Second Shot

And now, you’ll soon know someone famous!

Much like those applicants discarded at the early stages of the X-Factor, I’ll be one of the joke ones.

See you on the other side (of your TV).

Inspiration hit us when Ting showed me the Dot to Date calendar rejects (by Dan Usiskin) that were being sent out, of which we received ones of the Millenium Dome, Westminster/Big Ben, and St Paul’s Cathedral.

Without the full form of the Dome present it was easy to visuallise some else entirely, especially when you see it upside down. And that is exactly what we did.

Combining our (lack of) cinematic knowledge, we came up with “Independance Day: London”; the (now classic) climatic scene has been recreated with London architecture and with the aliens showing far greater technological knowhow than previously, as they take the Millenium Dome for a ride. See other people’s (and ours!) handiwork here.

Ben Folds, or actually the Cappella groups, does it again with University A Cappella.

Go get it and the rest of his music.

Michael ‘where’s my real face gone?’ Jackson has been pronounced dead (by the LA Times) after a cardiac arrest. How true this is has yet to be substantiated by the doctors’ announcement, but either he’s got a double (which I’m sure he probably has) or he really is dead.

He is, indeed, HIStory.

Guffaw, guffaw!! How do I think of these amazing one-liners?!

Edit:
Yep, he’s dead now.
For shame…

Back-posting this as, for some reason, I forgot to. Actually, maybe I didn’t, can’t remember; might have been because I was busy and having far too much fun. It was a good night, actually.

Ting took me to Ronnie Scott’s in Soho for an evening of dining and live jazz music accompaniment (headlined by Andy Sheppard Quintet). It was her birthday present to me, which was rather sweet, and I’ve something lined up for her’s in July.

As for the jazz club, you definitely have to go there – it’s such a lovely setup; an intimate place with seating surrounding a small centre stage. The seats to the sides were like tiered lecture theatre benches, and standard two- and four- seat tables are found in the centre.

Great music, lovely food, and an evening made better with Ting.
x

Whoo whee!  I might have to watch The Apprentice a bit more…

The delights of Toronto were to be had by myself and Dan at the expense of a pump company who have been specified within one of our projects. That, and building a good rapport with them, of course. Instead of me, it was supposed to be John but he had already made other holiday arrangements. Then it should have been Xinyi but visa issues grounded her. So it fell to me to pick up the freebie holiday and I’m glad I did.

I’ve been to Toronto before but this was different than going with the family. Although the idea was to attend a day-and-half of seminars on Thursday and Friday (which we did, of course), we stayed until Sunday (in fact, Monday – you’ll read why later) and made the most of our trip there. Who really wants to travel solely for seminars and bugger off back to miserable UK. Certainly not us, and we met up with some decent people from other departments of the pump company. But boy, was it knackering (in a good way) and all those buffets certainly do my waist line any good. It felt like all we were doing was eating and travelling between places.

Meeting Mitch and Scott from our Toronto office was our extracurricular task whilst away on the jolly – great guys, they were. Although we never managed to have a walk around the office (that is on the water front of Lake Ontario!), seeing the office reception was pretty jaw-dropping in itself (compared to ours – and ours is not that bad!).

A quick(!) visit to CN Tower was had on Friday before we ventured to a local grill and sports bar, played some pool and fussball, and got chatting to a couple of ridiculously good-looking waitresses (who kept distracting me and hence contributing to my poor performance at fussball… honest!). In fact, I won’t even bother to mention the other ridiculous number of fantastic looking ladies out there – I might have to take a secondment.

We got a drenching on Saturday thanks to a visit through the mist of Niagara Falls (I think my camera came out drier than we did), a nauseating view over the restaurant balcony in the Sheraton Hotel, and then a motion-sickness-inducing dinner in the revolving restaurant in the CN Tower. I think the others were fine but for me, looking down to cut food knowing you’re moving (but can’t see it) doesn’t make for the best environment. The night-time view was something else, though.

And come Sunday, our last day there, we each went for a stroll our separate ways. Nothing planned, except Dan phones up to ask if Keith (our pump company representative who had been taking us out) had phoned. Nope. Happens that Keith has another $600 of expenses that need using up. So what does he do? Checks through the leaflets at the concierge desk before asking them “Do you do helicopter tours?”

So, having seen the skyscraper-ridden city from the ground, from ‘mid-level’ at the CN Tower, we’re now viewing down upon the city on a short helicopter tour above (nearly) everything. And – fucking hell! – it was incredibly awesome. I’ve been on a helicopter ride down the Grand Canyon, but seeing a huge, huge city like it was a postcard view is something else. Completely and totally. I know it’s easy for me to say, what with it being an all-expenses paid holiday – but you really have to do something like this. And sunny Sunday Toronto is probably as good as any other city to start.

Unfortunately, it didn’t quite end on this high. Air Canada oversold the number of seats on our plane, we turned up later than we probably should have, and we were left stranded in Toronto without a flight until 12-hours later for a morning departure. Not too happy, knackered from a full five days of events, travelling and fun, we got a compensated hotel room and a decently sized air travel voucher. Lost a whole day but oh well.

Still, I highly recommend that you go visit. It’s a really friendly place although a little quiet at night-time for those of you looking from some after-dark fun. But you can’t beat having five-straight days of sunny 23-degree-Celsius weather; I hope that’s made you jealous.