On the apple wine for another three months

The birthday shindig in London was a success. There were about 15 or so people at Zebrano bar to begin with (thanks for the idea Ang) after kicking off at around 8pm on Friday night. We hung around there till about half 11, then headed over to our VIP table at Fabric club. Top marks to Marc for arranging the table. It quite pricey for the priviledge though since most things on the drinks menu were 100 pounds minimum per item. After all the hype of going to see Freq Nasty and Pump DJs we all piked out early (they were both on around 4pm). The one exception was the ever effervescent Braden who was a real trooper and battled on to the early hours of the morning. He's certainly changed - he didn't have any raver flashing LEDs with him that night.

Being in London, it would be rude not to take advantage of the creature comforts that our ancestors bought over from the motherland - Marmite and full english breakfasts. So Saturday was a day of eating and sampling the way-tasty coffee at Flat White. Flat white is a cafe run by antipodeons and is about the only place north of the equator you can buy a flat white or a long black. If you appreciate New Zealand coffee and are in London, you need to visit that place.

Saturday night Raephaela, Rohan and I went to a house party down in Clapham - was pretty cool. I am now the proud owner of some Rohan Murphy signature-class cloggy slippers - cheers bro.

The following couple of weeks were pretty uneventful - really busy at work and it'll probably stay that way for the next couple of weeks. I also found out that I'll be in Frankvegas for the next three months, which I don't mind. Gives me a chance to improve zee German and is pretty central if I wanna go visit places. Speaking of which, I'm writing this on the train coming back from Belgium - once again it was overcast. I visited Koen who is a Belgian I knew from NZ and is back in Europe for a few months getting his shit together. He lives in Sint Niklaas, which unusually isn't a town that was founded on beer brewing but we spend the night in Leuven. You might remember it from an earlier blog entry of mine and this time was no different, except we discovered a few more places to visit. There was a bar to suit everyone's music tastes - reggae, rock, house, dance and silence (the places where the old buggars go to smoke, drink and generally be cantankerous).

The book writing is also ticking over - not much to report there. Another couple of chapters are due on April fools day, then the thing should be about 40% done. Buggared if I know why I'm writing the thing. Maybe it'll come to me in an epiphany one morning in the shower - the best thinking gets done then. The executive assistant editor has been moved on to other pastures, so there's a bit of a reprive from publisher pressure while they get their internals realigned. The flow of the writing seems to improve over time, so I assume I'm getting less worse at putting words to keyboard.

Got the munchies

Usually working in Frankvegas means that I'm stuck here till the project ends but this time has been a little different. The DSL Forum meeting was on in Vienna for a few days so it'd be rude not to go over there and check out some of the real deal schnitzels and pretzels. The pretzels were all right, but Frankfurt's dead pig seems to top the swine in Austria. A few more reconnasance missions are needed to get the jury's final verdict I think. Some nasty virus took hold of my entire system (some dodgy wurst I think I had the week before) and was making sure it purged my internals of anything it could out wherever could. Luckily things like organs are a bit more securly attached, so I'm sure I still have a spare kidney available if I need to get out of a sticky situation in a war zone and need to sell something quick.

I went out for a few wanders in town the previous week, moonlighting at various bars. There's pretty much only one place that's any good to go to in F.V. on a Wednedsay night and that's Living. Music quality was spotty, but they did have a bunch of dance tunes early in the evening.

Yesterday I got one year away from the womb and another closer to the grave so to celebrate this odd imagery I've probably put in your heads, I'm going to have a bash over in London this weekend. Kickoff is around 8pm at Zebranos, then moving to Fabric for the rest of the night/morning. Especially looking forward to visit Flat White, which is a cafe run by an antipodean and it sells proper coffees - brewed with machines with double boilers, choice straining time, etc. Of course, you can buy flat whiles, long blacks too.

Anyhow, it's home time cause I gots some food to eat.

Today's link:

http://www.boreme.com/boreme/funny-2006/sinking-p1.php