Back from England

So I am back in Barcelona today after 9 days in England. Barcelona almost felt like returning to place from a distant memory when I walked out of the airport so I guess it means it have been an eventful week.

Wolverhampton

Started out with some LUGRadio live and and paintball fun in Wolverhampton. It was great to meet people like Jono, Bastien, Rob and Ronald again. The LUGRadio team had done a good job on the conference and I think everyone there had a good time.

The Sunday paintball session was quite fun although some of the bruises I aquired can still be felt :). Also managed to guilt Jono into continue playing after he tried to wimper out of the afternoon session.

Guildford

The on Sunday evening it was down to Guildford to visit with Bastien for a few days. Had great time and also managed to get a haircut at Bastien’s local resturant. I think Bastien felt the haircut was vanity based more than need based, and I am not sure I can argue to strong against it. Went out in Guildford on Monday evening trying to local beverage and peeking at the local life in realtime. We went into London the day after and met up with Ross and some local debianites. Ate a splendid meal at Wagamama, a Japanese Noodle resturant.

Maidenhead

Leaving Guildford to go to Maidenhead on (not as virgin territory as the name might imply) I was put on the wrong train, cost me about an extra hours worth of traveltime. Also decided that the London train setup is a confusing mess. Seems they have 4-5 ‘main’ train stations. Anyway Julia met me at the Maidenhead trainstation and we headed back to her house before going out for dinner at the local italian resturant.

Cambridge
Went on a daytrip to Cambridge on Thursday to visit with Michael Meeks and family. Had a great time and it was wonderful to catch up with Michael again. Started to grow a little tired of slow brittish trains though. Back to Maidenhead in the evening where Julia had prepared dinner for me and two friends of hers from New Zealand. Seems moving to England for a while is a typical New Zealand thing as the two girls, like Julia, and another friend of hers called Amy who I met later in the week had all gone to Univeristy together and they where all now living or preparing to live in England.

Friday turned out to be a slow and thus relaxing day. A meeting I had set up got cancelled so I wandered abit around London and did a little shopping. Also went to see War of the Worlds which wasn’t to bad. Don’t understand how people can spend time shopping though, after 30 minutes at the first store I went into (happened to be the GAP) I had already spent more money than I had planned too. Chilled out in Maidenhead during the evening reading a book Bastien had lent me.

Saturday I met up with Julia and her friend Amy close to Kew Gardens. Ended up eathing lunch there before stopping by Amy’s place for Julia to pick up some stuff before going downtown London to a greek resturant to meet up with Michael , another common friend from the Borneo trip. Eat some great food and drank quite a bit of greek beer.

Sunday was going home day, and me and Julia took a walk around Maidenhead as my airplane was leaving relativly late in the evening. Told Julia how I felt about her in what I guess could have been used as a scene in a chick-flick, only problem was that the result wasn’t as desirable as one could have wished. To follow up on the chick-flick theme I guess they stopped making scripts like that in the sixties or something as the marketing people discovered the audience wanted happy endings. Wasn’t all bad I guess, will at least let me feel I made a good attempt, and with these things its always the things you didn’t do you regret.

Anyway back to the house and grab my stuff before heading off to the airport. Turned out 3,5 hours wasn’t enough time for taking the trains from Maidenhead to Gatwick, so I ended the day with coughing up 200 £ for a new ticket and a hotelroom for the night..