Here’s the hardcore crew from NYE. More serious stuff happening today has prevented more substantive blogging, but will get a chance in the next couple of days. Watch out for our charity crusade!
From left to right: me (obviously) Iren, Trond, Arvind, Caroline, Becky, Devan, Sheila.
Hope you’re all enjoying 2005…
Hi all,
Happy new year! We sung in 2005 in a rather subdued, albeit quite fun manner; the Malaysia Prime Minister made an appeal for celebrations to respect the solemnity this season has taken with the recent Tsunami tragedy – one of the serious things I’ve been meaning to blog about and will do.
That said, we managed to have a little cheer – a bunch of Arvind’s friends, spanning several continents and eras of each of our lives were around, my cousin Shayna, and of course Arvind and Sheila, and we hung out in KL and made merry. Only marginally annoyed by can-spraying idiots with tinned streamers this year (I had a blog post about that somewhere…)
Anyway, photos and stuff will go up tomorrow, hopefully, with a couple of more blog posts (on 1602, a great Neil Gaiman graphic novel my brother gave my sister for Christmas, Tsunamis and other things).
Hope you all had good ones. Here’s to a great 2005!
Armo
So much for blogging with verve or any other kind of -erve. It’s been an exhausting December, and I’m less than 48-hours from flying to Malaysia, from where I promise I will blog.
In the meantime, though, Merry Christmas to you, Interweb, and friends who read my occasional ramblings.
Was interviewed about my shopping habits. End result…
There’s been a lot of stuff going on. Not a lot of time to blog. Will be back on during December, with any luck, writing with substance, humour, verve, and, erm, substance.
I ask myself why oh why…
A picture from Damo’s recent birthday festivities, & the accompanying soundtrack. Apologies for massive delays in blogging: will be back with multiple updates, including news of (and a copy of) my MA-award winning thesis (woo!) and various other updates.
Hope you (being the internet-reading-universe at large) are all well…
Armo
x
It really has been too long since I last blogged. But I’ve been busy at work, then busy sorting out my birthday, then ill as my immune system saw fit to give out on me on the eve of my birthday party (grrr… damn lazy white blood cells). Party was *awesome*, though, 42 (the magic number) of friends turned up over the course of the evening and we indulged in one of the silliest themes ever – “Better Red than Dead”/”Cold War Chic” – to which a couple of people (Rosi, Chris S) wore Russian medals, and to which the rest of us just wore red t-shirts (Damo, me, Moose, Matt, Richard, etc).
Wanted to share the brilliant work of Chris in sorting out the most amusing birthday card ever:
Out for now… Bo,
Armo the Great
I went to Tallinn, in Estonia. It was the experience of a lifetime, and one which I hope to replicate in some way with a return trip in the not-too-distant future, to bear witness to a medieval city blanketed in snow.
I was tempted to go through the holiday blow-by-blow, talking through each anecdote in turn, in true primary-school-holiday-report style; however, I have subsequently decided that doing this would likely reveal me as a misogynist, an alcoholic, and a general bum. The highlights, however, in no particular order (with some accompanying photography):
** we got to play with estonian money, which made us all briefly feel like rich men – the currency is roughly 23 kroon to the pound, so we had a few grand to play with:
** we made repeated trips to the beer house, an austrian themed pub with “pint counters” on the ends of tables, interesting and cheap food, and large, large beer glasses:
** we walked around the beautiful old city a number of times, and got some good views:
** we had an oustanding bottle of Italian wine (Tomasi) at one of Conde Nast Traveller’s top 100 restaraunts in the world – “Gloria’s Wine bar” – where our bottle of wine and cheese platter cost us a total of about 500 kroon – just over twenty pounds… and we pretended we were kings of the world:
** we played an amount of chess, drank an amount of the local liquour “Vana Tallinn” (which is outstanding), and Damian even dared Kanna Kuek, a “living liquer” which continues to ferment in the bottle, at a fairly well hidden cafe off the old town square:
** we posed as knights:
** we checked out icbm-mo-biles:
and…
** we drank honey beer (meady-licious)
** we tipped shamefully small amounts of money and got told off for it (well, Matt did. “2 kroon? that is not money! put that down!”)
** we met the beautiful and interesting Katrin, former basketball player for Estonia and future president, and Ana, beautiful and mysterious superspy, on the evening of a thousand venues, and ended up staying up all night talking increasing amounts of rubbish to them. It was much, much fun.
** on the flight on the way over, we met the lovely Lena S, who taught us the incredibly entertaining Russian card game “Durak”, to which we all became addicted. She also renamed us: Matt became Mathematix, Damian became A Le Coq (“Ally Cock”) – Estonia’s national beer, and Richard became Will Young. I, naturally, was renamed Harrods…
** we went to the 2nd best club in Estonia (no photo :() – Bon Bons – which was amazing
** we went to the best chinese restaraunt in Estonia and met the beautiful 50-50 Julia, our confusingly 100% Estonian-waitress in traditional chinese dress…
** Mathematix introduced us to the people’s eyebrow, and The Rock’s catchphrase: “can you SMELL what The Rock is COOKING?”
** We repeatedly sang Sir Mix-A-Lot’s song, “Baby got Back”, whose opening line is “I like big butts and I cannot lie”, at least in part due to the irony that in Tallinn there are no big butts on any ladies. Well, hardly. We were then ashamed of this.
** Damian slept on a banana. Literally. We’re trying to get the reflexive verb “to DK oneself” adopted by as many people as possible.
** We walked down a long, dark, creepy street to get Tex Mex food owing to a craving of Richard’s. I had my first enchilada, which was astonishingly tasty.
There was more stuff that happened – this was the bulk of it. We learned a few Estonian phrases, including the potentially dubious “tervi-sex” which apparently means “cheers”. There’s a good chance it means something more worrying – Katrin and Ana might have been winding us up…
We toasted about a million things to demonstrate our overall enthusiasm for the trip. Overwhelmingly, we toasted “the best holiday ever”, “Estonia”, and “Estonians”.
Can’t wait to go back.
It’s really difficult to explain quite how liberated I feel, having submitted my thesis last week. While there hasn’t been the big party I expected to have upon finishing it as yet (Saturday night notwithstanding), I nonetheless have felt the finality of it all (I hope). The simple fact is that I can once again engage with my day-to-day existence without the weight of unfinished business hanging on a chain around my neck, like some kind of toasted, ornamental albatross. Suck on that metaphor.
My other projects can resume, now: my writing, The Line (should Damian let me get involved), my job (substantially reduced in stress, hopefully), and, or course, getting back to the gym. I can’t wait.
This weekend was genuinely relaxing. As well as booking the hostel for my holiday in Tallinn this coming weekend (woo! although technicall, Matt did the booking…), I watched the entertaining Kissing Jessica Stein on video on Friday, and had dinner at the really outstanding Malabar in Notting Hill on Saturday. The duck curry was particularly impressive, and was washed down nicely with a very affordable house red — the occassion, which spawned out of a kind of spontaneous apathy on the behalf of a number of my friends (it was more complicated than that, but not more interesting) resulted in a last minute booking having to be made by myself – for 16 people.
It was a really great night – and we popped over to the Notting Hill Arts Club to finish the evening off in appropriate style. That was a great venue, even if it was a little loud for the conversations I ended up having (didn’t really feel the dancing vibe). Was huge fun, if I spent a little more money than I should have.
Sunday saw the revival, for me, of Boggle (I’m really out of practice!), I narrowly defeated Damian at chess when we both lost interest in waiting for each other to move, and Damo, Marionus, Turnermator and I popped down to my local Screen to watch The Bourne Supremacy, which, despite my absolute loathing of Matt Damon, proved very entertaining, even if Franka Potente was less attractive than she seemed to me in Run Lola Run.
In part due to the recommendation of Michael and Alex, the very capable painters who’ve been in this weekend fixing all the damage Arvind has inflicted on his room over the years, I popped down to the Notting Hill Carnival today. It was an interesting experience; although categorically, I think, not my scene: I was a little disappointed that I didn’t enjoy it more. Turns out I am that cynical and cloistered, after all. Don’t know who I was trying to kid with that, really.
Still, a great weekend. I’ve discovered that Blogger keeps profiles, so if you’re curious as to how much I’ve blogged since this site went live in September, check this out. Sayonara for now; expect more regular posts now, hopefully with some interesting and original content of a nature that isn’t excessively philosophical…
Honest. I worked it out. Work out the axes for yourself. It’s fun!
Some friends of mine, as I’ve mentioned, have been working on a new newspaper for London, including Tom and Chris, and probably mainly Damian (who doesn’t have a website).
The pilot is out! And the online section too – check it out. Comments etc., to the relevant places, or here, or by email.