Saturday 28 June 2008

Saturday 28 June 2008

London Time: 2.15pm

Well... Sorry for not really updating that much but there's nothing interesting happening for the past 2 weeks. So didn't really bother to blog about that.

So basically I'm blogging now its because something interesting happened. And well, my internet connection is dead slow right now so all I can do is just to blog.

So yesterday I basically finished work at 4pm. Didn't manage to get around to play football cause I had to get some testing done in the test cell, and by the time I finished it was 4pm. And football started at 4. So I thought what the heck, and decided not to go anyways.

Oh and at work there's a new intern that just came in. His name is DeePak. Not sure how do I spell that but basically he's from Trinidad. If your asking me where's that, all I can say is that its pretty close to South America. But I'm sure if you've watched the world cup, you'd remember a team called Trinidad and Tobago? Yep. Well this guy's from there. But he's been studying in a university called Imperial College in London for the past 3 years and he's doing an internship with Rolls-Royce for the next half year.

So yeap. On to the interesting stuff. I asked Toby if he had any plans for tonight or the next night and he told me that he was actually going to the Friary cause a friend of his, Claudia is spending her last night in Derby there before heading back home to Germany. He told me I was more than welcome to tag along if I didn't mind not knowing the people there. I considered it for a bit cause I'm not really good with people I don't know. But I thought what the heck. Its probably better to meet more people I don't know than staying at home watching the tele.

So I met Toby down at London Road (Although its London Road, its just a road in Derby) at our usual meeting point and we cycled to the city center. My bicycle had a weird screeching sound as i cycled. Its probably because of the ball bearings being a little rusty or not enough lubricant in them. Its been bugging my bike for weeks. But I've generally ignored it.

Anyhow, we made it to the city center at around 8.50pm and it was still pretty bright. Well for those of you who find it weird for it to be bright at around 8.50pm, its because of it being Summer. The sun rises at around 4.30am in the morning and sets at about 9.30pm. But it only gets dark at around 11pm? So yea. Well in Winter, the sun rises at around 10am or so? And sets at around 4pm. Kinda sucks doesn't it. But I'm glad I'm here during the Summer.

Alright back to the party. So we parked out bikes outside the Friary and went in. We got ourselves some Dutch beer (can't remember the name) and went to look for Claudia and her friends. We finally found them sitting in a section close to the back of the place and well we got ourselves a seat with them. There were 4 ladies there and 1 dude. I was introduced to them but I'm really bad with names (can't remember the names, just the faces), and met Claudia. Apparently she's gonna drive all the way back to Germany. I was quite curious about this cause I knew that well the U.K is basically an island surrounded by water and the only way to get to the other shores was either to take a flight, take a boat, take the train across the channel to France (which I will be doing for my trip), or to swim across the channel. I'm joking about the last one though. But yea, so I was curious cause there were no roads that you could use or bridges to get you out of the U.K.

She told me that the trains that ran across the channel was able to take cars as well. This meant that the cars would be loaded onto the train and across the channel. From there, she'll drive up all the way to the Netherlands and then to Germany. Friggin long road trip that is.

Soon after, 2 more ladies came to join us. One was Katherina and I can't remember the other one's name. So we got them seats and Toby started chatting with them. I chatted up the other guy there and turns out he's the boyfriend of one of the girls there. I found out that he's from Derby and working at a company that dealt with instrumentation and calibration. All in all a pretty friendly guy to talk to. Toby then asked me if I would like to go to Chester on the next day. He and the 2 girls that just came were planning of going there and wanted me to come along. But they were gonna take the train there which would cost around 30 pounds for a return trip. Thinking it was a bit too dear, I said I'd think about it and let Toby know once the night was over.

There were a couple of pool tables near to where we sat and Toby asked me if I wanted to play pool. It was a coin operated pool table and it was 1 quid per game. But unfortunately all the tables were already being played on. 2 guys at one table asked us if we wanted to play doubles with them. We agreed and started the first round. One of the guys asked Toby if he wanted to bet 20 quid on the game and well, he politely said no. haha. So the guys said that they would play for the table, whoever won got to keep the table. We were pretty alright with that and so we played on. I was pretty lucky and potted a few balls in and well those 2 guys there were abit drunk I guess? That made them really hilarious cause they kept saying we're hustlers when we said we weren't that good. And of course in the end we won. We asked them if they wanted to play another round, but they told us that they lost the table and it was ours now. Well they basically just said that cause they were going out to get more drinks. So yeap.
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The guy that I talked to earlier with Claudia and her friends came up to us and joined us in playing pool. Since there were 3 of us, it was decided I would play with him first and whoever won would play against Toby. I found out that his name was Simon as the game went along (Its strange isn't it, to chat with someone without even knowing their name until a few hours later). As we played along, I was outnumbered by 3 balls. But like I said, I was pretty lucky that night, he accidentally potted the black ball in before he was supposed to and that made me win that round. Pretty lucky.
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There's Simon

So next I was up against Toby. I was leading all the way through the game and managed to win it by 1 ball. So yeap, it was pretty lucky again. A lady came to join us and it turns out she's Toby's friend. She was a French lady and well her English isn't too good with alot of French accent thrown in. So as I was chatting with her I couldn't really understand quite abit of what she was saying. But I just kept nodding my head as if I did. Its only polite right? haha. Oh and by the way her name was Claire. She was quite a Tomboy. But she was really friendly as well.
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The one in black is Claire.


So for the next game, I paired up with Simon against Toby and Claire. During the game, I went out to get the next round of drinks for the guys there. Toby came along with me to the bar and I ordered a pitcher of Long Island Iced Tea. The bartender that attended to us was quite good lookin' but young according to Toby. She asked me for my ID so I got out my passport and it was cleared. When our drink was about to be ready she told us that they ran out of something I didn't really understood and asked if it was ok to add an extra short of tequila instead. I told her it was alright and we got out drinks. BLEH. Its the crappiest long island iced tea ever. The taste of the tequila was too much. But ah well.

So we played a couple more games and Claire left soon after cause she was flying back to Paris in the morning. I went outside to meet the rest of the earlier group and well. There were more people that I didn't know. So I introduced myself to some of them. There was two guys( one of their names was Nathan or something) and a lady(Mara) from France, and two ladies(Siskia, can't really spell it but I pronounced it this way, and another one I can't remember) from Holland. According to Toby, Siskia was a really dutch name. haha.

So we got out of the Friary and Claudia had to go cause she has a pretty long next day ahead of her. We decided to go to the Saddlers next, it was a place further down the road.
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Walking to Saddlers

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Outside Saddlers

When we got there, it was left with the group that I just met awhile ago and 2 more guys, one was Toby's housemate and another one I didn't really know. So we got in, it was quite a tiny place. We got to the bar and they went to order some drinks. I didn't really want anything to drink then but I got a tequila short since Toby, Siskia and Nathan was having it as well. It was pretty cool cause to have the drink properly, we had to lick the area of our hands just before the thumb, pour some salt on it (that was what the licking was for, to get the salt to hold), have a slice of lemon ready in the hand with the salt, and take the short, lick off the salt, down the short, and stick the lemon in your mouth. It was a pretty cool experience and well from that experience, basically the salt and lemon was to mask the taste of the tequila. Pretty cool.

We then went upstairs onto an open air area just covered using pieces of cloth. The music here was pretty Trance like. Like in MOS or Zouk. So we just danced the night away.

When it got to about 1.30am, a few of them left and the only ones left there was me, Toby, Nathan and Siskia. It was a pretty smoky area cause it was open aired and everyone who could smoke, smoked. Nathan practically had a stick in his mouth the whole night. haha. Turns out that Siskia was only 20 this year. She looked like she was Toby's age, 25. But she's a good laugh and really fun. Nathan kept telling me which girl around us was beautiful. haha.

At around 3.15am, we left the place, Nathan stayed though and got outside, Toby asked me if it was ok to walk Siskia home cause she lives pretty near and she would be walking home alone if we didn't. So yeap. We took some photos with my phone and it wasn't really good shots anyway. As me and Toby unlocked our bikes, Siskia found a bottle on the floor and tried to kick it away. But she fell on her ass instead. Really really funny. And when she got up, it turned out she had slipped on someone's puke. Eeew. And her coat had puke on. It was a good laugh though. She kept talking about her having a blue bum in the morning which made it even funnier.
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Claire fell on her ass!

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Blurred...
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Man I'm not photogenic. haha.

So we walked her home which was around a 15 minute walk from where we were and we cycled home after that. Somehow I reached home at around 4.30am and finally got to sleep at around 5am.

Good times...

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