Chuck Another Brim on the Barbie

A small update

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 11:00:05 +0000

To be honest, since my last Christmas updates I haven’t really been up to much. I’ve been working quite a bit and frisbee just getting back to full steam but things have been quiet over the last few weeks. For me this has meant a lot of time spent on the internet. It’s been the usual stuff mostly (a lot of Cracked.com) but I thought I’d share a few of my new internet places:

I’ve been writing on a friend’s blog a bit. I’ve been writing some game reviews with the catch being that they cannot be longer than 100 words. It’s good fun to do and keeps me thinking and writing. Check out all my reviews here.
After shooting to (relative) fame after his trick shot videos, Brodie Smith of Doublewide has been doing daily vlogs on YouTube. His vlogs mostly revolve around ultimate and him trying to earn a living from a sport that has no professional players (until the AUDL starts this year). It’s really interesting to track his progress in this uncharted territory as well as to get some insight on training techniques and things that can help make me a better ultimate player.
I’m really keen on getting into making some music so have been looking at the various digital audio workstations (DAW; e.g. Logic Pro, Pro Tools, ect.) that are available and seeing where to start. Partly inspired by Ben’s foray into DJing and also something that I have wanted to have a stab at for a while. I haven’t really got started with that yet as I am waiting until the new iMac is released but I’ve been doing a bit of reading and seeing what I can do to get a running start
Various flight websites. I’ve spent so much time on all of the various flight comparison sites that I’m just getting annoyed with them. I’m planning a bit of travelling this year so I need a bunch of flights. So far I’d like to go back to the UK around April time, volunteer at WFDF World Championships at Osaka, Japan in June and I’m meeting my family in Florida, USA for a nice relaxing family holiday (and some theme parks). Obviously, all of this travelling is going to be expensive!
Kirsty’s Germany blog. Kirsty (Matt Plant’s girlfriend if you’re missing the connection) is flying to Germany this Saturday to work for 3 months. I’ve been reading what little she has already written and both interesting and funny. Hopefully there will be more to read when she gets out there but so far so good!

Also, my stuff form the UK finally arrived! I know, it’s only been 3 months! It was all going swimmingly until I tried to boot my PC. Blue screen after blue screen. Crap. I’m sending some details of my problems off to the insurance company but the PC isn’t worth a great deal anyway. I just hope my data is OK!

My stuff arriving also meant that I now have a lot more clothes. This many in fact:

Good job I am having a washing machine delivered today!

Looking back - Settling In

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 16:05:05 +0000

This will be the last of my little updates. I dare say that I’ll do something like this again but I’m not sure when or if I will have anything interesting to say. I guess that is what this post is about. I’m really settling into Melbourne life and as such life is becoming routine (not a bad thing, my routine is awesome). I really don’t want to be blogging about everyday boring stuff and that’s the reason that I tailed off before.

The main thing I have to say in this post is in this picture:

Merry Christmas all! I took this photo on around the 20th December and really wanted to send it as a Christmas card as it has Christmas with a Melbourne twist (Flinders Street Station and a tram!). Alas, by the time the photo was taken, it wouldn’t have reached home before the clocks changing!

How am I settling into life in Melbourne? Again this is another one that is easier described by a picture:

I took this yesterday while sunbathing at St. Kilda. Playing all this frisbee has left me with such a ridiculous tan that I now look a little like a zebra (Hannah said that first). I’m trying to even it out a bit with some sessions at the beach listening to the Ricky Gervais podcast (I know, I’m about 2 years behind on this one. I’ve never really done podcasts before now). I’m using the fact that I’m worried about my silly tan as a good measure for my quality of life. To put it another way; life is good.

I’m really settling in and I love living here. It is just such a nice place to be and to live that as I said before; I can’t see myself wanting to live anywhere else for a while. Another reason I don’t want to move is that as you saw in my last post, I finally have got my flat furnished and equipped to a good standard and I don’t like the idea of having to do that again for a while!

With regards to my flat I only wanted to show the (nearly) finished product but there was a stage where my flat was just filled with cardboard and plastic wrapping. For at least a week, there was this huge amorphous blob of cardboard in a giant plastic bag that took up half of my living room:

I finally managed to get rid of all of the cardboard on the day that I hired a car. I took all of the cardboard to the local recycling centre and all of the plastic went in the bin bit by bit. I wish I could say that I’ve gotten rid of all of the moving in rubbish but I still have the boxes from the giant box of kitchen stuff that I bought. It will all go out eventually, little by little into the recycling. Luckily, the shipping company unpacks all of my stuff and then takes the boxes away!

I’ve decided to keep this one short because all of the others are short and people have better things to do on Christmas day than to read my blog so I am going to finish on yet another of the St. Kilda sea front (have you discovered the theme yet? I LIVE BY THE BEACH!). Yes, about 40% of this picture is car park but if you look closer, the car park is mostly empty on a really sunny day. This means that not only do I live by a beach and in an awesome place, there is also ample parking :)

Looking back - The New Flat

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 15:05:06 +0000

Wow, 5 posts in one day with another planned. All on Christmas Day too! As you can all imagine, today hasn’t been the most eventful Christmas Day for me. The 2 high points of today have been finding a place that’s still open so I could get some coffee in the morning and being called by one of our customers because something had gone wrong. Sounds a bit lonely but it was necessary to have the opportunity of being in Australia in the first place so I don’t regret it for an instant.
Edit: Something much funnier happened while I was talking with my parents whilst on Skype, I’ll leave the details off the internet but if you want to know, just ask :)

I know the last post was very long and probably uninteresting to more people than the rest of the posts but there was a lot of stuff that I wanted to say that fitted perfectly in that post.

This one will be a lot shorter as the pictures will, hopefully, speak for themselves.

Anyway…

As I said in my 3rd post, I’d found somewhere to live. I signed all of the paperwork and collected the keys about 1 week after being accepted. All very prompt and good.

I was told that when I took the place that there were some parts of the flat that didn’t get cleaned properly and I was asked to clean them myself. Although this was a bit of a nuisance, I decided to accept because I didn’t want the hassle that may have come with refusing to go about getting the keys this way. I spent my first full day in the flat (and $50 on cleaning supplies) scrubbing the flat. Most of the time was spent on the bathroom and then on the kitchen. I have some before photos somewhere…

The reason that I had chosen to find somewhere so early (in terms of my 2 months free rent) was that I wanted to move in slowly. Australia doesn’t really do the whole furnished apartment thing so I had nothing when I moved in. Unfurnished in the UK usually means you get stuff like a washing machine, bed and a fridge. Not here. Nothing. With that in mind, I had a lot of shopping to do!

Shortly after securing my place and cleaning up, one of the guys at work was having trouble finding a place. He had to move out before I did and knew where he wanted to live, he just needed for it to be decorated (it was a brand new building). He was living in the same building as me and like the place as much as I did. He approached me and asked if he could sub-let my place for 2 weeks while his place is being made ready to move in. I was sceptical until he told me how much he was offering for the two weeks. The classic cartoon bit of dollar signs rolling around my eyes may have actually happened. I wasn’t looking in the mirror at the time so I’ll never know.

I had roughly a week to get my flat in a liveable state. This meant the essentials: fridge, sofa, bed. To be honest I wouldn’t have done everything this fast if the whole sub-letting thing hadn’t have happened. In fact, I wouldn’t have been able to afford to get everything sorted that quickly without the extra cash.

With that in mind, I did have some money to play with so I had already ordered my fridge before everything was set in stone. I got a call shortly after ordering to inform me that the fridge I ordered was out of stock and I had the choice of waiting or cancelling. Being as at the time of purchase, the fridge was on sale, I chose to wait and save the cash. I was moving earlier than expected and wouldn’t have a fridge until much later than expected. Good job that my new flat is very close to a super market as well as bunch of take away places!

In the few weeks that followed I spent most of my Tuesday evenings (I was playing frisbee on the rest!) at Ikea either picking stuff or ordering stuff. The biggest order came to around $1,000 dollars and netted me a bed, a mattress, a coffee table and a desk.

The sofa came from a place called Super-A-Mart. It’s basically a furniture warehouse. I managed to get 2 seater chaise sofa for $800. I was very pleased with this as it was exactly the type of sofa that I wanted.

My next biggest shop came on a Saturday. I hired a car for the day and again drove up to Ikea. This was a day when I got all of the “essentials”. The biggest things that I bought were a bedside table and my TV stand. I also bought most of my kitchen stuff in one go (pots, pans, plates and cutlery as well as a few of the other little bits that a kitchen needs).

After getting all of this stuff my flat finally felt like my own. Everything in it I had bought with cash that I had earned myself.

Finally, when the fridge came it was complete (almost). All I am waiting for now is my stuff from the UK to arrive and I will be content. My parents keep telling me that I should be proud of myself; my first home to myself and I have bought everything upfront. I agree but at the same time, like most things in my life, everything has been fairly easy and have just fallen into place.

Below are some pictures of my flat that I took today. It’s obviously a little messy and there are still some important things missing (like my TV, PS3 and PC) but they won’t be long now.

Looking back - Frisbee

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 14:00:06 +0000

I’m going to say this upfront. For the majority of people reading this (I’m assuming that only my family and maybe like 2 others read this), this post is likely to be the least interesting for you whilst being the most interesting for me to write. There will be some pictures in this one too though so if you don’t even bother reading, at least one of the pictures will be slightly interesting (one of them even has a picture of me with other people in it).

I’m sure you’re all well aware of my (slight) obsession with ultimate frisbee by now. I started playing in my second year at Swansea Uni after being introduced by Stef. I’ve played frisbee in 3 continents now (Europe, Asia and Australasia) and my love for all things flying disk (except Whammos, bleugh) is only increasing. Also, frisbee is very social sport so this will be a post where I actually talk about me interacting with other people. I know! Real people!

Anyway…

Moving to a new place sucks for a number of reasons but the biggest one is that you leave all of your friends behind and you’re lucky if you know two people in the city that you’re moving to. This was always something that worried me about moving because to be honest, no one is every going to put me in the “people person” category. At best I’m nonchalant and at worst I’m miserable to be around. These are all things that I am aware of and was hoping to change when coming to Australia otherwise I would be stuck with 0 people to talk to.

I’d say about 50% of the people that I am friends with on Facebook play ultimate. Most of these people are from the UK (although Australia is putting in a good effort to be my friend :) ). The non-frisbee people are from a few other categories such as; people from school or uni I don’t really talk to (majority), people from school or uni I occasionally talk to (next largest group) and people from school or uni that I regularly talk to (small group). Playing the numbers game, it seems like I will be better off with frisbee people!

A quick google put me onto the Ultimate Victoria page and with that I discovered social league. “Social league” is a lot more of the first word that it is of the second. It’s more of a “Social come and learn how to play ultimate or have a throw around and meet some people while you’re at it”. This works perfectly for me. Naturally social league is in Albert Park.

In hindsight, my first night at social league was very weird. I played terrible but for most people it was only their second week in playing so it didn’t show too much. Despite playing terrible, the guy who runs Social (Seb, or Sebbo if you’re an Aussie) invited me down to a new men’s league that was starting with his club. I was more than happy to accept and was very excited to play some ultimate that was a bit more competitive.

First, there was more social league. I love social league, it’s where I have met a lot of the people that I know in Melbourne today. The strange thing is that while there are a few Aussies, the split at social is about 50/50 between Australians and non-Australians. It has been amazing fun to meet loads of new people, go to the pub afterwards and get running around again.

I’d barely done any exercise in the past 3 or 4 months and it showed in my first few weeks at social! I played a few points and then I would be lying on the floor fighting for breath. I blamed the heat at the time but I was just so unfit!

There was one week of social league that ended up being cancelled. Unfortunately for me, I was already at the park because I had the afternoon off. I was just lying down, reading on my iPad and waiting for people to turn up. Then this showed up out of nowhere:

The weird part was that this all came over in around 2 minutes. There was a gust of wind that smelled like sea air and within 5 minutes I was soaked! Three other guys showed up and being as we were already drenched, we had a throw around for an hour anyway. Good practice for throwing in the win and rain!

I played social league every week (that it wasn’t cancelled) up until the end of the season (just before Christmas) and will be going back for the next season too (just after Christmas). I probably won’t join in with the training so much (it’s aimed at true beginners, rather than people who just suck like me) but I’ll probably end up doing throwing practice with Trent. Trent has fast become one of my best friends in Australia and is a good Aussie bloke (that’s Australian for guy).

Moving on to the men’s league. I was happy to get involved in some more competitive ultimate but wasn’t quite ready for the shock of playing with these guys! The club, Heads of State Ultimate, are a high level club in Australia. A lot of the guys play internationally for the Australian team and the club has played the world club championships at least once.

Men’s league was really tough for me! Everyone else there was so much fitter and it showed. Despite that, I was loving it and felt like I was getting fitter every week and learning so much from the wealth of experience at the club.

One of the guys at the club who knew that I was new to Melbourne asked me if I was playing in the Monday night league. Looking back, he already knew the answer. He seems to know everyone on the Melbourne frisbee scene already and would have seen me before. He invited me to play league with hit team, The Other Team. Monday night league is split into 2 divisions, div 2 and div 3. Div 1 no longer exists but has been replaced by MAD League. Mixed Advanced Draft I think. Doesn’t matter, we were playing in div 3. This also doesn’t matter because most people play both divisions anyway.

Monday night league is great fun and again I’ve met loads of really nice people and have spent a bit of time at the pub with the rest of the team. Monday night league is obviously played at Albert Park (can you see the theme here?) but is played on synthetic pitches instead of grass:

I was really surprised at just how comfortable it is to run on in boots. Playing with TOTs was great fun and again, I learned a lot and met some awesome people. I’ll be back when the season starts after Christmas!

Back to HoS! As men’s league came to a close (our team came last, even with the amazing group of players we had), the club had organised a training camp in nearby Ballarat. Ballarat is about an hour and a half out of Melbourne and a lot of the guys who now play for HoS are originally from Ballarat. I was very much up for this!

I loved the whole weekend. Firstly, it was the first time that I got to play ultimate in a stadium:

Don’t get me wrong, this wasn’t Old Trafford or anything even approaching that standard but it was amazing to be playing on a well maintained pitch and to have all the facilities like our own changing room, showers and a meeting area.

The plan for the weekend was this:

Warm up & defensive drills
Lunch
Offensive drills & game
Showers & club meeting
Dinner and some drinks at a local pub
Mini-golf
Lunch
Offence vs. Defence game

I really enjoyed the drills, HoS play in a completely different way to what I’m used to so I have to get out of all my bad habits and learn to play like them. The club meeting was really interesting; as a club we set the goals for the season and talked a bit about being a team and all the other stuff that you see in films about American Football teams.

The drinks? I got wasted. I thought that we were just going to have a few quiet ones but jugs of beer were really cheap and we just kept chucking them back! The short story is that I got to bed at 4am and already felt like death!

Day 2! Mini-golf. I was still entirely smashed at this point and was using the club to hold me up most of the way around. The course was really cool though; it was an indoor course themed like medieval Britain. Good fun all ‘round. Needless to say, I didn’t win. We grabbed some lunch in town and then headed back to the stadium. We were meant to be playing a game but I felt like I was about to vomit at any moment. We didn’t have the numbers, I had to play. O vs. D and I was on the O team. In the state I was in, running seemed almost impossible but after a few points, I’d shaken out the cobwebs and actually put a bit of effort in. Our team lost. Badly.

After the game, we were all chatting while packing up and one of the guys summed up the weekend perfectly for me:

The best thing about joining a sports team is that as soon as you join, you get 20 new mates

This is pretty much how it has felt with all of the frisbee that I have done since moving out here. Every group or team that I play with just means that I meet more nice people and make more friends. And here I was worrying that I was going to be a loner!

I know this post is monstrously long but I couldn’t write a post about frisbee and not mention the Melbourne Hat. A hat tournament is a tournament where everyone enters as players rather than a team. Upon registering (well in advance of the actual weekend) you rank yourself and the teams are picked to try and make as even teams as possible.

There is a hat tournament that I’ve been to 3 times in the UK, DUFFA. DUFFA has been my favourite tournament every year for the last 3 years. You play with a bunch of new people, play in ways that you have never played before and generally have the most fun while playing frisbee. The Melbourne Hat was all this and more. It was very similar in format and style to the DUFFA tournament but was so well run and everything was thought of. To finish this huge post, here is a picture of me with my Melbourne Hat team, Gumbys:

Looking back - Finding a New Home

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 13:05:06 +0000

Part 3 already! I’m impressed with my own ability to aimlessly type so much. I was given months of free accommodation in Freshwater Place by the company. I’m on a relocation scheme whereas all the other guys I work with here were on an “extended overseas assignment” which meant that they have been living in places like Freshwater for over a year. Free accommodation and living expenses for a year! Due to a number of reasons, the extended overseas deal was ending so everyone else had to move onto the relocation policy that I was on. This meant that everyone in the office was now looking for somewhere to live at around the same time as me but they had the luxury of not paying rent for the previous year.

Anyway…

Firstly, I’d like to say something about the real estate setup in Australia. My very first point is that I don’t like it. Finding somewhere to live in the UK is hard enough but here you have all of that plus competition thrown in. When you are looking to rent/buy a property here, you don’t just contact the agent and they show you around. On the agent’s website as well as the meta-estate-agent sites (think Rightmove in the UK), for any given property there will be a specified “inspection time”

What this means is that you turn up at the given time with all of the other people who are interested in this property and all look around at the same time. If you like the place, you submit an application form and 100 points of ID (this bit particularly annoyed me as each agency would have different point values thus making the system entirely arbitrary). If the agency and landlord like you, they call you up and congratulate you like you’ve just got into Harvard on a scholarship.

I ended up going to see so many places and arranging my weekends based on what times I could go and see various apartments. This meant essentially ranking the places based on poor photos and descriptions because it isn’t possible to see all of your short listed flats in one day because of the awkward timings and travel time between each place. I am thoroughly glad that the whole process is over because it was such a pain. Rant over.

I had decided early on that I wanted to live in St. Kilda. My reason was fairly simple; it was where the beach was. There were other minor reasons such as not being too far from work and being a vibrant place to live but there are lots of places like that (e.g. Fitzroy) but none of them had the beach. I mean who wouldn’t want to live close to this:

One of the places that I saw early one was disgusting. It was advertised as a one bedroom apartment but was in fact a studio that someone had thrown a brick wall up in the middle of. What I’m not so subtly trying to say was that it was very small. It didn’t even have room for an oven. There was a sink and one of those microwaves with the rings on top and that was as far as it went with the idea of a “kitchen”. On the plus side, this was the view from just outside the building:

It looks like all those photos that you see of places like Miami and Malibu on TV. Unfortunately, I just couldn’t fit all of my stuff is somewhere so small and it was very, very basic (read as dirty and unequipped).

On the same day I had another 4 inspections planned and saw lots of places that I liked. One of them I wasn’t even going to look at but Mum and Dad sent me the link via email and I managed to get an inspection all to myself!

I’d scouted the St. Kilda area a few times before and had been to some of the iconic sights such as the pier (first picture), the Esplanade and Luna Park.

Luna Park is really strange. I think if it didn’t have the instantly memorable entrance that it would get closed down. It is your average rubbish seaside fairground and reminded me of the carnival level in Left 4 Dead 2. But on the plus side, you don’t get much more memorable than this:

On the right of that photo there is a white building. That’s The Palais Theatre. The Palais seems to be where all of the comedians of the world perform if they come to Melbourne. Eddie Izzard recently did a few nights there as well as Ross Noble. Tim Minchin is there in February and I am hoping to get tickets as he is one of my favourite comedians for a number of reasons.

Back to my inspections. In all honesty, most of the places I saw were either too small, too disgusting (there was a lot of wood chip wallpaper going around for cheap sometime in about 1701 it seems) or out of my price range. My solution? Increase my price range. I’d worked out that with all of the overtime I was putting in on the weekends, I would pretty much pay off the difference per year between the places I didn’t like and the places I did. It came to something like 3 shifts of overtime for the year would do the trick. Awesome.

I was actually accepted to one place that I was about 70% on. I had just put in an application on another place and liked it much more. Not being entirely sure, I decided to try and back out. I called the agent to say that I wanted to pass. I was informed that the “paperwork was already being done”. I then informed her I hadn’t signed anything and that she had told me only the day before that being accepted isn’t binding in any way (this is so that they can back out on you and then say “well, we told you we might do that”). I was amazed at how personally hurt this woman was. She spoke as if I had just killed her cat and then stuffed it with the body of another dead cat. I almost ended up taking the place just to end the conversation.

I then remembered the one thing that always works when in a foreign country (apart from speaking louder and slower if someone can’t understand you, of course). I played the “ignorant foreigner” card. She eventually realised that she couldn’t penetrate my wall of feigned ignorance and backed down. One nil me.

I had now put all my eggs in one basket. Sure, I had over a month left before I had to move out but I wanted to get this whole process over. The agent ended up calling me back the same day to inform me that my application was accepted and to ask me to the office for some tea and scones (it was more to sign the contract and there was no tea and no scones).

The place I ended up taking? Naturally, it was the one suggested to me by Mum and that I only went to see on the off-chance that it would be good. It also helped that I had a gap between other inspections that day. I’m not sure if they know or remember (they will do after reading this) because I haven’t had any of the usual “Mum knows best” lines thrown my way yet.

P.S. I wanted to include this picture because the mural is cool. I also wanted to include it because it is just across the road from that flat that I’ve been talking about. I couldn’t find anywhere in the rest of this post to fit a reference to the Talbot Reserve. It’s a very small park and there isn’t much there, but here is the picture anyway:

Looking back - Exploring

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 12:00:06 +0000

Here is the second part of my recap on my short time in Melbourne. This time I’m going to talk a bit more about the things I have seen whilst here. Once again I have chosen four pictures out of the pile of photos that I have taken (both with my camera and with my phone). I’m likely to be rambling (just like the last post) but it’s Christmas Day and I can’t be bothered to plan out a proper narrative for each post so I’m just going to type words until everything that I wanted to say has been said.

Anyway…

As I said previously, living in Freshwater Place was awesome and one of the reasons for that was that there was always something going on in the courtyard below. I was working one of the weekends in October and on my out to work I notice this:

There was around 20 muscle cars parked outside of the building, with the owners either leaning up against them trying to look cool, furiously polishing them or keeping hawk-like eyes on kids with sticky fingers that came near their treasures.

The muscle cars, as you can imagine, were all pristine and impressive. There were all the old American favourites there; Dodge, Cadillac, Pontiac and other. I’ve never really been into classic cars but this was a rare treat and the first thing that I noticed was just how huge all of these cars were. My first thought was “how the hell do you park these things?” but I imagine ease of parking is the last thing on the minds of the owners when they are thinking about their cars. My favourite was a 50s hotrod with the full “ridiculous flames” paint job. I should have taken a picture of it really but I was already late for work and was in a rush.

This was just one of the many things that happened outside of Freshwater Place. One of my favourites (that I never got to participate in because of work) was a mini-golf course set up to promote Kinect Sports: Season 2 on the XBox 360. There was also an old woman who took free Tai Chi classes every weekday morning. Little things like this made living at Freshwater Place interesting and you didn’t have to go far to “explore” what Melbourne had to offer.

Halloween was on a Monday this year. Why is this relevant? Well, it means that everyone would be going out for Halloween on the Friday or Saturday as that was the closest weekend to the 31st. I thought that going into the city on the Sunday morning after would be a good idea because it would be nice and quiet as everyone would be hungover and recovering.

When I got into the city (I was pretty much in the same place where the photo of Flinders Station from the last post was taken), I saw some people walking along the street in their Halloween costumes. I thought nothing of it and put it down to “walk of shame”. I look further up the street and see masses of undead looking people and start to wonder if I have drifted into a filming of the Aussie version of I Am Legend. Nope, it was the annual Melbourne Zombie Shuffle. Thousands of people in their Halloween best had shuffled all the way down Swanston Street to Federation Square. I crossed their path just as they were getting to Fed Square and snapped a photo on my phone:

Unfortunately, my picture was hastily taken and doesn’t do the scene justice. Imagine around 3,000 people dressed as zombies walking down a street in the middle of the day chanting:

What do we want? BRAINS! When do we want it? BRAINS!

Amazing. Most of the costumes were really impressive but the best had to be a guy in a full suit of armour, helmet under his arm and his face zombied up. Next year, I am definitely attending!

So far I’ve talked about exploring and have only really mentioned me walking around the city and bumping into things of interest. I did venture out of the city centre, I just spent most of that time getting lost:

My first “big trip” out of the city was to go to the Westfields Shopping Centre in Doncaster (same brand as the UK). The reason for this was that the iPhone 4S was out and I wanted one! I have bought the cheapest pay-as-you-go phone shortly after arriving and was already sick of it. When talking to my Dad on Skype he mentioned that I actually had a worse phone than him. That was the last straw!

The Apple Store in Doncaster opened at 8:00am and was around 90 minutes away by tram + bus. I got up at 6am and went to the tram stop next to my building. This was the first time that I had attempted to catch a tram since getting here and it didn’t go well. I later learned that I was in the wrong place (you essentially wait at a little barrier in the middle of the road). In knowing what my luck was like, I had already planned an alternative route, train + bus. I walked over the bridge to Flinders and grabbed the train to Lilydale and then a bus to Doncaster SC. 7:45, I hope there isn’t a queue! There was, but it wasn’t too big so I jumped on the end. 8:01 and an Apple Store employee comes out and tells us that they don’t have any stock and we should try again another time. I woke up at 6am for nothing! I had a wander around the shops but didn’t want anything else so promptly got a bus back into the city and then walked back to the apartment. What a fail!

I think my initial encounters with Melbourne’s public transport system are reflected in this photo:

What I am trying to say is that the tram is really confusing when you first start using it! The network map is not nice and simple like the London Tube Map but is just a mess of lines that all seem to be the same colour and are never going the way you want to go.

My favourite public transport “chump move” was to get the tram going the wrong way, thus ending up somewhere I didn’t want to be and somewhere much further from where I wanted to be. I did eventually get the iPhone (I reserved it on the internet and then went in to pick it up) and this made things much easier. Maps plus GPS plus MetLink Route Planner equals not getting lost nearly as much.

One of the places that I explored first is Albert Park. If you’re a Formula 1 fan, you’ll know that Albert Park is where the Australia Grand Prix is held. It is also a huge park with a massive lake. I spend a lot of time in Albert Park (playing frisbee, more on that later) and have come to love the place. It is such as nice place to be even when the weather is rubbish. Just to try and give a feel for what the place is like, I have this picture of the lake:

I could probably spend a long time talking about Albert Park (and will spend some more when I talk about frisbee some more) but it would be really boring to do so.

I will say what my favourite thing about this place is: there is so much going on. Most parks are quite quiet and peaceful place. Albert Park has spots like that but is also the hub of recreational sport in Melbourne. I was walking through one day and decided to take note of just how many different sports were being played on one day. The list was huge; soccer, Aussie rules, cricket, rugby, ultimate frisbee (of course), swimming, sailing, gold, rowing, running, cycling, baseball and tennis. I’m sure there were more that I just didn’t see too. Amazing place and I love spending time here.

I can’t write a post about exploring without mentioning the beach. Melbourne has it’s own beach in St. Kilda. To be honest, as beaches go, it isn’t the nicest or the biggest or the best. But it does have the beach and everything that comes with it. St. Kilda is full of interesting stuff and people. There are so many bars and restaurants and even more vintage shops and art galleries. St. Kilda is definitely a young persons place and I can’t think of anywhere better to live in Melbourne (more on that one later too…).

A few honourable mentions of my exploring go to:

I went surfing for the first time in Torquay (about 1hr 30mins out of Melbourne, you may have noticed that a lot of place names are stolen from the UK). I loved it. The weather was terrible and my surfing skills were non-existent but I loved it all the same
The various markets. There are a few big markets in Melbourne (Queen Vic, Prahran and South Melbourne are the main ones) and they are all interesting to walk through as you always see something new and there is always somewhere nice to get some coffee of a bit of lunch
There are also loads of smaller parks and gardens around Melbourne. I’ve been trying to spend as much time outdoors as possible when not working so I can quite often be found in one of these places reading on my iPad and just enjoying life

I did say I’d be rambling didn’t I? I’ll summarise this post now so that I can get on with the next one: Even after 2 and a bit months of living here, I am always finding new things to do, see, eat and drink. It’s strange that London is a much bigger city but doesn’t feel like it has to be explored like Melbourne does. I’ve said this to Mum and Dad recently; at the moment, I can’t imagine me wanting to live anywhere else.

Looking back - First Impressions

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 11:00:06 +0000

Hey all, I know I have been really bad at blogging since I got to Australia but it has been a busy time! I know some of my family like to read this to see how I am getting on out here in Oz. Because of that, I’ve decided to do a few entries over the next 2 days. In all honesty, I am probably going to write them all in one go and let the blog post them itself over the 2 days (the wonders of technology).

The reason I stopped blogging shortly after getting here wasn’t just because I was busy (I was, I promise!) but it was also because I had trouble finding things to say on a day-to-day or even a week-to-week basis that didn’t just involve me saying “I went to work, then lunch, worked some more, played frisbee, went home and ate some more”. No one really wants to read that so I’m doing a “2 months and a bit” catch up.

I’m going to split it into 6 parts to make it a little easier to digest. Trying to split it all nicely took a little planning but I think I’ve picked 6 topics (in the loosest sense of the word) that spread things quite evenly. Obviously, this is the first part. It’ll cover mostly what I have already covered but I have selected some pictures to try and give the whole thing a bit more context.

Anyway…

From the title, I am sure you have guessed that this is about my early days in Melbourne and all the new stuff I had to discover. Unfortunately, when I first arrived here I ended up working a lot so most of my findings were things I saw while walking around and things that I saw every day (like my flat).

My first real impressions of Melbourne came with my accommodation. I’ve spoken a lot on this before as the place was so awesome (Will B dubbed it “The Fortress of Brolitude”). If you have forgotten, here is a picture of my apartment:

Pretty swanky eh? Yeah, I loved this place. My favourite part of the whole building though was the terrace:

The terrace was on the 10th floor of the building and as well as being amazingly peaceful and serene, you got some great views of the the CBD (Central Business District). I spent a lot of my time up here, even when the weather was rubbish, just chatting to others I saw and people watching the streets. There was usually something going on in in the courtyard area outside the building (more on that later) so there was always something and someone to watch.

As I said before, I spent most of my time working (even the weekends) when I first got to Melbourne so I didn’t get to explore as much as I would have liked to. In hindsight, it was probably a good thing as even now I am discovering little things like hidden art work and nice cafes every week which I might have done all in one go if I had too much time off!

Although I did work most weekends, my first weekend (I arrived on a Wednesday and worked the Thursday and Friday) was spent just wandering around the CBD area and taking photos like a proper tourist. There are a lot of photo worthy things in the centre of Melbourne and I did take lots of photos. When planning these blog entries I decided to limit myself to 4 photos for each post because otherwise there would be very few words and too many pictures. It also meant that I had to choose pictures that I thought would both go well with the post and reflect my experiences of Melbourne at that time.

In my explorations I was getting lost a lot. This whole grid system confused me! Was this a vertical or horizontal street? Am I going north or south? East or west? There was one place that I always found myself looking for because it was a) easy to find and b) was close to the apartment. It’s also one of the most iconic buildings in Melbourne. Flinders Street Station is just one of those places that everyone meets (all of the city Metro trains pass through Flinders) and is the hub of the city. It also has that “old-timey Victorian look to it”:

It reminds me a lot of Paddington in London. I’m not sure why, they aren’t every similar. It may just be the fact that they both have a historical exterior but are modern inside. Maybe.

Another thing that I noticed about Melbourne was that it was full of art. Melbourne is a very ‘artsy’ place with all the typical stuff that comes with it (lots of people who are dressed funny, coffee shops that are full of people in the middle of the day, art galleries on every corner and posters everywhere for some aspiring performer’s next one-man show). As well as all of the independent art, there are some big art groups that can afford to do bigger exhibitions. On my first weekend in Melbourne, the CBD was full of demon babies: My reaction to these sculptures can be accurately summed up by a comment by Mathew Wilson (aka “Old Mat”):

What the fuck is wrong with Australians?! This weird shit should’ve been in China! Not Melbourne!

He has a point, there was a lot of weird stuff to see in China but most of that I put down to cultural differences. Stuff like this is just plain weird. And that’s what I like about Melbourne!

The title says that this post is about my first impressions and I haven’t really said anything about them directly but there were a few things that stuck in my mind right from the first day:

The coffee is amazing here (nobody goes to Starbucks because it is so rubbish in comparison to almost anywhere else you can go)
People here are really friendly. This was really surprising after living in London for a year. If you asked someone in London for directions you would probably get what you wanted but it would be accompanied by a scowl that says “stop wasting my time, I have somewhere to be” whereas people are more than happy to help out here.
Australia is sport mad. In the UK we like to think we are big on sports but we don’t really compare. If it is outdoors, you can bet there is an Australia following for it. The strangest one I have found so far is Yukigassen. This is a sport that is an organised snowball fight (it’s obviously Japanese). Guess where they play it? That’s right, Australia!
Food. Food is so, so good here. Everything. When I was getting lunch at work in the UK it would invariably be a sandwich. Ok, there were other things to have but it was never worth the effort. Here there are huge American style food courts selling all different kinds of food in one place. You have to keep active just to justify eating so much good food for lunch.

There is one other thing that hit me like a brick when I first got here; cost. Everything is so expensive! My favourite example is beer: beer in London is about £3.00-£4.00 a pint (for something decent, no Carling thank you) depending on where you go. I have yet to see a pint of beer in a pub for less than $6.00 (that’s around £4.00). Ok, so everyone earns more here and the exchange rate makes the numbers look crazy but it is expensive here. I didn’t want to put that in the list because it is a bit negative and although it was always in my mind and I have complained about it a lot, it hasn’t really affected me in a really bad way. I now have a big lunch (spend around £8 a day on lunch) and then have a smaller dinner. Food is generally higher quality too so I don’t want to go on about it too much.

Wrapping things up, my few few weeks in Melbourne were a little daunting but I really enjoyed the exploring and just being in a new place. Work wasn’t too bad either, but the less I talk about work, the more I can talk about more interesting things :)

Seaside living - Sat 22/Sun 23 Oct 11

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 13:31:45 +0100

Saturday

Waking up at 8am after going out and knowing that you’ve got to be out of the house very soon is not a good feeling. Nonetheless, I dragged myself out of bed (earlier than usual for some reason) and hopped in the shower. I think showers are the greatest cure for hangovers, it is just that building up the courage to stand up for any length of time when hungover is a big deal.

I actually made into work about 10 minutes earlier than I had any other day that week and was feeling somewhat chipper! Work was pretty slow, the work that I have got left at the moment is all the low priority stuff that takes an age to find what the problem is. It’s strange how the high priority problems are always the easy fixes!

Half the day rolled by and I started getting hungry. There were a few guys in from the dev team to monitor performance over the weekend or whatever dev teams do these days. The Tech Lead, Stu, informed me that there was free lunch downstairs on 18 for all of the weekend people to enjoy. Free lunch? I’m there!

Unfortunately, I wasn’t there early enough it seems. Most of the food that was left was already cold. Still, I’m not going to pass up some free Nandos so threw some chicken, spicy and non-spicy fries on a plate and jumped back in the lift to 30.

After eating, I felt like I had much more energy and the rest of the working day passed without any real incident.

The weather had once again been a bit British, with an average temperature of 14 and lots and lots of rain. I didn’t do much for the rest of the night bar watch Wales lose to Australia for the 3rd/4th place play-off in the Rugby World Cup and watch some TV that I had downloaded. Sunday didn’t have much promise either and with being exhausted from work, I didn’t plan on getting up early.

Sunday

When I woke up I was surprised to see the sun blazing and the skies clear. The forecast said rain and highs of 19 but were completely wrong. By the time I got up it was midday and my laptop told me that the temperature was 25 degrees!

I didn’t have anything planned for the day so decided to hop on a tram and go to Albert Park and St. Kilda.

I wanted to go to the park to take pictures and St. Kilda to scout the area as I want to move there when I get kicked out of Freshwater. I got off the tram at the top of the park and walked around the lake for a bit. I took a bunch of pictures that I’ve yet to upload. The lake area is really nice and I could have quite easily just sat around there all day.

I wandered through the rest of the park and tried to take some pictures of a baseball match when the battery on my camera died. As I was now at the bottom of the park and my camera had died, I made my way to the nearest main road and jumped on a tram to St. Kilda.

The tram dropped me off right by the beach and I had an instant thought that I was in LA. I have never been to LA and these thoughts were entirely based on TV but still; palm trees, beach and good weather. Sounds great, no?

I wandered down to the beach and found a little grassy hill to sit on. It was strange that there were loads of people around but still lots of room on the beach. I guess the day was considered cold by the local’s standards because there were only 3 people in the sea. Probably all Scottish.

On my grassy little hill, I laid down and read a chapter of my book on the iPad. It was really nice just to relax while taking in all the sounds and smells of the beach.

After I’d finished the chapter that I was on, I went for another little walk and found a market of sort selling lots of touristy crap like boomerangs and digerydoos but also some really cool artwork and photographs.

At the end of the road was Luna Park, I really small fairground that reminded my of Barry Island in Wales. It was a little smaller but a lot cleaner than Barry and was fun to walk around exploring. Being a small fairground, it took at most 10 minutes to see everything so I was back outside wondering what to do next.

By now it was about 4pm and I wanted to be back for the Rugby World Cup final so I hopped on a tram again and was back in the city centre after about 10 minutes.

I wandered around the city a bit, looking for somewhere to get some coffee. I gave up on that when I noticed a Target and walked inside, curious as to whether it would be any less expensive than everything else seems to be.

I guess Target can be described as an equivalent of a combination of Primark, TJ Hughes and Matalan. Quite budget and doing a bit of everything. It was actually quite reassuring to go in and see that when I do move, I’ll be able to pick up a lot of basics for a reasonable price.

I left Target through a different exit and stumbled up on a coffee stand that was nice and cheap (see the theme here? Australia is expensive!) so grabbed a latte and was off.

As I said before, I was trying to get back for the rugby so started making my way back to Freshwater. I couldn’t resist the smell of Subway so grabbed a foot-long Italian BMT that I planned on eating somewhere near. I ended up walking all the way back to Freshwater to eat and perched myself right next to the Subway in our building. Another small fail there.

Rugby time! I quite enjoyed the game and would say that I am enjoying rugby more in general these days. Perhaps it is the fact that it is the world cup and the standards are higher, who knows. During the game, I had a quick Skype with mum and we were discussing things like furnishing a place when I get one and things like that. It was a nice chat especially as I hadn’t spoken to mum since the weekend before. We both decided that I should have a look around Ikea on Monday so I had a look and planned to go straight after work.

After a largely uneventful weekend, I slipped into bed still feeling exhausted but like I hadn’t done anything all weekend.

Domesticated and intoxicated - Thur 20/Fri 21 Oct 2011

Sat, 22 Oct 2011 13:05:17 +0100

Thursday

Not much really happened on Thursday at work apart from the fact that we had a team meeting. The guys have a meeting every week to talk about the projects that they are doing and how things are going. Oh, and there is cake. The best thing about there being cake is that it is home-made every week. These guys actually have a cake baking schedule! This is just another of the great things about working with awesome people in a cool place and for a good company. In the immortal words of Will Berard; “bro, life is chill”.

I ended up staying quite late at work and had no plans for the evening. This led me to think that being a modern man by cooking and cleaning would be a good idea.

First was the food. I’d been shopping on the weekend and had just bought stuff like pizzas and bread so hadn’t really cooked properly at this point. I only planned to make some pasta with some chicken and sauce but it was a big leap from my usual eats so was actually looking forward to having some food that I cooked myself.

Pasta is easy enough. Boil kettle, pour in water to pan, put pasta in, wait. Frying a bit of chicken has never been a problem for me before and I followed the same basic plan this time; a little olive oil in the frying pan, wait until the oil is hot and then chuck it in.

Of course I set the smoke alarm off! A combination of too high heat, very sensitive smoke alarm and no ventilation put me into a mad panic. My brother calls the smoke alarm the ‘dinner bell’ because when it goes off, he knows that my mum has nearly finished cooking. Although this is an obvious jest, there is an element of truth in it fir the Brimble household.

I was flapping around the apartment, waving a tea towel at the alarm, taking my food off the stove and opening my door to let the smoke escape. None of it worked. Eventually I just turned the air conditioning on and after about 30 seconds, there was no more smoke and I was freezing cold. I was really worried that the sprinklers were going to go off and that I would be charged for masses of water damage.

As I was dishing my food up, I remembered that there is an extractor fan above the cooker. It’s hidden away and only comes on when pulled out. Idiot.

Later, I’d decided against vacuuming because it was around 10:30pm and I didn’t want to annoy any neighbours. I was doing laundry instead and managed tip half my box of washing powder onto the carpet. Better get vacuuming after all!

After a complete domestic fail, I crawled into bed feeling sorry for myself.

Friday

Work was still uneventful but for lunch we went to a curry place. I had a lamb rogan josh, bombay potatoes, dahl, rice and a naan bread. Very good stuff.

After work everyone was going out to celebrate someone who works in the office’s birthday and I was invited along. I had to stay in work until about 6:45pm for a conference call so I told everyone that I would meet them there.

By the time I got back to Freshwater the rugby (Australia vs Wales, 3rd place playoff in the Rugby World Cup) was already 10 minutes into the first half so I stayed in to watch Wales lose (what is going on with their kicking?). It was still fairly early at this stage so I sent Gio a text to see if the guys were where they said they were going to be.

I knew it was 300-something Lonsdale Street so I walked up to try and find the place. The guys had described it as Niagara Bar so that’s what I was looking for. After walking around for about an hour and not finding the place, I was on my way home when I got a reply from Gio saying that they were still there but won’t be for long.

I asked him for directions and it turns out that I had walked past this place about 4 times! The place was actually called Club Retro and has a big sign on the outside to prove it. They called it Niagara because it is also the Niagara Hotel and is next to Niagara lane. Google Maps says that it is Club Retro dammit!

I got there at 9:05 and there was a $15 entry fee after 9. Another fail it seems. I did get a free drink with that ($7.50) though so only a small punch in the wallet. As I went in, I immediately turned right and couldn’t find anyone. I then tried the 1st floor which was completely empty. I climbed all the way to the roof terrace and still couldn’t find anyone.

I went back down to ground and decided to get my free drink before leaving as they were definitely not there any more. I was at the bar when Jaspal comes over and asks me when I got here. They were on the left side of the ground floor. It seems that I am in idiot mode at the moment, maybe it is the lack of sleep due to jet lag.

There were a bunch of people there and quite a few that I’d never met before. I actually got to meet some of the people that raise bugs that I end up fixing which was strange in it’s own way. A few more drinks in and Jasapal, Gio and I went up to the roof terrace just to have a look around. It’s pretty cool and was full of people so we stayed up there a while to chat.

Nick joined us about 10 minutes later and we discussed where to go next. The decision was to try and wing it into a rooftop bar that requires a reservation and failing that, a bar called Section 8. We said bye to everyone (by this point Gommy was swaying and the staff were mopping up his spillages around him), and headed off.

We were obviously denied the rooftop bar because we had no reservation (it seems being just a group of guys also makes a difference here) so walked around the corner to Section 8.

I’m not sure how to describe Section 8 because it is an odd ‘venue’ It is essentially unused space between two buildings that has been turned into an outside bar. There is a tin roof providing some shelter and the walls of the surrounding buildings have graffiti murals on them but other than that there is no real feeling that you are ‘in’ somewhere.

Down one side is a long bar and there are a lot of seats and heaters but apart from that, it is essentially just a cool open space. When we walked in we were greeted by two huge kiwi bouncers that Nick chatted to briefly. We were again asked why we hadn’t brought any girls but were admitted regardless.

We got some more rum and coke and chatted a bit more about the area. The cool thing about Melbourne is that even if you just bump into someone accidentally, you can have a pleasant conversation and a laugh with some complete strangers.

We had a few more drinks, chatted to some more people and listened to some good funk and soul music. I was really liking this place and could see why it was a regular haunt for the other guys.

I’d made the complete error of signing up for overtime on Saturday so was constantly watching the time to make sure that I could leave at a reasonable hour. It was a shame that midnight rolled around so fast, just as people were talking of moving onto a club. It was at this point that I decided that going home would probably be the most sensible idea.

Nick was off chatting to someone (Will: he has a similar mandate to you) but I think my wanting to leave put a bit of a downer on the party spirit and as such Gio decided that he was hungry and wanted to leave to.

Gio, Jaspal and I left Nick to chat away and headed for KFC. I have walked past this KFC so many times and not even noticed it was there. I got a the good ol’ fillet burger meal and was quite content. We all lived in Freshwater so walked back together. Once back at the flat, I realise just how drunk I had gotten (I felt stone cold sober while I was out) and just wanted to get to bed.

I couldn’t sleep until around 2:30am, all the while knowing that I had work early the next morning. It was a really nice and chilled introduction to the Melbourne night life but I can’t wait until I get a chance to go all out. Next week maybe?

Ultimate: The Greatest Sport Ever Invented By Man - Wed 19 Oct 11

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 14:53:00 +0100

As I said in my last post, I wanted to try and keep things current so that I can talk about stuff that I am doing now (yesterday).

Work was work. I found out that I am getting an office, however. I know right? To be honest I am not too keen on the idea, it is already difficult integrating myself into a team that has been a close knit group for over a year. Moving into an office is going to cut me away from them and it will be more difficult to feel a part of the group. On the upside, I’ll get to use phrases like “put it in my office” and “give my office a call and I’ll see what I can do”.

Went for lunch with the rest of the team. Melbourne seems to have a lot of food courts with a lot of different types of food to eat. Food courts that are only seen in the UK at shopping malls and American TV but I think they work and are a good idea. It allows everyone to go for lunch together but to get the food that they want instead of the food that nobody wants but you went to anyway (so that no one was the person who chose where to eat). I had a veritable feast; a crazy breaded ball of rice and chorizo, roast potatoes and some salad on the side. Very tasty and very filling.

I keep thinking how expensive Australia is but that meal was $11 (about £7) and as I just said, was very tasty and very filling.

The rest of the work day was, of course, uneventful. 6pm rolled around and I dashed out of the door. Time to go and play some ultimate!

To get there I had to take the following route. The route involved a tram ride to the top of the park and then a walk through the park to where we would be playing. Getting on the tram was nice and easy, it stops in the middle of the road and you just get on. Simple. Paying for the tram is difficult. Melbourne has only just started an Oyster Card style system called MiKi (pronounced my-key, I think). I walk most places here so I haven’t bothered to buy one yet. You can still buy tickets on the tram but it turns out this tram was coins only and I had no change. Balls. I didn’t know what to do so just stayed on the tram without paying. I am such a rebel!

It was still really sunny at 6:45pm so I had sunglasses on. This meant that I wasn’t wearing my glasses, which in turn meant that it was almost impossible for me to see which stop to get off at. Luckily I noticed the stop number of the stop just before the one I wanted to so I pressed the bell after that stop and jumped off in hopes of being in the right place. Turns out that I was.

Albert Park is huge! I don’t think the map quite does it justice, but if you have also watched the Australian Grand Prix you will have seen the roads I was walking down. There is a huge lake running through the park with all sorts of birds and general wildlife in and around (no, I didn’t see any crocodiles).

It was all well and good being in this beautiful park but I had to get to frisbee and was already running late! I found a map but that was no use because all I knew was that I had to get to the bottom of the park. This was the first time I have truly missed having my iPhone. Being able to look up websites and maps on the go can be a lifesaver for situations like this. Alas, I had to do it the old fashioned way of wandering around in hopes of stumbling on the right place and constantly asking people where the bottom of the park was. I must have looked like a true tourist.

I eventually found the place using the traditional method of finding people playing ultimate; keep wandering until you see some flying plastic!

I wasn’t that late as people were still throwing around and nothing official had started yet. I arrived at the same time as a guy from the UK called Tom so I was chucking around with him until we were all called in.

This session is the social ‘league’ which is aimed more at beginners. I thought it would be a good level to get back into the game at as I hadn’t played in quite some time and was definitely out of touch.

Running the show was a guy called Seb who plays for a local club, Heads of State. The social league only started last week so he just went back over throwing the basic throws; forehand and backhand.

I was really surprised when he said that today we would be learning some advance throwing (it’s week 2!). I thought that it was just going to be slightly more advanced forehands and backhands such as some blades and discs made for running onto. Nope. Hammers and scoobers. If you are not familiar with ultimate and the throws involved, when I started playing you didn’t even think of throwing a hammer until you’d been playing for a few months and my first scoober throw was probably about a year in. This was either going to go really bad or really well…

We all paired off and started practising our scoobers. Scoobers are quite difficult to throw in any sort of wind and I had to throw into a cross wind to get my scoober to go where I wanted. This combined with me being a little rusty led to some truly awful scoobers and one that even hit a girl in the head. Oops.

Hammers next. Hammers were fine. Because they curve the opposite way to the scoober, it was much easier going into the crosswind and I actually threw some fairly decent distances with reasonable accuracy.

After we’d all had a bit of practice it was time for a drill. I was fully expecting an end-zone drill (Seattle, mushroom or one of it’s other many names) but instead we played a cool game called King of the Hill. The hill is essentially the end of a queue. The queue is two parallel lines going up the field. You play in pairs, opposite each other on the 2 lines of the queue. You have to throw back and fourth to move up the queue. If you make a drop, you go all the way to the back. Once you get to the top you are kings, if you are at the bottom, you’re jokers! What made this more interesting is that Seb would call out throwing rules such as having to put a fake in before throwing or hammers with one handed catches (with kings having to catch one handed at all times). It was a great little drill for getting people to practice their throwing and catching, while making it competitive. Me and Tom were kings twice, but I dropped both of them and we went tumbling all the way down to the bottom.

After the drill, it was game time and we were split into 4 even sized teams, with known experienced players as the captains. I was on Basil’s team (another HoS player) as well as I guy called Rob who has played with Devon Ultimate. I know a few people from Devon (JB, Afrow Peat & Craig) so it was really strange to meet someone on the other side of the world who has played frisbee with the same people as me.

The game was good fun and was a nice run around. Obviously, this wasn’t world class ultimate as a lot of people had only played ofr the first time either that day or the week before but that didn’t matter. I managed to score 2 points (I never score points) and put a decent pull out.

I actually spent quite a lot of the game time chatting to Seb about the ultimate scene in Melbourne and he told me that next week there was a league of HoS players starting up and that I would be welcome to come along. I was very much up for it as I really want to get back into ultimate on a fairly competitive level. Seb added me on Facebook and that was that. Next Thursday, can’t wait!

Afterwards there was no pub session despite being social league (unheard of!) so everyone went their separate ways.

By now it was 10pm but still very warm so I decided to walk home. It was 15 minutes on the tram so it couldn’t be that ling, right? Well, the walk eventually took me about an hour (I forgot about the 20 minute walk up through the park) but it was still really nice to be out and doing some exercise. Still being like 22 degrees at 10:30pm also helps.

When I got back, I grabbed a McDonalds from down stairs, had a Skype with dad and then fell into bed feeling the happiest I have since arriving in Melbourne! What a great day!

Note on the title: The title is actually the title of a great book, the website of which can be found here. If you’ve played ultimate for a bit and have been to a few tournaments, it’s a hilarious read because so much of it rings so true.

Edit: I forgot to mention, I’m going to start putting the date in the title. It just makes sense. Thanks to Stef for the idea (well, he stole it from Ben…)

Fast forward

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 14:48:32 +0100

If you have been keeping up with this blog and you know me then you will know that I am actually a week behind with my posts. That was mainly due to China being mental and me being slightly exhausted. What I’m going to do is actually condense the week that I am late by into this single post. My reasoning for this is that I want to make the blog more current and that in the last week, not a great deal has happened but things are starting to get fun now and I want to be able to write about them in a current way. Without further ado…

First days in work are always a bit of a nightmare. This one was made easier by the fact that I wasn’t starting a new job but made harder by the fact that I am in a different continent where I don’t know anyone.

Davide (my boss/co-worker) met me in the lobby of the building and took me up to the 30th floor. The first thing I noticed as I walked in was the view. It was amazing! Our office has a great, almost unobstructed view of the coast, harbour and sea.

The rest of the day was a pretty standard first day; meeting people, filling in forms and working much slower than normal. The highlight of the day was setting up my bank account. I know that sounds boring but when you have dealt with banks and their process as much as I have (I worked for one for about 3 years), you dread having to go there. The branch was actually in our building and everything was so easy! UK banks take note!

I’m going to skip Friday entirely as nothing of note happened. Nothing at all.

Saturday was iPhone day. I really wanted to get my hands on the iPhone 4S so I got up at 6am, ready to travel to the Apple Store and queue up. I actually missed my bus and ended up getting a train, McDonalds breakfast and a bus to get to Westfields Doncaster (a lot of places seemed to be named after places in The Grim North of the UK).

I eventually get outside the Apple store at 8:45am and there is already a queue. I used their free wifi on my iPad to pass the time before 2 guys who worked in the store came out to tell us that they didn’t have an 4Ss in stock. Balls. I grabbed the bus back into the CBD for a wander around.

I had a good wander, I visited the following places:

Federation Square - A sort of general meeting and gathering place. The local art museum is there and there is usually going on outside for people to watch.
Federation Wharf - Just the other side of the river from me, it’s a nice grassy area to just chill
The place that the people following the ‘Occupy Wall St’ campaign have decided to set up camp, right outside Starbucks.
Queen Victoria Market - A really cool market that sells a bit of everything. I bought some bread and cheese. Very tasty.

Sunday involved more wandering and I managed to find a cheap shop that I could buy another visitor travel plug (I only had 1), some chopsticks (I’m getting into it now) and some cheap drinks (Pepsi Max for only $1.75!).

Monday and Tuesday were pretty much uneventful. My work rate was finally back up to a decent level on Monday. It seems jet lag had hit me, just when I thought I had avoided it! I was also back in the gym both Monday and Tuesday. Taking it a bit slow as I try to ease myself back into it.

The photos I took on Saturday while I was wandering can be found here. Note: at the time of writing they are still uploading. Be patient :)

Fortress of Brolitude

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 14:08:00 +0100

Got off the plane in Sydney and was then shepherded into a huge passport control queue. I was a bit weary that I only had 2 hours until I had to board my flight and the queue was barely moving. The queue was huge with 10 zig-zag with each one holding about 50 people. So that’s 500 people all being served by a grand total of 3 people.

There was a shortcut queue for people with e-passports. The symbol they showed was the same one as the one on my passport. I tried my luck and was instantly turned away. The guy said that I had the wrong type of e-passport. How many different kinds can there be?

I eventually made it through and into baggage reclaim. I’d been in the queue so long that my suitcase was already on the carousel. That is the first time that this has happened to anyone. To check in my bag I had to go through another long line for security. I spoke to the guy and told him how soon my flight was. He sent me down an empty queue and I threw my case into the scanner. With that over, I wheeled like a demon until I got to the bag drop. Nice and quick, dropped the bag off. My bag seems to change weight every time it is weighed, even with the same stuff in it.

I had to get a bus to the other terminal for my flight and I narrowly missed one (it was still taking people when I got there but the person in front of me was the last one). I was told that it was only 10 minutes until the next bus and I think someone told the driver too. There was a huge queue of people but the bus driver just sat there reading his paper until 10 minutes and 59 seconds had passed. The bus ride was only 5 minutes and I was in the terminal, waiting to board. All that rushing and I end up waiting to board.

The flight was really strange. The plane was not as plush or kitted out as the international ones I was now used to and the flight was just over an hour. I had the window seat and sat next to me was a really nice woman who worked in Sydney and was travelling to Melbourne for business. It seemed really strange to hear that she just pops back and fourth Sydney and Melbourne as easily as I’ve jumped on the tube in London. I continued reading A Dance With Dragons and the flight obviously passed very quickly.

It was really cool to just look out of the window as we were only just above the cloud line. The cloud “landscape” looks just like all the photos of the artic that you see. It really looks like that you could step out of the door and just land on soft snow. On the main screen of the plane was the live map of our travels; kind of pointless when it spent most of it’s time zoomed out to a whole world view. The little plane that showed our progress didn’t even move…

Off the plane and once again at baggage reclaim (domestic flight don’t have passport control, obviously). This time my stuff took ages to arrive but at least I wasn’t in a rush to get anywhere. After grabbing my bag, I got a cab from outside the station, feeling both excited and nervous as this was really the beginning of a completely new chapter of my life. China was a holiday and the rest was just travelling; this was it, on the way to the new apartment, work the next day. Nervous and excited.

I had $150 in cash that I’d planned to use for the first few days until I could get my travellers cheques changed. I was enjoying taking in all of the the new sights, but my attention was constantly drawn back to the meter as it seemed to be climbing faster than I thought it would be. 10, 20, 30 and 40 all passed without my feeling like I was any closer to my destination. It was really strange that we somehow just appeared in the centre of the city, amongst sky scrapers and traffic only seconds after being on the motorway.

The taxi glided into the driveway of Freshwater Place and I forked over the $53 begrudgingly. I ended up walking into the wrong building and was promptly turned around and pointed to the other revolving door. I walked through into what felt like an expensive hotel. I walked up to the concierge desk and asked about the person from Corporate Keys that was meant to be meeting me here. I was a bit anxious as I was told someone would be there as soon as I get there.

I turned on my phone and checked the time, I was 45 minutes earlier than expected so my anxiety subsided. The time passed quickly with a little more A Dance With Dragons on the iPad. The nice lady from Corporate Keys was bang on time and lead me into the lift and up to the 16th floor.

The lift and the corridor again gave me that expensive hotel impression and I wasn’t disappointed when I walked through the door. I’d already seen pictures on the website of what I was getting but it didn’t really do it justice. As I walked through the door and into the main area of the studio flat, I was amazed at how light the whole room was. I must admit, the general design and décor is what I would like to eventually have in a place of my own.

The kitchen is all white with silver Smeg appliances, the living area has a comfy sofa and a big TV, the bedroom has a very comfy bed and is light and airy and the bathroom has the expensive hotel bathroom fell. Everything I wanted. My Corporate Keys friend gave me a little intro, gave me the key and left me to my new home. The Fortress of Brolitude (FOB) was mine! It was still all sinking in so I did something that is entirely against my personality; I unpacked and tidied everything up. I felt a little weird after that so took a shower in the nicest shower that I have ever been in. It’s like being blasted with a warm fire hose.

After the shower, I was feeling a bit peckish so I wandered down to the shopping area below my building and grabbed myself a Subway. Having Subway in the building will probably now work out well for my health!

Once I’d eaten, I cam back and looked how far I was from work. I wanted to do a quick walk there to ensure I knew where I was going for my first day back at work. There is nothing worse than rushing or being late on the first day. Normally I hate been early for stuff but this is one of the few times that I will actually try to be early for something.

The walk itself took less than 10 minutes. When I got to the building I wasn’t sure if it was the right one. I could see the occupant directory just a bit further inside but I couldn’t make out the names so was still unsure. I got lucky when someone left the building and I could go through the open door. I was in luck and in the right place. Awesome. A quick walk back, a lift ride and I was back in the Fortress.

I had to give corporate keys a quick call about sorting the internet out but other than that everything with this whole move has gone so smoothly! I couldn’t believe I was finally there! I suddenly realised how exhausted I was so fell onto my new feather bed, wrapped myself up in my feather blanket and drifted off to sleep.

Notes:
1) Pictures that I took of my apartment can be found here
2) The title. Will from my old team at work gave me the idea for the title when he kept referring to the apartment as the Fortress of Brolitude. He’s currently enjoying the whole “bro” culture, albeit mostly ironically. A Fortress of Brolitude is basically where a bro lives and is his own space for chillin’ with his bros and whatever else bros do.

Goodbyes, MagLev and more flying

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 14:29:00 +0100

It seems that everything is ‘e-something’ now-a-days. This means that I had an e-ticket and e-boarding-pass for my flight to Australia. This posed a problem for me; Ben or no one else that he lived with had a printer. Because of this I arranged with him to meet for lunch one more time and he would print my boarding pass for me back at the office.

While waiting for it to be lunch time, I had to gather all of my stuff together and pack it all up again. Gone was the nice and neat folded clothes that left the UK, everything was just thrown in the case and forgotten about. I thought I had everything, so went off to meet Ben for lunch.

I got a cab again as there is no simple way of getting to Ben’s office from where he lives other than by road. I met Ben on a large intersection and he said that all the guys from work were at a little Schezuan restaurant just across the road. We decided to join them.

This was the first place in China that the Chinese food looked like what I was used to as take-away in the UK. There was fried rice, kung po chicken and chow mein. There was also some battered chicken albeit with some heads and feet in the mix too. Unfortunately this was Chris, Peter and the other guy’s stuff (I only just met him then and couldn’t remember his name after him leaving my presence). Liking the look of what was on the table, Ben and I ordered the kung po chicken, the noodles and some fried beans.

While we were waiting for our food, the other guys left as they had to get back to work. I said bye to Chris and Peter again and our food soon arrived. It was so, so tasty. Xiao Bing’s was very, very good food but there is something that can be said for just eating something that you are used to and know is good. I chopsticked up loads of cashew nuts, beans and chicken but struggled getting noodles into my face without it going via the tablecloth.

We finished, paid up and then headed back to Ben’s office. Ben took me to his workstation and was very proud to tell me that he had to fight for his table in the corner where no one could see what he was doing. This was his little domain and he loved it. As well as the boarding pass, Ben printed me a map back to his flat and also a ‘taxi slip’ for the maglev. The taxi slips are basically a little printout of the address in both English and Chinese. Helpful if you don’t speak Chinese.
I said my goodbyes to Ben as I would be heading off to the airport straight from his flat. The goodbyes were emotional (I’m kidding of course). Another cab ride and I’m back at Ben’s flat. It was fun lugging the 23kg suitcase and my backpack down 6 storeys of stairs (again kidding).

I hailed a cab and showed him my taxi slip and he just gave me a sort of queer look as if to say “really?”. He read out the road name and what he said looked approximate to what was on the English part of the taxi slip do I just said ‘dui’ (correct) and we drove off. I was in the taxi that felt like an age and when I knew we were getting close I think the driver got lost so I had to try and direct with my limited Chinese (I’ve got; left, right, straight on and stop here. Impressive I know).

I bought a ticket for the maglev and made my way up to the platform. The maglev platform is really weird as it just a raised platform with a half-cylinder metal roof with nothing at either end. The maglev tracks look like 2 big pieces of fettuccine that have been made into a roller coaster track.

I waited around a while for the train and it eventually glided into the station and lowered itself from it’s usual magnetic hover. Everyone boarded the train and I was a little disappointed. I’m not sure what I was expecting, maybe something super-futuristic perhaps, but inside it was just a normal train. I took a seat and hoped that things got interesting.

We glided out of the station without a sound and I was still feeling a little disappointed. I was watching the speed clock climb to max speed and took some pictures of it. We finally reached the max speed of 431km/h after banking around a few corners and then a huge straight. Even with the banking (at one point it looked like we were going to topple off the track) the ride was still really smooth, I guess that was the really impressive part.

When we started slowing down, there was a huge noise and the other train hurtled past us the other way, making most people in the carriage jump in shock. The whole journey was relatively short at only 15 minutes. I stepped off hte train and was in the airport again. Boring.

It is worth pointing out at this point that when I was at Ben’s and leaving with my suitcase, I did a quick check to ensure that I had all of the important stuff. Wallet, passport, boarding pass. Oh fuck, where’s my boarding pass? That’s right, I’d left it on the printer in Ben’s office. Great.

I gave Ben a quick call but knew that there was no help that he could give me anyway. I decided to wing it, as I once had when travelling to Italy and back without a passport, and see if the electronic copy on my iPad would suffice.

Fast forward back to the airport queue. I’m near the front and am actually the first e-ticket person for my flight. Not surprising when you think of China’s heavily locked down internet to be honest. I explained my situation while the whole time the check-in lady was holding new boarding passes in her hand. It seems that everyone gets one, regardless of how you check in. Relief.

Once I was through the security checks (once again waived through because I had a western face), there was nothing to do but hang around for a few hours. I found some computers with limited access to the internet so I sent mum and dad some emails. I noticed a pay phone and thought that it would be a good idea to give mum and dad a call but I didn’t have any notes small enough to buy the phone card.

There was a nice little coffee shop near the phones so I grabbed one of their Blue Mountain roasts and sat down for a bit, playing with my iPad. Once I was done with the coffee I had enough change to call mum. I managed to get her first time at work, which is a rarity as she is usually away from her desk. We chatted for a bit about the usual stuff and then my money ran out. Next was dad. I tried to get him on the phone but it was engaged. I tried again and again. After a few more tries I gave up and went to send him an email. I guess he was on the phone to mum because I already had an email saying that he heard that I phoned mum. I replied saying that I tried to call him but to no avail.

I eventually reached dad and we again had a good chat with it ending when the money went. I still had a little time to pass and noticed that there was some table tennis playing live on the TV. After playing table tennis everyday in work, I now consider myself a fan of the sport so sat down to watch some of a pretty rapid game.

Boarding time. This is my least favourite part of flying. It’s so boring. Just queueing up so that you can sit in your seat and wait. When I get on the plane, as I am nearing my seat I ask the flight attendant how much it would cost to upgrade. I was never going to pay to upgrade, but I wanted to see what I could get for free. I played the whole “I’ve been in a car crash” card to see what I could get. Unfortunately, I was never upgraded. The very nice flight attendant did try and move me to an exit row seat so I would have more room but his manager snapped it up for someone else before I could pounce. I’ll stick with standard economy then…

I sat in my seat and waited and miraculously, no one came to sit in seat next to me. 2 seats to myself and a bit of extra legroom. Amazing, I didn’t even need my rubbish attempt at getting an upgrade.

The flight went pretty smoothly; I watched Hanna (good film, rubbish soundtrack), some Simpsons, Family Guy and Grand Designs. All good choices. The food was good too; chicken with some potato cubes. As I am now a master of eating the Asian way, I ate everything with chopsticks! Really good and I was off to sleep for a bit too!

The rest of the flight was uneventful and boring. Nothing to report except watching the flight map between trying to sleep. Landing was very soft and whad’dya know it, I’m in Australia!

Tourist fail, getting beaten up and ultimate in Shanghai

Sun, 16 Oct 2011 14:30:43 +0100

As I said in my last post, I’d arranged to go for coffee in the morning. I woke up at around 9 and grabbed a shower and thought that I was running late as me and Jesse had arranged to go at 9. There was no sign of Jesse so I thought that maybe he’d already gone as I was running late. I waited around until about 10am just to make sure and just as I was gathering my stuff to head out and my touristy stuff, Jesse pops his head out and says that he is jut going to jump in the shower.
Both washed and ready, we head out. I asked Jesse where we are going for coffee and he said “Starbucks, of course”. Jesse is quite a character of contrast; on the one had he loves China, Chinese culture and everything that comes with it. On the other hand, he is an American through and through and takes pleasure in knowing that he can get the same coffee that he can get back home and the business that he is trying to move into is importing American beer to China.
We got some coffee; a grande latte for me and Jesse had his ‘jitters’ (a iced coffee with 2 extra shots of espresso!). After acquiring caffeine, we went in search of breakfast. Jesse say a guy with a ‘shaobing’ and he proclaimed how tasty they are so we tried to follow the guy around in the hopes of seeing where he got it from. In hindsight, this was a silly idea because why would he be heading back to the place where he bought his breakfast if he already has it?
After searching down a few side streets, we gave up and Jesse got us both some sugar cane juice. There was a woman with a little cart on the corner of a street selling the stuff. Her cart housed some sugar canes and a hand-operated grinder/press. She just grabs one of the canes, puts it into the press and wheels away and outcomes the juice. I’m not really sure how to describe the taste of just raw sugar cane juice. It was obviously sweet but it had an acidic taste to it that I can’t really compare to anything else that I’ve had.
Now to get some breakfasty food. Right behind the sugar cane cart there was a little cafe that also had a little take away window. As Jesse speaks Chinese, he ordered for me, as he had with the sugar cane juice. The only difference here is that with the juice, I knew what I was getting as there was only one thing to get. The woman started frying a pancake, an egg and a rasher of bacon. This is the type of food that I can get behind! Before the egg solidified at all, she threw the pancake on top of it so that all of the egg is absorbed into the pancake. Next, the bacon was thrown on top and somehow just melted into the pancake. I was amazed when she flipped the pancake over and there was no egg left on the hotplate at all. She wrapped it all up for me and Jesse didn’t want anything so I paid and we left the window.
We weren’t sure what to do next. It was about 11am by now and Jesse had to be the other side of Shanghai by 12:45 and he had a lesson to plan. Jesse suggest that we could go for a blind massage and described how the people who give the massages are blind (hence the name) and therefore their other sentences are heightened and can feel all of the knots an tension in your body. I’m very much a fan of massages and pampering in general so I was happy with the plan.
The place we went to was actually opposite Ben’s compound but despite that neither Ben nor Jesse had ever been there. Jesse said that he’s had quite a few blind massages but not in this area so was quite keen to see if he could find a good place that he could come back to.
We walked in and there was a little desk with some (non-blind receptionists) and the price list. 78 quai for an hours massage! Amazing!
We were lead into a room with 4 massage tables and were given tops and trousers to change into. Jesse said that it was a good thing that we had been kept together because if this was a place offering “massages” from “girls” they would have split us up. Jesse would have been fine, he can speak Chinese. I can image that situation being very awkward for me.
Jesse had a youngish (blind) guy and I had an oldish (non-blind) woman. Admittedly, it is really hard to gauge the age of Chinese people, for instance Xiao Bing is 36 and I thought that he was no older than me or Ben.
Having Jesse there to be able to translate we really helpful because even for simple things like moving me around the table or asking me where I’m in pain would just not have worked with my level of Chinese (none).
The massage was actually quite painful, but in a really good way. I can’t remember which comedian (I think that it was Sean Lock) said this, but it seems like an accurate description of how I felt after the massage: “It was like she took out my spine, washed it and then put it back again”. I felt really good afterwards and the nagging back pain I’d been having was all but gone. Result!
Jesse had his class to teach and I wanted to go and do some touristy stuff so we headed our separate ways. My first stop was Lujiazui, where all of the skyscrapers are. I wanted to try and get to the top of the Jin Mao!
A metro ride away and I was back at the bottom of the two tallest building in Shanghai and taking more photos. I once again pretended that I was staying in the Grand Hyatt hotel and got almost to the top again. This time the lift to the very top wasn’t working at all. I searched around looking for an alternative way (maybe some stairs) to go up the last 3 storeys. No luck.
I headed back down to the hotel lobby on 54 and asked why I couldn’t get up to the top and was informed that the bar and restaurant (Cloud 9 and Club Jin Mao respectively) didn’t open until 5:30. Damn! I knew I couldn’t wait around for that because I had to check in for my flight to ensure that I got the best seat that I could without paying any extra.
By the time I had faffed around trying to get to the top and failing, it was too late to get to Tai Cang Lu and still get back in time so I decided to hang around in the J-Life Centre which is attached to the Jin Mao at ground level.
There was a Starbucks so I grabbed a coffee and sat down a bit, looking through all the pictures I’d taken during my time in Shanghai and got rid of some of the blurry or just rubbish ones. Exciting stuff! After doing that for a while, I got bored and so started to wander around. As I mentioned before, simply looking western means that no one really questions what you are doing and just assumes that you are meant to be there. After a bit of poking about and taking more pictures, it was time to head back so I hopped on the nearby metro again.
Once back at Ben’s I received a text from the man himself to inform me that he was going to be late back from work as a project that he had been coordinating was due to be completed that day and still wasn’t finish. I was cool with that because I was hanging around to check in for my flight anyway.
Remember me saying that I had to get back to check in and I was in a rush to get back? Well… I got the flight time wrong. It was 9:40pm the next day instead of what I must have read, 17:40. A bit of Skyping and Facebook passed the time until I could check in. The pickings were slim in terms of flight seats as it turns out that I could have actually chosen my seats at the time of booking. D’oh! I ended up picking a seat near the back of the plane, outside aisle where the middle group of seats was only 3 instead of 4. A little extra legroom always helps.
By the time I finished checking in, Ben was already back and we were already late leaving for frisbee so we jumped on the scoot and headed off (I accepted that we had to scoot, no matter how much I hate it. Time was of the essence!). We actually just scooted to a metro station and then got the metro to the stadium. yeah, that’s right, stadium!
I’m a little upset that I won’t be playing ultimate in Shanghai full time. There was a great mix of people, from a girl who had never played before to a girl who has played in the USA nationals team and everyone in between. We were divided into light and dark groups and then into 2 teams of each. Me, Ben and Hannah were all darks on the same team. We started off by doing a quick end zone (Seattle, mushroom, many other names) drill. I was a little shaky as I hadn’t played ultimate since BTT on August bank holiday. I got back into it after a few throws and was not doing half bad.
Game time! We played against one of the light teams obviously and it was interesting to see everyone’s level of play. There were lots of good people on both teams and lots of mistakes from both teams (mostly me and Ben to be fair). The strangest thing was that despite being outside breathing was a constant struggle. I’d never really noticed the smog until now. I don’t claim to be super-fit but I can job around a bit without collapsing at the very least. This was horrible. Ben said that people in Shanghai smoke to get some fresh air and part of me believes him. Still, even with the massive lack of oxygen, the games were fun and everyone seemed nice. Pub time!
No ultimate training session can be completed without a trip to the pub afterwards and our destination was a sports themed bar; Windows Scoreboard. Hannah was very excited about playing beer pong so we grabbed some beers and set up a table. I was paired with one of the Chinese guys while Ben and Hannah were on the same team. Similarly to the last time I played beer pong I had a bit of a rubbish start but then got into the swing and barely missed. We destroyed them. In the world of Ultimate, winning games like this are crucial for bragging rights (this is all explained in this book).
New teams and a new game of beer pong. This time it was me and Hannah against Ben and one of the American girls (Christine? I’m going to use Christine from now on to refer to her). Christine is American so obviously had an advantage. 3 years of playing sport at college in America are definitely going to give you some beer pong experience. At one point me and Hannah we down something like 8-2 and then brought it back to 9-8 only to have Ben and Christine finish us off. Damn, bragging rights were no longer mine.
Me and Ben went to refill the beers. By now Hannah had had a whole 2 beers so was actually quite drunk but we got her one anyway. Me and her played some pool but I potted the black mid way through so was an instant loser. I was gutted. Everyone except Me, Ben, Hannah and Christine had left the bar by then so we played some doubles with the same teams as beer pong in the hopes that me and Hannah could win back our dignity.
I can’t remember who won (that probably means that we lost) but we had good fun, with me and Hannah covering each other in chalk throughout the game.
It was home time now but we were worried about a 3-beer Hannah cycling back home. She insisted she was fine so we said bye and off she went. Christine, Ben and I jumped in a taxi and headed home. Not a bad day after all!

heading off to the bar
beer pong winning with chinese guy, loosing with hannah
pool, me and hannah vs ben and another american girl (we lost)
goodbye to hannah
cab back and bed

Guns don't kill people, scooters do

Sat, 15 Oct 2011 14:02:29 +0100

Warning: compared to the previous entry, this one is going to be mighty boring.
After Xiao Bing’s it was obviously going to be a late wake up with me and Ben heading out to get some food at around 3pm. We headed to City Shop because after over-indulging on Chinese food and alcohol a nice boring sandwich is always good.

As I know that you are all terribly interested in what I eat, I had a sandwich made. The sandwich contained; ham, blue cheese, tomato, onion and lettuce. Cheese and ham essentially. A little slice of cake and a horrible Chinese tea canned drink and lunch was done.

I’m not sure if I mentioned this but the back tyre on Ben’s scooter has a puncture and he needed to get this fixed before he had to ride it to work on Monday. This worked out well as I could have a little Skype session with my family while he went to do that. Nothing to report there, chatted with mum, dad and brother about the usual stuff and Ben was back just as I finished.

Ben came back into the flat looking quite annoyed. I asked what was wrong and he informed me that his scooter had just had some sort electrical fit and was billowing smoke. Probably not going to be good to ride to work…
He said he knew where to take it as the guy has fixed a similar problem like this 4 times before. You’d think Ben would have learned his lesson by now and taken it to a more capable guy, but this guy was only a 10 minute push away so off we trundled.

I went in search of a drink (I had to go all the way into the metro station to get one) while Ben had the scoot repaired. Of course, that meant scooting back. I was very much not in favour of this but I hopped on and clung to the grab rails like my life depended on it. We safely made it back even though we nearly had a little crash.

We were a bit stumped with what we should do with our day as we had plans for every day previously. We had been browsing Time Out and SmartShanghai for some ideas and were torn between two ideas; go karting or shooting. I love go karting but neither of us have seen a real gun, never mind shot one so there was definitely an element of intrigue. We decided that shooting would be the more interesting choice and looked up shooting ranges. There are two in Shanghai and Ben got some Chinese speaking people to find out how much they each were. We obviously settled on the cheapest option at 8 quai a round, with a minimum purchase of 10 rounds. We were getting quite excited by this point.

After another metro ride, we were on the right street and were looking for the building that housed the shooting range (it was on the 7th floor). For some reason I thought nothing of walking past a guy dressed in camouflage even though we were looking for a shooting range. After walking down the street a bit more, we still hadn’t found the building so I pointed out that we walked past the invisible man. We walked backed to where he was and sure enough, down a dodgy little alley, was a sign showing lots of guns. We were in the right place.

We went up to the 7th floor and were greeted by a poster of a Chinese girl shooting a guy towards where we were. Seeing an entire room painted in camo is a bit weird as well. We didn’t speak any Chinese and the guy didn’t speak much English at all (story of living in China really) but luckily there was another Chinese guy who was proficient in both so he translated for us.

There 7 photos of guns on the wall, 3 rifles, 3 handguns and 1 big-ass magnum style gun. What were actually looking at was a gun menu. The idea being that you just point to the one you want and you get that gun to shoot. Keeping it simple.

Ben opted for a scoped rifle while I went for a handgun as I wasn’t sure what sort of bashing my already damaged shoulder was going to get from the recoil. We enquired about the magnum and the guy said that it was 25 quai (£2.50) a round. I didn’t really fancy paying £25 for 10 rounds when the other guns all cost £8. In hindsight (knowing that I had money left over at the end) I wish I went for the big gun or at the very least a rifle.

Our translator friend also chose a rifle and was up first. Ben was getting equipped while the other guy started shooting. I’ve never heard a gun being fired except for games and tv/movies. I caught some air as I jumped in my chair.

Ben was ready to go and starting taking shots with the rifle. No more jumping for me. Our translator friend was done shortly after Ben started so I was up in his booth. The gun was loaded and the earmuffs were on. To be honest, even with my glasses, for some reason I could barely see the target. Maybe my handgun needed a scope? Point, aim, shoot. Point, aim, shoot, re-cock the hammer because the gun sucked. Repeat this 5 times and that’s 10 rounds gone. That however, only described the mechanics of what happened, how to describe what it was like to actually shoot something and know that what you are doing could really kill someone is something that I can’t really find words for. I guess all the obvious things come to mind; excitement, fear and adrenaline, but there was something else. The whole shooting thing was somewhat calming. I don’t mean in a shoot up a school way but more of a high you get after having a huge workout and feeling awesome. It was really addictive and over way too soon.

My guy offered me another clip but I declined. My target came back and it wasn’t that bad. There was only one outside of the black zone (7 to 10 points) and that was on a 5 or a 6. I thought I did pretty well until I saw Ben’s. Pretty much all 10s. I think the Red Army wanted to recruit him after that although that is just rumour.

We paid our bill and took our trophies with us. As we got outside, Livvie phoned and asked if we wanted to go for Indian food with her Indian classmate who’s name keeps escaping me (Ragat?).

We met up with Livvie and chatted for a bit. Her friend was really nice; she lives with her parents in Shanghai but is originally from India. She clearly went to an international school due to her slight American accent.

Now onto the bit that I enjoy writing about most; the food. It was an all you can eat and drink Indian buffet for 95 quai (£9.50, I think you’ve got the system by now right?). What more could you want? There was all the basic building blocks of Indian food as we know it; rice and naan bread as well as some things that I’ve never tried before. All of it was very good. My favourite was a mutton curry where the meat just crumbled with tenderness. There was also a little twist on the chicken tikka classic with the chicken instead being flavoured with spinach (saag) instead of tikka spices. So very tasty that I got some of that with every plate of food I had.

The way the all you can drink worked was that there was a Tiger tap next to the food and you just filled it up yourself. Awesome. Me and Ben were ravenous after our shootings so were throwing the food into our faces, which proved to be an error. After about 3 smallish plates and 2 beers, we were both quite full and had to throw in the towel. It was hard to do because everything was so good. By this point Livvie and Ragat had to leave but me and Ben decided to stay for another beer. It was, after all, already paid for.

After settling the bill, we got a cab back to Ben’s and found Maria, Jesse and Melody in the living room chatting. I’ve spoken about Maria before, so here is the low-down on the other two:

Jesse is an American from Tacoma, Washington State who currently in China teaching English but is also massively into beer. Not in a “you need to see somebody” sort of into beer, but in a “my family owns breweries and I want to get into the industry” sort of way. He has a penchant for the Asian ladies and is generally a cool guy, despite being very American.

I can’t really say much about Melody as I didn’t have much chance to engage with her. She is a Chinese girl living with a bunch of westerners and seems like a very nice person. She seemed very innocent and quiet.

We were all chatting for a bit and Jesse liked to point out that the guns we fired were really small and were the same calibre of an air rifle. Me and Ben didn’t care, we shot real guns! Woo!

After chatting for a while, people started peeling off to bed one by one. Melody was followed by Maria who was followed by Jesse. As Ben has work in the morning, me and Jesse arranged to go for coffee in the morning before he had to work.

Jesse and Ben both went to bed and I stayed up to browse the internet for a while before heading to bed myself at around midnight. What a strange day!

Xiao Bing

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 08:51:00 +0100

This post doesn’t have an attempt at a witty title because it doesn’t need one.

Me and Ben got up early (before midday) and decided to to just have a look around Shanghai and take some pictures.

First we went to the Science and Technology museum (we didn’t go inside). The area around the museum is really cool as it is just one big piazza and there is a (huge) bridge leading off that goes to a park. We took a few photos here and then decided to see if we could get to the top of the Bottle Opener (unofficial name of the tallest building in Shanghai, a quick Google will tell you why people call it that).

So, we walked in all cool like, pretending we were meant to be there (it’s amazing what westerners can get away with in China). Unfortunately all of the lifts required some kind of key card access so we never got of the ground. Let’s try the next tallest tower, the Jin Mao!

Inside the Jin Mao is a really swanky hotel, so we immediately pretended we were staying there and took the lift to the 54th floor for the hotel lobby. We were greeted by a nice Chinese lady and when we asked how to get to ‘Cloud 9’ (the bar at the floor 1 below the observation deck), we were directed to another set of lifts. All the way up to floor 85 we went. And then another lift to 87. We got there and looked at a menu and decided that we didn’t even want to pay for one drink. A little look out of the window, 3 sets of lifts and 87 floors later and we are back on floor heading for the metro. Fail.

We headed to a place called Tai Cang Lu which really reminds me of the markets in Camden (London). Ben said that it is a lot like Brighton Lanes, for those of you who have been there. We had a quick walk around, knowing that it was getting late and we had to get back and get ready for Xiao Bing’s soon. We were really hungry so ducked into a pizza place and ordered 2 meatball torpedoes. Granted the restaurant was quite busy, but this was a little silly. We waited over half an hour for 2 little items. We had to ask them to give it to us for take away as we were really running late by now. Hailing a cab was nice and easy (there are so many taxis in Shanghai) and before we knew it we were back at Ben’s with only half a meatball torpedo left.

Quick shower and change. Cab to the metro. Metro to where we were meant to be meeting everyone. I got to meet a few more of Ben’s friends, namely Peter who he works with. We all jumped in some cabs and headed to Xiao Bing’s.

I’d already heard some people talking about Xiao Bing but when they said he was crazy, I guess I thought people were exaggerating. He is mental! Mental in a good way though. We milled around outside while we waited for everyone to turn up (there were 20+ in the end). We were all seated around 2 tables and were greeted with some beer. Let the fun begin!

Xiao Bing doesn’t speak much English at all (a few words and sentences that people like Livvie have taught him) but he absolutely loves cheesy western pop music. Xiao Bing spent most of the night just hopping between our two tables, drinking, smoking and being the flamboyant character that he is. I think the word ‘character’ is the one that best describes Xiao Bing as ‘crazy Chinese guy who runs around his own restaurant shouting and drinking’ makes him sound bad and I’m really trying to get across how awesome he is.

I’m going to talk about the food we had now (probably at some length), so skip the next few paragraphs if you don’t care. I know you do though, so read on.

The food was amazing! One of the nicest meals that I have ever eaten and I was even a little adventurous. In China, the idea of everyone having their own meal off a menu just isn’t done. In fact; we didn’t even get a menu here, Xiao Bing and his minions just brought out food and piled it up on the table and we all grab at it with chopsticks. First there was a some fruit (in a crazy cream), peas still in a pod and what I think was melon. My chopstickin’ skills are not that good so I had a little trouble and had to just stab at a lot of stuff. The peas were very tasty but I learned the hard way that you need to take them out of the pod before eating.

That was just a little entrée, now for the actual starters; two different spicy soups, fried green beans and something with nuts (I can’t remember what it was now). All of them really good! What I thought was noodles in one of the soups somehow turned out to be mushrooms (they were long and thin like noodles, strange). With the starts came one of Xiao Bing’s specialities; crayfish…

I normally don’t eat seafood. Ever. This was amazing. It was a whole crayfish so I had to go through the whole dismantling process to get a small bit of meat but it seemed worth it! Xiao Bing has changed my attitude to seafood. Next came lots of food, very quickly. More greens, fried pork/chicken and another new one for me; lotus root. Very tasty.

The food kinda went from there really; noodles, meat, fish, veg; all of it amazing. Because you are only eating what you can chopstick into a small bowl or straight into your face, it doesn’t seem like you are eating a lot but after a while everyone was sitting in that familiar position of food pregnancy. Everything was so good and more-ish that you couldn’t help but pick away.

The whole time we were eating, we were also drinking copious amounts of beer and Xiao Bing kept forcing this crazy rice wine on me. Every time I finished my glass and try and get some beer, he would fill it with rice wine. I was getting very drunk!

After all of the plates were piled a good 2-3 feet high, the food stopped coming (I think we would have burst if we ate more, may of the plates were unfinished). Time to play some beer pong!

Now, I’ve never really played beer pong before (if you are unfamiliar with it, see this) but I was playing table tennis every day for about a year so I’ve got a pretty good feel for table tennis balls. Missed my first few shots and didn’t miss another. Like a boss.

Next up; table tennis. I actually beat a Chinese person! Ok, she is primarily French but still!

Between the time of finishing the food and leaving Xiao Bings, there were many shouts of “gam bai!” which is Chinese for “bottoms up” and requires everyone to down their drink. By this stage it was 1am and everyone was quite drunk!

After a while, things started to wind down and people were talking about where to go next. Eventually we (I have no input in these things, I generally don’t care where we go) all decided on a new club called Geisha. As we were saying our goodbyes Xiao Bing looked like he was about to cry and had to take Livvie and Ben to one side to say his thanks and give them presents. He is such a nice guy :)

We all jumped into taxis and what seemed like an age later, arrived at Geisha. They were close. Balls. We decided to go in anyway and while sitting around someone informed the group that Xiao Bing and his friend Xiao Leo (sp?) were on their way. Someone should have convinced them not to come because this place was far away for them and rubbish.

When they got here, we made to leave but we were told that Xiao Leo had bought us all drinks so we were kind of obliged to stay. Turns out that the drinks he bought was a 3100 quai bottle of Mumm champagne (£310). Needless to say, we all felt really bad; we didn’t want to stay in this place, we’d dragged Xiao Bing and Xiao Leo all the way here and now they were blowing a lot of money on drinks.

As bad as we were feeling, we all still drunk the champagne. It was good too! Everyone had then decided that Pheobe was probably the best place to go so me and Ben cleared up the left over champagne (we probably drank about £20 worth of leftover champagne without even thinking about it), said our good byes and headed home.

On the way back, Ben and Livvie were saying how they do this every time and that they should know by now just to go home after Xiao Bing’s.

All in all, it was a great night that had everything: food, booze and fun. That’s right, those 3 things are what I class as everything!

Ow, I've been shot! Can everyone stop gettin' shot?

Sat, 08 Oct 2011 20:57:32 +0100

So after all of the car crash mess the next day can’t be much worse, right? Sorry to disappoint, it wasn’t. In fact, it was pretty awesome.

A few days ago Kris (Swedish, not me) and Ben had decided that the plan for Friday day time was to go paint-balling. This would be my first paint-balling experience due to me generally avoiding things that cause me pain. We all arranged to meet at one of the Metro stations, travel on the Metro and then get a cab the rest of the way.

All 14 of us finally arrived at the paint-balling place. If you have read Ben’s blog entry about when he went paint-balling you will see the place. It’s really cool when you arrive as it is a giant mansion house with a huge ‘driveway’.

We were ushered down through this really dodgy looking walkway, going past old fairground rides that hadn’t been used in years. It really reminded me of the carnival level of Left for Dead 2. We also noticed on the map that this place is a centre for the equivalent of Chinese cadets, so as we were just getting to the actual paint-ball part (this place is huge), a bunch of kids in camo gear parade marched past us, very scary!

We got kitted up and through all the rules and all of a sudden we were on the battle field, shooting at each other. We had a 2 hit and out rule which was good because I almost immediately took one in the leg. I was surprised how little it hurt, but legs have a bit of meat on them and I was wearing jeans underneath my overalls.

In the first round, I did quite well as I managed to hit someone in the face and got a few people for a fair range (the guns were a tad wild). Someone ran and captured the flag, 1-0 us!

Round two and I took a very sneaky approach and was quite nicely covered in a trench that had a good view. Someone popped up in front of me and I sprayed them from fairly close range (possibly another face shot). I also managed to get a few more long range hit before Ben went and cleared out 6 people and took the flag by himself. 2-0 us!

We swap starting camps mix it up a bit and we end up losing as 5 of our team our refilling ammo all at the same time. 2-1 us still! The third round was a bit uneventful for me as I mostly defended and took long range shots into the enemy base. Seemed to work as we won that one too, 3-1 us!

We decided that the 5th round would be the last as we couldn’t see anyone (it was getting dark and the face masks didn’t help). I defended again but then decided that I was going to make a go of it as it was the last round. I get out of the base and one of the girls on the other team appears from out of a bush and blasts me 3 times from about 2 meters away. they were some good shots, she got me in both hands and on my right collarbone. These ones hurt!

My fingers welled up pretty quickly and I couldn’t pull the trigger properly for the free-for-all round so didn’t go back in the the 7 people who thought free-for-all would be good to get rid of bullets.

After getting changed and stuff, it was now pitch black and we had to go back through the dodgy walkway again, only this time it was pitch black. We made it through ok and even had time for a chuckabout before our cabs came. It was good fun to have lots of open space to throw about in and dust off the cobwebs.

Taxi, metro, walk and shower. Time to go out. We wanted to go for teppinyaki (Japanese food that is cooked on a griddle at your table) but it was expensive and the all you can eat and drink doesn’t appeal when the restaurant closes in an our. We ended up at a western style food place called Abbey Road. The food was really tasty (chicken stuffed with spinach and ricotta) and I had a cool minty cocktail. Good times.

After debating where to go, we finally settled on Dada’s, which is your average looking cocktail bar. Nothing to write home about apart from the ridiculous amount of gin that was drank and the awesome time we had there. Hannah left at around 1am as she had work the next morning and I wanted to go to Shelter to see what Ben was raving on about.

Livvie dived out of the taxi just before we got there and made her own way home. Me and Ben were outside, drinking a beer for a while before going inside. When Ben said that it used to be a bomb shelter, it didn’t really click until being there. The venue was awesome but unfortunately, we were tired, it was late and the place was empty, so I wandered around taking photos. We had a single drink and a little dance but then left.

Nice early one you might think? Nope, got to bed at 4:30. Should have went to bed early with Xiao Bing’s to come next!

Crash Bandicoot

Sat, 08 Oct 2011 06:29:00 +0100

After getting at 9am it is only natural to wake up at 3pm right? me and Ben both woke up around the same time feeling exactly the same; like death. It was one of those situations where just the idea of being vertical just makes you feel queasy.

We eventually did get up and just stayed in for a while, feeling like death and complaining about it. Hannah came over, also feeling a little worse for wear but not as bad as us. We watched High Fidelity and I really enjoyed it. Hannah had to get to a birthday party and we decided that we should probably leave the flat before it got dark.

While we were milling around in the flat, I got to meet Ben’s house-mate Maria and here boyfriend Dorian. Maria was really nice but I’m a little jealous of Dorian because he speaks 6 languages fluently. Dorian had to leave and we were going to walk Hannah to the metro station so Me, Ben and Maria went in search of dinner. We wandered around City Shop contemplating buying some beef for some tacos but the beef was expensive so we just gave up and went back. When we got Ben defrosted some home made salsa and made a few fresh tortillas. The salsa was very spicy but really tasty on the tortillas.

In the meantime, Ben had cultivated some plans and we were going to a house party. Showered and changed, we headed outside to grab a taxi.

We were in the cab for a while and then we pulled up onto the elevated road. The elevated roads in Shanghai are kind of like motor ways through the city; the traffic moves a lot faster and there are no pedestrian paths on the side if the road.

Everything was going swimmingly until someone in front slammed their brakes on and then our driver slammed his on and skidded a bit. A second went by when I thought “phew!” but then someone smashed into the back of our car. We lurched forward a bit but the impact wasn’t big enough to really move us and I was wearing my seatbelt anyway.

After the crash everyone got out of the cars and started arguing and speaking in Chinese. Me and Ben just sat in the car wondering what we do in this situation. Being on the elevated road meant that we couldn’t get another cab (you wouldn’t come up here unless you had a fare) and we couldn’t walk anywhere as there was 3 lanes of traffic either side and no footpath. Balls.

Ben phoned one of his Chinese friends, Julia, for some advice on what to do and some possible translation. Julia’s advice was to just wait for the police to arrive and they might help us. Might…

We sat in the car while the Chinese people argued and checked cars and all of the other stuff you do after a car crash. We saw some money change hands and then our taxi driver got back in and continued our journey as if the last 10 minutes never actually happened. Me and Ben were bewildered but just let the driver carry on. We reached our destination and handed the driver our money. The driver not only charged us for a fare where we had a crash, he checked the money to make sure it was real! Cheeky! We were just glad to be back with feet on the ground.

We walked to the metro stop from where we were dropped off as someone was going to come and meet us to take us to the right flat. Lucas (he was at Crocus) and a Scottish guy, Craig, came to meet us and walked us pretty much back to where the taxi had dropped us off.

We got to the flat (26th floor I think), and met a few new people and did some introductions. The flat was very nice and very modern. There was a lot of noise and a lot of people surrounding table and I asked Marrie-Ann what was going on. She explained that they were playing a drinking dice game. Drinking games? I’m in.

The game turned out to be the same dice game that is played by the crew of the Flying Dutchman in Pirates of the Caribbean 2. It took me a few rounds to get exactly what was going on and to learn the hand symbols for numbers in Chinese (I’m not sure if they are limited to this game or just general signs to be honest). Dice game was fun and everyone seemed cool and then there was a knock and the door. The building security were at the door shutting the party down as there was too much noise. Boo, I was having a good time.

Everyone spilled out of the flat with the intention of going to a club (possible Pheobe). Me and Ben weren’t feeling the club that they were going to so got in contact with Swedish Kris and decided to meet him in a bar below Pheobe called Panic Room.

Another taxi ride got us to the bar and we headed down stairs. Empty. There were around 5 people in the whole bar and none of them were our friends. Some phone calls and text brought Kris outside and he said that they were actually above Pheobe in another club. Ben’s instant reply was “but that’s a gay bar”. Kris said it didn’t seem that way and we apprehensively walked up the stairs expecting to see something straight out of a Jean-Paul Gaultier advert (sp?).

It wasn’t a gay bar but me and Ben just weren’t in the mood. The bad back had just started to kick in after the crash and had destroyed any enthusiasm that we may have had before coming out. We decided to call it a night and get a spicy chicken burger from McDonald’s.

Quite an early night, in bed at around 3 am. Well, we were in a car crash…

Phoebe is my least favourite person in the world

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 20:24:00 +0100

Time to reveal what the cliffhanger at the end of the last post was. As I said, I was asleep on Ben’s living room floor. Still half asleep (it was only midday), I heard the key turn in the door and thought nothing of it. Next thing I know is that there is a Chinese lady just looking at me and wondering why there is a guy passed out on the floor, all I’ve got to say is “well, this is awkward” and then she started speaking to me in Chinese. I know no Chinese. All I could think to do was call Ben in a really worried voice and ask him what was going on. Turns out that it was the maid and she wanted to clean the room that I was asleep in. I got up and dressed and let her clean the kitchen first so I could make myself presentable.

Once up, me and Ben sort of vegged out a bit at the flat and then decided that it was time to go to Livvie’s so that I could have a shower. Another ride on the futuristic tube, a shower and change of clothes passed. A bit more waiting at Livvie’s and Livvie was back herself. Ben then went to meet Hannah at the metro station and returned with 1 Hannah and enough Dairy Queen ice cream for everyone. Awesome.

We toyed with the idea of going to the zoo but decided against it due to time constraints. To pass a bit of time Me, Ben and Hannah went for a walk and a chuckabout in a really cool public space (should have taken my camera! I’ll make sure I go back with it). We spent a little time teaching Hannah how to throw a forehand as she has just started to play Ultimate. Looks like I am good teacher, she was picking it up pretty quickly. It started to get dark so we headed back to Livvie’s to drop the disc off and then head to Crocus.

Before going to Crocus, we new we had to eat so Ben took me for my first authentic Chinese meal in a little restaurant he has been to a few times. We got some dumplings, crazy cabbage stuff, kung po tofu, sweet and sour style pork (no sauce, just battered pork really) and something which I don’t remember what it was, but remember it being tasty. My chopstick skills are improving and and I could actually pick stuff up that was across the table and get it to my face without looking too stupid. Really good food makes me happy.

Ben has mentioned Crocus quite a few times and I was expecting there to be a big club or something (especially because Ben said that he was DJ’ing there tonight and told me that they have just bought a lot of new equipment. I was wrong, Crocus was a fairly small bar and much smaller than your average British pub. I was a little apprehensive but there were loads of new people to meet and the drinks were strong, cheap and buy one get one free for a few hours. Once the BOGOF ended, it was still ladies night with girls drinking free all night so it was easy to get one of the girls to get you a free drink. Pro tip: free drinks are the best type of drinks.

More on the people I met at Crocus; all of the people I met here were really cool. There was Kristopher and Christine (both Swedish), Oscar and his friends (again Swedish), Hannah and Emma (the Hannah from before, Emma is Chinese and one of Ben’s longest friends since coming to Shanghai) and Marrie-Anne and Agatte (both French). Everyone is in Shanghai for different reasons and for different amounts of time but they all love it here.

More on Ben at Crocus; the equipment was hugely overkill for a small bar! 2 expensive looking Pioneer CD ‘turntables’ and a rather large mixer with lots of buttons, switches and sliders. Cool. Ben’s début as a DJ went really well with him playing a variety of music that everyone seemed to enjoy. I’m sure it would have went a lot smoother if a) he brought a 3.5mm to 5mm adapter for his headphones and b) me and Hannah stopped randomly pressing buttons and flicking switches to annoy him (the reverse switch was by far the best).

Crocus was fun. Lots of drinks, lots of new people with interesting conversations and some good music.

Around 2am everyone started to pile out and head off to clubs. Most people said they were going somewhere that Ben said was rubbish but a few people were heading to a club called Phoebe so we (me, Ben and Hannah) hopped in a taxi and arrived at the club.

Phoebe was a very strange place. Crazily decorated and like a maze to get through, with a 100 quai (£10) open bar. Ben went for the open bar wristband so he could be the nice guy who gets us all of our drinks. The club was absolutely packed with no sort of personal space etiquette, the music was fairly awful and I kept getting lost. It was really good fun, no genuinely. Our group had dwindled to me, Ben, Hannah, Marrie-Ann and Agatte. Agatte left fairly early (between 3am and 4am) so the 4 of us carried on dancing on a stage in the middle of the club. We were wasted.

Marrie-Ann and I were both very warm so headed outside to get some air but somehow ended up sitting in there giant massage chairs for about half an hour chatting about lots of random stuff. We had a really nice conversation and then headed back into the club. After about half an hour more Marrie-Ann was tired (it was like 5am, I think…) so hailed a taxi and left.

And then there were 3. We stayed for a little bit longer but soon crashed and thought it would be a good idea to walk to a nearby park to see the sunrise. We walked for what seemed like a millennium and never got to the park but ended up sitting on a statue thing and drinking beer from the 24 hour shop. Ben somehow managed to smash his beer and we took that as queue to leave (the morning sun may have also played a factor in deciding that sleep may be good).

We somehow ended up in a bar, used the facilities, sat around taking photo and not buying drinks. Again, another time waster and a pointless, but funny, exercise.

As I was falling asleep I decided to stop listening to Ben saying “it isn’t much further” and hailed a cab to get us back. We had to drop Hannah home first so made a huge round trip (most of which I was asleep for) and when we got to Ben’s I just handed whatever the fair was (turns out it was 30 quick, or £3, for a 45 minute taxi ride) and stumbled onto the spare mattress at Ben’s flat. I was so ruined and it was 9am.

First day in Shanghai

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 14:39:05 +0100

Just in case you were wondering, the landing was super smooth. I was reading the plane catalogue and we were suddenly on the floor. Good stuff. Pu Dong Airport is the weirdest airport I have ever been in. Heathrow T5 has 66 gates and requires a train to get between them all. Pu Dong has around 80 gates (from what I saw) and I didn’t see another person (excluding the people who were on my flight) the whole time. Baggage collection was the same, huge and empty. Customs, same.

After getting through customs I was greeted by a nice surprise in skinny jeans. Ben was waiting for me with a nice Chinese guy who was our driver. We put the case in the car and were off. Our driver can only be described in one word; mental. I’m sure some of you have seen fast and Furious where Paul Walker and Vin Diesel are weaving in and out of cars on the ‘freeway’. This was just like that, but faster. After an interesting journey, the driver dropped Ben off at work (only 20 minutes late for work was pretty good going) and whizzed me off to Livvie’s apartment.

He dropped me off in the underground car park and a Chinese lady took my laptop bag and ushered me into a lift, stepped in herself and pressed floor 10. We got to our floor and Livvie was at the lift to greet us. I’ve never met Livvie before but I felt like I knew her from reading Ben’s blogs. Livvie showed me into the flat and we chatted for a little bit. She is really nice and her life has been very interesting.

Livvie wanted to go for a swim (she’s a self-proclaimed mermaid) and I desperately needed a shower. We soon met Ben for lunch and had the adventurous meal of ciatbatta baguettes and some ale. Very Chinese.

Fast forward past me having a nap, Ben being in work Livvie watching The Killing (sounds good, going to have to download it). Ben came around after work with the plan of going to the Bund (river front) with his friend Hannah, so that’s what we did.

To get there, we had to take the Shanghai Metro. The Metro is exactly what the London Underground would be like if it was more modern, cleaner and more comfortable to be on. Oh, and there is phone signal all over. We met Hannah outside the Metro station and headed off to Yuyuan Garden to see some sights and lights on our way to the Bund.

After wandering around and taking lots of photos of the bendy bridge and lots of ‘traditional Chinese’ buildings (built in the last 10-15 years) we found a nice Japanese restaurant to have some food in. Yup, Japanse. Ben had beef curry, Hannah had beef something, I had chilli beef and we ordered some dumplings and beer for the table. At first I was having trouble with the whole chopsticks thing (your food is in a giant bowl with lots of sauce and noodles and you get a big spoon to fish things out) but I gave up any pretence of grace or manners and slurped noodles into my face like everyone else. Really spicy and really tasty!

Livvie had completed her errand so we met up with her and made our way to the Bund. The river front in Shanghai is kinda crazy, on the side that we were on, were lots of 1800-1900 London looking buildings housing designers like Dolche & Gabbana and on the other side are huge sky scrapers that are covered in lights and screens. Very pretty. One of the buildings kept flashing up with a picture of Big Ben and I was trying to get a photo for the irony but I kept missing it, so I just gave up. We were recommend a bar called Captain’s Bar just off the Bund by one of Ben’s friends so made our way there.

The bar is actually in a hostel building and was mostly full of westerners. We grabbed some drinks (Morgan’s Spiced Rum & coke for me and Ben and some cocktails for the girls) and headed out onto the balcony area which gave us a nice view of the Bund, just as all of the big lights were turned off. By now, it was pretty late so we decided to retire to Ben’s flat to have the tour and some pancakes. Livvie dived out of the taxi to go meet some friends and we continued to Ben’s flat.

Ben’s compound was another ‘Model Accommodation’ (they all are) with a large French arch as you enter and nice gardens in the middle of all the buildings. Climbing the stairs to floor 6 while quite drunk (we were drinking while walking to and from all of the destinations) was not fun but pancakes definitely made up for it.

After watching some YouTube videos of mountain biking and assorted awesome stuff, we realised that it was now 3am and probably time for bed. Hannah headed off in a taxi and Ben gave me the spare mattress to sleep on in his living room. Sleep came pretty easy and the bed was comfy.

I was woken up by someone walking through the front door into the living room where I was sleeping. An awkward situation followed…