Okay, I got my music blog up and running yesterday. Just one review so far, Hanne Hukkelberg's 'Little Things', but I'll hopefully have more to follow. I'm never going to run out of albums to review, but I guess I should be focussing more on (relatively) new releases. As such, I'll be reviewing Bibio's 'The Apple and the Tooth' next. It's excellent, and you should all listen to it.

Anyway, blog is here:

The Chopstick

I think the title is probably a reference to The Spoon. What do you think of the banner?

On my way to work yesterday, I saw a heron perched on a roof not far from my house. Another bird that I assumed to be a crow was flying around it, occasionally swooping at it, which would cause the heron to duck. Eventually it flew away, and the crow followed it aggressively. I meant to Tweet about it when I got to work, but it slipped my mind. I just remembered it this morning when I saw two small birds chasing each other around a wall.

So, what's been up in my life? Recently, I guess there was the play-testing we did at work. It was something I took part in back when I worked at Ninja before, and we did it again for the new game. I didn't do the testing, obviously; it would make no sense to try and get information about gameplay from someone who's been playing the game for the past 7 months. Instead we got in a few people who've never played it before, and took notes about how they played the game. My job was to encourage the guy I was with to keep talking about his experience, and what he was thinking. He was someone who played quite a lot of games, and it sort of showed, because he finished up a good half hour to an hour before the other three! Anyway, it was an interesting change of pace.

Other stuff: My previous plan to start up a music blog kind of fell through before; I tried starting a review of The Mars Volta's Octahedron, but I didn't really feel that strongly about the album, so it never went anywhere. Inspired by Lisa, however, I had another stab at it, reviewing an album of her choosing (Specifically Hanne Hukkelberg's 'Little Things'), and managed to finish it. I'm going to revise the review slightly this weekend, and I need to do some stuff to set the blog up, and try to make it look nice (I've never been too good at that, as you might notice from this one), and then I'll post it. I'm also planning to review Bibio's new album, 'The Apple and the Tooth', which is fantastic. I'll link to the blog here when it's ready, anyway.

The train journey from Regensburg to Freiburg was largely uneventful. I had to change at Nürnburg, but I don't really remember anything about the station there. After five and a half hours, I arrived in Freiburg station; Joel and Chris were waiting for me there. As we went to get something to eat, I discovered that Chris didn't remember me. Fair enough, I guess! It was back in 2006, and I was slightly less sociable than I am now (Which isn't saying much, really). We'd met at a couple of GPA parties, at the same time as I'd met Thomas (Who I met again at the end of last year), but I guess I didn't make much of an impression back then. I tend to try to blend in at parties. When I told Chris we'd talked about Kings of Convenience, however, he remembered me. So that was good!

We sat outside a café, and Joel and I tried a local dish, Flammkuchen (literal translation 'flame-cake'); essentially a pizza with ham and onions, with sour cream instead of tomato and cheese. It was really good! We went to a nearby pub and had a beer; I managed to come across as someone who had very little knowledge of both beer and German. After that we made our way back to Chris' place, where we drank more beer and waited for a few of his friends to arrive. Corinna arrived first, followed by Florian. Corinna had lived in Guildford for a while, so she knew Joel already. Florian lived in Ireland for a while.

At around 10:30pm, after about 4 or 5 beers (Bottles, mind you!) we made our way to the pub/club, in the freezing cold. We milled around for a bit, and I had a Weissbier, which Chris informed me was made with yeast. It tasted odd, but nice enough! We moved back and forth between the pub area and the dancefloor, and spoke to a few German people. Chris, with his tongue firmly in his cheek, introduced me to a guy who'd lived in Alabama for a while. Before long, someone said the magic word (Jaegermeister), and shots went around. I had two, and a whiskey and coke, and eventually ended up on the dancefloor, dancing like some kind of twat. That didn't last long.

Suddenly it was 2am; outside the pub I remember some German guy talking to me about football (The next day, Joel and Chris told me I was visibly bored). Eventually we left, and made our way to Florian's house. I'm not sure how much I was participating in the conversation at this stage. I just remember Florian preparing several Vodka/Red Bulls, which I had one of. Corinna did the splits in his kitchen. Eventually I left with Joel and Chris, and we got back at around 4am, at which point it seemed prudent to eat cheeses and drink red wine. There was an Austrian cheese which I really enjoyed, but I've forgotten the name of it now.

I was fine the next morning; reassuring after my red-wine bender, but I was being a lot more sensible. We spent Tuesday walking around Freiburg, without much in mind. We had a really good doner kebab, had a look around Game Stop, and went to an independent record store. I was looking for German music in particular; they had a pretty small electronic section, but some fairly obscure stuff! Considering the poor exchange rate, though, it was all pretty expensive, so I only bought one CD in the end; Pillow - Flowing Seasons. Turns out it's not even German! It's on a German label, though. Also, it's really nice; ambient stuff, a bit like Helios, but with vocals.

Not long after that we went home. Florian arrived, and we played Assassin's Creed and Tomb Raider Underworld for a while, before heading back into town, this time with Chris' girlfriend Anne. There we went to a schnitzel restaurant, which was amazing. I made a point of ordering in German, which was met by applause, and the food was great. We were joined later by a friend of Florian's, whose name may or may not have been Pia. Her English was really good. Before long we left the restaurant. Joel and Chris and I went for a few more drinks, but I became really tired, so we got home at around 1am.

The next morning I had to leave fairly early; we walked to a bakery to get some croissants, and ate them with German ham and Swiss cheese. Then we walked to the station, which took about 40 minutes. Waiting for the train, I felt the same kind of thing about Chris as I'd felt after I met Thomas last year; even though I'd only really spent a couple of days with him, he felt like an old friend. Moral of the story: German people are cool. I left Freiburg at about 11am, and got home at about 8:30pm. So, it was a long journey.

Soooo. Last Saturday morning I woke up at 4am, and left the house shortly after 5. To the train station, to Stansted airport, to Frankfurt Hahn, to Frankfurt Main station, to Regensburg station; the journey in total took me about 12 hours. Next time I visit Myriam, I'll just bite the bullet and fly to München, it'll be so much quicker.

Anyway, I arrived at about 4pm, and went to grab something to eat in the shopping centre beside the train station. I got scared of the German sausage, so I just went to Subway. Myriam got a coffee somewhere, so we sat there as I ate. After that, we walked towards the town centre, with no particular aim but to see the town; Myriam moved there about three weeks ago, but she was away for a week, so she hasn't seen a lot. There's a huge cathedral there, which we walked around inside of, taking photos. We wandered around some more, got a bit lost, and bought some fruit, vegetables and nuts from a stall. Back at the station we got some groceries, and took the bus to Myriam's apartment.

She'd planned to take me to an Irish pub that night, but after we made something to eat (Spaghetti bolognese) and drank some wine, we were both too tired, having both got around the same amount of sleep. So, we stayed in and watched Arrested Development.

Next day, a Sunday, pretty much all of the shops in town were closed. In the morning we decided really needed some orange juice, so we walked to the nearby business park, but no shops were open. We eventually found a petrol station, and got something to drink there. It was about 1pm by the time we got back, too late for breakfast, so we had some lunch. Headed into town at around 2pm, and ended up back at the cathedral. When we were there the day before, we noticed a small museum at the back, so we checked that out; turns out they had some pretty awesome artefacts. After some moderately successful low-light photography, we headed back out and walked around town some more.

We ended up at a small bar/bistro; I walked up to the bar to look at the menu, and the woman behind it said something to me in German. I told her I didn't speak any German and asked if she spoke English. She didn't. After some meaningless gesticulating and apologetic looks, I sat back down with Myriam to try and work out if they were still serving food; from what the woman has said, I didn't think they were. She came over to us, however, and went through the menu in bits of broken English that were better than my fractured German. Turns out they were serving pizza, so I ordered one. It was pretty good. When I was finished, I asked for the bill in German. She seemed pleased by this; she was really nice in general.

When we left, we got a bus to where one of Myriam's co-workers lived, a fantastically nice apartment. Several of his friends were there also, and the six of us played a version of Uno with several additional rules that turned it into a more fast-paced and exciting game. Drinking red wine (again), we played for a couple of hours. Back at Myriam's place, we watched another episode of Arrested Development, and called it a night.

Myriam left for work at around 8:30 the next morning, and I milled around for a while before getting a bus to the station, and then a train to Freiburg, five and a half hours away.

Guess I should write something about my trip to Ireland, huh? Heeeere goes!

I had a half-day on Thursday, and got something to eat with Mum and Beck before going home to pack. Mum was kind of rushing us, though, and it was a bit stressful; I'd hoped to set up the internet before I left (God knows I'd been trying for a week), but I didn't get around to it. Mum's a little on the cautious side, so we turned up early for the coach to the airport, which got us there much earlier than we really needed to be, and resulted in us sitting around in Stansted Airport's horribly crowded Wetherspoon's. Glee. Beck and I listened to Bibio's 'Jealous of Roses'.

The flight was uneventful. On arriving in Derry, Niall picked us up, and we drove to Beck's. Before long Dad arrived to take Mum and I home, and I had a fairly early night. I don't remember much about Friday; Mum and I went to Donegal town in the morning for a bit of shopping, and I bought Beck a birthday present and a card. Beck came around a bit later, with her PS2.

I don't remember much about Saturday morning either, come to think of it. Most likely this is because of what happened later. It was Beck's birthday on Friday, so we went out for a meal on Saturday night; my family, her fiancée, and some aunts, uncles and cousins, 11 of us in total. The meal was nice, but I was already quite drunk by the end of it. This can probably be attributed to Dad. I had a glass of red wine on the initial drinks order, and then he bought two bottles of red. Seeing as it was just the two of us drinking Red wine, we had a bottle each. It kind of went downhill from there, too. The manager of the restaurant/bar we were at bought us a round of drinks (This has happened before, as we go there quite a lot), and mine was a whiskey and Coke, which I drank in parallel to my last glass of red wine. Oh dear. From here on it gets a little fuzzy, but from photographic evidence I estimate that I had some toxic-looking pink cocktail (A 'Woo-Woo'?), a glass of some clear orange liquid that I remember nothing about, and at least one shot which consisted of Creme de Menthe, Baileys and.. Tia Maria? My last clear memory is of dipping my thumb in the shot and having someone attempt to light it to play some stupid drinking game. Of course, the game is supposed to be played with Sambuca, and Bailey's doesn't really catch fire. And then... nothing.

I woke up the next morning, feeling okay. It then occurred to me that I had no memory of getting home the night before. I checked the time; 1:45pm. Starting to get a little worried, I scoured my memory for any hint of what happened after I blacked out. Ah, there it is.. I remembered kneeling in front of a toilet in a cubicle, retching into the bowl. I think my cousin was outside, asking if I was okay; I mumbled an affirmative. Great. I grew worried that I had become some kind of fountain of puke and completely embarrassed my family, and got the shakes as a result. With no solid memories, how could I be sure I hadn't? I steeled my nerves, got up and went to the kitchen. Quizzed my Mum a bit on what had happened, and she said I'd been fine (Apart from being sick in the toilets), albeit rather drunk. I'd been singing at one point, and we got home at about 2:30am (My last memory is from about 11:30, according to the timestamps on photos). Feeling queasy and unable to eat, but not hungover, I sat and watched Crocodile Dundee on TV for a while. Decided to lie down again for a bit, and our cat Mitzy joined me; she didn't seem very lively herself. Whilst I was resting, I reclaimed another memory. This was the one I'd been waiting for.

I was in the toilets again. Someone had been sick in the sink. Eugh. It was me, wasn't it? I was that guy. You know how if you get a bit of food clogging the plug-hole of a sink, you can usually dislodge it by putting your in there and swilling it around? Yeah, I did that. I think my cousin was behind me again, and he told me to leave it alone. So, my main concern now is whether I washed my hand off before I went back out, or whether I spent the rest of the night with a puke-y hand. My parents didn't say much on the subject, which was either because they didn't remember much themselves (They were also drinking heavily), or because they wanted to spare me.

And that's largely it. I spent the rest of Sunday recovering, and flew home the next day. Work has been pretty ordinary. I should go now, because I'm planning on seeing District 9 today. Laters!

Just when my orange hair was starting to look awesome, I changed it. To green! First time I dyed it, the streak was still yellow, so it was quite a bright green. It faded after about three days, though, so I did it again, and this is the result:



It's a little more inconspicuous than the orange, so I don't like it quite as much, but I still think it turned out cool, and it's pretty much what I had in mind when I decided to dye it green. So, hooray?

You know, it occurs to me now that I never actually posted about this here before! Basically, TIGSource held an Adult/Education competition. I was initially set to do music for three games (One of which was called Commander Cock), but two of those fell through. I was left with Super Cock Blockers, which was developed by the Gang Garrison 2 guys, who you may remember I made music for before. This was more chiptune stuff, and it turned out pretty well.

The game is available here (Although it may be unsafe for work, if you work in a place that takes exception to pixellated willies and boobs. Or if you're easily offended!). If you just want to hear the noises I made for it without having to look at scandalous imagery, you can download the soundtrack here!

The rest of the competition entries are here, if you're interested in checking them out.

It's been, what... two weeks? Yeah, two weeks. I guess a lot of stuff has happened. I'm going to throw up some bullet points.

• I finished watching the jPod series in the space of a week or so. It wasn't particularly good; considering the source material, it just struck me a being kind of safe. 'Spaced' is an example of a sitcom that's dark, surreal and subversive. jPod should have been, but isn't. I expected things to have been changed, but there were certain changes that just seemed to be in direct opposition to the book. Also: Rubbish ending. I'm done.


• My Xbox 360 red-ringed! It froze in the middle of a game of 'Splosion Man (Which is okay, but nothing special, I wasn't missing much), and interrupted my playthrough of Bioshock, which I'd just started a couple of days before. I spent a weekends cursing Microsoft's broken site, and then phoned them on Monday. They sent me a UPS label, I packed up the 360 and had UPS collect it from work on Friday a week ago, and I got it back yesterday! I haven't tried it out yet, so it may still be broken.


• In the absence of my 360, I got my gaming kicks from one of Steam's indie games bundles. This one has Braid (Which I bought on XBLA when it was released), Blueberry Garden (A short art game, which is pretty sweet), The Path (Another art game; I played the demo, and it was certainly atmospheric, but I haven't play the full version yet), Everyday Shooter (Which is pretty swanky, though a couple of things annoy me about it) and World of Goo. I finished the latter this morning, and it's amazing. Worth the price of the pack on its own (Which, actually, is what it usually retails for). So, in closing, get World of Goo.


• Super Cock Blockers was finished and released in time for the Adult/Education competition over at TIGSource. I'll post about it, and my soundtrack for it, in the next entry.


• After jPod, I bought two more of Douglas Coupland's novels; 'Hey Nostradamus!', and 'Generation X' (Obviously). The former is pretty nice, but it didn't grab my like jPod did. 'Generation X' is pretty sharp so far.


• Two of my housemates are moving out in September. This is going to change a few things around the house, as a lot of the furniture and appliances are theirs. The landlord's going to replace most of the stuff. I am probably going to have to get a TV though. Frankly, it's time I had one that isn't a crappy 14" CRT. I'll probably aim for something around the 30" mark.


• Myriam suggested we work on a webcomic together. Of course, it would be about the two of us. I was initially kind of resistant to the idea, due to not really being able to draw, but I thought about it a bit more, and figured that it was a stylistic issue; if I could find a style that suited me, and that wouldn't require a tablet and a huge amount of effort, maybe I could make it work. So, I decided on drawing 16-bit style sprites. I've done pixel-work before, and while I'm not particularly good at it, I can bluff my way through. I've done a couple of preliminary sprites, and they look pretty good!


• Wow, I've got more bullet points than I anticipated.


• Girls! I sent a message to this girl on OKC, which was actually a reply to a message she'd sent me back in 2007. The reason I never replied back then was that I was going out with Sarah at the time. Really stupid reason, frankly, but I dunno, I just felt a bit weird about it at the time. Anyway, it turns out she's really cool. Gamer, music student, cosplayer (But she makes her own costumes, so I'm not holding it against her!), and general geek. I think we really like each other.


• Oh yeah she lives in New York.


• Crap.


• Okay, last item: Scott Pilgrim! After hearing that Edgar Wright was directing the movie, I figured I'd check the comic books out, and they're pretty sweet! Definitely pretty geeky, but interesting and well written. I watched Edgar Wright's video blogs on the production of the movie, and they kind of got me excited about the movie!

Okay, I'm done.

Since finishing David Mitchell's 'Cloud Atlas' (Which I was reading most of the time I was in Canada, but kind of stopped when I got back), I've been at something of a literary loose end. On Friday, needing something to read while I ate, so as to avoid looking like a loser (and because I like reading in restaurants and coffee shops), I had a look around Galloway & Porter, a pretty excellent second-hand book store. After considering the books on maths and physics, I remembered that I'd been talking to a girl on OKCupid about Douglas Coupland, and since I haven't read anything of his since 'Girlfriend in a Coma', I figured I'd give JPod a shot, being as it is a novel set in the games industry. I finished it two days later, on Sunday evening. It was kind of awesome.

On learning there was a TV series of it, of course, I had to download it and watch it. I watched the first episode earlier; considering how much I liked the book, I'll probably end up watching the whole series, but it was not very good. The dialogue is closer to Will & Grace than it is to Coupland's pithy writing, and it seems to take too many liberties with the source material. I guess it's unavoidable that things would be changed, but the changes seem to have been done in such a way as to miss the original point by as much as possible; A character has been axed (for no good reason, that I can tell), the characters that did make the cut seem to be enthusiastic about their work (The antithesis of how things are in the novel), and there's a definite undercurrent of moralising, whereas the book revelled in its amorality. Apparently, Coupland was involved with the series, at least in part. I wonder how much say he had in it.

It's amazing. Even better when you realise that the title text reads:
what you can't see in the last panel are t-rex's thoughts, which are transcribed (verbatim) as "aw man! the one time i didn't pick 'boner'."

Oh Christ. I'm all kinds of unmotivated about my LJ at the moment! I guess I've been mostly content, if a little complacent, so I don't really have much to write about. I think I've got some brain-drama brewing, but I don't think writing about it's going to help anyone involved. It's all the same old shit, anyway; I've written similar things before.

ANYWAY. Here's something that isn't completely vague: New hair!



Saturday before last, I got my hair cut, and made an appointment to have it dyed the Saturday after. So that's what I did; I ordered a few different colours of Manic Panic online (Orange, green and blue), and had it dyed blue-black with a peroxide streak. There's a photo on Flickr of it before I dyed the streak; I quite liked it, especially because the blue in my hair went really well with the blonde streak. I really like the orange, though! Looking forward to doing green next, in a month or two.

Something else I really want to post about is Clark's new album, Totems Flare. It really is the finest album I've heard in a long time, and that includes Bibio's latest, released last month. Although his live performance was kind of staid when James and I saw him a couple of weeks ago, he's definitely one of the finest producers around at the moment. I actually want to write a proper review of the album, along with a few other recent releases, and to that end I'm going to start a music review blog. If I ever write anything, I'll post a link to it here!

Last weekend I met up with James in London. First thing we did was check into the Holiday Inn in Camden, where we saw a bunch of cosplayers and furries in the lobby. We then got something to eat at a nearby restaurant, and afterwards went to see Public Enemies. It was decent enough, though much too long, and I sort of fell asleep in the middle. Overall, I think I enjoyed the 1930's setting more than I enjoyed the movie itself. It made me want to see something like The Untouchables; maybe I'll look for it on DVD today.

After the movie, we sat in the Costa across the road from Koko, waiting for the gig to start. The bill was Tim Exile, Plaid, Clark and Luke Vibert. I guess we were mostly there for Clark, but also looking forward to Plaid. We got in shortly before 9, and waited around for the first act to come on, whilst appreciating again the kind of music that is played in Koko before electronic gigs. The first act were a duo who weren't on the bill, but they were pretty interesting. According to last.fm, they're called Grasscut. Tim Exile was up next, and he put in a really interesting performance, all rapid hand movements and knob-twiddling. Plaid, by comparison, were disappointing. They played a much dancier set than I was hoping for, and despite having heard a lot of their stuff, I didn't recognise most of what they played. Next up was Clark, who also played a very dancey set. His dance stuff seems to work better at incredibly high volumes than Plaid's does, though. I was a little disappointed that he didn't play Ted, which arguably would have fit in well, but Growls Garden and Rainbow Voodoo were amazing. After Clark was Luke Vibert's DJ set. It was past 2am by this point, so we decided to call it a night. According to a review of the gig on last.fm, he did some stuff with The Tuss' Rushup Edge, which would have been pretty cool to see, I guess.

James and I had some breakfast at a fairly nice place on Camden High St., and then made our way back to Paddington. We both got home at around 5pm; I had picked up Bibio's new album 'Ambivalence Avenue' on the way. It is amazing.

This week at work has been pretty uneventful. My boss is on holiday, and one of the guys in our department was sick for two days, so it's been pretty quiet. I'm cool with that, though. Anyway, I was going to try and get a haircut today, so I should get ready to leave the house. Bye!

Oh wow, so much for writing about the rest of my Canada trip, huh? I thought I might be able to avoid falling into my usual trap of only updating about the first half of my holiday, by updating while I was over there, BUT IT TURNS OUT I WAS WRONG. I'm pretty sure I can't be bothered to write about it now, but here are my photos of the holiday, just in case you didn't see them on one of the various other social-networky sites I linked to them on. And if you didn't then I guess we're not such good friends after all, huh?

My week at work after getting back from holiday was a pretty tough one. I mentioned that I was working on Sunday, the day after I got back, I think. I also did a bit of overtime on Tuesday and Wednesday; just a couple of extra hours each night, but at this point the jetlag had really caught up with me. I woke up on Tuesday morning at 3am, and couldn't get back to sleep for well over two hours. Running on about 5 hours' sleep, I had to deal with some extreme heat (It was warm enough outside, but we don't really have such as working air-conditioning in our offices, so it was kind of horrible) and long working hours. We were over the milestone by Thursday, however, and things got a little easier.

I'm going to split things into two posts!!

Firstly: I got back from Montreal okay! Sort of; my flight was a bit late leaving, so when I arrived in Amsterdam, I had about half an hour before my connecting flight; plenty of time for me, but apparently not enough time for my luggage. When I tried to board, I was told that they'd put it on a plane to Nantes, and that I should rush across to the other side of the airport, wait in customs for a frustratingly long period of time, and be one of those lucky people to have their name read out over the intercom for holding the flight up. Well, they didn't say that, but that's what happened. So, my luggage and I went to Nantes in a poky little Air France jet. My shaky grip on the French language, tightened little by my 10 days in Quebec, disgusted the airport staff enough for them to address me in English as soon as they heard it. I got on the plane okay though, and it was slightly bigger than the previous one; this was where my luggage and I parted, however. Apparently, it was deemed more prudent to send it back to Amsterdam than on to London City. Waiting at baggage reclaim, I found two other people who had flown from Montreal by the same circuitous route as I, also in the same boat. We had a moan at the ground staff, and once we had ascertained where the luggage had gone, filled out forms with address details, so that we might get our belongings back.

And so, I got a call from them today saying they were going to have it delivered tomorrow. Assuming the bottle of wine that I bought for my Mum hasn't been smashed during excessive transit, all will be well. I'm putting off a journal entry about my last week in Montreal however, as I can't recall enough about what happened at the moment, and I plan on using my photos to jog my memory. Speaking of which, I hope to have them uploaded to Flickr by the end of the week!

Edit: My luggage has just been delivered! Woot.

Okay, so I haven't been updating as much as I'd hoped! It's all good, though, 'cause ain't nobody read this any more.

Myriam was working on her thesis for most of last week; she'd hoped to have it finished before I got here, but something came up, and she had to make some changes. On Thursday evening, we met up for something to eat at a café, and then went to Starbucks. Both armed with laptops, Myriam worked and I surfed the internet. It was nice.

I didn't see her on Friday, however. During the day I went downtown again, to check out the Peel/Concordia district, and ended up going to the Musée des Beaux-Arts. It was pretty cool, but I have to admit that I find modern art a bit more interesting than classical stuff; at least anything earlier than the late 1500's, a lot of which is strongly Christian. I don't know nearly as much about art as I used to, though. Anyway, later in the day I met up with Heather (Of 'Pears' fame), at an Ethiopian restaurant, where we were joined by a friend of hers, Cindy. Food was good; Izzy had recommended I try Ethiopian while I was here, and if I'd been able to go to Toronto to meet her, we would have had some there.

After dinner, we made our way to the SAT, where The Field was playing; outside, however, we got sidetracked by a group of DJs and VJs who were doing a live performance in a small park area; Heather knew about the event because she'd been asked to collaborate, so we talked to a couple of the VJs for a while. Inside, there was a DJ playing decent-ish electronic stuff. The Field came on at 11pm, and put on an interesting show; though he produces alone, he had two other guys with him for his performance. One of them seem to be doing additional production stuff, and played a small xylophone on one track, and the other alternated between bass guitar and drums. Live drums were an interesting addition to his minimal house stylings! The Juan McLean were up after that, and they put on a pretty interesting show! Their frontman played a theremin on several tracks, which was awesome.

Myriam had finished her thesis at about 6am on Saturday morning, so we met up for 'breakfast' at about 2pm. I had my first crepe! We then made our way downtown, and popped in on an outdoor fashion event. There was nothing there to interest Myriam, so we only stayed long enough to have her photo taken. After that we made our way to her University, McGill, and passed through to Mont-Royal, a mountain in the middle of the city. We stopped at a lake on the way up to take photos of a fat squirrel and eat ice-cream, and then went all the way to the top. We took a number of stupid photographs of ourselves with Montreal in the background, and then got lost a bit, before finally making our way down. Myriam had a numer of ideas for places to eat, but they were all closed; we ended up at a Portuguese bar drinking beer and eating some really nice nachos. Two pints later, we made our way to the bridge to watch the fireworks display.

Whew! On Sunday (Yesterday), I went to Piknic Electronik, a dance party on an island, with the intention of meeting up with Heather again; she couldn't make it, however, so I ended up sitting around taking photos of people and listening to bad dance music for a couple of hours. It was pretty cool, all told. Made my way back into town and got something to eat while waiting for Myriam to arrive, and then we went to see 'Up' in 3D! It was pretty awesome. On our way back we stopped at a faux-Mexican restaurant for daiquiris and over-loud and annoying fiesta music.

Today I have no real plans yet! I'm going to do a bit of CD shopping, and perhaps see if I can find the Boards of Canada building again. See you!

Oh Hi! Been a while since I updated, innit? I'm in Canada now, and I brought my laptop, so I am at least going to be able to avoid my usual post-holiday epic updates (Which usually become so bloated that I give up on my account halfway through). So, here's some stuff about my flight over!

I woke up at 5am on Tuesday morning, bleary eyed and dull-witted. A shower perked me up a little, after which I finished my packing. One of my housemates gave me a lift to the coach stop, from where I got on a coach to row. The journey went largely without incident, until we got stuck in traffic on the motorway. I should have seen it coming, I guess, and got an earlier coach, but I figured 2 hours would be enough. What I didn't take into account was that I needed to go to Heathrow's Terminal 4, and I'd only bought a ticket to Terminals 1, 2 and 3. Oops. The coach arrived 20 minutes late, and I had to cheese it to the train that goes between terminals. Adrenaline-fueled, I made it through check-in and customs with ample time to spare. Go me!

My flight to Amsterdam, squashed between two older people, was mercifully short. The woman to my right spilled a glass of white wine, a considerable amount of which ended up on my trousers. She was very apologetic about it, but I told her not to worry; she thanked me for being nice about it, and said, 'At least it wasn't red wine!'.


Amsterdam airport is huge, and my trek between gates took the best part of 15 minutes. By this stage I was rather hungry, having not eaten since the night before, but I'd forgotten to bring Euros with me, and I was hesitant to get stung by airport exchange rates, after my previous experience at Helsinki airport. So, I went without food until the flight to Montreal. Ah, wonderful airplane food. My choice, vague as ever, was 'Chicken or pasta?'. Unsure which one was going to kill me, I went with the chicken. Maybe I should have gone with the pasta. I watched Coraline on the flight, in crappy airplane-o-vision. I kind of regret it now; although I enjoyed it, I really should have seen it when it was in cinemas. Anyway, the flight was dull, I didn't get any sleep, and I arrived in Montreal tired.

After getting a bus from the airport, I met up with Myriam; we walked to my hostel and I checked in. We then went for drinks at a nearby bar; being as the hostel is close to the gay district, dudes were totally checking me out. Had something to eat, and went back to the hostel to catch up on my sleep.

I spent the next day walking around Montreal's Centre-ville district, acclimatising myself. Didn't really buy anything, but had something to eat at a Subway, and sat by a fountain outside Montreal's Hotel-de-ville. Also walked past the 'National Film Board of Canada' building (From which Boards of Canada got their name). Headed back to the hostel for a while, and went back into town to meet Myriam; we ate at a vegetarian Thai restaurant, which was really nice (And really expensive; I'm going to need to get some more money out for sure).

Anyway, I've been typing for much too long. I'm planning to go to an insectarium today, and take photos for the first time since arriving. See you soon!

This weekend was pretty cool. Joel arrived in the afternoon on Saturday, and I met him in town. We had something to eat, before meeting up with Dave and Lorraine at the Strawberry Fair. We wandered around, and ended up at a tiny circus, watching a woman climb a rope and perform tricks, and a guy juggle daggers while balancing precariously. We got something to drink and walked around some more. There were a few live music acts, but none of them were particularly good.

Eventually we got tired of walking around, and went to a nearby pub for something to eat and drink. Dave and Lorraine hadn't met Joel before, but everyone seemed to get on well, so it was all good. We moved to another pub for something else to drink, and then went home pretty early. Joel and I then drank the cider I had at home, and finished off the bottle of Jameson's that I've had sitting in my room for the past half-year.

This was not a good idea. I woke up the next morning with a mild headache and mild queasiness. The headache didn't last so long, but I had to puke a little to stave off the queasiness; it helped, though I felt a little out-of-sorts for the rest of the day. Joel came away with a pretty serious headache. I guess we're not as young as we used to be. We listened to music for a while, and then went into town and ate at the Tram Depot. I couldn't finish my burger though, which I felt bad about, because they do great burgers there. Shortly after that Joel got the train home, and I pissed away the rest of the day doing something or other.

I popped into Sainsbury's on my way home from work today; a bit of a detour, really, which adds about half an hour onto the time it takes me to get home, but it's the only supermarket nearby which isn't a Co-op, so it's sort of a necessary evil. I bought: Some vegetables, pizza, ready meals (I haven't been cooking much lately), milk, blah, blah and blah. I walked home, dropped my stuff off, and then set out again. The polling station was about 15 minutes away.

Back-story; I've never been registered to vote before. I've never had, and still don't have, much of an interest in politics. Sure, I have political opinions, but like most of my opinions, I just assume they're of little relevance to anyone but myself. And because I have little-to-no interest in politics, or current events, my knowledge of the parties and candidates is seriously limited. Standing in the polling station, looking at the list of running parties I'd been given, I had to wonder what right I had to cast a vote based such an uninformed opinion; not just uninformed, but apathetic. However, it has been said that I'm an idiot for wasting my vote, so here I was, wondering whether the Jury Team, Socialist Labour Party or the Christian Party ('Proclaiming Christ's Lordship') were a better choice than the one that I was always going to make. I figured they weren't, so I voted Liberal Democrats. The polling station was on a road called Mansel Way; on my way home I listened to Boards of Canada - Mansel.

The Strawberry Fair is on this weekend. I went with Myriam back in 2007, but not last year. This year, however, Joel is coming to Cambridge, so we're going to hit it up. Dave and his girlfriend are going as well, so we'll probably meet up with them. Fun will most likely be had by all involved!

I'm sure I probably say this at about the same time every year, but I really hate the hot weather. The sun I can deal with, but once the temperature rises to the point that I'm constantly uncomfortable indoors, that's where my issues begin. It just makes me lethargic, and concentrating on anything is an effort. I can't play games very well, either. If anything requires me to focus on what I'm doing, like racing games, I just end up sweaty and frustrated. I think this is the weather to be playing Fallout 3 and Dwarf Fortress (Although the later does required a considerable degree of concentration) as opposed to Ridge Racer 6 and Forza Motorsport 2. So, that is what I shall do.

I ordered a laptop last Thursday. Specifically, a Samsung R509, with a 2.16GHz Dual Core processor, 3GB of RAM and a 500GB hard drive (Its only failing is the graphics set, which is onboard Intel badness). I was hoping that it would be delivered this week, but I got an email this morning saying there was a problem processing my debit card. It's most likely just my bank being cautious in the event of such a large payment, so I'll go in tomorrow and sort it out. I want my laptop!

Finally, I was working on Saturday! There were a few things that needed to be checked over, so a few of us went in. After work, we went to the Korean restaurant that Dave and I used to go to every month back a the old place. It was nice!

And that's what's going on with me!