…and after a very dull day of working from home doing documentation, Pat wandered out into Chelmsford to meet Lev and Andrea for a Thai meal at a place called Lanthai. Apparently it wasn’t chosen because it started with LAN… although I suspect if Pat had had anything to do with it, that would’ve been the deciding factor.

Anyway, he’s been banging on about it since he’s got back – apparently it was very, very tasty and the waiters were very cheery (which makes a change in comparison to some places in Chelmsford). Heartily recommended if you’re up for a Thai meal in the Chelmsford area!

One warning though: this place may cause conversation to move from normal things to very surreal discussions about portals to a parallel universe in the restaurant toilets.

Amazingly, these discussions weren’t driven by Pat at all, who doesn’t seem to want to discuss the full details through fear of making his friends come across as FULLY MENTAL… ;-)

Anyway, apparently a very entertaining evening with Andrea and Lev.

“I can’t believe you’re going away to have fun for a year, you git” count for the night: ~100.

Mr Wheller looking very pleased at Pat’s consistent mentioning of going away…

Tarrah,

Squage

…and I finally made it to the gym!

20 minutes (with gaps during as I was ker-nackered, oh dear) on the treadmill… 10 mins on bike… and some weights and I feel very, VERY tired.

I’m going to go to bed. Got a working from home day tomorow so I’ll have a slight lie in at least… also I’m going to see Lev and Andrea in Chelmsford, which should be nice.

Right, yes, short post, good.

Night :-)

Pat

…and as Squage mentioned I went to Field and Trek (and Blacks) in Chelmsford to buy myself various bits and pieces for the trip.

Some £100 shoes were part of it (about 5 times as much as I generally like to spend (I’m such a fashion nut), but these are niiice all-purpose jobbies), along with various things such as mozzie spray, sleeping bag cover, travel pillow… still need to get a bag, jacket/waterproof thing and, of course, hat, but I’m getting there!

Whilst in Chelmsford I also met up with Dan Nichols, who used to do sports reports and banter on my Dream 107 show back in the day.

Twas good to catch up and also find out that he and his mate Dom have got their show nominated for Best Entertainment Show at the SRAs – for the second year running! Nice one! Didn’t stop RaW getting 8 nominations, mind :-)

Here is the man himself, looking esctatic about his achievement:

And no, there wasn’t a solar eclipse. I just don’t have a viewfinder at the moment…

You can listen to the best of Dan’s (and Dom’s) show on their website. If some oddly familar features appear in a future Radio Squage show, it’ll just be a coincidence.

Later I did a muckabout radio show. If you didn’t hear it, you missed an hour of possibly the finest, funniest radio in the whole world. If you did hear it, sorry for being a liar.

And finally, I’ve just come back from my local’s pop quiz… we did… er… averagely (4th of 7) and after about 8pm I was wishing to get to bed. It finished at 11pm.

So yes, bed it is… I just hope I’m awake enough to remember how to drive to work tomorrow…

Toodles,

Pat

…and you’d be forgiven for thinking “Hang on, isn’t this only 22 days to go?”. That’s because this is a, uh, retrospective view on Saturday.

There’s no good reason for the lack of entry yesterday other than this:

• Friday night Pat went to an 80s club called “The Reflex” in Southend
• Flavoured shots were available at this club
• Drinking started at 8pm
• Drinking stopped at 2am

Essentially, Pat wasn’t in any state to write anything even vaguely coherent and because… er… I… was… away… I couldn’t write on his behalf.

To summarise Saturday:

• Pat felt like death
• Dark Place finally arrived on DVD!
• Pat watched Dark Place
• Pat watched telly
• Pat went to bed

Today is going to be a bit better (hell, he woke up prior to midday, which is a start) as he’s meeting his mate Dan from Dream and going to Field and Trek to buy such exciting things as a rucksack, combats and walking boots.

Oh and I think he’s going to be doing a show on Radio Squage… so if you’re around between 6 and 7pm, tune in to this stream:

https://www.squage.com:8000/squage.ogg.

Windows folk need Winamp or another player, which supports OGG/Vorbis format to listen (I think you can grab codecs for Windows Media Player if that’s your weapon of choice).

Linux folk need mplayer probably, but I’ve no real idea :-)

Anyway, I’m off out with Pat to do some socialising and purchasing.

Toodles!

Squage

Imagine the following:

• A big valley
• 6 or more big pylons around the edge of the valley
• A wire extending from each pylon, connecting with all the others in the centre of the valley, several hundred feet in the air
• Another wire hanging down from the connection point
• A small plane-like vehicle at the bottom of the valley, with the wire connected to it
• A big engine in the plane
• A verticle take off
• A crazy flying session all around the valley
• You in the plane

It’s insane sounding, isn’t it?
Surely something like this can’t seriously exist?
Surely Pat wouldn’t want to do this?

Yes it is.
Yes it does.
Yes I would.

Check it out!

Kinda puts the caving and bungee jumping into perspective… although to be honest I’m still most nervous about the bungee.

There’s just something about looking over the edge of a 40 foot drop, knowing that rather than stepping back from the edge I’m going to be willingly falling off it that doesn’t quite sit right with me.

But hey, it’s partly why I’m doing it. And shooting myself around a valley in a mental rocket-on-wires.

What the hell is wrong with me? :-)

Oh and by the way on an unrelated note, there was a classic cars display outside our office today… here’s a couple of them:

Again taken by my excellent Nokia phone. I really do need to get a new camera.

Pat

…and Pat’s nice and chilled following a great evening in London (the last of the “Second Thursday” meetups with his mates from Student Radio at Uni)… so much so that he’s about to go to sleep and hence gave me writing duties this evening.

In short, Pat enjoyed catching up with friends Dave, Chan, Mark and Katie… plus monging out at a nice Moroccan bar in Cov Garden – complete with Sheesh pipe things, as modelled by The Mark here:

Sadly Pat forgot his camera so took this photo with his phone. You can hardly tell – the quality surpasses many photos taken on SLRs (when covered in jam…)!

Anyway, I’m oddly chilled and ready to sleep too (very strange coincidence, that), so this short entry will end here.

Toodles,

Squage

…and it’s been quite a varied 24 hours.

Following a gradual decrease in “spaced out”-ness throughout the day yesterday I managed to make it out of the house to go to the delights of Bas Vegas’ * Empire Cinema to see all three Indiana Jones films back to back (for Gary-from-work’s birthday – happy birthday for yesterday Gary!).

It was great to see them on the big screen and to laugh along at the many amusing moments that I’d forgotten about since the last time I watched them. I recommend having another watch of your Indie DVDs / crap VHS recordings from ITV in the early 90s with the ad breaks crudely cut out (or is that just in our house?).

Anyway, after the entertainment of last night today’s been largely dull – probably not helped by being at work, and certainly not helped by the dire performance of the bunch of overpaid divas plodding around a pitch making sure they didn’t break a nail in case they miss their next Premiership match and hence lose their appearance fee…

And… relax.

Anyway, following that debarcle I went for a curry with some mates from ‘ome, which was very tasty indeed – only problem is that I ate far too much as usual and so can hardly move (I’m going to be so slender in time for leaving)… but that didn’t stop me having a nice ice cream dessert.

Why?

Well, I think it’s easy to see, when the ice cream dessert comes in the following container:

Yes, you’re exactly right, that is a Beautifully Crafted Mug (I kid you not, that’s how this piece of cheap, plastic, bulk manufactured mess is billed on the dessert menu).

I’m still not sure what’s worse: the fact that I ordered this or the fact that I smuggled it out of the restaurant just to get a photo of it to show you.

So there we go. In 24 hours I’ve experienced being spaced out, amused, bored, angry and utterly bloated. Actually that’s a pretty standard day when I look at it like that :-)

Anyway, that’s more than enough rambling… I’m off to bed.

Night,

Pat

* Festival Leisure Park in Basildon – a collection of restaurants, a cinema, a bowling alley and classy establishments such as Jumpin’ Jacks, Ikon-sorry, Lava- and Diva-sorry, Ignite. Known locally as Bas Vegas due to the tacky neon lights flashing all over the Lava/Ignite buildings. And the fact that it’s a centre of entertainment in the middle of barren wasteland.

…and Pat’s definitely feeling the side effects of yesterday’s vaccinations.

He’s asked that I describe this to you, so as a picture tells a thousand words I thought this’d do:

Unfortunately, in this case the thousand words are simply 500 instances of “Shit” and 500 instances of “Drawing”.

But hey, you try better with M$Paint and a laptop touchpad (actually, don’t, as the world does not need any more drawings of a similar calibre)!

Pat was, however, rather pleased when this arrived in the post:

After watching a couple of episodes with him, I’m not entirely sure it’s the sort of thing you need to see when you’re feeling rather spaced out, groggy and tired. It is ACE however, and if you’re into your Anime you MUST buy it.

Right, oddly I’m feeling the same spaced out effects as Pat (funny that) so I’m gonna bid you adieu.

Til tomorrow,

Squage

…and Monday morning just got good:

Sadly, this was shared between about 12 people and as such didn’t really last that long. Still, it brought a minor ray of sunshine into an otherwise typical Monday morning.

The afternoon was, on the other hand, marred by the dread of having my vaccinations at 5:30pm… it sounds stupid I know, but the knowledge that I’m going to be experiencing about 5 seconds of pain in the near future can really play on my mind.

Particularly as the last injection I had was TBG (I think that’s what it was called – you know, the one that leaves a raised scar on your left upper arm?) and that felt like someone was trying to blow up a balloon of poison in my arm.

Luckily, the injections were next to painless. All that worrying for nothing – but I’m not too upset :-)

My arms are starting to ache a bit though, which is expected but isn’t good… and I’m getting a little light headed. *

I think a little rest is in order.

Til tomorrow…

Pat

* The light headedness may be due to the fury from IE losing my post a minute ago, meaning a nice little anecdote about the injections is gone forever. I’m sure you’ll get over it, but I’m going to be angry for the rest of my days. **

** This may be a lie.

Hullo,

29 days, eh? Wow. I’m really looking forward to this trip now. For a large amount of time I’ll not need to do ANYTHING I don’t enjoy, which is making me wish these days shoot past as quickly as possible. It’s going to be about having fun, having time to chill, occasionally being scared (bungee jumping in Queenstown, anyone?) and not worrying.

Remember how things were in those first few weeks of Uni? Well, I’m suspecting this is going to be like that. Just without the coursework. *

Of course, I’m going to miss people terribly (as in “a lot”, not as in burning down towns because I miss people) but that hasn’t hit me yet (I’m sure it will) and with only 16 working days left, I can’t help but feel *very* excited.

That’s why I’m spending today sitting around the house watching dull telly, ripping CDs and chatting on IRC. Just to calm me down.

It’s not because noone wants to do anything with me this afternoon.

No.

What? Don’t laugh at me, damn it. Just cos you have friends :-)

Here’s a photo (taken without a viewfinder of course) to help you picture the UTTER HILARITY of my afternoon:

Ronan Keating was right. Life is a rollercoaster.

Toodles,

Pat

* Which, of course, I’d always do as a priority whilst at Uni. **

** What?