As promised...

East meets West

As promised, the first of many blurred and pixelated images snapped on a telephone to come your way.
I used to work here. Before my years of vancouverism. This is just off of Soho Square in London. The fact that there are four muslim women in burkhas strolling past is more of a coincidence than anything else, although it does paint a cutting image. More poignant than I had meant my quick-snap-of-place-i-used-to-work-at to be.

One of the most exciting things about being back in the east end is the overwhelming accessibilty of great curry. I mean, really good curry.
In honour of a tradition instigated with wade and jo, I celebrated Christmas with such an indulgence - A great Chicken Korma. I have been celebrating since, with Prawn Curry, Chicken Dhosa, Lamb Vindaloo, Chicken Tikka Massala, Chicken Jalfrezi, Chicken Dhansak, Butter Chicken and a bloody amazing Lamb Roganjosh.

My bro at tonight's currying bonanza - this is actually the only picture of him I own where his middle finger is not the focal point of the image

After 3 weeks of exhaustion/laziness, I also finally got the router in yesterday.
Resisting no temptation to remain calm and relaxed, my landlord's ageing peecee received the fullest helping of a distinctly unrefined section of my vernacular.
Eventually after half an hour talking to an indian fellow outsourced ntl helpline employee, the router and the peecee decided to talk nicely and even let the mac join in not too much later.
For the techies, I went with a D-Link DWL-922 which seems to do well with either XP or OSX.

I was about to sit down

Well, I was about to sit down and punch in something about how making lattes and such sucks the life out of you, but then work called.
So instead I'm going in to make more lattes and cappuccinos for wealthy businessmen who wouldn't blink at dropping £4 on a cup of coffee. *wipes spitting foam from chin*

After Christmas i'm planning on doing a little revamp around here since we're coming up to two years, and larph will become larph v2.0

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Is it a coincidence?

scouser's (those from liverpool) in their natural habitat

Do you think?
Is it conincidence
That the day Rachel comes down from Liverpool
The number plates on my mum's car
GO MISSING.

Is it a conincidence?
Ask yourself.

Christmas Shopping - Rachel, please bring a car stereo or something.

So this is the complex that I work in.
My grandad used to work here years before when it was just: "The Docks."
All that has since changed. I'm stuck in one of the many underground malls that are networked under the all of these buildings.
There's a Canada Square in there, as well as a Canada Place and a Canada Water. You just can't have enough Canada in your life when you're in London.

For those interested (and I'm probably talking to Randy and Heidi here), we get a lot of footballers drop by work for their coffee.
Because it's east London, it's mainly my team (West Ham) and Charlton players who live in the Docklands.
Apparently, last week we had Darren Bent, Matty Etherington, Carlos Tevez, Bobby Zamora, Paul Konchesky, Hayden Mullins and James Collins all pop by.
I'm contemplating asking a few inside questions and delivering the juicy nuggets as a "London Correspondant" for a soccer radio show I listened to in Canada.

Life moves at a fast pace these days and the days seems to fly by.
I get my first day off tomorrow, and I'm hanging out with Henri and Rachel who I'm hoping can get her hands on a few cheap hub caps for me and my Christmas shoppinng.

More Larph than a Larphbot on maximum Larph.

I've decided that my newfound status as a repatriated expatriate deserves more airtime.
As soon as I can get my arse down to Curry's I'll buy a router and hopefully larph will be a thoroughly up to date blog retaining all of the mundane qualities that no one cared about in the first place.

To bring you up to date, I'm renting a room in the East End in a place called Barking. And - OMGWTF2eleven!!!! - I got a job!!!!
I'll be slinging cappuccinos for certain global conglomerate we all know well (by day). At a place not too far away called Canary Wharf. Only a 25mins commute on the tube. By night... still plotting.
It's great being back in the city. It's bloody expensive here, but there's just a great buzz about the place.

There's been a bit of a perspective realignment, too.
People here don't have much, but they seem quite grateful for it nonetheless.
If I ever felt hard off or sorry for myself, it was probably because I was comparing myself to those who [materially] had more. It's been a crushing reality check, but that's a good thing.
There's so much out there, so much opportunity, new things to do, new things to think about. Shoot me in the head if I ever start thinking like that again.

Oh, the other cool thing was the one specific thing I prayed for before looking for work was that I would be working with 1.) Chinese and 2.)Koreans.
And, of course, I will be.

This will be my first christmas at home since 2000, I think. It's nice to be back. Lastime I saw my brother he was 17. Now he's a bloody beast and could probably kick the shite out of me pretty easily. When I have saved up enough for a fancy telephone that takes pictures I plan to post them here in order to display visually in a very blurred and pixelated manner all of the intrincisities that make up daily life of a cappuccino slave in London.

Later potater.

what happened to the pop bottles?

Sorry this update has been a long time in coming; the internets have not yet been so readily available. However, I did make a nifty little e-letter last night.
It's a little broad and obtuse, but I hope to fill in the gaps sometime soon.

As for England, well things are different.
All of the 2l pop bottles are very tall and skinny, now.
The "@" sign on the keyboard is in a totally different location, and almost everyone has a very strange and sinister accent.

Oh, and Dr Pepper tastes like poo for some reason.

Click the image to download the pdf.