hey! i'm back! hooray! Welcome to the first of many blogs about the last 2 months i spent traveling. this will take a long while, but i'm getting around to it bit by bit.

in non-trip news i think i'm in love with zach braff - though i think he's a bit of a sellout (re; garden state ending). i've moved to a new flat to cover for sophie while she returns to the netherlands for 2 months to finish her course. it is, without question, the nicest flat i've ever lived in. my room is dark puke green and it makes me happy. the living room has had 2 of the corners turned into curves which freaks me out a bit, but i'm getting used to it. i think i understand how the oval office can put people off guard. and it is practically in the city center (centre) - bliss!

alright, here is the first installment

this trip was so much more than i ever could have expected. to those of you who made it possible (you know who you are), a whole hearted and huge 'THANK YOU!'

PART minus 1: PRE-TRIP TRAVELS - BRIGHTON

although not really a part of my travels, the weekend before i left i spent in Brighton with Hannah (one of the english girls). she was the producer for her university's spring musical, Little Shop of Horrors. i watched the copy of the movie (starring all of the old SNL cronies) at the video store about a month before i came and although musical theater is really not my cup of tea, the video really made me want to see this thing in real life (mostly to see how the hell they'd get away with the giant plant on stage). after a 7 hour train ride i arrived at the first (of many) cast parties. as i settled in i was complimented on my boyscoutedness by having several pre-rolled joints ready to go. after the party we walked to hannah's uber cool house where i met her even uber-cooler roomates. i got along well with them all (especially in comparison to many of the drama kids at hannah's cast party - not that they were bad or anything, but a but...um...too much) and knew the upcoming weekend would be most excellent.

i was regulated to dismantling the two cushion couch to make a bed for myself in the living room as the whole place was loaded with visitors.

we woke up to a beautiful (read:sunny and *GASP* warm) day to explore the city. hannah was worried about 'meeting the parents', but (un)like seth cohen, i had them eating out of my hand in minutes. i just stuck with hannah's dad, who was feeling a bit overwhelmed by the estrogen (4 girls) and we hit it off pretty well. eventually we went exploring around the town (which is very much like everything i love about SF) and had a great time. loads of thrift/charity/secondhand stores, a good punk store (which was made EXCELLENT by their zine selection), a few outdoor markets - one with a tented head shop, sans-bongs/pipes, but with an interesting selection of herbal teas, incense and fungi (i splurged and picked up a copy of PiHKAL - as if i don't have enough to read as it is, i figured i might as well top off with a chemistry book), and many other things that make a city (imo) great.

the show was good (even for those of us not into the theatrical arts) and i was even happier to discover i shared the same sentiments about it that hannah's hippy (-ie?) roomate had. we stepped out of the final run of LSOH to a grippe of snow! what the hell? it was sunny and relatively warm this morning, but 2 hours in the theater gave mother nature enough time to pull one of her miracles and gave us a beautiful gift of big chunky blowing snow - and it wasn't even that cold. the snow danced long enough for us to get on the bus whereupon it dried up as quickly as it came. the short bus ride passed by and we prepared for the final cast party(-ies). Taking place at 3 different houses - #1, the party house, chock-a-block of drunk/e-tarded college kids, #2, the chill house, featuring techno/house that i haven't heard in YEARS (think zombie nation/stomp to my beat), #3, hannah's house (not really a party house, but available for us to use. all houses were on the same street so it was a breeze to switch between them - but a quick jaunt through #1 made the decision to stay in house #2 (with all its mediocre techno glory) much easier. #1 was cool, but too crowded and WAY too many drunk girls (whooooo! drunk girl! whoooo!). #2 was far less crowded, i think it wasn't officially a party house, but i was on the in by knowing hannah. i attached myself with hannah's roommates we made some tea and began our night.

i had a very excellent evening, but it was as one would expect - house 1 = overly drunk people with an overly huge number of people, house 2 = overly drugged people, house 3 = quite nothingness. good times were had, in retrospect i should have left house 2 with hannah's hippie roommate because the goings-on in house 2 were getting to be a bit much ("I can see the muuuusic" et.al.), but i hung around for the entertainment value and decent conversation. there was this guy who would get up every so often and do a few minutes of liquid dancing. i haven't seen this EVER in the UK - i get talking to the dude and it turns out that he's from southern california. we had a great conversation about the socal rave scene - apparently we both got suited up around the same time and (of course) were at the same parties (inc.death rave 2k2). really i should have asked if he used to carry a kermit backpack (insider blog for the worfs) cuz he kinda looked like that bloke.

during the night someone spilled blue soda all over the living room floor so i had to set up my pillows in the (slate floored) kitchen. oddly comfortable. next morning i woke up way before everyone else (in true mateo style) and watched the city wake up. got to this lovely cafe run by 2 lesbian ladies who were absolutely LOVELY to me. had a breakfast baguette and enjoyed my last moments in the southern sun.

my train ride up to london was amazingly slow. accidently got on the city train instead of the express (long story of avoiding a bus), but made it to london with still more than enough time to grab some mediocre veggie chow mein. the london - edinburgh train was accented just past newcastle with news of someone having jumped in front of the train running parallel to us. ordinarly (apparently) this takes about an hour to clear up, but we were stuck for over 2 hours (ya know when you're really tired and everything ends up being funny - oddly [horribly] it works for a train conductor saying something like "torso stuck in front of train").

Edinburgh & Birmingham - Part Zero thru One - Welcome to Unemployment!

Finally! No more reporting to transcribe bank statements, letters or any other crapola for those that cannot see well. It was a good run while it lasted, but one can only take so much of a mind-numbing, skill-wasting, 7:10AM bus catching job (yet some people have been there for years and years). I did my final shift at the video store (which oddly, i don't find to be skill-wasting or mind-numbing - it is probably the lack of waking up at 7:10 thing) and packed my newly adapted backpack (i added a set of straps to hold my sleepingbag). As a professional procrastinator i (of course) left the packing until...well...now. Several hours later i was strapped up and ready to go.

My train wasn't scheduled until friday afternoon, so i grabbed some lunch with kellie and liam at the villager (hip bar/coffeeshop/cafe - i can't decide if it is too hip for me, but i do like it) then i was off to waverly station. I picked up a copy of gay times (of which my interest is waning) and the economist (which is my new love in the form of a newsweekly) and hopped on my Virgin Trains train, direct to BHAM. I enjoyed the first 30 minutes by disagreeing with this lady sitting across from me. She was complaining about the fact that she had had to move as someone had reserved the seat she had started in. I was having none of her whinyness and let her know. Twas fun.

Several uneventful train ride hours later i was in bham and quickly found english girl #2 on this trip - Kaz! She was having her girls over for the weekend so i prepared for another english girl prompted weekend of estrogen (see previous blog about visiting sheffield). we waited for the 3rd girl to arrive and then we were off to kaz's flat. it seems that no one out here shares rooms while at uni (or maybe all the people i know are posh?), so there was plenty of space for us all (still regulated to the floor, but not on a stone kitchen floor). i quickly discovered that kaz's roommate is a chem student (joy!), we hit it off really well, mostly via talk of chemical disillusionment and the joys (and lack thereof) of lab...a quick curry later we were all in dreamland.

the next morning the girls wanted to hit up the Bull Ring - Birmingham's premier shopping attraction, equivalent to southcoast. Personally i think i deserve some sort of award, i resisted the desire to run screaming out of the complex for a good 15 minutes in the first store. quickly though i realized the reason i had only been to South Coast in the past 4 years was to visit Rozanna or to drool at the apple store. as neither of those things were there (the apple store was to open in a few months) i departed and explored the surrounding area.

if brighton is everything that i love about SF, birmingham is everything i dont (mostly union squareish stuff). kaz directed me to the nearby outdoor markets, much more my style, especially as i wasn't planning on buying anything. the butcher with a huge mohawk was by far the highlight the food market (photo later), i also picked up some yarn and a hook as i forgot a hat for skiing in bosnia.

whilst walking around in the rain i was surrounded by all the chain shops, but it wasn't just one high street, no, this was blocks and blocks of them. i counted between 6-8 different starbucks in the area! fuck. also, i was a bit under the weather so it was all getting to be a bit much. some folks were promoting an antiwar protest in london, i talked to one guy for 10 minutes asking about the city and where he'd recommend to get out of this hellish mall area. he said "what are you looking for?" stumped i replied, "ummm, somewhere more...um...somewhere not this...um somewhere..."

"...somewhere more humane?" finishing my sentence.

Perfect! unfortunately said humane locale was far away and i was regulated to SCP-UKstyle.

that night we went to typical free bar/club where for not the presence of 5 hot girls (my entourage i like to think) i would have been rejected due to my boots (alas). i was posed with the question (again), is it wrong for me to flirt with girls? i can't decide, but it sure is fun. we left with my entourage having trouble walking, but having no trouble flirting with the cabbie or anyone else. finally home i paid the driver and coralled the drunk girls home. although not my type of fun, i did have a good time.

other birmingham highlights:
adding a new member to the crochet academy
seeing 'in good company' and not being hugely dissapointed
having one of my scottish pound notes being rejected

coming next: Mygars Lions and tigers oh my!