Birthday weekend, Ghent, Tuesday and the monster that never was.

7 april 2010


The rest of the day/night on fri was awesome. Lots of cool people, live band at the pub, elaborate air drum solos from me (drinking may have been involved) and just generally an awesome night. Had to get to Ghent later on though so I left Berts couch relatively early, all things considered, and made my way home to make preparations. Arrived in Ghent early evening and met Monica, Valerie and Aayran there. That night we stayed at Aayran's counselors house which was cool. He took us to this Latina dancing place. Which to be fair had a good atmostphere etc, and I really enjoyed it. Needless to say, my hips didn't feel like partially dislocating themselves every two seconds so I refrained from dancing. (Yeah thats the reason, I was worried about the health of my body...). I mean, my normal dancing is bad enough without bringing actual dance moves into the equation. But I did take lots of pictures of creepy old guys dancing with the girls... hehe.

Later on that night me and Monica went to forage for food. Which proved to be very fruitful. It was a little Kebab place near the dance place. The fact that I used a capitol k for the Kebab should tell you a lot about my feelings for it. It was love at first site. For the first and second Kebab. And the chips. *gazes off into the distance in a reminiscing kind of way* Seriously it was awesome. If you're ever in Ghent centre, find a place called "Thats Kebab" and eat there. Admittedly, it was also the most expensive Kebab I've come across here - €5 for a normal Kebab. Still. Totally worth it. The remainder of the night mostly pales in comparison to the Kebab, although there was an interesting incident of Aaryan jumping inside some guys egg suite that he had made for Easter. While the guy was still in it. Crazy woman. But then hey, is there any other kind????? I can feel the look you females are giving me right now. Its the kind of fear that goes along with knowing that no matter how hard you try, you'll never quite be able to effectively return that look (or even have a manly equivalent other than laughing mischieveously/nervously)

The next day we all had Turkish pizzas. Wow. Very impressed. Unfortunately I can't remember the name of the place we got them from so as much as I would like to there'll be no free advertising (to my pulsing hordes of readers) for them. Just go to Ghent and try a bunch of Turkish places and if you like it then you just give me the credit. If you don't like it... then you've obviously just gone to the wrong place and it's entirely your fault.

And then there were three....
That is, Monica, Valerie and myself. The others went off to give the fairies a good talking to. We went and checked into out hotel, which was pretty cool. The usual knobs and goblins etc. We went out and searched for food, possibly traversing every side road in all of bloody Ghent. However, we did eventually find a really nice place that wasn't too pricey. The name of the place, wait for it.... was... Twilight. But to the credit of the staff they didn't try and drink my blood, they were actually good, and most importantly they didn't act like a bunch of stupid hysterical school girls with the intellectual capacity of a limp banana. Which I felt was nice. I had an awesome 300g steak. Easily the best meal I've had at a restaurant here. Nice and bloody...hmmm... (insert twilight reference here). Pancakes for dessert. Need I say more? Probably not. Will that stop me? Unlikely. They gave us these bowls of different sugars to distribute as we saw fit, which is nice because so often people skimp on the sugar and don't give you any extra to lather your pancake in. And boy do I like a good lathering.

The next day we did some touristy meandering (Easter Monday). Things were open; which was good. We went to a castle near the centre. It was like a dream come true. They had a room full of really old weaponary with descriptions of their origins, how they were used etc. Plus suits of armour. I want that stuff so badly. Honestly, if I suddenly had massive amounts of money that armoury would be one of the first things on my agenda. They had some of the old torture devices in another room. It made me strangely happy. They had the thumbscrews and all that kind of stuff (read, James can't remember the names).

Eventually we went home.

Yesterday it was back to work. The day was fairly uneventful - there's a media camp here at the moment so me and most of the interns had to shift over to Stefans room to escape the masses. After work we grabbed some drinks and went down to the river Schelde. Was a really good day - clear skies and 17 degrees C. I was in my T- shirt most of the time. Crazy stuff eh. Anyway so, Stefan invited a few of us to stay the night at his so the night could continue. Which it duly did. We all went and got dinner - also a Turkish place, really good. Most of us made our way to the couch when we got to his place and we watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Liked it even more the second time as I vaguely knew what was happening this time. Most people went to bed or fell asleep on the couch. Gladiator was eventually put on, and it was hard to sleep when a pat of me wanted to rewatch it so much. Made it fairly far into the movie though.

This morning we all staggered into work. The camp is still on today and tomorrow so we are still displaced. So tired. I mean there's a good reason I shower in the mornings. That waking up thing people keep talking about. Even with a shower I'm not sure I ever really accomplish being entirely wakeful. But feeeling particularly dead now. Don't know how I'm going to make it through the 3 hours of Dutch today. Have to leave in 20 mins actually.

No random wonderings today, for better or for worse. My brain simply cannot function well enough. Off to Dutch. See you

19 years ago, on a dark and stormy day, a screaming ape was born...

2 april 2010

Hello there.

So my dads birthday is on April Fools Day. Mine, is on world autism day. Not really sure what to make of that. Got to speak to the family this morning which was really good. Would've been good to talk longer though. And maybe in a warm home instead of an alleyway. I mean after the initial excitement, frostbite gets a little (c)old. See what I did there? Very witty indeed... In any case, I'm going out tonight which should be good, looking forward to that. Just got to make it through the day now...

I swear sleeping more doesn't make me less tired. The last 2 nights I've gotten like 2 hours extra per night than I usually do and I'm feeling completely dead. Like in a bad way.


I'm really keen for an early lunch. So about now would be good. So hungry. But then whats new right? I mean I'm hungry and tired, so basically I've just said the same things I've mentioned in almost every post. My god. Shut up about it already. I'm driving myself crazy here. I mean man-up already.

Ok good, glad I got that out. I feel somewhat refreshed. Its one of the feelings I don't usually openly despise - unless it's found in abundance inside others very early in the morning.

In any case I'm off, if thanks for all the birthday wishes everyone, was really good to log-in to my hotmail and have pages of facebook notifications. Cheers people, enjoy the rest of your day, and have a drink (or two) for me ;)

The tale of a vengeful fly

o1 april 2010

Ok, here I am.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!

Last night when I got home after Dutch and some drinks, I decided to have a (relatively) early night and in the same breathe decided to tell my mom that I got a tattoo - nz is 12 hours ahead so it was April Fools day there already. I sent her this txt pleading with her not to freak out about the small dragon tattoo I got on my shoulder... hehe. Apparently it worked. Her reply was "What? Are you serious?" The best part was that she didn't reply until I fell asleep so she had all day to consider my antics. I'm told she fell for it pretty badly (talked to the family this morning, all too briefly). Which lightened my day. God, me getting a tattoo. Such a bad idea. I would just look like some pasty white boy trying to look hardcore and failing miserably. Might be funny for the 5 mins before I realise that its not going to come off in the shower, even after considerable scrubbing.

So its my birthday tomorrow, and my plans as of now involve going out for some drinks with Bert and anyone else who wants to come. Which should take me well into the night/morning. Then it gets a bit tricky. I'm supposed to be meeting some of the other volunteers in Ghent at about middayish, but getting back from Antwerpen takes about an hour, then I've got to wash up etc, then take an hour trip back before setting off for Ghent. So when you consider that I don't really want to get up at the crack of dawn, it could be a tad tight. We shall see. At worst I'll just end up meeting them a little later than anticipated I guess.

I need to try get another book today. Finished the first trilogy by David Eddings so now I'll just move onto his next trilogy. Will try make it last longer this time.

Actually, I do have some fairly exciting news. Vincent invited me to go along with him and Laura to Paris for a few days if I got the leave from work. During that week there's a STAMP Media camp going on in our office so Stefan basically said I should just go to Paris. Which is awesome. Got the leave approved by AFS as well, and in fact our hostel is now booked, which is cool. So I'm pretty excited about that. I think I leave here on the 11th of April so really not long to go.

I need to go eat soon.

*time passes*

I have now eaten.

Most of the people at work smoke so I've decided I need an addiction as well. So during their smoking breaks I'm going to do my best to get addicted to Tic Tacs. In fact I just went for a Tic Tac break. A mouth of minty freshness at affordable prices. If I start selling off my Lord of the Rings model to pay for my Tic Tac habit then I know its time to stop.


This computers slowness is eating my inner soul at an excruciatingly slow pace. My outer soul is a little cold right now. Cold but beautiful...

I've been wondering about something lately. (Just the one thing) I've been wondering how many random photo's I've been in. I mean, not taken by people I know, photo's taken by people with me randomly walking in the background looking staunch and manly. That kind of thing. It saddens me greatly that I will never know the answer to this pertinent question. For once, there's a useless statistic which I wouldn't mind knowing, and there's almost no way to get it. Unless maybe everyone who's ever taken a photo during my lifetime puts them all up on the internet and some super computer can cross reference them all to find the answer to my question. Yeah, thats me, asking all the hardhitting stuff.

This is James Anderson, specialist reporter of...miscellaneous stuff.

Elise is sitting on my desk popping bubble wrap. This amuses me. That dirty woman and her antics.

She just deleted that last line but I had save. Thank god for auto save eh. Alright I'm off. bye

A Quick Hello

Hey,

I've been pretty slack with the blog lately I know. But hey, I'm a rash, unpredictable, unreliable teenager, what did you expect? Anyway, nothing major to report, no significant calamities, impending doom or otherwise forlorn occurences. That I know of. Don't want to speak too soon I guess. Anything could happen... Anything.

Okay I left the blog way too late to finish today and I have to leave work now, so will have to make up for it another time. byebyebye