So I like the band Radiohead a lot. They’ve done a wide variety of interesting music with the kind of sound I enjoy. But this isn’t why I’ve entitled this post ‘Brilliant’. It’s how they’re selling their latest album. If you pre-order a digital download of their album, you choose the price. If you want to pay £0, you pay nothing (probably a little fee for processing). If £15 is ok by you, pay them £15 (someone online I read says they’ll pay that much as they want this experiment to succeed) that’s what they’ll pay. Personally, I want them to know what I consider the value of an album. It’s been a while since I was actively buying any commercially available music (with a few exceptions). In my world, the value of an album is about $5. Since this is so novel, I’m gonna round up (and pay in pounds). But I will legitimately purchase this album for what I think is the value of any album. I think the concept is great. I don’t expect every band to be able to pull it off, but I love the idea.

I say I’ll buy it, but their site has just gone reeeeaaaally slow. It’s probably because it just made it to Slashdot which has been known to turn servers into smoldering pieces of metal. 🙂

So I seem to work with a few football fanatics. Last week, with about 5 hours notice, I was offered another ticket to see a Premier League team play. I got to see Arsenal’s arch-rivals Tottenham. This time it was an international match again a team from Cyprus. Alas, with my complete lack of a camera right now and no notice that I was going to be going, I didn’t have a chance to capture it on film. These seats were in the corner of one end of the curve. It’s an older, smaller stadium so it had a more intimate feeling. Tottenham beat the crap out of their opponents, but the fans weren’t quite satisfied. It was really entertaining. Even with them up 4-0 at half time, the fans were grumbling that they weren’t shooting enough. They scored 3 goals with just a few minutes left in the first half. Even though they were getting beat pretty bad, the away fans stayed pretty jolly throughout and had the Tottenham fans beat in terms of flags waving. But the Tottenham fans were just as lively. Part way through the first half, there was some sort of scuffle between the away section and the rest of the stadium and suddenly, the sections we separated by a wall of security. Very interesting.

Anyway, while I lack photos, here’s a video someone posted of a very amusing event. Note the fact that the player who gets hit by the ball looks like he’s about the kick the shit out of this little kid until a moment of “crap, he’s a kid and there’re 30,000 Tottenham fans who’ll kill me if I go after him” comes over him. I was just a little ways away and got a great look at the whole incident live. fun!

Hope you enjoy! I’m supposed to get another ticket to see a league match tomorrow.

Well, here’s one thing I can’t believe I haven’t really written about. It’s been 6 weeks since the kitties finally arrived in merry old England. They arrived in the beginning of August. It was a relatively smooth trip. The tricky part was the prep stuff. In my research, I’d read that the tough stuff was the initial stuff — making sure they were chipped and had their shots and clean of rabies. The way the whole cat moving process works is that the cats can come over 6 months after being proved rabies free. Alas, there is a single lab in the US that handles the blood tests. They were supposed to send the original forms to my vet and it never showed up. On top of that, the vet didn’t follow up even after a number of phone calls. Thankfully, I have wonderful parents who helped ensure the forms showed up. Then there was something about FDA certification as well. Once that crap got sorted, they were ready to go on there way. My parents took them to O’hare, spending a night with them in my apartment and the cats were ready for an 8 hour plane ride — their first!

I had just gotten back from a trip to Frankfurt (I came back especially to be there for the cats) and spent the day nervously waiting for them. Their flight landed at 10:30am, so I assumed they’d show up around 12:30 or 1:00pm. And yet, silence. By 2:00pm, i was a little nervous. As it turned out, there was a major accident on the Ring Road which meant the courier bringing them was stuck in traffic. Finally, he managed to show up with two safe kitties! Here they are:

Chewy hanging out by the tub

Anna exploring — she didn’t wanna sit still for a photo!

I haven’t got any more photos of them as my camera gave up the ghost recently. But the cats are doing well. I think they are still adjusting but they are healthy and generally happy. My place it pretty small and they aren’t romping like they used to. And I’ve been working a lot so I haven’t been around as much as I’d like to 🙂

Man, I’m glad I get paid in pounds. Not only is the dollar worth half a pound, but the Canadian dollar is now worth the same as the US dollar. This is up from being 1/3 less than a US dollar just 5 years ago. Ouch!

To signify the end of summer, the UK has a bank holiday. Over the last 30 years, a tradition has grown in which the Caribbean community living in Notting Hill (or increasingly, near it as the area has gentrified) put on a big ass street festival. Now, it goes for two days and apparently attracts 2 million people to it. Think of it as an absolutely enormous street party centered on a never-ending parade. This sounded like one of those things you don’t miss if you’re going to spend in London. So Dina and Adrian came up and we went to check it out.

The first day is ‘children’s’ parade. We decided to go to that one because the adult one usually ends in at least a couple of stabbings and shootings. I have no idea why this one was the children’s day, as it consisted of amazing amounts of people drinking a hell of a lot of beer. Allow me to demostrate. This is a view of crowd as we were sauntering off:

Would you bring your kid to that? People did. Anyway, if you look at the picture above, you’ll see some semis. That is the parade. Numerous groups would rent a big truck, load it down with speakers and a DJ and play some cool, loud Caribbean influenced music (mostly of an electronic nature). Behind them would trail people dressed up in various costumes dancing to the music.

But it wasn’t an organized parade in most places. You could meander into the parade route and join in. The parade served as the nucleus of the festivities. Off on the side streets, you had an amazing variety of random things. One minute you’d stumble upon a street filled with food vendors, the next, someone had hauled out their own speakers and were putting on a show. This being Notting Hill, we ran into a couple of streets with people selling things in a street fair kind of setting. It was huge and complex. I felt like, in the 6 hours we were there, we probably scratched a small bit of the surface. It was very impressive.

That said, it also had the seedy underbelly side of it. Like I said, there tends to be some violence. Take millions of people, lots of alcohol and a long long day and, as the sun goes down, bad shit happens. I believe there were 2 or 3 stabbings as well as someone firing a gun in the air. Aside from anything carnival related, the area shuts down. Majorly shuts down. Take this fancy looking store:

That’s not because business has been bad and the owner decided to close shop for good. That’s because the owner boarded the place up for the weekend while the crowds descended 🙂 There were entire streets like this where all the action was replaced by street vendors and the stores that normally were open would shut down and go on holiday. The only places that were open were off-licenses to buy alcohol (and some food places) and they would usually only open enough to hand you beer across the doorway. Very interesting.

Anyway, I feel like my words aren’t quite capturing the whole vibe, but that’s what yer getting. It was a very cool experience.

See, being a slacker when blogging means things like this which I wanted to post about get lost 🙂

For those of you unaware, Pavarotti died last week. I don’t have much more to add that you can’t find more eloquently said elsewhere. The man had an amazing voice and he managed to last for a very long time singing music that would tear a normal persons voice to shreds. I just wanted to point out this video of one of his signature songs. Beautiful stuff. He will be missed.

Now, I’m not the competitive type (sort of), but this is worthy of a posting. My company usually sponsors a number of activities during the summer known as the ‘Summer of Fun’. In the US, most of them consist of using one of the few patios in the Loop to host a party. In the UK, we lack that kind of public space, so it ends up being a variety of activities. This summers seemed to focus on bowling. We had two bowling events, the British type and the US type. Why do I post about something this simple? Because I somehow rule both! 🙂

The first event was lawn bowling. For those of you looking for a US parallel, it’s like bocce. You have teams and a single ball rolled down some grass. You try to roll a weighted ball closest to the ball in the middle of the grass. My coworker Steve was in town for the fun and, on a whim, we joined in. Well, we somehow won! The final was a closely fought contest in which we actually came down to a roll off which required a measurement to determine who was closest in the end. Here would be a perfect capturing of that moment:

Look how close it is!

Well, Steve and I took home the gold for Team USA (and team IT geeks). Flash in the pan, you’re probably thinking.

But no! I came back in the US version of bowling to show how truly dominant sedentary geeks can be. Tonight was the US bowling leg of the summer of fun. Well, how did we do? My team came in first overall. I bowled a strike on my first roll, thus winning the ‘First Strike’ trophy. My teammate, Julie, won best female bowler and I won best male bowler. We Rule!!!

OK, there are a few of you dedicated types who haven’t given up on me. I’ve been busy/tired and I’m finally getting a chance to catch up. I have at least 5 posts (yes ‘timber’ one of those involves my kitties!) that I’ll start putting up on Wednesday. In the meantime, my friend Dan is an artist. He has been drawing as long as I’ve known him (which is about 25 years). He’s made some cool shit that’s been put on the web and he published something recently. Sooo, here it be:

So I come back from lovely Paris to find that 2/3s of the underground will effectively be shutdown for three days due to a strike. This is due to the fact that England, like a lot of industrialized nations, has been screwing around with public services by privatizing them. Unlike, say the US which cut the cord entirely, causing corruption, higher prices and terrible service, the UK went the public-private route. As a result, you have companies with many restrictions on them trying to make money off of things that shouldn’t be thought of as being profitable and now one went bankrupt. So the workers, afraid of losing their jobs and pensions, are striking (although the government seems to have agreed to all their demands. weird). Anyway, all I can think of right now is ‘Thankfully, I take the bus!’ 🙂

I do wish countries would stop thinking about profitability when it comes to public transit. The whole point is that it’s subsidized and should never run at a profit. Now, running efficiently, that’s another story, but I personally think the idea that corporations can run things more efficiently than the public sector is a myth. They both have their bloated inefficiencies, they’re just different.

For those of you curious, this is what it looks like when the tube is shut down at rush hour. Although they’re claiming the Northern and Picadilly Lines aren’t supposed to be shut down. Wow!

Man, I’ve been bad. Well, this time, it was because of a last minute trip to Paris. Yep, I’m writing from Paris. I bought a ticket on Monday and hopped the eurostar on Tuesday night. Yes, the tough life. Hopefully, the work part won’t be as bad as I’m expecting. If so, then I get a day or two of free time to see the city. Alas, my digital camera died about 4 days ago, so I might not be able to post any pictures for a bit (I’m gonna look into getting some sort of single-use camera in the meantime). whee!

Well, it’s been more than a week, which I believe is the longest I’ve been blog-silent since I moved to London. A touch of writers block. I’ve been busy, but there’s plenty to write about. So let’s write.

Last week consisted of a lot of work and a lot of going out and being social. One of my favourite people in the world, Jess, was around for many days and it meant that I got to see her multiple times for what may have been three years. She’s on a grand work tour which included Australia, New Zealand and London. It ends with her going on her honeymoon (congrats Jess and Amit!). But, before she could relax in Italy with Amit, she was stuck hanging out with me.

Last Monday, she wanted to come up and see my neighbourhood a little bit and see my cute kitties who had arrived three days earlier (clearly I’ve been bad about writing in the blog — there’s no cat entry!). Before that, I decided she needed to try the Marquess Tavern. It’s a pub about 15 minutes from me that has a nifty little niche in the pub-food world. They have some sort of room in the back where they store racks of beef. They keep a running list of what they’ve got in back on a chalkboard. The sizes range from about 2.5lbs to about 10lbs of beef (I’m planning a big trip with many people to tackle one of those larger pieces of meat). If you pick one of them, they take it off the board since they only have one and the meal is something of a roast with gravy, potatoes, yorkshire pudding and some sort of vegetables. It’s very tasty. And the beef is right off the bone. Look!

It also has a nice selection of ales and a friendly atmosphere inside. The surrounding area is a fancy part of Islington called Canonbury, with lots of beautiful homes and greenery. The exterior of the pub is nothing to be ashamed of either. I believe it’s Listed (some sort of British distinction to preserve things of historical interest).  Look:

(bad picture — but it’s beautiful).

Anyway, that was one evening of Jess. The following days were fun as well and even included one night of Dina! But I lack photos of most of it. I’ve been a bad travelling Matt.

So I’m back in the lovely realm of London. I’ve got my cats and work should start being more normal. So, to get myself back in the blogging saddle, I’ll give some more fun with Frankfurt. This was a quick 2 day business trip, but I tried to have a little bit of the German experience.

Frankfurt is an odd city. It was pretty much levelled in World War II, so a lot of the old German charm was destroyed. As its become the financial centre of Germany, it’s got a lot of modernity to it. But there are definitely rebuilt buildings that retain an old-world charm to it. My company’s Frankfurt office is currently on the 27th floor of the Maintower, which is a nice building with a shitload of cool views.

Anyway, here’s a little of Frankfurt in pictures:

My office (the taller one) and my hotel (the shorter one). Easy commute and nice views!

The view from my hotel room. Alas, it was mostly rainy while I was there, but here’s a moment of clear sky.

Here would be a “typical” Germany meal. A whole lot of yummy pork. Mmmmm. In Frankfurt, this would be accompanied by Apfelwein, a fermented apple cider type drink. It’s dryer than a English cider.

I mentioned that not all of Frankfurt is new, corporate architecture. Here is the rebuilt opera house.

So I’m writing this from our office in Germany. I had to buy a plane ticket on Monday for a flight on Tuesday to come to Frankfurt for a quick jaunt of a work related nature. The office is on the 27th floor (cool!) and the hotel is it’s ‘twin’ accross the way, but my room is only on the 26th floor. hee hee. I’ll post more about it later, but here’s my spiffy hotel room:

So I have a post about my previous day on my Chicago trip, but I checked the news this morning and saw some baseball related info that seemed relevant to another activity I partook of whilst in Chicago.

The previous evening, I went out with a whole lot of people and braved the rain and lightning to see the Decemberists play in the Frank Gehry designed bandshell. Our friend Sof was there and, as we were leaving, he mentioned that he had a free ticket to see the Cubs the following afternoon and hinted that they were pretty freaking good seats. With everyone else having to work and stuff, I gladly took him up on the offer.

The day started out beautiful, but kept looking ominous and cloudy. They called for rain, but all that happened in the end was a little sprinkling of rain and some nice cloud cover from the sun.

Welcome to Wrigley!

After a little bit of missing each other in the crowds, we met up with two of Sof’s friends. Their dad had managed to pick up some box seats from work for free and couldn’t go, so he passed them on to his daughters and, eventually, I ended up with one! Well, these seats were about 20 rows back and slightly to the left of home plate. Very very nice. See for yourself:

Very nice view of the game. Which just meant that I actually had to watch it. So, while I did imbibe some alcohol at the game, I can actually recall what happened. It was a high scoring affair, with the Cubs jumping out to a big lead and squandering it. The big highlight (or lowlight, depending on your perspective) was Barry Bonds hitting homeruns 752 and 753.

Which brings me to why I’m writing about this today instead of the Decemberists concert. I’m not going to try to go into the obvious fact that Barry Bonds has been cheating for many years in order to reach a milestone that is one of those records that has and should be hard to break. I just think it’s a shame that major league baseball has appeared to wash their hands of it. He’s going to break the record very very soon (now that he’s tied it), and it doesn’t look like, short of them catching him taking steroids or HGH, there’s not much anyone can do about it. Which is kind of sad. Hitting that many homeruns is an impressive feat, but it appears as though he repeatedly tried any means he could to take things to enhance his game while not getting caught in the act.

I’ll leave it to someone who knows better than I to say a little more about it. Bob Costas, while he can get on my nerves, has a great interview here where he lays out the (circumstantial) reasons why it’s pretty obvious that Bonds has been using steroids (or other shit to make himself a gigantic man). Ok, no more rant. I think, in the end, that Major League Baseball deserves a whole lot of the blame for basically approving of these kinds of actions.
Anyway, I was really happy to have a chance to enjoy a day at a baseball game. I am not the biggest sports enthusiast, but I always like to catch a game or two every summer. It’s always a fun time.