Top 10 Games from E3 2007

No I wasn't there, but as usual, watched all the footage made available to me - mostly via Xbox Live Marketplace - last night. I watched the entire Microsoft conference in 9 400mb HD parts, not to mention countless stand-alone HD trailers and since I'm still feeling quite blown away the next morning I thought I'd scour Youtube for the bits that really impressed me - across both Xbox 360 and PC platforms - and stick them all into this here blog post, for easy browsing purposes:

Well, sort of...

So yeah. The day I posted that last entry, I caved in a bought a pack of 10 on the way home.

Since then I've been more or less OK with the 'no smoking suring the day' idea, but it gets to about 6 or 7 and I feel those pangs of addiction in my chest and I really need one.

And non-smoking down the pub is sadly non-existant. Bring on the winter I say, then it'll be more difficult for all of us.

Indeed, it seems as if the psychological aspect is gonna be easier to crack than the physical dependency. For example: whilst playing Computer Games, any downtime in the action or custscene exposition would be punctuated by my sparking up... something. The same with movies. I am feeling the need to do this diminishing...

Anyway... better go cos all this is making me want one AGAIN! I just need to shut it out of mind completely...

I Quit.

They say it's a good idea to keep a diary when you decide to quit smoking and so that's what I'm gonna do here. Cos I'm thinking since I haven't had one in over 2 days and counting, I might as well give it a try...

Why? Well, obviously there's that wee issue of a national smoking ban to contend with, but my main reasons are:

1. I've been feeling like shit since Xmas. Weird little aches and pains in my torso, occaisional numbness in my arms and hands. Doc said it was nothing serious - I just need to live a slightly healthier lifestyle. So I've been doing weights and eating the subsidised food in the Canteen here (cos it's a lot healthier than anything I can manage myself). The Doc said I really need to stop smoking, cos otherwise I'll be going down the same road as my father (quadruple heart bypass etc).

2. Fags are shit. They really are. And I'm not saying this as a reformed smoker in the slightest. I really could murder one. But why? It's not because I 'need' one. It's the evil Nic-o-teen telling me I need one. I actually went to a 'quit smoking' seminar at work back in March where I discovered it truly is a wholly negative habit. You want a Cigarette to satiate the fix your addiction craves. Destroy the addiction - Neutralise the craving.

3. Fags do nothing. They don't get you drunk, or stoned. I am not paying money for a drug that does nothing except relieve the fix that it creates itself.

4. That smoking ban. I can no longer smoke in pubs. I concede defeat. This is the whole reason I started smoking in the first place.

5. The Money. Nuff said. It's a total waste of cash.

6. Boredom - Aside from all this, I'm utterly sick of using the art of smoking as the grease around the wheels, the third leg to stand on and the missing link in conversation. I'm so busy at work nowadays that I'll often skip my afternoon drag. It only takes a little more willpower to cut it out completely.

So there ya go.

Apparently, the first 72 hours are the hardest. And I've done about 52 so far. The next hurdle will be getting to the 3 week mark, and then my physical addiction will be neutralised.

Anyway... I was thinking this would help and now I'm gasping for one. Touch wood I can go the rest of the day.... DOH!

Glastonbury: The Day 1 Aftermath

So there I was, minding my own business and having a pint in the VIP Bar, when a bunch of freaks turn up. I snaps away (since I'm in full on tourist mode this weekend) and that's when I realise that the dinosaur is actually Alex Turner from the Arctic Monkeys. As this blog more eloquently describes...

Greetings from Glastonbury

Ahoy there!

It's officially Day 1 now and so far I have discovered the following facts about Glastonbury.

1. It's massive. You could write a guidebook about this place. I couldn't say the same thing about any other festival I've ever been to.

2. It's a festival unto itself. When I was standing around near the Stone Circle last night I could completely understand why this thing is more about the event than the bands that comprise it.

3. It's the muddiest place in the world. ever. Slightest bit of rainfall and it turns into the bog of eternal stench.

4. Unlike other festivals, the food here is actually pretty damn good. It's not all burgers and hotdogs. You only have to go around by the Pyramid Stage and you'll find a whole 'food world' of places to eat. So far I've eaten a burger and bacon butty though, but the choice IS there... :)

5. Wigwams are cool. We went to Healing Fields last night and this family were to happy to let us bunch of geeks/journalists in. They had an ickle fire in the middle and everything. I felt like Charlie Sheen in Hot Shots 2!

6. This is the best festival I've ever been to. And I haven't even seen a band yet.

More elaboration and pics will follow, but for now that's all I have time for before I get chucked off this PC (which lives in a bus and doubles up as a useful shelter from the torrential rain) by someone with a more legitimate NME.COM reason for using it.

By the way, we interviewed 'The View' earlier, so we've modified our Glastonbury page accordingly.

Oh, and our bus is parked next to Pete Doherty's. And we have a webcam pointed straight at it!

New York - In Pictures

Phew. Just finished uploading all of my photos to google (if you click in the right spot below it should kick off from the start).



I'm in process of captioning them up, so bear with me.

JC has loads of cool ones of his own (especially of the nightlife we experienced), which I'll link to all of them once he's stuck them all online, but in the meantime, he's stuck some of his 'artier' shots up on his mySpace (You'll need to login before you can see them though).

New York - Day 7.5 (or Home Sweet Raining Home)

That's all Folks!

We spent our last day (or rather, afternoon) doing some last minute shopping round 34th Street, the deaprtment store hell that is Macys and Times Square. Couldn't get that 'Hiro' shot Stan asked us to get cos they were building on the only spot I can imagine they might have filmed it.

Got myself an NYPD T Shirt and a load of US Sweeties for work with my last remaining dollars. Got accosted by more rappers who insisted that press-ganging us into buying their hip hop was at least better than trying to sell us drugs, before trying to sell us drugs.

Once we were done shopping we used our remaining steam to high-tail it back to the hotel, away from the heat and sweat of the sidewalks...

...and then a yellow cab, airplane, tube, train & mini-cab later, I arrive back home, at approximately midday. I've skimmed over some of the highlights with Landlord/Housemate, Matt, but it's merely the tip of the iceberg until I can finish unpacking myself and getting my head around the change of location.

I literally emptied all my bags on to my bed as a means to find the motivation to sort through it all so that I might have a bed to sleep in once it's all done. And it IS pretty much all done now. Damn my organisisation skills :) I even have my photos uploading to picassa as I type. I am THAT organised. Doh.



Anyway, I'm feeling quite disgusted with myself for allowing myself to spend so much money on all of this, but there's no use crying over spilt milk now. It was absolutely worth every single penny. I just can't really allow myself anywhere near a pub for the month of June... :)

So yeah... Am uploading photos now so will add them into all my blog posts where relevant. I may also elaborate on things here and there if they come to me. After all, I've mainly done this blog for myself, so that I might remember the whole thing a bit better by, say... the time I return from my next trip.

I quite fancy Egypt actually...

New York - Day 7

This will be my last blog states-side (until I come back here again at least)



With nothing really left to see but shops and museums, we retrode our paths to the Empire State Building and up Broadway towards Times Square. We stop by at Planet Hollywood for lunch. The Stallone/Willis/Schwartznegger owned chain is part resturant/part movie museum, and amongst thye memorabilia in the New York branch is THE REAL DEATHSTAR FROM STAR WARS! Oh, and the Predator head too :)



Anyway, I have quite a delicious Lasagne which I can't quite finish and an amazing Strawberry & Banana smoothie (JC opts for a fat BBQ burger since he's been good enough to stear clear of them all week thus far). Planet Hollywood ends up taking a significant portion of the day, but we soon up and leave for the MOMA (Museum of Modern Art), which is actually JCs decision (for a change).



MOMA turns out to be quite cool. I've very recently run out of space on my camera's 256mb memory stick, but JC was happily snapping away at the various sculptures and paintings. I just have loads of different wallpapers for my phone now :( - hopefully some of them will come out OK on the PC. We wonder around the place until my legs take tremoundous amounts of force to work. Am I tired? Or is it just the sum total of all my hangovers this week?



After MOMA, we head back to the hotel down Lexington Avenue via Midtown Comics, where I manage to lose $100 in about 10 minutes. How?

A massive double compendium of the American Splendour comic
A Frank Miller 'Robocop' Graphic Novel.
The first edition of the new Battlestar Galactica comic
&
Action figures of Jay & Silent Bob.



I am my own worst enemy as far as buying pointless crap goes. Oh yeah - I saw what all the new Tranformers look like. Prime looks amazing, but they seem to have made Megatron look like some kind of alien made of crystals. Wierd. I'm sure the movie will rule anyway... It's Michael Bay after all.... um... :S



Anyway, in the evening we head back to some of the Bars we tried out earlier in the week around Alphabet City and Lower East Side. After warming up at 2 places, we head further downtown only to be sheperded into this underground bar where they have rappers freestyling around some kind built in Art Exhibition (How much Art can you have in one day?). It was OK, but we eventually wind up in a place called the Lakeside Lounge, which contains an old school photo booth that takes a strip of four different* pictures like in the olden days. We finish the night at 5am in pursuit of food. We go to a hotdog place on the corner of a road (somewhere?) and order the same as a chatty local who (suprise, suprise) remarks about our english accents.



We sit down with the chap and indulge in some idle banter as the sun begins to rise and before long find ourselves on the subject of 9/11. I wish I could remember the guys name, but anyway... he goes to give us his own account of what happened on that day and how it affected him. I didn't mean to provoke him, but I thanked him for sharing his experiences and he seemed pretty cool with it all.

And that, I believe, almost nails what it is I've enjoyed about this trip so much: The People. They've been courteous, helpful, friendly and entertaining in almost every instance. They just seem to want to get on, with us foreigners, as well as each other. It made the whole place a lot more intimidating than it could so easily have been (walking down some of those streets on the Lower East Side shit me up good and proper) and I'm sure - in time - it will be what makes me return...

*As opposed to four identical, which seems the norm in 21st century photo booths.

New York - Day 6

Damn, it's hot out here right now. I just popped outside for a cigarette and it's even hotter than it was yesterday. I so didn't expect to be chucking on the sun cream on a city break like this....

So yesterday we decided to take advantage of the passes for South Street Seaport Museum, which we got at the same time as our tickets for the Empire State Building and Statue of Liberty tours. It's down below the lower east side of Manhattan, near the Brooklyn Bridge.



Since we're in the area, we take a walk across the bridge until we reach the halfway point, which contans some tourist info and some kodak opportunities. It's really warm by now, so we finally make our way down to ground level and the seaport itself. It's a strange combo of old sailing ships surrounded by skyscrapers and the sea. There's a Shopping Mall on Pier 17 as well as a convent-garden-like square surrounded by restaurants, swanky designer stores and the like.



The Museum is small but a worthwhile visit. In particular, there's an exhibit on Irish Fighting, which contains some cool memorabilia, from the preserved right arm of bare-knuckles fighter, Dan Donnelly (he beat Bill the Butcher in a scrap), to various props used in the movie, Million Dollar Baby.



After checking out the Museum and walking around on one of the oldboats in the harbour, we grab ourselves a delicious fish supper before catching the subway back to the hotel.



In the evening we head out to Tribeca to watch a few bands at a 'Barfly-scale' venue called the 'Knitting Factory'. The bands themselves turn to be somewhat more on the lighter side of rock than we were expecting (Think Maroon 5 etc), but all four bands are of an exceptionally high quality, even if the music they're playing isn't really our bag.



Like every night we've been out since we got here, as soon as the locals here as speak, they seem very friendly and delighted to speak to us English-folk. We wind up chatting to a very friendly (and really quite pissed up) trio, but they eventually leave and we can't be arsed to keep watching the last band, so we leave the venue ourselves and head over the lower east side.

There we find a very cosy (and somewhat busy) bar which we were too intoxicated to remember by name, but it was OK. A guy told JC that "We don't really take to visitors, but you guys seems cool'. We only stay for one beer anyway, deciding to save ourselves for Friday night.

And somehow I've picked up leaflets for a burlesque night and some kind of crazy BBQ/Party going on in Brooklyn tonight...

New York - Day 5

"Spare Change for Heroin or Hand Grenades"

I couldn't believe I heard it, but those words were exactly what I heard whilst walking up First avenue after leaving Kat's Deli, which itself was like stepping into some kind of tangent universe. It was after all none other than the set of that bit in 'When Harry Met Sally' where Meg Ryan does the orgasm thing.



Yesterday was pretty hard work to be honest. A hangover is one thing, but feeling as fragile as I did in the middle of NYC is quite another. We started off the day by catching the tour-bus to Battery Park and then the ferry to Liberty Island. Yes, the statue is a tad smaller than you'd expect after the sheer size of all the Skyscrapers we'd been walking around so far, but it is still big, and a wondrous sight to behold. We got off the ferry and wandered around the island a bit, but since we hadn't paid in advance to walk around the pedestal (I don't think you can go up in the statue itself anymore) we decided to head back to Manhattan after about an hour.



Having disembarked the perilous exit ramp of the ferry, we headed towards the site of the former-world trade center, passing a large somewhat-ruined-looking sculpture (which it turns out was salvaged for the wreckage of the Twin Towers) There's not a lot to see really, it's just a building site now. But there was a fairly enlightning September 11th timeline and some really excellent photography, not to mention information and illustrations of the new World Trade Center which will supposedly be completed by 2012. It all made me feel a bit sad to be honest. I had myself a bit of a blub and everything...



We walk back to battery Park to get the Tour bus back uptown. We go through Chinatown and Little Italy AGAIN, but it's a slightly more educational experience this time thanks to our handy tour guide. Before we get off outside the UN building and walk the few blocks back to hotel, we're stuck in traffic for a while, held up by a large public demonstration promenading it's way through the streets. Apparently, it's to do with the rather appaling housing situation in NYC.



Hangovers subsiding, we eventually head out to eat at about 8pm and find ourselves at Katz's Deli. It's a weird old place and it stinks of pickles. You get a ticket on your way in, choose your food (They cut off some meat for you to try before they make your sandwich). I went for Brisket of Beef and then immediately regretted it about halfway thru. I mean, I LOVE beef, but there's something wrong about that much meat in one sandwich. Suffice to say, I couldn't finish it.



I have never felt further away from home...

New York - Day 4

Wooooaah. Too much Banana Beer for me last night. And I almost lost my passport. Doh! Thank god for the - suprisingly - friendly people of New York.



So yeah, we went on one of those open top tourist bus rides yesterday. "hop on, hop off" so they say, so we got off at the Empire State Building after catching the bus at Times Square and rode 89 floors to the top of the highest building in Manhattan. Bit of an Anti-climax actually, after the Rockefeller building, but it had to be done I suppose. It is REALLY high, but you spend so much time queuing to go up there AND to get back down as well. I can't imagine how romantic proposing to someone up here could be. It would be like, "Will you, sorry, excuse me, marry, HEY - WATCH IT! - marry me?". Fuck that.



So we're making our way out of the Empire State and some guy stops and makes us listen to some of his hip hop. It's not bad. Pretty well produced and we tell him so. We ask him about Music Venues, he re-affirms what we'd already heard about the Knitting Factory in the Tribeca area.



We get back on the bus and make our way downtown until Greenwich village, passing some 9/11 commemoration/tribute tiles on the way. We're informed by our guide that these will eventually be moved to the site of the new WTC once it's finished. It's actually quite a moving sight to behold...



At the village we disembark and continue to Tribeca on foot. It's a bit of a hike, but we eventually find the Knitting Factory. It's deserted at this time of day, but the guy manning the box office gives us a copy of 'The Village Voice' so we can see what else is on (and where) this week. We make our way back to an archetypal NYC diner that we passed on our way, and peruse our newly aqcuired copy of 'The Voice'. Turns out there's not a lot on at all, apart from some hardcore band that are actually playing the Knitting Factory on Thursday night - so I'll let you know how that goes later in the week.



We make our way back uptown, through Chinatown and Little Italy (making a note to revisit this area for food at some point - some of the Italian cuisine we saw people munching on looked delicious - and it's quite reasonable too price-wise). Anyway, we head up to Allen St & Delancey, cos the handy bus route map suggests there's a pick up spot there. After two busses drive past we figure the 'Hop on/off' slogan on the map is a tad misleading, so we walk up first avenue to 34th and cross over to the hotel.



After freshening up we head out to Alphabet City, to the club we were recommended on Sunday night, HIFI. It turns out to be pretty cool. We try some different beers, the jukebox is some kind of Internet-aware, Mac driven monster, packed with loads of Indie/Rock music. It played some 'Quicksand', a band I am destined to fall in love with, but somehow keep avoiding. I may try and find some of their stuff while we're here...

After about 4 pints we go to Manitovas, a bar owned by a member of punk band whose name escapes me right now, suffice to say they probably weren't that big in the UK, but the place is decorated with loads of cool pictures of Bowie and The Ramones etc. Nice place, but a bit quiet, so we head over the road to another place I can't remember the name of, but they serve this 'Banana Beer' and... well, it's all a bit foggy after that, but I remember having some long chats with some of the regulars. And I have all these contact details in my pocket now.

Oh yeah, and I'm still reeling after almost losing my passport. That could have so easily been a total disaster. Just as well we had no intention of leaving at a reasonable time. As I was saying to JC earlier, "Just because the bars are open 'til 4am doesn't mean we have to stay there 'til 4am". Doh. My head hurts.

New York - Day 3

Did anyone see the finale of Heroes last night? We did. And rest assured, the bomb didn't go off in Manhattan!

Back to reality though...



Yesterday we had ourselves a bit of a trek uptown. We crossed onto 42nd street after walking several blocks up 3rd Avenue. Went in Grand Central Station, wandered around a bit, got blown away by the architecture and sheer loveliness of it all, then joined the crowds outside again and walked up past New York Public Library until we got to the Rockefeller Center.



"Top of the Rock" they call it, when you go up to the 67th floor of the main NBC building. You go up in a lift with a transparent ceiling, so you can see the inner working of the lift structure as you ascend. And then you get onto the observation deck and the most incredible views of Manhatten ever. Apparently... Seriously though, you can see everything...

Uptown:



Downtown:



After that, we carried on walking north until we got to the south-east corner of Central Park. Here we checked out the Apple Shop, which turns out to be full of laptops all connected to the Internet to use as you see fit. If the Hotel was located nearer I'd just go there instead of paying through the nose for access here lol. I could probably even upload my photos!



Anyway, after almost getting lost in Central Park (There was totally a Hobbit moment where we went round in a circle) we decided to retrace our steps and head back towards the hotel. We cross on to Lexington this time (why not) and take pit-stop at TGI Fridays, where JC has considerable difficulty in finishing this massive Pasta Dish AND a Side-Salad.



After food, we make our way back to 34th street and the hotel, just in time to catch the series finale of Heroes on NBC4. I can hardly keep my eyes open. By the time the show finishes I'm well happy to call it an early night. This walking stuff is hard work...



Today?

We're gonna get our tickets for the Downtown Bus loop and go up inside the Empire State Building. And if we have time, maybe find out what this 'Knitting Factory' music venue is all about...

Until the morning...

Bobi out.

New York - Day 2

Ouch. My head hurts.

Last night was an evening of many beers, barmaids dancing on the bar and beating New Yorkers at Pool... but more on that later...

Since we're spending quite a while here, we figured that it would be possible to check out some places a bit further afield than Manhattan. Top of my list was the coastal fairground attraction that is Coney Island, which - since we're slightly out of season right now - is only really open on weekends. So, it being a Sunday an' all, we decided we'd take the subway over to Brooklyn and see what all the fuss was about.



We head straight for Astroland, home of the infamous 'Wonder Wheel' and the 'Cyclone' Rollercoaster. We arrive at about midday and the place is like a ghost town. We make our way through the low-rise alleyway-like throughfares (It really is SOOOO like that movie, The Warriors, it's surreal!). We go straight up to the wheel (I am in movie heaven by now!) but I'm thinking that I really need a pee and there's no restrooms in sight, so we head to the nearby Aquarium in the hope there might be somewhere to go there...



The Aquarium is pretty cool once the bodily extresions are taken care of. We check out some fish, and then some more.... We watch a Sealion 'Training' session - they stand on their flippers and clap on queue etc. Very funny. We watch some Sharks and Turtles (all in the same tank) being fed. Damn, don't sharks look evil!



After that we go have a beer at a bar/cafe type thing that's on the street. JC doesn't wanna go on the Cyclone, purely on account of it looking, sounding and actually being about 80 years old (It says so on the tshirts ffs!). We go on the wheel though. Having decided on the option of going on the 'swinging' carriages (as opposed to non-swinging), we're quite suprised when swinging turns out to be more than the simple 'rocking' action of similar rides we've been on before...



We chatted to a New Yorker who turns out to be an NYPD officer. She says we should probably leave the area before 7pm cos it gets a little rough and our accents are a dead giveaway. So we get back on the subway and head back to Manhattan. We go back to the hotel via the 'Deli' next door and load up on snacks and breakfast materials (i.e. Apple Jacks cereal and Pop Tarts).



And so at about 7pm we freshen up and head downtown to the Meatpacking District. After a bit of a navigational fumble we eventually find the Steakhouse we were recommended by our travel guidebook. It's $40 for a steak, so opt for the place next door which is half the price, but the food is still amazing. After collecting the cheque we ask the waiter where we should go next. He recommends a place called 'PM' and we head off in the direction he points out but can't find it.



And so we wander around 13th and 14th street a bit until we find 'Hoggs and Heifers' which looks from the outside to be some kind of Biker Bar. Sure enough, when we get there the barmaids are dancing on the bar and screaming at the patrons through a megaphone. We play some Pool and end up playing 'for the table' with a bunch of New Yorkers who tell us they're on a Bachelor Party for one of their number. JC gets the number of one of the girls, Susan, who works at the Natural History Museum. She offered to give us a guided 'behind the scenes' tour later this week. Me? I got the number of a girl who JC advised me was 'a bit of a slag'.

Anyway, gotta go. My time is nearly up. Heading towards Grand Central Station in a bit...

New York - Day 1

Greetings from the US of A.

Getting here was hellish to say the least. Despite the numerous wise-cracks from friends about the fact we were travelling with Air India (I will point out now that all flights available via lastminute.com are with the same airline), nothing could have prepared us for what was in store.

We load on to the plane and are greeting by an over-powering aroma of curry, leg room is non-existent, they're playing some old Bollywood video on a single projector display at the top of the cabin. This is followed by some obscure 80s movies that have probably only just been translated into a dialect understandable by the majority of the crew. Indeed, myself and JC feel somewhat in the minority.

Now I'm no racist, but it's with a reasonable sense of relief that myself and JC emerge from the 2 hour queue of hell that is US immigration and finally get ourselves into a (yellow!) cab set for 150 east 34th street - the location of our residence for the next 7 days, the Affinia Dumont.

And then it all gets really cool.

We head into the lobby, where the very polite receptionist assigns us a room on the 36th(!) floor of the place (That's higher up than the top floor in my old office!!!). We get to the room - it's spotless. We have a kitchen area, a great shower setup, a desk and a TV with loads of channels (HBO FTW!). It's well swanky to say the least and we have superb views of the east coast of Manhattan and downtown.

Check it out:

The Hotel (outside):



..and the rest of it(!):



..and THAT view:



So without further a do, we freshen up and hit the town. We're both hungry, but it's 10pm by now, so we opt for the fast option of roaming around down Park avenue for a bit trying to get our bearings. We find a place with a big 'Pizza' sign outside and go in and order these insanely sized slabs of the good stuff (Mine has chicken nuggets and spaghetti on it, JC's looks like a cross between Pizza as we know it and Spaghetti Bolognaise!!!).

After that we take a wander west and find ourselves on Broadway. I then remember that travelling a few blocks north on broadway takes you to Times Square. So we bod off there. It's pretty mindblowing. Totally felt like Hiro out of Heroes when I got there (NBC have a big Heroes centrepiece btw!) also, the amount of light the signs generate make it feel like the middle of the day almost!

Awestruck, we do our best to find a worthy drinking establishment and finally end up in a place called 'Tonic' which plays dodgy RnB, has multiple TVs showing different sports and is - unsurprisingly - full of what can only be described as the 'Jock Archetype'. The lager here tastes a bit 'funny' still, we get no hassle...

By the time it gets to midnight (me and JC have been up almost 24 hours) we're ready to drop. We make or zig zaggy way back to east 34th street and realise just how far we seem to have strayed on our initial exploration.

Anyway... gotta go. Only paid for 20 mins on this Internet terminal... Will be back tomorrow morning... maybe!

NYC FTW!!!!

More wallet rape...

Following on from Friday night's unintentional purse masochism, after last night I don't think I'll be going out again. Ever.

Popped into town yesterday afternoon to get some more fuel for the PSP (to avoid falling asleep on future train journeys) and I'm thinking - despite promising myself that the rest of the weekend would be safely spent in my bedroom - that the sun is out, it's a really nice day, maybe I should take advantage of the better side of this country's shaky climate with a nice cool beer outside a pub somewhere. Just the one mind...

I call up JC, who I know is already in Town, but he's not having any of it after the 'silly hat party' he went to the night previous. So I call up Matt, who drags himself out of his instance* to come and meet me.

We have a couple of pints down the Bay Horse (my long term local) and are eventually joined by Rob (my former housemate) and Lucy (his girlfriend - who moved in when I upgraded to the room at Matt's place). 2 more beers and Rob is getting hungry, so we move on to the Thai restaurant across the road.

By now of course, the damage is done. Myself and Matt (And Jens, who appears at some point during the course of our Meal) go off to O Connors for more beer and then two more clubs before we finally run out of money and go back home.

Watched Tenacious D when I got home, and all I can remember about that was that it wasn't very good. At all. I feel like my wallet has been sexually violated. That's my lot. Until New York of course (gulp!).

*An instanced Zone - in the drug that is World of Warcraft.

When a night out isn't a night out...

...when it costs you sodding £100 to get home. That's when...

It started off well enough, with the director of our company inviting some of us frontline guys to a pub in Farringdon to join him in entertaining a recruitment agency (on their budget). Didn't end up spending a penny until I was in the taxi (but enough of that until later)...

I'm almost thinking that Karma is dealing me a raw one just to make up for the AMAZING week I've had so far. Went to a press screening of Spiderman 3 on Wednesday, which by all rights I wouldn't have been at had I not screamed like a baby to get myself into it. It was AMAZING though... it was at the big Odeon in Leicester Square and everything. Exactly how it would have been if I'd had to wait until the film was out etc. Rah!

Anyway, the aforementioned travel fine came about due to my passing out on the train shortly after leaving Liverpool Street this evening. Was a bit tipsy I'll admit, but the power of my lovely Playstation Portable is usually enough to sustain me. Didn't have it on me today cos I'd finished all my games. Very stupid of me, cos even if I just use it as an Ipod it keeps me ticking over long enough to remain concious until my stop. I didn't even think to use my old trick of annoying similarly innebriated passengers with non-stop chatter as a means of staying awake.

...and so I found myself waking up in Dis, which is apparently near Norwich. I felt obliged to tip the Cabbie a tenner after he drove me 60 miles back to where I should have got off the train. So that's my lot for the weekend I think...

New York, New York

This is what my desktop looks like at the mo:

I can't really afford it, but I'm not gonna let that stand in the way of me realising my highest priority post uni/new job ambition - to travel the four corners of planet earth. What WAS stopping me however, was the lack of a similarly minded cohort to accompany me. Enter housemate, JC, who was of a similar disposition, albeit without the same reliance on his VISA card (gulp!).

First stop: The Big Apple. Why? Well, why the hell not? The place is so ingrained in my subconcious due to countless movies, TV shows, miscellaneous media culture and THAT DAY in September 2001, that I just have to go and see it for myself. In many ways, it might as well be the capital of the planet.

So we booked our tickets on lastminute.com on Wednesday. Just under £900 each got us flights, insurance and 7 nights at a 3 star hotel on 34th Street (just down the road from the Empire State Building). You might say - considering that I'm spending my saturday night starting this blog instead of 'having it' on the town as usual - that I'm in full-on excited mode now.

A work collegue got me an up-to-date guidebook from an inter-departmental sale yesterday which I've been furiously scanning most of the day. Currently on the list of things/places I want to do/go are:

• Empire State Building


• Statue of Liberty


• Ground Zero


• Central Park


• Times Square


• Coney Island (maybe via ferry/water taxi?) - Iconic location used in The Warriors, Angel Heart and countless other movies. Check out some more of Brooklyn while we're at it?


• The Flatiron Building (Daily Bugle in Spiderman)


• Locations from Ghostbusters (This is JC's only request so far)


• The Rockefeller Building


• Grand Central Station


• Chinatown


• Little Italy

...which I know is an ambitious amount of stuff to fit into one week, but with some cunning navigation we might just do it. Need to figure out where stuff is geographically and allocate a day to each area... or something.

That's all for now until I need to let out some more excitement. Obviously, all the pictures will be going up here via flickr and I may even do some blogging while I'm out there if we have any downtime at all.

As the song goes: "If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere..." :)