Ring Ring

Probably the best polyphonic ringtone ever. Outkast rock! Or this. For the Darkness rock too.

But anyways. See you all next year.

Happy New Year ya'hear?

Arg! I'm having a blog crisis. I think I've written and deleted about 3 posts today. Talk about frustrating the life out of me. I think I may have to resign myself to letting Nat write the interesting articles and I'll hang around in the background and try get everything working and looking better. Aww shucks. Maybe I just need a muse of sorts. I don't know.

Well at least I guess it's almost time to see 2003 out and the new year in. I suppose most of you will be looking forward to that. I would be too if I could make it to some of the invitations I've been offered. But I can't because I'm working. Admittedly work will entail consuming vast amounts of various intoxicating substances, for free, whilst at the same time making sure everyone is is getting theirs. That's an upside. Staying in a hotel and being back at work the next morning at 10am again is a definite downer though. God only knows how I'm going to get through that one? Still, the night itself is fancy dress, and I'm going as Tom Cruise from Cocktail. It could be argued that it's a bit on the risque side, especially as technically I'll be working, but someone needs to do these things and if not me then who? I think it'll fun, once I get over the initial fear of walking around in my undies (yes, I know he didn't wear any, but I am, just in case).

Anyways, I'm tired now. It's 3am and I need some sleep. Go read this photo blog. I love it.

TESTING AGAIN

Ed: Christmas eve pictures are up. It's been a while since my last album, which is largely due to a serious case of laziness. Sue me. Hopefully things will start ticking over again soon, starting with an actual link to the gallery as well as a seperate gallery for Nat. I think she asked me to set one up about 4 months ago. Oops. Sorry chick.

Ed: Ok. So thanks to Chris for helping me sort out my css stuff. And then thanks to Adrian for showing we how to do it better. And then thanks to Chris again for helping me troubleshoot some of the other stuff saving me much trial and error attempts.

Thanks to Chris for helping me fix my "float: left" css problem.

The Boxing Day blog

Ed: coda's photo's are available here, mine will be up soon.

People always say that Christmas is about family. Fair enough. I don't think it's ever really struck me as a family orientated thing to do. Something about living at home and seeing your family every day kind of reduces Christmas to just another meal at home. This Christmas was different though. It may not have been spent with family (a phone call had to suffice), but it was spent around really good friends, having a really good time... and when you're 8000km's away from home and family, friends are all important.

We kicked off the day at about 12 with the first round of vodka OJ's and a lot of confused looks and shrugging of shoulders with regards to roasting chicken. Yes, we know it was supposed to be turkey, we just wanted to be different. Anyways, our combined culinary shortcomings made glaringly obvious, we took the only path left... and so was born our Google Chicken. A raging success I might add, barring the rice, which was more pudding-like than fluffy. I asked someone at work why that was - apparently when you buy cheap 'n skanky rice you need to wash the starch off after cooking it. I'll remember that for next time then. Mince pies followed, complimented by vodka-whipped cream. Mmmmmmmm.

After Christmas dinner we headed down to my work where we were expecting to join a rocking little party there. That didn't really happen. Instead we got nasty glares and lots of cold shoulder. Not festive at all really. So we did the mature thing and tried to persuade my dumbass work colleague to bash down my bosses Jenga tower in mid-game. Hmmmm? We then tried to persuade him to either steal a bottle of Vodka for us, or pull his pants down and run around the table. He refused - obviously didn't want to 'belong' enough.

After about an hour, and more Lionel Richie than anyone should have to endure in a single sitting, we decided to head back home... with 6 bottles of wine. I think Madness said it best. We drank wine and orange concentrate (because the wine alone was nasty), laughed for ages, and danced on the table. The soundtack for the night was definitely Lemon Tree by Fools Garden... and Innocent by Our Lady Peace.

Sometime after midnight we started bailing, one by one, until it was just Tam and I left awake at 1am drinking the last of the wine. We tried to keep the vibe going by heading to the roof of our building, but the powers that be had locked the doors. And then we ran out of wine. And I guess that was that.

We're proud to present Cailey with the 'red-pepper' award for being the only person to chunk on the night. But she did go out in style, emptying Google chicken into her Santa hat whilst crouched over the toilet. You go grrrl! That's up there with G chundering down his sleeve in Buckley's, Cape Town. We still can't work out why she didn't use the bowl though?

I woke up at about 8am on Boxing Day still wearing a red Santa hat? No hangover though, which was rather good considering I had to be at work at 10.

I think I can honestly say that Christmas 2003 turned out to be, by far, the best Christmas ever. And that's no word of a lie. So just a big thanks to everyone who was there and who contributed to the day/night being such a success. And more happy happy Christmas wishes and thanks going out to everyone else out there who I'm lucky enough to call my friends... I know you would have been here with us if it weren't for that small 'different continents' factor.

Christmas wishes

Just a quick one to say merry (happy?) Christmas to everyone out there. I hope your stockings were packed with sweet chocolatey stuff.

And if you don't celebrate Christmas... well... happy bank holiday then.

Beat this

I made risotto last night. Roasted red pepper, mushroom and Basil risotto. And it came out perfectly. Oh yes.

Ed: More work on the layout and css of the site has been completed. The archive lists are now looking closer to what I want them to. My next mission is to get the actual archived post style up and running off css.

Getting it done

Although I know it just looks like subtle colour changes at the moment, trust me, there is some hectic work going on in the background.

After months of promising to get around to sorting this site out I've actually started. At the moment most of the work is around the stylesheets, which were embedded in the respective blog templates. I am however in the process of ripping them out the templates and running all the css from an external file. It's just a lot of renaming of tags and copy/pasting at the moment.

Still, it is a beginning, and beginnings are the hardest bits. Besides endings.

HIV activist gang raped and killed

Sometimes reality defies belief.

I think I must have been away from home for too long now because the general anesthesia I must have been under seems to have worn off. I feel ill to the pit of my stomach. I love my country, and I'm a patriotic to last fibre of my being, but sometimes the acts of it's people against their fellows makes me want to hide my head in shame. Or at least crawl into a corner and not make eye contact for a couple of days.

I hope they catch the people responsible and torture them very very slowly... until they die from sheer exposure to pain.

So wish I was...

...here.

But I wasn't. *sticky out'ey tongue*

I was planning a big ass party again for this Friday at the Swan... again... wid me mate Alex. But then I looked at my bank balance. And then I realized that I'm flying to Cape Town on holiday in February. Which means that instead of getting horrendously drunk (which is what Friday night usually entails for me) I will be playing Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness all night. Although I did mail the Dorp guys and put myself on the guestlist for their Christmas gig at the Hammersmith Palais. Hmmmmm... all these decisions.

Actually right now I think I may just go out tomorrow evening (tonight even??).

ed: In the end I didn't go out... well, unless Chinese with Adrian counts. But from the sounds of coda's snores, which woke me up numerous times last night, and the fact that there was an unidentified body on the couch this morning when I got up (enter Chris's boss, Asif) I reckon they hit the Swan pretty hard. Funny how that happens. I just didn't have the energy.

Ben Elton Will Rock You

Exiting Tottenham Court Road tube station on Monday before meeting Tam I came face to face with the massive Freddie statue on top of the entrance to the Dominion Theatre. Being the massive Queen fan that I am... and I'm not being sarcastic here... I've wanted to watch We Will Rock You since I first came to London. And Tam didn't need much persuading either. So we hit the Theatre.

As much as the show wasn't anything like what I was expecting, and Tam and I agreed on this, it was still excellent. Having said that, my expectations we're based entirely on my ideas of what was going to happen... I didn't actually read any reviews.

But the band is excellent, the lead male is superb, the story (once you get used to it) is good, and the music... well the music is unsurpassable.

All told I thought it was a witty, intelligent, funny, showcase for the music that defined a generation. Perhaps not my generation, sure, but that doesn't detract from anything.

And that being my first theatre experience in quite a few years... brilliant. Next time I will happily fork over twice the price to get down into the front rows.

But my last note is this - girls that look that good, and wearing outfits like those, should not be allowed to dance like that.

Dawson's Creek. My London.

Tomorrow Tam and I are doing the 'London' thing. Supposedly anyway. Whenever we make plans it seems one of us gets wasted the night before, gets up late, and screws the whole plan over. So holding thumbs that tomorrow stays on track... because I need to buy some new trainers. Heck. Need to buy trainers even. I don't own a pair of old ones to be buying new ones.

I just finished watching the final episode (like EVER!) of Dawson's Creek. I've never been a big Dawson's fan, but the series ended perfectly, and in my twisted little mind gave me hope. I don't need to explain that really. Needless to say that I'm a complete sucker for happy endings.

I've been sitting here for a few minutes now trying to troubleshoot my archives. My style sheet doesn't seem to have any effect on them? Could it be that I need to specify a new stylesheet for the archive pages? No that can't be right. I think I'm just going to have to pour over a working template and try and spot where I've gone and botched mine. But God... have you seen my source code... where do I even begin?

Nat's mom

Hmmmmm. Just had a sudden flashback. I seem to recall Nat mentioning a couple of weeks ago that her mom had read her site... ergo deductive nomological reasoning would suggest she had read mine too.

All of sudden my 'I'm still drunk at 1pm in the afternoon'scat references aren't quite as funny as I initially thought. I think I may struggle to meet her eye next time I'm in Knysna.

So hungover right now

God. You know you've been out on the raz with the boys when you drag your ass out of bed at 13:30 (have to be a work at 17:00) and you're still the only one awake. I'm a complete mess right now. Shakey. Nauseous. Dizzy. And I've just been for the biggest babalas kak in the world. Somebody please help me...

I think I may just have reached that point when I no longer find binge drinking appealing.

Still, The Swan in Stockwell (directly opposite the Tube station) was excellent! Shot to Dale for the recommendation.

Ok. That's me. My head is swimming too much to type anything more. Laters

Bored at work

Ivan Eric Shaun
Mike Hoxbig

Dude... where's my holiday pay?

I've just found out, after the fact, that I've been paid out all the holiday pay that I was owed before my tansfer. Man that sucks. Now I have to try and NOT spend it all before flying to Cape Town in February. That's just wrong. On the flip side I will have earned a further weeks worth of paid holiday by the time I leave, which makes it at least one week out of three that I won't be pillaging my saving too much.

Last night marked a pretty momentous occasion in my life. Mealtimes here at Andrew Reed house are usually quite funny affairs, with the four of us whipping out various ready made meals and scouring the packaging for cooking instruction. Kudos to us though, we do usually use the oven instead of the microwave! Last night however I (with a bit of prodding from Tam) decided to actually cook. Cook as in buy ingredients and make something from scratch. So some grated cheese, cream, mixed herbs, and a dash of curry powder later I had my stuffing ready. I then pulled the stalks out of some decent sized mushrooms, chopped them up and added them to the mix. Them took the stalk-less mushrooms and stuffed them with cheesy, creamy, herby mix recently prepared. Put some mixed veg into a deep frying pan and onto the flame. Then pan fried the stuffed mushrooms for a couple of minutes in some oil before transfering them onto a tray and popping them under the grill to finish them off. The final product (stuffed mushrooms with stir-fried vegtetables) was pretty good I thought, although I may have left the shrooms in the pan for a smidge too long before zapping them under the grill. But still, I'm taking baby steps here people. Next up I may just have to try Sarah's recipe for peppers (or was that tomatoes?) stuffed with cous cous. Mmmmmmm.

Anyways, enough of my culinary exploits. My final note: I have promised myself a site redesign after my holiday home. Well actually it'll just be kind of finishing off what Nat and I started. The whole site needs polishing off, and some additional content. My gallery is still down. Hers is yet to even begin. There's no bio links. No link links. Nothing besides our arb musings really. That will all change... just give me a couple of months.

Jingle bells, Santa smells

I have this suspicion that by the time Christmas actually arrives I may be completely sick of it. But you would be too if you had to endure 9 hours of Christmas music every day at work. And you know what... I reckon the punters feel the same. I mean, even though there are certain carols that strike an emotional chord with me based on my childhood experiences... even if the actual details of my religious alignment have skewed a bit since then... if I have to listen to cheesy Christmas 'pop' any more I may scream. God forbid that they dust off that Boney M album!

Work has been better of late. It was never bad really, just difficult, as big adjustments often are. Working in management you're expected to have all the answers, all the time, and be able to deal with whatever a work day throws at you. Those expectations are pretty hard to meet when you're still getting to grips with the basics of the role. Still, I'm getting there. I think I was a bit wary because I had this idea that, because I'd come from the same role at a different location, my direct boss expected me to be able to just jump right in a handle everything... which so did not happen. Then again, a 2 week period of adjstment isn't too long methinks.

Just the other day we were hosting a fund raising event, which ended up being composed entirely of toffs. In my experience to date I have found 'The Toff' to be a demographic unique to the UK. To qualify you have to speak (seriously and without laughing) in that cliched upperclass English accent, wear nondescript brown trousers, a shirt with a button down collar (no tie mind!), and over that a round-neck jersey, which has to be of a solid, not too garish, colour. No patterns allowed! To top the look off you need to sport a floppy Hugh Grant (the old Hugh that is) hairstyle. A room full of them is enough to make milk come out your nose.

Last night coda and I decided to go see what Covent Garden had to offer on a Friday night. So after a tube trip right across to the city to see Tam before hand, because I said I would, we found ourselves wandering around looking for a decent bar. No luck really. There were loads of bars, but not along the lines of what I was looking for really. We ended up at the Long Island Ice Tea bar (or something) and under the distinct impression that the people there had been drinking for far longer than we had. Still, it was a night out, and an experience to boot. And we did learn one important lesson: if you're staying out late have a plan on how you're going to get home. Paying £25 taxi fare is not quite as funny as you sitting there laughing at me might think.

Anyways, I'm off.

Love your bum.

Americans

Last night on the way back from work I bumped into this poor lost soul standing at the bus stop. It wasn't my bus stop mind, but he was lost and I decided to help him.

He proudly proclaimed that he was from LA, which may go someway to explaing why he was standing on the side of the road at 1am, in winter, in London, wearing nothing but a tatty grey track suit (the type everyone had when they were kids), trainers... and admitting that he just spent his last 20p on ice-cream. ICE CREAM FOR EFFING SAKE! It's freezing arctic cold outside, he's dressed for a jog on the beach, and he spends his final bit of dough on ice cream?! The sheer mentality of some people... I don't know... I give up.

So there I am in my coat, hands firmly thrust in the depths of my pockets, trying to help this poor bloke on his way home. That ended up being quite simple really. He was on the wrong side of the road, and the stop he was at wasn't services by a night bus. Of course helping him meant that I missed my last bus home and had to walk. Again. But never mind that. Poor me.

Laters.

Downtime, friends, binges, and more

So after a couple of weeks of internet downtime we're back online at Andrew Reed House. Much has come and gone in those weeks, and is now stale, but I'll do my best to recount some of the antics for you.

Biggest news is obviously that Tam and Cails arrived in London for their 'summer vac', which is now in all fairness a 'wet winter vac'. They crashed at our most legend (ok, it will be soon) pad for a couple of days before heading over to Camden Town to work. We only really got out once as a group while they were here, but it was all good. Pound-a-pint pints of Bitburger, followed by a party in a house somewhere, Jim Beam out of the bottle, boring some Brazillian chick till she just turned her back on me and spoke to someone else. Why you ask? Purely because Brazil is close to Columbia, and Juan Pablo Montoya comes from Columbia. Ok, yes, I was drunk. Very drunk. All that was followed buy getting lost while tecnically just down the road from home. And then Tam and Cails got the Ghetto treatment from two chicks because some other chick was upchucking red nastiness on the bus. It's all a comfusing blurrr really.

On Friday I managed to get the evening off and headed out for a 'few quiet pints at the Puzzle Pub' with a Alex. After 2 pints of 1664 things started to head downhill quite rapidly. The slide began with a pint of 'Turbo Shandy' (Be wary. Very.). That pint quickly became about 6, after which we started interjecting them with shots of Sambuca or Tequila. At about this stage the pub closed, but we were invited to the staff lock-in. Lekker ek se. The assistant manager then handed me a magnum of Smirnoff red vodka and a jug of Coke and told me to help myself. No worries there China. I completely blame the vodka for what happened when I got home, but that's still to come. I spent a large part of the rest of the evening dancing in a table... but remember very little of it really. In hindsight I probably embarrased myself quite badly. Oh well.

I ended up leaving the pub sometime around 01:30, I think, and caught the dodgiest taxi home. It was like a Pick 'n Pay No Name Brand taxi. No taxi light, no meter, no licence at all really. Of course I only noticed all this when I was getting out at home. I was like, "Dude, how much do I owe you?" At which point I noticed... no taxi meter. Hmmmm, strange. So he was completely cool and tuned, "Well how much do you want to pay?" WTF? So I reckoned, "How's about a fiver?" He retorted, "Let's make that eight quid." And that was that. I think it was a deal considering the time it was. I remember absolutely nothing from this point on besides spending a lot of time retching in the toilet. Damien assures me that I was well behaved, but that I repeatedly fell asleep with my head on the toilet bowl. Hey, these things happen!Eventually he steered me past a sleeping Tam on the floor and onto my bed, which is where I woke up at 9am, still fully clothed and honing quite badly (with a bucket - empty - positioned next to my bed). I owe you man!

And that was that. I haven't been brave enough to go out again since then.

Work is alright at the moment. I gave them my salary pitch, they then filled out my contract with an amount greater than I asked for. I signed it quickly. Ha!

The other big news at the moment: I land in Cape Town on the 16th of February. Booked. Payed for. Organized. This time around I'm hoping to do things a little differently though. I think it's going to be a quiet few weeks spent at home with my folks (much of which will be spent in the pub with my dad), and catching up with Natalie. The last time around I seemed to be jetting off constantly and when I finally left I didn't feel like I'd spent enough time with family.

Updates will become more frequent. Cross my heart...