X-FM

On the way home from work on the tube yesterday, I saw an ad in a paper here for 104.9 X-FM. Bring back any memories, Vancouverites?

Bristol Clubbing

I'm over a week behind on my blogging now, having not talked at all about my night out in Bristol, or the family gathering the next day.
Saturday last, I caught the train to Bristol, wisely deciding that driving is a bit beyond me for the time being. Stacey, my cousin, directed me which bus to catch from the train station, and which stop to get off at. Unfortunately, without being able to see the name on many of the stops, I got off at the wrong one (slightly similar name) and she and her friend Ben had to hop back in his car to come pick me up. We got to her place, dropped off my bags, and shortly headed into town to do some shopping. We were all starving, so before any shopping, we found a Weatherspoons, a chain of pubs favoured by students for their good cheap food. I don't remember what I had, possibly a meat pie, but it was certainly tasty.
Once we were all fed, we got down to some shopping. The girls had all planned to dress up 70s/80s style to go out to the club, so Ben and I tried to find some sort of 80s looking clothes for the evening. Eventually, I decided to go with a sort of "Top Gun" motif, with aviator shades.
After our shopping, Ben drove us back to Stacey's flat, and we relaxed there for a while, had some naps, and then started on the drinks. We were there quite a while, waiting for everyone to get ready, but we did eventually head to the club.
The club was fun, I had mostly rum & coke, and danced until they closed, which was surprisingly early, 1 or 2am.
After it closed, we wandered along the waterfront, trying to find something still open, that didn't have a ridiculously high cover charge. At one point, while we were standing around, Ben was demonstrating to Luke, Hannah's brother (Hannah is one of Stacey's flatmates) how do do a scrum in rugby. They set up, shoulder to shoulder, and scrumed for a moment, when suddenly 4 police appeared from nowhere and pulled them off of each other. It took a good 5 minutes of explaining to convince them that there was no fight going on, and that everything was friendly between Ben and Luke.
We did eventually find somewhere to go for a bit, but it was pretty quiet, and the drinks quite expensive, so we only stayed a short while before going back to Stacey's flat.
Back at Stacey's, a few of us sat around watching youtube videos of various comedy groups before finally hitting the hay. I felt like I could have gone on a bit longer, but I had a train to catch at 8:50am that morning, and Hannah and Luke had a flight to catch (and packing to do first, I gather) so it was probably good that we didn't party too late.

Spine Chilling

I just had an bizarre moment. I can't think of any time I've experienced anything quite like it. I was reading something online, and suddenly, everything around me just seemed to fade into the distance. Everything got quiet, except for the sound of my pulse. Everything around me visually seemed to recede, as I focused on the words on the screen. It's like a scene from a movie. Here's what I was reading:

Gibson said:

Douglas Coupland's descriptions of Vancouver circa City of Glass are closest to my sense of the place. It's hemmed in and separated from the rest of the world by an ocean, a border, mountains. And then there's the unknown and incomprehensible north. Vancouver sits there, insulated to some extent, but picking up influences from across the ocean and across the border. The signals seem to be amplified by those symbolic barriers. Psychogeographically, I identify with greater Vancouver more than I do with the rest of Canada, which I have a fondness for and good feelings for. Vancouver's peculiar culture feels like home.

It's an excerpt from an interview with William Gibson.

I haven't finished reading anything past the paragraph after that yet, but that experience was just so shocking that I had to post this before I carried on.


Update: Fixed the link to the interview.

These Shoes Were Made For Walking

I really must thank Ben for his excellent shoe recommendation. These Ecco shoes have seen countless miles of London's pavement, yet are still as comfortable to wear as when I bought them. They're even fairlywater resistant, which is useful here, considering the huge numbers of puddles everywhere when it rains. They still look quite sharp too.
They certainly weren't cheap, but they've paid off. Thanks Ben.

Oh, and thanks for convincing me to use Vim and Eclipse, also. :)

Bristol

I've been putting off blogging about my weekend for a bit because I'm rather embarrassed about something that happened. See, I decided that, on Sunday, I would drive to Bristol to visit one of my cousins. Yes, that's right, drive. I joined that car club I blogged about last week, and decided that Sunday would be my first time driving here in Britain. I was prepared to deal with the traffic. I was prepared to deal with the roundabouts. I was even confident I could deal with driving on the wrong side of the road, and shifting with the wrong hand. What I hadn't bargained on, however, is something else that comes with sitting on the other side of the car. It completely and utterly destroyed my sense of where the corners of the car were with respect to myself.
That's why I hit the parked car. Yeah, you got it, I had my first "my fault" accident in 11 years of driving. I didn't "hit" it, so much as scrape along the side of it. Both cars were perfectly drivable, and nobody was injured (there was no-one in the parked car,) but there's cosmetic repairs to be done on both vehicles, and I have an insurance deductible to pay. Thankfully, when I joined this car club, I opted to pay a small monthly fee in order to have a lower insurance deductible. Boy has that ever paid off now.
I'll be taking some driving lessons before I go driving again, I think. I need to find some way of relearning where the corners of the car are. Learning it the first time is one thing, but now, overcoming the 2nd nature that it's become is going to be even more difficult, I suspect.
In other news, I had an absolutely fabulous time in Bristol with my cousin and her friends. It's a beautiful city, and I'm looking forward to more trips there to explore it properly.
On Friday night, after work, a bunch of us from work went out to a mobile industry drinks night at a pub, where one co-worker was doing a presentation about our company. I had a few drinks there before going out to a club dancing with a couple of them. I danced all night long, and had a great time. At one point, I returned from the toilet to find the music quiet, and the dance floor still, and nearly empty. 4am had rolled around without me even noticing. It's like I'm 21 again or something. I crashed on their couch, and got home at around 2pm.
This coming weekend promises to be quite busy and interesting again. On Saturday, I'm heading to Bristol again, though by train this time. My cousin is going to take me clothes shopping, and then out clubbing with her friends. I've been told Bristol has a good club scene, so I'm looking forward to that.
On Sunday, there is a great big family gathering happening at the home of one of my dad's cousin's son's house (my 2nd cousin? Great cousin?) I'll be doing my best to arrive there without a hangover, but I suspect a little hair of the dog will be in order. I'll be seeing relatives there who I haven't seen for years, and others I've seen already since I got here, so I'm sure it will be a fun day.

Bus Deadlock

I just witnessed something hilariously unfortunate on the way home from work today.
Here's my best attempt at diagramming it, because a picture says a thousand words, as they say:

I got off the bus on the far right when it got to the stop there, and laughed the entire way home, heading down the street that goes off the top of the image.
When I got off my bus, the two eastbound buses on the left of the image where trying to work their way between that westbound bus, and the cars parked on the north side of the street. As soon as they'd done that, they realized they had no way to get past the bus on the right, that I had gotten off. When I turned off the street, I could see the bus drivers all standing in the middle of the road, trying to figure out what to do, with a line of about 20 cars behind the two eastbound buses.
I'm still giggling about it.

Deja vu

Torontonian Tries to Board Plane at Kelowna Airport while Toting a Gun
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/05/29/canadian-airport-sec.html

More specifically, a 1.7" long solid metal gun-shaped necklace. Sound familiar, mom, dad, Katie?

For those that don't know, back in 1998, my family and I were on our way to Disneyland, and I had a gun-shaped keychain. Mine, however, did have moving parts, and could fire caps. They wouldn't let me board the plane with it, so I had to put it in a little box that they shipped on the same flight with us, so I didn't have to leave it behind, as it had sentimental value to me.