dissonance

Haggis is not on the itinerary

I am so dunzo with work right now.  In about 16 hours I'm going to be off to Scotland for a much anticipated week long trip.  The trip as planned:

- Saturday through Monday in Alloa and Stirling to visit Craig's parents and castles (not his parents' castles, just castles in Stirling).

- Tuesday in Edinburgh to see the town and more castles.

- Wednesday in Glasgow for bit of shopping and my first live football game (mon da Killies!)

- Thursday and Friday a little snowboarding up in the Scottish mountains, woohooooooooooo!!!

- Friday evening and Saturday in Irvine (pronounced ervin) to visit Craig's friends.

- Saturday back in Glasgow to catch Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah (*clap* Yeah!)

- And finally back in The South Sunday evening.

Hmm what else....

Oh yeah, I have to move again.

Sigh.

Cold snnnnnnap!

In stark contrast to this 3 months ago, I was greeted this morning by this:

This Californian was most amused.

That is, I was amused for about a minute before I had to walk through it and proceeded to almost slip and crack my skull about 5 times on the way to the train station and then had to wait 30 minutes in the cold stuff for the shuttle that was late.  Durhhh, I'm already ready for summer.

This past weekend I went up to Liverpool (my friend Mike's hometown) and it was pretty cool to experience a "real city".  Reading, where I live, is really just a busy town and Liverpool had a lot more to offer.  Plus, did you know it's the home of The Beatles?

That's The Cavern where they began their career.

Most of the weekend was spent visiting various pubs and clubs... from hazy recollection I think we hit up about 5 places in one night.  I learned about the "Quad Vod" which is basically 4 shots of vodka and a can of RedBull.  What made me laugh was that the 4 shots were served in two separate cups (one shotglass inside a regular glass) because they're not allowed to serve more than a double in a cup.  I don't think they're fooling anyone.

Here are pics from a random pub that look almost artsy-ish but really it's cause it's on a camera phone:

And on the way home on Sunday, I was perplexed by the VAST NUMBERS of cones on the road:

It was like that for stretches of miles and they didn't seem to serve any purpose as far as I could tell.  Craig says that Sunday's are The Cones' Day Out.  I guess it's nice they try and get fresh air.

AQA answers are coming. I'd actually like to see some more questions. I said I'd pick three but when there's only 4 it's hard cause that 4th one left out may seem personal.

Curry is also better

I'm really enjoying living abroad, but to be perfectly honest, I haven't found much that's better here than in the states (it's more expensive, delivery is a joke, cold, shops close early...)  But finally, I have found something where they have an edge.  It's a handy/amusing service called AQA.  AQA stands for Any Question Answered and it's basically that.  You SMS a question to 63336 (only in the UK) and they text you back the answer.

Some questions we've asked recently:
What is the most popular car color in the UK? I think they said blue.
What country has the biggest breasted females? The UK has the largest natural breasts, but if you count surgical enhancements you get America.
What is 'Scottish' in Korean? We actually stumped them for a while with this one and we texted twice and they finally came back with saying Koreans don't actually have a word for Scottish but a singular term for British, "Young-guk".
What's easier to catch, a chicken or a duck? A chicken since a duck can fly. (You'd think this was obvious but you shoulda heard the debate that sparked bringing AQA into it)
What is the origin of the phrase "taking the piss"? Factory workers used to piss in a bucket and the unlucky guy had to empty it at the end of the day.
I am thinking of a cartoon movie with dinosaurs. What is it? Land Before Time.

Pretty impressive stuff and easily addicting (thank goodness I never see a phone bill!)

So, my fellow Americans, until you get to enjoy something similar over there, I invite you to enjoy this vicariously. What question would you ask?  I'll post the answers to the top 3 (chosen by me based on subjective factors of funny/interesting/weird) on my next post.

I promise that my next post won't take me two weeks.

Too late for Happy New Year but whatever, Happy New Year!

I'm back from holiday and just thought I'd finally check in because I've been getting a week bit nudged about my lack of updatees, But dood, I've been on vacation for two weeks with no internet. Can you please feel properly sorry for me and excuse my absence?

Actually you don't have to feel sorry for me cause I'm going to leave you with a half-arsed update and just point you to the album where you should focus on the last dozen or so pics that look unfamiliar to you.  In fact, I'm going to ask that you check on it often as I'm going to probably add to it as I get more pics from friends.  I promise no more additions past, oh... let's say March.

Instead of an update that actually requires what I consider work, I'm going to share with y'all some mental insights I had on the plane tonight.  I just came back from Helsinki and in case you can't tell, I consumed about three gratis (plastic) bottles of red wine (chilean!) on the flight.

So here we go:

Phrases Banned from Use Until Proven the User Can Apply them in a Coherent and Competent Manner

Phrase the first: Web Two Point Oh
This is just retarded. No one released Web 1.0 or even Internet 1.1 Beta.  The internet is in a constant state of flux and the YouTube, SOAP, AJAX, Del.icio.us, stuff out there now (as cool as it is) is just the web becoming more useful than that link based, table usage, AOL chatroom shit we had to put up with before.  We are in the midst of Web 2.0 as much as we are in the midst of Earth 10.8. Get over it, Web X.X is here before you know it so stop analyzing the bus stop and instead anticipate your destination.  So forget about using them in a coherent and competent manner. I think no one should use this term ever.  So there.

Phrase the second: Irony
You know what? I can't even be arsed to explain irony correctly. Let's just say that 88% of the population doesn't use it correctly and a 12% failure rate is enough to ban the term.   The phrase you are looking for is most likely "coincidental" or perhaps "unfortunate".  So just don't even start with the "wow that's ironic" because it is not.

===

And that's all the phrases I came up with.  Listen, the wine was in plastic bottles and although it was Chilean I was on a Finnish airline so coming up with that much is, in my opinion, commendable.  If it weren't for the fact that a cab was waiting for me, I'd say ending up on my bed with my laptop before me qualifies as a miracle.  As it is, it is only a minor feat that deserves a small printout certificate.

Happy New Year. It goes without saying that resolutions have been vetoed for this year (although I just said it now, didn't I?) so I'd just like to say that I hope for 2007 I stay true to myself even if it means I don't undergo self-improvement or resolutionment.