Kent / London trip: April 2006 (Part 1)

Just to recap for the newer readers - my parents and I have some very good friends down in Kent (London area) who my dad originally met online I guess about 4-5 years ago now. We often take a trip down to stay with them for a week or long weekend. It's generally a combination of Going out Doing Stuff, 1 day France trips (not this time), drinking and enjoying each others company and a little bit of 'tech support' from ourselves thrown into the mix.

Last time was at Christmas, first time I've been away from home for the period! (But still with the parents!)

The May Day (May 1st) public holiday - falling on a Monday this year and creating a Long Weekend - seemed like a good marker around which to base something a bit longer. So, without further ado, the story so far...

Thursday 27th April
The Journey South. Isn't that the name of a band or something? Anyway, little to report there. Took about 5 hours.

I spent the entire journey watching newly-released DVDs of Blake's 7 (Series 4) which is a British sci-fi drama masterpiece which although badly budgeted and aging (like the old series of Doctor Who) I can thoroughly recommend to anyone who's into sci-fi, gritty political drama or both. A separate review article of that series will follow.

I did also rewatch the English (at last!) version of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children which is the follow-up after the very abrupt and open ending of FFVII (the game). It's a follow-up which I've been waiting for for about 9 years and it proved to be well worth the wait. I now look forward to Dirge of Cerberus with bated breath.

Rest on arrival!

Friday

Went into Bluewater, where we've been a few times now. Mahoosive shopping centre built inside an old quarry. Famous for banning hoodies and being targeted by terrorists respectively.

Primary target was the Apple store, time to check out the new Intel machines! I was thoroughly impressed, it's exactly as it should be - it looks like a Mac, feels like a Mac, stable like a Mac, good looking like a Mac, but much faster than they used to be. The new cross-binary version of Second Life ran like a dream at an average of 35fps on the new MacBook Pro (new name for Powerbook), which for SL is very good, especially on a laptop. Heck, the fps meter maxes out at 45. I get slightly less than 30 on my desktop PC! I'd love to see how it runs on the new Powermac tower machines when they come out in Intel form later in the year.

After that, some food and other stuff - the evening... salsa dancing. Whilst I had the opportunity to try it, I decided to sit in the corner and observe instead - more entertaining and less embarrassing! I can see its appeal - it's a very "emotion driven" structured dancing style and could probably prove to be fun with the appropriate partner (i.e. as part of a date or whatever). As things stand I'll stick to the more everyday British and manly style of 'dancing' that consists of holding a pint in my hand and tapping my foot, or sticking both arms in the air and wiggling aimlessly, depending on drunkenness levels, venue and quality of music being played!

I did take some videos of my parents having a go (and doing reasonably well, I must say) but it was only on a phone camera and the footage sucked unbelievably. I've yet to believe that phone cameras are much good for anything other than those unusual moments when the lighting is exactly right and you haven't brought a real camera.

It was quite an entertaining night, and was followed up by some nice Chinese food. Bed was welcomed even by me, and I didn't do any dancing!

Saturday
The plan was to spend most of the day at a Dutch market festival type thing in London. As it turned out it wasn't a huge event, but entertaining. Their beer is really nice.

All I can really say about the Dutch is that they're weird. They are loopy, nuts, bonkers, mad. Some of them were wearing orange (they seem to love orange... bright orange carpet etc!) and I half expected to see "property of psychiatric rehabilitation centre" written on them like I saw in a shop down there. Okay, I'm making a gross generalisation and judgement of an entire country here (*tongue firmly in cheek*) but that's the impression I got - they're bananas!





You haven't seen them interacting, and the oddball greeting people at the entrance, but I rest my case.

This was followed up by wandering around the surrounding area (the Covent Garden area). We happened upon two street entertainers who put on a fairly good show - unremarkable in terms of "special effects" / stunts but very good with the (in)famous cockney "gift of the gab" or whatever they call it and so highly entertaining that way.

Quote of the day:
"So we've got to get on these unicycles. You have to (put this foot here, jump up into there etc)" (up he gets) "yeah yeah I know, you've seen this every day. Yeah"
(other guy has a much higher unicycle - they lark around for a bit then he gets on by climbing up a gate then onto it)
"See, you may see all this getting onto unicycles business quite a lot so it's not that impressive now, but it's not every day you see that!!"
"What, someone getting onto one this high?"
"No, a gay alcoholic on a unicycle."


An apt description!

Oh yeah, we went to church.
Only cos it'd been converted into a pub - quality! Real Australian lager was sold inside and is very nice (not like that Fosters or Castlemaine crap). Good stuff.

Browsing around various markets etc followed. Interesting food was bought...

Back at the house. Interesting food was consumed, all around the world in one go! Well, 3 countries..
- Traditional Cornish Pastys in various different types. I liked the Lamb&mint and Steak&guinness, I think they were.
- Dutch cheese. The cider flavoured one was really nice.
- Sushi. I'd never tried it, but given my recent Japanification here and there it seemed inevitable. My verdict: once you get over the fact that "it's raw fish", it's quite nice. I love the optional Wasabi (a sort of green.. substance) - ridiculously hot, you only need the tiniest of blobs to get a suitable blow-off-head effect. The taste is really nice.. and well... I like hot stuff!
The bits I tried included tuna, prawn, octopus and something else (can't remember what). The prawn was actually cooked, the rest not.

Sunday

More of the relaxation side of things. I didn't even get up until 11.30!

Went to look for a printer for a computer that we're installing for our hosts' relatives (I use the term 'hosts' in relation to 'parasites' i.e. us!), had a look around and went to Ikea. I intended to find my potential wardrobe / misc storage unit there to complete my bedroom redecoration/refurbishment (otherwise completed and review to follow in the coming weeks) but they were out of stock of what I wanted and other things proved to be rather expensive and possibly difficult to fit in an already heavily packed car.

What we did get from Ikea was some Pear Cider called Koppaberg. Yes, that's cider made with pears instead of apples. It's 4.5% vol and very nice - the pear flavour is much smoother and gentler than the sometimes harsh flavour of apple based cider and is therefore quite deadly; it glides down the throat very quickly.

That's the story so far! As always it waayyyyyy beats working (just making the comparison is an injustice really), and surprisingly in the 2 working days I've been away they haven't phoned my mobile yet. (I can 'dial in' through a secure VPN and control the server and everyone's computers from anywhere in the world but I didn't mention that bit). Maybe I didn't give them the new number - haha.

Tomorrow will be interesting. I will elaborate after the event...

Manchester for Dutch? (Tangled Trip Review, 01/04/06)

This is a guest article by MG

Our first Tangled visit was meant to be for breakbeat kings Hybrid in April. Instead, we headed down to see one of trance's current leading lights. I was thoroughly looking forward to it - even though I was expecting a fairly patchy set (trance can be very hit and miss). I hopped into the car on a glorious Saturday afternoon and went to pick up my partner in crime: Mr Darren Stretch. A 20 minute visit to the Shell forecourt (queues abound!), and it was away we go!

Driving down to Manchester was both enjoyable and relaxing in the main. Again, the car was a pleasure to manoeuvre and provided a 'smooth quiet ride’ that the marketing executives at a certain stair-lift company could likely reference in one of their ads. Oh, wait… (hysterics). Anyhow, all was well bar one incident when I was caught on the outside lane with a flashy Chrysler PT Cruiser and his mate in a van directly behind gradually inching up on my inside and looking to undertake me. Erm, what the hell do I do now?! Well, I decided to just keep on going and let them commence. Common sense was seemingly at a premium, though then again, anyone who buys one of those monstrosities of a ‘vehicle’ really does need their head testing anyway.

The only other problem I had with travelling down was (inevitably) when I hit Manchester. Town driving is such good fun… Or not! Stretchy had wisely printed off directions to our destination, and it was the usual fare of crawling around and not being 100% sure of which routes to take. There must have been a number of irate drivers in tow (this theory was confirmed by multiple horn blasts), but because I don’t really let this get to me as much I as used to, I fared OK. Scariest moment emerged when we entered what was seemingly a one-way street, only for a car to pull out and face me in the opposite direction. ‘Shit!’ was the cry as I hit the brakes. Thankfully, the other driver reversed back into where he emerged from and we could head to the town centre.

Following more slow driving, we finally arrived at our destination. The house we visited is very cool – we entered the front room to find a number of the lads sat watching Gillette Soccer Saturday with a few beers. Time to join in! I was sweating and suffering from minor-exhaustion following all of that, and joining in with a few tins was certainly high up on the priority list.

I’d like to dedicate a paragraph here to Jeff Stelling, presenter of Soccer Saturday. He is absolutely amazing, and probably up there with Rory Bremner in the utmost echelons of the television presenters league. His delivery of knowledge is absolutely staggering and he makes what the BBC and ITV equivalents attempt to project look ridiculously effortless and meticulously prepared. True, he likely has a world-class team behind him, but his on-screen presence and analysis of events is totally first-class, and I believe that if he continues in the same vein for the foreseeable future that greater rewards than TV award recognition will be forthcoming and richly deserved.

Anyhow, the main action was at the Reebok Stadium. After Chelsea could only muster a draw away at struggling Birmingham, the 1-1 scoreline in the Man United game had a fair number of the (ever-growing) crew on the edge of their seats. If we were to have any hope of making a challenge for the Premiership title, it was imperative that we capitalised on Chelsea’s below-par showing earlier on. Of course, Van Nistelrooy came off the bench to hit home the winner – much to the relief of a number of us! Can we catch Chelsea? Unlikely, but we live in hope.

Following on was the West Brom vs Liverpool game. In essence, West Brom looked below par and defended way too high up the pitch – something which Liverpool capitalised on with glee on their way to a comfortable away win. The pressure is on Bryan Robson once again…

What ensued was classic ‘lads night out’ events. We put on Rocky III (Ben: ‘you’ve never seen any of the Rockys?!’) (hysterics), which looked like it hadn’t aged well. It was still absolutely hilarious at times, though (the Hogan leg! (enter sarcasm) What a finishing move…), which prompted discussion and laughs in abundance. Great stuff. What wasn’t great, however, was ‘hunger’ beginning to strike. Of course, with a night’s dancing ahead I needed to ensure that I ate enough to burn off and last the night. And that’s exactly what I did…

‘What do we do for food around here?’ I asked. Carl ended up throwing a load of menus at me – the majority of which happened to be for pizza outlets. However, I was informed that there were a couple of takeaways in town a few minutes away, so I decided to take a stroll to see what I could find. The recommended outlet was a Chinese, which happened to serve everybody else aside from myself (hysterics). I must have been stood in there for a good 20 minutes and pretty much got to directly sample just how different city culture is to ours in small-towns. The difference is quite substantial – at one point I was shaking hands with a sizable bloke (who I wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of) who subsequently wanted a tab setting up for the mere order of pie, chips and peas (hysterics). The Chinese attendant (thankfully) obliged.

Finally, my order for 3 (which amounted to less than 6 pounds – you’d certainly pay more in Ulverston!) was dished out and I could return to the pad and consume. The gravy looked particularly dark in colour, with the notion of ‘heart attack in a tray’ coming to the fore. Still! I was to work it off later to what I hoped would be some excellent music.

Rocky was still on screen following my return, though my thoughts were instantly drawn to food consumption. It was just about spot-on for what I wanted it to be – Rob doesn’t make poor recommendations on the food front! What the food did achieve was to fully bloat my insides… Which didn’t bode well for the 500ml cans of Fosters I had left to drink! Consumption on that front slowed significantly for a short spell afterwards.

It turned out that we were going directly to the club, and with about an hour or so to go, Rob put on one of his new mixes. ‘Don’t listen to the quality of mixing!’ He needn’t have worried, because just about all of the mixes were more than passable. Some of the tracks featured were ones I’d like to check out again – if not their remixed counterparts, as there were some excellent nu-house being showcased. That’s some acclaim considering I’m not a particularly big fan of the genre.

Travel to the club was to be sorted by two lack cab / mini-bus taxis – there was around 12 of us to hit Tangled for the event. Queuing seemed to be on the agenda on this day, and Tangled never broke the trend with a medium sized posse outside the venue. Eventually, it was time to enter! On arrival to the club upstairs, expectations weren’t just met; they were instantly superseded by both the style of the venue and the vibe that the warm-up DJ was creating. Ironically, the room reminded me of Sankey’s with a raised platform surrounding the outskirts of the dancefloor giving access to both the bar and a heightened position to dance on – the latter of which provides the punters with a good view of a fair percentage of proceedings around and below.

As a cynic, I was expecting the music policy to be merely ‘interesting’, but it turned out to be far closer to ‘refreshing’ on initial impression, with the warm-up set providing a strong groove at a slower pace than what was to come, in addition to a number of well-timed hands in the air moments that tend to signify the quality of DJ at the controls. It was all very good – so much so that I didn’t really mind when the main act were going to turn up. It is very rare for warm-up DJs in these venues to disappoint, and it was an excellent selection of tracks before the inevitable influx of Anthemica further into the evening. Not to say that tracks such as Underworld’s ‘Cowgirl’ can’t be labelled within that bracket (hysterics).

When the speed of the music began to noticeably increase by a few BPM, it was only a matter a time before the headline act were to enter the booth and make their presence felt. Not that there was any aural indication of the switch – one minute I looked and there was no change; the next there were two of the members in the booth at the controls. Then came the Anjunabeats surge. In addition to a number of tracks that didn’t kick on after their breaks, creations such as Ronski’s Remix of Sonorous’ ‘Protonic’ sound so much more apt in a club than they do at home – all of which were totally lapped up by the posse on the floor. And then there was unreleased stuff that’s forthcoming mixed with a number of cuts from the act’s new ‘Tri-State’ album – ‘Air 4 Life’ (definitely a cut for the club) ‘Can’t Sleep’ and most notably, ‘Alone Tonight’ (which had me completely under its wrath) being showcased to an endearing fraternity on the floor - the latter’s emotive male vocal and subsequent euphoric chorus really hitting home. In all, it was fantastic stuff that had me grinning from ear to ear throughout the majority of the duration and I'm under the illusion that I must return. Its on the cards.

On arrival back at the pad, it was the usual after-hours fare, with lots of random chat, lounging and background music providing the post 04:00 entertainment. We accidentally left Mr Fish alone at the club (erm!), but in typical style he emerged following a couple of phone calls. Top class! Obviously after a hard night’s dancing, I was flagging, and decided to get some sleep next door. This turned out to be a very good idea as I didn’t want to struggle with sleep, so any opportunity that I had to get some much needed shut-eye was to be welcomed. I zonked out at around 04:30AM.

My eyes opened to fairly bright sunlight. I didn’t want to leave the bed as I feared that I may have required more sleep in order to fully recover, but all attempts to secure this were futile, so I decided to awake (quietly – Stretchy was sprawled across a sofa opposite me) and look to see if anyone else had awoken next door…

…Or make that, still awake from the previous night. What stalwarts! But hold on, what time is it? Oh. 08:15AM. I was hoping for more like midday (hysterics). That’s a mere 3hrs30mins sleep, and once I was awake, I wasn’t going to go back. The anecdote? A bit of mellow music followed by Family Guy season 4 all morning. Which was good, because Family Guy represents some of the best, totally out there comedy that has ever been put to screen – and is thus perfect for the chill-out period. Indeed, season 4’s Family Guy shows a totally unusual level of progression that is difficult not to endear to.

Episode after episode after episode went by, with the numbers of people dwindling quickly. We ended up with myself, Stretchy, Fish and Carl; the latter of two certainly needed to rest themselves after a hard night’s partying. Inevitably, we ended up with the two who were to travel back to Ulverston, which is where we decided to head once the crew had all disappeared. What I couldn’t cater for, was the highly hazardous driving conditions on our return! It was blowing a howling gale and absolutely teaming it down, leading to plentiful amounts of spray and significant visibility reduction. Concentration levels needed to be high in order to ensure car binnage didn’t occur, and thankfully I seemed alert enough to deal with everything thrown at us; to this day my car is still in one piece and I remain (although its likely that not all will see this as a positive!) (hysterics).

I’ll wrap it up here. I can only reiterate what I great time I had. The crew were first rate and accommodated us without fuss – I give my utmost thanks for giving me the opportunity to attend. Additionally, I was thoroughly impressed by Tangled – so much so that I want to return again to see who I'd initially intended; breakbeat pioneers Hybrid. It’ll be a technical and emotive showcase to behold, if not move and jump around to. I have no doubt that like Above and Beyond, they’ll be awesome in that room, and thus plans to return will soon be in full operation.

This is a guest article by MG, imported from Wordpress. Please ignore the 'author/contributor/posted-by' tag on this post, which is incorrect.

Employment Assessment: 6 Months

This is a guest article by MG

As you will likely have cottoned on to from the title of this piece, I have now been employed at Furness College since September. That's 6 months! I'm not sure if time has flown by or just passed normally, but what I do know, is that I am quickly becoming embedded in the College's culture and after seemingly passing through the probationary period I was set initially, here to stay for the forseeable future.

So what do I think of work? Well, it poses a lot of interesting avenues to wander down. Time sapping? Mentally draining? Rewarding? Perhaps I'm not so sure what to make of it and thus require more time to make a more reasoned assessment. Sometimes I seem to be in everybody's good books, sometimes not. Sometimes I feel happy with my work, sometimes significantly in the wrong; sometimes mythed, sometimes vindicated. Its an odd mix. What differs from what I do now and what I have done academically in the past is that I can only create part of the picture towards achieving success as there's a certain reliance on others to assist me with what is, in essence, a near impossible puzzle to ever complete. It is nearly impossible to achieve 100%... Now there is a parallel.

So if I need more time to make reasoned judgement, what does the current scenario represent? Well, I've still got a multitude of holidays to take, I'm looking forward to Youth Club events, the World Cup is forthcoming (with England currently second favourites) and the summer should provide plentiful opportunities for excursions, activities and the like. But all of this is external to the workplace. In it, I've got a new curriculum to assist sorting and the new year's worth of enrolment forms to take and put on, in addition to all of the other tasks that are usually thrown at us. It is a struggle to catch everything at the best of times - I reckon there may be a reliance on the organisation's flexitime system to help fit everything in! But above all, I can't see or envisage anything that is making me less than happy at this stage, and long may this continue

This is a guest article by MG, imported from Wordpress. Please ignore the 'author/contributor/posted-by' tag on this post, which is incorrect.