Category: Musings

I love the smell of napalm in the morning

Back in New York again. Stupidly long flight (8.5 hours) due to head winds. Managed to get one of the few empty seats next to me through a bit of effort convincing the large hassidic lad next to me to swap with his much smaller mate, only then to find that his screen didn’t work. Nice one. I suspect all Atlantic flights are going to be pretty rammed from now on, with the decreased volume of flights. It’s nice to be back though.

Started watching Armageddon Now: Redux last night. Excellent stuff. It’s been a long time since I last watched Armageddon Now so I can’t really recognise the new bits. Great sound.. Bugger all special features though – it’s all movie. Speaking of extra features, the people in the apartment opposite mine have moved out so I got to wander in there last night while Adelpho was cleaning it out. It’s huge! They have a small photo studio and lots of old photo equipment they’ve ‘abandoned’ – well, Adelpho was throwing it out anyway. I grabbed a tripod thing in classic hoarder stylee. The apartment’s about 30-40% bigger than mine but only $300 per month more! Suspect my landlord might find it hard to argue with me for a rent increase. Although that’s pretty much a moot point at the moment as I make me decisions whether to stay in New York or head elsewhere. Global travel is sounding increasingly interesting after chatting to lots of people in the UK. Watch this space!

Britlandia

Well, as you can guess from the fact I’m typing the plane landed safely… No sleep though, apart from the 20 minutes I caught during Hedwig and the Angry Inch (which I had just been starting to enjoy when I dozed off).

So I’ve been staying in a little hotel near to Oxford town center with most of my family – eight of us have descended to break the peace and celebrate my nan’s 84th birthday. We just had a wonderful (and extremely large) dinner at the Boot pub, just outside of Oxford. The walls have many different shoes from different celebrities such as Gary Linneker and the Bee Gees scattered around. Nice place.

Up, up and away

After a brief delay.. Currently I’m at JFK airport, enjoying the services of a get2net free console (which has many dodgy keys, of which ‘r’ is the wost). Just used my Silver Card with Virgin to check in, saving 20-30 minutes of waiting, only to find my flight is currently delayed over an hour. Of course, being Thanksgiving everything is closed. Damn glad I bought a book with me!

Also wish I’d checked the flight delays prior to rushing out early from Tim’s dinner. Good soup though and I have some pie to eat later. Mmm… Also got to play with a cute Sony Vario-Sonnar digital camera (5MP) courtesy of Jon. Smashing.

The life of Riley

As I sit here in my dressing gown at 12.30 in the afternoon, I realize that I’m already fully settled into the unemployed lifestyle. Strange how quickly one adjusts.. So I’m tweaking my web site, playing with my new Epson Stylus Photo 820 – a cute little ink jet printer that also does photos. It’s amazing the level of quality you can get for only $100 these days. I remember when I got my dot matrix printer for my Atari ST.. sigh.

A Maze of Twisty Turny Passages, All Alike

I’m now back in the US of A, New York City to be exact. My usual weekly jaunt up to State College, PA has been postponed. Indefinately. This was a bit of a surprise as I thought I would still be going up there for another month or two. The reality of it is that I get to stay in New York which I do love infinitely more than State College, although part of me is already missing the guys up there who were often a laugh. Plus of course all the cute student girls! Yay.

On the ‘yay’ note.. the new season of Buffy kicked off last night on UPN. A two hour Buffy-thon that I sat through the first half of before heading into town and letting my re-play take the strain. Watched the rest of it this morning. No great shakes. Guess what.. (spoiler coming)… they resurrect Buffy. D’oh! Didn’t see that one coming a frikkin’ mile off. After the extreme emotional tourment of last season (I cried in at least 3 episodes – especially when Buffy’s mum died) I’m apprehensive about this new series. I don’t believe they can better some of those episodes. So anyway, set my expectations low (one of life’s key rules) and carry on watching… Mmmm, stakey.

Junky

Back in the UK at my old house. Fly back later today on United – hopefully it will be as empty as on the way out so I’ll be able to get some sleep in, something I was sorely lacking until last night. I decided on Saturday to try and move my flight back to London earlier so I could see my family for longer. This turned out to be hideously easy, although the only flight available was 4.35am and was completely full – so no sleep for Matt and apologies to Stephen for constantly banging him as I tried to get slightly comfortable.

Having left Agia Napa we taxi’d over to Lemesos (aka, Lemesol) where we stayed at the Hawaii Grand hotel. This is another large hotel complex with every ammenity on tap, although the pool was smaller than London this time! I’ve now come to realize that I’m not really into ‘posh’ hotels – I’d rather be hanging out with a large group of friends or be somewhere interesting – like Mamacita’s in Culebra. Perhaps it’s just that I spend all my time in hotels anyway, so it just seemed like being at work!!

The last few days in Lemesos continued to be very lazy. We were fairly clubbed out and Lemesos clubs do not compare in quality to Agia Napa’s. Finally beat Stephen in our squash tournament and then in the snooker competition. So the overall score was well in my favour – it was just the ‘guess how many times Starlight is played’ contest that Stephen was best at.

The best of times, the worst of times

Being out in State College raises many emotions in me, most of which revolve around being away from my friends and the city I love. Sometimes thought being out here with feck all to do leads me to doing things I might not have done elsewhere. One such thing was sitting down and reading through the archives of my blogging. One caught my eye – poetic allusions to the World Trade Tower burning just under a year ago. Nostradamus eat ‘yer heart out!

Other thoughts though: whatever happens from here on in I’ve had a wicked ride. Maybe I’ve not been the coolest kid on the block, but who defines cool anyway? In looking back at the older stuff I see how my life has changed. When I was down Von the other night reading an old diary some guy (rudely) interrupted my thoughts to say that he’d read some of his old stuff and didn’t even recognise who had written it. His earlier, pre-suit job self was a wannabe writer. I disagreed with him at the time, but now I must apologise to him and say he was somewhat right.

Friends.net

It’s times like this when you really appreciate the power of the Internet to bring people together. The ability to mail/instant message/phone/post to my friends and let them know everything’s OK with me and find out that everything’s OK with them is a wonderful thing. People using their cell phones to tell their rescuers where they are in the rubble.

The Day After the Beginning of the End of the World?

Nope, not really that pessimistic. I’d like to believe that World War III won’t break out, even with Dubya at the helm.

Things are starting to sink in now. Every now and again I just stare off into space and imagine the New York skyline without the Twin Towers. The final few people I’ve been worried about have turned up safe and sound – thank you all for lying in bed that extra half hour. Noone can believe what’s happened. I was talking to a friend in Israel and she was saying that all the people who’ve died in Israel total 20,000 – not just from one tragedy like this. I still hope and believe that the figures won’t be that high from the stories I’ve heard, but it will be in the thousands. Why are some people so fucking stupid? What has this achieved? How does this help? I can’t even understand how someone can think like this!

Play it again Sam

Check out the new ReplayTV 4000 – it connects, via its Ethernet cable, to broadband and lets you do cool stuff like share tv programs with other people. So, plan is to leave one up and running in the UK and then just upload Brit TV over here… simple! Plus I could send the new Buffy series from the UPN playing New York cable stations up here to State College where no UPN is available.

Now all I need to do is get some form of Broadband connection set up in Williamsburg (damn you Verizon)… Oh, and ReplayTV needs to be released in the UK… Another fine plan goes awry.