Ok to set the tone for Leeds weekend, picture a shot looking down at Leeds and slowly moving down, and the title “Leeds Weekend” fading into the screen, and soon after imagine “Day 1″ sort of dissolving out below Leeds Weekend with a slightly sinister sound accompanying it. Get the picture right? Because this is the exact opposite of it haha.
Anyway, as planned for some time ago, I was heading out to Leeds this weekend to really relax and chill out with people up north. Was organising this with Alice, Inn and Gem. Things only started kicking in weeks before the event, I had booked my train tickets with the fact that I could just do a little meetup with anyone up north that time and just stay at my brother’s house as a backup, but eventually it evolved into a meetup that I was going to enjoy.
How to start… hmm, the first part of the day was going to be spent with Alice, Gem and Inn were busy at work at the time so there was going to be a pre meetup session with me and Alice were we just do whatever, was like our little Jamaican date haha. I managed to draft some ideas of what to do for the day but it only started to kick in nearer the event. Anyway… thats just bantering, I should really start talking about the day.
Anyway, the night before I had a quick skype talk with Inn in regards for things to bring and what the plans were, I’ve managed to plan most of the Friday with Gem a few days ago so it was a case of telling Inn about the plan and all, it was just a last minute check of things before the event, was quite a successful one because I brought everything I needed and stuff people wanted from me, including lucky charms and inn’s extension cable. One of the major decisions (major for me anyway) was whether or not to bring a laptop. My conclusion was to leave that at home since it was pretty lame going online during a meet up. The whole idea of meetups is for people to do stuff face to face, not all go online on the board and talk to each other haha.
So yeah, no laptop, lucky charms, extension cable, a few other bits and bobs and I was pretty prepared for the day… right, lets get this entry well and truely kicked off…
6.30am Preparing stuff
knowing me, i’m either extremely/fashionably late or disturbingly organised/ early. In this case I was actually nice and early for the event, I managed to print out all the places I wanted to go, the maps to it and all that. I also printed out my tickets for train for collection. The ideas were still pretty raw but that was the idea, I took many ideas of just left them out of the open so we werent deadlocked in what to do for the day. Was a pretty easy preparation task, did some ironing for my clothes as well shoving bits and bobs into my bag. My train left at 9:45am and it takes less than an hour to get there. Yet strangely I left the house at 7.30am… Anyway, got my laptop bag filled with lucky charms, clothes, toiletries, typical stuff like DS lite, iRiver and of course… my DSLR camera (would be silly if I forgot about that). I brought my camera bag for light travelling and all.
7.30am The Journey to Kings Cross
So things were really kicking in! I was leaving home for the weekend but it felt like a normal day to me. I decided to take a detour and pay Victoria Station a visit. I wanted to get Inn some cookies for helping me out during my uni days as well as buying Alice a Krispy Kreme doughnut because she’s never tried one before. I also pondered into the local Sainsburys and was tempted to get myself a jar of olives, soon I decided against it purely because I had forgot to bring cocktail sticks, I did however consider the thought of using LONG skewer sticks that Sainsburys had on shelf for BBQ purposes, but that was soon overruled purely by how silly that would look haha. The cookies and doughnuts were nice and fresh, made today and all so it was all good. After the light shopping I headed off to Kings Cross Station via the Victoria Line.
9.30am Lounging in Kings Cross Station
When you leave early, you arrive at the station early. Similar to kev putting tracks into a mix CD compilation and getting errors during disc burnage (the whole Garbage in garbage out theory haha). So the next thing after arriving at the station was finding something to do for the next couple of minutes, I just lounged around in shops and looked for things to buy on the journey, I came across some colouring pencils and a normal HB Shwan Shtabalo pencil (I like pronouncing it like that :)) so I can jot stuff down on my notebook. After that it was a matter of lounging about some more and taking photos of things at the station.
They were fun photos, but nothing interesting to be honest hehe.
9.45am B Quiet I’m doodling
The train journey was pretty cool, I took the B quiet coach per usual since I like things quiet (as well as getting the cooler seats) and the e3c’s help the journey a lot. So here I was on a train to Leeds, with a bottle of strawberries and bananas smoothie, a krispy kreme reserved for alice, some cookies reserved for inn, a notepad, my phone, and some colouring pencils to doodle around. I was pretty sorted to be honest. I was listening to my mix CD whilst doodling around. One of the things I drew was a photo of the flickr team at the muse board, it was a quick sketch to amuse myself with, funniest thing was when I drew uka and inn, uka because I was able to draw flies all over him and inn because I still had NO idea how to draw her face as a cartoon, I kept it like her wii (and later on we discover that inn actually does not like this!… actually skip that, this is probably the only time I’ll mention it so yeah, she didnt like it haha). So that was fun
The rest of the journey was spent listening to the mix cd and catching up some sleep (sleeping at 3am and waking up at 6.30am doesnt say a good nights sleep to me). The train was pretty empty to begin with, only one other person was sitting in the B quiet coach. I randomly wake up and its about 11:40am, perfect! Its funny when you wake up and there’s a load of random people sitting around you haha.
Afternoon: Alice and the sexy chameleon
Ok so the subtitle is a bit misleading, thought it made the story more interesting haha. Anyway, after a lovely GNER train journey, I finally arrive at my distination, Leeds. Everything looked the same (it’s been a year since I last visited the place) which was cool. I told Alice to meet me outside WHSmiths, typical Leeds meeting spot one might say, after going through to the ticket barrier I instantly spot Alice standing there. I approached her and gave her a lovely greeting, one of the first things I noticed about Alice was the fact that her hair was straight haha, I think I immediately asked her about it saying I thought it was going to be curly, she explained that it was a bit too frizzy today so she decided to straighten it so fair enough hehe. Alice was less mousy than I had imagined, but more glacial to compensate, she wasn’t shy as I had expected neither did she have a Jamaican accent :/. We exchanged a few journey anecdotes and instantly went off to our first destination, Tropical World! She was really excited when I mentioned Tropical World and how she had a lot of fun last time she visited so that was a clear indication that Tropical World was the place to be, the other option was a picnic at Hyde Park, but then again that wouldn’t really make sense since clearly Tropical World is filled with subjects we can take photos of.
So yeah, off to Tropical World, we went inside a Travel Information booth and took a leaflet about Tropical World, we didnt know where the number 2 and 12 buses were so I kindly asked where the bus was. We had to do a quick trek to the Corn Exchange and wait for a bus there (and so we did). Dunno why but I kept mentioning Mordor from Lord of the Rings, because it sounded similar to the town we were heading.
So yeah, we get into the bus and head down to the Park for some Tropical time, along the way I demonstrate my e3c earphones to Alice, she was pretty amazed by the quality of it all. She couldn’t hear me throw insults at her whilst she was listening to some Howling Bells action haha (just kidding, I didn’t swear at her). We had no idea where the park was, Alice kept guessing when we should leave but I just asked the driver guy “are we there yet?” at almost every stop near the end, was pretty funny haha.
Anyway, back to the adventure, we have no arrived at Tropical World, ready to rock and take photos etc. The park was pretty small but nonetheless had a good vibe. We instantly got into photography mode, it was weird taking photos with another photographer (I’ve been around Kazzie when she had her DSLR but it wasn’t the same purely because she kinda stopped using Flickr and all) you get to see what other perspective and settings other photographers would use to take the same subject, it was fun since Alice was amazing at photography and I got to check out how she does her photos (because they always in the end come out amazing in her flickr account). Was a lovely experience sharing event, I was very inspired with Alice’s presence, it sort of gave me the push to really think about my photos and all, my muse for the day haha.
Me being a ninja
Back to the photos, here’s some shots me and Alice took on Tropical World. One of the things we did was play a game where we had to take photos of each other without them looking, so unsuspecting shots of each other, the most wins. To do this you would require alot of cunning and ninja skills. So yeah, we were doing this as well as taking photos.
Some garden photos
Peter the monkey
More garden stuff and Carlos
Turtles, fishes and waterfalls
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the sexy chameleon and other bits and bobs
Nocturnal zone, some birds and the infamous camera battle
At one point we had a camera fight around the corridors where we start shooting each other as if our cameras were genuine pistols. My last shot at the corridor involved me poking my camera out (and not me) and shooting at random! I actually got Alice though haha.
Most of the time it was baking! Got a bit sweaty at points, I couldn’t really take my blazer off because I had nowhere to put it and all (damn Lucky Charms hogging up space in my bag) and carrying it was a bit lame haha. Some places were pretty fun, the nocturnal zone was fun, shame I couldnt take photos of the place (being dark and all). I could have used a long shutter speed but the problem was more about focusing on the stuff. Ah well.
After a long session of photo taking in Tropical World we went by the park area to chill out for a bit, we did some cute sock photos and made use of the extension cable WITHOUT a dog running by and stealing my camera haha. I did the infamous depth of field hand test on Alice too, she was very photogenic 
3pm The disney elephant and kev being all kinds of naked
After a lovely afternoon at Tropical World and a small lie in the grass at the park we decided it was lunch time as well as a quick shop for Gem’s present (I enjoy my lunch at stupid times). During the day kev texted me in regards to meeting up before he went to Birmingham to meet his sister, we said we could meet him up for sushi which was cool because later on we find out that he was sort of caught up by his dad asking him to sort his mobile phone out haha.
Before our sushi lunch we went to the local Disney store to quickly buy Gem a present for letting us stay at her place, we initially thought of getting her an Eeyore plush doll, but Alice said we should pick her a pink/purple elephant. It looks pretty cool so we ended up buying the elephant, during the purchasing process Inn phones me up and asks me how my day was, I talk about what we’ve already done and mention about the doll we just bought, I also told her that we were meeting kev in a bit and that he was getting changed right now ready to go. I told her that kev was “all kinds of naked” (reference to friends) and in the background I hear the cashier and Alice commenting on what I said, turns out she was surprised how I was using that kind of language at a Disney store, Alice immediately disowned me by telling the cashier how she doesnt know me :(. It is the me alice! How could you not know me :(, this is the part of the entry where a part of me dies inside. (haha) So with the present done and dusted we decided to go and find the sushi place and meet up with kev
3pm odd?: The Falling Ginger Man does Unagi
We decided to find the sushi place I went to last time (Japanic) so I took all my maps out and started to head to the destination. We tried taking photos of some store that was named “Alice” but gave up because it involved us moving from one side of the bus to another (yes we’re that lazy). After arriving at the address, we soon discover that Japanic is well and truely… gone 
It was now replaced by a Tapas restaurant, we were not amused.
Anyway we sort of met up with him at Costa’s, was quite funny when I was on the phone to him, he wasn’t accepting my Jamaican accent haha, anyway, I asked to meet up at Morrisons but strangely he was against meeting there and said to meet upat Costas Cafe. We eventually meet up with kev, he arrives in his typical stropish posture haha. We told him about the situation and so we head to Little Tokyo to check out the food and all.
During the journey we walk past a Games Workshop, kev talks about how he used to play them when he was a kid, I told him that it made him a little bit more cooler whilst stroking my beard of sarcasm. We went into Little Tokyo, one of my questions to kev was “So kev, this little Tokyo, how little are they?”… anyway, the restaurant was pretty snazzy! Much more fancy than I imagined it to be. The interiors were based on typical traditional japanese restaurants, with the small tables and little cushions for people to kneel onto, the great things was that kev was caught into the illustion that the table wasn’t raised so much and literally fell into the massive hole that was the seating area, it was pretty funny how he’d always managed to make some clumsy mistake that totally negates his cool persona online (if he has one haha). But yeah, with great fancyness of the restaurant comes great prices haha. A yakisoba (averaging out to £2.50 at Yo Sushi) costs £6.99) whilst sushi was in their £4 price range for a very minimal amount of fish action. We were pretty overwhelmed with the prices and decided to give it a pass. Luckily we were able to leave the premises with some dignity restored, meh who am I kidding, nah we walked the walk of shame, next time we’re entering we’ll be crawling through the dog flap with the waiters going “look who came crawling back”.
So yeah, 2 sushi restaurants down, 1 more to go. Kev took us to the final sushi place, Sisushi. Twas a nice place I must say, everything looked authentic except the fact that they served smoothies as well as sushi. The chefs weren’t Japanese either which sort of makes sense since they couldn’t sing Backstreet Boys tunes. This was the first time Alice had tried sushi so I thought I’d make it nice and authentic and eat in (rather than have a take out, plus kev is of a pasty variety so any long term exposure to the sun (say 5 minutes?) would give him sunburn or just melt him).
Didn’t take photos of interior of sisushi strangely, the waitress was really nice to us, Kev wanted to try out Unagi as well as the Tofu nigiri, I wanted some Yakitori action and Alice just wanted to witness the powers that is wasabi. We took some time to pick our food but eventually we ordered, kev got his nigiri, as well tuna maki rolls and apple juice, I had green tea, chicken yakitori and 6 maki rolls whilst alice kept it simple with 2 tuna nigiris and 6 cucumber rolls. Best bit was when Alice asked for a glass of tap water to drink, she asked it all nice and politely bless her hehe.
Kev kept calling the waitress love, was funny, sometimes I think kev has the immunity of knowing that girls will turn him down so he’ll just do it anyway haha. Twas pretty funny though, I’ve heard stories of him swearing at girls too, sounds well charming :p. Oh as well as calling the waitress “love”, he also pointed at peoples sushi and stared at the chefs making his food. Slightly causing a scene and all haha.
Food finally arrives, kev has very little time to finish the sushi off so he tries to quickly munch all the sushi he has, Alice finally tries her first sushi and found it nice, the wasabi was overwhelming per usual. I think she witnessed the explosion in her nose just like everyone else. I kept it nonchalant and ate it mine slowly. Near the end kev thought it was a funny idea to spice up my last maki roll with all the wasabi he could find (including Alice’s) as well as pouring chilli oil all over my poor little maki roll and forcing me to eat it, I was game to the challenge and ate the damn thing haha (it was bloody hot). I still kept it cool but yeah, there was a time where I teared up a bit, was fun.
After the meal, kev quickly gave me £12 and left to catch his train, me and Alice chilled out for a wee bit longer and paid the bill. The waiter asked me how the sushi places in London compared with Sisushi, I explained to him about the whole sushi chef singing thing and was hoping for them to actually sing some for us, he said he’ll try and arrange it next time we arrive and all hehe. He was nice and friendly, dunno if it was because it’s up north or because the restaurant was nice.
4.00pm DDR time
After sushi, me and Alice quickly went to the Light to play some DDR, me playing anyway, I played 3 songs, Speed Over Beethoven, Butterfly and Paranoia, Butterfly I was able to do some flash moves whilst Speed over Beethoven was nice and pacey, I sort of bummed out on Paranoia because I couldn’t hear the tune and I was bored haha (excuses eh?) but yeah, the music was really quiet! I really should of not played DDR since I kept losing near the end (probably need some practice and stamina boost now).
4.20pm Crazy upbeat reagae and whistle duets served with frappe de la frappe
We then hanged out in the LARGE caffe nero in Leeds (says Alice) and ordered two Strawberry Frappes, I was going to demonstrate my charms to (to, not on haha) Alice by getting more stamps on my Nero card but it turns out I only had one stamp left so I just used that and got one stamp (otherwise I would have had two haha). We enjoyed a lovely chat and talks about all sorts until some random busker walked passed and whispered to my ear, I didnt catch what he said so he repeated it to me, he whispered into my ear “hello”. I noticed he had an acoustic guitar so I asked him whether I could play his guitar, he said yes if I’d let him sit down with me. I agreed and so he sat next to us and began talking to us and unwounding his guitar strap from his guitar… or so we thought he was! He was talking about all sorts of crap, occasionally swearing about “the man” and how he plays for nobody, I managed to slip in a few “whats your logical intervention” questions but he still managed to waffle on and not answer my question (nobody wants to). It got to a point where Gem arrived and he was still talking. Was pretty surreal and all.Gem sort of just stood there and watch me listen to this guy go on and on about society whilst I just noticed his constant fiddling with the guitar strap and the guitar, it was strangely bounded up, I asked him why he had it bound and gagged like that and he waffled on about how his guitar needed to be like that, it was a ridiculous reply and made no sense as to why you put so much tension on your guitar strings.
He got more and more obscure as he started drinking milk from other peoples tables and doing all sorts of weird shit. Gem managed to take a seat and it got to a point where he FINALLY got to play some tunes on his guitar. They werent good I must say, I thought he was a shredder or some talented reggae rhythm guitarist but turns out he was a Pheobe busker. I started to take my whistle out and then we started to have a proper jam, little did he know I started to get all Muse on him, I played Supermassive Black hole without him knowing and Alice grinned knowingly as he witnessed what was suppose to be a “conceptual” and “original” piece of music. It was rubbish haha, there’s a reason why he’s drinking milk from Caffe Nero, its because his guitar skills is subpar haha. He was interesting, but to make it like bounding a guitar strap was a good thing is a no no, I would have liked him more if he didnt do that to his guitar. It’s a bit like choking your mum and saying it makes her a better person.
So yeah, we decided that we’ve had enough of him and so we went to the light again for some DDR action. We packed and I said my goodbyes to the guy, I shook his hand and was off to find gold (or ddr machines). I tried Dancing Stage Euromix 2 instead of 3 because it was louder than the other one. This time I got alice to dance with me, I chose pretty easy songs so it was good. I cant remember what songs we played but the last song I chose End of Century and Alice didnt like it too much hehe, twas bit of an intense song. She seemed to enjoy the ddr’ing, she was better than most people I’ve seen who has started off so it was all good. I didnt check on whether she kept her feet in the middle or was moving them all over the place, that was the first rookie mistake in DDR.
Afterwards I had a quick go by myself, I chose really cheesy songs to play, the first two were Steps tracks (Stomp i think, and 5,6,7,8) I wasn’t really playing, just sort of dancing about and making the stuff flashy with the occasional knee bending tricks, the last song I thought I’d be a bit silly and choose my trademark “Can’t stop falling in love, speed mix” track. This song was a bit of a hit and miss, it’s flashy but at an expense that my legs get proper mashed up and that I’d sometime lose on the game Depends on my stamina rate of the day. Turns out I couldn’t handle it today so I just gave up right near the end haha. Was quite a shame since I was getting quite a lovely crowd going (not much skilled DDR players in Leeds you see). There was a lot of cheering and commenting going on throughout which was funny haha.
I managed to get some water (thanks to Alice) and we went back to Caffe Nero since I needed to use the toilet for a quick wash up haha. After that we headed to Leeds train station to meet up with Inn.
7.00pm The Phantom of the Opera car
Upon arriving at Leeds Train Station we managed to get some seats at the Starbucks inside the station. It was a pretty tiring day, me and Alice just had a whole adventure at Tropical whilst Gem has been working all day (this is where someone randomly sings “working niine to fiiive”) a nice sit down was appropriate rather than lounging about for seats. Alice mentions a random cut she has on her finger so I told her to wash the wound so I can get some plasters and all.
Eventually the phone rings and inn has finally arrived at Leeds station, we head off to meet her at the drop off point and find her sitting on top of her car (like one of those rock chicks haha). Twas quite funny seeing her today, we finally had everyone present for todays “relaxed” meetup. We instantly shuffle into Inn’s car, I managed to get stuffed at the front seat whilst Alice and Gem sat at the back and then zooom we were off.
Inn asked for directions and it was a case for Gem and me to help out, Gem eventually knew where we were going so it wasn’t long till we found Leeds University to Park the car, Inn had an FM transmitter for her Creative DAP player which was transmitting her songs into the radio in her car. I changed the port to my mp3 player and started to play some quality tracks, one of which was Phantom of the Opera. Was quite a surreal experience listening to Phantom of the Opera at full blast (well the most Inn’s car can get), I also played a few random tracks afterwards before we reached our destination.
7.20pm “No you cant have my chips!” *bangs table*
After finding a place to park we had a nice trek from Leeds university to the Light where a Nando’s was located. There were some seats available at Nando’s so we didn’t need to wait around to be served etc (last time I went to the Nando’s in Leeds we had to wait painfully for our seats), the waitress picked a lovely corner for us to sit in, it was nice and cushioned so you couldn’t really complain.
We got straight down to business and picked our food on the menu, there was some sticky stuff on the menu which was a bit lame, I was pretty much set on what to eat for the day so I helped Alice pick her food hehe. I decided against the Full Platter Meal purely because it was a waste of side dishes so I ordered the Meal Platter which came with two glasses of bottomless drinks (not the most productive way of buying drinks though, could have all shared a glass haha). I was tempted to get everyone Sangria but the girls weren’t too keen on it so that was overruled, one of the key things people wanted was some big fat juicey Nando’s olives.
So we finally ordered our food, Inn bought a chicken burger (lemon and herb) with chips, Gem bought a chicken in pita bread with chips, I bought myself a meal platter whilst Alice bought some wings and chips (as well as having my free 1/4 extra hot chicken). I was pretty much forced into ordering my 1/4 chicken extra hot rather then saving it for another time. I swear most nando’s let you do that, they probably don’t know that I’m in a Nando’s tour and all haha.
Once the food was done we started going photography crazy, we took photos of each other as well as random upside down ketchup bottles. I did most of my photos via putting the camera on the table and taking shots, the lights were really yellow so either some white balancing was needed or we were having some nice yellowy photos, I stuck with the latter since that was the lighting of Nando’s so that’s how it should come out.
I told Gem and Inn about what we’ve been up to today (me and Alice that is) as well as mentioning the crazy busker man we happened to meat. The conversations were quite random one might say, Inn mentioned about server backups. It was kinda funny because I knew exactly what she was saying whilst everything was whizzing right past Gem and Alice (it was pretty boring, I was talking about Cron tabs and server side back uping). I tried to keep the conversation as fast as possible so we could involve everyone in the conversation hehe.
Slowly our food starts appearing on the table and we get proper tucked in. Our first instinctive thing to do was to take photos of what we (and the others were eating) Alice managed to take a nice shot of my lovely meal platter since it looked pretty beefy in quantity. I sorted of took photos of the Olives as well as the mountain of chips I was supplied. Inn took photos of us taking photos as well as some pretty natural shots of us sitting there talking etc.
After a nice burst of photo shooting we got tucked in. The food was yummy, the jumbo olives in particular hehe. For me, food was consumed in biblical proportions (not really, I just like using that word) as I began to slowly take on an entire chicken, eventually I had to get another plate since my platter was pretty crowded with chips and chicken. I managed to quickly smuggle the Nando’s cockstick into Gem’s bag. I initially tried taking the cock out of the stick (so it was just a cock and a stick), but that proved tedious so I just shoved the entire thing into the bag. Was funny how we weren’t really disturbed with the typical “Is everything ok?” Question whilst they took our cockstick away. I’m still tempted to go “Yup everything is fine, as long as I have my cockstick” whilst protectively craddling the stick in my arms, I wonder if the staff would get confrontational with me or just use their initiative and just leave me and the cockstick alone haha. But nonetheless, the lack of cockstick meant we were vulnerable from choking and all sorts of dinner table faux pas and accidents.
I havent had a platter in ages so needless to say, attacking the whole chicken was actually a challenge, it got to a point where I had to unbuckle my belt and even undo a button on my jeans to make way for some tummy room. Inn mentioned about how my tummy has grown from the food, but I swiftly ignored her comment purely on the fact that I can easily work off the food during the weekend with random jumping about and running around the place.
Food was nearly done, I had managed to get as much meat from the chicken as possible (twas a tedious job, at one point it looked like I was just getting meat off the chicken rather than actually eating it). I was pretty much left with chips to slowly eat. A waitress appears to our table and asks if she could take our dishes. I immediately went
“No! You cant have the chips!” and banged on the table REALLY hard with my first. I managed to terrify both the waitress and myself haha. I immediately started apologising for being over protective of my chips (twas all for show you see haha) and eventually she just left and took a few plates that wasn’t close by to me. I think I really scared her away, she never served us again and was probably in the kitchen crying traumatically over my aggressive table banging haha. Oops. It did look fun though haha.
Our food was eventually cleared out by another member of staff, Me and Inn took out our DS Lites and began going DS Lite battle crazy. Unfortunately there wasn’t much games we could play and all. We sort of let Gem and Alice have a go at Brain Academy which was fun, Alice got about 800g for her brain whilst Gem has 1100g (she’s played the game before you see). I also had a quick go and scored only 1000g. Gem was surprised that the coins in the game were british rather than american. Strangely my rom I used had american coins (think I opted to upload the US version on my M3 Simply purely because it was only 16mb instead of 32mb on the UK version, which was weird).
After that we got into some hardcore Brain Training. Gem and Alice battled it out on the 30 calculations battle and I think Alice won the battle hehe, they both have really strange ways of writing their number 5’s. Alice starts from the bottom and goes all the way up, it kinda makes sense in terms of writing it by hand since you usually end every character at the bottom so starting from the bottom would save time moving the pen from the top to the bottom. Maybe I’m just overthinking this and Alice and Gem simply have a weird and perhaps northern way of writing their number 5’s haha.
After everyone battling it out on Brain Training the winner was to take on me, so it was a duel between me and Alice at the 30 calculations game. I’m usually really good at this, the only time I actually lost was with Alice’s brother Alan, so hopefully I can whoop Alice at this haha. I’ve been told that their family are gods at Maths and Engineering so their brains are most likely packed with Maths related goodness haha.
The battle was pretty intense since I lost at the first round, but the other two games I managed to win yay! haha. Alice and Gem are pretty tough contenders I might say. Inn opted not to play the game purely because she wasn’t familiar with it and wasn’t keen on calculations hehe (the next day we see me beating her at it and actually go on her screen to tell her to answers haha).
Oooh who could forget cooking mama! As well as Brain training and Brain academy, me and Inn demonstrated to Gem and Alice the game that is “Cooking Mama”. Twas a simple cooking game on the DS that managed to convert a number of cooking skills and techniques into little mini games for the player to perform. The controls were slightly intuitive but weird to play at first, Alice tried cooking rice but completely failed at that hehe (well got around 60 points). She did a good job at pot noodle though :p and some other dishes. Twas a really addictive game and all.
Hmm, I think that was it in Nando’s we eventually started to head off back to Gem’s place.
10pm odd: Those useless trees
After vacating the area we headed straight back to Leeds Uni so we can head off to Gem’s place via inn’s car. Inn thought it would be awesome so drive around the trees that was surrounding the entire carpark, sort of picture them located like a grid of dots. But the dots are trees and the grids the carpark, and inn’s sort of the random car driving around the dots. After a few minutes of random driving we finally head off back to Gem’s place where we shall crash (and burn in biblical proportions.. see i like using the word).
10.30pm: Cakes, olives and a BBQ?!?!
After a lovely drive back to Gem’s house, we decide to head to the local Sainsburys for some stuff to bake cakes. Inn and alice were in that kind of mood. As well as buying cakes we also ventured into some quality (well 89p worth of quality) jar of pitted green olives stuffed with red peppers. Inn suddenly noticed the disposable bbqs stacked up near the check out counter and immediately asked “can we have a bbq?”. The question sent a wave of thought of everyone. Cant we actually eat bbq in the middle of the night. Is it physically possible for me to eat a whole chicken AND cram some extra burgers and sausages into my tummy. The answer was simple. No haha, everyone decided against the idea purely because noone could eat anymore (made perfect sense) however we were left with the thought of a potential BBQ later on the weekend. I tried finding Rice Cakes to snack on but none were available :(. We got our stuff and went back to Gems place for cake backing and Olive eating.
11pm: Gem the super chef and Bob the failed surgeon
After unpacking the stuff Gem immediately got down to it! She made the cake mix in a matter of seconds. It was pretty disturbing, Inn asked if we could actually have some part in the baking procedure just so it was a joint effort (even though Gem could have done it flawlessly one her own) but yeah, its the little things that make something special. I was in charge of mixing the damn thing into something
I eventually mixed it into a moose which wasnt exactly the desired outcome of the cakemix. Gem sort of took over and mixed it right and then Inn and Alice were in charge of dolloping the mix into little paper trays. Alice pondered as to why it was so hard to dollop stuff using a fork, the question sort of answered itself to be honest haha and yeah. After all of that it was baking time. Oven a go go and we were ready to rock, I asked for hundreds and thousands on the cake and Gem brilliantly handed over the hundreds of thousands. Was pretty amazing how we got the cakes going and all.
Alice actually took my camera to take photos of me! I told her that takingn a camera from a persons camera bag is like taking a gun from their holster. So in return I took her camera and played around with that.. the shots werent too good haha
After that we watched some television, I wasnt fond of watching TV so I just strummed along and played with my camera. We continued to take photos throughout the night as well as play some additional DS Lite games. I tried helping Inn out on her Trauma Centre mission that she was stuck on but kinda failed because I made far too many mistakes, it was a hard mission so one can only blame the fact that its a hard game haha (though i HAVE done it before).
After that the laptops were out, Gem and Inn went on the Museboard as well as other sites (including Flickr) to see what’s been going on since our day. Not much if you ask me, I sort of phase out from the Muse board when I’m out and about so I wasn’t really interested in whats going on there, not to mention the fact that I could easily catch up on what’s happening afterwards and all.
As well as that I managed to show everyone some fun youtube videos that were fun to look at, including the LOTR parody video where everyone is dubbed with retarded voices and the infamous Star Wars Kid (and a few variations from it just to demonstrate the powers of internet and video editing facilities). The cupcakes were ready but I suggested we wait for them to cool down since the chocolate needs to go cold and all.
I think that was about it for the night. We eventually all went off to bed and all. Our sleeping arrangements was me and Inn in one room and Gem and Alice in another (her room). Inn kept complaining about how I snore and everything (lies I tell you!) so I told her she could stay in the living room and sleep on the couch. Gem however told us that her housemates would be back from the Leeds prom and all and chances are they will be drunk. inn didnt like the idea of a drunken lady lying on top of her when she wakes up so she surrenders and sleeps with me haha.
Inn had her sleeping bag and pillow and everything which was good. I chose to sleep on the outside of the bed so I can quickly get up and fend myself from horny druken housemates or Ninjas (aka Alice, she’s been pretty Ninjaesque the entire day) and Inn was quite pissed off that I took that side of the bed since she wanted to sleep there haha. We locked the door in case random strangers came into our room and me and Inn chat for a bit in bed and then we called it a night and went to sleep. That was about it really.
…that’s what we thought….
Bonus Chapter: The missing dovet!
Now picture the scene, we’ve had a tiring day in a foreign town and we’re currently sleeping in someone else’s house. It’s already quite a strange situation to be in (unnatural to everyday sleeping and local town visiting activities). Strangely me and Inn fall fast asleep pretty easily, purely because the day was indeedly tiring and it was a nice and comfy double bed. But here’s when things get a little bit exciting…
I’ll tell it through my point of perspective just to add that extra drama and umph to it all.
I was woken up, I had no idea why I was up but all I could see was the dark interior of the wall and ceiling. Everything was dark (well duh you’re sleeping with the lights closed) and so everything was slightly confusling to take in at first. I hear some strange noises coming from the door. It seemed to be girls chatting about something. I couldn’t really understand what they were saying since I had just woken up and things weren’t really kicking in. Sooner or later I hear a knock, I wasn’t too sure what the knock was for, I initially thought it was Gem but it seemed a bit weird. I remembered that the door was locked so I knew we were pretty safe from the likes of Ninjas and horny drunken housemates. Suddenly I hear someone speaking.
“Hello, can you give us the spare dovet please, its freezing here and we need the dovet” Something like that
The voice didnt sound familiar so I immediately assumed it was the housemates. Given that it was only me and Inn about, and noone really knew if I was sleeping or not I thought I’d pretend I didnt hear it and just continue to sleep. You’d think after several attempts at asking us to open up (at an ungodly hour) that you would assume that we’re just fast asleep and you would quit. But no, these weren’t ordinary university girls in the middle of the night knocking on the door asking for a spare dovet. They’re drunken university girls in the middle of the night knocking on the door asking for a spare dovet! They were totally oblivious from the fact that it WAS an ungodly hour and that perhaps it’s alright to wake people up in order to get their dovet so the knocking contiues for 10-15 minutes. At this time I actually managed to fall asleep again (mwahahah) eventually I was awaken AGAIN by some banging. I didn’t really get much sleep so waking up this time wasn’t as dramatic as the other (though what happens next sort of makes up for the lack of dramaticness). The bangs become pretty vicious and the calls for their dovet became more and more apparant. I wondered if Inn was actually getting all of this so I kinda raise my hand and did a \m/ sign haha. She responded and we were definitly on the same boat.
Inn gets up and we both sort of communicate to each other about the situation, the knocking became loud thud on the door. The screams became louder as the housemates become agitated from the lack of response. Inn quickly writes a text saying “ignore?”. I quickly get my phone back and text back saying “y”. I dunno what happened afterwards but Inn then showed me the same text confirming what we should do, and yeah, we were in a position where the knocking has become so vicious that it wasn’t really a good idea to just open up and give them the dovet. The confrontation of it all was simply too much, if only there was a dog flap then we would have just oozed the dovet out of the door for them without having to say anything or look them at the eye for ignoring them. So yeah, me and inn are inside a uni house room with a couple of girls banging on the door viciously asking us for the dovet, some classic lines included:
“OPEN THE DOOR! WE KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE!”
“CAN YOU OPEN UP THE DOOR PLEASE, WE JUST OUR DOVETS BACK!”
“OPEN THE DOOR, WE KNOW YOU’RE AWAKE, THERES NO WAY YOU CAN BE ASLEEP FROM ALL OF THIS” (you dont say)
and the best line…
“Do you think they might have opened the window and escaped through there?” “No they’re definitely in there” *BANG BANG BANG* “OPEN UP THE DOOR SO WE CAN HAVE OUR DOVETS”
It became harder for us to actually open up the door judging from the viciousness of the banging and it was hard for us to actually ignore all the banging too. The knocking went on and on and me and inn just laughed it off at how we couldn’t really do anything but just ignore them. Eventually we hear some talking going on with someone else and the banging stops temporarily. We later hear a little knock on the door and were graced with a familiar voice. It was Gem, she told us to open up and pass the dovets to her. Inn asked whether we should do it and I gave her the OK to do it since it was Gem! So inn quickly ran to the door and opened up the lock and stuff the dovet out of the door immediately and closing/locking it straight away. We were saved haha. Twas quite a funny experience if you ask me. Inn checks the time and confirms that… it was 4am in the morning. We only went to sleep at 3am so you gotta love the amount of sleep we had haha. So yeah, we sort of laughed it off for a bit and just went back to sleep.
Yes I know what you’re saying, got to love drunken uni girls haha.
The other 2 days weren’t as traumatic as this one so stay tuned haha…
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