Edinburgh Was Still Fun

So my computer didn't work, but Edinburgh was still a great experience. Waterhouse was nice enough to meet me at the train station(awwww so cute) and then he took me back to his flat. I wanted to turn my computer on to check if it worked so bad but I abstained in the interest of it maybe working the next day. We then went out to a local pub and got some haggis. It was actually quite delicious despite its awful reputation. Also got some delish October beer at the pub.

Waterhouse then took me out to a bar with his frazbee friends at Edinburgh. They were typical ultimate players ie going out and getting drunk the night before a tournament. It was a fun crowd to be stupid and drunk with as we played probably the simplest game ever. It consisted of everyone sitting around a table with their pints. One person spins a 2p coin. Then they call out someone's name at the table who tries to hit the coin at someone's glass. If your glass is hit, you have to drink while they spin the coin again. Simple and simply sloshing.

The next morning we got up and began a whisky tasting tour. Yay Scotch Whisky! Our travels took us to 6 or 7 different distilleries where we were given the finest whisky in the world. And yes, that IS how you spell whisky. HA! Our favorite place turned out to be something called the Scotch Whisky Experience. This place had bartenders who knew more about whisky than I do about tickle fights. If you don't get that joke I'm sorry for you. Anyway, these bartenders were able to tell us what to try and taste, where the whisky was from, how old it was, really cool stuff like that. Our favorite whisky was found on the island of Islay. It had a smokey flavor to it that we had basically never experienced. We liked it because of just how smooth and rich it was comparably with the whisky based off of fruit flavors.

We took a break midway through to go to Edinburgh Castle. Somehow Waterhouse had never been there yet. Whateves. It was really effing cold up there, with the wind basically ripping through us. Besides that the castle was sweet. It had actually been attacked, which made it that much cooler, and there were some great crowned jewels to admire. We then continued our whisky tour gallantly. Except for the one problem that Waterhouse apparenlty doesn't look 18 and his Michigan ID is flimsy. We went to this one bar where the guy immediately asked for our IDs. I was cleared, but then Waterface handed over his(dumb). The guy took a look at it, looked at Waterhouse, flipped the card around a bit, and said, "its a bit flimsy." Water replied with the brilliant line, "just a normal ID." The guy then said he wasn't going to accept it. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Last thing I thought would happen happened. Waterhouse got denied for not being 18. We did indeed carry on with the trip, going to a few other places to get some more fine spirits in our blood. The whisky was good, we had a great buzz, and it was a wonderful day.

The next day we proceeded to go to frisbee practice with Edinburgh! Woooo! They were surprisingly dominated by a lot of Americans who were studying there as well. Instead of just doing regular ultimate, they played this weird game called gultimate. The way it works is the same as regular ultimate except you have to throw the disc through a big hoop thing and catch it in a certain area to score. Really weird but also a really good workout. While ultimate is supposedly continuous, gultimate actually is continuous. After you score, you just start running again and play. It was fun to play some sort of frazbee though, since I always miss the Imperial College practices due to traveling/class/my internship.

We then went to do some more sight seeing. This included visiting Arthur's Seat. Its an 823 meter high mountain with basically the greatest view ever. We actually saw white caps in the distance. We then went to this famous graveyard/monument place. I cannot for the life of me remember what it was called though. There was a monument to Abraham Lincoln though! That night we then went and watched some American football at a pub and met some Scots. They were awesome football fans. Waterhouse showed me some awesome times in Edinburgh, even though I lost in fantasy football. My journeys then took me to Frankfurt to visit family. Oh, and when I turned my computer on, Saturday morning to be exact, everything started to not work and now it won't turn on. BOOOOO! Frankfurt post will be next!

I DON'T HAVE A COMPUTER!

OK so I obviously haven't blogged in about a billion blog years. That is around 2.5 weeks in the real world. But at least I have been able to understand what life is like without a computer.

It sucks sometimes.

My trips to Edinburgh, Frankfurt, and now Paris, have been a time of no documentation due to this unbearable disability I have recently acquired. If you at any time decided to read my last post, you may have noticed that I was going to see Alex Waterhouse in Edinburgh for the weekend. I took my computer so that 1) I could register for classes and 2) So I could blog about my time. Unfortunately that dream I used to dream ended within the first 5 minutes sitting on the train to Edinburgh.

So I will now, in subsequent posts within the next few days, try to write what happened during my trips to Edinburgh, Frankfurt, and Paris. I will of course not forget the important details of my first week of internship. I will start with Edinburgh.

So it was MAD easy to get to Kings Cross Station to catch the train. I know you all were like pissing your pants to find out if I made it. The train got to the platform early, I got a nice window seat, a cup of coffee, and got ready to use my 15 minutes of free internet. But lets be clear, of the 15 minutes I used, it was pretty much the slowest of the slow. Like worse than Andrew Feierman's in South Africa.

So I was sitting in my nice seat, minding my own beeswax, trying to finish my coffee before the train left the platform, when the unthinkable happened. OK not unthinkable, but unlucky. The guy who has the seat next to me comes to sit down after his long day of whatever the hell he does with a couple of bags. He takes one of his bags off in an ENTIRELY DISPLEASING manner. He basically swings it down off his shoulder and hits my coffee in the process. My coffee then spills on my computer, and I exclaim, "Oh God Damnit!" I try desperately to turn the computer over, get the coffee off the keyboard, hoping that it will all work. The guy says he's sorry profusely, probably not enough considering the end result of this episode, but he seemed sincere. Then I left the computer off for the rest of the trip in order to let it dry out/not short-circuit.

I have to borrow someone else's computer so I'll finish this thang later peeps.

45% Fusion: Wastedhouse Here We Come

This past week and a half has been one of the absolute busiest I've experienced since in London by far. The largest reasoning behind this BS excuse why I haven't blogged lately is because two of the courses I am taking have decided to END. If any of you recall this craziness of a semester and its academic setup, you will recall that I am taking three academic classes, two of which last a whopping 7 weeks. That means a semester's worth of material, six hours of class per week, and whatever the professor decides I need to read/write/watch/talk about.

My Media in Britain class has been probably the biggest joke. For some reason I know more about the themes, class struggles, and characters in TV shows and movies than anyone in the class. Although this is a Comm class in the end, I am deeply disturbed by the inability of Comm majors to actually answer questions the professor asks pertaining to these topics. They even have trouble with the news questions! I mean I know that a Comm major is generally not seen as requiring the same analytical skills as others, but I became increasingly disappointed with how true that stereotype became. I mean, no offense to AU Comm majors fa sho, since I was the only AU person in my class. I just finished a final paper on the characters in The Office UK and The Inbetweeners, which to my knowledge did not increase my own knowledge at all. Other than that I loved the class! A career in analyzing movies and/or TV shows would be easy peasy lemon squeezy.

My British Politics class has been not only a nightmare of sarcasm and cynicism from my elitist British professor, but he also decided to have the last week of class combine a 15 minute presentation and a final. This dude, for a job, sits and reads government documents. If anyone will hate the way I generalize and tend to avoid specifics in papers and presentations, it'll most definitely be him. He also seems to have a style all his own everyday. One thing he loves to do is NOT match all of his clothing. His socks are always especially flashy and out of this world. We're talking Alice and Wonderland crazy colored stuff right here people. Or maybe crazy Wicked Witch of the East socks? I really just cannot decide. Maybe if I thought everything was corrupt except the BBC I would do that as well.

Just finished studying for all that nonsense, which I can only hope will lead to good grades and prosperity. The other activities I have recently participated in over the last week or so included a specific highlight of seeing the Social Network. Overall a wonderful movie that makes it seem like if you make enough money you can do whatever you want and ostracize those closest to you so you can make more money. Yeah...I guess that actually does make sense.

I also got to play in a beginners tournament with the Imperial College Ultimate Team. I showed up bright and early on a Sunday morning, 9 am to be exact, after being a real champ the night before. No I don't have pictures, but yes my eyes were completely bloodshot. The rules were as follows:
1) If you were an experienced player you had to wear a hat on the field
2) There could only be two experienced players on the field at a time
3) Beat really obnoxious British kids who think they're the shit at ultimate

Imperial had two teams at the tournament in order to get everyone the most playing time, and my team was the BOMB. I kind of came late so I was quickly picked up by this cool dude Ming who was basically the first person I met associated with the team. And yes, he's like every other asian handler. Really really good. If anyone would like to know what I looked like in a hat(since I am not a regular hat wearer by far) here it is.

Yep ladies and gents. That is the unforgettable Shay Longtain. I wore my flatmate's AU hat backwards just like that azzhole would have done.

So my team, as I said before, was quite good. Had a couple tall kids who could run and could NOT huck to because that would be silly. We beat Kings College, some college that wore blue, LSE, and some group of kids and really experienced handlers who ran me to shit. It was really fun playing LSE because there was a certain asian handler who thought he was awesome but could have used some serious work. After watching him throw the dumbest fakes I have ever seen, I decided to match up on him and shut his British butt down. It was actually a lot of fun to have some sort of challenge to match up against, but I think I might have overestimated the challenge. It was fun to beat him up line by 10 yards though!

The next most awesome game came from playing in the finals of the tournament. We were playing a UCL team, which meant I really really needed to win. Michelle is going to UCL so it would be extremely embarrassing to lose to them at all. Long story shorter, it was a game of comebacks. We go up 4-0 right off the bat with some nice quick scores. They then proceed to go up 7-4. Omg I was so mad. One point I was guarding this kid, their main handler, and I called a pick. The play continued since no one else knew what to do, and one throw later my guy dropped the disc. He proceeded to argue that it was not a turn because I called the pick, which then distracted him from catching the disc. He was wrong and I proceeded to teach him a lesson in the rule book(it felt so awesome to tell a Brit he was wrong!). So we brought it back to 7-7. That meant universe point. There were like 4 turns per team in the point, and in the end we lost. AAAaaaaaargh!!!!! Luckily Michelle is nice so she didn't rub it in TOO much.

The real exciting stuff I am doing is traveling! This week coming up is my fall break! That means I'm going to Edinburgh to visit Waterhouse after class tomorrow, and then I am going to visit my family in Frankfurt on Monday night for the rest of the break. I am super super psyched for both of these activities and cannot wait to get everything underway after my final tomorrow morning. I'll try to update and let everyone know how plan Wastedhouse is coming on Sunday. I secured an agreement from that dude to do a scotch whisky distillery tour on Saturday, so I am real excited to do something with this dude that involves drinking hard liquors. Needless to say this will be no Tenley experience. On that note, peace out homes. I gotta get some sleep, pack, get on a train, and start edinburgh chillin'.

Oh, and about the 45% fusion figure. I went to The Globe Theatre the other day, and my classes are kind of signaling a halfway point in the program. I also think Iran would be really jealous at my ability to fuse with the culture, so 45% is a perfect number(and yes that means it was arbitrarily and randomly decided upon).

Joe Joe Joe Joe Joe Waterhouse!