Breaking barriers

T: "C'mon! It'll be fun!"
Me: "No it wouldn't, it'll be laaaame!"
But I'm glad T made me do it :)

Something suspicious was happening at Liverpool St tube station. People were flocking to the center of the station. Cops were milling around. Cameras and mp3 players were everywhere. Everyone had their eyes on the giant clock on top of the announcement board... 19:23:57, 19:23:58, 19:23:59, 19:24:00 - "WOOOOOHOOOO!" The crowd raises a massive cheer and start to dance to their own music! Flashmob! The email was right:

"DO NOT WORRY YOU WILL NOT BE ALONE"

Six minutes later, we got off the dance floor and went to get a better view of what was happening. We left, went for a drink, had KFC for dinner and came back an hour and a half later just in time to catch the end of the flashmob. Thanks T and B for helping me break my "too cool for school" barrier :)

Land of Chocolate (and Beer)

I was living Homer's dream on the weekend :)

I have no idea why chocolate's soo good in Belgium, but I was on a constant sugar high for three days. It's impossible to escape. I ingested so much sugar, I had trouble sleeping at night.

If I wasn't chocolate munching, I was beer chugging!

And yes, I did manage to stop eating long enough to see the sights of Brussels.

Teaser

Guess where I've been this weekend? :)

Late night cinema (Part II)

I've become a really big fan of Kubrick's artistic direction. My mostest favouritest movie of all time is The Shining. It's beautiful to watch. Scary too. Kubrick took a very typical Stephen King novel and turned it into a brilliant screenplay. It's number one on my list. If you don't have time to watch it though, here's a re-enactment by bunnies in 30 seconds. And you can read some fascinating stuff about the Overlook Hotel and how the movie was filmed here.

Scene from The Shining

Other worthy Kubrick mentions are A Clockwork Orange, Dr Strangelove and Full Metal Jacket. Although I found A Clockwork Orange's themes of violence and rape a bit passe (it's not my fault I'm desensitized, it's our generation's attitude to anything taboo these days), the movie is soo confrontational about it and way ahead of its time. I can see how scandalous A Clockwork Orange would've been back in the 70's, I almost wish I was old enough to have watched it back then. Dr Strangelove was an unexpected discovery. I never knew of Peter Sellers' talent as an actor until I saw this movie.

FORGET Spartacus and 2001. *UGH* I made myself sit through Spartacus. I couldn't handle 2001 though. The screeching monkeys-that-looked-like-humans-dressed-as-monkeys was more than I could handle.

Last note on Kubrick, what I love most about watching his films, was discovering where all the cult references we see in movies and TV today come from.

Butt plugs & Gimp gear (NSFW)

Note: The links aren't safe for work either.

At the risk of sounding depraved, curiousity got the better of me and I visited three sex-shops-for-people-like-you-and-me today. The ones that go out of their way to be customer friendly and inviting to girls as well as guys. They were all on the way home :P

It's funny, the only other time I've ever been to a sex shop (I swearz!) was when I went shopping for a friend's 21st birthday present. We ended up in Newtown, in a dimly lit seedy sex shop, giggling over dildos. The shop guy (who had butt pr0n going on behind the counter), even pulled out the latest product (made out of flesh coloured silicon, very realistic for those days) and let me prod it *jiggle* *jiggle* We left the shop with a raunchy pair of... furry handcuffs for our friend's birthday gift. Lame, I know :) Incidentally, butt-pr0n-guy told us that video booths are all furnished with vinyl for ease of cleaning. Everything gets hosed down...

Anyways, first up was Coco de Mer. It was two doors down from my coffee shop and I was quite surprised at how classy the shopfront looked. It took me awhile to realise it was an adult shop. Looking at lingerie prices, this is probably where celebs shop when they feel kinky. This place had an abundance of feathered ticklers, and things that looked more appropriate for elegantly whipping a horse.

Secondly, I went into Ann Summers. I think Ann Summers is actually the first shop to crack the niche for women-friendly adult shops. Lingerie here is affordable, but, has that "made in China" feel to it. From the outside, it just looks like a normal lingerie shop. Compared to Coco de Mer, it's not very exciting *yawn*

Lastly, I went into Harmony. This shop looked the most intimidating. From the front, you see nothing but heavy curtains pulled across the shop windows. No peeking in to see what's inside. When you go in, everything's pink and brightly lit! I was a bit surprised by the rows and rows of vibes out on display for the customer to play with. Not that anyone was brave enough to turn one on :) All I can say is, rabbits are _the_ animal of choice at the moment. I was about to leave the shop when it started pouring, so back in I went and thought I'd go downstairs to check out the fetish zone. I hit PAYDIRT! It made me realise a lot of effort was going into making sex toys more visually appealing these days. Does a butt plug really need a gem at the end of it?

"You want to put what, where??"

Racks and racks of gimp gear!
To tell the truth, I've only ever seen the ball-gag thingy in movies.

I was going to try on a pink rubber dress for fun. But the thought of sweat in the dress from other people who have tried it on before me, put me off the whole idea. Wonder what people would say if I turned up at a wedding in a rubber dress (it was quite pretty) :) Ula, I have an idea for the bridesmaid dress *big grin*

Late night cinema (Part I)

Playing most nights on my lovely widescreen 15" MBP display. I've watched a lot of movies lately...

From the Kubrick collection:
- The Shining
- A Clockwork Orange
- Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
- Full Metal Jacket
- Spartacus
- 2001: A Space Odyssey

Always listed somewhere in some top 100 films of all time list:
- Citizen Kane
- Cidade de Deus (City of God)
- Brazil

Recommended to me:
- Silent Hill
- The Party
- Sexy Beast

Misc:
- Fight Club
- Huo Yuan Jia (Fearless)
- Le Diner de Cons (The Dinner Game)
- Angel-A
- Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit

Things to do in Stockholm

Eat one of these (the meat's a bit on the pungent side for me, but B's a fan):

Hunt for the narrowest street in Gamla Stan:

Visit the world's largest spherical building (*guffaw*):

Enjoy a bewdiful romantic sunset with your non-romantic platonic flatmate (no Swedish Svens tried to pick us up :( ):

Just quickly

Paris for a day and night (which has more metal, Eiffel Tower, or Harbour Bridge?)

With Shuai and Stan :)

YUMMY snacks at Pierre Herme (that chocolate cake right infront costs EU$70!)

Pho for dinner before the Eurostar home :D

"We ALL have boyfriends!"

I won't point the finger at the gal who came up with that line on Saturday night, but it definitely did the trick of chasing away those Frenchmen who had innocently asked us, "Can we join your table?"

*lol*

Some of us even managed to get marriage proposals that night. Others managed to drunkenly drench themselves in wine (if you look closely at the pic, you'd be able to to tell who, oops). And only one of us managed not to throw up the next day *grin*

15 quid will get you in at the Roof Gardens Club in Kensington. For 500 quid (minimum spend), you can book yourself a table (which we just slyly stole anyway). The venue itself is great! You'd never believe that such a large garden area could be setup on the top floor of a building in Rondon. The only thing is, the club doesn't stay open for very long. At 3am, the music stopped (we drank enough to dance to RnB), the lights went on, and we all trundled home. Massive hangovers all around.

Thanks for the great night gals :)

Big. Mistake.

I downloaded an Uwe Boll movie. I'm a fan of horror movies, and "Alone in the Dark" sounded like a scary enough title. Oh, it's scary alright, but for completely all the wrong reasons. It's scary that someone can make a bad movie, that's not at the same time hilarious to watch (like Jean-Claude Van Damme movies. I love JCVD (the muscles from Brussels!). His movies are terribly terrible yet soo entertaining, but I'll review JCVD movies another day).

Uwe Boll. The producer who recently challenged all his critics to a boxing match. Yes, he has that many enemy critics. For good reason. UB is infamous for making movies out of video games. Only, the movie is never like the video game. You can almost hear the breaking hearts of Nerds around the world everytime UB announces he's making a movie :) The Nerds have even united to put forward an online petition to stop UB.

You can watch UB pounding a critic here. Funny how he never mentioned that he's an amateur boxer when he made the invite.

I'm not going to waste my time reviewing "Alone in the Dark". Others have done the job for me, read this.

*Swoooooon*

I'm sorry, but:

Mr Darcy! So swoon worthy...

It's all a lie though, I haven't met any rich English gentlemen like Mr Darcy here :P (It's kinda like how I didn't meet any hottie Ricky Martin lookalikes in Sth America)

I wanty!

Behold! Aluminium beauty!

I know I don't need it... I know it's going to annoy me without a screen and only having 1GB capacity... But... It's beautiful... I -must- have... However, be warned, Apple's great at aesthetics, but few people realise the hell Apple can put you through. If you're ever in Rondon, check out the long queue of disgruntled customers with broken Apple goods at the "Genius" bar, who get even more disgruntled when they're told appointments for technical support are all full up and they have to make an online appointment. My own experience, I had to try for two weeks solid to get an online appointment with the "Geniuses", just to get a key replaced.

HECS free...

My Mum did my tax today, and I've finally worked off my HECS debt. It's only taken me... 5 years to pay off my education! Holy fck. I should've worked as a prostitute instead of an IT consultant.

Tabooboo

... the sex toy vending machine! Found it outside the toilets at Turnmills. Now, who in their right mind is going try out a sex toy in a skanky little club toilet while dozens of girls are lining up right outside the door?

Pee-in-a-tube kit

My very own:

You didn't really believe me when I said things here worked differently, did you? :) So what's this for? Is it because I've applied for a highly classified secret agent job at a sooper dooper government agency and they're doing a drug test on me?

Nope.

It's because I'm trying to register at a GP clinic. You can't just walk into any old clinic to see a doctor here. You have to scout out the closest clinic to your place of residence, take proof of address documents and passport, fill in forms, make another appointment to see a nurse and collect your pee-in-a-tube kit. All this, just to register at a clinic O_o I'm not even sick and trying to see a doctor!

You're lucky I didn't pee in the tube before I blogged ;)

Tiger soup

Well, I showed my Dad the picture of Snake Vodka. Disturbingly he replied, "believe it or not, Mum has given all of you TIGER soup to drink". What the?!? My Mum's comment on the topic is, "Don't you remember you had Tiger soup, best for Asthma. Your Uncle went hunting and made Tiger soup." I guess Tiger soup is better than the "hairless baby rat soaked in brandy and gulped down with raw chicken egg" remedy my Dad was telling me about.

"Eat endangered animal" is now unintentionally on my list of achievements.

Snake vodka anyone?

I came across this at Selfridges the other day:

Yup, Snake Vodka for the upperclass English folk :) None of the dodgy looking stuff you can get from Asia. This Snake Vodka is prettily packaged and sells for around 25 quid! Also available from the same brand (Edible) is Civet Coffee. You know, the coffee bean that comes from the arse end of a Sumatran cat. I'm sure there's a reason why there's a market for it, and it might even be the tastiest coffee in the world, but... I don't even eat chicken butt, let alone cat droppings.

I earn my dinner in the Beenix household by making cocktails for the cook. Lately it's been raspberry caprioskas made from B's yummy Belvedere Vodka stash. I wonder if I should prank the cook with some Snake Vodka. Here's my mix for raspberry caprioska:
- Ice
- 1 shot Belvedere Vodka
- 2 shots sugar syrup
- 1/2 juicy lime squeezed
- Handful raspberries (at least the Brits grow tasty raspberries)
- Shake shake shake!

Google Goody Bag!

4 x 45 min technical interviews with 4 x Google engineers gets you this:

- Google pen
- Google headfones for GTalk
- Google notebook
- Google tshirt with "I'm feeling lucky" on the back (also 10 times too big for me)
- Google thank you letter written in hex :)

I signed an NDA, so can't really say much apart from, "My brain melted" and "Wow, they have natural light in the building!"

What now? Wait for the feedback...

Nee-ce is Noi-ce

It's called the Cote d'Azur for a good reason. Nice was warm, sunny and oooh soooo beautiful to look at.

If you're wondering about the rocks, so am I *grin* From what everyone's been telling me, finding a sandy beach in Europe is a rarity. There's just rocks. Lots of them. Who ever heard of bringing cushions to a beach? o_O I was too cheap to fork out for cushions, deck chairs or umbrellas. So I bought a straw mat for EU$2 instead. It wasn't very comfortable, but who cares? I was sunny, warm and working on a tan! :D

What I loved most about Nice, was getting lost in its many alleyways. I spent the evenings discovering a multitude of stalls selling everything from spices, olive oils and french biscuits to fresh oysters, brandies and liquors. Link to the rest of my pix from Marseille and Nice here.

I have a tan! :D

Bidet and Bouillabaisse

It's been 6 years since I was last in France, and I'd forgotten how quirky the French are. So when I saw this in my hotel bathroom:

My immediate thoughts were:
- Okay, it's a bit wide, but I can still pee in it.
- Hrm, there's a plug. How does one _poo_ in it?
- OH! It's a BIDET! Okay, so where's the toilet?

So, Marseille. To be fair, I probably didn't give it much of a chance. It's a port town, and the city itself is on the seedy side. It's not a pretty town. I at least tried the bouillabaisse at Le Miramar:

It cost me a bomb! Usually, I don't mind splurging on food, but it has to be good. This was... well, I'm sure it's authentic enough with its six different varieties of fish, but it's just not my thing. There's only soo much fishy soupiness I can take, and the fish doesn't come out till you've finished a whole bowl of just soup first. All I can say is, don't take your restaurant tips from easyJet's inflight magazine :P