Thursday 11 March 2010

How the dinosaurs really died...

Requested by Ricky. Yes I realise my paint skills are quite amazing. Here is my theory on what caused the K-T mass extinction - Aliens! As you can see the catalyst cannon fired and resulted in a chain reaction that disrupted the lava plugs in volcanoes, thus causing them to erupt around the world - it could even be true!

Monday 8 March 2010

Movie Night or what?

This is the story of what was meant to be a simple movie night where the plan was to watch Gladiator - something that was clearly not meant to be simple in any way yet still turned out...interesting.

Off I went to Wilson house at around 7pm (left 1h late) and walked across Hyde Park in the dark - before it was closed - dangerous to go in after it closes (lots of gays, weirdos and rapists: not fun). When I finally arrived at around 8 on what seemed like a very long trek and a few askings of random people in the streets for directions, I let myself in only to find I was infact, late, but not the latest so it's all good.

The initial plan was to watch the film there and then but unfortunately the TV room was full thus we decided dinner was clearly the wiser and tastier option. This included noodles cooked by Matt, some really good rice-meat mixture by Soo and something else that evades my memory by Rodrigo (he also made a banana cake). While this was going on I was having a tour of what can only be called a Warren due to the complicatedness of its corridors, outdoors-parts, stairs and numerous doors. During the tour I was introduced to the game ping pong cricket by Lucy who arguably throws in a very scary way (i.e. fast and straight)! Having played a game of that we settled for dinner which was followed by some Pimms, WKD and Port.

Ofcourse, the people downstairs were still busy watching a film so we decided to go back to the Ping-Pong room and have some play offs. This would have been fine were it not for the fact that 1) it was 1am and 2)we had discovered some bins that were used to hold the balls and decided to use them as drums. As you may well have guessed, someone heard and came in to give us a piece of his mind: "Will you shut the F*** up!!!". Personally I found this quite funny but we decided to vacate to the games room where we found a Gamecube and... Super Smash Bros!!! This we played for until the owners came back, packed it up and went to bed - no fair!

At this point we considered watching Gladiator on a laptop but to our great luck the TV room was finally open - at 2am or something. As you can imagine the film watching commensed in earnest and the film finished at 4ish (yes it was awesome). As getting back to my halls would've taken about 2hours to walk I decided to wait until the tube station opened at 5am to catch one back...however the tube I was going to catch was cancelled due to 'work for the Olympics'. This meant I had to catch a different tube that was across the road *phew* down to Piccadily Circus before catching the Piccadily line down to Gloucester Road. On exiting the station I saw a rather dodgy scene at around 6am: a very drunk girl with a friend (not sure as to the sex) who were being followed by a 30-40+ arab looking man who was calling after them. Talk about a stalker. When I had passed them and looked back this man was actually right up and gropeing her - I guess this is why you hear creepy stories.

The final part of the story was when I reached my halls at 6:30 and came to the horrible, tiring conclusion that I could not infact sleep due to Paintball...at 7am!

Thursday 4 March 2010

Weekend at Bath

As you may have read from Jamie's blog I went to Bath last weekend for what in no small terms can only be considered an epic weekend. It started with a brief trip on the tube, then a hop onto a train at Paddington to Bath Spa.

The first night we met up with Fiona and Mcgreal in the kitchen where we had a conversation on the awesomeness of the Command & Conquer series which went from the beginning of the Tiberium Saga to the Red Alert Saga and our disapproval for Generals Saga. This detailed the different units available for use and the plotlines behind them; culminating in the watching (on youtube) of what is undoubtedly a childhood memory we have never forgotten: the Hell March. This inevitably followed with further game theme tunes such as the well known and much loved Zelda theme.

The aim (initially) of this was to play Brawl (before we got slightly side tracked), this was basically a one sided game of me getting thrashed by Jamie at least 10 times (sadface) by many different Nintendo characters on his Wii.

The next day will forever be an undying memory especially as it had actually started 2 days before on thursday when I called Jamie asking what was happening and confirming train times. The conversation was similar to this:

Me: So, what are we doing this weekend?
Jamie: I hope you don't mind but I bought you a ticket to a Juggling Convention!
Me:Uhhm ok sounds fun (Let's say I didn't know what to expect)

Thus, we left for this big hall with a high ceiling (yes, a sports hall!), let ourselves in and were greeted with the early morning jugglers who had already arrived. I was amazed to see someone juggling 7 balls at once, clubs, spinning hoops, unicycling. As I had no skill in any of these domains I was initially quite lost, however, I thought: well might as well try something.

I turned to Jamie then and asked him to teach me to juggle 3 balls, as I had been trying to master if for a long time and not succeeding at all. After a brief 30minute lesson I actually understood the basics of how to do it (at long last) and headed off for a 3ball workshop with Sam 'Mario' from GV64. An hour later I was actually managing to do 4 throws in succession - no doubt that the people from GV are very friendly and helpful people (and juggling people in general).

Later that day there was a unicycle gladiator event of which Jamie took part. It was actually quite a vicious sport with people getting pushed off their unicycles and falling to the floor. Anyway it seemed that people quickly realised that Jamie had a lot of skill because after he was attacked by 2 people (without falling off) the onslaught happened again and again without a fall. However what really made it a laugh was the look on his face; one of fear as he desperately tried to pedal away faster from someone else who was equally good (and who won the event). Jamie's undoing came when he tried to turn a corner too quickly and the unicycle collapsed; throwing Jamie from the competition. This said I have to say this was a highly entertaining event to watch (oh and the occassional children who thought it was a clever idea to run in front of people whacking balls with clubs).

That night I saw the evening entertainment which was presented by an amusing compere (is that spelt correctly?). There were 6 acts varying from hoop spinning, clubs, dropped clubs, diablos and finally Charlie and Haggis (whom I knew nothing of until I saw them perform). Watching them made the £4 ticket look like a bargain as they juggled 7 clubs with a highly amusing speel (see Jamie's blog for video) which terminated with the use of a 12 FOOT WHIP. Now this may not sound all that much but when you're basically aiming it at someone else everything changes; especially when that piece of paper is only a foot wide.

Fortunately Haggis was allowed to keep all his limbs and fingers and face. The event ended at around 10, at which point Jamie and I decided to go back to his halls for some dinner with a bottle of wine (or 2).

Having seen his previous post where he downed a bottle of wine with his house mate Oli, I wanted to take him up on that challenge - even though we had already downed a pint before (at Anna's birthday if I recall correctly) and lost - I knew what I was up against. It seemed to start quite well only once it got to half way JAMIE had finished...(http://www.opaquelucidity.com/facepalm.jpg)...watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe0SmEnr0CA

Needless to say it was an easy win for him. We decided that we needed to prepare dinner before the wines effects actually started to hit and metabolising alcohol commenced. What ensued was a mad rush to cook dinner as quickly as possible with help from a house mate who had some spare rice from when the chinese people invaded the kitchen for an hour and took over all the cooking space. The rice was eaten with some strips of bacon which went down a treat albeit quite slowly.

Fiona arrived then after what seemed like forever (drunkenness does strange things to time) and we decided to go to Parade which was closed (fortunately as I had since consumed a further point of cidre). Fiona then decided to go and get her apple tini supplies (well not really because she had no apple juice) but did not want to go and therefore delegated the task to Jamie who ran off to get it while we walked back to Eastwood 4 kitchen.

(Gap followed by sleep).

I have to conclude that that weekend was one of the best and most enjoyable I've had in a while and I may even take up juggling (need some juggling balls first) although I am unsure if such a society exists at Imperial.