oldposts

Old Posts

Various posts that don't have a specific theme or location attached to them.

Oxford Grass Volleyball Tournament

2008-05-11

I’ve been playing volleyball with a group of people, in west London. It hasn’t been anything too serious, just casual fun on Saturday nights, when I’m around. A few weeks ago I got an invite to join the group at a grass 4s tournament in Oxford. So Saturday morning I met some people near where we play volleyball, and we headed out to Oxford.

It was a fantastic day – bright, sunny and over 20 degrees. The tournament was a lot of fun – we didn’t do that well, but a good time was had by all. We ended up playing for something like seven hours, and by the end of the day, I was exhausted. It was a good day.

Denver (Boulder)

2008-05-09

This week I was in Denver – OK actually in the middle of nowhere half way between Denver and Boulder. I was there for our sales conference, much like Lisbon, where I had to give a session. All in all not much to say really – the highlight was an evening in Boulder, which seems like a great little city.

Where I live, near Waterloo Station is not really the best area for “general living” – there’s not a lot of grocery stores or that sort of thing near by. The closest thing I have to a neighborhood street is a place called Lower Marsh, over on the other side of the train station. Because of the way the station is situated, and as a result of some other very large buildings, it’s not that easy to get over to Lower Marsh. That was, until I discovered a tunnel that goes under the station, with an entrance across the street from my building. It was great, very convenient – until a couple of weeks ago when I went to use it, and it was all boarded up. I didn’t think anything of it – figured they were doing to maintenance work or something.

On Monday (which was a bank (stat) holiday here in the UK), before I headed to the airport, I needed to swing by a store on Lower Marsh. I headed over to walk the long way around, and noticed this huge crowd of people milling about, near the entry to my tunnel. I was puzzled, but didn’t think much of it. I went over to the store, but on my way back curiosity got the better of me, so I joined the crowd long enough to ask a security guy about what was going on. Seems they had set-up some sort of art exhibit in the tunnel, and this was a queue to check it out. From the street, it didn’t look that organized, but from my apartment window (which I hadn’t noticed earlier), there it was – this monster queue to enter the tunnel. I’m not one for queues, and I had to get to the airport anyway, so I didn’t think any more on it.

Today, after getting back from the airport I noticed that the tunnel was open again, so I thought I would check it out. I am glad I didn’t wait in the queue to get in, but damn is it ever cool! It seems that they opened the tunnel to graffiti artists to do their thing – and to great effect. There are some really cool things that they’ve done – I’ll try and go back and snap some pictures. The best is along a stretch of the sidewalk, where someone has painted a huge (50’+) model race car track that spells out something – you can pick out words like “boys” and “their toys”, but I couldn’t make out the whole thing. Very, very cool.

Musings

2008-02-27

Tonight I went looking for a dry cleaner. I didn’t find one, but sometimes when you think you’re looking for one thing, you find other things that are infinitely more interesting. Tonight was like that.

I headed in a different direction than I would normally go. It started poorly – I experienced London road work up close and in person – but I soon discovered that even here, in the densest areas of this huge city, a little bit of wild still remains. As I walked down a darkened side street to escape from the road work, I noticed a small park to my right. And there, from the bushes that designated the park’s boundaries came a fox. He was very cautious, and when he first noticed me he headed back for the safety of the park. I continued down the street a ways, and waited in the shadows. Sure enough, a few minutes later the fox came back out of the park, crossed the street and continued on with his nightly foraging. It’s amazing how life continues to evolve and adapt.

Later that evening, as my wandering brought me back home, I stopped at a bench on the Thames Walk on the South Bank. It was a beautiful, clear night, illuminated by an almost-full moon, the lights of the London Eye overhead, and the Houses of Parliament across the water. As I sat back and enjoyed the evening, I was enthralled by the sounds of the city: the rumble of the Underground trains as they crossed the bridge; the muffled roar of planes as they approached the various airports; the murmur of people as they passed on the South Bank and the ever-present background noise of the city’s traffic.

As I sat there, taking it all in, it was with a sense of contentment that I headed back to my flat, calling it a day. I never did find that dry cleaner.

Pictures from Christmas 2006

I've also updated the photo gallery from South Africa with more pictures.

I'm way overdue on adding some pictures of my new favorite subject matter.

And then of course there are my other favorite girls, of which I do not have enough pictures on my web site (apparently...).