Where the hell is Chiba?!

OK... Let's start with what I drank last night. It started with the bottle of Kriekbier I had with my steak dinner (peppercorn sauce is inherently good, I might add), and was swiftly followed with a pint of Tiger bitter in the Nuns. By that time I had company- Vixel, Dave-Death and Metal-Luke, and given that it was a nice day and I was in a good mood, I decided to partake of a pitcher of the pub's patented cocktail variously known as Smurf's Arse or Wipeout.

Now, I know it contains at least a double brandy, a double vodka, a double blue curacao and two bottles of Smirnoff Ice, topped up to four pints with ice, fruit and lemonade. I also know that it's a somewhat silly idea to drink three pints of this stuff through a straw. Unfortunately, knowing something isn't always enough to dissuade someone from doing something.

Being a Bank Holiday the pub shut at half-ten and, somewhere along the line, it was decided the night was still young enough for one more drink. So we headed to the News House across town, which I must admit I've never actually been in before. We had more cocktails, specifically Black Russians. While I'm normally all for bars that deal with measures by eye, I maintain these things involved significantly more of a bottle of Kahlua than I should be drinking before an 0730 alarm. Again, good spirits got the better of good judgement.

And thus, when I crawled out of bed at approaching 8am this morning, I decided in future I should listen to my conscience more often. ;-)

It was, however, a good night.

Having drunk that much, one can guess I wasn't fully awake when I trudged downstairs this morning to find an airmail envelope on the carpet, addressed to me.

Apparently I've grown a penfriend.

After a few bemused seconds it all started to click back into place. Back when I did Japanese evening classes I put my name down for a pen-pal programme, which I thought little of afterwards. Fast forward eighteen months to the letter now in my possession from a girl in Chiba named Momoko. I suppose I'd better start thinking of interesting things to say about myself... :-)

Song for the day: Big In Japan by Guano Apes. No real reason, I just thought the title was apt...

Out Of Character

I tend to treat weekends as time to rest and recuperate from the strains of a job which, if not for those weekly periods of respite, probably drive me to any number of psychoses. Bank Holiday weekends are doubly special, as they net me extra time to be myself aside from the coveted paid holiday allowance.

This one has seen me somewhat out of character, in that I slept through most of it. By the time I got in on Friday night, I was shattered and, once Graeme had shipped off to TKD I decided to grab a couple of hours shuteye. That, of course, wasn't to be. First NAFA-Andy came round to collect the bass amp Graeme was selling Jaxx, and following that I had to help Ed cook a chili (I swear that boy will kill himself by culinary disaster one of these days). It wasn't long after that point thet Graeme returned.

We've now found the downside of Graeme's new and laudable tee-total ways: he's hyperactive. As soon as he was in he booted up Half Life on my PC and remained playing that (with a fifteen-minute break for food) until about 2am. I attempted to doze off on the bed throughout- I hadn't the energy to evict him (and I could probably have heard him downstairs anyway).

Saturday was essentially a repeat performance. Charlie showed up on the premise of picking up a disc from Ed, and two episodes of Doctor Who, an order-out for pizza and the decimation of a cheesecake later the bunch of them discovered the comedy potential of spoons. Thankfully Saturday afternoon saw Graeme picking up a copy of Fable for the XBox, which he proceeded to play until the wee hours of the morning both Saturday and Sunday. The advantage of that is that the XBox is in the living room, thus I managed to escape and alternate between reading The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson (fantastic book, but a lot heavier-going than Snow Crash) and dozing again.

The only real difference with Sunday were the couple of hours I took to clean the kitchen, properly for a change. I don't think it ever occurred to anyone else to clean under the microwave turntable before, and halfway through doing so I wished it hadn't occurred to me either. But it's all done now, so unless Ed cooks for us again we won't be in danger of food poisoning any time soon. ;-)

Which brings us to Monday. I'm beginning to wake up a bit now. Graeme left at lunch to go watch Star Wars Ep3 with Kat, and I took the time to catch up with the eighteen-plus months of MegaTokyo I hadn't read. I like that comic, especially now that Piro's moving away from the traditional gag-a-day format most WCs follow. I guess that was one of the reasons I liked Poe's comics as well- they have a narrative.

Pub this evening, which is good. Supposedly there's a RockSoc meeting in just over an hour, which I might gatecrash too. I must admit I've become increasingly bitter and cynical about RockSoc committee decisions as time has worn on, and I can see the society being in increasing danger of folding soon. Maybe the incumbent Komitet could do with a kick upside the brainpan to focus them a little better.

Song of the day: Bombshell by Poweman 5000. Makes me want to buy a bike and go night-time cycling again.

The Border

Well, I'm bored enough this afternoon to sit down and start to scribble. While I hadn't intended to put prose on this Blog (that's why I've got a website, after all), I felt it'd make a nice change of pace once in a while. So here goes...

Another gust of wind blew through the field, bending the ears of corn like waves against the shore, their crests picked out in the crisp moonlight. Marielle lowered herself from a crouch to a kneel, letting the rifle hang on its sling for a moment while she scanned the terrain around them. Almost a kilometre away, at the far end of the fields, light spilled from the windows of a bullet train as it seared past. In the hedgerow to her right, songbirds rustled in their slumber. To her rear she could pick out her compatriots' breathing, no longer the hungry gasps longing to pay off their oxygen debt but soft, slow pants of those trying to calm the staccato thunder of their own hearts.
'We should be outside the search pattern now,' she whispered, as much for her own ears as for her party. 'The border's about ten miles to the West. If we keep it steady and don't run into any more problems, we'll be out of here by sunrise.'
Out of here, she thought as her compatriot translated her words for their charges. Out of here would be across the border into Germany, to the nearest small town on the safe side of Soviet-controlled lines, drinking coffee and eating a real, hearty breakfast for the first time in a fortnight. Nearly a week of sneaking through Polish countryside, living by moonlight and stepping from shadow to shadow around Russian patrols took its toll on mind and body alike. Spending three terrifying nights protecting the city-born researcher and his terrified young daughter as they moved through hostile lands was a strain on both her and Jimi, though the sniper did well to hide his fatigue as he spoke softly and calmly to the civilians. She knew he hadn't slept in forty hours- there hadn't been chance since they were last discovered. How long had it been since she had rested? That she could not immediately remember was in itself a bad sign. They had to get out tonight, or they wouldn't be getting out at all. Two of them were already gone, lost in the initial infiltration and the prison break that had netted their precious cargo. Whatever lived in this man's mind and this girl's bloodstream had already been paid for with two lives, and it was now up to her to make sure the cost did not get any greater.
She rose back to a crouch again, bringing the SCAR back to her shoulder as she moved forward. The civvies stayed close to each other, about fifty feet behind her with Jimi a few paces behind them. They'd learned not to bunch up, and they were remembering. They might survive this after all.
The wind fanned waves through the corn again as Marielle stepped into another drainage ditch tangential to the one they had been following. This was the best place to move in these circumstances- still covered from detection by the waist-high crops, but with firm, clear ground to move on and no deformation of the field to give away their passing. They could move at almost walking pace, and none would be the wiser.
The embankment at the field's end was topped by two sets of rail lines. They'd seen the train pass minutes before, knew the lines should be clear, but terror gnawed still in the pit of Marielle's stomach. This would all be for naught if their charges were caught like rabbits in the headlights of another bullet service, or if they were spotted while exposed in the open ground of the track, breathing human targets silhouetted atop the ridge by the selene light.
They reached the crest of the embankment, bellied down into the soft grass just shy of the shingle covering the peak below the rail sleepers. She glanced at Jimi, who needed no words to understand the task at hand. The lithe sniper slung his rifle over his back and moved swiftly across the tracks to the other side. For a second Marielle lost sight of him before he moved slightly. He was good- one of the reasons they'd made it this far.
She waited until a curt hand-signal from Jimi confirmed the other side was clear, then turned to the other pair. 'We're going to cross the tracks,' She said in her best Polish, hoping it made sense. 'One at a time. You, first.' She motioned to the girl, raising a single finger to confirm. 'Then you.' Two fingers for the man. 'Me last.' Three fingers. 'Stay low, move straight to him. Do you understand?' They both nodded. She hoped they were telling the truth.
The wind whistled again, the air sounding like surf crashing on a beach now. She pointed to the girl, then across the tracks to Jimi, urgently. 'Go!' The girl ran straight and true, keeping low as she'd learned over their nights together. Jimi grabbed her as she reached him, bundled her down to the ground and partially under the camouflage cloak he wore. Then signalled the all-clear.
Marielle heard it first: an ominous drone like a cloud of locusts on the wind, perforated by a steady dull chop like a giant's eggbeater. The helicopter swung low and slow over the field behind them, no more than fifty feet from the deck. She recognised its distinctive shape immediately, feeling the bottom fall out of her stomach as she did.
The Mi24 Hind was in border patrol colours, most likely filled with a squad of Spetsnaz special forces troops and enough weaponry to make war on Hell itself. From each of its doors shone an incandescent beam of daylight, slowly tracing their high-noon spotlight discs over the corn. The helicopter slowed, then pulled into a hover. It was no more than a hundred feet away. One of the spotlights passed its beam a scant few feet in front of them, blinding her for a moment and obliterating her night-vision. As her eyes adjusted she focussed again on Jimi.
The girl was struggling, trying to belt back across the line to her father and drag him away to safety. Jimi was holding her down, his hand across her mouth as she tried to scream, to reach out back to them. Marielle felt the researcher beside her begin to move, and grabbed him. 'No! If you move, they'll see us! We'll all die!' She hoped the look in her eyes would break the language barrier.
Blood oozed between the fingers of Jimi's hands as the girl continued to struggle. He was strong, but against the stark terror possessing the ten-year-old Marielle doubted he had enough fight left in him. If the girl screamed, they were all dead. If she moved, they were all dead. Jimi couldn't bring enough force to bear to knock her out. Marielle was the only one carrying a sound-suppressed weapon. She gazed through the night-scope at the tear-filled, panic-stricken eyes of the girl, estimated where the cerebellum would be. It would be quick, painless- she'd be gone before her body transmitted any pain to her mind. Biting her own lip, she drew back her trigger finger...
The Hind swung to the South-East, panning its searchlights across the treeline as it retreated back into enemy territory. Marielle remained frozen until the look in the eyes of both Jimi and the girl changed to one of relaxation. She released the pressure on the trigger, unclenched the fingers grasping her charge's shoulder and exhaled. The man ran to his daughter, pulled her from the sniper, hugged and kissed her as she cried into his coat. Marielle waited a few more seconds for her heart-rate to stabilise before she moved across the tracks to join them. She could see the lights of some unnamed town, of Germany, of freedom in the distance. Maybe they would all get out of this after all.

My thumbs have gone weird!

My brain is slowly pulling itself back into a semblance of order after last night's festivities. The night itself wasn't heavy, it's the lack of sleep between crawling in at some unearthly hour and my alarm going of at a slightly later unearthly hour that's making for conclusive proof of the non-existence of any God. However, I'm enough of a masochist to say that I enjoyed every minute.

Normally Thursday night is Subversion at the Students' Union, which I'd in most cases attend until about midnight before heading home, checking my downloads and grabbing enough sleep to survive the next day. However, on this particular Thursday Vicki had just been informed that she's been accepted onto the Publishing-with-English course (woo!), and as such she decided to get happily ratted on, first, half a bottle of port, and second, a number of vodka-and-red-bulls which I gave up counting. As the night progressed I decided I was having too much of a good time to leave, and that as I had sod-all to do in the office today I may as well continue enjoying myself- especially with the forthcoming bank holiday weekend to recover in. And so we stayed, I continued to drink G&Ts and we finally staggered out at 2am.

By this point Vicki was incapable of walking in a straight line (though at least kept the ability to talk, something Graeme always managed to lose before locomotion), so Pete and I decided unanimously to make sure she got home OK. The walk took about three quarters of an hour, and thankfully did not again involve me getting attacked by a drunken goth girl wanting to put my hair in a topknot. ;)

The walk back home from there took until about quarter-past-three, Vicki living in my old digs on the far side of town from, well, pretty much everything else. By the time we got back, sleep was the only plan I had left. Unfortunately a slight case of insomnia kicked in, and I found myself drifting in and out of sleep until about six, where I finally managed to doze off properly. My alarm goes off at seven-thirty. :(

And thus I'm in the office, writing this for a lack of anything else to do and wondering how many more of these mochas it'll take before my eyes settle on the same focal distance. Methinks tonight will involve crashing-out as soon as I get in, though I suppose I'll have to be slightly sociable at least- we've got Graeme as usual for the weekend (and probably Monday as well, given his propensity to put off returning to Derby for as long as possible, not that I blame him), as well as Pete's mum coming to visit. The house is (still) a bombsite, but I'm not in a position to do anything about that. Besides, I cleaned the sink this morning, I guess I can count that as my contribution. ;)

Finally, then, a question for the day (posed to me last night): Everyone's got to have at least two things about themselves and/or their abilities they're proud of. What are yours?

Contemplate...

...For a moment that the measure of your success as a human being is entirely derived from the emotions you stir in others.

Enough philosophy for the morning. I'm in a good mood. To be exact, I've been almost euphorically happy for most of the past week or so, and I'm not quite sure I understand why. It's a couple of weeks since I was told my contract wasn't going to be continued, and last week I was informed that I wasn't even due the acting-up allowance normally due to someone doing a Grade-4 job on a Grade-3 salary. I should be alternately livid and despondant, but I'm taking it so well it scares me at times.

In fact, I've had a great couple of weeks. Last week I took advantage of my boss's offer of time off whenever I needed it to, ahem, visit some agencies on Friday morning (neglecting to mention that the extra couple of hours in bed would counteract my lethargy after a night at the Union). While the night didn't quite go as planned- rather than five hours in a rock event we found the Union closed until midnight, and thus I ended up in the carvery across town with Charlie and Vicki (both gothed up to the nines- I'm surprised the bartender kept a straight face) before jaunting back to our preferred venue. On the following morning I did actually visit the agencies to hand around my CV, as well as go shopping.

That brings me to the next part: food. I'm not quite sure how Vicki and I got onto the topic of cooking, but I've got enough culinary confidence to be unable to back down from a cook-off. I ended up doing a tagliatelle bolognaise on the Friday night that worked very well. I think I won that round, but I'm still waiting for Vicki's riposte (and I'll freely admit she does better Oriental food than me...).

The Friday night movies dragged on until near-sunrise as usual, and a good time was had by all (though we're still finding bits of Charlie's hair around after she took her extensions out). Saturday saw Graeme, Pete, Vicki and myself descending upon Nottingham, where I ended up buying coffee and manga- the two staples of modern life. We ended up pulling another all-nighter after that: watching movies, playing Munchkin and DoA Ultimate, consuming caffeine and generally getting more and more silly and erratic as the night turned into day. Though I went down like a marionette with its strings cut shortly after the party broke up and Vicki left, I had a great time- one of the most enjoyable weekends I've had in quite a while.

Bits of the erraticness (is that a word?) have evidently continued into this week. On Monday I noticed that flights to Holland in September were ridiculously cheap, and while at the pub I ended up umming an ahhing about going- after all, at present I won't be in work then. I finally decided to go. Vicki was apparently tipsy enough to ask if she could come along, and I was apparently tipsy enough to say yes. So the two of us are gatecrashing my parents' place for a week in September.

This morning I received a letter in the post inviting me to an interview at our National Specialists Office at the other end of town. It's about a forty-minute walk from home (so ideal for starting to cycle again, thus getting me fit), and I can do the job in my sleep. It also pays exactly what I'm currently earning. As it's a permanent position it'd also give me some stability until I can get my head around what I actually want to do with my life.

In short, there may well be light at the end of the tunnel.

Song of the day: Bloodflowers by The Cure- spent most of last night listening to it.

Caffeine Bomb?

I got into a debate with a couple of my colleagues a little while ago about what constituted good coffee. One purported that decaffeinated coffee with extra milk and extra sugar was both tasty and healthy, while myself and the other balked at both the idea of milk and decaf. In decent coffee both are cruel and unusual. I normally go for the sugar, as it helps to keep you going until the caffeine kicks in, but coffee needs to be black and thick enough to stand a spoon in.

The same can be said of tea. I've never got the concept of putting milk in tea. Admittedly I rarely drink 'proper' tea in the first place- I like fruit teas, chai and (on occasion) green tea, all with a spoonful of honey and no milk whatsoever. I don't drink much tea in England though- the water just tastes wrong, and no amount of Brita-filtering can remove the chemical tang that you just don't get with naturally-filtered water.

So, Tea or Coffee? Milk or Black? Sweet or Bitter? Plain or Esoteric? How do you take your caffeine? Or don't you?

*Kicks in door*

Well, I guessed it was about time I joined the modern wired world and got me one of these Blog things. I've had a Journal page on EighthAngel for aaages, yet as there are almost four years between the last two posts I figured something with less upkeep may be more useful. And thus you find me here.
So, let's get the introductions out of the way. For the purposes of this page, I'm Cassiel. I'm a graduate of Lufbra Uni's English department, an office wageslave and a confirmed geek and otaku. Though I'm entirely English (if I shouted loud enough you could probably hear me where I was born) I consider myself half-Dutch as I did a lot of my growing-up in The Hague. Beer, Anime and Rock Music occupy most of my time when I'm not dozing behind a desk- yep, I sit in an office from nine to five doing SFA, then come home and do the same all evening.
Don't expect much in the way of cancer-cures here- the only claims to fame I have are being a passably decent writer and a full-time dreamer. However, I like to hear others' thoughts on pretty much anything, and thus from my personal PoV the comments area here is where it's at. These posts are just for planting seeds.
So that's the welcome. Make yourselves at home, I'll go and stick the kettle on. Oh, and ignore the cat- he's probably more afraid of you than you are of him. ;-)

-CB.