Dover, a major ferry port in southeast England that faces France across the narrowest part of the English Channel. You can actually pick up French radio stations and French cell phone carriers from here.

Anyway, we didn't come here for that, we came here for these - the surrounding chalk cliffs known as the White Cliffs of Dover.

One of the many tourists who have carved their alias into the rock face.

The cliffs stretch for several miles either side of Dover and reach up to 106 metres high, which makes for a good view from the top!

It also makes them a good place to end it all, which several folk do every year.

We followed a path down to a beach, hurled some rocks, kept our eyes open for anyone about to land on us from above, and checked out some of the old lookouts. As the cliffs face towards Continental Europe across the narrowest part of the English Channel, invasions have historically always been a threat here, and the cliffs are rigged with miles of hidden tunnels that played a role in the defence of Britain during the Napoleonic Wars.

We walked a good few kilometres along the top to some boring lighthouse, turned around, and walked back again.

France is about 30 kilometres over there somewhere. On a clear day, the cliffs are apparently easily visible from the French coast.

After all that we wandered into the centre of Dover, which being 5pm on a Sunday was all closed up and deserted apart from the usual bunch of small-town chavs loitering around.

How'd you spend your Halloween? Katie and I went to a gig (another one - I've been to a few lately come to think of it) at the Roundhouse in Camden. When we got there one of the supporting acts looked to be wowing the crowd with nothing more than his Mp3 player (he certainly didn't appear to be mixing).

Then his Mp3 player broke, the technician came running, and we all started looking at our watches to see if it was time for the main event yet.

With it being Halloween there were plenty of interesting looking people in the crowd...

...although I'm not so sure they were all dressed up just for Halloween hehe.

The cool kids bought their glow sticks.

The really cool ones stuck 'em in their mullet.

Anyway, before long that dude left the stage with his Mp3 player, and this bunch took his place - Shpongle, wearing some pretty colourful get up themselves! I was first introduced to this lot back in Brisbane by my flatmate at the time. Shpongle formed in 1996, and are described by Wikipedia (which knows everything) as "a psychedelic downtempo or Psybient music project from the United Kingdom", which is about as accurate as anything else I can think of. The name "Shpongle" is derived from a rumour that one of the founding members was asked at a party how he was feeling, to which he replied, "I feel... Shpongled", hahaha!

Shpongle make use of keyboards, synths, percussion, guitars, cellos, vocals...

An upside-down wok...

A horned bloke on stilts...

A black fella doing the robot...

A half-naked guy meditating who then frolics around the stage like a ballerina...

A human Slinky (because everyone loves a Slinky)...

And a pair of sexy chicks, one of them having a blow on a Dr. Seuss trumpet.

In a nutshell it was a bloody awesome gig, so if you happen to hear of a Shpongle tour in your area...

Another shithouse weekend weather-wise in London. This was the view from my window yesterday morning - leaves everywhere, and that bloke on the right is the poor bastard who had to pick 'em all up this morning hahaha! Back in the day my dear ol' Mum would send me out with the damn leaf-rake and rubbish bag to pick these fuckers up, and I absolutely hated it hehe.

Well apart from the keyboard. About three months ago I pulled the whole machine to bits to blow all the dust and shit out of it that had accumulated over the course of the three years I'd had it. While I was at it, I removed the keyboard and gave that a bloody good clean too. However, when I put it back in it wouldn't work - I'd push one key and about five different numbers and letters and random symbols would appear instead, great! I bought the USB keyboard for it which works fine, but I fast got sick of that and so have forked out £1300 for the beast on the right (plus insurance, so if I do that again it won't matter hehe - I'll keep that in mind three years down the track). So yeah, anyone want a laptop? I'll even throw in the keyboard for free, and the chick with the huge kajongers ;)

Regent Street, where the annual Christmas lights turny-ony event thingy took place on Tuesday night, and swarms of people rock up to watch without fail every year (I'm not sure why).

Oxford Circus, advertising Disney's A Christmas Carol...

Hamleys Toy Shop with its cool Christmas displays...

And Oxford Street - every shopaholic's favourite part of London.

I was here last year for Christmas and New Year's but not this year - more on that later :)

Wales, home of a pretty weird-looking language, and some pretty average weather! About a dozen of us got the train over from London for the weekend to watch the All Blacks vs. Wales game at Millennium Stadium, and get boozed up of course.

The boozing started on the train at 9am, and by the time we got to Cardiff some two hours later we really needed to go hehe. Some of the more civilised among us either went on the train or waited until we reached our hostel; some of us did not and just went in someone's front yard outside the kitchen window hahaha!

The weather forecast was for pissing rain all day, so we hit the pub and stayed there for the afternoon until it was time to stumble down the road to the game. I spent a couple weeks working in Cardiff about 18 months ago, and so saw a bit of it back then.

Millennium Stadium was packed, and when the players made their way out about 20 things shot fireballs into the air. Since the weather was, well, Welsh outside, the stadium roof was closed and so those fireballs left the place stinking of kerosene.

After the usual display of intimidation, we were off!

Long story short, it ended up being a pretty boring game of rugby! We threw some Hollywoods, they threw some Hollywoods, we scored the only try of the match, and aside from that it was all kicking.

There was some action right in front of me though. The chick in the grey beanie there waved our flag after that try was scored, and I don't know if she accidently hit the Welsh fella in front or what exactly happened but he turned, swore his head off at her, and snapped the flag - what an arsehole!

There's the snapped stick there. Unfortunately for him he had his name plastered on his back, and so for the rest of the game the multitude of All Black supporters in the crowd around us jeered him something wicked hahaha! "Rees is a wanker" got chanted a few times.

At the end of it all we took the match 19-12, and the boys did a victory lap to rub it in ;)

After that more drinking ensued, including attempts to drink a pint without using your hands hehe. Good times :)

Ahhh I see this almost happen every day in London. With traffic being so atrocious during rush hour, traffic lights changing from green to amber are taken as in invitation to floor the accelerator and scream through them hehe, even up to a couple seconds after they've turned red! Meanwhile, the car sitting there in the middle of the intersection waiting to turn right has to figure out whether the oncoming traffic is booting it through or slowing for the red (which isn't always obvious, and if you wait too long then other cars behind you start blasting their horn and traffic coming from the adjacent road gets the green and blasts you to get out of the way). Quite often this is the result: black car pushed the amber too far, beige car turned right in front of him - smack! That'll buff out ;)

...Bent and mangled traffic lights that have been smacked by trucks and buses hehe.

That's the driver there, whoops.

It wasn't entirely his fault - this dude with his miniature crane thing was in right everyone's way, and in fact the next bus to go flying through the lights gave them a smack as well but kept going hahaha!