They’ve recently moved into their new place, it was their temporary stay until they found a place to start buying. The location was near to where Rachel worked / studied. It felt like yesterday that we were sitting on some steps in a shopping centre eating greggs bloomer sandwiches for lunch at college (food at college has horrific). Now they’ve found a place to stay and will eventually get into the whole mortgaging business, oh how we’ve grown.

…well for them anyway. I feel like I’m still stuck in a time bubble where I’m still at college, just that work is actually work in a company, and we don’t do games/p.e. (boo I like running). I think I need to begin the plan of moving out and starting a life of my own, though this will inevitably take time and money to execute. I suppose I can live with the salary I make, but it would be ideal if I can save up as well for that move in the property ladder. No point in renting and forever stuck in a “renting” state.

So what’s the goal? What’s the plan? Well I don’t intend on moving out this year, and maybe not the next either. I don’t think I’m in a comfortable position to move, both for financial and personal reasons. I think for the next two years I’m going to first get out of any existing debts I’m in (hopefully random juicy bonuses will help!) and then review whether the situation changes and that I’m comfortable in moving.

I’ve already begun saving up via a savings account. I just need to continue that momentum and build up a momentum of constantly saving up, ignoring expensive gadgets and games and focusing on more long term things. Having this goal down in writing gives me the clarity I need and takes me out of the zone where I feel like I’m simply procrastinating in life. I’ve been moving forward pretty rapidly and I don’t want that to stop.

So where do I see myself in 2 years? Well hopefully I’ll be living in my own place in London, with a more senior role in the company. I will be in a more comfortable position to review my status in getting my own place but at that time, I have a place I’m renting and saving. A place that reminds me of where Jason and Rachel are living right now, where everything is customised to perfection (subjectively) and taste. It would be a place I feel comfortable living in as well a place that’s actually near work (I’m losing 2 hours of my life per weekday just sitting down waiting for transport C to take me to destination B)

The goal is pretty standard for anyone, suppose it’s the milestones and timing that make them my goal. You definitely need to be in a place where you can stop and review on what’s going on in your life, so a lovely reminder from 43things will do just that.

That’s it for now, I’ve recently got a raise from work and hopefully I can prove my worth in the company. Things will only get better, you just need to have clear goals and an ass that won’t quit.

The graduation itself was pretty boring, it was fun wearing the fancy graduation robe, but my part went quite quickly… a bit too quickly one might say, I was literally the SECOND person to receive my certificate. First class students get to go on stage first ;). But yeah the rest of the event was spent listening to a bunch of imbeciles hoot their fellow students when they received their awards, I mean, it’s a formal event, we’re at the Barbican, dressed up in robes and hooting? wtf? Ah well. The highlight of the graduation event (me picking up my award aside) was the fact that Mark Shuttleworth (founder of ubuntu) was there to make a speech! That was pretty epic. I spoke to a few students but kept it simple.

We went to hardwok cafe afterwards, Alice had never tried it and it was lunchtime so it made sense hehe. We managed to get the last of the yummy hardwok food, I had a Thai Red Curry (per usual) and Alice had a chicken in black bean sauce. We ate outside the place and had Krispy Kremes for dessert. Alice finally understood why I kept raving about hardwok cafe (if only the rest got it). Later on that evening we met up with Jason and Rachel for ANOTHER Royal China. We went to a Caffe Nero beforehand since it was a wee bit early and there we talked about how “judge judy” was the ONLY famous judge. Rachel said that there was another famous judge called “judge brown”. It was hard trying to make her crack that it was a lie since she kept building up a more and more elaborate lie about who judge brown was and what he did that made him so famous, it got to a point where Rachel said she was in contact with him and that he was her father. After a the battle of judge brown we headed to Royal China for our grub. This time we ordered a half duck to feast on as well as some dim sum dishes and awesome seafood noodles / ho fun. The meal was epic as ever (especially when we got ourselves some scallops action too) and though it was about £20 odd per head, it was a yummy meal! Afterwards we settled in the Natural Cafe and had a lovely chat like before.

The next day we had a meal at Wagamamma and spent the rest of the day at Central London, I took Alice to loads of places including Cyber Candy at Covent Garden and the Apple Store (beautiful landmark). It was disturbing how we managed to get a lot of things done, we also went to china town and got ourselves… ANOTHER duck haha, this time I went into a restaurant and ordered one cut up for din dins, it came to £14 which was amazing! We went to picadilly circus to so Alice could take the ubiquitous shot of the lights (not as epic as times square though).

Sunday we had a lovely meal with my dad and then spent the rest of the day watching Harry Potter (we managed to watch Sliding doors at one of the days too, it was a must!). We also watched Kill Bill and had a lovely meal at home. The next day Alice went back up north and I went to work again, it was a lovely day but it was always a bummer going to work and ONLY just departing with Alice. Ah well

I’m not sure how we spent our evening and morning but I believe we did have an amazing breakfast! We bought everything we needed to make the perfect full english breakfast and got delayed for the actual event that Max and Aino organised. I believe we did quite a fair bit of smash brothering too which made us disturbingly late, no worries though since we’re the host I guess *shrugs*. Passing Brent Cross I was able to smuggle myself a black DS Lite for Stu whilst Karis and Inn were able to distract Stu for a bit.

We arrived at Regent Street pretty late and finally found everyone, we then headed to a very packed Oxford Street finding the restaurant. We were going to have tapas at a place called La Tasca. Quite a fair amount of people were about which was fun and we had a lovely seat booked and all.

The meal was alright, paella was just wet rice and bits of stuff however we did order a fair amount of stuff and in the end, the bill was a joke. It came to £200+ and people were simply gobsmacked by it, it was rather awkward for people, especially when some were refusing to pay any more. Me and Alice decided to save the day by pitching in the rest so everyone was able to pay the bill and avoid embarrassment. But boy Max and Aino aren’t planning any meetups in the future. Tapas is a 2 person event, not suitable for orgies.

The rest of the weekend was spent with Alice, we met up with Jason and Rachel and had some yum yum dim sum at Royal China, I chose this place because Jason and Rachel previously took me to “Ping Pong” to have dim sum when I told them that Royal China is a nicer place and do a wider range of dim sum. So yeah, it was a pretty epic meal at a far less scary price (especially when Jason and Rachel could afford it all hehe). I was very pissed off that we didn’t get free oranges! They usually do it so

We went into the Natural Cafe to sit around and chat for the rest of the day, Jason got me an orange to eat hehe. Was always nice seeing Jason and Rachel, Alice got on well with them too so it was all good We then called it a night and that was that day.

The day after I had to go work and Alice had to return back up north, we said our farewells at Monument and that was the weekend. Lesson of the day, don’t get tapas. Stick with a golden crispy fucking duck haha.

Meeting Up and getting some grub

People were arriving at weird times and all. Kev was only joining us later on so we were going to meet up with him at some point. I spent most of the morning lounging about at home since Stephie was staying in a hotel near Fulham Broadway, this meant that travelling was awfully easy to her place (since Fulham Broadway and Southfields are pretty close to each other). I eventually leave the house with all my stuff (including several Yo Sushi! Rainbow vouchers and my dslr camera for taking photos of the gig) and went to fulham broadway to meet up with Stephie. I did leave pretty late since I managed to meet up with inn at the station instead of meeting Stephie first. We took the bus to Stephie hotel since Stephie was too lazy to come out and meet us (tut tut). Upon arriving the hotel room we soon discover that Stephie actually had a double bed and single for the room she booked. It was pretty nice since me, Inn and kev were hoping to sleep there (though I’m more there for show since I could easily pop back to my place hehe). We had a quick friendly banter and soon afterwards we were heading off to meet up with kev. Around the time of meeting up with kev I soon discover that I have left my Yo Sushi! vouchers in Stephie’s room so our plan on having Yo Sushi! today was slightly foiled. Trying to be sneaky I persuaded everyone to goto Nando’s in Brixton instead since it’s so close to the venue which makes it a more relaxing experience. Inn complained for a bit since she had her heart set on Yo Sushi that day but we all agreed that Nando’s was more convenient as well as me telling her I’d get her a chicken using my loyalty card.

Once in Nando’s (we’re now in Brixton) we ordered our food (wings for me I believe). Twas quite a lovely meal and Inn didn’t seem to mind having the free chicken (well she hardly paid a penny for her meal haha). Me and Stephie quickly popped round to the venue to pick up her tickets she booked and after having some Tetris battles and bantering we went straight into the venue (slightly late since we weren’t too keen on the support). We found out that Michelle and Caff were actually coming to Silverchair too so I contacted them to see if we could meet up with them inside the venue and all.

The dangerous Wheat Free Soya Sauce

We eventually left Nando’s and headed into the venue to catch Silverchair. I was once again able to smuggle my DSLR camera into the venue, this was however a close one since the guy was able to actually feel the camera in my bag. He was quite determined to find the source of what I was hiding however I told him that it was just padding. He did give the bag a proper search but failed to find the camera. After getting passed the guards we discover that kev was having problems getting in. The guy who was searching for my bag was now pretty pissed and was getting more arsey than ever. He found kev’s Wheat-Free soya sauce he had in his bag and was going to confiscate it since it could be used as a weapon, he demonstrated how it could be used as a weapon by holding it from the neck and pretending to hit kev on the head with it hehe. Eventually they let kev through on the condition that he put the bag in the cloakroom. Was quite an embarrassing moment for kev as he joined us shamefully to watch the gig hehe.

The gig was fun, Silverchair weren’t that bad though I didn’t know many songs from them so it wasn’t as fun as it could have been. We met up with Michelle and Caff during the gig and eventually I also departed the crowd and went to take photos of the band. A lot of squeezing in was involved and eventually I had a lovely spot for photo taking. Quite a nice evening, ended with some glorious Tropicana drinking. We went back to Stephie’s place and enjoyed some Tetris’ing and TV. Stephie got quite addicted to Phoenix Wright as she borrowed kev’s DS Lite to play with it.

Yo Sushi and Somerset House

Though there was a Yo Sushi in Fulham Broadway, we were hoping to have the rainbow combo in Victoria so we could meet up with Wincy as well as Lindsy. I took a quick detour back home before meeting everyone back at Fulham Broadway station! and heading to Victoria. Once there we lounged around at Wetherspoons for a bit to wait for other people arrive, once everyone was there we went straight to Yo Sushi! and got tuck into the Rainbow combo action. Food was lovely once again though I pretty much ordered the same food since I’ve got my combo down to a science. Afterwards we did some lounging about in Leicester Square since Stephie and co needed to do something else whilst I was going to the somerset house to watch 2001 Space Odessy. I eventually left everyone and they went and saw a comedy event which sounded pretty awesome.

Somerset House was pretty amazing. I’ve been there last year to see a double bill and this year I was watching 2001: Space Odessy in the daddio screen! Jason and Rachel were slightly late and I came to the venue slightly unprepared. All I had was some food bought from the newsagent, a towel brought from the venue and a very thin shirt (it got really cold near the end :(). When Jason and Rachel arrived we had a fun time playing a bit of Tetris and Mario Kart. I let them double team me at Tetris DS which was fun but I won most of the time.

The film was pretty amazing, last time I saw it I fell asleep near the beginning since it was far too long and dragged on for a bit. This time I finally got to watch the intense parts of the film involving the computer rebelling against the people. I took the train back to Wimbledon with Jason and Rachel and went back to Fulham to see the rest of the gang. I told inn to buy me some food since I was pretty hungry after that film, she kindly got me a sandwich and some rice cakes, twas pretty yummy. More Tetris action for the rest of the evening and Stephie also completes the second case in Phoenix Wright. Bless her.

Random park strolling and GBK

The final day left and we decided to go to stroll in Hyde Park whilst Stephie went to meet her Uncle for a bit. We went passed some Jewish Festival and lounged around the Princess Dianna Memorial place (was a fancy fountain place) and got our feet wet. More tetris DS’ing involved and eventually we met up with Stephie again and went to GBK in Soho for some burger action. This was the first time kev and inn had tried the burgers at GBK so they were quite excited for it. Kev ordered a bunless burger since he couldn’t eat wheat, I ordered milkshake too and had a classic burger. It was all yummy and nice. Kev eventually left us all to go back to Leeds and we soon left GBK to do some random internet browsing and eventually heading back to the hotel room. That was pretty much it. I packed up and went back home (which was disturbingly quick hehe).

A lovely weekend filled with loads of nice things to eat and all.

Travelling to her place was cool since she lives in Wimbledon and all, I was originally going to just walk it but decided to use the tube since I was a tad late, bad idea… the tube was slightly delayed due to signal failures at Earls Court (grr) So i was stuck there eating a Malteaser Icecream. Eventually the tube arrives and I meet up with Jason and do our usual catch up. We immediately get to Rachel’s place and I learn that she’s cooking Nando’s style oven chicken as well as Chicken Satay and a host of other things. Lovely

Jason brought out his wii and immediately we got down to it, Jason had managed to purchase a lovely copy of Mario Strikers for the occasion (was still sealed) and we managed to get stuck into it and all in no time hehe (the wii that is, we didn’t play Mario Strikers first). First things first, I needed a Mii. So I quickly did myself one and got Jason to play Wii Sports haha. I ruled at most of the games hehe.

We then got stuck into Smash Brothers! This was a painful match haha, Jason managed to beat me on both games we played due to his sneaky fight evasion technique and use of proximity mines placed EVERYWHERE so I can make a move! The wins were close shaves but fair play on him being so sneaky hehe, this is what Smash Brothers is all about though so yeah Rachel played too but she was new at it and all she did really was evade and occasionally kill me with her random moves (granted I was at 100-200%)

We also played some table tennis, and then Mario Strikers and got tuck in with the food. Table tennis was really addictive, Jason was really good at it since he plays a lot Tennis and all so he’s good with the paddle. We had a rally going on as well as a quick match which he beat me in hehe. Mario Striker was probably the climax since it was a game that none of us played and was a fair idea of who’s good at games that they’ve just picked up hehe. It was pretty hard to get in since you can do an ungodly amount of moves and tricks, it resembled a lot like smash brothers in terms of tackling and the use of all star nintendo characters and all. I later on figured out the key to scoring goals and used that to beat Jason. Jason however did have an unfair advantage of playing with Rachel in which she’d sort of lose the ball to the opposition hehe. Eventually we did a switch in characters and Rachel was in my team (and I eventually lost :(). We then had a one on one battle to settle the score, I came out victorious, but only just since Jason was pretty good at it too.

After some striker we had a lovely meal and ate at the table (obviously). It was yummy! Here’s some photos

Oh that’s Rachels cat Abbey, Jason is feed her chicken. We also had some cheesecake, mmm

Afterwards we played some more table tennis, wii and I managed to give Jason his present and all for his birthday (which I couldn’t come to hehe (booked up with Rachel)). I also showed him Resident Evil 4 which he enjoyed (was fun watching him run away from crazy villagers!). He also showed me Resident Evil 1 on the DS lite, it looked pretty sweet! Think that was it, I went for a dirty KFC before I got home and enjoyed it at the comfort of my own home

Friday 5pm The photography, tin man and pirate

Before the BBQ event (which was on Saturday), me Inn and Kazzie were going to meet up and all and just do something relaxing before the big BBQ, Inn was taking the train down to London and so I thought I’d meet her at 7pm when her train arrives, Kazzie had to do some cleaning up for the event to ensure that everything was nice and tidy.

Living in London, I didn’t have much trouble preparing or anything, I just treated it as a normal day and had my usual lunch at 3pm odd, but instead of heading home I decided to just lounge around central London until Inn arrived, I picked Covent Garden as my lounging destination since I haven’t been there in ages and I wanted to check out Cyber Candy which sold import candy and cereal stuff.

Upon arriving I took photos of random street performers as well as a weird selection of people sitting on a bench which consisted of a photographer, a tin man, and a pirate (well he wasnt a pirate but I insist on calling him one anyway for blog entry marketing purposes). There was also a guy called “Reno” (not really but I like giving people names to make it easier to remember) who did some random ball act. I’ve seen it quite alot of times before so I wasn’t too amazed but I took photos of him anyway.

Afterwards I was off to find Cyber Candy. I was disturbingly lost! It was pretty annoying, however I did manage to find a Tin Tin Shop! Was pretty chuffed about it and all, Alice was a big fan of Tintin so I thought she’d love the photo of the shop and all. I got quite a lot of dirty looks but thats what you get when you become a photographer haha.

I kinda gave up on finding cyber candy, judging by the time I had left it would have been closed if I had found it anyway so I just headed to Forbidden Planet to look at figurines, it wasn’t particularly interesting, I wanted to get some studio ghibli figurines but turns out they didnt have any :(. Ho hum. The day was getting quite shabby due to the lack of things I was getting haha!

I found out today was Malaysia Week, there were a lot of stalls open which demonstrated a lot of Malaysian culture. One in particular was a stage showing Malaysian fashion. It was a cat walk in which they talked about the interesting clothes worn in Malaysia, I just jumped at the opportunity and took photos of the event. Since it was a public event I was able to stand right in front to take the photos, it was quite fun I must say. I had free models and everything hehe.

It was funny texting people and telling them that I was at a fashion show, think I confused a lot of people during that hour. Inn had texted me saying her train was cancelled and that she had to take the train after that which meant I had to meet her at 7.30pm instead. So I was just taking photos of the event until it was time to leave, once the fashion show was over they were preparing a Malaysian wedding, they had the chairs all set up but I wasn’t able to watch the ceremony due to time restrictions.

Friday 7.30pm Train Pirates

Upon arriving at Kings Cross station, I got a bit bored and got myself some water to drink, it was a bit humid today and the trains were ungodly to travel in. I arrived slightly early than planned so it was a matter of finding things to do, wasn’t too long though till Inn rang me up telling me she had arrived. I picked her up and we went to Euston Station to take the train directly to Watford Junction. I initially thought it was ok for us to use the Oyster card to get to Watford Junction but it turns out later on that I was wrong haha (crippled me a bit with a £5 fine and all!)

Anyway, the train journey was cool, there wasn’t any seats left so me and Inn just sat on the floor, occasionally we would get trains coming from the opposite direction at rediculous speeds which would scare us or wreck our ears haha, it’s funny how everyone was used to it and didn’t flinch at all when the trains went passed. There were a lot of delays, I told inn that perhaps the train ahead of us was being hijacked by train pirates which caused the delay, I even did the ubiquitous ARGH voices to ensure realism of the scenario haha.

Friday 8.20pm “We have a KFC?”

Upon meeting up with Kazzie at Watford Junction, we immediately got in the car and drove around Watford in search for food. The list Kazzie suggested wasn’t too pleasing, we had to choose between Chiquitas, KFC or MacDonalds. Personally I wouldn’t mind having a bit of dirty dirty KFC but Inn wanted some decent food which left us pretty stuck on what to get. Eventually we drove up to a TGI Friday restaurant for food, however there was a 30 minute wait so we drove off in search for food once again. We then saw a Harvester and suggested we went there since it was better than the rest, I kept singing “ooooh when will there be a harvest, for the wooooorld” when we were close to the place, and later on we also find out that there was a Frankies and Bennys close by! We were shocked that Kazzie didnt mention them! We decided to head to Frankies and Bennys since it was close to the bowling alley which we were going to go to afterwards.

Upon arriving at Frankies and Bennys I immediately knew what I was going to eat, I remember when Michelle kept mentioning how she’d have Spaghetti whenever she went there and she liked it, so I decided to try it out, I was initially going to get the Meatball Spaghetti but they ran out of them, I even did the accent when I was ordering but I think they didn’t appreciate it haha. Kazzie got ribs and a quarter of a chicken served with chips, Inn initially was going to get a BBQ chicken lasagne but then decided that Mushroom lasagne was a better choice.

The restaurant was funny, they served things in disturbingly large trays and all, the drinks were a bit funny too, Inn described them as a liquid version of chewits, they tasted a bit mank to be honest haha. We did the typical thing of taking photos of each other and the food when it arrived.

I wasn’t too happy with my food, it tasted like something you’d eat in a school canteen, nothing like my Lloyd Grossman spaghetti which I enjoy making and consuming. Everyone else seemed chuffed with there food. I ate my food swiftly and was still hungry, Kazzie couldn’t eat any more and gave me some of her ribs whilst Inn also treated me to some of her Potato Skins (which was alright). The problem with the food was that it became pretty boring when you ate it, with places like GBK and Nando’s your tastebuds were always filled with something new which made the food nice. With this place it was rather bland and monotonous. The bill wasn’t too good as well, I had spent £9 for a rather sub par meal, the entire bill was about £40, with that kind of money we could have bought 4 family feasts (I remember a time where I constantly converted money into the amount of family feasts you could purchase with it).

It seems like no restaurant visit was complete without my banging on the table. I remember randomly doing and everyone was dead silent looking at me afterwards, it was quite embarrassing but funny at the same time haha. The waiters were also a bit too flirty for my likings too, he mentioned something about carrying Kazzie and Inn in his massive tray (tray not being an innuendo for penis before you think about it)

Friday 9pm Teh Kazzie, Jesus and God

We left the place and stole a balloon since the food was rubbish, some chav kids went “oi that’s illegal when we did so” inn hesitated for a bit but we still managed to leave with it, until some random kid said that the balloon belonged to his grand childs birthday (yes he has a grand child). Inn just surrendered the balloon since it wasn’t really worth squabbling over, though I felt she could of outwitted him with the obvious “what’s his name, how old is he, what year was he born, WHAT IS HIS FUCKING LOGICAL INTERVENTION”. But yeah, by surrendering the balloon the kid went all smug for lying about something pathetic in order to get a balloon. Ho hum

Bowling was shambolic, for me and Inn anyway, we weren’t too good at it, I myself have my good and bad times at bowling, Inn wanted to have bumpers in the lanes but I insisted that it remained a mans game haha. We picked our name on the interface, I called myself “Jesus” for comedy purposes, Inn called herself “God” whilst kazzie just called herself “Teh Kazzie”

We had quite a fun night, though most of our bowls were gutters it was still nonetheless fun, Kazzie did alright since she played it quite a lot beforehand and all. I just made a lot of over dramatic moves to compensate on the shit bowling haha. Inn didn’t do too well to begin with when she kept bowling gutter balls and eventually building up to hitting one pin hehe.

At the end the results were in, Kazzie won the game with me coming in second and inn last. We got our shoes back (was funny how they only took one shoe instead of both) and decided to really jazz things up with some DDR action. Twas only a quick go but I kept it simple and focused more on doing flash dancing (ie making it look fun). Most of the time I was able to spin around the dance mat and do steps without actually looking at it haha.

There was a Stacker machine there too which I was very tempted in playing but gave it a pass since they didnt have DS Lites as the prize (just ipods).

Friday 10pm Inn the pyromaniac

We went back to Kazzie’s place to have a nice lounge about, we literally did nothing but talk outside in the garden. Was a very chilled out moment that you’d hardly see in Muse meetups. Kazzie had a chimnea in her garden which we could burn stuff in, inn got well addicted to getting stuff burning, I just sat around and watched them do the burning. We didn’t even have fancy drinks, just drank tap water and talked all night. Not much to say to be honest… I could go on about the chimnea but that’s just boring haha. We eventually headed off to bed and awaited a crazy day sushi eating and BBQ’ing

Saturday 10am “I just had 11 microsleeps”

I’m really bad in the mornings, I’m used to sleeping in the dark so when the sunlight comes, I don’t notice a thing, this was mainly due to my bed being a bunk bed for quite some time (noone sleeps at the top) but ever since I’ve had the top bunk removed, I got an ungodly amount of sunlight which meant I actually wake up from the sun! I never knew how responsive I am to the sun, it’s good I guess because I can wake up naturally via the sunlight, but the problem is I don’t want to wake up. This is where microsleeping comes into play. I’m simply wake up, know that everyone is asleep still and just fall back into bed again haha. I woke up at around 6am I think, noticed it was an ungodly time and went back to sleep, and it almost became a 30 minute thing where I’d wake up again from the sunlight and fall back to sleep, nearer the end Inn was actually awake from all the waking up I was doing, so I tell her I had x amount of microsleeps. It got ridiculous when my count ended up to 11 microsleeps! I was literally waking up and sleeping for 10 minutes before waking up again! Inn kept complaining that I snore, but it wasn’t the oblivious type of snoring you get so I dont care, my golden line is still “i sleep like a goddess when in foetal position” and most of the time I’m forced to sleep on my back.

We woke up properly at 10am when Kazzie popped by and brought peanut the cat over (I’m only relying on timestamps on photos to guess the time haha). After much peanut playing (kazzie was using a goldfish tied to a stick) we decided to get ready and drive to central London for some food. During the journey we get close to a megabus, twas pretty disturbing for me Kazzie intentionally drove up close to it to really take the piss *shakes head* We eventually arrive at Brent Cross where we remember where we parked (Level 2 block C) and headed to Brent Cross tube station, we popped by a Krispy Kreme and Apple Centre in the shopping centre too, inn had never tried Krispy Kremes so we showed her the godlyness of it and all, she enjoyed it, Popey loved Krispy Kremes too so we managed to rub it in his face that we had some, the next best bit was when we went to Yo Sushi in Victoria Station to have our lunch.

2pm The green tea thieves

This was inn and kazzie’s first time at Yo Sushi, I had a disturbingly lovely meal at Yo Sushi with Jason so I was nice and prepared on what I should be getting to eat this time. We didn’t really get into the conveyor belt action this time since the food there wasn’t too good (or fresh) we ordered our food multiple times which was fun. I got myself some prawn yakisoba action as well as some prawn tempura to eat whilst inn ordered some sweet potato tempura. Kazzie was scared about almost everything, she wasn’t a fan of fish so sushi was definitely a no no for her, I eventually persuaded her to have some chicken dishes including firecracker chicken rice and chicken yakitori (Jason kept going on about it so I thought it would be fun to see it in action). Quite a lot of conveyor belt photos were taken, not to mention our food haha.

Everyone was loving their food, we tried each others food which was cool so we had an idea of what other stuff tasted like, I loved chicken yakitori so much I actually ordered another one haha, the waiters gave us a chicken yakisoba instead of yakitori by mistake for Kazzie, however inn was going to order that anyway so she decided to have it, then it was sushi time, felt a bit wrong if we just ate the hot stuff and not venture into some sushi, I got myself a salmon nigiri and inn got herself an assorted mix of nigiri and maki rolls. The sushi today was particularly fresh! The salmon was so soft that it melted into your mouth haha, Inn was very pleased at the quality of sushi.

Kazzie was enjoying the entire visit, she was trying out a lot of new stuff, including chopsticks, yakitori and most importantly…sushi! We managed to persuade her to have some cucumber maki roll, it wasn’t really fish so she should be ok. Here’s her attempting it…

Bless her, twas simply too much! I think its more in the mind than the fact that it was not edible, I mean she was eating rice prior to this and she was cool, I guess its the nori that freaked her out, or maybe the fact that I added wasabi in it haha (who knows :P). What I don’t get is that why people think nori is bad, you can hardly taste it, its just there to wrap things up and all, it doesnt really add to the taste or anything. I eventually made her eat everything.

Near the end I made faces with my food hehe. Was fun, the table really helped the photos unlike the one at Picadilly.

Kazzie did some pretty silly stuff at Yo Sushi, she even went into the men’s toilet by accident silly her haha! Inn kept drinking my damn green tea, she initially said how she didn’t like it, but eventually had a sip of mine, she definiteily liked it, whenever I looked the opposite direction from my tea she’s quickly get a sip of my damn tea! She did this quite a lot times, then Kazzie wanted to see what all the fuss was about so she started drinking my green tea too! Then it got to a point where it was either kazzie or inn stealing my green tea, I didn’t get my peace I had to constantly get refills from the waitress for them to drink it all up, Kazzie drinks quite a lot in one go too which meant I had to pester the people so many times. Even when i went to the toilet they actually got the waitress to refill my cup so they could drink from it!!! Grrr. We paid our bill after countless amounts of green tea consumage, I help paid for some of inn’s bill since I owe her money for lying about the price for Gem’s present (I swear I didn’t even get the money for it!). We were going to meet up with Popey at around 5 odd so we headed off to Camden Town for some shopping (well Inn and Kazzie wanted to shop anyway). We took a little detour and bought some additional krispy kremes too!

Saturday 4.30pm The Jamaican hat and booby apron

Shopping at Camden was a weird and also stupid experience, it was alright but you need to remember how much I loathe Camden Town for its worn out “alternative” feel. It was the home of little shits (emo, goth and the sub human categories) where they are able to buy identity kits. Speaking of which, Kazzie wanted to buy a spikey belt, wristband and some T shirts with whimsical sayings haha. And yes I did lecture her about it.

During one of the stall visits we found some aprons we could buy! Inn was supposed to buy one for the event but didn’t really have the time to buy one so today was a good opportunity to buy one for Popey to wear, we happened to stumble across one that has boobs attached to it and decided that we HAD to get it, it was only £6 so it was definitely a well spent investment and all.

At some random point I decided to put on a rastafarian hat and pretend I was Jamaican haha. Inn immediately took photos haha, there were also points where I tried on top hats but inn was far too slow to take photos before the guy said no photography allowed (well she was oblivious to the fact that the guy said it and only stopped when Kazzie told her not to).

We eventually met up with Popey, hiding the apron from his sight and then telling him that we bought him a Krispy Kreme but eventually I ate it which is why I only have a paper bag without the doughnuts, truth is Inn had it in her bag and all just to trick him, was quite fun. Popey made sure that he was getting the most out of the doughnut by sniffing it for a bit haha (I did that too but after eating it, it smelt so nice!).

We did some more browsing, me and Popey bought some freshly squeezed orange juice and went to Cyberdog to look around at crazy stuff. Everything was far too expensive for our likings though so we didn’t really buy much, we event went to that goth shop where inn wanted to buy some clothes. Actually it got to the point where inn kept stopping at shops which made us have to hang around and wait for her haha (Dont worry, I get my own back at the Apple Centre). After some hard shopping we went back to Brent Cross to get this BBQ thing started!

Saturday 6pm: Jamming at the mac store and 20 yakitoris

Once we were around Brent Cross I decided to stop at the Apple Centre JUST so we could play the fat man song. I was instantly recognised from my previous visit and they made me get on the keyboard to jam around haha! I suddenly was crowded around with loads of Apple Centre staff people listening to me play stuff, I did quite a lot of tracks including tetris (which people thought was “some russian song”), phantom of the opera (which was thought to be “some scary organ track”) and mario which someone actually knew what it was (though they thought the underground tune was the boss tune so they didn’t do their home work!) . The reason why people made such silly guesses? Well the songs they requested were…”some R’n'b tunes” and “Beethovens 5th”. The latter I can explain a bit more, I asked them “how does that go” and they said “I dont know” with a blank shrug. Bloody retarded chavy staff! I was hoping the more sophisticated types working at Apple Centre, not some retards who had no idea what quality songs I was playing! Popey Kazzie and Inn sort of stopped crowding around me and went on the Muse board whilst I was generating the crowd so sooner or later I decided it was time to leave (well to be honest I only left because someone turned down the volume when I was playing some pretty intense synth leads haha).

Our next trip was to Tesco’s to buy the BBQ stuff, me and Inn immediately knew what we wanted; quality quarter pounder burgers, chicken wings, onions and peppers, sausages and bacon, bread, breakfast stuff, tropicana, cloudy lemonade and cheese. Some additions included beer for the men (haha), steak for inn and Popey (they wanted to go all out with their steak and all), waffles for breakfast, some nando’s marinade and extra hot sauce since we had to buy raw chicken wings instead of ready to eat ones. Our most important purchase was the 20 sweet chill chicken kebabs, which we immediately called “Yakitoris” haha. This food was for the evening and the morning. Instead of working out bill splittings etc I just purchased the food with my card and asked everyone to pay later on (too much dilly dallying if they had done the splitting there) there were a few individual purchases so they were paid separately, including Popey and Inn’s steak and Popey’s 42p cupcakes which he was going to wager for my Canon 400d camera!

Popey refused to sort the food into the back so Inn shoved everything on Popey’s side (looks pretty silly) and we were off! We had gazebo’s to build and BBQ’s to make! During the car journey we took some nice photos including some car mirror shots, a shot of some random lonely tree and the “The NORTH” sign.

Saturday 8pm: Gazebo building, BBQ making and Smash Brother battles

Once we arrived back at Kazzies we instantly unloaded our food and took a photo of how much food we bought for the day, we then started having a go on the trampoline and began building the gazebo, me and Popey were in charge of doing it whilst inn just watched and took photos (don’t worry she gets a shitty job of cleaning the BBQ grills later on). It wasn’t too hard to follow. Most of the time when we were connecting the poles together we started battling out on them as if they were light sabres, we joked at how the instructions told you to test the durability of the poles by engaging in a light sabre battle with a friend and strictly telling you that you needed to make the sounds and everything in order for it to be a proper light sabre battle. Sooner or later our gazebo was built, it was a pretty big gazebo and we were really proud that our whimsical dream has actually became reality. Was surreal but satisfying at the same time.

I took some random helicopter shots which turned out pretty well, I basically made Kazzie look like a helicopter every time she jumped on the trampoline and made her do it at all angles, what we got was a spinning Kazzie that looked like she was flying from her helicopter spins haha.

Kazzie couldn’t find the charcoal I purchased last time we visited her house so it meant Popey and her had to quickly nip down and get it, me and Inn stayed to finish off cleaning the BBQ grills and to marinade the chicken wings. I wanted to use a meat cleaver to do this since I was literally cutting through bones and all but Kazzie didnt have it so it was a case of slowly cutting the bones with a normal knife. I used quite a lot of nando’s hot marinade as well as some extra hot peri peri sauce that I kept from the last bbq and some BBQ sauce just to add a bit more texture to the mix. The problem with marinading stuff is that you should really leave things over night since the stuff needs to get into the meat in order to taste anything inside the wings, but time wasn’t our friend so we had to make do with a quick marinade.

Popey and Kazzie arrived with the charcoal, we were ready to rock! We had loads of fire lighters this time so we were well prepared in ensuring that the BBQ would work this time. We eventually showed the apron to Popey and he was well chuffed at it, one of the funniest lines he said was “why does she have stumpy legs?”, not realising they were suspenders haha. The BBQ looked pretty good at this moment so we thought we’d just leave it and have our battle on Smash Brothers where my £500 Canon 400d camera and stu’s 42p cupcakes were on the line as wagers. The rules were simple, 5 lives, medium occurrence items, and Hyrule Temple. We picked our favorite characters (Me ness, Popey pikachu) and we battled…

The results were horrific, I thought Popey would have actually improved but I the moves were similar to the previous time we played, i was able to baseball bat him all over the place and dodge his lightening attacks, things were so much easier when you’re playing against one person so no doubt it was an easy victory for me. I was taunting him throughout the game by constantly falling off the screen and losing a life, the results were 5 ko’s (me KO’ing Popey) and 4 suicide deaths (me falling for the sake of taunting). So yeah, it was a pretty non intense game in which I defeated Popey :p haha, however to be fair he did make me worry that I wasn’t going to be able to defeat him this time and I had to actually hand him my camera so fair play on that!

Saturday 9:30pm The second BBQ

After the lovely victory we started our bbq and whacked on some cheap “ultimate” burgers from the frozen section of Tescos. It was always wise to shove in the shit food first and all haha. We also whacked on some yakitoris since they didn’t take too long too cook, the result was some crazy flames spewing out of the BBQ, I personally liked a bit of flame anyway, adds the texture and all. We eventually toasted with our nicely cooked burgers and continued to make some more burgers as well as eating yakitoris along the way. The yakitoris were godly! They actually tasted better than the ones at yo sushi (I confirm this at a later date), the funniest thing was that everytime we had a yakitori we should shout “yakitori” and someone would shout back “yakitori”. Twas quite funny, and similiar to earlier on when we hi5′d everytime we mentioned “yo sushi!” haha (just to piss Popey off since he loved it but didn’t get any).

We later on shoved the angus burgers into the BBQ as well as the rest of the yakitoris, the problem however was that the flames were beginning to die off. So once the food was cooked we decided that we needed more coal and heat. What does this mean? we had a SECOND BBQ (we did haha), not a separate one, just a new one with new coal and everything. This time we cooked the chicken wings, ribs, steaks and sausages.

The chicken wings were godly! I had once again done an awesome job in making some awesome hot and spicey chicken wings for me and Popey to eat, Inn couldn’t eat it due to her loss of spicey tolerance and kazzie had some chicken wings that didn’t have marinade on them. They were just godly!

Inn and Popey then shoved their steaks onto the BBQ and battled it out on who can have the rarest steak. Inn won by a long shot haha, I managed to have a little piece of steak that came off Popey’s piece haha, it tasted pretty awesome, though I didn’t really want to eat an entire steak myself since I was saving up for yakitoris as well as my chicken wings. The food and company was all good. We started putting streaky bacon into the BBQ too, I immediately thought of the idea of wrapping them with the sausages! It was a grand idea, bacon worked so well in BBQs I must say! We managed to do some guitar jamming during the evening too and sang along to some muse songs, I did do a few other songs but people had no idea of the lyrics, it was like they only knew Muse haha.

The rest of the evening was spent chilling, relaxing and talking. We continued our talks back to the living room and played some more smash brothers as well as wii. We went back to the whole me vs everyone battles on Smash Brothers since I was able to occasionally beat them at it, and it was only fair for me to play handicapped, it meant that instead of killing 5 pikachus, I had to kill 5 pikachus, 5 kirbys and 5 pichus. It was tedious! They’re whoop me at times but when I won I had my victory dance of defeating 3 people ganging up on me hehe.

Afterwards we played some wii tennis and bowling. Tennis was fun since people were just lying there and playing it rather than standing up and assuming the tennis position. Inn kept getting in the losing team which was funny haha, though she said her batteries were dying and all. Wii bowling was fun but Kazzie won again (damn her and her bowling haha). You got to love wii sports since its not about gaming skills anymore. It was around 4am that we were playing wii, Kazzie’s mum was a bit ill and was in bed all the time, she wasn’t too happy with the noises we were making during our battles, she’d text kazzie telling us to turn down the volume and all. Near the end when we got into bed Popey made a joke about farting in Kazzie’s face and everyone started to burst out laughing, inn in particular it was quite contiguous, Kazzie’s mum sent another text to Kazzie saying that was enough and that we should go sleep!

Later on that evening it got a bit hot so someone suggested in going outside and sleeping under the gazebo, Popey said no but I thought the idea was grand and decided to venture outside and sleep outside, it was a lovely warm evening so sleeping outside was alright. Then Popey and Kazzie followed with the idea haha, Popey however decided to sleep on the trampoline haha, Kazzie slept under the Gazebo too but later on the evening went back to sleep inside with inn! Meh! We soon settled in and got some sleep!

Sunday 6am: The 8am BBQ Breakfast

Like I mentioned before, I was pretty sensitive to light so I’d be awake in an instant when sunlight came shining onto my eyes, so around 6am I started to wake up, I felt like I couldn’t get any further sleep so I decided to pack up, and get ready for the day, I got changed, brushed my teeth and even went on the board. It was around 7am that Popey decided to wake up too, I told him we should get the BBQ started now for our breakfast since Inn had to catch her train back at 2.52pm. So eventually quietly got the BBQ set up and ready to go. We had a nice chat and drank some orange juice (I think Popey drank Lucozade haha). Popey began borrowing my camera and took some photos of stuff that morning too, once the BBQ was ready we started cooking the Sausages, once that was semi ready it was about 8am, we decided to wake people up… BAD IDEA…

Kazzie was sleeping like a log but inn was a light sleeper so she woke up pretty easily, we told her that we have breakfast ready but she told us to fuck off for waking her up at that kind of time haha. I wasn’t too bothered so we just let them have their sleep and continued to cook the food (since it would still take some time to cook). The sausages were nicely done around 8.30am but the heat was dying AGAIN! So yes, we had ANOTHER BBQ to cook the bacon and remaining sausages, we shoved the other sausages in the oven and let it warm up there.

It was around 9.30am where the food was ready where we decided to just make our (me and Popey) food first and let the girls either cook their food or something. I cooked the baked beans but used quite a high heat and resulted in some quite mushy beans haha. Popey kept whacking the beans back into the pot because he liked doing that to food (a bit Oliver Twist esque if that makes sense) . Eventually me and Popey had our food ready and ate it outside under the gazebo. It was a lovely BBQ breakfast, the orange juice in particular really gave the thing a kick.

Once we finished eating it was around 10am, we began cooking the other meats and decided to wake everyone up again, but once again inn wasn’t too pleased, she was still in a grumpy mood and said why did we cook the food haha, I think she was still oblivious to the fact that we decided to cook the breakfast in advance so everyone could enjoy a lovely breakfast as soon as they woke up. I guess you can understand that working people do need their sleep and all so I wasn’t too bothered about letting them getting more sleep and all. Me and popey were bored so we went on the muse board to look at the stuff, I left the meats to cook and put the stuff around the edges so it would cook slowly. In kazzie’s room I managed to do some CSS editing on stu’s blog since I didn’t like his sidebar link hovers haha. We then decided to play some New Super Mario Brothers. I got my DS lite out and found Kazzie’s DS Lite hanging around in the kitchen. I also took random photos of lamps and cupcakes, one in particular was a tribute to alice’s lamp pic:

It was a fun game since anyone could win at it, in this case Popey beat me ah well, I can’t win at everything. Kazzie woke up later on and got nice and tucked in with the food, her mum later on appeared and she had some of our breakfast food too. Kazzie enjoyed it quite a lot and waste grateful that we made it in advance. Inn was still asleep bless hehe. Around the time Kazzie finished her breakfast and was battling Popey at Mario, inn arrived and told how she didnt like being woken up at 8am, I told her that I woke up at 6am and just wanted to get the day started properly. She then went to take a bath or shower and said she’ll forgive us if we prepare her breakfast, since we were in the wrong a bit for waking her up at 8am (though we didn’t really set a time to wake up) I decided to make the meal for her (though most of it was ready anyway).

The bacon was extra extra crispy since we left it out for so long, I really should of left mine on the BBQ too
We went nuts on smash brothers again, this time I decided to make the damage ratio x2 which meant one hit can send someone flying to hell haha. Popey loved the new rule since he could occasionally beat me, Kazzie and Inn joined in and things got pretty intense, it was quite a challenge beating 3 people ganging up on you Sometimes I would win sometimes i didn’t however the last battle I managed to beat all 3 of them and left it like that.

We then tidied up and put the gazebo down. It was time to leave so kazzie drove us back to Watford Junction where we bought our tickets and went back home. Inn paniced a bit near the end since her train departed at 2.52pm and the train we took to Euston arrived at 2:44pm, she eventually missed the train however managed to get on the next one and avoid having to pay extra since the person just stamped it and didn’t notice the time. I had my lunch and went to my local Caffe Nero to chill out before going back home, was lovely :).

That was about it, I’m dreading silly for Wembley, so many people this time!

We decided to go watch Magicians (rather than 28 Weeks Later, I’ve sort of gone off that due to lack of original talent hehe). But yeah, we decided to piss about in Funland before the film, we booked our tickets and all (I was still Student oh yeah) Jason bought the tickets (and I bought the food later on). We felt like adults haha. We then went to the arcades and played Point Blank, was an awesome game, Jason only discovered it today, he enjoyed it quite a bit and yeah at 50p a game you cant really go wrong.

After that we went to watch Magicians, shockingly we were the only ones there! Well later on another couple turned up, was slightly homo erotic one might say haha. But yeah, the movie was really good. Not as gross as Peep Show but still nonetheless good. Not really a Shaun of the Dead / Hot Fuzz though, I dont think Magicians was that impressive as a movie when you compare it to the likes of Shaun of the Dead etc. Was fun seeing loads of Peep Show casts in the movie.

Afterwards we went to Yo Sushi for some Sushi, Jason was missing Japanese food from Japan so I thought it was the best place to go. We had chicken yakisoba straight away and then ate all sorts of japanese stuff, including Prawn Tempura! mmm, that was godly haha. We also had some fried chicken stuff, it was all nice and yummy. We had a very minimal amount of Sushi, just one prawn/tuna/salmon Nigri. We talked a lot about Japanese culture and it was pretty interesting. No singing sushi chef though Thats the only reason you spend £2 on 2 nigris instead of £1 at Wasabi’s. Ah well, the tempura was awesome enough to cover that.

Afterwards we went to loads of random shops in the rain haha, Jason told me to have a look a Abercrombie and Fitch, he explained how Rachel told him to go there and it was filled with women in Bikini’s and thumping techno music. OH HOW WAS HE WRONG! First thing we got was a topless man and thumping music. The paintings are homoerotic and everything else followed the same theme, immediately we left haha.

We also went to the Apple centre, I played some Logic Express, wasn’t too impressed by it to be honest, Xpand and Pro tools did the same job and all. But yeah, afterwards we went back to Wimbledon where we had a nice Frappe Latte and some hardcore DS battling (Elite Beat Agents). Jason met up with Rachel and yeah, she was too tired so they left and I went back home. Quite a nice day, I enjoyed the sushi in particular No photos sorry.

Anyway, main reason to meet up with Jason and Rachel was the fact that they have come back from Japan. Loads of stories to tell and all :). After the food ordering and slight use of homo erotica with me and Jason (we like teasing Rachel that Jason and I are a couple haha but its pretty fun), we got straight down to business and talked about stuff them two did in Japan.

Seems like they had loads of fun in Japan, quite a hectic one for them too since they were moving around hotels almost every day. They even stayed in the hotel used in Lost in Translation (I asked Rachel if she did the whole “Lip my stockings” thing with Jason haha). They went to all sorts of places including… STUDIO GHIBLI! I was gutted that they had went there! Though thankfully they had bought me some presents in the gift shop :D.

Jason and Rachel got me a DS Lite stylus (pink) which they got from those vending machines, as well as a Porco Rosso badge and Keyring I loved them (not too keen on Porco Rosso but nonetheless, its still awesome that its from Studio Ghibli so I’m no doubt going to treasure it)

They also went to a naked spa haha, Jason was talking to some random Japanese businessman type guy there, apparently the guy mentioned about how Japanese guy’s things…werent too big haha. How lovely. The whole journey seems like super fun, they were going to save up for another time to go to Japan AGAIN. I said I’m definitely going to come along that time. I want to see studio Ghibli

They bought alot of stuff from Japan, including DS games (which were disturbingly cheap), Jason had got himself a DS Lite after his trip to Japan to play his games so now we can have crazy battles, I advised him to get an M3 Simply so we can have proper battles on whatever games we had and all :D.

I tried some of the green olives on Rachel’s little bowl of Olives, Alice kept telling me to give them a go so I thought I’d have a taste at it, not bad I must say Going to buy some soon after.

After food and crazy sangria we were sort of told we had to leave since we had no food on our table and yeah, they were quite busy *shakes head*. We then walked around blockbusters and talked about random films, including Studio Ghibli ones. Jason and Rachel kept rubbing it in that they saw a Ghibli Museum exclusive short film when they were in Japan ;(. Was a fun night, afterwards I took a few photos of them and we said our goodbyes, quite a nice day and all

Jason told me to meet up with him at Russell Square where we would find a local Nando’s and just eat there before the gig. Jason and Rachel were working so we had to meetup right after their work and all. Both were slightly late. Rachel being the latest (about 40 minutes late!). Anyway, we went straight down to business and got to Nando’s in no time (was pretty easy to find one must say) I really should have met them there so I could just munch on food whilst waiting haha.

We talked about DS lites, their holiday they were planning on going, stuff that was happening (and stuff that wasn’t), and my DSLR camera. I told them my plan of smuggling the camera in my laptop bag. Theres a wee compartment in the back of the bag which looks like its just padding (but it has zips and everything for storing extra stuff). So yeah, I also showed them my new lens I got, I was planning on using that lens if I wasnt at the front of the stage. We managed to munch down our nando’s pretty quickly and spent quite some time talking and drinking bottomless fizzy drinks.

Eventually we made our way to the gig, Scala was pretty close from where we were at so that was good. We initially thought the band wouldnt have sold out and I would have easily bought my ticket on the door without the need of booking fee’s and p&p charges. Turns out I was wrong, Tilly and the Wall actually managed to sell out tonight! There was queue going on outside which meant we had to wait a bit. At this time the bottomless drinks had kicked in and I needed to use the bathroom, thankfully that desperation disappeared when we managed to swiftly get into the venue without much hassle. Jason did get some hassle though, the security guard said they werent allowed to bring bottled water into the gig, so jason had asked them to hold onto the bottle until he left the building, he even had a ticket for his bottle bless him!

I managed to smuggle my dslr camera in without any problems. After using the toilet, I met up with jason and rachel who were buying t shirts from the gig. We went down to the dance floor/stage and immediately I said we should goto the front and watch the gig. It was a pretty risky decision as the security guards can easily spot a dslr camera being used and all.

I was a bit nervous about bringing the dslr camera at such close proximity to the security guards, but I decided to risk it and only take photos when needed (not doing a Regina Spektor again where I get told off for going nuts on the flash!). Anyway, the support bands were alright, the first one was Kate Nash, apparently she was a friend of Lily Allen and has the same style as her and the notorious Regina Spektor (no idea why I called her notorious, perhaps she sings too fast that it offends people or something i dunno?) anyway, the second band were called the small ones or something haha. They were an american band and played pretty chirpy songs. At one point we REALLY thought they were going to play coca cobana! They had the bells and everything! Unfortunately they didn’t.

Anyway, most of the time I was perving over band photographer and their photo pit access. Though one thing I had to remember was the fact that they were only allowed to take photos of the band for a limited duration (usuaully 3 songs) then after that they would be ushered out of the pit by security. I think the security guard took more notice with the photographers then with my smuggled camera.

I noticed that most of them used 50mm prime lenses for their photographer, I’ve already read alot of reviews and positive comments about this lens (it was even recommended by this author of an lens guide article who had pretty much slagged off every cheap lens there was out there). So yeah, I’m pretty certain that this the next lens I was going to be getting since it’s faster then any lens I have right now and was a f1.8 lens. (£60 too!)

Eventually Tilly and the Wall came out… no not to play, but to set up their own gear!!! I was pretty shocked that they had to do it all themselves, the venue roadie was pretty much standing about doing nothing. Though jason did tell me that previously when they let the roadies do the gear and all, they’d fuck up and it ended up with the band themselves fixing it. I guess its useful knowing how to do your own gear but its not good for the fans to see you doing it yourselves hehe. Though you must remember that this was no ordinary band, this was a tap dancing band haha. They had to install their tap dancing booths JUST right in order to really show off the tap dancing and all. The main tap dancer had to put a metal plate over her large platform. Was fun watching her gaffa tape it all together on her own. I felt bad for the band but then again, they’re not THAT big and their setup is pretty complicated.

Once the gear was all set the band pretty much started.

Photographers on your marks, get set.. SHOOT!

As always, the photographers go nuts when the main act comes out and starts their first song (wouldnt blame them, thats their third to last song they can have photo pit access to haha). I was doing some pretty discrete shots since I really didnt want to get caught, more photographers arrived on the scene and it was a hectic slush of photographers in the pit (as always).

At one point of the gig they played a new song in which the singer had forgotten the lines, that was pretty funny. The tap dancing was amazing. Its pretty cool how the tap dancer was doing it right in front of me, waas like my very own dancer haha. The second song they played was Fell down the stairs, that was pretty much my favorite song so it was nice to hear that.

The stage was pretty dark I must say, taking photos of the people on the right was hard, my lens wasnt wide enough to take a whole band photo so that was a bummer too. This was where I began playing about with settings too. At times I had to surrender to the camera and use ISO 1600 which took some slightly grainy shots but most of the time I was stuck on ISO 800.

The photos were pretty nice

Notice the third shot has a bit of light. Those are the fortunate shots you take where another photographer went nuts on flash and you’re using their light to take a nice photo haha. They were pretty sharp photos I must say

They even did some synchronised dancing at some point. I was really enjoying the gig and at the same time, enjoying taking photos of them.

The band did an encore of “requested” songs in which they pretty much pretended to hear what the fans said haha. Looking at the setlist they pretty much stuck to what was on there rather then listen to the fans. It was fun, the term used for it is “selective hearing” when you hear only one person suggest the song you already had in mind :p.

The ended with Night of the Living dead in which it was joined in with the support bands. The stage was pretty much invaded and mental looking haha. Hoepfully the last photo shows how mental it was.

I was really happy about the photos for the gig, I managed to juice out a whole gig worth of photos and also got the setlist (and guitar pick which i gave to jason) which was an added bonus.

And yeah, that was pretty much it, Rachel tried using the camera a few times and was jealous of the photos I had taken hehe (she tried taking some on her mobile and all bless).

our journey back was quite fun, since Rachel lives in Wimbledon it was quite an cosy journey back (ie I had company haha). I immediately reviewed the photos when I got home and deleted whatever I thought wasn’t “flickr quality” haha. I mananged to figure out a new system for my band photography in which I would only take a limited amount of photos, I made the number the same as the number of photos a 35mm film would store. inn said that was 32 but later on i found out it was 36. So yeah, I managed to squeeze the best photos from that gig and upload them to flickr. They’re pretty nice and varied so overall I was pretty proud of them :).

It was suppose to be for my mum (she gave me the mulla to buy it and all) but somehow I just got a bit excited and installed it on my room, was hoping to squat on the LCD for a bit but my mum gave in so now this TV is MINE mwahahah. I can do picture in picture (hence the muse board at the corner) as well as using it for hdtv, wii (with composite ports) and other stuff. Its an awesome LCD TV despite being a random and unknown brand. I only bought it since Jason recommended me it and said alot of people have reviewed it and said it was good (and it damn well is).