It's note writing time, yes its been ages again, so what? wanna fight about it? As you can imagine lots has happened, but I will try to be brief...

A couple of weeks after the last time I wrote anything I embarked on a long and painful journey through a lot of work that I had been 'leaving to the last minute'. I actually left some of it until after the last minute and didn't get it done properly, but I was determined that I wouldn't let this happen with my dissertation. In any case I didn't have a lot of time so I dissapeared for a few weeks to live the hermit life and emerged from my cave on the assignment due date with a 79 page report on my project, a network playable computerized board game called buccaneer. Once I get an open source working version I will try to make it available to you!

During this time I made a little exodus to Berlin, accompanied by a small band of warriors (Ali, Matt and Gordon), to go and see 'ManOWar'. I will say now... I don't like ManOWar! but I only know that now having had the full 'ManOWar experience', previously I was unsure and open minded.

We stayed at a rather odd hostel called the 'Melinger' or something, who were apparently 'Good in beds'... We're still not entirely sure if that was meant to be a joke. It was quite a clean 'efficent' place with a rather odd key system... basically there was only one key per room and most of the time it was in the door to the room so anyone could get in. There were lots of other small, slightly strange, things about the way the place was run such as requiring your passport to borrow cutlery, but I wont bore you with the details. Suffice it to say it was WIERD but it sorta worked, like they had everything planned perfectly but you were too stupid to understand with your dumb english 'tea-making' brain.

We went to a lot of restaurants and ate pure meat (for this was in the spirit O' ManOWar), and drank proper german beer from great steins. The others went 'Techno raving', I slept through this but apparently this was very good apart from scary gay germans offering drugs. We went to the centre to see a big TV tower and then we sat in this tiny fishing themed pub and met some other ManOWar fans who we decided we wanted to hang out with, have a snowball fight with (it snowed) and get very drunk with. It is not for me to fully describe the events that evening, but someone got us thrown out of the pub we were in after commiting a terrible act in pure drunken stupidity. Carpets and urine were involved.

We did actually see ManOwar too but most of the events of that day are shrouded in my 'I don't care about ManOWar' attitude, so I daren't describe them for fear of doing them injustice. We had fun though.

The last week or so after finally handing in my dissertation have been spend 'winding down' before the final push for the exams. I am worryingly calm about it all right now, not sure this is good. I have been watching 'Heroes' which has me totally hooked but I ran out of episodes and have to wait until the 27th of april! I have also been working on Bucanneer... Its getting closer to being ready to upload so hold onto your hats!

I know I missed a lot out this time but I know people don't like reading the long ones, so I am keeping it short ;). Posted by:Ice52

Oh god, I fear I am getting worse at this... When was the last time I updated? 19th November?! What can I say.. I have been busy. Its been at least 2 weeks since I even looked at the site. I think you can forgive me though, its christmas after all! and did you get me a present? The hell you did. Well I forgive you, besides I probably didn't get you one, in fact you're lucky if I even said happy xmas to be honest...

Well consider this your christmas present, belated as it is. Cheap as you like, no wrapping paper, no tag, and if you don't like it you cannot take it back to the shop for an exchange/refund. But thats ok apparently, because its the thought that counts. "Happy Christmas", theres my thought. Are we done now? Can we move on to the part where I talk about me? Excellent.

What was I doing last time? I went to the MF again and then the Koko.. That really was AGES ago! This could be a long one.. Well here goes.

Soon after those escapades I believe I attended a few snow club related events, the 1st most memorable being a party at this place called 'The Chantry'. Its basically just a student house for about 7 people, but they have this massive, kinda open plan downstairs so it can fit loads of people there. Apparently they have loads of parties there (as it seems to be the perfect place for them), but this was my 1st experience of the place. They even have this kitchen ajoining serving hatch type room, that is perfect for a DJ booth (and is obviously used as such). Anyway I went along with my housemate Claire, not really expecting to know anyone, but a whole bunch of people I had met at the snow club were there, and I met a couple of new people too. It was a pretty good night, except certain people got upset about some things, which I can't really discuss.

Shortly after this I decided to join the rock society. Yes these events were related slightly... I was persuaded at the evening above to join. Though I had already planned to join anyway. It was a good decision, I went along on the thursday and it was great fun! Unknown to me they were having a rock night at the academy (our student union club) this night, so I decided to go along to that, they played some really cool music and I got to meet and hang out with some new people. I drank quite a lot though, and before I knew it I or someone else had spilt drink all over me so I decided to make a stealthy exit, to save the need for an explanation more coherent than I was capable of at the time.

The final week of uni was then approaching, I had to give a presentation on my final year project on the thursday morning and I get stressed enough when I am trying to talk to more than one person at once, so presentations are pretty much my worst nightmare. I decided that if it was to go well I would have to shut myself in my room for the week and work on it constantly. This didn't go as well as I planned, I kept getting distracted and I fell behind schedule, to speed things up I got a program to read out what I had written to say, and put it on my mp3 player so I could listen to it constantly whilst doing other stuff, when you are a nerd you are allowed to do things like that. Wed night I had already planned to go out to academy and decided it was a good idea anyway, because I have discovered I present better when I am still slightly drunk from the night before.

I went along and yes, it was brilliant, I don't really remember much, I think I spent most of the evening chatting in the corner, whilst most of the crazy happenings were going on though, apparently my friend (Allison) got her foot stamped on with a stilletto and was hit round the face, lots of people got very wasted, I didn't really..

Then I had my presentation. Somehow I managed to remember everything I was going to say with the aid of some prompts, remain fairly confident and fluent and pretty much get through everything I wanted to say in the small amount of time I had. I was first so I was then treated to another 4 presentations that were, in the most modest possible sense, not as good as mine. Lets just say, I saw a lot of what I could have done wrong.. My top tip for presentations therefore is. Get drunk.

Coming up after the break (tea, naturally).... *My Snow Trip*

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So pretty much as soon as my presentation was out of the way it was all about the snow trip. I started packing, I went out and got a few last minute bits and before I knew it I was on a coach with about 75 people on a 20 hour journey to south eastern France. Of course before this coach could even set off, we had to settle the minor issue of having a 75 person coach with the luggage space for about 40 of them, considering how many of us were also bringing snowboards/skis. Apparently our 'trailer' hadn't arrived, so we had to cram loads of stuff into the passenger area, including the isles. The coach was quite overweight but we went for it anyway, wheelspinning all the way. However when we got to Calais we were told we could not go any further because we were completely overweight, so we had to wait outisde this cash & carry place for about 2 hours for some other coaches to put some of our stuff on...

Finally we were on the road again, the journey was fairly smooth from here, things really got exciting when we started to see the mountains and the snow. It was snowing when we arrived and we dragged out stuff to our apartments, which were, as described by the reps of 'wasteland' (the company who arranged our holiday) "the plushest apartments they had ever been given". They looked completely brand new, with very clean, up to date stuff. It was very pleasing. Of course perfection had to end at some point, this was the point we realised we were about 15 mins walk away from 'the yeti' (the main pub everyone would be meeting in), and 20 from the actual slopes. Seems like nothing, but it is after a long day, when you are carrying your snowboard & snow gear.

People went to bed quite early the first night, I stayed out for a while and got my snowboard from the massive queue of about 4 unis all arrving at once and wanting their stuff too. Everyone was being given brand new boards & I got one too, makes me feel slightly bad about how much I scratched it :P.

The next morning I got up early, got dressed and decided to go out with my housemates (who were all way better than me). This was a bit of a mistake since they decided to immediately go about 1/2 way up the mountain and then zoom off, leaving me in the dust. The snow was amazingly good to board on at this time though, so even though I was on my own, deserted, it wasn't so bad.

I then went back down to the 'yeti' to see if I could find anyone else to board with. Eventually I found Hayley and Allison who were happy to board with me, and whom I was happy to board with, since they seemed to be more my level, at least, I was able to keep up with them. Which was good.

We had an excellent day, we discovered how fun chairlifts can be (especially trying to depart from them), and generally explored the mountain, the snow was nice and fresh and falling over didn't hurt. I learn't so much this first day, by the end I was going pretty fast, could link turns and was able to 'carve' on my heel edge.. if anyone knows what that means :P.

The second day was pretty good but not as good as the 1st, I think we met up a bit late and missed out on the crisp morning snow, we went down with some more ambitious people to begin with who we went down some red runs with, which was a bit more scary but extremely fun. Then we went down with some people who were basically just out of lessons which took a lot longer, but it was a nice change of pace I guess. The sun was shining the whole day and by the end a lot of the snow had turned to ice, I think, so it was a bit harsher to fall on especially down the bottom.

The next day was not so good, it was really foggy and people were reluctant to do anything, I went down a few times on my own and then we went to the top cause we were told it was much better up there, we must have missed this cause it was still cloudy, we went down the top runs and some people decided to take the lift down. I decided to board down and I beat the lift down, which I was pretty proud of.

I the next day we went over to some other mountain for a bit cause we heard the snow was better, and there was a 'park there' with ramps & halfpipes, the snow wasn't better and the park was closed, we went in anyway but I only experienced the halfpipe, and I wasn't very good. It wasn't worth it so we decided to just go back. On the way back down people decided to get the lift so me and my new mate Chris decided to race the lift again. We won! It was great. Then Chris and I went for a couple more runs before calling it a day, those were some awesome runs.

My lust for snowboarding wasn't satisfied though and other peoples enthusiasm seemed to be fading, so thurs morning I decided to get up and out early so I could get some in at my own pace then and meet up with people later. My pace was now pretty fast, I went right to the top and did some of the reds, not only was I being very daring and going to my limits, I was experimenting with my toe edge turns, trying to be able to 'carve' on those too. I did it a couple of times but I also stacked it a few times too. Unfortunately this is when things made a bad turn. I saw a long flat run of snow that I wanted to board straight over so I got up a fair bit of speed, I then needed to run straight for like 100-200 yards, past a lift and continue down another run, when I got to the lift I realised I needed to turn a bit on my toe edge, but I took the turn badly, caught my heel edge and smacked straight onto my ass.... It was very painful and I couldn't continue, I got myself onto the lift and decided to go home for a bit. Apparently my ski/board buddies went out for some great runs in the afternoon which I missed :/ I was quite annoyed but I was still pretty proud of my progress in the morning.

I did managed to get myself out there again on the friday, me and Chris went down a few of our favourite runs and I think I only fell about twice, obviously caution had kicked in. Then Chris and I swapped equiptment, since he skied and I boarded, and we went down the nursery slope a few times. I discovered it is a lot easier to stay up on skis, but is a lot more effort to manouver. I got the hang of snowplough and turning quite easily, but nothing further. Chris just about managed sliding down on his heel edge, and some 'falling leaf' to some extent. Then we had to pack up and before long we were on the coach back.

This wasn't boring for long as on the way down the mountain, the bus smashed into a crash barrier on a corner, the scariest part of which was feeling the bus slide a little way down a slope.... You can imagine the kind of fear that that might bring. Luckily the damage was mainly cosmetic, it was quite an impressive hole though. The back rim got warped and some guy next to us who did motorsport engineering or something gave us some lovely images about it coming off of the axel and sending us to our doom, fortunately this didn't happen.

Wow, I have been writing for ages... I know a lot of it is unnessecarily detailed but I kind of got on a roll.

Take another break, for the love of god, otherwise you'll never make it through. I can't stop writing... I feel like I have a void to fill.

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Ok so enough about the snow trip, I havent included loads of stuff but I think a whole page or more of writing is enough. Christmas was pretty good for me, I got back to Southend, went out with mates to 'The Alex' followed by 'Ye Old Smac' or something in old leigh. Jon from the snow club was there! It's a small world..

Then I had to attend a family gathering as it was christmas eve, it wasn't too bad, we played 'The Great Dalmuti', its a pretty simple fun game card game that we always play, I'll have to show you it sometime.

For Christmas I got:
Guitar Hero! - I had requested it from my sister, but it was still definitely the best thing I got. I have been playing it loads since I got it and I reckon I rock. Now to just translate these skills to my real guitar.
A lie detector that shocks you when you lie - I got this from my awesome, kinda but not actual, uncle. Its pure brlliance, it doesnt always work but thats part of the fun. I can imagine many situations where this will be useful!
Calenders
Soaps
A few other PS2 Games
An Electronic Soduku thing
A book on how to play guitar
A Snooker Cue?!
I think thats it.

Pretty standard stuff really but its all good fun, still have to find a place to put it all though.

God I get boring fast don't I... *sigh* Ok not long now.

The most notable other event was going to 'The Metro' in London the other night. None of my friends from Southend wanted to come but Chris from my placement at 3Com had invited me and I hadn't seen him in ages and had missed a number of opportunities to do so in previous months so I felt it my duty and privilege to go anyway. It was great fun! We started off at 'The Rocket', this great scream pub on euston road between Euston Station & Kings Cross. Had a few drinks here then headed down to The Metro. It was indie night, and they played some quality stuff. Also every time we go there, there are always loads of good looking girls there, don't ask me why.. Tonight was no exception... As usual I didn't go over and talk to any of them no matter how obvious it is that I should. I did get talking to one girl who seemed to be interested but then apparently she urgently had to go since her friend had been ill and she left in a hurry. According to my friends she had a boyfriend, but she never told me.. Don't they all?

I was still feeling good, just pretty tired, so we decided to go back, though not before getting a nice meatball subway thing. The others got greasy chicken, I was happy with my choice. I stayed at Chris' house on his nice comfy sofa bed & trained it home in the morning.

And thats it. BYE! Posted by:Ice52

Right, yeah. Its been a fairly long time since I last wrote something here, over a month. Dissapointingly long, perhaps, unforgivably long... But I hope you will find it in your heart to do so. Though, given my recent track record I'm sure you weren't holding your breath (If you WERE holding your breath and are still alive to read this, kudos).

One of the reasons I held back from writing was actually for your benefit, yeah, you should be thanking me, (whoever the hell you are...) I was trying to wait until I was in a good writing mood, because you may or may not have noticed that the quality of my ramblings varies quite considerably depending on what kind of mood I am in. Quality probably isn't the right word.. Still, time is getting on and I can't hold out forever so you'll just have to accept todays offering as it is, no refunds...

So, whats been happening? Why, I could tell you some stories... And so I shall, so gather round children, gather round, and I will tell you a tale, a tale of heroes, and demons and treasure, also a pirate called Tim and his trusty parrot 'Lemons'.

It all began last weekend, when me and some of me 'hearties decided to go to the Mean Fiddler for some hardcore rocking action, and so we set sail for London. My housemate Nick and I, met up with Matt and Ali in London about 9ish I think. The basic plan was to get drinks from Sainsburies and hang around nearby until it was time to get in the queue for the MF. As far as basic plans go you wouldn't have thought we could go far wrong, you wouldn't have thought... On request for drinks from Sainsburies, Nick and I got a few cans to tide us over and Ali decided to be a little bit crazy and purchase a fairly cheap and nasty bottle of wine. However, after leaving the shop and removing the plastic from the top (to reveal the plastic cork), the small fact that none of us had a corkscrew suddenly became a very big deal...

After going into various shops/restaurants and asking various random people whether they happened to have a corkscrew handy, we soon realised we would have to take matters into our own hands. Which is how I got loads of painful key impressions on my hand. Eventually the bottle was opened and we had access to the sweet treasures within. Us and some random guy who came and begged us for money and then started chatting to us and getting rather too close for comfort. How it is that he ended up being allowed to take sip from our precious wine bottle is anybody's guess.

We realised another flaw in our plan when it began to rain. We took cover in a small alcove for a while and then we went over to the MF. We met some random guys there who were quite excitable, I can't really remember anything they said, to be honest. Finally it turned 11 and we continued our quest into the Mean Fiddler. We sat down for a while and I taught Ali how to make a cool origami box and an origami ball, which seemed to astound everyone. Then we went down to see 'The Blackout' play. They were an emo band, and not a particullarly good one, the amount of people who actually seemed to care that they were playing was too embarressingly small to count. Luckliy these 'demons' were soon slain, by time... because their set was finished.

Things picked up after this, they played some pretty damn good songs and after not too long we were all in the mosh pit going varying degrees of crazy (Ali, of course, being towards the Hero end of the scale). A few people got quite annoyed with each other in the 'pit' and actually started fighting, Ali got removed by the bouncers at some point, for some reason, but as usual somehow managed to return 10 mins later.

The night eventually ended after a particullarly legendary System of a Down send off, and we made our way to Euston station to relax and bask in the warm glow of our victory... Matt also burned Ali with a lighter, which was funny somehow.

Meanwhile Tim the pirate and his parrot 'Lemons' sailed off into the sunset and lived happily ever after... Arrrrrrg.

That was longer than I expected, but I am not going to give up, as I also want to tell you about this weekend. However, you may need a moment to recompose yourself as do I. I am going to get a cup of tea and after this I shall continue... I suggest you do the same.

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OK, so that weekend I went home for my Dads birthday and saw my family and stuff, this really isn't very interesting for you except to say that it took place directly after the night out mentioned above. I got home to Southend about 8am and was permitted to sleep until about 11am. At which time I was woken up and we set off for a distant Beefeeter. I didn't get proper sleep till 8pm. I was also treated to a Beefeeter the next day too. Variety is the spice of life.

The main part of the next week was pretty boring. I spent most of my time watching Prison Break episodes, since I have only just discovered it and how awesome it is, and have a whole series and a half to catch up on. I also watched a lot of other things but I didn't come here just to tell you what stuff I have been watching on TV.

Friday night I was invited out by my Uni mate Raj to go to the Koko in Camden. Naturally I didn't need much convincing. When I finally got to Camden (quite late) I realised Raj was the only person there that I knew, or had even ever met before. Shortly after discovering this fact, Raj annonced to me that he had decided not to stay and go to the Koko but to go home 'cause he wasn't feeling up for it. I decided to go to the Koko anyway as I did not feel like going all the way home again after having just got there, plus I actually really wanted to go to the Koko. Very shortly after this we left the bar we were in for the Koko and Raj left me on my own with the bunch of random people I didn't know. This was actually pretty great, since they were a nice bunch of people and I enjoyed getting to know them and generally hanging out with them. Hopefully I wasn't too annoying. They spent most of the night txting random messages to the scrolling txt screen thing they have there. But it was fun nonetheless.

I got the night bus back with one of the guys ('Stevie TV', I have no idea...) and got to bed around 6am. Then saturday night I was going to stay in but I ended up going down to 'the pit' in Houndslow. I was quite sceptical at first since I didn't have the familliarity and 'security' of having one of my housemates or just someone else from Uxbridge with me. But once I arrived this scepticism soon faded and I enjoyed the music, the company, the beer and everything I guess. I ended up staying at a freinds house and we stayed up till 5am, playing rummy and listing to System of a Down and Dragonforce. It rocked.

I guess that information probably wasn't as interesting as it was in my mind, especially with the noticable lack of pirates, heroes and treasure. You had to be there, so next time I expect you to be, damn you... unless you were, in which case good for you!

P.S. Raj, I am not really annoyed at you at all, I just needed to use you as a device for dramatic effect, I am sorry to have used you like that without even having your consent, but it was for the greater good.

P.P.S Raj, I decided to go to Houndslow after I had already said to you that I wasn't feeling like going out and was going to stay in. I didn't mean to 'lie' to you I just eventually changed my mind about stuff and decided to go out after all.

P.P.P.S Don't show this to Raj... :P

That is all. Posted by:Ice52

I'm back, and I've brought some more information about my life. How to present you with this precious cargo? I suppose I will just leave it in the space below:

Life is alright at the moment, though it feels like time is going by very slowly and yet very quickly at the same time. I've had to put limits on how extravagant my spending is, becoming a student again after a year of having lots of money to throw around kind of makes my current lifesyle seem a bit meagre. Money is now a far more precious thing, and something I need to keep a constant eye on. I have made some sacrifices with regard to food in order to continue to be able to go out and drink and be merry. Totally worth it.

It has lead me to be staying in a lot more though, partly due to monetary constraints but mostly because half my housemates are never in and the other half never seem to want to go out. Also I only have a few lectures this year so I spend a lot of my time around the house, since Uni is about about a 1/2 hour walk away and bussing there is a bitch, its not overly tempting to just go there for no reason. Think I am going to make more of an effort though.

Anyway whats been happening? Well I went out yesterday evening with the snow club. It was a snow club social event called 'Pub Golf', allow me to tell you all about it... Basically we all dressed up in golf outfits, and we went on a pub crawl round uxbridge. There were 9 'holes' each hole being a pub, and at each pub you have to see how many 'sips' you could take your drink in. The drinks were of all varieties including a pint of guiness, carling, smirnoff ice, shots of sambucha etc. Anyway they weren't so much sips, more 'holes in one'. I got holes in one all the way, I think my liver appreciated it. It was pretty fun because I haven't been that drunk for a while, I don't remember a lot about the academy (which is the student union club where we ended the 'course'), I think I just wandered around for ages. I don't really remember the walk home either but the scratches on my arm and my housemate who supported me tell me that I fell in some bushes.

This morning was the worst though, I had to get up around 9:30 with a splitting headache and walk to uni and give this stupid little presentation, I got through it but I kinda screwed it up... Still whats more important really, maybe losing 5-10% of a presentation that counts only a miniscule amount towards my final grade because of being 'slightly' hungover, or missing a monumental drinking event such as last night? You do the math(s)!

Other than that there hasn't been anything specific to mention, I have been out quite a few times but they aren't really worthy of note, I am probably going out tommorow night though and definately will be on saturday, to meet some of my Uni friends from the year before last. Soon after that I should be going to the Mean Fiddler, November 10th, if I haven't invited you I probably either forgot to ask you, I don't know you well enough/at all or I don't like you. In any case you should come along. It would be cool to fill the place out with people I know or even just people I don't know who read this stuff. You could come up and suprise me and tell me you are my biggest fan and you could buy me a drink and quote me and stuff. I'd probably like that.

In any case I will let you know how it all goes. until next time folks! Posted by:Ice52

Hello friends,

I know.. It's been a while. Shame on me for neglecting this site and not writing for over a month. As you can imagine a lot of stuff has happened since reading, and im sure many of the finer details of most of those things will now be lost in the oblivion of time, since I will have forgotten them.

However I will do my best to get you up to date with my life, without missing too many important details, after all thats what 'blogging' is all about...

Well after I got back from reading I basically moved straight into my new house, accompanied by my new housemates. I spent the week settling in during which time I contracted the flu. This was particullarly worrying because it was just before I was about to embark on a magical journey. The destination of which was to be... Amsterdam!! Luckily for me by the time I left for Amsterdam I was feeling a lot better and much fun ensued.

We decided to meet up in London pre-trip for some important pre-trip drinking at the crobar. We being all of us that were going except Pete who decided he would get in a bit later, contrary to our advisement. From there we were to get a coach from victoria station. Yes you heard correctly, we took a coach to Amsterdam. The journey took about 10 hours, we decided to take it overnight, with the intention being to get some sleep on the coach on the way there so we wouldn't have to pay so much for the hostel. In any case, even before we had set off from the coach station the crazy weekend antics had already begun, Pete was late! Pete was in fact so late that we were all very worried that the coach would set off without him. We had to stall the driver for him. Luckily the driver was a quality dutch guy who just said: "Itsh alright, Itsh OK, take five minutes to smoke the cigarette" (He didn't actually say that then but it was important to get that quote in). In the dying seconds we were treated to the sight of Pete running his ass off through the coach station (big glass windows) to get his ticket exchanged. Finally he entered the coach to much applause and we set off for distant lands.

Plans to sleep on the coach were not particullarly well thought out, since I soon discovered that I had an inability to sleep upright and/or next to some asshole who was taking up all the room on the seats. At least they showed some films to pass the time, Garfield the movie *was* terrible but Spy Hard was alright.

We arrived at Calais and boarded the ferry to France. This was quite pleasant, not only was it a good opportunity to continue drinking but it was a good chance to discuss Pete's lateness and watch him eat things. Ali met some lady that had the same trousers on as him and they discussed this in amazement for a while, and then before long we were back on the coach.

We arrived in Amsterdam and finally got to "The Flying Pig" which would be our hostel and place of chilling out for a lot of the time. Some of us (me) were by this time very tired since I had not managed a single minute of sleep since about 8am the previous morning. There was an opportunity to sleep for half an hour or so which I tried to take... to no avail, for some reason, despite being completely exhausted, I still could not sleep.

We decided to go out and get food etc. Our first destination was a 'sports bar' with Union Jacks on the table, typical english tourist trap. There was a guy in a crazy blue suit who sorted out our table, gave us some general advice on life and some people took pictures with. We all had a 'skyburger' at this place because everything else was astronomically priced. Just because the prices are in euros doesn't mean I can't tell how badly you are ripping me off.

We went to a coffeeshop called the dolphin or something, strangely enough my memory of the events that took place beyond this point are slightly more hazy. We went back to the flying pig and chilled out there for ages in this little area with pillows. Unfortunately there was a guitar here which pete immediately noticed and proceeded to play at very annoying volumes, songs which none of us had any interest in hearing.

I forgot to mention Ali and I brought our own guitars along, £20 argos ones. It was quite fun trying to play them in unison and generally having random passers by request us to play songs.

The next day we had a picnic in the park ('vondelpark') and this random guy with a bicycle and a guitar stopped near us and performed fairly lamely a few very cheesy songs. We went to a big monument where there were people playing bongos and stuff.

In the evening we went out for some pirate based fun. We met up with some of our distant freinds who we knew were also in Amsterdam at the same time, and who had encouraged us to bring pirate gear. We went to a bar called 'pirates' dressed as pirates... Apparantly it was pirate night somewhere, but not actually here. 'Pirates' may possibly have been a gay bar, I can't really remember. In any case we left here before long and went to this other place which had better music. Theres not really anything of value to say of it except that it was a fun evening. Pete got very obsessed about his pirate outfit and get very upset by the prospect that he might not be able to wear it. When he finally revealed it to us we realised the most striking aspect of this outfit, was that it made him look very gay. Needless to say this was one of the more entertaining points about the evening.

The following day we roamed around Amsterdam. We got food at a steakhouse and they gave us a massive plate of chips. Pete got quite obsessed with drawing a couple of quite odd sketches. We went to a couple more coffee shops, I actually bought some coffee here due to the fact I had still yet to have a full reasonable amount of sleep. I drew an amazing (way better) sketch based on Petes one.

We marvelled at the wonder of 'machine beer'. They had beer that you could actually buy from a vending machine. More remarkable was that in order to purchase cigarettes from the cigarette machine you needed to get an age token from the bar to confirm you were old enough. The beer machine had no such device.

Before long it was already time to end this magical journey and return home. The coach driver made fun of the French and even blatently took the piss out of them when we got to the French customs. He was great. Finally we got back and got some capitalist coffee from some starbucks type place, and contemplated going back. This would have been great had I not needed to return to uni and preserve my precious few remaining money reserves.

So that's Amsterdam, the pictures I took probably tell a better story, but to be fair my memory of the events are severely cloudy... Since then I have mainly been getting to know my new housemates and starting to do some uni work. There have been a number of events including me joining the snow club, going to a house partys and a birthday partys and generally getting drunk places. However I have already written a lot and can't really be bothered to carry on.

Bye then. Posted by:Ice52

As I am sure you are aware, the title of this update can suggest only two possible things: either I have suddenly become a big literary enthusiast, or I recently attended a completely amazing, legendary, classic, hardcore, alternative music festival. Can you guess which?

Yes, I went to reading festival and yes, it was damn good. So without further ado, Here are the details:

A word of warning before you continue, this is quite long so you might want to take a couple of tea-breaks (make sure its tea, its essential to the experience, honest), I have taken the liberty of providing you with places to take a tea break.

The reading 'festivities' began on Tuesday, this included going to the Alex to discuss plans for the coming days. Of course by 'discuss plans' I mean 'drink' and by 'for the coming days' I mean 'beer' or in Adams case 'Vodka and Lemonade'. This went well, though only Matt and I really drank much, and only Matt seemed to suffer the effect, in vomit form. There was one great thing about this night though, and this was 'free takeaway'! We didn't steal it *exactly*, but we weren't asked for any money... So of course we assumed it was a gift.

The next day we stocked up on alcohol and food for our impending weekend extravaganza. Food we bought included 40 (count 'em) burgers that we intended to eat the entirety of, in one sitting, between the three of us. Also among the highlights were Goldshlager (such a fun drink, which I have on good authority does contain real gold flakes!), Apple Sours and plenty of 'kick' (Tesco's own brand energy drink).

Then finally the moment arrived to leave for reading! For me this moment was about 5:15am Thursday, when I realised Adams car was outside awaiting my many *essential* possesions that I would need to survive the weekend, including a cheap argos guitar (complete with guy rope strap) and a couple of foldaway chairs.

In classic road trip style the car journey mostly consisted of singing along to some classic songs (including god-damn-door song), and the occasional insult about my apparent lack of navigational skills and what I would lose this time at reading.. they wouldn't let me have the map or my ticket.

Then we arrived! You would imagine this to be a rather pleasant affair having waited such a long time to finally be at reading... Not so, for little did we know of the painful task that awaited us, this being carrying our stuff from the car park to the campsite. Apparently we had ended up in 'green', a car park that was about a mile away from the actual campsite, there was a boat to help transport people, but it wasnt running when we got there so we had to walk. My arms still ache from that walk.

Thursday was fun, we set up our tents, got our wristbands and then sat around drinking, attempting to barbeque our 40 burgers and meeting the many people we would be camping with (there were to be about 25 of us camping together, most of whom I either didn't know or had only met once two years previously). This drinking continued late into the evening, but unfortunatley Adam overdid things as he often does and ended up going to sleep really early. Matt and I decided to explore the campsite a bit and find pete (since he was camping somewhere else) after much shouting and attemping to phone him we met him and his crazy mates who apparantly have some rather offensive opinions on STD's. I woke up about 5am needing the bathroom (as you do) and discovered upon leaving the tent, the thickest smog I had ever seen. Seriously you could not see past 10 feet in front of you. There were obviously a lot of campfires..

**TEA BREAK! (go on, and as you're are there... no sugar please! I'm sweet enough) **

Friday was great, was woken up at about 8am by a fully rested Adam and went to check out the arena. After rather worrying information that there would be a golden circle that had a one-in one-out policy, I was relieved to find that it was nothing more than an open ended second barrier that actually made it much easier to get forward. I saw a bit of the Towers of London and went back to the camp for a bit to prepare for what would be a pretty heavy afternoon.

Wanted to be right at the front for panic! So we went down there during Dashboard Confessional. I have to say they were FAR more boring than I gave them credit for and I now actually hate them as apposed to mildly dislike. However, the plan worked because by the time Panic! came on I was front slighly left centre and could see perfectly. Panic started and everyone (myself included) went crazy, but not for long because barely had they got started when a plastic bottle hit Brendon Urie (lead singer). It must have hit him pretty hard because one minute he was standing there and the next he was laying on the floor for like 10 mins. They seemed to be considering pulling out and everyone was pretty shocked and worried, but to my great relief they came back and played a fantastic set anyway.

Then The Subways came on, and they were amazing! Billy Lunn (lead) climbed all over the amps and was jumping around, he also broke his guitar :P. They were so enthusiastic and lively and they played brilliant songs. After this it was time for Fall Out Boy. I am not a huge fan but they were pretty good and I was still right at the front. Belle and Sebastian were after this, my legs were starting to tire but I decided to stay for a while as I quite like them. I have to say I am so glad I did because they were brilliant as well and I stayed till the end. Stuart Murdoch pulled a girl out of the crowd and got her to put makeup on him and he danced with another on stage. It was quite amusing. He came up to the crowd asked the guy right in front of me at the barrier to cry for him, quite glad I hadn't ended up there...

Went back to the campsite for a while and met up with some others, including Adam who, apparantly, had lost his phone during Panic! and got pissed off and come back. He wasn't in the greatest of moods you can imagine. We went to see a bit of Kaiser Chiefs but got bored and decided to just come back and drink. In the evening we all sat around the campfire and sang a multitude of great songs. Adam was a bit boring and went to bed, Matt and I stayed up for ages and eventually decided to go to sleep at about 4am. This happened to be the time at which the 'tunnel' was assembled right by where we were sleeping. The 'tunnel' was a group of people who thought it would be a good idea to form a tunnel out of people putting their arms together that people could run under. The catch was that somewhere in this tunnel was a rope that unaware people running through the tunnel would fall over... From in my tent it sounded a little like this: "tun-nel! tun-nel! tun-nel! tun-nel! Ooooooooooooooooooh.... eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeyyyyyy, she fell over! she fell over! she fell over". And so it went on and on and on and on and on for hours and hours as people kept getting tripped up. I think they stopped eventually because they made someone cry. This is why I got about 3 hours of sleep saturday morning.

Saturday day was awesome. I saw Aiden in the morning who were suprisingly brilliant and The Automatic, I then went back to the camp and we played some hilarious drinking games. Specifically hilarious because some of the people (Joe) got so fantastically drunk. My favourite was "G'day Bruce" combined with international drinking rules. It's supposed to go like this:

Person 1: "G'day Bruce"
Person 2: "G'day Bruce",
Person 1 *indicating Person 3*: "Say G'day to Bruce, Bruce"
Person 2 *to Person 3*: "G'day Bruce"
Person 3: "G'day Bruce"
...

and so on until someone slips up and then their name changes to Sheila and they have to drink and then to something else every time they get something else wrong. Eventually it ends up like this:

Really drunk person 1: "G'day Shhheila..."
*everyone laughs*, someone sober: "his name is Toadfish, your name is now Harold Bishop"
Really drunk person 1: "aww fuck"
*everyone laughs*, someone sober: "two fingers, no swearing"
Really drunk person 1: "aww ffff.."
*everyone laughs*, someone sober:"four fingers"
Really drunk person 1 "G'day Toadfish, say G'day to..."
*everyone laughs*, someone sober: "you have to wait for him to say g'day"
*really drunk person 1 goes to drink"
someone sober: "wrong hand, two fingers"
Really drunk person 1: "bollocksing hell"
.......

and so it continues until that person (in this case Joe) either finally doesn't make a mistake or passes out.

After this it was time for the good part, I went down to the Arena for The Streets and managed to get right to the front again for Arctic Monkeys who were fantastic, and the highlight of the whole festival for me, MUSE!!! Muse were so amazing, they played a mix of the new and the classic, a mix of the fast and the slow, they had loads of cool effects and despite being in a lot of pain from people digging their damn elbows into me, about 50 people crowdsurfing directly over me, and being drenched with a mixture of water from the front, rainwater and sweat from various sources I had a great time.

When we got back Adam and Bethan had decided to make a super cocktail consisting of various things including goldschlager, apple sours, port and various other things. It tasted like apple pie. This was good except I think Bethan had a little too much of it and very soon she was incredibly drunk. She was so funny in a good way, but unfortunately this greatness was overshadowed by her inability to walk anywhere by herself and her eventual need to be sick and go to bed.... This also took Adam away, because as usual when a girl is not feeling well regardless of how well he knows her (not particullarly well) or how many other of her close friends are perfectly capable of dealing with the situation and sparing her further embarressment, he has to find a way to take over and end up sleeping in the same tent... No further comments required really. Matt and I enjoyed the night some more, the 'tunnel' picked up some new chants such as "whats that coming over the hill? Is it a tunnel?" and "God save our gracious tunnel".. but I was feeling quite knackered and eventually went to bed. Apparantly I missed some more tunnel action as well as people 'fresh prince of bel-air'ing my tent, which is thankfully not some kind of euphemism it just involved singing fresh prince rather loudly and shaking it.

***** TEA BREAK! (+ have a biscuit this time) ********

Sunday came! This was my favourite day really because all my favourite bands of the festival (Muse aside) were on on this day, and more importantly the couple of heavier ones in which the crowds would go more crazy.

First up was Metric, and wow, they were so much better than I'd expected. I mean, I really like them but I expected them to be a bit chilled since they seem that way on the albums, but they are SO much better live and their set had cool indie lighting. After this I saw Forward Russia! with Adam and Bethen, it was good but I wasnt really expecting much from them and I didn't really get much. After this was Dresden Dolls who were fucking AMAZING... I am kind of annoyed because Adam and Beth weren't really into it and otherwise I could have been right at the front, but Matt found us and I went forward a bit while the other two left and missed the really good songs... I guess I cant blame them, having not heard them before.

I then went down to the main stage for Less Than Jake so I could be in place for Bullet for my Valentine. I didn't really care for seeing Less Than Jake, but what I saw of their set was actually really good, they made everyone take their shirts off and swing them around, mixed feelings about whether I would have liked to have been involved in that. I joined in the big 'wave' thing though (everyone sat down and stood up in a wave). Then Bullet for my Valentine came on! They played some great songs to begin with but I was really dissapointed to see that the crowd wasn't really feeling my enthusiasm. I think it was my positioning, I moved right into the middle and it was much better and I could go more crazy. Massive circle pits were opened up which I joined in for a bit. It all wore me out and I was really thristy so I decided to go back to the tent and get some water and miss Slayer. I came back for the end of their set in preparation for MCR. Again, right at the front, though this time a few rows back because I wanted to be able to move around properly and not have to deal with people trying to push just a little way in front of me. The makeup of the crowd was quite strange, there were lots of leftover angry slayer fans who decided to stay to bottle MCR because they were 'emo' and they hate emo... and then there were loads of MCR fans who had come in after Slayer, it was fairly obvious that the male/female ratio had considerably shifted over the last few minutes.

Then MCR finally came on and got attacked by the angry slayer fans. There were quite a few bottles (A fair few filled with piss I am sure, which worried me greatly, considering I was right at the front), but MCR handled it so well. It was so funny to see the slayer fans slowly realise they were completely surrounded and outnumbered by MCR fans and give in to the sweet tempting sounds of 'emo'. My favourite part of their performance was when they pointed out an article in the daily mail accusing fans of MCR of being part of a 'cult' and promoting suicide and self-harm. Apparantly we're not a 'cult' were an 'army' :P... Needless to say it was not long before the whole crowd was chanting 'Fuck the Daily Mail', possibly the best chant ever concieved. Their whole set was awesome. I then went back to the tent to meet back up with people so we could go see The Kooks. They weren't as enthusiastic as I was and this was obviously a mistake. We didn't get to the tent until they had already started and the crowd was all the way out of the tent.. it was difficult to get in but eventually I found a way around the side and got to see most of their good songs from a fairly good place. Went back to camp after this and started drinking, was going to see Maximo Park but in the end we couldn't be bothered and just drank more and chatted. Adam got boring and before we knew it he was in bed asleep at 11pm or something. Matt and I stayed up and hung out with those of us camping that were still awake. I have to say this was probably the most interesting evening we had. Matt and I got a bit tired to begin with but we went and got some coffee and the effect it had on me was really suprising... because its not normally noticable to me, but it actually woke me up properly. We then went for a wander with people, and Oh, the sights we did see. We witnessed the 'silent disco' (everyone wore wireless headphones to dance to, and could listen to music of their choice) and the Dave rave... a rave consisting entirely of people who were called Dave. We saw people dancing and drumming on bins, people in bins, people tearing signs down, people blowing up gas canisters and nearly killing us, people burning tents and chairs but the best is yet to come....

After a while we came across a crowd of people who had broken some of the metal fencing and were now holding it in the form of a box or more accurately a cage. Apparantly originally they were trapping emo kids in it, now it had become a wrestling ring for cage fights!! Security had tried to stop it but they couldn't. There was also the 'emo gazebo' (bunch of emo kids running around under a gazebo chanting 'emo gazebo'). We got badges off of this guy wearing a tutu saying "Love not riots" and went back to the tents. It started to rain heavily, which really annoyed me because the night was still young. Matt and I decided to go inside the tent... Chaos erupted after this when some people came and stole our gazebo! at around the same time someone stepped on one of our camps tents and practically broke Lindsay's nose, I think it took ages to stop bleeding :(, as well as breaking the tent. Motherfuckers....

After this Matt and I sat around in the tent and got very merry before eventually passing out.

Thats pretty much it, we left in quite a state monday morning.

I have probably missed loads, one main thing being how while all this was happening I was busy screwing my housemates around since they were trying to move in to our new house on Sunday and I ran completely out of credit and battery on my phone so I couldn't contact them :S. And I lost one of my foldaway chairs.

Well until next year, I bought my 07 weekend ticket today so I suggest you get yours ASAP. See you there!

You can have some more tea now if you like. Posted by:Ice52

Time for an update on my life, whether anyone asked or not. According to my calendar its actually been two weeks since the last update... This is quite wierd for me because I remember the night out mentioned like it was last weekend, but it feels like I have been off work for a month. Yes, I am finally finished working at 3Com! I have actually been off work for only a week.

Its very wierd, I have spent a fair bit of time at home doing various things, so time seems to kind of merge together and I am finding it more difficult to keep track of what day it is. Anyway I have done a fair bit of stuff since I left work so lets look at just what that is.

I did a lot of guitaring to begin with, it was great I was getting the hang of some good songs and I occasionally thought that I actually sounded reasonable. I think it helps when you kind of know what you are doing without really having to think too much so you can put some passion into it. I must have put a little too much in though because my high E string broke :/. So now I have to go buy some strings before I can really play it again.

Went out with Adam, Matt, Richard and Marc on monday last week, it was really fun but I got totally wasted and I'm starting to think its not always the greatest thing. I didn't get as bad as Adam though... I don't really remember that much about it except that by the time we went to 'Mayhem' (Monday night indy club apparantly, though all I remember is RnB) I could barely see straight and felt pretty bad, after an hour or so I decided it would be best to just leave without even telling anyone I was going, I then proceeded to a takeaway to order a very expensive burger and then walk home (like.. 5 miles, it is a pretty long way away from Southend). Must have got in about 3:30, but it doesn't seem that bad in retrospect.

Adam however, was apparantly found on the floor in the corner of Mayhem by Matt, after which he proceeded to run off, out of the club to be later found at the other end of the high street outside Sainsbury's. He was then escorted home by Matt's dad to be greeted by his own, rather angry looking dad. Considering this is the same dad who threw us all out of Adams 'barn' at 3am after Adam had specifically told us we were allowed to stay there, and has been mentioned as the cause of much of Adams grief, I would assume this was not a particullarly good outcome.

Anyway, that was alright, I think friday night beat it slightly. We went out to the Alex again (of course) this time Matt, Myself, Paul (the wine guy) and his friend Pete. I was hoping for a quiet night since I was supposed to go and view a potential house to move into the next day, this it was not. For some reason I had not learned my lesson from monday and shared a couple of pitchers of grolsh with Matt, as well as a number of other drinks. After which we went to 'the brush', the best rock club ever (in Essex anyway). By this time I was considerably wasted :S. I think I spent a lot of the time sitting down trying to make the dizziness go away, and also talking randomly to this girl Jo who I know from somewhere but I have no idea where. Nothing really exciting happened, I felt *really* bad yesterday though.

Yesterday though... yesterday was goooood. Went out in London, with my intern friends this time. Got there around 7 (though noone else was arriving till 8) so I just wandered around London looking for a tesco so I could buy some 'kick' (Tescos cheap alternative to red bull), to be honest, I don't think it works as well. I bought two bottles and drank one and a half of them in the space of an hour (I was quite tired at the time and knew I could be up really late/early). Yes, I definately felt the effect. I was pretty shakey to being with, it was actually really scary. But after a while it kind of wore off and by 1am I was feeling pretty tired again. After feeling so bad from the previous evening I wasnt really in a drinking mood, but the combination of a lot of caffiene and a bit of alcohol was a good replacement. We drank for a while in 'The Rocket' which is a scream pub nearby kings cross. It was amazing, with a scream card drinks were like £1 a pint, it must have been happy hour or something but people certainly were happy about it. We were planning on going out somewhere in camden but this got changed to going to the Mean Fiddler.

However when we got to the Mean Fiddler the line was massive! According to my housemate the band that was playing was pretty awful but the line begged to differ. We then looked at the Roxy, massive line... We ended up going to 'The Metro', which, to be fair, is amazing on friday nights. Saturday nights however its 'Soul and Funk' night or something. The music sucked most of the time. Its main redeeming feature though, is that even on an evening with such bad music it never fails to draw some very attractive indie girls. This was no exception and had I not been in such a scaredy mood things probably could have been a lot better than they were. As it was though, things were pretty fun and I had a good time. Stayed over a friends house so I didn't have to sit around on a train station floor for several hours and got back around 10am today. Plus no hangover, Awesome!

Other than that, everythings been pretty boring. The housing we arranged for next year fell through because the landlord did something like, rent the property to another bunch of people through another estate agent, not entirely sure why but now we need to find somewhere else... Err, also been playing Doom 3, watching Green Wing and listening to 'The Dresden Dolls' (Coin-Operated Boy is *amazing*!). Thats it really.

Keep Rockin'. Posted by:Ice52

This will most likely be a bit of a wierd update since I am feeling a bit wierd. This could be down to a lot of things, sleep deprivation, alcohol, nicotine, crazy alien energy rays from space, you name it. I have a number of other theories but I'll spare you, in case you have a short attention span.

So whats been happening recently? Well I am finally leaving my work placement next week! So a lot of things related to that have been happening, sorting out my new house & housemates, work for Uni, work for work, work for Uni on work, work for work on Uni... and you get the idea. Have to give a presentation next Wedndsay on what I have been doing and I *hate* giving presentations so I am really not looking forward to that. Anyway, by the end of this week all this boring stuff will hopefully be out of the way.. and then two months of intense fun will begin! Followed by a year more of fun when I go back to UNI!! (Quite excited about that, in case you didn't realise).

Plans for intense fun for the coming month or so include but are not limited to: The Reading Festival!!, a trip to Amsterdam, a trip to Manchester, more trips out in London, more snowboarding, moving into my new house and getting to know my new housemates (Yes I do consider this fun) and lots and lots of drinking!

I really can't wait till Reading, SO many good bands playing and SO many cool people going, its going to be immense and its less than a month away! I can barely contain my excitement! (and for once I am not being sarcastic).

Ok, so thats whats coming up, still I haven't really finished, since I still haven't mentioned last night!

Last night was one of the best days/nights out I have had in ages to be perfectly honest, it all began at about 11:30am yesterday when I left for London to meet up with everyone at about 12. Unfortunately it would seem that when we arranged to meet up at 12, Pete was the only one who actually took this arrangement seriously and was there at 12 whilst everyone else turned up about 1. When I say everyone, I mean me, Matt, Ali and a couple of Ali's friends.

From here the plan was to have a barbeque in the park in soho square. We got some food and beverages from Sainsburys and headed over there. I didn't actually think anyone would be stupid enough to let us have a barbeque in the middle of a London park (which was so dry that had a single spark from our fire made it onto the 'grass', the whole park probably would have been a sea of flames). I was wrong, after very little convincing the 'park owner' or as I like to refer to him 'King of the park' (because his actual responsibility for the park extends to picking up leftover litter, looking after the plants and clearing the hobos off of the benches when its time to close the park) allowed us to a have a barbeque "as long as there was no fire". We told him there wouldn't be...

We cooked some burgers and burnt some sausages, got attacked by pigeons and drank strongbow (well not me, I was drinking John Smiths since I have a bad history with cider related drinks). It was great. Then we decided to go to the 'crobar' for a few more drinks, by this time the effect of the alcohol was beginning to show on some people, drinks got knocked over and on a scale of 1 - 37 we averaged about 25, apparantly.

After a while we decided to leave here, we were going to find a cheaper pub but I think we just ended up buying more alcohol from Sainsburies and sitting by the fountain. This was not before meeting a rather scary foreign guy whilst we were sitting around eating chips. He was saying something about 'police' or 'security' taking his friend away 3 nights ago, and he said something about 'kill' :S. Then he asked us if we were gay.. and he basically seemed to want to grab one or all of us and rape us. We carefully made excuses and tried to get as far away from him as possible. The scary thing was we had earlier seen a sign earlier notifying us of a recent stabbing in the area, possibly 3 nights ago... Draw your own conclusions.

We then sat by the water fountain opposite the Mean Fiddler for a while, A limo pulled up nearby and a guy mooned out of the window, Ali did the classic thing and ran up and slapped his ass, quality! I soaked Ali with rather a lot of water (I didn't mean to *soak* him) and he nearly threw me in, then we went over to queue for the Mean Fiddler.

Whilst in the queue we met some rather cool people. In particular, these cool people were: Brady (or Lauren), Sam and Allison. I could individually go into why they were so cool but it might take a while and I have already been writing for ages, perhaps another time. Anyhow we ended up hanging out with these guys pretty much all night, which made things fun.

*THEN* (Yes, theres more...) We got to see Boy Kill Boy! I quite like them so I really enjoyed seeing them, and outside of the half an hour that they played, the music was mostly great all night.

Things started to happen at this point, some people were beginning to feel adverse affects from the alcohol i.e feel sick, stressed etc. Luckily for me I seemed to be coping fine, I guess I didn't have that much. Anyhow at about 2am we ended up sort of leaving the club with our new friends and sitting around outside for an hour or two. At this point it was a bit of a struggle to keep people enthusiastic, but I didn't really want the night to end though certain others did. Besides which noone else could actually get transport home until like, 7am... So we were stuck in London anyway.

We all decided to go to the station and ended up walkng in the wrong direction for ages, eventually we got to London Euston and hung around in there until the tubes started running. I mostly didn't mind this though, because I had had a fair bit of Red Bull at the beginning of the evening and it hadn't quite worn off yet, plus we were still hanging out with our cool new friends. Eventually they all left and I had to hang around for an extra hour and a half till a suitible train was finally due.

Anyway all in all it was an awesome night with many other events I haven't mentioned for various reasons, space being the main one.

Bring on the next one! Posted by:Ice52

I wonder where it was in the evolutionary chain that the urge to spend large amounts of currency on things you don't really need, managed to overcome the tendancy to save. You would have thought the presence of loan-sharks, would have tipped the balance otherwise...

Thats probably one of the nerdiest openings I have had in a while, but I was basically trying to say subtextually that I have been doing some impulse buying recently. Very recently, in fact, I am still experiencing the satisfaction from making the last one. I guess, since I have nothing better to do, I will tell you all about it (so be prepared for a rollercoaster of emotion and excitement then).

I believe last time, I mentioned a transaction I made with Pete, that is, the exchange of my money for his guitar. Well I have been practicing, and I am making good progress. From a casual listener point of view I probably still suck entirely, but from my point of view I can do a lot more with the guitar than I used to be able to, and I am way better at the stuff I used to be able to do (he says, desperately attempt to spare you the detail). Also one of the 'big purchases' I recently made was an amplifier! This increases the cool factor on anything I play by about 10, because even though I am playing the same stuff it sound SO much better when you turn the amp on and crank up the distortion. The amp itself is a good make (Marshall), but... you don't really care, do you?

I also bought this thing for my Sony MP3 player, which is basically a set of speakers that it plugs directly into and plays out of (EXACT same thing Adam has, I just felt like it would be really useful for some reason). Damn expensive thing though, it probably didn't help that I got it from a Sony store.. but you can't actually get them from any of the other high street shops, only *suprisingly* all that ipod stuff.

I also went to the opticians and bought some glasses (which are always pretty expensive), at least this was a slightly more sensible purchase, made out of necessity, but it all adds up.

Then today (like, just before writing this) I decided to buy two (count em) 250gig SATA Hard-Drives, because I was annoyed that my current 300gig HD was over half full. I think this might be listed a good sign of a sad, pathetic loser with too much money (Well, not much anymore)...

As for whats been going on in general, not much took place really during the week last week. Working, practicing guitar and watching a couple of movies, this included Top Gun, which I finally saw (I cannot believe I have lived so long having not seen that movie) and Seven, which I have seen but wanted to see again since it was such a good film. Saturday though, I decided to take a trip to Milton Keynes. Whilst there I went snowboarding again, first full hour on the main slope. I was pretty worried to begin with since it had been ages since I had last been and I wasn't sure I'd still be able to do it. I fell over a few times (fell on my ass pretty badly!) but after a while I got back into it and it was all over too soon. I then got the amp and sony speaker thingy (it was hell carrying that damn amp home, its fairly small but it can get pretty heavy after a while). Took yesterday off as holiday and just chilled out mainly, played Halo 2 with my housemate (who also took the day off) and thats it really.

Don't really want to post this since it is boring and it sucks, but I just spent about half an hour writing it and I probably wont think of writing again for another week or two.. So deal with it. Posted by:Ice52

The time has come again to write something on my 'blog', to 'blog' as it were, since apparantly this word is a noun and a verb. This, apparantly, makes me part of something called a 'blogosphere'.. One moment you are casually recounting some of your weekly/monthly experiences in an effort to continue to produce fresh content, the next you are a 'blogger' in a 'blogosphere'. I don't really see much of a sphere from where I am though, because I don't know anyone else who actually writes anything on a regular basis. I suppose I couldn't be considered to be 'writing on a regular basis' either... but I try to update at least once a year.

So whats been happening? Well last time I mentioned an indy night that I was going to. I did indeed go to that indy night, it was pretty good, the guy played some good music, I got fairly wasted (I alone it would seem) and then we got subway.

Thing is, thats all there is to say about it because thats pretty much all it consisted of, slightly dissapointing considering, but not everything can have a crazy twist.

This last weekend was pretty good though, it was Ali's 21st birthday (many happy returns), so I went back to good old Southend to see him. Of course before this I had some business to attend to, this being the business of purchasing a guitar from Pete(!). Yes, recently I decided I wanted to start to learn the guitar again (after my other one broke when I was about 12, it involves being lulled into the belief that it was not only ok, but a good idea to put steel strings on a, really cheap, acoustic guitar). Anyway this time its an electric guitar which is far more excellent, I haven't got an amp yet but once I have I shall proceed to 'rock out' with it.

Yes then was the business of getting Ali, and everyone else present, completely wrecked in celebration of Ali's 21st. This was successful, it was indy night at the Alex (best pub in Southend, probably world, if carlsberg made pubs... etc.), and so the music was good... Eventually the end drew near and we all got takeaway and taxi'd home.

Again there was a severe lack of reportable events but it might just be because I dont really remember any of it.

Not much else has really happened, oh yes and I went to the zoo a couple of weeks ago (haha, yes to see my family, very funny), I would never go by choice but it was my sisters birthday so I got dragged into it. Anyway as a result I have a million animal pictures which will be uploaded to the site as soon as I make my web admin realise that he has blocked ftp access...

Anyway, until next time. Posted by:Ice52