fist fights versus fences in your backyard

In an ever increasingly zealous project by my company to destroy all sleep and liver functionality I may possess, my dev team had an away day in the Hospital Club, much to my delight. Not only did we get a surprisingly awesome meeting with out directors, but they paid for our drinks the rest of the night, which resulted in everyone getting rather drunk. It was probably the beer that did it. Unfortunately, I missed the last tube home, after watching my team lead attempt to sprint from Holborn to Waterloo in 15 minutes to get the last train. Luckily, I bought a kebab from the shop next to Burger King on Kingsway, which at the time may have tasted good, halfway through I decided it belonged in the bin more than in my stomach.

Then I had to survive the 25 journey to Stratford with no phone battery, and a swinging brain stem. Not great. That’ll learn me.

Probably.

Bet every dime, I'm a loose time

To avoid the practical complexities of being sensible, Rex and I met up in the Roadhouse after work to make sure their cocktail happy hour still worked. Needless to say it certainly did, even when DJ appeared from no where (although he did initially find himself in the PorterHouse). As we were very sensible and responsible we only ended up having 4 or so cocktails each, and then chose a healthy alternative to a home-cooked meal.

We had KFC.

I need a saviour…

Rather than fight any sort of stereotype I may have developed around alcohol, it seemed clever to continue my run of drunken nights by meeting up with the Katies and their friend Chris, in the loveliest of London locations – Angel. Mainly as a celebration of Sympo’s good news on the job front, we bust out some drinking action at the Keston Lodge, which claimed to offer free hugs, but none were forthcoming from the staff. Though I, quite Britishly, didn’t actually specifically ask for any. The others had obviously had a bit of a head start, though I restrained any crazy drinking shenanigans and we jovially chatted over some beer. As none of them had work for the next week or so, they decided on a pretty excellently spontaneous plan to go camping for 2 nights, the next day, going as far as drunkenly reserving tent space and calling up young Alex to try and organise a meet up. He sounded more ill than alive, but handled a bunch of drunkos calling him quite well.

After a large dollop of indecisiveness we smoothly glided into a nearby Thai restaurant, where I had an excellent Phad Thai, as well as a number of Singhas before sliding back to the Keston Lodge again, where we played some game that I did surprisingly well at. No idea what it was called, involved cards, and trying to get 4 of a kind and … maybe have been called Pig. Blam.

Then I was vastly too lazy to go home so crashed round Katie’s awesome flat, which did unfortunately mean I had to go to work the next day in the same clothes I wore today. But that’s how we all roll.

Summer Series: Southenders

Rising in a late fashion, we decided to take the beautifully scenic walk to West Ham station, where dreams are made and stars are forged in the kiln's of yester year. While we stepped over drug fuelled stab victims. Hopped on the wondrously air-conditioned C2C train towards Southend, that due to Rex's unfortunate body heat system, nearly put him into cyro-status, but prevented my over-working internal heater from boiling my soul.

On arrival in the sea side resort of SouthEnd, we discovered our intrepid companions had succeeded in making in approximately 10 metres from the train station before falling into the nearest wetherspoons. Obviously with no objections from me. Had a cheeky little half pint before making our way down the front, where we dillied and we dallied for a bit, before busting out some series fish and chip action. Though no one actually got any fish, it was a bit scorchio, but I got cheesy chips, which had around 1kg of cheese on it, absolute perfection. Finished them off while chillaxing on the beach and play "spot the topless guy without a tattoo", where everyone's a loser.

Next it was time for some Adventure Golf, which is like mini/crazy golf, but a bit more extreme, and better production values. For instance, there were crashed planes, abandoned jeeps (not stratford style), and caves etc, all in either an Aztec or Incan theme. We split into small groups and I performed pretty shoddily, with Sean kinda destroying me, luckily Snazzy being also has confused as me. By this time, I think everyone was starting to develop a mild heat stroke from the unrepentant ball of flames and awesome in the sky. To solve this we stocked up on ice creams, and I ate a Mr Wippy style 99 which was nearly the size of my head. We nearly made it down the pier before realising we had to pay to just walk down it, AND it was a mile long, without much on it.

Onward to Adventure Island, the sprawling theme park, with Pirate Ship, on the sea front. Pretty expensive, but we just wandered around, avoiding the AdventureLand style scam games. Kin and Pete did some extreme rock climbing which we filmed and was timed, though spent a decent portion of it falling gracefully. Especially Pete. Needless to say, we needed some form of drink, so we walked back towards the station and fell into the Varsity. Shing and I shared a FishBowl, which avid readers would instantly identify as a bad idea if one wanted to avoid any heavy gravitational events occurring to Shing. Soon people were talking of heading back, and as Rex and I had to wake up bright and breezie in the morrow, we decided to head back home, where I probably did something of amazing laziness. Good day!

Last night a DJ saved my life

Classically following the same mistake as many a school night, we decided it would be clever to go out drinking on a Thursday, though for a good cause, DJ and Matt's 5 month Anniversary. Sliding out of work on time, Rex and I made an executive decision to go the Sussex arms for a nice cold beer, or at least I did. Soon Anthony, DJ and Phil turned up, and we all ended up nicely tipsy in the sun watching all the crazy kids walk by. Definitely one of the nicest junctions to watch the world go by on in London.

We then bombed along to Freedom, where we met up with Matt's and his friends, and got Shing to find us by solely using Latitude, which is pretty dope. Nothing too crazy happened, we merrily drank, managed to get a Tuna Baguette from a tiny corner food dispensary, and continue. Rex departed around 11, with Shing and I leaving about 30 minutes later but skilling across to China Town. Nothing beats mixed meat noodles at midnight. Except not doing that on school night because I felt like a blimp the next morning.

It's all business right now.

Battling through Bracknall

Waking up at some ludicrous time in the morning, especially for a Sunday, Rex and I bumbled to the station to fight our way to Waterloo, which took far less time than anticipated, even with the jubilee b0rked once more. So we picked up some sneaky lunch from the food merchants at the station, specifically a cheese and ham panini for the Tommeister. We then lept on our chosen train and were whisked off to sunny Guildford where Adam picked us up in my sexy sexy car, which isn't my car any more :( but doesn't cost me money any more :D, and we were transported to the wonders of Bracknall.

There we found Colin playing with is Bike and soon Dan, Tracey and Laura materialised, so us lads got our bike hire on. Then followed 2 hours of extremely, hilarious and wikked off-roading around the Bracknall forest. Most of the time was spent with either Dan or I (who ever was behind the other) cracking up until we couldn't move anymore from sheer laughter paralysis. Dan fell off twice, once hilariously while we were basically just cycling through vegetation, and holly bushes, then suddenly realise there was a swamp about 5 metres in front. Took us all about 10 minutes to refind the path, and Dan unfortunately managed to puncture his tire, though we found this out close to the bike hire. Great times, then we all headed off to a mystery pub that Ad told us about, but didn't exist in our plain of existence, or at least where google maps said. Instead we went to a really nice Beefeater grill, where after umming and arring I got a huge mix grill which was both excellent and awesome in equal amounts. Colin had to scooch off to Swindon so he could drive to Milton Keynes and snow board, the crazy fucker.

Our next port of call was a random piece of grass that Google Maps correctly found, where we kicked around a ball for a while while the sky clouded up a bit and the wind picked up. Once more leaving Rex in some form of cyro-status. After everyone had taken turns in wearing me out, we split company with D&T and I drank about 3 litres of various liquids to stem severe dehydration, we headed back to Guildford. Where we participated in a mini pub crawl to the train station with Ad, including a stop at Frankie and Bennies where I mysteriously chose to have a Bloody Mary, which I didn't totally regret, but still feel a bit confused as to whether I like them or not. We may never find out.

We also stopped off at my favourite pub in Bristol, Doggens or something, where it's cool, they have a great range of beer, people seem nice, furniture is topsy turvy and there's great decor. Plus food is nice. It's got an Angel feel to it ;)

Evening ended with a rather late return to Stratford but we had a great day, and felt good to do some exercise for once. Cos that's how we roll.

Wilton's Music Hall

Finished off Live Support at work, and we got to go to the Coal Hole for lunch, where I had an appalling excuse of a "pie platter", basically 3 mince pie size excuses for meat pies and a tiny cornish pasty, all on a wooden board, with a small jug of gravy that seemed uncouth to pour all over this board. I did anyway, and narrowly avoided drowning in a tsunami of bisto, which on the scale of things is probably at the "least bad" tsunamis to be obliterated by.

Following all of this, a various attempts at work, which often led me down a path of breaking things more than they already were, I met Shing and Rex after work in the Minieries to grab some food and watch a bit of tennis before the night's conclusionary event. A pitcher of long island ice tea for me and one of sangria for Shing later, and we were ready to hit the road to Wilton's Music Hall, the oldest music hall in the world. Apparently. After years of being a warehouse and then falling derelict there has been a campaign for quite a while to try and save it/restore it. Currently there is a small bar which I think is open most nights, and sometimes there are events in the actual hall. Today we'd come to the Cinema Club which promised to films, and many a laugh, which did in actual fact, come from many an unlikely occurance.

Bust out some staropramen action, and we sat down on the balcony overlooking the grand old hall, with prime seats to see the film. The first film was an old school BBC documentry about the construction of Crystal Palace's TV Tower (not Alexandria Palace as some knobber tried to correct the lovely announcer), doesn't sound exciting, but it was actually really interesting and the narrators over the top BBC received accent, as well as some dubious dubbing, was hilarious. During the watching of this little dodiddy, shing began radiating more heat than a nuclear reactor in the Sahara, and going a bit dolally as well. Realising she may need to throw up, she made her way down stairs and began walking across the hall to the bar area. Unfortunately, out of sight, we did not see the following dizzy swaying and eventual collapse onto the hall floor, in a flurry of hilarity. Unsurprisingly, Shing now wears her grazes with pride, and the staff at Wilton's now know Shing.

After I refuelled my beer stock, the second film was an old black and white movie set in the ruins of the actual Crystal Palace, with some crazy comical plot, slightly carry on in humour, but all a bit mad and drug induced. Was funny though. Afterwards I tinkled on the ivories of one of the many pianos they had there, I managed perhaps 7 notes of a song I once played for Grade 1. Diabolical. Then we staggered back, where I may or may not have eaten something. Probably not. Good times and a great hall.

Eye Twitch Water: Twitching muscle has become stronger.

Sup

Yo, so I've got insomnia and just realised I've forgotten to feed you guys for an excessive amount of time. Get ready for a possible taste/word explosion on here, hopefully, very soon. I'd like to go back to decent blogging, just so that I remember my irrelevant yet altogether egotistical type in London as a "Young Professional™". Is it good or worrying that I have now memorised the alt code for the trademark symbol because I use it so much?

My main thrust is that my twitter count has just hit 2000, but it's such a "in the moment" thing, or transitive as some people might say, that it's pretty pointless unless you know about 20 real life friends who regularly use it to prattle on about random incidents, in a manner such as yourself. For instance today I managed to basically punch an old lady in the head in the Royal Albert Hall. Without this blogpost that fact would be lost in the ether of tweetdom, and so the evidence for my undoubted prosecution.

I am also in the phase of wondering if it's worth joining the vlogosphere. But I'm lazy, scared to show my face, and I also talk like a reanimated chimp corpse, none of which is too appealing for anyone to watch, let alone me to record. Unless I'm providing the voice over for one special little doggy. Enough with this anyway, it's 2am and I need to attempt to sleep via my technique of looking into my eyelids until I can make out images, which is like my backdoor to dreamland. It works surprisingly often, in the same way that I blog surprisingly often....

P.S. the old woman was fine.... until Adam threw up on her.

P.P.S I'm on my netbook and there is no way I can be bothered to bold up random words using a touchpad.

Vacating on bank time

Faffed for the majority of the day, doing what I do, then slammed into town to meet ad at South Ken for an Albert Hall based spectacular thanks to Opeth. Grabbed a healthy dinner from the evil brunt of Starbucks while watching the people swan by and waiting for ad. Once he exploded onto the scene, we navigated through all the metal heads to find the venue, me looking like an out of place skater kid and Ad a townie. No matter, we cut it surprisingly fine due to a mis read ticket, so we basically got a DC and sat in our seats. Damn also view, although near the very top we were right in the middle, even if the seats are remarkably cramped in the RAH.

overall the gig was very big, if not a bit too much opeth, they basically played for 4 hours with a 15 min break in the middle. And although I liked all their songs that go twangle twing dowahwahwoo, even ad agreed these were minority to screamy songs. Still was very good and I enjoy the RAH. got home a bit late because that's the way the cookie crumbles:

Humourous anecdote: first half opeth didn't say a word, apart from once saying "shhhhh". In the second half he got pretty chatty, before one song he said this little snippet "we're gonna play this one just because we're in the RAH, it's a fast one... it's kinda shit"

You Know What Time It Isn't

A small sleep in to allow a little recovery time, but when you go to bed at 4.30, 10.30 isn't that late of a lie in. Eventually stu and I burst forth into the void to wander around for 15 minutes waiting for everything to open. Unfortunately when we did choose, we decided on the goose, which although turned out to be pretty terrible. Except for my cheese and Bacon smothered/drowned wedges. Yummy. My heart hurts a bit. I then bid farewell to the stu and went home to die, and have a nice afternoon sleep, which helped a bit. I was naughty and ordered a large dominos meltdown revenge, garlic pizza bread and chicken kickers.... my god that was the hottest damn pizza ever, Rex was taken out by a bite of it. It was moderately alright, but just hellfire in ze mouth. Obviously the only way to get over it was to play High School Musical Dance! On the 360 until the early hours. Good fun, even if the back pad is so hard to consistently hit, but at least troy is a dreamboat even in computer generated form. We played through all 29 songs on medium difficulty before the night was out.

Saturday In The Face, Loving Mace

Today I was exceptionally recovered, just in time to faff the day away, have a few quick yet confusing games of fifa, before meeting Stu up Euston. Where we won repeatedly at finding alcohol. Checked out Mabel's Tavern for a brew and a New York chicken mouth explosion. Then crawled (or limped in the case of stu) towards Angel, stopping in at drinking establishments such as the Euston Flyer, that weird place that had a DJ playing American country songs last time we went there, a pub that was entirely empty and showing the boxing, followed by the Angelic.

At this point I formulated a plan which had us end up in Liverpool St with a desire to go to urban bar. I initially attempted to make Stu walk there but magically we were presented with a lone bus stop in a back street, which served just one bus, and it happened to go straight outside Urban Bar. There was even shelter from the rain. On arrival we beered up, shing arrived, we popcorned up, bust some tunes on the juke box, broke it, got free tunes, was then harrassed while selecting them by some crazy world withered woman, before running back to our table. Stu died from salt intake via pop corn. At around 2.30 we formulated a plan of buying Budgin's pizza and watching the new Doctor Who. Which I thought was really good, perhaps just for the little red lovely in it. The other two had very little opinion on it as they basically slept through a lot of it, with some surprising open-eyed snoring by Shing. Unbeknownst to us, the pizzas had around 92% of our sodium allowance for the day.

Friday's Folies

Magnificently still felt a bit off today, but soldiered on and bust out some Kick Ass film watching with Chez Star, Ad and Greg. Very good film, exactly what was required, even if there were some cringeworthy parts. "What are the Stratford cinema frequenting public like" you ask? "A bit special", I reply. Afterwards we bust up the King Eddies for a scrumptious meal of fish and chips, and a few bevvys before retiring for the evening. Though not after shing and I watched The Hangover. Also a very good film, I thoroughly recommend it, even if the person you watch it with keeps falling asleep!

Thursday Troubles

Felt like absolute hell/still impractically drunk and with the added disadvantage of still having to go to work. Had an informal quartely review, luckily located in Costa, unfortunately, although it was really good and I jabbered away well, the americano I had trebled the pain I was in, and my need to vomit. Oh, I did that last night as well. Needless to say I couldn't face the wrap I got for breakfast, but still, for some reason, thought I could take a huge roast and a beer at lunch... well I survived but I looked astronomically bad, as everyone kept pointing out, much to my disallusionment. To make matters worse I somehow got roped into explaining our most complicated story at demos to the whole company *shakes fist*. In the evening I had to die as opposed to go to Andy and Lucy's; felt pretty guilty about that one as it was self inflicted. Played some xbox with an ill Danu and then collapsed asleep.

Calling the allies

Although preplanned, I didn't expect or particularly want the resulting carnage of a night out with work, even if it was a blast. After a mediocre day at work where I spent the whole time fixing builds, we hit up the walkie to watch the Arsenal match in celebration of birthdays and a leaving (one that I didn't cause!). And what a screamer of a match it was! Arsenal being totally dominated by a superior side, somehow coming back from 2-0 down, thanks to a sprightly walcott, Henry receiving a grand reception and Fabregas equalising while breaking his leg with the match saving shot! Whole evening was interspersed with plenty of beer and peppered with sambuca shots. Oh, I also had a damn tasty ashes burger. After the match we retired to the classic local and I drove my memories out of my head with a wonderful elixer... though did manage to get the last tube home

Greatest Hex Hack Ever

Finally, all of us who have multi-monitors can run flash videos in full screen on one monitor and continue to do things on the other with this cunning hex hack(youtube video). I recommend using a hex editor such as FRHED.

I am mega happy with that. No updating for flash for me though. Boom.

Welcome to the industrial revolution

Well as all good addicts with short attention spans would do, I have deleted farmville from my facebook, for a number of reasons, but mainly because its "save" mechanism often seems to forget the saving part. So after spending far too long making my farm look pretty rather than practical, and on learning that I lost all of that already wasted time, so in theory it was wasted-time² or something, I questioned why I was even playing it. Then I stopped. Now I'm happy. Apart from the recent plate punching incident, that was uncalled for, except for the racial slurs that the plate was ejaculating all over the kitchen.

I do hate having to clean the house, I'll be the first in line when they finally bring out those retro steam-punk robots from the 70's that have concertina arms, and feather dusters. Cone boobs as well, no doubt causing the initial uprising of our steam powered skynet overlords.

Snippets: I'm so used to spotify now, I failed to find the volume on itunes initially. SNIP. Walking home form work when it's dark is suprisingly exciting, a mix of christmas and the general electricity of the night. SNIP. Geocities which shut down today, was bought by yahoo in 1999 for $3.57 billion... SNIP. Apparently the moon is a series of tubes. SNIP. The Stratford Rex is still sometimes used as a gig venue, Lil Wayne in fact was bottled there in '08. SNIP.

Good ole Link Dump:

• MET crime mapping
• London's fireworks this 5th November
• Best way to dispose of a sony products
• Technology is awesome.
• AWESOME: Japanese Milk Commerical. Or What The F-Bomb?
• Slow Motion Ice Cream Fight
• The Japanese are REALLY mean
  

Zorbing

In a random twist of unrelated events, I had at some point managed to organise the cashing in of my HydroPod voucher I got from Chez Star for my birthday. By hydropod they confusingly actually mean zorbing. Young Trev was my accomplis in such a daring and randical manouvere, and after some subtle GPS movement we arrived successfully in Warlingham. I think.

After some swift forest trekking, we got to go within 5 minutes of arriving even though we were 35 minutes early. I was told, mistakenly by Rex, that the water inside was probably nice and warm, so on being told to just dive in to the pod (through the anus like hole), I found myself face first in freezing cold water. Much to my delight sensualisation dismay. No matter. Trev soon joined and ended up sitting in most of the water for a good minute, with classic and humourous reaction. Suddenly it was all go, and we began to swoop backwards and forwards, in slightly random directions, linked cunningly with our arms. As we picked up speed, and our laughter made the air viscious with delight, we managed to not only end up in reverse, but we also did a complete 360 over the roof of the pod, dis-linked, resulting in Trev inserting himself in my left kidney, and I was left carefully placed with my head under the 10 inches of cold water. Which lacked breathable oxygen. Then after some more limb based collisions, we landed smack bang in a big pool of water.

After gasping some air based nectar, I decided it was extremely awesome. On changing in the tent/Gazebo that only had 3 sides to it, I was so excited I 'accidently' dropped my fiji themed town for everyone to see my white pasty bottom, and for Trev to look on despair. Hopefully awe. Probably just despair.

To celebrate the fact that I survived one more extreme based activity with only minor organ damage, and irreputable nerve damage, we found a nice carvery with exquisite roast pototoes, gravy and strange shiny high heels scattered through out it. Trev also tossed his yorkshire pud viciously and with no repent on the floor. I laughed. He was sad and wouldn't eat it.

This evening I mainly moped about, shocked and the size of my belly, and the annoyance of pulling stomach muscles through the act of vomitting. Don't drink kids. Or alcohol. Also don't get a job. And remember to change your clocks back if you haven't already.

Accidental drinking

So we decided to go drinking with Dan before we jetted off to Morocco (who knows when I’ll put those updates on here!!), however, we moseyed around a few pubs and ended up in the Pitcher and Piano, where Jon, Pete, Ting and Issy turned up, Dan got some insane hiccups, and had to go home, and we drank our faces in the dirty dirty ground. Slight fail on our part. Especially for flight tomorrow. Ah well. Photos:

Well this is stupid

I'm so behind, such a waste of this blog that I nearly kept up-to-date against most odds and spates of emoness. I'm not sure how I never have the time, it's not like I achieve anything of worth, apart from tweet repeatedly dull excerpts of my life. I've got some notes for this blog, but they stretch back to January, which is a whole lifetime away. Slowly everything I do slips away from me and my memories without this dump. Possibly stems the tide of emo that builds up with the ponderment that is required to write the prose this poor abandoned page begs for. Soon I'll be jetting off to morocco, with my journal and a pen, writing down thoughts that I kid myself will make it up on here. I haven't even finished wanderingtectonics because I can't read the awful cave man scrawl I wrote when I was in Japan.

Perhaps if I woke at 7 each morning I could catch up my blog, then extrapolate my awakeness into some form of gym. Or hope. Or Love.

I blame the Dum Dums.

I caught me a whisper now dance in my hand…

Monday night gig night!!!!! This week: Hundred Reasons.

Finished my story excellently at work, with skill and blatant lack of knowledge that someone will no doubt find out about in a few months. No one need to know for now. Anyway, Rex and I stormed into the local Bierodrome to sample their wares, mainly involve Chicken Ginger Chiller and Frites, for the price of the time, which was about £5.50, pretty awesome, and we had a slightly overpriced (face) palm beer. Which was the beer of the month or something, quite a ‘Distinctive’ flavour, but I agreed with it wholeheartedly.

Then we perambulated to Angel, which is perfection within a perfect city. Man I love Angel, and we had a nice chilled drink in the Angelic Pub, which had toilets with ‘Character’. Venue was just across the street, unfortunately the support acts were a bit poop, but Hundred Reasons were very good, apart from the penultimate song. In conclusion we had 5 beers(TUBORG MOTHERHUBBARDS!) and ended up quite tired.

Gigging is fantastic.