Posts Tagged ‘gem’

The v stands for mud: V festival 08 1/2

Sunday, September 14th, 2008

Welcome to my lovely two part post on V Festival 2008, thought I’d separate the social part of v festival and the gig part of v into two posts to make things easier to digest, granted there’s not much to talk about in the gig section so it will probably be photo flooded whilst this one will most likely be content orientated. So yeah, after being guestlisted for the lovely v festival at Staffordshire on a Sunday, I had arranged all the travel and accomodation a few weeks in advanced to ensure things go well (“well” being i can actually get there and have a place to stay), I booked a lovely hotel at the Wolverhampton Quality Hotel (where quality is oozing from the hotel so much that the word quality popped into the name of the hotel, that’s how awesome it was!) and some tiddly train rides to Wolverhapton (was about 3 hours to Wolves but 2 hours back, silly trains). Fact was I was going for the day and wasn’t really keen in heading home early or camping (that wasn’t allowed anyway what with the wristbands and not having weekend passes). The hotel seemed like the best (and warmest) option and I was surprised that it was only £48, including bed and breakfast. I had booked a holiday for Monday to ensure I had sufficient amount of rest once I arrive home (besides I don’t think work would appreciate me coming into work all muddy and bloody from the festival (mm soft skulls).

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Sorting out 500 muse photos

Saturday, April 19th, 2008

I dislike deleting photos I take, these days when I come back from a gig I have about 500 shots that I need to sort out, pick and then upload onto flickr. Now usually in gig environments you’ll discover that there’s a high ratio of crap shots and good shots purely because of crazy fans pushing you, random hands in the way, or the band moving too fast etc but once you throw all them out you have about 100-200 shots of nice shots.

Now what happens next? Do I upload them all? Now if all shots were unique then hell yeah, upload them all, but this is from one gig. A magazine doesn’t show millions of photos for one gig so neither should I. It’s only best to strip out all the similar but not as epic shots and only keep the epic ones. That means comparing them against one and another and SLOWLY killing the photos off. It usually takes hours to do and is a toughie when the photos are all sharp and presentable. I do have a few rules of deciding which photo goes through, usually judging on how interesting the lights are, and how dynamic the musician’s pose is. Once we’ve declared the winners, we start killing loads of photos that are simply “bad duplicates“.

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That damn duck weekend!

Monday, March 24th, 2008

Finally, was able to actually get this damn duck evening sorted. No idea why this event was labelled “damn duck” but inn kept hammering that line on long enough to cause the duck to be damning, plus it’s been a god damn long time to get this event sorted (3 odd months) I previously was able to book a table of 8 for 7pm for the epic duck weekend to celebrate my various achievements including graduation, job and first paycheck. Basically a lot of events crammed in one. It was hard these days to get time off, have it synchronised with everyone and pull off a big meetupmathom but somehow we managed, Inn took her time to actually decide on a date since she had to book it and her company had weird rules on it. I was flexible since it was easter period and I had planned on booking a long holiday to spend time with Alice before she heads off abroad.

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New Years Eve at Stu’s

Monday, December 31st, 2007

New Years was pretty epic, we all decided to meet up in Canterbury and celebrate new year there. Alice unfortunately wasn’t able to go since the planning was horrifically bad. I initially wasn’t keen on going since it was Canterbury but decided to go in the end since travel wasn’t too bad on the train and I didn’t feel too mashed after coming back from the north.

After work I took the train from Charring Cross to Canterbury West where Stu and Inn were there to pick me up. They had already spent the night there and had Xmas dinner ready, the previously mentioned that they WILL get a xmas turkey cooked to cheer up Karis’ gloomy xmas. They all decided to wait for me to arrive before eating (which was nice of them!) and once the party was all ready, we were ready to party. I was curious as to why the turkey was so tiny when I saw it but wasn’t really in the mood to question it (was more in the mood to eat tbh). Once at the table I made sure everyone was following strict table manners and regulations to ensure we had a formal and respectable dinner. I was quite impressed that they managed to prepare a pretty beefy amount of things to go with the “turkey”, they had the chandberry sauce, sweetcorn, peas, gravy and even pigs in a blanket. We managed to take turns with toasting the new year and Inn made me be the last person to give the toast to really sum everything up, I turned my toast to a business meeting agenda and yeah, lovely toast. I was also able to do my usual bit of asking how was everyone’s days. Stu managed to shock Karis some more by popping out of the living room dressed as Santa, we all god Karis presents and everything (mine was pretty impromptu but I got her something in the end). She seemed pretty chuff, but not because of that too…

It appears that Karis was able to find love in the meetup. Michael (Originalboywonder on the museboard) was at the meetup and before I arrived they managed to “hookup” (OH YEAH! haha) so yeah, this is where it gets interesting, we all took turns to tease the hell out of her. Including an extended long game of “I never” as well as that game where they stick names on your head and you have to guess who they are. It was pretty fun of an evening. New Years eve was celebrated with some lovely paper burning, I can’t remember what I wrote so yeah…

When the clock struck 12 we let loose some party poppers and drank some super cheap champagne (took a LONG time to open). We then played a few “t00ns” on Stu’s laptop and raved for a bit. The night fizzled down with everyone going to bed with me and Inn going online via mobile and ds lite respectively. I slept on the hallway since every room was taken, which was fine since I could sleep anywhere (including the stairs), I could have slept in the living room but Karis and Michael were there… I took the essence of the sofas and made a lovely mattress to sleep with. Later on the evening I kept getting woken up by Ste snoring at a disturbingly high decibel, I tried recording it on my phone but sadly it didn’t pick it up too well 🙁

The next day began with me waking up nice and early and having a lovely shower. I played some soothing classical music to wake everyone up which was quite hilarious, inn found it funny this time instead of enraged since the music was fucking awesome haha. I was glad I didn’t sleep in the living room either because the next day it had a very strong stench of crotch smell, and like what Stu said, “it’s only nice when you’re smelling your own crotch”. We thought the best breakfast would be a trip to Nando’s haha. I had already had nando’s with Alice but what the hell, nothing else nice in Canterbury haha. Karis got a bit antisocial at times with Michael and it was pretty hilarious watching them not being able to sit next to each other haha (young love and all that). After eating more chicken we all parted ways, I was dropped off at some train crossing and had to walk to the station in the rain, the train left a few minutes before I arrived so I had to wait an entire hour for the next train and spend another hour and a bit on the train (thank god I was able to phone alice for the entire journey!). All in all a good way to start the new year.

I don’t like making resolutions so I’m simply going with the flow. Life is awesome at the moment so I’ll just stick to what I have.

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Honey I’m home, 2 weeker in halifax

Saturday, September 15th, 2007

I decided that since I’ll be starting job hunting now, now that Alice has found herself a lovely job at Halifax (in Halifax). I believe my “holidays” need to come to an end and that I should start getting into the real world of finding a job and paying taxings like every graduate who wishes not to do their masters or doctorate. After a lengthy 30 minute thinking, I decided to plan a long visit to Alice’s place to ensure that we had enough time together and all.

The visit was slightly crippled though, mainly due to the fact that Alice’s job requires her to be at the office about 7-4 odd. Which meant that I would be spending most of that time on my own (that’s a lie, her family will be in the house most of the time). This is where productivity will see a massive boom as I ensure that the time spent when Alice is away isn’t gone to waste. I made sure that I finished blogging everything as well as start finding jobs around the end of the second week. We also had a day where we were going to spend with kev, inn, gem and paul for sushi and bingo (sushi being just with kev and inn). So yeah, quite a lovely one visit hits all plan. How could one refuse to go? (especially when Alice is living up there haha)

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Week in Halifax with Alice

Friday, July 20th, 2007

I was pretty sly in terms of organizing my days and all. I made sure that right after getting my results I was able to go visit Alice. If I were to get my first I would have a proper party and all to celebrate the occasion, and if not, I’d just be going up there for a nice long cheering up session. THANKFULLY I was able to achieve my goal and obtain the first I deserved :). Here’s a nice summary of the entire week broken down in little bullet point paragraph type things.

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The ultimate Muse Wembley Stadium Weekend (Sunday)

Sunday, June 17th, 2007

The final of the trilogy, this is where everything ends, the climax of the weekend (I do have an extra day with Kiernan and Kazzie but this was really the end of the weekend). Probably the best day and all too. We have already seen loads of Muse fans singing in a square, muse perform live for the first night, and met an ungodly amount of Musers through numerous locations including BBQs, pubs, and Trafalgar Square. Now we see the final night and say goodbye to quite a lot of people as we watch Muse for the second night to conclude this grand weekend.

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The ultimate Muse Wembley Stadium Weekend (Saturday)

Saturday, June 16th, 2007

Right, lets get straight down to part 2 of this epic triology (with a spin off episode where me kiernan and kazzie go see The Silent Years), a quick summary of the previous day includes me heading to yo sushi! going to trafalgar square to laugh at muse fans, heading to kazzie’s place for bbq and crashing at her place with Kazzie, Inn, Kiernan, Popey, Jon, Ste, Beast Bob, Lauren, Max and Aino. Everyone slept around 2-3am whilst I was being restless the whole evening. I managed to get about 2 hours sleep before cleaning the garden up and taking an ungodly bath. We continue off when people start getting up, ready for the first Wembley Stadium performance with Muse.

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