictionary. My cousin and his wife are the undisputed king and queen of pictionary, they usually make it the whole way around the board before you even get out of the first quarter. However this night something must have been in the air because Nikkie and I actually mounted a serious challenge and one of the games came down to sudden death when we were both on the all-play square at the end of the board. Sunday we went to the Oxton Village fair, ate Cornish pasties and watched a Punch and Judy show. Then it was almost time for Nikkie to leave. She is still on placement at the Queens Medical Centre and so had to leave to go back to Nottingham to be ready for her 8.30 start Monday morning. I hated seeing her go. It was hard the previous week being away from her, but because I was so busy running up and down the country the time seemed to pass really quickly. Now she is gone however and I'm aching deep inside. It’s only Wednesday. I'm leaving Friday afternoon to go down to Nottingham for the weekend, but that is still two nights away! I've been keeping myself busy, not trying to be alone in my big flat at nights, but is has been hard. Went drinking with Geoff, Graeme and Paul the last couple of nights, so that has kept me occupied (and Nikkie amused when I ring he at midnight drunk out of my mind). Still I'll have to face my empty flat eventually, and all I can do is think about wanting to be down with Nikkie. Anyway I'll be down there this weekend, have Friday, Saturday and Sunday together. The boss said it doesn't matter if I don’t come in until mid-morning Monday, so I'll get the train up from Nottingham early in the morning. Things are good for me right now. Nikkie is fantastic, but that’s a given, I don’t think she knows how to not be fantastic and lovely and sexy and perfect. The job is interesting, the money is good, the social side of it up here in Liverpool is much better than I expected. All over everything has worked out far better than I had ever hoped to dream. The only down side is the Nikkie is in Nottingham and I am in Liverpool. But it is only another month and a half till her summer break, and then she is coming up here to live with me for the summer, get a job during the days but be with me when we both finish work. It’s going to be awesome, the sun, the sand (oh did I mention my flat is 5 minutes walk from the beach), money in my pocket and my beautiful girl by my side.

Here, There, Everywhere

Friends - Fun - Travel - Work So it’s been two weeks since I last wrote an entry. Here is a quick summary of what I’ve been up to. After my week at work up in Liverpool I got the train down to High Wycombe, about 30 minutes outside of London, where Nikkie’s parents live. Nikkie had gone down to stay with them while I was up in Liverpool working, and had decided to stay longer, so I went down there to stay with them. So I went down on the Friday afternoon and ended up staying till the following Thursday. It was a lot more fun that I expected. Nikkie’s parents are really nice and her little sister is as well. It felt very comfortable there, like I belonged and was accepted. We went into London on the Monday, went to the Portobello Road markets and the Covent Garden markets. Nikkie was very good and resisted buying shoes and handbags. It was a great day, the weather was beautiful, my girlfriend looked stunning, I couldn’t have been any happier. So the week went by incredibly quickly, I was having a load of fun, and then, suddenly, we were back up in Nottingham. Bruce and Ben and Viki were all back in the house. It was good to see them after so long. Easter holidays were drawing to a close and everyone had to get back to study. The next week Nikkie was on placement, and I had to do some work around the country. I needed to do some site surveys for a project we are working on, so on Wednesday I got the train down to London and did a survey out in Enfield, and then Wednesday night I crashed at Anna’s place. She made dinner and we sat around drinking wine in her apartment overlooking the Thames and discussing politics, sex and whether a bear could beat a giant squid in a fight. The next morning I got the train down to Southampton to do another site survey. Thankfully this one didn’t take as long (I was checking this site against the same criteria as the pervious one, so I knew what I was looking for and it went much quicker) and I ended up getting back to Nottingham at 6pm. Over those two days I had spent about 10 hours on trains going to different places, but it was interesting work, and it meant that I could stay in Nottingham for the week and not have to go back up to Liverpool, so that was a great bonus of course. Now its bank holiday weekend. I’ve got tomorrow off, but I do need to be up in Liverpool on Tuesday. I’ll probably be moving up there for good starting next weekend. It’s been a fantastic last couple of months. I managed to stay down here in Nottingham far longer than I first expected. Nikkie is now on placement so she is working every day at the hospital, so that means we can’t spend the days with each other anyway. That being the case my being away won’t be so bad. I won’t be able to see her every night, but we’ll manage. I seem to be saying this a lot recently, but I will write more regularly in the future. This last week I’ve been travelling around for half the time, and the week before I was at Nikkie’s parents. Sorry to everyone who has emailed me that I haven’t replied to yet. I will get to them all! Written while listening to Damien Rice - The Blower's Daughter.

Robes and Room Service

Friends - Fun - Travel I've got to be in Liverpool on Monday. My working permit has come through and I've got a few things I need to sort out up there. I'm staying the whole week, and wont be back down to Nottingham until this weekend. It's going to be horrible, I know it. I've been with Nikkie everyday for the past month, and I want to continue seeing her everyday. This girl has got to me bad and I don't know how I'm going to manage to survive a whole week apart. Anyway rewind, I haven't told of our Brussels adventures yet. So we went and stayed with my cousin in Milton Keynes for a couple of days, then drove down to Nikkie's parents place and stayed there on Wednesday night, before getting up early Thursday morning, getting the train into London Waterloo, and jumping on the Eurostar! I’d been on it once before, but it was Nikkie’s first time, and she was very excited. The trip went smoothly and we arrived in Brussels at two in the afternoon. We got the metro from the train station to Rogier Place, and on reaching ground level, we were confront by our hotel. The Brussels 5 Star Sheraton Towers Hotel. Wow, I was intimidated just looking at it. We got there, checked in, and went up to our room, #24 on the 15th floor. Again, wow. This place was very, very swanky and cool. Here is a picture of me taken in the mirror in our room and here is one of the view out our window, with a very lovely Nikkie eloquently brushing her teeth in there as well. Anyway after jumping up and down a little on our king size double bed we ventured up to the top floor to check out the pool. I’m going to keep saying wow here, because it really was spectacular. We went for a swim, and a sauna, and another swim, and by then were hungry so went out strolling the streets of Brussels, found a nice restraint and had a fantastic dinner. Afterwards we went to the O-Bar, which was in the hotel, and hideously expensive, but very hip, and it had table service, and was open to late, and we only had to get the lift back to our room, so it was perfect for us. We talked and drank the night away before retiring for the night. We slept in the next day, but made sure to get up just in time for our buffet breakfast Mmm the Belgians know how to do breakfast in style, there is nothing like offering all you can eat waffles at 10am. We then ventured forth to check out Brussels during the day. And oh what a day it was; beautiful, sunny weather, 18 degrees, clear skies, little wind. Perfect. I don’t think you could have asked for a better day. So we went walking, seeing what sights Brussels has to offer. The main square, the cathedral, the royal palace, the central park, the little man pissing. Great stuff all round. By three in the afternoon we had exhausted the sights of Brussels so decided to return to the hotel. Up to the pool again for some more swimming, and this time, because the weather was so nice, we went out on the terrace and sunbathed until 6.30! In April! That’s how fabulous the weather was. So after swimming and lazing about for a while we decided we were far too comfortable to leave the hotel for dinner, so we ordered dinner from the bar at the pool, which they promptly delivered and placed on little tables besides our deck chairs next to the pool. Room service poolside, positively indulgent. Not having the right money to pay for it we just charged it to the room, the beginning of a slippery slope. Dinner was great though, and before we knew it the pool was closing and it was 10pm. We had spent the entire afternoon and evening in our swimsuits. After that we went back to our rooms, got changed and headed down to the O-Bar for some more drinks. Again we talked into the night, and cocktails, beer and nuts (though resisting temptation to charge all of our drinks to the room). Later that night, after having a nice hot bath we decided to order room service; chocolaty desserts to finish off the evening, The guy who delivered our food gave me a slightly bemused look when I answered the door in my robe and slippers, though as I was signing the credit slip (to again charge it to the room) I figured that he must get lots of the calls at 3am in the morning. The next day we slept in again, longer this time as breakfast on Saturday continued through till late and we didn’t have to check out till 12. Later that afternoon we caught the Eurostar back to London. Ok so if you are finding it hard to imagine this place, think along the lines of the Park Hyatt Tokyo from Lost In Translation. There was a gym, a pool, you could walk around in your robe and slippers, the bar didn’t have a live band, but it was very cool all the same. We are both poor students, hell I’m not even a student anymore, officially I’m still unemployed! For those three days though we lived the highlife and loved every minute of it. Now that I’m back now I’m dreading checking my credit card bill though and seeing everything I charged to the room ^_^ While we were away the Pope died. We had originally planned on going to Rome to get my out of the country. I’m really glad we chose Brussels now. Now the whole point of this trip wasn’t just to have an indulgent romantic getaway, it was to get my passport stamped with a visitors visa, which I managed to do, after a thorough interrogation by the immigration man about my plans and how I was to support myself. I had to show him my bank card and explain how I would get hold of money and everything. It was pretty scary actually, taking about 10 minutes talking to him before he actually stamped my passport. I have the stamp now, so that means I can stay legally in the country for another 6 months (though now my working permit has been approved and I submit for a working visa which will be valid for four years!). So Saturday night we stayed at Nikkie’s parents place again, before driving back up to Nottingham the next day. Nikkie’s little sister was on holidays, so we took her and her friend up to Notts to show them around and take them out. I never imagined it would be so easy to get a 15 year old into a bar!! Anyway so a whole heap of other stuff has been going on, but I’ve not got to get ready to head up to Liverpool. Don’t expect another entry from me till next weekend! Also Happy Birthday to my brother Jeremy, who turns 21 tomorrow!

Beautiful Brussels

Friends - Fun - Personal - Travel My student visa expires tomorrow. If I stay in the country past tomorrow I'll be living here illegally. I had two options, either apply to the consulate for a further leave to remain on a visitors visa, which would cost me £150, or leave the country and come back in during April and get a six months visitors visa for free on re-entry. I opted for the second option. Later tonight Nikkie and I are heading down to her parents place in North London, and then tomorrow we are heading off on the Eurostar from London, down through the channel tunnel, and then across to Brussels. We are staying two nights at the Five Star Sheraton Brussels Hotel before getting the Eurostar back to London on Saturday. I'll be out of the country, have a fantastic time, and come back in getting my visa for the same amount it would have cost me to apply directly to the consulate. I found the deal on lastminute.com, it's fantastically priced for what we get, including Eurostar tickets and two nights 5* accommodation at one of the best hotels in Brussels with breakfast included. The hotel looks amazing, with large rooms, comfy looking beds (^_^) and a heated indoor pool up on the 30th floor with a view over the Brussels skyline. It's right in the heart of the city too, within walking distance of all the major attractions. Brussels is a beautiful city. I've only been there once before, and then only for a couple of hours as I was making my way down from Bruges to Paris, but what I saw made me want to go back and spend more time there. There will be lots of premium Belgium beers to drink, as well as copious amounts of quality Belgium chocolate to consume. I'm really looking forward to the trip, I'm sure we are going to have an amazing time; positively indulgent! Some people may think it's a little strange for Nikkie and I to go on a romantic holiday, particularly to a different country and staying in an expensive hotel, when we haven't even officially been going out for three weeks. It's a big step, a serious thing to do, and for many people it may seem like we are going along incredibly quickly. But we know better. In our minds we've been together for three months rather than three weeks, and we both liked each other long before that. We've been almost inseparable these last three months and have become closer than I would have thought possible. We've lived with each other, we know everything about each other, and we were best friends before we became involved. There isn't a single day since we've been officially going out that I haven't seen her, spent some time with her. It's been very intense, very passionate, and so I don't think you can judge us based upon the time we've been "officially" going out. We're going to enjoy this time away, have a fantastic break, have lots of fun, and then keep going on as strongly as we have so far. Anyway I've got to start packing and getting ready! My next entry wont be for a couple of days, but when I get back I'll let everyone know how it was. Written while listening to Vertical Horizon - Everything You Want (Cheesy, I know! ^_^)

Alton Towers Adventure!

Friends - Fun - Guest Entry Yesterday Nikkie, Ads and I drove down to the theme park Alton Towers. We were meeting up with Jackie, Jo and Tom who were coming down from Liverpool. It's Jackie's birthday today, and so the Alton Towers trip was a sort of pre-birthday fun-filled excursion. --- ads override --- So Wigs is getting his Neighbours fix at the moment (despite declarations he is not hooked enough to watch the same episode twice a day, this is today's second viewing,) so the burden has fallen upon my heavy shoulders to summarise yesterdays adventures. And maybe add my 2 cents about eurobackpacking, life, the universe and blogs. Actually screw that, I hate blogs :D After 2 hours sleep (long story) I was awoken at half eight in the morning by Wigs (booming voice) for Operation Alton (dinner-out is a go). A bowl of cornflakes (Sainsbury special), a 50 minute burl down the motorway (M-1 through M-69, it seems), 20 minutes through the archetypically British, picturesque Alton countryside (complete with winding roads and blind corners), and a 5 minute walk from the Alton Towers carpark to the theme park proper (monorail inoperative) and here we were (where?). It'd be nice to say that going to Alton Towers embodied some sort of symbolic return to the UK for me, as going there had been one of the last things I had done before emigrating to Aus. Alas I couldn't actually remember anything about it, except there was lots of fun to be had. And fun there was. Oblivion. Nemesis. Submission. Rides appropriatelly named. A disconcerting indicator of the degree of intensity of a ride is given by the tightness of the harness on your crotch. And these rides were real crotchbusters. Which isn't a necessarily bad thing. Everybody has pondered what exactly would happen if your harness failed mid-ride. Most likely they'd be scraping you off the pavement. This is why I was expecting some sort of sympathy, concern and/or worry when the ride diagnostics said there was something wrong with my harness on Air, and the supervisor had to come and check it out. But no, instead Tom and Jo just point at me and burst out laughing. Thanks guys. More of the same after the second ride, when my ankle clips (yes, Air has harnesses to secure your legs) didn't unlock. Ride after ride, one by one we bugged out. Jackie on Enterprise, Jo - Ripsaw go #1; shortly followed by me on go #2, fighting rising bile as my stomach was palpitated by my intestines. Inertia is funny that way. Nikkie on the Tea Cup ride. The Tea Cup ride. After braving the Tower's top 5 adrenalin busters, the oldschool 'all round fun' Tea Cup ride may seem a peculiar choice for a black flag. But that is an opinion reserved for those who have not experienced the singular pleasure of 5 people, damp to dripping wet (see below), crammed into a giant teacup screaming, singing and spinning while tracing gracefull, high velocity spirographs in an area the size of a front yard. Ripsaw made me mildly nauseous. Mr Tea Cup ride OBLITERATED me; this thing is the destroyer of worlds. I wasn't alone. It is the most underrated ride there. I cannot overemphasize how bad. Fighter pilots do not experience g-forces quite like these. It was followed by unanimous agreement to grab a coffee and have a 10 minute sit down. Make that 30 minutes. Somewhere along the line Wigs and I stopped for a game of DDR, much to the digust of everyone else. And of course no theme park excursion is complete without the water rides - or namely, the conspiracies to get the unsuspecting soaked on said rides. And the conspiracies were abound. After the Wigs-Tom-Jackie (these three being the most mischievous) entente to drench the rest of us only resulted in their self-soaking (viz. Tom - 'My bottom is swimming!') on the rapids, we proceeded to the flumes. Better known elsewhere as the log ride, to those not in the know, it involves a bathtub sized conveyance (indeed, our particular vehicle at this venue was called a bathtub, nuff said) taking a narrowly winding water path with some sudden drops and accompanying splashes. These get progressively larger. The main 'fun' (and I use this term loosely) comes from seeing who gets drenched at each drop. It's sadistic, random, quite unfair and oh how we loved it. Here we were all mightily impressed by Wigs, who chivalrously offered Nickie a seat where he assured her she wouldn't get drenched. How sweet. Then he sat behind and used her as a water shield. Careful, oh intrepid readers: this man is devious. However, Tom and Jackie were the real show stealers. Jo and I, having escaped lightly on the rapids, were afraid the law of averages might catch up. But providence smiled. On us at least. Tom and Jackie had some dirty plan to avoid the water by hiding in the enclave at the front of the bathtub, yet making it fore-heavy to increase the splash for others (ie me, Jo). Make no mistake about it, log ride dynamics is apparently an intricate subject. In this case however, all it did was submerge the front of the tub on the drop and effectively dump buckets of water on them. There was one particularly memorable drop, done in the pitch black of an artificial cave - I braced for the drop, felt the impact, heard the splash. I was thinking 'that wasn't so bad' when Jackie let loose a gawdamighty loud splutter-cum-shriek. Music to my ears. When we got off that ride, Tom looked like he'd been under a shower for 20 seconds; Jackie like she'd jumped in a pool. She took it well, or better than I would've. Once again no sympathy. Not from this bunch. Come late afternoon, the crowds disperse; Tom and Wigs (the rest of us drained) to hop on Nemesis something like a billion times in a row, while I stay to talk fashion with the girls. I can say with confidence Gucci handbags are still in, by the by. So we finally make our leave from Alton Towers. Now when Wigs says 'we' drove, he more means Nikkie drove, he talked, and I slept. We did stop by a pub for some typically excellent British pub food. By now everyone's stomach is settled enough to eat - fish and chips, Yorkshire pudding, shepherds pie. There are some things about Britain I'd forgotten I'd missed.

Crash Into Me

Friends - Fun - Personal Well it's been a long weekend. I only just got home. Saturday I got the train down to London to meet up with Anna and Sarah, the two fun and crazy girls I travelled around most of Italy with last summer. Sarah is heading off in two weeks to the Middle East for six months to do some work for her firm. I hadn't seen her since Christmas so I wanted to take the opportunity to catch up with both her and Anna before she left. So I got the train down, had a lovely lunch with Sarah, and then went back to her apartment to find Anna just crawling out of bed after a heavy previous night. We sat around and had some coffee while I enjoyed their fantastic view out over the river Thames. It was good to see them both again, and we had a lot of catching up to do, but soon the afternoon ran out and I had to come back up to Nottingham. Anna and Sarah both wanted me to stay the night, come out clubbing with them to the Kross in Kings Cross, which was open to 6am that night, but I had to beg off. That night was Nikkie's physiotherapy ball and I had to get back! So after a long day in London I jumped on a train heading back home, and thankfully made it back in time. I think Nikkie would have been quite displeased if I had made her late for the ball ^_^ On Sunday Nikkie's parents were coming up to bring her some furniture and stuff for her new house. I had met Nikkie's parents a couple of times before; once while in Newark hall, and once when they came to our house. They are both really nice, but meeting them this time was a little different. I was no longer just the friend/housemate, I was now the boyfriend, the older boyfriend. I was a little worried to start with, but the day actually went really well. I helped Nikkie's dad put together Nikkie's chest of draws and desk, and then we all went to lunch together. Nikkie's mum quizzed us a little during lunch, because she really had no idea what had been going on (!!! I hope she never finds my blog ^_^) but it seemed cool in the end. Nikkie's sister had also come up, and it was nice to finally meet her as well. Nikkie talked to her mum on the phone later than night and said I made a good impression, so that made me feel good. My mum also rang that night, and I told her all about Nikkie and what had been going on. Mum was typical mum, asking all these awkward questions, and telling me to look after her. Of course I will mum! Come to think of it, Nikkie's mum said the same thing to me just before they all left. So come Monday morning, after spending a grand total of about four hours at my house all weekend, I got Nikkie to drop me into town on her way to Uni, and I came home. I'm tired, it was a busy weekend, but a really fun and enjoyable one. I hope all my weekends to come are going to be this good. Written while listening to Crash Into Me by Dave Mathews Band. P.S. Calvin - I'm an emo rocker too according to that quiz. Fragma - I appreciate all the comments, and "D" is the right option ^_^

This Is The Story Of A Girl

Friends - Fun - Personal - Work So this is the story of a girl. Or wait; maybe it’s another story entirely. They are all intermingled really. Or perhaps they are all independent, but just occurring concurrently. I’m too tired right now to actually figure it all out. I just thought it was about time that I told you all about it. Apart from my two random entries a couple of weeks ago, I’ve written nothing since my birthday, more than a month ago now. A lot has happened since then. I don’t even know where to start. Ah yes! There was mention of a girl. I guess that’s as good a place as any to begin. Nikkie and I have finally quit our (in hindsight rather stupid) efforts to resist each other and are now, to quote my good friend Calvin, ”brilliantly, disgustingly lovey-dovey”. I really like her, she really likes me. We have wasted so much time and have finally decided to waste no more. So no more of this random, drunken, fooling around bullshit; we are serious, committed and both hopelessly besotted. And I’m really happy, happier than I’ve been in a very long time. Nikkie makes me happy, she is caring, smart and funny; and of course it also helps that she is a stunning blonde half-Dutch goddess who is almost as tall as me! ^_^ Ah boy I can’t stop grinning lately. Nikkie is moving out of our share house this weekend into a smaller two bedroom house with one of her physiotherapy friends, Jade. This move had absolutely nothing to do with her and my relationship; she starts her final year after this summer, has her dissertation to finish and lots of lots of placements to go on, so she really needed to get out of the non-stop party place that is our house. At the time when she decided she was going to move out she and I weren’t even together properly and so it was a completely independent decision. It’s just a bonus now I think because it means we can have some semblance of a proper relationship separate from that whole living together thing. There are perks though that I’ll miss of course ^_^ It takes about 10 minutes to get from her new place to our place (officially named the PartyHouse). So commuting that distance won’t be a problem at all. It takes about two hours to drive to Liverpool from here, so commuting that will be a bit of a problem, which brings me to my next story. I’ve gone and got myself a nice shiny new job; or rather it has come and got me. I’ve been offered a job in Liverpool, with a great salary, company flat thrown in, and lots of interesting work. It’s a fantastic opportunity, all my working visa worries are being worked out, and everything made easy for me to move up there. It’s just not something I actively looked for (I was headhunted in effect, but it’s a long story as to how that came about). Liverpool has its benefits; my cousin John lives up there (lucky coincidence), I am familiar with the city, and I already know people who live there. It has also got a terrific nightlife (as long as you stay away from the chilli shots!). The only problem is that it’s two hours from Nottingham, which means two hours away from all my friends here, as well as the person who is constantly on my mind and making me so happy. So yeah that sucks pretty hard. I can’t start work properly until my working visa goes through though, and even though I’m doing the occasional day’s consultancy work on my student visa, that means I won’t be moving up to Liverpool until at least mid-April. So we are going to see what happens. I’m definitely taking this job, it would be foolish not to. I’m going to be moving to Liverpool at some point in the future. Two hours isn’t that much travelling time though, and I’ll have lots of weekends free, and Nikkie has her Uni holidays. At the moment we are still in the “disgustingly lovey-dovey” stage, but we’ve talked about it and are going to do the long distance thing if needed. That being said I’m going to London tomorrow for lunch and coming back tomorrow afternoon, and it is two hours each way there, so it’s doable, we’ll survive. In other news Ads is still here, in the UK, staying with me still actually. He is having a great time just bumming around and catching up on all the movies, TV shows and anime he has missed over the past three months. He will move on at some point, but right now it’s great to have him here, and if he has already stayed for two weeks, why not stay for another two I say! ^_^ I know I haven’t filled in a lot of the blanks here, and have more just updated the current status of my life rather than detailing how and why it came about that way. All those unwritten blog entries over the past month were suppose to cover that stuff. I didn’t write them though, and there is just too much to say right now, so be content with what you get. To all of my friends whose emails I have neglected to reply to recently please forgive me. I’ll get around to responding soon, and I’ll fill you guys in more on what’s going on. I’ll also endeavour to start writing blog entries more regularly again. It’s amazing how you can get so caught up in your life sometimes. It’s a funny thing life ^_^ Now I’m off to cuddle with my girl and be blissfully happy.

Unexplained Absence

Friends - Fun This is my first entry for almost three weeks. A lot has been happening recently and I just haven’t had the time or energy to write anything here. It’s strange because normally I find the time no matter what, but lately I’ve just skipped over writing something. I don’t think I’ll go back and fill in the blanks. There is just too much to tell. I’ve left it too long now, plus I have some really big, exciting news, so I thought it about time to write another entry. Ads has arrived! He showed up on my door at 8pm on Thursday night, just as we were getting ready to go out. If he had come half an hour later he would have been stuck sitting on our front porch till we got back after 12. It was a complete shock! I wasn’t expecting him, and well he wasn’t expecting to have to be there either. He had been told, only that day, that he was in Italy illegally and had to get out. So off to the airport he went, grabbed a ticket, and showed up at my door. So that’s really mad. We went out and got mightily pissed Thursday night and caught up on everything that’s been going on. It was great fun, just like good old times. Ads hasn’t really got a definite plan of what he is going to do next, but he’ll be crashing here for the meantime and we are going to have a lot of fun.

The Party Is Over

Friends - Fun - Personal - University - Work University is over. It's time to retire that category I think. I doubt I'll be writing anything else University related any time soon. I've been lazing about the last week. Well partying about is more apt a description. I decided to take last week completely off, have a holiday, a break, a brief hiatus from the stresses of the real world. So I partied hard the first weekend after my exams, and went out almost every night last week. I hardly got any sleep, and feel great for doing it. We went out to Bar BZA, The Works, Dogma, and a bunch of other places. On Friday night we went out to Ocean. We went there almost every Friday night all of last term, but hadn't been yet so far this term. It was the same as I remembered, crap music, but a lot of fun. Viki had her camera and took a bunch of pics... and here they are! First Picture, Second Picture, Third Picture, Fourth Picture. So the party is over. I've got to settle down now. My task this week, and the following week, and the week after, and for as many weeks after that as needed to succeed, is to get a job. I need to start working if I want to remain in this country. I'm going to try my hardest to stay in Nottingham, I don't want to leave here, leave the friends I've made. This will make it more difficult to get a job, but I'm going to do my best. I want to stay here. I don't know what will happen, where things will lead, but I know I want it to happen here. Written while listening to Crazy Sunshine by The Pillows.

Post-Patriotism

Friends - Fun My Australia Day went off with a bang. Drank more cans of XXXX that I can count. I wanted to be patriotic and drink a good Australian beer, more importantly a Queensland, a Brisbane beer. Of course the XXXX you get here is brewed in Scotland, but still, it's good stuff. We drank a few beers at our place first, and Nick and Little Matt from the office came round. After way too much beer we decided it would be a good idea to whip out the Absinthe. Heh well it was a good idea for most of us, but Bruce didn't take too kindly to it, and there is evidence on our front porch to prove it! This morning when I got back, the shot glasses were stuck to the table, and the absinthe had melted through the covering on the top of the table. This is seriously strong stuff. Taxis arrived; we all bundled in, and headed off to Bar BZR. Still can't beat those £2.50 triples. We drank there until last orders. We had already bought queue-jump tickets for The Works at the Grove earlier that night, so we didn't mind leaving until late. When we got into the Works we realised that it was School Daze! Lots of fit freshers dressed up in school uniforms to celebrate the start of the new term. It was a great night, and they actually played some halfway decent music. Came home and got some fantastic garlic bread from the place up the street! It's great; you get a pizza base but covered with garlic, butter and spices. So yummy. Viki and I stayed up talking and eating that for a while, before I eventually crashed out. A great night overall, a good way to celebrate my nation’s national day. Also a big shout out to Nash, who turns 23 today! Happy birthday Nash!

It's A Bit Fuzzy

Friends - Fun - University Where do I start? I’m only just sobering up. I didn’t sleep Thursday night. I was procrastinating as usual, and hadn’t done any real study yet. I had two exams the next day, and they were my last exams ever. So I stayed up all night, did a little bit of study, and then set off to Uni for my 9am exam. The exam went well, thankfully the questions I had prepared for came up, so I am pretty sure I managed to pass. I couldn’t wait to get out of there though, and as soon as 11am cranked round, I got up and fled that exam room as fast as possible. I met up with Bruce and Ben, who also had 9am lectures and we went down to the Ark, the student union bar. Let the silliness begin! We got in there, grabbed a seat, grabbed a beer, and started to kick back. That morning’s exam was Ben’s last and Bruce didn’t have another one until Saturday. Nikkie and Viki soon came and joined us, both of them having no exams to do either. And so I drank beer and got progressively drunk. While I was getting drunk, I pulled out my text book and past exam papers for Computer Security. I had my final exam starting at 4:30pm that afternoon and I was planning on doing it completely drunk! I also had to do some form of study for it. I wasn’t really worried. I figured I could go in and do most of it with my eyes closed. For an advanced subject it was pretty straight forward. However I wanted to be sure I could answer it in my increasingly drunken state. My friends thought I was crazy, but I’ve been so damn responsible my entire university career I wanted for once, for this final time, to do something really stupid. So I drank my beer, and then drank another, and drank some more. I spent almost five hours in the Ark, and I lost track of how many pints I had. I think Ben, Bruce and I bought two rounds each, but I can’t be sure. When it approached 4:30 though I left the other’s and went to my exam, almost falling over on the way. I don’t know how I managed it, but for a full hour I went into overdrive. I was in a drunken state of power writing. My booklet was almost full by the time the exam was over. When the time was up, I stood up, managed not to topple over, and triumphantly left the building. I had done it. I was finished. I was free at least. We had made plans to go out that night, so I walked straight home after my exam. The fresh air did some good in sobering me up, and it gave me time to think about my situation. Things are never going to be the same again. It's like the end of high school all over again, except I'm older, wiser, and better able to appreciate it. For some reason I had the Gurge’s Black Bugs mp3 on my phone, so I listened to that the whole way home. It wasn’t really relevant to my feelings, but it was still great to listen to. There will be many turning points in my life. Events which will shape the person I am. This wasn’t one of them. Those sorts of events are random, interactions that are spontaneous, and can change your direction forever. This was just an ending; one I knew was coming for a long time, and one I should have prepared myself for better. Anyway I’m rambling now, so I’ll stop and get on with the rest of my story. Friday night we went out to Bar BZR, but not before drinking half a bottle of Absolut Vodka and some 70 proof Czech Absinthe which really didn’t agree with me. BZR had triples for £2.50, so while I was there I had even more vodka. At about 12pm we headed out to the Works, where they played fantastic music and I danced until closing time. Most of the night is a blur. Drinking for more than 12 hours straight took its toll, and I crashed out at some point after getting home, somehow, and woke up the next morning with a splitting headache and no recollection at all of the specifics of what happened the night before. All good fun! My sore head didn’t stop me going out again the following night though. We didn’t go clubbing, instead we went to this bar called Dogma and met up with Nikkie after she went to an Ice Hockey game. Lots more drinking occurred, again I don’t remember much, but I do know that I got a taxi home early with the girls, for which Bruce, Graeme and Ben gave me lots of stick for. I am tired now. Its 3am Sunday night and there is more drinking ahead of me tomorrow. We are doing the slab challenge tomorrow, so I need to be rested and prepared for it. I’ll report back on my progress when I sober up from it ^_^ Ah my liver is going to hate me after the end of this week. I’ll start being serious come February, but for the rest of January, I am partying hard! Written while listening to Black Bugs by Regurgitator.

Consequences

Friends - Fun - Personal This is the Internet. It's public and it's open. In the past I've tended to not to talk some aspects of my life here because they don’t concern just me and I don’t feel right talking specifics about other people without their consent. I censor myself a lot here; in particular I censor myself when it comes to girls and relationships. I don’t kiss and tell. It’s not me and never has been (ok well there have been exceptions when I’ve been really drunk, but that’s different!). I am going to talk about the following here though because, well, I feel like talking about it, and I know Nikkie won’t mind. I am not going to go into specifics; I still don’t kiss and tell. So Friday night, my housemate Nikkie came home from Leicester, where she is doing her current physiotherapy placement. I first specifically mentioned Nikkie back in April last year in this entry. Here is a picture of Nikkie from that post so you know who I am talking about. Nikkie and I have become very close over the past five or so months since we moved in together. She and I get on really well and I’ve found myself opening up to her completely. That’s a rare thing and I’m glad I found it here, I didn’t think I would be able to so quickly. Anyway so we have been getting closer and closer, and at the same time flirting with each other now and then, but nothing even really came of it. Until last night. Nikkie was desperate to go out on Friday after spending all week down in Leicester on placement, but nobody else wanted to go out because we all have exams on at the moment. I ended up being convinced though, and she and I went down to the Bag Of Nails, our local pub for a couple of drinks. We started by sitting next to each other on one of the leather couches there, and talked and talked. As the drinks started flowing we started creeping closer and closer to each other on the couch. The night progressed, it was getting pretty late, and we were getting pretty drunk. We were doing a bit of flirting, and then she suddenly kissed me. I was a little surprised, but at the same time sort of half expecting it, and I like her, so I kissed her back. After a little bit of making out we promptly went back home and, to avoid specifics, we spent the night together. My other housemates will probably read this, but that’s ok, because they found out anyway. Nikkie and I spent about ten minutes kissing at our front door without realising that our other housemate Viki was just inside around the corner watching TV. So that kind of gave the game away, plus the fact that my bed was empty all night and Nikkie’s door was firmly locked with the music blaring from inside… ^_^ So Saturday morning we woke up, made out some more while watching episode seven of the new season of The O.C. and then had a talk, went into town and sat in Starbucks and talked some more. Conclusions: Though we both had a great time, and really needed the release, what we had done was a mistake. Neither of us regretted it, but with the current situation, and future possibilities, we agreed that we shouldn’t let it happened again. We are housemates, we live with each other, we are good friends, we each have crap in our past we are running from, and for all I know I could be in a completely different part of the country in a month’s time. There are consequences to our actions, and though during the night we each said a number of times, "What are we doing? We shouldn't be doing this!", with the clarity of day the full reality of those consequences was made clear. So while my other housemates are currently giving us endless crap about it, Nikkie and I are still sharing cheeky grins about our night of passion, secure in the (rather mature) decision to make sure it is just a single night, and that’s all it will ever be. I suspect Graeme of putting out odds on when he expects us to shag next, but the way we figure it, whatever bets he takes will be on very long odds. Anyway it’s time to go to sleep, back in my own bed tonight. Written while listening to Paul van Dyk – For An Angel, on repeat.

Christmukkah

Friends - Fun - Television It's been a really full on past couple of weeks. We had Christmas in Milton Keynes with my cousin Simone. It was just like a real family Christmas, lots of great food, and great company. On boxing day we walked down to the pub while Ed and Toby tried to canoe, however ones they got to the Grand Union Canal it was frozen over, so that quickly put an end to that idea. I drank far too much and ate far too much, and overall had a fantastic time. We went up to Liverpool on the 30th to stay with my other cousin John. Again we ate to much and drank too much and had a fantastic time. New Year’s was rather laid back, but fun all the same. I called home and talked to Fragma, Wulfen, Rur and Nash which was great. I hadn't talked to some of those guys since leaving Australia so it was really good to have a long proper conversation with them. On the 2nd, Ed, Jeremy and I drove down to Nottingham from Liverpool, via North Wales (a very round about way I know, but they wanted to see castles!). Mum stayed up in Liverpool because the plan was for me to take Ed and Jezz out for the night in Notts and show them what a party town it was. So this was going to be the last time I saw mum before she went back to Australia. She cried, told me to look after myself, said she loved me, all that nice stuff. It was sad to go, I really loved seeing her again after so long, but I still needed to leave and more and more I am happy with that decision and my decision to stay. So we went down to Nottingham, where all of my housemates except Bruce had already gotten back from their holiday break. We ended up going out to Dogma and having a great night. I got very drunk, but my brothers, needed to get up early the next morning and drive back to Liverpool, only got a little tipsy. Overall it was a great night, a very interesting night. Ed and Jezz left the next day. No tears here of course, just some manly hugs. No I am trying to finish off coursework and start on my study and catch up on everything I put on hold for the holidays. One of the first things I did though was watch the new O.C! Episodes 5 and 6 had been released while I was away and wow what fantastic episodes they were. I am not going to spoil it for anyone back home, but there is another Christmukkah episode! Fun all around. I'll try to keep this updated over the next couple of weeks but it will be difficult with all the work I've got to do. I'll do my best though!

London Calling

Friends - Fun - Travel So we finished up in Amsterdam. Four crazy days of fun. On Saturday we flew to London, lugged our bags through the underground, and ended up meeting up with mum again and crashing out in Paddington at the place of the son of a friend of a friend of mums. Or something like that. Slept. Woke up early Sunday morning. Went to The Church. Drank. Danced to crap music. Met a whole bunch of Aussies. Went home and slept. After recovering from that; Ed, Jeremy and I spent the next three days doing the full tourist trip of London. Sights seen include: Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, Westminster Abby, National Museum, etc. etc. etc. It was pretty full on, but great to do considering I have been living in the UK for almost a year but still hadn't done all the London touristy stuff. Ed and Jeremy loved it as well. On the Tuesday I ducked out of the Tower of London early to meet up with Sarah for lunch. It was good seeing her again and catching up on what she has been up to. I didn't meet up with anyone else while I was in London, we were so busy, but I glad I organised a little time out. So London is done, and we are now in Milton Keynes with my cousin Simone. We will be here for the next couple of days, over the Christmas period. I am really happy I'll be spending Christmas with my family. There is an uninterrupted line of Christmases for my bothers and mum and I. We have never been apart yet, and I didn't want to be the reason for this to stop. Next year I guess I'll just have to go back home for Christmas to keep the tradition alive. So Merry Christmas to everyone and if I don't get to write another entry before then, have a Happy New Year too!!

Amsterdam Again

Friends - Fun - Travel So I met up with my mum and brothers in Paris safe and sound. It was great to see them again. I also managed to catch up with Ads and Jimmy the Hacker! We are in Amsterdam now, all of us except for mum. It's a heap of fun, though the time here went so quickly. It's our last night already and tomorrow we are off flying to London. I am taking my brothers to The Church on Sunday though, so that should be fantastic. Anyway I am using the free internet in the Flying Pig Downtown hostel. The pot is thick in the air, this place is great. Peace out!

Family Reunited

Friends - Fun - Travel I haven't got long to talk. I am flying to Paris tomorrow where I'll meet up with my mother and brother's, whom I haven't seen since leaving Australia back in January this year. Then I am spending a couple of days with them, then going with my brothers to Amsterdam for a few days, then meeting back up with Mum is London for a few days, then spending Chirstmas in Milton Keynes with my cousin, then spending New Years in Liverpool with my other cousin, and then finally back here to Nottingham to do exams. So if I don't post for a while that's why. Now I am running stupidly late so I've got to go!

The Church

Friends - Fun - Travel I went to The Church in London yesterday. I went to drink, to party, to have a great time. I am a sinner and I needed to be purified with alcohol. Here's the full story. Saturday morning, bright an early, about 3pm, Bruce and I finally dragged ourselves out of bed, shoved some clothes into our backpacks and headed off to the train station. We were on our way to London! After arriving at St Pancras we made our way to Bruce's sister's place (near Russell square) where we dumped our stuff, and had a quick meal of pizza. We had plans to meet up with Anna and Sarah that night. Slight tangent here, I don't think I've talked about Anna and Sarah before... Well while I was in Italy I met these two fantastic British girls Anna and Sarah. They were travelling the same sort of route I was, but more importantly they could party the same sort of way I was, so we ended up travelling together for more than two weeks. For those of you who have seen my trip photos, they are the two blonde girls that feature in a lot of my Italy pictures. Anyway they had just finished Uni and were enjoying their last free summer before they both took up trainee solicitor jobs in London. We had a great time together and promised to keep in touch when we were back in the UK. So back to the story… So we headed out to Covent Garden, to this really nice place called Henry’s to meet up with Anna and Sarah and some of their friends. The drinks were expensive, but the place was cool, and this was London after all. We traded stories, caught up with what we’ve all been up to these last couple of months, and generally had a really good time. Bruce and I knew that we were going to The Church the next day so we didn’t end up getting totally blind drunk. Just a little drunk. After Henry’s closed (at 11pm, again English drinking hours SUCK!) were wandered around, was going to go to the Garden Club, but the line was massive and it cost £12 entry. Again London prices, but yeah, Bruce and I said our goodbyes, stumbled back to his sister’s place (after a number of wrong turns) and talked to his sister for a couple of hours before crashing. At 10am the next morning we were up and about! Why this ungodly hour? Well we only have a little while before we needed to be at Church. The whole original reason for coming down to London was to meet up with my friend Bull and go to The Church. It was Bull’s second last day in the country, he had come up to see me earlier this month (see this entry) and I wanted to return the favour and see him off. He will be back in Australia by Christmas, his travelling days over for the moment. So he met us outside the tub station at Kentish Town and we made our way to the place of worship. The Church is an institution. It’s something that you simply have to do. It involves drinking, and more drinking. You worship alcohol in the best way possible. You can only buy drinks in multiples of three. So you drink, and then drink some more, then drink even more. There was music, and alcohol, and woman seemed to flash their boobies at a lot. The place is dark, there is sawdust on the floor, you think it’s night time, but it’s not. There were Aussies everywhere, as well as lots of Kiwis and South Africans. We were pissed by midday, and literally falling down by 4pm came round and it was time to leave. If you go to The Church you go to get drunk, there is really not much point otherwise. Fragma, you would have loved it. Once we left the Church we found a nice quiet bar near Kings Cross station called Scream. We had some more drinks, had some food and then got ready to go home. So we got back on the tube and completely randomly bumped into these other guys who we had seen at the Church, so we went off to a pub called Punch and Judy in Covent Garden with them, had even more drinks, and then did finally have to push off. We said goodbye to Bull, it was great seeing him again, and I’ll be really sad to see him go. So far I’ve only seen Bull, Jacqui and Morgs from back home and I hate it when they all have to leave again. So we eventually made our way back to Bruce’s sister’s place, grabbed out stuff, and singing Waltzing Matilda at the top of our voices, stumbled back to where our train was leaving from. We eventually got home (back in Nottingham) around midnight and I promptly fell straight asleep. What a weekend.

Hackers Of The World Unite!

Fun - University One of the subjects I am studying this semester is Computer Security. In fact it's almost the only thing I've been working on at Uni lately. I've split my time pretty much between it and Japanese. My other subjects can wait until swotvac, I'll do revision for them then. Anyway the coursework for Computer Security is a lot of fun. We each get given a computer in an isolated lab. We then have four weeks to set up a number of services on it (SSH/SFTP/Webserver) and make it as secure as possible. After that initial setup phase we have a four week "LIVE" phase, where pretty much anything goes and the aim is to hack into a bring down as many computers as possible. No physical attacks are permitted, and we aren't allowed to do denial of service attacks either, but other than that, everything is fair game. So far my computer has fared really well. It's stood up to all attempts to break into it (well those that I know about at least) and the services run as they should (most of the time). The fun really isn't in securing your own system though, it's in hacking other people's. Having a stable and secure machine as a starting point to hack from helps, but I've personally put most of my energy into attacking other people. And it paid off. This afternoon the poor little box at 128.243.27.248 was penetrated and... TAKEN DOWN! I know whose machine that IP belongs to, and trust me, they deserved what they got. I am not going to go into how access was gained (because it's long winded and a little complicated) but the end result was their box being totally trashed, everything deleted, forcing them to do a full rebuild. Oh the joy! I shouldn't be getting so much pleasure from causing a lot of trouble to other people, but I do. It's so much fun. The thrill you get when you gain access is fantastic. It's such a rush! You know you might be noticed at anytime, that your connection may be shut down. You are working against the clock, and you want to do as much damage as possible. I think I've awoken my inner sadist. It was far far too much fun inflicting all that pain. They will need to spend hours and hours rebuilding they machine now. Poor them. Anyway I think I got a bit carried away. It was worth it though and I learnt a lot. Hackers of the world unite! Note: All the hacking involved in this course is done so as part of the curriculum and is authorised by the University. We are only allowed to hack in a special lab and it is isolated from the rest of the world. What we learn to do is illegal and no I don't do it outside of the labs. Listening to Orbital – Halcyon & On & On off the Hackers soundtrack. Of course.

First Snow

Friends - Fun - General It's snowing in Nottingham! I was walking back from Uni this afternoon and it started to rain, then it stopped raining and started to snow! Eventually the snow was think on the tops of all the cars, and Nikkie, Viki and I had a big snow ball fight. I must admit that I was a snow ball virgin, but I held my own, and it was great fun. It was freezing cold, and we were running up and down the street like lunatics, but I wouldn't have traded it for anything. We were acting like children, making heaps of noise, and people kept looking out of their windows at us, but still, it was fantastic. I want to do it again. I am not looking forward to the cold of this England winter and this early snow fall doesn't bode well for a mild season. However if I would like a white Christmas, I would like to walk through the streets of London in the snow, and I would like to have more snow ball fights! So I will bare with it ^_^ Listening to Shimmer by Fuel.

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 ^_^

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.

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.

Filling The Gaps

Friends - Fun - Guest Entry Continuing from where I left off in my last entry (becuase it is not as late as I thought it was)... I didn't spent all my time at my cousin's asleep though. My friend Jacqui came to visit me during the week. We had a great time and it was really good to catch up. I did my best to show her "traditional English countryside" and she cooked dinner for me, so it all worked out well! She wrote a wonderful description of her stay for her periodic mass emails, which I am going to reproduce here (I hope you don't mind Jacqui!):

I'm in Milton Keynes (England), staying with my friend Michael (from uni in Brisbane) at his cousins' place (they're away in Cornwall) in their gorgeous home - an old converted water mill - with bunny rabbits outside the door, a stream running past the back of the house, cows in the neighbouring fields and beautiful green, green scenery everywhere! Michael's surprise for me yesterday was to go kayaking - we climbed out the window of the house (first surprise!) 'cos that was the easiest access to the stream. Lifted the kayak down, jumped in, paddled across to the other side (like, 3 metres), jumped out, hauled the kayak up, carried it a few metres to the bank of the river, lowered the kayak down again and headed off downstream. (it sounds like a lot of work, but as we each nearly fell into the mud and water a couple of times, was actually quite funny). Down the river about a kilometre, I guess, then another muddy landing, then carried the kayak up a hill, before lowering it into... the Grand Union Canal: which, if you follow it far enough, ends up in London! The canal was great - colourful canalboats to look at, (no bunches of reeds to navigate!), people walking their dogs along the path beside the canal... and only one lock to get through! At the lock we jumped out, carried the kayak to the other side, and got back in again. We followed the canal up as far as a (nice, old English) pub, got out and had lunch and relaxed there for a while, before heading back the way we'd come. We were nearly back (rowing harder because we were going against the current this time) when we emerged from the leaves of an overhanging tree branch, to find a family of swans in front of us. Michael very wisely suggested we not go any closer, since Mother Swan was giving us some VERY suspicious looks! So we slowed down to swan-speed, and followed the family home - Dad in front, the three kids, and Mum bringing up the rear, glancing back at us frequently to make sure we got no closer! I wished I could have reached my camera, but it was tied up in a big bundle of my jacket and Michael's, keeping it out of the water which seeped into the bottom of the kayak. So you'll just have to imagine what a magic scene that was!

Jacqui had come up from London, and after staying a couple of days with me, headed off to Oxford. She is in France at the moment, and if you are reading this Jacqui, good luck on the rest of your trip! After Jacqui had left I did some more sleeping and watching DVDs until my cousin came home, where I did some sleeping and watching DVDs intermingled with going out with them. Which brings us up to The Elephant Vanishes. Yay! I am now almost up to date! I'll write all about my new place and my housemates and what we've been up to after the weekend.

Edinburgh Revisited

Friends - Fun - Travel I've moved into my new house! It's great! I will write more about it soon. First though I want to go back to Edinburgh, because if I don't do it now I never will. So, a couple of days after I got back into the UK, I got the train up to Edinburgh to meet up with Bruce and check out the tail end of the Fringe Festival. It's a long train trip up from Milton Keynes, about six hours in total, but I dozed on the train and the trip went rather quickly. Bruce met me at the train station and we walked down to his place, I dumped my backpack, and then we promptly went out for a beer. That set the tone for my stay in Edinburgh. Bruce showed me around the pubs and bars of the city and we got drunk... quite a lot. We also were being quite cultured at the same time. Surrounded by the Fringe it is hard not to, with performances of all types happening in all corners. We saw trapeze acts, an assortment of jugglers and acrobats, a number of theatre troops, singers, dancers and all sorts of other musicians, comedians, mimes, and the just plain bizarre... and this was all just down the Royal Mile. I stayed up in Edinburgh for about a week, and during that time managed to catch bunch of different shows; standup acts, dramatic performances, live music, and some that were a cross between them all. Some shows we had planned to go to, Bruce's parents had organised tickets, or we saw a performance in the street and decided go to the show afterwards. Another time I was sitting in a bar called "Under" something at about 1AM and this guy gave me a free ticket to see a two hour standup comedy set featuring four different comics. I was really pissed at this point, so everything seemed funny, but I think it would have been hilarious sober as well. Bruce couldn't direct us home that night (too drunk), so we ended up getting a taxi back to his place, cooking pizza in his oven and falling asleep on his floor. Good times. I met up with Morgs while in Edinburgh (I've talked about him here before). He was working as a driving for British Telecom, trying to save some money and enjoying Edinburgh and the festival at the same time. It was good to see him again and swap stories. When he first came to visit he was very much the seasoned traveller, while I was still a relative newcomer. After my summer trip though we had a lot more travelling stories to compare and advice to swap. He asked about everyone back home and I had to admit to him that I didn't really know much about what is happening with them. I updated him on Jimmy the Hacker (whom I only found out about via Ads) and gave him a brief overview, but couldn't do any more than that. We had a few drinks, caught up, and then he went home (he is living with four Polish guys in a 1 bedroom flat somewhere for £20 a week, or something like that). A few days later I went "home" too. Bruce was flying out to Dubai, the Festival was winding down, and after ten weeks of constantly being on the go, I just wanted to sleep. So I got the train back down to Milton Keynes (it took eight hours to get back!) and slumped asleep at my cousin's place. My cousin, her husband and her kids were all on holiday down in Cornwall, at the beach (what constitutes a beach in this country) so I had the house to myself. I made the most of it and spent almost three full days either in bed, or in front of the TV watching DVDs (my cousin had the most awesome DVD collection). It was bliss.

The Elephant Vanishes

Books - Fun Thursday night I went into London to see a play adaptation of Haruki Murakami's The Elephant Vanishes at the Barbican Theatre. I got the train down to London early, and met up with my friend Bull. We went to high school together, and, having finished Uni at the end of last year, he is travelling the world in search of adventure. At the moment he is working in a "Walkabout" bar in Bromley, but his shifts don't start till six, so he had time to meet up with me and have a few beers. It was good to see Bull again. We swapped travel stories. He had been to Spain last month and told me all about that, while I related (most) of my travel tales. He asked me about how everyone is doing back home, and I told him what little I knew. We are both so cut off over here. After a few too many beers we parted ways with promises to catch up in the next couple of months. He left to go to work, I went to the play. I've written about Murakami before (Midori, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and Popcorn, Lord Jim, Extinction) and over the past year of so have read almost all of his work. I can't describe why I like his stories exactly, but they never fail to touch me, and at heart, I am a person who likes to be moved. The Elephant Vanishes is a collection of short stories by Murakami, and three of them (The Second Bakery Attack, Sleep, and The Elephant Vanishes itself) were adapted into one continuous theatrical performance. The style was very innovative, with movement and action and changing scenes and use of props all flowing together to form a stunning show. The actors were Japanese, and the dialogue was all in Japanese. There were "subtitles" provided on a screen above the stage, but I didn't bother with them most of the time. There was too much going on in front of me. I got a terrific seat, a centre of the stage, a couple of rows back, and from there the action and drama unfolded in a truly magical way. I love being able to go see performances like this. I actually get the opportunity now, living so close to London, and I really should take advantage of it more. Anyway so I was on quite a high afterwards. I want to see it again! I am moving into my new house tomorrow. University starts the week after next. I still have to talk about the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (and I will) and also about my house, and my new housemates and all that jazz, but it will have to wait a little while longer. I don't know when we will get Internet access (or even a phone) set up in our new place. So please be patient.

Beer, Beer And More Beer!

Fun - Travel I am in Munich, where the beer flows like water. Last night, as I was sitting in the Hofbrauhaus, Munich's most famous beer hall, having only just arrived in Munich a couple of hours earlier, I was amazed at how vital beer has been to me throughout this entire trip. I have been travelling since the beginning of June, yet I can count on one hand the number of nights I have failed to have a beer. Beer is a fantastic social lubricant, and when you rock up into a new town, the first thing you do is go down to the hostel bar, or the bar next to the hostel, or the massive beer hall down the road, and drink up with your fellow travellers. I would hate to try and work out exactly how many litres of beer I have drunk this trip, or the amount of money I have spent buying it. It has been well worth it though. I am slowing down. I travelled at a hectic pace for the first month. Moving from city to city every couple of days. Now I just want to relax. I am spending four, five, even six nights in some places (I stayed a massive eight nights in Florence, but there were other reasons for that). It is good to take your time sometimes though. I need the rest.

Interesting Times

Friends - Fun - Personal - Travel Wow. What a week I've had. I am in Florence, and have been for the last six days. I love it here, I love Italy in general, but tomorrow it is time to move on. I am getting an overnight train to Bern, then am going to spend the week in Interlaken (and will catch the Swiss National Day festival/parade/fireworks that take place on August 1st). But back to the week that was. Well it certainly has been eventful. Aside from the beautuful city itself, with the dominating Duomo and the wondeful Ponto Veccio, I've taken day trips to Pisa, wandered around under the Tuscan sun and drank far to much for my own good. In the last couple of days I have also been going to this club ("discoteque" here) called Space Electronic. Again, wow. I've got a whole lot of tales to tell, but some of them I really don't think belong on a public site like this. Lets just say that I am having an amazing time. I will probably not be commenting much in the next week or so. Internet access is expensive in Switzerland and I've got a lot to do. I plan to spend days in Bern, Geneva and Zurich while I am there. After that I am heading back up to Germany and will be spending some time in Munich. Access is cheap there so I'll report back in when I get there. I always want to live in interesting times. I miss my past, but I also can't believe how much I have been missing out on living in that past. To quote a previous entry of mine:

"I have communicated, interacted, drank, lost, kissed, fondled, jumped, watched, hid, hit, missed, wallowed, yelled, run, listened, played, bled, shuffled, kicked, washed, fucked, talked, driven, fallen, tickled, tripped, worried, screamed, nodded, waited, learnt, enjoyed, shrugged, slept, dealt, spewed, ate, laughed, thought, hugged, tasted, read, dreamt, wished and longed with a frequency and ferocity far outstripping anything before..."

Squared

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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.

The OC

Friends - Fun - Japan - Music - Television Over the last couple of days I've watched the entire first season (all 27 episodes) of The O.C. with Bruce. It started out as a form of procrastination. I didn't want to do any study, so watching inane American dramas seemed like a good way to pass the time. By the end though I was completely hooked, we binge-watched the final 9 episodes in one night. I was wallowing in a sea of self-indulgence and I loved it. The show is cheesy, badly acted and has only average writing, but it's got great music, some really funny/interesting characters, and is filled with fit women ^_^ It's also really addicted, and I found myself getting completely drawn into the story (as clichéd as it is). I must admit that I was actually emotionally moved by the ending, it was so sad. I'm normally detached from everything I watch, but this got to me for some reason. Now I have to wait the whole summer until the next season starts. I want to see it now! Just some general comments on the show. Seth is such a cool geek, he gives geeks around the world a good name. Ryan looks like a young Russell Crow. Anna is really cool, she makes a comment calling Marissa's "Princess Mononoke", that's awesome! ^_^ Marissa is beauty personified. Summer is just insanely cute. Sandy is possibly the best father ever. I loath Teresa. The theme song is really catchy; singing it with Bruce at the beginning of each episode has become a ritual. We actually got in trouble for it last night, we were singing it so loud (and so badly out of tune) that one of the hall tutors came and knocked on Bruce's door and told us to be quiet. If you get a chance, watch this show. It's not classic television, but it will keep you entertained. Written while listening to the Ryan Adam's cover of Wonderwall and Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah, on repeat, looping forever.

Pub Quiz

Friends - Fun - Games Last night we went down to the local pub, The Crown, for dinner and a couple of pints. While we were there we got caught up in the Sunday night pub quiz! Now the English pub quiz is a very competitive game, and some of the old blokes in the pub didn't take kindly to us yelling out the answers when we thought we knew them, or with the "comedy" answers we wrote on our answer sheet when we didn't know. We didn't win in the end, but that's ok, we had a great time, and it was a good start to the week. Currently listening to Mr. Blue Sky by ELO.

Memories Sugoi!

Friends - Fun - Travel While digging through some of my CDs looking for University work from last year I came across some photos I scanned in at Wulfen's place just before I left for the UK. There were from our Japan trip and they brought back memories galore. They were all taken the second or third night we were in Japan. Sugoi invited us all out to dinner with him and some of his friends. It was a massive night, and we drunk a stupid amount of beer. I scanned in the receipt we got from the restaurant but I can't find that picture, I don't know if I ever got it off Wulfen (if you are reading this mate, can you email it to me if you have it). We were quite drunk when these pictures were taken; the girls in particular were almost falling asleep (though they had only had about one drink each). Anyway so I decided to put the pictures up here. I realised that hadn't really talked about the Japan trip much at all here, despite telling everyone that kept asking me that it was "on its way". So anyway here is a little task of what we got up to in Japan. The following are pictures of myself with Namoi, Noriko and both Naomi and Noriko. And these are pictures of the gang minus Naomi and the gang minus Noriko. Enjoy ^_^ Written while listening to "Michael" by Franz Ferdinand (sorry Al, I like the song, but I don't think it's particularly fitting for me ^_^) Sorry I seem to be doing a lot of these picture heavy posts lately.

Sunny England

Friends - Fun - University Yesterday England graced me with some of the nicest weather yet. It was sunny, it was warm, and there was a cool breeze blowing, and it was the perfect weather for drunking some beers with your mates. We set ourselves up in the Newark Quad next to the bar, and made ourselves comfortable. We got bins of ice from the bar, a whole lot of beer from Graemes room, and sat down to enjoy the weather. Most of the regular Notts Crew were there: Bruce, Graeme, Viki and Ben, Simon and Nikkie. We drank lots of beer, played some cards, kicked the football around, lay in the sun, and just chilled. At about 6pm, after sitting in the sun for the past five hours, we decided to pick up our big cooler full of ice, water and beer, and walk it through the Atrium where everyone was eating dinner, our to the lake on the otherside to enjoy the last hour or so of sunshine. By this point we were all pretty drunk (in particular Bruce, Ben, Graeme and I were), so we threw Bruce into the lake. Later that night we went to this house party being held by Bruce's boss, Ross. We kicked around there for a little while before heading into town to a club called The Zone. I got home somehow. What a great day.

Strike That. Reverse It.

Friends - Fun - Games - Movies I went to see Kill Bill Vol. 2 yesterday afternoon. Wow. I think I like this volume even more than the first one. The snappy dialogue was there, the references to other moves, the fantastic action sequences, and the wonderful conclusion. It's a great film all round. I particularly liked the Bride's (wait we know her name now!) training session (ah so many references!), as well as the repeated mentions back to Hattori Hanzo, his swords, and the consequence (though never stated directly) of his breaking his blood oath not to make another sword. Like the first volume, this is a film that I am going to have to go seen many more times. I wish it was released as one completed film. In other news, I've started up a little poker tournament with some of the guys in the Hall. We sit up in the common room on B floor, drink beer (we were too lazy to get whiskey or cigars) and have some fun. It's a £5 buy in, 5p minimum bet. I wanted to play Texas Hold-em, but in the end we played standard five card stud. I ended up losing almost all of my £5 last night. Of course it's all part of my strategy to draw everyone in and keep them playing ^_^ (that's what I'd like to think at least). So little to do, so much time to do it in. Written while listening to Yours Truly, 2095 by ELO.

Eat Beast

Fun Well it's the last day of term. Almost everyone is gone, or is going today. Simon and Adam left around midday and Bruce went about five minutes ago. I don't head out until tomorrow morning. The place is pretty empty now and it's a little lonely. I'm in the process of packing now, and I've come to the realisation that I have so much stuff! I've probably got about twice the amount of stuff now than what I came over with. I don't know where it all came from. I've just seemed to pick up things along the way. I'm getting picked up tomorrow morning by my cousin John, and them I'm headed back to Liverpool for a coupled of days before setting off trekking around the country. I haven't actually got anything planned yet, I'll work it out as I go along. I celebrate the end of term Bruce, Ben, Graeme, Niki, Vicki and I went out to a Chinese restaurant called Dynasty. It was all you can eat for £15. You go through starters, second course, soups, main course and then dessert and order whatever you want on the menu, if (or in my case when) you finish it, you order another, or something else, and they just keep bringing it out until you are done. It was fantastic. We were there for about three and a half hours and at a stupid amount of food. I am the Eat Beast! Anyway I'm starting my break from tomorrow which means I will be out of contact for a while. I wont be on Yahoo, MSN or ICQ, I will probably not get onto IRC, and I'll likely only check my email every week or so, if that. GenesisDreams will also go into stasis mode for the next month, so don't expect any comments. I've got an entire month off, so I'll be backpacking around the UK, and maybe across to continental Europe if I get the urge. I'll be travelling alone at times, but I've organised to meet up with someone else and travel with them for a couple of weeks too. I'm really looking forward to it, I'll be able to do a whole lot more than the "weekend trips" have allowed me so far. I'll probably rent a car for a week to check out southern England, then use trains and buses for the midlands, Wales, northern England and Scotland. Wish me luck everyone! ^_^

Vulture Street

Fun - Movies - Music - Travel - University Well I'm back from London again. I arrived home yesterday, but I haven't even unpacked yet. I've had this CSD (ok enough with the acronyms, it's Commercial and Industrial Systems Design) coursework due, and I originally thought it wasn't due until tomorrow. Oh well, it's done now, I just had to sacrifice some much needed sleep. It was basically just a project management assignment, and I did a whole subject on engineering project management last year, so all the PERT/GANNT analysis stuff was pretty easy. Once I submit it then I've only got one more piece of coursework due before the Easter break! Yay! (Oh yeah did I mention that I've got an entire month of holidays coming up! ^_^) Anyway back to the weekend. I caught the bus down to my cousin's place Friday night where we proceeded to get very drunk and play chess using backgammon pieces with letters written on them. We woke up the next morning around midday, so we scrubbed plans to get the train into London early and went out to see a movie instead. Simone wanted to see Mona Lisa Smile, a chick flick if ever I heard of one, while Toby had to go to a meeting (rather convenient on his part ^_^). The movie sucked. It was shockingly bad. A women’s Dead Poet’s Society this is not. Simone hated it as well. Julia Roberts was passable, Kirsten Dunst was cute in a 50’s sort of way, but everything else was horrible. After the dismal movie we met up with Toby and had some Italian at this restaurant called Z’something. The food was nice but the service was bad; we waited forever for everything. By the time we got out of there it was 5pm, so we raced off down the M1, and then onto the M25 (the London orbital) around to the western edge of London to Hammersmith. We all had tickets to see Powderfinger play at the Hammersmith Apollo (there are a whole lot of musical venues at Hammersmith, and the Apollo is but one)! For those who don’t know, Powderfinger are a Brisbane band who are probably the biggest rock band in Australia right now. They are not my favourite group, but I don’t mind their music. The strange thing is that even though they are from Brisbane, I’ve never seen them live before, and I had to come all the way to London to see them! Simone knows the drummer, well she used to know him back in Uni, he was in the year ahead of her at UQ. While she was doing engineering she lived with a bunch of guys who were in a percussion band, and the Powderfinger drummer was in it too. Anyway they rocked. The Apollo must have been a pretty small venue compared to what Powderfinger and used to back home, and I think they really took to it. We were right up the front in a really great spot and the atmosphere was intense. They were really pushing their new album Vulture Street, but also played a lot of their old classics. Overall the gig was great and I’m glad I got the chance to see them. Sunday we slept in again, before driving to Northampton to have lunch at this really great Indian restaurant. Simone and Toby know the owner, and the food was incredibly tasty. After that we went to see a preview of Starsky and Hutch, which was great. Then we did some more stuff, then it was Monday, then I went home. I’m really tired now so I’m going to go to bed. I haven’t slept since Sunday night and I didn’t sleep much then either.

Formal Dinner

Fun We had a formal dinner here at Newark Hall last night. I didn't bring a dinner suit over with me (for obvious reasons) so I borrowed Bruce's dinner jacket (he was working that night) and cleaned up as best I could. The warden gave a little speech, the JCR president gave a little speech, the JRC for next year was announced, and then we started to drink and eat! The food way nice, very nice compared to the standard fare that normally gets served up by the Atrium staff. The main course was lamb, and we had pavlova for dessert! I drank about half a bottle of £3 red wine which Jenny kindly shared with me and managed to score an extra dessert from Roy one of the Atrium managers who for some reason had taken a liking to me (so I always get extra servings of chips whenever I normally get food from him). Funny moment of the night: A guy on the table across from us was taking a whole lot of pictures with his digital camera, he was pretty drunk and misplaced it and then started accusing everyone of stealing his new £400 camera. Security came up at one point to sort it all out, and even interrogated one guy who was being accused of stealing it. After about 20 minutes of this though, the guy reaches into his pocket and goes, "Oh sorry, my mistake, it was here all along." Almost everyone on our side of the hall started laughing at him. Poor guy. Anyway I didn't rock on to the post-formal party afterwards. I needed some rest and recuperation. I've been running around with some things a lot these last couple of weeks, but I'll do my best to keep posting regularly.

It Had To Be You

Fun - Travel I went down to London for the first time ever on the weekend. I went with my cousin Simone and her husband Toby and they showed me how fantastic the city was. Simone had lived in London for many years previously so she knew all of the places to go, and still had the underground map imprinted in her brain (which is good because it's almost as complicated as the Tokyo rail system). I'm not going to describe what I did exactly, it wasn't that sort of day. I left my camera at home, we didn't concentrate on any one place for too long, and instead I just tried to soak up the atmosphere of this great city. Just some passing mentions though; we walked through Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square, Covent Garden, across to St Paul's Cathedral, walked across the Millennium Bridge to Tate Modern, the largest modern art gallery in the world, (it had an exhibition called simply "The Weather" which was breathtaking). Didn't ride on the Eye (but probably will next weekend). Which brings us to the reason we were actually in London; we were going to see a production of When Harry Met Sally at the Royal Haymarket Theatre. It was staring Alyson Hannigan as Sally and Luke Perry's as Harry and boy can Willow fake an orgasm. We went to a Belgian beer bar and drank Belgian beer (not surprisingly) until we felt hungry enough to head over to this Belgian restaurant called Belgo's for dinner. It was packed, and we would have needed to wait for an hour in line, so instead we went to Soho. I like Soho. We had some great food, drank some more and came home. I feel I should write some more here, about the play, the performances, how cute Alyson looked (I've always had a bit of a crush on her), but I'm not going to. It was a fantastic day, I had a great time, and I'll leave it at that.

Harry: "A man can never be friends with a woman he finds attractive, he always wants to have sex with her."
Sally: "That's not true! I have a number of men friends and there is no sex involved."
Harry: "No, you don't"
Sally: "Yes, I do."
Harry: "No, you don't"
Sally: "You're saying I'm having sex with these men without my knowledge?"
Harry: "No, I'm saying they all want to have sex with you."
Sally: "Well, what if they don't want to have sex with you?"
Harry: "It doesn't matter because the sex part is already out there, so the friendship is ultimately doomed, and that is the end of the story."
Sally: "So a man can be friends with a woman he finds unattractive?"
Harry: "No, you pretty much want to nail them, too"

I haven't been updating much recently. Sorry about that guys. I've been otherwise occupied over the last couple of weeks. I don’t know when things will change, but I will do my best to post more often. I have a month’s holiday coming up in two weeks. I’ll be on the road for most of that time but I’ll do my best to keep updating.

Flower of Scotland

Friends - Fun - Travel I made the trip up to Edinburgh on the weekend. That makes it five times in a row that I haven't spent a full weekend at 'home'. My new friend and next-door neighbour Bruce is from Edinburgh and he invited me to go up with him to watch the England vs. Scotland match of the Six Nations Rugby Championship which was to be played at Murrayfield stadium. The name Bruce is a lot like Fosters' Larger, both are supposed to be stereotypically Australian and yet, just as nobody in Australia actually drunks Fosters', nobody I knew (until now) was actually called Bruce. Despite being Scottish, Bruce is a great guy (Scotland lost the game, so I'm still in the 'pay Bruce out about Scotland' mindset). Bruce, Graeme, Ben and I got a train up to Edinburgh Friday afternoon. Graeme and Ben are two scousers who also live in Newark Hall (I'll get around to talking about all my new friends properly sometime soon).It was an easy five hour trip, during which we managed to watch almost a whole season of Friends on Bruce's notebook. The trip was also made easier when Graeme convinced some friends of his who were getting off at Newcastle to get the friend of theirs who was picking them up to bring a carton of beer with him. So when we rolled into Newcastle a quick exchange was made and as we pulled off we were a rolling in the beer. Ten minutes later we finally got a bottle opener and the drinking began. Suddenly we were in Edinburgh, and it was freezing, and I had to pay to use the toilet at the train station. 20p! Bruce said that when I go to London I'd see that it was pretty standard. We were staying at Bruce's house for the weekend, which was about a fifteen minute walk from the station. This place was huge, even for Australian standards. It had four floors and seven bathrooms! It was also completely empty. Bruce's parents were in Dubai (that's where his dad is currently working) and his brothers both live elsewhere. I don't think anyone realised before how minted (British slang there) Bruce's family is. Anyway the fridges were stocked, lots of beer and Irn-Bru (the Scottish soft drink that apparently outsells both coke and pepsi) and we all had beds to sleep in. You couldn't have asked for a better base camp. Bruce and Graeme went out for some deep friend food and returned to fish, chips and haggis. I didn't have any haggis, the normal stuff puts me off, deep fried... no thanks. We stayed up drinking and watching TV late into the night before deciding to get some sleep. The game didn't start until 5:30 the next night so we didn't have to be up particularly early. Cut to 1pm the next day. Bacon cooking, eggs cooking, a good fry-up breakfast. After we ate our fill we went down to this pub called The Standing Order, where we promptly ordered some pints of beer. This pub was packed, people lined four deep back from the bar, and it took about 20 minutes to get served, so when we did we bought three drinks each. On of Bruce's friends showed up, and as we were talking we suddenly heard bagpipes playing. Out of nowhere this troop of Scottish Bagpipers marched into the bar and started playing all the tradition bagpipe songs. Soon everyone was singing along. It was fantastic! I really wish I had brought my camera along because it was a sight to behold. I was ecstatic; bagpipes, kilts, Scottish accents and good beer, it doesn't really get much better. We had a few more pints (well more than a few) as well as some food, and suddenly it was 4pm. The game started in an hour and half and we were well on our way to being very very pissed. We decided that was enough for the pub. Edinburgh before an England vs Scotland rugby game is similar to Kyoto before a Gion festival. In Japan it's rare in normal circumstances to see people wearing Kimonos, however on the eve of the big Gion parade you see them everywhere. Likewise in Scotland it's rare in normal circumstances to see men wearing kilts, however on the eve of a big international rugby game you see them everywhere. The rugy brings out the patriotic Scotsman, in particular a battle against the English brings out the patriotic Scotsman, and on Saturday night, in the freezing cold, before a big game, the tartan abounds. Bruce didn't wear his, which is a good move, because we would have surely lifted it up for the world to see if he had. Murrayfield stadium, with the Scottish flag, the bagpipers, the atmosphere, the spectacle. Scotland lost, 35 to 13. At Bruce's place again, drinking the rest of the beer in his fridge. Ran out of that, so we moved onto the Scotch (this is Scotland after all). Eventually we worked up the energy to go out, so we walked up to the castle (a long and cold walk) and then down to this pub called The Three Sisters. We had way to much to drink here, but we did meet up with Bruce's brother, who is a policeman, and who had his jacket stolen at the pub. Lots of jokes were made. The pub closed up shop at 1am, so we moved onto this club called Faith that was just down the road. This place cost a whopping £7 to get in (that's almost $20!!!) but by that point we were all extremely inebriated, so we didn't really mind. The club was pretty cool, great music, real dance music, not like the Cheese they play in Nottingham, and the drinks were expensive. More drinking ensued. The club closed at 3am and so we began the long walk home. Arrived home. Went to Sleep. Good night. Next morning I get up while everyone else is still asleep and I go and have a look around the city. I go to all the famous places, the important places, take lots of pictures, get caught up in the history of it all. I'm tired now, so I'm not going to go into all the details but let’s just say it's a beautiful city, I loved being there, blah blah blah. Ok cool, so we did more stuff and later we went home. Sorry about being abrupt. Normally I leave these sorts of things if I haven't got time to finish them and then resume writing later on. But right now, I'm so close to the end, and I'm so late already for this thing I'm supposed to be at. So there it is. I've been humming the Scottish national anthem recently; I actually know the words now as well! Flower of Scotland O Flower of Scotland, When will we see your like again That fought and died for Your wee bit hill and glen. And stood against him, Proud Edward's army, And sent him homeward Tae think again. The hills are bare now, And autumn leaves lie thick and still O'er land that is lost now, Which those so dearly held That stood against him, Proud Edward's army And sent him homeward Tae think again. Those days are past now And in the past they must remain But we can still rise now And be the nation again! That stood against him Proud Edward's army And sent him homeward Tae think again. O Flower of Scotland, When will we see your like again That fought and died for Your wee bit hill and glen. And stood against him, Proud Edward's army, And sent him homeward Tae think again.

Jumping Jacks

Fun We went to Jumping Jack's last night, which is this club that contains a jumping castle. It was crazy fun! I had a few drinks, listened to some really cool music (the guy played the Ghostbusters’s theme!) and danced a lot of the night away. Coming home we got split up. Aussie Nick, these two Welsh girls and I got in one taxi, but Bruce, Ben, Graeme and the others had problems with theirs. We got home safely, but the other guys weren't anywhere to be seen. Anyway I got some sleep, until about 4am when Bruce woke me up banging on my door. Ben had gotten jumped by some guys and had a massive black eye. I'm not going to go into the whole story, but anyway I went down to the ER of the Queen's Medical Centre with him and we waited around for ages and in the end he was diagnosed with a 'head injury', but other than that he was fine. He can't see out of his left eye, but he is fine. Don't panic anyone who is reading this, and certainly don't tell my mum! ^_^ Anyway Ben, Bruce, Graeme and I are heading up to Edinburgh tomorrow. I'll relate the adventures of that trip when I get back.

The Salutation Inn

Friends - Fun I went out to the The Salutation Inn tonight to have a few pints with wertperch and Ferenczy, two noders from Everything2. It was my first time meeting other noders in the flesh, and the after effects have caused me revert back to my old noding habits of copious linking (see first sentence). I had a good time overall; the Inn was cosy, the company was great and the beer was well... interesting. Thanks for inviting me out wertperch and introducing me to this fine city of yours (which I was informed is the murder capital of the UK!). I don't mind though, becuase at night it's "like wading through a sea of erect nipples". Cheers guys.

Shoes

Fun Ok for some reason I hung out with the First Rugby Team of Newark Hall tonight. And I talked to a girl, which meant I had to drink a pint out of my shoe. So now my mouth tastes bad. We went out to ISIS tonight, and that was cool, but now I really need to get some sleep. My shoe is still wet.

The Works

Fun Went out to The Works last night, after having pre-drinks in the hall bar (which included the Frisbee Challenge). You can find a bunch of pictures here, though those are from last week's "School Daze" night, they haven't put up last night's ones yet.