You're so pretty and I'm so stupid...

This was Reuben's lyric that was playing to me on the bus in to work on Monday morning, this first sober morning which could be spent reflecting on the drunken adventures into Liquid - premier nightclub in Shrewsbury. Described by this guy Simon it's "...a bit like a prison". In despite of that, I was fortunate enough to meet two attractive girls on Saturday eve and Reuben were giving possibly the most concise summation of all (and I mean all) my crushes to date.

The plan of the evening was to go out for drinks in celebration of my mate Fletch's recent birthday. Off into Shrewsbury we went and bumping into Simon and Mark who I met the last time I was back in Shropshire on a fun camping adventure. They mentioned that they were heading to Liquid and whilst we make a quick detour where I once again got my glasses knocked off my face (man, the argument for contacts has never looked stronger), we headed over to Liquid to join the masses.

A digital camera is either a dangerous thing or a source of cliched snaps, and there was probably a healthy amount of both. There are many pictures of the evening now circling facebook - all I know is that I must have been pretty wasted as a. I can't remember the majority of these pics or time spent in liquid and b. I was pretty much giving the same, muppet-nobend-"I want to demonstrate how much of a good time I'm having" poses i.e. either sticking my tongue out, giving the horns, or both.

Moving on to the meat of this post and back to the two crushes I gained that night - my only wish is that I remembered more of the time in Liquid, for the majority of it, all I have to go on are these pics on facebook. One in particular involves Kym, the first of the crushes I would like to discuss, pretty much exposing her breasts with me giving the tongue and horns to the camera (again). Now I wish I could remember if there was anything I did to motivate this pic or whether it was just, hey it's a camera, let's do something kerazee. There are many comments saying that she exposed a nipple and the evidence I would argue is pretty conclusive, bless them the people that commented saying "I think we can see your boob Kym" - what they actually meant to say was nipple plus the fact is you could see the majority of them for the whole evening, which is probably the main (possible read: only) reason I was crushing on her; that and maybe the fact she had red hair, I blame Diggnation for the potential brainwashing, it seems all red haired laydees are now v attractive. That, or as I'm going to attempt to rationally argue that having very brightly coloured hair is very eye-catching, much like if a girl is wearing bright colours in the gym, they more often than not catch my eye. (I may have got away with it...)

Some of the few memories I had did involve telling Kelly that she looked really cute in a photo I took - she dismissed it of course, which is also a shame. As I've already discussed with my good friend Wilson, I put all my eggs in what turned out to be the wrong basket, and concentrated on Kym. At one point I remember asking her if she was single, to which she made the inductive step and replied that she's not interested. Well, it stunned me a little (surprisingly) to which led to a swappage of messages entered into our phones - the terrible thing is I cannot remember her response, although it was cool that she felt the need to explain herself more. It was probably along the lines of you're not my type, you're a nice guy an' all, the same old BS. Basically the only thing we had to go on was the physical attraction, impossible to hold a proper conversation in Liquid. It was a simple conflict of interests - I was very much interested in her, but she did not reciprocate, it's a common situation, and strangely enough I was cool with it.

And as I said, I can't remember a lot else at Liquid, except visiting the bar several times with Fletch to consume more shots with him, only for it to backfire and cause me to not be able to remember anything, really regretting that. That being said, it can't have been *too* bad, a lot of people I met there have since befriended me on facebook, so that's all cool. Actually, Kelly friended me and not the other way round. After being a little nosy checking out her profile, turns out that all the music she has listed I also like, so I actually have more in common with her, plus she's facially more attractive than Kym, and that's probably the largest check box of mine (to be rational and slightly cold for a moment).

Anyways, I need to message up Kelly if I can just put aside five minutes where I'm not getting completely distracted with something else. To bring it full circle, Reuben chanting away "You're so pretty and I'm so stupid", just reminded me like a sobering slap across the face, I've never (and I mean, never) have been properly intimate with a crush of mine, and that sucks, I mean, that really sucks.
I ask myself, perhaps these girls are only crushes as I determine them to be out of my league, and/or I get a serious case of bad nerves/hesitation (speaking of which, how is everyone enjoying the podcast? Oh no wait, I still haven't started recording any eps arg!)

I could go on, but it's late and I don't quite feel up to unravelling my inadequacies here. I'm sure there will be another time, but until then I'll be occasionally visiting places like Liquid doing my mock-dancing thang where noone understands it's done to be ironic, waiting for you to give me a smile.

#9 Lost by name, Lost by nature

So I altered my LoveFilm queue to introduce games back into the mix. I have about 10 games in the "games" queue (how did I ever come up with that name?!), most are to boost my gamerscore with easy achievements and others are games which I've been meaning to try but don't really want to fork out the cash for. Now, what I was hoping to get was the new Civilization Revolutions, but instead I got Lost: Via Domus.

Now, first off this game is unsuitable for anyone who is not a fan of Lost. I will also say that you're got to be pretty familiar with the main events of the story, because this game visits them but does not explain a lot of the exposition required to fully understand how the people in the fiction got from A to B. I'll try and keep the spoilers down but no promises.

So first off, what genre does the Lost game fall into? I hear you cry. Well it probably fits under the RPG category, although part of me wants to be bold and say it's reminiscent of the point and click adventures of yesteryear but more about that later.

Imagine if a secondary school student wrote some really bad fan fiction set in the Lost universe and that is the level of sophistication we're talking here

Speaking of yesteryear, that links me smoothly onto the visuals, and there is something horribly prev-gen about this game. Granted the environments are adequately rendered, nothing amazing for this generation, and technically quite small and constrictive, get ready to meet your old friend, Mr invisible wall.
Moving on, and the main motivation for playing the game is of course the excitement brought about from being dropped into the Lost universe. Want to play Jack or Kate? Bad luck I'm sorry, you play some side character just to ensure that the plot laid out in the TV show remains untouched.
Looking at the characters in more depth, and this is where you would hope the game would excel, capturing the likeness and personality of the characters you've all enjoying watching. Sadly, that isn't the case. To be fair the characters in-game are recognisable against their real-life counterparts, but a lot more work could have been put in, particularly with the animation of the characters; the horrible head bobs and jerky hand/arm gestures accompany every sentence, and don't get me started on the speech. As if I haven't knocked this poor game enough already, the game creators were not able to get all the original voice talent, the actual dialogue in this game is terribly woeful. Imagine if a secondary school student wrote some really bad fan fiction set in the Lost universe and that is the level of sophistication we're talking here. It might be an unfair comparison but the game is similar in pacing to Mass Effect, where there are extended conversation sections and then action set-pieces. Where Mass Effect has some of the most realistic facial animations, sophisticated dialogue trees and genuinely deep and interesting characters, Lost has none. It's pretty lame (but useful when in a hurry), that there is a tab of dialogue options which will guarantee that your progress in the current episode moves ahead. Don't bother with the other crap...

Hilariously there was this interchange where I was asking Sawyer to trade, and he would first go: "Do you want to trade or what? I haven't got all day?" ...to which I cancelled and Sawyer departs saying, "I'm here all day." WTF. Little screwy.

Your character is a journalist, I won't go into any more detail for those who still want to play after how I slated it just, but it does allow for some photo-taking gameplay - the most interesting of which being the flashbacks where you have to snap the correct photo from a torn up photograph. Shame, it is a little too easy, especially when the flashbacks last about a minute and you seemingly have as many do-overs as you need. Other noteworthy photo opportunities are clearly signposted by the object being labelled with a button press and some popup text "...might be worth photo..." - you're right!

The other core gameplay revolves around some action! yeah! The parts in between the hatch, black rock etc involve moving from marker to marker and have them point out the direction you need to travel, so there's no real exploration of the island. There's also the black smoke you come across, and in the tamer moments, you simply hop into the large reeds to hide - it was used like once or twice in the show so that's enough justification to have many of these spots equidistant from each other, how convenient! The action really hots up in the "chase scenes" which actually is very reminiscent of Crash Bandicoot levels I remember from the PS one days. You have the option to either jump a log or slide under a err... log. The only difference between this and Crash is that you're running away from the camera and not into it, so it's even easier, sigh.

I've slated the game, but there are *a few* pluses. If you can get over the bad writing, then this is technically the best Lost game out there (as it's the only one!), so for super die-hard fans that want to absorb anything Lost related, then this is a must have. When starting each new episode, the game offers a flashback FMV sequence, very much like the show, especially with the immortal slow-floating "LOST" moving close and eventually past the camera - the presentation here is very slick so that's pretty cool. The main character Elliot (mini-spoiler) has had a lot of attention, particularly facially, and is therefore arguably the best modelled character, it's a shame that the characters you actually care about haven't had as much care taken.

In closing, The game is pretty thin on the ground, and probably lives up to the low expectations which are given to licenced games like these. Being a fan of Lost, I had to give it a try, again not expecting a great deal. I could go on but in short the writing's a bit sucky, the game mechanics very simple, but look it as a fairly comfortable 900-1000 achievement points as I did and you might actually come away with something from it.

I want to get away (I want to fly away)

For those clever people, the above is indeed a lyric from the well known Lenny Kravitz song. It should be relevant to a post which has been on the backburner for some time but finally throwing it out there - that is my respect and admiration for those that document these epic journeys, sometimes not even for sightseeing purposes but for raising money for good causes and how I am very jealous of discovering lands anew.

The first thing I saw/read that got me very interested in travelling the globe was reading the travel fiction of Bill Bryson. It's not just the travelling but the whole lifestyle as well. Basically Mr. Bryson would go travelling somewhere with the only limitation being that he would have to produce a book at the end of it. That being said, not everyone can write books like he does, but man what a cool life to live. Just think how great this blog would be if it was something that I did full time, and not throw in 5 minutes here and there.

I also checked out the show A Long Way Down starring Ewan McGregor and his good friend Charley Boorman travelled from Scotland to South Africa on a pair of bikes, followed by a TV crew. They were raising awareness for a number of charities and also had a number of charity events scheduled along the way, but the rest was all unplanned, meeting people, visiting cool places along the way - it was actually very entertaining and interesting television. A lot of times they did grumble about the trip in the "end of day diary" sessions but as they would probably tell you, the good times on the trip clearly outweigh the bad times, or at least that's what it looked like watching.

It's weird that whilst I'm quite scared of the unknown, the main reason why I hesitate such a lot, but I've always really liked the idea of travel, although I could not do it like what my mate Adam did, you can read some of his travels (and check out some pics) over at www.adamswonderfultravels.blogspot.com. He went all over the Far East and I believe he's planning on heading back out to Japan this time. I have a lot of respect for that, to have the motivation to just get on a plane all on your lonesome and go see these faraway parts of the world - it is very cool.

Another charity effort which is a bit closer to myself is the efforts of some of Adam's family. His brother and dad along with some of his dad's friends did something very much like A Long Way Down but on a smaller scale - the aim was to visit 8 capital cities in 8 days on trikes, whilst raising money for the Alzheimer's Society and the NSPCC. The blog and links to help donate can be found over at www.g8globaltour.blogspot.com.

I've always thought that once I am driving, I would be keen on going on epic road trips. My friend Chris Simms from Uni told me stories of the road trip he did down the west coast of America, visiting places like LA and Vegas, damn I was so envious. I would like to go on a road trip round the British Isles to start possibly, before going on an epic trip round America and/or Australia, very much like Bill Bryson above.

Anyways, this is a quick post to highlight some of the efforts which I admire and respect and maybe one day I'll do something similar. Like some of the examples above, I think if I could get some kind of fundraising element into the whole thing, then that would be cool as at least that way someone else benefits from my selfish desire to see the world.

Here's thinking of making all blog posts have song lyrics as their titles.

I'm a drug user f*ck the police! ...2!

The alternative title being "The Le Mans BBQ" but that doesn't get the curiousity tingling as much does it?

Anyways, a while back I wrote about my very first drug experience here. I was invited to a BBQ for the Le Mans 24 Hour race weekend, and there I took my drug experiences upto the grand number of two OMG! But first, the Le Mans BBQ, and what was a thoroughly enjoyable weekend.

It has become a yearly tradition for Will to host a BBQ for the Le Mans 24 hour race. I was invited last year but other commitments meant I couldn't make it, but when the invitation came round this year, I firmly declared my intent of attendance. Now, Will himself will admit far too easily that the timing of the BBQ for Le Mans is basically a wafer thin premise for a piss-up weekend. Looking back, I think we *just about* managed to catch the start and we watched for some extended periods the day after when we were all too tired and hungover to try and do anything else, but you're probably asking what has this got to do with drugs?!?

To go back to the start, there is a National Express bus stop literally a stone's throw away from Will's new place, so the travel down was pretty much pre-determined. I got a National Express coach down from Birmingham, and wow are the National Express coaches awesome. Very large and comfortable seats, with ample leg room which is good for me as whilst I might not be the tallest I do tend to slouch in the chairs. Along with that, they had those infamous circular air con fans along the immediate ceiling, and unlike all the school trips I went on in my youth, the air con was impressive, I was not reqwuired to hold my head within millimetres of the fan to experience a weak breeze, so I was mucho chuffed with that as well.

Dropped some of my stuff over at Will's before heading over to his parent's place for the actual BBQ itself and I promptly made a start on the drinking. To mix up festivities I took along Rock Band minus the drums, so we had 3/4 the fun. Despite the lack of drums, it has proven to be a game that literally anyone can come in and have fun.
What with it being a glorious day we also went and played some American Football, I was hoping for regular footie but it was still pretty cool - I scored the first touchdown but my team lost in the end :(. As I discovered the day after, I took a knock to my ribs, thought it may have been broken but was assured that I had just bruised the muscle. It took like 2 weeks for it to stop hurting when I put pressure on it or twisted it. That was pretty lame as it really interfered with my sleep at first but thankfully that's all cleared up now.

Moving on to the drugs itself and as the BBQ was starting to kick off, this guy Lee (back in the day he was known as Chem Soc Lee, giving it an oriental twist ), who has become a renowned "druggie" as my Nan would pigeonhole, started passing round a joint. I found it a little humourous (although not enough to throw out a snigger) that this girl Claire (very cute btw) passed on the offer which left it to me where I took a few drags, only for her to proceed to do so as well when I passed it on.
Interspersing the yummy food (did I ever say BBQs are awesome?) I had a few more smokes with Lee; getting in to the evening and I popped out for a smoke, so there's just me and Lee there and he asks me if I've ever done ecstacy.

...I was quoting Scrubs where Carla asked Turk to see I love you just like Astro the Dog, so there's me going "Raggy! Raggy! I Wuv you! ...RAGGY! Where are you!"

I replied no, but I was incredibly curious and empowered thanks to a sense of being a combination of merry and high, that I was not going to back down on this opportunity that had presented itself. I was asking what were the side effects I was likely to experience, in particular how badly I was going to crash. Lee could have told me my foot was going to drop off, and I would still have gone through with it, I was that made up in my mind.

Now, Lee actually told me to make the open can of the 'bow I had my last one in order to enoy the E I had just done, but I kinda went against that advice. Now it's supposed to be experienced best at clubs with loud dance music banging away - it made me wonder if there wasn't a rather large placebo effect, or perhaps I was expecting a much greater effect. We popped inside, grabbing some food, sat down some people with rocking out on Rock Band. For some strange reason, I felt the need to do a Scooby Doo impression, aided greatly by a mouthful of burger. It was either that and/or I was quoting Scrubs where Carla asked Turk to see I love you just like Astro the Dog, so there's me going "Raggy! Raggy! I Wuv you! ...RAGGY! Where are you!" I remember it very distinctively, only cos Lee absolutely lost it, to which I kept on going - he was holding his sides by the end of it, I was laughing cos he cracked up so much over it, everyone else looking slightly confused and intrigued to what could have been so funny.

I did bother Lee to perhaps try some more, but the first taste was on the house and he wanted some money for any more. In fact, it seemed like he called pretty much everyone in his phonebook to see if they wanted to come along to the BBQ and purchase some drugs from him - bear in mind at this time it must have easily have been around midnight, if not later :s

In reflection, there is a big environmental factor to the experience gained from E, that was the general consensus I learnt, so it's difficult for me to say whether it was a good or bad experience. That being said, Bill Hicks perhaps has the greatest argument on drugs. He goes on to say that he's had both good times and bad with drugs, but will he give them up? No, his argument being that he's had both good times and bad times with women, but he's definitely not going to give up pussy. Bad experiences are there to build character or so they say.
I am a well-renowned hesitator (so much so I was going to throw out a whole post on it but I binned it) in pretty much all parts of my life, from telling people how I really feel to crossing the street, but it's strange (but satisfying) that I have taken both opportunities for drug-taking. A part of me thinks that I could get into the semi-habit of smoking weed, if only to de-stress from time to time. Thankfully for my health (and my wallet) I am not that well-connected, which is the main reason why I'm making such a deal out of these experiences, as alluded to in part 1.

Other little nuggets about the weekend, I learnt how to play the darts game "Killer", very cool game, very much like Uno where you can get so close to winning and then have it snatched away from you just with less cards and more darts I guess. Also, Will still owns me at Call of Duty multiplayer, especially with low numbers where it becomes a game of waiting and biding your time - I simply don't have enough patience for that - enter me going for many suicide runs down the streets only to get picked off by Will who has been patiently looking out a particular window, waiting for me to break, arg!

(Is anyone else tired of the constant bracket text?)

Lately I'm getting better / Wish I could stay sick with you

This is the first work-related post I've made since the "First day" post. Having checked Google Analytics, it's interesting to see what search terms lead people to my blog. Someone found the blog after having typed "prestwood professional" into Google - I can only wonder what they thought upon reading this :s. It's probably best to take this opportunity and say that any thoughts expressed within are purely my own and are not linked to any organisations etc etc.
Now the legalities are out of the way, we can get down to business, and the bone I want to pick concerning the health of my work colleagues (I love the phrase "work colleagues").

I've avoided posting about work for the above reason and the potential rant floodgate which once opened I would find very hard to close. First off, it's best to give a little background. The company is pretty small, there's actually only about a dozen of us, including part-timers, and the core is made up of 6(ish) support staff which I am one of.  It seems like people are coming down with colds and flu all the time.  These people are very poor immune systems, Simon for one has had this chest-infection type problem for as long as I can remember.  I always shudder when he makes this horrible throaty, regurgitating noise when he clears his throat - he really should get that looked at, seriously.

Now I'm pretty sure I've never had to call in sick and skip days, I had some problems with my teeth so I had to take a couple of afternoons off, that was pretty lame but necessary. The question is what is different about myself and seemingly everyone else on the support team. I wondered if it was my diet, but dismissed that straight away as whilst I've been trying to improve my diet, it's still pretty crappy when you break it down.
You could argue that it might because the job itself is not particularily active, a lot of sitting in front of computers all day, but it's the same for me too so it can't be that either.

I was ranting to my Nan about this one day and I think she nailed it. I am the only one that doesn't drive into work, therefore I walk a fair distance, although I've yet to plot it accurately on Google maps (or indeed any other map) but when I had a quick look at the aforementioned pr0 site, I approximate my walking to be about 3 miles a day. It can't be that simple I said, but on the face of it, that is the main obvious difference. So my inability to drive is both a blessing and a curse.

There's also the possibility that my co-workers (another great term) are quite wimpish when they become a little under the weather. Everyone seems quite lax and comfortable with taking time off. The silver lining is reading the "calling in sick" emails that get sent in - some of them are really hilarious, part of one I remember used the phrase "flu-like way".

Here's hoping it is never anything really serious or else I may have to start believing the sick notes...

Some gym motivation tips

Been a bit lazy on the blog recently, I blame my recent birthday and the rather cool celebrations that went down last weekend. Yes, for those that are interested I have now reached the ripe old age of 23 - pretty scary stuff, I'll be hitting 30 before I knows it.
Anyways, moving on and I thought I'd throw out some gym motivation tips, especially if like me your wardrobe is in serious need of a cold reset.

The first method of motivation I will detail here is the power of wearing old clothes that don't fit anymore due to all the weight you've lost on the treadmill/rower/bike machine etc. I was wearing some old jeans the other day and I because I was staying in and catching up on some hardcore tidying (soaking ftw!) I didn't feel the need to accessorise with a belt. But thanks to the inches lost on the belly, the jeans kept falling down, leading me first to walk around a bit like a cowboy in an effort to keep them up, finally resulting in conceding and applying a belt.

So that was looking back at the progress made, I remember a pair of shorts I got a few years back I purchased cos they were very cool (Saltrock shorts I believe...) but even back then they were a little tight. I wore them the other week for the first time since last Summer and was shocked at how much looser they appear now. Whilst that's great looking at past achievements, the contrary to the above is to look ahead to the future, what work still needs to be done? This is done by wearing a tee-shirt/sweater etc that is perhaps just a little too small. That way if you catch yourself in a mirror, you're immediately shocked by the less-than-perfect bump you've got going on for a belly (in my case at least). Whilst this can be potentially damaging.

...leading me first to walk around a bit like a cowboy in an effort to keep them up...

"After all this work I still look terrible" are examples of the thoughts, you really do have to think of it as a journey. I for one were thinking the same thoughts when I started, and sometimes, yeah, those same thoughts trickle back in, and I find that good motivation - it doesn't work for everyone. Basically I'll reach a point that I am happy with - I won't turn into some body builder type, I simply don't have enough time (or the desire for that particular look) for all that.

The thing with the gym is that is really is a battle of discipline and then attrition. Discipline is required to make yourself go on a regular basis and then attrition where if you go long enough, you will see the positives of your efforts. That being said I did set a goal of getting into shape that I'm very comfortable and happy with by the time I turned 23. I have missed that goal in my mind, although again the progress made is very encouraging, friends and family alike are commenting on how much better I look now - those shallow bastards! :P