Peru Prologue

I'm back from Peru!

I had a great holiday but after almost 24 hours of travelling and just one hour of sleep, I'm absolutely shattered!

So in 14 days I managed to travel by plane, train, automobile, motor-boat, canoe and a boat held aloft by recycled plastic bottles!

I've stayed for a night with a farming family on an island in lake Titicaca, in a lodge with full mosquito netting(!) in the middle of the Amazonian jungle, did the last day of the Inca trail and have seen the brilliant Machu Pichu with my own eyes. And that's just brushing the surface!

Bed time for me now....More soon....

Lucky?!

Bizarrely I've had two things happen to me this week which though inconvenient would have been a lot more troublesome if they had occurred whilst I was off on holiday.

First I woke up on Wednesday morning to find that my fridge-freezer door had popped open at some point during the night and in the process of defrosting itself had left a big puddle of melted ice all over my kitchen floor!

I'm completely to blame though. It's been in dire need of defrosting for weeks now and it was actually quite fun watching the ice build up in the top freezer compartment and start to descend into the fridge section.

Like a glacier slowly pushing, it had decided that down wasn't the only way to go and had pushed out as well. As soon as the door was open into my (always warm) flat, it was like global warming on a smaller scale with floods of huge proportions (for my ant flatmates anyway.)

I had to frantically chip away at the near-impervious ice with a screwdriver whilst keeping an eye on the time as I was running late for work!

But can you imagine if it had happened whilst I was on holiday!?
The ants would have had a free feast. Walking in on a Saturday night, knackered and finding something like that! ARGH!

Actually whilst cleaning the house up last night to make sure there's no chance of any stray crumbs around the kitchen, I spotted a spindly-legged spider surrounded by loads of dead ants in the corner behind one of my cupboards.

So if the poisoned bait doesn't get you, the spider will!

He's my new friend :)

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And then earlier on in the week my all-singing, all-dancing heart rate monitor-compass-altimeter-barometer (it tell the time too as an added bonus) watch's battery ran out. Getting one of those in Peru would have been hard and it's amazing how annoying and inconvenient it can get having to rely on others to know what the time is.

The watch is made by Suunto, a Finish company (I think), and I bought it on E-bay from someone with a very good rating (I never buy from anyone below 100, ideally 1000!) for massively less than RRP.

I worried for a day or so that the watch was faulty but one new battery later, everything is hunky-dory. Excellent!

I'm off from work early today so I can actually do my packing. Everything is in a pile at the moment. I've tried using telekinesis to get it to pack itself but it's not working :(

A cab is picking me up at the ungodly hour of 04:30 ! 14 hours flying!

Luckily KLM, who I am travelling with, allow you to check in online and even choose your seats, so that's out of the way. So, leg room seats sorted! Thank you internet!

So thank you for reading and see you all in 2 weeks!

Found Serenity

Sorry all, I've been living a secret second life. An addiction. I've tried to hide it; not let it interfere with my real life but it just took over me for the past week.

So I'm off to Peru on Saturday for detox from the drug that is World Of Warcraft.
Me, Doobrie, currently a 15th level Paladin resting soundly in a local inn :)

I did discover that, like cocaine (apparently,) playing WOW is a great aid to dieting. You just sit at the computer playing, chatting to others, ganging up on monsters, solving quests....
Just one more quest...Just one more level and before you know it, it's 3 in the morning, you're starving and it's time to hit the sack.

Okay, perhaps I didn't get THAT bad but I could feel myself slipping over to the dark side once or twice. Luckily, I have strong will power so can switch off if need be.

Is my life really that boring? Well, no but the World of Warcraft is just so damn interesting. Childhood fantasies of being the hero, casting spells. The amazing creatures you can meet, the whole surround sound, 1600x1200 experience is just too good to pass on.

And it IS fun, why else do hundreds of thousands partake (posh word!)?
Are they all obese computer geeks with no life? Hell, no. People from all over play these things. It is cool in a geek-chic type of way.

Will I ever survive two weeks without it in Peru?! Of course I will :)


Back to the real world, I went to see Serenity at the flicks last Thursday (Played WOW when I got home though.)

The film was awesome. I'm a sucker for sci-fi action and this film (and it's sequels) were what the last 3 Star Wars film can only aspire to be. Exciting, funny, action-packed with characters that get fleshed out better than George Lucas seemed to be able to do lately. Needless to say, I loved it. 10/10 and that is a rare thing with me. I saw the original series Firefly and perhaps that has biased me as obviously the characters are already known to me. However, regardless it was
a good film and with the right word-of-mouth, I hope it does well.

I'm planning to see Night Watch this week if I get a chance. First, I still need to sort out holiday insurance(!), clean my flat from top-to-toe before I go (to lessen the ants' holiday experience whilst I'm away) and sort out what I'm taking and start packing pronto! *stress*

One less thing to worry about though was I did manage to get a really good exchange rate for my currency today from a funny little exchange booth on Baker Street where the guy basically out-bid all the banks and Bureau De Changes in the area who were trying to give me 1.68 dollars to the pound and gave me 1.74 instead. I didn't have to haggle even though it looked like the kind of place where you could. It does look legit, just a bit strange compared to his surroundings. He's squashed between a restaurant and a dentists!

Also, I asked for a receipt and he gave me a hand written note with a stamp on it. LOL!

I'll probably go back in two weeks to find that he's disappeared *grin*

Geek!

I bought World Of Warcraft today...A few people at work have been raving about it.

I just had to try it.... I'm a reborn geek!

If it's good....You may not hear from me for a while.

That's either good or bad. I don't know....

You decide...

Do Stuff!

I'd been suffering from apathy a bit this week. Not just blog apathy but generalised apathy. But now I've had enough of that and it's time to get off my ass and do stuff!

Okay, so it's not as if I haven't been doing anything. I managed to go to the cinema twice (having started to suffer withdrawal symptoms from not having been for the past fortnight!), discovered that High Street Kensington is the place to go to buy travel gear (I hadn't been there for over 10 years) hence bought the perfect holdall for my holiday and checked out Oxford Street on Saturday whilst it was closed to traffic for it's rather weakly named 'Celebrate Oxford Street - Dress To Impress' day.

I was planning on seeing 'Revolver' but the universal panning by critics (pah!) and people I knew who had seen it (oh dear) scared me off.

So on Thursday, I went to see 'Land Of The Dead' instead. I never used to be that much into zombie flicks but the humorous gory aspects of Romero's films are quite cool.

'Land' was quite good. Not perfect but watchable nonetheless. Plenty of 'cool' gory killings but definitely not scary. If you don't like this kind of film, then this won't change your mind.

Reading between the lines it's about the masses rebelling against the governments and corporations driven by profit that try to control their lives. Just to make it really obvious, at one point the main 'bad man' played by Dennis Hopper, says "We don't negotiate with terrorists" when talking about one of the 'bully boys' that he has created to do his dirty work who is trying to blackmail him.

It could have been made at any time in the past three decades really. So a cool zombie flick but not really pushing the bounds of the genre anywhere new. 6.5/10 from me.

I went to see a completely different movie, 'A History Of Violence' on Friday. At least, this time, the cinema had more than six other people, as had been the previous day.

It was okay but I couldn't help but feel that Cronenberg's direction was a bit off. It's one of those films that you feel you shouldn't not like because everyone else seems to like it. As I said, it was okay but once again, not exactly genre busting. The story was interesting enough but bits of the movie felt out of place. There were a few scenes that felt a bit redundant.

The film was over an hour and a half long and I have to say that I didn't notice. So I guess that it did enough to keep me interested. I'd give it a 6.9/10. Could have been a lot better though.

I'm really looking forward to seeing 'Serenity' this week though, hopefully on Thursday, as I couldn't beg, borrow or steal any premier or preview tickets :(

Anyway movie reviewer bit over. HAHA!


As I mentioned, I popped along on Saturday to check out Oxford Street's traffic-free day. It's another one of those promotional attempts to get shoppers back into London's main shopping street after the events of July and various other factors have apparently knocked loads off the profits of the shops on the street. (Shame!)

It certainly worked in terms of the number of people who turned up. I was there after 3pm and Oxford street was packed to the gills. A few bands were performing on stage in the middle of the traffic-free section and various Z-list celebs were in some of the stores trying to feel important.

My friend, who popped down to London with me, had a good point though when he pointed out that although there were thousands of people packed into the street, practically none of them seemed to be carrying any shopping bags. So I'm not convinced that the shops along the street would really have benefited that much.

In fact at one point when it started raining, loads of us popped into Waterstones, the book shop that faces the main stage. Waterstones were well prepared. They had one security guard on duty and he struggled to keep people away from the entrance as the door alarm was going off non-stop!

Then we got bored of seeing reality-show rejects on stage and tried to head back the way we came. It took us twenty minutes to work through the, now, very compressed crowd. Some fights almost broke out as some people tried pushing a bit too hard!

Policing was a bit of a mess too. A one point there were about eight community police trying to form a chain across the whole street to stop more people getting through to the stage section.
Needless to say that eight against a few hundred doesn't work. Later on, proper London Metropolitan police turned up and sorted things straight away.

Frankly we were glad to get out of there in the end. I'm sure that all that happened was that they weren't prepared for the numbers that turned up around the main stage. Stupid really!

Anyhow, I was happy in the end as I managed to get a decent holdall for my Peru trip and just need to get some US currency now to spend over there.

Thirteen days and counting!

PS: Reading back I realise that I sound really cynical about the whole Oxford Street Event. I think that it probably was a good event so long as you stayed out of the over-crowded areas as I hope that my pictures of the wacky geishas on stilts and spinning teapots show.

Your bag is huge!

I'm trying to to think too hard today. If I do, I start to remember things that happened on Saturday night.

Why, oh why must I become a dancing machine after a few drinks *sigh*

I'm distracting my mind by thinking of happier things such as there being under three weeks until I go to Peru.

I'm slowly working myself through my guide book reading about all the places I'm headed.

Just one minor hassle at the moment is that I still need to sort out anti-malarial tablets. I have a horrible feeling that I'll have to go and see the (not so friendly) nurse at my local health clinic just so that I can get some on a private prescription rather than buying it outright which apparently costs a fortune.

I can't remember what it's called but I have to take tablets for a week before I go and then two weeks afterwards too....With lots of possible side-effects. Oh joy!

I also need to get a holdall to bung all my stuff in. We're traveling around in a mini-bus and my current suitcase (which is American but bought cheaply in a French supermarket in Beijing) is about the size of a mini-bus! I need to buy something a bit smaller.

I got a bit annoyed after work popping into a few luggage shops in Oxford Street when their idea of customer service is to ignore you when you want to talk to them and then ask if you need any help as you're walking out.

"No thank you, I'm just walking out," I mutter under my breath.

I figure that I need a trolley holdall so that I can drag it around most of the time and carry it like a regular bag when that's not possible.

I may pop into Millets on Kensington High Street over the weekend to see if they have anything cheaper than the nice but hugely over priced one that I spotted in Selfridges.

21 Again!

For the 13th time anyway :(

The bowling went well. We had a great time though I hadn't realised just how busy the SuperBowl in Park Royal gets on a weekend. I guess that it must be one of the few things for families with kids to do locally.

We gorged ourselves at Chiqitoes afterwards and then met up again in the evening and went on a mini pub crawl. Well, okay two pubs isn't really a crawl. So more of a pub hop.

My friends had been kind enough to get me the badge (pictured) to wear for the night!

Things started to get hazy around the time of the second pub anyway. Apparently we started making some bizarre toasts to various things before we headed off to Camden and went to the Electric Ballroom through until the early hours of the morning.

I remember dancing with a wooly hat on at one point but have now idea how or why!?

We came out to find loads of police and their cars blocking off Camden High Street. Apparently there'd been a fight earlier. I had no idea what they were still doing there though as we couldn't see anything happening at that moment in time.

The downside was that all of the mini-cabs had been cleared out of the area, so we had to walk around looking for what was probably an unlicensed cab in the end. We managed to haggle one down to 30 pounds for 2 stops and 30 minutes later I was happy and fast asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

Birthday Buzz

Okay, so having popped along to the Natural History museum the other day (however brief), I decided that the V&A would be next. I haven't been there since I was small but I wasn't really sure if there'd be anything worth seeing.

So, I googled it and found its web site.

Hey, they've got an exhibition on called 'Between Past And Future: New Photography And Video From China.' Well, that might seem boring to some but I went to China last year and thought that this might be interesting.

Look, they've got a photo competition on. There're only a few entries so far. Hmmmm, I took a picture when I was in Shanghai from the old part of Chinatown (yes, they even have Chinatown areas in Chinese towns, go figure!) looking back along a street at a brand new, shiny high rise building (lots of those in Shanghai).

I liked the contrast. Between past and future. Get it?

So I uploaded the image and now I wait....

As it is, I don't stand a chance of winning. Even I like some of the other pictures there more, I even voted for someone else's, although some of them don't really appear to have anything whatsoever to do with the theme.

Stuff like, here's a picture of my son/daughter laughing. Duh?!

Well, have a look... See if you like anything there...Nudge nudge, wink wink :) (picture 25!)

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I walked down to Gloucester Road from work today. It took about an hour but I had to do it because:

(a) I had stuffed my face at lunchtime with truffles that I had bought for everyone in my building as it's my birthday tomorrow (an office tradition for us). I bought them from the Godiva shop in Selfridges and asked the assistant to just give me nine of each of the twelve varieties.

I of course, had to try each variety, so twelve truffles!

(b) As a result of stuffing my face, I was on a chocolate high. It was totally bizarre. Whilst I might normally feel a bit sleepy after lunch, this time, all afternoon I had a definite chocolate buzz.

I had to burn that energy off somehow and since all my birthday stuff was planned for tomorrow and nothing for tonight, I had the energy to walk it off easily. It's not as if I was going to go to the gym, was it!

I walked past the London Fashion Week 'tents' in front of the Natural History Museum. Too early to see any models unfortunately though :( No early birthday presents for me!

One of my best mates is coming down from up North with his family for my birthday and I thought that we could do something that could involve everyone so we're off for a spot of bowling in the afternoon. Given that my form was inconsitent, to say the least, when I was in Hungary, I have no idea how I'll do tomorrow.

To be honest, so long as we all have a laugh...

Then much later, we're off clubbing at the Electric Ballroom in Camden. It's retro 70's, 80's and 90's tunes on a Saturday night, so just right for us 30-something old timers :)

We're watching you...

So, two days ago I received an interesting letter from the Local Government Association (No, I have no idea who they are either) saying that they were doing a survey on my block of flats today (yes, two days notice is great) and could I fill in a form detailing my journeys to and from my flat over the course of the day!?

So, stuff like times, where you were going, where you were coming from, mode of transportation, that sort of thing.

No explanation over why they're doing the survey, so I filed it under "recyclable paper."

To top it all off they have people at each of the exits noting down as people come and go. I gave them a stare as I left this morning.

It's freaky! Big Brother eat your heart out! I feel like I'm a specimen being analysed under a microscope.

They're supposed to be coming by tonight to pick up the completed forms.
They'll be knocking at my door for a while then....

Not Alone

They've never left but just when I thought that the bait was kicking in and their numbers were going down, my small flat mates have returned in numbers.

If I look at the wall behind by oven hob I can count over thirty, right now, walking up and down the grout between my tiles.

It's hard to resist wiping them out but I have to allow them to carry on in the vague hope that some of them will take the slow poison (too slow!) bait back to their queen.

Darn camera wouldn't focus on one of their larger gatherings but here's a picture nonetheless of a few of them to creep anyone looking at this out.

It's weird. They appear from under the extractor hood that I have over my oven, walk down and then head back up again. There's no food or drink for them (I even have to keep my box of cereal in the fridge to make sure!) , so I hope that they're taking the bait instead.

But I'm starting to have my doubts. *sigh* Perhaps they're just working out?

Oh well, at least they're quiet flat mates!

Speed Freak

Work raced by today. It was weird working with a monitor with a lower resolution than my home one. Hardly anything fits on the page now!

It was going to be a boring evening until I decided to join in a company sponsored "Evening Of Go Karting." As I write this right now, my arms ache, my back has pains where the G-forces pushed me into my seat and the contents of my stomach have been shaken, rattled and rolled all over the place!

I feel like I've been boxing all evening but f**k it I had a f**king great time!
There were over 50 of us and so we had the whole place booked just for us. No riff-raff! :)

(PS:I have to blank out swear words or my own blog gets blocked at work!)

We managed to get through the evening without any casualties and I was pleased with my times, even if they were almost 3 seconds off the best ones I managed to improve by 16 seconds as I got more confident/reckless and floored the kart through all the bits that I should have been flooring it on all along. Not bad for my second time karting ever.

And we all got a great laugh out of the fact that we had to wear bright red hair nets before we put on our helmets. So fetching ! LOL! I hope that it becomes an annual event.

Well, I should sleep well tonight. *YAWN*

Recommended for insomniacs everywhere!

Okay, so today.....
Watched football - no goals :(
Finished watching Lost - Season One - damn season ending cliff-hangers!
Ate, drank and chilled out.

Oh and played Fahrenheit on my PC to fill in the bits in between. Too early to say whether or not it'll be good but it certainly looks nice running at 1600x1200 on my new monitor. Woo hoo!

My Hungarian nephew has sent me a few e-mails over the weekend asking if I can send over some 'Magic The Gathering' cards for him. I had no idea that he was into them (I didn't see any when I was over there though he was massively into Lord Of The Rings) and I'm not sure how he'd do given that they'll all be written in English. I think that perhaps he hasn't really thought it through.

I did a bit of searching around on the internet and there are loads of cards, booster packs, sets etc. I wouldn't know the first place to start. Oh well. I've dropped him a reply to see how serious he is.

Saturday Stroll.

Well my monitor finally arrived at 4pm. So much for morning delivery *sigh*

I was planning on going into work but 4pm was a wee bit too late to even bother. Nevertheless I was a good boy and worked through to my usual time and then instead of traveling home on an overcrowded tube train was there instantly. Cool!

The monitor is excellent. It's not just 21 inches but 21.3! Well that's what it says on the box.

Who says that .3 of an inch doesn't count, eh?! Obviously to someone in marketing, it does! I wonder what that says about them :)

Today was nice weather-wise so I dragged myself off my ass and walked into London. It's just a few miles. Straight down the Uxbridge Road to Shepherd's Bush and then down Holland Park Road, past Notting Hill and into Hyde Park, down to the other end by Kensington Palace and then up the path that runs behind the Albert Memorial and Albert Hall (where the photo here was taken.)

I cooled my heels (literally) in the Princess Di memorial pool. Funnily enough I was the only person doing this but I didn't think that it was that cold; just a bit cool but with warm sunshine offsetting the chill; for me anyway. (Hmmm, I probably used semi-colons incorrectly there but I don't care.)

Then down to Piccadilly Circus. I went to see 'Wolf Creek' at the flicks. It was okay. A bit overhyped perhaps but if you like your horror sick-style then you'll love it but I thought that the one hour character building, setting the scene bit for a 90 minute film was over long. Not enough horror for a horror flick really. I saw 'The Descent' earlier in the year and preferred that to this. It was as I said not bad just not as good as critic comments seem to make it out to be.

6/10 for me

However, if you ever plan to travel across Australia, don't see this film! Or you may appreciate the horror more perhaps. Who knows!? Guy Ritchie's new film, Revolver is out next week so that'll be next on my 'hit list.'

Chilled out in the evening with a curry and a drink with a friend. Pretty boring day really.

In limbo

*sigh*

*BIG SIGH*

I'm stuck at home today waiting for a delivery. The only thing that I had on my "to buy" list for the past two years has been a new monitor. So with a bit of spare cash coming my way soon, I looked around and took the plunge and went for a huge 21 inch flatscreen one!

The downside is that I'm now stuck in delivery-limbo.

They told me that I would get the delivery in the morning but have now changed their tune and are saying. "We would never have said that. Standard delivery hours are from 9 until 6!"

"Arggggghhh! But somebody did tell me that!"

I am actually working from home, for the first official time, (hence I'm writing this in my lunch break!) but I've given up trying to watch the last few episodes of 'Lost' as it was just too distracting.

Knowing my luck, the monitor will either not arrive or will come at 17:59 at this rate!

Arggggghhhhh! (again)

View from my window. It's overcast in London, though the sun does pop up every now and then.

Return Of The Rain

Today was a bit of a dreary day weather wise.

I'm starting to feel almost 100% now and would have liked to go for a stroll through Hyde Park on the way home but not in the pouring rain!

One good thing about the mixed Summer in London is that the parks are so green. They did a comparison in the paper yesterday with how Kensington Palace Gardens (The grounds by which Princess Di used to live, next to Hyde Park) with a few years ago when we had a dry summer and things look so much greener this year.

If only it would rain overnight and then stay sunny during daylight hours!

I'm starting to get to the point where it's dark by the time I get home as well, so I may end up posting a few more London at night type pictures though def. not in the park!

All sorts of strange people inhabit London's parks at night, so I'll stay well away and will be walking around them instead.

Although it's not as if life in Acton, where I live, is all that safe. Over the past two weeks we've had two people stabbed and killed within a block of me and four break-ins over the weekend in my block of flats!

I'm seriously starting to ponder about moving somewhere 'nicer.'

Acton itself isn't so bad but there seem to be a lot of people with a lot of time on their hands hanging around the town nowadays. I rarely see any police walking around and although I make a point of never looking like a victim and have never been one, thank God, I can see how others could be a lot more afraid living here nowadays.

Acton is just so darned convenient travel-wise for someone like me (that doesn't drive) to get into the city, go to work, go out etc.