Cynicism at a whole new level

I think there is something wrong with me. I actually get angry at people who die and curse at them for hours. Okay, reading that makes me sound really bad, so let’s start from the top. At the time of writing this, the day had been as unremarkable as any. Go to work, putter around doing boring work things, and come on home. However, on the train, I get a call, a good friend of mine here in London called to let me know that she had been stood up on her birthday dinner date and wanted to know if I wanted to fill in. Obviously, I told her that I was still about 15 minutes away, but of course I would join her for dinner. Thinking about what that meant for the rest of my evening, I called Rebecca to invite her along. Literally, as I was on the phone with Rebecca, my train stops, in the middle of nowhere. Never a good sign, but hopeful it’s just some congestion I don’t think about it. 15 minutes later, over the intercom, the train conductor announces “I apologize for the delay, but there has been a trespass at the next station.”  Shit, well, that’s going to delay things for awhile.  Now in a full text message conversation with my friend, I mention that this delay could be a while. So, like any friend of mine, she says call me when you get in, I’m going to the bar. Cool with that, I sit.

15 minutes later, the conductor comes over the intercom again and we have now been upgraded to someone has been struck by a train. Which in the UK is a not so subtle code for someone jumped in front of a train. Ugh, I really am going to be stuck here for a while. A full half hour now passes before I hear anything else which is to now let us know that we are not going to be moving for at least 45 more minutes. It was apparently the train right in front of us. This means that we can’t do anything. If it had been further ahead, we could have changed rails and gone around, but since we are stuck. Now, I’m now sitting here, in my seat, over 2 hours late for my friend watching trains going past on the alternative rail line cursing at someone who has obviously gone through something bad enough to cause them to end their life and all I can think is you stupid selfish bastard. It’s really quite horrible, so as soon as that thought goes into my head, I start to feel like a huge jackass. Then thinking about how I’m a jackass, I start to think about how the person was a bastard and the cycle continues.

I’ve come up with a solution at this current point, which is booze, but as this train continues to not move (now at hour 3 not having moved) the limited amount of train food stock is quickly diminishing.

Thanksgiving

The story of Canadian thanksgiving actually starts well before the actual day, and here in the UK is quite an effort to deal with. First, the UK doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving, neither the Canadian or the American (and really why would they? It wasn't their expedition to the Arctic circle, or them almost starving to death), but when you tell them about how it’s a day in which you sit around, socialize and eat all day, they usually think that it’s a good idea and that they would like to partake. Add in all the North Americans that already love the holiday and the event can become rather large, rather quickly. So before we even got to the day of the event we had 14 people RSVP to the event and Rebecca continually inviting more guest. Next, the only time that I have ever come close to cooking a Thanksgiving dinner before was in Morenci two years ago. But, the only reason I say I came close was because I was in the kitchen at the same time that Lance was cooking things. I don’t believe I touched anything. I still hadn't passed Lance’s tests for allowing me to do any actual work.  Now, just a short time after that, I'm the one that cooking and better than that, at the time of writing this, I still haven’t heard of anyone getting sick because of me. Progress.

The first thing that was needed when cooking a Thanksgiving meal for fourteen is a decently sized turkey. This posed two distinct and worrisome problems. The first was that, as you may recall from the first story about cooking, is that we have a very small oven, and fitting a large bird in it would be difficult to say the least. The second was that in the UK, turkeys are really only sold at Christmas time. Since they don’t have Thanksgiving, they don’t have a grocery store full of turkeys in October (or November for the Americans). We were faced with two options. One, we could buy a turkey online from a specialty store for an exorbitant amount, or we found a store in Stowmarket that sold frozen turkeys at a reasonable price. No brainer right? Wrong. After being the person on a two hour train ride with a frozen turkey in their arms, I can guarantee that strange stares that you get are just something not ready for. Second, at about the one hour mark, the turkey will start to defrost and ice/water/red liquid will start dripping everywhere. So yes, I was that crazy person on a train with a large dripping frozen bird in their arms. The second issue that we had with this was that we panicked. Worried that the turkey supply would be limited we purchased and transported the turkey on the Monday, for a Saturday dinner. As I said, by the time I got the bird home, it was already well on its start to defrosting. This meant that putting it in the freezer was not a good idea, but as we found out, putting a defrosting bird in the fridge 5 days early isn’t the best plan either. You would be shocked at the amount of red liquid that will come out of a defrosting turkey and cover the bottom of your fridge. It’s really quite remarkable. Thankfully, other than some worrying and a lot of cleaning, the turkey was still fine on Saturday and was able to be cooked. Otherwise it would have been the multiple chickens from the local grocery store dinner.

After turkey, the things in the meal really become a bit of a discussion and since this was also Rebecca and I’s first Thanksgiving as a married couple we wanted to incorporate things from both our families. Me, I needed to have cranberry cheesecake for dessert. Rebecca, she needed both normal stuffing as well as sausage meat stuffing. After all the different things were added together the meal consisted of: turkey, sage and onion stuffing (both cooked in the turkey and out for the vegetarians), sausage meat stuffing, roasted potatoes, mashed potatoes, mashed yams, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, a mixed salad, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, fresh buns, sliced pickles, quorn, gravy, cranberry cheesecake and of course pumpkin pie. It was a production. Thankfully our neighbor and good friend, Stephanie was on board with the ridiculousness of putting that many people in one small London apartment and helped out by letting us use her table, chairs, dishes, cutlery and kitchen. By the end of the cooking time, we had two ovens full of things and 7 of the 8 combined burners being used to cook. All in all, the meal went off great. Everyone seemed to have a good time and other then being reasonably intoxicated by the end of the day, it all went perfectly. Who am I kidding, being reasonably intoxicated was pretty much according to plan as well. Rebecca even helped with the cooking, true, I relegated her to things that could be eaten raw in like the veggies so there was no chance of her poisoning anyone. Kidding, she’s not as bad of a cook as either of us make out and contrary to what she says, she can cook more than a bowl of cereal and a mean takeout.

Welcoming everyone to Thanksgiving dinner.

Actually, I take back that everything went according to plan. Apparently, me and pumpkin pie are bitter enemies. I made two for the Thanksgiving dinner and they were… meh, at best. Most people enjoyed them, but they weren’t the highlight. Thought, even if they were, I have found out that most here in the UK don’t like pumpkin anyways. It’s a travesty, I know. If I had to guess, I think I didn’t add enough of the spices to them, but to be fair I got the pumpkin at 3pm on the day and had to make the pie in quite a rush. The next day however, when I had all the time in the world to make a pie for my coworkers that I promised and forgot to add the eggs, I have no excuse. The pie tasted right this time, but instead of being sturdy and normal, it was more runny and more like apple pie gooey. Oops… I still don’t think this is a good reason for UK contingent telling me that pie was too spicy for them. Oh well, more pie for me.

I am happy that I can say that it was a great day, but I will be the first to say that if anyone asks me to do one for American Thanksgiving in a month, I’m going to tell them to sod off. Sitting on a train with a half frozen bird and the chaos of trying to keep that many dishes from burning (which is something I do regularly enough) is an adventure that I will reserve for only once a year.

Thailand Part 2 – Actually doing things

So far all I have talked about was the joyous adventure of travelling around in Thailand and unfortunately it kind of made it sound as if we didn’t have a good time, which is absolutely the opposite of the  truth. Thailand was gorgeous and I couldn’t have had spent two weeks in a better place. We ended up spending 6 days in Bangkok, 4 days in Chiang Mai and 3 days in Hua Hin and in each place it was a new experience. In Bangkok we lived up the chaotic city life, Chiang Mai we did the group tours of everything as well as night market shopping, and in Hua Hin we sat on the beach and at the pool drinking and wasting the day away. So, I’m going to write about some of the things that I thought we’re the most exciting.

Bangkok

For our first 6 days we were in Bangkok and I swear I went into colour shock. The city itself was a big city. It was covered in the grey of skyscrapers, roads and over ground railways, it was filthy, and it reeked of fish sauce. Around every corner however, was a gorgeous Buddhist temple decorated in the most vibrant colours. On the first day, we started off big and we saw the Grand Palace, the Temple of the Emerald Buddha and Wat Po with the Reclining Buddha.  

The Grand Palace at Night, still vibrant

Upon entering the Grand Palace, Rebecca and I stood in shock for what seemed to be half an hour simply spinning and taking photos.  Well, Rebecca was taking photos at least. I was making friends with the monkey men warrior figurines.  Wat Po wasn’t much different. Everywhere you turned was another image of Buddha and more vibrant colours. Additionally, Wat Po has some of the most renowned Thai massages so we stopped in there to try that out. Now, let me preface this with the fact that I’m not usually a fan of massages period, but this being our honeymoon and Rebecca’s love of massages, I did it anyways. Also, I’m really NOT flexible, like I can barely touch my mid shin let alone my toes. Next, let me tell you, a traditional Thai massage is nothing like a normal massage. It’s not relaxing, it’s invigorating…. For over an hour I had a 5 foot 4 Thai guy beating the crap out of me. Some of my favorite maneuvers were:  The twist your leg and step on your inner thigh, the put my knee in your back and bend you in two and  the screwdriver,  twist your top half as far as he could one way while twisting my bottom half as far as he could the other way. I could see how it would be possible that experience would be enjoyable, but I’m almost certain that my masseuse was confusing my lack of flexibility with tension so every time he did something, he would push to a point that was ok, then feeling some resistance push harder.  After an hour and Rebecca being delighted with the experience, I limped onto the next adventure.  On top of seeing amazingly colourful temples, we would get a blast of neon and blinking lights walking between the subway and our hotel. Unknown to us, our hotel was about a block from Soi Cowboy, one of the various red light districts in Bangkok. 

Floating Markets

The street was full of people and it seemed like quite the place to be, but when we would get up in the morning and have breakfast watching the middle aged white men and young Thai girls come down and eat breakfast too, the desire to really party there dwindled quickly. No matter  how many times we got asked if we wanted to see a ping pong show.  Also, we went to see the floating markets, the concept itself being really cool. The practicality of it however being terrible. It’s extremely hard to shop when you don’t control where you are going.  Compound that by the fact that you can’t go back to anything you pass, and while it is fun to see, you can see how it becomes almost impossible to buy anything you want . 

Chiang Mai

The middle of our trip was spent in Chiang Mai, and was highlighted by three things. The first was the night markets. There were two night markets, one on the weekend that shuts down the entire center of the city and turns all the streets into vendor stalls and the second one that was every night just outside our hotel. 

Night market where we honed our bartering skills

This was where you had to really hone your bartering skills and you had to be smart.  By the end of it, I thought that we were finally starting to get the hang of it too. But almost every time that we would barter something to a price we liked we would find it somewhere else for cheaper. Oh well, apparently Rebecca and I don’t have a career as a salesperson to look forward to. The second thing was the Thai cooking course we went on.  We ended up on the course with another British couple (we apparently have a knack for finding Brits) and a German girl. It was great fun, it’s not like we learnt anything all that ground breaking, but the group we were with was very easy to get along with and chat with and we sat around eating all day. I mean, you can’t really complain about that can you.  

Our Group and Teacher after gorging on food all day.

The last major highlight had to be the elephant park. First, we got to see some of the trained elephants do some tricks like shoot soccer penalty shots and shoot basket ball free throws. Both cool, but not nearly as ridiculous as watching the trainers pull out two easels and have two of the elephants  paint for us and not just random squiggles you could call abstract art. Still in awe of that we then got to go on an elephant ride with a trainer sitting on the elephant’s neck/head trekking us through the jungle. At the halfway point the trainer said that this would be the point we could feed the elephant (who I’m going to name Stampy, he was a bit ornery) some bananas as a treat. He then told me to come sit up in front to feed it. So, as I get down from the nice securely fastened seats and sit on this elephant’s head to feed it, the trainer sneaks into my seat and straps himself in. 

Me, holding on for dear life

As soon as the last of the bananas are eaten, the trainer makes a clicking noise and Stampy was off. I quickly think oh shit, I need to get back to my seat, turn around and see the trainer sitting in my seat telling me that I have to trek the rest of the way back up front. This was definitely riding an elephant. The only thing I would advise to the next person to ride an elephant, long pants. What I didn’t know was that elephants are really quite hairy, and their hair is coarse and hard like steel wire. So, every time Stampy took a step, his hair would rub against my inner leg and take off a new layer of skin, but that was easily worth the experience.

Hua Hin

We ended our trip in Hua Hin, a small fishing town on the Gulf of Thailand. I don’t really have anything to say about it. The extent of it was really spent going from the beach, to the poolside.  It was however, a perfect way to end our adventure to Thailand. 

It was a hard life in Hua Hin as you can tell. 

Thailand - Part 1 - Transportation

One of the most celebrated traditions of a groom is to plan a beautiful relaxing honeymoon for his new wife for after the wedding. I mean she does so much planning for the wedding, it’s the least he can do right? A time honored tradition, to show the equality in the relationship. Then there is me and Rebecca. Not only did we not go on our honeymoon right after the wedding, but it was easily more planned by the bride than me.  It was still a team effort, but there was definitely no big surprise for the bride at the airport for where she was going.  So as the title eludes, we went on our honeymoon to Thailand and to say that there were a few stories would be a bit of an understatement.  First, and probably most continuously problematic, was simply getting from one place to another.
The journey started on the morning of the 20th (August)  when we left from London Heathrow to Bangkok with a stop in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Now, me personally, I had an amazing flight. I would even argue that it was the best airline food that I had eaten.  I didn’t even  mind the stop in Colombo. The airport was nice, it had free internet. Sure, instead of airport security it had armed army personnel, but it really didn’t seem to bad. Rebecca had a bit different experience though. On the first leg of the journey she ended getting half food poisoned, half air sick and that persisted all the way to Bangkok. Even while on the ground in Colombo my darling wife’s complexion was closer to that of a lime than anyone should really be.  A wonderful way to start our romantic honeymoon.
Upon arrival in Bangkok, we quickly learnt that everything is to be bartered for, and I’m pretty sure that there is a running competition in Thailand to see who can get the white boy to overpay by the most. We first learnt this with our very first cab ride in the city. If you only speak English, the first price they quote is 5 times the correct price. We asked about a cab to our hotel, 250 baht. Not bad, only 5 pounds and seeing as we didn’t have a clue where our hotel was it seemed reasonable. A block later we got dropped outside our hotel… worse yet, the hotel staff let us know that our trip should have only been 50 baht.  We later learnt that if you ask for the cab to meter you don’t have to barter, which is easier when you are exhausted. Other modes of transport in Bangkok we took included a decently easy to use subway system that didn’t go anywhere near any of the tourist destinations, a ferry boat system that if you weren’t sure where you were suppose to get off meant that you would end up quickly outside of the city and the famous tuk-tuk’s that were easily the most popular legal version of Russian Roulette that I have ever see. Now tuk-tuk’s weren’t isolated to Bangkok, but they were easily most terrifying there. On roads with lanes that changed direction depending on which direction was more adventurous, these three wheeled open aired taxies would hurdle themselves through any small opening that they could fit through (even if it was the lane of oncoming traffic) in order to save anytime they could. Add in the fact that on top of them, there were literally thousands of scooters everywhere, traffic could be packed as far as the eye could see with regular cars and that in Thailand you don’t need a seatbelt, it was easy to see why we were always thankful to make it to the end of our tuk tuk journeys in one piece.

Tuk Tuk 

The next transportation journey was the epic journey from Bangkok to Chiang Mai. Now, in Bangkok, almost every day somebody would tell us that whatever thing we were going to was closed, but for a small fee they could take us to “the lucky Buddha” or “the big Buddha” both of which don’t exist. So needless to say we started to become quite skeptical of anyone that would come up to us and tell us anything unsolicited. So naturally, when we got to the train station for our quiet sunset/overnight sleeper train to Chiang Mai and the first person we see tells us that our train is cancelled we automatically ignore them and walk past them and go pick up our luggage that we stored earlier in the day. When the second person comes and tells us the same thing we look closer to her shirt and it reads “Enjoy Thailand by Train” we are still skeptical but are starting to believe them. We then talk to the train ticket agent and they tell us the same thing, we realize were in trouble. Instead of the nice train with beds, we get to take a bus. Not just any bus however, a VIP bus. So me, Rebecca, 4 other British tourists that we meet and 2 people that didn’t really feel the need to chat, all get shuttled off to get the bus. Still feeling like we were being played (mainly as there wasn’t a single thai person and the bus had cost us more than the train) we got taxied to the bus station. Otherwise known as a tiny restaurant in the middle of a street and told to wait there for our VIP bus. Crap, this is getting shadier by the second, but at this point they tell us that they will be graciously stopping for dinner during the trip. Oddly enough they will be stopping at midnight, but whatever. Finally the VIP bus arrives to dazzle us and dazzle it did. Build in the 1970’s with all the modern décor of pastel blue with the faint musk of mold, it was everything we could ever hope for. But that wasn’t all, we also got a many hour long video of a live Thai rock show. You would have thought that would have been annoying and stopped you from sleeping, but that wasn’t even close to a concern. Yes the rock shows flashing lights may have kept you awake, but that was only if the fact that the bus was driving 90 miles an hour weaving through traffic on a monsoon didn’t. The driver was creating a nice rocking motion like the ocean from the combination of hydroplaning and traffic weaving. As promised, at midnight we stopped for dinner at some stop, don’t bother asking where. Here we were offered a choice of mystery meal that smelt terrible, even by truck stop standards, and bottled water. Easy choice.  Another interesting note, buses are much faster than trains and when we got to Chiang Mai at 6 in the morning instead of 10 am like planned, hotels don’t really have your room ready. Who knew?

VIP Bus 

In Chiang Mai we experienced a new method to get around. There the preferred method to get from place to place was in the back of converted pickup trucks. They would run cushioned seats along each side of the bed with a canopy for cover. It really wasn’t too bad, unless of course you looked at the back end and noticed the fact that while they had cut a nice hole to act as a door to get in and out of the back, there was now nothing between you and the sliding out the back end and into traffic.

New Chiang Mai Transport

Even though we were on slippery vinyl seats, this wasn’t really a problem for people as we could grab hold of something. Luggage however, it couldn’t hold anything, so it liked to try and escape for freedom whenever it saw an opportunity.

Train to Bangkok

By the time we left Chiang Mai, the landslide that prevented the train ride up had now been cleared up and we were able to take the sleeper train down to Bangkok and then onto Hua Hin. Whether this was a good thing or not is still very much up for debate, but it was easily a new adventure. The train itself was fine. It moved about the same speed as a lost cow, but we did it in style. One thing that we didn’t think about however was the fact that they served us food, that unlike the random bus stop we stopped at, looked and smelt good. Unfortunately, the trains are generally taken most by the Thai people and because of that the food was cooked for the Thai palette. In many ways this is fine, but one thing that we had learnt about earlier in our cooking course (I’ll talk about that in a later story) was that all tourists food is about a tenth as spicy as a normal Thai meal. Combined with the fact that Rebecca already thought the food was too spicy and I thought it was at a good level, my face literally melted as I ate the curry that was given. Worse yet was that, even though I was dying with each bite (I know, the folks with ties to the southwest will be calling me a wimp, but ie-whey-la! (anyone actually know how to spell that?)) , it was extremely tasty, so I couldn’t help but to keep eating. 

Train Food

The second issue came when we started talking to a nice German on the train with us. We were starting to get worried as the train was supposedly getting to Bangkok 30 minutes from the time it was and we were still in the jungle.  Apparently, the arrival times were only for suckers. No trains ever ran on time and usually they were a hour or two late (worst we saw was a train that was 8 hours late). With our connection scheduled to leave an hour and 45 minutes after scheduled arrival, we started to panic. Stopping at every road crossing in Bangkok (trains stop for cars, not cars for trains like the west. Crazy, I know) and having to wait for street vendors to move their stalls of the tracks, we jumped out of the train and made our way to our connection.  So amongst the hoards of five foot five Thais, me and Rebecca were sprinting through the station with two large suit cases running half aimlessly, because we can’t read Thai and didn’t know where our train was departing from, towards our train. Thankfully, we ended up making our connection literally as it was pulling out of the station and were on our way to sit on a beach in Hua Hin and not deal with anymore transportation until we were travelling back to the UK.
“Beep! Beep! Beep!” 5:00 am, Saturday, September 3rd the alarm goes off in our hotel room and we get to begin our journey back to London. Why so early? Well, there are only 2 trains from Hua Hin to Bangkok a day. One at 6:30 am and one late night. Since the late one would have us miss our plane, (especially given that trains run hours late anyways) the early morning was the only option. Get to the station 15 minutes before the train is suppose to arrive, naively optimistic, and prep for our train. When we get there we are told that the trains are running a little late so we would have to wait. At 7:15 am, 45 minutes after our train was suppose to leave, the 4 am train heading south arrives.  Startled, we decide that it would be best if we clarified what was meant by running  “a little late.”  What they meant by a little late was, over 2 and a half hours late, with no definite timeline.

Delay Time For Thai Trians

Shit! Good thing we had planned to have 9 hours in Bangkok before even needing to go to the airport. Time crawled on, with no idea about when the train would actually be arriving we tried not to think about the cruel alarm clock that stole the comforts of a bed away seemingly hours too early. As 8 o’clock rolled past, a flurry of trains all came through the station, each time we sat up with anticipation, only to have the station attendant dash our hopes by shaking his head at us and saying, not this train. Eventually, one of the ticketing agents finds us and tells us that they can switch our tickets to a new train to Bangkok and that would be the next train at the station. Eager to get moving we switched our tickets and fifteen minutes later were on the 5:30 am train to Bangkok (at almost nine).  With vendors, selling everything from souvenirs to hot and cold food, marching up and down the aisle of the train we made our way to the city, arriving sometime after one. In Bangkok, we tried to muster up the desire to do some shopping, but tired we decided to grab some food and just go to the airport a little early and just sit and rest.  We ended up at the airport 4 hours before departure and an hour before check in was available, so we found a seat and let time drift away. What seemed to be eon’s past (actually only an hour, but when you are bored, EON’S!) and check in opened up so we got into line to eagerly get rid of our heavy luggage. It only took a few moments before both me and Rebecca noticed that something was terribly wrong. Each person checking in ahead of us (which was a large number, especially for 3 hours before flight time) was taking an extremely long time and at the end was given a box that looked to contain a meal. According to the agent, the plane had been delayed in China and was going to be 2 hours late. DOES ANYTHING IN THIS COUNTRY RUN ON TIME? Seriously? Well at least they were giving us a meal. WHAT! We were still on the ground and they were giving us shitty airplane food! This wasn’t right, but with no other choice, we ate our food (which wasn’t allowed past security as well) and continued past security. One thing that I will commend the airport with was that there were areas with comfy leather sofa’s to crash on and we even had the nature channel to keep us entertained for the delay. I could talk about how we ended up with 12 hour layover back in Sri Lanka and a stop to pick up more people in the Maldives (which don’t have an island big enough for a landing strip so they had to make one, which is freaky to land on) but I’ve rambled long enough and really, long planes aren’t that exciting of an adventure. So, I will end this story here and say that we got back to London at midnight Sunday, September 4th to end the long trek home.

Sean the Alchemist

              So,  I’ve been asked by a few people now, “ I know that you have a new job in a place called Stowmarket, but what do you actually do?” So I thought I would write about it. The short and boring answer is that I make Ferro-Molybdenum using an aluminothermic reaction.  This however poses two problems. One, most people don’t have a clue what Ferro-Molybdenum is, and two, it just doesn’t sound like nearly as much of a good time as it really is.  

(think like this but much bigger scale (7 tonnes) and in a big bucket, not cutting a car in half)

Mythbusters Playing with Thermite

The better answer is that I’m an a mad scientist. See, it already sounds more exciting, but I can’t start there, first I need to like all stories, at the beginning.

                I work for Climax Molybdenum in a small facility in the UK that is a subsidiary of the company I used to work for Freeport McMoRan. It’s actually so small that most FMI employees have never heard of it.  We have approximately 75 total employees of which, three are at all technical. One is me,  as the engineer, the second is the lab supervisor (Oddly enough not his technicians though), and the third is my boss (a chemical engineer by trade, but spends all his day managing people). And with my arrival, our manager has decided that the group has apparently become big enough to be called the “Techno-Weenies.”  To put it into perspective,  each week I send out a few graphs that show key process variables so that we can monitor how we ran the last week in comparison to how we normally run. Two days ago, one of the people that I send those out to stopped me and thanked me for sending them out to him and that they were quite neat looking, but he had no idea whatsoever what he was looking at. As in, didn’t know why we would have a graph of % Molybdenum in our final product, even thought that’s what we sell. I know that this doesn't make sense why I'm telling you this, but bear with me. Why I'm explaining this is just to explain that most of my coleagues know that we do what we do, but haven't got a good understanding of why or how it works. Which is what I'm suppose to do. This has it’s advantages.

The main advantage is that when we want to switch to a new material I get to test it. I know, this doesn’t sound too exciting, but in order to do these tests, I’ve been given a cement mixer and told to try and make mixtures of about 10 kilograms of these explosives (Because you can’t possibly hope to learn anything from anything smaller, and quite frankly when I tried the next size larger I may have had a bit of a “Rapid detonation of the reaction materials” or simply put a big bang) in a shed in the back of the property, that has been renamed sean's boom boom shed, I wonder why?  This is where the mad scientist comes in. I spend my day concocting different mixtures of explosives and then igniting them in a sand lined garbage can. The bounds of what I can try are only limited to what I think may work. Some examples of this are that we currently use calcium fluoride in our reaction, but it has the adverse side effect of making gas that isn’t great for the environment. This means that while it is helpful in the reaction, the cost of having to control and prevent the gas from escaping makes it almost not worth using. So, I have been told to find a replacement. Suggestions have ranged from just taking it out and seeing what happens to adding Borax, the laundry detergent. Now, I generally know what’s going to happen before, otherwise I would be decently terrible at my job. But, when someone who doesn’t know what I’m doing, which is most of the site, walks up to me and I’m covered with dust with a cement mixer and a garbage can shooting sparks eight feet into the air. Explaining it can become quite difficult and hence I get quickly labelled a mad scientist.

Like I said, while what I do is make Ferro-Molybdenum. I am really a mad scientist. So if you hear about an explosion tragically involving an engineer in eastern England you won't have to ask any questions about what happened.

London, A Little Dirty

So, a few weekends ago, Rebecca and I were visited by a most welcome house guest. Mike came and visited before he flew back to Vancouver.  Before I start this story, I feel that it is important to explain the friendship dynamics that me and Sanchez have. Firstly, Mike and I went to UBC together and then met up again in Arizona, him in Globe and myself in Morenci. An average visit with him meant that I/a group of us would stop in globe on the way to Phoenix and we would then spend the next two days trying to decided what to do. This usually meant that what we did was meander about, drink, eat, and discuss what we thought we should do, which was usually not much. I personally thought it was great. Add in Woot and the trifecta of indecisiveness was complete and don’t get me started on the inability to make decisions if you added Jarred.

But let’s continue with the story at hand. About a month ago, Mike emails to let me know that he will be in town and that we should hang out. Simple instructions and I quote “Yeah, let’s do something. I don’t really want to see the tourist stuff.” OK, this is going to take a bit of thought. Usually Rebecca is the master at things to see in London, but she loves to do all the things I would probably define as touristy. But, yeah, there are a bunch of cool things that we can do in London that aren’t touristy at all. I’ll do some research and we’ll figure something out.

Advance to Thursday before he gets here. Shit! Sean you’ve not done a lick of planning, as usual. Well, we can discuss with Mike when he arrives to get a better feel. But there is a couple really neat bars we could go too, some different food options. It will be good.

Friday, Mike comes into London, where I of course am late to pick him up, but it’s all good.  We chill, for the night and decide what to see Saturday. Here is a look at the photo’s of what we did in London.

Figure 1 - The Tower of London

Figure 2 - The Globe Theater

Figure 3 - St. Paul's

Figure 4 - Big Ben

Figure 5 - Westminster Abbey

Figure 6 - Buckingham Palace

As you can see, the "no tourist things" went out the window. We even got a pub lunch of fish n Chips in there.  We walked from the Tower of London all the way to Buckingham Palace and made sure to see every thing on the way. Including a lovely piece of 2 inch steel sheet in the Tate Museum of Modern Art. I still say the artist took the easy approach and the piece would have been much more striking as 3 inch plate, but what do I know.  I also learnt that my wife is in the wrong profession. Most would agree and say that she has the personality for school teacher or some other peppy position. But, what she should be is a tour guide. Without a doubt in my mind. Walking about giving the details on each thing that we walked past. I highly recommend the experience.  Unfortunately, Mike’s camera decided to bugger up. Right at the end of the two week vacation.

After the walking tour of London we spent the evening at a Canada Day BBQ. Simple BBQ, nothing to really mention, except that one of the hosts friends, who is actually a old house mate apparently will let anybody in the world stay with at his apartment, so he brought the two people currently crashing at his place. An Austrian hitchhiker and a shaggy dude wearing pants with one leg red and the other green. I won’t lie, when I saw them I immediately thought about Lance and his love of crazy people.

But alas, Sanchez had to be on a morning flight out so we had to end the visit and we sent him on his merry way to Heathrow and on his adventure back to Canada. 

Sean vs British Rail

So, as you all know, I’ve started a new job. All in all, I am enjoying the new experience. It’s really quite neat to go from somewhere like Morenci that had thousands of employees and took almost an hour to drive from one side to the other, to Stowmarket in which I already know almost every employees name and can walk across in about 5 minutes. But the one thing that I didn’t see coming was the epic battle that would become my life versus the National Rail.

First, let’s get something straight, I think that the UK national rail system is great. Maybe not the best in the world, but it makes an absolute mockery of anything I have ever seen in North America. There is no where that I have lived in which an hour and a half commute by train would be possible.  I mean, if I miss a train, that sucks, but it’s a half hour and then the next one will take me on my merry way. Even thought I work in a small English Village.

However, some of the things I’ve had to deal with are the most ridicules things that I have ever heard of. Let’s just go over this week. Monday, the whole of Britain was in a joyous mood as the weather hit the highest that it had hit in the entire year. At a toast 33 degrees Celsius (92 F, for the Americans in the crowd) , National rail had to cancel many trains as it was too hot. Wait, 33 is too hot?  This isn’t good, and summer has really just started.  Apparently all of Britain would shut down if it ever had to deal with a month of Arizona summer.  And to make things so much better, I spent the entire train ride next to a parent and their two children that were, A) Bored, therefore acting out and yelling, and B) because the kids were acting out, the parent kept yelling at them to stop embarrassing them.  At least, I had something to watch for three hours. Always stay positive. Next, apparently in the UK after a really hot day (hehe, that still makes me giggle thinking that 33 is a really hot day) there will be thunder storms. Ah, the UK is a country build on rain, I’m not too worried about it. Tuesday…. First the morning train is delayed due to recovering from the excessively hot day, then the night train home is slowed to a crawl due to flooding. Seriously? Flooding? In the UK? It rains here almost every day. Wednesday, we decided that weather was no longer a reason to have issues. Nope, it was going to be a train failure. Somewhere ahead of us a train had stopped moving and that meant that I got a lovely few of an empty field for a good long time. I mean, would it have been too much to ask for us to have been stopped so we could at least see some cows? I’m really not a hard person to please here or better yet somewhere with connectivity for my trusty Google phone? No, middle of an empty field…  That brings us to Thursday, better known as today, and I can proudly say, that as I sit here and write this, the train is chugging a long quite nicely. So here’s hoping nothing changes on that front.

This week hasn’t been the only case of National Rail trying to beat me. If you remember upon arrival the trains tried their best to get me lost somewhere in Northern England never to make it to Scotland. Then you had Rebecca’s fun getting stuck trying to get down from Scotland and then there is my personal favorite. Thankfully, I didn’t have to live through this one personally, but last fall the train ended up being  delayed and cancelled because of leaves. Yes, you read that correctly, leaves. But according to the railway if it had been just normal leaves things would have been fine, but these leaves were different and caused all sorts of issues. This now means I have a mission before fall, find out what tree leaves are these so called special ones, and burn down all those kinds of trees within a mile of my route home.

So, I would like to keep saying, I am still enjoying taking the train, but ugh. Sometimes these things are just… wait a second, message over the PA… shit, this is going to be an adventure…

The O2 - Rebecca's First Ever Concert.

So this isn't actually a story about me. It's about my new wife. Back in March a friend of ours got tickets in the Clifford Chance corporate box to see The Script, an irish pop band, play at the O2. The only catch was that the day before Rebecca needed to be in Edinburgh to get her wedding dress fitted. Shouldn't be an issue, she would just catch a morning train back down to London and join us for the show. March 25th comes and the dress fitting goes okay. It took all day, four trips back to do refitting, but it was done and Rebecca was now in possession of her wedding dress. The morning of the 26th comes and Rebecca is lugging her dress to the train station and that's where things start to go bad. The train from Scotland down to London is packed full of Scotsmen in full kilts because there is a soccer game between the Brazilians and the Scots in London that day as well. Ok, well, not ideal, but the dress is in a carry bag, with a plastic sheet to protect it in case someone spills their beer near the dress.

The train starts on its way and Rebecca with her dress protected in hand starts her journey back to London. They get to Newcastle with a few issues and then continue down the track. About 20 minutes later, they stop unexpectedly in Durham and things got worse quickly. "Attention passengers, Due do a signal failure, we have been held here at Durham until they can resolve the situation. We should resume travel shortly." This message wasn't too unnerving to Rebecca as she had lots of time before the show, but to the Scots that had gone to see the match, this was cause to drink and drink they did. So much so, that they cleared out the train of liquor. Hours continued to pass with no new updates and things were starting to look grim. By this point most of the Scots had already left the train to go to the supermarket and get more to drink and come back and were bound to have a good time no matter what. A few of them even noticed that Rebecca was visibly upset. Also noticing that she had her wedding dress, they put two and two together to somehow got five.... They, being ultimate gentlemen, consoled the bride to be letting her know - "Aye, lass, if he truly loves ye, he'll wait for yee - dina worry." Somehow they thought Rebecca was missing her wedding. Apparently, missing the show was as distressing as missing our wedding... hmm may have to look into that one. Oh well. with about an hour before the show was about to start, and now knowing that she would miss the show, it's announced that the train would not be making it to London tonight and that they would be providing busses back to Newcastle or trains back to  Edinburg for the passengers. So Rebecca went back to her sister's place in EDI.

Meanwhile, I not really knowing what to do, am told by Rebecca that I am to go to the show without her as I am not to have my night ruined because of the train. What she doesn't realize is that I've never heard of The Script and I don't really mind if I go or not. But alas, I go. It was fine. I've only ever gone to shows where there isn't assigned seats and usually involve a mosh pit. But hey, if you are going to try the assigned seating it might as well be in a corporate box. It was funny however, because there was most definitely a few girls in the box that were really into the band. I mean REALLY into the band.

The next day, Rebecca travels down to London without a single issue and I pick her up from the station upset from missing the show, but relieved to be home and done with the travel. I think that's the end of the story, but no. The next week, Rebecca gets offered tickets to a show in the CC corporate box. She's heard of the singer before, but doesn't know them well, so she accepts them anyways thinking that she was robbed of one show, she might as well go see this one. I'll be the first to admit, the guy is a superstar, but I honestly never thought that he would be someone I saw in concert. I mean, tickets to the show were £200 each. Rebecca got home and told me the good news, we had tickets to Barry Manilow.  Needless to say, I was shocked and asked if Rebecca knew any of his songs. Not to my surprise, she hadn't.

May 5th, I went back to the O2, this time with Rebecca and we went and saw the legend in concert. I would guess that we were the youngest people there by about 20 years, but we had a great time and I don't think that Rebecca will ever forget her first concert, or the image of Barry Manilow shaking his hips on stage making thousands of women scream. What can I say, apparently it's not just me who has adventures. My new wife, Rebecca is going to be susceptible to them as well. This should be fun.

A Brand New Gig

I have always said that my time was worth more to me then anything in the world. Even if I chose to waste it by banging my head on the wall for hours, at least it was my decision to do that. Don't get me wrong, I'm aware that in this world, except for the very rare occasion, you need to work. Preferably in something you enjoy. After my wedding day, I came back to London and had two interviews for two completely different positions. One here in London, working in retail sales, the companies not important, and the other working in Stowmarket, which is about a two and a half hour commute each way, as a process engineer, oddly enough, for the company I had just left in america. Apparently I'm a company man and I didn't even know.  That's a different story however. 

In the end, I was offered both positions and was forced to actually pit my mouth versus my career. Something that most of you will already know that my mouth generally wins. I seem to be unable to keep my mouth shut when I should when I disagree with something. It was actually to the point in which it was actually mentioned in my goodbye lunch by my manager that things would be a lot quieter without me. I took that as a compliment even thought it really wasn't. This time however, I actually chose to be a career person. I took the job in Stowmarket and am preparing to learn to love the train. I mean, I know that I will lose 5 hours a day to travel,  1300 hours in a year, and that is 22% of my waking life will be commuting to work. Wait, why I am doing this again?? Focus.... Yeah, even if I'm commuting a lot, I really like London, and I don't think that it is feasible for me to move out of it here. Think, if I think that London moves slowly and all the people outside London say it moves too fast for them, I would probably snap out there. Second, it's not like I can't bang my head for the hours on the train. It still is in essence my time to do with as I please. I figure that I can always turn my train time to my google reader time. 

The other great thing that I have learnt is that even if this is England, the birth place of english, a language I thought that I had a good grasp of, it's going to be fun trying to learn how to speak to everyone. I've now been in London for 5 months and am starting to understand what the hell people are talking about. As well as learning what you can and cannot say. Ie, you can't say pants in this country, it doesn't mean pants, it means underwear. So when I say something like I'm just going to put my pants over my shorts here I get some really strange looks. You also can't say your double fisting beers, that means all kinds of inappropriate things and not you have a beer in both hands. Finally, when asked what I was planning on doing with my very first paycheck I made the common joke I generally make - "Waste it on Hookers and Blow." I still haven't learnt what that one means, but the look of horror on the face of the poor brit I was with was enough to know that it wasn't good. But in Stowmarket, it's a whole new bag of chips. a new slang that I need to learn and a new accent again. During my interview I found myself so confused most of the time it was almost like when in Morenci people would start speaking spanglish at me. I mean, even couple words I would get but the gist of the topic? Hell no. We'll have to see how this one plays out. 

But yeah, enough ranting, as of June 6th I will no longer be a house husband and have to go back into the real world. The only thing that I'm not sure of is whether this place is quite ready for the adventures that seemingly come with me. 

Promotion

So, the rumors are true. I have gotten promoted. I am no longer a house fiance and am now a true house husband. In all reality if you are reading this you would most likely know this because you either saw the event in person or at least already knew about the wedding. Since it has now been almost two weeks and since most people already know the stories, I thought I would keep it short and highlight some of my personal favorites.

First one has to be the moments just moments before the actual wedding where one of the readers comes in to wish me and the groomsmen luck and chat for a few. So we were in a little room in the back that obviously served as the priests getting ready area as it was full of extra staves and robes. Chatting away, a nameless groomsmen and the said reader took notice of the staves and things went decidedly downhill quickly and then I heard a comment I was sure meant that I would be smote at that moment.
                           "Hey, lets do religious jousting! You be Jesus, I'll be Satan!"
At least one thing was for sure, we weren't stressing out before the wedding. Well maybe a little, but that was just me stressing if lightning was going to come out of the sky and strike down this mess of a group.

Second one also goes to a groomsmen of mine, unfortunately. Before I get into details, when someone who is planning a food event for you and asks about your allergies, it's generally not to be polite, but more to be sure that they don't get you killed. He had been so worried about making sure that his wife was able to eat with her allergies that he forgot to mention that he was allergic to something. Beets I think, or was it radish? It doesn't matter at this point, so I'm going with beets. And you guessed it, said vegetable was part of the main course. Also, it was a species that when presented the way it was didn't really look like beets. It's always fun to have an emergency phone call to Colorado to find out the severity of a allergy at the wedding. Sometime I wonder how my friends have made it this far in life. Know that I only joke because I know that he is okay. Apparently he wasn't deathly allergic.

The Killer Vegetable

Last story has got to be the story of the health of the bride and groom. So, we arrived in Vancouver on the 22nd and immediately, Rebecca comes down with strep throat. I being the loving husband that I am graciously laugh at her misfortune and joke about how instead of a first kiss we will have a first cough. This ends up with the obvious occurring and I get strep as well (which I'm not sure has cleared up, but I mean with endless boozing and very little sleep I don't know how it would possibly stay. Cam assured me that the cure to strep was to drink Sauza, then mix this Southern Comfort so I'm sure I'm be fine).  We go the entire week and make it out alive, I bet that Nat, Dan, and Jen may argue based on the level of movement we participated in on Monday after all events. Then to top all of this off, I get back to London and it appears that I have turned into a dalmatian and developed spots. Great! now I have measles and am literally quarantined for 5 days.

Look you can play connect the dots on my arm!

No matter what happened though, I can say that it was an amazing week. We got to go back home, spend time with all out friends and family, and in the end signed a piece of paper that just makes official what was already known. So I thank all of those who were there, and am sorry to those that missed it. It was quite the adventure.

The Haircut

So, as everyone is most likely aware, I am actually becoming an official house husband at the end of the month. It's been a lot of work but I'm going to graduate from fiance to husband. With that, it's important that you look good on the big day and since Rebecca likes my hair best about two weeks after it's been cut, that meant that I needed to get my haircut here in London. I will say, that really shouldn't have been a big deal, but since when has anything worked out well? So, Monday I decided that I would check around the wharf to see what if there was a simple barber around. I should have know that would be a waste. The banking capital of Europe and possibly the world, does not have simple hair dressers. My options were: one: Toni and Guy - a premier hair salon that wanted a personal consultation before even considering cutting my hair, Two: Sean hanna - another high end salon or three: the gentry barber - which was a high end barber like Men's Ultimate Grooming in Phoenix, a place that while nice and would do a good job is still a little much for me, the guy who likes a simple hair cut, nothing fancy. Deciding the wharf was a little much for me, I found a simple hair dresser at a mall a short train ride away.

This morning, I decided that today I would venture out to get my hair cut in the morning and then I would have the rest of the afternoon to get some other things that I needed to get done finished. After Rebecca left for work for 9:30 (side note, how awesome would it have been to start work at 9:30 instead of 6am?) I cleaned up and went to Lewisham where the mall was. I got to the hair dresser, I think it was a supercuts, maybe mastercuts? One of the generic hair dressers. I got there just before 11 am and asked how long? Apologetically, they said it would be 45 minutes as they were quite backed up. That sucks but hey, I have my trusty smart phone and I can easily kill 45 minutes on the internet. 45 minutes come and goes, and only one of the people in front of me has moved, but you know what, there is this duo of girls that are getting their hair full out coloured and worked on, why they decided to do all that at a generic place is a different story, but they look like they are coming to an end so I will wait. Another hour passes, and the only reason the line in front of me has gotten shorter is because people have gotten fed up and left. The duo of girls have decided that the first attempt wasn't done right and are now on try two, but I still have the internet and I'm still happily waiting. Now, it's 2:30 and I'm really thinking that I should just give up, but so many others have and I'm now in the front of the line and I've invested so much time I feel committed. I decided that I wasn't going to give up and finally, at 3:30 I'm rewarded and they say they will cut my hair. However, apparently I've been sitting so long that the hair washing that I did in the morning wasn't good enough for them and they said that they wouldn't cut it unless I paid them to wash it again. Fine, you know what, just wash it again, I really don't care. They cut my hair, I pay up and I thankfully get the hell out of there. To my amusement the duo of girls, was now on attempt 3 or 4, and still working on it. So, I have to say it could have been much worse and hey, I was getting to go home. Or so I thought...

I get back to the DLR station (one of the various subway like trains in London), Check the time for the next train, 20 minutes, hmmm, that's odd, usually they come every 5 - 10 minutes. After 20 minutes, the displayed time disappears entirely. Oh no, this can't be good. Sure enough, a few minutes later "Excuse me, Due to issues with the DLR system, all trains have been cancelled to Lewisham. Please find alternative travel arrangements. Sorry for the inconvenience." What? it would only be a hour or so walk, which wouldn't be too bad, but I'm on the south side of the river and need to get across the river to my place on the north side with no major bridge for miles. Time for the trusty smart phone to save the day. Unfortunately, remember that 4 1/2 hours of waiting for my haircut, well, I was watching high def video's online, and the last thing my phone told me before dying was there was a foot path that went under the river that wasn't too far out of the way. Hmmm, no phone for directions, in a part of london I don't know well, to a footpath I only saw briefly on the map before my phone died. Sounds like an adventure I can't pass up. Thankfully, the trip didn't involve getting too lost. I actually made it back home  in about 2 hours. I mean, yes, the footpath that went under the river was ultra creepy with the 'I'm going to get raped vibe' but other then that the weather was nice and overall I would do the walk again. Unfortunately, that wasn't the worst part of the walk back...

After awhile, I got through the creepy underground tunnel, got back to the isle of dogs where I live and can actually see the building I live in. Now, there is a park near our place and as I'm leaving the park I get caught behind two mothers pushing their babies strollers while meandering down the street. As I'm tired and want to get home I decide that I'm going to just slide past them and continue down the road. How I wished the road had been too small and I had to have crossed the street to pass them. If only life had been so convenient.  Passing a baby stroller what is the first thing you always do? For me, it's look at the cute little baby usually enjoying themselves on their walk. This time was no different, expect I did not expect what I saw. To be honest, I can't even remember what the kid looked like, but I do know what I did and said... I looked down and saw what in my opinion was an alien and jumped and said "AHHH!! what the hell!?!" Note, for all of you who are a little bit socially unaware, mother's are generally pretty defensive of their babies. The next few minutes, or what seemed to be hours, consisted of me being hit and yelled at for insulting the poor woman's child. Next, the child started to cry which caused the second kid to start crying, and it was all bad, all the time. I don't think that I could have gotten out of there any faster. I mean, I feel like a totally horrible person, but I didn't mean to be an ass.

All this in the name of a shitty haircut. So, I expect everyone reading this that sees me at the wedding to compliment me on the haircut. As with most things in my life, it was certainly an adventure.

The House Husbands Guide to Becoming a Londoner

Before I begin let me apologize for the not writing anything in a while, but I have a good excuse. So, I was trying to make some sweet and sour pork for dinner and I had my laptop on the counter for both music and the recipe when a cooking tragedy occurred. Reaching up to get something from the cupboard I knocked over a bottle of soy sauce onto my laptop. Now, it was sealed and closed so there is no liquid expelled to damage it that way, however, it did impact directly with the hard drive and since my windows disks are in Canada, my computer will be down until at least the wedding. Further proof, I should not be allowed in a kitchen. But onwards and outwards. 

To become a Londoner, I have learnt that there are man things that you need to do. I thought that for my latest story I would write about two of the steps that I took to becoming a Londoner in the past month or so, and no for the people like Peaches that have been hoping, it was not to develop an English accent. I'll work on it but I make no promises on that one. 

The first step was on valentines day where me and Rebecca decided that seeing a west end musical was a key thing that needed to be done. Seeing that it was my first west end musical, and Rebecca had seen countless musicals,  Rebecca let me choose the one that I wanted to see. Such a poor decision. There were so many choices, I mean should I pick a classic musical like Phantom of the Opera or Les Miserable? Maybe I should choose one of the newer ones out there like The Lion King or We Will Rock You, you know something that Rebecca hasn't seen yet. No, it was clear to me what we should go see. I mean it was valentines day and it really should be a musical that is upbeat and with some kind of love story, right? The choice was clear as I said, we needed to go see Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Nothing says Valentines day like Australian drag queens and since I figured that I loved the movie, I would like the show. You know the more I think about it I may have an unnatural fascination with drag queens, but I think that I will leave that for a different day. As for the show, it was ridiculous, over the top, and borderline obscene. It was perfect. I mean it couldn't have been better, it even included the giant an operatic song sung from queen lounging in a giant shoe. 

We weren't allowed to take photo's but Google had this one by Tristram Kenton

I would have to say that the first musical that I went to see was a great success. At this point we haven't decided what to go see next, but I'm sure that Rebecca will get to pick, even if she was laughing and having a good time at Priscilla too. 

The second agenda item was that I was suppose to go see a football match here in London, and from what I have learnt from the various people that I have talked to, you can become a fan of one of the big clubs, like Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester United, or Liverpool like I am, but that isn't as much fun as following one of the smaller teams.  Also, I have found out that most of the family that I am marrying into are supporters of the local team in Watford. So I was invited to go see a Watford game. We ended up going from the near furthest southeast of London, where Rebecca and I live, all the way to the most northwest to see the match. At this point we have no idea who Watford is playing, but we figure it should be a good time. Once there we get told that the team they are facing is a dirty evil team that are a bunch of no good hooligans from Millwall. Wait a second, why do I know the name Millwall, trusty google phone don't let me down.... That's why I know Millwall, they would be the home team where I live in the south east of London. Shit... So, do I go with the family, who at this point I've realized are quite passionate about this, or my home team... Well, in Arizona I didn't cheer for a single Arizona team, so I guess it's really not new for me to be living in a place where I am not a supporter of the local team. Watford it is! 

Ticket for the Watford - Millwall game

Lets go back one second. Remember how I was saying that I was told that it is more fun to support a small club. Well, Watford is a small club, now I don't mean a small club in the premier league, The Watford Hornets play in the football league championship division, which is the league below the premier league. But don't let that fool you, the people at the game when things weren't going well resorted to throwing beer bottles at the players. They take this stuff seriously here. One particularly fun thing that I spent most of the time doing was watching some 12 year oldish kid continually freaking out about the game. I mean, the ball would go out for a throw in and if it was awarded to the opposing team he would act as if that was a crime against humanity. I one point I was just hoping for his team to mess up to watch him freak. I mean that was more entertaining then the match. I know how ridiculous that sounds coming from me, as I can be one of the more passionate fans out there, but I assure you, this was out there. In the end, Watford won and good times were had by all. 

Watford was in Yellow and Millwall was in blue. Also you can see there is a group of police between the millwall fans and the watford fans.

I don't think that I can say that I'm quite there yet, as I most definitely don't have the passion yet, but I got my first few lessons on what I need to know about to be a true Londoner. Now I guess that means that I need to go to an away game and use the special barricaded visitors entrance or go do the next things that I need to learn to do while living here in London. This should be an adventure.

Adventuring to Bridlington

Good day, before I tell you about the latest adventure that I had, I need to explain a few things. First, for the last three years whenever I had a free weekend with my cohorts the first thing we would do would be to leave our small town of Morenci and go to the big city, whether that was Phoenix, Albuquerque or Tucson, sometimes with as little as a few hours notice. This was just the way it was, Morenci really didn’t have much to do and it was nice to get away from the mine and the constant reminder of work. Second, I just sold off my truck, a nice big six seat Silverado that I had named Isabelle, or Izzy for short. With those two pieces of information, I think we can start.

                About three weeks ago, Rebecca and her friends Stephanie, Laura and Carla decided that since in early March, Laura and Carla are moving to Paris and Dubai respectively, we should do something before they leave. It’s decided that we are going to go to Bridlington in Yorkshire; at this point the only thing I can tell you about the place is that it’s on the sea, which sea? I haven’t a clue, but I’m told that I don’t have to plan anything other then what to pack and that if I made cookies they would be delighted. Time goes on and no mention of the trip is made to me again, I think the girls were discussing and planning but to me everything is going smoothly until the day we were going to leave.

                Friday comes around and I get told that I need to pack my bag, a small one, and be ready by 6:30pm, which coming to know the lawyers of Clifford Chance like I do really means that they will hopefully be ready by 7:30pm. To be fair it’s usually not their fault as they usually are getting stuck at work, but nonetheless it’s still the reality. To my surprise they came to pick me up early at 6:50, well early by the standards I set and told me to hop into the car. What they should have said was hop into shoebox. Apparently, we were going to drive for four hours in a Ford KA. Now for those of you that are North American and don’t have the KA I’ve included a photo below. It’s a little smaller then a mini. And there were five of us. Oh Izzy, I have never missed you as much as I did that very second. I mean, I have been in some bad car rides before: 10 hours to Vegas in a full corolla, St. Andrews to Edinburg with 5 a focus and enough luggage to clothe a nation, and 30 hours to Vancouver going through the blasted lands of Idaho (you might remember that from earlier), but I will never complain about any of those trips ever again.

Figure 1 - The KA

Upon arrival in Bridlington, I swore that we had somehow made a wrong turn and ended up in Nevada. Unbeknown to me, the English seaside towns consist only of candy stores, fish and chip stores and amusement centers that look exactly like the small casinos that you find in Nevada. The whole place is flashing and blinking, the only thing that was different was that instead of real gambling and slot machines it was full of arcade and fair games. Additionally, you had the seaside. Since it is the winter the place was pretty quiet but apparently it becomes so packed that you can’t move in the summer.

Figure 2 - Playing the games inside one of the arcades (Laura, Carla, Stephanie, Rebecca and Me)

The other thing that we got because of the winter was a very angry sea. On more than one occasion you would be walking on the seawall, which was about ten to twelve feet over where the water was and a big wave would come in and splash up at you. Naturally, this meant there was only one thing to do. Try and walk all the way down the sea wall and back without getting wet like a game.

Figure 3 - The Raging Sea

Unfortunately for Stephanie, she most definitely lost the game and was hit full force by one of the waves. I had a few close calls but all in all I would have to say that it was a victory.

Figure 4 - My narrow avoidance of the waves.

After getting Steph home and dried off we then went out to dinner at one of the nicer restaurants in the town and had some good ol’ British cuisine. Side note, you have no idea how hard it is to get a photo that four girls agree is a nice one. I will say that this photo was the umpteenth one after we had to discount many because: “My smile looks stupid”, “My boobs look lopsided”, and “What are you looking at?” I say it was quite a production. But after I ruined the all the others, the girls decided that this one was ok and that my smile, boobs, and facial expressions was okay. :-P

Figure 5 - Dinner out on the town.

Finally, the next day, since I have now been to the UK on three visits and have now lived here for two months and until this trip I had never had fish and chips here. So, we decided that since it was my first time we would all pack into the KA again and drive to the shop that had just won the UK’s award for best fish and chips in the country. (Even thought it won best in the UK, it really made me doubt if I wanted to go if it meant that I had to get back into the KA). However, to my pleasure it was most certainly worth the inability to breathe for the duration of the trip.

Figure 6 - Laura, Carla, Rebecca and Stephanie at the fish and chip shop

All in all, it was an interesting trip. Almost the complete antithesis of what I was used to however. Instead of a group of boys and Rebecca going from the small town to the big city to go do some event and drink whilst forgetting dinner, it was a group of girls and Sean going from the big city to a small town to do nothing but eat dinner. Life is always full of odd twists of fate, but in the end it has and always will be an adventure.