(no subject)
So, I had a big weekend and I didn’t go to work yesterday, I was really exhausted and thought I deserved a day off. When I got back to work today I expected my bosses to be a bit annoyed at me (I was supposed to take minutes (actually, *action points*) at their meeting yesterday, last time I did it, it was super long, hot, and right before lunch so I was hungry and kept falling asleep), but they were just hoping I was better and told me that I’ve been working too hard!! Man, this country is silly.
I had a really nice weekend. My mother and sister and I exchanged more emails on Friday and got sorted out a bit, and with my sister’s helpful wisdom she made me see that my mom isn’t trying to be insulting, she is just completely devoid of tact and I should just pay no mind to most of the things she says. So, being tired of feeling like fighting, I just sent my mom some emails telling her the things I thought she would like to hear and eventually we came to the point of “ok that’s what family is about, loving each other no matter what.” So, I guess that’s ok. They called me last night and we had a good talk despite last week’s kickoff. I guess the thing that bothers me the most is that I feel like even if they “support” our relationship, they will always see it as a bit tainted because we live together. Which I don’t really think is fair, it really makes no difference. We still would have spent every night together had we lived apart. And they know that living together or not living together makes no difference in what we do, they just can’t justify thinking that I’m not in an “adult relationship” if we live together.
Anyway, Mercedes, my flatmate from Dublin, and her friends Susie and Xandro came to visit me this weekend. they got in on Friday evening pretty late, so Clinton and I met them at the station and took them home to drop their stuff then we had a few beers at the RL, our friendly neighborhood front yard pub. We sat in the beer garden and talked and had a nice time catching up, and the people at the table next to ours were smoking a reefer and having a good time as well. Too bad they didn’t share.
Saturday we got up early to go around town. We went to the uni first and wandered around, we didn’t find the visitor’s center so we saw a building that was open and wandered in. We followed some people up some stairs, and ended up wandering into this beautiful old library type room that had some sort of alumni brunch going on. As we walked in, the lady at the door told us to queue to the right side because that line was shorter. So we did, and we had lunch complements of the University of Manchester Alumni Association. It was quite good, and wonderfully free!
From there we walked into town and visited the library and then the town hall. There was a German market going on in the square in front of the town hall, so we wandered around and looked at all the sweets stands, the beer houses, and lots of jewelry and trinkets. From there we went to Affleck’s Palace, which is about 5 floors of vintage / punk / goth / second hand shops. We wandered around for a while there, then went up to the top floor café and watched the first half of the England game (World Cup). At half time we went to the pub across the street and watched the rest there. Then we went back to the German market, got some massive bratwurst and drinks and walked to the park near Sports Café to eat and lay in the grass and enjoy the sunshine. It was really hot this weekend, and I even got a bit of sunburn on my neck and shoulders!! Amazing, never thought that would happen in Manchester. Clinton met us there during his break (poor guy, he had to work 10am - 5pm, then 9pm - 3am) and we hung out in the park and went to have a few pints at the Cornerhouse, which is our favorite café / pub / gallery / cinema. After he left, I took the Spaniards to Sinclair’s, which is a pub that’s been around for hundreds (literally) of years. 10 years ago, the IRA bombed Manchester and everything around Sinclair’s and the neighboring pub, Wellington’s, was completely destroyed, but the two pubs were left completely untouched. It’s really amazing, they have pictures of all the destruction inside the pub on the 1st floor. Later, Susan, Rachel and Ian met us and while I tried to take them to a place called Tiger Lounge, it has this funny habit of always being a different place than when I remember it, so I couldn’t find it, and I took them to the Thirsty Scholar instead. We sat on the patio and had a few drinks, then went home to rest up for another big day.
Sunday we got up early again and took the tram out to Old Trafford, to take a tour of the Manchester United Football grounds. I don’t support Man U (Clinton would dump me - it’s Liverpool for us), but it was really incredibly interesting. The stadium holds about 70,000 fans. Season tickets are thousands of pounds, and season tickets for a box are upwards of £20,000. The pitch (field) is heated in the winter, so they have 18.5 miles of pipe running underneath the pitch that they pump hot water through, 24/7 throughout the winter. Guess how much that costs an hour? £100,000 per hour, to heat a football pitch. Take a moment and let that sink in. If you haven’t vomited from all the waste of that, I’m not sure how you managed.
We got to tour the player’s lounge (surprisingly not posh) and the locker room (mmm, where Beckham used to sit, mmm, Jacuzzi, mmm), sit in the stands, and walk through the player’s tunnel. It was pretty cool. The stadium got bombed in the war and was completely destroyed, but when they were clearing out the rubble, they found the player’s tunnel completely in tact, so they saved it, and still use the original player’s tunnel. Cool.
Afterwards we met Clinton and had dinner, and my silly Spanish friends headed back to Dublin. Clinton and I went to see X-Men 3. It was pretty entertaining, and didn’t quite end as expected, but I guess it was ok.
Yesterday we slept in (yay for lying out of work), then went to the RL to watch the Australia game. Australia pulled out a surprise 3-1 win over Japan, scoring all 3 points in the last 10 minutes. It was very exciting, and Clinton nearly knocked our table over with joy. We bopped home to make some dinner, then came back to watch the America game, which we sadly lost (really badly) to Czech Republic. It was very different, but Clinton kept telling me, “It’s ok, you’re Australian now, be happy, we won!” What a goof. So we went home and hung his Australian flag (somebody he works with gave it to him, or something) out of the window.
It was a good weekend, but in many ways it reinforced the fact that I’m really ready to leave Manchester. This city has been fun, but really it’s only been my friends. There’s heaps of good pubs and clubs and lounges, but the city itself is beginning to wear on me. It feels like living in Gotham City, sort of (Ok, yes, I have been watching Batman a lot). The violence here is out of control. I spoke in my last emails about all the problems with knives and people getting stabbed. Well, on Saturday during the England game (which they WON, so they should have been happy), they were showing the game on a big TV out in Exchange Square, hundreds of people gathered there to watch, and there were multiple stabbings there, mostly Man City v. Man United fans. As we were walking from the pub to the town hall, we saw several men with their heads cut up and bleeding all over the place. A block down the street from sports café, as we were walking past, there was a body-sized bloodstain on the sidewalk covered in sand. Later we found out that 2 men had been stabbed there, and one man got his ear bitten off. Leaving the pub on Saturday evening, we passed guys sitting on the sidewalks by the library with t-shirts covered in blood. Can you imagine what would have ensued if England lost on Saturday? I’ll definitely be pulling for Sweden on the 20th, but in secret, because I think I’d be stabbed if I do it openly.
For those of you who asked what a scally is, a scally is the lowest form of low, complete white trash, scum, refuse, degenerates. If they have jobs, they don’t do any work for them, they are violent, loud, and classless (hey, they’re English). You see the scally birds (girls) walking around, maybe anywhere from 15 to 20 years old, pushing their babies in prams. The scally guys walk around in their track suit bottoms, oversized t-shirts, greasy hair, and hands down their pants. The thing that is so horrible about scallies, besides the fact that if they’d just make minimal effort they could better themselves greatly, yet they don’t do it, is the fact that they fight dirty. I would feel more comfortable walking the streets of Compton in a bikini at 2am than I would walking through the streets of Salford fully clothed with two male escorts in the middle of the day. They fight for no reason, and they pick up anything they can to beat people with. Beer bottles, pool cues, pitchers, and they all carry knives. They have no qualms with hitting women (Clinton saw a scally guy punch two girls in the face at sports café a few weeks ago). They have absolutely no respect for humanity.
Some people say that maybe it’s the fact that the English controlled the world for so long that gives them the idea that they can go around and do whatever the fuck they want. I don’t know, but I do know that I’m ready to leave. I’d like to go to Scotland and Wales, but I won’t be sad if I never return to England. It is not the place for me.
Tonight we have another ozzie guy coming to look at the spare room, possibly moving in July 1st until September. He is 23 and seemed very nice on the phone. Though we really don’t want to have someone else move in, we have to, and that’s that. So hopefully he will like it and we will like him, and then that will be one thing to check off the “list of shit to get done before we move.”
We’ve been listening to our Swedish CD off and on, and it’s still really funny for me to hear Clinton try to say things in Swedish with his Australian accent. But then I remind myself that I sound just as retarded.
I’m going to Dublin this weekend to visit my friends and get my things that I left there. Mercedes got a job teaching Spanish at a high school in Nebraska (yeah, random, but cool) so she will be leaving Dublin next week and going back to Spain for the rest of the summer. If I can find a cheap flight, I might try to visit her in Madrid. However, since I will be going to Dublin now, while my visa is still valid, I’ll have to leave the country again on the 28th and come back in as a tourist. If Michaela is in Sweden at that point, I’ll go there for a few days or a week to get started looking for jobs, and if she’s not (and maybe anyway, if I can work it out), I’ll just see if there are really cheap flights to interesting cities and go for a few days on a mini holiday. I’d actually really like to do that, just to see somewhere different. It sucks that Clinton couldn’t come with me, but it might be kind of fun to go solo. Although, he is getting tickets for his favorite band (Brian Jonestown Massacre) because they are playing here on the 30th of June, and I’d like to go to that, so I’m not sure what that will do for my trip. I suppose I might just have to miss out on the concert, but we’ll see. I’m going to book all those flights this week, along with my flight home to America for a visit in August. I’ll be home for about 2 weeks in the beginning of august, so if any of you happen to be around, I’d love to see you.
I’m incredibly tired today, and again it was a major struggle to get out of bed this morning. After the footie yesterday we went to the store to get stuff for dinner and decided it would be a good idea to get a bottle of whiskey and some cola. As those things are very expensive here, we went to the Lidl, which has cheap imitation / foreign versions of everything, and got some strange off brand bottle of bourbon for ¼ of the price of JD, and 2L of “Freeway Cola” for 39p. it was actually surprisingly normal tasting, though I felt a little off so I only had a little.
I woke up around 6 to a really loud chirping noise, and I didn’t have my glasses on but I saw something fly across the room. I found my glasses and it was a little tiny baby (sort of) bird, flying around our room. It landed in my shoes, so I got up and sat on the floor near it (after opening the curtains so he could see the open window). I wish I had taken a picture of it, he was so cute! I reached out and he even let me touch his feathers, then flew and sat on the plant in the window sill. I tried to get him to jump on my hand, I nudged him towards it, and patted him, and he wouldn’t let go of the plant. So I took the plant and held it out the window so he could see how to fly away and off he flew. It was really funny, I guess that’s bound to happen when you leave all the windows open all night! What a silly little bird. Clinton just watched me play with the bird for about 5 minutes, I think he thinks I’m a little bit crazy. After the match yesterday at the RL we were sitting in the beer garden and there was a kitty and when I went nuts over it and begged yet again to get a kitten, he finally gave in with a compromise that if we live with Michaela in Sweden and she plans to stay there and wouldn’t mind keeping it after we have to leave, we can get a kitty. Michaela, I doubt you’d really want to take care of a cat, so I doubt it will happen, and cats are expensive little creatures. It would be cool, but I won’t push it. I really just do it because it’s nice to know that I’m wearing him down slowly. I heard about this program where you can take in elderly people’s pets while they are sick and in the hospital, then you give them back when they get better. I think it’s a super idea, but he says I’d get too attached and would get really upset every time I had to give one back. Humph.
Cripes, it’s only 2.00. But, 2 of the books I reserved at the library are in, so I will pick those up after work today, then go home and clean up so hopefully this guy will want to move in and be cool. The extra money would be really nice, especially since I have no more job after June 28th.
I had a really nice weekend. My mother and sister and I exchanged more emails on Friday and got sorted out a bit, and with my sister’s helpful wisdom she made me see that my mom isn’t trying to be insulting, she is just completely devoid of tact and I should just pay no mind to most of the things she says. So, being tired of feeling like fighting, I just sent my mom some emails telling her the things I thought she would like to hear and eventually we came to the point of “ok that’s what family is about, loving each other no matter what.” So, I guess that’s ok. They called me last night and we had a good talk despite last week’s kickoff. I guess the thing that bothers me the most is that I feel like even if they “support” our relationship, they will always see it as a bit tainted because we live together. Which I don’t really think is fair, it really makes no difference. We still would have spent every night together had we lived apart. And they know that living together or not living together makes no difference in what we do, they just can’t justify thinking that I’m not in an “adult relationship” if we live together.
Anyway, Mercedes, my flatmate from Dublin, and her friends Susie and Xandro came to visit me this weekend. they got in on Friday evening pretty late, so Clinton and I met them at the station and took them home to drop their stuff then we had a few beers at the RL, our friendly neighborhood front yard pub. We sat in the beer garden and talked and had a nice time catching up, and the people at the table next to ours were smoking a reefer and having a good time as well. Too bad they didn’t share.
Saturday we got up early to go around town. We went to the uni first and wandered around, we didn’t find the visitor’s center so we saw a building that was open and wandered in. We followed some people up some stairs, and ended up wandering into this beautiful old library type room that had some sort of alumni brunch going on. As we walked in, the lady at the door told us to queue to the right side because that line was shorter. So we did, and we had lunch complements of the University of Manchester Alumni Association. It was quite good, and wonderfully free!
From there we walked into town and visited the library and then the town hall. There was a German market going on in the square in front of the town hall, so we wandered around and looked at all the sweets stands, the beer houses, and lots of jewelry and trinkets. From there we went to Affleck’s Palace, which is about 5 floors of vintage / punk / goth / second hand shops. We wandered around for a while there, then went up to the top floor café and watched the first half of the England game (World Cup). At half time we went to the pub across the street and watched the rest there. Then we went back to the German market, got some massive bratwurst and drinks and walked to the park near Sports Café to eat and lay in the grass and enjoy the sunshine. It was really hot this weekend, and I even got a bit of sunburn on my neck and shoulders!! Amazing, never thought that would happen in Manchester. Clinton met us there during his break (poor guy, he had to work 10am - 5pm, then 9pm - 3am) and we hung out in the park and went to have a few pints at the Cornerhouse, which is our favorite café / pub / gallery / cinema. After he left, I took the Spaniards to Sinclair’s, which is a pub that’s been around for hundreds (literally) of years. 10 years ago, the IRA bombed Manchester and everything around Sinclair’s and the neighboring pub, Wellington’s, was completely destroyed, but the two pubs were left completely untouched. It’s really amazing, they have pictures of all the destruction inside the pub on the 1st floor. Later, Susan, Rachel and Ian met us and while I tried to take them to a place called Tiger Lounge, it has this funny habit of always being a different place than when I remember it, so I couldn’t find it, and I took them to the Thirsty Scholar instead. We sat on the patio and had a few drinks, then went home to rest up for another big day.
Sunday we got up early again and took the tram out to Old Trafford, to take a tour of the Manchester United Football grounds. I don’t support Man U (Clinton would dump me - it’s Liverpool for us), but it was really incredibly interesting. The stadium holds about 70,000 fans. Season tickets are thousands of pounds, and season tickets for a box are upwards of £20,000. The pitch (field) is heated in the winter, so they have 18.5 miles of pipe running underneath the pitch that they pump hot water through, 24/7 throughout the winter. Guess how much that costs an hour? £100,000 per hour, to heat a football pitch. Take a moment and let that sink in. If you haven’t vomited from all the waste of that, I’m not sure how you managed.
We got to tour the player’s lounge (surprisingly not posh) and the locker room (mmm, where Beckham used to sit, mmm, Jacuzzi, mmm), sit in the stands, and walk through the player’s tunnel. It was pretty cool. The stadium got bombed in the war and was completely destroyed, but when they were clearing out the rubble, they found the player’s tunnel completely in tact, so they saved it, and still use the original player’s tunnel. Cool.
Afterwards we met Clinton and had dinner, and my silly Spanish friends headed back to Dublin. Clinton and I went to see X-Men 3. It was pretty entertaining, and didn’t quite end as expected, but I guess it was ok.
Yesterday we slept in (yay for lying out of work), then went to the RL to watch the Australia game. Australia pulled out a surprise 3-1 win over Japan, scoring all 3 points in the last 10 minutes. It was very exciting, and Clinton nearly knocked our table over with joy. We bopped home to make some dinner, then came back to watch the America game, which we sadly lost (really badly) to Czech Republic. It was very different, but Clinton kept telling me, “It’s ok, you’re Australian now, be happy, we won!” What a goof. So we went home and hung his Australian flag (somebody he works with gave it to him, or something) out of the window.
It was a good weekend, but in many ways it reinforced the fact that I’m really ready to leave Manchester. This city has been fun, but really it’s only been my friends. There’s heaps of good pubs and clubs and lounges, but the city itself is beginning to wear on me. It feels like living in Gotham City, sort of (Ok, yes, I have been watching Batman a lot). The violence here is out of control. I spoke in my last emails about all the problems with knives and people getting stabbed. Well, on Saturday during the England game (which they WON, so they should have been happy), they were showing the game on a big TV out in Exchange Square, hundreds of people gathered there to watch, and there were multiple stabbings there, mostly Man City v. Man United fans. As we were walking from the pub to the town hall, we saw several men with their heads cut up and bleeding all over the place. A block down the street from sports café, as we were walking past, there was a body-sized bloodstain on the sidewalk covered in sand. Later we found out that 2 men had been stabbed there, and one man got his ear bitten off. Leaving the pub on Saturday evening, we passed guys sitting on the sidewalks by the library with t-shirts covered in blood. Can you imagine what would have ensued if England lost on Saturday? I’ll definitely be pulling for Sweden on the 20th, but in secret, because I think I’d be stabbed if I do it openly.
For those of you who asked what a scally is, a scally is the lowest form of low, complete white trash, scum, refuse, degenerates. If they have jobs, they don’t do any work for them, they are violent, loud, and classless (hey, they’re English). You see the scally birds (girls) walking around, maybe anywhere from 15 to 20 years old, pushing their babies in prams. The scally guys walk around in their track suit bottoms, oversized t-shirts, greasy hair, and hands down their pants. The thing that is so horrible about scallies, besides the fact that if they’d just make minimal effort they could better themselves greatly, yet they don’t do it, is the fact that they fight dirty. I would feel more comfortable walking the streets of Compton in a bikini at 2am than I would walking through the streets of Salford fully clothed with two male escorts in the middle of the day. They fight for no reason, and they pick up anything they can to beat people with. Beer bottles, pool cues, pitchers, and they all carry knives. They have no qualms with hitting women (Clinton saw a scally guy punch two girls in the face at sports café a few weeks ago). They have absolutely no respect for humanity.
Some people say that maybe it’s the fact that the English controlled the world for so long that gives them the idea that they can go around and do whatever the fuck they want. I don’t know, but I do know that I’m ready to leave. I’d like to go to Scotland and Wales, but I won’t be sad if I never return to England. It is not the place for me.
Tonight we have another ozzie guy coming to look at the spare room, possibly moving in July 1st until September. He is 23 and seemed very nice on the phone. Though we really don’t want to have someone else move in, we have to, and that’s that. So hopefully he will like it and we will like him, and then that will be one thing to check off the “list of shit to get done before we move.”
We’ve been listening to our Swedish CD off and on, and it’s still really funny for me to hear Clinton try to say things in Swedish with his Australian accent. But then I remind myself that I sound just as retarded.
I’m going to Dublin this weekend to visit my friends and get my things that I left there. Mercedes got a job teaching Spanish at a high school in Nebraska (yeah, random, but cool) so she will be leaving Dublin next week and going back to Spain for the rest of the summer. If I can find a cheap flight, I might try to visit her in Madrid. However, since I will be going to Dublin now, while my visa is still valid, I’ll have to leave the country again on the 28th and come back in as a tourist. If Michaela is in Sweden at that point, I’ll go there for a few days or a week to get started looking for jobs, and if she’s not (and maybe anyway, if I can work it out), I’ll just see if there are really cheap flights to interesting cities and go for a few days on a mini holiday. I’d actually really like to do that, just to see somewhere different. It sucks that Clinton couldn’t come with me, but it might be kind of fun to go solo. Although, he is getting tickets for his favorite band (Brian Jonestown Massacre) because they are playing here on the 30th of June, and I’d like to go to that, so I’m not sure what that will do for my trip. I suppose I might just have to miss out on the concert, but we’ll see. I’m going to book all those flights this week, along with my flight home to America for a visit in August. I’ll be home for about 2 weeks in the beginning of august, so if any of you happen to be around, I’d love to see you.
I’m incredibly tired today, and again it was a major struggle to get out of bed this morning. After the footie yesterday we went to the store to get stuff for dinner and decided it would be a good idea to get a bottle of whiskey and some cola. As those things are very expensive here, we went to the Lidl, which has cheap imitation / foreign versions of everything, and got some strange off brand bottle of bourbon for ¼ of the price of JD, and 2L of “Freeway Cola” for 39p. it was actually surprisingly normal tasting, though I felt a little off so I only had a little.
I woke up around 6 to a really loud chirping noise, and I didn’t have my glasses on but I saw something fly across the room. I found my glasses and it was a little tiny baby (sort of) bird, flying around our room. It landed in my shoes, so I got up and sat on the floor near it (after opening the curtains so he could see the open window). I wish I had taken a picture of it, he was so cute! I reached out and he even let me touch his feathers, then flew and sat on the plant in the window sill. I tried to get him to jump on my hand, I nudged him towards it, and patted him, and he wouldn’t let go of the plant. So I took the plant and held it out the window so he could see how to fly away and off he flew. It was really funny, I guess that’s bound to happen when you leave all the windows open all night! What a silly little bird. Clinton just watched me play with the bird for about 5 minutes, I think he thinks I’m a little bit crazy. After the match yesterday at the RL we were sitting in the beer garden and there was a kitty and when I went nuts over it and begged yet again to get a kitten, he finally gave in with a compromise that if we live with Michaela in Sweden and she plans to stay there and wouldn’t mind keeping it after we have to leave, we can get a kitty. Michaela, I doubt you’d really want to take care of a cat, so I doubt it will happen, and cats are expensive little creatures. It would be cool, but I won’t push it. I really just do it because it’s nice to know that I’m wearing him down slowly. I heard about this program where you can take in elderly people’s pets while they are sick and in the hospital, then you give them back when they get better. I think it’s a super idea, but he says I’d get too attached and would get really upset every time I had to give one back. Humph.
Cripes, it’s only 2.00. But, 2 of the books I reserved at the library are in, so I will pick those up after work today, then go home and clean up so hopefully this guy will want to move in and be cool. The extra money would be really nice, especially since I have no more job after June 28th.