Jakface in the UK

Inverness and Isle of Skye weekend!

2010-07-30T05:23:00.000-07:00

Been relaxing too much in the crap weather.

It was high time I explored Scotland!

I planned a 3 day weekend trip up to the Highlands and the Isle of Skye to the west with Steph and Linnea, who were visiting back in June. I managed to plan this trip in an afternoon, and it all turned out excellently. Here is a recap of our epic Highland adventures with some complimentary photos!

We got up at 7:00 am to get ready and pack our bags. Hustled our butts to Buchanan St. bus station... but cut it a little too close. We tried to find our bus, which I found, but I couldn't find the other girls in time. Bus was full anyway, and left, after I argued with the guy working there (who was a total jerk). We managed to get on another bus that connected to an Inverness bus in Perth. So we chilled eating Pocky and taking dodgy pictures of my Professor Layton figure.

We got to Inverness at about 2:00pm and were dropped off in the city center. We ate at the Riverside Cafe which was recommended to us by the Lonely Planet guide. It was alright. I had a gammon, brie, tomato and onion salad, but it had tons of red peppers. :(

Got a cab to our first hotel - The Kingsmills Hotel - which was considered 4 stars. There was friendly service and they showed us to our room down some cool halls, and there was a crazy birthday party/wedding going on outside. We tried to decide what we were gonna do around Loch Ness. The boat tours had already closed pretty much, but our concierge found a way for us to see Loch Ness... a tour taxi! It was perfect! The company is Tartan Taxis Inverness, and our guide's name was John and he was a total bro, gave us lots of info about the area, gum, a good chat and we listened to the Killers. He took us to some great look out points of Loch Ness, a really beautiful garden place with a maze of beautiful plants and trails, Urquhart Castle, and then the Loch Ness Exhibition center. He also took us to a place where we could dip our hands and feet in the Loch! We were super lucky as well, because it was a completely GORGEOUS day, barely any clouds in the sky, and apparently that is EXTREMELY rare. I got some souvenirs from the Ness store, but I lost the bag during the trip. I am a derp. :(

After our awesome tour, he dropped us off at a Turkish restaurant that was quite near. The food was good, but the service was awful. We had wine, Halloumi and Hummus, Olives and bread to start, lamb and rice grilled with a tomato, and we each had a different dessert. (Chocolate pudding, baklava and honey yogurt pistachio walnut creation.)

Taxi'd back to the hotel where we filled out what we wanted for breakfast and had tea time with Layton. :} Then went to sleep in the most COMFIEST BED I have ever slept in! In the morning we had showers and picked at breakfast which I wasn't charged for. (yesssss) Then got a taxi to the bus station where we got our bus to Portree on Isle of Skye.

We passed through the Highlands and OMFG the sights! So beautiful, never have I seen such images. The photos we took do not convey the largeness of these hills. They towered over us, over everything. We had to look straight up in the sky to see them/the tops. In combination with the sky it was just so nice. After getting to Portree, we got picked up by a nice guy who ran a car rental business. We got a car sorted, went back into town to get info, food and some books.

We traveled all the way to a nice spot outside of Portree to eat on the side of the road looking out at the hills. When there are no cars, it is SO quiet, you can hear the blood in your ears. The only thing that was crap was the midges (tiny flies). Other than that, cheese on buns, blueberry muffins and smoothies were had. Backtracking, we went to Edinbane where the Lodge was for our Bed and Breakfast. Greeted by a very friendly older lady who took us right in, made some jokes, took us up to our cozy room which was just awesome, and apparently haunted. We didn't stay long as we had a adventuring to do!

We drove to Dunvegan castle first. Most of it was getting renovated from the outside. We went inside and weren't allowed to take pictures, but there were some incredibly lovely paintings inside. And some cool things like a cramped dungeon and a post boat! I got Heather a bracelet from the shop.

After checking out the pretty gardens, we drove up to Uig, where the fairy glen was. We found it without trouble even though there were no signs. This place was incredible, it honestly looked like something in a picture book or fairy tale. There was sheep poop everywhere and stone creations of fairy rings people made, the biggest being a spiral where there were offerings in the middle. We put a strawberry there. We climbed up to this rocky cliff hill that was pretty scary to climb because there was a steep, grassy drop on either side. We went to the top and ate strawberries and had probably the most peaceful moment of my life. It was BLISS. We explored the glen for awhile, climbing hills, looking at bunnies and discovering wild thistles.

We took the car back to our lodge, where we got a delicious dinner and dessert and drinks. We hung out in the lodge lounge, where we played dominoes and laughed at the TERMINATORS on TV. We retreated to bed, and about an hour after I entered into REM sleep, my phone all of a sudden went dead and vibrated itself off my dresser, very strange! In the morning, we lazily got up and had a mediocre breakfast (these Bed and Breakfasts don't know how to soft boil eggs it seems) and set off.

First, we checked out Edinbane pottery, where the stuff was cool but hella expensive. We drove all the way to Plockton, where we went on an hour long seal boat spotting trip! We saw so many awesome seals. They were fat and hilarious and the boat trip was just awesome and relaxing. Then there came the stressful race against time down narrow roads for Steph. It didn't help it was misty raining and cars were slow. We did make it back to the car rental shop okay though.

During the bus trip, we made a brief stop in Fort William where we got out and found a hill to sit and draw where I saw a dude with Sephiroth's hair. HAHAH. Pics happened and you better believe the trip home was epic!

Steph, Linnea and I in front of Loch Ness

In the Gardens

In front of the KingsMills Hotel :D

JUMP IF YOU LOVE LOCH NESS

This reminds me of a very clever puzzle...

Edinburgh Spooky Spa Trip!

2010-06-22T03:51:00.000-07:00

The summer has started, everyone! Yesterday night was summer solstice, the longest day of the year! So much sun, so much hot! This flat is positively BOILING! But we're beating the beat with ice lollies and water, and trying to get outside as much as we can! All in all, a Glasgow summer is no different than a Vancouver summer! However, I've been told a few times that the weather isn't normally like this.. haw haw! I guess we brought the good weather from back home!

Speaking of back home, my best friend Steph took time off work to come to visit me in Scotland! She got here June 10th, and we've been chilling out, having teas, shopping, exploring, generally being awesome. Kody and I took her up to St. Mungo's Cathedral, the Necropolis, and other random bits of Glasgow. The West End Festival has also been going on, so we've checked out random bits of that. The day it started, I got my friend Greig to come with us to see some random things, like the Japanese Matsuri (which turned out to be just taiko drumming), the Greek Food Festival, and hanging out in Kelvingrove Gardens, checking out the cool garden displays and KILLER PLANTS! whoaaaaaAAa!

We also went to the Glasgow West End Festival Parade on Sunday the 13th. Lots of cool costumes and a super hot day, incredibly crowded in the park, but I got a lot of really good shots. We also met up with my friend Jamie one day and we went to a great Scottish restaurant called the Bothy and had super excellent food!

On Monday, Steph and I got up early to go to Queens St. Station to take a train into Edinburgh. We had lots of time to kill before we went on our Underground vaults tour, so we explored the Royal Mile, and the huge Scottish store behind Edinburgh castle, where they also made tartans. We explored Princes St, and I got a swanky watch from SWATCH. Unexpected purchase FTW!

We went into a cool cafe and had some wine, sambuca shots, and delicious hot chocolate with marshmallows. I had a Belgian waffle with bacon, brie cheese and maple syrup on it and the salad. Super delicious. The Underground Vaults tour we went on was pretty neat, we went in there with about 10 other people. Our guide was an Australian lady. It was quite dark, cramped and musty down there, and the lights played tricks with my eyes, but nothing crazy happened in the creepy vaults. We didn't go to the area with Mr. Boots or anything, but there was apparently supposed to be a Bridge Entity who was hostile.

Afterwards, we took the Airlink/Taxi to our hotel, which was Norton House Hotel and Spa. It was very nice there, down a windy bumpy path offroad. We were shown our room, which had a nice shower, LCD TV on the wall, and a strange painting I dubbed "the Vagina Wall". We jumped into our bathing suits and checked out the pool facilities and had a very short swim, but we got to test the hydropool, "experience shower", with fragrance, drench and cold water, sauna and steam room (which smelled like menthol and feet) .

Then went for our swanky dinner. We both had some fruity rose wine, and I had cauliflower soup, and salmon on cress/tomatoes and vanilla pannacotta with summer berries for dessert. It was really amazing, and the waiters were young with hilariously posh attitudes. I felt so out of place, haha. We rushed to get back to downtown to our City of the Dead tour, but we were too late and there wasn't enough people. We walked around a bit, and got hassled for a "fag" by a 14ish year old fiesty pikey girl. Then we decided to were tired and went back to the hotel after late shopping a bit more. We got into pjs and watched most of the movie 8MM which was on tv.

The next day we got up earlyish to pick up Linnea from the airport, who was arriving from Sweden! We first had a nice breakfast at the hotel and went on a nice walk in their Woodland park area, where we found an awesome clover patch. Couldn't find any with 4 leaves, but the clover was really soft!

After getting to the airport and picking up Linnea, we got ready to go on our spa adventure. We had a drink and then lunch, which was carrot coriander soup, aubergine flaked pastry, chicken tikka rolls and tasty seasoned chips, and vanilla pannacotta with rhubarb for dessert with a glass of champagne each. Then we got shown our lockers with slippers/rober after we took a swim. Our spa books had hilariously mispelled our names. Molly "Nemeses" (Nemecek) and Steph "Laserr" (Larsen). I got a back and leg massage which I kept falling asleep during, and a really nice facial. Then I met with Linnea and we went into the relaxation room for a snooze and a cup of peppermint tea as we waited for Steph.

After we enjoyed ourselves and changed, we got a taxi and bus back into Edinburgh where we dropped off Linnea's suit case so she didn't have to carry it. We had All You Can Eat Chinese at Jimmy Chung's by Waverly station. (Ice cream and syrup, yum!) Then we headed to the cathedral where we went on our much anticipated City of the Dead Tour. Ours had quite a lot of schoolkids attending on it, which were more amusing than annoying. This one girl actually reminded me of Tasli, which was really cute. :D Our tour guide was a cool blonde lady, and she made sure we got awesome stories. The Greyfriars kirkyard was creepy, especially since we were walking on over 250K dead bodies under the grass! Going into the Covenanter's Prison was especially creepy because she really warned everyone that poltergeist activity can happen. So we went into the crypt where all the stuff happens, and it felt really odd in there. After about 10 minutes of her talking about stuff in there, a guy with a werewolf mask or something came in to scare us. How cheesy! Oh well. It was a good tour, then afterward we bought some things from the souvenir store and went to the train station where we left for home to Glasgow.

The next 2 days consisted of beadmaking, shopping, visiting Steph's lovely Great Aunt Myrtle, planning for Inverness, and cooking. We met with Jamie again for Ketchup's burgers and drinks, and that was awesome. Yay!

Next on the list of updates is Inverness and Loch Ness, and Isle of Skye! Stay tuned shortly..

Linnea and Steph and Layton eat my delicious Moroccan Carrot Soup!

Oh my gawd, GREYFRIARS U GAIZ :O

Steph inspects some lovely lovely clover!

Greig and Steph have a delicious greek lunch!

We found-a Maaario!

PROFESSOR LAYTON LONDON PREMIERE

2010-06-06T15:14:00.000-07:00

Just because I'm traveling, doesn't mean I have stopped being the complete awesome geek that I am! :D

I heard over at the Professor Layton Livejournal community that the Professor Layton movie that debuted in Japan in December was having a once only ever London Premiere! Me, being a huge Professor Layton fan, could not waste this opportunity, being only a hop, skip and a jump away from London. So I managed to get a couple of free tickets from the MangaUK's twitter, bought a train ticket to London and left on a Thursday to meet with Chris, who oh so nicely lets me use his couch every time I want to do something in London!

The 5 hour train ride to London from Glasgow was pretty uneventful. I managed to get a seat in the quiet coach, so there wasn't any screaming children. It was nice for a change! The only thing that I'm beginning to notice is that I am starting to get motion sickness from being on trains too long, and that's not fun. It's not just looking out the window, it's just the rocking motion that is stirring my insides. Bleegh. Managed to watch some Alf and Adam & Joe, then arrived at Euston London train station at about 5pm.

Met Chris at his work, which is the Wellcome Library. I had a very awkward meeting with his friend Tracy (who also worked at the library), because I couldn't work the card reader, and as she was telling me how to use it, I called her Annabell (who is Chris's OTHER friend) so she was extremely confused. I'm such a dork. Chris set me up with my very own library card that reads "Jakface McGee", because that is apparently my name now. When he got off work, I was famished and demanded we go to India India, where we got some deliciously amazing curry and pappadoms with many delicious chutneys :D (the spicy hot salty one with chunks of lime is fantastic!) We went back to Chris's house where we watched a bit of TV. The Grudge 3 (yes, it exists) was on TV, so we were watching it and making snide comments, until a part where the girl was going up the stairs because she heard a noises and she looks over the banister and SEES...... Mr. Potato Head. We LOST it. Andy reinacted it with Sackboy puppet style from behind the couch.

Chris had to work on Friday, which was the day of the Premiere, so I took Andy with me on Friday instead for adventures! We got up at about 8am on Friday, had crumpets and tea in the sunny backyard forest (hehe), and head out to find the BFI building. When we walked inside, it was great because there were some awesome Layton cosplayers, and the building itself was very inviting and modern looking, and everyone looked really excited to be there. We were given free tea/coffee/water and pastries before the showing, and then we went into a room where we all watched the completely fantastic film!

The movie itself was an absolute charm. I wasn't sure what to expect, I was expecting something that was just like a very long cutscene, however I was surprised to be rewarded with something that reminded me a mixture of a Lupin the 3rd and a Miyazaki film. The scene at the beginning with Big Ben gave me shivers, and a lot of the music just excited me to the point of my hairs standing up on the back of my neck! I was used to the North America voice acting so listening to it in Japanese I had to get used to (I have a great fondness for the Professor's English voice) but regardless of that, I still enjoyed every minute of it. The style was true to the games, had just the right amount of action, emotion and humour. A+++ would view again!

Afterwards, we hung out with the Layton cosplayers a bit so I could get some photos of them, and we stuck the Luke girl on the carousel so we could get some photos of her on there. Got some great shots! After we said our goodbyes, Andy and I got some free enormous Starbucks drinks thanks to his coupons, and we walked around Piccadilly Circus and many parks, including Green Park, Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, taking lots of pictures and bothering the squirrels with pretend food. Then we met up with Chris and Lap to go watch the Prince of Persia movie that came out that day. It was surprisingly better than I thought it was going to be! Though I wasn't impressed with the use of the Papyrus font... :|

On Saturday, Chris worked until 4 and then we were going to Cinnamon (an Indian restaurant again) to celebrate Roy's birthday. I stayed inside and worked on a comic, then headed out to meet with them. Dinner at Cinnamon was really nice, and we got free wine/drinks because it was on Brick Lane, which is a huge street just with Curry restaurants, and they have "Curry pimps" outside each restaurant asking you to try their restaurant, and if you go there they'll give you such-and-such for free. It's kind of awesome. Our dinner was really great, except for a couple tables down one person had an epileptic fit that scared the shit out of everyone. They had to be laid on the floor for 15 minutes and an ambulance came and everything! yaaaaay. :(

On Sunday, Chris and I met up (after me getting completely lost, me ftl) and had a downtown adventure before we saw the Layton Movie again (this time I had pre-paid for tickets so Chris could see it too, it was the only other movie-screening that was public for the Layton movie) but it didn't start until 3:30, so we took Roy the Duck and Sackboy with us to take pictures of them riding all the Art Elephants that were scattered around London. It was a ridiculously hot day, and walking around was quite nice. We walked through Hyde Park and walked all the way to the BFI theatre, and saw more squirrels and a duck that had a staredown with Roy the Duck!

The Sunday showing was showing in one of the larger screens of the NFT building. It was great because the screen was bigger, sound was better, and the audience, which had people of all ages, were TOTALLY in to the movie, laughing at all the right moments, and getting into the puzzles (You could hear murmurs of surprise when the Professor said the answers to the puzzles, it was great!) It had a cool screen that was all lit up with red lights! Fiery!

Afterwards we got some touristy photos of me, we found a Somerfields that was wonderfully open, got some ingredients for the BREAKFAST QUICHE we were going to make the next morning so we could watch series finale of LOST (which was aired in UK the same time it was aired in the USA, which was 5am for UK.. so we recorded it) and eat delicious breakfast quiche. Went home, received a Joei and a Lap, played Singstar, watched Joei play Street Fighter... then went to sleep.

Got up early Monday morning to make the quiche. It was quite the adventure, and we made a video out of it, so I'll just post it here with just a DISCLAIMER that there is some horrible English swears! You've been warned! DON'T SHOW KIDS!

The LOST finale was interesting. I enjoyed it but could see why people are frustrated because lots of questions are left unanswered! Oh well, that's life!

Afterwards, Chris, Lap and I went into Richmond, which is a nice town not far from where Chris lives. Lap had to go to work, so Chris and I walked around a bit around the docks after I purchased some comfortable sandals, since my feet were actually dying from all the blisters (17 to be exact). That's what happens when I forget my sole inserts for my army boots. :( We had some food at Revolution, which was a neat restaurant with antler chandeliers. And they had these SANDS OF TIME hourglasses that meant if we didn't get our food in 15 minutes we got it free. I had a Chicken salad thing that was pretty good and Chris got 2 for 1 burgers... Which he somehow finished. ahahah. We got some ice creams and walked around the fields and trails a bit, and found the "Thames Walk" which looked like a short path to the next pub where we wanted a drink. Turns out it was a 3.3 mile walk beside the Thames River, and my feet, even with my new shoes, were absolutely dying. Almost gave up a few times and called for an ambulance, but Chris was determined I could make it. We eventually made it back to the bridge where we first saw the Hippie Community from the bus we took into Richmond, and we were pretty much home already. It was ridiculous. So I spent the rest of the day on the couch hahaahah.

Tuesday, I was ready to go home to Glasgow! Packed up my stuff and headed out at about noon and met Chris outside of his work and got an iced latte tee hee, hugged and said goodbye to Chris, and was on the train, where I drew a crapload of stuff! Yay!

It's June! And adventure times are soon! Tomorrow starts the Glasgow West End Festival, lots to do and see, and in 3 days I get a Steph! And in a week after that, I get a Linnea! And then Sweden at the end of June! Many more things to happen, stay tuned!

Squirrel tricked by my hand that does not feed.

I am a tourist, yes, that is blatantly obvious

Roy and Sackboy Sitting in a Tree~

Layton and Luke!

Chris and Roy the Duck have a staredown.

Long awaited VENICE, ITALY post!

2010-06-03T03:58:00.000-07:00

Hello! How I've missed you all. Sorry for being so lazy/forgetful, but I have finally written my Venice post from when I went there with Eren in early April. It was a very magical trip, and I absolutely loved it there so I really should have been more inspired to write about it, but I guess I was so overwhelmed by all that happened, I didn't know what to write first.

Going to Venice was a dream come true. Plane trip was uneventful, although we did get dry, crappy breadsticks and flew over the Alps. I didn't realize before how many mountains there were (way more than you might think, over 20 minutes of flying over them!!), and there are so many small villages nestled in the mountains! I wonder how life is there?

After getting to the airport, we got tickets from an unfriendly woman for a ferry to cross to the main island. Wasn't like the €100 each private boat trip I was expecting! Waiting for the boat on the pier with other people while the sun was going down over the water was beautiful. By the time we got on our boat, it got pretty dark. It took over an hour to get to our San Marco dock. With the help of our Google maps printout, asking someone in Hotel Serenissima (swanky!) and walking up and down deserted, echoey Venice streets, we eventually found our hotel hidden around a corner by a river side (with a scary unmoving beggar with his arms held out and his head down...) .

The Hotel Corte Grimani where we stayed was quite nice. The inside lobby area stank, but apparently that's really common. The old guy behind the counter who looked like Santos from Minna No Nihongo, took 20 minutes to explain to us the Venice map and gave us suggestions and stories of what to do/see. After grabbing a free internet access code, we went up to our room in the tiny elevator. Our room was room 302, so it was meant to be! We were starving because we hadn't eaten all day, and there wasn't any room service. I found hotel paper though and drew Ezio on it with miscellaneous HAI VENEZIA! messages on it. There was free water and cookies, so we partook in that, then took in some internet and went to sleep.

Got up the next day pretty early. The view and sounds outside our window were fantastic, and there was even a pigeon coop on the roof across from us. (Assassin's Creed much?) So we quickly got ready and departed. We wanted to shop, get lost in the maze of streets and explore everywhere, but first we were starving! Let me tell you something first, our Venice map got lots of wear out of it! It was quite easy navigating to the larger area because of the Per San Marco and Per Rialto signs everywhere on the buildings.

We went to a place called MR. SANDWICH for breakfast near the Rialto Bridge, and had a wonderful toasted sandwich with a cappuccino, and I normally don't like coffee but this tasted incredibly delightful. We were served by a really friendly Italian man that didn't mind that Eren couldn't pronounce Macchiato. Bahaha!

After breakfast we explored a bit down the streets, crowded with tourists and tourist trappings stalls. I went into a Murano glass shop run by a cool girl listening to ska music. I bought a red and black Murano glass snail and told her I would be back on Sunday to shop more. We happened to find a Lush in the hidden shops under all the old stone awnings, which I had to check out. Going through the rest of the alleyways, we cam across some great shops, ones with a lot of masks, Murano... you can tell it wa sa very touristy place. I found a great artistic dress in a shop run by a chinese lady (and later the zipper broke, sads. Need to get it fixed). We also got some sweets from one of the many bakeries and sweet shops scattered around (meringue cookies and melon rope, because I got addicted to the stuff thanks to Sweden).

We happily started a 3-a-day gelato taste test. Gelato was only 1 euro per scoop, so we tried as much as we could. Gelato is like ice cream, except way thicker, creamier and with incredible amounts of flavour. Flavours tried included Lemon, White Chocolate, Nutella, Extreme Chocolate, Strawberry, Kinder Surprise.. can't remember the rest. But most of them were nommy.

We checked out some of the amazing buildings and cathedrals scattered around, and made sure to take a couple of nerdy photos of us trying to climb some pillars a la Ezio. We had a late lunch at a fantastic restaurant on the first day. I had a fresh creamy ham sauce tortellini dish, while Eren had an artichoke, cheese, ham and mushroom pizza which was also tasty. I partook in the breadsticks and white house wine, which was divine, and cheap! Really satisfying meal.

We walked quite far all around the city, and discovered the Piazza Roma which is where all the cars/busses/trains drop all the people off because they can't go into the city. They had a newer bridge built over the water that was really modern and neat to cross over. There were some small posters put up in an area of construction that had a cracked out Snail on it that reminded me of Sausage the Snail. I was delighted. :D

Seeing all the Gondoliers float in their gondolas and go under bridges with people was so cool, they had their stripey shirts and awesome straw hats n' everything. Just like you'd expect! Some of them even sang/whistled.

We ate the meringue cookies at the waterside by the Rialto bridge and watched the gondoliers go by. We saw the seagulls flying around trying to get a bit of food action from people. We closely inspected the water in the canals (without getting too close) and summarized that is definitely pure AIDS. It smelled like the bathroom from Trainspotting. Oh well, the view was nice.

During the day, the lineups to get into St. Marco cathedral were huge, so we didn't bother going inside. There was lots of really cool things to see on the outside, anyway. Saturday night in St. Marco square there was a live band (bass, violin, clarinet, accordion) that played beautiful songs and even the Tetris song! I got some crappy video of it on my phone. Lights at night on the canals were creepy but hauntingly pretty. Night walking in St. Marco square was lovely! The architecture in this area is incredible, with the long row of pillared buildings and the ornate Torre D'Orlogio (clock tower) sitting adjacent to the San Marco Cathedral, when walking under it is quite neat.

On Sunday we walked all over Venice trying to find all the glyph locations from Assassin's Creed 2 (there are 6 locations, but one doesn't exist anymore because it was..well, a thieves guild. Haha) and taking pictures/video of each one. Before we left our hotel on Sunday we scoured the internet for an hour trying to find a proper old map from AC2 that showed us where the glyph locations were supposed to be. Translating it to the new map we had was a bit hard because even though it's very similar, it was definitely shrunk down for the game.

• Gilda dei Ladri di Venezia (this is the thieves guild location that didn't exist.. haha)
• San Giacomo di Rialto
• Ponte di Rialto Rialto Bridge
• Scuola Grande di San Marco
• Torre Dell'Orologio Clock Tower
• Campanile di San Marco
• San Pietro di Castello To the very very east of Venice where no one was!

At one of the locations at the far east, where we found the San Pietro di Castello, we were sitting on a bench and we saw a bunch of people on the large bridge going across one of the canals, and they were all wearing a different colour jacket. The funny thing was, most of them weren't together. Rainbow people! :D Also there were barely any people over on this side, so it was really quiet and quite beautiful. We had to cross 7 bridges to get to this place, one of the bridges being the "Lovers Bridge". There is a story behind it and you're supposed to kiss a loved one after you cross the bridge. So adorable!

Getting to this part in the east we walked down a street where mostly the locals were out and about, and there was some sort of flea market display in the streets that had some interesting items. We got some gelato and explored the nearby garden which had a fantastic statue/fountain and a really nice walking path that sheltered us from the sun. We got to the edge of the water and walked all the way up, admiring the skyline of beautiful Venice with all the boats going to and from the docks. On the way in the water, we saw a bizarre drowned woman statue covered in seaweed. We also angered a local gazebo.

During our shopping adventures, we saw a lot of really neat things. Like cybernetic masks instead of the normal Carnivale masks. We also found a small dragon and eclectic figure store where Eren got a little dragon figure. Also went back to Murano shop run by cool ska girl, and bought lotsa neat things and presents! I wanted to go mask hunting to find the perfect mask for me and a Plague Doctor mask for Kody. Another shop we saw had amazing Greek God statues in the window. I wanted the Lady Justice and Zeus ones but they would have been too huge to carry back. Also to my delight and surprise, I found out that Lupin the 3rd is very popular in Italy, as I saw lots of Lupin merchandise and clothing at random stores. I got a really awesome purple and green Lupin shirt with fuzzy black designs!

Caffe del Doge was amazing. Spent 17 euros in there. That's where I had the best hot chocolate I've ever had. It was pure chocolate with cinnamon sprinkled on top. Exquisite.

Found an amazing mask shop that did huge masks of cartoons/people, like the Joker, Simpsons, the Hulk, etc. and sold Italian manga!

Steph asked me to try to find a spiral/shell design necklace charm she lost, and we searched everywhere in most Murano shops but we could not find what she described. Apparently there was only one shop that sold them though (and there was a lot of Murano shops.) I did buy her a cool pendant though.

On Monday before we left, we decided to partake in one of the 80 Euro Gondola rides. It was about 30 minutes and it was really lovely. Our Gondolier was secretly Ezio, we think. He showed us some really old buildlings, like the Marco Polo building and some really old marble buildings from the 1400's. He took us to where we were looking out over the water on Saturday eating meringues. It was cool to see it from the other side on the water! We even got in a mini traffic jam on the water, which was cool, haha. And there was this old Gondolier with the coolest mustache! He was a bro. This was a really nice way to end the Venice trip, I think, even if it was an expensive one!

FINAL THOUGHTS!

Walking over so many bridges was really cool. Gorgeous city, old buildings, quite friendly people, the streets were very narrow and so crowded with tourists, it was sometimes very hard to get past. Apparently less than 1% of tourists actually take time to see the gorgeous sights and buildings. How sad! We made sure to see as much as we could, chased pigeons, fought our way through crowds, had lots of candy, gelato and expensive delicious foods. Our bed was very comfy and our bathroom had a bidet. Haha. The Hotel Corte Grimani was clean and very nice. Staff was nice too. Ferry ride back was fun and crowded. People got splashed by the water!

I was a bit worried at airport security that I wouldn't be able to take everything because I had like 5 carry on bags, but I guess they're used to it. Had shitty breadsticks on the plane ride back, too! Was uneventful and we got back safe and sound. Venice was amazing, A+++ would visit again many many times!

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Foods we tried:
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Toasted sandwiches
Super Expensive crab (that was just a small pile of crab with bits of shell in it on some lettuce.. :| )
Beef Goulash noodles
Lemon Pana Cotta with Raspberry sauce (this was EXTRA NICE)
Smoked Salmon Penne
Random pizza
Lots of wine
The BEST hot chocolate
Croissants
Spinach and Cheese pastry
Fruit Milkshake
Many delicious sandwiches on Monday, like my fav. Cream cheese and ham with no crust. DIVINE!
Random bakery cookies and pastries

I have a crapload of photos from Venice, you can see my photo album here if you haven't seen any my photos already! http://www.flickr.com/photos/43711291@N02/sets/72157623803323554/ GO SEE GO SEE!

Heidelberg Ho!

2010-05-02T15:21:00.000-07:00

I know, I know. My Venice post is coming up, HOLD YOUR HORSES.

I just got back from Germany today, and I'm full of Kody's Double Down chicken bacon mozerella explosion and ceasar salad. Ffsdgdsgsd. :}

I had heard about Heidelberg from Eren and the moment I saw pictures of it, I had to go see it. It was getting quite close to the time I had to go (Sunday) but with some good news from Eren's friend, we managed to get an all day return pass for the both of us for 39 euros, so it was off to Frankfurt am Main train station early Saturday morning!

We wandered the train station for a bit and went to the information desk to get help on how to get a ticket to Heidelberg, and we were served by a man with the most amazing moustache in the world. (Well, almost as awesome as the guy with the windmill in his beard.) We went to go outside to get something to eat, when a confused Eren stopped in the middle of oncoming pedestrians, and a very upset German guy yelled "ACHTUNG!!!!!!!" and forced his way past Eren. It scared the crap out of him, but I found it hilarious and kept yelling it out at random intervals all day. For breakfast, we had some Starbucks drinks (myself a chai latte and Eren a Caramel Frapp) with schnitzel sandwich bun and an egg and chive bun with lettuce, cucumber and tomato for breakfast.

The train ride was quite uneventful at 1 hr and 40 minutes. We got to the main station and made a beeline for the bathrooms (which we had to pay 50 euro cents for), which were will disgusting despite paying for it. I took note while waiting for Eren to come out, that outside there were tons of bicycles everywhere! Must be the best way to get around Heidelberg - scenically. I guess it means the air is cleaner too. :) We were greeted by a strange horse/person/dragon statue with a spinning head in its body when we went into the Tourist Information center to get a map.

We walked down a really nice road with gorgeous houses and trees. It was quite picture perfect! We were even greeted by a snail in one of the flower gardens in the road. We kept traveling down the road to find Heidelberg Castle, when we came across an interesting set of stairs that Eren insisted we check out. So we went up , and it was a steep climb, but we were greeted with a lush forest, dirt and rock paths, a mysterious gravestone, and wonderful lookout points that looked over the large, tree covered hills and old city below. The climb was quite brutal, because I wasn't used to it. We kept having to stop because my asthma was acting up. Eventually we got to a high up area with a cute log hut that was graffiti'ed to hell, but the best graffiti said "Russian Special Forces Barbeque Division" right under the window, so hilarious pictures had to happen.

After descending, we went off road and ran down some winding dirt paths until we came across a beautiful area of houses and a small stream waterfall. We followed the road that quickly brought us to the castle through posh houses territory. One even had a security camera outside that we had to go up to and wave! Outside the castle area we got some expensive water and I got my Germany sticker for my laptop. We took a breather on one of the bences and had our treats. (Eren had a vanilla strudel and I had a Berliner, which is a jam filled doughnut.) We explored and took lots of pictures, and saw terrible parents making their kids walk on top of the railing that had like a 100m drop to the ground below. Some kid came up to Eren when he was eating Apple candy and demanded he gave him some. What kind of world do we live in where kids demand candy from strangers?!

Anyhoo.. we walked all around the castle, and found a nice garden area with a hilarious Zeus statue with derpy wall eyes. We also found a huge pond that was full of tadpoles! It was awesome! Walking along the forested area that was protected by a short, stone wall, we found tons of snails, even teeny ones, begging to be photographed. We found a MASSIVE snail on a bench nearby, further on past the "Fronds Goethe" statue. After chilling and eating beef pepperoni sticks, we went to the inside castle area. The apothecary was closed, but we still took photos inside of the amazing statues on the wall. There was a wedding going on too!

Going through the exit had a lot of great stone covered paths and roads down to the main old town Heidelberg, where I found a shop called "Piu Piu". Hehe. We walked into a shop that sold organic baking and pesto and sauces, got some taste tests and bought 2 expensive (2.10 euro each) ginger cookies. Happened to follow a big dumb cute fluffy white dog to a Thai restaurant that was kind of expensive and the food was quite overcooked and tasteless. Also had an "Ice smoothie" from the Chiquita juice bar, but the new girl forgot half the ingredients, including the "ice" part, so it ended up just being a warm blend of orange, banana and passion fruit (that overtook most of the drink).

After the long trek down old town and finding our way back to the station at around 9pm, we got on the double decker train, and tried to sleep, but it was loud and incredibly uncomfortable. In Heidelberg train station, I had a Mr. Grimmer moment. (Mr. Grimmer is a character from the manga/anime Monster, which is set in Germany/Czech Republic, and is a great thriller/action story) A girl approached me and ask for change (she said she was sleeping under a bridge AND she said "I will become baby in 5 months"....lol) I gave her a Euro, just to make her go away. :|

Ah well, Heidelberg was gorgeous. A+++ would visit again.

The weather was a bit rainy but overall quite warm and very enjoyable air.
Have some delicious photos! I haven't posted in awhile, so have a lot!

I am part of the Special Forces Barbeque Edition. So sayeth my happy Doctor Tennant impression.

Inside the walls of Castle Heidelberg

Derp Zeus all like "sup gaiz"

A view of Old Town Heidelberg from above

Chillin' out maxin' relaxin' all cool at the ponds in the Garden

At a lookout point from walking in the forest uphill! Leo girl~

My handsome garden snail!

Our magic forest path

This was BIG Snail! He was about 4 inches long! Wowww :D

No German town is complete without a giant Pretzel sign

Resting at a lookout point

I got me some gooey snail kisses~

Tadpoles!

Sunset over the S-Line Train tracks

Sheep Respite

The WTF statue.

Messages + Frankfurt, Germany

2010-04-13T09:41:00.001-07:00

I just wanted to let you all know I am alive and well, though many of you who keep up with my Facebook, Twitter and DeviantArt pages already knew that!

Adventures lately have been few, but I will recap as best as I can.

First I'd just like to make a point or two.

The most important being the tea count. I might have to cancel the 1000 cups of tea challenge, only for the fact that I seem to have a caffeine allergy of some sort, which I think I developed by drinking energy drinks so much while working on the Prince of Persia costumes back in 2008. Every time I seem to have a cup of tea with caffeine (so, the regular kind, earl grey, etc) I get heart palpitations. I could do this challenge with just fruit and peppermint tea, but I think I'd honestly get extremely sick of 650 more cups of that before September hits. So I will continue the count, but don't expect me to reach the goal. It's sad, I know, but I can't do anything to help it!

I'm working very hard to update Insane Yeti Squirrel as best I can. Time allows me to update twice a week while letting me do things in between, like play games or do other projects or explore. I need to stick to a strict updating regime if I hope to gain any sort of following. I know I can do it.

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Currently I am in Frankfurt, Germany visiting Eren. I arrived here on March 20th, after Kody and Caz dropped me off at the Edinburgh airport. (Thanks guys!) Edinburgh airport is pretty tiny and was surprisingly fast to get through security and everything, so I had a couple hours to kill before I boarded the plane. Ended up drawing in the new sketchbook I bought just an hour previous and enjoying a cinnamon latte from Costa Coffee along the way (it was free! Woo hoo!)

When I got to Frankfurt, it wasn't very tough getting through security at all. Eren was waiting for me on the other side, and we went straight to the train station. There are a LOT of train lines in Frankfurt. If you thought London was confusing, you should see Frankfurt's train system, holllyyyyy smokes, and Frankfurt isn't even close to being as big as London is! We met up with his friends at the Tower Cafe, where I had a ginger ale with an orange slice in it (starting with the 0.2 L or 0.3L servings again, I remember this from Czech Republic!) and a VERY tasty chicken ceasar salad. We hung out there for a couple hours and went to go karaoke after. I wanted to drop all of my belongings off at Eren's beforehand, so we went to his house to meet up with them later. Except as luck would have it... Eren had lost all of his keys. :( Couldn't get in or buzz any of the neighbours since he didn't even have his flat key. So while I went to karaoke with his friends with all of my bags still weighing down my back, Eren went back to all the places he was that day to try to retrieve them - with no luck. Very upsetting indeed. So after everything, karaoke was completed super late, and we took a cab to Eren's friend Phil's house for the night, where he graciously offered us the use of his attic to sleep in. (It had 2 single beds and a cool, very low, slanted ceiling!)

I won't get into details about running around trying to figure out how to break into Eren's flat, but eventually we managed, buzzing countless German neighbours and trying to communicate and a locksmith later. Needless to say, since Eren didn't have the front building key replaced (would have taken 2 weeks and expensive to replace and he was moving anyway) I had to be under "house arrest" (meaning I couldn't leave the house because I wouldn't be able to get back in) so I could let Eren back in at the end of the day. This went on for a week and a bit. Had to rely on Eren to bring back foods from the corner store. I managed to go to the store once on my own, but I got a little nervous, not knowing what to do if I was asked questions in German. Most of the time I just say "Sorry I don't understand" or just mumble incoherently and ignore. Only because so far I've come to realize that most the German people I've come into contact with are not very nice people. I'm sure there are lots of lovely German folk, but so far I have not felt welcome in this country from the moment I've stepped into it's borders. I've been greeted with scoffs, rudeness, ignoring, patronizing, probably only because I don't speak German, or they are scared of an alternative looking individual like me. Whatever the reason is, I'm sorry to be on the receiving end of such bad treatment.

Eren's move to his new flat generally went okay. Since he didn't have a friend with a car to help him move, we went back and forth carrying many large, heavy bags on the train and walking long distances. Needless to say, my back was EXTREMELY sore, my arms were tired, and I was cranky a lot of the time. We even made an Ikea trip that was really fun, we even got Swedish Meatballs, lingonberry jam and potatoes (missed this from Sweden!), but we still had to carry home all the heavy spoils. His new flat is much better than his old one. It's in a tall building, he lives on the 9th floor, and has a balcony view of the direction of the sunset and a view of Frankfurt city. It's quite astounding! I'll post a picture.

So since I've been in his new flat, I've built most of his Ikea furniture (the bed, the bookshelf, the TV entertainment stand, and the computer desk) I am a freakin' LUMBERJACK but it made me have sore thumbs and palms from screwdriving by hand so much. We've experimented with the little food we buy at a time, we've watched all of Glee, played Kings Quest 4 and 5 and have started 6, and are playing it on the 40 inch LCD TV he bought for his new flat, I've tried out Final Fantasy XIII (it's kinda boring, music is a bit drab, characters are annoying), watched Amelie and Moulin Rouge, playing Heavy Rain, BlazBlue... etc etc etc. I've been trying to draw lots too. Sometimes all it takes is a little inspiration and free time. Which I got lots of at the moment! I also watched the entire 74 episode series of Monster, which was incredible, and very appropriate to watch in Germany, since the entire thing takes place in Germany and Czech Republic!

His friend had a Musicals and Fajitas night, where we watched Jesus Christ Superstar and most of Mamma Mia! while eating very tasty fajitas and drinking delicious wine. It was great fun!

I haven't seen much of Frankfurt yet, but we hope to take a day trip to Heidelberg, which is a gorgeous little town with a castle nestled in the nearby forest brush. To get to the main town you go over an enormous, stone bridge. If you can, look up a picture. I'm very excited to visit this beautiful German town!

My Dad wants me to go to Berlin and I would love to, but I might not have time as I have to go back to Scotland sometime soon so I can prepare for friends visiting when it gets warmer. Also, didn't think I'd say this, but prefer the atmosphere of more friendly Glaswegians than Germans, it seems! Hahahaha! Well, maybe Berlin another time, another adventure. We shall see! Maybe another time I'll do both Berlin and Amsterdam.

We did go to Venice, which was an epic trip. Next post will be about Venice! Yay!

Me at karaoke with my €6.50 bottle of Fanta and Tambourine

Singing "Viva Forever" with Phil

Typical German dinner. Wurst and apfelwine!

Sunset out of Eren's Balcony

I'm still alive!

2010-02-27T12:42:00.000-08:00

Heya folks! Just giving you a quick update saying I'm still alive, still drinking tea, and still hanging out in Glasgow with my friends Kody and Carly!

I've been doing art and trying to come up with plans for myself for future projects and such.

I did manage to see a bit of Perth, Dundee and St. Andrews last weekend. My boyfriend Eren's friend had a wedding last Saturday, where I had good food, good champagne, and managed to do quite a bit of Ceilidh dancing, which was so much fun! They had a live band and everything. It's basically like line dancing, but if your life ain't in danger at some point while you're dancing then you're not doing it right! Haha, it was crazy! I was lucky because Eren was up there with me dancing like mad. ^-^

Some of the cool things I've been seeing/doing/eating around this crazy town....

- played Guitar Hero with a Theremin

- making frequent trips on the train... train is always fun!

- buying tons of tea... earl grey, turkish apple, green apple pear, peppermint, insta-chai, green tea jasmine are some of our list

- making a game with Eren, with dialogue written by Tyler! It's Insane Yeti Squirrel themed!

- stayed at a really pretty hotel called "Mark's Hotel" where they had crazy wallpaper and a fantom possessed shower!

- had all you can eat Chinese food in Dundee, and on the way saw a "Jak's Cafe" (spelled the same way!)

- Beat Assassin's Creed 2 (HAH!)

- cooking stuff! Pancakes, breakfast, Japanese hamburg steak, Apple Crisp, Banana Bread Loaf

- Looking into bellydancing lessons, jewelry making classes, the university's pool for swimming funtimes!

- been buying beads for making voodoo/pirate inspired jewelry!

- Lush is only a 5 minute walk away and since Kody has a large tub at his flat, have been getting my Lush baths! *heart*

- went go-karting and laser tagging for a birthday party of someone I didn't know (was pretty amazing at go-karting for the first time, but laser tagging I leave something to be desired..)

Caz and I went to Edinburgh quite a few weeks ago. We went on a Sunday so not much was open and we went quite late in the day.. but I did manage to see Edinburgh castle from afar and saw a bunch of adorable shops! Caz and I made our first joint purchase - a cupcake teapot! Yay! I'm still planning on going back there soon when the weather gets nicer, and Steph and I will be going there when she comes up too for the City of the Dead tour. Getting excited for a bit better weather for more adventures.

Upcoming adventures include..

- Germany trip to see Eren
- Italy weekend with Eren while I'm in Germany

- Loch Ness Blair Witch adventure with Kody and Caz

So a few fun things on the horizon! Don't worry, more fun adventures and pictures will come soon! Love you all!

Me and Eren at the wedding! Happies!

The best hot chocolate I've ever had

Edinburgh Castle

Our Cupcake Teapot baby!

CARDIFF - PERTH/STIRLINGSHIRE ROAD TRIP - ETC!

2010-01-27T04:31:00.000-08:00

So much to say, so much to say!

First off I must tell you of Tchai Ovna, which is a tea house in a weird part of Glasgow where you have to go down some creepy streets to get to, and it's basically a shed in someone's backyard that they decorated all hippie like. They have close to 50 kinds of teas you can choose from, ranging from green teas, indian teas, fruit teas, Russian, black teas.. it's cool! I've gotten to try a couple things from there so far, like the best one is the Moroccan Mint Apple, which is ABSOLUTELY FINE. They had another one called Fairies Blood, which is very strong, fruity, minty herbal. A lot of my recent tea count has been from that place!

Also went with a new friend to his friend's birthday party, where we went Go-Karting (my first time) which was HELLA FUN! Totally Mario-Kartesque, got the helmet, outfit and everything! Too bad I don't have pictures from it. It was my first time but I got 5th out of 9 experienced go Karters, go me! And had a really good lap time! :D We also did lazer tag, which I am DREADFUL at, I got dead last out of 17 people, some of them being seemingly blonde petite girls...sigh. I think my tactics of "storming everywhere and everything while shouting BLUE THUNDERRRRRR at the top of my lungs" doesn't work so hot..)

Also saw Sherlock Holmes with Caz last week, which was cool! The movie itself I enjoyed but it was still missing something so I didn't enjoy it to the fullest extent of Robert Downey Jr.'s sexiness that I could!

Anyway, a couple weekends ago, Kody, Caz and I went on a ROAD TRIP to the outskirts of Perth and Stirlingshire, to visit a couple of pretty places and basically just hang out in the countrysides! (because they were NICE and the BIRDS and the SUN was almost down from the TOP of the SKY !?!?!)

Kody likes driving fast on scary roads that have no fences on them :| but that seems to be a normal thing in the UK where people are so used to driving on these roads and they are ace at it.. it's still scary! The long road we drove on was called Braco Road. (Google it!) I saw Stirling Castle and the (phallic) Wallace monument from a distance! We went to a place called "Deil's Cauldron". Deil is another word for Devil. Had gorgeous scenery with all these dead, red ferns covering the hills. Also went to a waterfall called Fairy Falls in South Lochearnhead. Got dangerously close, but it was worth it! Really had an amazing, thrilling feeling with the powerful water flow making wisps of freshwater flecked air fly into my face! Whoa... just made an alliteration there. Apparently in the Spring/Summer Equinox when it turns midnight, you can see lights around the falls that look like fairies!

We also went to Kody's parents house in St. Fillans which they have a private dock on Loch Earn. It was quite cold and it was definitely not swimming weather, or even staying outside for longer than a few minutes weather.. but it was definitely beautiful! Afterwards we went to the small town of Calendar, where we hit up a couple of neat shops. I went to a Celtic Jewelry store where I got some gorgeous triskele earrings and a triskele necklace, so much better quality than anything I'd find at home, and pretty darn cheap, too! Another store we visited was a Shell shop run by a very chatty, nice Scottish man. After Caz and Kody bought a couple of shells, we headed back home!

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CARDIFF
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A couple of months ago, a couple of friends back in London (Chris and Andy) mentioned that John Barrowman was doing a Pantomime in Cardiff, Wales, and had invited me to come along. I didn't want to miss an opportunity to be in the same room as John Barrowman while he sings and prances around gay-ly, so I told them to buy me a ticket.

Cardiff is where a lot of Torchwood and Doctor Who is shot, contrary to what you might be thinking (ie, London), so I saw a lot of places where some episodes were shot (the mall where they shot the mannequin episode, a chip shop where Martha was in, etc) and from Torchwood, we went to the "secret gate" which is on the docks at a wharf (which has now been turned into an Ianto Jones memorial shrine), and we also went to the most famous Torchwood place, which is where the secret slab is outside of that huge theatre building with the giant writing on it. (See pictures, you'd recognize it if you saw the show!)

The Cardiff trip itself was pretty successful. I was picked up by Chris, Andy and Sadie at Cardiff Central train station where we then walked around a bit to scope out the area. We ended up going to Nando's right away because I was starved to death from not eating on a 7 hour train journey. I ended up eating half a chicken, mashed potatoes, a corn on the cob, and Sadie's half a chicken wrap. XD;; Afterwards we hit up a couple of pubs, both of them being Wetherspoons. The first one we went to was a gay friendly 'poons with 2 floors. We lounged in the upper floor's comfy couch seats where I had a WKD Blue and a huge plate of profiteroles (PRO-FIT-TER-OOOH-LEES!) (ice cream filled cream puffs with chocolate drizzled on them) that I barely shared. 8D~ Chris had to run to catch his train back to Swansea, and Sadie, Andy and I called it an early night and went to our pretty ghetto hotel in a garbage-littered part of Cardiff. Oh well, it was cheap!

The next day, Andy, Sadie and I had breakfast at Caffe Nero, where we were served by a one-man show - he was nuts, serving all the customers himself and making all the drinks! He had crazy dreadlocks which must have given him A.D.D. Spider genes. I had a blueberry muffin and a chai latte. We scoped out a Wales shop, where I bought a Wales touque and a flag sticker for my laptop. Andy bought a sheep plushie that we had plans for later. Then we checked out the large, two floored Cardiff Market. We hung around looking at the booths while waiting for Chris and Neil to arrive from Swansea. We tried Welsh Cakes (like flat raisin english muffins covered in sugar). Looked for a specifically titled book in all the Harlequin Romance novels with similar titles (tried to find 'Italian Billionaire's Virgin Bride' but ended up having to settle for 'Italian Millionaire's Virgin Wife'.)

We escaped the market where Andy had written "Ianto" on the side of the sheep he purchased. From there, we proceeded to have random adventures in malls, like Andy putting 1man1jar on the macbook in the mac store (DON'T LOOK THIS UP IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT IT IS I'M SERIOUS), trying to find a smoothie place, Andy sending horrible pictures to people's bluetooth on their mobile phones... We had lunch at an Irish pub where I had a Steak and Guiness pie, chips and peas. (I ATE ALL OF THE PIES.) We found some statues to pose Ianto the sheep with, like the two giant fists (lol) and the "Stargate" where we had a good laugh because some young army cadets were hanging outside out of it with a 'malp' looking device. We took pictures of us jumping through the Stargate, and throwing Ianto through it. We visited an Antique store where I found a Sherlock Holmes soundtrack CD...go figure! And they had a comic store inside with a Doctor Who merchandise treasury on the top floor! They had so much stuff.... I found some stickers, a Dalek bag and a David Tennant notebook in a £1 bin which I promptly purchased! Yay stickers! Also, there was a militaria section where a guy had Russian guns and Nazi daggers and swords - spoils from the war! :O There was a section that had bags, medikits, jackets, badges, patches, lots of stuff from all the countries who participated in the wars! I bought an armband that has a medic symbol on it as well as a Union Jack and a Scotland Flag emblem. It's recent, but it's cool looking! The boys said it looked like a thong from the way it's designed... hahaha.

Neil drove us all to Barry Island, where during the day they have faires and rides, and it's right on the beach. We went after 5 when everything was closed, but we did manage to waste time in a couple of arcades where we tried to win stuff in the 2p pushing coins game. Also had Neil try to win me a Scottish Terrier plush, but he didn't get it. Took some amazing pictures of the beach and sky with long exposure. We also got a ton of free chips, pies and sausages from a chippy that was closing! So yet again, I got to 'eat all the pies' except I didn't really touch it. haha. Also, some person was setting Chinese Lanterns up into the sky (the kind where you light the base on fire and the heat takes it up like an air balloon) They filled the sky with pretty orange lights!

We headed for the posh area of Cardiff on the water after that, where I got a Starbucks. We visited the Ianto shrine where the presumed 'outside of Torchwood' is filmed, and we talked to the theatre with the huge glowing letters on the outside. After taking hilarious photos of Ianto being silly, we went back to the hotel where we had delicious Whittards Dreamtime tea, and called it a night after Sadie, Neil and Andy tried on Sadie's "Russell from Up" outfit she bought at the Disney store that was made for 5 year olds. HILARIOUS.

The next day, Sadie, Andy and I had breakfast at a cafe, where I had an apple blueberry juice and a bacon and cheese panini. We wandered around until we had to meet up with Chris and Neil. I managed to buy a very pretty pinup rockabilly dress for only £20! We also went to a Welsh crafts store with the world's largest carved wooden Welsh Love Spoon! (see pictures) I got Steph and Terri presents from that store. We went back to check on Cardiff Castle which is situated in the middle of downtown, but we figured it was too expensive because it was £9 just to get in. We went back to "Torchwood" where we tried to find a place to eat that had lamb on the menu, but surprisingly our search was fruitless because it seems Cardiff likes their Italian restaurants more than traditional Welsh food, and it is also "cool" for restaurants to close between 4-6:30pm. :| WTF. We ended up going to a chinese/thai food restaurant that was completely horrible. I had peanut satay chicken and the chicken was so overdone, and 'braised lamb with ginger and spring onion' which came as a slop on a plate that tasted like slop on a plate. Worst £15 I've ever spent so far ughghgh.

We went back to the hotel to drop stuff off and get changed to see BARROWMAN! The theatre was pretty, with crowded, uncomfortable seats. We were pretty high up so we couldn't see too well, but it was still hilarious. Barrowman flashing his butt in shiny tights, haha yes! There was a questionable "ice skating of the FUTUR" part with a Russian skater dude who looked like Evgeni Plushenko. However, it was all made worth it when I saw John Barrowman sing "Every little thing she does is magic". :D

The next day I bought a chunk of welsh lamb leg for Kody to cook, some fruit for breakfast, had a chocolatey fika with cheesecake and hot chocolate at Caffe Nero, then a 7 hour train ride later, I was back in Glasgow, where Caz and Kody went to go meet me but didn't get a block outside of their apartment before I arrived. Hehe!

It's good to be back in Glasgow, which seems to be my home at the moment! <3 Edinburgh trip on the weekend though! Very exciting, going to go bead shopping and buy a muffin tin so Caz and I can make cupcakes and muffins! Squeeeee~

TORCHWOOD

Chillin' in the market with Elvis

MY SPOON IS TOO BIG!

Those wooden links are carved like that!

Clock Tower in Cardiff

Barry Island

Fairy Falls

Loch Earn

Deil's Cauldron featuring Kody and Caz!

God Jul + Happy New Year!

2010-01-04T19:19:00.000-08:00

Not a day passes where I don't feel guilty when I don't post in this journal. Gomennasai!

So Christmas was a success! In Sweden they have food and presents on Christmas Eve. We had so much food, it was ridiculous. We started eating at 1 pm and it didn't exactly stop until about 8pm! We had different pickled herring dishes, ham, potatoes, leverpastej and bread, moose tongue, swedish meatballs and jam, cloudberries with cream for dessert, with random cookies and tea, Julmust (the awesome Christmas drink they have that tastes like coke, beer, and spices all mixed together) and glogg. We watched the Donald Duck christmas special at 3pm that everyone in Sweden tunes into, apparently! Hearing Disney in other languages was pretty cool! :D

I got some chocolate from Linnea's family, and Linnea got me a Portal shirt that says "THE CAKE IS A LIE" on it multiple times. It's a great shirt! I got Linnea some key earrings and got her mom and dad some chocolate, and her brother an iPod cover, and her grandmothers some blueberry glogg and strawberry honey! It was a good exchange. :D

Christmas day itself was more of Christmas Eve hangover where we ate leftovers and just chilled out. It was super grand! Linnea and I made a delicious Strawberry cream shortcake covered in chocolate icing and marzipan decorations, and bananas and whipped cream! It was DELEEESHOUS! Pictures below! And it wasn't a lie!

Boxing Day consisted of just CHILLING OUT (haha no crowd surfing for me!) and also BEING COOL (noticing my Mr. Freezisms?!) since Linnea and I went out into the freezing cold of the barren Swedish wastelands to try our hand at WINTER GEOCACHING. In case you are wondering how that went, it failed. We tried looking for one at this Church (the 70's prison one I told you about earlier) and we got stared at by people at the bus stop as we ran our hands all along this metallic pole looking for this tiny magnetic cache. Sigh. :( After noticing the police car parked across the road we decided to high tail it, and try our hand at one in a park, where we decided it was WAY TOO COLD and it was ridiculous because the GPS that Linnea got from her father was freaking out and would say we were 2 meters to reaching the cache, then would all of a sudden say we were 30 meters away.. SIGH. So after going up to a tree, molesting it until it had no snow left on it, we quickly withdrew and went back home for Fika and drawing times. Ahhhhh much better.

On the 27th, Linnea, her friend Åsa and I went shopping and had some Fika at a really tiny cafe where I had a chai latte (which sucked, needed like, 5 spoons of sugar) and a thankfully delicious piece of gingerbread cheesecake. :D I managed to score a rad scarf I had wanted before Christmas at this store called Monki (has a lot of really adorable clothes!) and I got it at 50% off and it was the last one! It was meant to be. Also got a rad purple touque, a slinky soft bunchy grey shirt, and a pink tank top with a hippie pattern that goes perfect under loose fitting casual tops :D

We also went to see Avatar, which would have been so totally boss all the way through, except the fire alarm went off 20 minutes into the film, where everyone was confused and tried to evacuate, then when the alarm went off and everyone went back to their seat still confused, the lights went off and we had missed 15 minutes of the movie. :| Also, the subtitles for the Navi language were in Swedish so I had to ask Linnea to translate it. And there were huge yellow Swedish subtitles in the way of everything so it would have been so pretty if it wasn't for that. I think I have to see it again without the interupptions, but yes, Fern Gully in Space with Smurfs of the Future = awesome. It just was missing a Hexxus. That American military guy did not live up to Tim Curry's sexy voice. :|

I've been having trouble with SharkRobot.com in getting the geek shirts that I had ordered way before Christmas, but they finally arrived on the 28th (Except for one, I'm still dealing with that right now) so I took a bunch of pictures with me in my awesome shirts! :D I'll upload it for you all to see!

Linnea and I were also around for DeviantArt to reach it's 100,000,000th deviation, which isn't SUPER exciting, but we were just waiting for it to be a picture of naked lady, yet we were hoping for a stick figure or a furry. XD It turned out to be a gay themed prose though, which was pretty cool.

The next couple of days before I had to leave consisted of Linnea and I hanging out and watching movies, Japanese/Korean dramas and finishing Ouran Host Club, drawing our Christmas comic, and having lots of Fika. I kept being spoiled with amazing food from Linnea's family. I don't think I ever disliked anything I ate! It was all tastylicious. :D

On the 30th, we got up early and I had to say my goodbyes and leave Umea, Sweden, I started my long 3 plane journey back to Glasgow. At the end I was extremely tired, tired of going through security and immigration and customs lines, tired of getting turbulence scares, tired of walking and being hungry... I finally got back to Glasgow where Kody had picked me up (<3) and brought me back where Caz and their friend Kurt was waiting and we ate Cheesy Fries and Buffalo chicken. OMMMNOMNOM. We watched a Harry Hill DVD which was hilarious, and we laughed all the calories away. The next day we prepared for H-Con, HOGSMANAY! Which is New Years in Scotland :D Sounds like something from Harry Potter... But yes, people trickled in all day, we were playing Halo 3 and Worms, eventually the party got started and much fun was had. Met all of Kody's awesome friends and made a lot of great friendships :D Got a bit tipsy, ventured out with people in the Silent Hill fog outside to find a food place that was open (the only one was a 10 min walk away and I had the best sausage and chips I've ever eaten, probably because I was drunk, oops!) , enjoyed Kody lopping the tops off of champagne bottles with a katana, drank champagne and sang Rock Band songs, and watched gorgeous fireworks amidst the fog! All my pictures from H-Con you can find on my Flickr here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/43711291@N02/sets/72157622990842243/

The last few days have been New Years Hangover™, which consisted of the stragglers - Loki, Mika, Junpei, Kurt - and me, Kody and Caz, all hanging out and just sitting around eating, watching stuff... in fact I don't even know where the time went, but whatevs! We braved the outside more than once, on the slippery icy sidewalks, surprised no one did a faceplant! We did go to Dim Sum where I was ripped off, however we did enjoy some freaking awesome dessert! Mika showed us a visual anime horror novel he was translating, which we promptly dubbed awesomely, and he showed us his skills in Bullet Hell games.

Yesterday consisted of ordering pizza, watching Father Ted, dropping off Mika at the train station, Kody and I going to the hardware store in the middle of nowhere to get bits to fix the shelf I destroyed under the TV (ahahahah sads) .. now hopefully I will be more productive if I finally manage to update this thing. Hooray!

Soon I will be planning for my Edinburgh trip so keep updated for that business! :D

And here's a random bit of info about what's going on in creative-enhancing land!

Shows I'm into/watching/watched:
__________
Glee
Ouran Highschool Host Club
Hagurashi
Father Ted

Current Music Playlist!
_______________
Kwoon (new album)
Chopin
Vocaloid
Me First and the Gimme Gimme's
The Knife
Pogo
Neverhood OST

Linnea and I!

I'm so excited about this Retarded Snail cake we made.

GOD JUL!

Whoa, you mean this cake isn't a lie?! Boss!

Cheeses, breads, cookies and cakes! Delicious Fika time!

A kiss for Russia on H-Con eve!

Silent Hill fireworks ring in the new decade!

AW MAH GAWD AWESOME SHIRT!

MORE AWESOME SHIRTS WOO!

Until next update! Love! <3

Christmas Time in Sweden!

2009-12-23T14:30:00.000-08:00

Hey all! I've been super busy here in Sweden, enjoying every waking moment hanging out with Linnea and her awesome family :D I've gone to Linnea's school and hung out with her there a couple days so she could finish her classes. We didn't do much except for clean for an open house and make a Gingerbread boob. Yeppppp. More on that...never! XD

Here's a list of some of the stuff I've gotten up to, now in convenient point form!

- Made homemade candy, including vanilla-caramels and knäck (sticky toffee with hazlenuts)
- Made gingerbread cookies and decorated them, hung up the big heart ones
- Decorated the tree with some awesome ornaments, including birds and tiny little crafted gnomes
- Cross country skiing through the gorgeous snow covered woods, which involved me falling down lots and taking awesome pictures/videos
- Made clove-infused designs on oranges and hung them up for awesome scent! And the one in my room kind of looks like Ike from South Park...and it watches me when I sleep...
- Watched some Christmas movies...like 'Love, Actually' and 'Peter Pan' (live action)
- Lots of Christmas shopping buying random little presents for Linnea's family
- Tons of Fika! Fika is a dessert-like meal any time of day which you always include with some sort of drink like tea or glogg! Snacks usually include gingerbread cookies, saffron bread, random cookies and candies
- Saffron bread making from scratch. We made the traditional shape, rams and snails!
- StrawberryMarzipan sculptures, made piggies and snails, dipped in chocolate
- TEA TEA TEA! Always tea every day! We have lots of kinds of looseleaf tea which are all delicious! Like nothing I've ever tried before :D
- Partook in Christmas Ham business, which was delicious
- Got introduced to Ouran Host Club (hahaha well, not really Christmasey but we have been doing it so it has to be included)
- Attending the Gym/Swimming pool Linnea goes to, it's a Spa gym/pool so it has saunas and is lit up all awesome! Like there's different colored light up panel walls going to the change rooms, and the pool room is dark except for some star-like lights on the walls and the dark blue glow of the pool, with dark mahogany wood surrounding the pool and the overflow of water from the pool/hot tub goes into the drains which sounds like a constant waterfall!
- Linnea and I went clubbing one night and walking home in the snow at 2 am. Walking in the cold after dancing retardedly and not caring about a thing was great!
- Baked Crappy shortbread that the recipe got screwed up on (it's okay Dad, I forgive you) and Thumbprint Carnage cookies, Canada style!

And most importantly... Linnea and I have been collaborating on a Christmas comic! We're including both of our characters and putting them in Christmas situations, taking turns drawing pages. It's been so fun! Hopefully we'll finish before I leave, but if not we'll finish and post it when it's all complete! :D Got 4 pages done already, and it will be 16 by the time we're done.

I'm doing exercise! Yay!

Moi and Linnea!

The tree we decor'D!

Me having Fika with a Chai and Pecan Pie!

The main street in downtown Umeå!

PLANE ADVENTURES and HELLO SWEDEN!

2009-12-13T02:37:00.000-08:00

Long time no talk!

So I was in Irvine for 2 weeks visiting my friend Leslie, who's also an awesome artist! She has a 2 year old boy named Aiden and a husband, Brian. It was quite nice to visit with her and talk with her, even though we were tired a lot from looking after Aiden! She's also pregnant again as well, so we got some art in, as well as a Fushigi Yuugi marathon and I showed her all of Hetalia!

Unfortunately, on my last week there I got really sick. I got tonsillitis with a little bit of a fever, so I was confined to the house for a good little while! I managed to get to the doctors after coughing up some blood and got myself some antibiotics. I'm all okay now! :D

Also I read this totally awesome book called "Skinny Bitch" which is basically like a no nonsense book about the truths of eating meat and non-organic foods, and how much our government lies about the garbage we put in our mouths. Also had some really scary horror stories about what goes on in slaughterhouses. Makes me want to give up meat for the most part. D: So needless to say we had a lot of great vegetarian dishes. :D

Leslie's mom lives in a Caravan park half of the year during the summer. I think it would be so fun to have one of these. It's just like a larger, wider motorhome amongst other Caravans. We visited it once at night time and it was directly opposite this large abandoned brick building which is HAUNTED! Apparently paranormal investigators confirmed hauntings there, like slamming doors and weird noises! I wasn't allowed to go in there though. Poo. :{

Also, on a really windy day, we went to the beach where there's a bit of a walkway that goes in between the crashing waves. There's no barrier on either side though so you could totally fall in, and it's only about 5 feet wide across. So because of the gale-ish winds, we were being pushed back from going forward to the very end of this walkway, with the waves crashing all around us. I actually took a video of it. Bluetooth's not working right now so you can get it later.

After the 2 week vacation there, I went back to Kody's for a couple of days. During that time I hung out with my old coworker Alan, because he's originally from Glasgow and he came home the same time I was in Scotland. So we shopped around and hung out, and we also went to this amazing Scottish restaurant called the Bothy, which had great food and a great atmosphere. The whole place was decorated like a beautiful tavern/inn with lots of foliage decor that was christmas themed, and all the seats were big and cushy, and everything was made of wood pretty much. I had this Chicken Bonnie Lass or something.. and it was chicken with a bacon mushroom wine sauce with potatoes and other veggies. Soooo good. *___*

So you might have noticed I am keeping up with my tea counts... it's been tough because sometimes I don't have access to tea, and being sick drinking hot drinks hurt. However, I've been keeping up since I've arrived in...

SWEDEN!!!!

That's right. My super awesome online artist buddy Linnéa, better known to others as Mirre, is letting me stay with her and her family for 3 weeks in Umeå, Sweden. Getting here was a whole different story..

I took a plane from Glasgow to London, which was fine. I got to London at 9pm and my string of 2 flights to get to Umeå was at 7am the next morning. I was going to spend the night at the Heathrow airport, but Chris texted me and gave me the option of spending the night at his place and getting up very early to catch a tube into Heathrow, because it was not very far away at all. After much debating with myself, I decided to stay at his place overnight so I could park my stuff and get some sleep.

After getting up at 5am and getting myself out the door, I walked briskly to the tube station and waited there for a good 35 minutes before I realized that there was no train coming, and when I went upstairs to the main area there was a sign that said "Trains not running to Heathrow, signal failure."

>:|

Unfortunately for me, stress levels then skyrocketed, as I frantically went around trying to find a cash machine so I could take out some pounds to pay for a cab to take me to the airport as "fast as he could" (which was less than the normal speed limit...) Long story short, I ended up getting to the airport through the doors to my check in counter at 6:30 am, 30 minutes before my flight, and they stopped taking bags at 6:15.

*sigh*

After almost breaking down in front of hundreds of people, I made my way to the SAS counter to buy myself another ticket on the next flight, which luckily was the same day at 2:05pm. However, 250 pounds later.. I had to wait around for almost 8 hours uncomfortably at the airport, starving and not wanting to leave my stuff. My 3 flights into Umeå. started from London, then to Copenhagen, then to Stockholm, then to Umeå. Copenhagen Airport in Denmark is a really pretty airport. Everything was dark wood decorated and it was very easy to find my next gate. Stockholm was a maze and it was too big. My flight to Umeå was pretty cool. I sat beside a huge muscular guy probably about my age who was a thai kickboxer I think.. or UFC style fighting? Anyway he won the Austria championship for his division and he was going to Umeå for his next round. How cool. He couldn't speak much english, but we communicated enough to talk for a bit. We were in the very last seats of the plane squished together, it was pretty funny. He liked my artwork. :}

So Linnéa was waiting for me in Umeå at the baggage roundabout! I gave her a big hug, it was great! :D After getting my stuff and driving back to her house and remarking how they drive on the RIGHT SIDE OF THE ROAD *cough*ukfail*cough* I came to her awesome house, and met her parents and her brother, Torkel. We had "Fika" which is like teatime, had some delicious tea I've never even smelt/tried before, with some banana cake Linnéa made and gingersnaps. They even decorated my room, it looks so cool in here! It's cozy, I have a couch, a bed, a leather armchair, a tv, with lots of really moody lighting and christmas decorations!

Speaking of Christmas Decorations, everyone in Sweden seems to have those light up paper stars in their window, or a 7 candle electric candelabra. It looks really magical, way less tacky then millions of colors of Christmas lights and weird decorations on lawns! It's super cool to see a huge apartment building on the horizon over the water and see every window with one of these!

The sun sets early because of how far North we are in the world, so it sets around 1:30pm. We don't get much sun, however it just means we get sunrise/sunset for the most part! 2 days ago, Linnéa and I went clothes shopping and I got a few things for myself since a few articles of clothing I bought didn't suit the weather conditions. We also had a really nice lunch at a café, and I tried "Portello" which is a soft drink kind of like cream soda. For dinner, we had a traditional Swedish dinner called 'pytt-i-panna', which had chopped up ham and potato, fried egg and pickled beets (which weren't as bad as I thought they were going to be, ahha) with some strong cheese on flat unleavened bread on the side. Later that night during Fika, I got to try glögg for the first time. It's like a hot mulled spiced wine that you drink with almonds or raisins in it with a tiny little spoon for scooping them out with. We also had Saffron buns, which is another Swedish christmas/Jul tradition with more Gingersnaps.

Yesterday, Linnéa and I went to a Swedish Christmas Market which was held at a farm. It was great fun, there were shetland ponies and pigs that we saw, and there were lots of stalls were people were selling crafts, homemade baking, jewelry, socks, candy etc. I bought a big jar of honey and took some great pictures. The way to walk around was lit with these large candles on the ground. It was so very pretty! After we looked around for a couple of hours, we went back home and had dinner (homemade pizza!)

Afterwards, Linnéa's best friend Åsa came over and we went disco bowling! Many lulz and awesome photos were had. Afterwards we went to a huge candy store and loaded up, went home and played some mega-yahtzee (with 6 dice) and card games, and chatted til about 2:00am when we decided to call it a night..

Today Linnéa and I have been baking Gingerbread cookies! I made an army of little piggies. Mwahahaahha!

So that's it so far. I'll update more because I'm sure we'll be doing lots of fun festive things. It's about -5 degrees and it snowed a bit!

ENJOY SOME PHOTOS AND BYE FOR NOW!

Linnéa and I are the best bowlers.

MAKIN' PIGGIES!

Outside! IT'S SNOWING!

Beautiful sunset! Oh yeah it's like... not even 2pm here.

Candy at the Christmas Market! Yummm.

Glasgow Fun Happy Time

2009-11-23T15:03:00.000-08:00

How goes my peeps! I spent the last week in Glasgow with a new friend, Kody! I was so productive art-wise. I drew like, 4-5 comics and lots of sketches! :D Being here really has lifted my spirits and given me inspiration! It's fantastic!

I already talked about what happened when I got here, after eating the most awesome lasagna and having a Fireworks show, we watched the new Doctor Who special, Waters of Mars, which was pretty scary/epic. Good times.

Kody has a really cool looking flat. It's very modern, and all of the bedrooms have open walls where you can peek down to the floor below, which means you can hear everything that goes on everywhere! Kody and I would yell at eachother while we went to sleep in the next rooms! XD Too funny.

What's great about Kody is that he's an excellent cook, and the next night he made the best no-bone Buffalo chicken strips...ever. ;_; He apparently learned the recipe himself from testing the sauce from restaurant buffalo wings in his Chem lab. XD It was so good though, with fresh made blue cheese dip NYAM NYAM.

He also has his own webcomic with his friends called Space Prison, and I saw him work on his stuff, read lots of his art and comics, and we collabed ideas back and forth. So that's where a lot of my inspiration came from, just keeping the creative juices flowing with someone else to talk to about comics and stories and randomness!

Some of the things we got up to while I was there, was that we went to go to the small town where my Dad was born, High Ballantyre/Blantyre. It still was a tiny town, but the lodge he was born in was torn town and was now replaced by a nursing home! However, something cool we discovered in the memorial garden across the street was a GEOCACHE that Kody happened to remember from our excursions online. So we marked our mark in the tiny little silver container and we were on our way.

We stopped by into the Kelvingrove art museum before it closed and had a few laughs while we were there, and made a point to remember the Doctor Who exhibit and to come back. :D

Something else we checked out was Xscape, which is like a huge recreation play center. There was an indoor ski hill, mini golf, a couple arcades, stores, coffee shop, and all you can eat Chinese buffet! We hit up the buffet, did mini golf where we got points for style and weird movements/rebounds/etc, and tried the arcade, where I failed at DDR in my chunky army boots. :(

Glasgow gets lots of raaaain but it's really nice, still. It just meant we had to stay inside lots, and draw and make food and drink and draw more!

We did brave the rain one day and set out to venture and explore the Glasgow Cathedral, otherwise known as St. Mungos Cathedral. It was really creepy, yet beautiful in there. The architecture was just fantastic. I took lots of pictures there and they are all in my Glasgow album on Flickr.

We also hiked up to the Necropolis in the blustery rain and walked amongst the huge graves and crypts. It was really depressing how much graffiti and alcohol bottles were scattered in the crypts and stuff though. People have no respect for beautiful stuff. :(

On the weekend, Kody's girlfriend Caz came back and we hung out, played Rock Band, had some booze and dressed up (well.. I dressed up. Caz had cow pajamas on and Kody wore his kilt, and Kody let me wear his Balrog outfit...) so we had some cheesy potatoes Kody made that I think I remember tasting, some cheese and crackers (Wensleydale and Applewood FTW).

Earlier that day, we also went outside to find 3 geocaches without a GPS. We found them all, even the super tough one which was a tiny container magnetized to the bottom of a fence post! There was a lot of fences in the area and they gave us a very vague hint! I'm slowly turning all my friends into Geocachers! hehehe. We also visited the Glasgow Winter Festival in the middle of the square where I had an Angus burger. There wasn't much on it, it was just beef and buns, but it was still super tasty!

On Sunday we hit up the Doctor Who exhibit. Saw lots of amazing things, like the Blink Angels, ENORMOUS Daleks, and David Tennant's shoes and coat! Woo! We peeked around the rest of the museum and saw a lot of cool stuff, had some laughs.. and we hung around until 3pm where in the mail hall, where they have an ENORMOUS pipe organ, they had an old man come and play it. It was just phenomenal. Being in the middle of the large, museum hall, with it's massive stone pillars and cold, reverberating walls, having the pipes basically melt into your soul while he played live was like nothing I've felt. I just love the pipe organ, seriously. I tried to take a really crappy video with my camera, so I at least have a small token of remembrance, but it does it no justice.

We tried to geocache afterwards too but we failed something fierce. :( It started raining hard so we went back to Kody's and we bummed around drawing and watching TV and listening to tunes before Caz headed back to Aberdeen.

On Monday I was up early packing my bags, and Kody walked me to the train station where I got a mint hot chocolate, said goodbye, and got on the 30 min train to Irvine, where my friend Leslie was waiting for me. :) Now I'm at her awesome house with her kid and her husband. Also, her mom is awesome because she is like me because she wears 2 different socks. It's me when I'm older! yay! And I'm still cool!!!!

Tune in for more adventures! I'll be in Irvine for 2 weeks, just wanted to tell you all I'm ok!

Check in with the pictures on my Flickr here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/43711291@N02/

BRADFORD + HELLO SCOTLAND!

2009-11-16T18:45:00.000-08:00

HI I'M DAISY! Okay not really... but that reminds me of a really clever puzzle!

Again with the long delay in postage.. just didn't have a heck of a lot to report! I've gone from Cheltenham, to Bradford, and now I'm in Glasgow!

But for now let me catch you up on all the delicious happenings..

Last Sunday, one of my new friends Rowan hosted an incredibly great, and incredibly geeky party at her house. The theme was a "World Conference Party" a la Axis Powers Hetalia (the new anime my friends got me into) , and we all had to bring a different dish depending on which country we were dressing up as. I got England, since no one wanted to be their own country - which is okay, because all I did was buy a large chippy and a flat of pear cider and I was set! :D I also bought a white collared shirt and camo green jogging pants - along with Troy's Dalek tie and drawn on enormous eyebrows, I completed the look. The party itself was a blast, full of drinking and delicious food from everywhere. Jack dressed up as Canada, and I taught him how to make proper canadian pancakes and bacon! He took it to the next level and made bacon-infused pancakes! I was so proud of him. *Sniff*

All the pictures from the party you can see if you follow this link below!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/43711291@N02/sets/72157622767701234/

Sarah came back from where she's originally from in Plymouth and her, Sabine, Troy and I went and braved the outside for a bit of a walk, and I introduced them to GEOCACHING! Except I didn't have a GPS so we pretty much did it via clues and Google Satellite. We managed to find one, and the other one was a bit lost to us (it told us to search near a rock under a shrubbery - there were a lot of those in the area we had to look!) Troy planted some Toy Soldier propaganda and a Warhammer 40k pin. The scenery was gorgeous. After getting up to some Blockbuster shenanigans, Sabine, Sarah and I watched the Prestige and hung out and drew for a bit (I drew Sarah a picture of her and the Doctor and she wrote me some really awesome poems in return!)

Sadly, I had to leave Cheltenham on Wednesday and say goodbye to all my sweet newfound friends. :{ They threatened to break my legs many times if I didn't return so I will MOST DEFINITELY return sometime next year, because I sure to love the use of my legs!

So a £61.50 ticket later, I was on the train to Leeds to visit my dad's cousin, Shirley, who I've only seen in pictures! She actually lives in Bradford, but she came to pick me up after I got there. After not knowing what I was doing to actually get out into the train station (that's what the tickets are for.. ohhhh) we drove to her awesomely cute house and ordered chinese food.

After getting accustomed to her place and settling into my nice clean room (WITH A BED!!! A BED!! YESSSSS!) I quickly learned that her cat, Frith, doesn't like being locked out of any room in the house with a person inside. So the next few nights of Bradford involved me waking up every hour to the sound of frantically scrambling claws trying to get into my room. :||||||| I had some earplugs but they fell out in the middle of the night quite frequently.. It was tough as well because I'm severely allergic to cats, so I constantly had my inhaler in my mouth, and popping Claritin trying not to die.

Oh well, SURVIVAL MODE ON, Shirley took me into town where we went to an old building that got turned into an art gallery and bookstore/diner. The guy who owns all the art posted around looks like he learned to draw from a 3 year old, but they had lots of really cool art supplies and books, and I bought a pink Copic sparkly writing pen. :D After looking at lots of cool books and having an Earl Grey, we went back home where we walked to a really tiny, tacky empty pub called the Blue Boar, run by a tiny old lady and her husband. Met up with Shirley's girlfriend, Lee, who is a freakin' gas. We had some drinks, and stumbled into a posh curry restaurant where we had great curry! Finally, some decent UK curry!

Unfortunately I've been having some problems with my electrical stuff, ever since my hard drive failed, the left side of my $100 headphones is busted and won't work properly, and the S key of my Macbook decided to stop working half the time (which I have since fixed, yay me!) and I'm always scared that the converter adaptor for my electrical stuff is going to blow up...

The next day, we went into a small town about 30 mins drive through countryside away to visit an Abbey in the middle of a tiny town. It had a huge graveyard outside with enormous gravestones, and it was all ruins. It was just gorgeous, really. There was a part of the church that was still functioning though, and I got some great pictures inside of it. There was ominous male choral music playing in the background.. like the Halo opening. It was kind of awesome.

We visited a couple of the pubs in the area where the locals hang out. The first one we had a drink at, two old men made a comment about my violently lime green tights and army boots. I said the tights were so that people could see me from miles away in case I got lost.. and they bought it! :D They liked my army boots too. They were just darling old men.

The next pub we went to had FOOD! And a great atmosphere, it was partly in a BARN that was converted into this dining hall, and it had a huge fireplace! And the old guy who ran it was really nice, and I got smoked salmon creamy penne and it was delicious! They also had this game in the pub where you had to swing a metal ring tied to a rope and try to hook it on a hook that was coming out from one of the ceiling bars. I failed harsh. :{ After finishing my "lemonade" (which is what British people call Sprite) we finished driving through the countryside back home!

That night we went to Shirley and Lee's coworkers birthday party at an Irish Club (not a typical "club" but a "Club" like the YMCA, somewhere where you'd host a really lame work party) and went to party with a bunch of drunk doctors, who were considerably less fun than I had anticipated. Humongous sigh. :{ Thanks to my salmon pasta earlier that day, every drink I had that night, including the double shot of vodka I had at the bar, was all for naught, and I wasn't even tipsy. However, they played Scissor Sisters and Lee and I got up and had to dance to that jazz.

The next day, Shirley had to go into another town to meet with her friend Pam, where I had 2 more cuppas at the beer and wine bar (I feel so lame not drinking beer..) and delicious cookies. It was POURING rain, and while everyone was scrambling around in hoodies and umbrellas trying to get out of the rain, I was the only one open faced into the air receiving the heaven's tears on my face :D Everyone must have thought I was insane..
Shirley got her hair cut, and we drove through some freaking awesome countryside where the rain had cleared and we got a DOUBLE AWESOME RAINBOW spread over the countryside!!!!!!!!!! It was so bright, the pictures don't do it justice! It was magical!

The next day involved rush hour traffic and almost missing my train into Glasgow, but we INDIANA JONES'D that noise, and got there just in the nick of time. Thank you Shirley and Bradford for letting me stay for a few days and showing me a great time. :D

So from Leeds to York, and York to Glasgow Central!

The train ride was fun and a half. 4 hours of screaming kids and obnoxious pikeys (those are hoodlums) , my non working headphones, Hetalia, talking to a sweet girl from London, a Wispa gold, and writing in my sexy new diary.

After a small mix up, I was met at the train station by Kody, Troy and Jack's friend, and his lovely girlfriend Carly. :D They proceeded to walk me back to Kody's where the BEST LASAGNA I've EVER HAD was waiting for me, and while we were eating, right outside of Kody's apartment in Glasgow center they had FIREWORKS! It's like they knew I was coming! And they were awesome. Awesome awesome awesome. Sparkly goodtimes.

Today was a rainy day and consisted of Kody showing me around town and the shops, and Glasgow Uni, and the museum where the Doctor Who exhibit I'm going to visit is (YEEEEE) . I got some strawberry marshmallow candy from this huge Candy shop where a thing of orange Koolaid imported from the states is £4.50 and a small box of Lucky Charms is £8.00!!! D: Dear god. Times that by almost two and you have that in Canadian prices.

I also got the COOLEST THING EVER... IT'S A RACING SNAIL WIND UP TOY!!!!

:D

After visiting the museum for a bit, Kody took me to a chippy place where we had chips and DEEP. FRIED. HAGGIS!!!!

The best part is..

IT WAS DELICIOUS!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes that's right my opinionated friends. Haggis is no more disgusting than a regular breakfast sausage. So if you'd eat that, you'd eat haggis which technically is just... a sheep sausage instead of a pork one. Honestly. It's not that bad. Tasty shite, man. Jak approves.

Excitement and joy of joys, my pretties. I will update again soon with more Glasgow-ness once the weather is better, it was spitting like mad today.

Love and-o peace!

Shirley's road in Bradford

Shirley (on left) and Lee (on right) in the Pub in the countryside :D

RAINBOW

View from underneath an archway at the Abbey

The Bolton Abbey and some gravestones

The Church inside the Abbey

SHEEP! You have pink on your butt.

View from Kody's balcony

"Hooray! Molly's here! Rejoice!"

Pub and GO! Let's rock Oxford!

2009-11-06T13:27:00.000-08:00

Sabine had the awesome idea yesterday for us to just up and take a bus into OXFORD for the day today, so that's exactly where we went!

So our bus departed at 7:00 exactly in the morning, and we decided to do the whole Oxford thing last night at about 12:30 am, so nevertheless, we got about 4 1/2-5 hours of sleep before we had to get up at 6:00am and rush around getting ready then busted out the door, grabbing money from a hole-in-the-wall, and booking it to the bus. HAPPY CAMPERS! (see picture)

A lovely 1 1/2 hour bus ride later, which involved a sunrise with the sky being on fire, having an awesome talk with Troy about a Venture Bros/Doctor Steel project we're going to work on together, and awesome english countryside, we arrived in downtown Oxford! Being as bathrooms needed to be had, and also breakfast, we went into a McDonalds. I got a blueberry muffin because anything else is a risk. lol. After eating in the smelly of poops eating area, I went to Pret a Manger across the street and got another one of their amazing hot chocolates to wake me up. :D

After feeling relieved, we walked down the main street to Christ Church and took some pictures and walked down the pretty path, where we were approached by a curious magpie flying around above us. We also came across some playful squirrels, which Troy tried to offer Dr. Steel propaganda to. (See picture) I don't think they bought his schpiel, though. :(

Since it was still really REALLY EARLY we went to a pub called "The Grapes" and had a drink, and had to wait until noon for them to start serving food because we were starving (awake for 6 hours and hadn't had a proper meal) and we tried the Steak and Yorkshire wrap with peas and chips and gravy. Omnomnom. It was pretty good but there wasn't enough gravy so it was kinda dry, and it hurt going down my throat. :{

Next we hit up the museum across from Trinity College because they were hosting a Steampunk exhibit, and couldn't miss that! I'm currently uploading a ton of pictures from it to my Flickr, they'll be here when done, but ohmygosh.. so amazing. The stuff in there was so inspirational, and I got to see some art pieces that were steampunk inspired, one of them being by Molly "Porkshanks" (we share the same name) who I watch on Deviantart, so that was cool to see her work up close. :D

So we wandered around a bit more, checked out a couple clothing shops and a book shop, I bought myself an awesome Snail shirt (SEE PICTURE) and I bought Sarah a shirt, which she will have to witness when she gets home.

Another cool shop worth mentioning that we visited was the Alice Shop, which had pretty much strictly Alice in Wonderland related merchandise. It was really cool! They had a lot of neat things. I got Steph a present from there, and bought some Mad Hatter Tea, which was quite delicious. :} Tasted like a mellow english breakfast.

We went back to the bookshop because we needed a pick me up, and we went to a cafe on the top floor, and I got an AWESOME cinnamon latte, which was loaded with sugar that I happened to add after the fact *cough* it was in a tall mug with proper awesome foam n' everything! And then we checked on the kids books on the bottom floor! I LOVE KIDS BOOKS AUGH no wonder it was so much fun drawing a kids book themed story, it was just so easy and came naturally and was fun to do.

We paid to visit Trinity College, which is a beautiful place. It's where some of the Harry Potter movies was shot, apparently. Lots of beautiful buildings covered in what's left of ivy branches, awesome decor. (SEE PICTURES)

We checked out this market which was kind of like the Granville farmer's market with all the booths, but it was pretty much closing up as we got there, however we found this Milkshake place called "MOO MOO MILKSHAKES" and we got some AWESOME MILKSHAKES. They pretty much made ANYTHING into a milkshake (even skittles!) I got a chocolate cheesecake milkshake, and it was delicious. We also got some chocolates from a little store, and I ate a truffle and it was melt in my mouth orgasmatastic. nommmmmm.

After that we headed back to the bus stop for 6pm which was the last bus outside of Oxford. We were being "rained" on (mildly spitting) for awhile, so Troy remedied the situation (see picture). On the excrutiatingly long ride home, there was some drunk 21 year old guy who decided to chat us up and talk about his boring ideas for books, and he also thought it would be a smashing idea to walk to the emergency exit across from my seat, whip out his junk and pee in a bottle. He didn't even try to hide it. Sabine and I were so disgusted, and he saw it. He was like "SORRY I'm LIKE THE MOST DISGUSTING GUY IN THE WORLD. LET ME BUY YOU GUYS A DRINK TO MAKE UP FOR IT" and we politely declined. :|

AH, ENGLAND

I'LL MISS YOU :}

WELCOME TO 6:45 AM GUYS

"Join Dr. Steel's army of toy soldiers! ....what the heck does "squeak!" mean?!"

WHAT'S THE RUSH!?

Trinity College

Sad, wet Troy is a sad, wet Troy.

Happy Samhain!

2009-11-03T02:59:00.000-08:00

Hey, long time no updatey! Cheltenham has been a bit more lax than London since there's far less to do, but that doesn't mean the company is any less awesome! I've been hanging out with my Fortress of Solitude peeps... Troy, Sabine, Sarah, Rachel, Jack! (And Sarah #2 who rarely comes out of hiding! :D)

I get the couch which is a tad too short for me in their living room. That's okay though, I have a super comfy comforter. Plus now that my back is all achey-wachey, it gives me an excuse to get a massage somewhere. And maybe a pedicure. My poor blistered feet. They be peelin'. It's not a pretty sight. (SEE PIC- just kidding.)

On my first day, Troy had the day off and he took me down High St. where all the shops and people hang out. We went into a couple of malls, one being the Regent Arcade Mall. There are a couple really cool stores in there, including LUSH!! :O I gotta go there before I leave and grab another shampoo bar and tin since my shampoo bar melted by accident. ;__; It's okay because it's CHEAPER in the UK than it is in Canada! Hooray! Anyway, Regent Arcade Mall has this enormous scary kids clock that blows bubbles on the hour. We didn't stay for that to happen, but I took some cool pictures of it. (SEE PICTURE) It was definitely something very cool, like out of a really colorful kids book. :D

Also went down the promenade and saw some really creepy Bull and Hare statue. :| I won't post it here for fear of nightmare inducing, but I'll upload it to Flickr later so you can see that business.

Troy tried out his crazy Two-Face makeup for Halloween, and that's always fun to see. :D

Since Troy works a lot at the local McDonalds, I've hung out with Sabine, his lovely girlfriend, and Sarah a lot. They're great girls, and we have lots in common. Sabine took me walking to see different cute shops and streets and we went into an Indian restaurant which was the most AWESOMELY decorated Indian restaurant I've ever seen (SEE PICTURE). The food wasn't the best, and so far I haven't been impressed by Indian cuisine over here since I've been in the UK (And it's supposed to be the birthplace of most indian food, wtf) but maybe I just haven't been to the right restaurant.

For the most part I've been just chilling out and talking to people, making food, taking walks, I have also been drawing a bit and trying to write Signum Fas issue 2. I've been having trouble though because I haven't written for so long so trying to find inspiration for the future events is pretty tough. I will sort it out soon though! :)

So in no particular order I'll tell you some things I've been up to..

Sarah, Sabine and I decided to do FACEPAINTING a la MAKEOVER MAKEOVERRRR style! It was a horrifying sight, but damn was it silly and fun. (See picture) Apparently Facepainting is one of the fun things you should do on Samhain so we decided to do it November 1st, which is another important day after Samhain. :) All we had was my makeup to work with too, so... haha.

Also as we speak my external hard drive with all my movies on it is exploding into dust because it's not a very happy camper. Not sure why.. but thanks to my friend who had an external hard drive, I'm now making a backup so I can restore the bugger and hopefully fix it's problem. If not, Molly sad. :(

So apparently it's tradition where every Tuesday, Troy and the boys go to their friend David and Kai's house to have dinner and either drinks, board games, SingStar.. whatever. I was invited this time, and I got to partake in the Scottish food "Stovies" which is basically, take potatoes and sausage, put them in a blender until it's pureed, and make it into a soup. It's actually really good. :D I had seconds! Troy and I got super drunk with First Rank, Second Rank, ...oh god don't even ask, we played the hell out of SingStar, and Troy singing songs as Professor Farnsworth, Fat Bastard, and 24 from Venture Brothers is something to witness. We got back later that night and made drunken videos of Troy rambling as Luke, which I nicely uploaded to YouTube promptly.

Being as there's not too much to do in Cheltenham if you don't have company that can stay longer than a few hours, we've been watching a lot of random videos on YouTube, and the household got me into Axis Powers Hetalia, which is an anime/manga where all the different countries from the world wars are represented as humans and they all have weird adventures and experiences based off of what kind of country they represented themselves as in the wars. It's cute and hilarious, and I haven't watched anime for a long long time seriously, but being around some fun people who are really excited about stuff really brings acceptance and optimism out of you, and I really enjoyed watching and laughing with everyone, I probably wouldn't normally if I would have been by myself in my room at home.

The lovely thing about being close to Europe is CHEESE. (SEE PICTURE)
I literally got a pile of cheese for about 5 quid. It's pretty ridiculous. I got French Camembert, Leerhammer, Applewood, Laughing Cow and a nice chunk of Edam to eat with some crackers for Samhain. It was soooo nice. Normally you'd pay so much for that kind of cheese over in Canada but this stuff was cheap. My lactose intolerance is being ignored for the most part since I've been here. LAWL.

I've also cooked a couple times, I made Chicken Stew with potatoes, carrots, onion, garlic and celery, and I also made Macaroni and Cheese sauce with Ham and mushrooms. It was GLORIOUS both times om nom.

So on October 30th, all of us and more friends went to the Two Pigs, which is a bar/club in Cheltenham which sometimes caters to nerds in all fashions, for a Halloween dance. So this was the night we all dressed up and went out to dance and drink and just have a heck of a lot of fun and get stared at a lot. Troy went as Two Face from the Dark Knight Batman movie, Jack went as Scarface (the ventriloquist dummy villain) from Batman, Sabine went as a character from Girl Genius, Sarah went as the cutest girl bee costume, and various other costumes by friends was there, including a Grim Fandango and a cute ghost girl. (SEE PICTURES) I wish my costume turned out a little better, but to be fair I DID start it 2 days before I left, and I pressured my mom into helping me, which I still feel really bad for. I still looked pretty awesome as I danced my silly butt off. :) Got a lot of compliments on my costume, and had creepy hick guys trying to dance near my butt, I guess they're kind is EVERYWHERE!! You cannot escape!! Anyway, we danced a lot and booked it out of there by 12:30, practically carrying a hilarious drunk Troy home. What a night that was!

The next day was Samhain, where Sarah and Sabine were having some of their Pagan friends over to celebrate Samhain. Sabine and I went out to buy ribbon for our "resolution knots" we were all going to tie. Each color was going to represent something we wanted to achieve in the next year, so I picked rainbow (For creativity), red (for love) and orange (For happiness). Seemed appropriate :) I also sewed/attached a bell and a pewter heart to the bottom. It's really pretty! Mine's in the middle in the picture attached. (PICTURE) We also set up a very pretty autumn altar (PICTURE) and thought of our loved ones who have passed. We did some amazing baking as well, and generally just hung around great people, had great conversation and laughs, listened to music and voila! :D Great night.

In other exciting non-UK-related news, THE PRINCE OF PERSIA MOVIE TRAILERRRRR:
http://uk.movies.ign.com/dor/objects/664420/prince-of-persia/videos/pop_mov_trl1_110209.html
I gotta wait til MAY?!?! BOLLOCKS!!!

Halloween Costumes!

THE CHEESE PLATTER

Samhain Altar

Some resolution knots (mine is the middle colorful one!)

MAKE OVER MAKEOVERRRR

Inside the Indian restaurant

CRAZY CLOCK!

Camden Town Wins, National Express Fails

2009-10-24T16:29:00.000-07:00

So on Tuesday I met up with Joei/Steve to go to Camden Town, which is a magical place in North London where it has tons of amazing little shops and booths with the artsiest, coolest trinkets and stuff you could possibly imagine! I must take Steph here. For serious. And any artist who likes cool stuff must go here.

We met up and walked around, I got an amazing hot chocolate from Pret A Manger, which is a chain of cafe type places, with the friendliest customer service person in London I had yet come across. His name was Tom and he was amazing and friendly. :D After checking out some of the booths and stores along the main strip that all look the same (but still cool), we go into a place called Cyberdog, which is a cyberpunk-only store. It's incredible. There's 2 enormous robots on the outside of the place (See picture) and when you go inside, you're greeted by people dressed in Cyberpunk gear, with neon blacklit stuff everywhere, robots on the walls, video game and electronic themed gagdets, then you go down an escalator downstairs and there's a DJ with a huge DJ table spinning trance/techno, with a lit up blue wall behind him that's got music level bars pulsing to the beat of the song playing. There's crazy cyber clothes EVERYWHERE, down a tunnel, in the big open area.. it was just insane. To get an idea for the kind of clothes and stuff they sell, go here: http://shop.cyberdog.net/ I looked at everything and almost bought a really cool bathing suit, but I didn't have room for it so I didn't bother.. But I DID buy an awesome Space Invaders roll up keyboard which I can put anywhere for when I'm typing, so it's more ergonomically friendly, AND I can spill stuff on it without worry because it can wipe right off :D

After visiting Cyberdog, we checked out more of the nooks and crannys of Camden, which included markets with indian restaurant/lounge type places that almost had a harem theme to it, with hookahs just chilling on some of the tables outside. It was really pretty, I took a picture. (see picture) And of course there were scary horse statues EVERYWHERE. I don't know wtf it is with London and scary horse statues, but it's like you cannot escape them. That's where I lost Steve. :{ (See picture)

I had a chillax day on Wednesday working on a commission, and I met Chris after work at this posh modern looking Indian restaurant called India India, and since it was 2 for 1 appys and entrees, we had a delicious feast that I treated us both to. It felt so hilariously bizarre, because I bought a sparkling rose wine, and the waiter kept wanting to ask Chris about pouring it and tasting it but since I was buying it I was like NO, ME, I'm THE MAN! They must have thought we were on some bizarre date XD Haha. It was funny, and delicious! I ended up drinking a bit more than I thought that night with Chris and watching Adulthood, and Chris's 2 friends from Norway came in and I was roaring tipsy, showing them the Professor Layton and the malignant tumor while laughing hysterically the entire time. PROFESSORRR!! BASEEEEBALLL!!!!

Thursday I had to get up early because I had an appointment with my Visa place in London to get my bank account set up and my National Insurance Number information posted to my aunt Shirley's place in West Yorkshire. After doing that jazz, I went to "Orange" which is one of the major phone companies here, and got a really nice phone, the Samsung Genio Qwerty. It was 110 pounds with the pay as you go plan with a 10 pound top up. :} I wanted to try to figure out how to make it work, so I had to go to the closest place with a sit down point, which on the busy Oxford street, was unfortunately McDonalds. It was a ZOO in there, like, they had people who were pushing/directing you into places in line, and I felt like I had to buy something. So I got 9 plain chicken mcnuggets with no sauce, and after trying to figure out a place to sit, manage to find a seat upstairs which was an awkwardly laid out long table. Think of a long rectangle with seats all the way around it with a low light above it.. you could breathe on the person across from you and beside you. I was trying to call Orange to get my account set up properly but it was too loud and people were staring at me when I was trying to give the lady over the phone my personal information quietly, so I had to abandon McDonalds with all my crap and settle it a more loiterous fashion. :)

After setting up the phone, I met up with Andy and the 2 lovely Norwegian girls, Ida and Stine, and Chris on his lunch break for a bit, we checked out some cute shops on Carnaby St, including a really cute Cupcake shop that had some good earl grey. We also went into this AMAZING place called Forbidden Planet, which is like a nerd's wet dream. It's got an entire bottom basement with TONS and TONS of comics and sci fi stuff, and tons of Doctor Who Stuff, and on the top floor is tons of action figures and comic toys and sci fi toys... it was literally amazing. Expensive though, didn't buy anything there (amazingly) but still had such a great time browsing! Later that night my body decided to decide I had a cold >:/ we went to Central London to go to a Wetherspoons, and we had Curry Club! Andy and I shared a apple crumble with traditional "custard" instead of "ice cream" which apparently is what you give to children to shut them up.. XD all the while Andy was explaining what "Honeymonster" was, which was not a very pleasant thing to think about while eating said dessert. :(

Friday was a fun day, involved hanging out with Ida and Stine, walking around Harrod's (which I felt so out of place, it's all expensive stuff, like Sak's fifth avenue) but they had the most AMAZING food displays... a Sandwich cost 15 pounds in this place!! It's very swanky, but since it was expensive we escaped and walked around a lot to find a place called "Thai Corner" or something, it was awful. I ordered "Iced Tea" and got some sort of horrid sugary ginger lemon crap that I couldn't drink, and the waiter was semi retarded, he only had to take care of 4 tables but it took him 5 minutes to get a glass of water which was RIGHT behind us. And it cost like, 10 pounds for my drink, 5 small chicken skewers with half a small cup of peanut sauce (I asked for extra peanut sauce and they only filled half the already tiny tin. Nice.) and a lame bowl of unflavored rice noodles. Fffff. >:|

We headed to the Science Museum and hit up an IMAX "Deep Sea" which was narrated by Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet and music by Danny Elfman.. it was in 3d! :O My eyes had trouble adjusting to some parts, but all in all it was cooool. We escaped to meet up with some people later, at the Trocadero, (see picture) which is like a huge arcade mixed with the cool parts of Metrotown. It's loud and obnoxiously tacky, crowded, and tall. I had the most expensive Sprite of my life in the bar there (it was 2.75 for a large sprite. Which is 4.75 canadian. :|) We checked out the arcade, and we played some oldschool DDR 3rd mix, and when I got off the machine K-dogg was right behind me. XD I almost had a heart attack, I laughed so hard. (He's some sort of DDR legend and the BBC had a spot about him called Lord of the Dance Machine, which Chris made me watch. It's really weird I saw him in person not even a week later randomly.) He was probably there for the DDR tournament at the Anime/Game Expo that was going on this weekend. Annnnyhoo.

We leave to check out Chinatown at night, which was SUPER cool, the atmosphere was great!! Lots of people out and it was so bright and colorful! We went to an expensive Japanese/Thai restaurant, where I decided to get a Chicken teriyaki bento box for 10.90 (which is about 18.00 canadian :|) It was pretty and delicious though. On the way home we got some snacks and watched Kiki's delivery service, and played Lips/SingStar until 4am. XD;

I got up at 10 am today, Saturday, to pack and get ready to catch my 1:40pm bus at Earl's Court.

The bad thing about today was that half the trains, including all the ones we needed to take, were shut down for maintenance. :| So Chris nicely went with me carrying my 20kg laptop bag, to Northfields station, me carrying my enormous backpack, purse and camera case, I topped up my Oyster card, got on the "Replacement bus" which was smelly and packed, it took us to Hammersmith where we went a couple stops to Earl's Court, walked around until we found the National Express stop I needed to get on at. I was an hour early and the bus was late when it finally arrived... except I got a nasty surprise.

Apparently, the lady told me the "bad news" that she couldn't let me on because I had a bag. I could only get on with a bag at the Victoria station because she couldn't open the compartment to put my bag in.

.......

What?!?!?!?

It never said that on the website. So she just shrugged her shoulders and said "sorry" and drove off. So there goes 19 pounds (35 dollars) wasted for nothing.

So poor Chris. He nicely went along with me BACK to Earl's Court, to figure out how the hell to get to Victoria station, after huffing and puffing upstairs (me, lol, out of shape) with my aching back, I'm literally dripping with sweat, walking fast after Chris to the Coach area of Victoria station which was a good 10 minute walk from the tube station, had to wait in line for 25 minutes to buy another 21 pound ticket, and just managed to get on, no thanks to the jerk bus driver when I asked him "did people board yet", he said "well people are on the bus, aren't they!?!?" >:|

When I finally got on the bus and settled down to listen to my iPod for the 3 hour trip, my iPod crashed in my bag, and doesn't work, and won't work until it dies and I recharge it.

Sigh.

Well at least I was greeted at the Cheltenham Spa station by Troy, who is awesome, and now I am in his tiny student house on a lovely couch, already enjoyed 2 cups of tea and an orange juice, and had spaghetti with a pork and creamy gravy sauce Sabine (his girlfriend) and I concocted, we played some Ghostbusters, watched some Batman animated series, and now, since I am extremely tired, am going to bed.

Good night, and god speed. Will update eventually! WITH STUFF!

omg! Cyberdog Robots! HUGE!

Want some curry and some hookah!?

Oh noes Steve ! D:

Stine, Rachel, Lap and Ida! :D

To London, geeky adventures await!

2009-10-20T04:50:00.000-07:00

Currently listening to: "To Zanarkand" from the Final Fantasy Distant Worlds concert, because it reminds me of "Home". Home doesn't only signify where my friends and family live, but anywhere where I feel welcome and happy and safe.

Sorry about the lack of updates! I've been a bit lazy the last couple of days to myself, but have no fear, I am returning with a full itinerary of what I've been up to.. :)

I've had a few days of just taking it easy because breaking in my boots hasn't been so easy.. I have internal blisters in my heels that are pretty painful to walk on, not to mention the regular blisters.. However, last Thursday I managed to drag myself out and go to the Natural History museum. It was a bit like Science World mixed with a modern museum with lots of interactive displays, dinosaur bones, stuffed animals, gemstones.. it was pretty cool to see everything and walk around on my own. The entrance with the escalator up to the first exhibits (see picture) was absolutely incredible, with statues of Zeus, Medusa, Atlas, a Cyclops, an astronaut.. and then ascending the stairs into a huge globe where inside was a small light show with cool sound effects and props telling you what to expect of what's to come in the exhibits.

So there were many exhibits like facts about planets, rock, volcanoes, earthquakes.. I watched a pretty mortifying video of how the earth is going to die in the future and what ways it can die (and probably will) sun exploding, war, disease, etc.. :| Sure lifted my spirits. Then I checked out the exhibits with the dinosaurs, that had animatronic robotic velociraptors on top of some of the displays.. they were pretty awesome :D The main hall had a brontosaurus bone display.. pretty amazing. And there were halls of stuffed mammals and birds which was a bit sad actually. :{ There were like, just heads of some of the birds in glass cases. :|

Then there were some exhibits about childbirth (woo hoo) and how a baby/child learns, and there was this model of a huge scary baby in a "womb"... it looked like something out of Silent Hill (see picture).

After exploring the exhibits, I went outside and managed to find my way back to Kensington Gardens, which is quickly becoming my favorite place to hang out. I found a bench and read a bit of "Howl's Moving Castle" (which I have since finished), and randomly found the spot where it had the Albert memorial with the Royal Albert Hall just across from it. Really beautiful architecture all around. :)

The next day was a rest day, yet when Chris got off work, I met him at Russell Square station to go check out the building where the outside of "Black Books" is shot. "Black Books" is my favorite british comedy series, and is where I named my last hamster from - 'Bernard', played by Dylan Moran, who is a lewd, wine drinking, smoking jackass who runs the bookshop. So in commemoration of the event, Chris and I went to the convenience store across the way and bought a bottle of White Zinfandel wine and drank it amongst some confused Japanese businessmen as we took pictures outside of the building. Too bad it was closed, I would have gone in and searched for the Little Book of Calm. :) (see picture!)

Afterwards we headed to Central London where we took in some of the sights at night, which involved crossing a bridge, checking out the London Eye all lit up, seeing Big Ben all lit up.. have a great shot of the nightly atmosphere! (See photo.) We also went to a Starbucks where Chris got free coffee! And I got a signature hot chocolate with a cheesecake which they threw into a bag so it fell apart nicely... but it still tasted delicious. :)

Saturday came! And it was quite a great day.

Chris and I headed out to Peckham early, since there was going to be a riot later that day, however we still got caught in a pretty nasty traffic jam (which Roy got the best of, he waited 2 1/2 hours on a bus when he could have just walked for less that XD) because we headed to TOYS R US for I wanted to find a Doctor Who Sonic Screwdriver, which Chris managed to find one left of. :D He is the finding masta! I have a video of me showing my "fancy pens" which you can check out ici:

Afterwards I was extremely starving, so Chris took me to a nice chips place. I got some chips and a Saveloy (a red sausage/hot dog thing, I didn't like it so much :( ) and ate it in a park which was actually right opposite the "Winchester" which is the pub Simon Pegg and crew hang out at during the Zombie Attack in the movie "Shaun of the Dead." However, it doesn't look like it did in the movie anymore because they closed down and renovated the crap out of the outside. :{ Ah well...

We met up with Roy at Chris's friend Barry's house, where I explored his awesome "basement in a closet", got confused at the furry pillows in the living room because I thought they were animals (had to poke it to make sure..) We had 1/6th of a McDonalds cheeseburger pie each, grabbed a quick cuppa and a cold Wispa Gold (which I thankfully saved for later, see why in a bit..) and headed out to the "Hobgoblin" which is a pub that sells "Green Goblin" beer. I think Jackson would have been ecstatic to see it. :) Anyway, I tried my first Gin and Tonic here, which was lovingly described by someone as "drinking an alcoholic pine tree", so in order to get through that, I had to take bites of my Wispa Gold in between sips. :|

That night we ended up watching the movie "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" which awesomely came out in the UK first before North America (ha ha!) It was the film Heath Ledger died in the middle of filming, which Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, and Jude Law all volunteered to help finish as being the same character, so they worked out his "face changes" into the script, which is awesomely done. I thought it was a brilliant movie, I love the kind of old carnival, artsy type movies (like Moulin Rouge) so of course I enjoyed it. :D I think the boys didn't enjoy it as much as I did though, haha.

Ended up going to the Ledger Building next door for a bunch of unexpected rounds of cocktails, 6 jugs of cocktails to be exact, playing hilarious drinking games and fondling Barry's hairy chest (I think the guys enjoyed that more, haha!!) Good times had by all, except for a stupid tipsy me, who thought it would be a good idea to wait to go to the bathroom.. So I awesomely didn't go before we left (it's more than an hour tube ride home) and after the longest tube ride of my life, dragged Chris and Roy off the tube a couple stops before ours because I couldn't wait any longer.. There wasn't a bathroom at the station so I had to run up the street looking for dark alleys when I finally found a petrol station which was HEAVEN SENT, all lit up and everything... After the best pee of my life, we walked home, got an enormous Lamb Doner Kebab and a large chips (which alone could feed a family of 4) and watched R. Kelly's "Trapped in a Closet" which was apparently an lol!internet sensation years ago but I never caught onto it.. Anyway, it was horribly amazing, and that was the end of that day, which ended at around 3 am.

Sunday consisted of Chris and I getting up and dressing up for "Suit up Sunday", and headed to Earl's Court because they had a REAL TARDIS there. :D After meeting up with Lap, we took some really great, geeky pictures (see photo) and had disgusting, expensive tea in the cafe across from it. :| Went back to Chris's place, changed, met up with Sadie and Annabel, and went to "Nando's 11". Chris and Annabel are on a mission to visit all the Nando's in London, starting from the order that they opened. I got a chicken pitta with a side of "spicy rice", both of which had SURPRISE PEPPERS in it >:| I managed to get some free chips and a coke, and we also managed some free banana frozen yogurt, an extra perinaise, and a few sprites :D

We visited Harrow on the Hill since we were in the area, I got a travel charger and we visited the Disney Store, where I got a Nightmare Before Christmas water bottle! We also visited this clothing store called "New Look", where they had a shoe section in the back, where it showed the laziness of both London shoppers and staff - shoes were EVERYWHERE. Like, someone would pick up a pair of shoes, not like it, and just THROW IT ON THE FLOOR. So in order to be part of the crowd, I picked up a couple of pairs of shoes and just chucked them on the floor. No one seemed to care, it was like I was one of them. Regardless, I got a photo of this event (See photo.)

Returning to Chris's house involved playing Singstar, eating a horrible gravy covered atrocity, and watching lots of hilarious videos, so now I'm all caught up with the in-jokes for the most part.

JUNIOR SPESH!

Yesterday was a lazy day, however we managed to go to a pub quiz later that night after making an epic Chile Con Carne. The Pub Quiz was lots of fun, and there was one question where we got a puzzle we had to solve. After playing 150 professor Layton puzzles in the last month, I was determined to solve it, so after 15 minutes of thinking, I finally figured it out and tick...tick...tick....DING! CORRECT! I struck a pose the Professor would be proud of. :D

After the quiz (we didn't win but we got a damn good score) I demanded emergency ice cream, so emergency ice cream was had. And enjoyed, while watching America's Next Top Model. Haha.

So today I am meeting up with Steve/Joei in Camden Town and we're gonna tear stuff up. :D Or just hang out. Whatever we feel like.

Tempus Fugit!

Touristy Things!

2009-10-13T16:40:00.000-07:00

Today I braved the outside by myself! And guess what - I didn't get lost! (at least.. not TOO lost...)

I got up at 10am thinking it was 1:30pm (damn receiver), but it's a good thing I did get up when I did, or else I wouldn't have been able to do all the things I wanted to!

After making a breakfast of a fried egg between a UK 'muffin' (I actually asked my friend where the English Muffins were. HURP DURP) and some tea, I got dressed and braved the outside world. Found my way to the South Ealing tube/train station. I always get so self conscious when I'm in a new country, I always think I'm not dressing properly or I'm wearing something in a certain way that would offend someone. Anyway, it just felt like people were staring at me, which they probably were. After about 45 minutes of transferring, I eventually got to Baker Street, wandered around aimlessly, but saw some really pretty buildings. After doing a bit of a circle, I found 221b Baker St, which is Sherlock Holmes'es address in the books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. There is a Sherlock Holmes tribute museum there where there are chamber maids that run the shop inside, and there is also a constable outside letting you into the museum. I went into the museum and saw all the cool stuff, which included top hats and deerstalkers. :D I wandered around the really tiny, but really tall house for quite a while, taking pictures and trying to avoid tourists. There is a lot of really neat stuff in there, including some freaky wax figures, and an antique potty, some old chemist sets, recreated old "clues", really old books, and other antique victorian knicknacks. I got the dude inside to take the touristy picture of me wearing Sherlock's hat, sitting in his chair, with his pipe. Observe totally rad picture. Also apparently people write to Sherlock Holmes. All his mail goes into this binder that is sitting in one of his studies. I read the funniest letter from a Japanese girl, and I took a picture of it. It reads..

"Dear Mr. SHERLOCK HOLMES How are you? I am seventeen year-old-girl and a junior at highschool. I have had great respect for you since I read about your distinguished service in the book. I admire you for your discernment, coolness, and prodigious intelligence. I am sure that you are gentleman of the first class, as well as you are the greatest detective in the world. Why have you retired at so early age? If I remember correctly, you were 48 year old at that time. Aren't you going to come back any longer? I have heard you are living in SUSSEX. What are you doing every day except when you raise bees. I hope you live comfortably. English is not much in my line, but I wrote this letter with my whole heart. Pleasure excuse me made some mistake in grammar.. I promise I will treasure your letter if you write back. Please do. I wish you every happiness. Sincerely yours, Rina Nakahara"

Next, I walked down the street to Reagent's Park, but not before stopping off in another small park to do a walkaround it's horseshoe shape to admire the lovely scenery. There were benches everywhere, and there was always one person at the end of each bench. Also, there were some girls in the middle of the park smoking that flavored tobacco out of a huge ornate water pipe. I didn't know people could do that in public. Interesting! Anyway, didn't stay long at Reagent's Park, I sat under a tree and decided what I was going to do next. I had some time to kill, so I decided to hit up Hyde Park/Kensington Gardens, which would be quite a walk. I hadn't eaten anything so I went to the Tube again, headed off to the Green Park area, and got sidetracked by the most gorgeous looking store, Fortnum & Mason and got some Strawberry Tea in a pretty pink can and some Smoky Earl Grey in a box, which I'm not sure if I like yet. Smoky is just a weird taste for tea. I guess it's more for the Professor Layton tea types. (the more DISTINGUISHED tea drinkers..)

I found a Starbucks and got a chocolate chip shortbread and large earl grey for 3.20 pounds, and headed to Green Park where I had a really nice sit down on a bench and just enjoyed the fresh air, viewing my photos, enjoying my tea and shortbread before I did the walk back to the Tube and went to Hyde Park, which is a huge park with a lake in the middle of it (Serpentine) where you can go river boat paddling.. I walked the great distance, crossed the bridge and went up to Kensington Gardens, where the famous Peter Pan statue was. It was definitely a tourist attraction but I had a few chances to take some great pictures without people interference. Even traded photo-taking with a nice foreign blonde guy. :D (see awesome photo!)

Walked back to the Tube and transferred a bunch of lines, got stuck in CRAZY rush hour and severe delays on my line.. sat in a VERY crowded train for 45 minutes with it barely moving.. Eventually got back and ate dinner, watched House, played Buzz! and had an awesome chat with one of Chris's flatmates :D

With that, I will bring you more adventures.. soon!

Hey isn't that a... I KNOW YOU!!! You bunch of traitors!

ELEMENTARY, MY DEAR WATSON

Me with the Peter Pan statue!

A mini-Tardis outside of Picadilly Circus Tube station!

Beautiful sunset outside of Kensington Gardens

I've been here for 3 days so far AND..

2009-10-12T04:04:00.000-07:00

My first 2 days in the UK have been quite interesting and full of...interest! Here.. I bring them.. to you!

Well, I first got on the plane, on a Thomas Cook flight.. the food was quite vile. Roast chicken and undefinable lump with biscuits and butter.. then after "sleep" (aka, trying not to lean on the person really close beside you or trying to rest your head on the seat dangerously close in front of you) we had, I think, it was lump of EGG with beans with tea... what the .. anyway. It was cool because I was sitting beside a cute blonde British guy and there was a really awesome girl beside me that I talked a lot with, her name was Giada, and we had a lot in common, including we were both artistic and loved online websites to showcase artistic talents, and we were both spiritual in some way, so we had a lot to talk about! That passed the time quite well!

After we landed and got through customs, which wasn't bad, got our suitcases, and parted ways, I got bombarded by some spanish guy selling smelly moisturizer in the train station when all I wanted was to find a pay phone, after spending a quid I finally found Damien (Chris) who was in Wetherspoon, which is a chain of British pubs that are quite cheap. Him, his friend Roy and his girlfriend Rachel, who I met at SG world some years ago, had ordered a traditional english breakfast, and the remaining bits were some oversized mushrooms, heated up microwave hashbrowns and black pudding, which quite literally looked like a coaster soaked in black coffee, and tasted like it dipped in spices. Vomit.

After buying an "Oyster card" which is kind of like a day pass for transit only it lasts a week, we found our way to Damien's house. I dropped off my one ton "house" and relaxed a bit, had some tea (by the way, I've got a count going, I'm going to drink 1000 cups of tea before I leave the UK) and we went out and cruised Ealing a bit, visiting and recognizing stores along the way, there's a lot of Fried Chicken shops, and we went into Paddy Power's which is some sort of Betting Shop for betting on dogs, horses, and they have electronic roulette machines which Damien spent 3 quid that he found on the ground not even 10 minutes before. We went on the "tube" which is the London train line's pet name, and we ended up in downtown London, and saw Big Ben, Parliament, and the millenium wheel all at once with a blue sky, so I got pictures in while I could.

Later on we met up with Andy, one of Damien's roomates, and we went and saw Zombieland, which was quite interesting, which I thought would be rubbish. The movie was 9.80 pounds, which is... extremely expensive. Though not as expensive as a movie in say, Japan would be. (almost 20 dollars)

We went home and watched some X Factor and I promptly fell asleep, got 11 hours of sleep and woke up the next morning. After a cuppa that Damien's other roomate Adrien made, Damien and I went out to meet friends and hang out in South London. We hit up Greenwich, and also went on the boat down the river called the "Moon Clipper" (clips the water, I guess). We also hit up Buckhingham Palace, saw a freaking PELICAN almost eat a girls' hand, walked a shitload, took a lot of trains, saw a Pyramid Head statue, went in the "Silent Hill tunnel"... had a lot of chips, and we went to a total of 3 other WETHERSPOONS today.. it was madness. I had the cheapest rum and coke I've ever had... 2.20 quid... ridiculous price.. And I went in the most POSH BATHROOM you could imagine girls, it had a sitting room before you went in the main room with plush carpet and modern chairs, then the bathroom had these awesome chairs, and a posh sink on either corner with cool mirrors, and 2 stalls in each corner, every stall was so neat looking with cool wallpaper/tiling, it was all purple themed! Wish I could have taken a picture... it was so posh even the tampons cost 2 quid! Anyway.. so after playing some horrible Gambling game called "Hex" Where it was like wheel of fortune and jeopardy mixed together we headed home and we played SINGSTAR and I cuddled Damien's Sackboy plushie , I drank, and we had 11:15 tea time with the 'Queen' (it was her face on a postcard and we taped it to the cupboard) with neckties on. It was so super rad. XD And then we talked about Gash'es. Don't ask.

In other news, I'm going to bed, GOODNIGHT.

Enjoying my first Ribena, which is a delicious blackcurrant drink, tastes like True Blue

Chris and I looking badass in front of some Quebec guy's statue.

On either side of the Greenwich meridian line, looking like total twats!

Beautiful sunset! :D

Me fondling a Pyramid Head statue.

The airport. I'm at it.

2009-10-09T15:12:00.000-07:00

So, of course, I left some stuff at the last minute (including making my mom help me complete an entire Poison Ivy bustier for my Halloween costume in 2 days - sorry mom, SLEEP GOOD TONIGHT) so I never really got to relax this past week since I got home from Ontario visiting Jesse and Cara. I got 4 hours of sleep last night and sleep has been broken since. Anxiety, nervousness, excitement, sadness, happiness.. all leading up to this one point. The point of no return - once I'm through security, that's it!

Right now I'm contemplating about the different plug adapters and how they're 40 dollars at the airport. Yeaaahh I think I'll wait til I'm in London to charge my Nintendo DS or iPod to get one that doesn't cost a billion dollars.

I didn't think I would, but I cried like a little baby saying goodbye to my parents. :{ I'm still sniffling like mad writing this. My dad asked if I wanted to just come home. I said no. Haha. I kind of wanted to. But that's just me being scared - I can do this. And I can do it without chickening out 2 months down the road! >:/

Me at the airport. Being contemplative. And trying to take a picture of myself without people being like "WTF" NINJA SKILLS!

Next time I'll update I'll be in a place in London with WIRELESS INTERNET SERVICE HOPEFULLY 8D

FIRST POST INTRODUCTIONS!

2009-10-06T10:48:00.001-07:00

I have created a blog for posting pictures and videos and shennanigans of my trip to the UK, mainly England and Scotland, which will last (hopefully) an entire year starting from October the 10th. Please watch and join me as I traipse around the rolling gorgeous green hills and document my stalking of David Tennant-err... I mean... yessss... :|

Will also be going to Sweden in December to visit Linnea, an awesome online artist friend which I am very excited to visit!

Thank you all for visiting and reading! Tempus Fugit!