Little Britain @ Apollo Hammersmith

Wednesday met up with Courtney, Rosie, Kath, Bin, Wacky and the two kiwis for the Little Britain LIVE show. This was one they were filming for the BBC so all the celebs were there, Kate Moss (pic) appearing in a shell suit along with Vicky Pollard, Russell Brand (creeps!) fixing the "I'm a laydee"s plumbing, Chris Moyles from the breakfast show having a round of the Fat Fighters routine etc, etc. I think I saw Dawn French sitting not too far from where we were.

So anyway the show was pretty good. All the usual gags and one liners from Little Britan plus a bit of improv - Matt and David taking the piss out of each other on stage ... "Dont' know why you are doing that thing with your fingers because I did actually do the channel crossing". Or even taking the piss out of each others characters: "I want that one".. "Eeh eeh eeh!".

All in all a brilliant night - Thanks Kath (and Comic Relief) for sorting out tickets!!

Weekend in London, 17-19 Nov

Well, its been a few weekends in a row now that I've been travelling around the place so I guess it was about time I spent some time in London, my home away from ... er... one of my other homes...

Anyway, so friday nite I'm having curry at Brick Lane with these two girls from work after a drink or two at the wharf. Can't remember what this place was but I guess it was another Balti restaurant, I just remember that we ordered three curry dishes and they were all lined up by colour (yellow/red/brown) ... which looked kinda nice. etc.. etc. So we go to Cafe 1001 which is just along Brick Lane and across from the Big Chill and I suddenly realise going in there that there is not just 1 upstairs room but 2, I'd been there before but now they've opened up this massive floor area at the back and there is some DJs playing breakbeats, the other main floor that I'd seen before is stuffed with people sitting in the couches and dancing to some sort of funky house. My friends dont like the breaks much (I have to say i'm not a big fan either - much to my friend Josete's dismay, and Nic Bye and a few other breakbeat connoiseurs - can't help it I prefer trance myself) but we still have a bit of a dance and after a little while and many confusing texts later another guy from work - Tom, who is pissed as a proper South African on a fri nite should be, turns up and orders another round of drinks. We hang around this place for a while and then the 4 of us head over to see about this rave round the corner that ended up being empty then change plans and head to Cargo where the night continues nicely with some more house and a whole bunch of cute girls everywhere.. I have to say I'll be going back to Cafe 1001 definately, not only is it free but u got 2 dance-floors and a whole bunch of crusties that look like my little brother, Cargo's alright, still pretty unpretentious and great sound (its vaulted) but I can't help feel its getting close the the 'clubby' thing I kind of want to avoid. Off to Cubana tonight with a friend lets see how much energy I have left for dancing..

My street

Another morning on the way to work... There is something really nice about cold clear mornings in autumn.

Is this a bit lame?

Was just having a look at my blog to see how the layout worked after posting and I was kind of thinking... hold on... isnt this A BIT LAME? I mean, what am I trying to do? put my life up on the web so anyone that is slightly curious can just peruse through who I am and what I do? I mean who does this Steven guy think he is anyway?

Yea, so anyway, I'm still deliberating. Maybe I should just take it down altogether so ppl wont get the wrong impression. Anonymity is better anyway, a lot more fun when you can take the piss and be anything to anyone. Can just put my pics in Flickr and no stories to go with them..

Still the reason why I got it up and running was because a few years ago I used to send a newsletter to everyone I knew about my adventures in China and ppl loved it.. it seemed to make sense to do the same thing when I go travelling round the world but put it on a web page with pretty pictures and just send a quick email with the link. That way I get to keep my stories too, I lost all the stories I sent to my friends about China (If anyone browsing this still has them please please send them - ta). Dunno, confused... Maybe I keep it running... decisions decisions.

Dublin, 10-13 November

I'm rewriting this post after leaving it sitting on the site for a week till I found a proper half-hour block of time when I actually felt like writing.. its great how you can do that in a blog isn't it? Just put a little placeholder to say 'I did something on this date' and then fill it up whenever you want.

Right so the weekend in Dublin was organised by Courtney (blonde girl on the right photo hugging me) and Wacky (the blonde guy on other photo). I've known Courtney a while now, I guess we met when I was 14 and just arrived in Tassie fresh off-the-boat. Me and my little bro used to catch the sandy bay bus to school with Courtney and her sister Ash, the two chicks in their uniform made such a cute pair on that bus.. There was also Chris 'Wacky' who I've met before - he is another tassie friend of liam/will/emerson, Rosie - the cute english red-head friend of Courtney's, Kath and Belinda - both Collegiate girls now living in London, and Dave and Harriet - two kiwis that joined us on this crazy weekend.

So we arrived in Dublin airport and made our way to the hotel while it was still fairly early on friday night and after sorting out accomodation (two huge rooms with lots beds) we just kinda all pop our stuff down and then head to the bar for some Guinness - after a few drinks it doesn't really matter who sleeps where right? Well. Except for Courts - "Remember Wimbledon!!".

Fast forward to Saturday morning.. hehe ... all a bit worse for wear, probably time to sort out the bags and turn off that TV (has it been on all night on that channel?). We all staggered out around 11, and went across the river to have proper Irish breakfast at a proper pub. Coffee is not amazing but the bacon and egg make up for it. The rest of the day is spent walking around the city and doing the rounds at a few more pubs meeting the locals (I mean lets be serious - what else is there to do in Dublin?). Night had to be Temple bar, bit turisty perhaps but still the highest concentration of pubs you can find, somehow the whole city was full of south africans I think ireland was playing them in the rugby that weekend. Anyway I could go into detail about Saturday nite but it'd be a bit messy so I wont. Just that I remember waking up to some lucky chap snogging two girls (and why wasn't that me?). And then we'd all made friends in the morning. :)

Sunday Belinda hired a car and she Kath and me headed up to see the area around Dublin, we first headed north up to Howth which is a cute little town with a harbour and a sunday market, then up to Malahide Castle and down to see the coast south of Dublin.. Then meet with the guys to go have dinner at a chinese restaurant where we had some authentic DongBei food from north-east china (dumplings etc) before having a few quiet ones and getting to bed early for the flight back to work first thing in the morning.

And THATS IT! Brilliant weekend, couldnt want for anything better to get rid of the sophie blues!

More photos that Wacky and I took are on the links below.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cdpa/sets/72157594373429891/

and

http://www.flickr.com/photos/
91303674@N00/sets/72157594377509686/

Madrid, November 03-05

Quickie link -->>> http://mirasierra8c.blogspot.com/2006/11/quedada-cole-04-noviembre-2006.html

For those of you who dont understand spanish please bear with me a bit while I get a post here in english talking about this weekend in Madrid.

Geneva, Oct 28-30

This is a weekend I booked to go to Geneva a couple weeks after breaking up with sophie... not sure why Geneva, kind of felt that maybe switzerland might have something to offer as a possible place to live, good weather, good food, good for wintersports and close enough to Italy. I think I might be able to go there an work next year as a EU citizen but then I have to look into the regulations and if that is the case then maybe Zurich makes more sense than Geneva because there are more jobs going (Geneva seems to be more of center for international civil servants, and I prefer working for private sector or finance companies)...

So anyway, here we are, this is a picture of guess what? hmmm: the United Nations... isnt that a bit of a cliche? There has to be more than the UN in Geneva right? Anyway, this was about a 10 minute bike ride away from the hostal where I was staying, Geneva is quite a small town, not only can you walk from one end to the other in less than 2 hours, it kinda surprised me just how many languages are spoken there. Just coming out of the train station I heard Spanish and Chinese (which I can easily recognise) and other ones like Arabic, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, German etc while walking down the street. French, Spanish and Chinese seemed to be the most prevalent languages.

This is a pic of me sitting down in the Parc des Bastions. A nice little bit of greenery tucked away right in the middle of town. I was watching these two cute girls sitting down with a laptop (??) and eating some fruit salad, there was also these four big statues (but I didnt' take a picture of them) one of which was Calvin, the guy who started the Calvinist movement (I think)..

I took this photo from the top of the hill. There were a few people sitting on this promenada, it overlooks the park above and you can see out into the hills surrounding Geneva.

When I got back to the hostal I was staying at, I met these three guys. Maider (the one on the photo) is a spanish girl from near Pamplona who is in Geneva studying on her Erasmus exchange, there was also Tony the Irish dude who was looking for work up in the ski slopes over the winter, he is a cook by trade and travels around as a hobby, and then there was Mia (was it Mia?) who is a Canadian girl whose life is all about travelling too. She was in geneva for a few days at the end of her latest europe trip and was heading back a couple days later via london back to Toronto.

Maider and I went for a bike ride around the city the next day so hence these two photos.

Sunrise over the Wharf

By the way.. This what I get to see in the morning on the way to work, nice isnt it?

First Post

Hey guys,

Right, this is my first post. Trying to start a web log for my upcoming journey this christmas so i've been looking at options and found Blogger a pretty good place to start. I was thinking of maybe building the functionality myself but I'm a bit too busy before I head off so I don't think I'll have time to write my own blog program.. and my previous attempt at a BBS (bulletin board system) on http://www.sdesalas.com/ I wrote ages ago is too basic for what I need.

Its 1st November today. I'm going to uhm... a lot of places in December and January. Would give you the whole list but then that would be spoiling it... I might write some more background information about me l8r on but this is it for now.. Ok time to post.. Lets see what this looks like... ;)