a big guy in a big city

Posted by Bone at July 29th, 2005

On the saturday night in Amsterdam we had our “big night” and what a night it was, we spent the sepnt in the lively Rembrandtplein, having a geat dinner outside at the Three Sisters pub (the steak comes highly recommended…by me) and then went to a few bars, including one that had been done out to look like a cave in Ayres rock (in Australia, or did it have it’s name changed, and does it have caves? basically it was red funny shaped walls, and it was an Aussie bar). Then we went to a club called Escape, which was filled with some of the most attractive ladies in Amsterdam that don’t need to be in front of a window. We all danced like uncoordinated troopers for many hours, mostly on the podiums, showing those crazy dutchies how to really ‘throw some shapes’. The drinks were astoundingly expensive, and I eventually resorted to buying water when tiredness kicked in. We slowly dragged ourselves back to the Botel along the Damrak, after eating gigantic amounts of chips and collapsed on my bed.

This was from the toilets in the Brazilian Bar, where the beers cold, the music funky and the people are friendly (one guy loved Steve’s Thundercats t-shirt). I loied the way that there was just such a huge amount of graffiti on the walls, I almost etched my name on there, but I’m just such a goody-goody.

DJ booth in the Outback bar (at least I think that was its name, I could just be stereotyping), that dude knew how to spin some tunes. I do have more interesting shots from that bar, but I think that fall behind that curtain of censorship that the guys have set up from the trip (intriguing, no’?).

One of the many shots of the (HOT!) dancers in Escape, but I feel this one really captures the essence of the night, brilliant, just brilliant.

Posted by Bone at July 28th, 2005

SPACE INVADERS

Looks like I’ve solved the mystery of the little space invaders mosaic in Amsterdam, apparently it’s this big global game.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, we live in a weird and wonderful world.

Posted by Bone at July 28th, 2005

Of course, I had to take a picture of myself brushing my teeth in the little Botel bathroom, wearing yet another of my Threadless t-shirts. Its funny, I never stop and ask myself why I take these pictures, I just think toothbrush pictures are fun.

A rather unusual addition to the regular hotel information sheet. From the exotic smells that were experienced in the hallways, this rule was very, very loosely enforced.

Just a quick pic of me and Tiggy boy’s room, the cameraphone seems to have destroyed all perspective, but you get the idea of our surroundings.

Posted by Bone at July 28th, 2005

I realised that my Amsterdam coverage was a bit sparse, and seeing as I went on about the Botel a lot before we went it only seems right to talk about it now.

It wasn’t the prison ship that everyone had expected, although when we turned up in the rain, there were a few cries of “where have you taken us Bone?” which annoyed me because I’d often made the case that they couldn’t complain because most of them did bugger-all towards the organisation. To be fair, we all changed our tune after a bit of a nap (the joys of flying at 6am). The the staff were friendly, and chatty when we rolled in at about 5am only semi-coherent, joking about giving us a wake-up call at 7am. The rooms were fairly small, but this was to be expected since it is a boat, and apparently most rooms in Amsterdam are small, even in expensive places. They were very clean though, Tigg worried a bit about securityy, his fears were laid to rest when the cleaner left a penny on his bed that had been found on the floor.

There was a wide variety of tv channels available (I didn’t realise that ‘in-house movies’ meant porn 24 hours a day…), the view canalside was lovely, the bar was well stocked and reasonably priced. Whilst it isn’t exactly situated in the heart of amsterdam, the walk to the main areas isn’t long, and even my feet managed okay so pretty much anyone should be able to handle those cobbles.

If you’re young, or in a big group, I would defintely recommend the Botel, as long as you’re not expecting five-star accommodation, remember, you get what you pay for! (we paid £60 per room per night)

Posted by Bone at July 27th, 2005

My weekend was occupied with a v.tiring but v.enjoyable trip to Leeds for a party, and the lovely Rosie’s birthday.

Me, Greeno, Ben, Anna and Marques were packed like proverbial sardines into my 206, and the 2 hour journey seemed to take a fair while and it was hot, but we still had a good trip, with old-school stories and classic games (would you rather have 3 legs or an arm in your back?) keeping us going.

Upon arriving in Leeds we realised that we didn’t actually know where Rosie’s house was, and that we hadn’t been given the right street name, but in the end we got there. Showered, changed, drove to a different house for the party. Where I had to catch in the drinking stakes, but never fear Frosty Jack’s extra strength white cider came to the rescue, along with pouring vodka straight into the red bull can. It was at this point I realised just how classy I am….

It’s always a bit tough for 5 people to fit into an alien crowd, since everyone else was from Leeds Uni, so there is a tendency that you’ll just form your own crowd and not meet new people. As if by magic, the social powers of Frosty Jack’s came about (”you cannot taste alcohol, and yet, it’s 7.5%”), which led to much blokey booze discussion. We also managed to form quite a large circle for a rowdy game of ‘Drink while you think’ which was a lot of fun, and resulted in the emptying of a few cans.

Then we headed out into the infamous nightlife of Leeds, we hit a fair few decent (and expensive) bars, and I enjoyed a fantastic Lynchberg Lemonade in the Elbow Room, donated to me by Ana since she didn’t like it (a Smirnoff Ice in exchange for cocktail, unfair to advantage to me on that one).

Rob and I enjoyed White Russians at Revolution, which I didn’t think was as good as the one in Leicester, but it was quite cool the way that they had an outside area, even though it was pretty much an alleyway.

We then headed to the Townhouse, which was all exposed brickwork and filled with posers, which which meant it was expensive, but it was also filled with attractive looking ladies. Upon the advice of Corina (from Rosie’s uni course) I purchased sloe gin and lemonade cocktails, which means I have finally found a use to the couple of bottles of sloe gin in the pantry.

As it was getting near 2a.m. a few of our group decided to head off, but since it isn’t every day that I go to Leeds, the hunt for a club was on, we found one place and this is how Ben’s conversation with the bouncer went:

Ben: Alright.
Bouncer: What make are your trainers?
Ben: Adidas
Bouncer: Sorry mate, can’t come in

Boy shoulda worn a pair of Nike’s! So then we found another club, it was called Rehab, and every person we spoke to told us it was only good if we were pilled off our faces, we I said “the windows are shaking, it has to be good!” Marques and Anna left. I wish we had too. Instead we paid £12 to get in (after persuading the bouncer that I wasn’t that drunk, he thought I’d fallen over in the queue, simply not true) and found ourselves listening to the same repetitive house music for about an hour and a half until we left the pillheads to themselves.

Got a taxi back, chatted with Greeno till about 5, was amazed at the pace of a slug going up and down the wall. Was shocked by the stickiness of the floors (Ana’s shoe actually came off on it in the morning). Slept for a few hours. Went round to Rosie’s. Ben cooked an amazing full english breakfast for 8. Drove home. Collapsed on sofa.

Brilliant, thanks Ro (and her friendly friends).

Posted by Bone at July 26th, 2005

Well, it’s 2am, and I’ve lost all of the bookmarks on my computer. I know most people have a lot of bookmarks, but I REALLY had a lot of bookmarks, I had more than a page of just t-shirt sites, and I can only remember 3! I’ve managed to salvage around 70ish from my history but it’s not the ones you visit that you really need to have bookmarked, is it?

There are quite a lot of tutorials out there on the web about how to recover lost Firefox bookmarks, but when I did eventually find the elusive file it was corrupted, which makes no sense as I hadn’t used my computer since Friday, but there isn’t much that can be done now is there. Bye bye meticulously researched dissertation sources.

I’ll do a write up of my night out in Leeds tomorrow, including how we paid £12 to get into a club that we were repeatedly told was “only good if you like drugs.” I don’t do drugs, but that place woulda probably turned me if we’d stayed till it closed. Just to clarify, I don’t do drugs, I was just making it clear that it wasn’t a great club.

*Title Explanation* I think I might give the Opera web browser a shot, even if it is ad supported. Oh, and I’m considering moving the blog over to a Wordpress based system.

Posted by Bone at July 22nd, 2005

Due to a rather boring story involving bed-linen and Debenhams I found myself with nothing to do in the coastal town of Barrow, surely the most mocked place in Cumbria (though I can assume Cockermouth gives it a fair run for its money). The answer of course lay, as ever, with the combination of Pizza hut and Superbowl. The Pizza Hut buffet now has options, you can skip salad and simply gorge yourself on pizza, and for a pound less!

Suitably doughy Neil and I moved walked across the complex to the bowling alley, where we requested one hours bowling for £15, but we were told that we could have 2 hours bowling, a drink, AND a scone for just £5.95 each, which we obviously went for as it was the cheapest option. We didn’t quite make it through the whole 2 hours as our hands eventually succumbed to the ache of seven games (I won 3-2 + 2 draws), but nevertheless it was damn good value.

btw, I didn’t see Nixon at the superbowl, but I just wanted a picture and google imaged it.

2nd btw, I am posting from in bed, oh the glory of wireless internet!

Posted by Bone at July 20th, 2005

I wasn’t all that shocked by the red light dstrict in Amsterdam, I guess it just depends on how you apporach it. Yeah I got offered cocaine every 20 seconds, but I wasn’t exactly hassled by it, you just walk on and no one cares. And it wasn’t as seedy as I imagined it, like the the pubs there are just like the ones outside of the RLD.

Admittedly the windows are pretty unavoidable (especially if you make sure that your route home from from the club just so happens to go via the main ‘lady street’), and the women populating them are fairly attractive, largely, but our group did manage to restrain ourselves, although I’m tempted to say that Tigg’s only reason for not help the local economy was because he didn’t want ‘the walk of shame’.

Note to any potential patrons, we found that it’s probably best to go around 10 or 11 o’clock, as the quality at 5am was dramatically lower, although if you’re looking for a hooker at 5am then their looks probably aren’t going to be your number 1 priority.

We did get a couple of great quotes from the greasy sleaze merchants outside the doors of the sex shows. “Quality sleaze and filth” and “it’s disgusting, you’ll love it!” Which brought much laughter from us, which was probably his aim.

P.S. I didn’t take the above photo, because I didn’t want a pimp throwing me into a canal.

Posted by Bone at July 19th, 2005

the blog seems to be broken at the moment, as I can’t see the frontpage, though I can get to my archived pages. I don’t know if this is the case for everyone, but I can’t see how I’d fix it so I’ll just have to wait (or blame it on the settings of my router).

Posted by Bone at July 18th, 2005

SARAH MICHELLE GELLAR - GELLAR DESPERATE FOR TOPLESS ROLE

Ok, possible tabloid headlines for this story:

Buffy’s Bountiful Boobies
Gellar load of these
Sarah Michelle, Un-topless hell
Gellar wants the breast roles

Ok, bored with that now.