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Saturday, 11 November 2006 - GO THE AB's!

Ten changes to the side that thumped England - pfft, who cares! ;) Back to the Walkabout bar tonight to watch the All Blacks embarrass France with a seven-try, 47-3 drumming (just look at those sorry faces!). France are the world's second leading rugby-playing nation (behind New Zealand) but they looked far from it tonight with their only points coming from a 40-metre drop goal 20 minutes into the game. We play the Frogs again next weekend and while it looks like we'll be making just five changes this time, France ought to think about changing their whole team hehe.

Tuesday, 14 November 2006 - Britain, Britain, Britain!

If you've seen Little Britain on TV and like it, you should make every attempt to see them live! Mo and I went to see them tonight and I had tears in my eyes in parts - it was great! :)		This is a shot looking up at Edinburgh Castle I took one night last week while walking to check out a flat. While on that subject, it looks like I'll be replacing Mo's flatmate as he's moving out in a few weeks after buying his own place. AS it happens, Mo's also planning on moving out in about month.

Monday, 20 November 2006 - The week after the weekend before!
The Vodka Scooter - it sounds like I almost took one of these home on Saturday night (apparently I did a few things I can't recall), but hey I'm in the UK now! The weather is getting worse by the day here and I haven't really done anything of note lately (still got another week before I start work), so here's an animation that cracked me up (followed by a bad joke :)

Friday, 24 November 2006 - Christmas hits Edinburgh!

In an apparent effort to keep the locals feeling merry over Christmas despite the biting cold and bullshit weather, the city lights up with eye-candy everywhere. The shot on the left is the front of the George Hotel, and on the right are trees on the hill below Edinburgh Castle - very pretty!

Aside from eye-candy, Princes Street Gardens become the Winter Wonderland. With a huge Ferris wheel right next to Scott Monument, fairground, Christmas markets, and one of Britain's largest outdoor ice rinks, this is supposedly "A spectacle to rival New York's Central Park" - impressive :)

Next to all the action is the German Christmas market consisting of many little wooden cabins selling heaps of different foods (yum), beer (even better), and random goodies. The mulled wine here is very popular - heaps of people were drinking the stuff while wandering around.
		Hell yeah! ;)
The view from the German market. The ice rink can be seen in the background.		Looks like this carousel has been rigged up with a turbo, it was flying around pretty bloody quick.
Hooray for ice-skating - haven't done it in years. I don't know how they set this up but it looks very au naturel with the leaves and crap in it.
Mo and I were going out for dinner but couldn't resist a good German beer first hehe. I want to go back to Munich! I'll try the mulled wine next time I'm here.		I've been in Scotland for two months now but hadn't tried haggis! This is Whisky Haggis: haggis atop creamed potato and turnip with a rich Highland whisky sauce. Not bad at all! :) Quick tip: if you haven't tried haggis and want to, don't investigate its ingredients before you do - just eat it!

Monday & Tuesday, 27 & 28 November 2006 (St. Albans) - Back to work, back to the grind, and back to the perks! ;)

First day of work today with B&D (Business & Decision) - back to the daily grind! Generally the first day of a new job consists of turning up at the front door a little nervous and making yourself known. My first day today consisted of a 9am flight to Luton (an hour north of London), and being chauffeured in a big phat Mercedes to the front door of my head office in St. Albans for an induction hehe, nice!		For the duration of the 50-minute flight from Edinburgh I could see nothing but cloud - typical! It was good to see the sun was shining over Luton though; good sign I thought ;)
I arrived at work at 12pm, and by 12:15 there were four of us sitting in a nice little Italian restaurant for lunch all courtesy of the company hahaha. Oh the perks! Anyway, after getting the usual crap out of the way it was quickly 5pm. I wandered around looking for a supermarket and was pretty surprised at the number of drunks out and about on the street for a Monday night. For a population of only 80,000 this place is bustling on a week night!
My accommodation for the night: the company flat! B&D own this big two-storey joint just five minutes up the road from the office, and bloody hell it's nice - no expense spared here. I found a drawer full of DVD's to keep me entertained. I was told B&D would reimburse a maximum of £20 for dinner - £20! That's almost my weekly grocery budget hahaha! So I bought too much for dinner and too much for dessert (but ate it all anyway), threw on the Matrix Reloaded (I wasn't really in the mood for Grease 2) and got comfortable hehe.
The following day I did what I usually do during lunch hours - go for a big wander :) It's hard to realise I'm in England until I see suburban houses and the persistent moisture all over the ground that never seems to dry hehe.
What - no cycling?! After a bit of meandering through what felt like Coronation Street I found this huge park which reminded me a lot of The Groynes back in Christchurch - really pretty :) It's too bad I was only here for a night as I would've loved to have seen more of the place - it seems like a nice little town (at least from what I saw of it) so hopefully I'll get sent back here for something sooner or later.
I like ducks :) This lot came screaming up to me when I took the camera out of my bag to get a shot of them - people obviously feed them a lot. They quickly lost interest when they realised the silver thing in my hand wasn't edible.
Anyway, with induction out of the way and the formalities all taken care of, it was back to Luton in another big flash Merc and back to Edinburgh.		Just what I like to see when I'm boarding a plane - crap leaking from the engines.

Friday, 1 December 2006 - My first northern winter!

December already, and the first day of my first northern winter (by meteorological definition)! December has always been my favourite month of the year, but now I'm not so sure. In the southern hemisphere, December is all about the start of summer, holidays, sun, days at the beach, BBQ's with the chums or family, big outdoor parties, getting stressed and excited over Christmas, driving around in your Skyline with all the windows down - bloody great month! Up here in the north I don't know what December is all about. While I'm up here though, December is just going to make me really home sick, and this will be my first Christmas away from home too :( Anyway, pictured is a good alternative to the common advent calendar hehe, just perfect for the northern winter I feel!

Saturday & Sunday, 2 & 3 December 2006 - Road trip!

I love a good road trip! So a group of five of us Kiwis hired a car for the weekend and hit the road!		We left Edinburgh about 9am, and three hours later were in Inverness - the most northern city in the UK, and bloody hell it was cold hehe!
Inverness Castle. Built in 1836, this is very young as far as castles go (especially in this country) although numerous castles have stood on this site since 1057.		Markets in the city centre were packed selling typical market stuff...
...and some not so typical stuff hehe.		Some fella brought his owls into town to show them off.
Not far out of Inverness is the mighty Loch Ness - the biggest lake in the UK. Apparently it's big enough and deep enough to hold the entire population of the world three times over! We went through the 'Official' Loch Ness Exhibition, but for £6 I don't recommend it unless you really want to learn about Loch Ness Monster sightings over the last 70 years.		Nessie!

Loch Ness. We had our eyes pealed for Nessie ;) OOOO WHAT'S THAT?!?!...		Oh, just a boat.		Urquhart Castle (or what's left of it), overlooking Loch Ness.

At the southwest end of Loch Ness is the little settlement of Fort Augustus. With a massive population of around 600 there obviously isn't much of interest here, but there is the Caledonian Canal.
The Caledonian Canal runs for some 100km, and the locks of Fort Augustus are apparently one of its most picturesque parts, often appearing on postcards.		Highland Cows hahaha - these things look so cool! They're an ancient Scottish breed of cattle.
A short while later we arrived in Fort William - our stopover for the night. The shot on the left was taken at 3:30pm - the middle of the afternoon and look how bloody dark it is! We didn't really have a good look around the town. Instead we parked up, found accommodation, and found a decent-looking pub. The rest of the night is (mostly forgotten) history ;)
The following morning we headed for Stirling, a city of 40,000. This is the view looking up at Stirling Castle, and the view looking out across the city from the castle. In the distance is the Wallace Monument atop the hill (see below).

The Wallace Monument is a 220-foot tower standing atop Abbey Craig commemorating Sir William Wallace. Anybody who has seen Braveheart will know who William Wallace was, and his significance in Scottish history.				I would've made a good William Wallace.

Overlooking Stirling from the Wallace Monument towards the castle.		We had persistent showers throughout the weekend, and the roads were soaked with numerous large puddles that we took joy in screaming through in the car - here's the view from my window while going through a biggy (there's a field behind there somewhere ;)
Our last stop before heading home was the Falkirk Wheel in Falkirk. The Falkirk Wheel, the only one of its kind in the world, is a rotating boat lift connecting the Forth and Clyde Canal with the Union Canal, which at this point differ in altitude by 24 metres (equivalent to the height of an eight story building). In a nutshell, a canal barge enters either the upper or lower caisson, and the wheel rotates through 180° to transport the barge to the opposite canal - bloody clever stuff. The wheel is completely balanced and therefore, despite its enormous steal mass, it rotates through 180° in less than four minutes while using only as much power as boiling eight kettles of water. If we'd wanted to wait around for three hours we could've had a free ride on it, but nah.

In other news I'm heading to London tomorrow for the week to do a training course for work (more free meals and flashy accommodation - it's a hard life). I get back to Edinburgh late on Friday night, and then set off for four days in Prague with Mo the following morning - awesome! There is a good chance I won't be able to update this site until next week after Prague, so here is something to keep you all amused for the time being :)

Friday, 8 December 2006 - Parties parties parties!
There are many company Christmas parties happening this weekend or next (my own included), so here is something that may come in handy for you.

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