Crazy calendar updates!

Time flies at a ridiculous rate when you’re busy. Already we’re in mid November and getting ready for the start of Christmas, winter coats, bankruptcy, roasted poultry, mind games and the lovely end to a crazy and eventful year. When peering at my Google Calender, I quickly skipped back to the previous month to see what I’ve been up to and boy was it a crazy month, though you’ve probably noticed that already with the sudden abundance of blog posts Since October was such an amazingly packed month I thought I’d write a big fat summary post of it all, kinda like a catch up post for those who check less frequently or for those who’ve just started reading. So yeah, lets rewind the tape and go back to first of October, 2008, no idea if you can click on all the links but I’ll take my time to link up to EVERYTHING so it all makes sense!

1st October: Lykke Li
Lykke Li was recommended to me by uka (well I just checked his last.fm and thought I’d give it a listen). Her tickets were sold out so I managed to buy a ticket from ebay and see her live at the Scala. Her voice was amazing and on par to her dancing (at one point she event started dancing right in front of me which was awesome (mmm private dances haha)). First time I used good old Eve, my compact camera to film a video of the performance. Favorite song: I’m good, I’m gone.

2nd October: Lost Coastlines:
I started writing a short story called “Lost Coastlines“. It was loosely based on a trip I made in September to the north. The story only has one character, but focuses on his mindset, thought process, and other subtle things. The story was told via a series of photos I took during my visit to the Four Rise Locks in Bingley. I slowly released the photo and passages bit by bit and eventually spilled the ending at some random point in the evening. Having an influence on certain games where they offer a good and bad ending depending on the actions you took, I gave this story a double sided ending where the readers need to search for happiness in order to find the good ending (Probably giving too much away here).

3rd October: Photography and regret:
That was fun, following from the Lykke Li gig and Lost Coastlines, I decided to write another quick monologue story type thing called “Photography and Regret“. This was based loosely on a livejournal comment I made about my insights on photography and the future, I write a dark side story about Mark, the photography with a flagship DSLR camera who was at the Lykke Li gig. Twas a fun write but then I think i totally lost the plot near the end haha. But yeah, just a complete ramble

4th October: Scottish Ballet:
One of the more diverse events in my calendar, I went to see a scottish ballet, the catch/gimmick here is that they were dancing to Radiohead. It was quite a fun show, though I actually enjoyed the last act more than the act that had the radiohead dancing, it was far too pretencious and I preferred some good old classical dancing with fancy pancy dresses and costumes.

5th October: Crazy ass coding:
I got really annoyed at the lack of search bar in my site so I started coding and added one in, that’s about it

6th October: CSS:
This was an impromptu gig, I pretty much bought the ticket the week before off ebay (it was cheaper than face value). I had emailed a fellow photographer about the security of Shepherds Bush and was told it was quite a strict place in terms of DSLR photography, I brought Eve along and stubbornly took my DSLR with me, they found my DSLR during the bag search but I eventually got the camera in after some sly words and ninja’ing. Traumatic experience but nonetheless a fun one, the gig was a fruity one, lots of jumping and balloons. Favorite song: Left behind

7th October:
Relaxing day for blogging and catching up sleep (Shepherds Bush gigs tend to make me end up sleeping at 4am) Near the evening Michelle updated that she had guestlists to CSS which she couldn’t attend, i took up the offer but needed to find a girl to go with.

8th October: Wine tasting and drunken CSS:
Spent entire morning and afternoon finding a plus one to go with, failed in epic proportions. Had a wine tasting session, learnt a bit about wine and left halfway. Michelle managed to get Silvia to come with me and woo, was able to smuggle the DSLR whilst slightly tipsy. Was glad I saw CSS once again because I felt the other gig wasn’t enough. Chuckled at the fact that the band gets free xbox360’s out of this gig (it was an xbox event). I had to squeeze through some ickle ladies to get through, later on after writing about it they manged to find my blog and comment on what i said about them teehee. Favorite song: Music is my hot hot hot hot hot sex

9th October: Emiliana Torrini:
After two crazy nights of CSS, I went to see Emiliana Torrini at an ickle Church near Soho. The performance was amazing and she was unbelievably cute! She constantly conversed with the crowd during intervals and explained how the songs were written or whatever crazy anecdotes she could come up with, you loved her gigs for that! Met up with some photographers too. Favorite song: Sunny Road

10th October: Diggnation:
A nerdy event with Stuart and Dip, after work I met up them two to see Diggnation live in London (apparently it only happens once every year). It was quite a fun show! The highlight was the vast amounts of free beer provided by Google, after the event we went to the Facebook aftershow and grabbed a lot of stuff, got to love free stuff.

11th October: Blog updates:
Updated a new feature for my blog which makes flickr integration awesome.

12th October:
Chillaxed, excited about Monday since I had a new 28mm lens and contemplating on see of Montreal play at an instore gig.

13th October: New wide lens and of Montreal acoustic set:
Coworker arrived with new lens I asked him to buy in New York, got well excited! Used the lens to shoot of Montreal who played live at Rough Trade East, was my first time there and I enjoyed the venue. of Montreal were amazing and their acoustic set was quirky and different from what they’d play at a proper gig. Met up with loads of old friends, got talked into seeing The Dears play on Wednesday, I sense crazy gigathon this week again (was SOOO tired from last week’s 3 gigathon) Favorite song: For our elegant caste

14th October:
Just to repeat last week, this day was spent relaxing and recovering from gigging. Probably wrote a lot of blog entries this night too! Went to pure groove records to try buy a tilly and the wall cd for tickets to an instore gig on 17th but found out it was closed after 6pm even though it said it closed at 7pm :(!

15th October: The Dears:
Turned up to see the Dears since had nothing better to do on a Wednesday, met up with people from of Montreal gig, then spoke to a guy because he had a crumpler bag (Just ordered a bag at work you see!), and finally spoke to Chalky from Terrible Love Songs. The gig was pretty fun, especally seeing the tension between the two band married band members Favorite song: Demons

16th October: of Montreal:
This was a horrible date, so many things clashed! I wanted to see Howling bells play but alas I had tickets to see of Montreal and it kinda took priority because I’ve never seen them play properly (acoustic one didn’t count). I acquired a spare ticket so I gave it to Chalky. Met up with more people from both gigs (including Anika) and even met up with a fellow photographer from flickr (preamble). Gig was amazing and theatrical, especially when Kevin Barnes gets naked and frolics around in hot pants, there was even a piledriver performed on stage! Favorite song: Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse.

17th October: Tilly and the Wall:
I managed to buy the Tilly and the Wall album online and it came with 3 guestlists, I invited some people from the CSS gig and even a coworker to the gig. The setlist was super short but it was an ickle gig and we were able to talk to the band about of Montreal (they were at the gig) and whatnot. Favorite song: Dust me off

18th October:
After 2 weeks of weekday non stop gigging, it was time to call it a rest! I believe lots of blogging was involved on Saturday, had a lovely meal out and did some chillaxing

19th October:
Got my haircut! It was getting far too long! Also started coding my site so it was 960px wide, made the sidebar all fancy looking

20-23rd October:
Quiet day of blog catching up (from September gigs), watching films about cyborgs and reading a book about super geeks who choose to fall in love with girls named Katherine. I enjoyed this week, it was nice and quiet for a change, but all the good stuff happened on the weekend hehe

24th October: Video Games Live 2008:
Went with jason and rachel to go see video games live 2008, where a live orchestra performs songs and tunes featured in famous and cult video games. It was a nerdy night, ate some steak before the show, took photos of lots of folks dressed up and enjoyed a slew of nerdy things, they played a lot of songs I loved and at the end of it all. I decided to go check out this cosplay exhibition on Sunday (was going to do Saturday but that was Tilly and the Wall day that me, jason and rachel had planned to go). Favorite Song: Castlevania

25th October: Tilly and the Wall:
Quite a hectic day I must say, Jason and Rachel weren’t able to come because Rachel wasn’t feeling too well. Was going to get their tickets to let someone else go but couldn’t find any one who were able to come so I eventually went solo. Met up Anika from various Rough Trade East gigs (she loves her free gigs), and met up with Preamble and another photographer I met at Emiliana Torrini too (called Lorne). Tilly and the Wall were amazing live, the lights were amazing and awesome for photography. Met up with a girl called Angela during the gig and had fun talking to a random drunk guy called Jeff with Angela, Angela had a chrome bag (I thought it was a crumpler bag :$) Favorite song: Tall tall Grasss (you can hear Angela in it)

26th October: London MCM Expo 2008:
The cosplay fest! Went there and saw loads of people dressed up as video games characters, bought loads of merchandise, mainly studio ghibli plush toys, phone charms and whatnot. There were signings but they cost £15 a pop for some C list celeb action (no way!)

27th October: Gabriel Kain:
Work colleague asked me if I wanted to go see a local band, it was his girlfriends’ coworker’s piano teacher that was playing at the gig. I said why not and went, the gig wasn’t that amazing, we laughed at the band after Gabriel kain and pretty much left afterwards. I took some shots and gave evils to a girl who took shots using flash!

28th October:
Another nice and chillaxed day, I managed to finish writing up on Tilly and the Wall entry, mainly talked about upskirts and whatnot haha.

29th October: Photomonth Preview:
Met up with my friend Malakai, went to the flickr photomonth preview event and had some free wine whilst enjoying some photos, then had a crazy night in London where we ate a Korean BBQ and did some crazy bumper cars and bowling, quite a jam packed night (the kind of nights I’m good at making for people who visit london)

30th October: Uka / Lomokev / Jonathan Coulton:
Crazy assed day where I managed to meet up with uka who was visiting for a few days, he dropped his bag off at my place, we had lunch at my local burger joint type place, then I stuffed him with loads of England based foods such as Krispy Kremes, Thorntons Chocolates and Fireflys (he could of drank imported ones but that’s not cool/it was expensive). After work I met up with uka and went to go see Lomokev at his signing. Was able to get two copies of his book hot shots signed (one for Inn) and take a photo of lomokev and uka together. We then swiftly left and I dropped uka off to Alice whilst heading off to a gig myself. Saw Jonathan Coulton, ninja’d a lovely seat near front and took loads of lovely photos (at Shepherds Bush! mwhaha) It was fun when he rick rolled us! Favorite song: Still alive

31st October:
Nope, no halloween for me, got some chocolate eyeballs from work but afterwards I felt like staying at home and just relaxing, it was pay day finally and all I could think about was getting some rest for such a crazy month I’ve had.

So that’s about it. That’s pretty much my month in a list format, hopefully you’ll read an article or two, doubt you’d click on all the links (please do, it took forever to link up!)! Thanks for your time here! Glad people actually take interest in what I get up to hehe!

stuff you might also like

• …and you think Thom Yorke can dance
• Howling Bells: Now with more dancing
• Okkervil River @ Shepherds Bush feat. Lauren Gurgiolo
• Jonathan Coulton rickrolls us all!
• Shearwater and the love of birds

As hinted in earlier posts, uka paid England a visit and took a eurostar (an eurostar sounds weird) to see us british folk. For those who don’t know him he’s an amazing photographer who does ickle macro photography and lomo photography. He’s got his own style down to a science and pays quite a lot of attention to detail. But yes, do check his flickr account and see for yourself. I personally love his macro photography but right now he’s getting into the serious world of film and lomo photography (which is also brilliant). Anyway, he had a whole trip planned out in which he made sure he visited all the famous London sights (ie Topshop) and meet up with a few photography friends (including me, Alice and Inn). To be fair his visit was originally to visit Alice but I managed to find a way of yanking him over for a day in London to meet up with the other folks.

Uka taking "fisheye" shots

Anyway the day he arrived I was actually at work, it was far too late to book a holiday and since it wasn’t a full day (he’ll be travelling up to stay at Alice’s place) we’d only meet up for lunch and also goto a lomokev signing which uka happened to conviently pick as a day of arriving into London. We sort of made a rough plan of when he should meet up with me and where (I suggested the Gherkin since it was recogniseable and close to work) and no further planning was involved. Uka was more sucked into planning a super day in London where he’d visit all the places for all his shopping needs (including Cyber Candy, Topshop, Urban Outfitters, you name it!) than the actual meet up point.

Nearer the time I had to do a quick search in our old msn conversations to find out what we had planned because he was already on his way to England and I had no idea when he’d be there. It was pretty funny but I managed to meet up with him standing there aimlessly at the Gherkin (phew). The main reason we met up that time was for me to pick up his ultra heavy backpack to look after whilst he was shopping, once I finished work I would meet up with him again and we’d head to Lomokev’s signing.

I immediately made sure uka went to all the places to eat that you wouldn’t find in Belgium, including a Barney’s (a restaurant that sells sandwiches and burgers), a krispey kreme, and a Thorntons for chocolate. I pretty much porked him up in that 1 hour lunch break I had to meet up with him teehee, he told me I was killing him with food! (NO WAI!). Uka was sort of semi shy, he wasn’t afraid of talking though, and his English was pretty awesome (it had a pretty cool Belgian accent to accompany it too). Another thing I noticed was that he giggled quite a lot, like, quite a lot! It was nice meeting him for the first time though :D. After lunch we said our goodbyes and I went back to the office carrying his huge backpack that nearly made me collapse (not really but I like overexaggerating).

Once work was over I managed to meet up with him again (same place different time) and then we began our quest to lomokev’s signing place. Uka seemed to think there was going to be a huge queue or something so we made sure we’d go there asap to avoid queueing up. It was located near a bar type place quite close to work, he was initially going to take the tube to Old Street and find the place (he had all his places printed out on google maps bless) but I suggested we just walked there since it was a straight walk to the area. Uka told me about the his hectic day of shopping and looking around London whilst I was at work whilst I uhm… talked about work and how busy I was haha. We finally arrived at our destination, Jaguar Shoes. The door said “lomokev signing downstairs” (or something, I dare not question what it originally said).

Down the dark stairs of doom we saw Lomokev sitting down in one corner, we were literally the first people at the signing (hats off to uka assuming there’d be a queue). We were a wee bit shy but eventually we approached him and uka and lomokev started conversing like a house on fire (eg “hey, so what are you doing?” “nothing much, just BURNING THE SH** OUT OF YOU MWAHAHAHAH” “ah ok”). Uka gave kev a lomo sticker which he made and printed on his zink pogo printer (it’s a special printer that doesn’t require ink, made by polaroid) and kev was amazed at it, he first asked uka if he worked for lomo or something because he also gave him a lomo sticker, he said no and yeah… kev made sure he got something in return for the stickers, originally he was going to give him a pound for it but then he traded it off with a poster (slyyyyyyy).

Lomokev's spoils for the signing

I was able to get a poster too for getting two copies of his book signed by kev. The book was pretty amazing, it teaches you both the fundamentals and some other stuff you wouldn’t imagine about photography and whatnot. I recommend you buy a copy of it if you’re into photography, use this link Uka wanted a quick photo with kev too so we quickly did a photo session of them two together, they were instantly posing for the shot which was funny. We soon took off since uka had a train to catch and I had a gig to catch (more on that tomorrow, I think 3 posts in one day is enough for me!!).

The tube journey was pretty funny, uka got stuck on the barriers because of his sleeping mat being too wide, not only did it get him stuck, it also took down quite a few people haha. I took a few photos of him during the trip which he smiled throughout (surreal when you consider everyone’s gormless expressions in the tube). So yeah, once we arrived at the train station I handed uka off to Alice and headed off to the gig. Good times.

stuff you might also like

• Preview: A day with three photographers
• Snacks for all
• Splash of October Swimmer (Summary)
• Drinking google, listening to digg & wiping facebook
• Photomonth preview & Korean BBQs

Yup, facebook napkins!

“Bob has been drinking google, listening to digg and wiping facebook.“

One of my rather cryptic messages I posted on facebook a while ago. Don’t think people really got why I said that, so let me explain in a form of an event I went to. I was invited by Stuart to go check out diggnation, a geeky show talking about articles found on digg hosted by Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht. It was once again, one of my geeky days where I felt like checking out proper nerdy events, even a coworker was going so it had to be worth visiting. The actual event held was talking about Web Apps and whatnot but most people were merely interested in the Diggnation event which was free (and we love free events don’t we!!! YEAH we do!). So yeah, on with the show.

After arriving fashionably late to meet up with Dip and Stu, we started heading off to Excel Custom House via the DLR. I was hoping to bump into a lot of pasty nerds wearing Diggnation T shirts along the way which I did (teehee pasty nerds), most of them bearing iphones and twittering like crazy about the stop they’re at or whatever. We had a discussion about the concentration of iphone users there were at this event and did more stat’ing around, such as the ratio of male and female (more on that later) and the ratio of Mac / PC users. Dip actually went for shits and giggles, twas funny seeing him come to an event that clearly was for nerds only, but it did feel wrong (a good kind of wrong) that our friendly  and loveable emo was attending the show :).

Once at the venue, we were greeted by loads of people in red t shirts who were paid to be super friendly. They’d high five you, welcome you, cheer at you, raise your spirits and would probably hug you if you asked for one. There were loads of them about, which made me wonder who the hell was funding all these people to stand around and simply say hi to people. It was a nice feeling though, sounds like a boring job but what the hell, someone’s paying for it. At the venue there wasn’t much to do, the only thing left open was a Google stand, and the entrance to see Diggnation (more on the google thing later, trust me, it’s awesome). We queued up for Diggnation and nattered about bits and bobs and what the show will talk about, my bets were on the new Apple laptops (nom).

Girl with Apple Logo tatoo'd to her back!

We got in the actual diggnation bit pretty easily, there were loads of seats but it became pretty obvious that it was filling up pretty quickly. We had some pretty far back seats but no matter, it wasn’t exactly a gig haha (you’ll see me darting to the front if it was!) Once sat down that a few rows in front of us was a girl who had a tatoo of the Apple logo on her back. It was hilarious, people were taking photos of her (without her consent, the best kind) and even I got in there to take a quick ninja shot, I was originally going to ask her to pose for me but the timing was a bit crap so I decided not to in the end. Quite a lot of jokes were made about the tatoo, one in particular is when fornicating with a girl with an apple logo tatoo’d on her back, you’d might randomly scream “STEVE JOBS” (CEO of Apple) in the middle of it all. I don’t know if that would turn the girl on or not… anyway, knowing my bad history with talking about people I encountered at the gig and them actually finding my blog and commenting on it, I’ll leave it at that (though tbh that was all we talked about). Stu did say some mean things though haha (his blog is on the sidebar so find him there haha).

As time flew by waiting for the show to begin we noticed something very strange, people were vacating their seats and coming back with a handful beers. We investigated further about what was going on and realised that the Google stand, was in fact a “Google Beers” stand. Now what are they doing in the stand? Nothing but providing everyone with unlimited FREE BEER! (hopefully by saying that you even felt the need to get up to your seat and find out this stand, but alas, this was in the past so unless you have time machine, sit back down :P). Once we realised this attrocious freebie we got dip to go scout for beers. We eventually went ourselves after feeling ever so slightly impatient for free beer. The stall was swarming with people, a closer look and you’d see people behind the stalls frantically unbottling caps and handing it out to people. You’d think there’d be a limit to how many beers a person can have but nope. The only limit was your modesty in how much free stuff you’d like to get from a super big corporate company. The number of bottle caps on the table was ungodly, (would have taken a photo but my hand was filled with beers haha), since the bottles were opened, it wasn’t possible to just cram them into a bag or whatever, so the max I was able to get was 4 bottles (probably could of got more but I didn’t want to get too wasted). It really felt like they had a googleplex of beers under that stall (had to make a googleplex joke hehe). Anyway, 4 bottles was an ok amount to last the entire evening, don’t want to be watching a gig show drunk do we?

We salute you google! Thanks for the free beers!

Back in our seats we piled up the number of free beers we had, me and Dip managed to swipe 4 beers each whilst Stuart came with an appalling two (shame on him!). So with 10 beers to share between 3 we said whoever finished their third bottle will get the last bottle. Dip eventually won the 4th bottle which was good because I didn’t want to have loads of bathroom breaks :(. Anyway, it was nice having big corporate companies providing nerds free stuff, so Google, we salute you!

The show was really funny, a lot of heckling, shouting and screaming was involved. It was quite a nerdy bunch! Not only that, it felt like a proper sausage fest haha. When the guys from diggnation told all the girls to shout, there really wasn’t much screaming coming out from the crowd. It felt so weird going to an event that had such a low female ratio. Anyway, they talked about Google Beers, the new Mac Laptops,  Gmail’s drunk detector for making sure you don’t send unwanted emails while intoxicated and other bits and bobs.

It was a nice event, there were so many geeky references that I and the rest of the crowd got that it made you feel somewhat a bit welcomed. I can’t remember how the show ended but we were then all invited to the aftershow party at a pub. The event was sponsored by…*drum roll* FACEBOOK mwhaha.

Facebook PARTAE!

The pub wasn’t that interesting, there were a lot of facebook merchandise to take (one of which were facebook napkins) but it was just like any other pub. Later on, Kevin and Alex arrived and I was able to say hi to Kevin (I think I literally said hi and went haha). We decided to leave (after a toilet break) since nothing was happening but as we were heading to the toilets for a wee Kevin and Alex appeared behind the DJ desk with mics talking the crowd, they were about to play a game with the audience!

Kevin and alex asking the crowd which month and year Diggnation began

The timing couldn’t be any better since I was stood literally in front of them. They were constantly throwing Digg branded bottle openers and T shirts (managed to grab one) and yeah, they asked some pretty hard questions about Digg where the winners would get super prizes handed to them if they got it right (they weren’t that awesome mind). It wasn’t that interesting but having loads of nerds heckling was quite a sight to see hehe. I wasn’t able to take a good shot of the guys during the Diggnation event but I was able to do so now. After the show that pretty much was it, we decided to call it a day and left the area to go home (well we did end up in a boat for a bit but it was boring so we left).

So yeah, that was my day where I was drinking Google Beers, listening to Diggnation and wiping my face with Facebook. Suddenly all these events are making me feel more and more nerdy! (Though the abundance of music gigs and art shows should hopefully cancel it out!)

stuff you might also like

• Splash of October Swimmer (Summary)
• Killing a belgian with food and lomokev
• Photomonth preview & Korean BBQs
• Preview: A day with three photographers
• Guess who’s coming to town?

Photomonth preview event!

After reading a flickr blog entry about a photomonth preview event happening close by to work, it was a preview night to show case some photos as part of the photomonth… month. I decided to make an evening of it all. My friend m was coming over to meet me that day so I thought she’d appreciate the photos and free drinks before we go out for a meal somewhere. The gallery was pretty close to Rough Trade East, and from the 3 or 4 trips to the place I no longer required google maps to aid me from finding the place. I met with my friend near where I worked and walked with her to the gallery (stopped by for some book browsing and toilet breakage).

The gallery was pretty neat, a lot of photos were based around the area (so a couple of gherkin shots) and they obviously all had a certain theme to it all. I believe most of these were shot as part of a photo walk or project. I haven’t been on a photo walk before but it does sound fun, shame you need to pay like £45 just to walk around with people and take photos of a place that was free (the only benefit is getting help from professionals). Anyway, enough about photowalks, here’s some photos of the event.

After slightly abusing the free wine and admiring the shots, we vacated the area for some food, I initially wanted to go for a curry at brick lane but I had no idea which place to goto (need some reviews first before going to a shonky one). We decided to head to central London and find a yo sushi since m hasn’t dined in a yo sushi for quite a bit. The plan sort of fizzled as I couldn’t think of a place to have yo sushi in and suddenly I decided to take her to the Korean BBQ place that my other friends took me to. m found the idea amazing since she’s never went a Korean BBQ restaurant, she’s tried making a Korean BBQ at home once but failed epically so it was a good idea to see how it was done properly.

Waiting patiently for food

Once at the restaurant we sat down and ordered pretty quickly, the BBQ set mix was about £30 and that was the main thing we wanted to have, it was just meat but that was fine. The meats included beef, pork, duck and chicken. We kept joking about how the waitress kept looking at me because she fancied me teehee (not really :P, however she did teach us more about Korean BBQs and the steps required to consume one, it was muy interesanté). The food came and the BBQ grill was heating up (for those who know little of Korean BBQs, the meat is initially set on the table RAW and gets grilled up in the crazy heating grill area that’s located in the middle of the table in a built in sort of way). It was all marinaded so once the meat was cooked it was ready to consume.

m instantly was in love with it, we were both pretty hungry and watching the food getting cooked in front of us made us even hungry! But it was definitely worth the wait, boy I need to visit here more. We spent a while identifying all the meats that was grilling, some were easy to spot but some needed some prodding and guesswork (we eventually asked hehe).

Beef, pork, chicken and duck!

Chicken and beef mainly! Nom nom

I felt slightly hungry still and ordered a seafood udon, it was nice and thick and was definitely the cherry on top of the meal, though I wish we actually ordered it with the BBQ so we could eat the udon with the various pieces of BBQ’ed meat. I could go on and on about food but I won’t bore you too much, it was a yummy place and I’d recommend anyone to try a Korean BBQ if they haven’t already (and try it again if you have!). Hopefully my food photography will convince one or two of you to go!

Seafood udon!

After our meal we went to funland (since it was closeby) to play some mini bowling (the £2 one with smaller balls and the pins attached to string). We both took a lane each and I did pretty well with my mini bowling skills by scoring a strike and a few spares. Think I ended up with 100 something whilst m scored 80 odd.

After that we ventured into the bumper cars, I took a crazy ass timelapse video of it all whilst doing some serious crashing onto fellow bumpercarians. Good times.

After that we wondered around aimlessly in London, heading to Trafalgar square and others place with no aim whatsoever, I suddenly felt like I was in a book (namely catcher in the rye). It was nice wondering around aimlessly, I suppose you just need to have good company to make it nice (which I did). The evening was getting late so I took m back to her station and said goodbye to her, it has been a while since I’ve met her so it was nice seeing her again :). Nice and short entry since I have a bitchass amount of things to catch up on, it’s become one of those moments where the things I’m doing is greater than the things I’m writing! Damn life haha (just kidding). Next entry will be about the adventures of uka so stay tuned!

stuff you might also like

• That damn duck weekend!
• Super Jet Lag Meetup
• Stuart’s birthday and Alice weekend
• Sushi, 3D Dumbledore and We are Physics!
• Leeds Festival 2007

stuff you might also like

• Snacks for all
• Killing a belgian with food and lomokev
• The v stands for mud: V festival 08 1/2
• That damn duck weekend!
• New Years Eve at Stu’s

Monday shall be an epic day

stuff you might also like

• Splash of October Swimmer (Summary)
• Killing a belgian with food and lomokev
• Drinking google, listening to digg & wiping facebook
• Photomonth preview & Korean BBQs
• Preview: A day with three photographers

Festival checklist and hungry touts

There really wasn’t much to prepare, the only last minute thing i brought were my spotty wellies that I used for Reading Festival 2006, my bag consisted of a poncho I got from the filmfour somerset house show (mmm scarface), a hoodie in case i got cold, tickets, maps to my hotel, a notebook (containing writing instruments, post it notes and other bits and bobs), and my lovely dslr camera, dont think I bought a book for this trip, in festivals you simply assume that you’ll lose everything you own. plus i loved the idea of packing and ensuring that things were at it’s bare essentials. Once the packing it was time to put on a lovely pair of green converse chucks and hit the road. The train journey was boring as ever, but nothing internet on the phone or music on the ipod won’t kill (i actually find them to be the ultimate time killing combo, you can either read the interweb or write blogs and random entries with the lovely qwerty keypad). I eventually reached Wolverhampton to meet up with kev. He had arrived pretty early and found time to kill by asking touts how much they’d pay him for his additional V Festival VIP ticket, the story was pretty hilarious as the tout originally offered £20 which kev immediately thought “forget it” and left him, but obviously that’s how touts roll, insist that the first offer is their lowest and simply walk away, they know how to bargain (they probably try haggling at McDonalds when they order their happy meals (assuming they eat happy meals, there’s very little happiness in the life of a tout)). Kev had ignored the touts but found them to be slightly aggressive nearer the end when they kept pestering him and asking him for an offer, but obviously kev wasn’t intending on selling it. Once we met up we immediately waited outside at the shuttle bus stop place where the shuttle buses roam. There again the touters were there ready to offer kev money he cannot refuse (but did). From £20 they simply asked him how much did he want, kev asked for £100 and the tout reluctantly started to unload a few twenties from his pocket ready to hand to kev, but kev immediately changed his mind and said “nah”. Man did kev know how to piss the touts off. Kev eventually offered the ticket to a fellow muser once we were at the box office area.

Why wellies were your best friend at v festival

On the shuttle bus we talked a bit about Marley park and other bits and bobs, once we were close to the arena we donned our wellies (kev was ultra proud that he could make use of the wellies once again since he only bought them for the purpose of Marley which really wasn’t used much). Upon walking up to the box office we met a few folks, including dip. Conversation then began and slowly but surely we got our passes, and was in the arena where we met up with Stu. I think this is the point where we finally realised how important it was to wear wellies, it was just as important as our festival tickets (well not really but saying that makes it important). The fields outside the arena weren’t too bad but as soon as we saw the entrance, man how glad were we to have wellies. The v in v festival really stood for mud; rain, fields and loads of festival goers never mix. Of course having wellies on instantly had that sense of feeling as if you touched a gold star in super mario and was invincible to it’s thick and miserable aura the thick brown mud gave out (and if you listened hard enough you probably could hear the invincibility theme tune in your head as you started stamping onto the mud, killing mushrooms and turtles).

Oh did I mention about dip? he was all kinds of awesome and it was fun meeting him, it turns out that everybody including myself love dip, got to love a bit of emo. He’s in quite a few of my photos since he was “hanging out” with the folks and kev gave his VIP pass to him so he was able to chillax with us in there too.

A burger and chips stall called “burger and chips”
Not long we met up with everybody, I think from then on there was a lot of chillaxing involved, we were told that the VIP area had a Nando’s in it which got both me and kev pumped, however our dreams were immediately raped silly when all they served were nando’s burgers. You couldn’t even go “fitter with a chicken on the pitta”, nonetheless, it had to be done, me and Stu bought a nando’s burger (no idea what burger number stu was on hehe) and whipped on the extra extra extra hot sauce and feasted on the hot piece of chicken wrapped around this cold floury bun. I never liked eating food that had two temperatures at the same time, usually buns are heated up to compliment the burger but hey, we’re in a field i suppose, it reminded me of eating salmon nigiri’s where the fish was nice and warm (in the melting kind of way) however the rice was cold, these things require delicacy. Anyway, that was me on the food, I eventually spent the rest of the evening food wise having lovely “gourmet” bbq jumbo sausages, and they were bad at all, definitely had that lovely bbq feel to it and not that mass produced festival food feel. The stalls in the festivals were pretty hilarious, I was constantly pointing out the names of the stalls, going “HEY LOOK, THEY HAVE A PLACE CALLED BURGERS AND CHIPS, AND THEY SOLD BURGER AND CHIPS”, evidently stall owners assume all people are retarded and have to be pretty clear of what a stall is saying before venturing out to buy some beef tacos, noodles or whatever they fancied, though I suppose calling it “Johns Stall” really didn’t help one bit (we later on discover that this wasn’t just inside the festival, there was a kebab place called Doner Kebab in town). That’s the food commentary sorted, lets think of some more things that happened.

The special place

The VIP area was pretty nice, but somewhat lame at the same time, the bar tent had a DJ playing thumping dance music but with nobody dancing to it, it’s probably a DJ’s worse nightmare playing music to nobody, you could definitely feel the energy once you’re in there but the lack of involvement with other people was an immediate turn off, I did manage to dance for a bit when another person started dancing, but that didn’t last too long, the area was simply empty if you exclude the 3 girls who were actually using the dark dance floor as an area to get changed (weirdos). There were lots of lovely tents and seats in the guest area too, the toilets were of a better variety than the ones in the arena (obviously) and I believe kev was able to swot out a hollyoaks cast member (bless). Another good thing about the VIP area was the fact that the grass wasn’t muddy as it was out there, you could actually lie down and chillax the entire day, but that really wasn’t the point of the festival, we had like… 2 bands to see (haha). At one point we were playing buckeroo with some guy who was actually sleeping in the arena, it was pretty fun until someone poured beer on him, bad form and sleep man!

“Nobody plays you because you always win”

After heading off to go see Sugababes we went to the guitar hero tent since inn wanted me and kev to battle it out, the tent was a bit lame since they were playing thumping rock music meaning people couldn’t hear the songs they were playing, it was all about eye coordination and guesswork. We were given cute little guitar hero badges and waited around the booths for people to finish playing, the booth we were waiting for had two kids playing, one of them was obviously whooping the other kid, for his last he picked “Through Fire and Flames” by Dragonforce, if people have played Guitar hero 3 you should all know about this song and how painful it is to play. My heart however started racing because that was the most exciting song to play and I didn’t mind giving that kid a run for his money, the losing opponent left knowing he was most likely going to lose and so I stepped in and challenged him to a battle of guitar hero, dragonforce style. Of course we picked expert mode and then we were off. The needle indicating who was winning stayed on my side and eventually I defeated the kid, he shook my hand and then left whilst kev stepped up to battle it out on guitar hero. We picked the most obvious song on the list (Muse - Knights of Cydonia) and began rocking out (silently mind, still couldn’t hear the song and all). Now kev has actually played guitar hero a lot longer than me so I was pretty scared that he would win, but fortunately the guitar controller was shite, and kev wasn’t a fan of tremolo picking, that’s where I got all my brownie points from and defeated kev hehe. People were obviously cheering kev on more because as inn says i “always win” hence noone really wants to play me, oh cruel video gaming skills how you curse me with the lack of opponents.

After some guitar hero’ing i believe we did more lounging about, meeting up with random people, chillaxing back at the tent, and then meeting people some more, it was quite a tiring day and there really wasn’t much to watch due to the lack of good bands, it really was more about the social part of the festival where we were all together and chatting away though, and good company is usually hard to gather around since they only respond to muse gigs haha. Near the end we went off to check out Stereophonics and then found a decent spot to see Muse. That was pretty much it (the gigs will be explained on part 2 obviously).

Birthday stories and post it notes

We met up with a few musers and then went back to the campsite, halfway through we decided to take a toilet break so he headed back to the VIP area and used the nicer toilets (by this time most people were using the golden wall to relieve themselves, it’s quite a horrific event so I’ll simply skip that chapter altogether). Once settled me and kev paid the camping people a visit to celebrate Gem’s birthday. The last bus supposedly was leaving at 11:30am so we had very little time to hang around, once there we began counting down the time to Gem’s birthday, I had already given Gem my presents to her which consisted of a pink bag (because she likes pink), a fairly big cow model (because she likes cows), and a Joseph CD (because she likes theatre). I also gave everyone post it notes from that post it note project and everyone was happy to read what it said. Gem and Ste remembered to bring their post it notes to me and it was amazing seeing them, I’ll most likely update the post it note section and show you what they wrote. After pulling some party poppers and singing happy birthday to Gem (not to mention attracting some drug dealers at the same time) it was time for me and kev to depart the camping world and return to the world were beds had mattresses and showers were a mere facility and not a luxury hehe (man we did rub it in quite a bit with the hotel dwelling). I wasn’t keen on camping on the last days anyway, the last time that happened I had to sleep through toilet banging, fires, and people screaming, not to mention the ubiquitous drunk man who opens up your tent to pee inside it whilst you’re there (is it ubiquitous or is it just a mere myth that i devilishly inserted to make things interesting? alas, most likely the latter (but i’m very sure it does happen for the unfortunate ones))

Back to civilisation

It was now me and kev heading back to Wolverhampton, as kev said earlier on (Wolverhampton is shit) haha, we were misguided twice by incompetent festival staff for where the shuttle buses were and I was at a point of running to the bus stop in fear that we might miss it, strangely I still had a lot of energy left whilst kev wasn’t having any of it, he said he’d rather get a taxi than run to the bus stop hehe. Nonetheless we arrived at the bus stop and was able to board the freedom shutter bus back to civilisation. It was pretty tiring at this point, we eventually changed back to our normal shoes and sat there talking about the show and the entire day, it was a pretty nice day, nothing hectic and intense as most meetups generally are, just having one commitment (ie seeing muse at the end) was enough to make the entire day nice and relaxing. It was around 1am and we were finally at the Wolverhampton bus stop, we went to a Doner Kebab place called Doner Kebab and ordered a can of coke each, man it’s refreshing to drink some sugary water after an intense day of mud trotting and jumping up and down during Muse, all drinks are amazing when you’re thirsty enough. Once the moment was over we eventually spoke to the cab driver who was suspiciously parked right next to us in his “nonchalant” way (granted we were standing near the taxi rink) and asked him how much it was to drive us back to our separate hotels, it came out to a mere £10 so we entered the vehicle and was transported to our hotels, kevs first (grr). We agreed that if one of us wasn’t able to check in because of the time we’d taxi it to the other’s hotel and stay there. Fortunately both of us were able to check into our hotels and begin the arduous task of cleaning our wellies.

Hotel antics

I was greet by a kind lady and man at the door, they seemed very friendly and helpful, they were well aware of the festival goers so it wasn’t out of the ordinary to have people coming into their hotel all muddy and bloody, it turns out I was the last person to check in (damn toilet break for stalling time) he gave me my card key and directions to my room, I was able to catch the other staff members chillaxing in the living room, it did have that homey feel, and boy did the place smelt of “quality” teehee. Once inside my room I unpacked my bag and threw myself into the soft cuddly mattress, you suddenly realise how aching you are when you meet comfort once again, anyway, lots to do before I head to bed. I only cared about the wellies (and poncho to some extent) and used kev’s method of cleaning them which was to run them in the shower and have some scrubbing fun. The process was pretty quick but I did make a proper mess of the room. Grass and mud were all over the place which I immediately rinsed out to avoid any hotel faux pas. Once that was done I took a shower, wrote in my notebook for a bit, and began taking photos in the room, I had an urge to write a post it note to the cleaners since I was in a post it note mood so I sat at the desk and scribbled a quick message to them. Whilst all of this was happening I was texting kev back and fourth in regards to his status of cleaning his wellies and stuff, that was sorted for him but his task now was to clean up his jeans, he didn’t want to go into town (and subsequently) and Birmingham with mud all over him so he tried washing off with a the shower head. The next task was making it dry, he used the hair dryer to dry up the thing (i had a trouser press but I couldn’t be bothered with cleaning my jeans since I was going home immediately). He texted me back saying the blow dryer broke hehe, so he was stuck in wearing the jeans wet whilst sleeping *shudders*. That was pretty much it, it was a tiring day so eventually I turned off the lights and went to bed.

You can never have enough bacon.

The next morning was the best bit, I tend to wake up dead early when I’m not sleeping in my own bed or sleeping somewhere where I’m most comfortable, today I did just that, enough time to exit the room and head down for Breakfast of the buffet variety. I usually get my money’s worth at breakfast buffets. A lovely full english breakfast was exactly what I needed after an exhausting day of the yester variety. The food was pretty good for a 3 star hotel and the buffet obviously enticed me to order more than I can handle (no caps this time at least, once I was capped for ordering too much bacon :(). There were a few customers who were obviously at the festival too, intently listening to the news about the what happened at the festival last night, there was the ubiquitous review of a festival goer who sounded more like a chav being interviewed in the street than a music lover. Once breakfast was over (mmm lovely croissant) it was time to check out and head off to Wolverhampton station. With the post it note ready i left it at the most obviously place, packed my bags and vacated the quality hotel. I asked the receptionist to order me a taxi and spent three lovely british pounds for my transport to the station, the driver didn’t appreciate my constant headphone mode but I didn’t care. Once at the station I was able to say hi to kev for a wee moment and then I was off, back to the city of London. The rest of the day was spent chillaxing and making stuff.

Part two, the gigs

stuff you might also like

• The ultimate Muse Wembley Stadium Weekend (Sunday)
• The ultimate Muse Wembley Stadium Weekend (Saturday)
• Muse Meetup 23rd November 2006
• The ultimate Muse Wembley Stadium Weekend (Friday)
• New Years Eve at Stu’s

Anyway, before and after the event me and Alice had our time off together, Alice wasn’t too happy about leaving her job but had to so she could go travel. Hopefully that all pans out right. We were able to prepare loads of stuff since Alice was leaving very soon. On the duck day me, Alice and Inn met up a wee bit for some random browsing and whatnot. Alice wanted to do a makeover with Mac but that backfired when booking was required, same with Body Shop, shame because it would have been fun watching! Inn also got some food before the duck event. We then chilled out at a starbucks where we met up with Gem and Paul.

After getting a wee bit impatient we decided to just go red chilli and chill out there. We managed to get ourselves a big table that had a lazy susan in the middle. Was a good thing since there was quite a lot of people eating and spinning food around was a good idea. (it’s ALWAYS a good idea). After some bantering kev and her sister finally arrive. We began the ever so painful process of choosing food and eventually we picked a few starters and that duck (whole variety)

The duck was epic, granted Inn wasn’t as chuffed but man it was epic haha. We had a lovely soup too and the others had spring rolls and, some cake and a hot and sour soup (all for kev, though he shared). The main course was a lot nicer than I thought it would be, I ordered the hot pot, kev ordered the sizzling beef, paul ordered some chicken and spring onion dish, alice ordered some chicken dish too and inn had to be alternative by ordering some braised pork trotter (which was some slowly cooked pork so the meat is soft (but salty).

The chicken dishes were highly accepted as well as the sizzling beef. Food was slowly but surely consumed and we even cracked a bottle of champagne (well I did, hardly anyone could drink because they were all driving or didn’t want to drink too much! Rats). I got it from work and had to find a way of using it, not going to just sit on my own and guzzle it haha.

So yeah, we got some nice orange wedges to finish off (everyone ruined their oranges by not eating it the right way (bit like eating sweetcorn too)) and boom, the bill. It was a lot less than we expected which was good and I paid almost half of it since it was meant to be a treat as well as me helping to pay Alice’s portion.

So the moral of the story is, eating is cool. Me and alice took alice’s family to go eat at Red Chilli again so we were able to enjoy a double heaping of duck! They were chuffed about the food too since we ordered some epic dishes (including soft shell crab mm).

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• Week in Halifax with Alice
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• The ultimate Muse Wembley Stadium Weekend (Sunday)
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We went to some pub afterwards and had a chat with Michelle and her friends from Virgin. I managed to get a Big Issue card thingy the big issue sellers wear and michelle was up for wearing it and looking like a hobo hehe. All in all a good day for gigging and photo taking! The keyboardist was cute and tiny as ever! and the lead singer was fun with his engrish!

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I met up with everyone at Victoria, they decided to go sushi it so yeah. I said hello to everyone and tried shaking everyone’s hand. I showed off my new york hat and gave people some “Kisses” chocolate. The meal was pretty nice and then we went to get Stu’s ticket at National Express, I ended up doing it on the phone but nonetheless we got stu out of the door haha. We then went to Covent Garden and checked out some boring street performer as well as cyber candy. I got people to take the stairs since it was quite a gruelling walk!

Afterwards we went to funland, that was.. fun, we had some bumper car action and I did some DDR’ing. Afterwards we went back to Victoria to meet up with stu and have some nando’s action. I took some photos here and there and tried to abuse the 50mm lens.

After meeting up with Stu we went to find the nando’s, I used my google maps app on my phone to locate it but the problem was finding out where we were in the first place, eventually we got there and found out it was packed and it might take 20-30 minutes for a table to be ready, we went to the pub next door to chill out and scream at passers by, eventually we get our seats at Nando’s and had a lovely meal, I ordered two jugs of sangria to treat everyone. We played a few games of “I never” and abused my nando’s loyalty card to get some extra chicken. The meetup was quite fun and ended at Wetherspoons. Max kept playing with his new compact Canon camera bless. I got back home and had an epic sleep! ready for work!

stuff you might also like

• The v stands for mud: V festival 08 1/2
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• Muse Meetup 21st November 2006
• New Years Eve at Stu’s
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