Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

So yes. My holiday was awesome. It was really really good meeting up with peeps again, and I think everyone had a good time. Photos will be up soon(ish).

Got back from Bakersfield on the Saturday evening, and met Anna, Maghda, Igor and Hakan in San Fransisco, and stayed the night in a really cheap and tacky hotel. Didn't really eat much all day except for a tin of spam and some bread in the evening (t'was the only food I could find! :( ), but it was rather pleasant to sit on the roof of the hotel in San Fransisco and drink beer, listen to music, and chat.

Woke up on Sunday and went to Alcatraz. Muchos good. After that, went to a party at Shady's place in San Fran, ate Egyptian food, danced, and sat on the roof (again) and drank and chatted. I am apparantly now the AIESEC Bay Area Mascot. Rocking.

The week was ok... Finished up a lot of work, but nothing overly exciting happened. Anna came over on Tuesday evening, which was nice, but otherwise an uneventful week.

Spent my first weekend here in America without anything to do being lazy. I was going to go into the City and do some shopping, but got the first series of Stargate SG1 instead, and watched all of that. First time I'd watched SG1, s'pretty good :D

I finally got my last 2 paychecks through, which was good as I had no money left. Apparantly the payroll dept thought I finished my internship a week after I had started it. All sorted now though.

Nothing much else to say. I watched The Island on friday evening, and *loved* it. Utterly brilliant film, had me engrossed. I can't wait for Serenity (both trailers look *so* awesome, I keep on watching them) and Aeon Flux to come out, should be good.

mmmmmmyup. That's about it. How're you?

Hrm

So, today has been both good and bad. Mainly good though, which is, well, good.

I went to Six Flags Magic Mountain, and uber-cool themepark full of roller-coasters. Absolutely fantastic fun, and all of the rides I went on had me slightly worried at one point or another. Was great. Favourite was Goliath followed be Colossus, methinks.

This was followed by returning back to the house for burgers, beer, and relaxing in the pool. Followed by general messing around in the pool, which coupled with the alcohol, was most amusing.

So yeah, a pretty good day. Except for the fact that it was a year ago that it was the 6-month mark with Kim. And I was in America with pretty much the same people, looking out all the time for cool stuff to get her. And as I was walking around today, I kept on seeing stuff, and kept on thinking "Oooh, Kim would really like that, I should get it" for a split second before remembering that we're not together any more. Not just the once, either, I kept on doing, which kinda put a damper on my day. We've been apart for 4 months now, and she's with another guy, but still.... it's just really annoying that I still can't seem to convince myself of the reality of that fact. I keep on reminding myself of the past, and even though the fact itself doesn't really get to me any more (Ok, so I still get sad sometimes, but not every time), I just wish I'd stop thinking about it all the time.

So yes. Vegas tomorrow. I shall get drunk and married, possibly in that order.

Just a quickie....

So, I'm safe and sound in Bakersfield, after a horrid 7 hour coach trip from San Fransisco on Saturday. I'm here having a gathering with my friends from wotmania.com, most of whom I haven't seen since last year, and we're having a blast so far.

Sheila's kids, Nicholas and Sarah (the cutest kids ever), kidnapped me on Saturday evening as I was the only one here at that time, and made me go swimming with them in the pool outside... such a tough life :p

Sunday was spent waiting for everyone to arrive, after which much drink and good food was injested, followed by much more poolage and funnage.

Yesterday we went to Santa Barbara (an almost 3 hour drive away... s'nothing for americans O_o) and spent the day on the beach and looking round shops. Muchos cool.

Today will be spent going to Magic Mountain theme park, choc-a-bloc with rollercoasters and fun stuff like that. Then later in the week it's Vegas, and Hollywood.

So yes, fun times so far. And yes, you can call me weird for meeting internet websitey peoples, but I don't really care ;)

Observations about America, #2

The lifetime habit of looking right when crossing the road could prove to be lethal

This weekend.

This weekend has been utterly fantastic.

Started on Saturday morning, with a trip to the local Laserquest (Yes Morti, it was a Laserquest) with a bunch of AIESEC'ers... was great fun, a much bigger arena than the one back in canters, with much more of a mazy feel, and three separate multi floor tower type things; much darkness and UV lights. The packs were kinda odd, with it taking a number of shots to register a hit, not like the one hit - one kill thing from pack home. Stick rocked, coming second in each game. And I say that I rocked cos the guy who came first in each game was in the top 10 of the places memberlist, and was there alone for the entire day... seemed pretty anti-social and stuff, so I'm discounting him and saying I won them all :]

After that, everyone (plus some more) came back to my hotel, where I had organised an all afternoon/evening pool party and BBQ. Insanely successful event. The swimming/hot tub wen donw a treat, especially after LQ, the the BBQ was great fun, especially flamegrilling the burgers. Words cannot do this justice, I shall have to find photos from somewhere (I, sadly, did not take any photos the entire weekend. Except some of Anna, but she won't let m show those to anyone.), the BBQ was tres amusant.

The pool party went on until midnightish, at which point it migrated to my appartment, which got utterly trashed... a fantastic party though, really fun. Lots of people, lots of beer (like, 140ish bottles/cans, all drunked), and eventually around 2ish everyone hauled off to various places to try and sleep.

Mads, Tobias and Anna all stayed in my room, but I didn't really get much in the way of sleep... got up with Mads and Tobias when they left around 0630, attempted to clean by apt some, then went down to grab some breakfast with Anna.
Mooched around all morning watching friends with Anna, Alex, Shady, Gary and some others, before heading off to a chinese place with Anna for lunch... was a really nice place, with an abundance of great food. Delicious. Headed back to the hotel where I just spent the afternoon relaxing in/by the pool in the sun with Anna. Was really nice, just chilling out like that after a hard night's partying, and the pool was awesome. Grabbed some icecream around 6, and then watched Snatch with Anna (with a short interuption from the fire alarm).

Anna's just headed back home now, and I'm exhausted from lack of sleep, so I think it's an early night tonight. I managed to grab some photos of the before/after state of my apt (it was horrendously messy) which I'll post at some point.


All in all, a very very very good weekend.


Just amazing. M'one happy guy.

Observations about America, #1

The toilets here are *really* close to the ground

I'm really useless at updating this thing

So yus. The remainder of last week, and this week so far, has been fairly uneventful. Work all day, relaxing all evening. I've made a point of using the gym facilities as much as possible, and for someone who hasn't really done any consistent exercise for the past year and a half, I'm doing pretty well. It help that I have a pool to relax in afterwards; Napping in the sun by the pool after a quick dip today was really rather nice.

The weekend, though, was fantastic. Headed down to Santa Clara to Mads' house, where I had a weekend of beaching and partying with the San Jose aiesec-ers. Was muchos cool... spent the afternoon on the beach on the Saturday, followed by a fantastic fondue dinner (Cheese fondue for starters, chicken/pork/beef fondue for main, and chocolate fondue for desert) which was utterly brilliant. That kinda swung into a party, for which I bought along 2 crates of Corona. A most excellent night, even if it did involve drinking straight vodka out of a pineapple...

Woke up the next morning and watched Finding Nemo with Anna whilst the others went to get surfboards. Headed back down to the beach in the afternoon for surfing.

Quite a knackering weekend in all, and photos can be found on my website as usual.

Speaking of which, Dave and I have just purchased a server (well, Dave has, I still need to pay him :p) which will be acting has a IRC and Web server. It's connected to the Darkmyst network, and there's info up on http://www.tagsoc.org

Most excellent. Maybe I'll try and update this more regularly now.

Time to go get my washing from the dryer.