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Yeah, I texted Jason asking him whether he was about yesterday but he wasnt, so to make up we arranged a quick day out on Saturday. Twas a nice and manly date haha. Met up at Wimbledon and literally went to Waterloo via super trains (not tube). Had a talk about DSLR cameras, seems like Jason is interested in getting into photography as he understands that compact cameras are quite limited at awkward conditions, mainly indoors etc. I told him about the whole divide of Nikon and Canon and how he had to make the right choice first time round.
We decided to go watch Magicians (rather than 28 Weeks Later, I’ve sort of gone off that due to lack of original talent hehe). But yeah, we decided to piss about in Funland before the film, we booked our tickets and all (I was still Student oh yeah) Jason bought the tickets (and I bought the food later on). We felt like adults haha. We then went to the arcades and played Point Blank, was an awesome game, Jason only discovered it today, he enjoyed it quite a bit 
and yeah at 50p a game you cant really go wrong.
After that we went to watch Magicians, shockingly we were the only ones there! Well later on another couple turned up, was slightly homo erotic one might say haha. But yeah, the movie was really good. Not as gross as Peep Show but still nonetheless good. Not really a Shaun of the Dead / Hot Fuzz though, I dont think Magicians was that impressive as a movie when you compare it to the likes of Shaun of the Dead etc. Was fun seeing loads of Peep Show casts in the movie.
Afterwards we went to Yo Sushi for some Sushi, Jason was missing Japanese food from Japan so I thought it was the best place to go. We had chicken yakisoba straight away and then ate all sorts of japanese stuff, including Prawn Tempura! mmm, that was godly haha. We also had some fried chicken stuff, it was all nice and yummy. We had a very minimal amount of Sushi, just one prawn/tuna/salmon Nigri. We talked a lot about Japanese culture and it was pretty interesting. No singing sushi chef though 
Thats the only reason you spend £2 on 2 nigris instead of £1 at Wasabi’s. Ah well, the tempura was awesome enough to cover that.
Afterwards we went to loads of random shops in the rain haha, Jason told me to have a look a Abercrombie and Fitch, he explained how Rachel told him to go there and it was filled with women in Bikini’s and thumping techno music. OH HOW WAS HE WRONG! First thing we got was a topless man and thumping music. The paintings are homoerotic and everything else followed the same theme, immediately we left haha.
We also went to the Apple centre, I played some Logic Express, wasn’t too impressed by it to be honest, Xpand and Pro tools did the same job and all. But yeah, afterwards we went back to Wimbledon where we had a nice Frappe Latte and some hardcore DS battling (Elite Beat Agents). Jason met up with Rachel and yeah, she was too tired so they left and I went back home. Quite a nice day, I enjoyed the sushi in particular 
No photos sorry.
Right, after the Art Exhibition came a gig at Stockwell, that’s right, twas Murder in Monochrome. Michelle was going to the gig anyway so it was nice to know I had company hehe, I asked for guestlists and got an immediate reply from Kris saying its ok. Michelle said to meet up at 9:30pm so yeah I had quite alot of hours spare to spend. I just had a long lounge at Soundcontrol making tunes and all, afterwards I had a nice sushi meal at Wasabi
Afterwards I went to Stockwell to meet up with Michelle and co, they were quite late, I had nothing to do so I quickly took random photos of the tube, one in particular was this shot
Arty? Haha, anyway, Michelle and the gang finally arrived and we went to the venue, it was a pub :O haha. Did sound like one to be honest haha. Michelle brought along Caff as well as her friend Shel and Bucjo (from the museboard). Pleasant girls, Shel in particular said how Michelle mentioned me a lot and said I was a cool guy *nods*, that I am Michelle, that I am haha. We missed a few tracks but still managed to catch them at it, was nice. The band after that (Yunioshi) was really good too so I took some photos of them too :D, typically we’d leave after the gig but I stayed a bit longer with the band and had a chat with Kris and Michelle, was a nice evening, got to know them a bit better and all. I left soon after due to last trains etc.
But yeah, some photos.. during the gig I thought my photos werent sharp enough so I started tweaking the shutter speed at like 1/250, was a silly idea, turns out I had alot of light going on and it was sharp. Damn funny eyes haha
Oh and a disco ball came out of nowhere, was random!
Here’s the photos for Yunioshi, they’re really cute hehe
The portal was open, other souls were entering the portal and it was nearly about to close, I was trapped between two worlds, what should I do? My mind was a complete blank, I had lost all sense of self and had no idea what to do, the wind was almost tearing my clothes away, my hair stood on end from the ravishing winds, I had to decide before it was too late.
Suddenly the wizard emerged from the other end, the Wizard shouted at me “don’t do it, if you take one more step you’ll become a northerner and will never be able to return down south! Dont risk all you have! Come back!”. It was clear what my paths were, to stay down south and never experience up north ever again, or to take the brave step and become forever a northerner. My heart was racing, blood boiled under my veins, I became ever so sweaty as I took the first step that would change the rest of my life. I was… a northerner again!
Hahah, sorry about, haven’t done some random writing in ages. But yeah, I will be heading back to Leeds on June the 1st and returning on June the third. It has been decided, I have my train tickets and everything, no turning back and all. (Probably why I wrote the above haha). So yeah, I shall be partying it up north with Alice, Inn and Gem. Will be a fun weekend! Me, Alice and Inn always wanted to have a photography day where we’d just hang out and take loads of photos, a bit like a flickr meetup but with friends you knew pretty well. We’ll be dining at a nando’s as well as a sushi restaurant with a chef that will sing boyband pop songs whilst he prepares our sushi. Everything sounds good, a perfect way of celebrating my end of uni!
The week after that I’ll be having a proper propane and propane accessories BBQ too. So its definitely looking bright. Its definitely a weird feeling knowing I’ll be back at Leeds, I’ve been there over 104 times (back and fourth every weekend) so yeah it brings back memories. Thank god I’m not taking the megabus though, that would well and truely be the death of me if I had to ride that motherf**ker again haha (pardon my french). I’m sure alot of things have changed since I last went there so it will definitely be interesting revisiting the place and all. I might grace everyone with some DDR’ing and all too hehe.
So yeah, it will be fun indeed.
Today Mr Postman managed to redeliver a parcel I was suppose to get two days ago. It was addressed to “Bob bles” haha, the postman was proper confused but nonetheless left the “Sorry, you were out :(*” card at my door. *= the smiley added was for a more dramatic effect and does not represent the persona and ethos of Royal Mail and it’s other associates
Anyway, today it finally got redelivered! And lo and behold
Lucky charms! From Kiernan! (muser from america innit). She’s renowned amongst the muser community to being ultra nice and sending people snacks and treats to people. Stuff that you can only find in America. Inn had packets of peanut butter m&ms as well as cookies sent to her and other musers such as Blee has had the same treatment With me its lucky charms! I kept going on and on about how much I like them and how extortionate they are to buy over here (its all imported like). So yeah, Kiernan goes and buys some for me and sends it all the way from America to my door The post and packaging fee’s are crazy! $17.80 to send $2.99 worth of Lucky Charms to my door!
I’m definitely super grateful for getting this Will definitely buy her something fun when she comes down to London, maybe a big hat from Richard Branson (friends/kev style). So yeah. Enjoy the pic of me munching down my new present haha.
I also made smiley faces
Slightly sinister as some might say but meh, I’ll try making other sorts of things from them in the future haha. Today I is the happy
Today I managed to catch up with Jason and Rachel, it was sort of a semi celebration for me handing in that ungodly report. We’d celebrate it typical Nando’s style (could have done Gourmet Burger Kitchen but we did a coin toss for that last time and went there). Prior to that I had half a crispy duck to eat for myself for lunch so I was already feeling a bit full so I decided to opt for half a chicken too (half a duck and chicken, what do we get? goose haha).
Anyway, main reason to meet up with Jason and Rachel was the fact that they have come back from Japan. Loads of stories to tell and all :). After the food ordering and slight use of homo erotica with me and Jason (we like teasing Rachel that Jason and I are a couple haha but its pretty fun), we got straight down to business and talked about stuff them two did in Japan.
Seems like they had loads of fun in Japan, quite a hectic one for them too since they were moving around hotels almost every day. They even stayed in the hotel used in Lost in Translation (I asked Rachel if she did the whole “Lip my stockings” thing with Jason haha). They went to all sorts of places including… STUDIO GHIBLI! I was gutted that they had went there! Though thankfully they had bought me some presents in the gift shop :D.
Jason and Rachel got me a DS Lite stylus (pink) which they got from those vending machines, as well as a Porco Rosso badge and Keyring I loved them (not too keen on Porco Rosso but nonetheless, its still awesome that its from Studio Ghibli so I’m no doubt going to treasure it)
They also went to a naked spa haha, Jason was talking to some random Japanese businessman type guy there, apparently the guy mentioned about how Japanese guy’s things…werent too big haha. How lovely. The whole journey seems like super fun, they were going to save up for another time to go to Japan AGAIN. I said I’m definitely going to come along that time. I want to see studio Ghibli
They bought alot of stuff from Japan, including DS games (which were disturbingly cheap), Jason had got himself a DS Lite after his trip to Japan to play his games so now we can have crazy battles, I advised him to get an M3 Simply so we can have proper battles on whatever games we had and all :D.
I tried some of the green olives on Rachel’s little bowl of Olives, Alice kept telling me to give them a go so I thought I’d have a taste at it, not bad I must say Going to buy some soon after.
After food and crazy sangria we were sort of told we had to leave since we had no food on our table and yeah, they were quite busy *shakes head*. We then walked around blockbusters and talked about random films, including Studio Ghibli ones. Jason and Rachel kept rubbing it in that they saw a Ghibli Museum exclusive short film when they were in Japan ;(. Was a fun night, afterwards I took a few photos of them and we said our goodbyes, quite a nice day and all
Today I was inspired… by what or who I hear you ask. By 6 double chocolate chip muffins! Was randomly taking photos and stuff when I decided to take photos of muffins, and then this idea came into my head
Then the next thing you know, uka made cookies for everyone :p
and then inn made some
and then alice made some!!
Twas fun, I only ate uka’s muffin when I took the photo because he added notes on my photo with the words “licks” *grr* So yeah :p Fun day
… Now i’m hungry
Today was a crazy day for gigging. Was guestlisted for Pink Grease at the Buffalo bar, one of the main reasons for going was to take photos of one of the instruments they used, it looked disturbing. Not to mention they sound pretty cool to see them and all. So yeah, I initially wanted to head to the venue and all but I strangely left the house a bit too early for my likings and decided to just lounge around central London and being a bit of a tourist.
Lounging out in London is fun. I’ve only realised that most of my childhood was spent NOT doing anything fun in London. I’m definitely taking things for granted in London and all. Its only been more apparent after the IBM placement year. Better make the most of my time spent in London and go to places that a tourist would go haha. I paid a visit to Haymarket just to take photos of Her Majesty Theatre. I really want to go see Phantom of the Opera again. Alice said she was really keen in going too so it would definitely be awesome if something was arranged after uni and all for us and inn to go check them out. Inn wants to go somewhere thats not a musical first but frankly you can’t get anything better theatre wise with Phantom. So yeah, fingers crossed that they do some cool promotion and all so we get to go
Anyway, lets fastfoward a bit to the gig, right before the gig I managed to get myself a subway to eat. I had a chat with the guy serving me and asking whether he gets bored eating subway sandwiches, turns out he just brings his own food because he was a veggie and couldnt stand eating the ONE veggie sub that they have to offer hehe. I can understand why too (thats why meat is the way to go haha).
There were 4 bands up tonight, Brontosaurus Chorus, Gggrits (Yup, 3 g’s), Screaming Tea Party and Pink Grease. I’ve only seen Brontosaurus Chorus play once before, the rest are new to me. Was most surprised at how impressive these bands were when I heard them tonight.
Right lets get right into the photography haha.
Brontosaurus Chorus
Started pimping out the prime lens like last time, the problem was that the band was pretty big so I couldnt do a wide shot with everyone in it :(. Nonetheless I did take some cool shots of them
Gggrits
Bless them, they were awesome haha. The singer really knew how to work it with the camera. Quite alot of times she was posing and stuff in front of me whilst I took photos of her. I didnt even get to use my “make love to the camera baby” line :(. Some really good shots here. One thing I found funny was that they had a macbook out. I was thinking “hmm can macbooks run protools or logic already!?!?” only to discover that they were just using itunes to play the backing tracks hehe. The music was very dancey, I did my fair bit of dancing to compensate my lack of moving during gigs.
Screaming Tea Party
I asked Michelle what kind of band they were and she said “theres one italian drummer, and two japanese guys, they’re crazy” or something like that haha. Sounds like a crazy mash up. And yup, they were crazy. The guitarist wore a gasmask on stage and went nuts on effects (in particular the whammy and chorus/flanger). The music was really upbeat and exciting.
Pink Grease
The main act. Was here mainliy to take photos of the “machine”. Some crazy synth that one of the band member used. He uses two toothbrushes to play the thing by tapping some strings at the top of the mammoth. It was pretty exciting, they had a saxamophonist too just to really class things up. I always love it when bands have peculiar instruments at the gig, but yeah, the mammoth was definitely something haha.
The band was great, very charismatic. Though I felt very sorry for the singer, because there was some crazy chick in a blue dress who kept pulling his braces. He wasn’t happy about it. She was very VERY invasive. Totally crossed the line between a normal gigger and a loon. One part of the gig, the singer wrapped the mic cable around his neck for a laugh (rock and roll like :D) and she actually thought it would be clever for her to tug the damn cable. I think everyone during the gig wanted to give her a cunt punch haha. One part of the gig the singer just erupted and just pushed her off the stage (she was trying to get on stage and push the singer about) and I could hear him going “F**k off bitch!” really viciously. I guess singers have a limit to how much harassment you can get from crazy girls haha.
Apart from her, everything was cool. I had to use flash quite a bit for this gig but it definitely worked well with this venue. The guy who played “THE MACHINE” kept getting blinded by other photographers (and me) using their flash haha. During the encore he just wore some sunglasses to avoid getting blinded by us haha bless him.
So yeah, top notch gig, its good to visit some small bands you’ve never heard of, things are far more intimate and all.
Today I was invited by the Kris (the bassist of Murder in Monochrome) to go to their gig and take photos. It was at the metro club again but this time they were headlining. I managed to meetup with Michelle before the gig and have a quick bite beforehand. I just randomly went to Wasabi and got myself a Chicken Yakisoba and a prawn/salmon sushi to eat outside. Michelle was a bit late but it was cool (i’m always late anyway haha so it balances out). I urged Michelle to have a quick bite and she ended up getting a fried rice and tofu yakisoba. It looked pretty nice and she ate most of it this time hehe.
We had a quick look around Virgin Megastore since the bands werent starting for a long time. Michelle made me listen to Pink Grease at the listening poles whilst she was texting people. After a bit of badgering around we eventually headed off to the venue. It was fun because I could walk into the venue with my DSLR camera It seems like Metro Club allows professional photography so its all good.
Anyhow, the support bands were boring, we were pretty bored all the way through haha. The second band went all Godspeed You! Black Emperor on us and did some insanely boring instrumental tracks. Two twats at the venue constantly screamed throughout the gig. Michelle was really annoyed at them (so was I but i ONLY just noticed haha) and was ready to smash a glass ash tray into their thin and soft cranium.
Anyhow, there were two other photographers lounging about during the gig. They both had Nikon cameras. One of them kept changing their lens right in front of me, he puts his camera right on the table where I was sitting so I can have a look at it whilst he puts his other lens on. It was pretty sad haha. Apparently they were band photographers and gave out their business cards to the bands to see if they’re interested in purchasing their shots. I’m still in the process and providing free photographs since I’m only getting into this so yeah.
Anyway, Murder in Monochrome comes in and again, its ready to shoot. READY SET SHOOT! Haha
Heres a few photos which I took:
The performance was much better than the previous ones, there were some new songs and things got a bit rockier since Tom used his guitar more now. Definitely enjoyed the gig and all. The photos were amazing too. I really enjoyed using my 50mm f1.8 lens. It was nice and fast, before using it I gave the kit lens a quick go since I wanted to take some wide shots but I had to sacrifice quite alot of stuff in order to take a decent shot, I had to use flash on some occasions, raise the iso to 800 and risk blurry shots with very slow shutter speeds (around the 1/10-1/30 region). As soon as I attached my 50mm lens and took some close up shots, things dramatically changed, the photos were really light and I was able to capture alot more then the previous lens. I got a bit nervous and used some crazy settings (like 1/100 shutter speed when i can easily manage 1/50 and 1/60). But yeah. Really happy and proud of my new lens, top notch.
After the gig I had a quick word with Kris but didnt get round to talking to the other band members, ah well. They were pleased with my shots this time since I’ve really put more composition and style with the photos this time. Hopefully this continues with the other gigs I goto. Including some Michelle have already invited me to goto and all.
