PROFESSOR LAYTON LONDON PREMIERE

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!

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!

CARDIFF - PERTH/STIRLINGSHIRE ROAD TRIP - ETC!

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!

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

Glasgow Fun Happy Time

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/

To London, geeky adventures await!

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!