Any Colour You Like

Back in Bristol means back to the flat antics. Everyone has not always been around but there has been enough coming and going to make for a very interesting few days. It seems we have now found a final two people to fill the house too.

First things: Josh seems to have passed his resits which is a big relief. As a consequence he has been going hyper with planning fun things for us. It seems I will be going canoeing/camping for a few days and then going to Amsterdam with the electrical engineering crew plus flatmates past and present. Somewhere in amongst all of that I need to go to London and see Orsi’s and Dave’s new place. And I need to organise my kite society for next year. And I need to get a significant amount of work done.

There has been lots of flat cooking which has been fun and very much missed over the last three weeks – Josh’s orange curry is still legendary and Laurence pulled out the most epic pie in the world three days ago. I don’t know where he got his housewife streak from but it was an epic 2.5hr effort!

Also had dinner plus banter with the 5th year EngDes people which was great fun. Some brilliant stories about engines falling out of cars and adventures in Italy and the annoyances of my course. There has been ice skating and there has been the ‘Propaganda Mini Festival’ at Syndicate. There has been Terry Pratchett movie watching (I didn’t even know there were any!), and there have been a few episodes of tying teddy bears to kites. And it has been fantastic.

Probably best if term doesn’t start tooo soon =)

Yesterday was an interesting mix. We decided to do a walking tour of Shinjuku tower block district but didn’t realise that tower blocks are somewhat closed on Saturdays. We therefore tragically missed out on the toilet museum(!), the Pentax museum and the tokyo metropolitan government offices.

Worlds largest grandfather clock =)

We did on the other hand get to see a world record breaking 29m tall grandfather clock, weaseled our way up to the 51st floor of another skyscraper and had an exquisite sandwich in a very expensive deli.

After that was the Japanese sword museam which was very cool. They tried their best to explain the metalurgy to me but I think some extra research may be needed. There is certainly some eutectic martensitic equilibrium stuff going on, along with a soft springy core and a hard outer blade. Did I mention that as well as a zen garden I will be requiring a katana sword for my future house?

Then there was Roppongi – a legendary district in Tokyo we had heard so much about. Mostly bad stuff obviously. But it had to be sampled for ourselves. So the first bar was Gas Panic and we were their first happy hour customers which made the bar staff very happy. Dave came to suspect it was a gay bar, but with no one else about we had no way of telling. We made a hasty exit none the less.

Next up was Propoganda which does not share anything in common with Friday nights at the academy in brizzle. Instead it was a quite busy pretty cool cocktail bar on the second floor. From there we nipped over to Kingston Jamaca to finish the night.

This morning we stumbled across some weird dance/marshal arts festival parade thingy in Harajuku. Nice costumes, funny slippers and massive flags. Everyone also seemed to have some Japanese version of castenets on the go. I am now sitting in Tokyo’s pizza express as I thought it was my duty do a comparasson with the one in corn street Bristol. For my pizza conneseur friend: the dough is more spongy than back home, and there is no theo favourita. The pizzas also seem to be smaller so no real competition from overseas!

Went to the fish market last night and it was awesome. You just point at the fish you want and they bbq it for you right away. Pretty cheap too =) We then went to the only bar in the place that sells beer in a pint glass and on to this weird local night club with a great live band. It seems you can have a night out in essaouira after all.

A good name for a night I think. Once again Orsolya was annoying enough to come to Bristol and then tell me what is going on and where we should be going. Unfortunately she was also right again – the Golden Lion was a fun place with lots of ‘real’ people, the live band were great and I had no idea DJ-ing was so complicated. It is good to see the resurgence of 7″s but I can’t help squirm when they scratch them (so much needle abuse). I will have to venture out of the student bubble more often I think…

It was a noticeable return to studendom for me. The house was in a state (they managed to break two windows over christmas), the banter returned and the beer fridge was raided before a start-of-term night out. Unfortunately we decided to go to Versa. Please remind me not to bother if I ever suggest going again. And even that was a warm, sticky and somewhat distasteful welcome back to Bristol. We still have no idea how Adam managed to get a massive graze across his forehead, but I can easily imagine a few typical scenarios involving harassment, eviction and fights with the bouncers. Still, I have stuck it out for nearly four years now so the extra year and a bit shouldn’t be too hard =)

Josh and me