Oh day of movies three.

Which was yesterday. I came back from London on Friday, and since the while trip put quite a drain on my resources I was forced to find a non-costly way to fill my time. Luckily, I have a monthly-renewed subscription to the public transport, a direct bus-connection to the nearest cinema, and a subscription to that one as well, so I can go and watch movies without any additional monetary strain. And, since my roommate found herself in the same situation, I didn’t have to go alone either. Shibby.

We watched three movies that had some been some time coming in watching. Mission Impossible 3, The DaVinci Code, and The Libertine. And really, they all sucked. Not all for the same reason or with the same intensity, but still. But to review them and still give people the opportunity to decide for themselves, one has to…euhm… what was I saying? Fuck “the people”, I have some things to say about these movies, yes.

Mission Impossible 3; Now I’ve never completely gotten the point of the whole M:I franchise thing, but then again, I’m not all that into action-movies anyways. I also don’t get why Tom Cruise is still being paid, but since he seems to produce most of his own movies now perhaps that is not such a difficult question to answer, I guess a good deal of the negotiations there were based on the “Want money? I’m in it then, so there” type of argument. Perhaps with some tongue-sticking-outage for good measure.
But, as far as action movies go, this one truly got on my tits. Now I don’t say that an action movie needs to have a good plot, good acting or intelligent behaviours in it, far from it really, I’ve watched and enjoyed “Krull” which should give anyone a good standard of how I feel about Action as a genre. This movie did NOT live up to those standards. This is saying something really.

We start of with a scene of Cruise (who is named Ethan in the movie but never mind, you’ll be thinking of him as Tom anyways) vs TheBadGuy (who probably had a name, Davian SomethingorotherbuthellbedeadsoonsonoworriesrememberingplusyoullbehappyhedoesntdothevoicehedidinCapoteanywayeventhoughyoudidntseeitcauseyoureculturallyretardedwhichIknowcauseyouarewatchingMI3andyesImtalkingaboutyoutooeventhoughyoudidseeCapotebutthatmustvebeenaflukecauseyourehere, I guess the credits named him) where TheBadGug (TBG from now on) threatens to shoot Tom’s wife. Now we all know this is a big no-no. Only the wife’s of James Bond are allowed to be killed, and then on the wedding night only. There are RULES here people. We don’t kill the pets, the kids (this rule should be revoked but is still in practice) or the wife unless we are in a revenge-type movie, or one of the aforementioned are part of the plot/aiding and abetting/generally established stupid. But because TBG is spouting off a lot of information not from the previous movie we already know the movie is going to be a flashback or “how did we get up to here”, and therefore most likely not going to be about revenge. TBG then proceeds to shoot the wife, leaving Tommyboy with a very classic One-Tear rolling from his right eye. Cut to opening credits.

Where we find out the woman who was just shot (or will be just have been shot (grammar licks differential timing’s cloven hoofs)) in the last scene to actually be Tom’s fiancé, which means she can safely be killed, anyone stupid enough to get engaged just before the start of or mentioning that fact during an action movie deserves to be killed. And Tom is a trainer of agents, one of which has been stupid enough to get herself caught. (damn, it is a revenge type movie, can’t we just go back to “trying to stop the maniac from destroying the Earth? I like the Earth, I think of it as Home, whereas I think of the person to be revenged as a word SOUNDING a bit like home, but with two less letters, and not meaning quite the same)
Rescueing ensues, which is botched because the to-be-rescued gets killed (in a fun way, by the way, but more on that later) and we are introduced to the standard team/band of heroes for this movie. The cute asian girl who is an expert on nearly everything but mostly on wearing clothes real nice, the nerdy Irishman with a penchant for fast moving flying objects, and the burly may or may not be black man with a gruff demeanor but a heart of gold.
So, stereotypes firmly in place, we go after the bad guy, which we do stupidly, but it still works, and we piss him off, after which he kidnaps our wife (they got married sneakily and swiftly, mostly because they both realised that only marriage would keep her from getting killed) and we go after him again, kill him, resolve a few interpersonal conflicts by ignoring them and we are ready for the next instalment of this drivelling maniacal cuntingness.

But in the meantime we get to see Tom get shot up the nose with a small explosive device that will fry his brains (the FUN way to go, not real painful and fast. If I were the bad guy I’d not invest in expensive small explosive but just crush his nads in a vice and shoot him in the head just before he passes out. No chance of a sequel there) we see the head of security being ineffectual; “Ma’am I’m gonna need you to stand back a bit, please, ma’am, stand back please, ma’am, would you mind stopping with the pouring wine all over my boss please, ma’am? Really I’m going to have to ask you not to tag him with this paging device if it is not too much of a hassle, ok, now I can handle you drugging him but really I would like you to stop bundling him to that there car now please ma’am? Ma’am? OH GOD THEY TOOK THE BOSS!!!!”
And a lot, a LOT of latex masks and shite to let people for no real reason look like other people.
So nothing new there.

Something that also has very little news to bring is The DaVinci Code. I mean, come on. The information from the book already wasn’t all that newsworthy, I know a lot of things most people didn’t know and I’ll admit it was presented well, even though bookwise it was so bad I nearly broke my personal dogma and almost heaved it mightily through the nearest window, but the movie is not going to be all exiting now is it, everybody in the entire world having have read the book after all? Plus, the information in the book might have been news to most Americans and the three people in Europe who’ve never heard of Catholicism, but really, watch Discovery Channel for a rainy Sunday afternoon and look up any words you
But I’d have to say, from a technically inferior book with a nice idea and a good deal of information they went to a technically very good film with nice action and unoriginal information. So in general I’d say it was a well done movie. It was stupid, but entertaining. Not going to go into it too deeply, it wasn’t all that interesting. Actually, on the bus drive home my roommate was at a loss to remember it in the line up of the movies we’d seen.
But see it, anyways, it was entertaining, and it is the movie people are going to be talking about, so it’d be a shame to see it.

And then, The Libertine. Johnny Depp as a cursing, shagging London Toff who pisses people off, is forgiven, pisses more people off, is forgiven, gets sick, pisses people off, gets forgiven and dies. End of freakin’ story.

Beautifully done movie, honestly, and most of the acting is superb, and there are some moments in the film that are truly moving, and with impressive lines. But the movie is depressing, god it is. And I think that most Depp-fans won’t like him that much with a face rotten of by syphilis… I enjoyed it though J smarmy little bastard. (I’m kidding, as an actor I think Depp has done some very fine work and will be able to do much more of the same, but sometimes it feels good to see someone attractive be destroyed by the consequences of their on ill-conceived actions)

Well, that’s it for now, I had some more to say about MI£ but since it’d have been just more of the same only with more cussing thrown in, I’ll spare you that much.

Off to next time,
Kind regards.

Peeved

I am. Just slightly, but I am. I would even go so far as to say I am considering moving myself into the slight direction of feeling royally pissed off.

Yesterday I walked from my hotel to Picadilly Circus, cause you need to have been there once at least any visit to London. As this is about a 1.5 hour walk at the best of times and I have done some backtracking to fill up a good two hour slot, I was planning on taking the bus back.
Now when I reached the bus-stop it was just coming up, so I jumped in immediately, oping to be able to by my ticket from the driver. No such luck, I had to get out again to get my ticket from the machine at the stop. Something that takes all of thirty seconds, and since there were about eleven people behind me, I had plenty of time.
Only I didn't.

I didn't because as soon as I got off the doors closed and the bus left, leaving twelve people including me on the sidewalk. This as you can imagine proved a prime-bonding experience between us all as we stood there cursing and yelling at the busdriver.

I hate busdriver. It's a shame here in England they are all safely ensconsed in their own little plastic bubble.

Apart from that, nothing really happened yesterday, just had the nice long walk, saw the sights a bit, enjoyed looking at the architecture and whatnot. I was happy.

Now I'm on the last day of training, half day actually, then up to the airport and back to Holland, because I have tickets for the theatre tonight. Should be fun, but a bit tiring and rushed.
Ah well, off to training now!

Pubcrawl...

Yes, yesterday I somehow got suckered into a pubcrawl. Within my circle of friends I might be known as someone who'll try new things every now and again but really, pubcrawling is not widely seen as "my thing".

But the football-watching crowd yesterday was picky enough to send us trudging through east-Londen looking for a good viewing location. The first one was rejected because the screen was too big and the place too busy. The second one because there wasn't enough sound, the third one, by sight alone, because it wasn't busy enough (?) and then the fourth was deemed acceptable, not big screens, but comfortable seeting at least. By now I was hungry, bored out of my gore and I needed to go to the toilet with a vengeance, so I'd have agreed with anything.
(There was also a part Spanish-part English reason to agree with whatever was suggested, but then again, to me that's nothing new.)

But I have to say I had fun. We were with a group of about ten people, and everybody was introduced to me and quite nice. Football fans, off course, and the match was Barcelona against Arsenal and therefore well on the side of Arsenal. Because Barcelona is coached by a Dutchmen I felt moraly obliged to support Barcelona and I actually found out watching football isn't as bad as I'd always thought. At least the game was interesting and the fact "my team" won might've helped a bit.

We stuck around untill we were quite subtly told the bar wanted to close ("do you mind holding up your glass so I can clean the table now?") and we walked back to the hotel.
I'm very happy by the way to report that I can now find my way around East Londen 1, and my sense of direction is slowly coming back. Tonight I'm gonna see if I can truly catch my bearings in the Centre as well. Luckily I did find out there is an all night bus service from Centre to my hotel so I'll be able to come home at least.

For anyone who thinks this is really boring, by hte way, me prattling on about my hotel, and my lack of nightlife, and everything, I'm not sorry. This is going to be a bit like my diary for the duration of my stay and I'll prattle on about anything I like to prattle on about. Next up is fashion.

Because really, fashionwise I'm starting to hate humanity with a vengeance. We have come to the point where fashion isn't really different from one country to the other and it doesn't renew itself because everybody keeps buying what everybody else buys. And that basically sucks. For I'm here now and NOTHING I can buy I could not have bought in Amsterdam. Nothing apart from the backpacks.... Backpacks are really IN right now apparantly but I truly, truly hate them. Really hate them. They look like shite on nearly anyone. I'm just happy I brought my little messenger style tote. it is so much nicer than a twostrapped contraption maskerading as a fashion item.

Anyway, this afternoon on my lunchbreak I took a walk up to the Tower, and stood there for a few minutes, and then I walked up to the Roman Wall, and I stood there for nearly a quarter of an hour. The oldest man-build site in Londen.. Amazing, actually. I mean, the tower is nice, the bridge is nice, but they are both sort of...well..new, compared to that little bit of wall.

Speaking of age... I turned 25 a few weeks ago and have been feeling sort of old-ish, but luckily last night I found out I am the youngest employee of this company on the mainland of Europe! I am second on the whole of Europe by about six weeks, dammit, the spanglish one is six weeks younger than me. But fair enough, I won't hold it against him. (I'd hold anything else available against him though, if there was even the slightest chance he wasn't very, very straight)

Hmm what more have I to say for now... not much, actually... OH! concerning the heat/pressure issue tipped on upon in my blog yesterday, the answer is both, I'm so happy...

That is truly it for now I guess. I'm off to find somewhere to eat and will speak to you all tomorrow morning. (not that you'd know it is tomorrow morning then, but it seems to be the only time I'll be able to write anything before training and the rush to the airport right after that...)

Tata!

Sense of Direction

Well, it's something I have. I have an incredible fear of getting lost, and as a sort of defence I have developed a reasonable sense of direction. I can read maps, asses distance-information, remember landmarks and streets and therefore usually have a very easy time finding my way around.

Not so here in London, the town just freaks my senses. I can't find anything. And it's not just the small and winding streets, Cologne has those, Amsterdam has those, and I am fine over there. And it's not the lack of landmarks, cause, well, it's London, apart form Rome I don't think there is a more landmark-filled city in Europe. But nonetheless, I can't find anything here. I can sort of find my hotel, and after walking around a bit yesterday afternoon I can find my way around the direct environs, which is good cause I will probably be here some time soon in the future again.
But the Centre of the city, not a chance. I was looking for a particular bar yesterday and had been walking for quite a while when I noticed I was traversing parallels of the same street over and over again. This pissed me off, and I decided to concentrate on a well-lit and busy street to re-orient myself, and set of towards the lights. Which I then proceeded to miss. Somehow, I got turned around and walked towards a general housing area, nothing there to get my bearings back.

Well, my choices where simple, there was the "plod along untill you recognize something" which I'd have used in Amsterdam because it's small and you get to a border or river within two hours walk any time. Then there was the "freak out and break down" which I seriously considered but given the fact that I was trying to get to a bar and see if I'd be able to pull a well-accented person of no definite description I'd ruled that out as an option. So i went for #3, grabbing a cab. And luckily I did, cause I was a LONG way off.

Well, since I picked the bar in question because it was having a comedy-night with a gay comedian I'd seen once on television and seemed a nice bar with cute general patronage, I was disappointed with the fact that I'd managed to miss my preferred entertainment, instead running in to a bad drag queen with tired jokes, and into a collection of the old and drizzly. I could've pulled, but really, without a good will there is no reason to kill anyone during intercourse now is there.

So an early night, which was a good plan, I was exhausted and nearly overslept this morning. Well, I say nearly, and I mean nearly. I was supposed to be here at work at nine thirty, and I woke up at nine twentyfive. So nearly. And here I am sitting, not showered, unshaven, I feel like a mess. And tonight I'm supposed to go for a few drinks with a few of my Londen colleagues.
And watch football. Christ but I hate football. Ah well, I'll see how it is for an hour or so and get into city center as soon as I get bored, see if I can find my footing in this blasted town.

Two more days here, two more nights counting tonight. Londen is great, though, my english is improving again (which I notice because I feel it is deteriorating, but that just means I hear mistakes again I'd usually miss). The hotel is nothing real special but the bathroom is stellar, really spacious shower I still haven't actually used, and can't wait to. I hope there is water pressure and heat, but right now I'd be happy with either.

And I do love English people, Oh god I do. I still maintain that out of every 15 you see 14 are so ugly I'd not touch them if they were in the way between me and a coke, but the fifteenth, of god the fifteenth makes up for all of them in general Woofyness.. Truly. So I'm enjoying myself.
I do think I'll be happy to get home on friday though, but that's mostly because it'll be weekend then and there are tickets to a good show :)

Anyway, I wish you all a good night, I'll go watch a football match now, arg, and see who in this office is fun enough to spend some more time with.

Fokker 50

WHY?! WHY!?

I was doing fine. I got up at 4.30 this morning, showered, made my bed, heard my mom come in to pick me up & bring me to the airport. Repacked my suitcase, got in the car, airport, checked in, went to the gate, saw the plane.

No problem as yet, sure, the plane was small, a Fokker 50 in fact and quite dwarfed by anything I'd ever flown in, but no problem.

Then, as I was awaiting boarding, a purser/stewardess type woman walks up to one of the external propellors, wiggles it about a bit, turns it round once, looks to me to be sighing derisively, and walks off.
I was firmly beleiving she'd do both, or, judging from her facial expression, to condemn the plane and make someone get another one. (I know it doesn't work llike that but she looked like she'd be able to pull it off.)

But no, they started boarding, and I started being very, very sure that if there ever was a flight I might not make all the way through, this would be it.

Obviously, since I am in fact typing this from the London office of my company instead of from a burning and charcoaly slab of sulfur, I survived. What I did in fact survive was a very pleasant flight into London City Airport. Then, because my boss' boss is an impatient man and was on the same flight as me I also got to survive not the planned DLR-drive into London but a cab-drive into a traffic jam the likes of which I'd still hesitate to describe.

Interesting.

Now, I'm enjoying a spectacular view of London's financial centre. Very nice, and awaiting the first part of the reason I'm here, a systemtraining. Tomorrow and the day after will be Network. Fine by me, the wheather is gorgeous and I'm planning to do some nice city-scanning on my off hours. Been to London once before for a weekend, which is hardly enough, and I want to see a bit more of the town this time.

Have to say though, I like the London branch. At least here, when people aren't truly attractive, they at least have nice accents. Shame that getting up at half four in the morning does no good to ones' complexion or general attraciveness, and my accent isn't up to par yet due to not aving spoken much English lately.

Ah... I'm certain I'll do okay.

More tomorrow, but I've no idea what about yet, since I don't know how I'm gonna spend my time here precisely at this juncture in time.

Londen..thingy

See? See? I CAN do an update within three months of the last one, just providing I have something to say and am bored enough to say it here. And guess what? Yes, indeed, I am! Oh goody...

Last weeks have been a bit meager, moviewise. I've been both busy and broke and very little new movies that interest me have come into the cinema's. Me and my housemate have been maintaining our tuesdaynight-schedule though, where two theatres in town show sneak-previews, which is always a good thing, seeing a movie before everybody else has a chance to.

This week; "The Hills have Eyes", a remake of a movie by Wes Craven, who's had his hands in this version as well. Because it's a remake of what is widely considered a "classic"I'm gonna spoil it like there's no tomorrow, so if you've no idea what the movie is about and still planning on seeing it, skip this review-type thing.

First things first, is it really necessary to tell us EVERYTHING we need to know about this movie in the first few minutes? Really? It is? oh.. my bad then. The opening credits show newspaperclippings of a series of nuclear tests and the fact that some American miners refused to leave there houses and became "lost". This is interspersed with flashes of deformed faces and children born with peculiar birth-defects. All nice and well, but considering that since "Freaks" no movie has been about freaks hurting freaks I'd already put good money on the introduction of regular people to get killed, kidnapped, beaten, shot, raped, or otherwise inconvenienced. Said regulars would undoubtedly triomf in the end over sheer insurmountable odds and numbers of opposition thusly re-affirming the stereotype of the all american hero.

And guess what, this is EXACTLY what happens. A "normal" family is stranded in the very same desert where the nuclear family resides, they get attacked, beaten, raped, shot, kidnappen, the dogs are killed (BAD nuclear freaks, never hurt the pets) and the requisite "youngsters" and their uncle survive.

Well, survive... survive 12 miles from the nearest but abandoned shack and god knows how far from everything else, without food or water, or shadow. Not to mention the fact that they are all probably radioactive now. So they WILL die, but really, this only makes me happy.

A good few scares moviewise, a couple of nice lines, a few good acting performances. Sadly, these are submerged and forgotten quickly in the barrage of cheap scares, bad lines, bad acting and gratuitous shots of gore.
Still, it was entertaining enough to sit through, which says something about a Cramer-movie.

In other news, I'm off to londen for the next week on business, and knowing that fact really drove home the fact I'm getting really old now...
But I'll try to keep y'all up to date what happens over there, I will, truly. And yes, this means I might write ssomething here next week, where I'll mention things I've done sideways, and gloss over nearly anything interesting.
But that's well known territory by now, so no surprises really...:)

8 freaking litres of soup

Yes. yes. Eight (8) litres of soup.

Why eight?

As I posted last time I turned 25 on the 25th of April, and such an occassion deserves to be celebrated in grand style. But since I can't afford grand style, I celebrated it by inviting anybody I felt remotely interesting into my house to spend a relaxing evening at home. The initial count rose a bit above thirty, and thirty people need to be fed. Simple. So I enlisted my mom, the best of the best, and asked her to make two pans of soup, tomato and vegetable, so I could give people soup, and I was planning on making snacks, sandwiches, anything really.

My mother miscalculated, and arrived toting the abovementioned litres. And then the cancellations started coming in... Friend who suddenly needed to stay late at work and would be arriving after dinner, people who called to say they'd be eating at home, people spraining their ankles, anything you can think of really. In the end, I ended up with about nine or so people for dinner. They valiantly battled the tsunami of food I spread out before them, but didn't make any real dent in the available consumables.

So I'm left with a load, load of food. Most of this, the chips, the crackers, the cheese, will keep well, but the soup, the blasted soup, won't. So me and my roommate have been eating soup this weekend. And the vegetable is now completely gone, but the tomato is still a daunting prospect, and because soup is only soup for so long before it turns into a new tenant, I am going to be forced to throw it away, and it sucks, because it is really, REALLY good soup.

Incidentally, soup is one of those words that loses all meaning when used too often.

Ah well, the birthday was right fun, a good group of people to get together, all's well that ends well, except for the soup, that won't end well.