Last Night, or the night before - 24/1/10

As soon as we sat down we went straight back out. The night only starts at 10.30 in Spain and we headed out just after this.

We spent the first few hours with some whiskey and coke standing on a street corner. Ruth and I were being introduced to people we couldn’t speak to left, right and centre; David’s brothers, cousins, friends and everyone else associated with him.

We had a great time attempting to communicate with drunken Spaniards in an equally inebriated state – it resembled two people; both blind, deaf and dumb having a political debate about the current world economic crisis. Me and Ruth also took our friendship to what can be argued as it’s greatest level when I stood watch to make sure nobody else walked around the corner while I listened to her crouch and piss in the street as there were no toilets in the immediate area.

We spoke about deep things some of them truly representative of how drunk we were.

We also hard our first brush with the law more importantly El Guardia Civil. The police decided to come by and check us all for drugs and in the drunken state I was, I believed it to be a great tourist opportunity. I whipped out the camera and off went the flash.

Taking photos of policemen in this country is illegal. I had to hand over my ID, camera and was searched head to toe. With the possibility of being put in jail, I left the talking to David and just apologised presudely.

At about 1.30-2.00 it was time to mosy on down to the club – one that I velieve is possibly the only one in the world that has the men’s toilet queue coming out of the door and being twice as long as the women’.

There were more amazing conversations with the Spanish mainly consisting of;

RANDOM SPANIARD: You love Spain!?

ME: Si!

The night was still young and at about 4-4.30 we moved the party to another club.

Here it was my dancing that got me in to trouble. Some Senioras decided to help me dance like a Spaniard and not some ghetto-wigga-wannabe, nerdy, white man dance. Henceforth I felt thoroughly embarrassed and made my way p to rejoin the main group.

Before heading back for the night David wanted to show us his version of a greasy fry up. It involves hot chocolate, which is quite frankly was just meted down chocolate bars with some batter form a battered sausage to dip into it. It was… not a greasy fry up. We got to David’s and stayed in bed until 1.30 in the afternoon.

When we awoke it was time to see the village in daylight, it’s beautiful. The simple nature of it all and it’s quaint sizeis everything you imagine from a village in Spain.

We stopped at a pub to taste some Spanish beer – Kahou. It’s no Pilsner Urquell but does have a good tast. I also enjoyed it because of the added Tapas. Some potator and cheesy bits and chopped up hot dog in a rich vinegar. Not at all bad tbh.

After the beer we were shown to a place called ‘La Sabia’. About 28 of David’s friends all piled some money together to rent a place that they simply hang out it.

The room is full of beer, TV’s, Xbox, Playstation, a fridge,, a freezer and bags and bags of weed. This basement between two shops is perfect for a hangout spot, and during the course of the entire day, numbers of people arrived and left as they pleased. The highlights included and Athletico Madrid loss, Ronaldo being sent off, the hot dog with EVERYTHING on it and a pizza that Domino’s would be envious of.

On our way home we had law encounter numbero dos. David’s friend who kindly offered to take us home failed to mention he had forgotten to renew the tax. Our with the ID again and a fine for the driver. As we were leaving he yelled out ‘Tu Puta Madre’ – my new favourite phrase.

Starting at Ruth's - 23/1/10

Spent all morning packing in my usual last minute style. Drying clothes from the washing machine and ramming them in the suitcase.

Got to Ruth’s – absolutely frozen. No point wearing too many layers it’ll be warm in Madrid – and allowed Ruth to throw her things in the suitcase.

After a cup of tea and a quick chat the trip began. Once there we decided that out of all the couples there, we looked the most in love – shame we wouldn’t touch each other with a barge pole.

Wizz-Air seems to be pretty good and when we got up above the clouds, the view of the sun setting was pretty incredible. You could also see the high rise mountains poking out the top of the wispy blanket that is the cloud beneath.

Ruth passed out pretty quickly and has the silliest eye mas on I’ve ever seen, looks like some girls may wear it in the Darling Cabaret. I’m beginning to question whether Ruth has a side career.

I’m also convinced two of the air stewards are fucking – I’ll see what I can find out.

So we landed and immediately went to a restaurant in David’s village. We ordered a huge 3 course collection of sea food. I was incredible – crabs, prawns, molluscs, shrimp and tasted like the sea, but removed of all the salt and oil.

We then made the short wealk back to his house through the village. We had to stop four times because the cillage David lives in is your prototypical Mediterranean village, it’s small, everyone knows each other, the small beautiful buildings are the colour of burnt sienna and everything looks so homely.

The plan tonight is to drink whiskey and coke with many a Spaniard and make an ass out of myself in front of a whole new legion of people.

Madrid

Here's a short list of things I noticed in Madrid, there will be plenty more about my trip in total also of course I will be publishing a post entirely about the Spanish people, one that should be very interesting after the experience I've just had but for now I'll just put a few posts up to wet your appetite.

• Renfe regret to inform you that our commitment to punctuality has been suspended
• Spaniards are some of the omst lovely people, even if a little racist on times
• Allergies suck
• If you have food with a drink, you have to dip it
• Puertas! Selva! Jardin de las Flores!
• You want some drink with that ice?
• Art Rocks!
• Me and Ruth would be the worst couple ever
• You don't wipe the dust off a vintage bottle of wine
• There's nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing, as simply messing about on a river

Papa's got a brand new blog

When you think of how many people you meet in life, and not just the ones you shake the hand of and learn their names I mean everybody that you have a conversation with, from good friends to teachers to store clerks to old ladies on the bus that just love a good natter. These numbers could easily reach the upward millions.

I have come to find that in life there are certain people you simply have to meet to live a fulfilling life, and I don’t mean heroes, celebrities or your mate from accounting cos he’s an absolute legend, I mean types of people.

Firstly it’s pretty obvious that if you stand any hope of leading a life to the full you simply must have good friends. Friendship is the beginning, middle and end. Of course family comes into it and that goes without saying but I can truly, honestly say that without my friends; who knows where I may have ended up. But life isn’t just about the people you will connect with for the rest of time. Think about those other people.

The single serving friends (thank you Fight Club) that you may meet just once. Whether it be on a train journey, a plane, in a restaurant. These people come into your life with such happenstance that you are thrust into conversation about anything. It may start with the weather, a shared complaint about bad customer service, but there are two questions that will inevitably be asked should the conversation continue; where are you from? What do you do?

From these two questions a whole conversation can open up, and yes it may be boring, idle chit chat but try conversing with someone you have never met without asking one of these two questions (variations do not count).

The next lot of people are an extension of the previously listed single serving friends, but they still fit into the same category. They are friends that you will meet once in life but for an extended period of time. You may find yourselves travelling with this person. They may share the same time period in a city or place and you’ll find you spend most of your time there connected to this person. For a brief period of a few days, this person may become the most trusted person in the world to you. They will become your confidante, your friend, maybe even your lover and then without a trace they will be gone from your life never to be seen or heard of again (although thanks to facebook this is becoming increasingly harder).

Then of course you have the friends that are not even friends, they are acquaintances. They are the people that are always on shift every time you seem to go into Starbucks for your morning coffee. They are people that catch the same bus to work everyday. You will have fleeting conversations which will rarely remove itself from the usual ‘how are you’, ‘leave room for milk please’, but sometimes there are moments with these people that you become truly appreciative of. It may be the compliment they offer you about your new haircut when no one else notices, or even just that person to bitch at for five minutes about your boss just to relieve stress which quite frankly had it not been relieved you may have just walked back into work with a can of petrol and torched the place (ok maybe you never would but everybody’s thought about it… right?)

My point is that even though you can lead a happy life with the friends and family that you will always care about and they will always love you no matter what, it’s these little people, the smaller moments in your life that can really add the cherry on top of the ice cream sundae that is your life.

It is for this reason that from here on out this blog will be taking on a new direction, I have been waiting for it to find it’s voice and I believe I am in a unique opportunity with regards to my job that I get to see a huge variety of people from all over the world and to spend time with them. They may turn out to be people from any of the above list but I will use this blog to study nations of people as whole; Americans, Europeans, Australians, Asians and even the good ol’ Brits. Who knows I may even find out a thing or two about myself along the way but stay tuned, we’ll be right back after these short messages.

More Adventures with the girls

I was supposed to blog about the rest of this trip earlier but ran out of time and got distracted but I'm back with a vengeance.

This might be a longish one

No on the first night of the pub crawl as I mentioned GI began talking to an Australian and a very nice Australian he was. As nothing was happening Jodie did her usual 'good friend' thing and dragged this poor guy to the other side of the bar. Now any guy will back me up when I say this next bit. Jodie grabbed this gentleman by the hand and led him to a quiet area in the bar, the first thing she said was 'who do you fancy here tonight?' Now any normal fellow with any sense of a straight bone in his body would have gone 'you baby now lets break this joint and go fuck like rabbits at a swingers party in Spring'. This guy did have a straight bone in his body but decided to go for the more appropriate version of this sentence by simply saying 'well you of course'.

Now what Jodie was trying to do - bless her cotton socks - was to hook GI up with this dashing Aussie fellow, but as always she manages to confuse the poor sod in a way that only drunken Jodie can. After re-explaining what she meant by this particular conversation to him she then dragged him to the dancefloor and taking GI by the hand on the way. She then stood right next to both of them and watched making both parties feel very awkward about what they were supposed to do. I dragged Jodie away and allowed the couple to do whatever it was either of them wanted to do.

The following night day we went on a castle tour, not my original plan but being dragged into work allowed the girls to the see the other side of the river which I think they enjoyed to a certain extent (personally it was one of my worst castle tours and really couldn't be arsed so we all decided to have a quiet night in as the previous one didn't finish until 4.30.

This was explained to a tour guiding friend who had been ill as of late and was missing intellectual stimulation so I offered to provide some for her and invited her round for some Za. The pizza mission itself was hellish. Czech douchebags with their not listening and overcharging, but thats water under the bridge.

After sitting down and watching some Gavin and Stacey with the group of now three girls, GI had managed to get hold of the Aussie gentleman's number from the night before and had been texting him all day. She wanted to head out for a quick dirnk with him as he was leaving early the next morning, so we decided to head to a place called U Plavni. It was there because GI can't understand simple instructions and when I said to her send him to Svataplukova she decided Karlovo Namesti would suffice. We went and found them and I informed them that this particular pub sucked and one of the coolest pubs in Prague is literally around the corner.

After several more beers we proceeded to Red Room to play Foosball and to drink out of glasses bigger than both the girls I was with. HooeGaarden. Love it.

In this heavily expatted pub I met an interesting, if at all, slightly twattish bloke, who claimed to be a 'Director' and upon asking what kind of stuff he does he stated that his work was heavily influenced by the likes of Mark Twain, some other pretentious cunt, and Jesus Christ. As you can imagine I then turned around and had a really interesting conversation with a brick wall.

The Aussies asked what other places would be open now (at approximately 1 in the morning), I said the best place is probably Cross Club. I then told them how to get there as I imagined this is probably the end of the night for myself and the girls. I was wrong.

I ended up taking them to the tram stop as they would have struggled to find it and then thought I'll take them to the Cross club then come home. The problem being is that the tram stop I thought we would end up at didn't exist. We therefore had to disembark from our tram journey and wander half an hour through the street of unknown areas of Prague and search for this club. Despite their previous concerns the tour guide found his way around the city and there were high praises from the roof tops.

By now it was about half two and we stayed in the Cross Club for a good hour or so and this short night for one drink with GI's fancy man had turned into an all night binge. There was a guy sitting at the next table that seemed to have gone through the same thing as us only his had taken a turn for the worse. He had been given some sort of drug and was passed out... but dancing at the same time. Everyone simply ignored him and got on with their night, dude could have actually been having a seizure but thats why I love the Czech Republic - if it aint your business don't make it your business.

We got home at about half four and watched some more Gavin and Stacey before we all passed out about half way through.

I was going to write more but I'll let you chew on that for a bit and get back tya, plus it turns out I'm leading the Pub Crawl tonight, blogs about this in the near future I believe.

Ciao for now

GI and Jo

Waiting at the airport in the arrivals area.

There are camera crews, photographers, reporters and they were all waiting for Eva Novakova. Apparently she'd been in the news for being arrested in Palestine. She stepped off out of the gate and was mobbed after having a few seconds to say hello to her mother, poor woman just wanted to see her family after that ordeal, but I didn't understand what was being said... it was all in Czech.

But the real celebrities arrived about two minutes after, I almost missed them, mainly cos both of them together only add up to a combined height of about 5'6, but also they had done their hair in styles that I had not been prepared for. Jodie had turned into a red head and GI had gone against her usual perfectly straight perfectly beautiful pristine hair style, instead she'd left it curly but and wild, it looked awesome. I would later find out that it actually looked like this because they had both been out the night before until 2.30 in the morning, they had to leave to get to the airport at 3.30 so neither had really made much of an effort for the friend they hadn't seen in several months but I suppose thats what makes them such awesome friends, knowing that they don't to do feck all and I'd still love them no matter what.

Despite their one hour of sleep, my first statement was that we were going to get messed up that night. They complied.

Before we did so however we went to the coolest tea house in the world, it's right in the centre of Old Town on a street called Michaelska and its where you imagine all the hippys retired to.

The place is run by this gentleman of about 60 years of age and he's got a beard Jesus would have been envious of. I ordered the usual of Yogi and the girls loved it, we then went for a wander and headed back to mine to let them relax for a bit.

After some R+R we went to Lokal the coolest beer hall in the world and the food was typically Czech with carbs a plenty and no veg within a mile of the plate.

We then headed onto 'The Hottest Pub Crawl in Prague' mainly cos its free alcohol and I wanted to see if the Marjons girls still had it. They did.

We started off playing Ring of Fire in true Marjon tradition and when I stopped for a toilet break, I returned to the table to see the girls had effectively moved the entire pub crawl to our table. We had spaniards, aussies and pretty much every other nationality all playing ring of fire and Jodie had managed to bond with the Spaniards over drinking, GI had managed to bond with the australians... for other reasons but more about that in a later blog I believe.

The night continued throughout the typical pub crawl route finishing in the fine constabulary that is Chapeau Rouge we then proceeded home at about 4.30 the girls had officially been up 24 hours (taking off the hour time difference)and the first day had been a mighty success.

Time for sleep but another full day ahead for tomorrow, which is why it will be in another blog at a later day maybe tomorrow as I've killed my battery with too many distractions as I've been typing this.

Ciao for now

Confessions of a What?

Ok so I've blogged like four times now and not once have I ever really mentioned tour guiding... I don't know why it just hasn't come up but I figure I'll tell you guys a little bit about my job.

It Rocks.

Being a Tour Guide fits me like a glove on Michael Jackson. I was doing nothing the past summer due to the recession and a good friend of mine was doing this for a summer job. She invited me out and left shortly after to go back to Uni. Due to my amazing degree I had nothing else better to do so have stayed and will do until September at least.

Imagine this; stuck in an office with no window and a butt load of fake oxygen coming through an more often than not broken AC system, in front of some slow ass computer operating on Windows (eugh) moving data from one file to another for 8-9 hours a day, for some God awful wage.

Now here's the reality; walk around one of the most beautiful cities in the world for no more than three hours a day, earning a decent amount of money to live off and enough to put aside a small amount for travelling and (well lets be honest) drinking.

My job is the latter. I meet amazing people every single day and the majority of them have the same mindset as my own, the world is for the taking.

Travellers are really interesting, each person has their own story, their own reason for being there. My favourite tourist so far was an older gentleman, mid-seventies. He was doing a bus-about tour, London to Sydney in one hundred days. He had lost his wife earlier in the year and had received a large amount of money from life insurance. He was devastated but didn't want to spend his first Christmas and New Year alone, so he would join a Bus-about tour and spend these two special dates on Sydney Harbour Bridge watching the fireworks. This man was married for over 50 years and his wife would not have wanted him to be stuck in alone, depressed when he still had plenty of years left to enjoy life, and this is exactly what he has done.

It takes courage to attempt something like this, he has gone travelling with no one apart from the people he would be spending the next hundred days with. There are too many people who dismiss the older generation as being useless and not being able to offer anything to today's society and although they may have passed their peak in life this does not render them completely useless and this gentleman has proved it. He may never read this post but I wish this gentleman the best of luck and I hope he enjoys the fireworks!

I have also met people that may possibly be in my life for... the rest of it. Both tourists and the people I am touring with. There are people that I have made a strong connection with and I hope these connections remain for life, both in and out of the company.

The company itself, is... well, I don't think I should say too much just incase someone from the company ends up reading it. But there are problems within it. They a problems that are simply created I feel and although I am no CEO I personally believe this company can be run a lot smoother which is why I have often thought about starting up my own company. But that thought is for the future, maybe when I begin setting one up I'll post about this particular subject again, for now however lets brush it under the rug and leave this post where it is.

Ciao for now

Some Poetry

A short poem I wrote while I couldn't get to sleep the other night

City Life

Trams trundle by, all through the night

Bells jingle every time they stop

The city sounds go on all year round

It would be awkward if they did not

The beeping of car horns, the stepping of feet

It reassures you that life

Goes on, even in the darkest of hours

The world will keep turning tonight

No matter what your day has laid out for you

There is always a constant here

To return home, to sit and listen

To the trams trundle through the night

Top Ten Most beautiful songs

My last list of Greates Movie Scenes ever inspired me to write another one in that style. This is a list of my Top Ten Most beautiful songs of all time. You won’t agree with many of the choices, maybe all of them but they are worth a listen nonetheless. They are in no particular order.

Polly Paulusma – She Moves in Secret Ways

There are few lyricists that can create an image better than Polly Paulusma, while she has only received limited success on the commercial scene Polly released one of the greatest acoustic pop albums ever created. Overshadowed by the marketability of Norah Jones and James Blunt, Paulusma produced the album Scissors in my Pocket by herself in a shed in her back garden and played 90% of the instruments. The story telling behind this song allows the listener to understand the problems with struggling which fork to take in the road and to try and avoid the devil wherever he may be.

Eric Clapton – Tears in Heaven

This song takes Clapton away from his image of a guitar God and allows him to be placed high in the rankings of the greatest songwriters ever. At the time Eric struggled with alcohol and drug problems not to mention the tormenting loss of his son. While nothing can truly captures the pain of having to bury one of your children ‘God’ gives us a beautiful insight into the feelings that may come up in such a horrifying situation.

Imogen Heap – Hide and Seek

From the moment the initial harmonies begin playing, the listener is immediately drawn into this song, stops everything and becomes immersed into try and figuring out what is taking place in this song. While the Vocoder and autotune techniques have been mocked and waved off by many of the world’s greatest producers. Imogen Heap shows an audience how effectively it can be used. While the true meaning behind the lyrics may never be explained, the way that it is sung and produced make you understand that it is an emotionally filled four and half minutes.

Paul Simon – Father and Daughter

Makes the JCB song by Nizlopi sound like Right Said Fred. Paul Simon just plain and simple knows how to write good songs. This song perfectly explains the love felt between a father and an offspring. The production values of using a child’s voice for certain lines add to it’s beauty and the simplicity of some of the lyrics truly prove that you don’t need to write lines like Shakespeare to be a genius. This should go down as one of his greatest beating (do I dare say it?) Bridge Over Troubled Water.

Greenday – Time of your Life (Good Riddance)

The ultimate anthem for the ultimate punk rock band. This song changed the way that punk rock bands were allowed to write songs. Never has a band pushed boundaries more than Greenday did at the time of this song’s release. Since then all modern punk bands have tried to recreate this style of acoustic emotional rock. The more modern interpretations have simply come up short, writing lyrics about missing their girlfriend, or being cheated on. Good Riddance doesn’t have to spell it out so obviously, Billie Joe relies on himself and the guitar to tell a masterpiece of a story.

Jamie Cullum – London Skies

Jamie Cullum may have played some beautiful songs in his time when he has covered some of the greatest, most romantic jazz and pop ballads of all time. For this song Jamie relies on his own songwriting skills and instead of writing about New York’s atmosphere or the sun-kissed San Francisco, he goes in an untold direction, telling the world about your average cloudy, miserable day in London Town. However the spin on the style of playing and lyrics shows that, as Mr Cullum states ‘there is beauty in our London Skies’.

Jimmy Eat World – Hear You Me

There may not be a rock album like this ever again, and certainly Jimmy Eat World can never dream of recreating the power the found behind Bleed American. The album goes from powerful punk pop, to hard rock and to a moment of clarity that would become the song Hear You Me seamlessly without ever sounding awkward. There may be better songs, better albums and better bands but everything came together in this amazing package. If there is an upcoming band looking to get the perfect running order for an album, they should listen to this album in it’s entirety to truly see how to set one up with Hear You Me being the pinnacle of beauty on a beautiful album.

Queen – These are the days of our lives

Freddie Mercury had gone public with knowledge of the HIV Virus and he was nearing his death. This would make the toughest man take some time to look back on life. This should have been the perfect ending to a wonderful career and a wonderful life. It’s a shame that half of the band felt the need to sell their music to anything that could continue to make them money. But for a moment, this song wonderfully produced with heartfelt lyrics seemed to be exactly what the world needed to say goodbye to possibly the greatest rock singer and performer to set foot onstage.

REM – Nightswimming

When many of you saw the band REM breaking the top ten, it may have taken your minds to the wonderful song of Everybody Hurts. While this may be the bands greatest combined achievement, Michael Stipe wrote this lone piano and voice song telling the tale of skinny dipping. The reason it trumps the Everybody Hurts is the warm fuzzy feeling it gives you when you hear it. Everybody Hurts is genius but is quite frankly depressing and this image perfectly passed from Stipe’s mind onto the listeners should always bring a smile to your face.

Tom Waits – San Diego Serenade

You can’t fit any more similes or metaphors in a song than Tom Waits has in San Diego Serenade. During his days of writing beautiful jazz and blues songs before he went a little insane and began combing this with hip hop and melodies that would make Marylin Manson shudder, Waits is trying in every way possible to describe the love he feels for someone special. He portrays his feelings perfectly when the song rounds out and it’s only then that we may truly know what love is.

Bright Eyes – The First Day of my Life

This Country Rocker has received high praises from Bob Dylan and numerous folk greats and with due respect. This particular song tells the story of the fresh feeling that envelops you when you meet your true love for the first time. The emotion in his voice brings a fragility to the performance that is extremely endearing and only adds more reasons to want to fall in love with his music.

Some of you will have read this and will begin asking questions; What about U2 –With or Without You, RHCP – Under the Bridge, the entire Beatles back catalogue?

True there are brilliantly beautiful songs and this has been an incredibly tough list to widdle down to just ten. There could be ten more top ten lists with the same title but should there be a gun held to my head and I have an hour to listen to ten songs before the trigger is pulled, this collection would create a feeling of acceptance and relaxation ready to take me to wherever I may be heading at the end of the final song.

I suggest you take some time to listen to these songs, you may just agree.

Favourite Movie Scenes of All Time

After watching Anchorman recently I decided that the film, as silly as it was posessed one of the greatest movie scenes of all time. This got me thinking and I thought of a few other scenes from absolute classic movies that should stand up there as the greatest of all time, here is a short list that briefly came to my head.

Sky Rockets in Flight - Anchorman

The reason for me writing this post, this particular scene in the film is the first instance in which we discover that these four wannabe macho guys in fact do possess hearts. In the DVD's blooper reel, they only show one moment of them screwing this scene up, I dread to think how many bloopers of it they left out but the final attempt put together one of the most incredible examples of acting and communication between some of the finest modern comedic actors we have with us now, not to mention some surprisingly beautiful singing. Here is a link as to how it went down

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBQ8XwbXI5A&feature=related

Full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes and we're wearing sunglasses - Blues Brothers

This scene has to be the greatest car chase ever put on film. With what seems like the whole world against them; Jake and Elwood's 'mission from God' has left them with one final task, to pay the taxes of the the building in which they were brought up. They have been through hell and back already but in a way that only the Blues Brothers know how they manage to stay calm and collected when it all comes to a head. Starring Dan Ackroyd and the hugely missed John Belushi the entire film holds cameos from some of the greatest singers, actors and models ever, their finale only needed the Brothers Blue to finish it off though.

Unfortunately I can't find the full real time version but here is a double time version with the added bonus of being to the Benny Hill Theme tune.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1WpzrtQwI0&feature=related

Captain Jack Sparrow - Pirates of the Caribbean

Is there a better entrance for a better character in film history? We are introduced to everyone's favourite pirate in this classic opening moment in which Jack Sparrow is struggling with his waterlogged boat to just about make it into shore. He risks it all and gets rewarded with a damn fine entrance. In what is possibly Johnny Depp's finest ever role, the audience falls in love with Jack Sparrow right from the very first scene - not too much of a task for Depp as he had the entire world's population of females in the palm of his hand anyway, but now all the women want him and all the men want to be him, largely in part to this fantastic entrance. Enjoy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFG6KAd2ITI

A New Year

Lyric: "I close my eyes tight and, think about her, but she's 2000 light years away" - Greenday, 2000 light years away

I have attempted to do a blog once before but never updated it, with the new year (and a bit of inspiration) I have decided to rekindle this idea of a blog, and hopefully post unedited, un-thought-through ramblings once a week. This requires some sort of self discipline which has never really oozed out of me but I'll try my best.

However when it comes to names of people, I will often not name them or maybe use just initials to protect the identity of these people.

The start of every new year always gets people thinking about the past one, and this past one has been good to me. I made the most out of my final months of university, although at the time I didn't want to leave as I attempted to become Student Union President. Unfortunately I came up against a powerhouse of popularity and to be fair I was impressed with how well I did (coming second with only 12 votes between us) considering I was never 'popular' in Uni.

But with the end of University came the end of an era. The summer led to me re-thinking a lot of things in life, mainly because I had so much time on my hands - damn recession giving no jobs to graduates. I booked a flight to Prague, a one way flight, of no returns, and no idea of what was going to happen.

The rough plan was that I'd spend a few months there and if it was going well, not come back. This was the toughest decision I ever had to make especially due to the fact that I had a girlfriend of three years back in Britain, once I had made the decision to stay in Prague, it led to one of the most difficult decisions and conversations I have ever had. We had to break up, and even though at some moments I do rethink the idea and I do still miss her, it was time. I truly believe deep down inside that we'll both be better off in the long run I just hope she soon realises that also.

So these huge decisions have left me in Prague alone, and the first few months here caused a lot of trials and tribulations.

Upon arriving I stayed on couches, with friends and pretty much anywhere I could find. I then thought I'd landed on my feet. I moved into a flat with three great people and thought this could be the start of something good, then it ended. All three ended up leaving before Christmas, and this hit me hard.

While I knew I wanted to be here in Prague all of a sudden, I was left in a flat the size of my house all alone. The other tour guides I work are awesome and I couldn't have asked for better friends, but a lot of these people have friends outside of the tour company and the feelings of lonliness got even deeper, especially with no girlfriend to lean upon, and the only girls I like uninterested I needed to get away.

Home put things into perspective. My return to Wales for Christmas allowed me to re-energise, re-focus and realise that I don't actually have to be constantly surrounded by people, a bad habit I'd put myself into throughout University.

I searched for a new flat and found somewhere to move into for the New Year.

While I am not there yet I have cleared my thinking.

New Years.

So here we are, thats the round about deal of 2009. On the whole pretty good, but some huge setbacks.

But this year I think is going to be interesting. In the past, I have always had something holding my year together; A Levels, holidays, finishing university etc. This year I have nothing. There is literally nothing I need to do.

This has allowed me the opportunity to do some potential travelling. I'm going to Madrid in a few weeks and am excited at the prospect, I also hope to see some friends from home in Italy and maybe go see some cousins in Australia, maybe along with one or two other people. This is essentially my first year of... absolute freedom.

I intend to do a lot of writing during this time, part of the reason why I re-opened this blog, also I'd like to start playing a lot more music again.

But for now I am content as to what is going on. It's different, but it's a little bit exciting as well.

Not all my posts will be like this, some will be pointless anecdotes, reviews questions on life etc. And I suppose everyone who reads it is more than welcome to , but I think for now, I am writing this for myself, just to remind myself of how I'm doing and to put things in perspective. If you guys gain anything from that then, cool, I'm glad about that.

But for now I'm done, I'll try and post again next week - maybe sooner, I'm starting to warm to this idea.

Ciao for now