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.