The thing I am looking forward to most this year
I think everyone has something that they are looking forward to in the year. I bet you can’t guess what mine is!
Christmas? No.
New year? No.
Revision? No.
Going home to Newport? No.
You will kick your self when you realise how obvious it was! It is obviously Iron Fives! If you don’t know what that is, it is an Ultimate tournament in Plymouth where every team is only allowed to take 5 players (that means no subs) for the whole weekend.
It’s not the idea of just wearing myself out that is appealing, but the idea of playing some awesome Ultimate with guys that you want to play with and they want to play with you!
We have been seeded 32nd out of 32 so the hopes for us are not very high, but that does mean that the only way is up! Just need to show people how good we really are by coming a bit higher.
I can’t wait, fuck Christmas, I’ll take two Iron Fives if possible!
What a time it has been!
I know I said I would deliver a Rimini post and finish off the London one, but if I am completely honest, I haven’t had the time. So there!
At the moment I have the will nor time to do a post on either so I will give a quick run down here.
London:
- Hung-over coach journey (not as bad as it sounds). When I got into London, it was a bit of a bus tour with lots of sight-seeing for free!
- Met Stef in Victoria St. train station and noticed that for all of the food places in the station there was not one rubbish bin!
- Got the tube to Setf’s house and was massively disappointed by the fact that most of the ‘underground’ just isn’t
- Played some Ultimate with the new and emerging East London team. Great fun, learned loads, and ruined my knees somehow
- Dropped my stuff at his and then we were off to visit the infamous Troys. Got there, met Nick and Ed.
- Off to O’Neils (Oh No’s!) for some karaoke action. Good fun all round, walked back through Wanstead. (Also met some more of Stef’s friends: Burke, Mills, Shaun and Chelsea)
- Next day, went to some giant grassy area called Wanstead Flats where we played a little football (I couldn’t do much as my knees were still very bad), everyone carried on drinking and had a nice relax on the field (Met Jen Troy)
- After that, we went to a ‘Spoons called the Wallnut Tree, where I met Alex and Neil. As Neil worked at that spoons, we quickly moved on to yet another ‘Spoons: The Wantstead George. More drinking, stories and all-round fun times!
- Another walk back to Stef’s where I promptly fell asleep on the sofa
- Last day: got up, had some food and then to kill some time before my coach home so we went to the British Museum and I was amazed (stuff like this interests me), but I couldn’t help wondering how Egypt felt about us having all of their artifacts?
- Coach ride home, just a coach really isn’t it?
See, I told you I would tell you at some point.
And now for something just a little more exciting, Rimini!
- Massive fuss packing as I have never packed for myself before (I know, I need to grow up lol)
- Long time on the coach going through France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland and of course Italy (having a chuck about at every stop!)
- Once we finally got there and settled into the hotel and everything, it was off to the beach for some Frisbee of course!
- First night out: Tight and Bright. It was good until a lesbian thought I was hitting on her girlfriend (which I wasn’t)
- First days games, we played 4 games on the first day and we learned just how hard beach Ultimate is, especially when the pitches were mountainous!
- Second night out: Emergency services. Me, Stef and Matt went as Secret Service agents and if I am honest, it was a short night and it was my least favourite by far.
- Second days games: played some more games and it worked out that we won the Plate! Yay us!
- Third night out: Tour shirts. Matt Plant’s birthday! He got absolutely wasted and spilled lots of drinks over me and didn’t really help with some other stuff too but I still love him…
- Day off: played a little more Ultimate, some volley ball, some football and dug a tunnel in the sand. Good times
- Fourth night out: Rubix and Foam Party. One word, amazing. I had such a good time that night. Me and Hywel ended up stopping a bus in the middle of the road but doing a Mexican wave with a random guy after firstly getting on the wrong bus and ending up miles away from the hotel. Good times!
- Very, very long coach journey back. Lots more sleeping and not a lot of going on the coach really.
I know this was all kinda short and sweet but I have put this off for so long I just wanted to get something down on the page. I met loads of people and made some new friends and had the most awesome time ever. Would I do it again? I’m organising the next one I love it so much!
Burn baby burn
Hey y’all.
Once again, over the weekend (yes I know this will be posted on the weekend again but I’m talking about the weekend that just passed) I was playing Ultimate Frisbee at a tournament.
This time I was at Bristol for Disco’s Disco Inferno tourney. Here is a quick summary of the weekend on both the Frisbee and non-Frisbee fronts:
- Left on Saturday morning, on the way popped into McDonald’s for some breakfast and for some reason the guy there gave me an extra cappuccino.
- Arrived in Bristol, as usual, just in time to play our first game. (Warming up is for pussies right?)
- Lost 2 and drew 1 on the first day, played some hard teams like our heroes Danger! High Voltage.
- Went to the ‘Sexy Disco’ party. To be honest, not very impressed. Not very sexy, not very disco and not very cheap.
- Day 2, won all of our games and we all generally played well. Came 3rd out of 3 in the scavenger hunt as we were the only non local team to enter and non of us thought that bringing Pogz was a good idea (even though my new and huge bag could have fitted the whole game in). We came away with the bowl (17th) which made us happy as we all played really well and beat some good teams on day two.
- I was chosen as MVP for the weekend and won a cool little photo of the team. I was trying not to be too happy about it but I think most people could tell that it did mean a lot to me.
So yeah, that was Bristol. I know what you’re thinking, why post about that so late in the week, what the hell have you been doing since then? And, why haven’t you blogged this much earlier?
Here is the answer I know you are so desperate for. On Monday I was too tired from Bristol and was putting off doing my graphics coursework and both of those things took over the whole day (apart from Monday training which I obviously went to because Frisbee is awesome!). Tuesday was the hard-core graphics programming day, with slow gamma correction done, there was only convolution left to do. With a few pointers from some friends and an un-relenting need to finish it before midnight, I cracked on and actually did a decent job. Wednesday was another training day, but with a twist. We were on the beach.
That’s right, you heard me. February and beach. Surprisingly, it was fairly warm and enjoyable. Some dude even took photos of us while we played (Not sure why, but hey). Here is a tip for all the beach Frisbee players out there though: when the sand is still kinda wet and all compacted together, its like running barefoot on concrete until it all gets churned up. My feet were on fire for the next 6 hours!
Thursday, doing some more coursework, mainly Compilers. Got lots done. The deadline for assignment 2 is on Friday and I’ve done up to assignment 5 so huzzah for me!
Friday. Friday, Friday, Friday. Of course I had Uni in the day, but then somehow going out for a £3.50 meal at the Bryn-Y-Mor turned out to be a Frankie and Bennie’s with some Revolution cocktails thrown in. You thought that was odd? Leanne nearly got ploughed into the road/a tree whilst in a trolley that Fran had let go of as she had fallen over. And to top it all off, me and Matt had some chocolate eclairs.Yum.
Saturday: I decided to come back to good old Newport to see the good old family. Completely smashed Josh of FIFA 09 (6-0 incase you were wondering.). The sad thing is, I have spent most of my time home not talking to my family and catching up, but learning how to you Trac on top of Subversion for my Software Labs Group Project.
You are probably waiting for me to say something witty or clever, but all I will say is “Are you happy now Andy!?”
Long time, no post
I haven’t written anything in a while, and I have realised why: I’m always bloody tired lately.
Have you noticed that my last post was around the time that I was starting back at uni? Well, if you didn’t, just to inform you, it was.
This is because since then I have barely had much time to sit down and think about what I am going to post and I was/am fed up of posting just random rubbish, I would like my blog to mean something to the people that read it (even if those people just encompass me (bad English I know, but, I’m Welsh so I’ll bastardise English all I want, all my other countrymen seem to do it so why can’t I?))
Since I last posted a lot has gone on. Here is a quick summary of what has happened with me:
- Started back at Swansea University for my second year of Computer Science
- Took up Ultimate Frisbee (they got the name right, I love this sport) at uni, I’m now one of the Swansea Ugly Ducklings!
- Went for many job interviews (Sainsbury, Game and Staples come to mind firstly)
- Accepted jobs in Sainsbury and Game
- Started working in Game
- Bought Saints Row 2 so have been playing that a lot since I bought it
- Went to a Ultimate tournament in Plymouth
- Uni work in general
- Living with 5 other guys and the few others who are always here (not a bad thing)
- Trying to keep my girlfriend happy while she avoids staying at her own house)